Dozens of Israeli settlers attacked the villages of Burin and Iraq Burin south of Nablus on Saturday afternoon.

Barkat warmly received in Washington, with Congress members presenting to him legislation proposal to have US embassy moved from Tel Aviv to capital without need for president's consent

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat met with Democratic and Republican Congress members in Washington on Friday, and was pleased to find wall-to-wall support of the need to keep Jerusalem united.

In April 2008 I personally visited Sderot and Ashkelon, Israeli communities near enough to have been hit by rockets fired from within Gaza. While there, I condemned these indiscriminate attacks on civilians as acts of terrorism, and I consider their condemnation by Judge Goldstone to be justified.

Israel on Friday rejected a United Nations General Assembly resolution urging an investigation into a report saying war crimes were committed in Gaza, and condemned the world body vote as "completely detached from realities".

In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said in response to Thursday's vote that Israel "maintains the right to self-defense", and would "continue to act to protect the lives of its citizens from the threat of international terrorism".

Imprisoned American citizen and Michigan resident Ahlam Mohsen to be deported to the US after being arrested in a Palestinian home taken over by Israeli settlers in Occupied East Jerusalem.

Israeli tanks have shelled a house in the east of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, leaving at least two people wounded.

The weekly demonstrations against the West Bank separation barrier in the towns of Bil'in and Na'alin, which take place every Friday, reached new heights this week when activists, seeking to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the falling of the Berlin Wall, knocked a part of the barrier over.

Last week I was disinvited from my second Jewish conference in two months for poems I’d written in solidarity with Palestinians, poems that make an unapologetic call for justice. Subsequently, I and the poet I was to read with at the J Street conference, wrote a response to being censored. People from all over the country wrote to us supporting free speech, supporting art as a tool for change, supporting real talk about the degradation of Palestinians, and people wrote to let us know they disagreed. Some more thoughtfully than others.

A 575-page blistering report by Justice Richard Goldstone detailing war crimes in Gaza last December is refusing to die despite an aggressive Israeli smear campaign to kill it.

The report, which was favorably voted by the 47-member Human Rights Council in Geneva last month, received overwhelming support Thursday in the 192-member General Assembly.

In his landmark speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, on June 4, President Obama vowed to adopt a fair approach toward the Arab-Israel conflict. He criticized the Israeli policy of settlement expansion and repression against Palestinians, and promised to get Israel to freeze all settlement activities in the West Bank and Al-Quds (East Jerusalem) in order to facilitate the resumption of a more genuine peace process.

However, six months later, the Obama Administration’s approach toward the enduring Palestinian crisis seems more or less a mere re-cloning of George Bush’s policies.

Israel’s national paranoia that the international community is bent on holding Israel to a higher standard than the rest of the world has provided an environment where Israel acts with impunity in full view of the entire global community.

New York Mets called on to cancel settlement fundraiser

The General Assembly today began its debate on the report of the United Nations probe which found that both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants were guilty of serious human rights violations during the Gaza conflict earlier this year.

The report is the result of a three-month investigation, led by Justice Richard Goldstone, a former prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and mandated by the UN Human Rights Council.

The report accused Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group, which has de facto control of Gaza, of war crimes during the 22-day conflict in December and January.

But most of its criticism was directed towards Israel's conduct during the offensive, in which human rights organisations say about 1,400 Palestinians - many of them women and children - were killed.

Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements and the United States does not stop it, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Wednesday.

The latest visit by Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to Occupied Palestine seems to have effectively terminated whatever hopes the Palestinians and other Arabs may have pinned on the Obama administration to adopt an evenhanded approach toward the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Yesterday and while politicians fret over terms like “slow-down” or “restraint” on illegal settlement activities, the Israeli authorities demolished more homes and evicted some 30 people in Jerusalem.

The Movement of Hamas categorically denied an Israeli allegation that it conducted successful experiments on a missile with a range of 60 km that may reach Tel Al-Rabi (Tel Aviv).

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said this allegation is a proactive step taken by Israel to influence the world opinion prior to the discussion of the Goldstone report in the UN general assembly.

Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin, director of Military Intelligence, announced Tuesday that Hamas launched a rocket some 60 kilometers into the sea, apparently as an experiment. Such a rocket, if fired from the northernmost point of the Gaza Strip, could strike the southern cities of the Gush Dan area - including Rishon Letzion, Holon and Bat Yam - and possibly reach as far as Tel Aviv itself.

Rioting settlers forced a Palestinian family from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah out of their home on Tuesday, after the district court denied the residents' appeal to remain on the premises.

Shortly after the verdict was passed dozens of settlers stormed into the house with hired security guards, and demanded that the family vacate immediately.

Anyone listening to Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas these days would think the man is a paragon of democracy and liberty. Abbas, who has remained at the helm of the PA despite the expiration of his term in office, has been exhorting Palestinians to prepare for “presidential and legislative elections” which he called a “constitutional imperative.”

However, a deeper look into Abbas’s behaviors at home shows that the PA Chairman is not really interested in holding true, free and honest elections. After all, actions speak louder than words.

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, sought to deflect the anger and disappointment of pro-western Arab states today after backing Israel's position that it did not need to freeze settlement activity as a prelude to resuming peace talks with the Palestinians.

Jews took over another house in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday in what Palestinians say is a systematic campaign to drive them out and strengthen Israel's hold on all of Jerusalem.

The house, built 10 years ago by the al-Kurd family, is the seventh this year to be awarded to Jewish settlers following legal battles in the Israeli courts, where the Palestinians say a fair hearing is impossible to obtain.

We enjoyed summer weather in Jerusalem until about a week ago. The days were hot, the evenings were cool…. but not cold. There wasn’t a sign of rain. This literally changed overnight as cold winds and rain turned the clock into winter mode.

That’s when the Israeli authorities decided to destroy the tent that an evicted family was living in.

So let's decide: Who was the victim of Operation Cast Lead, them or us?

No question - us. We Israelis were the victims and we still are. In fact, our victimhood is getting worse by the day. The Goldstone report was the real war crime. The Goldstone report, the UN debates, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross, B'Tselem, the traitorous soldiers of Breaking the Silence and the Rabin Academy - those were the true crimes against humanity. This is what's meant by "war is hell."

It is we who've been going through hell from the war in Gaza. It is we who've been suffering.

Gazans? Suffering? What's everybody talking about?

We let them eat, don't we?

That the Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu has chosen to conduct an international campaign against Justice Goldstone and his report need not surprise us. Israel refused to cooperate with the UN investigation; long before its conclusions were published, Netanyahu had set in motion a campaign to deny and denigrate them. More dispiriting, and of greater political consequence, is the pitiful and humiliating response of the Obama Administration. The "fierce urgency of now" apparently required that Washington join Tel Aviv in discrediting the Goldstone Report, and with it the UN inquiry.

Teitel is also charged with planting several explosive devices in 2006 and 2007 directed at Arabs, Christians and police; sending a bomb hidden in a Purim gift basket to a messianic Jewish family that left a 15-year-old boy seriously injured; and planting a pipe bomb in 2008 near the Jerusalem home of Zeev Sternhell, a prominent left-wing academic.

Some Israeli commentators suggested that had Teitel limited his attacks to Palestinians, Israeli authorities would have left the investigations into the attacks on Palestinians grow cold.

“Teitel’s fatal error was turning on other Jews,” Ha’aretz columnist Gideon Levy wrote Monday. “Had he been satisfied with acts of murder against the Palestinian population, he would never have been caught.”

The Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO) reports that nearly 80 truckloads of goods entered Gaza from Israel yesterday through the Kerem Shalom crossing.

The majority of the trucks contained fruit, cooking oil, dairy products, flour, frozen meat, tea and coffee.

However, 'sauce for the goose' etc. and I have decided that from here on out, I will identify all defenders of Israel's actions in Palestine and all those who are fighting to block the bringing of war crimes charges against Israel for Operation CAST LEAD as "Goldstone Deniers".

I feel that this is perfectly appropriate because the "Holocaust Denier" label is used to claim that the denier is trying to conceal NAZI Germany's atrocities. Therefore, those who are trying to conceal Israel's atrocities should be accorded the same treatment. After all, they are indeed trying to deny the atrocities which took place inside Palestine.

Netanyahu mentioned the steps taken by his government to this end: "We did things that have not been done by any prior government. We removed hundreds of road blocks and checkpoints. We have taken steps to ease their lives and the Palestinian economy. The result of this is unprecedented prosperity in the Palestinian Authority."

Netanyahu Scores Victory as US Abandons All Settlement Demands
Peace Process Likely Dead After Clinton Touts Israel’s Commitment

mary rizzo
Mary Rizzo will be interviewed by Lauren Booth again
on Press TV’s show about Palestine (seasonal viruses permitting!)
There are some great guests, including the absolutely wonderful
Brenda Heard of Friends of Lebanon with Hussein, a child victim of a
toy-shaped cluster bomb.

I know what you are thinking, shouldn't I be referring to these as Israeli war crimes? Well no, to do so would impugn the character of 2 million Israeli Arabs who had nothing to do with the Gaza slaughter. You see Arabs are not allowed to serve in the Israeli military.

Voters are being urged to contact their representatives (U.S. House of Representatives 202.225.3121 or www.house.gov; U.S. Senate 202.224.3121 or www.senate.gov the Congressional switchboard) to oppose H.Res.867.

Is she on drugs or booze? ……The things she has been saying definitely indicate one or the other. Perhaps V I Ps should have their luggage checked before entering a country…. at least this one in particular.

Every time I think of 9/11
I see burning flesh dripping off the bones of Iraqi children in Fallujah
Now Gaza
I tend to memorialize the forgotten
The collateral damage eclipsing our unpunished crimes
Maybe it’s because I’ a numbers guy
Because if I had a dollar for every time an Iraqi died since 2003 I’d be a millionaire

“I fear very much that the Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on the top they are just as intolerant and cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath. I regret this situation very much because my sympathy has always been on their side.” – Harry Truman

Many Zionist Jews are angry and frustrated these days following the ample attention given to the Goldstone report around the world.

This is why huge amounts of classical Zionist lies about the Nazi-like winter onslaught against the Gaza Strip are being pumped through the internet.

Israel's premier savoured a victory on Sunday after Washington hailed his "unprecedented" position on settlements and backed his call for peace talks to resume without the construction freeze sought by the Palestinians.

Pointing an accusing finger at the United States, the Palestinians on Sunday said Washington's backing for Israeli refusal to halt Jewish settlement expansion had killed any hope of reviving peace negotiations soon.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, buoyed by new-found support from the Obama administration, urged the Palestinians to "get a grip" and drop their settlement freeze precondition for restarting talks suspended since December.

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Saturday night rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's demand that Israel freeze all settlement activity as a precondition to negotiations.

Stopping construction in the settlements "has never been a precondition, it has always been an in issue within the negotiations," Clinton said at a joint press conference with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

An umbrella organization for Israeli Arab groups accused Israel on Saturday of perpetrating "ethnic cleansing" in Jerusalem, in the wake of Israel's quelling of riots by Arab youths on the Temple Mount.

"Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem, and the defense of Al-Aqsa and of East Jerusalem is an obligation for the whole Palestinian people, and for the Arab nation," the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee said in a statement.

As his family clashes with workers from Israel's water authority, employed to rip up the irrigation systems for their tomato plants, and the Israeli soldiers protecting them, Yosri Jaber, a school teacher, explains: "These clashes with the Israeli authorities are a regular thing; they happen every two to three months or so.

"The Israelis don't allow us to water our plants. We pay them four shekels ($1) for every cubic metre of water.

"We have a water regulator, which we share with the eight other houses to irrigate our plants and get water to our homes. We've paid for it but we can't use it."

Local sources told PIC correspondent that in addition to singing and dancing in circles the extremist settlers performed Talmudic rituals outside the house of al-Ghawi family, who were evicted from their house by the Israeli authorities and their house given to Jewish settlers.

The extremist settlers celebrated under the protection the Israeli occupation police and special forces who also participated in the rituals.

As if the stalled and nearly moribund peace process between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel didn’t face enough problems, PA President Mahmoud Abbas dropped a bombshell this week when he called for “presidential and legislative elections” to be held in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem on 24 January.

The most interesting aspect of the debate surrounding the Goldstone report has attracted no attention. The cabinet and its supporters are dealing only with the question of damage control as far as image is concerned, and how to deflect international criticism. The question of what really happened in Gaza is considered to be tainted with anti-Semitism. The ever-quiet conscience of the average Israeli deflects the question effortlessly. But as time passes the legal aspect will be increasingly shunted aside, and it will be the moral dimension of the report that is etched in our consciousness and that of the world.

Everyone understands that the army's opposition to a probe of the accusations against it can have only one reason: There is something to hide.

Too many American Jewish groups have their heads in the sand when it comes to the damage the settlement project has done to Israel. They embrace those on the American religious right who endorse settlement as a religious principle, without realizing that the influence of these groups is declining. They talk to each other or to themselves, but not to their own children on campus who must deal with this topic every day. Yet those of us who do the actual work of making Israel's case in local communities know full well the damage the settlement issue causes in grassroots America.

Then, as Dr. Barghouti said that Palestinians have been subjected to a system of segregation, the man with slicked back hair sitting directly in front of me pulled a Joe Wilson and yelled "Liar!" (it’s at 1:49 of the first part of the interview).

Dr. Barghouti was unfazed and explained his reason for working with Anna – "It’s just natural to have an alliance of people who believe in the same values." He returned to this theme of values several times and applause grew every time. He finally made it clear what the Palestinians are calling for – equal rights.

Ten Palestinians including a 70-year-old woman, seven women and two journalists were attacked by Israeli forces south of Hebron on Thursday, local sources said.

The incident began when Israeli soldiers and armored vehicles demolished a water reservoir belonging to Al-Baqa'a resident Mohammad Mustafa Jaber.

Highly respected Judge Richard Goldstone, who is both a Jew and a Zionist, rightfully condemns Israel's policy of collective punishment of a people under effective occupation, destroying their means to live a dignified life as well as the trauma caused by the kind of military intervention the Israeli government called Operation Cast Lead

So far, the Jordanian reactions to the scandalous Israeli provocations at al Masjidul Aqsa (Aqsa Mosque) have been minimal, inadequate and strikingly weak. Jordan, which signed the inauspicious Wadi Araba treaty with Israel fifteen years ago, is legally and morally responsible for the Islamic and Christian holy places in al-Quds.

We see and meet the nicest people but we also see and meet the meanest people in Palestine. Every day here is an experience in extremes. We contrast an activist for peace in her 20s who speaks many languages with a settler who (joined by other settlers) attacks people picking their own olive trees (because he is brainwashed to believe Palestinians are not a “chosen people”). We contrast a young man getting up at 3AM to try and cross the countless hurdles to make a trek to make a living for his family with elites like Netanyahu who told members of his cabinet that “our challenge is to delegitimize the continuous attempt to delegitimize the State of Israel.

On a hot summer day, two Border Guard police officers walked around the holy city of Jerusalem without any particular mission. At one point they decided that it would proper to prove their authority and respectful position to themselves and to the Palestinians. The officers proceeded to nab two Palestinians, yelled at them, and demanded that they salute “their majesties” numerous times.

In a measure that has already vexed the internal Palestinian political arena, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmud Abbas has called for “presidential and legislative elections” to be held in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, East Al-Quds and the Gaza Strip on January 24, 2010. The decision is expected to widen and deepen the state of contention between Fatah and Hamas, the two largest political groups in occupied Palestine.

Fatah, which have been in control of the PA security agencies connived with Western powers and also Israel against Hamas after the Muslim liberation group won the 2006 elections.

"We told the authorities in London; we shall be in Palestine whether you want us there or not. You may speed up or slow down our coming, but it would be better for you to help us, otherwise our constructive force will turn into a destructive one that will bring about ferment in the entire world." (Judishe Rundschau, #4, 1920, Germany, by Chaim Weismann, a Zionist leader)

These questions should be at the center of an investigation into Operation Cast Lead. An investigation is necessary because of the political complexities that resulted from the operation, the serious harm to Palestinian civilians, the Goldstone report and its claims of war crimes, and the limits that will be imposed on the IDF's freedom of operation in the future. There is no room to argue that the government should be allowed to govern without interference and investigations, with the public passing judgment at the ballot box. The government changed after the Gaza operation and the questions remain troublesome.

Israel is denying Palestinians access to even the basic minimum of clean, safe water, Amnesty International says.

In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

It says that in Gaza, Israel's blockade has pushed the already ailing water and sewage system to "crisis point".

Israel says the report is flawed and the Palestinians get more water than was agreed under the 1990s peace deal.

“WHAT did the trees do?” says Muhammad Abu Awad, a retired teacher of agriculture and father of 14 children, as he looks gloomily at his ravaged field. Twisted, silvery stubs are all that remain of a lush grove that once offered up a yearly abundance of fat green olives.

The vandals came at night from Adei Ad, a Jewish settlers’ outpost deemed “illegal” even by the Israeli government, near Shvut Rachel, an established West Bank settlement that is judged illegal in international but not Israeli law. Working fast, unnoticed by Palestinian landowners in the nearby Arab village of al-Mughayir, the settlers cut down nearly 200 olive trees, of which 70 belonged to Mr Abu Awad. As a result, he reckons to have lost income worth around $3,400 that he would have earned from this year’s harvest.

Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Israel’s Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR), has been used as a human shield, arrested, and beaten up several times by Israeli security forces while defending Palestinians. He has also been stoned by Palestinians who mistook him for a settler.

“Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank, while the unlawful Israeli settlements there receive virtually unlimited supplies. In Gaza the Israeli blockade has made an already dire situation worse,” said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International’s researcher on Israel and the OPT.

Nine Palestinians were injured and one was detained on Tuesday when dozens of Israeli settlers attacked farmers were harvesting olives in the West Bank village of Qaryout, south of Nablus, according to witnesses, local officials, and medics.

According to sources in the village, the incident began when dozens of Israeli settlers assaulted farmers working near the Israeli settlement of Shavout Rachel.

After the initial attack, both soldiers and settlers stormed the village, clashing with Palestinian residents who defended the area by throwing stones at the marauding groups. Soldiers fired bullets and tear gas, residents said.

With reconciliation hopes with Hamas looking grim and peace prospects with Israel looking even worse, it is being reported that Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has told President Barack Obama that he intends to resign.

Israeli authorities demolished two Palestinian homes near Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday, ignoring international concern about the practice.

Israel's Jerusalem municipality said the houses were built without permits. Palestinians say such permission is impossible to obtain and accuse Israel of using demolitions to tighten its hold on occupied territory in and around Jerusalem.

An Amnesty International report paints a picture of many Palestinian families struggling – and often failing – to secure enough water for drinking, cleaning, and agriculture while Israelis, including residents of Jewish settlements
in the West Bank, have all they need for lush, irrigated farmland, swimming pools and gardens.

Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of preventing Palestinians from receiving adequate clean and safe water while allowing the "unlawful Jewish settlers" of the occupied West Bank almost unlimited supplies.