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‘NY Times’ and ‘LA Times’ run op-eds by an AIPAC board member without telling readers

Last month the LA Times ran a cute test on its op-ed page to show that Israel doesn’t practice apartheid, and that Palestinians are treated very well by Israel.

Today the NY Times runs an op-ed saying that Israel gives Palestinians all the water they need, and as the region dries out, Palestinians are going to feel very lucky. Doing damage control after last weeks massive brouhaha pulled by Naftali Bennett (w/his party MKs in tow) during EU president Martin Schulz’s Knesset address? Your guess is as good as ours.

Both pieces are by Seth M. Siegel– a founder of Beanstalk, a brand-licensing agency, and of Sixpoint Partners, an investment bank, the NY Times says. The LA Times also mentions Beanstalk, and says Siegel is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Neither the LA Times nor the NY Times tells you that Siegel serves on the national board of AIPAC, the leading Israel lobby organization.

More on that water story:

Siegel, who specializes in “extending brands through the strategic and creative development,” has got his work cut out for him cleaning up Israel’s sewage, literally. His New York Times Op-Ed Israeli Water, Mideast Peace?  reads like a love letter for Israeli innovation.

According to Siegel, Palestinians are benefitting from the occupation when it comes to water:

The Palestinians in the West Bank already receive much of their water from Israel’s national water utility and, sovereignty and symbolism aside, neither a two-state solution nor a continuation of the status quo will change that. Given their proximity to Israel, the Palestinians are likely to be among the few Arab winners in the water race.

The West Bank settlement of Ariel sits on a major aquifer, on Palestinian land!

According to Siegel, Israel is “a model” and has “mastered the management of water resources”:

Israel also treats household sewage as a precious resource, reusing more than 80 percent of it for agriculture. In Iran and many Arab countries, sewage is dumped, which can threaten public health by contaminating wells and aquifers.

Iran? Wait a second. Sewage is being dumped in Palestine too– by Israeli settlers.

Here’s a taste of the reality . . . Harvest of excrement: colonists in Occupied Territories pump sewage on to Palestinian farm land.

July 29, 2011 Ein Yabrud, northeast of Ramallah:  State authorities stole private Palestinian land and used it to build a waste facility based on a fictitious permit, for the benefit of the nearby settlement of Ofra.

August 7, 2012, Palestinians say “The bad odor is constant here and nowadays it has become normal to find rodents and insects in this area” because Israeli settlement waste contaminates the environment:

Palestinian children play in a polluted stream contaminated by wastewater from Ariel settlement, Bruqin, West Bank. (Photo: EWASH-OPT)
Palestinian children play in a polluted stream contaminated by wastewater from Ariel settlement, Bruqin, West Bank. (Photo: EWASH-OPT)

 

staring at the smelly polluted water flowing less than 10 meters from the houses of his village located between Salfit and Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank – “It’s not only about the smell. In the village a lot of people suffer from skin diseases, asthmas, and other illnesses.” The waste water stemming from Ariel settlement has played a major role in the contamination of water and in the pollution of the environment in the Salfit area. Due to the concentration of pollutant elements in this zone, many agricultural fields have been destroyed and many animals and plants have been killed. Moreover, many infectious waterborne diseases, like diarrhea, have broken out especially among children.

The inhabitants of Wadi Fukin and Nahalin, south-west of Bethlehem, face the same problems. Surrounded by the Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit, these two villages, known for the quality of the agricultural products, are constantly threatened by the flow of waste water coming from the nearby settlement. “Inside Beitar Illit there is a waste water treatment facility but it can’t handle the amount of waste water it receives and as a consequence it overflows reversing untreated waste water onto the agricultural fields” explains Dib Najajrah, a resident of Wadi Fukin. “Moreover, in the last years the settlers have started attacking our crops by deliberately pumping the waste water coming out of the settlement into the cultivated land of Nahalin.”

Nov 18, 2012 Gaza:

an Israeli air strike hit a water distribution truck in Beit Lahia, destroying it completely and killing the driver Suhail Hamada and his son.

“I have approximately two days stock of drinking water and food,” Mahmoud Sa’adallah, 32, resident of Bait Lahia and a father of five says, “we will have no option but to drink the municipal water which is too salty”. Mahmoud doesn’t know how his children are going to survive in the coming days with the lack of basic necessities if the offensive continues. “My brother and neighbors, for whom the vendor was coming, have already started to drink from the tap”.

The vast majority of the residents of the Gaza strip rely on purchasing desalinated water from private vendors as piped water coming from Gaza’s sole source of fresh water, is too contaminated with chemicals. [1]

From last March. Settler sewage destroys agricultural lands. “Local community organizers from Qusin reported abnormally high cancer rates in the village”:

Land in village of Qusin used as garbage dump by settlers
ISM 27 Mar by IWPS — On Wednesday March 27 at 15:00 the village of Qusin organized a tour of a nearby quarry that is regularly used as a garbage dump. The residents of Qusin invited the Minister of the Environment, IWPS and the International Solidarity Movement to inspect the amount of Israeli trash that has accumulated in the recent weeks. The quarry had been partially refilled with dirt and gravel covering the majority of the trash, leaving three large piles of plastic, wood and metal exposed. The effect was that of a large land fill in the middle of a mined industrial zone. The organizers of the visit explained that the toxins from the trash are seeping through the soil into the water sources of the nearby villages, endangering the local residents. Local community organizers from Qusin reported abnormally high cancer rates in the village. Residents of Qusin have started to regularly visit and protest as a community at the dump site.

Also last year, from Sebastia: Sewage flows from the nearby settlement of Shavei Shomron. Palestinians demonstrate against sewage settlers spill onto their land.

Six months before this 2010 video was shot the Israeli Civil Administration tried peddling the claim the flooding of Beit Ummar with raw sewage was the result of “an accidental power malfunction” from the adjacent illegal Israeli settlement of Kfar Etzion.

Destroying farmland and vineyards, contaminating Palestinian drinking water, this is no accident. It’s an ongoing environmental nightmare and certainly not limited to a few the villages, it’s routine.

Siegel:

Because of geography and hydrology, the Palestinians’ water future is closely tied to Israel’s. In just the few years of Hamas control of Gaza, the water supply there has been polluted, and though no solution to its coming water crisis is likely without an Israeli role, Hamas has refused to cooperate with Israel.

Allison Deger adds, the water crisis in Gaza is because Israel bombed the water treatment facilities. Israel may not have a role in fixing the crisis, but it sure did cause it. Oh, but then again, Israel could have a hand in fixing the water crisis. B’tselem writes:

Israel has forbidden the entry of equipment and materials needed to rehabilitate the water and wastewater-treatment systems there. The prohibition has remained despite the recent easing of the siege.

Funny anecdote: in 2006, the same year Israel was bombing Gaza’s water infrastructure, Seth Siegel was going on tour in Israel with magician David Blaine. Maybe that’s why he missed this big chunk of information…?

The Jerusalem Fund: The Water Crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

“Israel’s discriminatory and unfair water policy is illegal under international law to the detriment of the Palestinian’s economy and health.”

  

(Hat tip Patrick Connors)

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NY times and LA times supports racism. Good to know.

In 1930s-1940s the headline would be:

“German Lobby: Jews are just fine, they are treated nice, they have water, dont worry”

As to water:

Any peace deal (or “framework”) should include equitable sharing of naturally occurring water (“NOW”) (on anticipated per-capita basis, anticipation including births and immigration for 10 years after deal goes into effect), where NOW should be deemed to include in an equitable way the ground-water that has been “mined” by Israel since 1948.

And of course a deal should provide for clean-up of all dumping of sewage, toxics, nuclear, garbage, and other trash by Israel and also by Israelis in or onto land which is set aside for Palestine in the “deal”.

And of course a “deal” should allow for equitable sharing of wealth (if any in this climate-changing world) from oil and gas discoveries.

Some writers (e.g., Avrum Burg) seem say that in a peace deal present Israelis should not have to pay a price for the crimes of past Israelis, but I think that principle a bad one where — as here — the crimes have been on-going, known, notorious, done “as of right” by Israelis, and the time period is within the lives of people, still alive, who have complained of the crimes continuously.

Thus, to tie up my argument here, if it be assumed (arguendo) that because of antisemitism, etc., Israel had a right to thrust itself violently into existence (as a safe haven for Jews) at great cost to the Palestinian people, it cannot be argued that Israel had a right to trash Palestine with trash, to steal water that belonged to Palestine, and to perform all the other crimes.

To put it another way, people should pay for what they break — even if they are Zionists.

interesting piece in Haaretz about israeli control of Palestinian water supply.

http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.574554

The Israeli ‘watergate’ scandal: The facts about Palestinian water

by Amira Hass an Israeli left-wing journalist

Hass list a number of facts

* Israel doesn’t give water to the Palestinians. Rather, it sells it to them at full price.

* The Palestinians would not have been forced to buy water from Israel if it were not an occupying power which controls their natural resource, and if it were not for the Oslo II Accords, which limit the volume of water they can produce, as well as the development and maintenance of their water infrastructure.

* This 1995 interim agreement was supposed to lead to a permanent arrangement after five years. The Palestinian negotiators deluded themselves that they would gain sovereignty and thus control over their water resources.

The Palestinians were the weak, desperate, easily tempted side and sloppy when it came to details. Therefore, in that agreement Israel imposed a scandalously uneven, humiliating and infuriating division of the water resources of the West Bank.

* The division is based on the volume of water Palestinians produced and consumed on the eve of the deal. The Palestinians were allotted 118 million cubic meters (mcm) per year from three aquifers via drilling, agricultural wells, springs and precipitation. Pay attention, Rino Tzror: the same deal allotted Israel 483 mcm annually from the same resources (and it has also exceeded this limit in some years).

In other words, some 20 percent goes to the Palestinians living in the West Bank, and about 80 percent goes to Israelis – on both sides of the Green Line – who also enjoy resources from the rest of the country.

Why should Palestinians agree to pay for desalinated water from Israel, which constantly robs them of the water flowing under their feet?

* The agreement’s second major scandal: Gaza’s water economy/management was condemned to be self-sufficient and made reliant on the aquifer within its borders. How can we illustrate the injustice? Let’s say the Negev residents were required to survive on aquifers in the Be’er Sheva-Arad region, without the National Water Carrier and without accounting for population growth. Overpumping in Gaza, which causes seawater and sewage to penetrate into the aquifer, has made 90 percent of the potable water undrinkable.

Can you imagine? If Israelis had peace and justice in mind, the Oslo agreement would have developed a water infrastructure linking the Strip to the rest of the country.

* According to the deal, Israel will keep selling 27.9 mcm of water per year to the Palestinians. In its colonialist generosity, Israel agreed to recognize Palestinian future needs for an additional 80 mcm per year. It’s all detailed in the agreement with the miserly punctiliousness of a capitalist tycoon. Israel will sell some, and the Palestinians will drill for the rest, but not in the western mountain aquifer. That’s forbidden.

this Siegel chap is a pathological liar, a person of low self esteem who needs to be ‘a part of something larger than himself’ in this case AIPAC, to feel that his life has any meaning.
According to Siegel, Palestinians are benefitting from the occupation when it comes to water.

while the opposite is blatantly true

israelis are benefitting from the occupation when it comes to Paletines water.

“Destroying farmland and vineyards, contaminating Palestinian drinking water, this is no accident. It’s an ongoing environmental nightmare and certainly not limited to the village of Beit Ummar.”

It’s a system run by Jews for Jews.
Completely immoral.
The NYT will eventually fall to the forces of reason.

Private Eye magazine (UK) on the day the establishment turned on Murdoch newspaper “the News of the World”

Evans described the atmosphere in the NotW office the day Mulcaire and royal correspondent were arrested on suspicion of phone hacking as “everyone on tenterhooks, a lot of fear and anxiety and people preparing to cover their tracks”. Evans claims to have destroyed a number of microcassettes from his desk drawer by pulling the ribbon up and napping them into little bits. He also went through his paperwork , shredding various items and pulled apart and binned a number of notebooks at both his office and home, “even notebooks which largely had legitimate stuff in, because they might have had some reference to voicemails in there” He told the jury “it was a purge, basically”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVN_H7J31TY

It’s almost ridiculous how easy it is to counter hasbara.