Press release, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine 22 September 2009.

Photo: ActiveStills Israel’s apartheid wall in the Palestinian West Bank.

The University Center of Ariel in Samaria (AUCS) has been excluded from the Solar Decathlon, an international university competition promoting sustainable architecture.

The self-styled AUCS, claiming to represent Israel, though situated in the illegal settlement of Ariel in the occupied West Bank, was one out of 20 architecture teams short-listed from university entries last April to compete for the Solar Decathlon-Europe 2010. The Spanish Government together with the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid organizes this most prestigious competition for sustainable architecture in the world.

(…اكثر)

Daily Star by Matthew Mosley, Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Photo: Tanya Traboulsi Antennas in the sky in Beirut, Lebanon.

BEIRUT: “We’re a growing family,” says Zeid Hamdan, describing the Lebanese underground music scene. “Audiences have been following us since the beginning and they see constant progress. They see that we’re serious about the music. Now a whole new generation of teenagers is becoming interested in what we do.”

If Hamdan gets his way, underground music will soon break into the light of mainstream media attention. One half of the defunct band Soap Kills and one third of cult rockers The New Government, Hamdan has fought to promote the alternative scene on various fronts. Now, with “The Road to Kfifane,” he is presiding over a music festival dedicated solely to Lebanese talent.

(…اكثر)

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009. Palestine’s first BDS prisoner of conscience!

Photo: Israel’s apartheid wall in Palestine.

On Tuesday, September 22, Mohammad Othman (33 years old)—a Palestinian human rights activist and advocate of the non-violent civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)—was arrested by Israeli authorities at the Allenby Crossing, the border terminal between Jordan and the occupied Palestinian territory. He was returning from a trip to Norway—where he had been promoting BDS—when he was detained, arrested and then moved to a prison where he is being held for a military hearing scheduled for next Tuesday.

(…اكثر)

September 21st, 2009 Haaretz

Photo: Palestinian holds Israeli military shells in Gaza.

United Nations investigator Richard Goldstone, whose commission of inquiry found Israel guilty of war crimes in the Gaza Strip, said Monday that Israel Defense Forces soldier and officers must be held accountable for any violations to military standards.

Goldstone’s findings outraged Israeli officials across the political and military spectrum, who accused the former South African judge of bias and failure to sufficiently recognize as war crimes Hamas’ rocket fire during the winter offensive.

(…اكثر)

Richard Falk, Electronic Intifada, 22 September 2009.

Photo: Palestinian youth hoist flag admidts rubble in Gaza.

Richard Goldstone, former judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court, the first prosecutor at The Hague on behalf of the International Criminal Court for Former Yugoslavia, and anti-apartheid campaigner reports that he was most reluctant to take on the job of chairing the United Nations fact-finding mission charged with investigating allegations of war crimes committed by Israel and Hamas during the three week Gaza war of last winter.

Goldstone explains that his reluctance was due to the issue being “deeply charged and politically loaded,” and was overcome only because he and his fellow commissioners were “professionals committed to an objective, fact-based investigation,” adding that “above all, I accepted because I believe deeply in the rule of law and the laws of war,” as well as the duty to protect civilians to the extent possible in combat zones. The four-person fact-finding mission was composed of widely respected and highly qualified individuals, including the distinguished international law scholar Christine Chinkin, a professor at the London School of Economics. Undoubtedly adding complexity to Goldstone’s decision is the fact that he is Jewish, with deep emotional and family ties to Israel and Zionism, bonds solidified by his long association with several organizations active in Israel.

(…اكثر)

Haaretz by Udi Aloni, September 22nd, 2009

Photo: ActiveStills Palestinians trying to reach Jerusalem during Ramadan.

Jewish international celebrities, from Jerry Seinfeld to Sacha Baron Cohen, have come out once again, riding the horses of glory, to save Israel from the cruel enemy, that is to save her from us, those fighting for human rights.

They have published a counter-declaration to the Toronto declaration. The latter, of which I am a co-drafter along with Naomi Klein, John Greyson and others, protests the cooperation between the Toronto Film Festival and the rebranding of the State of Israel as an enlightened democratic state (instead of an occupying state).

(…اكثر)

Report from United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), September 2009.

Photo: Palestinian youth walking down Israeli military Erez checkpoint in Gaza Strip.

The underground water supplies, upon which 1.5 million Palestinians depend for agricultural and drinking water, are in danger of collapse as a result of years of over-use and contamination that have been exacerbated by the recent conflict.

A report released today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) on the environmental condition of the Gaza Strip following the hostilities, calls for the aquifer to be “rested” and alternative water sources found.

(…اكثر)

September 2009 Link letter by Doug Smith.

Photo: Kevin Walsh. Riot police in front Concordia University, September 2002.

This past August, Concordia President Judith Woodsworth was the opening speaker at a Conference entitled, “Israel on Campus: Defending Our Universities.”

(…اكثر)

September 20th, 2009, by Rana Moussaoui (AFP)

Photo: Zoriah (c) Buildings destroyed by Israeli bombings in south Beirut, 2006.

BEIRUT — Israeli director Samuel Maoz’s “Lebanon” may have won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival but it has been given a hostile reception by critics and bloggers in the country it is named after.

“This film shows the Israeli point of view,” wrote the Venice correspondent of the Lebanese daily An-Nahar, which is aligned with the US-backed parliamentary majority.

(…اكثر)

Muntazer al-Zaidi, guardian.co.uk Thursday 17 September 2009.

Photo: Zoriah (c) Iraq’s national flag painted in Baghdad.

I am free. But my country is still a prisoner of war. There has been a lot of talk about the action and about the person who took it, and about the hero and the heroic act, and the symbol and the symbolic act. But, simply, I answer: what compelled me to act is the injustice that befell my people, and how the occupation wanted to humiliate my homeland by putting it under its boot.

Over recent years, more than a million martyrs have fallen by the bullets of the occupation and Iraq is now filled with more than five million orphans, a million widows and hundreds of thousands of maimed. Many millions are homeless inside and outside the country.

(…اكثر)