Middle East

NOVANEWS   Dear Friends,   Just 4 items tonight—all dealing with a single subject: Civil Disobedience.    Israeli activist Jonathan Pollak was sentenced today to 3 months in jail for practicing civil disobedience.  From my standpoint, he deserves a medal instead.  The final 2 items are about him.  Item 4, the Independent article on Jonathan was written prior to the verdict being given, but its details make it worth including.  Item 3 from the Guardian reports the verdict.  The 3 Israeli dailies also included news on the sentencing and some background   Amira Hass in item one relates the workings of the Shin Beit in certain instances.  The  young man whom Amira begins with, Matan Cohen, began practicing civil disobedience very young.  I recall him at 14 or so joining us on nearly every demo...

NOVANEWS 27 December, 2010 Israeli Activist Jonathan Pollak Sentenced to 3 Months in Prison; Tells Judge "I'll Go to prison With my Head Held High"   Press Release 27 December 2010   Israeli Activist Jonathan Pollak Sentenced to 3 Months in Prison; Tells Judge "I'll Go to prison With my Head Held High" Pollak was sentenced to three months imprisonment this morning at the Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court for his participation in a 2008 bicycle in protest of the siege on Gaza. He will begin serving his sentence on Januray 11th . Tel Aviv Magistrates court judge Yitzhak Yitzhak convicted Pollak of illegal assembly for his participation in a January 2008 Critical Mass ride against the siege on Gaza and then sentenced him to three months imprisonment that will begin on January 11th, 2011. Pollak w...

NOVANEWS - Please distribute widely - Dear Friends, CO Ajuad Zidan, 18, from the town of Beit Jann, a Palestinian member of the Druze religious community, was sentenced to 20 days of imprisonment on 14 Dec for his refusal to enlist in the Israeli military. This is his second term in prison (he was earlier sentenced to 10 days in prison on 30 Nov., although he was released a few days early following the evacuation of Military Prison no. 6 during the fire on Mt. Carmel earlier this month). He is currently held in Military Prison no. 4. Members of the Druze community, unlike most other Palestinian citizens of Israel, are conscripted into the Israeli army. Explaining his refusal to enlist Ajuad Zidan stated to the press that "the loneliness of the prison cell is one thousand times better than...

NOVANEWS   25 December 2010   Israel must be losing too many battles in the war to win global public opinion. This is the conclusion to be drawn from the release of a 66-page document by the Tel Aviv-based Reut Institute, which was followed quickly by a similar report from the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs (JCPA). Both documents must be analysed in the context of the media campaign engineered by Israel's extreme right-wing Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, to improve Israel's shattered image which plunged to an all-time low during 2010. Both reports undertake to address what their authors claim is an urgent existential threat to Israel; they call it the threat of "de-legitimization". What is telling about the two documents is that they address only the symptoms and not the cause...

NOVANEWS Dear All,   Tonight’s 8 items are a rather mixed bag—racism, education, an apology, US holding back money, etc.  I have not included articles on East Jerusalem—the demolitions, the threats, the ethnic cleansing.  But that does not mean that these things are not happening daily.  I have also omitted the fascinating revelation that the new Mossad chief plans to apologize for use of UK passports in Dubai killing, but you can read about that in the Telegraph if you wish http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/8224391/New-Mossad-chief-to-apologise-for-use-of-UK-passports-in-Dubai-killing.html . Interestingly, the report does not say that he will apologize to other countries for the same.  I likewise have not included Israel’s Foreign Minister’s (Avigdor Lieberman’s)...

NOVANEWS     by Jehanzeb Dar  Ma’an News Agency  25 December 2010     Because of modern alarmist reactions to the word “Palestine,” many non-Arabs and non-Muslims take offense when it is argued that Jesus was a Palestinian (peace be upon him).   Jesus’ ethnicity, skin color, and culture often accompany this conversation, but few people are willing to acknowledge the fact he was non-European. A simple stroll down the Christmas aisle will show you the dominant depiction of Jesus: a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, white man.   Islamophobia and anti-Arab propaganda have conditioned us to view Palestinians as nothing but heartless suicide bombers, “terrorists,” and “enemies of freedom and democracy.” Perpetual media vilification and demonization of Palestinians, in contrast to the glorification o...

NOVANEWS Closing Document of the Palestine solidarity conference “Separated in the past – together in the future”. Stuttgart, 26-28 November 2010. Equality – or nothing (Edward W. Said) From 26-28 November 2010, over 200 participants came together for a “Palestine Solidarity Conference”. The theme of this 3-day conference, with the title Separated in the past – together in the future, was “Barriers and Perspectives for a just solution” of the conflict between the state of Israel and the Palestinians. The speakers were the Israeli historian Prof. Ilan Pappé from the University of Exeter (U.K.), Prof. Haidar Eid from the Al Aqsa University Gaza, Prof. Mazin Qumsiyeh from Bir Zeit University Ramallah, the co-founder of the Internet Portal Electronic Intifada Ali Abunimah, the Palestinian acti...

NOVANEWS  24 December 2010 On 26, Novemer 2019, six Palestinian political prisoners began a hunger strike to demand their release from a facility run by puppet Ab-A$$; they have now gone without food for 28 days.Human rights organisations have warned that the threat to the lives of the six men is now critical and have demanded their immediate release. Five out of the six prisoners have languished in puppetAb-A$$ prisons without any clear charges being brought against them, despite having secured release orders from the Ab-A$$ Supreme Court of 'Justice'.? The hunger strikers are: 1. Ahmed Mohammed Yusri al-Uwaywi: arrested 15 September 2010; Supreme Court of Justice release orders issued 3 February 2010.   2. Majd Maher Abid: arrested 11 October 2009; Supreme Court of Justice release or...

NOVANEWS    June 2, 2010 Belatedly --but better late than never--, Israeli Jews are beginning to acknowledge the extermination of over 1 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915-18. At a Tel Aviv demonstration Monday night, they event went so far as to compare the events to the sacrosanct Holocaust: WHAT ABOUT THE PALESTINAN HOLOCAUST? Cynics are claiming, though, that those Jews never gave a damn for the Armenians and nor do they now, and that they're just using them to bash Turkey for its support of the Gaza flotilla. But this is antisemitic, since the demonstrators have also called for the resignation of their own president, Shimon Peres, over his 2001 denial of the Armenian genocide. Just kidding!

NOVANEWS   December 23, 2010 By now no one denies the existence of a deeply racist segment within the Israeli Jewish society, which operates with a freedom unseen in any other advanced democracy. Belgian priests signing a document against intermarriage with Muslims, for instance, or American politicians suggesting that Mexicans should not be allowed in certain neighborhoods, would be met not only with oprobium, but also with legal actions. Not so in Israel, where the housing minister can claim that the Arab and Jewish populations should not mix with hardly an eyebrow being raised. The standard Zionist line of defense is that such elements are a tiny minority in Israel, and that the vast majority of Israeli Jews repudiate their discourse. The events last Monday in Bat Yam, a suburb of Tel A...