Report: South African ports to reject Israeli ships
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- Written by Ynetnews Ynetnews
- Published: 04 February 2009 04 February 2009
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The Congress of South African Trade Unions has vowed to close ports to cargo ships from "apartheid Israel," the South African Daily News reported on Wednesday.
The Congress has already announced it would refuse to offload a vessel scheduled to dock in Durban on Sunday.
According to the report, this will be the second time COSATU's affiliate, the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU,) refuses to unload goods from or destined to "dictatorial and oppressive rogue states," which include Israel, Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
A statement issued by COSATU said "This follows the decision by COSATU to strengthen the campaign in South Africa for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against apartheid Israel."
A series of protests were also scheduled to take place in major South African cities starting Thursday, and several parliament members and senior union leaders are expected to attend.
The statement, issued by COSATU, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and the Young Communist League recalled the successful boycotts imposed against South Africa during the apartheid era.
"We call on other workers and unions to follow suit and to do all that is necessary to ensure that they boycott all goods to and from Israel until Palestine is free.
"We also welcome statements by various South African Jews of conscience who have dissociated themselves from the genocide in Gaza," the statement said.
The South African Jewish Board of Deputies, however, told the Daily News it was more likely that COSATU was more concerned with upcoming national elections than the state of the Palestinian people.
"COSATU wants to show its muscle and the elections are getting closer, so it is easy to bash a foreign state," said board chairman Zev Krengel.
"It is a pity COSATU cannot show the same solidarity with its own brothers in the African continent. More than 3 000 people in Zimbabwe have died of cholera, yet we do not see any protest about that."
Krengel also said that a boycott would have little economic effect on Israel, and would prove to be unproductive.
"As South Africans, we have been a nation which talks and reconciles. This is not helping at all, and does not help the Palestinians," he said.
COSATU spokesman Patrick Craven rejected claims that the decision to boycott Israeli ships was influenced by elections, saying "The ultimate aim is to give the Palestinians independence and a sovereign state in which to live. This particular action goes beyond simple verbal denunciations."
No territorial concessions to Palestinians, says Netanyahu
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
- Published: 04 February 2009 04 February 2009
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Land would be 'grabbed by extremists', says Israeli opposition leader
[I guess he's not counting HIS extremists . . .]
Israel's rightwing opposition leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, who leads the polls before next week's parliamentary elections, warned today against giving up any occupied territory to the Palestinians, saying it would be "grabbed by extremists".
Under Netanyahu, leader of the Likud party, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are likely to grow more rapidly, putting Israel at odds with the new US administration.
In a speech, Netanyahu said that rather than peace talks with the Palestinians about giving up territory, he favoured economic development – a plan of "economic peace". He has stopped short of endorsing a two-state solution that would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
It is a stance that is likely to draw criticism from Washington, particularly from new Middle East envoy George Mitchell, who wrote a report in 2001 explicitly calling for a halt to all settlement growth. Since then the Jewish settler population has increased significantly until today it stands at nearly 500,000 settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Netanyahu has said he will not be bound by current prime minister Ehud Olmert's commitment to withdraw from some West Bank settlements and from large parts of the occupied territory as a whole. "I will not keep Olmert's commitments to withdraw and I won't evacuate settlements," Netanyahu was quoted as saying last week in the Ha'aretz newspaper. "Those understandings are invalid and unimportant."
Netanyahu is opposed to territorial withdrawals, even from the Golan Heights, captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 war. Others, including members of the current Kadima-led government, have said they would give up sovereignty over the Golan Heights in return for a peace deal with Syria.
Last month Netanyahu said there were other "models" for the Palestinians short of complete sovereignty.
His comments come at a time of growing assertiveness from the settler movement. None of the leading election candidates have taken a strong position against the settlers. Even Tzipi Livni, head of Kadima, who favours the creation of a Palestinian state as long as Israel's interests are met, said she believes in "maintaining maximum settlers and places that we hold dear such as Jerusalem".
There is frequent evidence of continued settlement expansion, despite the latest year-long round of peace talks. Under the US road map, which remains the basis of peace negotiations, Israel is committed to halting all settlement growth. All settlements are illegal under international law.
Yesterday, Ha'aretz reported that defence minister Ehud Barak had agreed to approve a new settlement in return for the evacuation of Migron, a settlement of 45 families which even the Israeli government regards as illegal. Evidence of the approval emerged in an affidavit submitted on Monday to the Israeli high court. A plan is being considered for 1,400 housing units at the new settlement. In January last year, Olmert committed himself to evacuating settlers from Migron within six months, though it now appears that no one will leave the settlement for at least another two or three years.
It has also emerged that Israel has spent more than 200m shekels (£35m) in the past two years preparing infrastructure to build thousands of homes between east Jerusalem and Ma'ale Adumim, one of the largest settlement blocs on the West Bank. A police base was built on the site in May last year and, according to Ha'aretz, much more building is expected in the area. The defence ministry told the paper it regarded Ma'ale Adumim as "an inalienable part of Jerusalem and the state of Israel in any permanent settlement".
A secret Israeli government database on settlement construction that was leaked last week to an Israeli human rights group showed that in three-quarters of all West Bank settlements some construction had taken place without proper permits. It showed more than 30 settlements were built at least in part on privately owned Palestinian land.
Michael Sfard, the lawyer for the Yesh Din rights group, said it amounted to a "severe indictment" of Israel's military and government. The group plans to use the information to file lawsuits on behalf of Palestinians.
URGENT: Act Now To Defend UNRWA In Gaza
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- Written by American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
- Published: 04 February 2009 04 February 2009
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ACT NOW: CONTACT CONGRESS ON GAZA RESOLUTION : ASK FOR SUPPORT ON H.R. 66
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- Written by ADC ADC
- Published: 03 February 2009 03 February 2009
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Exchange Between Bill Moyers and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League
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- Written by Bill Moyers Bill Moyers
- Published: 03 February 2009 03 February 2009
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Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 7:34 AM
Subject: Bill Moyers:
Exchange Between Bill Moyers and Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League
Following Bill Moyers' reflections on the events in Gaza on the JOURNAL last week, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman sent him this letter:
Mr. Moyers,
In less than a thousand words, you managed to fit into your January 9 commentary: (1) moral equivalency between Hamas, a radical Islamic terrorist group whose anti-Semitic charter cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East and perhaps America’s greatest ally in the world; (2) historical revisionism, asserting that Canaanites were Arabs; (3) anti-Semitism, declaring that Jews are “genetically coded” for violence; (4) ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel, claiming that checkpoints, the security fence, and the Gaza operation are tactics of humiliation rather than counter-terrorism; and (5) promotion of an individual, the Norwegian doctor in Gaza, who has publicly expressed support for the September 11 attacks.
I have seen and read serious critiques of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and I have disagreed with many of them. Your commentary, however, is different, consisting mostly of intellectually and morally faulty claims that do a great disservice to the PBS audience. It invites not disagreement, but rebuke.
On one point you are correct – “America has officially chosen sides.” And rightly so. Fortunately for our nation, very few of our citizens engage in the same moral equivalency, racism, historical revisionism, and indifference to terrorism as you. If the reverse held, it would not be a country that any decent person would want to live in.
Sincerely,
Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League
In response, Bill Moyers sent Mr. Foxman the following message:
Dear Mr. Foxman:
You made several errors in your letter to me of January 13 and I am writing to correct them.
First, to call someone a racist for lamenting the slaughter of civilians by the Israeli military offensive in Gaza is a slur unworthy of the tragedy unfolding there. Your resort to such a tactic is reprehensible.
Earlier this week it was widely reported that the International Red Cross “was so outraged it broke its usual silence over an attack in which the Israeli army herded a Palestinian family into a building and then shelled it, killing 30 people and leaving the surviving children clinging to the bodies of their dead mothers. The army prevented rescuers from reaching the survivors for four days.”
When American troops committed a similar atrocity in Vietnam, it was called My Lai and Lt. Calley went to prison for it. As the publisher of a large newspaper at the time, I instructed our editorial staff to cover the atrocity fully because Americans should know what our military was doing in our name and with our funding. To say “my country right or wrong” is like saying “my mother drunk or sober.” Patriots owe their country more than that, whether their government and their taxes are supporting atrocities in Vietnam, Iraq, or, in this case, Gaza.
Contrary to your claim, I made no reference whatsoever to “moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel. That is an old canard often resorted to by propagandists trying to divert attention from facts on the ground, and, it, too, is unworthy of the slaughter in Gaza. Contrary to imputing “moral equivalency” between Hamas and Israel, I said that “Hamas would like to see every Jew in Israel dead.” I said that “a radical stream of Islam now seeks to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth.” And I described the new spate of anti-Semitism across the continent of Europe. I am curious as to why you ignored remarks which clearly counter the notion of “moral equivalency.”
And although I specifically referred to “the rockets from Hamas” falling on Israel and said that “every nation has the right to defend itself, and Israel is no exception,” you nonetheless accuse me of “ignorance of the terrorist threat against Israel.” Once again, you are quite selective in your reading of my essay.
Your claim that “the checkpoints, the security fence and the Gaza operation” [I used the more accurate “onslaught”] are not humiliating of the Palestinians is lamentable. I did not claim that these were, as you write, “tactics of humiliation rather [emphasis mine] than counter-terrorism,” but perhaps it is overly simplistic to think they are one and not the other, when they are both. Also lamentable is your description of my “promotion” of the Norwegian doctor in Gaza when in fact I was simply quoting what he told CBS News: “It’s like Dante’s Inferno. They are bombing one and a half million people in a cage.” The whole world has been able to see for itself what he was talking about, and as one major news organization after another has been reporting, is reeling from the sight.
And, to your claim that I was “declaring Jews are ‘genetically coded’ for violence,” you are mistaken. My comment – obviously not sufficiently precise – was not directed at a specific people but to the fact that the human race has violence in its DNA, as the biblical stories so strongly affirm. I also had in mind the relationship between all the descendents of Abraham who love the same biblical land and come to such grief over it.
From my days in President Johnson’s White House forward, I have defended Israel’s right to defend itself, and still do. But sometimes an honest critic is a government’s best friend, and I am appalled by Israel’s devastation of innocent civilians in this battle, all the more so because, as I said in my column, it is exactly what Hamas wanted to happen. To be so indifferent to that suffering is, sadly, to be as blind in Gaza as Samson.
Sincerely,
Bill Moyers