BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Israeli military erected flying checkpoints in the West Bank on Sunday morning, witnesses said.
Army checkpoints were installed near Qabir Hilweh, east of Bethlehem, and close to Eizariyya in East Jerusalem, where drivers said they had waited for three hours to pass.
Meanwhile, hundreds of cars were queuing at the container checkpoint near Bethlehem as Israeli soldiers inspected Palestinian vehicles.
Overnight, the Israeli army raided the southern West Bank and detained 120 Palestinians, local security officials said.
As Israel continues to pound the daylights out of the Gaza Strip, several US bands remain committed to entertaining audiences in Tel Aviv.
On 30 August, New York-based post-punk/indie rocks band Interpol and Blonde Redhead, along with southern California’s punk-psychedelic rockers Jane’s Addiction, are scheduled to play the “Pic.Nic Festival” in Tel Aviv, thus ignoring the Palestinian-led call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).
Israeli propaganda will gladly announce that you are coming to perform in “the only Democracy in the Middle East”, but your Palestinian fans in the Occupied Territories will not even be allowed to come to Tel Aviv and enjoy your performance. Furthermore, the Pic.Nic festival is produced by Shuki Weiss, who has a special relationship with the Israeli establishment. Mr. Weiss attended Knesset meetings which have led to draconian anti-democratic legislation to outlaw boycotts, and he sends Israeli politicians VIP tickets to concerts which he produces. This is not just corruption within the system, but corruption that serves to whitewash Israel’s war crimes against the Palestinian people, using international artists such as you.
You have an opportunity to stand with the oppressed. Please don’t play in apartheid Israel, until it complies with international law and ends the occupation over the occupied territories, recognizes full equality for its Palestinian citizens and respects and protects the Palestinian refugee’s right of return to their homes and properties.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and editor with The Electronic Intifada, and contributes to Al-Jazeera English, Inter Press Service, Truthout.org, Left Turn magazine, and various other international media outlets. From 2003-2010, she was the Senior Producer and co-host of Flashpoints, an award-winning investigative newsmagazine operating out of KPFA/Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California. Nora has been regularly reporting from Palestine since 2004.
“In response to the ongoing rocket fire, an IDF spokesperson stated that the military will not tolerate any attempt at harming Israeli civilians or soldiers, and will continue to “act with determination and strength against any source of terror.” The spokesperson also claimed that Hamas must be “held responsible” for the ongoing attacks.”
Israel is quickly trying to shift the blame for the war crimes it is committing in Gaza to Hamas. Suddenly those firing rockets (after 10 were killed for no reason last night, now 15) are the bad guys and Israel is the good guy doing self defense in this equation.
In times like this, what alternative would you give to the resistance groups other than fire rockets? Their families are killed, their children are either dying or becoming handicapped due to continuous raids. The 1.6 million population of Gaza is terrorized night and day, there isn’t any place in that open air prison safe from the random Israeli shelling, not even UNRWA schools as we have seen in 2009. Israel aims to collectively punish all those who live in Gaza for the crime of living in Gaza.
The blood thirsty leadership of Israel bombs Gaza for no reason other than their own self satisfaction. Another reason is that no one would interrupt them in their war crimes process, the US and EU leadership hurries to condemn Eilat attack while barely giving attention, if any, to those civilians slaughtered in Gaza.
And of course, let us not forget that Israel started bombing Gaza on Thursday for no reason. There is no evidence of any connection between Gaza militants and Eilat attack. The only proof the IDF claimed was that Eilat attackers used AK47, which is a weapon that only comes from Gaza (In fact the AK47 or Kalashnikov is the world’s most common firearm). This was literally said on the tongue of the IDF spokesperson Lt. Colonel Avital Leibovich interviewed by the The Real News Network’s Lia Tarachansky as This site has brought it to my attention.
Tarachansky: On what are you basing your conclusion that this group [the Popular Resistance Committees] is responsible for the terror attacks?
IDF Spokesperson: We did not say that this group was responsible for the terror attack. We based this on intelligence information as well as some facts that [we] actually presented an hour ago to some wires and journalists. Some of the findings that were from the bodies of the terrorists, and they are using for example Kalashnikov bullets and Kalashnikov rifles are very common in Gaza —
Tarachansky: Many terrorist groups use Kalashnikovs —
IDF Spokesperson: No, not many terror groups. I’m not saying — I’m referring to the terrorists that came from Gaza.
Tarachansky: Prime Minister Netanyahu said today that the group that was responsible for the terror attack was the one that was eliminated [in Gaza] and you’re saying that’s not the case?
IDF Spokesperson: I don’t know what he said [when speaking on Israeli national television] — I’m not Prime Minister Netanyahu. I’m saying that the group came from Gaza and I’m giving you proof why it came from Gaza — how we know it came from Gaza. This is all I’m saying.
Despite the continuing terror Gaza suffers, Israeli media is doing an even more horrible job. I spent yesterday going through almost all Israeli English news websites, non of those websites mentioned Gaza civilian deaths along with news on rockets coming into Israel. In the matter of fact, I kept reading news reports on Haaretz, Jerusalem Post, and Ynet to realize there is nothing about Palestinian civilian deaths, they only mentioned rockets, Israelis injured, and Gazan militants who were killed. Covering up the real news from the public is dangerous!
This tweet by +972 magazine’s Noam Sheizaf couldn’t describe it better
@nsheizaf
noam sheizaf By reporting only rockets fired 2 Israel in its top stories & hiding news over dead in Gaza, Israeli media is making public want more blood Aug 20 via TweetDeckFavoriteRetweetReply
Jalal Abukhater is 16-year old Palestinian (turning 17 this August) resident of Jerusalem. He is a high school senior at a school in Ramallah, will be graduating school in Summer 2012.
Submitted by Adri Nieuwhof on Sat, 08/20/2011 - 07:36
Tuba Skinny, a traditional jazz and blues band from New Orleans, planned to perform at the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eilat, Israel on 21 August. The international campaign “Don’t Play Apartheid Israel,” and the Israeli group “Boycott From Within” approached Tuba Skinny with the request to honor PACBI’s call for a cultural boycott of Israel.
One week before the show, Tuba Skinny received an open letter with information about the cultural boycott of Israel:
Jazz festivals take place every summer all over the world, and New Orleans jazz bands are in high demand. Jazz music is loved the world over, so why would it be considered inhumane to play at a Jazz festival?
In the case of the Red Sea Jazz Festival, music takes on a very political role, because of the well-known global BDS movement. The PACBI, (Palestinian Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) has, since 2005, asked musicians to refrain from playing in Israel, and their call, representing Palestinian Civil Society, has become a global movement.
Thus, when a band, like Tuba Skinny, agrees to play in Israel, and break the picket line, it becomes very political.
Tuba Skinny announced the cancelation of their show in Eilat on their website.
The group has joined the picket line of Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters, Elvis Costello, The Pixies, the late Gil Scott-Heron, Carlos Santana, Pete Seeger, Massive Attack, Faithless, Gorillaz Sound System, The Tindersticks and the Klaxxons.
Yesterday morning, I wrote a piece questioning the journalistic ethics of some in the Israeli media and, to a larger extent, the entire international press corps over of their rush to adopt the Israeli government claim that Gaza-based terror organization Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) were behind Thursday’s triple terror attack near Eilat. As the terror attack was unfolding, Israeli warplanes were warming up to carry out airstrikes in the Gaza strip without revealing any concrete proof to the public confirming that the culprits of the attack were from Gaza. After a night of bombing, a number of senior operatives in the PRC were killed along with a handful of civilians including children.
The Real News Network’s Lia Tarachansky asked IDF Spokesperson Lt. Colonel Avital Leibovitz for evidence that the PRC was, indeed, responsible for the Eilat terror attack. Liebovitz responded that the Israel “did not say that this group was responsible for the terror attack.” This quote distanced the IDF spokesperson from the public statements Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made on the evening of the attack placing clear responsibility on the PRC. Backtracking in the interview, Liebovitz said,
We did not say that this group was responsible for the terror attack. We based this on intelligence information as well as some facts that [we] actually presented an hour ago to some wires and journalists. Some of the findings that were from the bodies of the terrorists, and they are using, for example, Kalashnikov bullets and Kalashnikov rifles [which] are very common in Gaza.
In response to this quote, Paul Woodward at War in Context responded “So, the IDF says it “knows” the gunmen came from Gaza because they were using Kalashnikovs. That’s about as logical as saying they know they came from Gaza because they appeared to be Arabs.”
The simple yet difficult to answer question remains open, who is responsible for the Eilat terror attacks? If the PRC and Hamas, both of which have denied responsibility, are not the culprits, as Lt. Col Avital Liebovitz alleges in the Real News interview, why is Israel attacking targets in Gaza with overwhelming force? Why are senior members of the Israeli and international press corps reporting unsubstantiated Israeli government claims as fact without doing the necessary legwork of revealing sources and providing verifiable proof of their material.
If the PRC episode is a harbinger of how the media is going to handle the next Israeli offensive in Gaza one sorry conclusion can be made, Prime Minister Netanyahu will be left unmolested with obloquy demanding that his government provide factual evidence to support their rationale for war.
Joseph Dana is a journalist and writer based in Tel Aviv and Ramallah. A dual American-Israeli citizen, Dana formerly studied Jewish history at the Hebrew University and the Central European University in Budapest before devoting himself to full time writing about Israel and Palestine.
His work has appeared in The Nation, Le Monde Diplomatique, London Review of Books, The National, Tablet Magazine, Al Jazeera English, The Jewish Daily Forward, Haaretz and The Mail & Guardian. Dana is a regular media commentator with appearances on Al Jazeera English, BBC Arabic and National Public Radio.
During January and February of 2011, Dana was the temporary media coordinator of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee while the permanent media coordinator, Jonathan Pollak, served a jail sentence for protesting the 2008 Gaza war.
