The above leaflet was dropped on Gaza this morning from Israeli military helicopters. The translation says: TOTHEPALESTINIANPEOPLE. Your life is being harmed by irresponsible elements who exploit you by firing missiles from in between your houses at the Israeli settlements. These missiles backfire on you causing only destruction and loss of your source of living without leaving you any road to hope. Be aware !!! that firing missiles from your area will compel the Israeli Defense Forces to act in your area and to hit missile-launching elements in any place they act from. Get rid of terror which leads you to the bottom. Follow the road of hope. Do not allow the terrorists to come close to your area.” EI’s Nigel Parry reports. Read more about Leaflets of fear
Today’s Israeli Ha’aretz newspaper brought good news to those disturbed by the relentless death toll resulting from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; a headline that stated “IDF: 29 Palestinian civilians killed in W. Bank in 2004”. “The Israel Defense Forces released figures Wednesday showing that since the beginning of the year,” wrote Ha’aretz correspondent Amos Harel, “148 Palestinians have been killed by IDF fire in the West Bank, at least 29 of them, by army count, innocent bystanders, Israel Radio reported Wednesday.” EI’s Nigel Parry gags and begs to differ. Read more about On Palestine's Dead: Israel's Chilling Concept of "Good News"
With Arafat gone, the television screens of America are filled with “Middle East experts” who tell us that it was Arafat who was the obstacle to peace and that a new dawn is now upon us. Last night on Hardball with Chris Matthews, the host and caption team couldn’t even pronounce or spell the name of guest Palestinian Legislative Council member Hanan Ashrawi, repeatedly referring to her as Ashwari. Commentary from the guests was similarly insightful. Today, MSNBC’s Lester Holt continued the Ashwari mangling and “Terrorism expert” Harvey Kushner ludicrously claimed an Arafat/Al-Qaida link. Switch the channel, no real difference. It was the kind of Middle East coverage that got Bush reelected. Read more about Blaming Arafat for Israel's torpedoing of Oslo
The Internet information service Yahoo! has omitted information about Palestine’s athletes competing in the 2004 Olympics at Athens. Yahoo! has extensive Olympics coverage, one of the features of which is a search engine that allows users to look up any athlete by name or to look up all the athletes representing a country — except that the athletes from Palestine are mysteriously missing. EI’s Ali Abunimah and Nigel Parry explain the problem and ask for action. Read more about Yahoo! Sports makes Palestine's Olympians disappear
Father Michael Prior worked tirelessly for over 20 years of his life to expose the racism, false favoritism, deception, and blatantly ‘unJesuslike’ core assumptions of the theology of Christian Zionism. As a Christian theologian and philosopher he felt responsible for confronting the contradictions of the philosophy by weaving tapestries of understanding from the more mainstream pages of the Bible that Christian Zionism had torn out and discarded. EI’s Nigel Parry, who worked with Michael Prior from 1993-1994, remembers his life and work. Read more about Remembering Michael Prior
“We have to make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a mainstream concern and the only way we can do that is by effectively communicating the realities at ground zero for Joe and Jane Palestinian to the American public. Nobody would sign off on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict if they knew what happened at ground zero, nobody. Only the most ardent and entrenched supporters of Israel.” This article is an edited version of a speech EI’s Nigel Parry gave at the “Palestine: Perception and Reality” panel at the 21st National Convention of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington DC, on Sunday 13 June 2004. Read more about Palestine: Perception and Reality
Following pressure from the Israeli public, international condemnations and a UN resolution, and a flurry of rare coverage of Rafah from American cable news networks, Israel’s “Operation Rainbow” was ‘concluded’ in Rafah on 24 May 2004. According to Israel at least. Since then, in a one week period in Rafah (27 May-2 June 2004), Israel destroyed another 39 Palestinian homes, leaving at least another 485 Palestinian civilians homeless, and razed another 24 dunums of Palestinian land. Google News continuously crawls more than 4,500 news sources from around the world, yet a search for the keyword “Rafah” shows that, beyond the Israeli press, supplementary news websites such as the Electronic Intifada, and a handful of US newspapers, coverage of the latest demolitions has been minimal, particularly in the United States. EI’s Nigel Parry comments. Read more about Time to put the US media on trial for complicity in genocide?
We must again note that CNN’s reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not all bad. But, once again, here is a report that employs terminology to describe land — the central issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — that comes straight from the Israeli lexicon. The language of this report suggests that the status of West Bank land is unclear, that it is “disputed”. The status of this land is anything but unclear and is defined by international law as occupied territory, regardless of the views of Israel or CNN. Read more about CNN goes where few have dared to go, adopting Israel's "disputed" territories terminology
“As they mourn today’s anniversary of the birth of Israel, Palestinians find themselves living through a new disaster, a mismatched struggle with the Jewish state that threatens what they have accomplished in the past eight years.” — from “A Bitter Sense of Deja Vu for Palestinians,” by MARYCURTIUS, Los Angeles Times.
Of course Palestinians are not mourning the birth of Israel, but the uprooting of 800,000 Palestinans from their land in the Nakba. Read more about Nakba widely misrepresented as an anti-Israeli protest instead of a Palestinian commemoration
