I watched Ross Kemp’s documentary on Paleastine yesterday and it was much better than I had expected. I have never watched any of his travel documentaries before – their advertising portrays them as “Our hard nut goes to see if other hard nuts are really as vicious as London East End gangsters”.

It is impossible, unless you are obscenely ill-motivated, to do a documentary in Gaza that does not leave you appalled at the plight of the Palestinian people there. But Kemp gave the Palestinians a much fairer and fuller hearing than I had expected, and while there was a great deal of editorial horror at the attitudes of Islamic terrorists and their supporters, it came over very strongly – and Kemp himself plainly “got”, that those attitudes were caused by the atrocities and indignities to which the Palestinians are subjected.

Which made Kemp’s documentary much more intelligent than Michael Portillo’s effort on Guantanamo. Portillo never for one moment questioned whether Islamic hatred of the West was in any sense caused or triggered. He seemed to accept that Guantanamo holds a core of “some 50” diehard terrorists who are intrinsically evil, and he agreed explicitly that they should be kept locked up forever even though there was no evidence against them that could stand up in court.

His glib “I am a politician and I know about tough decisions like abandoning legality” line was helped by two intellectual dishonesties. He never considered the causality of terrorism, and he did not mention the possibility that some of that “core” of fifty might be innocent. He described the moral dilemma as whether people you knew were guilty but could not prove it, should be locked up. Who says you know. they are guilty? I can tell you from first hand experience that a great deal of the War on Terror intelligence on individuals is woefully inaccurate and deliberatelly exagerrated.

Which Michael Portillo once seemed to understand:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article495277.ece

Portillo reserved his compassion for the Uighurs, because they were anti-communist, and for the British ex-detainees who had been tortured. There was one particularly unsavoury piece of editing when showing a UK conference, at which an ex-detainee was making a very emotional and harrowing point; the director then cut away to a shot of Moazzam Begg grinning merrily and apparently completely inappropriately at the point.

The impression was given that cut-away was contemporaneous, and it made Moazzam look very bad. I don’t believe the cut-away was contemporaneous and think this was a deliberate bit of BBC demonisation. I don’t think it was genuine because of sound discontinuity, because BBC documentary crews nowadays almost never have two cameras, and because I know Moazzam.

Shoddy work.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/13/palestinians-israel-obama-abbas

And in other shocking news, the sun sets in the evening….

There are many terrible injustices in this world. Of the two which most caught the World’s attention and about which I marched through the streets of Edinburgh as a young man, apartheid is thank God long gone, but the fate of the Palestinians has got worse and worse. No American President except Carter has even remotely cared. Blair’s appointment as quartet “envoy” on Palestine was a joke so sick that I can only think of the concentration camp slogan about work setting you free as a similarly horrific irony.

Meantime anyone in any doubt as to how unpleasant our Conservative rulers in waiting are, might look through the comments section on Martin Bright’s Spectator blog post on Kaminski.

I particularly like this comment from someone called Judy:

Craig Murray is not just unreliable, but a ludicrous and embittered crank with inter alia a track record of writing distorted defences of the most indefensible regimes, such as the Iranian one.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/martinbright/5413196/michal-kaminski-an-astonishing-new-twist.thtml

As my extremely negative view of the Iranaian regime is a constant source of dispute with my commenters here, I found that funny. Judy’s link is to an article by the pig-headed neo-con fool Oliver Kamm, where he took issue with my contention that the British sailors arrested by Iran were not in Iraqi waters but in disputed waters, and that the “boundary” map produced by the MOD had no legal standing and was simply propaganda.

Eventually, of course, absolutely everybody including the House of Commons inquiry accepted that I was right. Kamm has since been totally silent on the subject. Whether he still believes in the entirely fake MOD boundary map, I have no idea. I guess he probably does. He probably believes the Iraqis cunningly hid the WMD too.

Meantime, a large prize goes to anybody who can produce an example of me “writing distorted defences of the most indefensible regimes”.

Whether Obama wants to do anything about Israel is one question. Whether he would ever be allowed to do anything about Israel is another question. I suspect the answer to both is negative. I am more certain about the second question than the first.

At the moment Israel is putting two fingers up to him by spurring ahead with new illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. I thought this was a grimly amusing piece from Sky News:

Under international law they are illegal, though Israel disputes this.

They are also a major obstacle to peace because they are spread out across the land that Palestinians want for their own state.

There are almost 500,000 Israeli settlers now living on occupied land.

Last year, their numbers grew three times as fast as that of the general population in Israel.

The Israelis say they have the right to continue what they call the “natural growth” of settlements, to allow for the increase in population.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Israel-Defies-US-Over-Settlements-In-Occupied-West-Bank/Article/200905415288144?lpos=World_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_7&lid=ARTICLE_15288144_Israel_Defies_US_Over_Settlements_In_Occupied_West_Bank

A bit like “Murder is illegal, though Jack the Ripper disputes this. He says culling is required to reduce the female population.”

With bombing stepped up in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the US withdrawal from Iraq an obvious fake which sees weekly increments in plans for the number of US troops to remain, and detention without trial for Guanatanamo internees to continue indefinitely – somewhere – behind a smokescreen of rhetoric, I am struggling to think of anything Obama does better, other than not look a complete arsehole.

You would hope that the combination of a rhetorically liberal US Administration with the most openly vicious of Israeli regimes might lead to some change in the massive supply of US money and weapons that keeps Israel viable for all those irreligious ex-Soviets who moved there for an easy high standard of living.

But I fear you would be very disappointed.

Consultant Dr Chris Burns Cox is among a group of three doctors and five nurses from the UK and Belgium, who are on hunger strike at the Rafah crossing into Gaza, after being prevented from crossing by the Egyptian government. Chris has been on five previous visits to Gaza to train medical staff.

Egypt is under huge pressure from the United States and Israel, but nevertheless plays a most shameful part in maintaining the Gaza prison ghetto. The ethnic cleansing and confinement of the Palestinians remains one of the great crimes of the last century, still unmitigated in this century. The prevention of medical staff from entering Gaza is indefensible.

I have been contacted direct from Rafah and informed that the British Embassy in Cairo is refusing to help with the Egyptian authorities, which sadly sounds all too typical of Milliband. I am trying now with some of my own diplomatic contacts.

I have frequently compared Israel as a state to apartheid South Africa. Citizens of the country are defined and confined by race. it is not just that all ethnic Jews, wherever they were born, have a right to live in Israel whereas many ethnic Palestinians who were actually born in Israel do not. Jews in Israel have a right of immigration for their spouses; arabs in Israel do not. Arab Israelis are actually forbidden by law from marrying Palestinians outside Israel. Many Arab communities are physically cut off by barbed wire.

It is worth reading this interview with Dr Hatim Kanaaneh. The interviewer, as is frequently a problem with pro-Palestinian groups, does not couch his questions in neutral terms but in pejorative terms which may put off the neutral reader. Try to get over that, and just concentrate on the substance of what old Dr Kanaaneh, who uses language with care and neutrality, has to say.

Here are some key parts:

Discrimination is a built-in part of life and the laws of the country. Remember that what we are dealing with here (and the basic issue of contention in the conflict between Zionism and all of us native Palestinians) is a conflict over land.

As a Palestinian I am disqualified by law from equal access to land ownership or use. This is given a deeper expression in the form of the Law of Return granting any Jewish person anywhere in the world automatic citizenship with all the benefits that accrue with it of access to land, housing, financial and social assistance, and to the symbols of the state while no Palestinian who is not born here can dream of ever becoming a citizen.

Recently laws were passed specifically to prevent our children from marrying other Palestinians and from the right to bring their spouses under the standing laws of family unification applicable to Jewish citizens.

The absolute majority of land we, the Palestinian citizens of the state of Israel since its establishment in 1948, once owned has been confiscated for the benefit of our Jewish co-citizens through a maze of some three dozen laws specifically designed for the purpose. Were it not for the 1976 uprising that has come since to be commemorated as Land Day, we would have lost the remainder. We, nearly one-fifth of the total population of Israel, now own about 3 per cent of its land. After all, we are dealing with what has been defined by Zionism as “the land of Israel” in an ethnic sense, a definition that excludes us, Palestinians. The last stroke in the continuing saga of disenfranchisement is the requirement from us to pledge allegiance to Israel as the state of the Jews. And once we take such an oath, it would be up to the same racist crowd to define what constitutes a breach of it, a process inevitably leading to our expulsion one way or the other.

Our youth, unlike Jewish youth, are exempt from conscription. Positions from which they are disqualified on this basis when they seek employment run the gamut from civil aviation all the way down to the manufacturing of ice-cream.

The worst part of the daily discrimination that we meet with is the fact that much of the final decisions on so many little items are left to the discretion of low-level bureaucrats. These, by and large, have been brought up on a deeply self-centred world-view that sees the world as one of constant struggle between “us”-the-Jews and “them”-the-goyim and considers one’s duty as serving his own people. This, of course, leaves me out of “the favours” many officials consider it their duty to do their clients. Intentional obstructionism is more often what we face.

Another area in which this phenomenon is evident is the differential implementation of the law. Take, for example, the practice of house demolition within Israel. Mind you, we are not speaking here of the savage collective punishment practised by the Israeli occupying forces against Palestinians in the occupied territories. We are speaking of the practice of demolition of homes built without permit within Israel proper.

In absolute numbers there are more illegally constructed structures in Jewish communities, but the demolition is practised almost exclusively against Arab home owners. The basis for the construction of homes without permit is also rooted in discriminatory practices in the laws of zoning which in many cases have retroactively criminalized all residents of many villages whose existence predated the state itself. Such “unrecognized villages” are frequently the site of home demolitions.

The cumulative end result of all the openly discriminatory laws, the hidden disadvantages, and the differential application of the rules and regulations are clearly seen in comparative figures from officially published data of the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics.

As a public health practitioner I can point to the single most telling indicator of the well-being of a community, that of infant mortality rate (IMR), or the number out of a thousand infants born in a certain year who die before their first birthday. This statistic regarding the most vulnerable segment of a population reflects such community attributes as the income level, the level of education, the sanitation, etc.

The relative ratio of the IMR between Arabs and Jews in Israel has run at the level of almost exactly 2 since statistics were ever collected on both groups. In the last decade it has been on the rise, a reflection of increasing discrimination. One could look at many other statistics such as the level of poverty, education, housing, etc. and the gap is obvious, but IMR sums it up best.

It is worth reading the whole interview carefully. Israel now has a Foreign Minister from a party whose major election platform was the need for further action against Israeli Arabs.

http://www.redress.cc/palestine/atibbs20090408

Two important petitions to Gordon Brown are on the official government ‘Number 10’ website.

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to do everything in his power to impose an arms embargo on Israel in light of the recent Israeli offensive in the Gaza strip and to apply pressure on countries supplying Israel with arms that breach international agreements with the intention of restoring lasting peace to the region.”

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Arms-embargo/

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Introduce sanctions against Israel.

Israeli must be punished for its failure to adhere to the Geneva convention concerning the collective punishment of the citizens of Gaza. Israeli tactics are cruel, malicious and demonstrate that Israel is not interested in the peace process or a Palestinian State. They are creating the ideal breeding ground for extremism, sabotaging peace efforts and squandering the good will they have been given.”

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/Israel-Sanctions/

Both of these petitions are entitled to an official government response. They are currently the third and fourth biggest open petitions on the site…

Petitions’ deadline is 27th January.

On the war:

“…Israel must lose. It is not enough to call for another ceasefire, or more humanitarian assistance. It is not enough to urge the renewal of dialogue and to acknowledge the concerns and suffering of both sides. If we believe in the principle of democratic self-determination, if we affirm the right to resist military aggression and colonial occupation, then we are obliged to take sides… against Israel, and with the people of Gaza and the West Bank.

We must do what we can to stop Israel from winning its war. Israel must accept that its security depends on justice and peaceful coexistence with its neighbours, and not upon the criminal use of force.

We believe Israel should immediately and unconditionally end its assault on Gaza, end the occupation of the West Bank, and abandon all claims to possess or control territory beyond its 1967 borders. We call on the British government and the British people to take all feasible steps to oblige Israel to comply with these demands, starting with a programme of boycott, divestment and sanctions.”

Full letter and signatories…

On the humanitarian consequences:

“…casualty data are indicative of a military campaign being waged in an indiscriminate, disproportionate, and therefore under International Humanitarian Law, illegal fashion. Failure of the international community to ensure legal culpability would provide military forces around the world with a clear message that the Geneva Conventions can be discarded with impunity, as in Gaza today. If this happens, children and women will continue to pay heavily in future conflicts.”

University College London, CIHD

Update 22.01.09: British students are also taking action in at least eight Universities, adopting various protest tactics.

Protests over Gaza spread to eight English universities

Students stage university protest

Oxford University

Birmingham University

Essex University

Kings College London

London School of Economics

SOAS

Sussex University

Warwick University

Update 25.01.09:

Cambridge University joins the protests

17+ Universities have now taken action

The Cambridge University Gaza solidarity blog can be read at: http://cambridgegazasolidarity.blogspot.com/

Update 29.01.09:

http://queenmaryoccupation.blogspot.com/

http://shuoccupation.blogspot.com/

Update 03.02.09:

Nottingham University has forcibly evicted students engaged in a sit-in. Security guards manhandled and apparently assaulted students last night to force an end to the protest. A video is available here

More details at: http://occupationnottingham.wordpress.com/

A blog with news on all the different university protests can be read at: http://occupations.org.uk/

“Israel military forces only use munitions that are acceptable under international law and international convention,” Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

22nd March 1995 – Israel signs the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons

Protocol III, Article 2 states:

1. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make the civilian population as such, individual

civilians or civilian objects the object of attack by incendiary weapons.

2. It is prohibited in all circumstances to make any military objective located within a

concentration of civilians the object of attack by air-delivered incendiary weapons.

17 January 2009 – “… a number of white phosphorous shells struck the yard of an UNRWA school in Beit Lahia, causing panic among the 1,600 civilians who had taken refuge there. While evacuating the shelter, an explosive shell struck the third floor of the school, killing two brothers, aged five and seven, and injuring 14 others including the boys’ mother. UNRWA has demanded an independent investigation into this incident.”

“…Where you have a direct hit on an UNRWA school where about 1,600 people had taken refuge, where the Israeli army knows the coordinates and knows who’s there, where this comes as the latest in a catalogue of direct and indirect attacks on UNRWA facilities, there have to be investigations to establish whether war crimes have been committed.” – Christopher Gunness, UNRWA spokesperson” [UN OCHA]

DEMONSTRATE FOR GAZA: SATURDAY 24 JANUARY

END THE BLOCKADE: STOP ALL ARMS SALES

BRING THE WAR CRIMINALS TO JUSTICE

Assemble 2.00pm BBC Broadcasting House for rally

Portland Place, London W1A 1AA

Nearest tubes: Great Portland Street or Regents park.

March starts at 3.00 pm. Ends with rally in Trafalgar Square

4.30 pm.

MARCH ROUTE:

Assemble and rally Portland Place, March to Regent Street,

Piccadilly, Lower Regent Street, Trafalgar Square,

Northumberland Avenue, Embankment, Parliament, Downing Street,

Trafalgar Square (End rally)

For details and updates: http://www.stopwar.org.uk

With the media pumping out Israeli propaganda about the clinical accuracy of their weapons, today the Israelis have hit the UN aid distribution centre and a Gaza hospital. The UN Secretary General has expressed “outrage”. The UN report that their compound was bombed with phosphorous shells – which the Israels still deny using as part of their “Big Lie” propaganda blitz.

Then, as one of many such incidents every day, this is in the Independent:

At least three Palestinians in Gaza were shot dead yesterday after Israeli soldiers fired on a group of residents leaving their homes on orders from the military and waving white flags, according to testimony taken by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/gaza-residents-waving-white-flags-shot-dead-as-they-flee-their-homes-14138998.html

Naturally, the Israelis are denying it.

We must not let compassion fatigue set in as these terrible atrocities by the Israeli military unfold. The essential fact is that at least 450 of the dead are women and children.

Stand by for one of those obnoxious Israeli spokesman telling us Hamas were firing from the UN compound.

STOP PRESS

UN Refugee Agency Head of Mission John Ging in Gaza

“It looks like phosphorous, it smells like phosphorous and its acting like phosphorous”.

“We were continually in contact with the Israelis throughout the night telling them their shelling was coming too close. The artillery was pounding and pasting this area all night. We have been warning them all night that it was not appropriate to use shells in a built up area. We had seven hundred people in the compound seeking refuge.”

“People are being killed here hour by hour and the extent of damage and destruction is frightening”.

Oh dear. it was bound to come sooner or later. As soon as anybody sticks their head above the parapet to criticise Israel, an attempt is made to slur them as an anti-semite. I now have the notorious Zionist propagandist Jonathan Hoffman on my case.

Hoffman is the Zionists’ equivalent of the Witchfinder-General. In July 2008 he produced a report on “Anti-Semitism on The Guardian Comment is Free”, in which his definition of anti-semites included “Those who question the Zionist aim of a Jewish Homeland”.

http://www.zionismontheweb.org/CommentIsFree_ParliamentASCttee_July08.pdf

This blatant conflation of anti-Zionists with anti-Semites is typical of his methodology. It does not wash. There are a significant minority of anti-Zionist Jews, for one thing. My personal view is that all those now living in Israel and Palestine should be allowed to stay there, in a new secular and race-blind state. I do reject the state of Israel with its racially defined citizenship qualification. That is not an unusual position – Germany was only recently obliged by the EU to abandon citizenship laws based on race.

In 2004 Jonathan Hoffman made this laughable contribution as a submission in the consultation exercise on the BBC Charter:

I want to comment on the BBC’s persistent anti-Israel bias. They have

appointed Malcolm Balen as overall editor of programmes with a Mid-East

content but it has made no difference

.

www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/first_phase_responses/H/Hoffman_Jonathan.rtf

It is, incidentally, interesting that he appears to have the impression that the appointment of Malcolm Balen was supposed to help Israel. Anyone know anything about Mr Balen?

It is worth comparing Hoffman’s complaint about the BBC to the comment by OrwellianUK after the blog entry before this.

Anyway, Hoffman is now onto my case. I have just had the following email exchange with him:

Dear Mr Murray

Are you content that your site is being used to propagate anti-Semitism? :

Jonathan Hoffman

Jonathan,

There are many comments on my site that I do not agree with, not only the anti-Jewish ones. There are some very rude comments about me, for example, some completely untrue. There are currently people defending the use of the word “Paki”. I disagree with them too. There have been a number of offensively worded pro-Israel comments, and I have not deleted them. But I tend to the view that freedom of speech is most important, so I almost never delete anything from comments. My own views are the bits of the blog which I have written.

I have only ever deleted, I believe, 36 comments from my site in four years; 2 because they were about children of politicians, and 34 for being anti-semitic. This post from five days ago explained my position:

“ I have not deleted a single pro-Israeli comment from discussion on these pages, though I disagree profoundly with many. I have deleted three anti-Jewish comments. I should make it plain that I am in profound disagreement with those commenters who conflate Israel with Jews in general. We have had commenters excusing anti-Jewish comments on the grounds Jews are not a race, and positing claims of a world conspiracy of Jews and freemasons. I have only deleted three of these, because in general I believe the suppression of any opinion to be an evil which requires major justification. I find it hard to define the exact line which leads to deletion.

Michael has overstepped the mark by a posting about “Jews with their Satanic Smirks” and then introducing the Protocols of Zion. All of his 31 comments have therefore been deleted.”

In addition I have added numerous comments in dialogue with commenters to the effect that one should not confuse anger at the killings by Israel, with racism against Jews in general.

It is an extraordinary and terribly sad and bad thing that anti-semitism still exists. It is to me genuinely incomprehensible.

But sadly any discussion forum on Israel attracts two kinds of malevolent people.

The first kind are anti-semites.

The second are those who seek to portray as anti-semites anyone who opposes Israel’s appalling actions in Gaza. I rather fear you may be one of that kind of malevolent people, Jonathan.

I have given a fair and full answer to your question. Let me now ask you, are you content with the murder by Israel of so many women, children and old people in Gaza?

Craig Murray

Somebody got a video of my speech to yesterday’s amazing demonstration in London against the occupation of Gaza. Two minutes limit and a huge crowd is a difficult brief. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=04d_1231674275

I had marched in the body of the massive demo, which had been fine but for the extraordinary decision by the police to close the pavements and narrow the route to a bottleneck at exactly the point where it passed the Israeli Embassy. In consequence three score hotheads who wanted to kick off there could block the whole thing. The police reacted to that by penning in many thousands into just this narrow point, and donning riot gear.

A more sensible police would have had the flow at its widest as it went past the Israeli Embassy and hurried people through at speed. Anyway, the crush that resulted from the constriction was really pretty scary, especially for the hundreds of children. I had Nadira with me who is five months pregnant. So I arrived to the stage rather rattled and with nothing prepared to say. But it went fine, and “Zionism is Bullshit” came out quite spontaneously, but felt for me personally like an “Emperor’s New Clothes” moment of political truth.

There go all my American sales.

Lenin has the best photos (that sounds unnervingly like “Satan has all the best tunes”.)

http://leninology.blogspot.com/

The Heathlander the best report

http://heathlander.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/huge-demonstration-in-london/

Press coverage focussed entirely on the 0.01% of troublemakers. The 4,000 Zionists who rallied in Trafalgar Square today got much more sympathetic coverage.

“In of the one gravest incidents since the beginning of operations, according to

several testimonies, on 4 January Israeli foot-soldiers evacuated approximately 110 Palestinians into a single-residence house in Zeitun (half of whom were children), warning them to stay indoors. Twenty-four hours later, Israeli forces shelled the home repeatedly, killing approximately thirty. Those who survived and were able, walked two kilometres to Salah Ed Din road before being transported to the hospital in civilian vehicles. Three children, the youngest of whom was five months old, died upon arrival at the hospital.”

[UN OCHA]

“The ICRC/PRCS team found four small children next to their dead mothers in one of the houses. They were too weak to stand up on their own. One man was also found alive, too weak to stand up. In all there were at least 12 corpses lying on mattresses.

In another house, the ICRC/PRCS rescue team found 15 other survivors of this attack including several wounded. In yet another house, they found an additional three corpses. Israeli soldiers posted at a military position some 80 meters away from this house ordered the rescue team to leave the area which they refused to do. There were several other positions of the Israel Defense Forces nearby as well as two tanks.

“This is a shocking incident,” said Pierre Wettach, the ICRC’s head of delegation for Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. “The Israeli military must have been aware of the situation but did not assist the wounded. Neither did they make it possible for us or the Palestine Red Crescent to assist the wounded.”…..

…The ICRC believes that in this instance the Israeli military failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded. It considers the delay in allowing rescue services access unacceptable”.

[International Committee of the Red Cross]

The Oxford Professor of International Relations, Avi Shlaim, is for me the among most clear-sighted and independent of all commentators on Israel. I recently read his book, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and recommend it most strongly as an extraordinary piece of research combined with storytelling. I don’t agree with him on everything, but the information is indispensable.

Thanks to Michael Meadowcroft for pointing out to me Shlaim’s brilliant piece in yesterday’s Guardian supplement.

Israel’s spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel’s actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It did so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel’s objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel’s insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine

It is well worth reading the whole article. In doing so, remember that Shaim is not only an academic of world standing, he is an Israeli who served loyally in the Israeli armed forces.

My name appears in extraordinarily distinguished company in this letter to the Guardian published today:

We speak out for the people of Gaza. What is happening there is a crime against humanity. We are asking everyone to be at Speaker’s Corner in London at 12.30pm on Saturday 10 January, and join the march to the Israeli embassy.

Tony Benn President, Stop the War Coalition

Andrew Murray Chair, STWC

Annie Lennox, Michael Nyman, Brian Eno, Alexei Sayle, Terry Jones, Dr Richard Horton, Bill Bailey, Vanessa Redgrave, Nigel Kennedy, Janet Suzman, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Samuel West, Caryl Churchill, AL Kennedy, Tariq Ali, Corin Redgrave, John Williams, Lauren Booth, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Roger Lloyd Pack, Jehane Markham, John Pilger, Susan Wooldridge, Katherine Hamnett, Kika Markham, David Gentleman, Professor Hilary Rose, Iain Banks, Miriam Margolyes, Professor Steven Rose, Mark Thomas, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Mark Steel, Andy de la Tour, Professor Paul Gilroy, Michael Rosen, Janie Dee, Kathy Panama, Mike & Kate Westbrook, Craig Murray, Ed Harcourt, Dave Randall, Ian Macdonald QC, Michael Kustow, Michael La Rose, Louise Christian, Ali Hussein, Liane Aukin, Eugene Skeef, Keith Burstein, Peter Gabriel

I will certainly be there – I needed some new shoes anyway.

Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions are a peaceful response to Israel’s continued illegal occupation, repression and brutal military operations against the Palestinians. Useful links can be found on the Boycott Israel site.

Another useful site for those interested in Boycotting Israeli Goods can be found at: http://www.bigcampaign.org/

…and if anyone really wants to know more about how bar codes work then here is a good place to start… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GS1

Caution: If you are an US individual or organisation then boycotting Israeli goods is illegal! (US Department of Commerce). I guess its further proof that organisations like these are highly effective.

STOP THE MASSACRE NOW: ISRAEL OUT OF GAZA

SATURDAY 10 JANUARY ASSEMBLE HYDE 12.30 PM

MARCH TO ISRAELI EMBASSY, LONDON W8

Organised by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition, British Muslim Initiative, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and many other organisations.

For updates and more info: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/

Update: A continuous vigil for Gaza starts today (08/01/2009) in Parliament Square, London. http://www.vigilforgaza.net/

I watched BBC World News for a timed hour yesterday. In that time I saw:

Pro-Israeli (including US government) speakers – 17

Pro-Palestinian speakers – 2

Mentions of Hamas Rockets as reason for war – 37

Mentions of illegal Israeli settlements – 0

Mentions of Palestinians killed by Israel during “ceasefire” – 2

Mentions of Sderot – 12

Mentions Sderot used to be Palestinian – 0

If you don’t believe me, try it yourself.

The Interpal facebook group, of which I am a member, was sending out information on demonstrations and on relief aid to Gaza. Facebook yesterday closed down Interpal, with the following message:

The group “Interpal” has been removed because it violated our Terms of Use. Among other things, groups that are hateful, threatening, or obscene are not allowed. We also take down groups that attack an individual or group, or advertise a product or service. Continued misuse of Facebook’s features could result in your account being disabled.

Now I frequently pull up people commenting here if I feel they are being anti-Jewish or supporting terror, but I received all Interpal’s messages and saw nothing at all that could be characterised as “Hateful, threatening or obscene”, except in that they are labels which the powerful continually manage to apply to anyone opposing Israeli military aggression.

It is Facebook’s closing the Interpal group which might more correctly be characterised as hateful, threatening and obscene, in view of what is happening in Gaza.

I strongly recommend this interview with Dr Mads Gilbert as a corrective to the mainstream media.

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=11490

Brown is appeasing domestic horror at the Israeli massacre in Gaza by calling for a ceasefire. Meanwhile British diplomats on the United Nations Security Council are under direct instructions to offer “tacit support” to United States’ efforts to block a ceasefire.

I have been told this directly by a former colleague in the UK Mission to the United Nations.

A footnote on the uses of obscenity – 7,200 people read this entry between 15.30 on a Sunday afternoon and 08.30 on a Monday morning. That’s normally the slowest time of the entire week.

Amazing what a catchy heading will do. Besides, if you think the title is obscene, how do you describe what is happening in Gaza?

NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION: SATURDAY 3 JANUARY

HANDS OFF GAZA: STOP THE BOMBING: FREE PALESTINE

ASSEMBLE 12.30 PM EMBANKMENT, LONDON WC2

Nearest tube Embankment or Charing Cross

A national emergency demonstration has been called for Saturday 3 January by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War, British Muslim Initiative, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and many other organisations, assembling at 12.30pm at Embankment WC2.

More info and updates from: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/