By John Pilger

(source: AntiWar.com)

I phoned Rami Elhanan the other day. We had not spoken for six years and much has happened in Israel and Palestine. Rami is an Israeli graphic designer who lives with his family in Jerusalem. His father survived Auschwitz. His grandparents and six aunts and uncles perished in the Holocaust. Whenever I am asked about heroes, I say Rami and his wife Nurit without hesitation.  

Soon after when we met, Rami gave me a home videotape that was difficult to watch. It shows his daughter Smadar, aged 14, throwing her head back, laughing and playing the piano. "She loved to dance," he said. On the afternoon of 4 September, 1997, Smadar and her best friend, Sivane, had auditions for admission to a dance school. She had argued that morning with her mother, who was anxious about her going to the centre of Jerusalem. "I didn’t want to row," said Nurit, "so I let her go."

Apartheid is alive and well in a street in the Israeli-controlled West Bank

February 25, 2010 Edition 1

By Zenande Booi and Quinton Combrink

Apartheid South Africa demanded surplus quantities of moral blindness and monomaniacal creativity from those tasked with ensuring the separation between black and white. And then the systems of influx control, separate identity cards, and Bantustan development folded like a spectacular house of cards.

Off somewhere, in old age, sit those men who played God, either reconciled to their folly or nursing an injured pride while doggedly insisting on the unappreciated genius of their grand policy of separation.

It would surely add insult to injury for them to find out about the current arrangements in Shuhada Street in the Israeli-controlled West Bank. Not only is the separate-roads policy, of which Shuhada Street is a prime example, an absurdity that surpasses South Africa's separate beaches, but it is also part of a planned "policy of separation" - because that is the official terminology - alive and well in the 21st century.

(source: Russian T.V)

A feminist movement has accused the Israeli government of adopting a racist policy towards the country's Ethiopian Jews.

Activists believe black women are deliberately being given a controversial contraceptive drug to bring about a drop in the population – a claim the government denies.

Thousands of Ethiopians have immigrated to Israel since the 1980s, but their Jewish heritage has been questioned, while their social status continues to suffer.

For nearly four years, Racheli Mangoli has been running a youth center in one of Israel's poorer communities. Forty-five Ethiopian families live here, but throughout that entire time, only one Ethiopian baby has been born in this neighborhood, and that has alarmed Racheli.

Latest Israeli Response To Gaza Investigations Totally Inadequate

(source: Amnesty International.org)

Israel’s latest response to the UN on its investigations into alleged violations of international law by its forces in Gaza a year ago is totally inadequate, Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

Crucial questions about the conduct of attacks in which hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands were made homeless are not credibly addressed in Israel’s update to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“The investigations undertaken by Israel fail to meet international standards of independence, impartiality, transparency, promptness and effectiveness,” said Malcolm Smart, Director of Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Programme.

“The Israeli military is investigating itself and in no way can this be adequate in obtaining the truth and ensuring justice for the victims.”

By Uri Avnery

(source: Uri Avnery's ZSpace Page)

From time to time I ask myself: what would happen if the world’s governments decided to abolish all their spy agencies simultaneously?

True, it would be a great blow to the authors and movie producers who make their living from secret service stories. Their products would lose their appeal.

It would be a disaster for the huge army of fans which gobbles up spy adventures, the enthusiastic consumers of books and movies about superhuman heroes like James Bond and super-devious geniuses like John La Carre’s Smiley.

But what would be the real damage if Washington stopped spying on Moscow and Moscow stopped spying on Washington, and both on Beijing? The result would be a draw. Immense sums of money would be saved, since a large part of the efforts of every spy agency is devoted to obstructing the intrigues of the competition. How many diseases could be overcome? How many hungry people fed, how many illiterates taught to read and write?