Searching For Eliyahu Gorey



By



Rob Eshelman



East Jerusalem comes alive early. The six a.m. sun hits the high, stonewalls of the Old City and castes a long shadow before the Damascus Gate. Radios from taxi cabs and passing police vehicles squawk commands to the cab drivers, already chain-smoking, and the 18-year old soldiers behind the wheels of their jeeps. A cab driver yells, “Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv” over and over, while the smell of falafel balls frying in hot oil and Turkish coffees waft through the crisp morning air.



Despite being in Palestine, some things remain the same for me – the need for a morning caffeine fix and a look at the day’s headlines. For the second consecutive day, the English language addition of Haaretz is focused on a missing Israeli cab driver, Eliyahu Gorey, suspected of being apprehended by Palestinian militants. It smacks of the same stupid sensational journalism rampant in the US: Lacy Peterson, or that child star from Colorado who we were commanded to care about.



The ride to Ramallah is bumpy and I arrive at the Qalandia checkpoint outside of the city within 30 minutes. Checkpoints – the object which so clearly illustrates the realities of Israeli occupation. From above, Qalandia would take the shape of a dumbbell. At each end of the checkpoint, massive amounts of activity. Cabs, trucks carrying goods, people trying to get to work or to see their families. In the middle, a long narrow stream of people passing nearly single fill under the gaze of young Israeli soldiers with automatic weapons.

nolympics submits


The following was published as a commentary by the Financial Times. It's written by Ali Abunimah (media watcher and co-founder of electronicintifada.net) and Hasan Abunimah.

The holes in Israel's road map



Despite the declaration of a unilateral Palestinian ceasefire with Israel, and the frequent meetings between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, the "road map" for peace is in serious trouble. This is because the Bush administration, the plan's chief sponsor, has allowed Israel to reinterpret it so that it is gutted of the elements that offered hope of progress.


Two elements distinguish the road map from the failed Oslo process. First, it requires Israel to freeze all settlement construction in the occupied territories at the outset and to remove all colonies established since March 2001. Second, the road map spells out explicitly the objective of the peace process: an end to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory; and two states, Palestine and Israel, living side by side.


Because Israel depends on the US for the military and diplomatic backing that allows it to continue its occupation of Arab land indefinitely, the success or failure of the plan lies in Washington's willingness to confront an Israel that remains committed to the settlements and opposed to a genuinely independent Palestinian state.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Enron-Style Management in a Dangerously Complex World"

John Chuckman

At least North Korea won't have Bush droning about fake documents for the sale of uranium from Niger. He's already played that role, and it wasn't well received. Besides, North Korea reprocesses spent nuclear-reactor fuel to extract plutonium, and they now politely inform us they have enough to build six nuclear devices. Former Defense Secretary Perry, normally a man of soft words and low blood pressure, says the US will be at war with North Korea before very long.

Rob writes:

This is a piece written by the mother of Tom Hurndall, a young, British photographer shot by the Israeli Occupation Forces while trying to pull two Palestinian children from harms way.

http://news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=781552003

nolympics submits

by Juliana Fredman



Art.55 To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate.



Art. 56. To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the public Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties. Geneva Convention.


In the perversity that overwhelms while making a documentary about other people's misery we had to make a conscious effort not to lament the recent, albeit limited, easing of restrictions. 'If only you had been here last year', everyone said. 'You would see they shoot at the ambulances every day. We were so short on supplies that now we keep 6 months worth in all towns'.



So many patients die of kidney failure at checkpoints that first Jenin and now Tulkarim have been forced to establish small dialysis units. The trip to Nablus had become too hazardous, too long, and often the patients were turned around and left to go home and die. More than 70 patients have died in ambulances being held at checkpoints. Many more babies have been born at checkpoints or at home in villages because ambulances could not reach them. Incidents of death during or just after labor for both mother and child have increased dramatically in the past two and a half years. I was here last summer, riding ambulances, doing direct action, too horrified and busy to pick up a camera. But now things appear quieter.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Has the Gulf War Taken Place Yet?"

Daniel Jewesbury, Variant

Shortly after the NATO intervention in Kosovo in 1999, Michael Ignatieff published a book called ‘Virtual War’1. In it he argued that Kosovo was a new type of conflict, marked most particularly by the ability of Western nations to wage what he called ‘war with impunity’. This impunity had two defining characteristics. Firstly, ‘the citizens of the NATO countries… were mobilized not as combatants, but as spectators. The war was a spectacle… The events in question were as remote from their essential concerns as a football game’ (p.3). Secondly, the sheer wealth of the West means that, even with relatively small defence budgets, we can afford to fight wars and not suffer noticeable changes to our standard of living. Both these conditions, Ignatieff argued, were new, and fundamentally altered the nature of global power relations.

eleusa writes

Radical Exchange / Solidarity with Argentina

Call for Translators

We hope that through workshops and translations about social movements in
Argentina we can begin to discuss new ways to organize in our own
communities; to talk about autonomy, popular education and direct democracyby way of the example of social movements in Argentina.
In our translations we focus on materials written by the movements
themselves, concentrating on methods of organization and strategic
principals. Our focus thus far has been the MTD (unemployed workers
(movement) Anibel Veron. However, we are hoping to expand our work to
include many other important causes in Argentina such as occupied and
collectively run factories, neighbourhood assemblies and indigenous and
campasino movements.

nolympics submits:

"Four International Solidarity Movement Workers Arrested"

July 9, 2003

[Arrabony, Jenin Region, Occupied Palestine] Four international volunteers with the International Solidarity Movement were arrested today while
maintaining a presence at the peace camp set up by Arrabony
villagers and the ISM to protest the confiscation of Palestinian
land for the Apartheid Wall. The four arrested are:

Tobias Karlsson from Sweden

Tariq Loubani from Canada

Bill Capowski from New York, USA

Fredrick Lind from Denmark

Full details are not yet known and none of the peace activists are
answering their phones, however we just received the following text message: "at Salem abused and beaten". This seems to indicate that the four are being held at the Salem Military Base, north of Jenin.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

"Racism, Exploitation and Neglect:

Bush and Africa"

Martha Honey, Counterpunch

It was a powerfully symbolic gift, coming as it did from one of the world's
poorer countries to the world's richest. In June 2002, a Maasai village in
Kenya presented its most precious resource, fifteen head of cattle, to the
United States as an expression of solidarity for the tragedy of September
11. "To the people of America, we give these cows to help you," read
banners at the ceremonial handover of the cattle from Maasai elders to the
U.S. ambassador. The gift was all the more poignant since the U.S.
government still has not compensated the families of the Kenyan victims of
terrorism who died in al-Qaeda's 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in
Nairobi.

Anonymous Comrade submits:

Weapons of Mass Destruction Found