AN EXHIBITION about the West Bank city of Hebron was pulled down after state counter-terrorism officers visited Leichhardt library last Thursday afternoon.

On Friday the council closed the exhibition, titled El Nakbar (the catastrophe), saying it could ignite community unrest.

Exhibition organisers, Friends of Hebron, blasted the council decision as "gutless". Group member Carole Lawson said the library's manager approved all but one of the panels before the display opened on Wednesday last week.

"She read every caption and looked at the whole exhibition. She was happy with it and said it was suitable for a community space," Ms Lawson said.

"She told me that they (police officers) put the fear of God into the library staff and described them as 'the men in black'. We're being censored as a group. It's denying the Palestinian story oxygen."

The display included photographs of Palestinian children walking to school, apparently being pelted with rocks by Israeli children, and burning houses.

Ms Lawson said the council panicked and pulled the exhibition after counter-terrorism officers asked to see the material to judge if it was inflammatory.

But a council spokesman said the decision was made by the libraries director David Marshall, mayor Carolyn Allen and the librarian after the exhibition was hung and they'd had the chance to fully examine it.

"The written description of some of the images and the headlines were clearly divisive in a public library," the spokesman said.

"The (counter-terrorism) officers didn't tell the council to do anything."

A NSW Police spokesman denied pressure was put on the council to close down the exhibition.

Community contact unit officers from the counter-terrorism command were "just down there as part of their normal duties", he said.

"The officers didn't even talk to the council, they just went down to the library to meet the display organisers just to say 'hi' and introduce themselves," the spokesman said. "They didn't go down for the exhibition."

Cr Allen said the council wasn't out to censor information but to keep the peace.

"I don't want to pit separate groups of ratepayers against each other," she said.

"It's not a matter of stopping people making statements."

She said the group hadn't followed the proper process agreed to last September when they were formed.

All projects related to Hebron had to go through the four-councillor panel and Jewish group Inner West Chavurah had to be consulted.

Judy Singer from Inner West Chavurah said she wasn't against the exhibition, but the group hadn't followed procedure.

Fisk 'shocked' by US failure to debate conflict in Israel

By Amol Rajan
Monday, 13 October 2008

A feisty debate between Robert Fisk and the author Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman brought The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival to a close on a high note last night.

The absence of a debate on the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the US presidential elections was "shocking", Fisk told a packed hall at Blenheim Palace, the grand 18th-century home in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, which hosted the festival.

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Does Yom Kippur cover repentance of the sins committed against the Palestinians? see top at top.

Jailed for Aiding Israel, but Pardoned by Bush

WASHINGTON — Charlie Winters was an unlikely soldier in the fight for a Jewish state 60 years ago. An Irish Protestant from Boston, he took up the clandestine cause from his perch in Miami and helped ferry military planes to Israeli fighters, even flying a B-17 bomber across the Atlantic Ocean himself in 1948.

The Israelis have long considered him a hero; Prime Minister Golda Meir hailed his efforts. Yet in the United States, he was a criminal, imprisoned for 18 months for violating the 1939 Neutrality Act and breaking an embargo on weapons to Israel.

...

Jim Winters said his father never said anything about his time in prison for his work for the Israelis, and he would never explain to his son why he was not allowed to own a gun. Only after his father died — and Jim Winters noticed the blue-and-white flowers sent to the funeral by the Israeli government — did the younger Mr. Winters begin to learn of his past.

“I think the whole prison sentence turned him off from talking about it,” Jim Winters said. “But he did what he did because he thought it was right.”

William C. Daroff, director of the Washington office of the United Jewish Communities, called Mr. Winters “a righteous gentile, a non-Jew who was looking to help out the state of Israel and was one of the unsung heroes of Israel’s war of independence.”

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Gus: one cannot say "Israel’s war of independence.”

Israel was never a state or a country underfoot from another nation before the foundation of that country... There was not an "independence" to be claimed, but the appropriation of a region that had been predominantly Arabic for centuries with quite a lot of Jews who coexisted reasonably well with the arabs. The process in the creation (not "independence") of Israel (under the Zionist push since the 1920s) thus demanded the semi-exclusion of the Arabic people (some stayed, most were exiles in massive camps, all but a few were dispossessed) the massive influx of Jews from war devastated Europe — a Europe that more or less wanted to get rid of "the Jewish problem" from their own lands while appearing to be generous, with someone else's estate... The Americans were happy to participate in the process, as it was going to give them a beach head in the holy land... The weapons embargoes were only little fiddles to make the whole process "decent" in the eye of the general public and to stop weapons falling into the wrong hands...

Israel did not exist in 1939.

See toon at top.

From Chris Floyd

On 5 November the Israeli government sealed all the ways into and out of Gaza. Food, medicine, fuel, parts for water and sanitation systems, fertiliser, plastic sheeting, phones, paper, glue, shoes and even teacups are no longer getting through in sufficient quantities or at all. According to Oxfam only 137 trucks of food were allowed into Gaza in November. This means that an average of 4.6 trucks per day entered the strip compared to an average of 123 in October this year and 564 in December 2005. The two main food providers in Gaza are the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and the World Food Programme (WFP). UNRWA alone feeds approximately 750,000 people in Gaza, and requires 15 trucks of food daily to do so. Between 5 November and 30 November, only 23 trucks arrived, around 6 per cent of the total needed; during the week of 30 November it received 12 trucks, or 11 per cent of what was required. There were three days in November when UNRWA ran out of food, with the result that on each of these days 20,000 people were unable to receive their scheduled supply. According to John Ging, the director of UNRWA in Gaza, most of the people who get food aid are entirely dependent on it. On 18 December UNRWA suspended all food distribution for both emergency and regular programmes because of the blockade.

Israel has reopened crossings into the Gaza Strip to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid.

Israeli officials said Defence Minister Ehud Barak took the decision after talks with security chiefs and requests from the international community.

About 80 trucks with supplies such as medicine, food and other goods are expected to cross on Friday.

The move comes despite Israeli warnings to Palestinian militants in Gaza to stop their rocket attacks on Israel.

On Friday, two Palestinian sisters - aged five and 12 - were killed when a mortar, apparently fired by Palestinian gunmen targeting Israel, hit their home in northern Gaza.

Medical officials said the incident happened in the village of Beit Lahya. The Israeli military said its forces had not fired in that area of the Gaza Strip, AFP reports.

Israel attacks Gaza, at least 155 dead

Palestinian militants responded with rocket salvoes that killed an Israeli man and wounded several others, medics said.

Black smoke billowed over Gaza City, where the dead and wounded lay scattered on the ground after more than 30 air strikes destroyed several security compounds, including two where Hamas was hosting graduation ceremonies for new recruits.

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From the NYT

After the initial airstrikes, which also wounded about 600 Palestinians, dozens of rockets struck southern Israel. Thousands of Israelis hurried into bomb shelters amid the hail of rockets, including some longer-range models that reached farther north than ever before. One Israeli man was killed in the town of Netivot and four were wounded, one seriously.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have turned out in the Gaza Strip to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the Islamist group Hamas.

Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said the organisation would not recognise Israel and would not stop fighting.

Supporters filled the streets, waving banners and portraits of assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

The event comes almost year after a deadly three-week conflict between Israel and Hamas.

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see toon at top...

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