Hamas blocks 50 from leaving Strip
50 Palestinians who were supposed to cross into Israel from the Gaza Strip Tuesday, mostly in order to receive medical treatment in israel, were repelled by Hamas security forces at the Beit Hameches Junction just west of the Erez Crossing. In the north-eastern Gaza Strip.

Hamas operatives blocked off the road and prevented the Palestinians from reaching the crossing with Israel.

Israeli officials said the Hamas blockade was likely part of paranoia by the terror group that Fatah officials were disguised as sick people who required treatment in Israeli hospitals, in an effort to sneak out of Gaza to attend the Fatah conference which was due to open in Bethlehem Tuesday morning.

Hamas men at the junction ordered the people who arrived to return to the Interior Ministry in Gaza City and have their permits to leave the Strip reissued.

http://palsolidarity.org/2009/08/7939

Take action against suppression of Palestinian non-violent resistance in Bil’in
Posted on: August 3, 2009t

Bil’in demonstrates against ongoing night raids and arrests.
3 August 2009

At around 3am on Monday morning, a large military force wearing combat paint and masks invaded the West Bank village of Bil’in. Israeli soldiers raided several homes, arresting 2 Palestinian children, 5 Palestinian adults including Mohammad Khatib of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. The home of another member of the Popular Committee was raided, but soldiers could not arrest him because he was not present at home.

Also arrested were the three brothers Khaled Shawkat Abd-Alrazic al-Khateeb (age 23), Mustafa Shawkat Abd-Alrazic al-Khateeb (age18), and Mohammed Show gut Abd-Alrazic al-Khateeb (age 16); Abdullah Ahmad Yassen (age 18); Abdullah Mohammed Ali Yassen (age 16); Issa Mahmoud Issa Abu Rahma (age 40); This brings to 19 the number of Biliner’s currently in custody.

Monday’s raid is another in a series of many that Israeli forces have carried out in Bil’in since June 29 June 2009, Israeli forces have arrested 25 people (most are under 18). Israeli forces have been using interrogation techniques to pressure the arrested youth to give statements against Bil’in community leaders.

Abdullah Abu Rahme, coordinator of the popular committee stated, “Mohmmad Khatib and Adib Abu Rahme along with other leaders of the Palestinian popular struggle are being targeted because the mobilize Palestinians to resist non- violently. The fact is that the Apartheid Wall and the settlements built on Palestinian land are illegal under international law, in the case of our village even the biased Israeli court declared the route illegal. Yet Israel is prosecuting us as criminals because we struggle nonviolently for our freedom.”

Max, I agree that MLK put his finger on it: classism and imperialism/war. That is what scares us so much, that we can’t just wear the platitudes and sympathies, that we will have to shake up our own comfort, identity, only system we recognize, to really get to the root. I feel too much time and energy is WASTED on the planted diversions. Thank you for pursuing the conversation to root cause analysis.

Peace,
Melissa

Ricardo, in particular, would wrote extensively about the need to capture rent from use of natural resources. Had that prescription been established within the our economics it would have saved us from much of the wealth concentration and created a level “playing field” from one generation to another.

Many things contributed to the berserk economic system that presides as the dominate force in the world. But it is this ability to privatize the commons, and corporate person-hood (none of which comes from either Smith or Ricardo), that has sent this from A to Z. Industrialization was the tipping point; at which time we (collectively) said to hell with future generations, it’s all about ME. So, we went full bore with non-renewable fossile fuel with no care whatsoever for anyone but ourselves. This whole society is nothing without fossile. So as it ends, and must, what then? That is not the result of capitalism, but of a pathology that is a blend of a corporate elite and a political system that feeds off of that wealth produced by that elite.

But we, individually, gave it all over…all our power….any concern for the land…became concern about credit (debt) and machinery (industrialization) as we plowed and raped the earth with total abandonment. That is not capitalism, though capitalism has taken on this grotesque, nihilistic form.

As far as racism, frankly I don’t know what it really is, at least not today. Is it the fact that by all indicators people of color generally fair much worse than those who are white. Not really. That to is a symptom. Is it simply a legacy of slavery; of Jim Crow? If so what does that mean? It is a vicious cycle without end or can we create a path away from it?

It’s easy to talk about slavery (though that is not exclusive to Africans) and one can see the demonizaiton of others to create a power structure (such as Vietnamese/US or Palistinians/Israel); but is that what we’re talking about in the US when we use the word racism?

I think MLK did ulimately put his finger on it. He understood the machinery of war/classism and that it with the concentration of wealth created a prolonged dichotomy of “race” an invention to communicate a collective difference for the means of control and domination. But why is it sustained today?

I asked you not for a definition of capitalism or of racism, but to describe what it is that you describe them as a “symptom” of. It would seem that you have in mind some more fundamental reality, such as the division of society into classes which occurred shortly after humans began to cultivate cereal crops, and was well advanced by the time irrigation was introduced. Or maybe the fact that in presentday society, Production is social but Appropriation of said product is Individual? I’m just speculating, really have no idea what you have in mind, maybe it’s something completely different? Yes?

I asked you not for a definition of capitalism or of racism, but to describe what it is that you describe them as a “symptom” of. It would seem that you have in mind some more fundamental reality, such as the division of society into classes which occurred shortly after humans began to cultivate cereal crops, and was well advanced by the time irrigation was introduced. Or maybe the fact that in presentday society, Production is social but Appropriation of said product is Individual? I’m just speculating, really have no idea what you have in mind, maybe it’s something completely different? Yes?

the homes were owned by Jews dating back to the late 19th century, and were abandoned during a spate of Arab attacks in the area in the 1920s and ’30s.
the Jordanian government took control of these plots under the Enemy Property Law during its rule from 1948 to 1967.

In 1956, 28 Palestinian families who had been receiving refugee assistance from UNRWA were selected to benefit from a relief project, in which they forfeited their refugee aid and moved into homes built on “formerly Jewish property leased by the Custodian of Enemy Property to the Ministry of Development.

The agreement stipulated that the ownership of the homes was to be put in the families’ names – a step that never took place.

In 1972, two Israeli organizations – the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Yisrael Committee – began notifying the residents that they owed rent, and initiated a process with the Israel Lands Administration to register the land in their names, also based on 19th-century Ottoman-era documents.

In 1982, the two committees brought a lawsuit against 23 families for rent delinquency.

the lawyer representing the Palestinians, did not contest the legitimacy of the committees’ ownership claims, and instead arrived at a court-ordered settlement – a binding agreement that can be appealed only if proven to be based on false grounds The years since have resulted in a slew of legal battles between the two sides, now culminating in the eviction of neighborhood residents

Thank’s Max berserk great way to put it.

I would ask that you define what you mean by racism and why it persists.

Capitalism is just a word for an economic system that’s gone berserk.

Thank you in advance for your response.

mary–the REAL TRUE story as opposed to bbc lies
you probably pfere the lies because you’re used to that

High Court Evicts Arab Squatters in Jerusalem

Two Arab families were evicted from Jewish-owned homes in the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood of Jerusalem on Sunday morning. The evictions took place following a Supreme Court ruling in which the court found in favor of Jewish families who claimed ownership of homes in the area.

The evictions took place without unusual disturbances, police said.

The Arab families claimed that they owned the houses in which they lived. Jewish families argued that they were the legal owners of the homes, and that the Arabs had squatted there illegally in an attempt to wrest control of the property from its rightful owners.

The Arab families presented documents that appeared to show Arab ownership of the homes dating back to the Ottoman period. However, the court found that the documents had been forged, and that the documents presented by the Jewish plaintiffs were legitimate.

The neighborhood in question is located near the 2,000-year-old gravesite of the sage Shimon HaTzaddik. The neighborhood was founded in the first half of the 20th century by Jewish families, but fell under Jordanian rule following the 1948 War of Independence and was quickly populated by Jordanian Arabs.

Since the reunification of Jerusalem under Israeli rule in 1967, a number of Jewish families have moved back into the area. Their arrival has been greeted with hostility from local Arabs and from the Palestinian Authority, which has demanded control over the neighborhood as part of a future Arab capital city in Jerusalem.

Jewish activists have fought several legal battles in recent years regarding properties in Jerusalem and in Shimon HaTzaddik in particular. Activists say they are undeterred by the difficulties of regaining control of Jewish property, and plan to continue their efforts to reestablish a Jewish presence in historic Jerusalem neighborhoods.

An end to the current system of power relationships in the ME is not possible without a major shift in the balance of global military, financial and media/propaganda/psyops power.

To envision a real social revolution, in which the current power structure is dismantled and replaced by another more attuned to real human needs is of course a tall order, but such a vision does not equal “the entire cosmos going down a black hole and out the other”.

So let’s not exaggerate the problem, but let’s not minimize it either. Let’s face the facts: as long as the current bunch is running things there will be no justice for the Palestinians, the Native Americans, or anybody else who has something these ZioImperialists want.

Even if you insist on doubting that “US Imperialism” is now being run primarily by and for the richest of the Zionazi Superich, even if you think that the “goyish” element still dominates the capitalist ruling class, what reason have you to hope said goyish Militarist-Fascists will force the Jewish State to agree to anything resembling “a just peace”?’ The evidence of the last sixty-odd years says the whole concept of a negotiated settlement with these fanatic zionists is a pipe dream.

At some pt you have to wise up & stop buying into these pipedreams. It may be unpleasant to look reality straight in the eye, but that’s a necessary first step in the process of finding a way to deal with it.

BTW, Max ol’ buddy, what is it that Racism & Capitalism are a “symptom” of? Thanks:)

lombards, gauls, franks , moravians have lost their languages but most germanic peoples have not.
historians do not report of mass murder by newcomers in any region of europe.

‘jews’ are an anomaly in this regard; thus, we wld be criminal to reward them for their behavior.
the win-win situation is for two peoples to live together.
those that can’t or won’t live with pal’ns wld leave anyway. The people that wld leave wld be mostly nonshemitic voelken.
tnx

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8180413.stm
Sunday, 2 August 2009 15:25 UK

Palestinians evicted in Jerusalem

Palestinian officials say the families lived in the houses for over 50 years (photo)

Israeli police have evicted nine Palestinian families living in two houses in occupied East Jerusalem.

Jewish settlers moved into the houses almost immediately. The US has urged Israel to abandon plans for a building project in the area.

Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since 1967, a move not recognised by the international community.

The evictions have been condemned by the United Nations, the Palestinians and also the UK government.

The US said the evictions were not in keeping with Israel’s obligations under the so-called “road map” to resolve the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

‘Deplorable’

The operation to evict the 53 Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah district of the city was carried out before dawn on Sunday by police clad in black riot gear.

It followed a ruling by Israel’s Supreme Court that the land originally belonged to Jewish families. Israel wants to build a block of 20 apartments in the area.

The police were clad in black riot gear (photo)

The evictions were quickly condemned by the United Nations.

“I deplore today’s totally unacceptable actions by Israel,” the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Robert H Serry said. “These actions are contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions related to occupied territory.

“These actions heighten tensions and undermine international efforts to create conditions for fruitful negotiations to achieve peace,” Mr Perry said.

Palestinian negotiator Saed Erakat said: “Tonight, while these new settlers from abroad will be accommodating themselves and their belongings in these Palestinian houses, 19 newly homeless children will have nowhere to sleep.”

Sovereignty ‘unquestionable’

Israel considers a united Jerusalem to be the capital of the state of Israel.

“Our sovereignty over it is unquestionable,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month.

“We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and buy [homes] anywhere in Jerusalem.”

The BBC’s Tim Franks in Jerusalem says the houses are in what is probably the most contested city on earth and the diplomatic ripples from the evictions will spread.

The UK joined in the condemnation of the evictions. “These actions are incompatible with the Israeli professed desire for peace,” the British Consulate in East Jerusalem said. “We urge Israel not to allow the extremists to set the agenda.”

There are an estimated 250,000 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem and 200,000 Jews.