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Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
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Feb 16, 2010
Israeli Hit Squad? Dubai Police Issue International Warrants
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Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
Jews-Only Homes for Ajami
 | Jews-Only Homes for Ajami aletho | February 16, 2010 at 10:39 am | Categories: Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | URL: http://wp.me/ |
By Jonathan Cook in Jaffa | Palestine Chronicle | February 16, 2010
Over the past few days graffiti scrawled on walls around the mixed Jewish and Arab town of Jaffa in central Israel exclaims: "Settlers, keep out" and "Jaffa is not Hebron".
Although Jaffa is only a stone's throw from the bustling coastal metropolis of Tel Aviv, Arab residents say their neighbourhood has become the unlikely battleground for an attempted takeover by extremist Jews more familiar from West Bank settlements.
Small numbers of nationalist religious Jews, distinctive for wearing knitted skullcaps, have begun moving into Jaffa's deprived main Arab district, Ajami, over recent months.
Tensions have been simmering since a special seminary was established last year in the heart of Ajami for young Jewish men who combine study of the Bible with serving in the Israeli army. Many such seminaries, known as "hesder yeshivas", are located in the occupied territories and have earnt a reputation for turning out extremists.
Last week Ajami's residents were dealt a further blow when an Israeli court approved the sale of one of the district's few remaining building plots to B'Emuna (Hebrew for "with faith"), a construction company that specialises in building subsidised homes for religious families, many of them in West Bank settlements.
The Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country's largest human rights law
centre, which petitioned the courts on the Arab residents' behalf, called the company's policy "racist".
B'Emuna, which is expected to complete 20 apartments in the next few months, is applying for approval for a further 180, as well as a second seminary and a synagogue.
"We have no problem living peacefully with Jewish neighbours," said Omar Siksik, an Arab councillor representing Jaffa in Tel Aviv's municipality. "But these Jews are coming here as settlers.
"Like in Hebron, their policy is to weaken us as a population and eventually push us out of our homes," he said, referring to a West Bank city where an enclave of a few dozen settlers has severely disrupted life for tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Jaffa's fortunes have changed dramatically since early last century when it was the commercial hub of Palestine, famously exporting its orange crop around the world. During Israel's founding in 1948, most of the town's Palestinians were expelled or forced to flee, with the few remaining inhabitants confined to Ajami.
Today, Jaffa's 18,000 Arab inhabitants are outnumbered two to one by Jews, after waves of immigrants were settled in empty homes during the 1950s.
Arab residents have long complained of being neglected by a municipality controlled from Tel Aviv. Ajami's crumbling homes, ramshackle infrastructure and crime-ridden streets were on show in this year's much-feted eponymous movie, nominated for an Oscar as best foreign-language film.
But the latest arrivals in Ajami are causing considerable anxiety, even from officials in Tel Aviv. Gilad Peleg, head of the Jaffa Development Authority, said he was "deeply concerned" at the trend of extremist organisations arriving "to shake up the local community".
Nasmi Jabali, 56, lives in a modest single-storey home close to the olive grove where the new apartments will be built. "We've seen on TV how these settlers behave in the occupied territories, and don't want them living next to us," she said. "They'll come here with the same attitudes."
But despite widespread opposition, the Tel Aviv District Court last week rejected a petition from 27 residents who argued that the Israel Lands Authority had discriminated against them by awarding the land to B'Emuna, even though its policy is to build apartments only for Jews.
Yehuda Zefet, the judge, accused the residents of "bad faith" in arguing for equality when they wanted the interests of the local Arab community to take precedence over the interests of Jews.
Mr Siksik said the judge had failed to take into account the historical injustice
perpetrated on Ajami's population. "For six decades the authorities have not built one new house for the Arab population, and in fact they have demolished many Arab homes, while building social housing for Jews."
Fadi Shabita, a member of the local Popular Committee for the Defence of Jaffa's Lands, said the plots in Ajami being sold by the government originally belonged to Palestinian families, some of whom were still in the district but had been forced to rent their properties from the state.
"The land was forcibly nationalised many years ago and the local owners were
dispossessed," he said. "Now the same land is being privatised, but Ajami's residents are being ignored in the development plans.
"For the settlers, the lesson of the disengagement [from Gaza in 2005] was that they need to begin a dialogue with Jews inside Israel to persuade them that a settlement in the West Bank is no less legitimate than one in Jaffa."
B'Emuna told Israel National News, a settler website, that it was developing Jewish-only homes in several of the half dozen "mixed cities" in Israel to stem the flow of Jewish residents leaving because of poverty and falling property values caused by the presence of an Arab population.
B'Emuna has said it is looking to buy more land in Jaffa.
A short distance from the olive grove that is about to be developed is the Jewish
seminary established last year. An Israeli flag is draped from the front of the building and stars of David adorn the gate at its entrance.
The manager, Ariel Elimelech, who was overseeing two dozen young men on Sunday as they pored over the Torah, said he commuted daily to Ajami from his home in Eli, an illegal settlement deep in the West Bank south of the Palestinian city of Nablus.
Mr Elimelech said he favoured coexistence in Jaffa but added that the seminary's goal was to strengthen Jewish identity in the area. "We don't call this place Ajami; it's known as Givat Aliyah," he said, using a Hebrew name that refers to the immigration of Jews to Israel.
He said the students performed a vital service by visiting schools to help in the
education of Jewish children before performing 18 months of military service.
Kemal Agbaria, who chairs the Ajami neighbourhood council, said residents would launch an appeal to the Supreme Court and were planning large-scale demonstrations to draw attention to their plight.
- Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
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Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
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Jew vs Jew by Prof. Plaut
| Jew vs. Jew He speaks of "points of similarity" between Nazi Germany and Israel and has campaigned on behalf of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and other ... By: Steven Plaut Date: Wednesday, February 10 2010 Excerpt: Paul Eisen, another Jewish extremist in the UK, has distributed an essay titled "Holocaust Wars" which claims, among other things, that the claim of gas chambers in Auschwitz is fraudulent and that they could not possibly have worked. Among the essay's "sources" are the disgraced historian David Irving and the neo-Nazi crank Ernst Zundel, deported by Canada and now in prison in Germany. Perhaps the most venomous Jewish-born Jew-baiter of all is one "Israel Shamir." An émigré from the Soviet Union, "Shamir" moved to Israel and later left for Sweden, where he changed his name to Adam Ermash and reportedly converted to Christianity. As just one example of his poison, in an interview with the Islamist Mohamed Omar in August 2009, Shamir said: "I think it is the duty of every Muslim and Christian to deny the Holocaust, to reject this belief, just like Abraham and Moses rejected idolatry. "Every person who profess [sic] their [sic] faith to God should deny the Holocaust. I think it's much more serious that people deny God, isn't it?" In other cases prominent Jews endorse Holocaust deniers while carefully tiptoeing around explicitly endorsing Holocaust denial itself. The best known of these is Noam Chomsky, an extremist anti-U.S. and anti-Israel professor of linguistics at MIT. A long-term apologist for the Khmer Rouge, Chomsky seems to despise Israel almost as deeply as he hates America. He speaks of "points of similarity" between Nazi Germany and Israel and has campaigned on behalf of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and other European neo-Nazis. He not only demands that this hate be protected under freedom of speech but as Professor Werner Cohn has noted, Chomsky also endorses the contents of their speech: "But in fact we saw that Chomsky justified Faurisson's Holocaust-denial, we found Chomsky publishing his own books with neo-Nazi publishers, we saw him writing for a neo-Nazi journal, we saw that the neo-Nazis promote Chomsky's books and tapes together with the works of Joseph Goebbels. It is this complex of anti-Semitic activities and neo-Nazi associations, not his professed ideas alone, that constitutes the Chomsky phenomenon." Within Israel, one of the most openly anti-Semitic Jews was the late Professor Israel Shahak, who taught chemistry for decades at Hebrew University. He specialized in endorsing medieval anti-Jewish blood libels. He insisted that Judaism teaches Jews to worship Satan, to connive against non-Jews and to murder them. He stopped just millimeters short of saying Jews use gentile blood for ritual purposes. Shahak claimed the Talmud is filled with calls to murder gentiles, and that Jews regard gentiles as subhuman. He collaborated with neo-Nazis all over the planet. In an analysis of Shahak, the British writer Paul Bognador wrote: "According to Shahak, the Jews think of nothing but making money for the benefit of the Jewish state ('The force of Jewish devotion in assembling money is thought to be infinite'). "According to Shahak, the Jews plan to dominate much of the world through an Israeli empire.... According to Shahak, the Jews facilitate the spread of vice in order to enslave the masses . Shahak also found excuses for the near-genocidal Chmielnicki pogroms, which he classified as a 'revolt of the oppressed.' " And then there's Norman Finkelstein, who had been on the faculty of DePaul University until he was fired three years back (and has been unemployed ever since). Finkelstein has built an entire career out of smearing Holocaust survivors as frauds and liars, and cheering on Islamofascist terrorism against Jews. His personal website is a vulgar gutter of juvenile anti-Semitic catcalls. He claims Zionists exaggerate the dimensions of the Shoah to steal money and invent Holocaust survivors to exploit Germany. He has visited with Hizbullah terrorists and was denied entry into Israel on grounds that he associates with terrorists. Finkelstein wrote a book titled The Holocaust Industry that fast became a favorite with neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. He considers David Irving a reliable historian. While Finkelstein is dismissed by serious historians, he is nevertheless celebrated by Jews with an anti-Jewish and/or an anti-Israel agenda. * * * The creation of Israel was supposed to turn Jews into a "normal" people. But the psychosis of Jewish anti-Semitism has no comparable analogue among the nations, making the Jews a therapist's sui generis. The disease of Jewish anti-Semitism not only illustrates the absence of normality among 21st century Jewry, it threatens the very survival of Israel and of Jewish communities around the world. Steven Plaut is a professor at the University of Haifa. His book "The Scout" is available at amazon.com. He can be contacted at steveneplaut@ |
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
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Jordanians sue Israel over Dimona nuclear plant
| | Jordanians sue Israel over Dimona nuclear plant aletho | February 16, 2010 at 7:48 am | Categories: Environmentalism, Nuclear Power | URL: http://wp.me/ |
Press TV - February 16, 2010
A Jordanian human rights group is set to sue Israel for the damage its nuclear facility in Dimona has caused to the environment and the residents in south Jordan.
The al-Jisr al-Arabi center has accused Israel of causing death, cancer and other afflictions among the Jordanian population residing in the area adjacent to the nuclear plant and thus prone to the toxic gases and radiation the facility emits.
The Amman-based human rights group has reportedly taken the preliminary steps necessary ahead of filing a legal lawsuit against Israel in the coming month with Jordanian legal bodies.
The center met with a number of the reactor's victims and "collected evidence and proof that attest to a rise in the number of cancer cases, especially among residents of the southern region, which is adjacent to the reactor."
"This is an ongoing and deliberate crime on Israel's part, which still causes cases of death and injury in large numbers among the Jordanians," said the center's General Manager Attorney Amjad Shammout.
He went on to add that he was optimistic the complaint will be accepted in accordance with the constitution and international treaties on human rights, which Jordan has recently adopted.
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Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@
Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton
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