Hebron: Jødiske bosættere i pogrom mod indfødte palæstinensere

Ja, det er ikke mig, der kalder bosætternes vold mod de lokale palæstinensere for en “pogrom” – det er Israels premierminister Ehud Olmert.

Fra Sabbahs blog:

You may have heard brief blurbs about settler violence against Palestinians in Hebron. You may have even heard Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of Israel, call this violence “a pogrom in the worst sense of the word“, but to truly understand what’s going on in Hebron you have to see it yourself.

Go to: http://www.heb2.tv and you can see a new experimental TV station broadcasting from Hebron which uses mostly Palestinian home videos.

They do interviews with Israelis and Palestinians, and they let you see the footage that Palestinians have begun to take of settlers harassing and attacking them. The Palestinians have learned that although the settlers have no fear of reprisal from police or soldiers, they are afraid of the video cameras, because they don’t want people to see what they’re doing to Palestinians on a daily basis. So check out this TV station and watch the first few episodes, but be warned, it’s disturbing.

Vestbredden – det nye Vilde Vesten?

Ikke helt – i det Vilde Vesten blev hestetyve hængt, på Vestbredden bliver man idømt bøder for at klage over dem. I hvert fald hvis tyvene er israelske bosættere og ofret en arabisk bonde:

Palestinian farmerIsraeli horse rustlers have deprived a West Bank Palestinian farmer of his livelihood.

“While I was busy with one of my daughter’s engagements, settlers from the Efrat settlement came and stole my 1,600 dollar [USD] horse. This horse is my only means of income and I use it to plow people’s land,” Ibrahim Suleiman Muhammad Salah, a 45-year-old Palestinian farmer from Al-Khadr explained.

After the incident, Salah rushed to the Israeli police to complain and accuse the settlers of theft.

Salah says the police refused to listen to his claim, instead accusing him of “causing problems” at the station. In the end, he was forced to pay a fine of 1,000 Israeli shekels (250 US dollars).

Settlers have been trying to take over his land by planting trees, but Salah and his brothers removed them in front of Israeli troops, who menaced them with their guns.

He has been assaulted on numerous occasions by the Israelis and therefore appealed to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad for help. Salah has also appealed to the Al-Khadr municipality other organizations after this recent incident, but all have ignored his case or refused to help him.

Link: Settler rustlers steal farmer’s horse

Israel: Værre end apartheid

Israels politik i de besatte områder (Vestbredden og Gaza) sammenlignes ofte med apartheid i Sydafrika, og denne sammenligning vækker ofte forargelse blandt Israels støtter – det kan man alligevel ikke, og Israels rare men håndfaste hyggen om den palæstinensiske befolkning kan på ingen måde sammenlignes med, hvad de onde, onde hvide sydafrikanere bedrev.

I denne uge har sammenligningen for alvor skullet bestå sin prøve: 21 menneskeretsaktivister fra Sydafrika, hvoraf flere har prøvet apartheidregimets metoder på egen krop, har besøgt Israel med det formål at undersøge forholdene i de besatte områder.

Deres dom er klar – der er ingen sammenligning overhovedet: Israels behandling af palæstinenserne i de besatte områder er mange gange værre, end apartheid-regimet nogensinde har været.

Gideon Levy rapporterer i Ha’aretz:

On Monday they visited Nablus, the most imprisoned city in the West Bank. From Hawara to the Casbah, from the Casbah to Balata, from Joseph’s Tomb to the monastery of Jacob’s Well. They traveled from Jerusalem to Nablus via Highway 60, observing the imprisoned villages that have no access to the main road, and seeing the “roads for the natives,” which pass under the main road. They saw and said nothing. There were no separate roads under apartheid. They went through the Hawara checkpoint mutely: they never had such barriers.

Jody Kollapen, who was head of Lawyers for Human Rights in the apartheid regime, watches silently. He sees the “carousel” into which masses of people are jammed on their way to work, visit family or go to the hospital. Israeli peace activist Neta Golan, who lived for several years in the besieged city, explains that only 1 percent of the inhabitants are allowed to leave the city by car, and they are suspected of being collaborators with Israel. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, a former deputy minister of defense and of health and a current member of Parliament, a revered figure in her country, notices a sick person being taken through on a stretcher and is shocked. “To deprive people of humane medical care? You know, people die because of that,” she says in a muted voice.

Lad mig gentage: Den sydafrikanske delegation var chokerede over, hvad de så, og gjorde det umisforståeligt klart, at Israels behandling af palæstinenserne i de besatte områder er meget værre, end apartheid nogensinde har været.  Dommeren Edwin Cameron udtrykker det således:

We came here lacking in knowledge and are thirsty to know. We are shocked by what we have seen until now. It is very clear to us that the situation here is intolerable.

Mondli Makhanya, chefredaktør af Sunday Times of South Africa, udtrykker det sådan her:

When you observe from afar you know that things are bad, but you do not know how bad. Nothing can prepare you for the evil we have seen here. In a certain sense, it is worse, worse, worse than everything we endured. The level of the apartheid, the racism and the brutality are worse than the worst period of apartheid.

Tag det fra hestens egen mund – en sammenligning mellem Israels politik i de besatte områder og sydafrikansk apartheid er hverken  “overdreven” eller uretfærdig – i hvert fald ikke mod israelerne.

Link – via Z Communications.