Time for a new week in review of Occupied Palestine.

First, Britain’s +six-million strong TUC union voted in favor of a partial boycott of Israeli goods. Union members and sub-union groups are encouraged to boycott all goods produced in the Occupied West Bank, and to divest from all companies profiting from the illegal occupation of Palestinian land. Ironically, in the short term this will harm some Palestinians whom often work in Israeli plants in the occupied West Bank. But in the long run it will further make the occupation toxic for Israel and thus help expedite the emergence of a Palestinian state:

In a landmark decision, Britain’s trade unions have voted overwhelmingly to commit to build a mass boycott movement, disinvestment and sanctions on Israel for a negotiated settlement based on justice for Palestinians.

The motion was passed at the 2009 TUC Annual Congress in Liverpool today (17 September), by unions representing 6.5 million workers across the UK.

Hugh Lanning, chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, said: ‘This motion is the culmination of a wave of motions passed at union conferences this year, following outrage at Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, and reflects the massive growth in support for Palestinian rights. We will be working with the TUC to develop a mass campaign to boycott Israeli goods, especially agricultural products that have been produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian West Bank.’

The motion additionally called for the TUC General Council to put pressure on the British government to end all arms trading with Israel and support moves to suspend the EU-Israel trade agreement. Unions are also encouraged to disinvest from companies which profit from Israel’s illegal 42-year occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.

The motion was tabled by the Fire Brigades Union. The biggest unions in the UK, including Unite, the public sector union, and UNISON, which represents health service workers, voted in favour of the motion.

The motion also condemned the Israeli trade union Histadrut’s statement supporting Israel’s war on Gaza, which killed 1,450 Palestinians in three weeks, and called for a review of the TUC’s relationship with Histadrut.

Israeli respect for women’s rights is, of course, always on display whenever Jewish occupation troops deal with Palestinian women:

An 18-year-old Palestinian girl, imprisoned at the Israeli occupation jail of Hasharon, was sexually assaulted by an Israeli prison guard, according to a statement by the Palestinian Ministry of Prisoners Affairs. Reyad al-Ashqar, head of the information office of the ministry said on Thursday that the victim was detained six months ago and that she was being held in a solitary cell.

This news needs it own post, and I feel guilty including it as an also-piece: This week marked the 27th year since Lebanese right-wing Christian militia men, trained and armed by Israel, invaded the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Chatila and under Israeli cover for several days massacred hundreds if not thousands of innocent Palestinians:

Then he uncaged them.

At six on Thursday evening. In the first penetration, three hundred and twenty men were brought on thirty trucks. Four gangs invading from four approaches. These were the most blood-addicted, rape-happy, battle-addled of militiamen, men long ago surfeited on outrage, men who required ever more extreme atrocities to stir their glutted senses. Ever wilder, ever sharper.

Israel lit the sky for them. White phosphorus flares trailing and dancing. Fire above like a terrible sun in the ceiling, a sun switched on in anger, while the children are sleeping.

They came to root out the terrorists General Sharon told them were hiding in the camp’s safe havens. The fear of our fighters gripped him. Perhaps they really were with us, ghosts slipped from the Tunis-bound ships and swum home. Perhaps God had answered our prayers.

Sharon gave them aerial photographs of our maze. They drooled on the glossy paper. And when they rushed in on the ground they found without searching too hard boys old enough to fight, old men who could still hold a gun. Also middle aged men pretending to pacifism, holding apart their empty palms. These they shot, sometimes lining them up first. Carelessly, they shot small children too, and their annoying mothers. Plus things that shrieked and things that ran. House to house, to the inner room, to the furthest wall. Hot work. Soon they shot with greater care, enjoying the sport, slashing and chopping and stabbing too. They swigged whisky and araq, snorted cocaine from flesh and knife blades.

Throughout Thursday night bulldozers levelled the buildings closest to the camp entrance. A machine was sent in to dig trenches. Wailing and shooting whirled around the streets. People shut themselves in, waiting. They whispered amongst themselves, guessing the direction of the slaughter, or making excuses for the noise. Some still didn’t know the extent of it, or didn’t believe. Tomorrow would make believers of them.

They huddled in the darkest dark. Outside the night sun shone; inside not even a candle. Dark as dark as ignorance. The dawn brought smoke and a smell of blood.

On Friday the massacre intensified. Reached its fiercest height in the area surrounding the Gaza Hospital. Finally waned to a dribbling halt around 8am on Saturday morning. A long debauch. More than 36 hours of it. I’ll give no more details. You imagine it how you will.

What you imagine will depend on the kind of tv you watch, which channel.

So, alright. I’ll help you.

Imagine the volume, surging and falling according to the killing rhythm, imagine the gunfire and vehicle noise, the cursing and screaming. Human sound pure in blood lust and death terror: Let me go! Or, Get away from my child, you dog, you hear? Or, kill me instead, my son, I beg you! Or, I am not Palestinian, brother, not one of them! And No! For God’s sake, no. For God’s sake no. And always, No. . .

But this week came another reminder that the Palestinians continue to stand tall and the resistance goes on: And, as with the Lebanese Phalange militias, this week also reminded us that the enemy of the Palestinians isn’t only Israel but all too often Arab governments:

Residents from the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp in northern Lebanon gathered on 16 September to protest the Lebanese government’s halting of planned reconstruction of the camp that was destroyed in 2007 in a battle between the Lebanese army and militants from Fatah al-Islam. Hundreds of refugees from the camp and their supporters gathered in Tripoli, the closest major city to Nahr al-Bared. After being denied a permit to protest at the police station near the city’s center, organizers change the location an area far away from symbolic government buildings and people.

Photo Credit: Matthew Cassel

And, finally, some Israeli women do know what’s good for them, and some Israeli men just can’t stand that. Is this the path toward a one-state solution?:

Every night, dozens of young men in Jerusalem’s Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood take to the streets and go out searching for girls. But theirs is not a promiscuous search. In fact, the group of some 35 volunteers is looking to prevent such interaction and to stop what neighborhood residents have overwhelmingly complained is a growing problem in Pisgat Ze’ev - Arab men going out with Jewish girls.

You can’t blame them. Us Arab men are simply mesmerizing. This story reminded me of another story I read a while back where a Palestinian citizen of Israel was chosen by the Israeli magazine edition of the prominent daily Yedioth Aharonoth as the most beautiful man in the Jewish state: actor Saleh Bakri

If only more Israeli women would follow the Tel Aviv graffiti we all would be closer to peace.

Rahamhoum (May God have mercy on them) all the dead in Sabre and Chatila and all Palestinian martyrs before and after.

Join me next week for a new review from the Holy Land.