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.

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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).

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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.

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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.”

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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.

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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.

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Bil’in Popular Committee | 18 September 2009

Photo: ActiveStills. Israeli military launches teargas in Bil’in, Palestine.

Dozens were suffocated with tear gas canisters at the weekly demonstration in Bil’in. As the people of Bil’in with international and Israeli peace activists participated in Bil’in’s weekly demonstration after Friday prayers today, although they have raised Palestinian flags and banners to mark the twenty-seventh anniversary of the massacre at Sabra and Shatila and they have raised other banners condemning the policy of incursions, arrests, land confiscation and settlement construction.

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par Nayla Naoufal | Le Panoptique

Photo: Nicholas Marcroft (c) l’eau potable en Palestine occupée.

Dans le conflit israélo-palestinien, l’eau semble à la fois un enjeu important et un dommage collatéral. Les politiques hydriques israéliennes dans les Territoires Palestiniens Occupés et le conflit entraînent des impacts nuisibles sur les ressources en eau partagées et ne font qu’exacerber les hostilités.

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Daily Star by Rami G. Khouri, Saturday, September 19, 2009.

Photo: Tanya Traboulsi. Sky over sea, Beirut, Lebanon.

The amount and quality of available scientific data on the global impact of climate change, I rediscovered at a seminar organized by the Danish Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen this week, is staggering. The debate that swirled around the issues of climate change and global warming just two or three years ago has vanished. There is much more certainty now on the nature and extent of the changes to the Earth’s climate that can be attributed to the impact of human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases.

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Haaretz September 17th, 2009.

Photo: Israeli bombings over the Gaza Strip.

British labor unions on Thursday agreed to support a boycott of some Israeli goods in response to the offensive in Gaza last winter.

The boycott, proposed by the Fire Brigades Union, calls for a ban on importing goods produced in some Israeli settlements, an end of arms trading with Israel and disinvestment from some companies.

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