Bcc: contributors Friends, My apologies for not posting in quite a while. I've been swamped with the work involved in getting a new startup company off the ground. Needless to say, I'm glad this opportunity has come along... it will be good to be economically viable again. Still not enough time to write anything, but I'll share some of the messages that have been piling up about the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories. I am aware that many of you do not share my views on what's going on there. The issues are clouded by the Palestinian suicide bombers who target innocent civilians, as well as by the sympathy all of us share for the historic suffering of the Jewish people. As I see it, the historic suffering issue is entirely irrelevant to the present day circumstances, and the desperate response of the suicide bombers, though not excusable, is also inevitable given the brutal and long-standing suppression of the Palestinian people. There can be no excuse for unleashing a modern army on a mainly unarmed civilian population. best regards. rkm http://cyberjournal.org ============================================================================ Delivered-To: •••@••.••• Reply-To: "Brit Eckhart" <•••@••.•••> From: "Brit Eckhart" <•••@••.•••> To: <•••@••.•••> Subject: RE Foreigners arrive in Ramallah to aid Palestinians Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2002 06:29:09 -0500 http://www.nandotimes.com/world/story/330604p-2774238c.html Foreigners arrive in Ramallah to aid Palestinians Copyright © 2002 AP Online By HADEEL WAHDAN, Associated Press RAMALLAH, West Bank (March 29, 2002 2:27 a.m. EST) - Hundreds of pro-Palestinian foreigners arrived in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Thursday, offering themselves as human shields for Palestinians anticipating a massive military response by Israel to a suicide bombing that killed 20 Passover diners. About 600 activists, most of them European members of the Public International Protection group, arrived in Ramallah for 10-day stays with local families. The town is Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters. "We are going to stay here in Ramallah in particular to provide the Palestinians with protection," said French farmers' union leader Jose Bove. "The Israeli government and our governments all know that we are in Ramallah. (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon must understand that if he decides to bombard Ramallah he is going to bombard hundreds of foreigners." Sharon convened his ministers in Jerusalem into the early hours of Friday to discuss responding to Wednesday's suicide bombing by a Palestinian militant at a seafront hotel in Netanya. "I'm here to tell the Israeli government and to tell my government that the source of terror and violence is the Israeli government and racism," said group member Karrin Wheeler, of Pittsburgh. Another 200 other activists from Italy were turned back by Israeli troops at a road block at Kalandiya, just south of Ramallah. Meanwhile, United Nations officials in Ramallah said several foreign staffers, mainly families with young children, left the town. The officials, however, denied reports that the organization ordered an evacuation. ============================================================================ Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2002 07:31:13 -0500 To: (Recipient list suppressed) From: Bill Thomson <•••@••.•••> Subject: MIDEAST ALERT: ACTIONS NEEDED TODAY "THIS WAR HAS NO TERRITORIAL OR OTHER BOUNDARIES." Israeli Defense Minister 3/29/02 1) Request for help from Allegra Pacheco: Spread Voices of Opposition ---<snip>--- 7) ISRAEL GOES ON NUCLEAR STRIKE STANDBY This is a critical time in which every voice is needed. PLEASE take a half hour today to support our Palestinian, Israeli and International colleagues who are assertively, nonviolently, risking their lives on the ground on behalf of peace and justice in the world in confrontations with the Israeli Army. Peace, Bill *********************************** Allegra Pacheco is an Israeli human rights attorney (a lead attorney in the "End of Torture" case before the Israeli supreme court), and a very articulate spokesperson for Palestinian, Israeli and human rights. If any of you have media contcts, PLEASE PUT THEM IN TOUCH WITH ALLEGRA ASAP--Bill. From: "allegra pacheco" <•••@••.•••> Subject: Spread Voices of opposition - email for Sam Husseini and friends Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2002 08:20:44 +0000 Dear Sam Husseini and friends, I have been trying to find the best way to contribute to stopping the horrible situation here. Several Palestinian friends have suggested that my voice as an Israeli-American Jewish lawyer representing and working with Palest. should be utilized more and given my experience with the media, activists abroad should be working to help get opposing voices to Israeli oppression out to the media. e.g. when PRes. Bush says "he respects the right of Israel to defend herself." I am available at any time to do media interviews to discuss the situation and can arrange interviews of other Israeli Jews who will speak out against the Israeli military and government's policy, occupation, etc and tell the world that this isn't a matter of self-defense, but rather aggression, oppression, power, and dispossession. I am also in the West Bank, and am experiencing the fruits of US Military Aid to Israel - F-16's flooding the skies overhead spreading fear and trepidation in all of us. If you have contacts, I think especially with radio, tell them to call. If you have other ideas let me know. I"m currently drafting an op-ed piece as well. Phone: 011-972-50-387-570. Mobile phone is on all the time. In solidarity, Allegra ---<snip>--- *********************************** (I do not have any independent confirmation of this story--BT) ISRAEL GOES ON NUCLEAR STRIKE STANDBY Gordon Thomas (EXCLUSIVE) by Gordon Thomas Two Israeli fighter-bomber squadrons equipped with battlefield tactical nuclear weapons have been placed on "cock-pit standby." They are based at an airfield in Galilee - minutes only flying time from Syria. The Golan Heights which borders Syria has also been sown with neutron-type bombs. Designed at Israel's nuclear facility in the Negev desert, the bombs are designed to "kill soldiers and leave the infrastructure intact," was how one Israeli Defence Forces source described the weapons. This escalation of military preparations follows an urgent report from Mossad chief Efraim Halevy to prime minister, Ariel Sharon, of "credible intelligence" that both Syria and Iraq - who have held lengthy private talks at the Beirut "summit" this weekend - may be preparing to intervene in the dangerously-out-of-control situation in the West Bank and Gaza. At the summit both counties were the strongest voices to pledge all-out support for the PLO. Syria, with its massive army of 300,000 ground troops and state of the art aircraft supplied by both Russia and China, has always presented a credible threat to Israel. The hard-liners who run Syria make no secret it is only a matter of time before the day of reckoning will come between Israel and Syria. Of equal concern to Israel is Mossad's intelligence that Saddam has some 100 kamikaze pilots within a few minutes flying time from Israeli cities - and Dimona. The kamikazes are under the command of Saddam's son, Qusay. Mossad believe their aircraft are fitted with bio-chemical weapons. Gordon Thomas is a writer on intelligence for a number of leading European newspapers (the Sunday Express, UK; El Mundo, Spain; Welt am Sonntag, Germany). His work is also syndicated internationally by World Wide Syndication. Any use of the above must carry a clear attribution to both Gordon Thomas and Globe-Intel. He is a Contributing Editor to Globe-Intel, an international newsletter devoted to intelligence matters. ---<snip>--- ============================================================================ Delivered-To: •••@••.••• Reply-To: "Brit Eckhart" <•••@••.•••> From: "Brit Eckhart" <•••@••.•••> To: <•••@••.•••> Subject: RE Israeli Army Broadcasts Porn, Hebrew Propaganda to Besieged Palestinians Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2002 07:13:17 -0500 http://palestinechronicle.com/article.php?story=20020331004714620 Israeli Army Broadcasts Porn, Hebrew Propaganda to Besieged Palestinians Sunday, March 31 2002 RAMALLAH, West Bank: Porn movies and programs in Hebrew are being broadcast by Israeli troops who have taken over three Palestinian television stations of Ramallah, irate residents of the besieged West Bank town have told AFP. The offices of three local television and radio stations were occupied by soldiers yesterday morning, a few hours after tanks and hundreds of troops stormed the town in Israel's biggest offensive against the Palestinian Authority and its leader Yasser Arafat. The soldiers started broadcasting the porn clips -- considered extremely offensive by most Palestinians -- intermittently this afternoon from the Al-Watan, Ammwaj, and Al-Sharaq channels, the residents said. "The pornographic movies started on Al-Watan television at around 3:30 pm," one 34-year-old Palestinian mother named Reema told AFP. "I have six children at home, they have nowhere to go with what is going on here and can't even watch TV," she said angrily. Anita, a 52-year-old mother of three children, complained about "the deliberate psychological damage caused by these broadcasts". "I am furious, these are the people who are shooting at us that also play this disgusting trick on us," she said. "We are desperate for news and constantly flipping channels and get these terrible pictures instead," adding that videos of the intifada were also shown backwards with "ideal terrorism" written in red across the screen. "Luckily, there is no electricity in half of Ramallah," she said from her house in east Jerusalem where the channels are also available. A fourth local station, whose premises were not seized by the army, ran a written message across its screen letting people know it was the Israelis who were behind the graphic scenes. "Anything currently shown on Al-Watan and other local TV channels has nothing to do with Palestinian programs but is being broadcast by the Israeli occupation forces, we urge parents to take precautions," the message said. From Australia’s Sunday Mail ============================================================================
