TAO

Updates on Teachers Against Occupation (Thanks Omar)

Symbolism

"The gap between the might of Israel 's F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters, and the Palestinians' catapulty thing is so ridiculous that to try and portray the situation as between two equal sides requires the imagination of a children's story writer.

The reporter on News at Ten said the rockets "may be ineffective, but they ARE symbolic." So they might not have weapons but they have got symbolism, the canny brutes. It's no wonder the Israeli Air Force had to demolish a few housing estates, otherwise Hamas might have tried to mock Israel through a performance of expressive dance. The rockets may be unable to to kill on the scale of the Israeli Air Force, said one spokesman, but they are "intended to kill"." (Thanks Aliya)

Mark Steele on the absurd

Free Derry mural updated

"Today marks 40 years since the slogan You Are Now Entering Free Derry first adorned 22 lecky road during the Battle of the Bogside, today 2009 the wall has again been transformed as an act of solidarity with the citizens of Gaza." (Thanks Marcy)

From indymedia Ireland

Gaza calling

Hello, This is the IDF...

Gaza Phone Tag

By MUHAMMAD ALI KHALIDI

"…hundreds of thousands of Gazans have received warnings in the form of telephone messages or fliers that their buildings are Israeli targets…"

-- New York Times, 1 January 2009

Israeli soldier: Hello, Abdul, this is the Israel Defense Forces speaking…

Palestinian civilian: My name isn't Abdul, I think you have the wrong number.

I: As I said this is the IDF, we never have wrong information.

P: So how can I help you?

I: I'm just calling to warn you to evacuate your place because of an imminent airstrike on a Hamas target in your building.

P: But there's no Hamas in my building.

I: Not even on your street?

P: No, there was a Hamas member of parliament on the next street but you put him in jail.

I: Must be old information, anyway, there's going to be an airstrike so you better go.

P: Can you tell me where you'd like me to go to?

I: It's not my business, check into a hotel, stay with relatives on the beach, take a vacation in Cyprus, just go.

P: I've been unemployed for a year because of your siege so I can't afford a hotel right now. My relatives just got bombed on the beach, in the Shati' refugee camp. And I can't get out of Gaza because no one can leave.

I: Don't blame me, I'm just warning you.

Read the rest of this excellent article in Counterpunch by dear Muhammad Ali

On-line

From `Akkar to `Amel is now available online through Amazon.com. To order follow this link.

Book review

"Food is also at the heart of Rami Zurayk's new book "From Akkar to Amel: Lebanon's Slow Food trail," published in November by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity.

Zurayk is a professor of Ecosystem Management and associate dean of the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the American University of Beirut, a prolific blogger (www.landandpeople.blogspot.com) and a food activist; he approaches Lebanon with a literally ground-up perspective, what is known in French as "terroir." Each short chapter on a specific region and its specialty food product begins by examining its geology and soil conditions. These climactic features explain the exceptional quality of, for example, the orange blossoms that bloom on trees best grown at an elevation of between 150 to 200 meters above sea level in Maghdousheh."

Anna Sussman review of my book (and 2 other guides to Lebanon) in the Daily Star.

Gaza update: food, water

From the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) report on Gaza humanitarian situation as of Jan 4, 5 pm. (Thanks Muna)

FOOD
UNRWA food distribution was cancelled today due to Israeli military activity, except in southern Gaza where the situation is calmer. UNRWA reports that it is facing significant difficulties obtaining food for their emergency distributions since most bakeries are closed and movement is too dangerous. WFP was able to distribute bread to 13 hospitals throughout the Gaza Strip today. CHF, one of WFP’s main implementing partners, distributed food yesterday in North Gaza but have not been able to distribute today in Khan Yunis due to security reasons and movement restrictions. Due to the lack of cooking gas in Gaza, 23 bakeries are no longer operating. The number of operational bakeries is down to 10. The remaining 14 are partially operating, depending on the availability of electricity.

WATER AND SANITATION
According to CMWU, Gaza’s water utility, approximately 70% of the Gaza Strip population has no access to water, in particular Gaza City and northern Gaza due to the electricity cuts and lack of fuel for back-up generators. CMWU fears that continued shelling near the Beit Lahiya waste water treatment plant may hit the west side of the sewage lagoon which contains 3 million cubic metres of waste water. If this happens, a large part of Beit Lahiya will be flooded by sewage. UNRWA has donated 75,000 liters of fuel to CMWU, though only 35,000 liters has so far been distributed due to the fear of moving fuel tanks in the current security situation. The situation remains critical: in northern Gaza, for example, the water and sewage networks have enough fuel to continue operations for 2-3 days only.

Paris Protest

Yasmine (who took the picture) also sent me this about the demonstration of last Saturday in Paris (I post with her permission):

There were up to 25,000 people who gathered in central Paris on Saturday to show their opposition to Israel's military offensive against the population of Gaza. The march began from place de le République mid-afternoon. While there's been reports of vandalism later in the evening, everyone I saw was very peaceful.

Looks like this and other protests across France helped - on Sunday, as you will have seen, Sarkozy came out more strongly against Israel's assault (stronger than the U.S. anyway, which isn't hard).

You might want to mention too that i didn't see a single person wearing one of those colourful keffiehs that are everywhere else in Paris. None of those people apparently showed up...

Blogging live from Gaza

Blogging live from Gaza: Moments of Gaza

Protest

My daughter Thurayya at the Protest for Gaza last Friday.

Discussion with an old friend

I met someone I hadn’t seen in a long time, and who was active in the Left during the early Lebanese wars. He “retired” in the mid 80’s. We discussed the situation in Gaza and here’s what he told me:

"Whatever the outcome of the Israeli war on Gaza, things have changed forever. Like the July 2006 war on Lebanon, this one will make us stronger. Every day, every hour, every minute liberates us further. We are stronger are freer because we know we are right. How can we not be right when we are a handful of poor, marginalized and excluded people fighting Israel with its all its might and its modern technologies? How can we be wrong when we are fought by the imperialists, by the very same regimes that are oppressing the peoples of the world; by those who have built their fortunes on squeezing nations out of their wealth? How can we be wrong when the ruling classes of the Arab World are against us? We are right both objectively and subjectively: we are right because our cause is just and we are right because those who want to eliminate us are tyrants, thieves and tormentors.

Before 2000, we were scared of the Israelis. There is no shame in admitting that: the Israelis had won all the wars against the Arabs and they had one of the most powerful armies in the world. They had F16s, Apache helicopters and big guns. They even had nuclear bombs. And they had all the rich and powerful countries behind them.

South Lebanon was occupied, and the rulers of Lebanon, the rich and powerful, did not care. The Resistance in South Lebanon was working quietly, organizing itself. It inflicted severe blows to the occupiers, but somehow this was not covered enough: there was no Al Jazirah, no satellite TV channels. There was no internet. Satellite TV and internet communications has changes us. It has made us witness what was being done to us. It has woken us up to injustice. It has give a voice to the oppressed, a voice as strong if not stronger than that of the oppressor. Before this, they used to show us what they wanted. Today, we see everything.

Around the early 90’s the Resistance in South Lebanon started to take videos of its operations. People were able to see the achievements and identify with the Resistants. This was a major turning point. The Resistance fighters became heroes. We needed heroes.

In 2000, Israel withdrew humiliatingly from South Lebanon. This was the first Arab victory in a long time. The Resistance was magnanimous, and did not seek revenge on the collaborators. The Lebanese state gave mild sentences to the collaborators who had tortured the Resistants, killed them and raped their wives and daughters and sisters under their very eyes. The Resistance accepted this because it was victorious. If anyone had any doubts about its triumph, this is the proof: only the victorious can show magnanimity.

In 2006, Israel launched one of its most vicious and murderous attacks on Lebanon. It destroyed a significant part of the infrastructure. It pulverized homes and crushed their inhabitants. It killed thousands, mostly civilian children, women and men. The cameras of the whole world were able to see our children as they were extracted from the rubbles. The Resistance stood its ground and inflicted heavy casualties on the Israeli army. Few Israeli civilians were killed. The Resistance became the champion of the oppressed of the World. It gave people pride. It broke the fear barrier. No, it didn’t break it, it transferred it: now it was the turn of the Israelis to be scared.

The liberation from fear was an important turning point in the lives of the Arabs. We are not scared any more. They may kill us and kill our children and we will not be scared anymore. Only angrier.

We also liberated ourselves from shame. We used to walk with our heads down and hide behind our powerlessness to avoid taking action. We were subdued. We blamed ourselves. We did not have faith. We despised ourselves and all the Arabs. We wanted to be something else, someone else. Now, we want to be ourselves. They can kill us, they can kill our children, and they can destroy all the buildings and all the schools. They cannot kill our spirit anymore.

And we also liberated ourselves from the West. It used to matter so much to us: we were always seeking the West’s approval. If their media said that we should make peace on Israeli terms, we parroted them and believed it. We wanted the West’s endorsement, as if this endorsement made us a little bit like them. We were always ready to change our course, to change our beliefs in order to appear like them, in order to please the writers on CNN and BBC and Time and Newsweek. We wanted them to think of us as “civilized”. And when they did not see the injustice in what the Israelis did, we did not see it either. They called us backwards and we called ourselves backwards.

Now we don’t care anymore. We know we are right. We know they are ignorant, superficial and self-centered. We know they change their opinions everyday. We know they would always find something wrong with us, unless we become subservient, submissive and docile.

Now we are strong. Their blows cannot hurt us. Do you see all these little children torn to pieces by Israeli bombs? They are not dead: each one of them has given life to a hundred, a thousand, a million partisan who will continue the struggle.”

Why we continue to struggle

"... after one fails, one can go on and fail better, while indifference drowns us deeper and deeper into the morass of imbecilic being."

I have posted this Slavoj Zizek statement before and I will continue to post it hoping that it will one day reach the Arab defeatists and all those who love life, but only if it is theirs.

Teachers against occupation

An organization called teachers against Occupation has formed, based for now at University of Minnesota. They encourage others to form local chapters and communicate through their site:

htttp://www.teachersagainstoccupation.blogspot.com

An Open Letter to Obama is there which you are invited to sign if you are interested. I hope that we can work collectively on strategies to change business as usual as regards Palestine.

Please forward this information. (Thanks Lara)

Next Nobel?

The best reporting on Gaza is from Al Jazira English. The blond anchorwoman called Julie? is really good. By contrast the BBC has really been lame.

And the quote of the day, by the former political adviser of Olmert: (I paraphrase) "We are doing this for the good of the people of Gaza, so that they start caring more about building their industry and business than their resistance. We will bomb Gaza into development."

I knew Israel loved bombing countries back in time, but this is the first time it offers people a missile-fueled leap towards development.

Guess who's getting the next Nobel Peace Prize.

Israel: apartheid and massacres

After 8 days of relentless bombing which has left 450 deaths and 2500 wounded the terrorist State of Israel has launched a ground attack on Gaza. The editorial of this week's Guardian Weekly says: "This in reply to hundreds of rockets from Hamas militants that killed one Israeli in six months." (Of course it is not, it is to bend the Palestinians to Israeli will, to tame them, and make them subservient to their oppressors).

The otherwise excellent (unsigned) editorial continues: "We also know that to have chosen to strike on Saturday morning, when the streets of this impoverished enclave were full, showed the same indifference to human life with which Israel charges its enemies. When the suicide bombers reply in cafes and shops, as they inevitably will, Israel will reel in horror. But it will shut out of its mind the blood its warplanes have now caused to flow in Gaza."

Clearly, the writer has no illusions about Israel.

In the same issue of the Guardian Weekly, Rachel Cooke reports on the Bedouin who live near Beersheba, and hold Israeli citizenship. Her long article is essential reading, even (especially?) in these difficult time when all eyes are on Gaza.

"The statistics, however, are striking. Israel has a national health insurance scheme which entitles all residents to access to a health 'basket', irrespective of income. It is considered progressive and efficient, and health outcomes in the country are good. So why, then, is the infant-mortality rate among the Bedouin population so high (15.5 for every 1,000 in 2006) compared to that of the Jewish population (three for every 1,000 in 2006)? (In the wider Israeli Arab population, the figure is eight for every 1,000; the Bedouin are, as Avni points out, at 'the very bottom of the heap').

The Bedouin are ill, mostly due to the lack of clean water available to them. Intestinal infections are common, diarrhoea endemic during the summer. In a sirocco, when the wind whips up, the dust rises and temperatures peak, 60 per cent of the children in Negev hospitals are Bedouin, a figure that sometimes rises to 80 per cent during the summer. Bedouin children and older adults suffer disproportionately from respiratory diseases such as asthma because their iron houses are so hot by day and so cold by night; their villages full of burning garbage; their homes too close to Israel's main hazardous waste facility, Romat Hovav (the site is also home to 19 chemical factories)."

Gaza: food as a weapon, covert genocide

Zionist terrorism reached a new height this week as Israel unleashed fire and destruction on the people of Gaza. Israel has often been blatant and brutal in its violence against the Palestinians, and this latest bloodshed comes as no surprise. But it should not distract from the fact that the Zionist state is also engaged in a war of attrition in Palestine; a war aimed at the slow destruction of the Palestinian people. In this covert genocide, one of Israel’s weapons is food. Gaza is the main the laboratory where Israel is testing this arsenal.

Gaza is basically a large refugee camp where 1.5 million people live in squalor. According to the UN, 75% of the people of Gaza lived in acute poverty in 2003. People in Gaza are poor in the broad sense of the term: they are economically poor; their environment is severely degraded and their access to basic services is extremely restricted. They are also opportunity-poor as their hopes and aspirations are very limited. If you are born in Gaza, satellite TV will bring you images of a world you know you can never be part of.

Over the years, Israel has acted to create and nurture this situation. Its pernicious control of food access and availability is part of a larger scheme aimed at inducing the physical, mental and psychological decline of the Palestinians. As a result, rates of malnutrition in Gaza are among the highest in the world today. According to experts, this will affect the population for years to come.

Since 2000, Israel has been openly curtailing food security in Gaza. It has systematically prevented food aid from reaching the neediest. For example, on November 30, 2002, the Israeli army cold bloodedly destroyed a UN World Food Program warehouse in the Jabalia refugee camp. Stored in it were 537 metric tons of food aid mainly comprised of donations from the European Commission and Sweden. These were to be distributed 41,300 destitute people. The Israeli forces refused to let the WFP employees evacuate the food from the warehouse. It set it on fire, destroying 413 tons of wheat flour, 107 tons of rice and 17 tons of vegetable oil.

In July 2003, Jean Ziegler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food found that Gaza suffered from a humanitarian emergency with severe malnutrition equivalent to that found in poor sub-Saharan countries. Ziegler was ostracized by the Zionist lobby, although he had used sources such as USAID reports. In just 3 years, the Israelis managed to turn Gaza from middle income into one of the poorest places in the world. In 2003, over 22% of children under five were suffering from malnutrition compared to 7.6% in the year 2000. Around 15.6% of children under the age of 5 suffered from acute anemia, which for many will have permanent negative effects on their physical and mental development in the future. Food consumption had fallen by more than 30% per capita. Food shortages, particularly of proteins, were widely reported. More than half of Palestinian households ate only once per day. Many Palestinians with whom Ziegler met were trying to subsist on bread and tea.

The health impacts of Israel’s food blockade became quickly apparent. In 2004, a survey of Palestinian households showed that malnutrition and associated ailments were growing slowly but steadily. Nearly 10 percent of the populations was suffering from stunting.

Since 2004, the situation has seriously worsened. In February 2007 the British daily “The Independent” quoted a UN report stating that 46% percent of households were "food insecure”. Israel’s use of food as a weapon continued unabated.

In November 2008, The Independent newspaper quoted a leaked report from the Red Cross stating that the Israeli blockade of Gaza has led to a steady rise in chronic malnutrition among the 1.5 million inhabitants. According to the Red Cross, the effects of the siege were devastating and resulted in a dramatic fall in living standards which led to a shift in diet “that will damage the long-term health of those living in Gaza and has led to alarming deficiencies in iron, vitamin A and vitamin D.” Palestinian diet had shifted from fish and vegetable-based to sugar, oil and starches-based. This type of diets is known to induce chronic illnesses such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. The Red Cross warned the Israeli government and other governments that undernutrition and deficiency in essential nutrients were taking place and that they will affect the long term health of the population.

Mass eradication of the Palestinians is a central tenet of Zionist strategy. Violent massacres of the type we are witnessing in Gaza today is just one of the tactics. The systematic induction of nutritional deficiencies and associated illnesses is another.

Gaza and the Ghetto

"It is time for us to cease the appeasement of Israel. Even the most ardent of appeasers of Nazi Germany never supplied Germany with arms or foreign aid, with fighter planes with which to bomb civilians, never labeled the resistance to Nazism "terrorism", never actively participated in the German stranglehold on the ghettoes where it confined its subject populations. "Constructive engagement" did not work with South Africa; numerous U.N. General Assembly resolutions that have expressed the virtually unanimous international condemnation of Israel's occupation of Palestine and its wars against its neighbors have not worked. It is time for the truth about Israel to be disseminated, even against the most effective control of the western media by Israel's lobbyists. It is time for all who care about justice and peace, for human rights, for the fate of the innocent and the oppressed, the stateless and the dispossessed, to make our voices heard. Let it not be said that in their most extreme hour of need, the Palestinian people were abandoned by the world, as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto were abandoned in 1943."

Gaza and the Ghetto (by David Lloyd) (Thanks Lara)

Lebanon, Syria, America

I am working on a book on ethnobotany in Lebanon. I have been reviewing the literature and I found a marvelous piece of work: a doctoral thesis written by an American anthropologist, Jane Philips. The thesis, called Lebanese Folk Cures, is not dated but appears to have been published in the early 1950s from field work initiated in the mid 40's, right after WW2. It is based on interviews with a large number of Syrian immigrants to the US (Syrian means Lebanese in this context), and of interviews with almost a thousand people in Lebanon.

Philips reviews the social and anthropological work done on the Syrians in the US, in order to frame her work. Some of the stuff she reports is fascinating. Examples (p 79-80):

"A masters thesis (from Columbia University) in 1912 states that Syrians have developed lying to a "fine art"...among the Syrians in the United States, peddling is the principal occupation, factory work is second, while only 2 percent of the gainfully employed are professionals.

Another master's thesis in 1915 characterizes the Syrians as filthy and lazy...educators agree that the little Syrian girls are stupid, although the boys are bright, aggressive, good in arithmetics and bad in English.

Another thesis in 1929 studies retardation with special regards to the Syrians. Italians are thought to me more retarded than Syrians..."

Also of interest is this excerpt (p 88) from a 1951 study by Elli Shouby also from Columbia, called "Tentative Formulation of Some Prominent Aspects of Syrian Culture":

"Ability to create and change social frames of reference is to be added. Syrians are always on the lookout for bases on which to form an in-group with people they have to deal with. To give an illustration of this, let us take a Maronite from a small village in Lebanon, and see how he would act in interpersonal relationships. In dealing with a religious American Protestant, our Maronite would think of himself and talk of himself as originating from the Holy Land; with an American Catholic, the Maronite would think of himself as a Catholic; with a Maronite, he is a Maronite. Dealing with a Protestant from Beirut, he is a Christian Lebanese, but meeting a person from Aleppo or Damascus, he is a Syrian. Making the acquaintance of a Moslem from Egypt, he thinks of himself as an Arab, while in talking to a sophisticated American, he is a Phoenician. Applying for a job in a Jewish firm, he is a Semite, but if the firm is a religious Christian group of any sect, then evidently he is a Christian. In dealing with governmental and patriotic organizations, he is hundred per-cent American..."

And that's not even a comic routine.

Lebanese voices for Gaza

To send a letter to our beloved Lebanese MPs urging them to support Gaza, go to this blog: Voice of a Lebanese Citizen

Food for port

"Kenya will lease out 40,000 hectares (about 100,000 acres) of land to a Gulf state to grow food at a time when the country is facing serious food shortages.

The deal with the government of Qatar is similar to a model that has been widely criticised by agricultural experts worldwide and mainly involves poor African countries and rich nations or corporations especially from the Middle East.

In the Kenyan case, Qatar will, in exchange for the land, fund construction of a new Sh2.4 billion port on Lamu island to serve as Kenya’s second port after Mombasa. The deal was struck during President Kibaki’s visit to Qatar in late November."