Graham, Stephen. "Lessons in urbicide." New Left Review (2003): 63-78. APA Stephen Graham
This document summarizes and analyzes Israel's strategy of "urbicide" or deliberate destruction of Palestinian urban areas and infrastructure. It describes Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 where the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) demolished over 1,500 homes in the Jenin refugee camp, leaving thousands homeless. It argues this went beyond dismantling terrorist infrastructure and was intended to destroy the foundations of a Palestinian state. It discusses how urbicide is part of a broader strategy combining expanded Jewish settlements, economic strangulation of Palestinians, and discriminatory building regulations. The document analyzes the ideological justifications for urbicide, including demographic anxieties about Arab population growth and metaphors that depict uncontrolled Palestinian urbanization as a "cancer" or threat to
Graham, Stephen. "Laboratories of War: United States-Israeli Collaboration in...Stephen Graham
This document discusses the close collaboration between the United States and Israel in developing urban warfare strategies and security doctrines. It argues that the US military has widely adopted tactics and lessons learned from Israel's operations in the West Bank, particularly during Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin in 2002. US observers were present during these operations to learn from the Israeli approach. The US justification for its global war on terror, including the emphasis on preemption and legal exceptions, was also heavily influenced by Israeli security doctrines developed during the second Palestinian intifada. As the US occupation of Iraq transitioned to counterinsurgency, Israel's involvement in advising the US military grew and the tactics increasingly resembled Israeli operations against Palestinians.
The document provides an overview of Israel, including its demographics, socio-cultural aspects, legal/bureaucratic environment, and economic climate. It notes that Israel has a population of over 6 million Jews and over 1.5 million Arabs. Culturally, Israel contains a diverse, multi-ethnic society with Jews and Arabs maintaining their unique identities. Israel has a parliamentary legal system based on western principles with courts that oversee civil, criminal, military, and religious matters. Economically, Israel is a leader in new technologies and partnerships with countries like India.
An overview of how Israel's warfare against Palestinian civilians and cities since 2002 amounts to a strategy of 'urbicide' -- the deliberate killing of the city
- Palestinians react with anger as the US vetoes a draft UN Security Council Resolution calling for Israel to end its illegal settlement building. All 14 other Security Council members vote in favour.
- The veto reflects the US's bias towards Israel and undermines US credibility as a mediator in peace efforts. Palestinians see the explanations for the veto as "paltry excuses".
- The article also discusses Israel's attacks on Gaza that killed one Palestinian, protests against the Israeli separation wall in Bil'in village, discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israel's new $1.6 million social media propaganda campaign.
The UN Human Rights Council held an emergency debate on the Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of human rights violations during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Several countries, including Kuwait, Pakistan, and Iran condemned Israel's actions. However, the speech by Colonel Richard Kemp, organized by UN Watch, provided a contrasting perspective. In his speech, Colonel Kemp stated that based on his military experience, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to protect civilian lives during combat than any other army in history, facing an enemy in Hamas that used civilians as human shields. He asserted that while mistakes happen in war, they did not constitute war crimes, and that civilian casualties were ultimately a consequence of Hamas' tactics. Colonel Kemp concluded by saying that
The document summarizes the history of conflict in the Holy Land between Palestinians and Israelis, including the origins in 1948, the 1967 occupation of Palestinian territories, and ongoing issues such as settlements, restrictions on movement, detention of Palestinians, and lack of access to resources. It describes the work of Caritas Jerusalem in providing humanitarian assistance and advocating for justice and peace in the region.
International Law And The Fighting In Gaza Power Point Aas2marissyb29
The document summarizes international law as it pertains to the fighting in Gaza in 2009. It discusses key principles of distinction and proportionality under international law. It analyzes how Hamas' rocket attacks on Israeli civilians violate these principles and constitute war crimes. The document also examines how Hamas uses civilian infrastructure like mosques, hospitals and schools to carry out military operations, in violation of international humanitarian law.
Graham, Stephen. "Lessons in urbicide." New Left Review (2003): 63-78. APA Stephen Graham
This document summarizes and analyzes Israel's strategy of "urbicide" or deliberate destruction of Palestinian urban areas and infrastructure. It describes Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 where the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) demolished over 1,500 homes in the Jenin refugee camp, leaving thousands homeless. It argues this went beyond dismantling terrorist infrastructure and was intended to destroy the foundations of a Palestinian state. It discusses how urbicide is part of a broader strategy combining expanded Jewish settlements, economic strangulation of Palestinians, and discriminatory building regulations. The document analyzes the ideological justifications for urbicide, including demographic anxieties about Arab population growth and metaphors that depict uncontrolled Palestinian urbanization as a "cancer" or threat to
Graham, Stephen. "Laboratories of War: United States-Israeli Collaboration in...Stephen Graham
This document discusses the close collaboration between the United States and Israel in developing urban warfare strategies and security doctrines. It argues that the US military has widely adopted tactics and lessons learned from Israel's operations in the West Bank, particularly during Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin in 2002. US observers were present during these operations to learn from the Israeli approach. The US justification for its global war on terror, including the emphasis on preemption and legal exceptions, was also heavily influenced by Israeli security doctrines developed during the second Palestinian intifada. As the US occupation of Iraq transitioned to counterinsurgency, Israel's involvement in advising the US military grew and the tactics increasingly resembled Israeli operations against Palestinians.
The document provides an overview of Israel, including its demographics, socio-cultural aspects, legal/bureaucratic environment, and economic climate. It notes that Israel has a population of over 6 million Jews and over 1.5 million Arabs. Culturally, Israel contains a diverse, multi-ethnic society with Jews and Arabs maintaining their unique identities. Israel has a parliamentary legal system based on western principles with courts that oversee civil, criminal, military, and religious matters. Economically, Israel is a leader in new technologies and partnerships with countries like India.
An overview of how Israel's warfare against Palestinian civilians and cities since 2002 amounts to a strategy of 'urbicide' -- the deliberate killing of the city
- Palestinians react with anger as the US vetoes a draft UN Security Council Resolution calling for Israel to end its illegal settlement building. All 14 other Security Council members vote in favour.
- The veto reflects the US's bias towards Israel and undermines US credibility as a mediator in peace efforts. Palestinians see the explanations for the veto as "paltry excuses".
- The article also discusses Israel's attacks on Gaza that killed one Palestinian, protests against the Israeli separation wall in Bil'in village, discrimination against Palestinians in the West Bank, and Israel's new $1.6 million social media propaganda campaign.
The UN Human Rights Council held an emergency debate on the Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of human rights violations during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza. Several countries, including Kuwait, Pakistan, and Iran condemned Israel's actions. However, the speech by Colonel Richard Kemp, organized by UN Watch, provided a contrasting perspective. In his speech, Colonel Kemp stated that based on his military experience, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to protect civilian lives during combat than any other army in history, facing an enemy in Hamas that used civilians as human shields. He asserted that while mistakes happen in war, they did not constitute war crimes, and that civilian casualties were ultimately a consequence of Hamas' tactics. Colonel Kemp concluded by saying that
The document summarizes the history of conflict in the Holy Land between Palestinians and Israelis, including the origins in 1948, the 1967 occupation of Palestinian territories, and ongoing issues such as settlements, restrictions on movement, detention of Palestinians, and lack of access to resources. It describes the work of Caritas Jerusalem in providing humanitarian assistance and advocating for justice and peace in the region.
International Law And The Fighting In Gaza Power Point Aas2marissyb29
The document summarizes international law as it pertains to the fighting in Gaza in 2009. It discusses key principles of distinction and proportionality under international law. It analyzes how Hamas' rocket attacks on Israeli civilians violate these principles and constitute war crimes. The document also examines how Hamas uses civilian infrastructure like mosques, hospitals and schools to carry out military operations, in violation of international humanitarian law.
This document is a project work on the Arab-Israeli conflict prepared by students at Abylaikhan University of International Relations and World Languages in Kazakhstan. It provides background on the conflict, analyzing its historical causes and main stages. It identifies four phases: from pre-1948 to the establishment of Israel, the wars from 1948-1973, the beginning of peace processes from 1973-1993, and the current period since 1994. The document forecasts escalation in the short term due to factors like Iran's nuclear program and the unwillingness of sides to compromise. It concludes that Israel should withdraw from Zionist policies and establish equality for all, while returning territories occupied in 1967.
The document discusses the Israel/Palestine conflict and the West Bank barrier (or wall) constructed by Israel in 2003. It provides perspectives from Israelis, Palestinians, and the international community on the barrier and its impact. Maps show the location of the West Bank and route of the barrier. Comparisons are made between the West Bank barrier and the Berlin Wall constructed in 1961.
This document provides an overview of Judaism and key topics related to Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Jewish perspective. It discusses Jewish beliefs about Israel, important historical figures and events, the religious and political justifications for war in Judaism, challenges to a two-state solution, and public opinion polls showing support among Israelis and Palestinians for a two-state agreement. It aims to concisely summarize the key people, places, events, challenges and potential resolutions related to the conflict from a Jewish and religious viewpoint.
The document discusses the Kurdish genocides and lessons learned. It provides context on Raphael Lemkin who coined the term "genocide" and the Genocide Convention. It examines the legal definition and judicial interpretations of genocide. It then discusses the history of genocide against Kurds in Iraq during the Anfal campaign in the late 1980s, including evidence from Iraqi documents, tribunal recordings, and reports. It covers efforts for official recognition of the Kurdish genocide and remaining questions under international law.
The document summarizes events related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from February to March 2008. It reports that 106 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over 6 days, including 25 children. It also describes Israeli missile strikes targeting Palestinian children and the denial of medical care to Palestinians by Israeli authorities. The document discusses evidence that the US engineered violence between Fatah and Hamas factions in Gaza and leaked documents revealing this. It provides other brief updates on related political and human rights issues.
The document discusses the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians becoming refugees after the establishment of Israel in 1948; it describes the ongoing Israeli occupation and siege of Palestinian territories, including incursions in Gaza that have killed civilians, including children; and it provides updates on other issues affecting Palestinians such as restrictions on movement, home demolitions, and poor economic and living conditions under the Israeli blockade.
The document discusses 10 of the worst genocides in history, providing brief summaries of each. It defines genocide as mass killings intended to destroy an ethnic, racial, or religious group according to the UN. The genocides summarized include the genocide of indigenous Americans from 1492-1900 which killed an estimated 2-100 million, the Holocaust which killed an estimated 17 million Jews and others, and the Cambodian genocide from 1975-1979 which killed an estimated 1-3 million under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Israel's capital is Tel Aviv, though Jerusalem is considered the administrative capital. Israel has no written constitution but instead has basic laws that serve as a constitution. Israel maintains diplomatic relations with over 100 countries but does not have relations with many Arab and Muslim countries. The Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, were annexed by Israel in 1981 but this is not recognized internationally. Peace talks over the Golan Heights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have occurred with varying levels of success over the years.
This document discusses General Moshe Dayan's tactics for acquiring Palestinian land and displacing people after Israel's establishment in 1948. It describes one instance where Dayan tried to trick Jordan into accepting a village so he could confiscate its lands, saying he would have one farmer who spoke out "liquidated." It also outlines methods Israel used to take land over time, such as offering higher wages to farmers to work in factories so their land could later be claimed as abandoned. The document asserts that Israel's actions violate the Geneva Convention and are a systematic attempt to annex the West Bank through violations of Palestinians' rights and movement.
This document discusses and responds to common arguments made against Israel regarding apartheid, occupation of Palestinian territories, and treatment of Palestinians. It is organized into four sections addressing the civil/legal issues, economic issues, religious issues, and security/settlement issues. Each section examines claims related to that topic and provides counterarguments and context in response.
The document provides a detailed overview of the political history and current state of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It discusses key events including the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, the Second Intifada in the 2000s, ongoing violence and conflicts between Israel and Palestinian militant groups like Hamas, as well as recent Israeli military operations in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009 that resulted in over a thousand Palestinian deaths. The summary also notes ongoing issues like the blockade of Gaza and lack of reconstruction due to Israeli restrictions.
The document provides biographical information about Lyndon B. Johnson and details his career and presidency. It discusses how he became president after John F. Kennedy's assassination and established major social programs as part of his Great Society agenda. However, the escalating Vietnam War came to define his presidency as he committed increasing numbers of troops despite facing growing domestic opposition.
John F. Kennedy served as the 35th President of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. As president, he faced challenges in both domestic and foreign policy. Domestically, he advocated for expanding education funding and civil rights. In foreign policy, he dealt with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis, both of which heightened tensions with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address in 1961, calling on Americans to serve their country.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict began after World War I when the Ottoman Empire lost control of the Middle East and the land was divided. In 1947, the UN proposed dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, which the Jews accepted but Arabs rejected. This led to war and the establishment of Israel in 1948, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The conflict has continued with attacks, wars, and peace efforts over decades but no permanent resolution.
This document summarizes and discusses teachings from the Talmud regarding Jews' attitudes toward and treatment of Gentiles (non-Jews). It argues that the Talmud introduces racism into Judaism, teaching the moral superiority of Jews over Gentiles. It claims this helps explain allegedly racist and violent behavior by some religious Jews in Israel toward Palestinians today. The document asserts certain Talmudic passages sanction killing or deceiving Gentiles who oppose Jewish goals. It maintains these teachings remain influential for some Orthodox Jews, and help justify Israeli military actions that human rights observers criticize as inhumane.
BAKER DONELSON Founder of STATE OF ISRAELVogelDenise
17 USC § 107 Limitations on Exclusive Rights – FAIR USE
HOW is it that Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz has been ALLOWED to INFILTRATE and TAKE CONTROL of the United States of America’s Government and turn it into a DESPOT?
It is difficult to believe that FOREIGN Nations/Governments are NOT aware of the TERRORIST/RACISTS that FOUNDED the STATE OF ISRAEL! Thus, explaining WHY it appears that the UNITED NATIONS and WHITE-Controlled Nations have REMAINED SILENT while Israel CONTINUES its ATROCITIES against Muslim/Islamic Nations!
IF Baker Donelson CAN HIJACK the United States of America Government and THEN move and BUILD and/or FOUND the STATE OF ISRAEL, the UTICA INTERNATIONAL EMBASSY can CONTINUE in its BUILDING of a LEGAL and LAWFUL Government in OPPOSITION to the USA’s DESPOTISM Empire and TERRORIST/RACIST Agendas, WAR CRIMES and APARTHEID Practices, etc.
“Tension between Israel and her neighbors was caused by the failure to resolv...Megan Kedzlie
The document discusses the tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors. It argues that the primary cause of conflict was the failure to resolve the Palestinian question and establish a Palestinian state. This failure inflamed pan-Arab and pan-Islamic sentiments among Israel's neighbors and led them to support the Palestinian cause. The tensions were further exacerbated by the military strength Israel demonstrated in wars like the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War, as well as the proxy conflict between the US and USSR for influence in the region. While the Palestinian issue was a major source of conflict, resolving it may not be enough to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East.
Even if you're not intending to tour Israel with Jerry and me in November you will be educated and edified by these lecture slides. There are a total of 13 lectures which you can locate on Slideshare or my Facebook timeline.
This document summarizes U.S. arms transfers to Israel from 1949-2018. It details that the U.S. has provided over $31 billion in arms to Israel during the Bush administration through programs like Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales. It also notes that these arms have likely been used to kill over 2,000 Palestinian civilians from 2001-2008. The document concludes by calling for conditioning future U.S. military aid and arms sales to Israel to protect innocent Palestinians and ensure weapons are only used for legitimate self-defense.
The United Nations faced several major failures in the 1990s that damaged its reputation for peacekeeping. This included abandoning Rwandan civilians during the 1994 genocide, failing to protect Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1995 massacre, and numerous cases of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers around this time period. These events demonstrated that the UN was unprepared and ineffective at preventing mass violence and atrocities, and in some cases UN peacekeepers directly enabled human rights abuses rather than protecting civilians as intended.
Graham, Stephen. "War and the city." New Left Review 44 (2007): 121. APA Stephen Graham
The document discusses the increasing focus of Western militaries on training for urban warfare, as cities have become more common conflict zones. Several Western countries are constructing simulated cities to prepare troops for combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. These mock cities are built to resemble areas troops may face, with details like Arabic signs and simulated slum areas. They allow soldiers to train for combat situations in urban environments rather than open fields. The military sees realistic urban training as important to reduce casualties when fighting in actual cities overseas.
Graham, Stephen. "When life itself is war: On the urbanization of military an...Stephen Graham
It is now well established that both the ‘war on terror’ and its offshoots have been conspicuously marked by overwhelmingly urban discourses, materialities and practices. Deliberately transdisciplinary, synthetical and polemical in scope, this article seeks to demonstrate that new ideologies of permanent and boundless war are radically intensifying the militarization of urban life in the contemporary period. The article delineates the ways in which contemporary processes of militarization — which surround what I label the ‘new military urbanism’ — raise fundamental questions for critical urban scholarship because of the ways in which they work to normalize the permanent targeting of everyday urban sites, circulations and populations. Focusing primarily on US security and military doctrine, culture and technology, this article exploresthenewmilitaryurbanism’sfiveinterrelatedfoundationsindetail,namely:the urbanization of military and security doctrine; the links between militarized control technologies and digitized urban life; the cultural performances of militarized media consumption; the emerging urban political economies of the ‘security’ industries; and the new state spaces of violence. Following the elaboration of each of these themes, the article concludes by identifying ways forward for critical urban research in exposing and confronting the normalization of the new military urbanism.
This document is a project work on the Arab-Israeli conflict prepared by students at Abylaikhan University of International Relations and World Languages in Kazakhstan. It provides background on the conflict, analyzing its historical causes and main stages. It identifies four phases: from pre-1948 to the establishment of Israel, the wars from 1948-1973, the beginning of peace processes from 1973-1993, and the current period since 1994. The document forecasts escalation in the short term due to factors like Iran's nuclear program and the unwillingness of sides to compromise. It concludes that Israel should withdraw from Zionist policies and establish equality for all, while returning territories occupied in 1967.
The document discusses the Israel/Palestine conflict and the West Bank barrier (or wall) constructed by Israel in 2003. It provides perspectives from Israelis, Palestinians, and the international community on the barrier and its impact. Maps show the location of the West Bank and route of the barrier. Comparisons are made between the West Bank barrier and the Berlin Wall constructed in 1961.
This document provides an overview of Judaism and key topics related to Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a Jewish perspective. It discusses Jewish beliefs about Israel, important historical figures and events, the religious and political justifications for war in Judaism, challenges to a two-state solution, and public opinion polls showing support among Israelis and Palestinians for a two-state agreement. It aims to concisely summarize the key people, places, events, challenges and potential resolutions related to the conflict from a Jewish and religious viewpoint.
The document discusses the Kurdish genocides and lessons learned. It provides context on Raphael Lemkin who coined the term "genocide" and the Genocide Convention. It examines the legal definition and judicial interpretations of genocide. It then discusses the history of genocide against Kurds in Iraq during the Anfal campaign in the late 1980s, including evidence from Iraqi documents, tribunal recordings, and reports. It covers efforts for official recognition of the Kurdish genocide and remaining questions under international law.
The document summarizes events related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from February to March 2008. It reports that 106 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in Gaza over 6 days, including 25 children. It also describes Israeli missile strikes targeting Palestinian children and the denial of medical care to Palestinians by Israeli authorities. The document discusses evidence that the US engineered violence between Fatah and Hamas factions in Gaza and leaked documents revealing this. It provides other brief updates on related political and human rights issues.
The document discusses the 60th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians becoming refugees after the establishment of Israel in 1948; it describes the ongoing Israeli occupation and siege of Palestinian territories, including incursions in Gaza that have killed civilians, including children; and it provides updates on other issues affecting Palestinians such as restrictions on movement, home demolitions, and poor economic and living conditions under the Israeli blockade.
The document discusses 10 of the worst genocides in history, providing brief summaries of each. It defines genocide as mass killings intended to destroy an ethnic, racial, or religious group according to the UN. The genocides summarized include the genocide of indigenous Americans from 1492-1900 which killed an estimated 2-100 million, the Holocaust which killed an estimated 17 million Jews and others, and the Cambodian genocide from 1975-1979 which killed an estimated 1-3 million under the Khmer Rouge regime.
Israel's capital is Tel Aviv, though Jerusalem is considered the administrative capital. Israel has no written constitution but instead has basic laws that serve as a constitution. Israel maintains diplomatic relations with over 100 countries but does not have relations with many Arab and Muslim countries. The Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, were annexed by Israel in 1981 but this is not recognized internationally. Peace talks over the Golan Heights and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have occurred with varying levels of success over the years.
This document discusses General Moshe Dayan's tactics for acquiring Palestinian land and displacing people after Israel's establishment in 1948. It describes one instance where Dayan tried to trick Jordan into accepting a village so he could confiscate its lands, saying he would have one farmer who spoke out "liquidated." It also outlines methods Israel used to take land over time, such as offering higher wages to farmers to work in factories so their land could later be claimed as abandoned. The document asserts that Israel's actions violate the Geneva Convention and are a systematic attempt to annex the West Bank through violations of Palestinians' rights and movement.
This document discusses and responds to common arguments made against Israel regarding apartheid, occupation of Palestinian territories, and treatment of Palestinians. It is organized into four sections addressing the civil/legal issues, economic issues, religious issues, and security/settlement issues. Each section examines claims related to that topic and provides counterarguments and context in response.
The document provides a detailed overview of the political history and current state of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It discusses key events including the establishment of Israel in 1948, the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, the Second Intifada in the 2000s, ongoing violence and conflicts between Israel and Palestinian militant groups like Hamas, as well as recent Israeli military operations in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009 that resulted in over a thousand Palestinian deaths. The summary also notes ongoing issues like the blockade of Gaza and lack of reconstruction due to Israeli restrictions.
The document provides biographical information about Lyndon B. Johnson and details his career and presidency. It discusses how he became president after John F. Kennedy's assassination and established major social programs as part of his Great Society agenda. However, the escalating Vietnam War came to define his presidency as he committed increasing numbers of troops despite facing growing domestic opposition.
John F. Kennedy served as the 35th President of the United States from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. As president, he faced challenges in both domestic and foreign policy. Domestically, he advocated for expanding education funding and civil rights. In foreign policy, he dealt with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Cuban Missile Crisis, both of which heightened tensions with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address in 1961, calling on Americans to serve their country.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict began after World War I when the Ottoman Empire lost control of the Middle East and the land was divided. In 1947, the UN proposed dividing Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, which the Jews accepted but Arabs rejected. This led to war and the establishment of Israel in 1948, displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. The conflict has continued with attacks, wars, and peace efforts over decades but no permanent resolution.
This document summarizes and discusses teachings from the Talmud regarding Jews' attitudes toward and treatment of Gentiles (non-Jews). It argues that the Talmud introduces racism into Judaism, teaching the moral superiority of Jews over Gentiles. It claims this helps explain allegedly racist and violent behavior by some religious Jews in Israel toward Palestinians today. The document asserts certain Talmudic passages sanction killing or deceiving Gentiles who oppose Jewish goals. It maintains these teachings remain influential for some Orthodox Jews, and help justify Israeli military actions that human rights observers criticize as inhumane.
BAKER DONELSON Founder of STATE OF ISRAELVogelDenise
17 USC § 107 Limitations on Exclusive Rights – FAIR USE
HOW is it that Baker Donelson Bearman Caldwell & Berkowitz has been ALLOWED to INFILTRATE and TAKE CONTROL of the United States of America’s Government and turn it into a DESPOT?
It is difficult to believe that FOREIGN Nations/Governments are NOT aware of the TERRORIST/RACISTS that FOUNDED the STATE OF ISRAEL! Thus, explaining WHY it appears that the UNITED NATIONS and WHITE-Controlled Nations have REMAINED SILENT while Israel CONTINUES its ATROCITIES against Muslim/Islamic Nations!
IF Baker Donelson CAN HIJACK the United States of America Government and THEN move and BUILD and/or FOUND the STATE OF ISRAEL, the UTICA INTERNATIONAL EMBASSY can CONTINUE in its BUILDING of a LEGAL and LAWFUL Government in OPPOSITION to the USA’s DESPOTISM Empire and TERRORIST/RACIST Agendas, WAR CRIMES and APARTHEID Practices, etc.
“Tension between Israel and her neighbors was caused by the failure to resolv...Megan Kedzlie
The document discusses the tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors. It argues that the primary cause of conflict was the failure to resolve the Palestinian question and establish a Palestinian state. This failure inflamed pan-Arab and pan-Islamic sentiments among Israel's neighbors and led them to support the Palestinian cause. The tensions were further exacerbated by the military strength Israel demonstrated in wars like the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War, as well as the proxy conflict between the US and USSR for influence in the region. While the Palestinian issue was a major source of conflict, resolving it may not be enough to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East.
Even if you're not intending to tour Israel with Jerry and me in November you will be educated and edified by these lecture slides. There are a total of 13 lectures which you can locate on Slideshare or my Facebook timeline.
This document summarizes U.S. arms transfers to Israel from 1949-2018. It details that the U.S. has provided over $31 billion in arms to Israel during the Bush administration through programs like Foreign Military Sales and Direct Commercial Sales. It also notes that these arms have likely been used to kill over 2,000 Palestinian civilians from 2001-2008. The document concludes by calling for conditioning future U.S. military aid and arms sales to Israel to protect innocent Palestinians and ensure weapons are only used for legitimate self-defense.
The United Nations faced several major failures in the 1990s that damaged its reputation for peacekeeping. This included abandoning Rwandan civilians during the 1994 genocide, failing to protect Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1995 massacre, and numerous cases of sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers around this time period. These events demonstrated that the UN was unprepared and ineffective at preventing mass violence and atrocities, and in some cases UN peacekeepers directly enabled human rights abuses rather than protecting civilians as intended.
Graham, Stephen. "War and the city." New Left Review 44 (2007): 121. APA Stephen Graham
The document discusses the increasing focus of Western militaries on training for urban warfare, as cities have become more common conflict zones. Several Western countries are constructing simulated cities to prepare troops for combat in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. These mock cities are built to resemble areas troops may face, with details like Arabic signs and simulated slum areas. They allow soldiers to train for combat situations in urban environments rather than open fields. The military sees realistic urban training as important to reduce casualties when fighting in actual cities overseas.
Graham, Stephen. "When life itself is war: On the urbanization of military an...Stephen Graham
It is now well established that both the ‘war on terror’ and its offshoots have been conspicuously marked by overwhelmingly urban discourses, materialities and practices. Deliberately transdisciplinary, synthetical and polemical in scope, this article seeks to demonstrate that new ideologies of permanent and boundless war are radically intensifying the militarization of urban life in the contemporary period. The article delineates the ways in which contemporary processes of militarization — which surround what I label the ‘new military urbanism’ — raise fundamental questions for critical urban scholarship because of the ways in which they work to normalize the permanent targeting of everyday urban sites, circulations and populations. Focusing primarily on US security and military doctrine, culture and technology, this article exploresthenewmilitaryurbanism’sfiveinterrelatedfoundationsindetail,namely:the urbanization of military and security doctrine; the links between militarized control technologies and digitized urban life; the cultural performances of militarized media consumption; the emerging urban political economies of the ‘security’ industries; and the new state spaces of violence. Following the elaboration of each of these themes, the article concludes by identifying ways forward for critical urban research in exposing and confronting the normalization of the new military urbanism.
RobowarTM dreams US military technophilia and global south urbanisationStephen Graham
Graham, Stephen. "Robowar™ dreams: US military technophilia and global south urbanisation 1." City 12.1 (2008): 25-49.
This paper seeks to open up to critical scrutiny the attempts currently being made to re- engineer post-cold war US military power to directly confront global south urbanisation. Through analysing the discourses produced by US military commentators about ‘urban warfare’, and the purported military, technological and robotic solutions that might allow US forces to dominate and control global south cities in the near to medium-term future, the paper demonstrates that such environments are being widely essentialised as spaces which necessarily work to undermine the USA’s military’s high-technology systems for surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting. The paper shows how, amid the ongoing urban insurgency in Iraq, widescale efforts are being made to ‘urbanise’ these military systems so that US military forces can attempt to assert high-tech dominance over the fine-grained geographies of global south cities in the future. This includes an examination of how, by 2007, US forces, in close collaboration with the Israeli military, had already begun to imple- ment ideas of robotised or automated urban warfare to counter the complex insurgencies in Iraq. The paper concludes with a critique of the urban and robotic turns in US military doctrine.
Graham, Stephen. "Switching cities off: Urban infrastructure and US air power...Stephen Graham
In this follow-up to a piece originally published in City 8(2), Stephen Graham offers a detailed portrait of the tactics and techniques of contemporary urban warfare. As cities have become more reliant than ever on networks, and as their infrastructures have become more fragile due to the vagaries of neoliberal privatization, urban-based warfare, which targets the systems—informational, medical, agricultural, and technological—that sustain the civilian populations of cities, has had disastrous consequences. Although terrorists have chosen to target urban infrastructures in an attempt to disrupt modern urban life, Graham suggests that the greater threat to metropolitan existence comes from systematic attempts by traditional powers, such as the United States, to disrupt urban networks, thereby effectively ‘switching cities off’. Policies of what Graham calls ‘deliberate demodernization’ have become the hallmark of US air power. Although such policies are thought to bring about asymmetrical military advantage, they also place civilian populations at risk. Such policies represent thus perpetuation of total war in a different key. Graham concludes by calling for further research into the new geopolitics of infrastructural warfare.
Graham, Stephen, and Simon Guy. "Digital space meets urban place: sociotechno...Stephen Graham
This document analyzes the political and spatial issues surrounding the rapid growth of gentrifying IT clusters in downtown San Francisco. It discusses how new high-capacity internet infrastructures and services have contributed to restructuring the politics and landscapes of the city. In particular, it focuses on the complex urban and technological politics around the "dot-com invasion" of internet entrepreneurs and industries moving to downtown San Francisco. This has led the city to be forcefully appropriated as a strategic site for digital capitalism, facing intense resistance from social movements wanting to maintain the city's culture of diversity.
Graham, Stephen. "Cities and the ‘War on Terror’." International Journal of U...Stephen Graham
Programmes of organized, political violence have always been legitimized and sustained through complex imaginative geographies. These tend to be characterized by stark binaries of place attachment. This article argues that the discursive construction of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ since September 11th 2001 has been deeply marked by attempts to rework imaginative geographies separating the urban places of the US ‘homeland’ and those Arab cities purported to be the sources of ‘terrorist’ threats against US national interests. On the one hand, imaginative geographies of US cities have been reworked to construct them as ‘homeland’ spaces which must be re- engineered to address supposed imperatives of ‘national security’. On the other, Arab cities have been imaginatively constructed as little more than ‘terrorist nest’ targets to soak up US military firepower. Meanwhile, the article shows how both ‘homeland’ and ‘target’ cities are increasingly being treated together as a single, integrated ‘battlespace’ within post 9/11 US military doctrine and techno-science. The article concludes with a discussion of the central roles of urban imaginative geographies, overlaid by transnational architectures of US military technology, in sustaining the colonial territorial configurations of a hyper-militarized US Empire.
Graham, Stephen. "Postmortem city: Towards an urban geopolitics." City 8.2 (2...Stephen Graham
This document discusses the close relationship between cities and warfare throughout history. It argues that cities have long been both the agents and targets of war. Many cities were built with fortifications for defense, and the sacking of cities was a central event in pre-modern war. In modern times, industrial cities provided resources and workers to fuel large-scale wars, but also became prime targets of "total war". The deliberate destruction of cities and targeting of civilian populations and infrastructure has continued in recent conflicts. However, the social sciences have largely neglected the topic of urban warfare and destruction. The document calls for more research to confront and challenge the militarization of urban space.
Graham, Stephen. "In a moment: on glocal mobilities and the terrorised city."...Stephen Graham
The document analyzes the September 11th terrorist attacks and their implications for cities and urban mobility. It makes three key points:
1. The attacks exploited the inherent fragilities of the global urban technological mobilities that sustain modern cities, hijacking passenger planes to turn mobility systems into weapons.
2. They allowed choreographed acts of carnage to be broadcast live globally for maximum media impact, manipulating global communication networks.
3. The attacks took advantage of the concentrated nature of global city development, targeting the iconic skyscrapers of Lower Manhattan to inflict massive damage and economic impacts through relatively small strikes.
The attacks are seen as accelerating trends toward more militarized and surveilled urban civil societies, decentralized
Graham, Stephen. "Cities as battlespace: the new military urbanism." City 13....Stephen Graham
Graham, Stephen. "Cities as battlespace: the new military urbanism." City 13.4 (2009): 383-402.
The latest in an ongoing series of papers on the links between militarism and urbanism published in City, this paper opens with an exploration of the emerging crossovers between the ‘targeting’ of everyday life in so-called ‘smart’ border and ‘homeland security’ programmes and related efforts to delegate the sovereign power to deploy lethal force to increasingly robotized and automated war machines. Arguing that both cases represent examples of a new military urbanism, the rest of the paper develops a thesis outlining the scope and power of contemporary interpenetrations between urbanism and militarism. The new military urbanism is defined as encompassing a complex set of rapidly evolving ideas, doctrines, practices, norms, techniques and popular cultural arenas through which the everyday spaces, sites and infrastructures of cities—along with their civilian populations— are now rendered as the main targets and threats within a limitless ‘battlespace’. The new military urbanism, it is argued, rests on five related pillars; these are explored in turn. Included here are the normalization of militarized practices of tracking and targeting everyday urban circulations; the two-way movement of political, juridical and technologi- cal techniques between ‘homeland’ cities and cities on colonial frontiers; the rapid growth of sprawling, transnational industrial complexes fusing military and security companies with technology, surveillance and entertainment ones; the deployment of political violence against and through everyday urban infrastructure by both states and non-state fighters; and the increasingly seamless fusing of militarized veins of popular, urban and material culture. The paper finishes by discussing the new political imaginations demanded by the new military urbanism.
Crang, Michael, Tracey Crosbie, and Stephen Graham. "Variable geometries of c...Stephen Graham
Summary. This paper proposes a new way of conceptualising urban ‘digital divides’. It focuses on the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) unevenly affect the pace of life within the urban environment. Based on a detailed case study of how ICTs are being used in an affluent and a marginalised neighbourhood in Newcastle upon Tyne, the paper suggests that urban digital divides need to be understood as more than uneven patterns of access. They emerge in this work as more than the presence or absence of specific technological artefacts. Rather, it is argued that different styles and speeds of technologically mediated life now work to define urban socio- spatial inequalities. The paper distinguishes between two such key styles and speeds. First, the paper argues that affluent and professional groups now use new media technologies pervasively and continuously as the ‘background’ infrastructure to sustain privileged and intensely distanciated, but time-stressed, lifestyles. Secondly, more marginalised neighbourhoods tend to be characterised by instrumental and episodic ICT usage patterns which are often collectively organised through strong neighbourhood ties. For the former, mediated networks help to orchestrate neighbourhood ties; for the latter, it is those neighbourhood ties that enable on-line access.
Super-tall and Ultra-deep: The Cultural Politics of the ElevatorStephen Graham
Entire libraries can be filled with volumes exploring the cultures, politics and geo- graphies of the largely horizontal mobilities and transportation infrastructures that are intrinsic to urban modernity (highways, railways, subways, public transit and so on). And yet the recent ‘mobilities turn’ has almost completely neglected the cultural geographies and politics of vertical transportation within and between the buildings of vertically-structured cityscapes. Attempting to rectify this neglect, this article seeks, first, to bring elevator travel centrally into discussions about the cultural politics of urban space and, second, to connect elevator urbanism to the even more neglected worlds of elevator-based descent in ultra-deep mining. The article addresses, in turn: the historical emergence of elevator urbanism; the cultural significance of the eleva- tor as spectacle; the global ‘race’ in elevator speed; shifts towards the ‘splintering’ of elevator experiences; experiments with new mobility systems which blend elevators and automobiles; problems of vertical abandonment; and, finally, the neglected ver- tical politics of elevator-based ‘ultra-deep’ mining.
Graham, Stephen. "The end of geography or the explosion of place? Conceptuali...Stephen Graham
Abstract: This article critically explores how the relations between information technologies and space and place are being conceptualized in a broad swathe of recent writings and discourses on the geographies of `cyberspace' and information technologies. After analysing the powerful role of spatial and territorial metaphors in anchoring current discourses about information tech- nologies and society, the article goes on to identify three broad, dominating perspectives. These I label the perspective of `substitution and transcendence' (dominated by technological Utopian- ists), the `co-evolution' perspective (drawing from political economy and cultural studies) and the `recombination' perspective (derived from recent work in actor-network theory). The discussion turns to each in turn, extracting the geographical dimensions and implications of each. The article concludes by considering the implications of the discussion for spatial treatments of society± technology relations and for broader debates about the nature of space and place.
Graham, Stephen. "“Homeland” insecurities? Katrina and the politics of “secur...Stephen Graham
This intervention explores the paradox that although the Bush administration has repeatedly stressed the purported insecurity of U.S. urbanites to “terroristic” threats since 9/11, it has simul- taneously undermined the preparedness and resilience of U.S. cities in the face of catastrophic weather and seismic events. Arguing that Katrina needs to be seen as an event that unerringly exposes the politics of urban security in post-9/11 U.S. cities, the piece explores the relationships between neoconservative, antiurban ideology; the “homeland security” drive; and climate change, catastrophic weather events, and oil geopolitics.
Vigar, Geoff, Stephen Graham, and Patsy Healey. "In search of the city in spa...Stephen Graham
Summary. This paper addresses the ways in which urban regions are represented in contemporary urban policies. In doing so, it critically examines how urban trends are reflected in diverse notions of ‘cityness’ in contemporary policy discourses about spatiality and territoriality. Through a detailed case study of the use and construction of the word ‘city’ in a range of urban governance contexts in Newcastle upon Tyne, this paper analyses the political work done by diverse representations and invocations of ‘cityness’ in contemporary urban governance. Such representations matter because the way in which contemporary cities are conceptualised influences policy formulations and policy outcomes. In addition, considerable emphasis is being placed in contemporary urban policy on ‘joining-up’, ‘integrating’ and co-ordinating governance efforts. How conceptions of the city are mobilised to do such integrating work provides insight into the challenge such ambitions present. The evidence from the case study suggests that the capacity of local actors to think about the processes of change in metropolitan regions, and to define the ways in which they can respond, is often limited, as they struggle to define what their ‘city’ actually might be these days. This tends to be to the detriment of collective attempts to maximise conditions for citizens and for investment.
Graham, Stephen, and Lucy Hewitt. "Getting off the ground On the politics of ...Stephen Graham
This article contends that critical urban research is characterized by horizontalism. It argues that the swathe of recent urban writings have neglected the vertical qualities of contemporary urbanization. The article’s introductory section elaborates this argument in detail. The paper then elucidates three areas where vertically oriented research is emerging. These encompass: the links between Google Earth and urbanism; the connections between social secession and ascension through buildings, walkways and personalized air travel; and the links between verticalized surveillance and urban burrowing.
Water Wars in Mumbai
Stephen Graham, Renu Desai, and Colin McFarlane
Beyond the Pale
The Mumbai Mirror, January 8, 2010. A photograph shows a line of proud Mumbai police officers standing behind row upon row of what appear at first sight to be rusted machine guns (see fig. 1). But this is not one of the arms caches regularly unearthed to demonstrate the force’s effectiveness against the myriad terrorist networks that regularly target urban sites in contemporary India. Rather, the objects are water booster pumps, confiscated in a new campaign of dawn raids targeting “water theft” by slum dwellers in the Shivaji Nagar and
Govandi districts (see fig. 2 map below).
“Stealing Water to Earn a Few Bucks?” the headline reads. “Pay a Hefty
Price!” (Sathe 2010). The article details how the raids are being backed up by new legal moves to criminalize certain uses of water. Hundreds of people, arrested for installing and using the pumps, are to be prosecuted under draconian and nonbailable laws such as the Prevention of Damages to Public Property Act. All this activity is portrayed unproblematically as a heroic response to the threat that water theft in slums poses to the wider, formal, legitimate, and law-abiding city. “Pilferages, if not controlled,” writes the author, “could exhaust the potable water reserves before the next monsoon” (Sathe 2010).
Such statements tap into a mainstream discourse according to which recent poor monsoons have led to a major “water crisis” in Mumbai, necessitating radical, emergency measures to address widespread “water theft” or “water pilferage”— especially by the urban poor. What such discourses occlude, however, are the ways that current systems of urban water provision work to systematically dehydrate and profit from urban slum communities, while water wastage by the affluent and their preferred urban facilities goes unchecked.
Graham, Stephen "Software-sorted geographies." Progress in Human Geography 29...Stephen Graham
This document summarizes emerging research on how computer software and code shape social and geographic inequalities. It discusses the concept of "software-sorting", where computerized systems continuously classify and separate privileged and marginalized groups through things like access controls, surveillance, and customized services. Three examples are reviewed: 1) physical and digital mobility systems, 2) online geographical information systems (GIS) that produce neighborhood classifications, and 3) facial recognition CCTV surveillance. The document argues that software-sorting facilitates the transition from public to privatized services and helps structure unequal access aligned with neoliberal political-economic shifts. While impacts are complex, software-sorting plays a key role in restructuring infrastructure and everyday life.
Life support: The political ecology of urban airStephen Graham
This article discusses the need for a political ecology of urban air to address several key themes. It notes that while political ecology has analyzed urban nature like water and green space, urban air remains understudied despite public health crises. The article reviews links between global warming and lethal urban heatwaves. It also examines urban air pollution crises, paradoxes of pollution patterns, horizontal air movements, vertical politics of air, construction of elite high-rises, feedback loops in air-conditioned cities, and deaths of workers building air-conditioned structures. Developing a political ecology of urban air can help explain how unequal power relations shape the production and flows of good and bad air in cities.
Vertical noir: Histories of the future in urban science fictionStephen Graham
Unerringly, across its whole history, urban science fiction has offered up imagined cities that operate about remarkably similar and highly verticalised visions. These are heavily dominated
by politics of class, resistance and revolution that are starkly organized around vertically stratified and vertically exaggerated urban spaces. From the early and definitive efforts
of H.G. Wells and Fritz Lang, through J.G. Ballard’s 1975 novel 'High Rise', to many cyberpunk classics, this essay – the latest in a series on the vertical dimensions of cities –reflects on how vertical imaginaries in urban science fiction intersect with the politics and contestations of the fast-verticalising cities around the world. The essay has four parts. It begins by disentangling in detail the ways in which the sci-fi visions of Wells, Lang, Ballard and various cyberpunk authors were centrally constituted through vertical structures, landscapes, metaphors and allegories. The essay’s second part then then teases out the complex linkages between verticalised sci-fi imaginaries and material cityscapes that are actually constructed, lived and experienced. Stressing the impossibility of some clean and binary opposition between ‘factual’ and ‘fictional’ cities, the essay explores how verticalised
projects, material cities, sci-fi texts, imaginary futures, architectural schemes and urban theories mingle and resonate together in complex, unpredictable and important ways which do much to shape contemporary urban landscapes. The third section of the essay explores such connections through the cases of retro-futuristic urban megaprojects in the Gulf and forests of towers recently constructed in Shanghai’s Pudong district. The
essay’s final discussion draws on these cases to explore the possibilities that sci-fi imaginaries offer for contesting the rapid verticalisation of cities around the world.
Vertical cities: Representations of urban verticality in 20th-century science...Stephen Graham
Vertical cities: Representations of urban verticality in 20th-century science fiction literature
Lucy Hewitt and Stephen Graham
This paper seeks to intersect two recent trends in urban research. First, it takes seriously the recognition that established traditions of research concerned with urban space have tended to privilege the horizontal extension of cities to the neglect of their vertical or volumetric extension. Second, the paper contributes to the resurgence of interest among social scientists in the validity of fiction – and especially speculative or science fiction – as a source of critical commentary and as a mode of knowledge that can exist in close reciprocity with non-fictional work. From these two starting points the paper develops a reading of the dialogue between the representations of vertical urban life that have featured in landmark works of 20th-century science fiction literature and key themes in contemporary urban analysis.
- The document discusses strategies for resistance to Israeli occupation in Palestine. It argues that Palestinian leaders previously chose violent strategies like armed struggle that failed and caused destruction, but the Palestinian people now generally choose nonviolent resistance through civil disobedience.
- Nonviolent resistance should allow Palestine to hope to end the Israeli military occupation, though it worries hardline Israelis. The document says a solely nonviolent strategy requires training and offers hope for both Palestinians and Israelis.
The document summarizes protests in London against Israel's war in Gaza in late 2008-early 2009. It describes how 119 young Muslims were arrested months later for their involvement in the protests, despite many being first-time offenders. 78 were charged with violent disorder and convinced to plead guilty to lesser offenses, but were still given disproportionately long prison sentences ranging from 8 months to 2.5 years. The arrests have been criticized as disproportionate and unnecessary.
1) The conflict between Jews and Palestinians arose from the Zionist movement in the late 19th/early 20th century which advocated for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine.
2) Tensions increased under the British mandate as Jewish immigration grew, displacing many Palestinians and causing Arab resentment. Violence broke out between the two communities.
3) In 1947, the UN proposed partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, which the Jews accepted but Arabs rejected, seeing it as unjust given they owned most of the land. War ensued and Israel declared independence in 1948, causing hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
This document provides a history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and an outline for a paper examining the conditions in Hebron that have contributed to the internal displacement of Palestinians. It discusses the Zionist movement in the late 19th century, the British Mandate after WWI, the establishment of Israel in 1948 and subsequent wars. It notes that Palestinians were forced to evacuate their homes and many still live in refugee camps. The document presents an outline to examine if geopolitical contestations over religious claims to Hebron have led to Palestinians there being considered internally displaced persons according to UN definitions and standards of human rights. It will analyze policies, statistics, and the situation of Palestinians in regards to rights around equality, discrimination, freedom of movement
The document summarizes the long-running Arab-Israeli conflict, which began in the late 19th century with increased Jewish immigration to Palestine. There are competing claims over the land between Jews/Israelis and Palestinians/Arabs. The conflict consists of wars between Israel and neighboring Arab states from 1948-1973 over Israeli sovereignty and territorial integrity. A second aspect is the intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians over issues like borders, settlements, Jerusalem status, and Palestinian refugees. Resolving these core issues is challenging given the deep historical, religious and political narratives on both sides over claims to the land.
This document provides a detailed overview of the major Arab-Israeli conflicts from 1948 to 2000. It summarizes:
- The 1948 Arab-Israeli War that began after the UN partition plan and led to Israel controlling more territory and hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
- Subsequent wars and conflicts including the 1956 Suez War, 1967 Six-Day War that doubled the size of Israel, the 1967-1970 War of Attrition, and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
- Military operations, uprisings, and peace processes including the 1982 Lebanon War, 1987-1993 First Intifada, 1993-2000 Oslo Peace Process, and 2000 al-Aqsa Intifada.
The document summarizes the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the 1920s to the 1990s. It discusses clashes over religious sites in Jerusalem in the 1920s that led to violence. It then outlines the 1936-39 Arab revolt against British rule and Zionist settlement, which Britain suppressed violently. It also discusses the 1939 British White Paper that limited Jewish immigration and land purchases, angering Zionists. The document traces the creation of Palestinian refugees in 1948, resolutions like 242 after the 1967 war, the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, the PLO's expulsion from Jordan, and the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO that established Palestinian self-governance in parts of the occupied territories
This document provides a summary of Ariel Sharon's legacy as a Zionist leader in Israel. It discusses how Sharon embodied an expansionary view of ensuring Jewish privilege in Palestine through his willingness to use violence and ethnic cleansing against Palestinian civilians. Key events discussed include Sharon's role in the massacre of Palestinian civilians in Qibya in 1953 as head of an Israeli army unit, and his responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 as Israeli Defense Minister. The document also examines how Sharon promoted Israeli settlements in occupied territories and ultimately withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005, but in a way that deepened Israeli apartheid. It argues Sharon's policies have led Israel down a path of isolation and a Jewish supremacist state cannot last.
The document discusses the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine from a historical and legal perspective regarding genocide. It provides background on the Sykes-Picot agreement, the establishment of Israel in 1948 which displaced Palestinians, and the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It analyzes Israel's actions like blockades of Gaza and violence against Palestinians in relation to Raphael Lemkin's definition and framework of genocide. The document argues Israel's treatment of Palestinians constitutes genocide according to international law.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a long-standing dispute over border security, water rights, control of Jerusalem, land rights, and refugee legalities. The roots of the conflict lie in the history of the region but the modern conflict stems from the 20th century as Palestine and Israel have come under the influence of various powers. Though peace negotiations have occurred, radical elements on both sides have hindered lasting agreement between Jews and Palestinians.
The document summarizes a new tour developed for the Latrun Tank Museum in Israel that provides historical context about the rise of Israel from the Holocaust to modern day. It begins with the founding of Zionism in the late 19th century and covers major events like the 1948 War of Independence and 1967 Six-Day War. Stops on the tour highlight tanks from different eras and explain their significance. The goal is to help visitors appreciate the sacrifices of fallen IDF soldiers by understanding what their efforts achieved in establishing a secure Jewish state.
Similar to Graham, Stephen. "Bulldozers and bombs: the latest Palestinian–Israeli conflict as asymmetric urbicide." Antipode 34.4 (2002): 642-649. (11)
Elite Avenues: Flyovers, Freeways and the Politics of Urban MobilityStephen Graham
Flyovers and elevated highways are built in many global cities to privilege the movement of elites and separate spatial movement. However, they often displace large numbers of poorer residents and further segregate access to mobility. While touted as symbols of modernity, these projects actually reflect ongoing struggles over who can freely move and are contested by those with constrained mobility. Alternatives are being explored in some cities that repurpose this space for equitable public use rather than private automobility.
Bunkering down the geography of elite residential basement development in londonStephen Graham
Much has been written about the “luxified skies” – “high-rise”, “super-prime” housing for the super-rich – that has been sprouting up across London. Thus far, less attention has been paid to what has been happening to the subterranean city. The “luxified skies” are highly visible reminders of elite “verticality” but, what we might term, “luxified troglodytism” is also an important aspect of London’s changing geometries of wealth, power and architecture. In this paper, we map out in detail the emerging subterranean geography of residential basement development across London since 2008. The very wealthy, it turns out, have been “bunkering down” across certain parts of London, to an extent hitherto little understood. Some 7,328 new residential basements underneath existing houses had been granted planning permission up to late-2019. Over 1,500 of them are of a size that their locations might best be thought of as marking out a distinct plutocratic “basement belt”.
Vertical : The city from satellites to bunkersStephen Graham
A revolutionary reimagining of the cities we live in, the air above us, and what goes on in the earth beneath our feet
Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground. In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below.
Starting at the edge of earth’s atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers. He asks: why was Dubai built to be seen from Google Earth? How do the super-rich in São Paulo live in their penthouses far above the street? Why do London billionaires build vast subterranean basements? And how do the technology of elevators and subversive urban explorers shape life on the surface and subsurface of the earth?
Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world.
Offering a critical response to the dominant vision of the smart city, this talk seeks to look beyond the seductive imagery and hype that surrounds emerging smart city paradigms. In their place, it explores arrange of critical perspectives to smart city planning that are emerging across the social sciences and activist communities, in various places across the world. These critiques centre, broadly, on ways in which smart city paradigms radically deepen urban surveillance ; the way they embed power into corporate urban operating systems; the way the glossy hype and marketing hides tendencies toward authoritarianism and centralized power ; and the way in which ‘smart’ city labels are used to camouflage the construction of highly elitist urban enclaves. The talk will finish by exploring efforts to mobilise digital media to more democratic and egalitarian urban vision.
Transcending the surface graham: The New Techno-Utopian Dreams (and Realities...Stephen Graham
A presentation about a range of utopian projects for moving about cities above and below the surface via tunnels. orbital travel, supersonic airliners and vertical take off and autonomous 'sky taxis'.
Subterranean urban politics: Insurgency, sanctuary, exploration and tourismStephen Graham
A presentation, drawing on my book 'Vertical', exploring the politics of the urban subterranean. The wide-ranging discussion explores the subterranean as a source of class threats and insurrections; as a sanctuary; as a space of exploration; and as a site for tourism.
Elite avenues: Flyovers, freeways and the politics of urban mobilityStephen Graham
This document provides a summary and analysis of the politics and impacts of elevated highways known as flyovers. It discusses how flyovers have been promoted by urban elites and planners as symbols of modernity and progress, yet often privilege the mobility of the wealthy while negatively impacting poorer communities. The document is divided into several sections that discuss the genealogy of flyovers, their role in social segregation, and examples of how they have been implemented in cities like Manila, the West Bank, South Africa, and Mumbai. It argues that flyovers should be viewed as part of broader processes of three-dimensional social segregation and exclusion within cities.
This presentation is a call for critical urban research to address the vertical as well as horizontal aspects of social inequality. It seeks, in particular, to explore the important but neglected causal connection between the demonisation and dismantling of social housing towers constructed in many cities between the 1930s and 1970s and the contemporary proliferation of
radically different housing towers produced for socio-economic elites. The argument begins with a critical discussion of the economistic orthodoxy, derived from the work of Edward
Glaeser, that contemporary housing crises are best addressed by removing state intervention
in housing production so that market-driven verticalisation can take place. The following two sections connect the rise of such orthodoxy with the ‘manufactured reality’—so
central to neo-liberal urban orthodoxy—that vertical social housing must necessarily fail because it deterministically creates social pathology. The remainder of the paper explores
in detail how the dominance of these narratives have been central to elite takeovers, and ‘luxification’, of the urban skies through the proliferation of condo towers for the super-rich.
Case studies are drawn from Vancouver, New York, London, Mumbai and Guatemala City and the broader vertical cultural and visual politics of the process are explored. The discussion finishes by exploring the challenges involved in contesting, and dismantling, the hegemonic dominance of vertical housing by elite interests in contemporary cities.
Vertical noir: Histories of the future in urban science fictionStephen Graham
This document provides an overview of how science fiction has influenced visions and depictions of future cities. It discusses early 20th century works like H.G. Wells' When the Sleeper Awakes that featured vast, towering urban architectures. More recent sci-fi from films like Blade Runner and works by Syd Mead portrayed divided cities with the wealthy inhabiting skyscrapers while the poor lived in underground slums. The document also examines how sci-fi visions shaped urban planning and concepts of ideal cities, and how works like these both depicted dystopian futures but also inspired dreams of vibrant, dense urban environments.
Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers Stephen Graham Stephen Graham
A presentation outlining some of the themes to my new book, 'Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers' (Verso, 2016).
"A revolutionary reimagining of the cities we live in, the air above us, and what goes on in the earth beneath our feet
Today we live in a world that can no longer be read as a two-dimensional map, but must now be understood as a series of vertical strata that reach from the satellites that encircle our planet to the tunnels deep within the ground. In Vertical, Stephen Graham rewrites the city at every level: how the geography of inequality, politics, and identity is determined in terms of above and below.
Starting at the edge of earth’s atmosphere and, in a series of riveting studies, descending through each layer, Graham explores the world of drones, the city from the viewpoint of an aerial bomber, the design of sidewalks and the hidden depths of underground bunkers. He asks: why was Dubai built to be seen from Google Earth? How do the super-rich in São Paulo live in their penthouses far above the street? Why do London billionaires build vast subterranean basements? And how do the technology of elevators and subversive urban explorers shape life on the surface and subsurface of the earth?
Vertical will make you look at the world around you anew: this is a revolution in understanding your place in the world."
See https://www.versobooks.com/books/2237-vertical
Histories of the Future in Contemporary Megastructures
An exploration of the development of multi-level cities around the world, and their links to historic futurism
Super-tall and ultra-deep: The Politics of the ElevatorsStephen Graham
Entire libraries can be filled with volumes exploring the cultures, politics and geographies
of the largely horizontal mobilities and transportation infrastructures that are
intrinsic to urban modernity (highways, railways, subways, public transit and so on).
And yet the recent ‘mobilities turn’ has almost completely neglected the cultural
geographies and politics of vertical transportation within and between the buildings of
vertically-structured cityscapes. Attempting to rectify this neglect, this article seeks,
first, to bring elevator travel centrally into discussions about the cultural politics of
urban space and, second, to connect elevator urbanism to the even more neglected
worlds of elevator-based descent in ultra-deep mining. The article addresses, in turn:
the historical emergence of elevator urbanism; the cultural significance of the elevator
as spectacle; the global ‘race’ in elevator speed; shifts towards the ‘splintering’ of
elevator experiences; experiments with new mobility systems which blend elevators
and automobiles; problems of vertical abandonment; and, finally, the neglected vertical
politics of elevator-based ‘ultra-deep’ mining.
Vertical ground: making geology graham icus 2016Stephen Graham
Key note presentation at the Island Cities and Urban Archipelagos 2016. 07-12 March 2016, Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong
See http://www.islandcities.org/icua2016.html
Life support the political ecology of urban air (Paper)Stephen Graham
Humans, increasingly, manufacturer their own air. In and around the three-dimensional aerial environments within and above urban regions, this manufacture of air reaches particular levels of intensity. For a species which expires without air in two or three minutes, this anthropogenic manufacture of air is of incalculable importance. Curiously, however, urban air remains remarkably neglected within the political-ecological literatures. Accordingly, this paper suggests a range of key themes which a political ecology of urban air needs to address. These address, in turn, the links between global warming, urban heart-island effects and killer urban heat-waves; urban pollution crises; the paradoxes of urban pollution; horizontal movements of polluted air; the vertical politics of urban air; the construction of vertical condominiums structures for elites; the vicious circles that characterised air-conditioned urbanism; heat-related deaths of workers building air-conditioned structures in increasingly hot climates; and, finally, the growth of large-scale air-conditioned environments.
Life-support: The Political Ecology of Urban Air (Presentation)Stephen Graham
Humans, increasingly, manufacturer their own air. In and around the three-dimensional aerial environments within and above urban regions, this manufacture of air reaches particular levels of intensity. For a species which expires without air in two or three minutes, this anthropogenic manufacture of air is of incalculable importance. Curiously, however, urban air remains remarkably neglected within the political-ecological literatures. Accordingly, this paper suggests a range of key themes which a political ecology of urban air needs to address. These address, in turn, the links between global warming, urban heart-island effects and killer urban heat-waves; urban pollution crises; the paradoxes of urban pollution; horizontal movements of polluted air; the vertical politics of urban air; the construction of vertical condominiums structures for elites; the vicious circles that characterised air-conditioned urbanism; heat-related deaths of workers building air-conditioned structures in increasingly hot climates; and, finally, the growth of large-scale air-conditioned environments.
Graham, Stephen. "Bridging urban digital divides? Urban polarisation and info...Stephen Graham
The societal diffusion of information and communications technologies (ICTs) remains starkly uneven at all scales. It is in the contemporary city that this unevenness becomes most visible. In cities, clusters and enclaves of ‘superconnected’ people, rms and institutions often rest cheek-by-jowel with large numbers of people with non-existent or rudimentary access to communications technologies. In such a context, this paper has two objectives, reected in its two parts. The rst part of the paper seeks to demonstrate that dominant trends in ICT develop- ment are currently helping to support new extremes of social and geographical unevenness within and between human settlements and cities, in both the North and the South. The paper’s second part aims to explore the prospect that such stark ‘urban digital divides’ might be ameliorated through progressive and innovative policy initiatives which treat cities and electronic technologies in parallel. It does this using a range of illustrative exemplars from a variety of contexts
13062024_First India Newspaper Jaipur.pdfFIRST INDIA
Find Latest India News and Breaking News these days from India on Politics, Business, Entertainment, Technology, Sports, Lifestyle and Coronavirus News in India and the world over that you can't miss. For real time update Visit our social media handle. Read First India NewsPaper in your morning replace. Visit First India.
CLICK:- https://firstindia.co.in/
#First_India_NewsPaper
Youngest c m in India- Pema Khandu BiographyVoterMood
Pema Khandu, born on August 21, 1979, is an Indian politician and the Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh. He is the son of former Chief Minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Dorjee Khandu. Pema Khandu assumed office as the Chief Minister in July 2016, making him one of the youngest Chief Ministers in India at that time.
Here is Gabe Whitley's response to my defamation lawsuit for him calling me a rapist and perjurer in court documents.
You have to read it to believe it, but after you read it, you won't believe it. And I included eight examples of defamatory statements/
Essential Tools for Modern PR Business .pptxPragencyuk
Discover the essential tools and strategies for modern PR business success. Learn how to craft compelling news releases, leverage press release sites and news wires, stay updated with PR news, and integrate effective PR practices to enhance your brand's visibility and credibility. Elevate your PR efforts with our comprehensive guide.
2. Bulldozers and Bombs
643
as their blood, literally, seeped away. Those medical staff who got
through were, in some cases, deliberately attacked, and at least five
were killed.
Numbers of civilian casualties, especially in Jenin, are difficult to
estimate. At the time of this writing (17 June 2002), most reports
estimated that at least 52 Palestinians were directly killed in Israel’s
first Jenin attacks. At least 22 of these were civilians, including children and disabled people (Human Rights Watch 2002:4). In the Jenin
operation, Israeli bulldozers levelled a 300-by-250-metre area, burying
some civilians alive and leaving over 4,000 people homeless (Human
Rights Watch 2002:4). The destruction is captured graphically in
Figure 1. Reports tell of Israeli soldiers carefully marking houses
for demolition with blue markers from detailed maps. It is clear that
the objective was the deliberate and wholesale removal of the core of
the Jenin refugee camp, long seen by Israeli military leaders as one
of the main areas for producing and equipping suicide bombers. Since
the demolitions, all attempts at rebuilding and removing unexploded
ordinance have been blocked by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). As
Jonathan Cook reported in the Guardian on 3 June 2002, “[K]eeping
the heart of the camp in ruins will make Jenin more accessible next
time the tanks rumble in”. Even since this was written, there have
been many instances of such reinvasion.
The Context: Broader Infrastructural Warfare
The April invasion followed earlier efforts by Israel to destroy the
developing infrastructure of the Palestinians—much of it financed,
since the Oslo Accord, by aid from Europe and the United Nations. In
January 2002, Josep Pique, president of the European Union Council
of Ministers, complained that Israel had systematically bombed
Gaza International Airport, Gaza Port and Palestinian TV and radio
transmitters, which together had received around $20 million in EU
support. Under the guise of “destroying sniper hiding places” the IDF
have also destroyed many fields, olive groves, factories and greenhouses, adding to the economic effects of the bombings and tightening
checkpoints.
Such destruction has occurred against a broader context of systematic infrastructural and planning biases, which have prevented the
modernisation of Palestinian settlements in Israel and the occupied
territories over the decades since 1967. At the same time, Israel has
poured billions of dollars into building over 400 new Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. These have been equipped with
lavish, dedicated highways and electricity, water and telephone links
that literally bypass the Palestinian neighbourhoods around them. Such
policies have been deliberately designed to fragment and undermine
the contiguity and coherence of Palestinian territory.
3. Figure 1: Aerial photograph of the destruction of the centre of the Jenin refugee camp caused by the battle and Israeli bulldozers (used by
permission from Public Relations Branch, Israeli Defence Forces)
644
Antipode
4. Bulldozers and Bombs
645
Only when the lack of infrastructure threatens to produce wider
externalities for Jewish populations has the Israeli state invested
systematically in modernising occupied Palestinian communities. On
retiring, Teddy Kollek, Mayor of Jerusalem between 1967 and 1993,
made a startling admission. “For Jewish Jerusalem I did something in
the past 25 years”, he reflected.
For East (Palestinian) Jerusalem? Nothing! Sidewalks? Nothing!
Cultural institutions? Not one! Yes, we installed a sewerage system
for them and improved the water supply. Do you know why? Do
you think it was for their good, for their welfare? Forget it! There
were some cases of cholera there, and the Jews were afraid that they
would catch it! (Israel–Palestinian Peace-Building Program 2002)
Urbicide by Bulldozer: Tracing the Origins
The deliberate destruction of settlements by Israel in 2002 is not
entirely new. Sharon, who is nicknamed the “Bulldozer”, has a long
association with its use as a weapon of war and intimidation. In 1953,
forces commanded by Sharon levelled homes in the West Bank village
of Kibya, killing 69 Palestinians, in retaliation for the slaying of a
Jewish woman and her two children.
Sharon revealed the philosophy behind urbicide by bulldozer in an
interview in Ha’aretz on 26 January 2001. When asked what he would
do about persistent Palestinian shooting into the new Jewish settlements at Gilo, south of Jerusalem, he replied: “I would eliminate the
first row of houses in Beit Jela”. And, if the shooting persisted?
I would eliminate the second row of houses, and so on. I know
the Arabs. They are not impressed by helicopters and missiles. For
them there is nothing more important than their house. So, under
me you will not see a child shot next to his father [as was the case
with Mohamed Al-Dorra]. It is better to level the entire village with
bulldozers, row after row. (Jansen 2001:2)
The current war, however, marks a shift from occasional and sporadic
demolitions to the systematic and planned destruction of carefully
targeted settlements for political and military reasons. An Israeli chief
of staff recently claimed that “[T]he D-9 [armoured] bulldozer [that is
invariably used to do the destruction] is a strategic weapon here”
(Harel 2000; see Stein 2002).
The shift to deliberate urbicide by bulldozer is one result of a deepening antagonism amongst Israel’s right-wing military and political elites
toward the natural demographic and urban growth of the Palestinian
people. They see rapid and spontaneous Palestinian urbanisation and
demographic growth, within both Israel and the occupied territories, as
the Palestinian’s major long-term strategic “weapon” in shifting the
demographic, geopolitical and military balance against Israel. Sharon
5. 646
Antipode
and his military leaders worry that Palestinian urbanisation and
demographic growth—largely unplanned and poorly serviced by infrastructure—is now undermining the viability of the Zionist state itself.
Such growth overwhelms efforts by Israel to support the in-migration
of Jews into both Israel itself and the new settlements (a balance
further tipped by growing out-migration of Jews from Israel because
of the increasing incidence of suicide bombs). The fast-growing, labyrinthine Palestinian cities of the West Bank and Gaza also challenge
Israel’s military omnipotence. Such places help Palestinian fighters
avoid surveillance, detection and capture—even when Apache helicopter gunships buzz overhead, occasionally killing alleged Palestinian
fighters (with those unlucky enough to be in the vicinity succumbing
as “collateral damage”). Places like the Jenin refugee camp are commonly dehumanised as “terrorist nests” in the right-wing Israeli media.
As we saw with the death of 13 Israeli soldiers in Jenin on 9 April,
as fighting terrain, such places dramatically negate the superiority
of high-tech Israeli forces over low-tech Palestinian ones. They expose
Israeli soldiers to the risks of snipers, ambushes, booby traps and
homemade bombs. They also inhibit the traditional military tactics of
invasion and occupation, because tanks—when they can get in at all—
are very vulnerable to attack.
Hence the shift to mass demolition as Israel’s preferred strategy
of getting tanks into the centre of Jenin refugee camp—a place they
could not otherwise enter. The demolitions were the brutal reaction
on the part of Israeli politicians and military planners to the deaths of
the Israeli soldiers. But they were also a response to the fact that many
Palestinian fighters sought refuge within a built environment the very
existence of which implicitly challenged Israel’s military omnipotence
over the whole geopolitical space of “Greater Israel” (ie the land to
the west of the Jordan River).
These demolitions are the most extreme element of a broader
strategy of destroying the landscape in the creation of Israeli and
Jewish settlement and mobility spaces that are supposedly less vulnerable to Palestinian attack. “What is most striking in Palestine now is
the violence wrought against the land, the terrain”, writes Christian
Salmon (2002) of the Autodafe writers collective. This process is
now intensifying with the construction, beginning in June 2002, of
a massive 110-km fence along a large part of the 1967 “Green Line”
on land forcibly taken from Palestinians. The fence will have a “buffer
zone” of several kilometers on the western side to be forcibly
bulldozed of Palestinian settlements, structures and vegetation. As
Salmon (2002) continues, such policies mean that
houses are destroyed, olive trees uprooted, orange groves land waste
… to improve … visibility … The bulldozer one runs across at every
6. Bulldozers and Bombs
647
roadside seems as much a part of the strategy in the ongoing war as
the tank. Never has such an inoffensive machine struck me as being
more of a harbinger of silent violence. The brutality of war. Geography,
it is said, determines war. In Palestine it is war that has achieved the
upper hand over geography.
From Urbicide to Genocide? Effi Eitam and
Representations of Palestinians as a “Cancer”
Within the (Greater) Israeli “Body-as-State”
A key force behind Israel’s shift to a strategy of urbicide by bulldozer
is Effi Eitam. A retired IDF brigadier, General Eitam commanded an
army brigade during the invasion of southern Lebanon in the 1980s.
He is now an ultra-right-wing leader of the Jewish settlers’ National
Religious Party and was invited to join Sharon’s new ruling coalition
on 10 April 2002 as Sharon brought in a group of hard-liners and
marginalised more conciliatory figures such as Shimon Peres. Such
has been Eitam’s meteoric political rise that many already rate him as
a serious contender for future leader of Israel.
Crucially, Eitam has also headed a group of senior Israeli generals
who, in late 2001, developed the plan for the Israeli invasion of the
occupied territories that was presented to Sharon on 31 January 2002.
The plan, which Sharon seems to have loosely followed since, was
directly aimed at smashing the political, infrastructural and urban
foundations of the Palestinian State, partly, at least, to “encourage”
Palestinians to leave the occupied territories.
Eitam wants Arabs and Palestinians to leave Israel and the occupied
territories, to be accommodated in a new, two-lobed “Palestinian”
state in Jordan and the Sinai in Egypt. He spoke at a recent conference in Israel on the links between war and cities, attended by this
author. Israel, he argued, faced a “Jihad of buildings”. The spontaneous
construction of Palestinian housing and refugee camps within both
Israel and the occupied territories was, he argued, a “cancerous tumour
destroying the ordered host” of the Israeli state. It threatened, he said,
to undermine Israel militarily and demographically. “Eventually”,
he believed, “this could destroy the strongest army in the world”.
The necessary response, to Eitam, was urbicide—to change the IDF’s
tactics so that they challenge the very existence of Palestinian cities.
Viewing Palestinian cities as “cancerous tumours” within the “ordered
body” of (greater) Israel legitimises the bulldozing of avenues through
people’s homes so that tanks can reassert Israeli military control and
surveillance. It existentially denies Palestinians the right and space
to exist—even in a miserable refugee camp with little or no infrastructure or services. Most astonishingly—and Eitam is fully aware of
the charged irony here—the corporeal “body-as-state” metaphors of
“cancers” and “ordered bodies” that Eitam regularly employs to describe
7. 648
Antipode
Arab settlements are virtually search-and-replace copies of Hitler’s
metaphorical depictions of Jewish ghettos in Mein Kampf. From
countless examples in history, it is obvious that from such metaphors
genocides can grow. The Jewish people should be the last to need
lessons on how quickly this can happen.
Worryingly, Eitam already hints at such quasigenocidal fantasies.
His belief is that, in a context of war, Israeli military force and
strategies of deliberate urbicide will make life so intolerable that
Palestinians will “voluntarily” leave their homeland in Israel or the
occupied territories for Jordan and Egypt. The aim, as suggested
by Israeli minister for Labor Shaloumo Bin Azri in May 2001, is
to “convert the life of Palestinians into hell” through the ongoing
destruction of infrastructure, the building of fences and “buffer zones”
and the strengthening of curfews and checkpoint controls (Arabic
News 2001). This policy, euphemistically labelled “transfer”, is now a
legitimate political idea in Israel. “Transfer” is “ethnic cleansing” by
urbicide—not (yet?) a deliberate massacre, but a systematic programme
of urban and infrastructural destruction, with heavy casualties along
the way.
On the need to remove the “cancer” of Israeli-Arab settlements
from the “ordered” spaces within Israel, Eitam argued in Ha’aretz on
6 April 2002 that “in war we [ie Jewish Israelis] behave as in war. I can
see that as a consequence of war few Arabs [Israeli citizens] will
remain here [in Israel]. As a result of war many Palestinians may find
themselves again as refugees, on the other side, the eastern side, of
the Jordan river.” If such visions continue to influence Sharon’s
fraying coalition and his military and territorial strategies, shifts from
urbicide to genocide can genuinely not be discounted. This is something
for US and EU leaders, who have taken few direct actions against
Israel’s attacks, to consider immediately.
Bombs Versus Bulldozers: Suicide Bombing
as (Asymmetric) Urbicide
What Israel’s strategy of deliberate urbicide totally fails to do—as the
tragic litany of ongoing suicide bombs demonstrates—is to improve
the security of Israelis in their own cities. For, in this war of (asymmetric)
urbicide, Palestinians have their own weapon against the modern
urban life of the Israelis that will not be stopped by anything but a just,
two-state, geopolitical settlement with substantial international
enforcement. Untraceable and unstoppable, bypassing fences, checkpoints and targeted assassinations alike, and driven by despair,
vengeance and religious certitude, the suicide bomb continues to deny
Israelis their modernity, their cities, their freedom. Hundreds of
Israeli civilian have been killed by such bombs. Whole swathes of
the economic hearts of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa are being
8. Bulldozers and Bombs
649
economically starved as terrified Israelis stay at home and shop on the
’net. And the national economy is on a major slide.
Whilst they have no doubt killed many of the organisers of the
suicide bomb campaign in recent West Bank offensives, it is already
clear that Israel’s brutal current attacks will, tragically, only add to the
queues of people, from both sides of the new fence, desperate enough
to consider such extreme measures.
References
Arabic News (2001) Israeli official calls for striking Palestinian infrastructure.
ArabicNews.Com 6 May. Available at http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/
010605/2001060505/html (last accessed 10 April 2002)
Cook J (2002) Time to clean up the battlefield of a dirty war. The Guardian 3 June:16
Giacaman R and Husseini A (2002) Life and health during the Israeli invasion of
the West Bank: The town of Jenin. Indymedia Israel. Available at http://www.
indymedia.org.il (last accessed 29 May 2002)
Harel A (2000) This time, the chief of staff keeps his lips sealed. Ha’aretz 28
December:3
Human Rights Watch (2002) Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the
Palestinian Authority territories. 14(3)
Israel-Palestinian Peace-Building Program (2002) Jerusalem: Planning and development. Available at http://www.atsc.org/1spal/ jerusalem/jeruplans.htm (last accessed
4 March 2002)
Jansen M (2001) The bulldozer baron. Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line 8–14 February.
Available at http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly (last accessed 15 May 2002)
Salmon C (2002) Sabreen, or patience. Available on the Autodafe Web site at
http://www.autodafe.org (last accessed 18 April 2002)
Stein Y (2002) Policy of Destruction: House Demolitions and Destruction of Agricultural
Land in the Gaza Strip. Report by B’Tseelem—The Israeli Information Center for
Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. February. Available at http://www.
btselem.org (last accessed 5 May 2002)