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Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted
09/14/2012: Sent I-130
10/04/2012: NOA1 Received
12/11/2012: NOA2 Received
12/18/2012: NVC Received Case
01/08/2013: Received Case Number/IIN; DS-3032/I-864 Bill
01/08/2013: DS-3032 Sent
01/18/2013: DS-3032 Accepted; Received IV Bill
01/23/2013: Paid I-864 Bill; Paid IV Bill
02/05/2013: IV Package Sent
02/18/2013: AOS Package Sent
03/22/2013: Case complete
05/06/2013: Interview Scheduled

06/05/2013: Visa issued!

06/28/2013: VISA RECEIVED

07/09/2013: POE - EWR. Went super fast and easy. 5 minutes of waiting and then just a signature and finger print.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

05/06/2016: One month late - overnighted form N-400.

06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

07/01/2016: Biometrics Completed.

08/17/2016: Interview scheduled & approved.

09/16/2016: Scheduled oath ceremony.

09/16/2016: THE END - 4 year long process all done!

 

 

Filed: K-3 Visa Country: Indonesia
Timeline
Posted

Israel IS a terror state and Israel DOES violently expel people en masse from their homes and then Israel takes the property without compensation like the Nazis did to the Jewish people (and other groups) so the issue is ?

Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted

Zuheir Hamadan, the Islamic religious leader of a Jerusalem neighborhood praised Israel for defending the Holy City from Hamas rockets.

The Mukhtar (Islamic religious leader) of the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sur Baher on Monday praised Israel for defending the city – and particularly the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount – from Hamas rockets.

Just days after wide-scale riots by Jerusalem Arabs over the murder of Arab youth Mohammed Al-Khdeir, Zuheir Hamadan said that Hamas, which claimed to be defending the Arabs of Jerusalem, was doing quite the opposite.

Hamas Endangers Arabs and Muslim Holy Sites

“Israel is the one defending Al-Aqsa from the missiles of Hamas,” Hamadan said. Speaking to Israel Radio’s Arabic service, Hamadan said that Hamas’ seemingly careless firing of missiles endangered Muslim holy places, as well as Arabs, who live and work in all parts of the country.

Red Color alert sirens have sounded several times over the past few days in Jerusalem and Gush Etzion. According to several reports, rockets have fallen in both Hebron and Ramallah.

http://unitedwithisrael.org/muslim-cleric-thanks-israel-for-defending-jerusalem-from-hamas-rockets/

09/14/2012: Sent I-130
10/04/2012: NOA1 Received
12/11/2012: NOA2 Received
12/18/2012: NVC Received Case
01/08/2013: Received Case Number/IIN; DS-3032/I-864 Bill
01/08/2013: DS-3032 Sent
01/18/2013: DS-3032 Accepted; Received IV Bill
01/23/2013: Paid I-864 Bill; Paid IV Bill
02/05/2013: IV Package Sent
02/18/2013: AOS Package Sent
03/22/2013: Case complete
05/06/2013: Interview Scheduled

06/05/2013: Visa issued!

06/28/2013: VISA RECEIVED

07/09/2013: POE - EWR. Went super fast and easy. 5 minutes of waiting and then just a signature and finger print.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

05/06/2016: One month late - overnighted form N-400.

06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

07/01/2016: Biometrics Completed.

08/17/2016: Interview scheduled & approved.

09/16/2016: Scheduled oath ceremony.

09/16/2016: THE END - 4 year long process all done!

 

 

Filed: Citizen (pnd) Country: Ireland
Timeline
Posted

Do they really pay you to post walls and walls of cr-p on the internet? Is that coming out of US taxpayers pockets too?

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/israels-information-ops/

The hasbara onslaught inevitably cranks up when Israel is being strongly criticized. There were notable surges in activity when Israel attacked Gaza in 2009 and 2012, as well as when it hijacked the Turkish humanitarian relief ship the Mavi Marmara in 2011. The recent Gaza fighting has inevitably followed suit, producing a perfect storm of pro-Israel commentary. The comments tend to appear in large numbers on websites where moderation and registration requirements are minimal, including Yahoo! News, or Facebook and Twitter. Sites like TAC as well as leading national newspapers have much stricter management control over who comments, and are generally avoided.

The hasbara comments are noticeable as they tend to sound like boilerplate, and run contrary to or even ignore what other contributors to the site are writing.

Haaretz reported in 2013 how Prime Minister Netanyahus office collaborated with the National Union of Israeli Students to establish covert units at the seven national universities to be structured in a semi-military fashion and organized in situation rooms. Students are paid as much as $2,000 monthly to work the online targets.

Many of the volunteers worked through a website giyus.org (an acronym for Give Israel Your United Support). The website included a desktop tool called Megaphone that provided daily updates on articles appearing on the internet that had to be challenged or attacked. There were once believed to be 50,000 activists receiving the now-inactive Megaphones alerts.

This certainly explains a lot. Israel is the world leader in Orwellian double speak.

Oct 19, 2010 I-130 application submitted to US Embassy Seoul, South Korea

Oct 22, 2010 I-130 application approved

Oct 22, 2010 packet 3 received via email

Nov 15, 2010 DS-230 part 1 faxed to US Embassy Seoul

Nov 15, 2010 Appointment for visa interview made on-line

Nov 16, 2010 Confirmation of appointment received via email

Dec 13, 2010 Interview date

Dec 15, 2010 CR-1 received via courier

Mar 29, 2011 POE Detroit Michigan

Feb 15, 2012 Change of address via telephone

Jan 10, 2013 I-751 packet mailed to Vermont Service CenterJan 15, 2013 NOA1

Jan 31, 2013 Biometrics appointment letter received

Feb 20, 2013 Biometric appointment date

June 14, 2013 RFE

June 24, 2013 Responded to RFE

July 24, 2013 Removal of conditions approved

Filed: Citizen (pnd) Country: Ireland
Timeline
Posted

Desmond Tutu: My Plea to the People of Israel: Liberate Yourselves by Liberating Palestine

A child next to a picture of Nelson Mandela at a pro-Palestinian rally in Cape Town. August 9, 2014 / Photo by AP

The following text is the statement of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, published by Haaretz.

It calls for a global boycott of Israel and urges Israelis and Palestinians to look beyond their leaders for a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land.

The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israels disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine.

If you add together all the people who gathered over the past weekend to demand justice in Israel and Palestine in Cape Town, Washington, D.C., New York, New Delhi, London, Dublin and Sydney, and all the other cities this was arguably the largest active outcry by citizens around a single cause ever in the history of the world.

A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined wed see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturdays turnout in Cape Town was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation.

I asked the crowd to chant with me: We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.

Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa.

I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.

I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region, I said.

Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar.

Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements.

We have also recently witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar.

It is a movement that is gathering pace.

Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred.

We South Africans know about violence and hatred. We understand the pain of being the polecat of the world; when it seems nobody understands or is even willing to listen to our perspective. It is where we come from.

We also know the benefits that dialogue between our leaders eventually brought us; when organizations labeled terrorist were unbanned and their leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were released from imprisonment, banishment and exile.

We know that when our leaders began to speak to each other, the rationale for the violence that had wracked our society dissipated and disappeared. Acts of terrorism perpetrated after the talks began such as attacks on a church and a pub were almost universally condemned, and the party held responsible snubbed at the ballot box.

The exhilaration that followed our voting together for the first time was not the preserve of black South Africans alone. The real triumph of our peaceful settlement was that all felt included. And later, when we unveiled a constitution so tolerant, compassionate and inclusive that it would make God proud, we all felt liberated.

Of course, it helped that we had a cadre of extraordinary leaders.

But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically.

At a certain point the tipping point the then-government realized that the cost of attempting to preserve apartheid outweighed the benefits.

The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state bloodlessly to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africas economy, they were contributing to the retention of an unjust status quo.

Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of normalcy in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo.

Those who contribute to Israels temporary isolation are saying that Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace.

Ultimately, events in Gaza over the past month or so are going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.

It is becoming more and more clear that politicians and diplomats are failing to come up with answers, and that responsibility for brokering a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land rests with civil society and the people of Israel and Palestine themselves.

Besides the recent devastation of Gaza, decent human beings everywhere including many in Israel are profoundly disturbed by the daily violations of human dignity and freedom of movement Palestinians are subjected to at checkpoints and roadblocks. And Israels policies of illegal occupation and the construction of buffer-zone settlements on occupied land compound the difficulty of achieving an agreementsettlement in the future that is acceptable for all.

The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful and secure lives they crave and are entitled to as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict.

I have condemned those in Palestine responsible for firing missiles and rockets at Israel. They are fanning the flames of hatred. I am opposed to all manifestations of violence.

But we must be very clear that the people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world.

No human-made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with the earnest desire to overcome them. No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it.

Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognize the human being in themselves and each other; to understand their interdependence.

Missiles, bombs and crude invective are not part of the solution. There is no military solution.

The solution is more likely to come from that nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies.

The reason these tools boycott, sanctions and divestment ultimately proved effective was because they had a critical mass of support, both inside and outside the country. The kind of support we have witnessed across the world in recent weeks, in respect of Palestine.

My plea to the people of Israel is to see beyond the moment, to see beyond the anger at feeling perpetually under siege, to see a world in which Israel and Palestine can coexist a world in which mutual dignity and respect reign.

It requires a mind-set shift. A mind-set shift that recognizes that attempting to perpetuate the current status quo is to damn future generations to violence and insecurity. A mind-set shift that stops regarding legitimate criticism of a states policies as an attack on Judaism. A mind-set shift that begins at home and ripples out across communities and nations and regions to the Diaspora scattered across the world we share. The only world we share.

People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable. God does not interfere in the affairs of people, hoping we will grow and learn through resolving our difficulties and differences ourselves. But God is not asleep. The Jewish scriptures tell us that God is biased on the side of the weak, the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan, the alien who set slaves free on an exodus to a Promised Land. It was the prophet Amos who said we should let righteousness flow like a river.

Goodness prevails in the end. The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support.

Nelson Mandela famously said that South Africans would not feel free until Palestinians were free.

He might have added that the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too.

Desmond Tutu

Oct 19, 2010 I-130 application submitted to US Embassy Seoul, South Korea

Oct 22, 2010 I-130 application approved

Oct 22, 2010 packet 3 received via email

Nov 15, 2010 DS-230 part 1 faxed to US Embassy Seoul

Nov 15, 2010 Appointment for visa interview made on-line

Nov 16, 2010 Confirmation of appointment received via email

Dec 13, 2010 Interview date

Dec 15, 2010 CR-1 received via courier

Mar 29, 2011 POE Detroit Michigan

Feb 15, 2012 Change of address via telephone

Jan 10, 2013 I-751 packet mailed to Vermont Service CenterJan 15, 2013 NOA1

Jan 31, 2013 Biometrics appointment letter received

Feb 20, 2013 Biometric appointment date

June 14, 2013 RFE

June 24, 2013 Responded to RFE

July 24, 2013 Removal of conditions approved

Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted (edited)

Desmond Tutu can go take a look at what I just posted in the other thread. Anyway. Next.

Maybe Expat can tell us if those moms are also part of Isis:

A Syrian woman gave birth to her firstborn in the Ziv Medical Center in Safed on Sunday. The mother was evacuated to the Israeli hospital overnight and delivered a baby boy on Sunday morning.

"There are no midwives in the village and there was no one to help with the delivery," the Syrian mother, who resides in the Quneitra region, said. As a result, she asked IDF troops stationed near the border fence to help her.

The woman is a nurse, and noted she had knowledge of hundreds of Syrian refugees who were given medical care in Israeli hospitals over the past year.

"Fortunately," she said, "the Israeli soldiers in the area saw that I was in a lot of pain, picked me up and took me to a hospital in Israel. I was afraid to make it to Israel, but I was more afraid for my baby in case the birth didn't go smoothly at home.

"We've been eating mainly rice for a while, as a result of the blockade. It's the first time in a long time that I've been eating meat and vegetables. I feel better and I'm relieved; I'm eating and growing stronger and my sweet baby is getting great care."


or this:

Israel's security situation provides a lot of strange and surprising moments, and today (Tuesday) that has been shown once again: A Syrian woman gave birth at Ziv Hospital, while her nurse, who lives in the Golan Heights, suffered a rocket fired just a few days ago from Syria.

The Syrian woman, aged 25, came when she was 40 weeks pregnant from Quneitra, near the Israeli border in the Golan Heights, arrived at the hospital, "Ziv" in Tzfat after crossing the border and getting picked up by the IDF. When she reached the medical facility the delivery has already started, and she was rushed into the delivery room where she quickly and safely delivered a healthy baby girl weighing 2.6 kg.
The baby was admitted to neonatal ward, where she met Eti Ambar, the head nurse, who lives in Kibbutz Ein Ziwan, located only two kilometers away from the Syrian town the mother is from. "We live in a strange reality," said Ambar. "Only two days ago we went to the shelter after the siren sounded At one-thirty in the morning and several rockets hit the area, and mortars fell yesterday, and today we are helping a Syrian woman who comes from the area from which we were shot at.
The Syrian mother says that because of the war her and the inhabitants of the region suffer from a lack of food and health services. "I knew that the delivery is expected soon and there will not be anyone to help me," she described what made her cross the border. "I heard about the wounded Syrians transported to Israel and being well taken care of, so as soon as I started to have contractions, I asked to help me get to the border. The Army picked me up and transported me to the hospital. I Was nervous and scared, but the staff treated me with respect and sensitivity. I'm glad I came here, they treat me well and take care of me and my baby. "
The woman, who gave birth today in the morning, is the seventh Syrian woman that escapes and gives birth in Tzfat. "We hear and see every day the fighting in Syria and know that the population's situation is difficult. Ordinary people do not want war, Syrian mothers who come to us tell difficult stories and talk about their hopes for peace and a better future for their children. Their Gratitude is huge, I wish it to be a bridge for dialogue "Ambar said.
So far Ziv hospital has treated 353 wounded Syrians, 12 of which are still hospitalized. Hundreds of injured were treated at other hospitals also in the north, as Nahariya and Poriah.
Edited by OriZ
09/14/2012: Sent I-130
10/04/2012: NOA1 Received
12/11/2012: NOA2 Received
12/18/2012: NVC Received Case
01/08/2013: Received Case Number/IIN; DS-3032/I-864 Bill
01/08/2013: DS-3032 Sent
01/18/2013: DS-3032 Accepted; Received IV Bill
01/23/2013: Paid I-864 Bill; Paid IV Bill
02/05/2013: IV Package Sent
02/18/2013: AOS Package Sent
03/22/2013: Case complete
05/06/2013: Interview Scheduled

06/05/2013: Visa issued!

06/28/2013: VISA RECEIVED

07/09/2013: POE - EWR. Went super fast and easy. 5 minutes of waiting and then just a signature and finger print.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

05/06/2016: One month late - overnighted form N-400.

06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

07/01/2016: Biometrics Completed.

08/17/2016: Interview scheduled & approved.

09/16/2016: Scheduled oath ceremony.

09/16/2016: THE END - 4 year long process all done!

 

 

Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted

Here's some more child killers for you - http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4446122,00.html

09/14/2012: Sent I-130
10/04/2012: NOA1 Received
12/11/2012: NOA2 Received
12/18/2012: NVC Received Case
01/08/2013: Received Case Number/IIN; DS-3032/I-864 Bill
01/08/2013: DS-3032 Sent
01/18/2013: DS-3032 Accepted; Received IV Bill
01/23/2013: Paid I-864 Bill; Paid IV Bill
02/05/2013: IV Package Sent
02/18/2013: AOS Package Sent
03/22/2013: Case complete
05/06/2013: Interview Scheduled

06/05/2013: Visa issued!

06/28/2013: VISA RECEIVED

07/09/2013: POE - EWR. Went super fast and easy. 5 minutes of waiting and then just a signature and finger print.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

05/06/2016: One month late - overnighted form N-400.

06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

07/01/2016: Biometrics Completed.

08/17/2016: Interview scheduled & approved.

09/16/2016: Scheduled oath ceremony.

09/16/2016: THE END - 4 year long process all done!

 

 

Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted

And here's some more innocent Palestinian children celebrating their "victory".

xpwps3.jpg2mec0hk.jpg2s0h53m.jpg

09/14/2012: Sent I-130
10/04/2012: NOA1 Received
12/11/2012: NOA2 Received
12/18/2012: NVC Received Case
01/08/2013: Received Case Number/IIN; DS-3032/I-864 Bill
01/08/2013: DS-3032 Sent
01/18/2013: DS-3032 Accepted; Received IV Bill
01/23/2013: Paid I-864 Bill; Paid IV Bill
02/05/2013: IV Package Sent
02/18/2013: AOS Package Sent
03/22/2013: Case complete
05/06/2013: Interview Scheduled

06/05/2013: Visa issued!

06/28/2013: VISA RECEIVED

07/09/2013: POE - EWR. Went super fast and easy. 5 minutes of waiting and then just a signature and finger print.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

05/06/2016: One month late - overnighted form N-400.

06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

07/01/2016: Biometrics Completed.

08/17/2016: Interview scheduled & approved.

09/16/2016: Scheduled oath ceremony.

09/16/2016: THE END - 4 year long process all done!

 

 

Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted

Here's a long read, but worth it, no being lazy now ;)

An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth

A former AP correspondent explains how and why reporters get Israel so wrong, and why it matters

The Israel Story

Is there anything left to say about Israel and Gaza? Newspapers this summer have been full of little else. Television viewers see heaps of rubble and plumes of smoke in their sleep. A representative article from a recent issue of The New Yorker described the summer’s events by dedicating one sentence each to the horrors in Nigeria and Ukraine, four sentences to the crazedgénocidaires of ISIS, and the rest of the article—30 sentences—to Israel and Gaza.

When the hysteria abates, I believe the events in Gaza will not be remembered by the world as particularly important. People were killed, most of them Palestinians, including many unarmed innocents. I wish I could say the tragedy of their deaths, or the deaths of Israel’s soldiers, will change something, that they mark a turning point. But they don’t. This round was not the first in the Arab wars with Israel and will not be the last. The Israeli campaign was little different in its execution from any other waged by a Western army against a similar enemy in recent years, except for the more immediate nature of the threat to a country’s own population, and the greater exertions, however futile, to avoid civilian deaths.

The lasting importance of this summer’s war, I believe, doesn’t lie in the war itself. It lies instead in the way the war has been described and responded to abroad, and the way this has laid bare the resurgence of an old, twisted pattern of thought and its migration from the margins to the mainstream of Western discourse—namely, a hostile obsession with Jews. The key to understanding this resurgence is not to be found among jihadi webmasters, basement conspiracy theorists, or radical activists. It is instead to be found first among the educated and respectable people who populate the international news industry; decent people, many of them, and some of them my former colleagues.

While global mania about Israeli actions has come to be taken for granted, it is actually the result of decisions made by individual human beings in positions of responsibility—in this case, journalists and editors. The world is not responding to events in this country, but rather to the description of these events by news organizations. The key to understanding the strange nature of the response is thus to be found in the practice of journalism, and specifically in a severe malfunction that is occurring in that profession—my profession—here in Israel.

In this essay I will try to provide a few tools to make sense of the news from Israel. I acquired these tools as an insider: Between 2006 and the end of 2011 I was a reporter and editor in the Jerusalem bureau of the Associated Press, one of the world’s two biggest news providers. I have lived in Israel since 1995 and have been reporting on it since 1997.

This essay is not an exhaustive survey of the sins of the international media, a conservative polemic, or a defense of Israeli policies. (I am a believer in the importance of the “mainstream” media, a liberal, and a critic of many of my country’s policies.) It necessarily involves some generalizations. I will first outline the central tropes of the international media’s Israel story—a story on which there is surprisingly little variation among mainstream outlets, and one which is, as the word “story” suggests, a narrative construct that is largely fiction. I will then note the broader historical context of the way Israel has come to be discussed and explain why I believe it to be a matter of concern not only for people preoccupied with Jewish affairs. I will try to keep it brief.

How Important Is the Israel Story?

Staffing is the best measure of the importance of a story to a particular news organization. When I was a correspondent at the AP, the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the “Arab Spring” eventually erupted.

To offer a sense of scale: Before the outbreak of the civil war in Syria, the permanent AP presence in that country consisted of a single regime-approved stringer. The AP’s editors believed, that is, that Syria’s importance was less than one-40th that of Israel. I don’t mean to pick on the AP—the agency is wholly average, which makes it useful as an example. The big players in the news business practice groupthink, and these staffing arrangements were reflected across the herd. Staffing levels in Israel have decreased somewhat since the Arab uprisings began, but remain high. And when Israel flares up, as it did this summer, reporters are often moved from deadlier conflicts. Israel still trumps nearly everything else.

The volume of press coverage that results, even when little is going on, gives this conflict a prominence compared to which its actual human toll is absurdly small. In all of 2013, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict claimed 42 lives—that is, roughly the monthly homicide rate in the city of Chicago. Jerusalem, internationally renowned as a city of conflict, had slightly fewer violent deaths per capita last year than Portland, Ore., one of America’s safer cities. In contrast, in three years the Syrian conflict has claimed an estimated 190,000 lives, or about 70,000 more than the number of people who have ever died in the Arab-Israeli conflict since it began a century ago.

News organizations have nonetheless decided that this conflict is more important than, for example, the more than 1,600 women murdered in Pakistan last year (271 after being raped and 193 of them burned alive), the ongoing erasure of Tibet by the Chinese Communist Party, the carnage in Congo (more than 5 million dead as of 2012) or the Central African Republic, and the drug wars in Mexico (death toll between 2006 and 2012: 60,000), let alone conflicts no one has ever heard of in obscure corners of India or Thailand. They believe Israel to be the most important story on earth, or very close.

What Is Important About the Israel Story, and What Is Not

A reporter working in the international press corps here understands quickly that what is important in the Israel-Palestinian story is Israel. If you follow mainstream coverage, you will find nearly no real analysis of Palestinian society or ideologies, profiles of armed Palestinian groups, or investigation of Palestinian government. Palestinians are not taken seriously as agents of their own fate. The West has decided that Palestinians should want a state alongside Israel, so that opinion is attributed to them as fact, though anyone who has spent time with actual Palestinians understands that things are (understandably, in my opinion) more complicated. Who they are and what they want is not important: The story mandates that they exist as passive victims of the party that matters.

Corruption, for example, is a pressing concern for many Palestinians under the rule of the Palestinian Authority, but when I and another reporter once suggested an article on the subject, we were informed by the bureau chief that Palestinian corruption was “not the story.” (Israeli corruption was, and we covered it at length.)

Israeli actions are analyzed and criticized, and every flaw in Israeli society is aggressively reported. In one seven-week period, from Nov. 8 to Dec. 16, 2011, I decided to count the stories coming out of our bureau on the various moral failings of Israeli society—proposed legislation meant to suppress the media, the rising influence of Orthodox Jews, unauthorized settlement outposts, gender segregation, and so forth. I counted 27 separate articles, an average of a story every two days. In a very conservative estimate, this seven-week tally was higher than the total number of significantly critical stories about Palestinian government and society, including the totalitarian Islamists of Hamas, that our bureau had published in the preceding three years.

The Hamas charter, for example, calls not just for Israel’s destruction but for the murder of Jews and blames Jews for engineering the French and Russian revolutions and both world wars; the charter was never mentioned in print when I was at the AP, though Hamas won a Palestinian national election and had become one of the region’s most important players. To draw the link with this summer’s events: An observer might think Hamas’ decision in recent years to construct a military infrastructure beneath Gaza’s civilian infrastructure would be deemed newsworthy, if only because of what it meant about the way the next conflict would be fought and the cost to innocent people. But that is not the case. The Hamas emplacements were not important in themselves, and were therefore ignored. What was important was the Israeli decision to attack them.

There has been much discussion recently of Hamas attempts to intimidate reporters. Any veteran of the press corps here knows the intimidation is real, and I saw it in action myself as an editor on the AP news desk. During the 2008-2009 Gaza fighting I personally erased a key detail—that Hamas fighters were dressed as civilians and being counted as civilians in the death toll—because of a threat to our reporter in Gaza. (The policy was then, and remains, not to inform readers that the story is censored unless the censorship is Israeli. Earlier this month, the AP’s Jerusalem news editor reported and submitted a story on Hamas intimidation; the story was shunted into deep freeze by his superiors and has not been published.)

But if critics imagine that journalists are clamoring to cover Hamas and are stymied by thugs and threats, it is generally not so. There are many low-risk ways to report Hamas actions, if the will is there: under bylines from Israel, under no byline, by citing Israeli sources. Reporters are resourceful when they want to be.

The fact is that Hamas intimidation is largely beside the point because the actions of Palestinians are beside the point: Most reporters in Gaza believe their job is to document violence directed by Israel at Palestinian civilians. That is the essence of the Israel story. In addition, reporters are under deadline and often at risk, and many don’t speak the language and have only the most tenuous grip on what is going on. They are dependent on Palestinian colleagues and fixers who either fear Hamas, support Hamas, or both. Reporters don’t need Hamas enforcers to shoo them away from facts that muddy the simple story they have been sent to tell.

It is not coincidence that the few journalists who have documented Hamas fighters and rocket launches in civilian areas this summer were generally not, as you might expect, from the large news organizations with big and permanent Gaza operations. They were mostly scrappy, peripheral, and newly arrived players—a Finn, an Indian crew, a few others. These poor souls didn’t get the memo.

What Else Isn’t Important?

The fact that Israelis quite recently elected moderate governments that sought reconciliation with the Palestinians, and which were undermined by the Palestinians, is considered unimportant and rarely mentioned. These lacunae are often not oversights but a matter of policy. In early 2009, for example, two colleagues of mine obtained information that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had made a significant peace offer to the Palestinian Authority several months earlier, and that the Palestinians had deemed it insufficient. This had not been reported yet and it was—or should have been—one of the biggest stories of the year. The reporters obtained confirmation from both sides and one even saw a map, but the top editors at the bureau decided that they would not publish the story.

Some staffers were furious, but it didn’t help. Our narrative was that the Palestinians were moderate and the Israelis recalcitrant and increasingly extreme. Reporting the Olmert offer—like delving too deeply into the subject of Hamas—would make that narrative look like nonsense. And so we were instructed to ignore it, and did, for more than a year and a half.

This decision taught me a lesson that should be clear to consumers of the Israel story: Many of the people deciding what you will read and see from here view their role not as explanatory but as political. Coverage is a weapon to be placed at the disposal of the side they like.

How Is the Israel Story Framed?

The Israel story is framed in the same terms that have been in use since the early 1990s—the quest for a “two-state solution.” It is accepted that the conflict is “Israeli-Palestinian,” meaning that it is a conflict taking place on land that Israel controls—0.2 percent of the Arab world—in which Jews are a majority and Arabs a minority. The conflict is more accurately described as “Israel-Arab,” or “Jewish-Arab”—that is, a conflict between the 6 million Jews of Israel and 300 million Arabs in surrounding countries. (Perhaps “Israel-Muslim” would be more accurate, to take into account the enmity of non-Arab states like Iran and Turkey, and, more broadly, 1 billion Muslims worldwide.) This is the conflict that has been playing out in different forms for a century, before Israel existed, before Israel captured the Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, and before the term “Palestinian” was in use.

The “Israeli-Palestinian” framing allows the Jews, a tiny minority in the Middle East, to be depicted as the stronger party. It also includes the implicit assumption that if the Palestinian problem is somehow solved the conflict will be over, though no informed person today believes this to be true. This definition also allows the Israeli settlement project, which I believe is a serious moral and strategic error on Israel’s part, to be described not as what it is—one more destructive symptom of the conflict—but rather as its cause.

A knowledgeable observer of the Middle East cannot avoid the impression that the region is a volcano and that the lava is radical Islam, an ideology whose various incarnations are now shaping this part of the world. Israel is a tiny village on the slopes of the volcano. Hamas is the local representative of radical Islam and is openly dedicated to the eradication of the Jewish minority enclave in Israel, just as Hezbollah is the dominant representative of radical Islam in Lebanon, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and so forth.

Hamas is not, as it freely admits, party to the effort to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It has different goals about which it is quite open and that are similar to those of the groups listed above. Since the mid 1990s, more than any other player, Hamas has destroyed the Israeli left, swayed moderate Israelis against territorial withdrawals, and buried the chances of a two-state compromise. That’s one accurate way to frame the story.

An observer might also legitimately frame the story through the lens of minorities in the Middle East, all of which are under intense pressure from Islam: When minorities are helpless, their fate is that of the Yazidis or Christians of northern Iraq, as we have just seen, and when they are armed and organized they can fight back and survive, as in the case of the Jews and (we must hope) the Kurds.

There are, in other words, many different ways to see what is happening here. Jerusalem is less than a day’s drive from Aleppo or Baghdad, and it should be clear to everyone that peace is pretty elusive in the Middle East even in places where Jews are absent. But reporters generally cannot see the Israel story in relation to anything else. Instead of describing Israel as one of the villages abutting the volcano, they describe Israel as the volcano.

The Israel story is framed to seem as if it has nothing to do with events nearby because the “Israel” of international journalism does not exist in the same geo-political universe as Iraq, Syria, or Egypt. The Israel story is not a story about current events. It is about something else.

The Old Blank Screen

For centuries, stateless Jews played the role of a lightning rod for ill will among the majority population. They were a symbol of things that were wrong. Did you want to make the point that greed was bad? Jews were greedy. Cowardice? Jews were cowardly. Were you a Communist? Jews were capitalists. Were you a capitalist? In that case, Jews were Communists. Moral failure was the essential trait of the Jew. It was their role in Christian tradition—the only reason European society knew or cared about them in the first place.

Like many Jews who grew up late in the 20th century in friendly Western cities, I dismissed such ideas as the feverish memories of my grandparents. One thing I have learned—and I’m not alone this summer—is that I was foolish to have done so. Today, people in the West tend to believe the ills of the age are racism, colonialism, and militarism. The world’s only Jewish country has done less harm than most countries on earth, and more good—and yet when people went looking for a country that would symbolize the sins of our new post-colonial, post-militaristic, post-ethnic dream-world, the country they chose was this one.

When the people responsible for explaining the world to the world, journalists, cover the Jews’ war as more worthy of attention than any other, when they portray the Jews of Israel as the party obviously in the wrong, when they omit all possible justifications for the Jews’ actions and obscure the true face of their enemies, what they are saying to their readers—whether they intend to or not—is that Jews are the worst people on earth. The Jews are a symbol of the evils that civilized people are taught from an early age to abhor. International press coverage has become a morality play starring a familiar villain.

Some readers might remember that Britain participated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the fallout from which has now killed more than three times the number of people ever killed in the Israel-Arab conflict; yet in Britain, protesters furiously condemn Jewish militarism. White people in London and Paris whose parents not long ago had themselves fanned by dark people in the sitting rooms of Rangoon or Algiers condemn Jewish “colonialism.” Americans who live in places called “Manhattan” or “Seattle” condemn Jews for displacing the native people of Palestine. Russian reporters condemn Israel’s brutal military tactics. Belgian reporters condemn Israel’s treatment of Africans. When Israel opened a transportation service for Palestinian workers in the occupied West Bank a few years ago, American news consumers could read about Israel “segregating buses.” And there are a lot of people in Europe, and not just in Germany, who enjoy hearing the Jews accused of genocide.

You don’t need to be a history professor, or a psychiatrist, to understand what’s going on. Having rehabilitated themselves against considerable odds in a minute corner of the earth, the descendants of powerless people who were pushed out of Europe and the Islamic Middle East have become what their grandparents were—the pool into which the world spits. The Jews of Israel are the screen onto which it has become socially acceptable to project the things you hate about yourself and your own country. The tool through which this psychological projection is executed is the international press.

Who Cares If the World Gets the Israel Story Wrong?

Because a gap has opened here between the way things are and the way they are described, opinions are wrong and policies are wrong, and observers are regularly blindsided by events. Such things have happened before. In the years leading to the breakdown of Soviet Communism in 1991, as the Russia expert Leon Aron wrote in a 2011 essay for Foreign Policy, “virtually no Western expert, scholar, official, or politician foresaw the impending collapse of the Soviet Union.” The empire had been rotting for years and the signs were there, but the people who were supposed to be seeing and reporting them failed and when the superpower imploded everyone was surprised.

Whatever the outcome in this region in the next decade, it will have as much to do with Israel as World War II had to do with Spain

And there was the Spanish civil war: “Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which do not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. … I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what had happened but of what ought to have happened according to various ‘party lines.’ ” That was George Orwell, writing in 1942.

Orwell did not step off an airplane in Catalonia, stand next to a Republican cannon, and have himself filmed while confidently repeating what everyone else was saying or describing what any fool could see: weaponry, rubble, bodies. He looked beyond the ideological fantasies of his peers and knew that what was important was not necessarily visible. Spain, he understood, was not really about Spain at all—it was about a clash of totalitarian systems, German and Russian. He knew he was witnessing a threat to European civilization, and he wrote that, and he was right.

Understanding what happened in Gaza this summer means understanding Hezbollah in Lebanon, the rise of the Sunni jihadis in Syria and Iraq, and the long tentacles of Iran. It requires figuring out why countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia now see themselves as closer to Israel than to Hamas. Above all, it requires us to understand what is clear to nearly everyone in the Middle East: The ascendant force in our part of the world is not democracy or modernity. It is rather an empowered strain of Islam that assumes different and sometimes conflicting forms, and that is willing to employ extreme violence in a quest to unite the region under its control and confront the West. Those who grasp this fact will be able to look around and connect the dots.

Israel is not an idea, a symbol of good or evil, or a litmus test for liberal opinion at dinner parties. It is a small country in a scary part of the world that is getting scarier. It should be reported as critically as any other place, and understood in context and in proportion. Israel is not one of the most important stories in the world, or even in the Middle East; whatever the outcome in this region in the next decade, it will have as much to do with Israel as World War II had to do with Spain. Israel is a speck on the map—a sideshow that happens to carry an unusual emotional charge.

Many in the West clearly prefer the old comfort of parsing the moral failings of Jews, and the familiar feeling of superiority this brings them, to confronting an unhappy and confusing reality. They may convince themselves that all of this is the Jews’ problem, and indeed the Jews’ fault. But journalists engage in these fantasies at the cost of their credibility and that of their profession. And, as Orwell would tell us, the world entertains fantasies at its peril.

***

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http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide?all=1

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07/09/2013: POE - EWR. Went super fast and easy. 5 minutes of waiting and then just a signature and finger print.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

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Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted (edited)

Desmond Tutu: My Plea to the People of Israel: Liberate Yourselves by Liberating Palestine

A child next to a picture of Nelson Mandela at a pro-Palestinian rally in Cape Town. August 9, 2014 / Photo by AP

The following text is the statement of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, published by Haaretz.

It calls for a global boycott of Israel and urges Israelis and Palestinians to look beyond their leaders for a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land.

The past weeks have witnessed unprecedented action by members of civil society across the world against the injustice of Israels disproportionately brutal response to the firing of missiles from Palestine.

If you add together all the people who gathered over the past weekend to demand justice in Israel and Palestine in Cape Town, Washington, D.C., New York, New Delhi, London, Dublin and Sydney, and all the other cities this was arguably the largest active outcry by citizens around a single cause ever in the history of the world.

A quarter of a century ago, I participated in some well-attended demonstrations against apartheid. I never imagined wed see demonstrations of that size again, but last Saturdays turnout in Cape Town was as big if not bigger. Participants included young and old, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, agnostics, atheists, blacks, whites, reds and greens as one would expect from a vibrant, tolerant, multicultural nation.

I asked the crowd to chant with me: We are opposed to the injustice of the illegal occupation of Palestine. We are opposed to the indiscriminate killing in Gaza. We are opposed to the indignity meted out to Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks. We are opposed to violence perpetrated by all parties. But we are not opposed to Jews.

Earlier in the week, I called for the suspension of Israel from the International Union of Architects, which was meeting in South Africa.

I appealed to Israeli sisters and brothers present at the conference to actively disassociate themselves and their profession from the design and construction of infrastructure related to perpetuating injustice, including the separation barrier, the security terminals and checkpoints, and the settlements built on occupied Palestinian land.

I implore you to take this message home: Please turn the tide against violence and hatred by joining the nonviolent movement for justice for all people of the region, I said.

Over the past few weeks, more than 1.6 million people across the world have signed onto this movement by joining an Avaaz campaign calling on corporations profiting from the Israeli occupation and/or implicated in the abuse and repression of Palestinians to pull out. The campaign specifically targets Dutch pension fund ABP; Barclays Bank; security systems supplier G4S; French transport company Veolia; computer company Hewlett-Packard; and bulldozer supplier Caterpillar.

Last month, 17 EU governments urged their citizens to avoid doing business in or investing in illegal Israeli settlements.

We have also recently witnessed the withdrawal by Dutch pension fund PGGM of tens of millions of euros from Israeli banks; the divestment from G4S by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and the U.S. Presbyterian Church divested an estimated $21 million from HP, Motorola Solutions and Caterpillar.

It is a movement that is gathering pace.

Violence begets violence and hatred, that only begets more violence and hatred.

We South Africans know about violence and hatred. We understand the pain of being the polecat of the world; when it seems nobody understands or is even willing to listen to our perspective. It is where we come from.

We also know the benefits that dialogue between our leaders eventually brought us; when organizations labeled terrorist were unbanned and their leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were released from imprisonment, banishment and exile.

We know that when our leaders began to speak to each other, the rationale for the violence that had wracked our society dissipated and disappeared. Acts of terrorism perpetrated after the talks began such as attacks on a church and a pub were almost universally condemned, and the party held responsible snubbed at the ballot box.

The exhilaration that followed our voting together for the first time was not the preserve of black South Africans alone. The real triumph of our peaceful settlement was that all felt included. And later, when we unveiled a constitution so tolerant, compassionate and inclusive that it would make God proud, we all felt liberated.

Of course, it helped that we had a cadre of extraordinary leaders.

But what ultimately forced these leaders together around the negotiating table was the cocktail of persuasive, nonviolent tools that had been developed to isolate South Africa, economically, academically, culturally and psychologically.

At a certain point the tipping point the then-government realized that the cost of attempting to preserve apartheid outweighed the benefits.

The withdrawal of trade with South Africa by multinational corporations with a conscience in the 1980s was ultimately one of the key levers that brought the apartheid state bloodlessly to its knees. Those corporations understood that by contributing to South Africas economy, they were contributing to the retention of an unjust status quo.

Those who continue to do business with Israel, who contribute to a sense of normalcy in Israeli society, are doing the people of Israel and Palestine a disservice. They are contributing to the perpetuation of a profoundly unjust status quo.

Those who contribute to Israels temporary isolation are saying that Israelis and Palestinians are equally entitled to dignity and peace.

Ultimately, events in Gaza over the past month or so are going to test who believes in the worth of human beings.

It is becoming more and more clear that politicians and diplomats are failing to come up with answers, and that responsibility for brokering a sustainable solution to the crisis in the Holy Land rests with civil society and the people of Israel and Palestine themselves.

Besides the recent devastation of Gaza, decent human beings everywhere including many in Israel are profoundly disturbed by the daily violations of human dignity and freedom of movement Palestinians are subjected to at checkpoints and roadblocks. And Israels policies of illegal occupation and the construction of buffer-zone settlements on occupied land compound the difficulty of achieving an agreementsettlement in the future that is acceptable for all.

The State of Israel is behaving as if there is no tomorrow. Its people will not live the peaceful and secure lives they crave and are entitled to as long as their leaders perpetuate conditions that sustain the conflict.

I have condemned those in Palestine responsible for firing missiles and rockets at Israel. They are fanning the flames of hatred. I am opposed to all manifestations of violence.

But we must be very clear that the people of Palestine have every right to struggle for their dignity and freedom. It is a struggle that has the support of many around the world.

No human-made problems are intractable when humans put their heads together with the earnest desire to overcome them. No peace is impossible when people are determined to achieve it.

Peace requires the people of Israel and Palestine to recognize the human being in themselves and each other; to understand their interdependence.

Missiles, bombs and crude invective are not part of the solution. There is no military solution.

The solution is more likely to come from that nonviolent toolbox we developed in South Africa in the 1980s, to persuade the government of the necessity of altering its policies.

The reason these tools boycott, sanctions and divestment ultimately proved effective was because they had a critical mass of support, both inside and outside the country. The kind of support we have witnessed across the world in recent weeks, in respect of Palestine.

My plea to the people of Israel is to see beyond the moment, to see beyond the anger at feeling perpetually under siege, to see a world in which Israel and Palestine can coexist a world in which mutual dignity and respect reign.

It requires a mind-set shift. A mind-set shift that recognizes that attempting to perpetuate the current status quo is to damn future generations to violence and insecurity. A mind-set shift that stops regarding legitimate criticism of a states policies as an attack on Judaism. A mind-set shift that begins at home and ripples out across communities and nations and regions to the Diaspora scattered across the world we share. The only world we share.

People united in pursuit of a righteous cause are unstoppable. God does not interfere in the affairs of people, hoping we will grow and learn through resolving our difficulties and differences ourselves. But God is not asleep. The Jewish scriptures tell us that God is biased on the side of the weak, the dispossessed, the widow, the orphan, the alien who set slaves free on an exodus to a Promised Land. It was the prophet Amos who said we should let righteousness flow like a river.

Goodness prevails in the end. The pursuit of freedom for the people of Palestine from humiliation and persecution by the policies of Israel is a righteous cause. It is a cause that the people of Israel should support.

Nelson Mandela famously said that South Africans would not feel free until Palestinians were free.

He might have added that the liberation of Palestine will liberate Israel, too.

Desmond Tutu

Desmond Tutu I am writing this article to you, to Cosatu and the South African Government in general. Your views on the Middle East conflict and your recent comments are entirely disingenuous. Once again you have failed to be impartial, you have chosen a side and through your influence you perpetuate misunderstanding and violence. I write this because as a man in your position, you have a very distinct responsibility and you continuously fail!

Desmond Tutu you have been silent when Hamas has been firing rockets on innocent Israeli civilians for the past 12 years. You have never stated that Hamas initiated the violence. Over 12000 rockets have fallen on Israeli cities and the silence from your mouth is deafening. The ONLY time you have raised a voice is when Israel has retaliated. You claim that “fanatics” on both sides are claiming to “[act] with the approval of God”. When did Israel ever make such claims? You brand both sides fanatics when one side has repeatedly made offers for peace, has never rejected a peace offer and has never initiated violence but only responded to it. That country is Israel. Have you forgotten or never heard of the Peel Commission of 1937, the Partition Plan of 1947, the Camp David Accords of 1978/9, the Oslo peace talks of 1993, the Camp David Summit of 2000, the Taba talks of 2001 and the Roadmap to Peace in 2007? Each time the Jews or Israel either accepted or offered a solution, one for 2 states and each time this was rejected! Instead you choose to justify the endless violence that has erupted after each failed attempt at peace. Yours and other’s mislabeling of the aggressor only impedes finding any solution!

Desmond Tutu, you have never once condemned Hamas for using their own population as a political tool. You have not once condemned their use of the population as human shield. You have not once condemned their placing of ammunition depots and rocket launching sites inside civilian populations, next to mosques, schools, hospitals or Red Cross buildings. This is a war crime! You have not once condemned or mentioned those Palestinians killed by Hamas for dissent. You have not once mentioned those Palestinians killed by Hamas rockets not making it out of Gaza. Instead you draw a moral equivalency or even worse, criticize a country, without shame, who sanctifies life; a country that sends warning, at great expense to itself, to the people of Gaza before an operation is about to take place; a country, Israel, that sends aid through to Gaza even in a time of war; a country that has on numerous occasions aborted an attack because of the presence of civilians and a country who surgically targets terrorist infrastructure unlike the hundreds of indiscriminate rocket attacks fired from Gaza! For this YOU should be condemned!

It’s quite strange that you, coming from South Africa should feel the need to get involved in this conflict at all. Does South Africa not have enough of its own issues to deal with? Last I checked the statistics, according to various United Nations Reports, the summary being the Human Development Report, the Palestinian Territories have better literacy rates than South Africans, lower infant and maternal death rates than South Africans, far fewer people living under the poverty line than South Africans, better access to sanitation than South Africans! With all this information it seems that South Africans rather than those in the Palestinian Territories are facing a humanitarian crisis! Where is your voice now? If you are so interested in international politics, where is your voice for Syria, for Sudan, for Burma, for Egypt and for Nepal? Why are you silent for these REAL genocides and human rights abuses? Is there no one pandering you to issue a statement? Are they not important enough?

Desmond Tutu, for a man in your position to abuse your power and influence, is a crime. Your ignorance and clearly superficial and biased knowledge of the issues at hand is inexcusable, especially when you comment on a local or international stage! You give rationalization to terror, to murder of innocent civilians and inspire a group of people to move further from reconciliation than ever before!

Desmond Tutu, I suggest you do some soul searching and fact finding for yourself. Force the world to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and force the Palestinians to seek peaceful resolutions opposed to the use of violence to get their demands. As a religious man you should be using your power for the progress of humanity and not push it further into the darkness!

http://reclaimingtruth.info/desmond-tutu-how-far-are-you-going-to-keep-falling/

Edited by OriZ
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

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Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted

A vast majority of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip – 88.9 percent - are in favor of rocket fire on Israel, a new poll shows, while 61 percent say they would not want United Nations forces in the Strip.

The survey, which was conducted last week by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, found that 60.3 percent "strongly" supported the rocket fire on Israel, while another 28.6 percent said that they supported it. Just 1.4 percent said that they were opposed to the attacks, and only 1 percent expressed strong opposition. Another 1.7 percent said that they did not know how they felt about the strikes.

Furthermore, more than three quarters of those polled, 75.4 percent, said that they believed the resistance had increased Palestinian deterrence during Operation Protective Edge, which ended Tuesday after 50 days. Only 12.8 percent expressed the belief that it had decreased, while 8.1 percent said they thought it had remained the same.

However, with regards to attacks carried out by the Palestinian factions, 29 percent cited "specific military operations, such as the foiled infiltration from the sea as "the most successful act of the Palestinian Resistance in retaliation for the recent Israeli aggression". Another 23.3 percent said infiltrations "across enemy lines" were the most successful, while just 15.9 percent named rocket attacks and 19.8 percent identified infiltrations through tunnels burrowed under the border.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is viewed favorably by more than half of the Gazan population, the poll found, with 54 percent of respondents saying that they were "satisfied" with his performance during Protective Edge. Only a little over one third, 38.6 percent, said that they were dissatisfied with his conduct.

Meanwhile, Egypt, which banned Gaza's Hamas rulers from operating there in March, was seen to be the country which "best backed the Palestinian Resistance against the recent Israeli aggression on Gaza." Almost one third, 32.5 percent, named Egypt as the most supportive nation, with major Gaza supporters Qatar and Turkey were named by just 23.5 percent and 25.3 percent of respondents respectively. Iran was identified by just 8.1 percent of Gazans.

The survey was conducted between August 14-19, questioning a random sample of 1,000 Palestinian adults in Gaza, with a margin of error of 3 percent.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4564975,00.html

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07/09/2013: POE - EWR. Went super fast and easy. 5 minutes of waiting and then just a signature and finger print.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

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08/17/2016: Interview scheduled & approved.

09/16/2016: Scheduled oath ceremony.

09/16/2016: THE END - 4 year long process all done!

 

 

Filed: IR-1/CR-1 Visa Country: Israel
Timeline
Posted (edited)

Abbas slams Hamas for intransigence during Gaza op

Palestinian leader stresses Gaza terror group cannot dictate outbreak of war: 'That's not unity; it is not reconciliation.'

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas slammed Hamas' behavior during both IDF Operations Protective Edge and Brother's Keeper in a TV interview Tuesday night.

Earlier in the evening, Hamas' political chief Khaled Mashal attacked the Palestinian Authority's security forces for preventing an intifada in the West Bank.

During the interview, Abbas admitted that there was no difference between the Egyptian initiative introduced at the beginning of the operation and the proposal accepted at its end, 50 days later.

He said the Palestinian Authority requested the Egyptian initiative, which centered on an end to the killing of civilians, according to Abbas, and the reimplementation of the understandings reached in Pillar of Defense.

Abbas hinted that the entity responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians was Hamas, whose stubbornness did not benefit the process.

The Palestinian leader objected to Hamas' declaration that it would decide whether there was war or calm because, according to the Palestinian unity accords, that decision can only be taken by the PA.

Abbas said that if that condition was not followed there was no utility in the reconciliation effort. "One side must not be able to declare war. That's not unity; it is not reconciliation."

The PA leader stressed that the project of rehabilitating the Gaza Strip would only be undertaken by the Palestinian Authority.

Abbas also addressed the kidnap and murder of the three Israeli teens in the West Bank, emphasizing that the Palestinian Authority had no information about the abductors, though Israel has announced that Hamas was behind the affair.

Abbas added that he asked Khaled Mashal if Hamas was responsible and was answered negatively. He said he was surprised when, a few days later, senior Hamas official Salah al-Arouri admitted that Hamas was responsible for the attack – especially after Mashal officially announced that Hamas had no part in the abduction.

The Palestinian leader then condemned the public killings of alleged Israeli collaborators in Gaza, calling the murders a crime.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4565455,00.html

This is a brave leader that Israel should find a way to make peace with. Hamas, on the other hand, is a terror organization.

Edited by OriZ
09/14/2012: Sent I-130
10/04/2012: NOA1 Received
12/11/2012: NOA2 Received
12/18/2012: NVC Received Case
01/08/2013: Received Case Number/IIN; DS-3032/I-864 Bill
01/08/2013: DS-3032 Sent
01/18/2013: DS-3032 Accepted; Received IV Bill
01/23/2013: Paid I-864 Bill; Paid IV Bill
02/05/2013: IV Package Sent
02/18/2013: AOS Package Sent
03/22/2013: Case complete
05/06/2013: Interview Scheduled

06/05/2013: Visa issued!

06/28/2013: VISA RECEIVED

07/09/2013: POE - EWR. Went super fast and easy. 5 minutes of waiting and then just a signature and finger print.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

05/06/2016: One month late - overnighted form N-400.

06/01/2016: Original Biometrics appointment, had to reschedule due to being away.

07/01/2016: Biometrics Completed.

08/17/2016: Interview scheduled & approved.

09/16/2016: Scheduled oath ceremony.

09/16/2016: THE END - 4 year long process all done!

 

 

Filed: K-3 Visa Country: Indonesia
Timeline
Posted

How many deaths does this policy cause? Let's look at what the medical community, not the "propaganda machine", has to say:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2805%2978599-8/fulltext

In 1993, the Israeli government imposed a permanent blockage between Gaza and the West Bank, and East Jerusalem, which prevented free access of Palestinians to their only national tertiary-referral hospitals. Further, in the past 2 years, Israel have responded to terrorist attacks by imposing intermittent “internal closures”, of disputed security value, on the whole Palestinian population. Sometimes known as sieges, super-closures imprison residents from six major West Bank towns within town limits and prohibit citizens from the environs and from the remainder of the West Bank from entering, for weeks at a time. Patients who live outside town cannot access hospitals without permission from checkpoint soldiers who lack medical knowledge, and many health employees cannot reach work. A survey in March, 1996, found that 38% of the health workers were unable to reach work and five of ten hospitals had a 50% or greater reduction in emergency cases. We interviewed doctors who had smuggled themselves into the village of Asira, after it had been under total closure over 2 weeks, so that they could treat patients, including children, whose medical conditions had deteriorated because they were denied access to appropriate services in nearby Nablus....

Repeated obstructions to the coordinated functioning of a national-health service promotes premature deaths, increase morbidity, and damage the medical infrastructure. The Israeli authorities' disregard for Palestinian health care, evident during their stewardship of the health system during 1967-94, continues to influence their security policy and will, ultimately, have been responsible for an incalculable number of deaths


The IDF admits freely that they delay, slap around, and just play around with people at checkpoints all the time, just for fun. How many deaths does this cause?

21 February 2014, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) prevented 60 Palestinian patients from the Gaza Strip from travelling via Erez crossing to reach their hospitals in the West Bank, Israel, and Jordan. Patients who obtain medical referral from the Palestinian Authority and seek medical treatment that is not available in Gaza Strip have to leave the Gaza Strip through Erez Crossing which is under the total control of the IOF. According to Al Mezan’s field investigations, the Israeli authorities attempted to justify this prevention in stating that the medical referrals are prohibitively headed with the title, “State of Palestine”.

...

the denial of medical access of protected persons is in contravention of international humanitarian law, citing in particular paragraph (2) article (38) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which emphasizes the right to “receive medical attention and hospital treatment to the same extent as the nationals of the State concerned”. Israel’s policies also violate articles (22), (25), and (12) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Economic Rights.

http://reliefweb.int/report/occupied-palestinian-territory/iof-prevent-60-palestinian-patients-travelling-erez-crossing

Filed: K-3 Visa Country: Indonesia
Timeline
Posted

Here is what I think: "Go Die In Gaza" is the rule, not the exception. If Israel treats their captives so humanely I am wondering why "Physicians for Human Rights" has to remind Israel that deliberate withholding of medical care is a violation of international law and follow up with condemnation of their practices.

What to believe? Let me think.......A propaganda-spreading "wall-'o-text'r" OR a human rights organization? Wow this is hard. HMMMM who gains from lying?

I think I'll go with "B".

http://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-heart-patient-go-die-gaza/3292

The following is an update from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel:

The death of Na’el al-Kordi

Na’el al-Kordi, aged 21, was diagnosed with cancer (seminoma) in February 2006. He was operated at Shifaa’ hospital, Gaza, in March 2006, and underwent radiotherapy in Egypt in April 2006, followed by continuation of chemotherapy in Gaza. In January 2007 his condition worsened and in March he was diagnosed with secondary tumors. He was referred to a medical center in Egypt for care but encountered difficulties in reaching regular sessions due to repeated closures of Rafah Crossing into Egypt. His tumor shrank by 50 percent, and there was a chance of saving his life if granted follow up and appropriate care. Following the final closure of the crossing into Egypt on 9 June 2007, Na’el attempted to exit Gaza into Ichilov hospital in Israel, via Erez Crossing, but was refused by the Israeli authorities “on security grounds.”

PHR-Israel reminds the government of Israel and the international community that deliberate withholding of medical care for reasons external to medical considerations can in extreme cases constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as defined in the UN Convention Against Torture. Since Israel controls the sole exit point from Gaza to the outside world, it bears sole responsibility for access of patients to care, irrespective of the legal status of Gaza as occupied territory.

PHR-Israel emphatically condemns the policies of the Israeli government regarding Gaza, as well as the failure of international governments to oppose the policy of isolation implemented against the 1.4 million protected civilians of Gaza.

 

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