We need you to email the UK’s UN Ambassador and tell him to endorse the Goldstone Report report…

Larry Derfner writes: “So let’s decide: Who was the victim of Operation Cast Lead, them or us?

No question – us. We Israelis were the victims and we still are. In fact, our victimhood is getting worse by the day. The Goldstone report was the real war crime. The Goldstone report, the UN debates, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Red Cross, B’Tselem, the traitorous soldiers of Breaking the Silence and the Rabin Academy – those were the true crimes against humanity…”

Anna Baltzer’s website Like many Americans and many Jews, I grew up with a positive view of Israel as a Peace-Seeking democracy. Israel symbolized to me the one protection that Jews had against the type of persecution that had plagued families like mine throughout history. I saw the Jewish state as a tiny and victimized [...]

Jon Stewart’s comedy news show The Daily Show is reportedly under fire from pro-Israeli groups for giving airtime to two pro-Palestinian figures on Wednesday night. Stewart hosted Palestinian democracy activist Mustafa Barghouti and human rights activist Anna Baltzer, author of A Witness in Palestine, who explained the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the perspective of the Palestinian side.

Tony Judt responds to the campaign to denigrate Richard Goldstone in the Huffington Post, 29 October 2009…

Zionists stop medical talk after campaign by Robyn Rosen, October 29, 2009 Two lectures by Israeli-based charity Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I) were cancelled after a Zionist organisation told hospitals holding the talks that they were “anti-Israel”. Miri Weingarten from PHR-I was due to give a lecture, entitled The Right to Health in a Conflict [...]

As military lawyer gives false promise, Bethlehem University Student is Blindfolded, Handcuffed, and Taken to Gaza by Force Sign the petition of protest to No 10 Downing St Berlanty Azzam, 21, was arrested yesterday while crossing from one part of the West Bank to another – just because her address in the Israeli-controlled Population Registry [...]

Report credited to Associated Press, 29 October 2009 The United Nations General Assembly announced late Wednesday it will meet next week to consider a report that accused both Israeli forces and Palestinian militants of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the offensive in Gaza last winter. The Geneva-based Human Rights Council endorsed the [...]

JStreet’s national conference finished on a highnote in Washington yesterday, 28 October. Their summary of the event, and five news reports discussing it, give an overview of developments in the US in the last eighteen months since JStreet’s foundation [...]

Support in Israel for a domestic independent commission of inquiry into the Gaza attacks is growing as fears mount in advance of the UN General Assembly’s debate on the Goldstone report next week. Below are two opinions published over the past 24 hours in Haaretz…

In an unusually frank interview, which offers insights into the melding of religion, politics and law that underpins land seizures in the occupied territories, Major Agassi, Israeli army lawyer and then military judge, lays out his belief that Israel has a biblical claim to territory beyond its borders and that he, even as an immigrant, has a right to live on it when those born there do not [...]

An extremely important analysis by Zvi Bar’el, a normally middle-of-the-road Ha’aretz correspondent: “Goldstone was born in June 1967. I am not referring to the judge from South Africa, but to his report, or more precisely, the notion that Israel needs a synonym for the soul-searching it must carry out after 42 years of occupation…”

Hadas Zvi of PHR-I writes: “For four short and inspiring months, I am an Israeli away from home as an Oak Fellow for human rights at Colby College in Waterville Maine. Having some (healthy) distance from the daily struggle, I watch with disappointment the reactions to the Goldstone report. I believed it to be a watershed that could have — and should have — changed the discourse on the conflict that torments us all…”

The Goldstone Report Impact and Implications Daniel Machover of Hickman Rose, solicitors and co-founder of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights Miri Weingarten Former  oPt Director of Physicians for Human Rights – Israel Dr Ghada Karmi, Exeter Academic and author of “Married to Another Man” For those of you who missed our superb public meeting last night [...]

With acknowledgements to CAABU Lobbying your MP Effectively . HOW TO MEET YOUR MP Find out who your local MP is on the They Work for You website, or by telephoning the House of Commons Information Office on 020 7219 4272. They will ask you for your full postcode in order to verify which constituency [...]

Every November, for the past several years, there has been a lobby of Parliament in support of Palestinian self-determination. Hundreds of voters go to meet their MPs and impress upon them the popular support for the rights of the Palestinians to their own, free nation state. We have seen how this has greatly improved the [...]

Troubled Waters: Palestinians denied fair access to water An Amnesty International report,  27 October 2009 See also Inside Story – Palestine water shortage – 27 Oct 09 on Al Jazeera. Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing [...]

New Profile reports First prison term for Efi Brenner, the first among the signatories of the 2009-2010 Shministim refusal letter to be sent to military prison. Full information and recommended action follow. A new collective declaration of refusal by Israeli youths, the 2009-2010 high school seniors letter, went public last week. Today (22 Oct.), two [...]

Ronnie Kasrils: “South Africa’s Chief Rabbi, Warren Goldstein, acting like some demented Israeli propagandist has weighed-in to the Goldstone Report on Gaza as “a political strategy for delegitimizing Israel”; alleging that it is “phrased in wild, undisciplined and aggressive language;” and violates the audi alteram partem (right to be heard) rule – injudiciously ignoring the fact that it was Israel that refused to participate and prevented the Goldstone team from setting foot in Israel and the West Bank…”

It is truly sad, though hardly surprising, how a Goldstone-basher coalition has emerged in the last week, a coalition made up of Israeli war crimes apologists, states opposed to international humanitarian law (except when it serves their own interest), and ultra-nationalists everywhere. Now the Obama Administration and the Congress, for reasons of political expediency , or because of a naïve confidence in the so-called peace process, have jumped on the bandwagon…