Madison Rafah Journal

Gulf Times, 1 July, 2008

Palestinian journalist Mohamed Omer lies in his hospital bed in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip yesterday

GAZA: A Palestinian journalist said from his hospital bed yesterday that he was abused and injured by Israeli security personnel on his way home to the Gaza Strip after receiving a journalism award in Britain.

Mohamed Omer, who writes for the pro-Palestinian Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, said he was strip-searched and detained for nearly four hours at the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge when he crossed from Jordan into the occupied West Bank, en route to the Gaza Strip, on June 26.

"They wanted to humiliate me. I collapsed in tears … I had to throw up twice and I fainted twice," Omer said. "They asked silly questions about everything I had done during my trip to London and Europe and they made fun of me."

An Israeli government spokesman declined immediate comment and said he would seek information about the incident.

(Read on …)

Mel Frykberg, Inter Press Service, June 28, 2008

GAZA CITY – Mohammed Omer, the Gaza correspondent of IPS, and joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday as he tried to return home to Gaza.

Omer, a resident of Rafah in the south of Gaza, and previous recipient of the New America Media's Best Youth Voice award several years ago, was returning from London where he had just collected his Gellhorn Prize, and from several European capitals where he had speaking engagements, including a meeting with Greek parliamentarians.

Omer's trip was sponsored by The Washington Report, and the Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv was responsible for coordinating Omer's travel plans and his security permit to leave Gaza with Israeli officials.

(Read on …)

Nasser Jaber spent eighteen years building up his chicken farm in the southern Gaza Strip. Two weeks ago the IOF bulldozed his farm, killing 40,000 of his chickens, and destroying his business.

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 27 May 2008

“They came at four in the morning, with two bulldozers, and they left before 8am. I own this chicken farm with my three brothers, and we worked day and night for eighteen years to build up our business. The Israelis destroyed everything in less than four hours.”

Nasser Jaber’s chicken farm was bulldozed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) ten days ago, in the early morning hours of May 16, while he was sleeping at home in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. He still looks stunned. Wearily he guides us round the ruins of his eighteen-year business.

“This was a lifetime project for me and my brothers” he says as we clamber over rubble, wire, shattered sheets of metal and thousands of putrefying chickens. “I have never belonged to any political faction, and I have never been to jail. I don’t know why they did this.” The farm workers who are starting to clear some of the rubble are all wearing facemasks. Forty thousand dead chickens lie smashed amidst the rubble and the stench is sickening.

When his workers raised the alarm that the chicken farm was being bulldozed, Nasser Jaber didn’t rush out to the farm, but stayed at home, waiting until the Israelis had finally left. “It would have been too dangerous to come to the farm while they were destroying everything” he says. “This is not the first time the Israelis have been here. The [Israeli] border is only two and a half kilometers away, and they invade this area every month. They had already destroyed one of our walls, and then the water tanks. But nothing like this.” One section of the chicken farm, a large barn containing 9,000 chickens, was spared the attack, though Nasser Jaber says the poultry are traumatized, and laying few eggs. (Read on …)

The most persuasive indictments of Israeli actions come from Israelis themselves. When American presidential candidates compete this year to be “pro-Israeli,” let’s hope that the one they support is not the oppressor.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, New York Times, June 22, 2008

HEBRON, West Bank

To travel through the West Bank and Gaza these days feels like traveling through Israeli colonies.

You whiz around the West Bank on new highways that in some cases are reserved for Israeli vehicles, catching glimpses of Palestinian vehicles lined up at checkpoints.

The security system that Israel is steadily establishing is nowhere more stifling than here in Hebron, the largest city in the southern part of the West Bank. In the heart of a city with 160,000 Palestinians, Israel maintains a Jewish settlement with 800 people. To protect them, the Israeli military has established a massive system of guard posts, checkpoints and road closures since 2001.

More than 1,800 Palestinian shops have closed, in some cases the doors welded shut, and several thousand people have been driven from their homes. The once flourishing gold market is now blocked with barbed wire and choked with weeds and garbage.

(Read on …)

Austin Greenberg, The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, June 21, 2008

As Dallas, Texas, resident Charles Gelfand, 69, was reading the Dallas Morning News in his home about three months ago, he decided to test his news knowledge by taking a current events quiz he saw in the paper.

“I am the president of the Palestinian National Authority and a leading member of the Fatah political group,” read the first sentence of the “Newsname” section of the quiz under a picture of the smiling Palestinian leader.

Though he was already a lock to earn 15 points for knowing the correct answer (Mahmoud Abbas), Gelfand read on.

“I have often been seen as the Palestinian voice of moderation by Israel and the West. In the past few days, Israeli attacks in Gaza killed more than 110 Palestinians, including 22 children, in the deadliest military assault on Gaza in years.”

(Read on …)

Diamond Mogul Lev Leviev Facing Increasing Pressure for Human Rights Violations

Adalah-NY, June 19, 2008

[New York, NY] A senior advisor to UNICEF’s Director said in a letter today that UNICEF will reject all partnerships with, or financial support from, Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev. Leviev had previously provided UNICEF with support by sponsoring fundraising events in France. Leviev’s past support for UNICEF is featured in a number of places on his company’s website.

UNICEF’s rejection of Leviev’s support followed meetings with Adalah-NY, letters from organizations and Palestinian communities advocating a boycott of Leviev’s companies, and a visit by UNICEF officials to Jayyous, one of the Palestinian communities where a Leviev company is building Israeli settlements. Leviev’s diamond-mining companies in Angola have also been accused of serious human rights abuses.

Abdullah Abu Rahme, a community leader from the West Bank village of Bil’in, said, “We welcome UNICEF’s decision to hold one of the companies that has been building Mattityahu East settlement accountable for attempting to destroy our community. Our village has engaged in a three year nonviolent campaign to save our land, and an international boycott is an important complement to our weekly protests. This is a victory, but we need many more like it.” Leviev’s companies have also recently built homes in the settlements of Maale Adumim and Har Homa, both of which cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank.

A June 19 letter to Adalah-NY from Chris De Bono, senior communications advisor to UNICEF’s Executive Director, stated: "Yesterday we confirmed that UNICEF has concluded that it will not consider partnerships – direct or indirect – with Mr. Lev Leviev or any of his corporate entities, and will not accept financial or other support that we know is from him or his corporate entities. The concerned parts of the UNICEF family, including our national committees, have been advised of this." (See the full UNICEF letter) The letter followed a June 18th meeting at UNICEF’s New York headquarters with representatives from Adalah-NY.

(Read on …)

From: Professor Said Abdelwahed [abdelwahed_prof (at) yahoo.com]
Subject: Fishing in Gaza
Date: Friday, June 20, 2008

Palestinian fishermen re-asserted their right to fish and their right to live, demonstrating on June 16th with their boats against the Israeli siege

Luisa Morgantini, Il Manifesto, June 18, 2008

IN THE GAZA STRIP THE SEA IS A HUGE ISRAELI CHECK POINT

The sea in Gaza is blue, but also green due to pollution because in many sites sewage waters run freely into the waters after passing visibly through the streets of Gaza city and other cities in the Strip and ending up in the sea. No waste water decontamination treatment systems exist because they have been destroyed by the Israeli raids or are out of use because spare parts cannot get through the embargo decided by the Israeli Authorities, resulting in serious consequences for the environment and the local economy.

But the sea in Gaza has always been a great natural resource and could also become a resource for tourism. After the Oslo Agreement, Palestinians hoped that Gaza beaches would be crowded, many hotels have been built, and restaurants and cafes opened. But these expectations were short-lived: hotels have been almost abandoned and tourists cannot of course travel to Gaza. Palestinian citizens in Israel, who the Palestinian tourism targeted, are prevented from entering Gaza since the borders are in the sole hands of the Israeli government and all Israeli citizens are prohibited from traveling to the Strip or to the West Bank.

THE LAST FIVE YEARS, THE WORST

(Read on …)