Justice for Palestine

Michael Shaik, Australians for Palestine

In 2005, more than 170 organisations endorsed a call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BIDS) against Israel. These organisations represent Palestinian refugees in exile, Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and the subjugated Palestinian citizens of the Israeli state.

6.30pm Tuesday 6 July

(cheap meal from 6pm) Resistance Centre, Druids House, Level 5/ 407 Swanston St, Melbourne city (opposite RMIT)

For more info Ph: 9639 8622 or 0413 377 978

A Socialist Alliance monthly meeting. www.socialist-alliance.org

CANBERRA
Tues 22 June 2010, 6.00pm: Diana Buttu will be guest-of-honour at the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine dinner at Parliament House. Some 24 MPs and senators from both side of politics, as well as the Greens, the National party and independents will be attending with 10 journalists, some church representatives and Arab ambassadors. The evening is being sponsored by Australians for Palestine and the Australian Friends of Palestine Association.
For more information, contact Moammar Mashni 0419 999 773 or Basem Abdo 0417 541 465

PERTH
Wednesday 23 June 2010, 6.30pm: Friends of Palestine, WA will host a public meeting with Diana Buttu as guest speaker at the University of Western Australia, Ross Lecture Theatre, Physics Building. Entry by donation.

Thursday 24 June 2010, 2.00pm: Diana Buttu to meet CFMEU officials. 
For more information, contact Alex Whisson 0407 850 962

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Barak warns against further harming Israel-Turkey relations

By Barak Ravid and Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondents, and Haaretz Service

Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Monday warned against further harming Israel’s relations with Turkey, after Turkey excluded Israel from a joint military exercise because of its criticism of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

“The relations between Israel and Turkey are strategic and have been maintained for dozens of years,” Barak said in a closed meeting, according to a statement his press officer released.

He added: “Despite all the ups and downs, Turkey continues to be a central figure in our region; it is unsuitable to be drawn into criticizing it.”

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EU backs UN Gaza report, disappointing Israel

STOCKHOLM (AFP) ? The European Union backed on Thursday a contentious UN report blasting Israel‘s military offensive in Gaza, praising its chief author and saying the document is “worthy of consideration.”

Israel immediately expressed disappointment at the support from Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt — whose country holds the EU presidency — and said it showed that Bildt had either not read the report or misunderstood it.

“It is worthy of consideration needless to say, I think Mr Goldstone is a person of high credibility and high integrity and accordingly his report carries weight,” Bildt told reporters in Stockholm.

The report by a fact-finding mission led by former international war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone accused both Israel and Palestinian armed groups of committing war crimes in the three-week Gaza war that erupted on 27 December, 2008.

“It is now in the Human Rights Council (based in Geneva) and that’s where we think it should be deliberated, it is an independent report,” Bildt added.

In Israel, foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said: “Anyone who had bothered reading the report and not just the headlines in the press would realise this is not an independent or professional investigation but a collection of claims brought forward by Hamas to the members of the panel.

“The Swedish foreign minister‘s words are very disappointing because they show that either he did not read the text or that he really did not understand what was written in it,” he told AFP.

More than 1,300 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s land, sea and air assault, Operation Cast Lead, launched in the impoverished coastal strip to stop Hamas militants firing rockets at Israeli civilians.

Some 5,300 people were wounded, with 4,100 homes destroyed and 17,000 damaged. Israel lost 10 soldiers and three civilians.

[Ramallah, 8 October 2009]

On Sunday, 4 October 2009, it was reported in the media that a Palestinian child had been shot on his family’s farm in the north of the Gaza Strip, near the border with Israel. It is reported that the child was shot in the spine and is now recovering in hospital, having first been denied access to medical care.

Israel has established a so called ‘buffer zone’ inside Gaza, a closed military zone which runs the entire length of the border. Since the end of the Israeli offensive in January 2009, this ‘no go’ area has been extended 300 metres into Gaza, although the killing of civilians has been reported up to one kilometer from the border.

The UN estimates that the buffer zone consumes approximately 30 percent of Gaza’s arable farmland, at a time when there is a near-total Israeli blockade of the territory. With limited options, farmers and their families are compelled to risk their lives in order to gather food from their lands in and around this killing zone. Read the rest of this entry »