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NPK-info 23-10-2001 - Nederlands Palestina Komitee
/ www.palestina-komitee.nl
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Premier Kok gaf, na Bush en Blair, aan zich voluit in
te gaan zetten voor de
stichting van "een levensvatbare Palestijnse
staat", zie o.a.
Komen nu de daden om Israel - inclusief haar tijdens
Paars bijna verdubbeld
aantal kolonisten [*] - weg te krijgen uit alle in
1967 bezette gebieden? Zo
niet dan sancties? Wordt ervoor gezorgd dat
kolonisten met een Nederlands
paspoort kunnen worden aangeklaagd?
Komt er eindelijk reactie op oproepen zoals van BADIL
[International
Community MUST INTERVENE NOW] en van de "Health
Work Committees" hierna?
We zijn benieuwd.
[*] plm. 400.000
Verder
* Israeli Extremist Shot Dead!
* "Murder in cold blood" http://www.miftah.org/Articles/oct17i2k1.html
* Guardian 19-10
"...When civilians elsewhere are murdered or
threatened, we talk of human
rights abuses, impose sanctions, send in troops, or
bomb civilians from a
safe distance without risking one single precious
white life. Meanwhile,
Israel continues its illegal occupation and regular
murder of civilians with
impunity, while any attack on Israel is condemned in
the strongest
terms....."
* BADIL 17-10-2001: AL-MAJDAL Quarterly
* Onderwijs in Israel
* Onderwijs in de Palestijnse gebieden
NPK/WL, 23-10-2001
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BADIL Resource Center
For immediate release, 22-10-2001 (E/55/2001)
-------------------------------------------------------
International Community MUST INTERVENE NOW
Should a Peaceful Solution Remain An Option!
Urgent Call for Support Issued by BADIL Resource
Center, Bethlehem.
As Israel's assault on the Palestinian population in
the 1967
occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip continues unabated
for the fifth
consecutive day in the districts of Bethlehem,
Ramallah, Tulkarem,
Qalqilya, and Nablus, both Palestinian survival and
the survival of a
viable political option for peace in the region
depend on the
immediate and determined intervention by the
international community
to stop the Sharon government. According to the
Palestinian Red
Crescent, 160 Palestinians have been injured and 26
killed in the
current Israeli assault between 18 - 21 October, i.e.
a death toll
which equals half of the number of Palestinians
killed during the
whole month of September.
In the Bethlehem area, 14 Palestinians have been
killed by Israeli
armed forces between Thursday, 18 October and Sunday,
21 October by
shelling from tanks and gunship helicopters and by
snipers shooting
from Israeli army positions set up on the tops of
Palestinian homes.
The refugee camps of Aida and Beit Jibrin/Azza remain
sieged by army
tanks, UNRWA has been prevented access, and food
supplies in the
camps are running short. King Hussein Hospital in
Beit Jala was
attacked by heavy tank shelling twice on Sunday night,
resulting in
the death of one person and the injury of one of its
physicians. All
Palestinian institutions in the area, including BADIL
Resource
Center, have been unable to operate, as movement in
the streets has
become a matter of life and death.
List of Palestinian victims of the Israeli assault (Bethlehem
area,
18-21 October):
Atef Abayat, assassinated by car bomb, Beit Sahour,
Thursday, 18-10-
2001;
Issa Abayat, assassinated by car bomb, Beit Sahour,
Thursday, 18-10-
2001;
Jamal Abedallah, assassinated by car bomb, Beit
Sahour, Thursday, 18-
10-2001;
Musa George Abu Eid, shot inside his home in Beit
Jala, Friday 19-10-
2001;
Abed Abdelqader Abu Srour, shot next to his home,
Aida camp, Friday,
19-10-2001;
Mariam Subaih, shot next to her home in El-Khader
village by tank
shells, Friday, 19-10-2001;
Rihab Nofal, a pregnant woman from Husan village; she
was stopped at
the Israeli checkpoint until she died, Friday,
19-10-2001;
Rania Kharoufa, shot in a shop while trying to hide
from bullets shot
from an Apache helicopter, Beit Jala, Friday,
19-10-2001;
Aysha Odeh, shot inside her home, Aida refugee camp,
Friday, 19-10-
2001;
Joni Yousif Thaljiya, shot while waking on the
Nativity Square,
Bethlehem, Saturday, 20-10-2001;
Yousif Mohammad Abayat, 15 years, killed during
shelling, Bethlehem,
Saturday, 20-10-2001;
Muhammad Sulaiman Baraq'a, disabled deaf father of
five, shot in his
home, Azza/Beit Jibrin camp, Sunday, 21-10-2001;
Nahed Hussain Aljuju, officer in the Palestinian
National Forces,
shot in fighting, Sunday, 21-10-2001;
Issa Fouzi Abu Hlayel, killed by a shell in front of
Al-Hussein
Hospital, Beit Jala, Sunday, 21-10-2001;
PLEASE SEND URGENT CALLS FOR INTERVENTION to your
government and
press. Below is a sample letter prepared by Ali
Abunimah, Palestine
Right-to-Return Coalition, which we recommend to use
for guidance.
------------------------------------
The situation in the West Bank and Gaza is urgent and
critical.
DEMAND THE UNITED STATES TAKE A STAND AND STOP
ISRAEL'S AGGRETION
IMMEDIATELY!
CALL, EMAIL, AND FAX LETTERS LIKE THE ONE BELOW TO:
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
E-mail: president@whitehouse.gov
Phone: (202) 456-1414
Fax: (202) 456-2461
Secretary of State Colin Powell
E-mail: secretary@state.gov
Phone: (202) 647-4000 (202-647-5150) Bureau of Near
East Affairs
Fax: (202) 261-8577
Solidarity
Zahi
From: Ali Abunimah <ahabunim@midway.uchicago.edu>
To: secretary@state.gov
Cc: president@whitehouse.gov
Subject: Stop Israel's Rampage
October 20, 2001
Dear Secretary of State Powell,
I am writing to urge you immediately to intervene to
stop Israel's
murderous rampage against Palestinians in the
occupied territories.
Israeli attacks are escalating and the death toll is
mounting despite
strong statements from the United States that these
attacks should be
halted. It is clear that words alone do not stop
Israel's government,
and it is now time for the United States to take a
stand.
The United States cannot be both for a Palestinian
State, as the
President has recently affirmed it is, and also for
allowing Israel
to rampage freely and indefinitely through the
occupied territories
murdering people, destroying property, building
settlements and
besieging and impoverishing the entire population.
The United States
cannot both be for peace and negotiations and at the
same time
unconditionally supply the very weapons with which
Israel makes war
against a defenseless civilian population
under occupation.
The United States cannot be for law and order and at
the same time do
nothing to oppose Israel's use of death squads armed
with American
weapons to carry out extrajudicial executions. Indeed
I wonder how it
is that at the same time as the United States demands
that the
Palestinians arrest and try people responsible for
violence against
Israelis, the United States welcomes in Washington
those who plan it
and carry it out on a massive scale against
Palestinian civilians and
leaders.
Since October 18 at least 20 Palestinians have been
killed by Israeli
occupation forces who have now taken over parts of
six Palestinian
cities. Dozens of Israeli tanks now control Bethlehem,
Beit Jala,
Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Ramallah and Al-Bireh and their
residents are
under constant bombardment. As I write today, eight
people have been
killed.
Women and children are the most conspicuous victims
of the ongoing
Israeli attacks. Today, 23 year old Rania Kharufa
died after being
hit by shrapnel from a tank shell which exploded near
her house in
Beit Jala.
Aisha Abu Odeh, a mother of eight was mowed down by
Israeli machine
gun fire at the at the door of her home in Aida
refugee camp near
Bethlehem and witnesses said tank fire killed
17-year-old Yusef
Abayat on the street. Yesterday, 35-year-old Mariam
Sbeh was killed
according to media reports.
According to human rights organizations, Basil Saleem
Mohammed Al-
Mubasher, 14 years old from Khan Yunis, was killed by
an Israeli tank-
shell that landed near his house following Israeli
shelling of
residential areas during the night of 18 October.
Basil discovered
the unexploded shell the following morning and was
killed when it
exploded.
On 18 October 2001, 10-year old Riham Nabeel Ward was
killed by live
ammunition to the chest while attending school in the
German Area,
Jenin. Riham and other students of the Shahidayn Al
Ibrahmiyyeh Basic
Girls School arrived for class in the morning and
found Israeli tanks
and soldiers positioned near the school following an
Israeli
incursion into the area the previous night. Israeli
soldiers opened
fire while the
students were attempting to take cover on the floor
of one of the
classrooms. Riham died in her older sister's arms
while five other
students and a teacher were also injured. Dozens of
others have been
injured.
Like tens of millions of people, I have witnessed
these things on the
television thanks to Al-Jazira and when I see the
injustice of them
they make me outraged and angry.
If the United States does not take active steps,
beyond mere words,
to prevent Israel from using US aid to continue its
grave violations
of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, then how can anyone
conclude that
the United States is not aiding, abetting and fully
supporting
Israel's criminal actions? You cannot have it both
ways.
Time is short Mr. Secretary and enough lives have
been lost. In the
interests of everyone, in the interests of peace, I
hope the United
States will act now.
Sincerely,
Ali Abunimah
(postal address deleted)
-----------------------------------------
BADIL Resource Center aims to provide a resource pool
of alternative,
critical and progressive information and analysis on
the question of
Palestinian refugees in our quest to achieve a just
and lasting solution for
exiled Palestinians based on the right of
return.
PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine; tel/fax.
02-2747346; email:
info@badil.org; website: www.badil.org
_______________________________________________________________________
UPDATE FROM THE HEALTH WORK COMMITTEES
21 October 2001
Dear Friends,
It is difficult to describe what is going on at
present in the Palestinian
occupied territories in view of the Israeli
occupation army's invasion of
six cities in the West Bank -- Jenin, Tulkarem,
Qalqilya, Nablus, Ramallah,
Bethlehem-Beit Jala. For three consecutive days
the Israeli army has been
continuously bombarding and attempting to reoccupy
Palestinian cities. With
its tanks, attack helicopters, and heavy artillery,
the Israeli army is
leaving a trail of death, injury, fear, and
destruction.
This invasion followed the assassination of three
young men from the
Palestinian resistance movement in an explosion of
their booby-trapped car
in Beit Sahour. During this brief three-day
period, ten people have been
killed and dozens injured. Half of those killed
were civilians shot by
Israeli snipers. Most of the injured are
civilians. The Aida and Azza
refugee camps in Bethlehem are suffering the most.
Heavy machine guns are
shooting at all that moves. Even Manger Square,
in the center of Bethlehem,
has not been spared the presence of Israeli snipers.
Yesterday,
nineteen-year-old John Thaljiyeh was shot in the
chest while standing in
Manger Square. He was brought to our clinic in
Beit Sahour and declared
dead on arrival.
The hospital in Bethlehem is running out of medical
supplies and blood as
the Israeli tanks in the surroundings of the hospital
are making it nearly
impossible to reach the hospital.
Employees from our center in Beit Sahour, as well as
many volunteers from
the local community have begun to donate blood.
To date, 32 units of blood
have been sent to the hospital in a Red Crescent
ambulance. Bethlehem and
Beit Jala are being attacked from the north, west,
and south. Only the exit
to Beit Sahour is still open and most probably, it is
only a matter of time
before Beit Sahour is also invaded.
In order to deal with the crisis in the Bethlehem
area, as well as
throughout the West Bank, all medical facilities of
the Health Work
Committees are remaining open twenty-four hours a day.
It is unlikely that the Palestinian people who are
outnumbered,
less-equipped, and lacking proper infrastructure,
will give up their right
to fight for freedom and independence. It is
more likely that the
Palestinians will still have to pay a much higher
price.
The loss of vision of Sharon's government has caused
widespread
apprehension. If the Palestinian people want
freedom and independence, what
do Sharon and his government want? Security and
military occupation are
mutually exclusive. This bloodshed must stop.
The Israeli occupation must
be ended. The loss of even one life is one life
too much.
Dr. Majed Nassar
Deputy Director, HWC
Health Work Committees/Beit Sahour Medical Center
POB 44, Beit Sahour, Palestine
tel: 972-2-277-4444
fax: 972-2-277-5567
e-mail: bsmc@p-ol.com
_______________________________________________________________________
BADIL Resource Center
For immediate release, 17-10-2001 (E/54-2001)
------------------------------------------------------------
Available now at BADIL:
AL-MAJDAL Quarterly
for the Promotion of Palestinian Residency and
Refugee Rights
Publisher: BADIL Resource Center
Annual subscription fee (4 issues): US $20.
Under the headline "Ending the Ongoing Nakba, A
Real Alternative to
Oslo," the September issue of Al-MAJDAL examines
the structural flaws
of the Oslo-Mitchell-Tenet process. The same flaws
underlie recent
statements and plans announced by US President George
Bush and
British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the context of
US and British
"anti-terror coalition building," and will
bring to fall also future
international peace efforts in the Middle East.
The Program of Action approved by some 3,000 NGOs at
the recent World
Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, is
presented as an
alternative to the Oslo/Mitchell/Tenet process. It is
a framework
clearly based on international law and UN resolutions,
provides an
independent, international monitoring and enforcement
mechanism, and
addresses the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict - i.e.
displacement/expulsion, dispossession, occupation,
and denial of the
right to self-determination.
AL-MAJDAL, issue no. 11 also includes:
- Reports about recent activities by the global
Palestinian right-of-
return network, including memorials of the 19th
anniversary of the
massacre of Sabra and Shatila;
- An update about the war crimes suit
submitted in Belgium by the
victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre against
current Israeli
prime minister Ariel Sharon;
- Report: World Conference Against Racism,
Durban, 26 August to 9
September 2001;
- Analysis: Europe's Moment? The Palestinian
Right of Return in
European Middle East Policy;
- Survey of recent proposals for effective
protection of Palestinian
rights (Palestinian proposal for the solution of the
refugee
question, Taba, February 2001; NGO proposals for
effective protection
in the 1967 occupied Palestinian territories);
- Review: lack of international protection,
international assistance
efforts and Palestinian refugees after one year of
Al-Aqsa Intifada.
Subscribers to AL-MAJDAL will receive issue no. 11
via mail shortly.
The magazine can also be accessed via our website:
For subscription orders, please send a cheque of US
$20 (or
equivalent in your local currency) to BADIL Resource
Center, address
below.
---------------------------------------
BADIL Resource Center aims to provide a resource pool
of alternative,
critical and progressive information and analysis on
the
question of Palestinian refugees in our quest to
achieve a just and lasting
solution for exiled Palestinians based on the right
of return.
PO Box 728, Bethlehem, Palestine; tel/fax.
02-2747346; email:
info@badil.org; website: www.badil.org
_______________________________________________________________________
Over onderwijs in Israel:
"Special Report
Israeli Textbooks and Children's Literature Promote
Racism and Hatred Toward
Palestinians and Arabs
By Maureen Meehan
SEPTEMBER 1999, pages 19-20
Israeli school textbooks as well as children's
storybooks, according to
recent academic studies and surveys, portray
Palestinians and Arabs as
"murderers," "rioters," "suspicious,"
and generally backward and
unproductive. Direct delegitimization and negative
stereotyping of
Palestinians and Arabs are the rule rather than the
exception in Israeli
schoolbooks.
Professor Daniel Bar-Tal of Tel Aviv University
studied 124 elementary,
middle- and high school textbooks on grammar and
Hebrew literature, history,
geography and citizenship. Bar-Tal concluded that
Israeli textbooks present
the view that Jews are involved in a justified, even
humanitarian, war
against an Arab enemy that refuses to accept and
acknowledge the existence
and rights of Jews in Israel.
"The early textbooks tended to describe acts of
Arabs as hostile, deviant,
cruel, immoral, unfair, with the intention to hurt
Jews and to annihilate
the State of Israel. Within this frame of reference,
Arabs were
delegitimized by the use of such labels as 'robbers,'
'bloodthirsty,' and
'killers,'" said Professor Bar-Tal, adding that
there has been little
positive revision in the curriculum over the years.
Bar-Tal pointed out that Israeli textbooks continue
to present Jews as
industrious, brave and determined to cope with the
difficulties of
"improving the country in ways they believe the
Arabs are incapable of."
Hebrew-language geography books from the 1950s
through 1970s focused on the
glory of Israel's ancient past and how the land was
"neglected and
destroyed" by the Arabs until the Jews
returned from their forced exile and
revived it "with the help of the Zionist
movement."
"This attitude served to justify the return of
the Jews, implying that they
care enough about the country to turn the swamps and
deserts into blossoming
farmland; this effectively delegitimizes the Arab
claim to the same land,"
Bar-Tal told the Washington Report. "The message
was that the Palestinians
were primitive and neglected the country and did not
cultivate the land."
This message, continued Bar-Tal, was further
emphasized in textbooks by the
use of blatant negative stereotyping which featured
Arabs as:
"unenlightened, inferior, fatalistic,
unproductive and apathetic." Further,
according to the textbooks, the Arabs were
"tribal, vengeful, exotic, poor,
sick, dirty, noisy, colored" and "they burn,
murder, destroy, and are easily
inflamed."
Textbooks currently being used in the Israeli school
system, says Bar-Tal,
contain less direct denigration of Arabs but continue
to stereotype them
negatively when referring to them. He pointed out
that Hebrew- as well as
Arabic-language textbooks used in elementary and
junior high schools contain
very few references either to Arabs or to Arab-Jewish
relations. The
coordinator of a Palestinian NGO in Israel said that
major historical events
hardly get a mention either. "
..........."
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Over onderwijs in de Palestijnse gebieden:
"...The Palestinians are being rebuked where
they should in fact be praised.
For this school year the Palestinian Authority has,
for the first time ever,
printed its own textbooks. A research team from the
Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the
Advancement of Peace, led by Dr.
Ruth Firer, has established that the new books are
"freer of negative
stereotypes of Jews and Israelis, compared to
Jordanian and
Egyptian books." The defense establishment
has investigated and confirmed
this finding.
The Truman team compared the new Palestinian
books with Israeli textbooks
from the 1930s and 1950s, that were then used by the
state as a tool for
political indoctrination. "We were surprised to
find how moderate the anger
directed toward Israelis in the Palestinian textbooks
is, compared to the
Palestinian predicament and suffering,"
Firer says. "This surprise is doubled when
you compare the Palestinian
books to Israeli ones from the 1950s and 1960s, which
mentioned gentiles
[only] in the context of pogroms and the
Holocaust...."
"...Deborah Sontag of the New York Times visited
a Palestinian classroom in
Ramallah on September 7, 2000.
Interestingly enough, my own six-year old son happens
to attend this school
and is in this same classroom. It is obvious from her
text that Ms Sontag
was primarily looking for evidence to possibly
substantiate the charge.
She finds none. Instead she draws a thorough
picture of the pedagogical
dilemmas facing Palestinians in dealing with complex
historical issues. As a
father who closely monitors what his son learns at
school, I also find no
evidence of anti-Jewish incitement in what he is
being taught. As a
Palestinian-American academic, in
Ramallah trying to establish an educational
research and development center
whose primary objective is to help improve the
quality of Palestinian
schools, I also find no evidence of brainwashing or
anti-Jewish incitement
in the new texts produced by the Palestinian
Authority. My concerns are
primarily ones of
quality. I would like to make sure that, now that the
Palestinians are in
full control of their educational system, they will
produce a first rate
curriculum that allows their children to compete in
the modern world..."
"..The last few years an Israeli committee,
associated with the previous
Netanyahu government, diligently examined textbooks
employed at Palestinian
schools. The results are summed up in page-long
advertisements in the
Israeli and American press in which Palestinian
educators are accused of
anti-Semitism. I wonder about the reliability of the
quotes brought forward
as evidence. In one case,
Khalil Mahshi, director of the international
department of the Palestinian
Ministry of Education, examined such an accusation of
"negating the
existence of Israel" and it turned out that the
quote was not from a
textbook but a reference book mentioned in the
textbook. That reference book
dated from before the existence of
Israel. It is definitely possible to find some
harsh anti-Israel and indeed
anti-Jewish quotes in the textbooks used at
Palestinian schools but these
textbooks are not Palestinian ones, but from Jordan (used
at schools in the
West Bank) or Egypt (at schools in Gaza)..."
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