1. In the 6 days from 27 February
to 3 March, 106 Palestinians
were killed. At least half of
those killed were civilians,
25 of whom were children
including 6 month old
Muhammad al-Bur’i killed
in his own home by shrapnel
from Israeli shelling.
On 28th February, a group
of six children were targeted
by an Israeli missile while
they played football.
Four were killed –Ali Dardona
(8), Muhammad Hamudah
(9), Dardona Dardona (12) and
Omer Dardona. The remaining
two children survived but were
horrifically wounded, with the
flesh burnt off their legs and
hands, and the image of the
decapitatedbodiedandsevered
limbs of the other children
etched in their minds.
Israel’s Chief of Staff claimed
that at least 90% of those
killed took park in the fighting,
however, Israeli human rights
group B’Tselem investigated
and concluded that this was not
the case and expressed grave
concern at the large number of
children and other uninvolved
civilians among those killed
and wounded.
Israel has justified its military
strikes and the closure of Gaza
as being a response to rocket
attacks against Israeli towns
bordering Gaza. Between May
2007 and 3 March 2008, two
Israelis were killed by these
rockets. Yet Israel is seeking
to use this to justify the killing
of hundreds of Palestinians
and the enforcement of an
inhumane embargo which cuts
off Gaza’s 1.5 million people
from the outside world.
Israel has greatly reduced
the amount of fuel, electricity
and essential medicines
being supplied to Gaza.
Thishascreatedahumanitarian
catastrophe. Over 90 medical
patients died over a 6 moth
period as they were prevented
from receiving treatment for
treatable illnesses. Many more
face harsh living conditions
which make normal life
impossible.
Israeli leaders have said that
Gazans will not be allowed
to live normal lives until the
rocket attacks stop.
The people of Gaza on the
other hand, have had neither
security nor peace for the past
40 years. The occupation of
Gaza began a long time before
the rocket attacks did, and the
occupation is the reason for all
Palestinian resistance.
The siege on Gaza and Israel’s
military raids were condemned
bytheinternationalcommunity,
and UK based human rights
groups said the situation has
not been this low in the 40
years of occupation. Amnesty
International’s UK Director
Kate Allen said,
“Punishing the entire Gazan
population by denying them
these basic human rights is
utterly indefensible.”
UK Foreign Secretary David
Milliband angered many
human rights organisations
by failing to condemn Israel’s
collective punishment of
Gaza and the killing of over
100 Gazans in a period of 6
days, and instead he chose to
condemn the rocket attacks as
acts of terrorism.
UCL votes to twin with
Palestinian Universities
Crater appears in
Al-Aqsa Compound
US engineered
Palestinian civil war
AqsaN E W S
Quarterly Issue 36 April 2008
For Free Distribution
Israel exploiting
Jerusalem deaths
Holocaust in Gaza
Between 1 January and 5 March 2008, Israel killed 238 Palestinians through direct
military assaults on Gaza and the West Bank. 37 of those killed were children.

2. A document which was leaked to the
US magazine Vanity Fair and the UK
newspaper the Guardian revealed that
the Bush administration engineered
a civil war in Gaza in a bid to oust
the Hamas led government after its
election victory in January 2006.
President Bush, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, and deputy
national security adviser Elliott
Abrams, all approved a plan to
pressurise Palestinian president,
Mahmoud Abbas, to remove
the Hamas authorities in Gaza.
The original plan was to provide
Fatah ‘security’ forces with arms,
ammunition and training so that they
could effectively challenge Hamas.
They used Muhammad Dahlan, a
Fatah supporter, as a front to sew
seeds of dissention and attempt to
weaken Hamas by fuelling conflict
between Fatah and Hamas security
personnel.
The US offered over $80 million
to fund Fatah security personnel
and claimed this was to “dismantle
the infrastructure of terrorism and
establish law and order in the West
Bank and Gaza.” The money never
came, as the payment was blocked
by the U.S House Subcommittee on
the Middle East and South Asia as its
members feared that military aid to
the Palestinians might end up being
turned against Israel. However, the
US then called on its allies in the
region and tried to persuade Egypt,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates to offer training and
funding to the Fatah fighters.
Egypt was one of the states that
complied and sent weapons to the
Fatah faction in Gaza and trained
up Fatah fighters. Towards the end
of 2006, Egypt sent 2,000 automatic
rifles, 20,000 ammunition clips, and
two million bullets to Fatah in Gaza.
Despite this, Hamas and Mahmoud
Abbas formed a Unity Government,
in March 2007. However, this was
dissolved when Hamas took over
control of Gaza in June 2007 after
the US sponsored Fatah violence
and Hamas response escalated out of
control.
Following the Hamas takeover,
David Wurmser, a former Middle
East adviser to the vice-president,
Dick Cheney said “It looks to me
that what happened wasn’t so much
a coup by Hamas but an attempted
coup by Fatah that was pre-empted
before it could happen.” He accused
the Bush administration of “engaging
in a dirty war in an effort to provide
a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas]
with victory.” Crucially, he believed
that Hamas had no intention of taking
over control of the Gaza Strip until
Fatah forced its hand.
I N B R I E F
2
US continues increasing military
aid to Israel
Despite Israel’s continuing collective
punishment against Palestinians, and the
rocketing number of Palestinian deaths,
the US continues to increase its military
aid to Israel. In his proposed 2009 budget,
PresidentBushhasrequested$2.55billionin
military aid for Israel. This is a 9% increase
above and beyond Israel’s actual military
spending in 2007. The budget request is the
first instalment of a ten-year Memorandum
of Understanding signed between the
United States and Israel in August 2007 to
increase military aid by 25% over the next
decade, totalling $30 billion. This military
aid is in fact sustaining Israel’s occupation
of Palestinian land and creating greater
misery for Palestinians.
Fatah and Hamas United again in
the struggle
Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip was heart-
breaking for the Palestinian people, but
one positive outcome is that after months
of inter-factional animosity, Hamas and
Fatah supporters have once again become
united against the Israeli occupation of their
homeland
Israel to demolish 700 year old
mosque
TheAl-OmarimosqueinthevillageofUmm
Tuba near Jerusalem is to be demolished by
Israel. This mosque dates back 700 years
and is the only mosque in Umm Tuba,
but despite this Israel claimed it was built
without a licence.
Palestinians condemned this decision,
claiming that Israeli authorities are
attempting to wipe out historic Islamic sites
in Palestine. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
Sheikh Muhammad Hussein called on the
United Nations Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) which is charged
with protecting human cultural heritage
around the world, to prevent the demolition
of the mosque.
UK police refused to arrest Israeli
General for fear of gun battle
Israeli Major General Doron Almog faces a
war crimes warrant of arrest in the UK. In
September 2005, he flew into England but
received a tip off about the impending arrest
and refused to disembark from the plane.
British police recently revealed that they
refused to board the plane as they feared an
armed gun-fight with his body guards.
Palestinian war crimes campaigners had
broughtthewarrantforaprivateprosecution
following the General’s order for more than
50 homes to be destroyed in the Gaza Strip
and the resultant loss of Palestinian life.
Join Friends of Al-Aqsa
Be a part of Friends of Al-Aqsa. Join our
mailing list
To receive updates and information about
our events, log in your email at our website
www.aqsa.org.uk
Leaked documents show US engineered Palestinian civil war
UCL votes to twin with Palestinian Universities
On the 5th March 2008, the University College London
Students’ Union (UCLU) voted in favour of twinning
with the Students’ Unions of Al-Quds and Al-Azhar Uni-
versities in the West Bank and Gaza respectively. The
Union also voted to establish an educational exchange
programme between UCL students and students from
the Palestinian universities, and finally “To reiterate the
UCLU Friends of Palestine society’s right to raise issues
that concern the student body, criticise the Government
of Israel and its policies, as well as highlight atrocities
that contravene International Humanitarian law” and be
treated the same as other societies for doing so.
Just prior to the meeting, what the Palestine Society
termed as a ‘hostile’ amendment was received from UC-
LU’s Jewish Society for the substitution of the Israeli He-
brew University in Jerusalem in the place of Al-Azhar in
Gaza. This was rejected.
The vote was preceded by weeks of conflict between the
Palestine Society and the Jewish Society, with the latter
accusing the Palestine Society of ‘inciting racial hatred’
against Jews following an exhibition titled “Jerusalem
Dispossessed” which documented “the dispossession of
indigenous Palestinians from their native city, Jerusalem,
amid rapid expansion of Israeli settlements, the separa-
tion wall and home demolitions.”
Evidence that Israel uses snipers in the Gaza Strip
During Israel’s military offensive in Gaza at the end
of February and beginning of March, many journalists
reported that Israel was using snipers to target and kill
civilians in Gaza. Papers such as the Guardian and the
Daily Telegraph covered the story of 12 year old Safa,
killed by a bullet to the chest while she was in a bedroom
in her house about 4 metres from the window. Her father
stated that an Israeli sniper shot her deliberately. She then
bled to death after 4 hours as her family were prevented
from leaving the house to get medical help.
Many others were killed in their homes, including 16 and
17 year old brother and sister Eyad and Jacqueline who
were sitting in their uncle’s living room when they were
both shot. Neither of them was close to the window at
the time and could only have been shot by sniper fire.
Another Palestinian teenager said he was shot three times
when he approached the Zimo Square area to see what
was happening.
The fact that children were being targeted makes the
crime even more appalling. Israel’s 6 day military assault
left over 30 children dead and their families in mourning.
The Palestinian rocket attacks did not reduce during the
military assault, rather, they intensified.

3. I N B R I E F
3
Palestinian prisoner dies in Israeli
prison due to neglect
47 year old Fadel Ouda Atiya Shaheen from
Gaza City was imprisoned in October 2004.
He was detained by Israeli Occupation
Forces in the Be’r al-Saba’ Prison. His health
condition was poor and he was a diabetic
in regular need of insulin injections. The
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported
that there were indications that his health
condition deteriorated and the administration
of the prison failed to offer him appropriate
medical treatment. He died on 29 February
2008.
The PCHR has repeatedly received
information about medical negligence and
the failure of Israeli prison authorities to
provide Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails
with appropriate medical care. 7 Palestinian
prisoners have died in Israeli prison since
January 2007, 6 of whom suffered medical
neglect.
Israel military action intensified
after Annapolis Conference
Former Palestinian Information Minister Dr.
Mustafa Barghouthi revealed that the rate
of Israeli military attacks and the killing of
Palestinians doubled following the Annapolis
Conference in November 2007. In a meeting
in Brussels, Dr Barghouthi presented data
showing that Palestinian deaths caused by
the Israeli Occupation Forces had increased
100% since the meeting, and he showed that
the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed in
2007 had risen to 40:1, up from 30:1 in 2006
and 4:1 from 2000-2005. “We do not want
anyone to die, Israeli or Palestinian,” he said,
“but this ratio is alarming. It is unacceptable
to justify such large-scale killings under the
pretext of security.”
Israeli missile strike in Gaza
destroys medical relief centre
The building housing the Palestinian
Medical Relief Society (PMRS) was severely
damaged by an Israeli air strike in February.
The PMRS provides essential emergency
health care to Palestinians. The building also
housed the central pharmacy and a warehouse
of equipment for handicapped and severely
injured people, all of which were destroyed.
Equipment such as wheelchairs, crutches and
walkers are all essential to the population
where thousands of people have been injured
and maimed by Israeli attacks. PMRS stocks
of such equipment were all destroyed. Due
to the embargo which has been placed on
Gaza, it is highly unlikely that these essential
equipment and medicine will be replaced.
Israel approves settlement growth
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has
approved plans to build 750 new homes in an
illegal settlement in the West Bank. This has
angered many Palestinians as under the terms
of the peace process, settlement expansion
is supposed to be frozen. Israel has 500,000
Jewish Israelis living illegally in the West
Bank.
Israel exploiting Jerusalem deaths
Medical patient dies after denied passage at checkpoint
Crater appears in Al-Aqsa Compound
No waste water treatment left
The UN has reported that
there is no longer any waste
water treatment available in
Gaza due to the continuing
blockade and therefore
raw sewage is being
pumped into the sea. The
UN information service,
IRIN, has released a report
detailing the environmental
devastation faced by the
population of Gaza due to
the ongoing Israeli siege of
the Gaza Strip.
Gidon Bromberg from
Friends of the Earth Middle
East said “This is a disaster.
This is a lot of sewage. It
is a health issue, as people
swim in the sea and it also
affects drinking water as the
pollutants could harm the
ground water.” Until Israel
lifts its sanctions against
Gaza, there will not be
enough fuel and electricity
to treat the sewage in a safe
way.
Palestinian Volunteers attacked while
renovating within Al-Aqsa Compound
On 6 March 2008, Israeli
border police troops
attacked a group of
Palestinian volunteers who
were doing renovation and
cleaning work inside the Al
Aqsamosque.APalestinian
NGO which was doing the
renovation work stated that
this was the third day on
which the police had
attacked the volunteers
and that three volunteers
had been kidnapped by
the army while they were
doing the renovation work.
The soldiers were reported
to have used batons and
rifle butts to beat up some
of the volunteers.
66 year old Fawziyeh a-Dark had a heart attack on 14
February 2008, but died after an ambulance was prevented
from reaching her. Israeli soldiers had set up a surprise
checkpoint close to the village of Deir al-Ghuson and
prevented passage of the ambulance.
She was forced to travel by taxi to the main checkpoint
where the Red Crescent ambulance had arranged to
meet her and her husband after passage was refused.
However, the soldiers at the checkpoint refused to let
her cross, even though she was in need of urgent medical
treatment. Fawziyeh’s husband Mahmud Qab reported
that he pleaded with the soldiers to let him take his wife
to hospital but this was to no avail. The soldier’s response
was “Let her die, let her die, it doesn’t interest me, it is
forbidden to cross.”
Mahmud said he begged the soldiers for fifteen minutes
before realising they would not allow them to cross. “My
begging didn’t make them feel an ounce of compassion.”
They returned home, and Fawziyeh died a short while
later. This case was recorded and reported by the Israeli
human rights group B’Tselem.
The tragic death of 8 Jewish religious students, who were
killed in Jerusalem by a Palestinian gun-man on 6 March
2008, is reportedly being exploited by Israel to launch
an aggressive campaign against Hamas, despite no clear
links to the attack.
Major Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported that
the political echelons in Israel instructed the Government
Press Office to distribute the shocking images from the
yeshiva shooting worldwide, including pictures of holy
books perforated with bullets, a blood-stained praying
shawl and the gunman’s body inside the yeshiva to prove
that Palestinians will stop at nothing to target innocent
Israelis. Nothing was said of the hundreds of Palestinians
who were killed prior to this revenge attack, which was
the most likely cause of the shooting.
On Friday 15 February 2008, Palestinian worshippers at
the Al-Aqsa compound reported that part of the esplanade
had collapsed leaving a 2 metre long and 1.5 meter wide
crater in the ground. The collapse took place close to the
Al-Silsila (Chain) Gate and Qatibai Water Fountain at the
mosque’s western side.
Palestinians have blamed Israel’s continuing tunnelling
beneath the compound for this latest danger to its stability.
Israel has been digging beneath Al-Aqsa since the 1980’s.
When the tunnels were first discovered, they sparked
international condemnation. However, Israel only halted
digging temporarily on a number of occasions but always
resumed. There now exists a network of tunnels beneath
the Al-Aqsa compound accessible only to Israeli Jews.
These tunnels have severely compromised the structural
integrity of the buildings within the Al-Aqsa Compound.
In February 2004, part of a road leading to one of the
mosque’s main gates collapsed due to Israeli digging. A
crack also appeared in one of the walls within the al-Aqsa
mosque building suggesting that its foundations are no
longer stable. Experts have warned that even slight earth
tremors could lead to a collapse of the buildings within
the Al-Aqsa Compound.

4. 4
Message from Friends of Al-Aqsa
Leaflets
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6 month old Muhammad al-Buri killed by
an Israeli missile strike.
Narratives Under Siege
The events of the past 3 months in
Gaza have been shocking and deeply
distressing. Many words have been
spoken, but the voice which often goes
unheard is that of the Palestinians on
the ground. Israel prevents reports from
emerging and tells a different story to
the world. The Palestinian Centre for
Human Rights has set up ‘Narratives
under Siege’ on its web-site in order to
allow Palestinians to tell their stories
to the world so that the international
community may finally understand
their struggle against Israeli brutality.
Below is the voice of one Palestinian
– a voice and many more like it which
Israel would prefer to keep silent.
Abed Rabbo St, East Jabaliya
“I heard shooting, then screaming.
I rushed upstairs to see what had
happened, and they were both on the
floor. Jaqueline was already dead, but
Iyad was still alive. The neighbours
called an ambulance and we ran to the
hospital with him, but he died as soon
as we arrived.”
East Jabaliya in the northern Gaza
Strip bore the brunt of Israel’s latest
military incursion into Gaza. The
incursion, which was launched in the
early hours of Thursday February 28,
lasted four days and nights. In that time
Israeli troops killed 108 Palestinians,
including 54 unarmed civilians, 26 of
whom were children. The Palestinians
who live in and around Abed Rabbo
Street in east Jabaliya suffered intense
airstrikesbyF16planesandhelicopters,
tank shelling, snipers, and having their
houses invaded and vandalised by
Israeli soldiers, who tied adults up with
ropes, or else locked whole families
into single rooms in order to use their
homes as sniper towers to target local
Palestinian fighters. Sixteen year old
Jaqueline Abu Shebak and her fourteen
year old brother, Iyad both lived on
Abed Rabbo Street with their mother
and three other young brothers and
sisters. The children’s uncle, Hatem
Hosni Abu shebak, who lives next
door, found the bodies of Jaqueline
and Iyad in the early hours of Saturday
March 1st, when he rushed upstairs
after hearing intense shooting and then
screaming.
“I hear shooting and Iyad was
screaming.AsIranupstairstheshooting
continued, and both children were on
the living room floor “he says, as we sit
in the blood-stained living room where
Jaqueline died and Iyad was critically
injured. “I tried to revive them, but
Jaqueline was dead, and even though
Iyad was alive and making sounds we
could not save him. We had to wait for
an ambulance because my car had been
shelled by an Israeli tank.” Hattim
Abu Shebak shows us the mirrors and
windows shattered by bullets, the bullet
holes in the walls, and the children’s
blood on the furniture.
The Israeli soldiers who killed
Jaqueline and Iyad had occupied the
house opposite, and were holding
Ramez Etbail and his family hostage
so they could use the house to shoot
at local Hamas fighters. The Israelis
fired straight through the kitchen
window of the Abu- Shebak house,
striking Jaqueline and Iyad who were
both cowering in the corner. Their
mother was in her own bedroom trying
protecting her youngest child from the
onslaught of bullets.
The children’s father, Mohammed
Hosni Abu Shebak, works as a security
guard in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
He has been in Ramallah since Hamas’
takeover of the Gaza Strip in June
2007.
As soon as the Israeli military withdrew
from northern Gaza, at around 6 am on
Monday 3 March, people came out onto
the streets of Jabaliya in order to start
to bury their dead.As we drove through
Jabaliya just hours later, funerals were
being held in street after street.
Israel has described its incursion into
Gaza as a “routine” military operation.
However,theIsraelimilitary’sintentions
were made clear prior to the incursion,
when Internal Security Minister Avi
Dichter stated that unlawful rocket
fire by armed Palestinians must be
stopped “Irrespective of the cost to the
Palestinians.”

5. 5
Take Action!
NO to Israel’s celebrations in Britain
Supporters of the state of Israel are planning its
60th Birthday celebrations around the world.
The Palestinians are also marking this day as the
60th anniversary of the Nakba – the catastrophe
that cost them their homeland and made them
refugees for 6 decades. The brutal occupation
continues and every day, Palestinians continue
to be killed by the Israeli army who shows little
consideration for life and property.
Israel ’s planned celebrations include:
1. A JNF funded charity dinner at Windsor
Castle
2. An international friendly football game
against Manchester United, in Israel
Israel continues in its occupation of Palestinian
land. Its building of illegal settlements means
that a future Palestinian state is no longer viable.
Israel has built a separation wall within the
West Bank cutting many Palestinians off from
Jerusalem , and imprisoning others on the Israeli
side. The death toll continues to rise. Israel must
to brought to justice for its War Crimes, and it’s
‘celebrations’ must be challenged. Israel is in
breach of UN Resolutions, Geneva Conventions
and International law.
TAKE ACTION
Lobby the following people/organisations:
Her Majesty, The Queen
The Jewish National Fund is a racist organisation
which owns land in the state of Israel, a lot of
which it refuses to lease or sell to any non-Jews.
This is both discriminatory and racist. The JNF
also helps develop Israel’s illegal settlements in
the West Bank, which exist today in defiance of
international law.
- Write a letter to Her Majesty, The Queen,
requesting that she withdraw permission to the
JNF to use Windsor Castle to host its ‘celebratory
dinner’.
- Include the following points:
o The JNF is a racist organisation which
discriminates against Arabs and Palestinians.
o The JNF assists the state of Israel in
committing War Crimes against the Palestinian
people.
o It is unacceptable for the British Monarchy
to support the state of Israel in its celebrations
when the Palestinian have suffered for 60
long years, and continue to suffer daily, a life
of oppression, occupation and brutality. We
expect our Monarch to remain impartial in the
circumstances.
o For these reason, we find it unacceptable
that the JNF be given access to Windsor Castle
Address: Her Majesty The Queen,
Buckingham Palace, London, SW1A 1AA.
Manchester United
Israel has issued an invitation to Manchester
United Football club to play in an international
friendly match in Israel to ‘celebrate’ its 60th
anniversary.
- Lobby the Manchester United Football
team, and ask them to
refuse Israel’s invitation. Include the following
points:o Israel is an occupying power who has
made the lives of the
Palestinian people miserable for the past 60 years.
o Israel restricts the movement of Palestinians
and has even barred the Palestinian football team
from traveling abroad.
o Israel has bombed Gaza’s only football
stadium.
o Israel ’s occupation is illegal, and it has
been condemned by the United Nations on dozens
of occasions because of its war crimes.
o Israel has been responsible for initiating
at least three wars in the region leading to
thousands of deaths.
o Israel is only a democracy for
its Jewish citizens, and all others are treated in a
discriminatory fashion, leading to criticisms of
Apartheid like practices.
o Israel ’s 60th birthday marks 60 years since
the Palestinian Nakba or catastrophe, and we
cannot accept that a British football team would
aid in the ‘celebration’ of the misery of 8 million
Palestinians.
Address: Management, Manchester
United, Sir Matt Busby Way, Old Trafford,
Manchester, M16 0RA
Email: enquiries@manutd.co.uk
TAKE ACTION today, and remember to copy
your emails/Letter to Friends of Al-Aqsa: info@
aqsa.org.uk
Madrid and London, 2007

6. Fun & Games
C O M P E T I T I O N
Win a £20 Argos voucher and a
Friends of Al-Aqsa goody bag!!!
13 years old or under???
Draw a picture representing
Palestine and send it to us.
This can be of Masjid al-Aqsa
or the Dome of the Rock, or of
anything else that reminds you of
Palestine.
The picture should not be bigger
than A4 size, and you can use
any materials including paints
and colouring pens. The best
entry will win the prize.
14-18 years old???
Many Palestinian children
are born in refugee camps
and they live their whole lives
there. Refugee camps are
overcrowded and the houses
are small and made of concrete
blocks. In some homes, there is
no natural light and residents
must keep the lights on all day
and all night.
Imagine what your life would be
like in a refugee camp. Write a
short letter to us, telling us how
you think your life would be like
living in a refugee camp, and
what things you would miss most
from the possessions you have.
Try to imagine being a Palestinian
refugee when you are writing
your answer.
Visit this web-site which may help
you: www.baqaacamp.blogspot.
com
The best and most thought
provoking answer will win.
Deadline for both
competitions:
31st May 2008
Send your answers with your
name, age and address to:
Friends of Al-Aqsa, PO Box
5127, Leicester, LE2 0WU.
Or email us on
info@aqsa.org
Winners of the last
competition:
Sadia Hajat,
age 12 from Blackburn.
Sajida Ali,
age 15 from Nuneaton.
Order your copy of the Friends of Al-Aqsa
Palestine Colouring Book and Palestine
Activity Book today!
These books will help you to learn more
about Palestine in a fun and creative way!
Use the order form on page 4 to place your order.
Book
Co lo u ri n
g
Palestine
Book
Palestine
Word-searches
Colouring
Crosswords
Spot the difference
And much more…
Act ivi ty
£ 2
£ 3
Fun & Games
6

7. 7
Ali Abunimah
As Compared with the international silence that surrounded Israel’s recent
massacres of Palestinian civilians in the Occupied Gaza Strip, condemna-
tion and condolences for the victims of the shooting attack that killed eight
students at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem have been swift.
The day before the Jerusalem attack, Amira Abu ‘Aser was bur-
ied in Gaza. She had lived just 20 days on this earth before being
shot in the head by Israeli occupation forces who attacked the
house of friends she and her family were visiting.
Needless to say, she had not been firing rockets at Sderot when she was
killed. One of the house’s inhabitants was found the next day, shot dead and
his head crushed by an army jeep, an apparent victim of an extrajudicial
murder by Israeli forces.
But confirming their status in the eyes of the “international community” as
less than complete human beings, neither Amira’s killing, nor any of the
dozens of Palestinian civilian victims of Israel’s onslaught in Gaza have
merited condemnation or condolences.
The fallacy that lies behind the differential concern for the lives of innocent
Israelis and Palestinians is that the massacre in Jerusalem and the massacres
in Gaza can be separated. Israeli deaths are “terrorism,” while Palestinian
deaths are merely an unfortunate consequence of the fight against “terror-
ism.” But the two are intricately linked, and what happened in Jerusalem is
a direct consequence of what Israel has been doing to the Palestinians for
decades.
Let me be clear that the killing of civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, is wrong,
repugnant, and cannot bring this one-hundred-year war caused by the Zion-
ist colonization of Palestine to an end. There will be an Israeli propaganda
effort, as always, to present Palestinian violence as being simply motivated
by hatred, and divorced from the context of brutal occupation that Palestin-
ians live under. What greater proof could you need than an attack on reli-
gious students, devoting their life to the study of the Torah?
We cannot expect much analysis in the media of why the Mercaz HaRav
yeshiva might have been chosen as a target. Was it mere coincidence that
the school, named for Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, and led after his death
by his son Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, is the ideological cradle of the militant,
Jewish supremacist settler movement Gush Emunim?
Unlike other sects in Israel which sought exemption of their students from
military service, Gush Emunim encouraged its followers to join the army
and become the armed wing of religious nationalist Zionism. Gush Emunim
settlers, many of them, like Moshe Levinger, graduates of Mercaz HaRav,
founded the most extreme and racist settlements in the Occupied West
Bank, including the notorious colonies in and near Hebron whose inhabit-
ants have made life miserable for Palestinians in the city and forced many
of them out of their homes. It is the militant settlers of Gush Emunim who
still honor Baruch Goldstein who murdered 29 Palestinians in Hebron in
February 1994. It is in Hebron that the Gush Emunim settlers spray “Arabs
to the gas chambers” on Palestinian houses.
It is possible that the Mercaz HaRav gunman did not know or care about
any of this, that any target he could identify as Israeli would have satisfied
his desire to exact revenge?
In 2002, Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon declared that “the Palestinians
must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness
that they are a defeated people.” This would be achieved by the massive and
constant application of force until they got the message. The same philoso-
phy was elaborated in 2004 by Professor Arnon Soffer, one of the architects,
with former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, of the 2005 Gaza
“disengagement.”
Soffer, an avid supporter of turning Gaza into a hermetically-sealed pen
for unwanted Palestinians, explained that if Palestinians fire a single rocket
over the fence into Israel, “we will fire 10 in response. And women and
children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such
incident, Palestinian mothers won’t allow their husbands to shoot Qassams
[rockets], because they will know what’s waiting for them.”
For decades Israel has been exercising with ever-escalating brutality this
deliberate strategy to crush through force and starvation a civilian popula-
tion in rebellion against colonial rule. To Israel’s vexation, the Palestinians
are not playing their part. After sixty years of expulsions, massacres, as-
sassinations of their leaders, colonization, torture, and mass imprisonment,
the Palestinians have utterly failed to understand that they are a “defeated
people.”
The vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank
endure unprecedented oppression by the Israeli army and settlers
without resorting to violence in response, but they maintain an
inextinguishable determination to endure until they regain their
rights.
If the methods the Palestinian resistance has sometimes used are reprehen-
sible, they have also been typical for anti-colonial resistance movements
throughout time, as William Polk shows in his book Violent Politics: A His-
tory of Insurgency, Terrorism and Guerrilla War from the American Revo-
lution to Iraq, and Robert Pape demonstrated through his study of suicide
bombing in Dying to Win.
Is it not time for the rest of the world to step in and force Israel at last to
understand the same thing, so that the senseless bloodshed can finally stop
and all the people of the country - Israelis and Palestinians - can begin to
imagine a future other than an endless parade of funerals?
The full version of this article is available at www.electronicintifada.net
A defeated policy, not a
defeated people

8. In October 2000, when the Second Intifada broke
out and Arab-Israeli’s peacefully protested against
Israeli military action in the occupied territories, 17
year old Aseel Asleh was killed. He was found dead,
face down in an olive grove. A bullet, fired from an
Israeli police gun at point-blank range had severed
an artery near the back of his neck in what appeared
to be an execution. Earlier, he had been seen fleeing
through the grove, chased by a police squad breaking
up the demonstration.
Aseel was a firm believer in non-violence, and wore
a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of a prominent
Jewish andArab coexistence group, ‘Seeds of Peace’.
When Aseel’s parents went to collect his body from
the hospital, they were handed a hospital report card
which had “Enemy Operation” stamped on the front
cover. Asleh was treated as an ‘enemy’ despite the
fact that he was an Israeli, albeit an Arab. A later
official inquiry found that even the country’s most
senior police commanders believed Arab citizens to
be “the enemy” and acted accordingly.
After a seven-year battle for justice, Asleh’s
parents and the family’s of a further 12 Palestinian
demonstrators killed inside Israel at the start of the
intifada heard that the policemen responsible for
the deaths would almost certainly never stand trial.
The investigations were being wound up as Israel
claimed that there was a lack of evidence and in the
cases where there was evidence, the policeman had
acted in the belief that their lives were in danger. As
the protestors were peacefully demonstrating, this is
something their families have never believed.
Israel’s Arab population which makes up 1/5 of the
state, were deeply angry at this and they viewed it
as further evidence that to the state of Israel, “Arab
blood is worthless”. A one-day general strike was
called in protest against the decision. Asleh’s mother
stated: “We shall not keep quiet and we shall show
the world what a racist establishment this is, so that
everyone knows what is taking place in the State of
Israel.”
No justice for 17 year old Aseel Asleh’s death
Saturday 10th May 2008
FREE PALESTINE
END THE SIEGE ON GAZA–
FOR THE RIGHT OF RETURN
– END ISRAELI OCCUPATION
Assemble 1pm Temple Underground
station/ Victoria Embankment, rally in
Trafalgar Square.
The Friends of Al-Aqsa
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Join the Friends of Al-Aqsa
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A walk in the Peak District
Dovedale
15 km walk
Estimated time to complete 4-6 hours
Date: Sunday 24th August 2008
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