Do I Dare Be Optimistic?.....

:-)

"There are people in US and Israeli politics who ideologically oppose Obama, and are willing to sacrifice the special relationship between the two countries in order to advance their political agenda."

"The "atmosphere of confrontation", he warned, was alienating the US public and putting the Jewish community in a difficult position."
Memo by Nadav Tamir

The poor bastard's going to be roasted over the coals now.

How A U.S. Tax Deduction Aids Israeli Settlements.....

For many years, the United States has had a policy against spending aid money to fund Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which successive administrations have regarded as an obstacle to peace. Yet private organizations in the United States continue to raise tax-exempt contributions for the very activities that the government opposes.

There's nothing illegal about the charitable contributions to pro-settlement organizations, which are documented in filings with the Internal Revenue Service. They're similar to tax-exempt donations made to thousands of foreign organizations around the world through groups that are often described as "American friends of" the recipient.

But critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns. A search of IRS records identified 28 U.S. charitable groups that made a total of $33.4 million in tax-exempt contributions to settlements and related organizations between 2004

"This is an issue that has not gotten the attention it deserves," said Ori Nir, a spokesman for Americans for Peace Now, a lobbying group that opposes settlements. "I don't know how many people, including in the U.S. government, realize the extent of private American funding to settlements. . . . Every dollar that goes to settlements makes Middle East peace that much harder to reach."

The Obama administration had an early confrontation over settlements when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Israel this month. She criticized Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in a largely Arab area of Jerusalem known as Silwan, just below the walls of the Old City. "Clearly this kind of activity is unhelpful," she said. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat responded that Clinton was mistaken and that the Palestinian houses had been built illegally.

One of the Israeli organizations that has led the way in developing this area of East Jerusalem is called Ir David, or City of David. Like other pro-settlement groups, it has an active fundraising effort in the United States. According to Form 990s filed with the IRS, Friends of Ir David raised $8.7 million in 2004, $1.2 million in 2005 and $2.7 million in 2006.

The group's primary tax-exempt purpose, according to the IRS filings, is: "To create a charitable fund to provide financial aid & other reasonable assistance to benefit the Jewish people of the Old City of Jerusalem. To teach about the history and archeology of the biblical city of Jerusalem. To offer aid & assistance for education, housing & the rehabilitation of distressed properties."

A senior Jordanian official argued in an interview this week that Israeli pro-settlement groups such as Ir David are seeking to transform the demographic character of East Jerusalem so that a two-state solution with Jerusalem shared by Israeli and Palestinian governments will be impossible.

Hebron is another controversial area where settlements have received substantial tax-exempt gifts from America. According to IRS records, the Hebron Fund donated $860,637 in 2005 and $967,954 in 2006 for "social and educational well-being"; the fund's online mission statement makes clear this is for Israeli settlers inside the city. The Hebron settlement of Kiryat Arba received $730,000 in 2006 from a group called American Friends of Yeshiva High School of Kiryat Arba.

Often the U.S. charities will specify that their gifts are going to charities in Israel, even though the recipients are in the West Bank, which the United States regards as occupied territory. American Friends of the College of Judea and Samaria, for example, said its donations were "to provide for the expansion and furtherance of the needs of educational institutions in Israel," even though the college is in the settlement of Ariel. Similarly, other filings speak of gifts to "Elon Moreh, Israel," "Gush Etzion, Israel," "Karnei Shomron, Israel," "Efrat, Israel," and "Bat Ayin, Israel," even though those settlements are all in the West Bank.

A 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service stated: "The United States stipulates that U.S. aid funds cannot be used in the occupied territories." The issue came to a head during a 1992 dispute over the use of U.S. loan guarantees. A Jan. 25, 1992, story in the New York Times said that Secretary of State James A. Baker had cautioned Israel's ambassador "that the administration was not going to underwrite Israeli policies that fundamentally contradict its own principles and long-stated policies."

U.S.-Israeli friction over settlements is likely to increase as Israel forms a new conservative government under Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu. Indeed, the man he has selected as Israel's next foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, lives in the West Bank settlement of Nokdim, just east of Bethlehem.

Source

I've yet to find out how the Canadian version of this scam works, but I will.

West Bank.....

Masua
Israeli police
West Bank shooting
Moghniyeh Group
near the other illegal West Bank settlement of Ariel

Silwan and Bulldozers.....

Jerusalem – Ma’an – The Israeli army harshly put down a demonstration by Palestinians in East Jerusalem protesting land destruction near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, witnesses told Ma’an.

The Israeli army had bulldozed four dunoms of land belonging to the Al-A’bbasi family in the Al-Bustan neighborhood of Silwan, near Jerusalem’s Old City, sources said, leading to riots.

Israeli municipality staff and police responded to the scene, threatening the oweners of the land with arrest for not evicting the protesters, themselves. Israeli police also refused to show official documentation, neither a warrant for entering the property nor a demolition notice for destroying the privately owned land, witnesses said.

The army was backed by heavy military vehicles when it bulldozed the land in Silwan, near the Al-Aqsa Mosque-area illegal settlement of David City, itself adjacent to Al-Mughrabi Gate into East Jerusalem’s Old City. Follow this link for the source and the rest of the story.

For photographs of this and much more, see ActiveStills.

About ActiveStills:

We are a group of documentary photographers acting for social change, convinced in the power of photography as a vehicle of change through awareness. We seek to bring awareness to issues and situations that we believe create social injustice, through images that question the society in which we live in.

We believe in the capability and obligation of photography and all arts in general to make a statement and to stimulate conscience. Photography is a channel of self expression. The camera is the mouth. The picture is the scream.

The group was integrated during the current year out of the belief that mutual work may serve the personal statement of each member and similarly make a conjoined statement that will echo from afar. Our first project was related to the situation of the Palestinian village of Bilin and the High Court of Justice 's decision regarding the trace of the Separation Wall. This work was the fruit of a year of working in the village, and the choosen format was a street exhibition that was displayed in several public spaces in Tel Aviv.

We have chosen the common space as a platform for presenting our works. Using the walls of the city as an open gallery is derived from the will to create a communication with the surrounding. Art as we grasp it shouldn't be locked in galleries, but open to the wide public. We address the people on the street, whom we like to influence, the ones in which the power to make real social changes is latent.

ActiveStills operates in Israel and Palestine and focuses on social and political documenting, projects production, publications and open exhibitions at topics in which the public is not exposed in its daily informative routines, managed by the established media.