Someone is paying attention:
For 28 months, Palestinians from the West Bank village of Bil'in have been joined by Israeli and international solidarity activists to non-violently protest the seizure of Palestinian land and Israel's Apartheid Wall.
Today, said an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) press release, before reaching their destination at the Wall, the Israeli army set up a roadblock of razor wire, separating the protesters from the Wall. As demonstrators crossed the razor wire, Occupation soldiers started to throw tear gas and sound grenades.
Immediately, Israeli soldiers kidnapped Mohammad Khatib of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. As more activists arrived at the scene, soldiers became more aggressive and started to push and hit people, including camerapersons and activists.
http://www.wafa.ps/...
Iyad, from Bil'in, was kicked in his groin by an Israeli soldier. Iyad fell to the ground in pain. Soldiers hovered above him, preventing other activists from helping, until another soldier took a tear gas canisters and threw it towards Iyad as he lay on the ground.
Meanwhile:
About a dozen U.S. lawmakers in Israel
Among the delegations were a Senate team including Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) and Sen. Chick Hagel (R-Neb.); Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (D-Fla.) and Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), Charlie Crist (R.); Sen. Joe Liberman (I-Conn.), Rep. David Price (D-N.C.), and Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.)
http://www.jta.org/...
Why is Condi sounding reasonable to me?
"The best solution here is going to be when there is a Palestinian state that can live side by side in peace and freedom with Israel," the U.S. secretary of state told CNN on Thursday when she was asked about violence on Israel's border with the Gaza Strip. "It's not something that can be set aside just because circumstances are difficult in the Middle East. If every time circumstances got difficult in the Middle East, you'd set aside the course of trying to get to a two-state solution, you'd never move forward."
http://www.jta.org/...
Captured Gaza journalist speaks--video:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
.....out of words...ugh:
DERSHOWITZ V. FINKELSTEIN: Why the famous lawyer is working so hard to deny tenure to a Jewish professor in Chicago
http://www.chicagojewishnews.com/...
Isn't this interesting:
‘Israel Lobby’ Prof. Hawks Tome in Appearance at Jewish Bookfest
That was a question on some minds when Stephen Walt, co-author of a controversial paper criticizing the role of the "Israel Lobby" in American foreign policy, made a presentation at this year’s 9th Annual Jewish Book Network conference. The event, which is run by the Jewish Book Council, connects authors with directors at the nearly 100 sites that host Jewish book programs, including JCCs, synagogues, Hillels, Jewish federations, synagogues and other related organizations.
http://www.forward.com/...
snip
"Our audience knows that the Jewish Book Council is not making a statement by presenting any of these authors," said Miryam Pomerantz, program director at the Jewish Book Council. "We are merely giving them a forum for them to choose."
Event coordinators agreed, arguing that it was their right to choose what worked best for their own audiences.
Freedom:
Blogger Opens Iranian-Israeli Dialogue Online
Toronto - As Tehran and Jerusalem exchange threats on a regular basis, a former Iranian journalist who is credited with having popularized Internet "blogging" in the Islamic republic is waging a campaign to defuse the tensions.
Hossein Derakhshan, a 32-year-old Iranian expatriate living in Toronto, files daily blog posts in his native Farsi and in English. Although the Iranian authorities attempt to restrict access to his blogs, Derakhshan says he has 20,000 Iranian readers who know how to circumvent the government filters or who receive the material via e-mail.
snip
Derakhshan wants Israelis to know that Ahmadinejad, though president, is not the supreme leader in Iran, and that the ruling ayatollahs have "never said anything close to" Ahmadinejad’s apocalyptic remarks. "Total rejection of the idea of Israel is not part of the intrinsic ideology of the Islamic Republic," he said.
http://www.forward.com/...
Something to argue about:
British document: Israel initiated Entebbe hijack
Official government file quotes unnamed source as claiming Shin Bet cooperated with Air France flight's hijackers, PFLP group, in instigating crisis in bid to weaken PLO
http://www.ynetnews.com/...