Haaretz August 27th, 2009, by Anat Matar.

Photo: Palestinians walk along the Israeli apartheid wall in the West Bank.

Several days ago Dr. Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev published an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times. In that article he explained why, after years of activity in the peace camp here, he has decided to pin his hopes on applying external pressure on Israel – including sanctions, divestment and an economic, cultural and academic boycott.

He believes, and so do I, that only when the Israeli society’s well-heeled strata pay a real price for the continuous occupation will they finally take genuine steps to put an end to it.

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Palestinian Center for Human Rights, August 13-19, 2009.

Photo: Palestinian boy holds-up Israeli shell in occupied Palestine.

On 14 August 2009, Israeli gunboats opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats opposite to Rafah beach. As a result, a 12-year-old Palestinian child, who was at the beach, was seriously wounded by a gunshot to the head.

During the reporting period, Israeli forces used force against peaceful demonstrations organized by Palestinian civilians in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall in the West Bank. A number of demonstrators also suffered from the inhalation of an unknown substance used by Israeli forces in Bal’ein village, west of Ramallah.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli warplanes bombarded the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt allegedly to destroy smuggling tunnels.

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Tuesday, August 24th, AFP by Adel Zaanoun.

Photo: Zoriah (c). Damaged wall along the Gaza / Egypt border.

GAZA CITY — Three Palestinian brothers were killed and nine other people were wounded on Tuesday when Israel bombed smuggling tunnels between the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and Egypt, medics said.

Rescue services were digging through the rubble to try to find another man who was reported missing after the first Israeli air strike against the tunnels in more than two weeks.

Mansur, Wael and Ibrahim al-Batniji, aged 30, 26 and 24, were working inside the tunnels when Israeli warplanes struck two tunnels in the early morning hours near the border town of Rafah.

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Beirut, Lebanon, August, 2009 Menassat.

Photo: Markus Moning. Reading the newspaper at La Grande Arche, La Défense, Paris.

BEIRUT—On Tuesday, on the third anniversary of al-Akhbar, the Lebanese daily signed a partnership with the Arabic version of Le Monde Diplomatique, a major international newspapers that has more than 70 foreign editions in 25 languages.

At a conference at the Holiday Inn Hotel in Verdun, Beirut, attended by journalists, media persons, and politicians, it was announced that the partnership gives al-Akhbar the exclusive right to distribute a monthly issue of the Arabic language Le Monde Diplomatique in Lebanon and Syria.

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International Solidarity Movement, August 20, 2009.

Photo: Valerian Mazataud. Palestinian community activist Abu Nizar.

20 August 2009: Once again the night in Bil’in was disrupted by a raid ending with the arrest of one the members of the Village’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements. This occurred the night after the childrens demonstration where the children had chanted slogans like “We want to sleep,” “Stop the night raids”.

The house of Bil’in Popular Committee member and vice president of the Bil’in village council, Mohammad Abu Rahma, (age 50), known by his friends as Abu Nizar, was raided shortly before 2am on Thursday morning. About 25 soldiers with their faces painted in black had come to the village on foot.

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Globe and Mail by Paul Koring, Friday August 20th.

Photo: Zoriah (c). Palestinian handles necklace at Israeli checkpoint.

A tough Israeli crackdown that discriminates against some American citizens because they are of Palestinian origin has been sharply protested by the Obama administration, but the same treatment curtailing freedom of movement for Canadian citizens has produced no response from the Harper government.

Border guards at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport have been barring entry to arriving Canadian and American citizens with Palestinian-sounding names. They are told they must make a long detour and enter via the Allenby Bridge land-border crossing that connects the West Bank with Jordan. On arrival there, their passports are stamped “Palestinian Authority only” – preventing them from entering Israel, including the annexed parts of East Jerusalem.

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Al-Ahram by Mustafa Barghouthi, August 2009.

Photo: Palestinian children walking in the West Bank.

Palestinians have only two choices before them, either to continue to evade the struggle, as some have been trying to do, or to summon the collective national resolve to engage in it.

The latter option does not necessarily entail a call to arms. Clearly Israel has the overwhelming advantage in this respect in both conventional and unconventional (nuclear) weapons. Just as obviously, neighbouring Arab countries have neither the will nor ability to go the military route. However, the inability to wage war does not automatically mean surrender and eschewing other means to wage struggle.

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17 August 2009.

Tadamon! collective responds to Montreal Gazette.

Peggy Curran’s article entitled “Activist group stirs up storm” (August 14, page A6) is filled with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, some of which bear directly on the Montreal social-justice collective Tadamon!. For the record, we would like to identify and correct some of these inaccuracies and misrepresentations.

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Haartez Tue., August 11, 2009, by Dana Weiler-Polak.

Photo: Hussein Alazaat. Skyline over Amman, Jordan.

If the term “sweatshop” used to be associated with Asian countries and global brands such as Nike, now such methods of production by exploiting workers have made aliyah. Two Israeli entrepreneurs run a sweatshop in Jordan that produces clothes for leading Israeli brands such as Irit, Bonita, Jump and Pashut, Haaretz has learned.

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Doug Smith, Electronic Intifada, 17 July 2009

Photo: Israel’s apartheid wall in occupied Palestine.

For the first time since the 2005 Palestinian civil society call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against institutions supporting Israeli apartheid, students from North America and Palestine came together in Ramallah to share their ideas and experiences. Consisting of eight days of travel and a four-day workshop, the North American student delegation spent their two weeks getting connected with the struggle in Palestine in order to better articulate the BDS movement in their respective cities. The visiting students met face to face with those who are living and resisting the systematic oppression of Palestinians by the state of Israel.

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