WHY NOT IN VEGAS ?

ALL ABOUT THE JACKPOT: Romney's trip to Israel was to court donations

 SINCE United States presidential candidate Mitt Romney's whole trip was about how to satisfy the right-wing, super pro-Bibi Netanyahu, American Jewish casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, why didn't they just do the whole thing in Las Vegas? 

It was all about how much Romney would say whatever the Israeli right wanted to hear and how big a jackpot of donations Adelson would shower on the Romney campaign in return.

Much of what is wrong with the US-Israel relationship today can be found in that Romney trip.

     In recent years, to garner more Jewish (and evangelical) votes and money, the Republican party decided to "out-pro-Israel" the Democrats by being even more unquestioning of Israel. This arms race has pulled the Democratic Party to the right on the Middle East and has basically forced the Obama team to shut down the peace process and drop any demands that Israel freeze settlements.

State Department officials, not to mention politicians, are reluctant to even state publicly what is US policy -- that settlements are "an obstacle to peace" -- for fear of being denounced as anti-Israel.

       Add to that the importance of single donors who can write mega cheques to "super Political Action Committees" -- and the fact that the main Israel lobby, Aipac, has made itself the feared arbiter of which lawmakers are "pro" and which are "anti-Israel" and, therefore, who should get donations and who should not -- and you have a situation in which there are almost no brakes around Israel coming from America anymore.

Into this environment, Romney wandered to declare how he will be so much nicer to Israel than big, bad Obama.

      But on what matters to Israel's survival -- advanced weaponry and intelligence -- Defence Minister Ehud Barak told CNN: "This administration under President Obama is doing, in regard to our security, more than anything that I can remember in the past."

While Romney had time for a US$50,000-(RM155,000)-a-plate breakfast with American Jewish donors in Jerusalem, with Adelson at his elbow, he did not have two hours to go to Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority, to meet with its president, Mahmoud Abbas, or to share publicly any ideas on how he would advance the peace process.

He did have time, though, to point out to his Jewish hosts that Israelis are clearly more culturally entrepreneurial than Palestinians. Israel today is an amazing beehive of innovation -- thanks, in part, to an influx of Russian brainpower, massive US aid and smart policies.

It's something Jews should be proud of. But had Romney gone to Ramallah, he would have seen a Palestinian beehive of entrepreneurship, too, albeit small, but not bad for a people living under occupation.

    Palestinian business talent also built the Persian Gulf states. Romney didn't know what he was talking about. On peace, the Palestinians' diplomacy has been a fractured mess. It is in Israel's overwhelming interest to test and have the US keep testing creative ideas for a two-state solution.

    That is what a real US friend would promise to do. Otherwise, Israel could be doomed to become a kind of apartheid South Africa.The three US statesmen who have done the most to make Israel more secure and accepted in the region all told blunt truths to every Israeli or Arab leader: Jimmy Carter, who helped forge a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt; Henry Kissinger, who built the post-1973 war disengagement agreements with Syria, Israel and Egypt; and James Baker, who engineered the Madrid peace conference.

    All of them knew that to make progress in this region you have to get in the face of both sides. They both need the excuse at times that "the Americans made me do it", because their own politics are too knotted to move on their own.

   So how about all you US politicians -- Republicans and Democrats -- stop feeding off this conflict for political gain. Stop using this conflict as a backdrop for campaign photo-ops and fund-raisers.Stop making things even worse by telling the most hard-line Israelis everything that they want to hear, just to grovel for Jewish votes and money, while blatantly ignoring the other side. There are real lives at stake out there.

If you're not going to do something constructive, stay away. They can make enough trouble for themselves on their own. NYT

source : http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/why-not-in-vegas-1.118332

PALESTINIAN CHILDREN

by Emily L. Hauser Jun 29, 2012 9:30 AM EDT

Those of us who advocate for a just Israeli-Palestinian peace (however defined) make a point of clarifying that each side has seen enormous suffering, and we’re right to do so. There are no angels and very few innocents in this war–there’s far more ugly dehumanization, bloodletting, and endless, inconsolable mourning.

But surely if anyone’s innocent, if anyone has a right to claim our non-ideological attention, it’s Israeli and Palestinian children, people born into a conflict not of their making, and thrust into violence through no fault of their own. Shalhevet Pass was only 10 months old when she was killed; Abir Aramin 10 years. Shalhevet was shot in her stroller in Hebron; Abir was shot when the Israeli border patrol opened fire on suspected stone-throwers. The facts surrounding these children’s deaths cannot mitigate them in any way; these are two little girls buried in the ground. There is no excuse or absolution.

Palestinian boys inspect the damage at a cheese factory in Gaza City following an Israeli air strike on the Gaza Strip. (Mahmud Hams / AFP / Getty Images)

But when we talk about each side’s enormous suffering–when I name two children, one Israeli, one Palestinian–and leave it at that, we make it sound as if the scales weigh equally, as if the suffering can be effectively compared. But that’s simply not true. ­

One dead child is one too many. Period. But we’re lying to ourselves if we think that it doesn’t matter that in the past 12 years, 90 Israeli children have died at the hands of Palestinians, while Israel has been responsible for the deaths of 1,331 Palestinian children (note that this figure doesn’t include those killed in airstrikes this month).

And death and bereavement are hardly the only troubles that this conflict brings to a Palestinian childhood.

 Since September 2000, Israel has arrested some 7,000 Palestinian children and prosecuted them in military courts. 62% were arrested in the middle of the night, between the hours of midnight and 5 am; 87% were subjected to physical violence. Whereas Israeli law stipulates that Israeli children under the age of 14 may not be imprisoned, and must be allowed to see a lawyer within 48 hours, Military Order 1651 states that the minimum age of criminal responsibility for Palestinian children is 12, and children may be held for as long as three months without legal representation.

One example: In January, 7 year old Muhammad Ali Dirbas was arrested after a stone-throwing incident in the Palestinian village of Issawiya in East Jerusalem. Muhammad was detained by riot police at 4:00 pm, held and interrogated without a parent present for five hours (despite the fact that his father had learned of the arrest and arrived at the police station by 6:00). The 7 year old was finally allowed to see his father at 9:00 pm, when the two were questioned further. They were finally released two hours later.

Then there are things like this: In East Jerusalem–where Israel holds 100% of the administrative and governmental control–84% of children live below the poverty line. There is a chronic shortage of some 1,000 classrooms on that side of the city, and only six preschools, compared to 66 in Jewish Jerusalem. When it comes to amenities such as public parks, libraries, and playgrounds, Jewish Jerusalem receives 95.5%, 92.3%, and 99% of the city’s budget allocation, respectively. Indeed, in February of this year, the Israeli Parks Authority demolished the only community center and playground available to non-Jewish children in the East Jerusalem village of Silwan.

Do the Palestinian leadership and people share some of the responsibility for–if not conditions in Jerusalem–those 7,000 arrests and 1,331 deaths? They certainly do, just as  the Israeli leadership and people share some of the responsibility for the minors involved in a recent “price tag” attack on a mosque, and the 90 dead Israeli children. People who act on notions of vengeance, or advance hate, or choose to make war rather than aggressively seek peace, all share in the responsibility when children are caught up in the maelstrom.

But they are not, ultimately, the responsible parties. Those who pull the trigger, let loose the rocket, drop the bomb are responsible­–or, more to the point: The leaders who tell them to do so.

As an exercise, let’s switch some nouns: 1,331 Israeli children killed; 7,000 Israeli children arrested by Palestinian security forces, some as young as 7, most subjected to violence; 84% of Jewish kids living in poverty in Jerusalem; 1% of that city’s budget going to Jewish playgrounds.

What would we do? How would we feel? Would we be more, or less, likely to lean toward trust and reconciliation?

I understand that this conflict is complex. I understand that when two nationalities clash, there can only be suffering. I understand that groping our way toward a shared justice will never be easy, nor will it be perfect.

But I also know that if I had grown up under those conditions, I might not be of a mind to make it any easier.

Since September 2000, at least 1,421 Israeli and Palestinian children have been killed. Neither side is served by those graves, nor by the broken hearts that are left behind.

source : http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/29/palestinian-children.html

MORE ON PALESTINIAN CHILDREN

by Emily L. Hauser Jul 27, 2012 9:00 AM EDT

Last month I wrote about some of the struggles faced by Palestinian kids, not least the fact that Israeli forces have killed more than 1,300 children since 2000 (90 Israeli children have been killed in that same time).

The problem with articles like mine, though, is that shocking statistics tend to elide the grinding daily struggles, the smaller things that shape a Palestinian child’s life.

Palestinian children who live in caves near the Palestinian village of Jimba, south of Yatta, near the West Bank town of Hebron, rest on a mattress outside their home (Hazem Bader / AFP / Getty Images)

As mental health care activist Vicky Hosker wrote in +972 on Sunday:

Chronic uncertainty surrounds children living under occupation like amniotic fluid. Even if they aren’t one of the 500-700 children who are arrested annually by the IDF, even if they haven’t had their homes demolished or lived through bombing raids, they imbibe fear. They also inherit the anxieties and preoccupations of their parents, many of whom were born into this situation themselves and grew up with a similar sense of instability.

That uncertainty and anxiety expresses itself in virtually every area of life—education, for instance.

On Monday, UNICEF released a report about the impact of Israel’s security barrier on the schooling of children in East Jerusalem:

[Karimeh Khatib] had been a teacher at the Comboni Convent pre-school centre in East Jerusalem for 20 years when, two years ago, her commute to school turned from a simple 10-minute walk to a daily trial involving escorting 4- and 5-year-olds through an Israeli-controlled checkpoint, with a bus ride at either end.

…Crossing the checkpoint on foot, Ms. Khatib has to take the children one-by-one through steel turnstiles, electronic detectors and iron bars, which scare several of the little girls. “There’s usually some sort of problem at the checkpoint,” said Ms. Khatib, 45. “I once got my arm stuck in the turnstile, and I’m always afraid this will happen to one of the children…”

It now takes Khatib an hour or more to get her charges through the barrier (if it’s open—military authorities often close West Bank checkpoints), and once the toddlers get to school, they are literally surrounded by the concrete wall—25 feet high in most places, but “Israeli Security Forces recently entered the kindergarten to heighten the Barrier even more.”

Within Gaza, Palestinians have freedom of movement, but that stops at the border. Neither goods nor people can get in or out of the Strip legally unless the Israeli military approves (the exception is a single pedestrian crossing into Egypt, which cannot handle commercial goods).

The UN reports that as a result of the blockade, more than 80% of Gazan families depend on humanitarian aid; Israeli human rights organization Gisha reports that even with the much-ballyhooed easing of the blockade since the Mavi Marmara incident, the amount of goods allowed into Gaza is still only about half of what it was before the blockade was imposed. Moreover, Israel doesn’t allow construction materials in, calling such items (cement, gravel, steel) “dual use” (and thus potentially useful for building weapons).

What this means for education is two-fold: First and foremost, Gaza is in desperate need of schools but has no way to build new ones, or repair those damaged or destroyed in the various rounds of hostilities with Israel. Terrible crowding is endemic, and, as a result, many schools are forced to teach the Strip’s half a million students in double or triple shifts.

And yet, an even more basic problem is the question of books. The Christian Science Monitor reported this week  that it has become very difficult to obtain any kind of books in Gaza—not because they’re banned, but because the sheer mechanics of the blockade make getting them in all-but impossible.

Educators in particular are feeling the pinch. Gazans now resort to bootlegging the books they need, or smuggling them through Gaza’s extensive (and frequently bombed by Israel) system of tunnels. According to Awni Maqayyid, head of the central library at the Islamic University, “the education system would collapse” without the smugglers’ help.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is full of big, awful, often bloody things. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by the recent report in Israeli daily Yediot Aharonot  that among children exposed to trauma, one in four Israelis suffer from PTSD, as do nearly three-quarters of Palestinians—the children of southern Israel struggling with the emotional fall-out of falling rockets; Palestinians like seven-year-old Yara, hiding in a closet for fear soldiers are going to arrest her for dropping candy wrappers.

But the conflict is also full of smaller, quieter, terrible little moments. Like just trying to get to school, just trying to get books.

As one Gazan said to The Christian Science Monitor:

If people are living in a stable situation, they will behave stable. But if their situation is unstable, that causes the attacks that you see in the streets, the recklessness and radicalization. Things here are not stable.

“The most critical impact of the siege,” the man said, “is the psychological one.”

source : http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/27/more-on-palestinian-children.html