Egypt uprising: Islamists lead Tahrir Square rally

BBC News
29 July 2011
Last updated at 07:03 ET


Protest in Tahrir Square, 29 July The protest is one of the largest since the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak

Tens of thousands of people have packed Cairo's Tahrir Square, after the first call by Islamist leaders for nationwide demonstrations since President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February.

The demonstrators - dominated by Muslim Brotherhood supporters - are calling for an Islamic state and Sharia law.

Correspondents say the rallies will be a worrying development for secularists.

The Brotherhood is the most organised political force in Egypt, although it was not prominent in the revolution.

Tensions have been running high between Egypt's Islamist and secular groups, who are at odds over the transition to democracy in the Arab world's most populated country.
Turning point?

Liberal groups first want guarantees of a constitution that will protect religious freedom and personal rights, whereas Islamists want speedy elections and a recognition of Islam - in one form or another - in the new Egyptian state.

Now, the Islamists want their voice to be heard and are showing their muscle for the first time since Mr Mubarak stepped down on 11 February, says the BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo.

Although the Muslim Brotherhood - Egypt's oldest political party - can turn out huge crowds by rallying its supporters at mosques, it does not necessarily represent the majority of Egyptians and is predicted to win around 20% of the vote in an election, our correspondent says.

There was little sign of any secular groups at Friday's rally, he says, adding that it will be interesting to see how they re-group after today's events.

Since early July, the mainly secular protesters had camped out in Tahrir Square - the epicentre of protests that toppled Mr Mubarak - to denounce the ruling military council over the slow pace of reform.

Islamist groups had for the most part stayed away from the sit-in. Last week, they held their own demonstration and accused the Tahrir protesters of going against the country's "Islamic identity", the AFP news agency reports.

But with Islamists and the more conservative Salafist groups now filling Tahrir Square, it could mark a turning point in Egypt's post-revolution period, our correspondent says.

Egyptian Islamists are playing out the role that the Communists did when they rose to power by using other anti-government movements, peace activists, socialists, to help them topple governments. And like Communists, Islamists have no real tolerance for any ideology or theology that competes with Islam for social/political control of the whole population. I wish I could say Islam produced more democratic thinkers but it doesn't anymore than Communism did. It takes a fundamentalist mindset to hold these ideologies and a fundamentalist mindset lacks capacity for critical thinking.

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Abducted again in Al-Walaja

From: Mazin Qumsiyeh

We (5 Israelis and two Palestinians) were roughed up by Israeli apartheid
soldiers then abducted while filming the destruction of the land of
Al-Walaja. In my case, the officer recognized me and came straight at me
pushing me to the ground, kicking me then asking his soldiers to take me
away. Shireen was taken later by the invading fascist soldiers in the
village. It hurts so much to see how slowly the old trees are being uprooted
to build a wall on village land that will separate the villagers from tehir
agricultural fields. In this case, trees and An agricultural road (built
with European funding) were being destroyed in the village. The oldest tree
in the Bethlehem district, an olive tree that is perhaps 3-4,000 year old is
also in the path of the apartheid wall. The Israeli soldiers working as
subcontractors for land thieves and racists also raided the freedom theater
in Jenin (founded by our friend and martyr Juliano Mer-Khamis) and abducted
some of the workers there. We ask everyone to write to politicians, media,
and others to alert them of these persistent violations of basic human
rights. We must intensify pressure via boycotts, divestments, and sanctions.

Stories about the abductions yesterday in Al-Walaja
http://imemc.org/article/61756
http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=408787
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2011/07/482775.html

Videos from Al-Walaja yesterday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvGAsleAY4Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNHfWnxU5E

Events last time in Al-Walaja
On Nakba day May 15, 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FvfO1ms6ys
and on Naksa day June 5th http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mGyEbqUYDI
&NR=1

Request: Advise or give help for a 5 year old girl who had had a cochlear
implant (inner ear) in 2007 and is now having an infection. She needs either
a new implant or removal/rehabilitation of the old implant and she also
needs rehabilitation. Any thoughts or ideas about how to proceed in this
medical situation would be appreciated or if an institution or charity can
take on this case. (the family is from a remote village and they were
staying at my house for the past four days).

Palestine's Norwegians By VIJAY PRASHAD
http://www.counterpunch.org/prashad07252011.html
Anti-Muslim law enforcement trainer cited by Norway killer rakes in U.S.
taxpayer cash
http://alexbkane.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/anti-muslim-law-enforcement-traine
r-cited-by-norway-killer-rakes-in-u-s-taxpayer-cash/

Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
A bedouin in cyberspace, a villager at home
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinejn.org
http://pcr.ps
http://IMEMC.or
http://www.alrowwad-acts.ps

Gaza film-makers decry Hamas censorship

(Reuters) - - "Cinema in Gaza is like writing on rocks with your fingers," says Palestinian writer-director Sweilem Al-Absi.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi
GAZA | Thu Jul 28, 2011 4:46am EDT

It's not just the dearth of funds, equipment and studio facilities that prompts such laments from film-makers in the Gaza Strip. Four years into Islamist Hamas rule, cultural censors are fraying the already threadbare local movie industry.

Locked in conflict with Israel and vying against secular Palestinian rivals in the occupied West Bank, Hamas has long invested in television- and Internet-based news, educational shows and even animated clips that advance its political views.

But independent artists say Gaza's Culture Ministry, where projects must be approved before public screening, is quick to crack down on content that does not conform to Hamas edicts.

Such was the case with "Masho Matook" ("Something Sweet"), a 2010 short film directed by Khalil al-Muzzayen, which depicts the interaction between Israeli troops and soccer-playing Palestinian children in once-occupied Gaza.

Though the video vignette was submitted to the Cannes Film Festival, Hamas banned its screening locally, citing a four-second scene where Israeli soldiers appreciatively eye a comely Palestinian woman who breezes past them, her hair uncovered.

Culture Ministry director Mustafa al-Sawaf described the images as "out of context."

"She was leaning and laughing, looking at the Israeli soldiers, and that was not appropriate. Palestinian women would not do that," said Sawaf, who described his ministry's intervention in film and television productions as minimal.

Much of the dispute stems from the fact that the film, set in the 1970s, shows a bare-headed woman -- now a rare sight in Gaza, where Islamist mores have taken root.

DENYING REALITY

While censorship is commonplace in conservative Arab and Muslim societies, some Palestinians see in Hamas's version an over-zealousness born of its efforts to impose order on the poor territory penned in between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean.

"It was unjust to ban a movie just because of a scene showing a girl without a scarf. Why deny reality?" said 23-year-old filmmaker Ahmed Abu Naser, who, like his twin and artistic partner Mohammed, helped Muzzayen with Masho Matook.

The brothers themselves cut unusual figures in Palestinian society, by wearing their hair long and smoking pipes.

Gaza has no cinemas: three that existed before Israel withdrew soldiers and settlers in 2005 were torched during Palestinian factional clashes. Televisions, often with satellite feeds, are ubiquitous. But public screening venues are not.

A film festival hosted by the Gaza Women's Affairs Center this month also fell foul of Hamas commissars.

The line-up included documentaries and fictional pieces on women's issues from Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia and Mexico. But all had to undergo the Culture Ministry's "scissors," said Absi.

"What I saw would make me weep blood instead of tears," he said. "Cuts, cuts, cuts."

One film had to shed a scene where a woman, speaking to her paramour from opposite balconies, lowered one shoulder of her dress. In another, a man's expletive-laced tirade against his wife was expunged.

Sawaf described the censorship as consensual, saying films submitted for vetting ahead of the women's festival were returned with "comments for the directors."

"We should have a position toward any work that violates traditional values because we want to preserve the heritage of the community," Sawaf said.

(Editing by Ori Lewis and Alistair Lyon)

Atheists ask judge to order removal of 9/11 memorial cross

World Trade Centre construction workers hold hands during a prayer at a ceremony for the 9/11 cross. Photograph: Mark Lennihan/AP

Beam found amid 9/11 wreckage blessed by priest and moved to Ground Zero memorial, which atheists say should remain neutral

Associated Press
Guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 28 July 2011 10.23 BST

A US atheist group has filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order the removal of a cross-shaped steel beam at the 9/11 memorial in New York or request that other religions and nonreligious views be equally represented.

The cross was found amid the wreckage from the terrorist attacks by a construction worker who said he stumbled onto a miracle. It was last weekend moved to the Ground Zero memorial – due to open on the 10th anniversary of the attacks in September – after a blessing by a Catholic priest. It is to become part of the permanent collection of a 9/11 museum opening next year.

Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists, the group which filed the lawsuit, said its main concern was equality.

He said 9/11 was an American tragedy, "but the Christian community has secured sole representation in the memorial for itself at the exclusion of other religions and philosophies."

He added: "What we're looking for is a remedy that honours everyone equally, with a religion-neutral display, or display of equal size and prominence." Silverman said American Atheists has offered to pay for such a display and has several ideas to represent all religions – such as a firefighter carrying out a victim.

Reverend Brian Jordan, who was instrumental in their preservation, said people from other religions came to pray collectively when he blessed the beam. He said it provided comfort to hundreds of suffering people and continues to do so.

Museum officials said the cross was being displayed not because of its religious value but the role it played in the aftermath of the attacks.

"The mission of the National September 11 Memorial Museum is to tell the history of 9/11 through historic artefacts like the World Trade Center cross. This steel remnant became a symbol of spiritual comfort for the thousands of recovery workers who toiled at ground zero, as well as for people around the world," museum president Joe Daniels said in a statement.

Is this an atheist attack on Christianity or a Jewish attack using atheists as cover?

Palestinian Nonviolence: Muslims, Not Christians, Are the Leaders

Posted on July 27, 2011
by Sami Awad| Leave a comment

Huffington Post

Whenever I give talks on the effects of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian livelihood, the status of nonviolence as a means to resisting the occupation, and how I believe nonviolence is the only way to move forward to resolve the conflict and create a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, one of the first and immediate questions I get from foreign visitors to my office in Bethlehem is, “What you said is good, but what about the Muslims? Do they also believe in nonviolence? Do they understand it?” Even if I don’t mention religion in my presentation — and I rarely do — this question always seems to make its way in our discussions.

I have to admit that this question challenges me because within it lies an underlying stereotype, a bias, or at the least a grave misunderstanding of the Palestinian Muslim community — that they are violent people and do not have any understanding of nonviolence. The second challenge is in the biases toward Palestinian Christians. Western Christians simply think and assume that Palestinian Christians must engage in nonviolence and that it is “unchristian” if they use violence.

Even though we never look at it through a religious lens, the reality on the ground is that when it comes to nonviolence in Palestine, it is not Christians but Muslims who are engaging in this tremendous work. It is Palestinian Muslims who are the main leaders, the organizers, the activists and the strategists, and only some Christians are active in nonviolent resistance.

The men and women organizing the protests each week in villages where land is being confiscated and the separation wall is being built, chaining themselves to olive trees so they don’t get uprooted and laying in front of bulldozers are Muslims. When we organize protests that fall on Christian holidays, like an Easter protest or the Palm Sunday march to Jerusalem, 90 percent of the protestors were Muslims, standing in solidarity with the rights of the Christian brothers and sisters to pray in Jerusalem. Many Muslims, some of whom are my closest friends, like Basim and Naji Tamimi from a small village called Nabi Saleh whom I have worked with and trained with for years, are now locked up in Israeli prisons because of their nonviolent actions.

On the other hand, the Palestinian Christian community has limited numbers of leaders and activists in this work. One reason is, of course, demographic: Palestinian Christians are less than 1.8 percent of the Palestinian population in the occupied territories. But the main reason why Christians are not active is due to the fact that, like many Muslims, they have simply given up. They refrain from any actions working to end the military occupation and are simply resigned trying to live life day-to-day. The community sees the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements, the increased regulations on movement by Israeli military checkpoints, the harder economic conditions and, most of all, the failure by our own political leadership to even sit together, let alone lead us to liberation. Sadly, this breeds hopelessness.

At the end of the day, while the question is always asked by our foreign friends, when it comes to how we live with each other and how the Israeli occupation treats us, there is actual agreement: We are all the same; we are “Palestinians.” I have never gone to a nonviolent demonstration and counted how many Christians and how many Muslims were there. I have never helped this family and not that because of their faith. Christian and Muslim farmers have had their olive trees uprooted and their fields burned by settlers, Christian and Muslim homes have been destroyed by Israeli military bulldozers. Christians and Muslims have been killed, injured or arrested by the Israeli military. The walls and fences surround Christian cities like Bethlehem and have confiscated hundreds of acres that belong to Christian and Muslim families. When I am stopped at a military checkpoint and interrogated, the Israeli soldier never says, “Oh, a Christian. Sorry, go ahead.” I am held up for hours along with my Muslim friends for no reason but intimidation.

I am proud of the fact that when it comes to the Palestinian community, with all the challenges, hardships, and divisions that we face, religious identity remains a sacred space, honored by the greatest overwhelming majority. It brings me the greatest joy to see Palestinians (Christians and Muslims) deeply engaged and committed to nonviolence. It gives me even greater pleasure when I see the growing number of Israeli Jews join us hand in hand in this struggle.

My prayer is that a new question will arise from my Christian friends in the U.S. and Europe and from our churches across the globe: What can we do to help you (Christians, Muslims and Jews) end this occupation and conflict, once and for all, and create a peace in the Holy Land that will bring us all pride in our religious faith, teachings and heritage?

Sami Awad is a Palestinian Christian active in the nonviolence movement. He is the Executive Director of Holy Land Trust in Bethlehem. His story is told in the film “Little Town of Bethlehem.” For more information visit www.holylandtrust.org and www.littletownofbethlehem.org

Iran: Scientist May Have Been Mistakenly Killed

NPR
by Peter Kenyon
July 24, 2011

Iran says the killing of a young scientist Saturday was a "U.S.-Zionist terrorist act."

Darioush Rezai-Nejad, 35, was gunned down in Tehran on Saturday by assailants who also wounded his wife, according to state-run Iranian media.

A number of Iranian nuclear scientists have been attacked in recent years, but officials said in this case there may have been a mistake. Official media said Rezai-Nejad, a promising graduate student, may have been killed because his name is similar to another scientist, who does work on Iran's nuclear program.

Despite assassinations, cyberattacks and stringent sanctions, Iran continues to press ahead with its nuclear activity, which it says is peaceful. Tehran recently announced the installation of new, second-generation centrifuges that could accelerate the country's efforts to enrich uranium.

Iranian nuclear scientist shot dead on Tehran street--Israeli/CIA assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists again?

Gunmen on a motorcycle shot physicist Dariush Rezai outside his home near a military base, an Iranian news agency reports. He's the latest victim in a series of attacks on nuclear scientists in Iran, which is suspected of trying to build a nuclear weapons program.

Borzou Daragahi Los Angeles Times
July 23, 2011, 9:21 a.m.
Reporting from Beirut—

An Iranian nuclear scientist tied to the country's controversial atomic research program was shot dead Saturday on a street in Tehran, Iranian news outlets reported.

It was the latest in a series of attacks targeting the country's nuclear scientists.

The victim, Dariush Rezai, 45, was described by the semi-official Iranian Students News Agency as a professional associated with the country's Atomic Energy Organization, which oversees the country's complex of nuclear installations, including uranium enrichment facilities that produce fuel for energy reactors.

U.S. and Israeli officials, as well as many Western diplomats and nonproliferation experts, believe Iran is using the cover of a domestic energy program to assemble the building blocks for an eventual weapons program.

Rezai, who reportedly held a doctorate in physics, was reportedly shot by gunmen on a motorcycle outside his home in the southeast of the capital, Tehran, according to the semi-official Mehr News Agency.

"The investigation to identify the motorcyclists involved in the assassination has begun," Mehr quoted an unnamed police official as saying, adding that Rezai's wife had also been wounded and taken to a hospital.

The attack took place near the Imam Ali military base, a centerpiece in the archipelago of secretive and well-guarded Revolutionary Guard compounds housing sensitive equipment and personnel around the country.

There was no claim of responsibility. Western and Israeli officials have vowed to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Iran blamed the U.S. and Israel for a nearly simultaneous pair of November 2010 attacks that killed nuclear scientist Majid Shahriar and injured Fereidoun Abbasi, who is considered a leading figure in the country's atomic research program. A remote-control bomb attack in January 2010 killed physicist Massoud Ali Mohammadi.

daragahi@latimes.com

Special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this report.

Erdogan: 'Unthinkable' for ties to improve without apology

By JPOST.COM STAFF
07/23/2011 13:10

Turkish PM says normalization will come only after Israel pays compensation, apologizes, and lifts Gaza blockade; Abbas in Istanbul: PA statehood bid was "forced" on us by Israeli refusal to stop settlements.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday said it was "unthinkable" for Turkey to repair relations with Israel until it apologized for the raid on the Mavi Marmara last year, AFP reported.

"As long as Israel does not apologize to Turkey, pay compensation to the families of the victims and lift its blockage on the Gaza strip, a normalization of relations is unthinkable," he said during a meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Istanbul.

The comments come after Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon on Thursday told foreign reporters that Israel is not ready to apologize to Turkey. But he added that such a decision may be debated in Jerusalem, and that the doubt he has expressed in recent days was his own.

In response, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman expressed outrage that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was considering delivering a limited apology, saying "This would be abandoning IDF soldiers. It’s diplomatically irresponsible. It’s diplomatic surrender. Israel is broadcasting weakness, embarrassment and an inability to stand up to pressure.”

Meanwhile, during his meeting with Erdogan in Istanbul, Abbas said Saturday that the Palestinian plan to obtain UN support for statehood in September was "forced" on them by Israel's refusal to stop settlement construction and end the "occupation," AFP reported.

"We are going to the United Nations because we are forced to, it is not a unilateral action," he told Palestinian diplomats from around the world meeting in Istanbul to garner support for the PA's statehood bid. "What is unilateral is Israeli settlement."

'We have not been able to return to negotiations with [Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu because of his refusal to negotiate on the basis of the 1967 borders and to stop settlement," he was quoted as saying by AFP. "Our first, second and third choice is to return to negotiations."

Gil Hoffman contributed to this report.

Israel has over the past five years arrested 835 Palestinian youths for stone-throwing,

Reuters
updated 2 hours 3 minutes ago


A masked Palestinian youth throws a stone towards Israeli soldiers standing on the other side of Israel's separation barrier during clashes in the West Bank village of Nilin near the Jewish settlement of Hashmonaim on June 3. Abbas Momani/AFP-Getty Images

JERUSALEM — Israel has over the past five years arrested 835 Palestinian youths for stone-throwing, sentencing most of them to prison time, a rights organization said in a report on Monday.

The Israeli group B'Tselem said the military mistreated and violated the rights of the youths, most between the ages 16-17, but some as young as 12-13. Their jail time ranged from a few days to a year.

They were arrested between 2005 and 2010.

The report, based on court cases and interviews, said that Israeli military law applying to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank does not provide the same protection to minors as Israeli law and laws in other countries.

Israel's military called the report unbalanced, saying that it ignored the fact that minors are often exploited by militant groups in a manner that violates international law. It also said the arrests and convictions deter others from throwing stones.

Israel's military has set up a special court to deal with cases involving minors and to help improve the protection of their rights, though B'Tselem said the court brought limited change.

Young Palestinians in the West Bank are often arrested by Israeli forces for throwing stones during protests or clashes.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Gaza-bound ship carrying pro-Palestinian activists sets sail from Greece

Haaretz News
Published 00:13 17.07.11
Latest update 00:13 17.07.11

Ten activists head to Gaza aboard the French Dignite-Al Karama ship, regarding themselves as representatives of the entire abortive flotilla.
By Amira Hass Tags: Gaza Gaza flotilla Gaza aid

SOMEWHERE IN THE EAST MEDITERRANEAN – On Saturday evening a Gaza-bound boat left Greek territorial waters. Its 10 participants regard themselves as representatives of the entire abortive flotilla to Gaza, and are determined to exhaust all possibilities in order to reach their destination, or at least carry out the symbolic act of protesting the blockade. They are well aware of the Lilliputian dimensions of their venture, compared with the massive impact organizers had initially planned to have with the 10-odd vessel flotilla.

Dignite-Al Karama, one of two yachts purchased by the French delegation in the second Freedom Flotilla, left a port in Corsica on June 25. Thus, it was spared the fate of eight other boats which were supposed to sail out of Greek ports, but were impounded by Greek authorities.
Dignite-Al Karama, flotilla, Greece - 15.7.11

Fuelling the Dignite-Al Karama ship at Kastellorizo port, Greece, on July 15, 2011.
Photo by: Amira Hass

Last Wednesday Karama left the port of Sitia in Crete, where it had been anchored for a week, awaiting the other boats in vain. Once it was clear that Greece, under strong Israeli pressure, would not allow those boats to sail, its remaining passengers ¬ three French nationals and one Tunisian ¬ were joined by three representatives of other delegations, a Greek, Swede and a Canadian, and by three more French activists who arrived from France. Also on board are three crew members and three journalists from Al Jazeera and Haaretz.

The decision to carry on the mission of sailing to Gaza was not automatically welcomed by other delegations or by the steering committee of the flotilla. Some preferred to officially end the current campaign. Karama's participants spent long hours negotiating and convincing the others.

On Thursday evening Karama reached the eastern Greek Island of Kastellorizo in order to fuel and meet the additional delegates from France. Kastellorizo's history is connected to Gaza: During World War II, after having been occupied by the British army and fearing German attacks, some of the inhabitants fled to Gaza and remained in Palestine for a couple of years. This made the inhabitants of the island and its small port city especially hospitable to the small boat and its mission.

Three of those on board already sailed towards Gaza in last years' flotilla. One of them, Greek sociologist Vangelis Pissias, claims that while in detention in Ashdod last year he was severely beaten by Israeli security forces. Also on board for the second time is Dror Feiler, the Israel-born Swedish national, who is chairperson of 'European Jews for a Just Peace."

Claude L'Eostic, a French flotilla organizer and a veteran activist for Palestinian causes, said that even the sailing of one tiny yacht was the best way to expose the Israeli policy of blockading Gaza, and its illegality.

Vertical axis wind turbines trump others on land use

In a test in Southern California, a farm vertical-axis turbines spaced close together generated more power per area than traditional turbines.
(Credit: John Dabiri/Caltech)


By Martin LaMonica
July 15, 2011 11:12 AM PDT

In a test in Southern California, a farm vertical-axis turbines spaced close together generated more power per area than traditional turbines.
(Credit: John Dabiri/Caltech)

Typically, cost is the driving concern when choosing one renewable energy technology over another. But a pair of studies that consider land use give the edge to niche forms of solar and wind power generation.

Caltech researcher John Dabiri, a professor of aeronautics and bioengineering, this week presented results of a test that found that vertical-axis wind turbines have the potential to generate more power per square meter than the propeller-like, three-blade wind turbines. The key is that vertical-axis turbines can be placed close together without creating the type of wind disturbances that would sap performance of traditional turbines.

Dabiri conducted a test last summer with 24 vertical-axis turbines from Windspire energy, which are shaped like 10-meter tall columns, placed in 75-meter square space. He then calculated how much power per meter the small array of turbines can generate as a way to measure how much aerodynamic disturbances are caused by neighboring turbines.

The tests found that the power density of these vertical-axis wind turbines is about six to nine times that of modern wind farms with horizontal-axis turbines, which need significant spacing among them to prevent causing aerodynamic interference. Dabiri's conclusion is wind farm design and technology is as important the power rating of individual turbines.

"Whereas modern wind farms consisting of (horizontal axis wind turbines) produce two to three watts of power per square meter of land area, these field tests indicate that power densities an order of magnitude greater can potentially be achieved by arranging (vertical-axis wind turbines) in layouts that enable them to extract energy from adjacent wakes and from above the wind farm," he wrote in a paper published Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy. (Click for PDF.)

A concentrating solar photovoltaics collector.
(Credit: Amonix)

The question of land use and power generation is a thorny one as siting energy projects is often problematic. Wind and solar farms, meanwhile, require more land compared to fossil fuel or nuclear plants for the equivalent amount of power generation.

A separate study issued this week by an industry group found that one type of solar power, concentrating photovoltaics (CPV), has a lower space and environmental footprint compared to other technologies. CPV systems use mirrors and lenses to concentrate light onto high-end solar cells to boost the output. The technology is suited for desert areas with good sunlight, but hasn't taken off broadly.

A University of California Berkeley study, commissioned by the industry group CPV Consortium, did a lifecycle assessment and found that CPV used less water, land, and materials than other solar technologies. "Concentrating solar minimizes overall land area use to a degree that almost nothing can beat, Daniel Kammen, director of Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at UC Berkeley, said in a statement.


Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld.

Jerusalem 'March for Independence', July 15, 2011

Photo by: Daniel Bar On

4,500 Israelis and Arabs march in Jerusalem to support Palestinian independence
Police intervene to separate marchers and right-wing counter-protesters, despite organizers' claim march went peacefully.

Haaretz News
By Nir Hasson
Published 16:30 15.07.11
Latest update 16:30 15.07.11

Over 4500 Palestinians and Israelis took part in the "March for Independence" Friday, calling for the recognition of a Palestinian state.

Although the organizers of the march issued a statement saying the march was carried out peacefully, police had to intervene and separate right-wing and left-wing activists.

The event was coordinated with the police, and organizers had pledged to prevent any violence from breaking out, despite the expected right-wing counter-protests.

Participants in the march held signs quoting South African leader and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela saying "only free men can negotiate", while others bore slogans calling for support of Palestinian independence.

Several MKs participated in the march, including Zehava Galon of Meretz and Dov Hanin of Hadash. Other prominent public figures took part as well, such as former Speaker of the Knesset Avraham Burg and former Attorney General Michael Ben Yair.

The march took a symbolic route, following the green line that used to divide East and West Jerusalem before the Six Day War in 1967. It began at Jaffa Gate and ended at the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, the opposite route taken by right-wing activists during Jerusalem Day last month.

"After years of Israel speaking about peace and building settlements, checkpoints, walls and outposts, the young generations from both sides are starting to understand that they are being duped," said Hillel Ben Sasson from the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement said on Thursday.

Ben Sasson added that "in Jerusalem of all places, the heart of the conflict, Israelis and Palestinians will march together calling for independence and for an end to the running amok of the Netanyahu government, which is leading us to a political abyss."

Israeli lawmakers pass West Bank settlement boycott law

BBC News
11 July 2011
Last updated at 16:29 ET


The West Bank settlement of Ariel was the focus of a boycott by Israeli artists and academics

The Israeli parliament has passed a controversial law that will punish any Israeli individual or organisation boycotting West Bank settlements.

Rights groups say the legislation stifles freedom of speech and compromises Israeli democracy.

After failed attempts to delay debate, it was voted through 47-36.

It follows several Israeli calls to boycott institutions or individuals linked to Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

The settlements are deemed illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this. Recent peace talks with the Palestinians were derailed over the issue of continued building in settlements.

The Palestinians want the West Bank as part of a future state.

Among the recent initiatives that angered settlers and their influential political patrons was a pledge by Israeli academics and artists to boycott the West Bank settlement of Ariel.

Israeli developers also agreed not to use products or services from settlements when they signed on to help build a new modern Palestinian city, north of Ramallah.

Under the new law those who sponsor a "geographically based boycott" - which includes any part of the Jewish state or its settlements - could be sued for damages in a civil court by the party injured in the boycott call.

The petitioner is not required to prove that "economic, cultural or academic damage" was caused, only that it could reasonably be expected from the move.

"The State of Israel has for years been dealing with boycotts from Arab nations, but now we are talking about a homegrown boycott," said the author of the legislation, lawmaker, Zeev Elvin, the Associated Press news agency reported.

"It is time to put an end to this travesty. If the State of Israel does not protect itself, we will have no moral right to ask our allies for protection from such boycotts."

Fierce opposition

The new law has been strongly opposed by rights groups in Israel.


Israeli activists have campaigned against the bill

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Acri) described it as "deeply anti-democratic" and a violation of Israelis' freedom of speech.

"There is no question that promoting boycotts is a legitimate, democratic, non-violent form of protest that is being used by Israelis on a wide variety of issues from environmental issues to opposing the prices of certain products," said ACRI executive director, Hagai el-Ad.

"No reasoning has been suggested to explain why the boycott of settlement goods should be uniquely cherished as opposed to the right of the Israeli citizen to protest."

On Sunday, activists opposed to the boycott ban held a noisy demonstration outside the Justice Ministry. They carried banners which read "the boycott law boycotts democracy."

There are plans to challenge the legislation in Israel's Supreme Court.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has led an increasingly concerted campaign against the settlements.

Last year, it passed a law banning settlement produce from Palestinian shops in the West Bank. Traders who break the law face prison and a heavy fine.

However the PA has yet to pass promised legislation making it illegal for Palestinian labourers to work in settlements.

Israelis’ afflictions: instilled memory and paranoia vera

Uri Avnery considers the psychological disorders underlying Israel's response to criticism and peaceful protest, most recently manifested in its over-reaction to the humanitarian flotilla to Gaza, and the Israeli public’s generally docile acceptance of what their government and media tell them.

By Uri Avnery
Redress Information & Analysis
10 July 2011

For several weeks now, our army and navy have been in a state of high alert, bravely facing a deadly threat to our very existence: ten little boats trying to reach Gaza. These vessels are carrying a dangerous gang of vicious terrorists, in the form of elderly veterans of peace campaigns.

Binyamin Netanyahu has affirmed our unshakable determination to defend our country: we shall not let anyone break the blockade to smuggle rockets to the terrorists in Gaza, who will then launch them to kill our innocent children.

This is a kind of record even for Netanyahu: not a single word is true. The flotilla is not carrying any weapons – the representatives of respected international media in the boats provide assurance of this. Also, I think we can rely on the Mossad to plant at least one agent in every boat. (After all, what am I paying my taxes for?) Hamas has not launched rockets for a long time – it has very good reasons of its own to keep the unofficial Tahdi’ah (“Quiet”) agreement.
What is the blockade of Gaza for?

If the flotilla had been allowed to reach Gaza, it would have been news for a few hours, and that would have been that. Israel’s total mobilization, the training of the naval commandos for capturing the boats, the acts of sabotage carried out in Greek ports, the immense political pressure exerted by Israel and the US on the poor, bankrupt Greek government – all this has kept this minor initiative in the news for weeks now, drawing attention to the blockade of the Gaza Strip.

What is this blockade for? There is no ascertainable reason for it now, if there ever was one. To terrorize the Gaza people into overthrowing the Hamas government, the victor in democratic elections? Well, it didn’t work, did it? To compel Hamas to change its terms for a prisoner exchange which would release Gilad Shalit? That didn’t either. To prevent the smuggling of arms into the Strip? The arms are flowing freely through a hundred tunnels from Egypt, if we are to believe what our army tells us. So what purpose does the blockade serve? Nobody seems to know. But it is the rock of our existence. That much is clear.

As a result of world pressure following last year’s flotilla, the blockade was eased considerably. But Gaza manufacturers are still prevented from getting their products out of the Gaza Strip – thus condemning most of the population to unemployment and abject poverty.

The same goes for the disgusting trade in human remains. Netanyahu promised to turn over the remains of 84 “terrorists” (both Fatah and Hamas) to Mahmoud Abbas as a gift. At the last moment, he reneged. His people make believe that these remains, by now hardly identifiable, may serve as bargaining chips in the game for releasing Gilad Shalit.

The same goes for the actions against yesterday’s fly-in of international peace activists though Ben-Gurion airport. All they wanted was to go to Bethlehem and Gaza, which can only be reached by crossing Israeli territory. Almost a thousand police officers were mobilized to meet that threat.

All of these unthinking knee-jerk reactions: We must be strong. Everywhere there lurk mortal dangers. Israel must defend itself. Otherwise there will be a second Holocaust.

Instilled memory

This is an interesting phenomenon: people see innocent-looking elderly human-rights activists on their TV screens and believe they are seeing dangerous provocateurs, because the government and most of the media tell them so. Sinister “Arab and Muslim” individuals are hiding in the boats. An Arab American on one boat has been unmasked as somebody who has collected money for a Hamas social institution. A dangerous terrorist! How absolutely awful!

The phenomenon of people seeing something and thinking they are seeing something else has always intrigued me. How can people not believe their own eyes but believe the eyes of others?

This week I got an email message from a man who remembered something from the time he was a pupil of my late wife, Rachel, in first grade.

Rachel asked him to raise his right hand. When the boy did so, Rachel said: “No, no. That is your left hand!” She turned to the other children and asked them which hand it was. Following their teacher, they shouted in unison: “The left! The left!” Seeing this, the first boy started to waver. In the end he conceded: “Yes. It is the left hand.”

“No, you were right in the first place,” Rachel assured him. “Let this be a lesson to all of you: if you are sure that you are right, insist on it. Never change your view because other people say the opposite.”

Quite by chance, straight after reading this testimony, I saw on TV the results of a scientific investigation by Israeli researchers into “instilled memory”. Their experiments show that people who have seen something with their own eyes, but are told by everybody else that they have seen something else, start to suppress their own memory and “remember” that they saw what the others had allegedly seen. Neurological research then showed that this is can actually be seen happening in the brain: the imagined memory replaces the real. Social pressure has done its work: the instilled memory has become real memory.

I believe that this is even truer for an entire nation, which is, of course, composed of individuals. I have seen this many times.

For example, for 11 months before Lebanon War I, not a single shot was fired from Lebanon into Israel. Against all expectation, Yasser Arafat had succeeded in enforcing a total cease-fire even on his Palestinian opponents. Yet after Ariel Sharon started the war, practically all Israelis clearly “remembered” that the Palestinians had shot across the border every single day, turning life in Israel into hell.

I call this “Parkinson in reverse” – while advanced Parkinson patients do not remember things that happened, these patients do remember things which never happened.
Paranoia vera

There is a mental disorder called “paranoia vera”. Patients adopt a crazy assumption – e.g. “everybody hates me” – and then build an elaborate structure around it. Every bit of information which seems to support it is eagerly absorbed, every item that contradicts it is suppressed. Everything is interpreted so as to reinforce the initial assumption. The pattern is strictly logical – indeed, the more complete and the more logical the structure, the more serious is the disease.

“The trouble is that the paranoid, by their offensive and distrustful behaviour, create more and more real-life enemies.”

Among the accompanying symptoms are belligerent behavior, recurrent suspicions, disconnection from the real world, conspiracy theories and narcissism.

It seems that whole nations can fall victim to this illness. Ours certainly appears to have.

The whole world is against us. Everybody is out to destroy us. Every move is a threat to our very existence. Everyone critical of Israeli policy is an anti-Semite or self-hating Jew.

Indeed, even when we do a good thing, it is turned against us.

Witness: we left the Gaza Strip and even dismantled our settlements there, and what did we get in return? Qassam rockets!” (Never mind that Sharon refused to turn the Strip over to any Palestinian body, leaving a void. He cut it off from the world and turned it into one big prison camp.)

Witness: “After Oslo we armed Arafat’s security forces, and they turned their arms against us!” (Never mind that we never quite fulfilled our commitments under the Oslo agreements, that the occupation got more oppressive and that the settlements on Palestinian land increased by leaps and bounds. Also, the Palestinian security services never actually acted against Israel.)

Witness: “We withdrew from south Lebanon and what did we get? Hizbollah and Lebanon War II!” (Never mind that Hizbollah was born in reaction to our 18-year occupation there, and that we ourselves chose to launch the second Lebanon War after a minor border incident.)

It has been said that paranoiacs also have real-life enemies. The trouble is that the paranoid, by their offensive and distrustful behaviour, create more and more real-life enemies.

The slogan “All the world is against us” may easily function as a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Israel is not the only country to suffer from this affliction. At some time, the Germans have been afflicted. So have the Serbs. So, to some extent, has the US and many others. Unfortunately, the costs of paranoia are very high.

So let us start to behave like sane people. Let the little boats go to Gaza. Let arrivals at Ben-Gurion airport go to the Palestinian territories and pick olives, if that’s what they want.

Even if we do behave like a normal nation, Israel will continue to exist. Really!


Copyright © Redress Information & Analysis.
All rights reserved.

Israel Blocks Air Travelers to Palestinian Conference

Police arrested activists at Ben-Gurion Airport as a small group of protesters gathered to welcome Palestinian supporters flying in for a week of “fellowship and actions” on the West Bank.

By ISABEL KERSHNER
New York Times
Published: July 8, 2011

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Israel prevented a gathering of foreigners here on Friday by blocking, deterring or deporting hundreds of air travelers who had been invited by Palestinian activists to fly into Israel’s Ben-Gurion International Airport and then travel to the West Bank for a week of “fellowship and actions.”

Related
U.N. Report Criticizes Israel for Actions at Border (July 8, 2011)

Israel has traditionally been welcoming of foreign tourists, including more than a million Christian pilgrims who visited this Palestinian city of the Nativity last year. But the Israeli authorities prepared for days to head off Friday’s planned fly-in. The Israeli news media added to the hype by calling it a “flightilla” — a reference to the flotilla of boats that was supposed to challenge Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza last month but has been stymied by Israeli pressure and by the cooperation of the Greek port authorities.

As a result, most of the foreigners who planned to fly to Tel Aviv and join the “Welcome to Palestine” initiative were either deterred from trying to come or were prevented from boarding flights to Israel by foreign airlines, on instructions from the Israelis.

The Palestinian hosts decried the Israeli measures, but also chalked up a small victory.

Fadi Kattan, a Palestinian organizer, said at a news conference in Bethlehem that he was “pleased — sadly pleased” that the episode had exposed what he described as Israel’s draconian anti-Palestinian policies.

Over the past few days, hundreds of police officers were deployed in and around the airport near Tel Aviv. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the base of operations at Ben-Gurion with his internal security minister, the police chief, security branch representatives and immigration officials.

There were persistent reports that the foreign visitors would try to create chaos and paralyze the airport, despite strenuous denials from the organizers of the campaign, who advocate nonviolence. They insisted that the foreigners wanted only to transit the airport and “go to Palestine.” (The West Bank has no airport of its own.)

By Thursday, the Interior Ministry had sent letters to foreign airlines with a list of 342 passengers it described as “pro-Palestinian radicals” planning to “arrive on commercial flights from abroad to disrupt the order and confront security forces at friction points.” Israel said people on the list would be refused entry, and it asked the airlines not to allow them to board flights, warning that if the listed passengers arrived at Ben-Gurion, they would be sent back on the same aircraft. Several airlines, including Lufthansa, complied with Israel’s request.

Several passengers at Charles de Gaulle Airport near Paris were barred from boarding a Lufthansa flight to Tel Aviv on Friday morning, and staged a protest. About 50 people were turned away, according to Agence France-Presse. There were reports of a similar disturbance at the Geneva airport.

“Like any other airline operating internationally, Lufthansa has to comply with the immigration laws and administrative decrees of the country we are flying to,” said Martin Riecken, a spokesman for the airline.

Such requests by national governments are not altogether uncommon, Mr. Riecken said, noting for example the United States’ no-fly list, which includes several thousand names.

Malev, the Hungarian airline, denied boarding to about 10 ticket holders in Paris on Friday. The decision to deny passengers the right to board does not indicate that “the airline likes or doesn’t like anyone,” said Marta Rona, a spokeswoman for the airline. Rather, she said, Israel had made it clear that the return of blacklisted passengers would be the responsibility of the airline.

“It’s our cost; it’s our responsibility; it’s our problem,” Ms. Rona said.

Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, said that the Israeli authorities had followed the activists’ plans and compiled the list of undesirables by tracking the Web sites and social networking of the organizations involved.

“We did not need the Mossad,” Mr. Palmor said, referring to Israel’s intelligence agency. “It was all out there in the open.”

At Ben-Gurion Airport, two American women were deported from Israel early Friday after flying in from Athens. In the afternoon, six Israeli left-wing demonstrators were detained for questioning after shouting pro-Palestinian slogans in the arrivals hall.

By early Saturday, 124 foreigners had been refused entry and were awaiting deportation, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, Sabine Haddad, said. They had come in on six different flights and included Spanish, French, American, Belgian, Bulgarian and Dutch nationals, she said.

Israel’s Internal Security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, had branded the potential visitors as “hooligans.” Mr. Netanyahu said that every country has the right to block the entry of “provocateurs.”

Still, Israeli commentators and some politicians have described the Israeli preparations as excessive and bordering on hysterical.

“The state of Israel has taken leave of its senses,” wrote columnist Eitan Haber on the front page of the popular Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Thursday. “Instead of welcoming these loony visitors, permitting them to sing, whistle and even raise signs, the world is liable to see the ‘Zionist storm troopers’ in action once again.”

Brigitte Von Winterfeld, 71, from Germany, was one of a few foreigners who got to Bethlehem to join the campaign. She said she flew in on Tuesday, chose a “smiley” immigration officer at the passport control booths, and told him she was coming to visit friends. Ms. Von Winterfeld said she spent a while here last year with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, a World Council of Churches organization that says it brings people from other countries to the West Bank to experience life under occupation.

The Palestinian organizers of the week’s program include well-known advocates of nonviolent protest like Sami Awad of the Bethlehem-based Holy Land Trust, and Mazin Qumsiyeh, a science professor at Bethlehem University. They said they were going ahead with the schedule as planned.

The itinerary includes visits to families in Palestinian refugee camps as well as demonstrations at various traditional Israeli-Palestinian flashpoints.

Scott Sayare contributed reporting from Paris.

Israel’s denial of entrance to international visitors who support human rights

From Mazin Qumsiyeh

[This campaign that we have been working very hard on for months is just
beginning. The week of activities will go on with all your help. We will
plan bigger and more dramatic events in the months to come. The collusion
of the governments and corporations in Israeli occupation and colonization
must be further exposed.]

‘Welcome to Palestine’ campaign responds to Israel’s denial of entrance to
international visitors who support human rights

Bethlehem and Jerusalem, July 7, 2011 - The Israeli authorities are
escalating attacks on anyone they suspect of participating in the peaceful
events of the ‘Welcome to Palestine’ campaign. Israeli authorities sent
hundreds of names to airline companies telling them to deny travel to
individuals on the list. Several people on the list who had booked flights
were sent letters from airline companies cancelling their reservations
‘based on a request from the Israeli authorities.’ We call on all airline
companies not to accept such provocative, blackmailing, and illegal actions
by the Israeli government. Ominously, Israeli Prime minister has directed
the interior security minister that the Israeli authorities must ‘act with
determination’ towards those who do make it to Ben Gurion Airport.

The visitors coming from the US and Europe on Friday are committed to the
principles of international and humanitarian law and believe strictly in
nonviolence. They were invited by dozens of Palestinian civil society
organizations and groups. They have stated that the only way to visit and
work with Palestinians is by passing through Israeli border controls. They
have declared their commitment to pass these border controls in an orderly,
peaceful and fully transparent way.

Before stepping onto the airplanes, the visitors will have passed through
meticulous security procedures at the various airports of origin and will
pose no threat in any way. The propaganda efforts to paint human rights
advocates as ‘hooligans’ and even ‘violent’ (an attempt to demonize and
dehumanize them in order to justify violence against them) is simply not
credible and indeed ridiculous. We are pleased that this episode further
exposes Israeli policies towards anything or anyone relating to
‘Palestinians’ as dictatorial, racist, and criminal and not complying with
basic elements of democracy or human rights.

Visitors traveling between countries have rights under international law and
bilateral travel agreements. Our foreign visitors insist that they must be
treated with respect in the same manner Israeli citizens receive when
traveling to their countries. Those who had reservations cancelled will
exercise their right of protest including bringing legal cases in their own
countries. We will also bring legal cases in Israeli courts under our
continued attempt to expose the racist policies of the Israeli government.

Several peaceful protests will be held at airports throughout Europe on the
8th of July and we urge all civilized people throughout the world to protest
these undemocratic moves to silence free speech and legal travel. We ask the
media to insist on access and fair reporting on Israeli tactics that are
against basic human rights of international solidarity activists before,
during and after they arrive at the Israeli airport. We demand Israel
publishes all instructions given to their ‘border control officials’
regarding visitors who intend to visit Palestinians.

The "Welcome to Palestine" campaign has been successful in exposing Israeli
attempts to isolate and imprison Palestinians and prevent international
visitors from coming to find out what is really happening on the ground.

Friday 8 July 2011 at 10 AM in Bethlehem Peace Center, located in Nativity
Square, we will have a Press Conference to announce further steps we will
take and to answer any questions.

Twitter: #PalSpring
Facebook: Welcome to Palestine

Contact information:
Bethlehem: Fadi Kattan, press.welcometopalestine2@gmail.com +970 (0) 595
754 100 or Skype
welcome.palestine

Jerusalem: Nikki or Laura, sergioyahni@gmail.com , +972 2 624 1159 or +972 2
624 1424

Berlin: Sophia Deeg, sophia_deeg@yahoo.de, +49(0) 30 88 007761
, +49 (0) 1799878414
. 13:00 Press briefing;
beginning 13:30 news center, including (if possible) direct contact with the
travelers as they land at Ben Gurion airport. Filmbühne am Steinplatz,
Hardenbergstr. 12, Berlin Charlottenburg.

Paris: Nicolas Shahshahani, bienvenuepalestine@orange.fr +33 (0)1 42 94 39
94 and +33 (0) 6
73 38 24 84 .
The press office will answer questions from the media around the clock.

UK: Sofiah Macleod, july8@scottishpsc.org.uk, +44 (0)131 620 0052
or + 44 (0)
7401631658 , Skype:
scottishpsc.

USA/Germany: Elsa Rassbach, elsarassbach@gmail.com, +49 (0) 30 326 01540
, +49 (0) 170 738
1450 , Skype:
elsarassbach

Website
http://palestinejn.org/palestinianspring

AlJazeera English Story:
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/07/201175145243628145.htm
l

Challenging Israeli Apartheid Staring at Ben Gurion airport

-gurion-airport.html>
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/06/challenging-israeli-apartheid-starting-at-ben-
gurion-airport.html

Mazin Qumsiyeh, Ph.D.
http://qumsiyeh.org
http://palestinejn.org
http://pcr.ps
http://IMEMC.or
http://www.alrowwad-acts.ps

Empathy toward the Palestinian side invokes hatred and distrust

Haaretz News
Published 03:16 07.07.11
Latest update 03:16 07.07.11

The anger at Israelis who support Palestinian independence resembles the treatment of whites who supported the black civil rights movement.
By Yael Sternhell

The July 15 march scheduled by the solidarity movement for Palestinian independence will surely stir an ugly wave of threats against Jews who dare to deviate from the consensus: those who express their identification with the Palestinian desire to end the occupation and establish an independent state. In the Israel of 2011, every manifestation of basic human empathy toward the Palestinian side, every disclosure of understanding for its aspirations and priorities hits a wall of hatred, distrust and the growing siege mentality.

How we got this far is one question, but since we're already here, maybe we'd benefit from remembering another march, in a different place and time, and the people who dared to take part in it despite the opposition of the stunted, racist consensus.

Martin Luther King, Jr. and other activists marching in Alabama in 1965.
Photo by: AP

On March 21, 1965, activists left Selma, Alabama, and headed for the state capital of Montgomery to protest the denial of black voting rights in the American South. It was the third time civil rights organizations had tried to set out on such a march.

The first time, 600 participants ran afoul of the local police, headed by Sheriff James Clark, an untrammeled racist who decided to block the civil rights movement with his own body. His men treated the protesters with exceptional brutality, even according to the norms prevailing in the South. They used batons and tear gas; their horses trampled on the demonstrators. Skulls were cracked, bones were broken and organs crushed. The demonstrators, helpless before the force of the police, left the front lines for home. But the pictures, broadcast all over the country, had an effect.

The third attempt attracted 25,000 people, accompanied by federal police. This time the demonstrators reached Montgomery, and America took one step closer to returning the right to vote to the black minority. This was a high point in the struggle of the civil rights movement, a movement that, adhering to an ideology of nonviolence, managed within just a few years to topple the apartheid regime that had lasted for decades.

Leaving their comfortable lives

Anyone who looks at the photos from those fateful days in 1965 sees immediately that white faces - of women and men, nuns and rabbis, young and old - emerge in the sea of black faces. These were the movement's white supporters, who left their comfortable lives in the cities and suburbs and came to Selma to express solidarity with the most oppressed and hated minority in America.

It wasn't an easy task. From a distance of just a few decades, with a black president in the White House, it's hard for us to imagine why millions didn't march for African-Americans' just struggle in the South to enjoy basic freedoms, to realize the equality they deserved as citizens of a democratic country. But we must remember how deeply rooted was the belief among Southern whites that blacks were not entitled to civil rights, that whites had to preserve their social and politic superiority at any price, and that members of both races were eternal enemies.

All white people who disagreed with these beliefs, who agreed to come out openly against the majority, came to the South and declared that they were willing to stand beside black citizens in their struggle against oppression and discrimination and put their lives on the line. So the whites who took part in the marches also suffered the violence and hatred aimed at their black compatriots.

Viola Liuzzo, a housewife from Detroit, was shot to death by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Every white who dared to lend a hand to the black struggle was seen as an enemy of the race in the eyes of many, as a traitor whose life was cheap.

Still, they marched. They marched because they understood that it was time to break through the indifference of the white community in the United States, that it was time to stop cooperating with the paranoia and racism of whites in the South and to stand on the side of justice and ethics, to stand on the right side of history. To this day they are remembered as people who did the right thing, who saw beyond prejudice and the hollow political conventions of their time, despite danger and fear.

Our necessary enemy

We, the Jews who live in Israel, participate each day, each hour, in the denial of basic rights to Palestinian citizens, in the perpetuation of the settlements and the occupation. We're in a similar position to that of many whites in the United States in the 1960s.

Most of us find it hard to support the Palestinian struggle for independence, whether out of laziness, indifference or a basic loathing of those we've been told all our lives are a necessary enemy. Most of us find it hard to stand up to the story told by the government and most of the media that the Palestinian declaration of independence is a disaster for Israel, exactly as most whites in the South saw the granting of voting rights to blacks as the end of civilization.

Most of us find it hard to believe that it's possible to live together in peace, just as those whites in Alabama found it hard to imagine life in a free society in which members of all races have the same rights. Most of us also have more pressing matters to attend to, just as the whites all over the United States found it hard to see why the fact that Southern blacks couldn't vote should keep them awake at night.

The march supporting the Palestinian declaration of independence is a golden opportunity for change. It's the moment we can say to ourselves, to our Palestinian neighbors and the entire world that we too can be freed from the chains of hatred, fear and the racism that grips the State of Israel.

This is the time to show that we too are capable of seeing beyond the paranoia that paralyzes us, that blocks all possibility of reaching a solution. In how many years will people look back on us, the Israelis, as people who couldn't grasp reality, who waged a useless war against others' legitimate aspirations?

Taking part in a solidarity march is a similar choice to the one of the whites who joined the march from Selma. It is the choice to take a stand, in real time, on the right side of history.

"Welcome to Palestine" Organizers decry Israeli propaganda efforts and threats of mass deportation

From Mazin's journal

(Please circulate)
Links to some Media Stories below (Netanyahu went to the airport himself to
oversee preparations!!)

Press Release 2: "Welcome to Palestine" Organizers decry Israeli propaganda
efforts and threats of mass deportation

Bethlehem and Jerusalem 5 July 2011--The organizers of the "Welcome to
Palestine" initiative decry the numerous attempts by Israeli and other media
to distort our message and planned activities. There were messages claiming
that we are attempting to reach Gaza by going to Lod Airport (aka Ben Gurion
airport) on July 8. Some claimed that this initiative came after the
flotilla was blocked. Others claimed our visitors want to disrupt things at
the airport and some even claimed they will try to take over planes. These
claims and many others being circulated are false; we urge media not to
disseminate false statements.

As stated in our first press release: we invited international guests,
including families, to visit us in Palestine. We hope and expect the
Israeli authorities to allow them safe passage in compliance with
International law and normal diplomatic bilateral protocols. We also reject
the Israeli government threat to engage in mass deportation of peace
activists and the apparent attempt justify this unjustifiable action by
using rumors that they spread.

We are accessible to the media and encourage them to speak with the actual
organizers and participants of this peaceful initiative. Journalists will
be flying with us, and we encourage more journalists to join us and to
report on what actually happens (without innuendos and propaganda efforts -
Israeli hasbara).

Our visitors are coming to Palestine with a nonviolent approach to peace
building and conflict resolution, with full respect of the universal
declaration of human rights. We urge the Israeli authorities to allow the
journalists to have access to our participants and to report the true story
of "Welcome to Palestine."

Inviting Palestinians and internationals to join us is our right as people
under colonial occupation who yearn to be free.

Some journalists are flying with our visitors and we invite all journalists
who want to exercise their right to free press to fly in of the 8th of July
to Palestine.

We will have a press conference Friday July 8 at 10 AM at the Bethlehem
Peace Center in Bethlehem.

Contact: info@palestinejn.org
##End###

Press Release from the European group is posted at
http://bienvenuepalestine.com/

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http://www.maannews.net/arb/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=402801

Xinhua agency Report
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90777/90854/7429516.html
AFP Report
http://beta.news.yahoo.com/israel-readies-pro-palestinian-airport-protest-21
1323198.html

Israel to expel pro-Palestinian airport protesters
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=402646

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http://www.alarab.net/Article/382010

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Challenging Israeli apartheid, starting at Ben Gurion Airport
http://mondoweiss.net/2011/06/challenging-israeli-apartheid-starting-at-ben-
gurion-airport.html

Mazin Qumsiyeh, Ph.D.
http://qumsiyeh.org

Israel 'angry' at UN report on Lebanon deaths

BBC News
6 July 2011
Last updated at 14:14 ET



Israeli officials are reportedly boycotting a UN official in Lebanon after he wrote a report criticising Israel's response to a border incursion by Palestinian protesters in May.

Diplomatic sources in Israel have declined to comment on the reports.

It is understood that the unpublished UN document criticises the Israeli army for using disproportionate force by firing on protesters.

Seven protesters trying to cross from Lebanon were killed, the report says.

The incident occurred on the anniversary of what the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba or Catastrophe, their term for the founding of the Israeli state in 1948.

Some protesters were also killed on Israel's border with Syria as they took part in a similar demonstration.

'Not commensurate'

The contents of the UN report, written by the organisation's senior representative in Lebanon, Michael Williams, have been circulating widely in the Middle East.

It was delivered several days ago to members of the UN Security Council, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which also obtained a copy.

The report apparently acknowledges that the actions of the Palestinian protesters initiated the violence.

But the document is understood to criticise the Israeli army for being too quick to turn to the use of live ammunition against protesters who were not carrying firearms.

"Other than firing initial warning shots, the Israel Defense Forces did not use conventional crowd control methods or any other method than lethal weapons against the demonstrators," it says, according to quotes published by Haaretz.

It adds that the Israeli response "was not commensurate to the threat to Israeli soldiers".

Reports in the Israeli press say Israel's diplomats are now refusing to schedule meetings with Mr Williams, who they feel is readier to condemn its forces than the protesters who challenge them.

Although that is not officially admitted in Jerusalem, the BBC's Kevin Connolly says one diplomat acknowledges that "there is no hurry to restore contact with him".

The day of victory: Bil'in celebrates the removal of the wall

From: Iyad Burnat
Friday 1-7-2011

The day of victory: Bil'in celebrates the removal of the wall
http://www.bilin-ffj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=365&Itemid= 1

For the first time after nearly seven years of resistance and struggle of the residents of Bil'in, the people of the village and a large number of participants from neighboring villages could hold the Friday prayer on the land that has been retrieved 2 days ago. Also many Palestinian leaders, including: Abbas Zaki, member of the Central Committee of Fatah, Qais Abu Laila, member of the Democratic Front, Hisham Abu Raya, member of the Palestinian Liberation Front, Fadwa Barghouti, member of the Revolutionary Council of Fatah and many of the leaders and supporters of the Palestinian national movement, as well as dozens of international activists and Israelis joined the celebration.

The Sheik spoke the Friday prayer and held a speech for the brave people of Bil'in, praising the strength of their will and their attachment to their land, shown by their resistance to the occupation army. He added that the land can only be retrieved through resistance, patience and faith in the complete victory. He also praised the foreign assistance and continuous support for the Palestinian cause.
After the prayer, the participants in the march went to have a huge celebration in the natural reserve of Abu Lemon, waving Palestinian flags and banners of the various factions, and singing national songs to express their joy about the victory and the big dream to end the occupation of all Palestinian territories.
In a speech, Abbas Zaki, member of the Central Committee of the Fatah movement encouraged the people of Bil'in and praised their heroic struggle during the past seven years. This victory was the result of the sacrifices made by the people of Bil'in, he said.

After they reached the protected area, they built the first house there after the removal of the wall. After many years of not seeing any big groups of Palestinians so close to their residence, the inhabitants of the nearby illegal settlement were watching the celebration and the building of the first house with great attention and surprise. The people of Bil'in are now planning to built more houses, in order to protect the land from the greed of the occupation and the settlers.