Madison Rafah Journal

Posing and smiling with blindfolded Palestinian prisoners — and then posting the pics to Facebook? What's the big deal, an Israeli reserve officer asks. (wired.com)

Haaretz, 16 Aug 2010

'Best time of my life.' Female soldier smiles for camera in front of bound prisoners, before joking online with friends; army calls photos 'ugly and callous.'

A former Israel Defense Forces soldier has raised a storm on the internet after posting photographs of herself posing next to blindfold Palestinian prisoners on Facebook.

Photographs uploaded by Eden Abergil from Ashdod and labeled "IDF – the best time of my life" show her smiling next to Palestinian prisoners with their hands bound and their eyes covered.

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Colombia Support Network, August 12, 2010

Colombia Support Network and the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project invite you to contact United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to urge him to remove Alvaro Uribe-Velez from the panel of inquiry into the May 31, 2010 Israeli attack on the humanitarian flotilla to Gaza.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon announced that he had named Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe-Velez to be the Vice-Chair of a U.N. Panel of Inquiry into the May 31 Israeli attack on a six-ship humanitarian flotilla bringing aid to Gaza. Alvaro Uribe is particularly unqualified to be a member of this commission, much less its Vice-Chair, for the following reasons:

1. His government presided over the murder of thousands of innocent non-combatants, many of them kidnapped and later killed by the military and presented as "guerrillas killed in combat." This phenomenon became known as "false positives", a "positive" being Colombian military lingo for a killed guerrilla. When a common grave with some 2,000 bodies was discovered next to a military base in the town of Macarena, Uribe's response was to praise the military—likely responsible for these deaths—and criticize the human rights workers who brought the mass grave's existence to light.

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Madison Area Peace Coalition, The Capital Times, June 13, 2010

The Madison peace community condemns the Israeli murder of nine activists aboard the Mavi Marmara on May 31. Nineteen-year-old U.S. citizen Furkan Dogan was among the slain. Other unarmed activists, including American and Israeli citizens, were illegally arrested in international waters. Though the activists' ship flew the flag of NATO member and erstwhile Israeli friend Turkey, the Israeli soldiers were undeterred. These brutal crimes against a peaceful flotilla of humanitarian aid vessels were acts of state piracy on the high seas.

While pretending to end its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005, Israel has subjected the population of Gaza to an illegal blockade for the past three years because it does not approve of the democratically elected Palestinian government. In January 2009 Israel inflicted a brutal, punitive assault on Gaza, killing 1,400 civilians. Numerous Israeli war crimes during this attack, including the use of white phosphorus munitions in civilian areas, are carefully documented in the United Nations Goldstone Report.

The prolonged Israeli siege prevents Gaza's civilians from getting enough food and medicine for their daily needs and the necessary supplies to rebuild their devastated economy. Biscuits, chocolate, fishing line, seeds, toys, musical instruments and dozens of other household items are prohibited under the blockade. Even Gaza's sewage system cannot be rebuilt due to a shortage of cement.

Amnesty International reports that 90-95 percent of the drinking water in Gaza is contaminated and unfit for consumption. According to the U.N., 15 of Gaza's 27 hospitals were damaged or destroyed during the war. Without building materials like cement and glass, the vast majority of the destroyed health infrastructure has not been rebuilt. The U.N. has also found that "over 60 percent of households are now food insecure, threatening the health and well-being of children, women and men."

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Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, 6 Jun 2010

JERUSALEM – Israel rejected Sunday a proposal by U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon for an international investigation into its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship and said it had the right to launch its own inquiry.

"We are rejecting an international commission. We are discussing with the Obama administration a way in which our inquiry will take place," Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington, said on the U.S. TV program "Fox News Sunday."

The U.N. chief had suggested establishing a panel that would be headed by former New Zealand prime minister Geoffrey Palmer and include representatives from Turkey, Israel and the United States, an Israeli official said earlier in Jerusalem.

Netanyahu discussed the proposal for a multinational panel with Ban in a telephone call Saturday but told cabinet ministers from his right-wing Likud party Sunday that Israel was exploring other options, political sources said.

Nine Turks were killed Monday in the Israeli commando raid on the Mavi Marmara, part of a six-vessel convoy that set out to challenge an Israeli-led blockade of the Gaza Strip.

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A list of goods that Israel blocks from Gaza: notebooks, blank paper, writing utensils, coriander, chocolate, fishing rods. That’s not security; that’s a travesty. President Obama needs to find his voice and push hard for an end to the Gaza blockade.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF, The New York Times, June 2, 2010

When reports first circulated on Twitter of a deadly attack by Israeli commandos on the Gaza flotilla, I didn’t forward them because they seemed implausible. I thought: Israel wouldn’t be so obtuse as to use lethal force on self-described peace activists in international waters with scores of reporters watching.

Ah, but it turned out that Israel could be so obtuse after all. It shot itself in the foot, blasting American toes as well, and undermined all of its longer-term strategic objectives.

Abba Eban, the former Israeli statesman, is famously reported to have said in 1973: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” The quotation resonated because it was largely true.

Palestinians were locked for years into a self-defeating dynamic of violence and self-pity that led to terrorism and intransigence. Feeling misunderstood, they shrugged at global opinion and lashed back wherever they could, undermining their own cause.

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