Saturday, February 28, 2015
Thursday, February 26, 2015
New Murals by Banksy in Gaza Strip
The anonymous street artist known as Banksy has visited the Gaza Strip, leaving behind several murals, according to the artist's official website.
Banksy is known for creating work with political or satirical messages. One of the paintings in Beit Hanoun features children playing on a guard tower. Another shows a large kitten drawn on the wall of a home that witnesses say was destroyed during Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli war in Gaza during the summer of 2014.
On his website, the artist captioned the kitten photo, saying, "A local man came up and said 'Please -- what does this mean?' I explained I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website -- but on the internet people only look at pictures of kittens.”
The artist also posted a mini-documentary on his site to further show the conditions in Gaza.
New Murals by Banksy in Gaza Strip
The anonymous street artist known as Banksy has visited the Gaza Strip, leaving behind several murals, according to the artist's official website.
Banksy is known for creating work with political or satirical messages. One of the paintings in Beit Hanoun features children playing on a guard tower. Another shows a large kitten drawn on the wall of a home that witnesses say was destroyed during Operation Protective Edge, the Israeli war in Gaza during the summer of 2014.
On his website, the artist captioned the kitten photo, saying, "A local man came up and said 'Please -- what does this mean?' I explained I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website -- but on the internet people only look at pictures of kittens.”
The artist also posted a mini-documentary on his site to further show the conditions in Gaza.
Aid agencies sound alarm on Gaza amid fears rebuilding could take a century
Six months after the ceasefire, Gaza’s residents are still eking out a perilous existence in the shadow of ruined buildings. Traumatised children struggle with the horrors they have seen and teenagers lose hope in the future, said aid agencies, who criticised international donors for reneging on pledges to help.
In a joint statement, 30 aid agencies, including UN bodies and international NGOs, said they were alarmed by the limited progress that had been made to rebuild devastated lives and tackle the root causes of the conflict.
Related: Gaza aid worker: we have stopped feeling anything – in pictures
In a separate statement, Oxfam said it would take more than 100 years to reconstruct ruined homes at the present rate of progress.
“We must not fail in Gaza,” said the agency collective. “We must realise the vision of making Gaza a liveable place and a cornerstone of peace and security for all in the region.”
The statement pointed to a dramatic deterioration in the situation since July, pointing out that about 100,000 people remain displaced from their shattered homes.
The agencies said: “Scheduled power cuts persist for up to 18 hours a day. The continued non-payment of the salaries of public sector employees and the lack of progress in the national unity government further increases tensions. With severe restrictions on movement, most of the 1.8 million residents are trapped in the coastal enclave, with no hope for the future.”
Calling on Israel to lift a blockade that has been in place for more than seven years, the statement said the fragile ceasefire must be reinforced and urged all parties to resume negotiations. It also made an urgent call for Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing for humanitarian cases.
Oxfam said it could take more than a century to complete essential rebuilding of homes, schools and health facilities in Gaza, because the blockade was hampering the arrival of basic building materials.
“Only an end to the blockade … will ensure that people can rebuild their lives,” said Catherine Essoyan, Oxfam’s regional director. “It is utterly deplorable that the international community is once again failing the people of Gaza when they need [assistance] most.”
Over a period of seven weeks, from early July last year, Israel bombed thousands of apartment buildings and homes in Gaza, claiming that it was reacting to rocket attacks by Hamas. More than 2,000 Palestinians – including about 540 children – and 73 Israelis were killed, while more than 11,000 were injured, with many people losing limbs or suffering horrendous burns.
Oxfam estimated that Gaza needed about 800,000 truckloads of construction materials for housing, including steel bars and cement. This would cover the damage done last year, when more than 16,000 homes were destroyed or made uninhabitable and a further 133,000 damaged. It would also cover houses damaged in previous conflicts but never repaired, and housing needs resulting from population growth.
“Less that 0.25% of the truckloads of essential construction materials needed have entered Gaza in the past three months,” said the agency.
Related: The human cost of the Israel-Gaza conflict – in pictures
Under the blockade, Israel limits the flow of concrete, cement and other materials into Gaza, arguing that they are “dual use” items that could also have a military purpose if taken by Hamas to rebuild the tunnels used to launch rocket attacks on its territory.
The failure to rebuild is exacerbating the trauma of nearly 1 million children, who, the aid agencies said, have experienced unimaginable suffering in three major conflicts spanning six years.
“Children are still coping with a tremendous amount of grief, the loss of loved ones. At the same time, a lot of them are still not in their homes … that’s unsettling, and it doesn’t enable kids to find their equilibrium and move forward,” said Pernille Ironside, chief of the Gaza office for the UN children’s agency, Unicef.
“There is just no visible improvement, let alone a tangible one in their own lives. If we were able to provide real markers of improvement that would instil and reinforce a sense of hope, which is essential,” she said.
About 80,000 children receive group or individual counselling, half of which is provided by Unicef. Even if they do go back to school (some are too scared to return to classrooms bombed last year), children find it difficult to concentrate, partly because of the trauma and partly because of conditions in crowded schools. Teenagers, in particular, were finding it hard to cope, and were experiencing feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, Ironside said.
“Even when they apply themselves, the chances of them realising their dreams are miniscule. That sense of loss of hope and helplessness really risks driving some of them over the edge, whether its climbing into rickety boats setting sail for Europe and risking drowning, or trying to jump the fence into Israel and getting shot, or joining a local militant group,” she said.
“These are very real choices that are available to adolescents and young Gazans today and they are going to making those choices more and more unless we provide them with meaningful opportunities that are attainable.”
Related: Gaza, Ebola, Iraq ... are we approaching disaster overload?
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ financial tracking service shows that last year’s UN appeal for the occupied territories was only 48% covered, with pledges of $447m (£290m).
Last month, the UN Relief and Works Agency said it had been forced to suspend its cash assistance programme for repairs to damaged and destroyed homes and for rental subsidies because it had not received funds from donors.
The 30 aid agencies urged donors to meet pledges made at a conference in Cairo last October.
“Little of the $5.4bn pledged in Cairo has reached Gaza. Cash assistance to families who lost everything has been suspended and other crucial aid is unavailable due to lack of funds. A return to hostilities is inevitable if progress is not made and the root causes of conflict are not addressed,” they said.
Think on: Banksy's tour of a ruined Gaza
The Bristolian street artist Banksy has returned to Palestine to create another series of works, following his famous 2005 series painted on the West Bank barrier wall.
The works, which he trailed on his Instagram account last night, include one piece which riffs on Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker, with the figure’s hand gone from thoughtfully supporting his face to covering it in despair. Another features a kitten sprayed on the remains of a wall, posed playing with a coiled ball of rusted metal as if it were wool. A third features children swinging around a watchtower as though it were a fairground ride.
The artist made a film to go alongside the works, documenting the devastation wrought by Israeli militia and bombing campaigns. “Make this the year YOU discover a new destination,” he sarcastically writes in its captions, recalling the banal exhortations of holiday brochures. One local is recorded saying of the kitten painting: “This cat tells the whole world that she is missing joy in her life. The cat found something to play with. What about our children?” The camera then rests on text that reads: “If we wash our hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless we side with the powerful – we don’t remain neutral.”
The artist’s previous work in Gaza on the barrier wall that seals off the Palestinian territories from Israel included an image depicting a group of girls being lifted aloft my balloons. The now infamous image marked the moment where the artist widened his satire from social problems in the UK to international issues.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Lost limbs and shattered lives: the British doctors on the frontline in Gaza
It doesn’t sound like a dangerous journey: ten-year-old Weam Al Astal was walking back home from her grandfather’s house by her father Mohammed’s side. The distance was just 40m and dozens of her cousins were playing on the Gazan street outside their home. But as the pair approached, they heard the children shout in terror. A drone fired a missile overhead. The resulting explosion threw the pair to the floor, and Mohammed heard his daughter screaming. “I lost my leg! I lost my leg! Father, come and help me!”
Six months on from the conflict in which more than 2,000 Palestinians and 73 Israelis lost their lives, tales such as Weam’s are far from uncommon. But for the British doctors who helped treat her, such cases are still a shock.
Every month since the ceasefire was declared in August, a small group of up to six orthopaedic and plastic surgeons from the UK has been travelling to the devastated city for a week at a time to help save the limbs of those caught up in the attacks. So far they have seen more than 180 patients and carried out more than 50 operations as well as helping to train local staff, provide medical equipment and help increase the capacity of the hospitals.
Naveen Cavale, a plastic surgeon from King’s College Hospital in London, says he was initially worried about travelling to Palestine just weeks after a ceasefire was declared. “I hadn’t done anything like this before,” he says. “I was scared. Would there be bombs? Were we on the bad side of town? The crossing from Israel to Gaza is intimidating in itself – there are lots of cameras and a mile long tunnel-shaped cage you have to walk through.”
But once in the city’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, the team was struck by the resilience of the doctors and patients such as Weam, whose left leg was amputated, but whose right leg was eventually saved. “What was so impressive was how brave she was,” says Graeme Groom, 61, an orthopaedic surgeon from King’s. “She came to the clinic and smiled.”
Medical help is sorely needed in Gaza. More than 11,000 Palestinians were said to be injured in the conflict, and Cavale says that on 31 July the hospital – which has only 583 beds – had to cope with 200 new patients arriving, all with terrible injuries. “That would be two months’ work in a big hospital like King’s,” the 46-year-old surgeon says. “They literally had to patch people up and get them out to make room for the next lot.”
Sometimes the injuries are so severe they are beyond our help.
Groom says the number of injured children has horrified the team and their Palestinian colleagues. “If we contemplate the shattered lives – it’s appalling. You see small children whose families have been killed and who are being looked after by more distant relatives, and who are also living with injuries. Sometimes these are so severe they are beyond our help.
“The doctors here are professional, but if you talk to them they say every time they see one of these children dead, or dismembered, or blown into bits, they see their own children. I think that’s the most distressing thing.”
Many patients with limb injuries, who would normally be kept in hospital, were sent home during the conflict, and told to return when the situation was calmer. Others were transferred to better-resourced hospitals in places such as East Jerusalem or Egypt. Today the hospitals in Gaza are still struggling to cope with a lack of resources, equipment and specialist training in fields such as plastic surgery. On top of this, many doctors – as well as cleaners and other hospital staff – have not been paid for nine months because of a political dispute.
But with the help of specialist British doctors from the charity Ideals, which provides medical and social help to victims of conflict, funded to the tune of £700,000 by the department for international development through the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, many Gazans with shattered limbs are finally being treated.
I suddenly found myself flying through the air. I found my leg bent to one side and shattered
One of the first patients Cavale saw was 24-year-old Abdullah Habeed, who had been on his way to pick up his marriage certificate so he could wed his fiancee, Iman, when he was caught in an air strike. “I suddenly found myself flying through the air. I found my leg bent to one side and shattered. I lost consciousness and when I came round I was in hospital. I was in intensive care for 17 days.”
Most of the bones in Abdullah’s left arm were shattered, and he fell on unexploded shell fragments that shattered his pelvis. He was left with a gaping semicircular wound in his left thigh with the blood vessels and bone visible. By the time the British doctors saw him, he had been in hospital for a month but was refusing to allow his leg to be amputated in the hope he could be transferred abroad and his limb saved.
The Palestinian doctors were unsure on what to do, but Cavale says it was clear any delay could prove fatal. “He was lucky his vessels hadn’t burst and he hadn’t bled to death. We told him he would die unless he had an amputation, and the longer he waited the more likely this would be.”
Under advice from the British specialist trauma team, Palestinian surgeons amputated Abdullah’s leg and today, although he has to use a wheelchair, he is looking forward to his future with his wife.
But Cavale says conflict-related injuries have not stopped. With schools, hospitals and Gaza’s infrastructure – including power plants hit by Israeli air strikes, problems continue. More than 100,000 people have been left homeless and many more are without electricity, so there has been an increase in burns cases as families turn to open fires for warmth or cooking. Even as recently as last week the British doctors were given a grim lesson in what their Palestinian colleagues have to cope with. Three young cousins had found a small, unexploded shell or bullet, and when they threw it against a wall it exploded leaving them all with terrible stomach and chest injuries that could have been fatal. The oldest, a 14-year-old, lost his hand but was saved, along with his two three-year-old cousins.
Cavale says his experience has taught him not just about the “futility of armed conflict”, but a respect for local doctors in Palestine. “They are doing an amazing job.”
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Palestinians Threaten to End Security Ties With Israel
The Palestinian president has threatened to stop security coordination with Israel if the country continues to withhold millions of dollars of Palestinian tax revenue, a senior Palestinian official said Sunday.
Nabil Shaath said President Mahmoud Abbas warned European leaders on a trip to Europe last week that Palestinian officials would discuss the matter during a Palestinian central council meeting next week.
"We have told the international community that we will not be able to continue the security coordination and the Palestinian Authority itself may not be able to continue functioning if Israel continues stealing our money," Shaath said.
Israel has withheld tax revenue from the Palestinians since they joined the International Criminal Court last month. Shaath said the withheld revenue amounts to $140 million per month for the last two months.
Tax revenue accounts for about 70 percent of the Palestinians' budget. The withheld revenue has led the cash-strapped Palestinian government to take out bank loans. For the last two months, it has paid only partial salaries for civil servants.
Palestinian officials said the U.S., European Union and Arab countries have asked the Palestinians to hold off on any decision about canceling security coordination with Israel until after Israeli elections on March 17, saying Israel may release the revenue after the elections.
But the Palestinian officials said they were concerned Israel could continue to withhold the tax revenue as a punitive measure through April, when the Palestinians become official members of the International Criminal Court.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Secretary of State John Kerry said Saturday the U.S. fears that without a cash injection, the Palestinian Authority could collapse — entailing serious security implications for both Palestinians and Israelis.
Palestinians and Israelis cooperate on arrests and other security matters in the West Bank. The Palestinian leadership has been under public pressure to cancel the security coordination, but it has been reluctant to do so.
Israel has withheld and subsequently released Palestinian tax revenue in the past. The Palestinians have also threatened to end security coordination in the past.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Those calling for a boycott of Israel are ignoring some painful truths | Yair Lapid
T his past weekend, 700 British artists had a letter published in the Guardian in which they called on others to boycott Israel until what they term the “colonial occupation” ends. As an Israeli politician who supports the creation of a Palestinian state, it has been a long time since I saw a letter so shallow and lacking in coherence.
The fact that, as is common with petitions like this, the majority of the signatories are unaware of the reality here in the Middle East, doesn’t reassure me. It only takes one “useful idiot” like Roger Waters (the expression is not an insult but a phrase attributed to Lenin to describe weak liberals used by cynical regimes for their own ends) to call Israel an apartheid state and the liberal choir will immediately stand to attention and sing the chorus with him. Why? Because everyone wants to be like Nelson Mandela but no one has the patience to learn the details.
I wonder if, before they put their names to the letter, anyone told the 700 signatories that twice already – once in 2000 and once in 2008 – Israel offered the Palestinians the chance to build an independent state on over 90% of the territories, and on both occasions the Palestinians refused?
Related: Over 100 artists announce a cultural boycott of Israel | Letters
Do they know that Gaza is ruled by Hamas, a terrorist organisation that punishes homosexuality with hanging? That severely restricts the freedom of women to do such dangerous things as running a marathon or riding a scooter? Where Jews and Christians don’t have the right to live?
Maybe when they aren’t signing petitions they would prefer democratic regimes, like Israel, where there is freedom of expression and freedom of the press and where rights for the LGBT community are protected by law. Where Muslims and Christians serve in the supreme court, the Knesset and senior positions in the military; where women have served as prime minister, as president of the supreme court and in the highest ranks of the army?
As artists – who by definition are people with imagination – are they willing to take a moment and consider this: let’s imagine that following a call in the Guardian the IDF puts down its weapons and stops protecting the people of Israel for 24 hours – what do they think would happen?
If you don’t share the imagination of an artist let me tell you: radical Islamists would kill us all. Women and children first. That’s what they’re doing to their brethren in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and across the Islamic world. What are the chances that they’d spare us?
To end the conflict Israel only has one demand: security for our citizens. We don’t believe that’s unreasonable. In 2005, as part of the disengagement from Gaza, Israel pulled out without any demands from Gaza, took down the settlements and removed the army from the area.
Related: Peace not promoted by an Israel boycott | Letters
We expected the Palestinians would take the opportunity to build schools, hospitals and factories but instead they kicked out the Palestinian Authority from Gaza and brought in Hamas – a fundamentalist Islamist terror group of the worst kind. And after a few months they began building terror tunnels into Israeli territory and started massive rocket and mortar fire upon the innocent civilian population.
Not long ago I visited my friend Gila Turgeman who lives in southern Israel. Her son, Daniel, was killed a few months ago by a mortar shell the Palestinians fired on his house. He was four years old. A little young to be a colonial occupier.
I am not a British artist. I guess I’ll never be as complex as Ken Loach or as grandiose as Richard Ashcroft. What I want is far more modest: for people not to try and kill me just because I’m a Jew. For Jews in Europe to be able to stand safely outside synagogues and do their shopping in a Kosher supermarket and for Jews in Israel to be safe from the threat of rockets and mortars.
• Comments on this article will be open for 24 hours but may be closed overnight.
Wednesday, February 18, 2015
In Israel, Biracial German Author Probes Her Nazi Heritage
When Jennifer Teege stumbled upon a book in a Hamburg library seven years ago, the biracial German woman who was given up for adoption as a child was stunned to discover a deep family secret that shook her to the core.
Her maternal grandfather was the brutal SS Commander Amon Goeth, who ran a concentration camp in Plaszow, Poland, in World War II and whose cruelty was so chillingly portrayed by actor Ralph Fiennes in the 1993 Oscar-winning movie "Schindler's List."
"It really turned my world upside down," said Teege, who has written a memoir about her soul-searching experience entitled "My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me" — a reference to the Nazis' racist ideology.
In Israel, her story resonates on many levels. The country is home to the world's largest community of Holocaust survivors. It is also the place where Teege lived as a student for several years, became fluent in Hebrew and first saw Steven Spielberg's epic movie — long before she knew the dark secret of her origins.
Discovering that she traced her lineage to a man described as "the symbol of evil" sent Teege into intensive psychotherapy. Her therapist broke down in tears when he heard her tale, she said.
"It was very difficult for me to deal with this because I have a very unique relationship to Israel and with the Jewish people," said the 44-year-old Teege, now a mother of two. She spoke to The Associated Press on the sidelines of the Jerusalem International Book Fair that showcased her book's Hebrew edition. An English version is coming out in April.
Goeth was notorious for shooting Jewish inmates for sport at the concentration camp in Plaszow, a Krakow suburb, and for getting his dogs to attack them. The German industrialist Oskar Schindler saved more than 1,200 Jews by bribing Goeth and other Nazis to have them work in his factories rather than be sent for extermination in death camps.
Known as the "Butcher of Plaszow," Goeth was convicted as a war criminal and hanged in 1946.
Teege's astounding revelation and the book that followed were just the latest chapters in her troubled biography, from a childhood spent in foster homes to a prolonged estrangement from both her biological parents, to her struggles with prejudice in Germany because of her dark skin and the suicide of her grandmother, with whom she was very close.
It all led to several bouts of depression, but she said that finding out about her ancestry helped bring a "sense of closure."
"Life is like a puzzle, so today I have a lot of pieces that were missing," she said. "It is a story that you would never ever invent because no one would believe that it is true. But it is true."
Teege's maternal grandmother, Ruth Irene Kalder, was a secretary in Schindler's factory and it was he who introduced her to Goeth, whose wife remained in Austria while he ran Plaszow.
Their affair produced Teege's mother, Monika Hertwig, whose memoir "I Have to Love My Father, Right?" was the book Teege found in the Hamburg library that set her on her journey.
Teege's mother had a brief affair with a Nigerian student but was already in another relationship by the time Teege was born in 1970, and she was sent to an orphanage as an infant. She maintained occasional contact with both her mother and grandmother until she was formally adopted at the age of seven. When she was 13, she found out that her grandmother had killed herself and only much later in life did she track down her biological father in Africa.
Tuesday, February 17, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Israeli Leader Calls for Mass Jewish Influx After Attack
Israel's prime minister on Sunday called for the "massive immigration" of European Jews to Israel following a deadly shooting near Copenhagen's main synagogue, renewing a blunt message that has upset some of Israel's friends in Europe.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that at a time of rising anti-Semitism in Europe, Israel is the only place where Jews can truly feel safe. His comments triggered an angry response from Copenhagen's chief rabbi, Jair Melchior, who said he was "disappointed" by the remarks.
"People from Denmark move to Israel because they love Israel, because of Zionism. But not because of terrorism," Melchior told The Associated Press. "If the way we deal with terror is to run somewhere else, we should all run to a deserted island."
Netanyahu issued his call during the weekly meeting of his Cabinet, which approved a previously scheduled $46 million plan to encourage Jewish immigration from France, Belgium and Ukraine — countries where large numbers of Jews have expressed interest in moving to Israel. France and Belgium have experienced deadly attacks on their Jewish communities in in recent years, most recently an attack in Paris last month that killed four Jews at a kosher market. Ukraine, meanwhile, is in the midst of a conflict between government troops and Russian-backed separatists.
"This wave of attacks is expected to continue," Netanyahu told his Cabinet. "Jews deserve security in every country, but we say to our Jewish brothers and sisters, Israel is your home."
Netanyahu's comments came amid a tight re-election campaign ahead of March 17 elections. Seeking a third consecutive term, Netanyahu has focused his campaign on Israel's security needs, repeatedly warning voters about the many threats from Islamic radicals throughout the region. There was no immediate reaction from his chief opponents.
Netanyahu spoke at a time of rising tensions with European countries over Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, captured territories claimed by the Palestinians. Some Israelis believe such criticism has helped fuel anti-Semitism.
European leaders, however, have insisted that their criticism has no bearing on the treatment of their own Jewish communities. When Netanyahu rushed to France following the deadly supermarket standoff and urged the country's Jews to move to Israel, French leaders signaled their unhappiness.
"France, without the Jews of France, is no longer France," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said at the time. The government has since beefed up protection at synagogues, Jewish schools and other sensitive sites.
French Jews have been increasingly migrating to Israel, a pattern that dismayed the French government well before the attacks at the kosher supermarket and since has left top officials pleading for them to stay. In 2014, more than 7,000 French Jews left, more than double the number for 2013.
The exodus from France accelerated after the March 2012 attacks by Mohammed Merah, who stormed a Jewish school in Toulouse, killing three children and a rabbi.
Last month's attack in France was part of a wave of violence that killed a total of 17 people carried out by extremists who claimed allegiance to the al-Qaida and Islamic State extremist groups.
In Denmark, Jens Madsen, head of the Danish intelligence agency PET, said investigators believed the gunman who killed two people in separate attacks was inspired by Islamic radicalism.
Friday, February 13, 2015
The Chapel Hill shootings show how urgent it is that we abandon hatred
T hree young American students were killed this week in a horrific shooting in North Carolina. Their names were Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, who was in his second year of a graduate school in dentistry, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, also a student.
Young lives cut short, ostensibly over a long-simmering dispute about a parking lot. I don’t accept this explanation for one second. In his pain, the young women’s father commented that his innocent daughters had died because today there is so much imagery of “Islamic terrorists”.
I look at their photos – beautiful young women with smiles of hope in headscarves with their graduation gowns. They were three young Muslims – don’t tell me this was about a parking lot.
Already the media is asking whether this was a hate crime, though for some outlets it took a while to pursue this theory. The prosecutor says it is too early to tell what happened. I do not blame Craig Hicks, the man who has been charged with the killings – but I blame those who have influenced him, who filled him with thoughts of violence and hatred, and the soft laws that allowed him to own a gun. Tell me, if a Muslim man had shot three white Americans in the head in their flat – would your first thoughts have been about a parking lot dispute or noise in the condominium?
Three daughters of mine met violent deaths in a shelling attack in Gaza in 2009. I know what it is to be a bereaved father. But I will never hate. Hatred begets more hatred, violence is an endemic disease. And who exactly should I be hating? Hatred in this world is causing corrosive damage. We need to break down barriers and work as loving individuals to get to know people of all cultures and accept our differences. We need to bridge the divide and provide our children with a peaceful environment to grow up in. Hatred is often fuelled by ignorance and racism. We should not hate something or someone we do not as yet know – it might turn out to be a new friendship, something that enriches our lives.
My other three daughters, who live with me in Toronto, are beautiful young humanitarians and clever students. Two will graduate this year. They, too, wear headscarves – and a graduation gown. I am frightened that one day my daughters will be walking down a street and that people seeing only stereotypes fuelled by the media and movies, will see the headscarves before they see my daughters. My lovely trio, who are my life, and lead independent lives, are well educated and look forward to a fulfilling future. I look at the two smiling women in the newspaper photo, and it is my dead daughters all over again.
We need to ask why such killings take place, as many times as it takes, to look at the causes, and speak out with courage. I am a doctor, so here’s an analogy. Violence and hatred are endemic diseases that cross borders like infectious illnesses. I always live in hope, however. I believe we can reverse this disease and we can immunise ourselves. But first we need to speak out, to get to know one another. Let’s inform our political leaders, get them on board, tell our newspaper editors, and fill our communities with tolerance and understanding.
Please let us ensure that these three young students did not die in vain, that we can learn from this situation to shun ethnic, religious or political stereotypes. Following the appalling killings recently in Paris, at the Charlie Hebdo offices and a kosher supermarket, tens of thousands of people across the world stood up in solidarity with the victims. Now I say let’s honour the memory of Deah, Razan and Yusor by speaking out against hate speech. All religions, including Islam, spread the message of tolerance, forgiveness, kindness, peace and equality, respect of neighbours and care of the neighbour.
But it is time for global political leaders, and Barack Obama in particular, to show that all are equal and no one is denied justice. They must start treating hatred as a destructive and pressing public health issue. For hatred to work, to create war and genocide, it must dehumanise the other – make stereotypes, out of individuals. We can stop this hopeless cycle of violence from repeating, but only if we work together.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Rachel Corrie's family loses wrongful death appeal in Israel's supreme court
Israel’s supreme court has rejected the appeal by the family of Rachel Corrie – the US activist who was crushed to death by a military bulldozer in Gaza 12 years ago – which had sought to hold Israel liable for her death.
The ruling, which followed a high-profile hearing before Israel’s top court last year, appears to bring to an end – in the Israeli courts at least – years of effort by Corrie’s family to hold the country’s military responsible for her death.
Instead, the court upheld the decision of a lower court, which invoked the “combat activities exception” that the Israeli military cannot be held responsible for damages in a war zone.
In 2003, 23-year old Corrie, from Olympia in Washington state, was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement protesting against the Israeli military’s house destructions in Rafah, in the southern Gaza strip, when she was run over and killed.
Her death became an international cause célèbre.
Corrie’s family had been pursuing a lawsuit against Israel’s defence ministry, charging that Israel’s military had either killed her deliberately, or that they were guilty of negligence in not demonstrating more care when she attempted to block the bulldozer.
The family had been appealing against the decision of a lower court in Haifa in 2012 that absolved the Israeli military of responsibility for her death, describing it as a “regrettable accident.”
The Corrie family first began proceedings in 2005 – two years after their daughter’s death – arguing in court that the military should have suspended the bulldozing operations until the protesters had been removed from the area.
The appeal last year attracted considerable attention, although it was clear from the exchanges between the judges and the Corrie family lawyer that it would be an uphill struggle to persuade the court. Rachel’s mother Cindy had criticised the 2012 court ruling in Haifa as “a symptom of a broken system of accountability within Israel and our own US government” that had failed to deliver accountability for her daughter’s death.
The Israeli military had long argued that the area in which Rachel Corrie was killed was a “closed military zone” where there had been recent violence – a claim challenged by family’s lawyer Hussein Abu Hussein.
The judge in the Haifa case also accepted the claim by the Israeli military that troops in the area had recently been attacked with a grenade – an assertion also challenged by the family.
Rachel’s parents, Craig and Cindy, had dedicated themselves almost full-time to their quest to learn the truth about their daughter’s death, an event tangled in the contradictory claims by by Israeli soldiers, which often seemed at odds with official military logs.
The 2012 hearing accepted the claim by the unidentified bulldozer driver that he did not see Corrie standing in front of his when he ran her over despite the fact she was wearing a fluorescent jacket.
Instead, judge Oded Gershon held her responsible for her own death. “She did not move away as any reasonable person would have done,” Gershon ruled. “But she chose to endanger herself … and thus found her death.”
In a separate ruling, however, the supreme court reversed a second lower court decision relating to claims that Corrie’s body was mishandled after her autopsy. That had led to claims that some of her remains were misplaced. That case will now go back to court.
Corrie’s story inspired the 2005 play My Name is Rachel Corrie, written by Guardian US editor Katharine Viner, which was based on Corrie’s writings. The play has been staged across the world, and will be performed this spring in New York for the first time.
Hezbollah Troops Fast Approaching Israeli Border From Syrian Side
Bolstered by the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran, the Syrian Army continued its rapid advance into southern Syria today, inching closer to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
"Regime troops and their Hezbollah-led allies are advancing in the area linking Daraa, Quneitra and Damascus provinces," close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Beginning earlier this week, the Syrian government confirmed they launched a “broad operation” to recapture strategic hilltops and key swaths of territory lost last year to rebel groups including the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra Front.
A field commander told Syrian State TV: "The military operation launched by the Syrian army in the south continues under the leadership of Syrian President Bashar Assad and in cooperation with the axis of resistance -- Hezbollah and Iran," according to the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat newspaper.
Amin Hatit, a military strategist close to Hezbollah, added that "it appears that the initial results surpass all expectations. ... Within 48 hours, goals were achieved for which ten days were allocated," according to Asharq Alawsat.
Syrian State television reported the offensive swiftly gained control of the town of Deir al-Adas and the village of Deir Maker and Tal al-Arous and Tal al-Sarjeh.
But rebels told ABC News the battles are ongoing, and ABC News was unable to independently confirm the captured towns.
"The Free Syrian Army is still making notable advances across the border with Jordan into Southern Syria. The battle for Deir Addas is not over. We have reports of over 30 Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah and Afghan Shia foreign fighters captured by rebels in the Southern front this week," Oubai Shahbandar, former Senior Advisor to the Syrian National Coalition told ABC News.
"The Iranian revolutionary guards have taken operational control of Assad’s forces south of Damascus because they have little trust in the competency of what’s left of Assad’s military in the southern front following a string of defeats since January," Shahbandar explained to ABC News.
This week's southern offensive comes on the heels of a deadly week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says air strikes to the south and east of the capital have killed nearly 200 people in the last ten days alone.
But by this afternoon, the Observatory said military operations were more "limited” than earlier this week due to bad weather.
Activists told the Associated Press that the pace had slowed due to the snowstorm hitting the higher elevations.
The pressure on Israel’s northern border comes just two weeks after a Hezbollah strike on an Israeli convoy in the Shebaa Farms area, killing two soldiers and wounding at least seven others. The strike was in retaliation for a presumed Israeli attack on a Hezbollah convoy in Quneitra, Syria, near the border last month. The strike, which Israel never officially claimed, killed an Iranian general and six Hezbollah commanders, including Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of one of Hezbollah's most prominent military commanders believed to have been assassinated by Israel. Neither Hezbollah nor Israel escalated the border fire, but analysts say renewed fighting near the border heightens the risk of opening a broader confrontation.
"The decision to prevent southern Syria from falling into the hands of Israel's collaborators is more strategic than any other, and is equally as important as the decision to prevent Damascus from falling to these same collaborators,” said Ibrahim al-Amin, editor of the pro-Hezbollah daily Al Akhbar, according to Israel’s Ynet.
According to the Observatory, the Lebanese Shii’ite militant group is currently leading the charge in southern Syria and has deployed at least 5,000 fighters to serve alongside Syrian government forces. Peter Lerner, spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces puts that number somewhere between “3,000 to 5,000.”
The new offensive “should not be a surprise," Lerner told ABC News, “as Hezbollah are an integral component of the regime’s war effort.”
Avi Issacharoff, the Times of Israel's Middle East analyst, said it’s premature to game out an Israeli response. “It’s early to evaluate the offensive in the Golan heights, Hezbollah's attempts to take the Golan heights is aimed at creating one front from South Lebanon to the Golan heights in Syria - so the next war will be fought on two fronts and not one as it used to be.”
Issacharoff added: “This is a strategic offensive, it will take a week to understand if Hezbollah and the Syrian army will be successful or not in driving the rebels away from near the Israeli borders.”
Israel’s next move could depend on the success of this week’s operation, but for now, Lerner says “we maintain extensive forces both offensive and defensive capabilities” and “continue to assess the situation closely.”
Rym Momtaz contributed reporting from New York. The Associated Press also contributed to this report.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Sunday, February 8, 2015
Yair Lapid Seeks 2nd Chance to Be Face of Israel's Future
After bursting onto the political scene with a surprisingly strong showing in Israel's last election, Yair Lapid said he was bound for the prime minister's office. But today the telegenic ex-anchorman, actor and novelist hopes to avoid becoming another flash in the pan.
His fledgling party, Yesh Atid or "There's a Future," came from nowhere in the 2013 election to capture 19 of the Knesset's 120 seats, second only to the party headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But instead of leading his largely secular and middle-class supporters into opposition to battle Netanyahu, he cut a deal to join the prime minister's government as finance minister — but also wilted his own grass roots support in the process.
On the campaign trail ahead of the March 17 election, Lapid has dumped his previous brash talk of replacing Netanyahu as Israel's leader and emphasizes he simply wants his party to retain enough votes to be a force in parliament, either back in the Cabinet or in the opposition. He's hoping that voters forgive him for propping up Netanyahu, and instead credit him as the man whose bitter breakup with Netanyahu's Likud triggered this early election.
"It's not about who I want to be, it's about what I want to do," Lapid told The Associated Press last week at a late-night Super Bowl party with supporters in a Tel Aviv bar.
Whether there's a future for Lapid's barely three-year-old party may seem like a local issue for Israelis alone. But Yesh Atid's tepid performance in opinion polls is dispiriting for the legions worldwide who want Israel to dump the internationally unpopular Netanyahu. Many still see in Lapid the most charismatic face in a field cluttered with less-than-electrifying leadership candidates.
Having been fired as finance chief two months ago, he now crisscrosses the country attacking Netanyahu with venom and confidence. But he's assailing every other major party too, suggesting that his camp alone is untainted by criminality and corruption. He uses dry humor to good effect.
"Listen to something amazing," Lapid tells the camera in his latest campaign ad. "Of all the big parties in the Knesset — Likud, Labor, Jewish Home, Shas, Yisrael Beitenu — we are the only party, the only one, where none of its leaders or members have ever been investigated, suspected of anything, detained, used the right to remain silent, been indicted or sat in prison. The only one. I can't believe I am listing this as an achievement."
Analysts and opinion polls suggest Yesh Atid is on course to retain only around 10 seats, still good leverage to join a potential coalition government with the current opposition leader, Labor's Isaac Herzog. Lurking in the back of Lapid's mind must be the fate of so many trendy centrist parties — including one founded by his own dad —that blossomed brightly and died just as quickly.
Lapid's father, former journalist Joseph "Tommy" Lapid, led Shinui to a surprise 15 seats in the 2003 election, but that party disintegrated within three years. The Kadima party, founded by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a centrist alternative to the stalwart Likud and Labor parties, attained power on its first try in 2006 but soon it too exited the stage.
Thursday, February 5, 2015
Monday, February 2, 2015
AP PHOTOS: After Moment of Fear, Wounded Gaza Girl Goes Home
Screaming, covered in red burns and welts from shrapnel, 13-month-old Anwar Saad's fear and pain showed across her face as five pairs of white-gloved hands gently brought her down on an examination table.
The moment of chaos, one of many at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital during last summer's war between Israel and Hamas, became an image shared worldwide after Associated Press photographer Khalil Hamra captured it.
Now, some six months later, Anwar is back at her home in the Gaza Strip. But her family's suffering has not abated.
The summer's war in Gaza, the third between Israel and Hamas since the group seized the seaside territory, killed more than 2,200 Palestinians and 72 people on the Israeli side. At least 1,483 Palestinian civilians were killed in the war — 66 percent of the overall death toll — according to preliminary United Nations figures.
For the Saads, the war came into their home on July 18, when they say an Israeli tank shell crashed through the wall of their house in Gaza's crowded Shijaiyeh neighborhood. Shrapnel wounded all of the Saad family, most seriously Anwar, her mother, Abeer Saad, and her 3-year-old brother, Mahmoud Saad.
Anwar's father, Mohammed Saad, rushed his wounded family to Shifa Hospital.
"I did not know where to go," he later recalled. "Shall I go to see my wife at the women's surgery department or go to the men's surgery where my older son is staying, or to the children's surgery department to see Anwar and Mahmoud?"
Hamra, on hand at the hospital to cover the work of doctors treating the wounded, saw Anwar and followed her into an examination room. He shot his photograph overtop the infant against the black exam table, the bright overhead lights drawing deep shadow into the rest of his image.
Today, Anwar has returned to her family's damaged one-story home. Their living room serves as a sleeping and cooking area now, because the damaged kitchen and adjacent bedroom are still unusable. The roof of the living room is charred and the smell of smoke still lingers.
Anwar's father built new walls for the kitchen and the bedroom, but stopped rebuilding because he ran out of money. He said he quit his job in a coal workshop because the war drove up his blood pressure.
And Anwar's mother spends much of her time caring for her daughter. The toddler only stops crying when she is in her rocking bed.
Before the war, Anwar was playful and alert, the mother said. Not any longer.
"Now she doesn't play with her siblings. She is always dull and every now and then we take her to the doctor," she said. "I wish she would go back to how she was in the past."
Here are a series of AP photographs shot by Hamra of Anwar at the time of her being wounded and how she lives now.
———
Follow AP photographers and photo editors on Twitter: http://apne.ws/15Oo6jo.
———
Follow Fares Akram on Twitter at http://ift.tt/1zBv3W0 . Follow Khalil Hamra at http://ift.tt/1z9kY1L .
Head of UN war crimes inquiry resigns after Israel accuses him of pro-Gaza bias
The head of a UN inquiry into last summer’s Israeli military offensive in Gaza has said he will resign after Israeli allegations of bias due to consultancy work he did for the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
William Schabas, a Canadian academic, was appointed last August by the head of the UN Human Rights Council to lead a three-member group looking into alleged war crimes during the offensive.
In a letter to the commission, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Schabas said he would step down immediately to prevent the issue from overshadowing the preparation of the report and its findings, which are due to be published in March.
Schabas’ departure highlights the sensitivity of the UN investigation just weeks after prosecutors at the international criminal court in The Hague said they had started a preliminary inquiry into alleged atrocities in the Palestinian territories.
In the letter, Schabas said a legal opinion he wrote for the PLO in 2012, for which he was paid $1,300 (£900), was not different from advice he had given to many other governments and organisations.
“My views on Israel and Palestine as well as on many other issues were well known and very public,” he wrote. “This work in defence of human rights appears to have made me a huge target for malicious attacks.”
Israel had long criticised Schabas’ appointment, citing his record as a strong critic of the Jewish state and its current political leadership. Schabas said his work for the PLO had prompted the Human Rights Council’s executive to seek legal advice about his position from UN headquarters on Monday.
“I believe that it is difficult for the work to continue while a procedure is underway to consider whether the chair of the commission should be removed,” he wrote.
The commission had largely finished gathering evidence and had begun writing the report, he added.
The commission is looking into the behaviour of both the Israelis and of Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza and calls for the destruction of Israel.
The appointment of Schabas, who lives in Britain and teaches international law at Middlesex University, was welcomed at the time by Hamas but was harshly criticised by Jewish groups in the US.
Schabas had said at the time he was determined to put aside any views about “things that have gone on in the past”.