Workers Stand Against Israeli Apartheid

Omar Barghouti discusses BDS 27-06-2010.wmv

Public seizing illegal Israeli goods in UK supermarkets

Zionist colonialist gives 10 families 24 hours to leave homes

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Ten families in the Jordan Valley were handed home demolition orders on Sunday and given 24 hours to evacuate their lands.

Most of the homes to be demolished belong to the Daraghmah and Al-Makahmreh families, who say they have documents proving their ownership of the land filed with Israel's Land Registry.

The families said they had been issued demolition orders before, however this was the first time they had been given a 24-hour notice.

A spokesman from the Israeli Civil Administration office said the orders were given because the homes are in a "fire zone", putting the residents "at risk."

The homes slated for demolition are in Al-Farsieyah in the Tubas municipality, all in “Area C”, under zoning regulations established under the Oslo Accords, putting them under Israeli civil and military control.

Several villages in Tubas have been targeted by home demolition orders in recent days. Six families in the villages of Al-Hadidiya and Khirbet Humsa were given 10 days to evacuate their land on 21 June, a move which would see 50 Palestinians homeless and without their livelihoods.

So far this year, 125 Palestinians have been displaced by home demolitions in “Area C”, which encompasses 60 percent of the West Bank and is under full Israeli military and administrative control, according to UN reports.

Palestinians can only build within boundaries specified by the Israeli Civil Administration, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has noted, an area that constitutes less than one percent of “Area C”, and much of this is already built up.

Effectively, "in almost the entirety of the Jordan Valley, Palestinian construction is prohibited,” a UN office reported in December 2009.

In a recent report, Amnesty International's deputy director, Philip Luther, remarked that "Demolition and eviction orders do not just destroy people's homes. They also take away their possessions and their hopes for a secure future,"

Last year, at least 600 Palestinians, half of them children, were made homeless by home demolition orders, the report said.


http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=295106

UNRWA director: Innocent children pay toll of Gaza siege

Bethlehem/Gaza – Ma’an – It is "shameful" that the international community allowed the Gaza siege to enter its fourth year as "750,000 innocent children are paying the toll," UNRWA director of Gaza operations John Ging said Sunday.

Speaking at a news conference in Gaza City, Ging added “The political focus should be translated into action rather than discussing improvements or easing the siege. This siege must end completely and immediately.”

Further, he noted that ending the blockade would not only bring peace to the Strip, but to the whole region.

UNRWA currently provides aid for around 800,000 of the 1 million refugees living in the coastal enclave.

In a statement to the Advisory Commission last week, UNRWA chief Filippo Grandi explained that the organization has reduced the support it provides to refugees “hardest hit by poverty and social marginalization” due to a lack of funding.

Grandi condemned the “inherently pathological nature” of the Gaza blockade, which he said is “causing human misery on a massive scale.”


http://maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=294979

Turkey Closes Skies To Israel

'Genocidal' Israel will be put in its place - Chavez

By Frank Jack Daniel

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez described Israel on Saturday as a genocidal state that acted as an assassin for the United States, predicting the Middle East nation would one day be "put in its place."

The socialist Chavez is a harsh critic of both Israel and the United States and cut relations with Israel after accusing it of "holocaust" for its 2009 offensive in the Gaza Strip.

"It has become the assassin arm of the United States, no one can doubt it. It is a threat to all of us," Chavez said, during a visit by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Chavez said he supported a peaceful struggle for the return to Syria of the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967.

"The territory will one day return to the Syrian hands," Chavez said. "Of course we want it to be peaceful because we don't want more war."

"But one day the genocidal state of Israel will be put into its place, and let's hope that a really democratic state emerges there, with which we can share a path and ideas."

Chavez did not offer further details of what putting Israel "in its place" would entail.

U.S. attempts to isolate Syria and reshape the Middle East have failed, he said, and Israel was fast losing allies.

Israel last week eased its land blockade on the Gaza Strip, allowing in all goods except for arms and related materials. That move followed widespread criticism for a raid on a blockade-busting group of boats, in which nine activists died.

Hugely popular in the Arab world for his fierce "anti-imperialist" stance. Chavez received a hero's welcome when he visited Syria in 2006. He returned to Damascus on a tour last year.

ASSAD TOUR

Assad arrived in Venezuela on Friday, the first stop on a rare Latin American tour. He is also due to visit Argentina, Brazil and Cuba.

Syria has started to raise its international profile in recent years, shrugging off Western efforts to weaken it and developing ties with former foe Turkey, Russia and with Latin American nations.

Assad, who faces a decline in domestic oil production and droughts that have hit agriculture, is looking to reinforce links with a rich Syrian expatriate community in the region and with economic power Brazil.

His tour is expected to focus on bilateral issues and Syria's hopes to attract $44 billion in private foreign investment over five years to repair its infrastructure.

He applauded Chavez's loud criticism of the United States and Israel. "Few politicians are brave enough to say no, when it is necessary to say no," Assad said as he arrived at the Miraflores presidential palace.

"He has revealed an image of Venezuela in resistance, creating a place for Venezuela on the international map. He has been on the side on just causes both in Latin America, in our region the Middle East and in the whole world."

(Reporting by Frank Jack Daniel; editing by Todd Eastham)

© Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE65Q0DS20100627?sp=true

Israeli Occupation Soldier: "They are animals, we are humans"

Israelis Enjoy Massacre (Shocking)

How I wish I was wrong - Fidel Castro

When these lines are published tomorrow, Friday, in Granma newspaper, the 26th of July, a date on which we always recall with pride the honor of having resisted the onslaughts of the empire, will still be in the distance, despite it being only 32 days away. 

Those who determine every step of the worst enemy of humanity – United States imperialism, a mixture of ignoble material interests, disdain and underestimation for other people inhabiting the planet – have calculated everything with mathematical precision.

In the Reflection of June 16 I wrote: “Diabolical news is filtering little by little between games and games in the World Cup, in a way that nobody is paying much attention to it.”

The famous sports event has entered its most emotional moments. For 14 days, the teams made up of the best footballers from 32 countries have been competing to advance toward the second round; afterward the phases of quarter finals, semifinals and the final of the event come in successive stages.

Fanaticism for sport is growing incessantly, captivating hundreds or millions and possibly billions of people all over the planet.

On the other hand, one would have to ask how many of them know that, since June 20, U.S. military vessels, including the Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier, escorted by one or more nuclear submarines and other warships with missiles and cannons that are more powerful that those of the old battleships utilized in the last world war from 1939 to 1945, have been navigating toward Iranian coasts via the Suez Canal.

The yanki naval forces are accompanied by Israeli military boats, with equally sophisticated armaments, to inspect every vessel that leaves to export and import commercial products required for the functioning of the Iranian economy.

At the proposal of the United States, with support from the United Kingdom, France and Germany, the UN Security Council approved a harsh resolution that was not vetoed by any of the five countries which hold that right.

Another harsher resolution was approved with the agreement of the United States Senate

Subsequently, a third, even harsher one was passed by the countries of the European Union. All of this took place before June 20, which prompted an urgent trip to Russia by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, according to the news, to meet with the head of state of that powerful country, Dmitry Medvedev, in the hope of negotiating with Iran and avoiding the worst.

Now it is about calculating when the naval forces of the United States and Israel will be deployed facing the Iranian coasts, and joining up there with aircraft carriers and other U.S. military boats which mount guard in this region.

The worst part is that, just like the United States, Israel, its gendarme in the Middle East, possesses extremely modern bomber aircraft and sophisticated weapons supplied by the United States, which has converted it into the sixth nuclear power on the planet given its firepower, among the eight recognized as such, including India and Pakistan.

The Shah of Iran had been defeated by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979 without using a single weapon. The United States imposed the Shah after the war on that nation with the use of chemical weapons, whose components it supplied to Iraq together with the information needed by its combat units and which were deployed by them against the Revolutionary Guards. Cuba knows that because, at that time, as we have explained on other occasions, it was president of the Non-Aligned Movement. We know very well the devastation that it caused among the population. Mahmud Ahmadinejad, now head of state in Iran, was chief of the sixth army of the Revolutionary Guards and chief of the Guard Corps in the western provinces of that country, which bore the brunt of that war.

Today, in 2010, after 31 years, both the United States and Israel are underestimating the one million soldiers in the Iranian Armed Forces and their capacity for fighting on land, and the air, sea and land forces of the Revolutionary Guards.

In addition to these, there are the 20 million men and women, aged from 12 to 60, selected and systematically trained by its diverse military institutions, from out of the 70 million people who inhabit the country.

The government of the United States drew up a plan to instigate a political movement that, supporting itself on capitalist consumerism, would divide Iranians and defeat the regime.

That hope has become innocuous. It is laughable to think that with U.S. warships plus those of Israel, that they can arouse the sympathies of one sole Iranian citizen.

Analyzing the current situation, I initially believed that the battle would begin in the Korean peninsula, and that that area would be the detonator of the second Korean war which, in its turn, would immediately lead to the second war that the United States would impose on Iran.

Now, reality is changing things in an inverse sense: that of Iran will immediately unleash that of Korea.

The leadership of North Korea, which was accused of the sinking of the Cheonan, and is all too well aware that it was sunk by a mine that the yanki intelligence services succeeded in placing in the hull of that corvette, will not hesitate for one second to act as soon as the attack is initiated on Iran.

It is quite right that the football fans should enjoy their craving for the World Cup competitions. I am only fulfilling the duty of exhorting our people, thinking above all of our youth, full of life and hope, and especially our marvelous children, in order that events do not catch us completely unawares.

It pains me to think of so many dreams conceived of by human beings and the astounding creations of which they have been capable in just a few thousand years.

At a time when the most revolutionary dreams are being fulfilled and the homeland is firmly recovering, how I wish I was wrong!

Fidel Castro Ruz

June 24, 2010
9:34 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

http://monthlyreview.org/castro/2010/06/24/how-i-wish-i-was-wrong/