Politics

NOVANEWS In This Issue... Audrey Farber responds to proposed loyalty oaths More Recent Articles Search The Only Democracy?     Audrey Farber responds to proposed loyalty oaths   by Audrey Farber  A part of me wants to give at least a hesitant nod of acknowledgement to the less-extreme-right in the Knesset who recognize that there is something less-than-savory in Lieberman’s loyalty oath. In Lieberman-land, all naturalized citizens will swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. (Ah, the hypocrisy!) As much as Netanyahu may be frustrating the hell out of those of us who – dare we say it – hope for better, he did at least make the effort to temper Lieberman’s firebrand uber-nationalism by proposing an alternative loyalty oath that invoked the equality for al...

NOVANEWS [A forwarded posting from Jewish Peace News ] No positive evidence supporting accusations against Ameer Makhoul On May 8th, Jewish Peace News posted news of the arrest or, more precisely, abduction, of human rights defender Ameer Makhoul, "Director of Ittijah – The Union of Arab Community-Based Associations – … in the dead of night, while he and his family slept in their home in Haifa ." The arrest of this "Israeli citizen [and] … high-profile activist … [was] placed under a gag order … Israeli reporters, news outlets and even blogs" were forbidden from writing about it. On June 20th, JPN followed up with a letter from Makhoul, composed after he "had spent 3 weeks in prison without access to even pen and paper, not to speak of lawyers, family visits, due process, humane and legal ...

NOVANEWS Would ‘one state’ end the occupation? lawrenceofcyberia http://jfjfp.com/?p=17868 One State, Two State, Red State, Blue State Diane Mason, 19 September 2010 I think there’s a degree of wishful thinking in the positive reaction from some pro-Palestinian one-staters to recent suggestions by a few Israeli rightists that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be resolved by gradually offering citizenship of a Jewish state of Israel to some of the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. The wishful thinking lies in the assumption that “we” are talking about one state, and “they” are talking about one state, so regardless of the differences in the details we’re all to some extent reading off the same page. I don’t think there’s any basis to that assumption at all. What the Likud’s appa...

NOVANEWS In This Issue... Their First and Last Day of School Israeli McCarythism 2010: Now with loyalty oaths More Recent Articles Search The Only Democracy? Their First and Last Day of School   Wajdan Abu Alian, left, and Dina Abu Rabia Photo by: Eliahu Hershkovitz A school in Omer asks two Bedouin students not to come back after their first day of school. Omer is a suburban community near Be’er Sheva, an elite escape in Israel’s destitute south. Of course the golden quote cannot be found in the English Haaretz article, only in the Hebrew one. In the past I have allowed Bedouin students to study at my school with a presumption that if I give them the best possible education they won’t later give birth to 20 children. We invested in them a lot of money. Some persevered a...

  NOVANEWS Dear Friends, The depiction below of yesterday’s proceedings at the trial are accurate.  I and my spouse (Israel) can affirm this because we were there the entire day.  The first witness claimed not to have remembered at almost every question that the Corrie’s lawyers asked.  The second witness appears to be entirely incompetent for his position as head of the investigation department, as is evident below from his responses.  This is not the first time that we have witnessed incompetence in the military.  When we attended the trial of Yonathan Ben Artzi we were amazed at the unprofessionalism evident in some of the officers and at their total lack of knowledge of what constitutes pacifism.  Some of these lapses also were apparent to the judge, as we could see from his questions ...

NOVANEWS In This Issue... Israeli court welcomes pre-1948 land claims, from Jewish Israelis only More Recent Articles Search The Only Democracy? Israeli court welcomes pre-1948 land claims, from Jewish Israelis only   By Jesse Bacon One of the Palestinian families that could be evicted from their homes as a result of a September 26 court ruling. Photo by: Michal Fattal It has been pointed out repeatedly, but now it’s official, the Israeli Supreme Court will accept your pre-1948 claim, if you are Jewish that is. In one of those cases that is a testament to presumably intelligent people’s ability to ignore the larger implications of their actions, the court has been ruling that Jews who left East Jerusalem during the founding of the state of Israel/ Palest...

NOVANEWS QIRESH FAMILY EVICTION: 1948 Ethnic Cleansing Continues October 5, 2010 by Debbie Menon   By Antoine Raffoul This post is to show that the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians continues to this day. In 1948 it went unobserved by most of the world media. Today, it continues despite of the presence of world media. Add to this the farcical indifference of the world community. If this is acceptable today, then we are bystanders.  TALA QIRESH, THE LITTLE PALESTINIAN GIRL IN THE PICTURES, AND HER FAMILY HAVE BEEN EVICTED FROM THEIR HOME IN OLD JERUSALEM AND DESPITE THE LAWYER’S INTERVENTION, THE SOLDIERS REFUSE THEM ENTRY. THE QIRESH FAMILY LIVED IN THAT HOUSE SINCE 1940 WITH 40 OTHER RESIDENTS IN 20 ROOMS. PICTURES SPEAK A THOUSAND WORDS: Little Tala infront of her house from which she w...

NOVANEWS By Grattan Puxon, 05/10/2010 While last minute attempts are being made to stave off the eviction operation at Dale Farm, it now looks certain that a violent confrontation is being forced upon residents by a merciless council motivated by blatant anti-Gypsy racism of the same kind seen virulently at work across Europe. No one could misread the message given out by Basildon District Council through its bully-boy bailiffs at the recent Hovefields evictions. Appeals by two pregnant mothers, the cries of a lad with learning difficulties and children who just want to go to school - all were evicted with nowhere to go in what the council called a dry run before Dale Farm. Many eyes have been opened by events in France and Italy. Less has been published about the expulsions by Germany, wh...

10/4/2010 Jewish Organizations Behind Internet Censorship Scourge By Rev. Ted Pike The Internet was probably the least foreseen of events challenging ADL/Israel’s agenda for world control. Leaping across previously Jewish-dominated media boundaries, the worldwide web has given people of conscience unfettered privileges to criticize Jewish supremacism and misbehavior of the state of Israel. However, in my April 27 article, “Israeli Cyber-Warriors Crash Internet,” I detail how Israel, unable to legitimately dispel overwhelming world criticism, has been marshalling hundreds of thousands of Jews worldwide into an army of internet “cyber-warriors.” These act in unison to skew polls about Israel and disproportionately flood the internet with opinion favorable to the Jewish state – and against i...

NOVANEWS THE CHARTER OF THE ISRAELI STATE October 4, 2010 by Debbie Menon By Avigail Abarbanel Growing up as an Israeli provided me with an intimate understanding of Israeli-Jewish psychology.   I had the privilege of hearing Ali Abunimah speak at a dinner organised by an Australian pro-Palestinian activist group. Abunimah, an author and an editor of the Electronic Intifada website, is a supporter of the one-state solution in Palestine/Israel, and so am I. One democratic and secular state for both peoples with a right of return for the Palestinian refugees is the only just solution to the long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Abunimah is optimistic about what is possible. I would like to be as optimistic but am not so sure I can. Growing up as an Israeli provided me with a...