Appeal for Arab railway workers

This blog had earlier noted the racist practices of Israel Railways, which has fired 40+ Arab employees. Now an appeal in solidarity with the discharged workers has been issue, it can be found here.

Israeli Apartheid "justice": Kill an Arab = 6 months community service

From Ynet (my emphasis):

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Haim Castro, a former Border Guard officer, who was convicted of shooting dead an Israeli Arab in Kfar Qassem six years ago, without there being any immediate threat to his life.

Castro was sentenced to six months community service by a district court. He then appealed to the Supreme Court arguing he did not shoot the man in question, but his appeal was rejected.

Do you really need any further argument that Israel is an Apartheid state? The same state holds thousands of Palestinian in detention, many of them having done no crime at all. Israel uses 'Administrative Detention' to arbitrarily imprison Palestinians without criminal charges. Interestingly, the military can detain a Palestinian in 'Administrative Detention' for six months (and is renewable indefinitely by a military judge under certain conditions), six month being the same period as Haim Castro's penalty for having killed an Arab citizen of Israel.

Blog: Angry Arab
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Ethnic cleansing @ Israel Railways

Regarding the 40+ Arab former employees of Israel Railways, their former employer has no changed their line of argumentation. The Arabs had been fired from their jobs in the beginning of April 2009, and at the same time Israel Railways introduced a new policy of only hiring IOF veterans (thus excluding the Arab ex-employees from applying for their old jobs).

Today, Israel Railways stated to the Tel Aviv Labor Court that 'mistakes' committed by the employees had been the cause of their dismissal and that decision to sack them had been made in order to "improve the level of supervision". Tawfiq Toubi, a lawyer representing 20 of the former employees has stated that their dismissal was a case of discrimination. On April 10, the Labor Court had suspended the dismissal of Arabs for a period of 10 days.

Source: Haaretz

Votes in settlements, kibbutzim and Bedouin villages

At Haaretz website you can read election results by city and sector. If you read Hebrew, Ynet has an interactive map of the results (with comparisons to 2003 and 2006). The Ynet map is a nightmare if you have a slow internet connection, though. Do note that the Ynet map includes both West Bank and Golan as parts of Israel, borders that are not internationally recognized. On the plus side, you can even see results at submunicipal levels at some places.

*Settlements: According to the Ynet map, 'Judea and Samaria' (i.e. West Bank settlers) have voted in the following fashion: Likud 25%, National Union 20%, United Torah Judaism 14%, Shas 11%, Kadima 8%, Jewish Home 8%, Yisrael Beiteinu 8%, Labour 2%, United Arab List-Ta'al 1%, Green Movement-Meimad 1%. Other parties got less than 1%.

*Kibbutzim: According to Haaretz, Kibbutzim votes have been divided along the following lines: Kadima 31%, Labour 31%, Meretz 18%, Likud 6%, Yisrael Beitenu 3%, Jewish Home 3%, Green Movement-Meimad 2%, National Union 2%, Ale Yarok (Green Left, pro-marijuana party) 1%, Green Party 1%, Shas 1%, Hadash 1%. Other parties received less than 1%.

*Bedouins: According to Haaretz, the Bedouin communities have predominately voted for the United Arab List-Ta'al (80%). Other parties in the Bedouin areas were National Democratic Assembly (Balad) 5%, Hadash 2%, Kadima 2%, Labour 2%, Shas 2%, Likud 1%, Green Party 1%, Yisrael Beitenu 1%, Meretz 1%. Other parties received less than 1%.

Egyptian singer Tamer Hosny releases new video in support of Gaza - calls for Arab unity in solidarity with Palestine

The video by Egyptian singer Tamer Hosny is titled كلنا واحد, 'We are all one' and calls of Arabs (and their governments) to go from words to action in solidarity with Palestine. In the video you can see protests in Lebanon and Jordan, amongst others.

In Egypt the mood is one of outrage against their own government, which is complicit in the massacre of the people of Gaza. The Egyptian government should heed the call of the people, open the border with Gaza whilst stopping oil exports to Israel. The cause of Palestine is tightly linked the the cause of democratization of the Arab world. When Arabs have governments who obey their people instead of Washington and Tel Aviv there will be real progress in the liberation of Palestine.