UN expert: Jewish settlers 'terrorize' Palestinians
By The Associated Press
Haaretz - A major Israeli daily newspaper
March 8, 2006
Masked settlers standing next to a banner showing the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Sunday. (AP)
Jewish settlers are able to "terrorize" Palestinians with impunity, intimidating children on their way to school and destroying farmers' trees and crops, a United Nations expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict said in a report.
John Dugard, a South African lawyer, also said that Israel continues to dominate life in the Gaza Strip despite having pulled out all troops and settlers because it continues targeted killings in the Strip and carries out sonic booms over it.
Dugard further said the U.S.-backed roadmap for Middle East peace is "hopelessly out of date" and needs to be revamped.
Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, rejected Dugard's allegations as "misinformed and inaccurate."
Israel has previously rejected Dugard's reports as being one-sided on the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, noting that he has been assigned only to investigate violations by the Israeli side.
Settler violence has been particularly significant in the West Bank city of Hebron, Dugard said in his 22-page report prepared ahead of next week's start of the annual UN Human Rights Commission.
While he made no reference to Palestinian violence, he said Hebron settlers "terrorize the few Palestinians that have not left the old city and assault and traumatize children on the way to school."
"It seems that settlers are able to terrorize Palestinians and destroy their trees and crops with impunity," Dugard said, adding that he himself was a victim of settler abuse while visiting the city in June 2005.
Dugard's report "is guided by a clear political agenda, and bears little relation either to the facts or existing principles of international law," Levanon said in an e-mailed statement to The Associated Press.
Dugard prepares his regular reports for the UN's human rights watchdog during visits to the region, but receives no cooperation from the Israeli government.
The current Human Rights Commission has been widely criticized as a discredited body that is powerless to stamp out abuses because its members include some of the worst offenders and it has no mandate to dole out punishments.
The 53-member body, which is mandated with monitoring human rights throughout the world, routinely spends a whole week attacking Israel, while many Arab countries escape criticism.
Dugard filed his report before Hamas' surprise legislative victory in Palestinian elections in January and made no mention of the militant group.
The report "ignores the fact that the Hamas, considered as a terrorist organization by the family of nations, controls the Palestinian authority and disregards the enormous efforts done by Israel to fight this terrorism while preserving humanitarian law and human rights," Levanon said.
Dugard said Israel's treatment of Gaza violated the Geneva Conventions on warfare, which forbid "all measures of intimidation or of terrorism" against civilian persons in time of war.
He called the Gaza withdrawal a positive step, but said Israel's military still exercised effective control over the region and was obliged as an occupying power to ensure protection of civilians.
"Sonic booms, which terrorize and traumatize the population (and constitute a form of collective punishment) and the targeted assassination of militants (and innocent bystanders) by rockets fired from the skies, serve as a constant reminder to the people of Gaza that they remain occupied," he said.
In the first three months after the Gaza withdrawal, targeted killings by Israel Defense Forces killed - in addition to 15 militants - at least 18 civilians and wounded 81, he said.
Israel has long used sonic booms to rattle Palestinians in times of tension and violence and maintained the practice at all hours of the day and night since its pullout from Gaza in September.
He also reiterated previous criticism of Israeli policy.
The continued construction of Israel's separation barrier, which he termed a "wall" to seal off the West Bank, is a violation of Israel's human rights obligations, Dugard said. But Supreme Court decisions to change the route of the barrier "have reduced the suffering of the Palestinian people," he said.
New UN report says IDF has expanded number of West Bank roadblocks A seperate United Nations report says that the IDF has increased the number of roadblocks and barriers in the West Bank by 25 percent since last summer, tightening travel restrictions for Palestinians and making it harder for them to reach properties, markets and medical services.
Palestinian officials said the roadblocks have worsened life in the West Bank in recent months and made their goal of establishing an independent state in the territory increasingly remote.
Israel says its network of permanent checkpoints, concrete barriers and temporary mobile roadblocks are needed to protect Israeli towns and Jewish settlements from Palestinian attacks.
In its report, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said the number of road obstacles rose to 471 in January, from 376 last August, at the time of Israel's Gaza pullout.
The entire increase was in unmanned structures - such as concrete barriers and earth mounds - and temporary checkpoints that are easily moved from place to place.
The Gaza evacuation had raised hopes for improved relations between Israel and the Palestinians, and a further easing of conditions in the West Bank. But since then, fighting in the West Bank has intensified, particularly near the northern towns of Nablus and Jenin.
The World Bank has identified Israel's "closure" system as a leading cause for the Palestinians' economic woes, and Palestinians have long complained that the roadblocks are excessive, collective punishment.
"As we see here, after the Gaza withdrawal, things have become much worse," said Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator. "This is destroying the livelihoods of Palestinians, the economy, agriculture, education and health situation."
The report said "a picture is emerging" of a West Bank divided into three areas - north, central and south. "Movement is easier inside these areas, but travel between them is hampered by a combination of checkpoints and other physical obstacles," the report said.
It said the roadblocks have helped create a system of roads limited for Israeli use, while funneling Palestinian motorists onto alternative routes where movement is restricted. "The new physical obstacles have further restricted access to land, markets, services and social relations," it said.
It cited a new permit system limiting Palestinian access to the West Bank's Jordan Valley, where many farmers own land. Farmers also have difficulty reaching fields in the northern town of Salfit and southern city of Hebron, while rural communities have been isolated from cities because of the travel difficulties, it said.
The travel restrictions have made it difficult for farmers to ship their produce to markets in the West Bank, prevented residents from reaching medical services and make it difficult for people to visit relatives, the report said.
Erekat said the travel restrictions, coupled with Israel's construction of its West Bank separation barrier, "will kill the viability of an independent state."
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said the increase in roadblocks is in response to "an escalation of terrorist activity," noting a rash of stabbings and shootings in the West Bank in recent weeks.
"These actions on the ground are defensive and responsive to that increased threat," he said. "They can be removed and hopefully these things can come down as the threat recedes."
Israel has pledged to revamp its system of roadblocks, pledging to use new technology and other measures to improve freedom of movement. The number of road structures remains well below its peak level of 735 in December 2003, according to the report.
Israel has long argued that such measures are for security only, and physical structures can be removed once peace is achieved.
The IDF was studying the OCHA report and did not immediately respond.
WANTED: One Good Non-Jew . . .
To condemn Jimmy Carter's new book.
Must be prominent, credible, and above all willing to say anything bad about the former president's new book in return for professional and political perks.
Need not be genuine. Must not be truthful or feel the need to give Carter a chance to respond. Bigoted inquiries only. END AD
You think I'm kidding - but, I'm not. However, the spirit of this advertisement is not mine.
It's the brainchild of Shmuel Rosner at Haaretz:
It seems that the well-publicized resignation
If anybody is really interested in a first-hand account of conditions in Israel, just read "The Other Side of Israel" by Susan Nathan. BTW, she's a Jew.
High Seas, As that analogy goes, if anyone accuses anybody of something bad by "pointing," there are more fingers pointing at themselves - than the person they accuse.
Israel-style democracy.
Archbishop of Canterbury condemns Israeli wall around Bethlehem
The Israeli-built wall is "a sign of all that is wrong in the human heart", the Archbishop of Canterbury said today in Bethlehem.
Speaking to the town's civic representatives shortly after walking through the wall, Dr Williams said the wall symbolised "the terrible fear of the other, of the stranger, which keeps us all in one kind of prison or another", from which God 2,000 years ago came to release people.
Dr Williams was speaking on behalf of a delegation of UK church leaders to the town of Christ's birth, which included the Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the moderator of the Free Churches, David Coffey, and the Armenian patriarch of Great Britain, Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian.
Accompanied by Christian church leaders from Jerusalem, the delegation made its way through the notorious checkpoint at the entrance to the town, which prevents all but a few Bethlehemites - who need special permits - from traveling and trading with neighbouring Jerusalem.
The church leaders had planned to walk through the pedestrian checkpoint - an elaborate steel construction involving turnstiles, CCTV cameras, and gun-wielding soldiers.
But at the last moment, the Israeli security forces diverted them through the less humiliating vehicle entrance point, causing camera crews waiting on the other side to rush to get pictures.
The delegation walked from the checkpoint down Star St to Manger Square, following the route said to have been made 2,000 years ago by Mary and Joseph.
They were greeted in the square by civic leaders at the International Peace Centre, close to the Basilica of the Nativity.
The Archbishop of Canterbury's remarks were in response to a speech by Bethlehem's Mayor, Dr Victor Batarsheh, which described how Bethlehem was now cut off from the outside world by the wall, causing economic hardship and the emigration of families. Bethlehem, he said, had been "transformed into an open prison" by the wall.
He told the church leaders that future peace depended on "dialogue, not separation."
"Your presence is challenging this ugly wall," Mayor Batarseh told them.
The Archbishop of Canterbury said they were "here to say to the people of Bethlehem that they are not forgotten. We are here to say: what affects you affects us. We are here to say, your suffering is our suffering too, in prayers and in thought and in hope."
He continued:
"We are here to say, in this so troubled and complex land, that justice and security are never something which one person claims and the expense of another, or which one community claims at the expense of another. We are here to say that security for one is security for all. And for one to live under the threat of occupation or of terror is a problem for all."
Citing an Advent hymn which sings of "Jesus Christ, the one who comes the prison bars to break", Dr Williams said it was the church leaders' "prayer and our hope for all of you that the prison of poverty and disadvantage, the prison of fear and anxiety, will alike be broken."
He added that the church leaders had come because the Incarnation "assures us that these prisons could be broken, broken by the act of God in whose sight all are equally precious - Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Christian and Muslim; and for whom all lives are so equally precious that the death of one is affront to all."
Following the speeches, the Mayor of Bethlehem declared the delegates honorary citizens of Bethlehem.
The delegates then made their way to the Basilica of the Nativity, where they prayed at the spot in a cave said to be where Jesus was born. As well as the Greek Orthodox-controlled Basilica itself, they visited the Catholic church alongside, from where the delegates made their way down to the cave where St Joseph is said to have received the angel's warning to flee Bethlehem. Alongside it is another cave where St Jerome made the first translation of the Bible.
The delegates return Saturday, after a day of prayers and visits in the town of Christ's birth.
The visit by church leaders coincides with the release of surveys in the US and in Bethlehem commissioned by Open Bethlehem.
The surveys show widespread ignorance in the US of Bethlehem and its plight. But the poll, which was carried out by Zogby, also revealed that if Americans knew that the wall had severed Bethlehem and Jerusalem and had led to the large-scale Israeli annexation of (mainly Christian-owned) land, they would oppose the wall.
For example's sake, let's just say you have a neighbor...this neighbor is violent and shoots at you. Do you avoid having a barrier just to keep up appearances sakes or do you fortify your home so that the neighbor's bullets don't reach you?
Suppose that your parish priest "condemns" you as unfriendly because the neighbor can not see over your wall and you interfere with your neighbor's quality of life? You know that if you tear the wall down, you neighbor is going to point at your head and shoot.
A 20' wide easement is used by your neighbor to sneak up on you and shoot at you, so to survive, you claim the right of passage to the easement and now you live far enough away from your neighbor to have a comfortable degree of protection.
Your neighbors take up a petition and say nasty things about you at their town hall meeting, while they eat stale cake. Do you let go of the previous property that was an easement? You know that the minute that you do, your neighbor will come right up to your fence and shoot you. Many times, the neighbor has promised he won't shoot at you, and then always does. He even sends his relatives to go after your family.
How do you deal with such a neighbor?
Israel has not been able to discredit Jimmy Carter's book, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid", so they fall back on the old trick of attempting to undermine the author by accusing him not of opposition to Israel's policies, but "hate" of Jews.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/813159.html
Monte Cargo wrote:For example's sake, let's just say you have a neighbor...this neighbor is violent and shoots at you. Do you avoid having a barrier just to keep up appearances sakes or do you fortify your home so that the neighbor's bullets don't reach you?
Suppose that your parish priest "condemns" you as unfriendly because the neighbor can not see over your wall and you interfere with your neighbor's quality of life? You know that if you tear the wall down, you neighbor is going to point at your head and shoot.
A 20' wide easement is used by your neighbor to sneak up on you and shoot at you, so to survive, you claim the right of passage to the easement and now you live far enough away from your neighbor to have a comfortable degree of protection.
Your neighbors take up a petition and say nasty things about you at their town hall meeting, while they eat stale cake. Do you let go of the previous property that was an easement? You know that the minute that you do, your neighbor will come right up to your fence and shoot you. Many times, the neighbor has promised he won't shoot at you, and then always does. He even sends his relatives to go after your family.
How do you deal with such a neighbor?
An honest and sincerely concerned individual would introspect and ask, first, what kind of neighbor have I been?
The crux of the debate is not what kind of neighbor the Palestinians have been, rather, what has the relationship between the
two looked like.
You conveniently ignore the fact that there are 2 sides to this conflict, and point only to the Palestinians as the source of voilence.
Zippo writes
Quote:WANTED: One Good Non-Jew . . .
To condemn Jimmy Carter's new book.
Nancy Pelosi isn't good enough? I believe she is of Italian descent and shows religious affiliation as Roman Catholic.
candidone, You have the right perspective on why the Palestinians use violence; they have no civil or legal rights in their own country. Something that's continually missed by the pro-Israel wingnuts.
Foxfyre wrote:Zippo writes
Quote:WANTED: One Good Non-Jew . . .
To condemn Jimmy Carter's new book.
Nancy Pelosi isn't good enough? I believe she is of Italian descent and shows religious affiliation as Roman Catholic.
Foxfyre - quoting Ms. Pelosi (especially when reviewing a book she couldn't have read at the time) is a risky proposition, as you well know:
Quote:
During the last midterm election, Pelosi stated repeatedly the single most important accomplishment of the 20th Century was the formation of the state of Israel.
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061230/OPINION02/612300303/1014/OPINION
High Seas wrote:Foxfyre wrote:Zippo writes
Quote:WANTED: One Good Non-Jew . . .
To condemn Jimmy Carter's new book.
Nancy Pelosi isn't good enough? I believe she is of Italian descent and shows religious affiliation as Roman Catholic.
Foxfyre - quoting Ms. Pelosi (especially when reviewing a book she couldn't have read at the time) is a risky proposition, as you well know:
Quote:
During the last midterm election, Pelosi stated repeatedly the single most important accomplishment of the 20th Century was the formation of the state of Israel.
http://www.newarkadvocate.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061230/OPINION02/612300303/1014/OPINION
I didn't quote Ms. Pelosi. But she is definitely one who publicly stated that Jimmy Carter didn't speak for her or the Democrats. And she is not Jewish or of Jewish descent. The bloke asked for one "good" non-Jewish person to condemn Jimmy Carter's book. Pelosi did.
So did I. I'm not Jewish either.
Publicly stating that Carter doesn't speak for you isn't the same as critiquing (or condemning) his book. And condemning a book you haven't read is a useless waste of breath as it bolsters no argument.
FreeDuck wrote:Publicly stating that Carter doesn't speak for you isn't the same as critiquing (or condemning) his book. And condemning a book you haven't read is a useless waste of breath as it bolsters no argument.
So you've read it then FD? What did you think?
McG, I didn't read Carter's book, but know enough about the man to trust his opinion, and believe whatever he wrote in any book. I judge his book based on most things he involves himself in and on how I judge his character. I trust him.
McGentrix wrote:FreeDuck wrote:Publicly stating that Carter doesn't speak for you isn't the same as critiquing (or condemning) his book. And condemning a book you haven't read is a useless waste of breath as it bolsters no argument.
So you've read it then FD? What did you think?
I have it on audio book so I've "heard it". I think he's mostly right about the situation there and that the facts back him up. I think he tells the story from a very personal point of view though, and that is undoubtedly a religious one.
Of all the bluster about inaccuracies and plagiarism I've yet to see any concrete evidence of either. Most of the complaint seems to be that he's not critical enough of the Palestinians or not considerate enough of Israel's need for security or (a Dershowitz) that he didn't also write a book about the human rights problems in Saudi Arabia.
All in all, I think the facts support his thesis though. And he's not the first person to forward it.
McGentrix wrote:FreeDuck wrote:Publicly stating that Carter doesn't speak for you isn't the same as critiquing (or condemning) his book. And condemning a book you haven't read is a useless waste of breath as it bolsters no argument.
So you've read it then FD? What did you think?
One other thing here, McG. I realize you were playing a gotcha here, assuming I hadn't read the book either. Even if that were true, I wasn't the one the condemning it or expressing a strong opinion about it.
FreeDuck wrote:McGentrix wrote:FreeDuck wrote:Publicly stating that Carter doesn't speak for you isn't the same as critiquing (or condemning) his book. And condemning a book you haven't read is a useless waste of breath as it bolsters no argument.
So you've read it then FD? What did you think?
One other thing here, McG. I realize you were playing a gotcha here, assuming I hadn't read the book either. Even if that were true, I wasn't the one the condemning it or expressing a strong opinion about it.
Not at all. I figured you had read it or you wouldn't have made the comments you have been making.
You say that the facts back him up, yet many of the facts he used have been shown, in this thread, to not be true or to be stretched beyond credibility. How do you counter the many critiques of Carters books? Is this another one of those situations where if you don't have experience, one shouldn't comment on? I wonder, will some be called chicken-book worms or something queer like that?
McGentrix wrote:
You say that the facts back him up, yet many of the facts he used have been shown, in this thread, to not be true or to be stretched beyond credibility.
Which ones?
Quote:How do you counter the many critiques of Carters books? Is this another one of those situations where if you don't have experience, one shouldn't comment on? I wonder, will some be called chicken-book worms or something queer like that?
Absolutely in the case of a book it is at least unfair and at most dishonest to condemn a one you haven't read. The only way to reach such a conclusion is to take someone else's word for it. It is the equivalent of ci's "I trust him".
