Israeli Apartheid
Tens of thousands rally in georgian capital
Picture: REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko (GEORGIA)
Young people prepare for a rally in the Georgian Black Sea port of Poti today. Russian troops were still manning checkpoints in Georgia and patrolling a Black Sea port even after Moscow pulled back much of the force it deployed to crush Georgia’s attempt to take back two separatist provinces.
Tens of thousands of people gathered in the Georgian capital Tbilisi today to protest against Russia’s occupation of parts of the ex-Soviet republic.
Demonstrators gathered as EU leaders met in Brussels for an emergency summit on relations with Moscow.
Central Tbilisi was a sea of red-and-white Georgian flags as demonstrators formed a human chain stretching from central Freedom Square along the city’s main street, Rustaveli Avenue.
As the Georgian national anthem played to mark the start of the rally, demonstrators joined their hands and raised them into the air.
Protester Tengiz Katzarava told AFP "the demonstration is to show how badly Russia has been treating them for 300 years."
"We don’t count very much on the Europeans. What we are counting on is the United States," he said. "The Russians understand the weakness of countries like Germany and France."
Organisers say earlier that demonstrators were to form a human chain through the Georgian capital Tbilisi and similar actions were planned in major Georgian and European cities including Brussels, London and Vienna.
Georgia is hoping EU leaders will give a tough response to Russia’s August 8 incursion, occupation of several parts of Georgia, and recognition of independence for two Moscow-backed separatist regions.
SAPA-AFP
Gazas goldstone on the backseat
With or without the Goldstone Report, Israeli hegemony is nearing its end
By Hilary Wise
(source: The Journal Issue 26 )
The UN report on Israel’s assault on Gaza one year ago called the operation “a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population.” It represents the most powerful international indictment yet of Israel’s policies. Despite massive pro-Israel lobbying the report was accepted by the UN Human Rights Council on 16 October by twenty-five votes to six, with eleven abstentions.
However, some cynics have greeted the report with a weary, “So what’s new?” In the past Israel has ignored dozens of resolutions calling upon it to allow the return of refugees to their homes, to cease colonising territories occupied in 1967, to dismantle the Wall being built on Palestinian land, to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, to abolish imprisonment without trial, and so on, and so on. On each occasion, Israel has given two fingers up to the international community—and gotten away with it.
Fayyad subverts right of return
By Iqbal Jassat – Chairman, Media Review Network
(source: Maan News Agency)
"Fayyad just gave away your right of return," I read on the Twitter page of Electronic Intifada editor Ali Abunimah, leading me to access a link and discover that indeed, the Palestinian Authority prime minister has done the unforgivable.
In an interview with Akiva Eldar of the Israeli daily Haaretz, Fayyad made the following comment in response to a question about refugees: "Of course, Palestinians would have the right to reside within the State of Palestine."
The Palestinian state he refers to is what many analysts have come to regard as no different than apartheid South Africa’s version of "independent homelands" for blacks, commonly referred to as Bantustans. It is within the confines of this oxymoron that Fayyad envisions the return of refugees – not to the land from where they were forcibly uprooted.