Israeli gunboats have RAMMED and attacked SS Dignity on its way to Gaza - 90 miles off Gaza and in international waters.

(Larnaca, Cyprus, 10:00 am) On Tuesday, December 30, at 5 a.m., several Israeli gunboats intercepted the Dignity as she was heading on a mission of mercy to Gaza. One gunboat rammed into the boat on the port bow side, heavily damaging her. The reports from passengers and journalists on board say that she is taking on water and appears to have engine problems. When attacked, the Dignity was clearly in international waters, 90 miles off the coast of Gaza.

The gunboats also fired their machine guns into the water in an attempt to stop the mercy ship from getting to Gaza.

As the boat limps toward Lebanon, passengers have been in contact with the Lebanese government, who say the captain has permission to dock and are willing to lend assistance if needed. Cyprus sea rescue has also been in touch, and offered assistance as well.

The Dignity clearly flies the flag of Gibraltar, is piloted by an English captain and has a passenger manifest that includes Representative Cynthia McKinney from the U.S. The Israeli Government Press Office director was faxed the passenger list and press release last night, after Dignity set sail. The attack was filmed by the journalists, and crew and passengers will report on Israel’s crime at sea on arrival in Lebanon.

On board the boat are doctors traveling to this impoverished slice of the Mediterranean to provide badly-needed relief at the hospitals there. The crew and passengers were also hoping to take wounded out for treatment, since the hospitals are totally unable to cope. In addition, the Dignity was carrying 3 tons of medical supplies at the request of the doctors in Gaza.

The three physicians on board who were sailing to Gaza are: Dr. Halpin (UK), an experienced orthopaedic surgeon, medical professor, and ship’s captain.

Al-Haq documentary takes first place in Dubai International Film Festival

Al-Haq is proud to announce that its recent documentary, “Memory of the Cactus,” directed by Hanna Musleh, took first place in the Dubai International Film Festival in the category of best documentary.

The film addresses the story of the destruction of the Palestinian villages of Latroun in the Occupied West Bank and the forcible transfer of their civilian population in 1967. Over 40 years later, the Israeli occupation continues, and villagers remain displaced. Currently the site of the villages is home to the Canada Park, which was built with funds from the Jewish National Fund of Canada.

To view a trailer of the documentary, please click here.

Al-Haq, PO Box 1413 - Ramallah, West Bank
Tel: +972 2 295 4646/9 Fax: +972 2 295 4903
media@alhaq.org - http://www.alhaq.org

The Nativity Trail 2009

The Alternative Tourism Group (ATG) and Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies proudly announce re-inaugurating the Nativity Trail from Nazareth to Bethlehem in 2009.

Now, 2000 years after the historic journey of Joseph and Mary, the modern city of Bethlehem invites you to make a symbolic and historic journey by walking Palestine’s Nativity Trail.

This walking trail was originally inaugurated in 1999. However, the route has been recently researched again and modified to suit the new changes on the ground

Meeting the people while walking the Nativity Trail will be an opportunity to meet a diverse range of people: Franciscan priests on Mount Tabor, Muslim clerics at village mosques, Greek Orthodox monks in desert monasteries, hillside farmers and their families, small-town shopkeepers and craftspeople, Bedouin shepherds watering their flocks at ancient cisterns, and many more interesting people.

The Nativity Trail is an opportunity to understand the Geopolitical situation in the Holy Land by observing it while walking through the valleys and mountains of Palestine. It gives the participants the chance to have a first hand experience of the situation on the ground.

The Nativity Trial is not just a trip; it is a journey of dialogue, openness and interaction with new people.

Participants will be able to understand the Flora and Fauna of Palestine and the Bible, and will be able to embrace the culture that lasted in Palestine for thousands of years.

Dates:

• 12 Mar 2009 until 23 Mar 2009
• 23 Apr 2009 until 04 May 2009
• 08 Oct 2009 until 19 Oct 2009
• 29 Oct 2009 until 09 Nov 2009
• 12 Nov 2009 until 23 Nov 2009
• 13 Dec 2009 until 24 Dec 2009 ( Christmas Trail)

For more information about the Nativity Trail please visit our website:www.atg.ps; www.sirajcenter.org

You are most welcome,

ATG and Siraj

[ATG are long-standing partners of Olive Cooperative, and we would like to take this chance to highly commend their work and recommend their tours - Ed]

Israeli Authorities Hold UN Official in Ben Gurion Airport:

GENEVA, December 14, 2008 (WAFA)- Israeli Occupation Authorities held, Sunday, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967 Professor Richard Falk, and is willing to deport to Geneva, Monday morning.

Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the United Nations in Geneva said in a press release issued few hours ago, that the Israeli Occupation Authorities have denied the UN Special Rapporteur into the Palestinian Territory and Israel .

The press release explained that Falk was coming to detect Israel ’s violations of the International and the International Humanitarian Laws in the OPT. At his arrival, Israeli Authorities denied his access into Israel and held him in the immigration section in Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. Israeli Occupation Authorities are to deport him to Geneva Monday morning.

This is Falk’s first official visit to the OPT and Israel , after he was appointed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). He is currently working on a report about the human rights conditions in the OPT to raise it to the UNHRC tenth session in March 2009.

http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=193842

http://english.wafa.ps/?action=detail&id=12417

Israel Blocks Entry of UN Rapporteur Richard Falk

Israel on Sunday reportedly blocked entry to U.S. professor and United Nations’ “Special Rapporteur” for human rights on the Israeli - occupied Palestinian territories who last week accused Israel of “war crimes,” CNSNews reported on Monday.

Lilia Zaharieva, the deputy head of the U.N.’s “occupied Palestinian territories country office,” confirmed Monday that staff had gone to Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv to meet Prof. Richard Falk but learned that “he was not allowed to enter Israel .”

He had taken the next flight to Switzerland on Monday morning, she said.

Full Story at: http://www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=2150

Israel turns back senior UN official :

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israel has turned back UN human rights envoy Richard Falk upon his arrival at Ben Gurion airport, authorities said on Monday, accusing him of “legitimizing Hamas terrorism.”

” Israel has made clear that Mr. Falk was not invited, nor would be welcome in Israel, under his capacity as UN special rapporteur” for human rights, the foreign ministry said.

Falk, who is the UN’s monitor of human rights in the Palestinian territories, last week prompted Israel’s ire when he said its policies against people in the territories amount to a “crime against humanity.”

UN officials said Falk was sent back to Zurich upon arrival at Ben Gurion, near Tel Aviv, on Sunday.

Full Story at: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h8NzYUMt2T2VBPg_E1wNqfjAZu6A

Tzipi’s Nation-State

IT SOUNDS like an invented story. And indeed it is.

In this tale, an American politician gets up and declares: The United States was founded by British Protestants who were persecuted in Europe for their Puritan beliefs. Therefore, the United States is an Anglo-Saxon Protestant state.

And he goes on: the United States is also a democratic state. Therefore, people with another background – such as Native Americans, Africans, Latinos, Asians and Jews – enjoy full equality. But they must know that the United States is an Anglo-Saxon nation-state, while they belong to other nation-states.

Sounds far-fetched? Indeed it is. No American politician would dream of uttering such a statement, even if he might feel it in his heart.

Here in Israel one can say such a thing, and nobody gets excited.

THIS WEEK Tzipi Livni did just that. She was speaking to high-school pupils – the audience preferred by our politicians, who know that the great majority of them are conformists who will listen to anything without protest. Standing in front of these pupils, boys and girls, who will be called up by the army in a year or two, Tzipi disclosed her inner convictions.

Israel, she said, is a Jewish and democratic state. The Arab citizens enjoy full civil rights. But they must know that this is the Jewish nation-state, while they belong to another nation, and their nation-state will be the putative Palestinian state.

This statement did not arouse a storm, not on the spot and not in the media. It does not contradict the convictions of most Israelis. The public accepts the view that Israel is a Jewish state, and that its Arab citizens are, at most, a tolerated minority.

What is special about Tzipi Livni is her emphasis on the two words “nation state”. She has made them into her trademark and repeats them at every opportunity. They give her statements a certain respectability, the halo of a thought-out world-view, which makes her sound different from Ehud Olmert, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, who, of course, think exactly the same.

NO ONE denies that the world is divided into nation-states. The nearest thing we have to a world parliament is called the “United Nations”, meaning “United Nation-States”. The question is only: what is a nation-state?

In historical terms, the nation-state is a relatively recent phenomenon. Only a hundred years ago, large parts of Europe belonged to multi-national empires. It was the dynasty that united the empire, not the national identity of the subjects. The Austrian Empire included people of more than a dozen nationalities, and so did the empire of the Russian Czar.

Actually, the national idea crystallized only in the 18th century. More and more thinkers adopted the view that a society with a common origin, a common cultural identity, a common language (mostly), a common territory and (usually) a common religion should be united in a state of its own, which should belong to them alone, and enjoy national independence.

The timing was not accidental. All over Europe, mass education systems sprang up and all the peoples developed a national consciousness. Slovaks and Slovenes began to wonder why they should be subject to the Austrian crown, Lithuanians and Latvians no longer found it natural that they should be oppressed by the Russian Czar. At the same time, economic and technological advances demanded states big enough to sustain a modern economy and a large enough army to defend its citizens (and perhaps to attack neighboring countries).

The classic nation-state was France. It developed a French nation with a nationalist world-view and a national pride, and that imposed its language and culture on the peoples that became part of France either by agreement or by force – Alsatians in the East, Corsicans in the South, Basques in the West, Bretons in the North. British nationalism absorbed the Scots, the Welsh and some of the Irish. The people that were swallowed up by the big nations generally accepted this and developed a pride in their new nations. The Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte was the Frenchman par excellence, and the Jew Benjamin Disraeli created the British Empire.

That was the heyday of the classical nation-state: a national state, homogenous as far as possible, which at most tolerated its minorities or persecuted them outright, that demanded national conformism within and made little pretense of morality in its dealing with other nation-states.

It seems that Tzipi Livni takes such a nation-state as her ideal. But developments have long since left that stage behind.

The nation-state has not died, but it has changed almost beyond recognition.

THE UNITED STATES, too, is a nation-state. But that nation is very different from the one Tzipi Livni is dreaming about.

The American nation is composed of all the citizens of the United States. Lithuanians, Argentinians and Vietnamese become members of the American nation the moment they receive their citizenship. The heritage of Washington and Lincoln is conferred on them together with their passport. They are not required to change their religion or skin-color.

The ultimate confirmation of the success of this system has been given by the election of Barack Obama, the grandson of a Muslim from Kenya. Throughout the stormy election campaign, no one seriously claimed that he was not a complete American.

The American flag and the American constitution unite this modern nation. The President does not swear loyalty to the Fatherland, but to the constitution. Not the skin-color is important, not the ethnic origin, nor religion or language. Only citizenship. Even the requirement that the citizen should know at least basic English is not enforced as strictly as it once was.

The term WASP – White Anglo-Saxon Protestant – has long since been reduced to a half-jocular appellation. Demographic experts predict that in not so many years, the Whites of European origin will be a minority in the American nation-state. But it seems that this piece of news did not arouse a storm of alarm and anger.

Everybody understands that the future and robustness of the US-American nation do not depend on the religion and race of the American people. Therefore, there is no “demographic problem” in America. Neurotic demographers like our Arnon Sofer would be considered cranks over there.

AS IN several other areas, the United States is a model for the rest of the world in this respect, too.

In Europe, the old nation-states persist. Even after World War II, when the Europeans woke up from their fatal nationalist intoxication and came to the conclusion that they had to create a united Europe, they rejected the idea of a unified European nation on the American model. They did not establish the “United States of Europe”, but rather a “European Union”, which is composed of a large number of nation-states. Yet a German or a Frenchman of 200 years ago would not believe their eyes if they were to walk down Unter den Linden or the Champs Elisee today.

The European nations are changing. They are opening up to the world. The idea of a homogenous nation, based on a common origin, is fading. Slowly, perhaps too slowly, tolerance towards “the stranger in our midst” is growing, and citizenship is granted to inhabitants with a different ethnic origin and religion, like Turks in Germany and Africans in France. It is a difficult process that does not always advance smoothly, but that is the direction.

It is also necessary for the very survival of the European nations. Their birth-rate is decreasing, there are fewer and fewer local workers to sustain the economy and pay the taxes to cover the pensions of an aging population. Europe needs a steady stream of new immigrants, and these will join the European nations.

Angela Merkel will not tell her Turkish citizens: “You can enjoy equality here, but you belong to the Turkish nation-state”. One can hardly imagine Gordon Brown telling the British citizens of Pakistani extraction: “Your nation-state is Pakistan.”

The Arab citizens of Israel can be compared to the Swedish citizens of Finland. These constitute about 6% of the population, but they play an important role in the economy and other spheres of life. All signs in Finland are bilingual. Finland belongs to all its citizens. Ariel Sharon’s advisor, Dov Weisglas, once said that “peace will come only when the Palestinians become Finns”. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that peace will come only when we ourselves “become Finns”.

The Israeli Arab citizens in Kafr Kassem and Um-al-Fahm, near the Green Line, can be compared to the Alsatians in France, who have been living there for untold generations. Several times in history they have belonged to Germany. The last time was when Adolf Hitler annexed them to the Third Reich. Nowadays, the Alsatians are as French as any, with equal rights and obligations, and other aspects do not interest anybody. Would the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, the son of a Hungarian nobleman, declare that “the nation-state of the Alsatians is Germany?”

I KNOW, I know, all these examples do not apply to us. We Jews are special. Fact is, God chose us.

But with all due respect to God and Tzipi Livni, I must tell the Kadima candidate: ”Madam, what you are saying is already a little obsolete.” Since Vladimir Jabotinsky was born 128 years ago into the Jewish minority in Odessa, much water has flown down the Dniester river, and I am not sure that even he would have signed Tzipi’s statement. When he wrote that in our future state “the son of the Arab, the son of Nazareth and my son” would live happily together, did he mean that the Jewish state he was dreaming about would not be the state of its Arab citizens, too?

I believe that nation-states will continue to exist for a long time to come. It seems that this is the social structure contemporary people prefer for the time being. A person feels a need for national identity.

But it will not be a narrow, closed nation-state, compulsively homogenous, based on nationalist-religious-linguistic conformity, hostile to its neighbors. The new nation-state will be open and cosmopolitan, respectful of minorities, a state of all its citizens, integrated in a regional partnership, a part of the global economy, a partner in the joint struggle for the preservation of this little planet.

That may be the future. And when does the future begins if not today?

permlink:  http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1229205376/

To mark International Human Rights week, B’Tselem have decided to hold a virtual event on Facebook next week. For 48 hours, their entire team will be available to answer questions you post on their wall and discuss anything you’re interested in.

What’s happening in Gaza? How does the video project work? How do they get their data?

This is your chance to ask their researchers, data coordinators, video department and anyone else all those questions you never got around to asking. You’re more than welcome to invite your friends too.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 9:00am    —to—   Thursday, December 18, 2008 at 7:00pm

Write anytime during these 48 hours and they’ll post a reply. Please, keep the questions informative and the tone decent! They’re here for any of you who want to learn more about our work.

See you next Wednesday!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=43424622002
The B’Tselem team

GAZA IN CRISIS -  December 2008

The following video describes in pictures and words the shocking details of Israel’s
deliberate ravaging of Palestinian life and society in Gaza. Its purpose is
to call attention to the plight of a people under siege, which so far has
been chillingly ignored by governments and the world media unwilling to call
Israel to account for its criminal execution of the ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinians from their own land.

The video was created by Sonja Karkar for Australians for Palestine on
9 December 2008 using images captured by various courageous photographers
on the ground in Gaza, and the haunting sounds of Sada (Echo), composed and
played on the oud by Ahmad Al-Khatib.

Click here http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=DSzn7XLLM7c

http://www.freegaza.org/

A note from Shministit Omer Goldman.

Dear Dorothy,

My name is Omer Goldman. I am 19 years old. I am one of the Shministim. Thank you for signing the Shministim letter to support me and my friends.

I first went to prison on September 23 and served 35 days. I am lucky, after 2 times in jail,  I got a medical discharge, but I’m the only one. By the time you read this, many of my friends will be in prison too: in for three weeks, out for one, and then back in, over and over, until they are 21. The reason? We refuse to do military service for the Israeli army because of the occupation.