Israeli action 'is declaration of war'
Hamas has called Israel's decision to sever all ties with the Palestinian Authority "a declaration of war".

  thanks to Politics in the Zeros

EU suspends aid to Palestinian Authority

The EU yesterday increased the pressure on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority to recognise Israel and renounce terrorist violence by suspending all direct aid to the new government. Europe is the largest single donor to the Palestinian territories, providing €500m (£340m) a year, of which just under half goes directly to the PA. Aid organisations warned that the decision to cut off assistance would simply damage people living on about £1 a day and drive them further into the arms of extremists. Aid accounts for 25% of Palestinians' incomes.

[more]

There is no hunger in Gaza

But even if they have bags of flour and rice, the living conditions of the Palestinians are chilling. They live in prison. Their daily routine includes humiliation that is no less terrible than malnutrition. Anyone who has to beg for permission to leave his village, to spend hours crowded in line at a checkpoint just to reach his destination, anyone whose bedroom is brutally invaded in the middle of the night by the occupation army, whose time and life is considered valueless, and whose basic human dignity has been trampled into dust, cannot find any consolation in the fact that flour and rice is available. Those who think that all it takes is providing a quota of flour to be free of any responsibility for the fate of the people they occupy, are suffering from a serious case of moral blindness. Does the fact that a Palestinian youth is not hungry in any way blunt the fact that he cannot dream, cannot aspire to a career, an orderly education, a vacation or simple pleasures of life? Does the fact that his belly is not completely empty cover up for the miserable present and the hopeless future? The departure of Israel from Gaza does not remove a speck of the responsibility it has for the fate of Gaza's imprisoned residents. Israel, which forbids Gazans from going to the West Bank - a violation of signed agreements - and prevents the provision of supplies from both Israel and Egypt, has never left Gaza, not even for a moment. The world and people of conscience in Israel do not need to wait for the first Palestinian child to die of hunger to raise the hue and cry. Enough Palestinian children have been killed because of too easy trigger fingers or disgraceful health services. The responsibility is not with the international relief agencies, but on Israel's shoulders. But Israel's conscience in recent years operates only according to one index, the index of protest from Washington. If Washington remains quiet, everything can be covered up. Those who have been silent until now can remain enveloped in their silence. Those whose conscience doesn't torture them and whose sleep is uninterrupted by Israel's behavior in the territories can continue resting in peace. There is no "humanitarian disaster." Israel will find a solution to the food crisis, and the stores in Gaza won't lack for flour. But those who regard the Palestinians as only requiring basic food should remember that even in the zoos, where the animals presumably don't lack for a thing, people are often shocked by the conditions of their imprisonment.

[more]

The Earth is Closing in on Us

The shells keep falling. They’ve gotten inside my head, so that its not just my house shaking but but my brain throbbing. It’s like someone is banging a gong next to my ear every few minutes; sometimes 5 times a minute, like last night. And just when I savor a few moments of silence, it starts again as if to say “you're not going to get away that easily.” We went to sleep to the rattling of our windows and invasive pounding and after-echo of the shells. We sleep as they fall. We pray fajir, and they fall again. We wake, and they are still falling. When they are closer, when they fall in Shija'iya east of Gaza City, they make my stomach drop. And I want to hide, but I don't know where. The Earth is Closing in on Us. That's the thing about occupation-it invades even your most private of spaces. And while the shells were falling inside my head, they also killed little Hadil Ghabin today.

[more]

Toasting God’s Terrorism and Other Passover Themes

1. Passover is About Liberation; Not Simply About Jews In that hungry eternity of singing and praying in an alien tongue that spanned from your first taste of haroset on matzoh to the arrival of the matzoh ball soup, you could sometimes get to thinking about the meanings of the passover in universal context rather than in terms of the fetishistic rituals that have in many cases have replaced those meanings. (Does the Jewish God really care if there are a few breadcrumbs nestling undetected at the bottom of your toaster in a week when you’re supposed to constipate yourself on matzoh?) And growing up Jewish in apartheid South Africa, it wasn’t hard to see that the annual pesach seder was an elaborate exercise in missing the point. This from a little memoir thingie I’m working on: Thus the bizarre spectacle, every Pesach, of our extended family - and countless others — sitting around elaborate Seder tables singing “Avadim Hayeinu” (“Once we Were Slaves”) while women who lived in our back yards in a latterday equivalent of slavery carried in steaming tureens of matzoh ball soup and platters of brisket and tzimmes. Dai-dai-yeinu, we sang, that table-thumping beerhall-chant of a song praising God for his generosity to our people in bondage. “Had God brought us out of Egypt and not supported us in the wilderness, It would have been enough!” Dai-dai-yeinu. “Had God given us the Sabbath and not the Torah, It would have been enough!” But not only did he free us from slavery and support us in the wilderness and give us the Torah and the Sabbath; he sent us to sunny South Africa and gave us slaves of our own! Dayeinu.

[more]