In the two years I have been editing this blog site I have only received half a dozen comments or communications from readers. The site receives 500-800 hits per month on average. So I know there are people viewing it. But I'm not sure it is worth my time or the annual domain-name fee to continue the site.
If you are a regular visitor to this blog, please drop me a line if you would like to see the site continue to exist. If I receive even a few replies I'll keep the thing going. If not, this will be the last post to the blog. I'll take it down as of January 15, 2012.
You can continue to read any published articles of mine, past, present or future, at my personal blog, The Plain Language Review.
Thanks!
Joe
The Ethnocide Continues Apace
Business as usual for the rogue Zionist state, with the full support and encouragement of the U.S., the world's other most dangerous rogue nation.
Israel Killed 180 Palestinians Including 21 Children in 2011
The Palestinian Information Center / December 30, 2011
The Israeli occupation forces killed 180 Palestinians in 2011 including 21 children and arrested 3300, a report by the Palestine liberation organization (PLO) said on Wednesday.
It said that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) endorsed in the same year the construction of 26837 new settlement units in the occupied Palestinian land including 1774 in occupied Jerusalem and its environs.
The IOA confiscated 15525 dunums of Palestinian land, razed 495 homes, and destroyed 18764 trees, the report, carrying the name of people under occupation, said.
It pointed to the Jewish settlers’ attacks in the same year, noting that they escalated attacks in December and launched a series of “terrorist” assaults on mosques and violated the sanctity of a Christian Orthodox church on the Jordan River.
It's All About the Paper Work
Poof! 70,000 fewer Palestinians are citizens of Israel. Pretty clever trick, and just one of many Israel uses to continue their program of ethnic cleansing. Imagine if the Mayor of New York decided to revoke the citizenship of 70,000 Jews living in Manhattan. What do you think Abe Foxman would have to say?
Israel Prepares to Transfer 70,000 Jerusalem Palestinians to West Bank I.D.’s
Allison Deger / Mondoweiss / December 28, 2011
This week Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat announced plans to strip IDs from 70,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem , and transfer them to the West Bank civil administration. Though not a physical transfer, this stripping of IDs will mark the largest en masse stripping of citizenship rights, since 1967, the Palestinian naksa, or "setback." Palestinians who were forced into exile as refugees, or were traveling abroad in 1967 were stripped of their Palestinians ID documents.
The Palestinians from East Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Silwan, whose status will be revoked, are already geographically annexed to a "greater Jerusalem" by the security wall. The route of the wall cuts Silwan from other Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem that are east of the wall, and west of the Ma'ale Adumim settlement.
Haaretz’s Nir Hassan reported on December 23, the stripping of Jerusalem IDs coincides with the opening of a massive new checkpoint in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Shuafat, and the re-emergence of construction on a settler road connecting Jerusalem to Ma'ale Adumim. Finishing the construction, combined with the new checkpoint, would all but cut the West Bank in half-- and complete the physical annexation of East Jerusalem.
Hassan writes: Put the pieces together, and you get a picture of Israel erecting, at enormous expense, a major system of roads and checkpoints that would allow for the total separation of Palestinians and Israelis while also enabling the construction of Mevasseret Adumim, a neighborhood that would connect Ma'aleh Adumim to Jerusalem.
Mevasseret Adumim, located in what is called EI, currently has, "roads, electricity lines, traffic circles and lots for development," according to Hassan. The transfer of 70,000 Palestinians, the new checkpoint, and the road construction all indicate that though development of Mevasseret Adumim stopped in 2007, plans to construct this settlement (which will break territorial continuity in the West Bank ) are back.
I Wonder Who Taught Israel How to Engage in Collective Punishment? (Nudge, Nudge, Wink, Wink)
In case anyone still believes what is being done to the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank is anything other than the most sinister form of ethnocide and collective punishment. Probably those strawberries and roses would be used by Hamas to attack Sderot. Israel is peopled by a sick and deranged society.
Single Truckload of Strawberries Leaves Gaza
Ma'an News Agency / November 29, 2011
One truckload of strawberries left the Gaza Strip on Tuesday for export to Europe, crossings officials said.
Farmers in Gaza started to export limited amounts of produce to Europe via the Kerem Shalom crossing on Sunday, said crossings liaison officer Raed Fattouh. The strawberries and carnations were the first produce to leave the coastal enclave in six months due to an Israeli ban on exports which has crippled the Gaza economy. The agricultural goods are exported under an agreement between Israel and the Dutch government to allow five trucks of farm produce to leave Gaza each day.
The Israeli legal rights organization Gisha notes that if Israel fully implements the agreement, the exports represent just 1 percent of the exports Israel agreed to in 2005. Under the 2005 agreement, Israel pledged to allow 400 trucks of Gaza produce to be exported every day.
"This exception to the ban is helpful for select growers, but it fails to address the manufacturing shut-down and massive unemployment caused by the export ban," Gisha said in a statement released Monday.
Before 2007, 85 percent of Gazan produce was sold to Israel or the West Bank, Gisha said, adding that exporting to Europe was expensive due to high shipping costs and low demand. Gaza farmer Monthar al-Boudi told Gisha he exported 1,500 tons of strawberries annually before Israel banned exports from Gaza to Israel and the West Bank in 2007. In 2010, al-Boudi was only allowed to sell seven tons of strawberries to Europe.
Gisha director Sari Bashi said: "It is not clear how preventing producers in Gaza from selling eggplants, school desks, and oranges to the West Bank enhances Israeli security, but the ban is clearly harming Palestinians trying to engage in productive, dignified work."
Zionism is a Corrupt and Barbaric Ideology
Imagine if Jewish children were treated like this, anywhere in the world. It would be front page news, and the U.S. Congress would pass resolutions condemning such barbaric behavior. But this is Israel, where Zionism has created a racist vortex which allows the whole world to watch as Israelis treat children like animals. All this in the name of the "Jewish" state.
Stone Cold Justice / November 28, 2011
John Lyons / Australians for Palestine
You hear them before you see them. The first clue that a new group of children is approaching is a shuffle of shoes and a clinking of handcuffs and shackles. The door to the courtroom bursts open – four boys, all shackled, stare into the room. Four boys looking bewildered.
They wear brown prison overalls and they trail into the room where their fate is to be decided by a female Israeli army officer/judge, who is sitting at the bench, waiting. The look on the face of one of the boys changes to elation when he sees his mother at the back of the court. He blows her a kiss. But his mother begins crying and this upsets the boy. He begins crying too.
We’re sitting in an Israeli military court which is attached to the Ofer prison in the West Bank, 25 minutes from Jerusalem. Mondays and Tuesdays are “children’s days”. Hundreds of Palestinian children from the age of 12 are brought here each year to be tried under Israeli military law for a range of offences. The majority are accused of throwing stones and, as the court has close to a 100 per cent conviction rate, almost all will be imprisoned for anything from two weeks to 10 months. Some will end up in adult jails.
How Dare You Make Electricity Without Our Permission
I say it often, but it is the only way to truly express the reality of this fetid ideology: Zionism is a sickness of the soul. It corrupts even the most basic of human instincts for compassion and fairness. But then, isn't that true of all forms of racism?
Palestinian Village Condemned To Live In Darkness
Saed Bannoura / IMEMC November 19, 2011
After the “Seeba” Spanish organization managed to install Solar Panels at a Palestinian village in the West Bank, known as Amenzil, and for the first time its residents managed to have electricity, Israel issued a military injunction ordering the residents to remove the Panels.
The village never had power, but after the panels were installed, the residents started providing their homes, and event tents, with lights, bought TV sets and other electric materials.
In cooperation with the An-Najah University In Nablus, the Spanish nongovernmental organization installed two Solar Panels in the tiny village “Amenzil” located in the southern part of the West Bank, and the villagers managed to replace their gas-run generators that were barely enough for basic functions.
The Solar Panels also enabled the residents to run a water-pump to provide the village with water supplies, especially since it does not have running water.
Racism Corrupts Any and All Notions of Morality
They are products of the racist society which Zionism has fostered in Israel. Notice the abject abuse of power evident in this photo. A single unarmed person, bound and blindfolded, then taunted by two young boys armed to the teeth and knowing they have absolute authority over another human being. And they also know they have absolute impunity and will never be punished or reprimanded for anything they do. This is the legacy of Zionism.
Pathology of a Checkpoint in Service of Settlers
Tamar Fleishman / Novembef 12, 2011 / The West Bank
Jaba checkpoint is a great example of the deep connection between the infliction of the checkpoint regime in the West Bank on the Palestinian population, and the effort to satisfy the settlers' needs and caprices.
Jaba checkpoint lies on the road leading from Qalandiya to Ramallah, it merges with road number 60 which is the main road running along the length of the West Bank.
Unlike the tens of checkpoints that are scattered around the Bank, never has the existence of this checkpoint been ascribed an ideological reasoning. While the other checkpoints detain vehicles heading towards towns populated with Jewish communities, Jaba checkpoint is the opposite: the checkpoint faces settlements in the depth of Palestine, ignoring those driving from Qalandiya/Ramallah, and the inspections preformed are to identify the nationality of the passengers, so as to protect Jews by preventing them from heading on- the original reason was that some settlers which had arrived at the entrance of Qalandiya refugee camp were stoned.
In order to give this prohibition validity, a special decree (Zav Aluf) signed by the commander in charge of the Central Command, Yaeir Nave, had been issued in 2006. The procedure was called "regulatory selection" and as the commander of the checkpoint explained: "during the regulatory selection we stop the car, check whether it’s a Jew or and Arab, if it's a Jew- check to see if he is disoriented and warn him from heading on to Ramallah". When I mentioned the bad historic connotation of the expression, he laconically replied: "the army has enough to deal with. It can't be bothered with every single word…"
And so, in attempt to protect wondering settlers, the checkpoint is manned by six soldiers during all hours of the day and year.
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