northridge mall

zionist terrorist colonist projects in la

i spent the last few days scouting out various spots where items from the zionist entity are being sold in los angeles. last week i went with a friend from the boycott campaign to a beauty supply shop at the northridge mall. she scoped it out beforehand and saw ahava dead sea products in the window. when we went they were pushed to the back of the store. we went with some materials from code pink, though as i have written before, their concept of what occupied palestine consists of is terribly limiting. for instance, all we had at the time were flyers that they made to hand out to customers and managers to educate them about the issue. here is the front and back image of the flyer:

because of the limitations of the code pink rhetoric, another member of the boycott collective who is amazing with altering images and doing guerrilla ad campaigns. here is what we are hoping to use to put some teeth into the ahava boycott project:

in any case, we spoke to the russian woman who managed the beauty store. we gave her the materials, but it was obvious that whatever stories she’s heard about palestine–and they were quite the tall tales, i might add–were very clearly those distorted versions of the facts from local zionists she knows. i’m not sure that we did any good in the end, but it seemed that my first-hand experiences of zionist terrorist colonists in palestine made her at least doubt some of the propaganda she’s been fed.

zionist terrorist irving moskowitz's bingo parlor, hawaiian gardens

my next mission was with tamara who came to visit me this week. i had been wanting to drive down to hawaiian gardens to see the irving moskowitz bingo club that funds colonies for zionist terrorists who live on stolen palestinian land. the place is called simply “the bingo club” and it’s a pretty bland place. very simple building outside, and inside very simple–just a set of tables with some video monitors and booths in the back and front for people to pay for their bingo cards and get their cash pay out should they win. we warrived at around 3:30 pm, which apparently was too early. it doesn’t open until 4 pm. so we walked around the perimeter of the place to take some photographs. there are entrances on all sides and there are security cameras everywhere–the same kind they have all over places like the old city of al quds. there were also plenty of people lined up or waiting in their cars for the doors to open. the crowd was a mixture of white trash and people of color. they were mostly older, and many were handicapped. we talked to two women who were waiting. one was african american, the other samoan. we asked them if they know where the money was going when they played bingo here. one of the women asked questions and wanted to know, but then she just said: “why does everyone hate the jews?” by “everyone” she meant iranians as she then went into her ignorant questioning based on zionist propaganda about iran. when we explained to her that it was not that “everyone” or even iran that hates jews, but rather people hate colonists who steal land and massacre palestinians she seemed a bit more clear. but only a bit. the other woman couldn’t give a shit. she said she doesn’t care who gets the money. she said, “i’m just here to have fun.”

generally speaking, i find casinos and gambling places depressing. i don’t like the use of brown colors, dark light, and the lack of clocks designed to keep people from seeing what time it is so they stay longer and lose more money. but i also find it depressing when i see places like this one where the people are so obviously working class or barely hanging on to that middle class thread going to the casino to waste their hard earned money. it is a spectacle of over-consumption that epitomizes the things i hate about the u.s. while we were scouting out the place and talking to these women, security obviously saw us taking photos from their security cameras everywhere. they came over to us and told us that we were not allowed to take photographs. of course, i didn’t listen to them. but they came over twice to tell us we couldn’t take photographs. they seem highly paranoid. and understandably so.

i found a website called “stop moskowitz” that looks like it has not been updated in a while, but it has a number of useful materials on it related to the campaign to stop the casino and its support of zionist terrorist colonialism. but it also has uncovered some important points about the community of hawaiian gardens and moskowitz’s treatment of workers as well. for instance, here is what they say about how the bingo parlor affects the local community:

Over the years, the bingo club has netted dozens of millions of dollars and, rather than using the money to benefit Hawaiian Gardens, Moskowitz has funneled the bulk of it to extremist Israeli causes (see the information on
Jerusalem below). By contrast, his use of bingo funds in Hawaiian Gardens has been strategically stingy, directed mostly to the hospital he owns and the food bank he and his family control. Yes, you will see some old news stories discussing how Moskowitz’s bingo supported the Hawaiian Gardens government.

But that was from 1995 to 1997, while he campaigned for approval of his casino. In 1999 his total giving to the city was $35,000! Moskowitz’s bingo operation takes advantage of a state law requiring that bingo be a charity run by volunteers. His Moskowitz Foundation has no members, so he staffs the bingo with immigrant “volunteers” who work only for tips – no wages or benefits. MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, is suing the Moskowitz bingo on behalf of 24 unpaid bingo workers.

of course i wrote about this here and here if you want to see other linked articles about how the casino affects palestinians, especially the video on youtube that i posted earlier.

inside the bingo hall

the stop moskowitz website does a good job of linking local issues affecting the working class and people of color who live in this area. but the people going to the bingo hall don’t seem to get it. or they don’t want to. and this is also what i loathe about the u.s. people want to be fat and happy. they just want to mindlessly consume. and i think it is degenerative. i don’t mind on some level as once the u.s. implodes on itself the rest of the planet will finally be able to breathe freely. but it still depresses me to see people who would rather just sit on their butts, with their pile of snacks in their cooler, their special little cushions they bring to sit on, their bingo gear (apparently one needs special tools to mark out their letter choices on the cards) than think about how their supposedly simple act of “wanting to have fun” has a direct impact on their own community and on palestinians.

moskowitz bingo menu

tamara and i also went to trader joe’s to check out if there was any wine from the zionist entity the other night. i wanted to check it out since the article i posted the other day said that it’s becoming a popular export. fortunately, we found none. but we did find a wine that recommended people go to the cheese aisle and purchase cheese from the zionist entity to go with that particular wine (see photos below).

trader joe's promoting cheese from the zionist entity

zionist terrorist colonist cheese at trader joe's

one last little adventure tamara and i had. we went to the campaign to end israeli apartheid southern california meeting the other night. the meeting was a sorry state of affiars. just a handful of people, most of them older, most of them jewish. i wondered where all the young activists were. i wondered why there were no members of students for justice in palestine present. that said, there new project is going to target los angeles mayor antonio villaraigosa’s project to work with mekorot, the zionist entity’s national water company (which i wrote about the other day too). they handed out an impressive overview of the issue of stolen water in palestine more generally and then on this local angle more specifically. they don’t have it up on their website yet, but there are some links to how the zionist entity creates a system of water apartheid. and they also have a few good links on boycott for americans:

Be extra vigilant about purchasing anything off of mall kiosks:

http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/item/illegal_israelis_lured_to_mall_kiosks_20060908/

Never use the internet Yellow Pages:

http://sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2007/12/12/internet-yellow-pages-collects-your-money-for-zionist-occupation/

Never use a 1-800 locksmith company; they are owned by Israelis.

And finally, here’s a list of products straight from the horse’s mouth: http://www.buyisraelgoods.org/

After World Bank issues report, commissioned by the Palestinian Authority on the condition of water accessibility in the West Bank, Israel claims the reports authors are biased. To understand the conditions on the ground, how they’ve been addressed, and whether the so-called peace process succeeded in addressing them, The Real News speaks to LifeSource Project, a non-profit organization focusing solely on the issue of water. Susan Koppelman and Taysir Arabasi tell The Real News’ Lia Tarachansky the Mountain Aquifer, the biggest supply of fresh underground water is pumped by Israel even though it lies almost entirely in the West Bank. They also speak about restrictions on Palestinians to dig water wells, and their dependence on the Israeli national water corporation, Mekorot.

View the Real News video report below.

Source: Real News, 24 Aug 2009

here are some news items over the past month–just the latest examples in 122+ years of why zionism = racism.

1. An Arab couple whose one-year-old daughter was expelled from an Israeli day-care center on her first day are suing a Jewish mother for damages, accusing her of racist incitement against their child.

Maysa and Shuaa Zuabi, from the village of Sulam in northern Israel, launched the court action last week saying they had been “shocked and humiliated” when the center’s owner told them that six Jewish parents had demanded their daughter’s removal because she is an Arab.

In the first legal action of its kind in Israel, the Zuabis are claiming $80,000 from Neta Kadshai, whom they accuse of being the ringleader.

The girl, Dana, is reported to be the first Arab child ever to attend the day-care center in the rural Jewish community of Merhavia, less than one kilometer from Sulam.

However, human rights lawyers say that, given the narrow range of anti-racism legislation in Israel, the chance of success for the Zuabis is low.

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has operated an education system almost entirely segregated between Jews and Arabs.

However, chronic underfunding of Arab schools means that in recent years a small but growing number of Arab parents have sought to move their children into the Jewish system.

Dana was admitted to the day-care center last December, according to the case, after its owner, Ivon Grinwald, told the couple she had a vacant place. However, on Dana’s first day six parents threatened to withdraw their own children if she was not removed.

Kadshai, in particular, is said to have waged a campaign of “slurs and efforts aimed at having [Dana] removed from the day-care center, making it clear that [her] children would not be in the same center as an Arab girl.” Zuabi was summoned to a meeting the same evening at which Grinwald said she could not afford to lose the six children. She returned the contract Zuabi had signed and repaid her advance fees.

Zuabi said that while she was in the office Grinwald received a call from Kadshai again slandering Dana and demanding her removal.

2. A 23-year-old woman of Ethiopian descent claimed that the driver of an Egged No. 5 bus in Rishon Lezion refused to allow her to board his bus because of the color of her skin.

Speaking to Ynet, Yedno Verka recounted last Wednesday’s incident: “As I prepared board the bus, the driver suddenly shut the door. I banged on the glass, but he ignored me. Then a young woman came running towards the bus, and he opened the door for her. I stayed close to her and boarded the bus.

“When the driver saw me he said, ‘what, don’t you understand that I don’t allow Kushim (derogatory term for black people) on board? Are you trying to smash my door in? Were there buses in Ethiopia? Why don’t you walk? In Ethiopia you didn’t even have shoes and here you do, so why don’t you walk?’ I was shaking all over; I couldn’t even speak,” she said.

At this point Verka handed the driver the bus fair, but, according to her, he refused to accept it and said, “Kushit hold on, what’s your hurry? Since you (Ethiopians) made aliyah you’ve become arrogant.”

3. At least 100 students of Ethiopian origin in Petah Tikva do not know what school they will be attending in the fall, with the opening of the school year just two and a half weeks away. The uncertainty stems from the fact that the city’s private schools with an ultra-Orthodox or national Orthodox bent have refused to accept children of Ethiopian origin.

Much of the funding for the private schools comes from the Education Ministry and the city. Education Ministry director general Shimshon Shoshani said Wednesday that the schools that continue to refuse to enroll the children will be fined and may have their licenses suspended.

A few days ago the Petah Tikva municipality told the city’s private schools that they would need to enroll about 70 students of Ethiopian origin. Another 30 students were to be enrolled in the public Orthodox school system, where most Ethiopian-Israeli students go. However, sources at the ministry and municipality said conversations with officials at the private schools indicated that they would refuse to enroll the children.

Administrators at the city’s public Orthodox schools said they would not accept the 30 children as planned.

Sources familiar with the situation said that around 150 to 200 students of Ethiopian origin are to go to school in Petah Tikva.

According to a senior city official, the private schools “told us specifically that they do not intend to register the new students. It’s clear to everyone that the response to the enrollment instruction would be negative, but we had to go public with it to allow the Education Ministry to begin the process of imposing monetary fines.”

4. A trip for some 250 children from Al Jish village, near Safad north of the country, had to be cut short after the manager of a Jewish-run swimming pool refused to allow the organizers of the Jish Church Summer camp, play Arabic music.

Israeli Ynet News published a report on the incident and stated that Jad Salman, the director of the Jish Church Summer Camp, stated that the pool manager was insulting and racist in his statement.

Salman said that this summer camp is conducted by the church every year, and is considered one of the best summer camps among Christians in Israel, the Ynet added.

Salman stated that after he along with the organizers of the trip, and some 250 children entered the country club to swim, he asked the personnel about the location of an electricity connection, but the workers did not give a direct answer and kept sending him around.

Later on, Salman managed to find a power outlet, and connected a stereo system before playing church music.

As soon as he went to fill some drinking water, he noticed that the music had stopped, he went back and the instructors told him that they were asked to stop the Arabic music and were instead given a Hebrew music CD.

He then approached the club manager, Shemi Namimi, and asked him about what is going on, and then the directors said “do not put Arabic music, but you can play Hebrew music”, the Ynet reported.

Salman tried to convince the manager to allow them to play Arabic music, as he told him that this is a summer camp, and that the mother tongue of the children is Arabic.

But the manager just said “There will be no Arab music in the club”. After he heard the response, Salman used a microphone and called on the children to leave the pool.

5. UNRWA’s Hebrew-language outreach program titled “Building Understanding: Epitaph of a Dead Warehouse,” was cancelled by Acre festival authorities in the last days before the UN organization was to present photos and films of their work in Palestine.

The agency had prepared a multimedia theatrical performance that documented the “dramatic last day of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s warehouse in Gaza which was destroyed during the fighting in Gaza on 15th of January 2009,” a program for the evening read.

“[The production] has already been shown in Tel Aviv and Sderot where it was well received,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said in a statement. “We presented the piece to the Acre Festival authorities a couple of months ago and they gave an immediate green light and it is surprising that the play should be cancelled by the Festival authorities just hours before our first performance here.”

The festival also booted UNRWA’s photo exhibit and another film from the program.

6. Israel’s national water company announced Tuesday that it would be disconnecting the water in the Bedouin community of Rahat due to an accumulated debt of about $400,000 owed by the town’s municipality.

The 46,281 residents of the town, located in Israel’s desert region, will remain without water for a few hours a day until the municipality settles its debts with Mekorot.

Heads of the Bedouin councils held a meeting with Shlomo Buchbut, chairman of the Union of Local Authorities, in order to discuss their financial difficulties.

Rahat Mayor Faiz Abu-Sabihan said a plan had been formed in order to pull the municipality from its deficit, which currently stands at around $7.8 million. However he said the plan had not yet been approved.

“Our accounts have been seized,” the mayor told Ynet. “And the employees are not being paid. We’ve been chosen to provide a service I cannot provide.” He said the municipality would strike until the plan was approved.

An official with the Interior Ministry’s southern district said the plan had been approved, but that the ministry still had to cooperate with the Treasury in order to allot funds towards its implementation.

Meanwhile, the data presented by the municipality at the meeting was disheartening. While Rahat exacts municipality taxes from just 30% of its population, 35% receive income support and 26% are eligible for unemployment payment. The city’s rate of unemployment is a whopping 20%, and the average age of its residents is 13.5.

7. The government extended on Sunday, by one year, the force of the Law of Citizenship and Entry into Israel, which prevents people from the Palestinian Authority and enemy states from becoming Israeli citizens by marrying Israeli citizens.

A High Court decision on the legality of the law is pending, and could cause its negation.

8. A Bedouin forum on education has recently filed a complaint with the Prime Minister’s Office inquiring why the government committee tasked with promoting the representation of Arab citizens in government offices did not include a single Arab member.

The forum’s coordinator, Dr. Awad Abu-Freih, demanded that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appoint Arab representatives to the committee.

According to the government’s Civil Service Commission, the number of Israeli Arabs employed by the government does not exceed 6.8 percent of the employees. Last week, the cabinet decided to establish a committee to promote proper representation of Arabs in government offices.

The members of the Bedouin education forum were dismayed to find that the 11-member committee did not include a single Arab member. The committee includes Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander, Prime Minister’s Office Director Eyal Gabbai and Welfare Ministry Director Nahum Itzkovitch.

“There is no doubt that in the absence of Arab citizens on the committee, the commission may continue to give unfair preference to Jews in appointments, in promotions, and in handing out key positions,” Abu-Freih said in his complaint to the prime minister.

“The promises on fair representation still sound hollow and empty,” he went on to say. “Again and again we will be told that ‘no qualified Arabs could be found for the job.’”

“The services offered to Arab citizens will also continue to be discriminatory,” he continued. “For example, the education services offered to the Arab community in the Negev are neglected and deprived.”

“Out of 20 percent of the population of the state, not one Arab could be found who would be qualified to be honored with serving on the committee?” Abu-Freih asked.

9. Five years after a mounted militia stormed his village, torching houses and killing his relatives, Ibrahim Saad el-Din, a refugee from Sudan’s Darfur region, gazed at remnants of another slaughter: hundreds of shoes worn by Jews killed in a Nazi death camp during the Holocaust.

Saad el-Din was among a dozen African refugees brought by an Israeli advocacy group to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial last week, hoping to spur public sympathy for their plight by invoking the Jewish people’s own history fleeing death and persecution.

Over 16,000 asylum seekers have poured into Israel in recent years, most from Africa, posing a unique dilemma for the Jewish state.

Israel is proud of its heritage as a refuge that took in hundreds of thousands of Jews who survived the Nazi genocide. But it’s conflicted over refugees from elsewhere. Israel’s many wars with its Arab neighbors have left it distrustful of outsiders, while some fear accepting non-Jews could threaten the state’s Jewish character. As a result, it is struggling with how to handle the non-Jewish newcomers.

“The Jewish past makes us particularly mindful of the dangerous plight of exiles and refugees and the need to help them,” said Yaron Ezrahi, a political science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “But the smallness and siege mentality of our country given its hostile environment make us more committed to maintaining our majority.”

Israeli refugee advocates criticize the state, saying stints in jail and the scant support asylum seekers find in Israel fail to honor the memory of Jewish persecution through the ages.

“I think it’s a great shame the way we’re behaving,” said Sigal Rozen of the Hotline for Migrant Workers. “We have an extremely short memory.”

Israel’s current refugee influx started in 2005, when Egyptian smugglers helped a few hundred Africans sneak into Israel. The government arranged jobs for some, and as stories of their new lives spread, more came.

Just under half are from Eritrea, whose repressive government often detains returned asylum-seekers, according to Amnesty International. About one-third are from south Sudan and Darfur, whose conflicts have left millions dead and homeless, according to the U.N.

Under the U.N.’s Refugee Convention, all those claiming to be refugees should have their cases reviewed, said Sharon Harel of the U.N. refugee agency.

But the sudden influx outstripped the ability of the UNHCR and the government to process them, officials in both bodies said, resulting in stopgap policies that critics say make Israel inhospitable.

Those arriving now are detained for an average of five months — and some more than a year. They then receive release papers that must be renewed every three months but give them no right to work, though the government usually looks the other way when they take under-the-table jobs.

Simona Halperin of the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the government has a “full moral and legal commitment” to protecting refugees, but must distinguish them from economic migrants.

Asylum seekers from Sudan pose a unique problem, she said, because their mere entering Israel — which Sudan considers an “enemy state” — prevents their return.

10. The Education Ministry’s budget for special assistance to students from low socioeconomic backgrounds severely discriminates against Arabs, a new study shows. The average per-student allocation in Arab junior high schools amounts to only 20 percent of the average in Jewish junior highs.

The study, published recently in the journal Megamot by Prof. Sorel Cahan of Hebrew University’s School of Education, supports the claims of institutionalized budgetary discrimination that Arab educators have long voiced. On Monday, when the ministry published town-by-town data on what percentage of high school students pass their matriculation exams, most Arab towns were once again at the bottom of the list. A rare exception was Fureidis, where 75.86 percent of students passed – the third highest rate in Israel.

Ordinary classroom hours are allotted to schools on a strictly per-student basis. But the special assistance budget, which totaled NIS 150 million last year, is by nature differential, as its purpose is to give extra assistance to schools with a large proportion of students from low socioeconomic backgrounds. The money goes toward tutoring, enrichment activities and more.

The special assistance budget is allocated in two stages. First, it is divided between the Jewish and Arab populations based on the number of students in each. Then, it is distributed among schools in each sector based on an index with three components: the percentage of students per school from low-income families, the percentage from large families, and the percentage whose fathers have relatively little schooling.

However, Cahan found, because the Arab sector has more students who meet these criteria but less students overall, “educationally needy” Jewish students receive anywhere from 3.8 to 6.9 times as much funding as equally needy Arab students.

This discrimination defeats the whole point of the special assistance budget, he wrote.

11. The inhabitants of the Bedouin village of Amra have good reason to fear that the harsh tactics used by the Israeli army against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been imported to their small corner of Israel’s Negev desert.

Over the summer, the Tarabin tribe, all of them Israeli citizens, have had the sole access road to their homes sealed off, while the dirt track they must use instead is regularly blocked by temporary checkpoints at which their papers and vehicles are inspected at length.

Coils of razor wire now surround much of the village, and children as young as eight have been arrested in a series of night-time raids.

“Four-fifths of our youngsters now have files with the police and our drivers are being repeatedly fined for supposed traffic violations,” said Tulab Tarabin, one of Amra’s 400 Bedouin inhabitants. “Every time we are stopped, the police ask us: ‘Why don’t you leave?’”

Lawyers and human rights activists say a campaign of pressure is being organised against the Tarabins at the behest of a nearby Jewish community, Omer, which is determined to build a neighbourhood for Israeli army officers on Bedouin land.

“The policy in Israel is that when Jews need land, the Bedouin must move – no matter how long they have been living in their homes or whether their communities predate Israel’s creation,” said Morad al Sana, a lawyer with the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Arab minority. “The Tarabins’ crime is that they refuse to budge.”

The 180,000 Bedouin in the Negev have never been welcome, says Oren Yiftachel, a geographer at Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beersheva. They are descendants of a few thousand who managed to avoid expulsion from the southern semi-desert region during the 1948 war that founded Israel.

12. The UN says that access to education is a basic human right. But for Palestinian children living in the occupied West Bank, getting to school itself is a challenge. One Bedouin community lost three children in road accidents on their long walk to school. Making matters worse, Israeli authorities are trying to block the building of a school near the community’s home outside Jerusalem.

13. Gaza’s children are starting a new school year, but Israel’s blockade and its January war on the territory mean many are doing so without adequate supplies. Al Jazeera’s Ayman Mohyeldin reports from one school in Gaza where classes are resuming.

14. Black British filmmaker Ishmahil Blagrove has launched an outspoken attack against the “racist” Israeli government after being abducted from the high seas and imprisoned for seven days.

Jamaica-born Blagrove, who lives in West London, was one of six British nationals taking part in a mercy mission to Gaza who were seized from the vessel Spirit of Humanity on June 30 by Israeli military forces.

The ship, which Blagrove says was illegally boarded in international waters, was bringing a cargo of medicines, children’s toys and reconstruction materials to the devastated people of Gaza.

“I’m not concerned with the time that I spent in jail because I am now free, however, there are still thousands of people being persecuted as we speak,” said Blagrove.

“I went on the voyage to deliver medical aid, toys and film a documentary about Palestinians living in Gaza post the 22-day bombing last year however, I was unable to fulfill my mission and have now returned with a bigger story to tell. Africans, like Palestinians, are being persecuted by the Israeli governmentand the world needs to know.”

Sailing from Larnaca, Cyprus, with a crew of 21 human rights activists, humanitarian workers and journalists from 11 different countries, those on board included Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire and former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

“We were surrounded by four Zodiac Special Forces, which are Israeli gunships.”

Blagrove told how Israeli warships surrounded their vessel threatening to open fire if they did not turn back.

“We were 18 miles of the coast of Gaza and 23 miles outside the international water boundaries. The Israelis made contact with us via radio at approximately 1.30 am. Our ship had been given security clearance by the port authorities in Cyprus so we posed no threat, yet the Israeli government insisted that we aborted our journey.

“When we refused to be intimidated, they jammed our instrumentation and blocked our GPS, radar, and navigation systems, putting our lives at risk.

“Before we knew it we were surrounded by four Zodiac Special Forces, which are Israeli gunships and helicopters were also flying over our heads. They stormed our ship and took us against our will to Ashdod Port in Israel.

“They confiscated and destroyed all our equipment including all our medical aid and toys and eventually we were all taken to Ramla High Security Prison where we were imprisoned.”

“Most astonishingly the prison was full of black Africans.”

Describing his experience inside Ramla, Blagrove said: “Without insulting the memory of those that have survived the Nazi concentration camps, the prison we were kept in can only be described in that manor. But most astonishingly the prison was full of black Africans. I was absolutely dumbfounded!

“Israel operates under a right-wing racist government that discriminates anyone that is non-Jewish.

“The first day I was there, I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison. The next day 300 more Africans were taken in and the prison population continues to grow daily with Africans falling victim to the Israeli judiciary system.

“There were Africans from the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Ethiopia and so on. The prison population in Israel is 90 percent black, which is why I was so welcomed by fellow inmates. There are thousands upon thousands of Africans inside the Israeli prisons.

“I was told atrocious stories. Real harrowing tales and countless inmates that have been transferred from one prison to the other informed me and that every prison is the same and the government is refusing to send them back to their own country.”

“I witnessed 500 Africans scooped from the streets of Tel Aviv thrown into prison.”

Haunted by the conditions of the prison, he said: “I shared a seven foot by seven foot cell with 14 others. We were constantly being barked at and threatened with physical abuse. If you disobey, prisoners are stripped naked and put inside a hole with no lights or heating. We were seen as sub-human.

“In the corner of the room there was a white plastic bag full of single slices of bread, which was our breakfast, lunch and dinner. If we were lucky they occasional gave us a cup of yoghurt to share.

“The toilets are two tubes and to pass your waste you have to aim and squat. The smell was indescribable because it was a mixture of sweat, urine and feces.”

Explaining that the government officials tried to force him to sign documents in Hebrew, which is illegal as all prisoners must be able to understand what they are consenting too, Blagrove said: “My fellow passengers and I were only kept for seven days because they knew the world was watching.”

helena cobban’s recent article in ips of one zionist terrorist colonist who is renouncing zionism because of its racism, though it appears, not the colonialism:

I’ve never met Dov Yermiya, a Jewish Israeli peace activist who is now 94 years old. But I read of course the book he published in 1983 in which he wrote with anguish about the torture and other gross mistreatment of civilians he witnessed directly during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon the year before.

I have it in my hand now.

I just learned, from an open letter published by Uri Avnery, that Yermiya, recently renounced the ideology and practice of Zionism with these stirring words:

“I, a 95 year old Sabra (native born Israeli Jew), who has plowed its fields, planted trees, built a house and fathered sons, grandsons and great-grandsons, and also shed his blood in the battle for the founding of the State of Israel,

“Declare herewith that I renounce my belief in the Zionism which has failed, that I shall not be loyal to the Jewish fascist state and its mad visions, that I shall not sing anymore its nationalist anthem, that I shall stand at attention only on the days of mourning for those fallen on both sides in the wars, and that I look with a broken heart at an Israel that is committing suicide and at the three generations of offspring that I have bred and raised in it.

“… for 42 years, Israel turned what should have been Palestine into a giant detention camp, and is holding a whole people captive under an oppressive and cruel regime, with the sole aim of taking away their country, come what may!!!

“”The IDF eagerly suppresses their efforts at rebellion, with the active assistance of the settlement thugs, by the brutal means of a sophisticated Apartheid and a choking blockade, inhuman harassment of the sick and of women in labor, the destruction of their economy and the theft of their best land and water.

“Over all this there is waving the black flag of the frightening contempt for the life and blood of the Palestinians. Israel will never be forgiven for the terrible toll of blood spilt, and especially the blood of children, in hair-raising quantities… “

yes, the zionist entity does all these things. this is its “normal.” but how to get these abnormal hateful people to wake up, renounce zionism, and voluntarily leave the land (since 70% have dual citizenship) so that palestinian refugees can return…

On 18 Aug 2009, the Jerusalem Post and Cleantech Group reported that new startup ROTEC plans to commercialize the technology out of Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of Israel that promises a faster, cheaper method of reverse-osmosis desalination to clean dirty groundwater.

The researchers at the BGU have recently been awarded grants from the NATO Science for Peace programme and the Middle East Desalination Research Center (MEDRC) to lead an international project to scale up a method for achieving high recovery rates of pure water in desalination processes based on reverse osmosis.

The team, led by Dr Jack Gilron of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research (ZIWR) and Prof Eli Korin of the Department of Chemical Engineering, work in collaboration with Colorado University and the Hashemite University of Jordan and the group will now set up pilot facilities to produce around 20m³ per day (31,000 gallons) of water at desalination sites in Israel and Jordan. “NATO Science for Peace is a program run on an ongoing basis in which NATO tries to encourage cooperation between countries in the Mediterranean and the NATO alliance to advance science projects that could enhance peace and stability in the area,” said Gilron.

The team has developed a method of exploiting the finite kinetics of membrane fouling processes by periodically changing the conditions leading to membrane fouling before it can occur. Membrane fouling is the single largest cause of reducing the efficiency of such systems. Gilron said, “the process will be tuned to reduce the volume of brine in the water by 50% to 33% less than that generated in conventional systems. This greatly reduces the environmental burden and improves the economics of the desalination process.”

The new technology is cheaper because it reduces the quantity of brine that needs to be dealt with, as well as the amount of chemicals required in the desalination process. Gilron continues, “Water scarcity and the need to develop new water resources for populations not on the seacoasts are driving efforts to desalinate brackish water and municipal wastewater with ever-increasing efficiencies.”

The technology is being commercialized by a new startup, ROTEC (Reverse Osmosis Technologies), which is already been chosen by Israeli national water company Mekorot as a promising firm in which it will invest R&D funds. Mekorot supplies 80% of Israel’s drinking water and 70% of its entire water supply. ROTEC is established by BGN Technologies – the University’s technology transfer company and the ATI (Ashkelon Technology Incubator) Cleantech Group.

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The researchers are among many trying to find more efficient and less costly methods of desalination.

Yale University spinout Oasys Water said earlier this year it developed a low-cost, low-energy desalination and purification technology for seawater, wastewater and industrial waste streams. The company said its forward-osmosis technology uses one-tenth the energy of conventional desalination systems.

Anaheim, Calif.-based cleantech incubator Catalyx also uses forward osmosis before employing the traditional reverse osmosis to purify heavily polluted wastewater from the textile and other industries. Catalyx says the result is low-cost and chemical-free.

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About ROTEC:
Since its website www.rotec-water.com is down, you can check out more details of ROTEC under ATI’s website here. It lists the technology and its competitive advantages; the market and potential users for the technology; and the team and contact details.

Sources:
Israeli researchers start pilot for new desal technology
Desalination process
BGU scientists to advance desalination technology
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev technology being developed for use in Jordan desalination plant

a couple of weeks ago al jazeera ran ilan mizrahi’s four-part documentary entitled “the rise of the right” in the zionist entity. it follows rabbi meir kahane who preached ethnic cleansing until his death in 1990. one of his followers was responsible for the massacre of palestinians praying in the ibrahimi mosque in khalil in 1994. i think this is important viewing material because these ideas of hate and jewish supremacy you will see below are far more wide spread among zionist terrorist colonists occupying palestinian land than one might imagine. and they are not only the views of a few religious zealots.

here is max bluementhal and jesse rosenfeld’s “feeling the hate in tel aviv” (their sequel to “feeling the hate in jerusalem”) to give you an idea of the more secular hatred expressed by zionist terrorist colonists who occupy palestinian land:

such racist ways of thinking are not isolated moments outside a bar or on a university campus. they are part and parcel of ministers, mayors, and city planners as jonathan cook pointed out last week in relation to a new scheme of zionist terrorist colonists to wipe palestinians off the map:

Israel’s housing minister called for strict segregation between the country’s Jewish and Arab populations last week as he unveiled plans to move large numbers of fundamentalist religious Jews to Israel’s north to prevent what he described as an “Arab takeover” of the region.

Ariel Atias said he considered it a “national mission” to bring ultra-Orthodox Jews — or Haredim, distinctive for their formal black and white clothing — into Arab areas, and announced that he would also create the north’s first exclusively Haredi town.

The new settlement drive, according to Atias, is intended to revive previous failed efforts by the state to “Judaize,” or create a Jewish majority in, the country’s heavily Arab north.

Analysts say the announcement is a disturbing indication that the Haredim, who have traditionally been hostile to Zionism because of their strict reading of the Bible, are rapidly being recruited to the Judaization project in both Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Atias, of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas, is drawing on a model already successfully developed over the past decade in the West Bank, where the Haredim, the group with the highest birth rate in Israel, have been encouraged to move into separate settlements that have rapidly eaten into large chunks of Palestinian territory.

Several mayors of northern cities in Israel have appealed to Atias to help them “save” the Jewishness of their communities in a similar manner by recruiting Haredim to swell the numbers of Jews in the north.

Atias revealed his new drive on Thursday as he spoke at an Israeli Bar Association conference in Tel Aviv to discuss land reform plans. He told the delegates: “We can all be bleeding hearts, but I think it is unsuitable [for Jews and Arabs] to live together.”

His priority, he said, was to prevent the “spread” of Arab citizens, who comprise one-fifth of the country’s population and are mostly restricted to their own overcrowded communities in two northern regions, the Galilee and Wadi Ara.

Referring to the Galilee, where Arab citizens are a small majority of the population, he said: “If we go on like we have until now, we will lose the Galilee. Populations that should not mix are spreading there.”

Atias also revealed that mayors of several northern cities where Arab citizens had started to move into Jewish neighborhoods had asked him how they could “salvage” their cities.

One, Shimon Lankry, the mayor of Acre, where there were inter-communal clashes last year, met with the minister only last week. “He told me, ‘Bring a bunch of Haredim and we’ll save the city,’” Atias said.

“He told me that Arabs are living in Jewish buildings and running them [Jews] out.”

The Haredim have a birth rate — estimated at eight children per woman — that is twice that of the Muslim population and are increasingly seen as a useful demographic weapon to stop the erosion of Israel’s Jewish majority.

Atias’s comments brought swift condemnation from Israel’s Arab lawmakers. Mohammad Barakeh, the head of the Communist Party, told the popular Israeli website Ynet: “Racism is spreading throughout the government and Minister Atias is the latest to express it.”

The key initiative proposed by Atias is the development of a large Haredi town of 20,000 homes based on an existing small community at Harish in the Wadi Ara, a region close to the West Bank.

and there are more examples of such ideologies of jewish supremacy and racism against the indigenous palestinian population. last week the zionist entity cut off water supplies on the hottest day of the year to a palestinian druze town in 1948 palestine:

The Israeli National Water Company has cut off the water supply to two Arab Druze towns inside Israel. While water cut-offs by Israeli authorities are common within the Occupied Territories of Gaza and the West Bank, they are fairly unheard of within Israel itself.

While the National Water Company, Mekorot, blamed the municipal authorities in the towns of Daliyat al-Karmel and Usafiya for collecting the fees and then keeping them instead of passing them on to the water company, the municipal authorities say the Ministry of Interior is to blame.

For the last five years, the towns have been under the control of a federally-appointed comptroller who was supposed to arrange a payment plan for the towns to pay off past debt to the water company. First, the two municipalities were combined under a single entity called Carmel City, and ‘Carmel City’ signed an 18-month payment plan that would have ended in May 2009.

But after six months, the entity ‘Carmel City’ was dissolved, and the two municipalities returned to having separate governing authorities. But apparently the federally-appointed comptroller did not take responsibility for following up on the 18-month payment plan made with the no-longer-existent Carmel City, and the plan expired with millions of shekels unpaid.

The water company makes no provision for the weather in their decisions to cut off water in non-payment cases. Instead, they happened to choose a day (July 1st) that is in the middle of a heat wave, and is in fact the hottest day so far this year.

elsewhere in 1948 palestine the racism is not only direct against the indigenous population, but also towards brown folks who are living in palestine as refugees from africa. these refugees, apparently, are allowed to live on palestinian land while palestinian refugees may not return to their land. in any case, when it comes to the zionist terrorist colonists who occupy this land, any brown folks are a problem–and like palestinian refugees who attempt to return to their land, these refugees are also called “infiltrators”:

Some will see it as pure racism, while others will refer to it as a real concern over a small city’s identity. Taxi drivers at the cab station in Arad’s commercial center launch a spontaneous parliament when asked about the issue of infiltrators. They don’t even try to conceal their sense of aversion towards the guests from Sudan, Eritrea and other African countries.

“The blacks have Sinai, the Chinese have China, and the Moroccans and Russians have Arad,” says cab driver Leon.

“I don’t want my grandson to be in a kindergarten with Sudanese,” says Alexander, a veteran immigrant, who claims the refugees have not undergone proper medical examinations. “Their women are pregnant with many kids,” he states. When asked about large Israeli families, he gets angry: “It’s my garbage. It’s stinks, but it’s mine.”

….Maxim Oknin, a committee member and a former City Council member, says “Arad has been chosen to be the Darfurians’ paradise. Without a solution we could simply be annihilated.”

….Fear is the key player here. When there were only dozens of infiltrators, Arad’s residents welcomed them kindly. But over time, the hospitality has been replaced by fear, aversion and loathing.

“My daughter is afraid to walk on the street at night,” says Moshe Edri. “My family is Arad, and I can’t sleep because of this fear.”

Marcelo, a volunteer at the jeep unit, speaks about his small children, saying “I see a black future for them.”

….Julius expresses himself in a less subtle way: “The Israelis treat us like animals. Why? They think we have taken the Russians’ jobs. But the hotel managers need people who will do a good job.”

Interior Minister Eli Yishai is expected to take part this week in a discussion aimed at helping the mayor solve the infiltrators problem. Yaakov Ganot, head of the Interior Ministry’s Population Administration, says this is not a simple matter.

“On the one hand we want to compromise with the mayor, but on the other hand we must take into account that the moment they leave Arad they’ll arrive somewhere else. The problem may simply be relocated to a different place.”

“I hate them,” says high schooler D. while sitting with her friends at a municipal playground, near the kindergarten of the infiltrators’ children. Her father took the family to Arad after finding a good job and searching for a quiet town.

“At first there were only a few of them, but suddenly they are all being brought here,” she says. Her friend suggests “building a city just for them.” They laugh.

and one other bit of racist news in the last week–the street signs will begin to erase palestinian presence on this land by altering street signs and ethnically cleansing traces of the origin of who is really from here and who really belongs here:

The Israeli transport ministry said on Monday that it will get rid of Arabic and English names for cities and towns on road signs, keeping only the Hebrew terms.

“Minister Yisrael Katz took this decision that will be progressively applied,” a ministry spokeswoman told AFP.

Currently Israeli road signs are written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, with the city names in each language. So Jerusalem is identified as Yerushalaim in Hebrew, Jerusalem in English and Al-Quds in Arabic (along with Yerushalaim written in Arabic script).

Under the new policy the Holy City will only be identified as Yerushalaim in all three languages. Nazareth (Al-Nasra in Arabic) will be identified as Natzrat and Jaffa (Jaffa in Arabic) will only be written as Yafo.

and perhaps the icing on the cake, for this week any way, is a report about the way palestinian female political prisoners are treated by zionist terrorists holding them in their torture chambers treat pregnant women as vita bekker reported in the national:

A Palestinian human rights group yesterday lambasted Israel’s treatment of female Palestinian prisoners, saying they are beaten during their arrests, their education and visitation rights are violated and those who are pregnant are shackled before and after they give birth.

The report by the Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association, which was sponsored by the United Nations and based on dozens of interviews with current and former female inmates in Israeli jails, condemned Israel for providing them poor access to health care, education and family visits and said the country’s prisons and detention centres were ill-suited for women.

Addameer slammed Israel’s treatment of pregnant prisoners, saying their hands and feet are often shackled with metal chains when they are transferred to hospitals to give birth. The women are frequently chained to their beds until they enter the delivery rooms and once again afterwards, the group said.

Israelis, especially in the south, have been drinking desalinated water from the tap for the past two years, but increasingly, that trend is not catching on in the rest of the country as the perception that tap water is unhealthy continues to take hold. The desalination plant in Ashkelon produces much of that region’s water, and is one of the most technologically advanced facility of its kind in the world.

“The quality of desalinated water in our taps is increasing every year,” says Jacobo Sack, a veteran official at Israel’s National Water Carrier, Mekorot, and now a water and wastewater quality consultant. The increasing awareness of Israel’s acute water resource shortage has put the issue of drinking water at the forefront of the national agenda. Increasingly, Israelis will rely on desalinated water, both for drinking and irrigation, and the number of desalination plans in the country is slated to increase.

But there seems to be a vast disconnect between the contention by experts that desalinated tap water is clean and healthy, and the perception of just the opposite by large segments of the population. While there are no hard figures showing how many people refuse to drink tap water, preferring instead the bottled option, the phenomenon is quite prevalent, especially in the greater Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem areas. Some of the most common reasons given for not drinking tap water are: inconsistent water quality testing, frequent Health Ministry warnings for certain areas, the perception that water-carrying pipes are old and rusty, and, finally the taste.

“Ninety eight percent of our water resources are being used, so there is nothing under the ground we haven’t gotten to. Desalination is the only answer and the quality of the tap water is excellent, I drink it, and my daughters drink it,” Sack adds.

“Mistakes do happen, but the Health Ministry has done a gradually better job of monitoring water quality. People don’t believe tap water is healthy because there is a misconception that the chlorine in the water is damaging to health, it isn’t. It changes the taste of water, but there is nothing unhealthy about our tap water. Similarly, people think desalinated water is dirty water,” Sack says.

Professor Eilon Adar, Director of the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, is emphatic: desalinated tap water is the best possible water you can drink. “I’m a hydrologist. I drink tap water in my house and not because I can’t afford bottled water, but because it is clean and healthy,” Adar, considered one of the foremost water experts in the world, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. Adar says that the water quality in Israel’s water distribution system “is amongst the best in the world.”

So why doesn’t the general public believe that tap water is safe? Could it possibly have something to do with the frequent health ministry warnings advising residents of cities countrywide to boil their tap water before drinking it?

Some Israelis are psychologically unable to accept the fact that tap water is clean and healthy, even when that fact is based on hard science. “There is a myth that bottled water is better for you, I know that it is only a myth. But actually the reality is that there are elements from the plastic that can seep into the bottle and enter the water and that can be bad for you. In general, I don’t trust the tap water in Israel, I hear so much about pollution,” says a former Australian now living in Israel. Some just don’t trust the water-carrying pipe system, and others just like having cold water bottles handily available in the fridge. Many households filter tap water with various products, even though those companies clearly state on their packages that there are no health benefit in doing so. Still others will drink tap water when they are in the north, but not in the central or southern parts of the country. When it comes to water intake, it seems, Israelis prefer to play it safe, and safety is by and large perceived to be found in bottled water. “As a pregnant person I would not drink tap water because of the inconsistent testing and the quality of the piping is not very good,” says a Jerusalem resident, who adds that she has no problem drinking tap water in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona. Shmulik Shmueli, a member of Kibbutz Eilot near Eilat, and who is in charge of the Kibbutz’s water, says he only drinks bottled water. “I find tap water scary because I don’t know where it comes from and when I drink it I always get stomach aches.”

While there are many level headed Israelis who believe there is nothing unhealthy about drinking tap water, it seems that water industry professionals just cannot get their message across to the wider public, and as a result, many still feel that tap water is not safe. Adar says the ingrained perception likely started in the 60’s and early 70s when the level of dissolved salts in water was high and that was considered unhealthy for people’s kidneys. But the major reason people don’t drink tap water, according to Adar, is that they don’t like the taste. Adar says Mekorot is working on the taste problem.

Rafi Ifergan, VP for technology and engineering products, says Israelis better get used to drinking desalinated tap water, as there’s going to be a lot more of it around in the future. Right now, Israel’s household sector consumes 800 million cubic meters of water a year, of which 130 million cubic meters is desalinated water. Within 2.5 to 4 years that number will rise to 200 million cubic meters as two more desalination plants are established in Ashdod and Nahal Sorek. Within 5 years, Israeli consumption of desalinated tap water will rise to 500 million cubic meters, Ifergan says, adding that water consumption in Israel rises on average by 3 to 4 percent every year. There are four sources of water in Israel: the sea of Galilee, the coastal aquifer, the mountain aquifer, and desalination plants. And as natural water resources deplete, the importance of desalination becomes obvious. So why are people reluctant to drink tap water? Ifergan says Israel is part of a trend, mainly in America and Western Europe, which sees citizens who can afford it buying bottled water, as the marketing of that water becomes smarter.

A spokesperson for the Standards Institute of Israel, which overseas water re-use technology standards, says that while bottled water companies advertise their water as coming from natural sources, they never say that tap water is unclean. “They wouldn’t dare do that, because they know they can’t back it up,” the spokesperson said.

“Not only can you save money [by not buying mineral water] you can also save the hassle of carrying the bottles,” Sacks, the water consultant, says.

Mekorot’s Ifergan also points to the age of pipes in old buildings as a factor in the bad reputation tap water gets. “The problem here is aesthetic, not health related. Some buildings are old and have old pipes, and sometimes the water that comes out of them gets a certain color, so the citizen won’t drink it,” he says.

According to economic data on the soft drink industry in Israel, both of the country’s major bottled water companies have seen a very dynamic growth rate over the past decade. The reasons for this are the decreasing cost of bottled water as a result of increased competition, and the increased perception of the low quality of tap water, a perception fed by frequent Health Ministry announcements warning of contamination and suggesting residents boil water before use. Interestingly, an improving economy and growing health awareness is expected to be a major factor behind the expected growth in bottled water sales, even though the experts agree: there is nothing unhealthy about desalinated tap water.

Farmers using drinking-quality water from the world’s largest desalination plant in Ashkelon, on Israel’s southern Mediterranean coast, have discovered that the water is lacking in some needed elements, like calcium and magnesium, and too rich in boron. That’s not a problem for humans drinking the water, but it’s terrible for tomatoes, basil, citrus trees, flowers and other economically important plants. Mekorot’s Ifergan is as emphatic as the other experts: the quality of the tap water here is excellent. “It is tested during its production and transportation, and empirical results show that the quality is excellent,” he says.

Danielle Singer contributed to this article