Video: Pitching Try Outs Interrupted By Tear Gas

Asking Where The Money Goes Is Tantamount To Murder

Toronto Star – The new Conservative appointees hounded the [Rights and Democracy] president, Remy Beauregard, over three small grants he had given to one Israeli and two Palestinians NGOs to probe possible human rights violations during the Israeli attack on Gaza a year ago. He died of a heart attack caused by the harassment, said his wife, Suzanne Trepanier, who testified Tuesday.

Paper: There’s Anti-Semites And Then There’s Us

Berekeley Daily Planet – There are certainly anti-Semites who criticize Israel because they are racist, but these marginal people simply do not characterize those organizations mentioned above, the Palestinian people, or those of us in the international movement to boycott Israel for its long-standing human rights abuses.

Blog: Atwood Is Such A Protest Whore, Let’s Get Her To Jump On Our Bandwagon

Art Threat – Margaret Atwood, Canadian novelist, activist and general rabble-rouser, has been awarded the Dan David Prize at Tel Aviv University. As an outspoken advocate on everything from censorship to poverty to women’s equality to gay rights to arts funding, many human rights activists around the world are hoping Ms. Atwood will join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Campaign and decline the award…

For those wishing to support the students of Gaza on this issue, they are asking that you send a letter to Ms. Atwood as well…

Human Rights Is Big Bucks #13

VOANews – The United Nations Human Rights Council has called on Israel to pay Palestinians in the Gaza Strip reparations for damages suffered during the Israeli offensive about a year ago.

Shocking News: “Universal Jurisdiction” Being Abused

AP – British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Thursday he would move to block private groups from launching war crimes prosecutions against visiting foreign dignitaries, following a controversy inflamed when an arrest warrant was issued for former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

Brown said that Britain’s principle of universal jurisdiction — a wide-ranging legal concept that allows judges to issue warrants for nearly any visitor accused of committing war crimes anywhere in the world — was being abused.

From the “No Shit, Sherlock” File

Queen’s Journal – Queen’s English professor Scott-Morgan Straker said he thinks the term “Israeli apartheid” was deliberately designed to be contentious.

Israel, Come Forth And Be Judged

Your taxes pay their salaries, restaurant tabs, and airline tickets. They poke and prod your country. They cluck their tongues in disappointment. They judge your culture and find it lacking. They tell your leaders how to run your lives. And how many of them are elected to office? Zero. Worse yet, having a beer with any of them would be akin to eating a dirt sandwich.

[Jerusalem Post] A three-country panel was chosen Monday to examine Israel’s human rights record as part of a Universal Periodic Review this year of 64 countries by the United Nations Human Rights council in Geneva.

All 192 UN states are subject to review.

According to Israel’s ambassador to Geneva Roni Leshno Yaar, the review will be conducted by Nigeria, South Korean and Azerbaijan at the council’s December session.

Canada’s Green Party: All About The Environment…And Israel

[Globe and Mail] Green Party Leader Elizabeth May is affirming her support for an Ottawa-area Green Party candidate accused of “Israel bashing,” just one day after citing anti-Semitism as grounds for rejecting one of her B.C. candidates.

Qais Ghanem, a Yemeni-born physician with a strong interest in the Middle East, has stirred debate among his fellow Greens on the party’s online discussion forum. The Greens’ Ottawa-South candidate has aligned himself with three other Green candidates to form what they call the “Ottawa Group of Four.” They are pushing the party to approve a resolution called “Palestine” that “calls upon Israel to end its forty-year occupation of all Arab lands without preconditions.”

Picking Up Where Louise Arbour Left Off

[Haaretz] The UN’s new human rights chief said Monday she hopes to persuade the United States and Israel to drop their opposition to an upcoming global racism conference. 

“My instinct would be to get as many countries to participate as possible,” Navi Pillay said on her first day as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The so-called Durban II meeting in Geneva next year will review progress in fighting racism since the global body’s first such conference seven years ago.

The U.S. and Israel walked out midway through the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, because of a draft resolution that singled out Israel for criticism and compared Zionism to racism. The resolution was never adopted. 

Lame Times At Appeasement High

[Brampton News] The Peel District School Board’s newest secondary school is the first in the world to be named for leading Canadian human rights advocate Louise Arbour. Louise Arbour Secondary School is located in the Springdale area of Brampton and will open in fall 2009.

Notes Janet McDougald, chair of the board, “Louise Arbour is a passionate and determined human rights advocate who has worked to improve the human condition around the world. Her commitment to social justice connects strongly to the vision and focus of our new school.”

vs.

[National Post] In the aftermath of the 2006 conflict between Hezbollah and Israel, Arbour even went so far as to suggest that the Jewish state had more blood on its hands than the terrorists who started the war in the first place: “In [the case of Hezbollah] you could have, for instance, a very objectionable intent — the intent to harm civilians, which is very bad — but effectively not a lot of harm is actually achieved,” she said. “[But] how can you compare that with [Israel,] where you may not have an intent but you have recklessness [in which] civilian casualties are foreseeable? The culpability or the intent may not sound as severe, but the actual harm is catastrophic.”

Aussie Writer: Australia Must Boycott Durban II

[SMH] The United Nations is planning a global anti-racism conference that is destined to encourage racism. Known as Durban II, and to take place in Geneva next April, it follows the notorious anti-semitic hatefest held in Durban seven years ago.

Canada has already decided not to attend. The United States and Israel are planning to boycott too. Australia is, therefore, faced with an important challenge and opportunity. By refusing to participate, Australia can help deny legitimacy to a global platform for intolerance and deal the voices of hate a blow.

The rest.

Who Reports On The Special Rapporteur?

Note: all UN mandates are supposed to go through a review process every three years.

[Jerusalem Post] According to Levanon, out of 35 UN mandates established to report on human rights abuses around the world, only the special rapporteur on the situation in the Palestinian territories has yet to be reviewed as stipulated by the Human Rights Council’s institution-building procedures. At the council’s latest session in Geneva two weeks ago, Levanon asked why the rapporteur’s mandate had not been reviewed since its establishment in 1993.

The rest.

Michael Nenonen: Blame Israel

[The Republic of East Vancouver] Israel’s remarkably influential lobbyists portray it as morally exemplary, a light unto the nations, a beacon of democratic virtue illuminating the Middle Eastern darkness. Like all moral exemplars, its actions help set the standard for morally acceptable behaviour among nations. When Israel commits atrocities, the damage to international moral standards is therefore far greater then when atrocities are committed by reviled countries. The atrocities of states like Myanmar are universally condemned, and rightly so, but Israel’s atrocities are whitewashed or rationalized by powerbrokers throughout the Western World. This process of justification establishes new international norms guided by the principle that “If Israel does it, it can’t be so bad.”

The rest.

Finally, The Answer: Disarm Israel And Teach Iran That Peace Is Nice

I am glad to hear that Obama supports Israel and wants Israelis to live in security. Me too.

But I’m sad to hear this former proponent of fresh thinking promising to keep Israel secure by making sure it has the most advanced weapons. Israel has plenty of those already, and they have not brought security.

I’m also startled to hear Obama’s sabre-rattling at Iran. One of the nightmares of American liberals has been that George Bush might follow up the invasion of Iraq by attacking Iran. Now it seems as if Obama would be just as likely to bring this nightmare about.

I would have been happier to hear Obama promise support to the many grassroots groups that are working to bring Israelis and Palestinians together in dialogue; to peace education; and to serious negotiation over the bitter issues at stake.

The rest.

What? Not Israel’s Fault?

“Our report finds that unfortunately because of what happened in Gaza, and the violent confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, grave human rights violations have resulted,” PICCR head Mamdouh al-Aker said.

“There is a regression in the status of human rights in Gaza and the West Bank,” he told Reuters.

The rest.

Thanks For Narrowing It Down

The former president [Carter] also believes a solution to the problems in Iraq is possible and said a deadline must be set for withdrawal of US and British troops.

“I am not sure if it should be one year or five years. The essence of it is to let the world know and particularly Iraqis that by the end of this period we will be out.”

The rest.

Jimbo Works Another Shift At The Kool-Aid Stand

[AFP] Former US president Jimmy Carter on Sunday described Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip as “one of the greatest human rights crimes now existing on Earth.”

In a speech at a literary festival in Hay-on-Wye, in Wales, the 83-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner said: “There is no reason to treat these people this way,” referring to the blockade, in place since the Islamist Hamas movement seized Gaza in June 2007.

The rest.

Sorry. Palestinians Have A Better Press Agent

[Israel Insider] The left and the right should champion Israel for both sentimental and rational reasons. Liberals passionate about democracy, women’s rights, gay rights, social justice, and religious freedom should rally around the only Middle Eastern country with any real civil liberties.

vs.

[Calgary Herald] The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) has labelled Israel an “apartheid state” and has therefore passed a resolution to support a boycott, divestment and sanctions against it.

University Professor Doesn’t Feel Like Celebrating

[From Why We Don't Celebrate Israel] Between December 1947 and December 1950, over 530 Palestinian villages and towns were destroyed. Half of the Palestinians were ethnically cleansed by underground Zionist forces even before Israel was unilaterally declared a state. Palestinians call these events of the late 1940s the Nakba (Catastrophe).

…

Mazin Qumsiyeh is the author of the book “Sharing the Land of Canaan.” He was born to a Palestinian Christian family in the Shepherds’ Field and splits his time between the USA and Palestine. He served on the faculty of both Duke and Yale Universities (six and five years respectively) and he is a prominent human rights activist.

The rest.

Nile Gardiner: UN Human Rights Council A Joke

The Council includes some of the world’s worst human-rights violators, such as China, Russia, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and is even worse than the old U.N. Commission on Human Rights, an institution that had sunk to such depths that even then-secretary-general Kofi Annan mustered the courage to call it a disgrace. It has just appointed as investigators Richard Falk (special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories), a Princeton emeritus professor who compares Israel to Nazi Germany and defends Ward Churchill, and Jean Ziegler (special rapporteur on the Right to Food), co-founder of the intriguingly named “Muammar Gaddafi Human Rights Prize.” Needless to say, around three quarters of the Council’s resolutions involve the condemnation of Israel.

The rest.

Irish Activists: Israel Must Be Punished

Why does the EU refuse to suspend its Euro-Med Agreement with Israel despite Israel’s continuing human rights abuses?

The rest.

Guess Her TV’s Broken

[Tehran Times, May 17, 2008] Rabbi Gottlieb, one of the first ten women rabbis in the history of Judaism, on May 10 visited the offices of the Tehran Times and the Mehr News Agency, heading a delegation of 21 peace activists from the United States. 

The interfaith delegation included people of Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Christian, and Indigenous religious confessions from 11 different U.S. states. 

“It is important to remember that the Islamic world has sheltered the Jewish people throughout our long history,” Rabbi Gottlieb said in an interview with MNA.

…

“(Here) we have eaten well, we have been graciously hosted, we have loved the people of Iran, and we have had wonderful conversations… This is a community that expresses many different views within the context of a tremendous spirit of hospitality, which we have so appreciated. And that is the tradition we share.”

vs.

[Associated Press, May 14, 2008]  Speaking in northern Iran, [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad said, “The Zionist regime is dying. The criminals assume that by holding celebrations they can save the sinister Zionist regime from death and annihilation.” Iran does not recogize Israel, and Ahmadinejad was internationally condemned in 2005 when he said in a speech that Israel should be “erased from the world map.”

…

“Nations of the region hate this criminal fabricated regime (Israel) and will uproot this fabricated regime if the smallest and shortest opportunity is given to them,” Ahmadinejad said Wednesday in an address broadcast live on state television.

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[Associated Press, August 3, 2006] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Thursday the solution to the Middle East crisis is to destroy Israel.

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[Haaretz, Jan 30, 2008] Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on the West Wednesday to acknowledge Israel’s “imminent collapse.” 

Speaking to a crowd on a visit to the southern port of Bushehr, where Iran’s first light-water nuclear power plant is being built by Russia, Ahmadinejad further incited his listeners to “stop supporting the Zionists, as [their] regime reached its final stage.”

“Accept that the life of Zionists will sooner or later come to an end,” the Iranian president said in a televised speech.

Blogger: Blowing Up Restaurants Is Courageous

DWE doesn’t mind printing other people’s propaganda, as long as it makes them look stupid. Here’s another screed for Israeli independence day.

[The People's Voice] Until Palestine has been restored, Palestinians have the right to use what weapons they may possess to drive the invader out. If all they have are rocks and sticks and suicide belts, then that is perfectly legitimate as well as an indication of a courage that the invader does not possess. It is the commonly shared and oft-repeated belief of the mad-dog settlers and large body of neo-con Israelis that there is no such thing as a Palestinian or Palestine. However, believing something doesn’t make it so.

But…if you believe it, then it can’t be so? Or maybe, if we believe, then it is so? Or isn’t so? Or…ah, nevermind.

Historically and Geographically Challenged

In The Canadian, a writer breaks out the Royal “we” with gusto:

He lives there, I don’t. I get it. But I’m Palestinian too.

…

We are not less human that we should be expected to continue to “negotiate” with our oppressors for basic human rights. For decades now we have extended our collective hand in willingness to accept the two-state solution, a desperate offer of great compromise on our part. And for that same length of time, Israel has continued to steal more and more of our land, to kill, maim, and dispossess more and more of us. The daily horrors inflicted on my countrymen have nothing to do with terrorism or our corrupt leadership. Our great crime is that we are not Jewish. We are oppressed, denied, humiliated daily, dispossessed and robbed because we are not Jewish.

The rest.