From Occupied Palestine

"...namely the State of Israel"
URI AVNERY
3 May 2008

EVERY TIME I hear the voice of David Ben-Gurion uttering the words "Therefore we are gathered here..." I think of Issar Barsky, a charming youngster, the little brother of a girl-friend of mine.

The last time we met was in front of the dining hall of Kibbutz Hulda, on Friday, May 14, 1948.

Keeping the peace? The El Al flight and the Israeli army officer
ANDY McSMITH
Independent, 20 February 2008

Heathrow airport, September 2005. An Israeli general accused of war crimes flies in. Waiting for him is a team of Met police officers. Would they dare to arrest him and risk provoking an international incident?

Parallel lives
DALIA KARPEL
Ha'aretz, 4 October 2007

When she was in fifth grade, her father took her to the Golan Heights and showed her where he had lost his best friends in the battle for the Tel Faher outpost on June 9, 1967. "For years, that battle was an inaccessible emotional zone for him," says Nufar Yishai-Karin, a clinical psychologist whose years in the shadow of her father's battle trauma shaped her consciousness and steered her to her profession.

Israel said to fear war crimes charges
MATTI FRIEDMAN
Associated Press, 4 September 2006

Jerusalem -- Three weeks after a cease-fire ended Israel's monthlong war against Hezbollah guerrillas, Israel is increasingly concerned that government officials and army officers traveling abroad could face war crimes charges, a Foreign Ministry official said Monday.

Let's be Realists, let's demand the impossible!
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
In These Times, 30 August 2006

One of the most repulsive moments of the present Middle East conflict occurred after one of Hezbollah's rockets killed two Israeli-Arab children: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah pointedly apologized only for these deaths, thus making it clear that there is nothing to regret in the deaths of Israeli civilians. Doesn't this make clear the ethical difference between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), which always regret civilian casualties among the Lebanese, perceiving them as a necessary evil?

Almost half the fatalities in the Gaza Strip in July were civilians not taking part in the hostilities
B'Tselem Press release, 8 August 2006

In July, the Israeli military killed 163 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, 78 of whom (48 percent) were not taking part in the hostilities when they were killed. Thirty-six of the fatalities were minors, and 20 were women. In the West Bank, 15 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in July. The number of Palestinian fatalities in July was the highest in any month since April 2002.

Israel kills 32 in air strikes
LAILA BASSAM
Reuters, 15 July 2006

An Israeli missile incinerated a van in south Lebanon, killing 20 people, among them 15 children, in the deadliest single attack of the four-day-old campaign launched by Israel after Hizbollah captured two of its soldiers and killed eight.

Aggression under false pretenses
ISMAIL HANIYEH
Washington Post, 11 July 2006

GAZA, Palestine -- As Americans commemorated their annual celebration of independence from colonial occupation, rejoicing in their democratic institutions, we Palestinians were yet again besieged by our occupiers, who destroy our roads and buildings, our power stations and water plants, and who attack our very means of civil administration. Our homes and government offices are shelled, our parliamentarians taken prisoner and threatened with prosecution.

42 Palestinians and 3 Israelis killed in June
B'TSELEM, 2 July 2006

B'Tselem's Web site today published the fatality figures for June 2006 in the Occupied Territories and Israel.

Forty-two Palestinians, six of them minors, were killed by Israeli armed forces. Twenty-four of the fatalities did not participate in the hostilities, but were bystanders who were killed in attacks by Israel 's air force. The figures do not include the seven members of the Ghaliya family, the cause of whose deaths B'Tselem can not determine at this time.

A week of Israeli restraint
TANYA REINHART
Yediot Aharonoth, 21 June 2006

[Translated from Hebrew and annotated by MARK MARSHALL]

In Israeli discourse, Israel is always presented as the side exercising restraint in its conflict with the Palestinians. This was true again for the events of the past week: As the Qassam rockets were falling on the Southern Israeli town of Sderot, it was "leaked" that the Israeli Minister of Defense had directed the army to show restraint [1].