Swedish daily publishes second article on ‘IDF organ harvesting’

Despite Israel’s harsh protests, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet published a second article accusing the IDF of harvesting Palestinian organs.

In the article, published Sunday, Oisín Cantwell and Urban Andersson report from the northern West Bank village of Imatin, where 19-year-old Bilal Ahmad Ghanem was killed during a clash with Israeli soldiers in 1992.

According to the family, the IDF demanded NIS 5,000 (about $1,300) to return the body.

 “It was the middle of the night. The soldiers caused an electrical power outage in the entire village. Bilal was returned in a black bag; he had no teeth. The body was stitched from the neck all the way down to the abdomen,” the Swedish newspaper quoted the mother as saying. According to the family, the IDF demanded NIS 5,000 (about $1,300) to return the body.

“It was the middle of the night. The soldiers caused an electrical power outage in the entire village. Bilal was returned in a black bag; he had no teeth. The body was stitched from the neck all the way down to the abdomen,” the Swedish newspaper quoted the mother as saying.

For full article, visit http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3765992,00.html

Netanyahu wants meeting with Abbas at UN

However, Netanyahu’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, told reporters Sunday that he sees no chance of peace. “In the 16 years since the Oslo Accords, we haven’t managed to bring peace to the region, and I’m willing to bet that there won’t be peace in another 16 years, either. Certainly not on the basis of the two-state solution,” Lieberman said.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109616.html

Israel denounces Sweden’s silence on IDF organ harvest article

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman

On Friday, the Israeli Ambassador to Sweden Benny Dagan met with Deputy Foreign Minister of the Scandinavian country and urged his government to issue a denunciation of the article. Deputy Foreign Minister Frank Belfrage emphasized his country’s freedom of speech and how it limits the ability of the government to respond to articles in the media.

It also emerged Thursday that Defense Minister Ehud Barak is considering a libel lawsuit against Donald Boström, the writer of the article. Boström has reportedly been trying to publish a version of the article about Israel harvesting organs since 1992.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1109008.html

In a blog post on Thursday evening, Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote that he would not condemn the article, and that freedom of expression is part of the Swedish constitution.

For full article, visit http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8213873.stm

A spokesman for Israel’s interior ministry said it was freezing the issue of entry visas to Swedish journalists, though those already working in the country would not be affected for now.

The newspaper commented on its story on Sunday, acknowledging that it had no proof of any organ theft but argued that the story deserved publication because of the issues it raised.

For full article, visit http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/08/200982434437906626.html

U.S.: Netanyahu policy speech not adequate

The official said Netanyahu told U.S. envoy George Mitchell this week what he planned to say in the speech and that it was “not adequate” to satisfy Washington, who is pushing for an immediate resumption of talks on Palestinian statehood.

The official was quoted on Friday by participants at a meeting this week of the so-called Quartet of Middle East mediators. Netanyahu’s refusal to declare a building freeze in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and to endorse the goal of establishing a Palestinian state — both set out in a 2003 peace “road map” — has opened a rare rift in U.S.-Israeli relations.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1092452.html

Obama and Netanyahu differ in talks

Israel’s prime minister has refused to commit to an independent Palestinian state during talks with Barack Obama, the US president, at the White House.

Binyamin Netanyahu told Obama that he wanted the Palestinians to govern themselves, but steered clear of explicitly endorsing the two-state solution set out in the so-called “road map”.

For full article, visit http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/05/200951817522268394.html

Obama wants Israel to hold parallel talks with Palestinians and Syria

The Obama administration is preparing a Middle East peace process that will include simultaneous bilateral talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and between Israel and Syria. The plan is based on the Arab peace initiative that offers establishing normal relations between Israel and Arab League states in exchange for withdrawing from the occupied territories and establishing a Palestinian state.

The United States will put together a “security package,” including demilitarization of the territories from which Israel will withdraw and the option of stationing a multinational force in them for years.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1078889.html

Ziyaad Lunat: The rhetoric of “peace”

Netanyahu’s “economic peace” proposal should not only be seen in this context but crucially too as the beginning of a new stage of colonization. Israel has been successful in dividing the Palestinians into different groups, separated politically and geographically. Israel has also been successful in creating a collaborating political class. Israel failed however to squash their desire for freedom and their right to resist aggression. In other words, Israel was successful in the physical colonization of the land, de facto controlling the whole of historic Palestine, but failed to colonize Palestinian minds, for the most part, at least. This new stage will target the latter.

A sample of what is to come can already be seen within the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority’s bureaucracy. Employing roughly 300,000, it is the biggest employer in the occupied territories. These employees and their families are dependent on the bureaucracy to sustain their livelihoods, raising incentives for compliance and creating costs for dissent, namely loss of income and political reprisals. Netanyahu’s “economic peace” will mean that further to the existing political stratification of the Palestinian society, a capitalist class will be co-opted to subordinate the Palestinian working class to the requirements of the market. It is expected that the Palestinians will become too comfortable with the newly bestowed economic freedoms and relegate political rights to a secondary concern. The plan strives for the creation of a homo economicus, an individualist, self-interested man, a slave to the capitalist structures of inequality. Dependence on this neo-liberal structure-in-formation is aimed at removing individual and collective agency. The resulting false consciousness — under the framework of hegemonic capitalism — betrays the true relation of forces between the occupier and the occupied.

For full article, visit http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10466.shtml

Johann Hari: Israel’s Voice of Reason? An Exclusive Interview With Amos Oz

Oz is sitting in the coffee shop of Joseph’s bookstore in Golder’s Green, north London, looking older and more fragile than his vigorous black-and-white author’s picture. He is 70 now, his hair wispier and whiter. He greets me with a gravelly voice, and we order black coffees. It seems far away and long ago, but Oz once dreamed of bombing this city. He was once a child of what he calls “the Jewish intifada” – the stone-throwing, death-defying Jewish rebellion against British occupation. He believed the state that would emerge from the rubble would be a model of justice and idealism for all mankind. If you were a child in Gaza now, Mr Oz, would you be dreaming the same dreams against Israel? “I don’t even have to imagine the answer to this question – I know it,” he says. “Because I was a kid in Jerusalem in ’48 when the city was besieged, shelled, starved, [and] the water supply [was] cut off. And I know the horror, and I know the despair, and I know the hopelessness, and I know the anger, and I know the frustration.” He says he was “not so much a child as a bundle of self-righteous arguments, a brainwashed little fanatic, a stone-throwing chauvinist. The first words I ever learnt to say in English were ‘British, go home!'”

For full article, visit http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/israels-voice-of-reason-a_b_176724.html

Israel: No objection to West’s talks with Tehran

Israel does not object to talks between the West and Iran intended to stop Iran’s nuclearization, as long as Iran does not take advantage of these talks, a top source in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government told Haaretz Thursday.

The source was commenting on the announcement by U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration that it will fully participate in talks with Iran on its nuclear program, putting the ball in Tehran’s court with a new engagement policy.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077654.html

Obama to visit Israel, West Bank in June

The decision to visit Jerusalem several weeks after his first meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington is meant to emphasize Obama’s commitment to an active role in achieving a two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

For full article, visit http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077070.html