A story of waste and hypocrisy

(As reported by the Daily Mail)


Journalists ask same questions, get same answers:
Times Online
BBC

Charity calls for honesty:
Save the Children

"We also think that while the current food crisis is pushing millions of families to the edge of survival, it is completely unacceptable for these summits to lavish hospitality on their guests. The next major global meeting should take the Chateau Grillet and cavier off the menu. World leaders need to fulfil their promises before they fill their stomachs."

See also Democracy Now! (clip here and programme top left)

You'd better be on the right side of the law

WTOP

Vaccaro said Gugliotta and the others convicted were unlikely
to go to jail because the statute of limitation on their alleged crimes expires early next year, long before appeals would be completed. Defendants in Italy usually do not go to jail until they have exhausted appeals.

The G-8 summit in Genoa saw riots by anti-globalization activists that left one protester dead, more than 200 people injured, 240 detained and millions of dollars in damages.

Last year, a Genoa court convicted 24 protesters on charges of
devastation and looting, giving them sentences ranging from five months to 11 years in jail.

A post from the blogosphere (the world of evil private individuals)

Figaro-Pravda

Extract:

I don't know when Americans became such a cowardly people. Afraid of terrorists after 9/11? I can understand that, of course - even if ultimately we figure out that we trained and financed a lot of those terrorists back in the day with our wonderful covert military-industrial foresight. Afraid of our daughters and sons dying in an interminable war? Again, I find that a reasonable danger to be afraid of. But afraid of traffic jams?

Consumer Alert

Guardian

Tesco, Sainsbury's, Waitrose and Somerfield have all admitted sourcing produce from Israeli-owned farms on Palestinian territory but claimed that labelling the goods 'origin: West Bank' gave enough information for the customer to make an informed choice.
(...)
British policy is clear, with the government's website stating the UN Security Council resolution that 'settlements are illegal under international law and settlement construction is an obstacle to peace'.

News in brief

Palestinian West Bank village under curfew

Hindi Mesleh, a resident of Nilin who spoke to reporters outside the town, said he had managed to evade the cordon and leave. He called the curfew "collective punishment" and said food and medical supplies were being kept out of the town. Another resident contacted by telephone inside the town, Mohammad Khawaja, said he had seen some 100 soldiers stopping villagers from leaving their homes. He said about 50 people were wounded by tear gas and rubber bullets during Sunday's clashes.

A palestinian boy of 13 was detained for two months and beaten says israeli human rights organisation B'tselem.

International human rights law requires separation of adult and minor prisoners and detainees. Israel meets the requirement with respect to Israeli adults and minors. In the case of Palestinians who are suspected of security offenses or have been convicted of security offenses, Israel breaches the requirement systematically.

UK plans to remove 11,ooo zimbabwean refugees according to refugee groups

A removal letter, sent at the end of May to an exiled London-based member of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, states: 'The support that you have been provided with is to be discontinued ... You should note that there is no right to appeal against this decision ... You must now leave the United Kingdom.'

(see Refugee Council)

US kills wedding guests say witnesses. US says they were in fact Taliban fighters.

Witnesses said at least 20 civilians, travelling to the wedding in Nangarhar on Sunday, were killed. Women and children were among the dead and injured.

A spaniard narrowly beats a swiss at a game of tennis according to my TV set. No-one has yet disputed that fact.

6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5/7), 6-7 (8/10), 9-7

Good news from Canada

BBC

A Canadian court has ordered the country's refugee board to re-examine an American deserter's rejected attempt for asylum in Canada.

Punishing the family of a criminal.

epalestine

Dear friends,

Yesterday was tragic. The bulldozer rampage shocked all. Anyone could have been a victim. I personally use that road once a week. Our prayers are with all those that were killed or wounded, whomever they may be.

But that's not enough. If we care, really care, we must dig deeper. Let's at least ask before judging:

- Israel is 100% responsible for the security in the area where this tragic event took place and the place where the attacker lives. Why does Israel not blame itself to the same degree that it blames Palestinians when such events happen on the Palestinian side?

- Before rushing to raze the attacker's family house, without any due process, investigation, etc, would it not be prudent to assume that maybe, just maybe, this was a criminal act or an act of a madman, or have Palestinians been so dehumanized by Israel that even criminals are put on the pedestal of grand planning terrorists? By the way, my speculation is that this was an individual rampage, no more, no less, which makes it no less tragic for those killed or injured, but much less tragic for those that will be the victims of any knee-jerk raciest replies from the Israeli government.

- Since Israel is rushing to make it 'legal' to raze this attacker's home and strip his family of their Jerusalem residency status, etc, the question that begs asked is why Israel did not consider similar acts when an Jewish student extremist gunned down and murdered Israeli Prime Minister Rabin. Not only was this not considered, but Rabin's killer was allowed to marry and have a child while imprisoned.

- Will the world continue to only weep when Israelis are the victims, while totally ignoring the daily terror that is making Palestinians' lives equal to death?

- Will collectively punishing the attacker's family yield lessons learned from this tragedy in order to ensure it does not happen again, or will it only breed more hate?

No answers to these questions will or can justify the terrible events of yesterday, but addressing these may save both Palestinian and Israeli lives in the days to come.

Losing ground to rising water

Losing ground, a film by Ryota Kajita about the Inupiat villagers of Shishmaref.

Another film titled "Losing ground" by Jenny Monet about the village of Kivalina.
(see Democracy Now 03/07/2008 top left)

From triumph to torture

Rafah Today
Guardian
Extract:

"I realised," said Mohammed, "he was after the award stipend for the Martha Gellhorn prize. I told him I didn't have it with me. 'You are lying', he said. I was now surrounded by eight Shin Bet officers, all armed. The man called Avi ordered me to take off my clothes. I had already been through an x-ray machine. I stripped down to my underwear and was told to take off everything. When I refused, Avi put his hand on his gun. I began to cry: 'Why are you treating me this way? I am a human being.' He said, 'This is nothing compared with what you will see now.' He took his gun out, pressing it to my head and with his full body weight pinning me on my side, he forcibly removed my underwear. He then made me do a concocted sort of dance. Another man, who was laughing, said, 'Why are you bringing perfumes?' I replied, 'They are gifts for the people I love'. He said, 'Oh, do you have love in your culture?'

"As they ridiculed me, they took delight most in mocking letters I had received from readers in England. I had now been without food and water and the toilet for 12 hours, and having been made to stand, my legs buckled. I vomited and passed out. All I remember is one of them gouging, scraping and clawing with his nails at the tender flesh beneath my eyes. He scooped my head and dug his fingers in near the auditory nerves between my head and eardrum. The pain became sharper as he dug in two fingers at a time. Another man had his combat boot on my neck, pressing into the hard floor. I lay there for over an hour. The room became a menagerie of pain, sound and terror."

An ambulance was called and told to take Mohammed to a hospital, but only after he had signed a statement indemnifying the Israelis from his suffering in their custody. The Palestinian medic refused, courageously, and said he would contact the Dutch embassy escort. Alarmed, the Israelis let the ambulance go. The Israeli response has been the familiar line that Mohammed was "suspected" of smuggling and "lost his balance" during a "fair" interrogation, Reuters reported yesterday.

Israeli human rights groups have documented the routine torture of Palestinians by Shin Bet agents with "beatings, painful binding, back bending, body stretching and prolonged sleep deprivation". Amnesty has long reported the widespread use of torture by Israel, whose victims emerge as mere shadows of their former selves. Some never return. Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists, who receive barely a fraction of the kind of coverage given to the BBC's Alan Johnston.

Or Gilad Shalit. Or Ingrid Bétancourt. Or all the other Israeli and 'western' hostages. In his song "Lily", Pierre Perret sang "pour Debussy, en revanche, il faut deux noires pour une blanche" ("for Debussy, however, two blacks are worth one white"). How many Palestinians are worth one Israeli or one 'westerner'?

Colonialism two-step programme

How to kill two birds with one stone: Drain Aotearoa of it's indigenous people and settle them in another people's land in an act of demographic ethnic cleansing. Will it happen? Nothing's impossible. Ynet

I believe our forefathers were originally Jewish," Shimshon said.

Yeah. And I believe my forefathers were originally alien. Dig that!

Elie Wiesel joins the Iran fest

Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin

Remember when a leader of a nation violates all standards of morality and decency by announcing to the whole world his wish to see a nation member of the international community wiped off the map,

Wahey! There goes Wiesel, and he has a head start on the others with this beautifully timed fallacy! Will he keep up the momentum....

At least he's frank in his goals and in his dreams. He really wants to see the end of the Jewish state and thus annihilating all its Jewish inhabitants.

Yes! What wonderful sense of bias! What amazing disregard of evidence! Beautiful!

Their number they come close to a figure that will forever hound humankind's memory: six million

And he knows just when to throw in that magic figure...such grace!

Shame on him for preaching the murder of multitudes of Jewish children and their parents

How does Wiesel do it?! Such is the power of his immagination!

He wants to be allowed to obtain nuclear weapons while openly boasting of how he will use them and against whom.

And it's not over! The man is truly unbeatable in his literary prowess...

What mass murderers has he chosen as his guides?

Surely this is irony? It must be. Elie Wiesel must know Ahmadinejad (the fundamentalist muslim) is a loyal student of Hitler (the nihilist nazi). Yes surely he must.

The international community is duty bound to listen to his threats and respond with adequate measures.

Ah yes...Elie Wiesel is truly a master at the art of serving the elite. Bravo! One can only bow to his greatness.

And for desserts:

For in threatening an ancient people with annihilation

What ancient people? The Israelis? The Zionists?? Oh, Elie, such a joker!

Benny Morris providing the elite with what it needs

Mideast Freedom Forum Berlin

Now that international economic and political sanctions have failed to stop the Iranian nuclear project – which all know is geared to the production of atomic weapons

One expects a level-headed, rational and scientific approach from a person calling themself a historian, not the parroting of offical propaganda, devoid of evidence.

or, Two, to resign oneself to a nuclear-armed Iran and to deter it from using its new weapons with the threat of nuclear retribution.

I wonder what makes any rational person believe the Iranians are likely to threaten a country, Israel, which can anihilate it, no doubt alone, without even using the nuclear weapon? What makes any level-headed person believe the Iranians or the Israelis would risk provoking a nuclear armageddon at such close quaters?

The wellknown American newspaper columnist, Charles Krauthammer, has recently argued that, given the failure of the Western containment strategy, a nuclear Iran is merely a matter of time, be it in 2009 or 2011 or 2013.

Rendez-vous in 2013, then. Since it goes without saying, that today's offical propaganda mouthpieces will, in one, three or five years, wether their leaders are in power or not, claim no evidence of nukes merely means dishonesty on the part of the Iranians, as they did with Saddam Hussein's regime, we will have to stick steadfastly to the evidence.

He accepts that the target of the Iranian nuclear project is Israel and that the Iranian regime, headed by Ahmadinejad, seeks to destroy Israel;they aim for a second Holocaust.

More official propaganda from the 'historian'. Is that last quoted phrase not akin to comparing the Shoah to any other holocaust? If the latter is antisemitism, what then is is the former?

President Bush must publicly announce that anyone who assaults Israel with nuclear weapons will immediately and automatically be obliterated by the American nuclear arsenal.

As if we didn't know it (Bush or no Bush) !

if Iran decided to call the American bluff and nuked Israel, what would be the point of an American assault on Iran? It would not bring the Jewish state back to life

When the US dropped two nukes on Japan, it did not wipe out the japanese political elite. What brought regime change (which, by the way, seems to be the desire of the iranian political elite if one bothers to listen) were the post-war impositions on and occupation of Japan by the dominant world force. Iran is no such thing. Only the US (and US allies with US blessing) can bring a lasting regime change by force. In short: nuking Israel won't destroy Zionism, and if the iranian political elite is as shrewd as even it's enemies depict it, it knows that full well.

and it would involve the slaughter of tens of millions of Iranians, most of them innocent, and the lasting hatred of the world’s one billion Muslims.

As if it weren't already the case! As if the US political elite cared!

Would a President, Obama or Clinton, for example, actually press the button in such circumstances? Without doubt, the Iranians have thought all this through – and most likely have dismissed this American threat as highly unlikely.

Refer to comment number two. Then recall Iraq.

Without Israel, Judaism, and the Jews, might well not [survive].

Yeah right.

Secondly, it is quite possible that among Iran’s leaders – and this probably includes President Ahmadinejad and other true believers – there are those who believe (a) that Allah will protect Iran and\or (b) that sacrificing Iran for Islam’s greater good ... The principle of selfsacrifice is deeply embedded in the psyche of messianic Islam.

Talk about a load of nonesense! A historian?! 1) lack of knowledge of Iran, Iranians, the Iranian Revolution, the iranian political elite. 2) caricatured vision of Islam.

Thirdly, the Iranians may believe that their mere possession of nuclear weaponry, with the missiles to deliver the bombs, will suffice to turn them into the Middle East’s hegemonic power and overawe Israel into gradual decline and disappearance.

Of course, Mr Morris has no evidence other than his own fantasies for this. Recent history certainly does not bear this out, as Persia/Iran has not attacked any foreign power since the early XVIIIth Century.

How long will the Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian peace treaties survive under the shadow of Iranian nuclear power? What Arab, indeed, what Palestinian, will make peace with Israel once assured of the backing of Iranian nuclear weapons? Will Oman and Qatar make peace? Will the Saudi peace initiative remain on the table?

Benny Morris has obviously strayed from the realm of history into the fantasy world of the mainstream media.

And will Israelis, fearful of extinction, not mob foreign embassies for visas to America and Europe? And what Jew will want to immigrate to Israel in such circumstances?

Isn't that already the case? How many young Israelis leaving the country? How many staunch supporters of Israel actually live in Israel? And this is not because of some imagined nuclear battle with Iran in some distant future. If anything, it's because of a colonial/liberation war taking place within Israel's own borders.

Iran’s leaders are not the cool, hard-headed opportunists who inhabited the Kremlin in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The threat of mutually assured destruction probably does not move them. They march to a different tune, to a rough and beguiling chant that us secular, liberal, humanistic people cannot even hear, to the temptation of jihadist martyrdom and 70 dark-eyed virgins beckoning from the heavenly paradise.

Oh, Morris obviously doesn't share the vision of the shrewd, calculating persian mullahs and president held by so many racists among our elites. No, he prefers the caricature of the sex pervert fundamentalist muslim fanatic, enemy of freedom. The wonderfully constructed metaphor Benny Morris uses causes one to question wether he doesn't view the Iranians as dogs which as we all know can hear high-pitched sounds we humans cannot hear.

mad mullahs of Teheran

There you go again, Benny!

In truth, we don’t really know what the mad mullahs of Teheran will do – but we cannot take a chance ... And if this involves a protracted, conventional air assault on the Iranian nuclear facilities – then so be it. The Iranians will have brought that assault on their own heads.

And if, as in Iraq, we turned out to be wrong about the intentions of the 'mad Mullahs' then it'll still be their fault. So there!

It is terrible to contemplate the use of nuclear weapons to prevent others, murderous Iranian leaders, from acquiring nuclear weapons. But a second Holocaust is an even more horrific prospect to contemplate.

Understand: another jewish holocaust (note the capital 'H' in the quote). Says it all really: if a jewish holocaust is to be averted it may be necessary to resort to a persian holocaust.

All this would be funny of course, if it didn't read like a pre-invasion justification provided to the masters by the 'intellectual'.

Seven to one

Ynet

UN records 7 incidents of IDF soldiers attempting to drive Palestinian farmers away from border fence by shooting at them. Only one offence marked against Palestinians for firing on Sderot; report does not include most recent rocket fire.

Ok. Seven to two then.

Ynet

Two days after first rocket attack since truce agreement, another Qassam fired from Gaza into Sderot. No injuries or damage reported; Fatah's military wing claims responsibility. Hamas spokesman says Israel's refusal to reopen crossings constitutes violation of ceasefire

Wow. So no doubt the next step is for Fatah to be placed on the evil list by Israel, US and EU.
No violation by Hamas, I note. Just this:

Hamas wants quiet in Gaza: Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called Friday on Palestinian factions to adhere to the Gaza Strip lull agreement with Israel.

"The factions and the people accepted the lull in order to secure two interests – an end to aggression and the lifting of the siege. Therefore, we hope that everyone honors this national agreement," he said following Friday prayers.

Earliar Friday, two mortar shells were fired at Israel from the northern Gaza Strip. One landed near Kibbutz Kfar Aza in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council, and the second one hit an open area. There were no reports of injuries or damage in the latest violation of the fragile ceasefire.

So as of Friday, that comes to Seven to three. After Israel closed Gaza. Eight to three? This could go on for ever!

Colonialism then, colonialism now

In reality, Bemba was arrested for challenging and threatening French authority. For over 40 years, the French government involved itself in the CAR's political affairs; the French army has helped install dictator after dictator in that country since CAR's independence from France in 1960 (Hari, 2007). CAR has strong ties with its former coloniser, France and for many years it was reported that France had a 1 200-strong garrison based in CAR. It is that same garrison that engineered changes of government over the years or that supported the government of the day to quell dissent, given that the governments of the day kow-towed to France's agenda.

The French government never forgave Bemba for questioning and challenging their authority in the CAR. This is why Bemba is the only war-thug being sent to jail for sending his goons to kill innocent civilians in a foreign country. Bemba did exactly what the French army has been doing to the CAR since that country's independence. Uganda and Rwanda did the same thing in the DRC, when they invaded that country in 1998, triggering a civil war that killed more than 3 million people.

Democracy Now! 26/06/2008
(see also liste de partage on left for video)

GERALD HORNE:
For example, the statement condemning or questioning the Zimbabweans elections emerged from Swaziland, a South African nation that is one of the last absolute monarchies on this small planet. Some might well question why isn’t Swaziland’s human rights situation being interrogated and investigated? A scant year ago in Nigeria, the continent’s giant, you had shambolic elections, had hundreds killed yet that barely registered a blip on the international media. At least not in the North Atlantic. Many talk, perhaps understandably, about the fact the President Mugabe has served as President since 1980, but what about Omar Bongo of Gabon, a close ally of the U.S, an oil-rich country in West Africa, which of course, he has served as president since 1967? 13 years before Mugabe came into power. I mean, I could go on in this vain, but I think the fact that thousands were killed in Zimbabwe in the 1980’s and yet, he received a virtual knighthood from Queen Elizabeth and received an honorary degree from Massachusetts, and yet, today in 2008, he is a subject of international scorn after of course he expropriates some white farmers, really speaks of profound racism in terms of how this issue has been covered in the North Atlantic media.

More than that, if the situation in Zimbabwe is so terrible, and I agree it is, why is it that the Bush administration continues to send undocumented Zimbabwe workers back to Zimbabwe? There’s been talk about a so- called genocide unfolding in Zimbabwe, yet, you see the Gordon Brown administration in London not giving asylum to Zimbabwe workers who are exiled now in London. We talk about the Mugabe regime, but just the other day it was revealed that Anglo American, the major transnational corporation with close South African ties and headquarters in London, is about to make a $400 million investment in Zimbabwe. Barclay’s bank is in Zimbabwe. Rio Tinto-Zinc, the major mineral conglomerate is in Zimbabwe.

It is of course right to criticise Robert Mugabe and to call for an end to his regime. No doubt many people are also happy about the arrest of Jean-Pierre Bemba as well. It is, however, important for the role of the (ex-) colonial powers and the imperialist powers of today to be brought into the public discussion, especially in an age of so-called 'humanitarian' intervention. It is utterly wrong that countries such as France, Britain should be able to pass for (albeit sometimes weak) sympathetic ex-colonisers (or the benevolant world cop) who simply want to defend democracy to Africa. Not only for moral reasons, but especially in light of imperialist intervention in Afghanistan and Irak, possible intervention in Iran (perhaps through the Israeli proxy) and calls for intervention in Africa (as if they didn't already intervene in their 'ex'-colonies!).

Robert Mugabe get's off lightly

Democracy Now!
(See Liste de partage on left for video)

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe: “Raising a lot of noise for nothing, absolutely nothing. We will proceed with our elections. The verdict is our verdict. Other people can say what they want, but the elections are ours. We are a sovereign state, and that is it."

The Queen of Great Britain has stripped the despot of his knighthood.

Israeli incursion, assasination - Islamic Jihad rockets

After the IDF killed two palestinian militants in Nablus, Islamic Jihad fired rockets on Sderot. Two were lightly wounded and two others treated for shock.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas official, responded to the attacks by urging "all Palestinian factions to abide by the calm agreement," adding: "Hamas is keen to maintain the deal."

Israel then proceded to close the border with Gaza and to launch an attack in the strip, according to palestinian medical sources.

Islamic Jihad's threat of renewed Qassam fire cam after it accused Israeli troops of shooting a Palestinian farmer as he worked his field in the village of Khuza, near the Gaza border.

Palestinian medical officials said the man was wounded in the leg but there was no independent confirmation that he had been shot by Israeli forces. In Tel Aviv, an Israeli military spokeswoman said she had no knowledge of any such incident.

Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad denounced the Israeli raid in Nablus

Fayyad said the raid was "an example of the kind of activity that has to stop and stop immediately and promptly," adding that such actions were hindering the peace talks. "Clearly everything is related to everything else," he said.

The great Emir Kusturica brilliantly illustrates the intertwinement of religion and nationalism

Guardian

"My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that. We only became Muslims to survive the Turks."

Oh! what marvelous schizophrenic madness...

A respected newspaper publishes ignorant drivel by well-known ignoramus Dersh O' Witz

JSF

Remember Sirhan Sirhan?

I know I know, I'm a week late with this one but I didn't read much about this last week. I did hear something on Radio 4 about the Robert Kennedy assassination but that was it. Of course there would have been more coverage in America about the killing of a US presidential hopeful than there was in the UK so let that be my excuse. I actually remember the killing of Bobby Kennedy when it happened. I doubt if I saw it live but I remember seeing it on tv back in 1968. I remember how they described the killer as a "Jordanian". Years later I assumed that they were simply keeping the word "Palestinian" out of the media's and therefore the public's vocabulary.

Anyway, I wouldn't normally be too bothered with this but for Ben White blogging the Boston Globe seeking a scholars' opinions on what happened those 40 years ago and why. One such scholar was Alan Dershowitz (uh oh!).

"I thought of it as an act of violence motivated by hatred of Israel and of anybody who supported Israel," said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor who had worked on Kennedy's campaign as a volunteer adviser on gun-control policy. "It was in some ways the beginning of Islamic terrorism in America. It was the first shot. A lot of us didn't recognize it at the time."

It is interesting that more wasn't made of the background and the motivation of Sirhan Sirhan and you can look at the rest of the article to see the inaction of for example the ADL over that. But look at these letters to the Globe following Dershowitz's "analysis".

I WAS dismayed that Alan Dershowitz referred to Sirhan Sirhan's assassination of Robert F. Kennedy as the "beginning of Islamic terrorism in America" ("Slaying gave US a first taste of Mideast terror," Page A1, June 5).

Sirhan, a Christian Palestinian immigrant, said he was angry at Kennedy because he supported Israel in the 1967 war over the rights of the Palestinians. This was an instance of one Christian killing another Christian for political, not religious, reasons.

Why does Dershowitz conflate Palestinian with Islamic, other than to spread fear of Muslims? I think it is for a similar reason that he equates Israel with Judaism. Therefore, any criticism of Israel's policies toward Palestinians can be denounced as anti-Semitic.

MARILYN LEVIN
Arlington

ATTEMPTS TO spin the tragic assassination of Robert Kennedy as a prelude to today's problems between the United States and the Middle East collapse under the weight of the facts.

Alan Dershowitz's suggestion that a 40-year-old crime committed by a lone gunman - a Christian Arab who moved to the United States at age 12 - could be plausibly counted as "the beginning of Islamic terrorism in America" strains credulity. This is as absurd as Ayman al-Zawahiri's claim that the modern state of Israel is a direct extension of the medieval Crusades. Such illogical readings of the past do nothing to advance the mutual understanding between peoples that is so urgently required in today's world.

DARRYL LI
Cambridge

What is very strange about Dershowitz's scholarly view on islamist terror by a Christian is that the article mentions that Sirhan Sirhan was a Christian. Why didn't the writer correct Dershowitz? Why did the writer run his quote at all? It's a funny old globe.

I don't fully agree with the second letter. Maybe zionism isn't a direct extension of the crusades but it is a bit of a re-run.

Alan Greenspan : an expert on human nature

Monestary in colonised territories to be 'anschlussed' by Israel

Cremisan Cellars

Scotsman.com News

Sunday, 8th June 2008

Bad year for wine-making monks as Israeli wall keeps workers from vineyard

By Kurt Bayer

FOR 120 years, generations of Christian monks have peacefully cultivated the land surrounding the Cremisan monastery in the hills above Bethlehem – hewing terraces out of the rocky slopes to create Palestine's only vineyard. The monks have combined traditional Italian methods of wine-making with organic viticulture fitting the harsh conditions of the Holy Land, to create distinctive red and white wines and provide vital income for the families of those who labour in the vineyards.

But this idyllic monastery will soon be swallowed up by Israel when the next phase of the controversial Israeli West Bank barrier is completed over the next three months.

Cremisan wine already carries the label of being a "product of Israel" because Palestine is not a recognised wine-producing country – and now, because of the new border, it will officially become a part of Israel. The monks' land on the outskirts of Bethlehem borders a road that connects Jerusalem with Jewish settlements. They have looked on helplessly as the Israelis continue to pursue construction of the 26-foot concrete wall as part of the 280- mile security barrier started in 2002 to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers.

Bulldozers have already ripped out hundreds of pine trees surrounding the vineyards and, according to a spokesman for the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, which monitors Israeli settlement activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, foundations have already been dug and the infrastructure is in place so that the wall can be completed within "two to three months".

Amer Kardosh, general manager of the vineyard, stressed: "We do not want to be in Israel. We are Palestinians, but we have no choice. The wall will separate us from Palestine and our people."

The Italian Catholic monastery produces around 200,000 litres a year of some 30 different labels of wine.

Now a group that coordinates the Stop the Wall campaign has said that placing the monastery in Israeli territory would deprive about 40 families from Bethlehem and the village of Al Walaja of one of the main sources of income. It would also force the monks to abandon several projects working with poor and underprivileged Christian children from Bethlehem.

A spokesman for the monks said: "We cannot oppose the wall. It is not our duty to complain or demonstrate and we wish to maintain an equidistant position. Our wine production has decreased considerably in the past few years and now will drop even further, because we will have difficulty in finding workers.

"Palestinians were working here, but with the wall, the road which leads to our monastery will be blocked and the Israeli authorities are already issuing very few working permits."

The plight of the monks and their historic vineyard, caught in the crossfire of the Arab- Israeli conflict, is symbolic of the dilemma facing all Palestinian Christians.

In 1948, Christians accounted for 20% of the West Bank population. But now, there are just 30,000 left in the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem, making up only 1.5% of the total population.

An estimated 230,000 Arab Christians have emigrated since the establishment of the state of Israel 60 years ago and the numbers are growing.

One Christian Palestinian guide said: "No one in the West knows we exist and what we go through. When I meet Americans and I tell them I am a Christian, they cannot believe it. They ask when we became Christians. They have no idea.

"We feel abandoned and shunned by the Western Christian churches who pray for Israel. The Muslims, the Jews, they both hate us. That is the reality."

http://news.scotsman.com/world/Bad-year-for-winemaking-monks.4163473.jp

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