The Hate Crime Purging of “Antisemites” Is Underway!
Saying anything about Israel’s misbehavior can send you to jail
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 20, 2023
There have recently been a number of incidents that would be of interest if one has concerns about the sorry state of free speech in Europe and the United States, the so-called “democracies” who tend to boast about their freedoms and the rights of their citizens. The chosen weapon in the US and elsewhere in the Anglo-sphere has been the designation “hate speech” which also covers “hate writing,” “possessing hate literature or films,” and even “hate thinking.” In Europe, where “hate speech” is often referred to using the English words, the expression is often preceded by the word “illegal” to make sure that the point about consequences is made and the potential penalty is clearly understood. Some Europeans have in fact been convicted and sent to prison when they have falsely believed they were exercising free speech.
Though the “hate” designation was originally coined to discourage racist language and other forms of expression it has increasingly been exploited by Israel and its associated Jewish support groups to criminalize any criticism of Israel or of Jewish group behavior. It has extended its reach by moving into subsets, notably “holocaust denial” and “antisemitism” which are also regarded ipso facto as hate crimes in a context in which Jews are always regarded as victims, never as perpetrators of violence.
Much of what is going on might be described in fairly simple terms: Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and its unprovoked lethal attacks on its neighbors might reasonably be described as “deplorable” or even genocidal in the case of the Palestinians. Beyond that, Israel, which pretends to be a democracy, operates a system of control over the Christian and Muslim minority within its own borders and also in the area it illegally occupies that is describable as “apartheid,” where the minority is compelled to accept limited resources and consistently harsh treatment from the dominant Jewish population. More to the point, the extremist government coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the situation even worse for those non-Jews that it controls, with talk of introducing mass expulsions and imprisonments. The death toll of Palestinians at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces has also been going up, with more than 150 Palestinians killed this year, including 26 children.
To be sure, Israel has become a home for Jews that can no longer tolerate anyone else. Some ministers in the new government are particularly vile in their views but it is to be assumed that Netanyahu and others in his administration are genuinely supportive of turning Israel into a truly and even exclusively Jewish state, which is in fact how it legally defines itself. The one minister most cited for his cruelty and racism is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party. Ben-Gvir has been charged with crimes 50 times, and convicted on eight occasions, including once for support of a Jewish terrorist group. He is a former supporter of the now deceased right wing fanatic Meir Kahane, and, like Kahane, envisions an Israel that is as Palestinian free as possible and centered exclusively on Jewish interests. He has called for deporting Arabs who aren’t loyal to a Jewish Israel, annexing all of the West Bank and exercising full Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, where the Muslim venerated Al-Aqsa mosque is located. He supports legislation defying international agreements to “divide” the Al-Aqsa site to permit regular Jewish worshippers and there have even been suggestions that the Israeli government will seek to rebuild the so-called Biblical Second Temple, destroyed in the First Century by the Romans, in that location.
MK Itamar Ben Gvir at a ceremony honoring late Jewish extremist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane in Jerusalem on November 10, 2022. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90
Ben-Gvir is notorious for his provocations directed against Palestinian Muslims and Christians. He has led marches of armed settlers flaunting Israeli flags through Arab quarters of cities and towns and has even brought settlers and other extremists to the al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan and to interrupt Friday prayers. To cap the irony, he has been since November 2022 the National Security Minister, which gives him authority over the police, to include the so-called Border Police as well as the police forces located on the illegally occupied West Bank. Indeed, as a practical matter, Ben-Gvir is seeking to have the Knesset pass legislation explicitly conferring legal immunity on all Israeli soldiers for any and all killings of Palestinians. He has also pressed the parliament to institute a formal, judicially administered death penalty for “terrorists”, which would mean any Palestinian who physically resists the Israeli occupation.
Another extremist who has obtained a major ministry in the Netanyahu government is Bezalel Yoel Smotrich who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022. He has recently completed a controversial trip to the United States where he met with American Zionist leaders. Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, and lives in an illegal settlement in a house within the Israeli occupied West Bank that was also built doubly illegally outside the settlement proper. Smotrich supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposes any form of Palestinian statehood, and even denies the existence of the Palestinian people. He demands a state judiciary that relies only on Torah and Jewish traditional law. Accused of inciting hatred against Arab Israelis, he told Arab Israeli lawmakers in October 2021, that “it’s a mistake that David Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw all of you out in 1948.”
The increasing brutality of the Israeli government and its security forces have produced a reaction among many observers worldwide, so the supporters of Israel have engaged in their own first strike frequently using the “hate crime” weapon. They have basically turned the hate crime legislation to their advantage by convincing many nations to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of the “hate crime” antisemitism to automatically include criticism of Israel as being equivalent to hatred of Jews. When that doesn’t work the powerful Israel lobby can also resort to much more brutal threats. When Iceland sought to make illegal infant circumcision five years ago, regarding it as genital mutilation performed on an unconsenting child, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) threatened to unleash Jewish power to destroy their economy and international reputation as punishment for making their country “inhospitable to Jews.”
Now that the “hate crime” genie together with the associated links to holocaust denial and antisemitism have been released from the bottle, they are being used regularly to silence anyone who even indirectly criticizes prominent Jews like George Soros. Conservatives including Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk have recently been on the receiving end of the antisemitism label after referring to Soros and his “Globalist” agenda. It is my belief that Tucker was fired at least in part due to Jewish pressure on FOX as he had been very critical of groups like the hysterical ADL and its hideous director Jonathan Greenblatt.
Roger Waters, the former lead singer of Pink Floyd, has emerged as a powerful critic of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians. As a consequence, he has been hounded by authorities in Europe, has had his concerts canceled, and has been threatened with legal action to make him shut up. The Biden Administration’s antisemitism Czar Deborah Lipstadt has also attacked him, saying “I wholeheartedly concur with [an online] condemnation of Roger Waters and his despicable Holocaust distortion.” She was referring to a tweet stating that “I am sick & disgusted by Roger Waters’ obsession to belittle and trivialize the Shoah & the sarcastic way in which he delights in trampling on the victims, systematically murdered by the Nazis. In Germany. Enough is enough. Holocaust trivialization is criminalized across the EU.” The State Department, speaking for the White House, then piled on adding that Waters has “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes” and a concert he gave late last month in Germany “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust… The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
One might observe that the depiction of Waters is basically untrue – he is a critic of Israeli crimes against humanity but does not hate Jews. One might also add how the fact that the United States State Department actually has a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism speaks for itself and tells you exactly who is in charge in Washington. I wonder how much it costs to run Lipstadt’s mouth from a no doubt well-appointed office in Foggy Bottom each year? Maybe someone should do a cost/benefit analysis and give Debbie her walking papers.
Beyond that, several other recent stories show how it all often works in practice to confront and silence critics. Swedish pop star Zara Larsson is facing what is obviously a coordinated backlash on social media after criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. In an Instagram message to her 6.3 million followers, the 23-year-old declared the ongoing cross-border violence, which is killing mostly Arabs, was a “crime” against Palestinians. Her effort to be somewhat even handed was ignored, in the message, which she later deleted, where she wrote “We have to stand up for Jewish people all over the world facing anti-Semitic violence and threats, but we must also call out a state upholding apartheid and KILLING civilians, funded by American dollars.” She ended the message with the hashtag “#freepalestine.”
Larsson was hardly calling for targeting Jews or anything like that, but the reaction to her comment was symptomatic of the typical overkill response engaged in by Israel and its friends whenever anyone challenges the standard narrative of Israeli perpetual victimhood. Two other instances of comments about Israel leading to an overwhelming response to punish the perpetrators took place during the past month in the United States at college commencement ceremonies. The first was on May 12th, at a graduation ceremony for the law school of the City University of New York (CUNY), where Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Queens native who was selected by the graduating 2023 class to speak during the May 12 ceremony, praised CUNY for supporting student activism, citing in particular the acceptance of student groups protesting against Israel’s brutality towards the Palestinians. She said “Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young and even attacking funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinians homes and businesses. As it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes. Silence is no longer acceptable.”
The response to Mohammed was immediate, including a scathing news report in the New York Post, a call by several Jewish groups to cut funding to CUNY and demands that the law school dean be fired. And the controversy again made news when a second student spoke out at a commencement at El Camino community college in Torrance California. Jana Abulaban, 18, strongly criticized Israeli government policies during her speech on June 9th.
Abulaban, who was born in Jordan in a family of Palestinian refugees, reportedly felt “inspired” by the speech of Fatima Mousa Mohammed and she told the audience “I gift my graduation to all Palestinians who have lost their life and those who continue to lose their lives every day due to the oppressive apartheid state of Israel killing and torturing Palestinians as we speak.’’
There was, of course an immediate reaction to the Abulaban speech coming from a variety of West Coast and New York pro-Israel sources. Brooke Goldstein, a claimed human-rights lawyer founder of The Lawfare Project, said, “This is yet one more example of the systemic Jew-hatred we’re seeing on our college campuses. When a student gives a commencement speech targeting Jews, trafficking in modern tropes of antisemitism, it’s clear that there has been a complete failure in that school to promote social justice for the Jewish people. If any other minority group were targeted like this, there would be consequences for the bigot. The Jewish community deserves no less.”
Of course, both women only spoke the truth about what is happening in the Middle East. Neither attacked the Jewish religion or Jews per se and only criticized Israel’s appalling behavior. When I last checked, Israel was a foreign country with both foreign and domestic policies that are considered very questionable by most of the world, so why should it be protected from being challenged in the United States? The two women were brave to speak up as they did, surely knowing that they would be targeted by the Jewish state’s many friends and supporters. Those of us who continue to speak out on Israel’s genocidal policies can likewise expect no less, particularly as both the federal as well as many state governments and also the media are now on a witch hunt directed against those who seek to speak the truth. But we must persevere. As Fatima Mousa Mohammed put it, “Silence is no longer acceptable.”
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Twisted narratives promote the targeted assassinations of Palestinians
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | June 20, 2023
A recent poll by the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research detailed how Palestinians are largely in favour of armed resistance against Israel’s settler-colonialism. More importantly, Palestinians have again asserted that they no longer need to take their cues from the main Palestinian political factions, indicating a sharp detachment from the politics of the previous years that monopolised resistance depending on factions and geographical territory.
In the poll, 71 per cent of Palestinians favoured the forming of armed resistance groups such as the Lions’ Den and the Jenin Battalion. The Palestinian Authority continued to lose favour among the people of occupied Palestine, with 80 per cent of survey participants against the surrender of members from resistance groups to the PA. In relation to this, 86 per cent of Palestinian respondents declared themselves to be against the PA’s persecution of resistance group members.
Juxtaposed against these findings is the statement of Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s former foreign minister and current head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, who has called for a targeted assassination policy against Hamas leaders in Gaza. “We cannot accept the ‘rules of the game’ in which they can inflame Judea and Samaria while being immune in Gaza,” said Lieberman, referring to Palestinian resistance in the occupied West Bank. He also called for a large-scale military operation in the occupied Palestinian territory to quash the resistance.
The current Palestinian resistance — which is legitimate under international law — does not follow the politics of Palestinian factions, preferring instead to maintain a unified front encompassing all groups. Moreover, support for Hamas in the occupied West Bank is not a recent phenomenon, but the result of the Fatah-led PA’s corrupt existence.
Referring to the Israeli raid of the Jenin refugee camp in which five Palestinians were killed (a sixth has since died of his wounds), Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem pointed out that, “The resistance fighters from all factions were united on the battlefield. It shows that the resistance still exists in the West Bank cities.”
Two narratives are at play here. One is the unified front which Palestinians are moving towards and embracing in their anti-colonial struggle. The other portrays Hamas as the epitome of Palestinian resistance and the reason why Palestinian resistance exists. Much of this is attributed to the discrepancy between Gaza and the occupied West Bank in terms of their portrayal, as well as the different reactions to their unique socio-economic and political realities. Now that the PA has lost much of its grip over the occupied West Bank, Hamas is looming as a bigger threat in the official narrative, despite Palestinians clearly veering towards a unified resistance that encompasses all factions and which remains independent.
Lieberman’s call for targeted assassinations exploits the image of Hamas as synonymous with Palestinian resistance. The movement is being used to promote Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations, a purportedly rational objective in the settler-colonial narrative. The impact, however, is not restricted to Gaza. A growing independent Palestinian resistance which is out of the PA’s control is an uncontained reality which Israel currently faces. Maintaining the narrative of Hamas as the exclusive source of resistance can ultimately be used as a facade for Israel and the PA to normalise extrajudicial killings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.
Read also: Israel forces assassinate Palestinian Authority officer in West Bank
Britain will maintain sanctions to ensure war-affected Russians cannot receive aid
By Ahmed Adel | June 20, 2023
The UK has passed legislation that will allow sanctions against Russia to remain in effect until Moscow pays compensation to Ukraine, the British Foreign Office said on June 19. The British Foreign Office also stated that the European country’s law allows sanctioned Russians to transfer their frozen assets for Ukrainian reconstruction.
“The Government is taking powers to maintain Russian sanctions until compensation is paid to Ukraine and is introducing a route for frozen Russian assets to be donated for Ukrainian reconstruction, under new legislation announced by Foreign Secretary James Cleverly today,” the British Foreign Office announced.
In addition, the ministry pointed out that the UK will create a fund that will allow sanctioned Russians to transfer their frozen assets to the reconstruction of Ukraine.
“This will be a voluntary process whereby sanctioned individuals may apply for funds to be released for the express purpose of supporting Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction. There will be no coercion of individuals to encourage them to transfer funds, nor any offer of sanctions relief in return for making a donation,” the Office audaciously added, although it does highlight the British entitlement of wanting Russians to release their funds for a purpose but without guarantees.
On June 18, the Daily Mail reported that the UK government and Russian businessman Roman Abramovich, who owned the English Premier League football club Chelsea until 2022 when he was forced to sell it due to the British sanctions campaign against Russia, could not agree on the distribution of funds received from the sale of the club as the billionaire wanted the funds to be sent not only to Ukrainians but also to Russians affected by the conflict. The UK government and the European Commission opposed Abramovich’s desire to send funds to Russians.
At the time of the forced sale, Abramovich’s press office said he “wanted the proceeds to be transferred to a charitable foundation for the needs of the victims on both sides of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”
This latest provocation by Britain comes as the country’s Ministry of Defence released a video on June 14 revealing the advanced long-range drones that will be sent to Ukraine in the coming weeks. The video shows several types of drones, including one firing a torpedo over water and another being catapulted from the deck of a vessel.
“We announced a £92m air defence package, to be provided through the second procurement round,” the video’s caption said.
Despite the publication of the video, the British authorities did not provide details about the equipment. However, it is speculated that autonomous aircraft with a range of more than 200 kilometres will be sent to Kiev. It is worth noting that the UK recently supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine with a range of over 250 kilometres.
Western countries imposed comprehensive sanctions on Russia after it started a special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, and provided constant support packages to Kiev in the conflict. However, it has been their economies, especially the British, that have suffered from these sanctions.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was warned that the UK could be in recession next year as high inflation pushes interest rates to more than 5% before the next general election. With rising borrowing costs on mortgages and loans for millions of households, economists believe the Bank of England could be forced to drive Britain’s economy into a recession to deal with inflation.
Former IMF deputy director Mohamed El-Erian said the Bank of England would be forced to raise interest rates for longer, leading to a recession or near zero growth.
“The risk we now have, you put all that together – sticky inflation, the Bank having to go higher, borrowing costs going up – all that translates into a higher threat of stagflation. I use stag as shorthand for insufficient economic growth. It can be recession, it can be zero growth. This is not about abstract numbers; it’s about something that hits the poor particularly hard,” El-Erian said.
Yet, despite these significant economic problems, the UK establishment continues its centuries-long policy of opposing and challenging Russia, this time in the context of Ukraine. Already having imposed self-detrimental sanctions and funded Ukraine with billions of pounds, the UK will now roll out a major expansion to its cyber defence programme in Ukraine. It will be boosted by an injection of up to £25 million and a two-year expansion.
As demonstrated, London is concocting all sorts of methods, with endless money streams, to challenge Russia despite British citizens facing a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis. Not only does this prolong the war and suffering, but it also shows Britain’s obsession with challenging Russia, so much so that it cannot even tolerate Russians affected by the war being supported with the frozen funds of Russian billionaires.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Israeli raid in Jenin escalates into full-scale battle
One of the Israeli Apaches which launched airstrikes on Jenin, pictured firing flares over the West Bank city during a battle between the Israeli army and resistance fighters. 19 June, 2023. (Photo credit: AFP)
The Cradle | June 19, 2023
Israeli troops launched a massive raid into the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on the morning of 19 June, resulting in the death of five Palestinians and the injury of at least 66, Palestinian media outlets reported.
The four killed have been identified as 21-year-old Khaled Assasa, 21-year-old Qais Jabareen, Ahmad Daraghmeh, 19-year-old Qassam Sariya, and 15-year-old Ahmad Saqr.
The raid began as usual, with the Israeli army storming Jenin to make arrests and facing heavy gunfire from resistance fighters.
Confrontations escalated significantly after members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s (PIJ) West Bank-based Jenin Brigade managed to ambush Israeli troops and detonate explosive devices targeting their military vehicles. Members of the Jenin Brigade opened fire at the vehicles following the explosions.
The Jenin Brigade named the operation “Fury of the Free.”
Israeli media outlets confirmed that seven Israeli soldiers were injured in one of the blasts, with unconfirmed reports suggesting deaths among the troops.
In a brief statement, the Jenin Brigade said: “We still have more surprises … we warn the occupation against continuing their aggression.”
As violence continued to escalate, Israeli helicopters launched airstrikes on Jenin, targeting the West Bank in an aerial attack for the first time in over 20 years.
The airstrikes were launched in order to secure the evacuation of the Israeli soldiers wounded in the resistance’s explosive attack, Israeli media said. Resistance fighters reportedly attempted to target Israeli helicopters with gunfire.
According to Palestinian media reports, the wounded Israeli soldiers remain trapped within one of the vehicles targeted in the blast.
In another brief statement, the Jenin Brigade claimed that the Israeli army was attempting to withdraw from Jenin, but the resistance was obstructing their escape from the area.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was quoted as saying, in response to the events in Jenin, that “the time has come” for Israel to launch a full-scale military operation against the resistance in the occupied West Bank, which has grown beyond unprecedented levels in the last two years.
“I will request an emergency meeting of the Security and Political Security Council,” Smotrich said.
For months, Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have been calling for a wide-scale West Bank operation to root out ‘terrorism’ in the area.
However, the military establishment has been mulling over the idea and is conflicted, as some believe that a cost of such an operation would be too high.
HHS is Still Wasting Money Fighting Online Covid “Disinformation”
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | June 17, 2023
Apparently, Covid discussions are still a thing worth cracking down on. That’s at least according to The Biden administration, which is injecting $500,000 into Texas Woman’s University as part of a grant program aimed at curbing COVID-19 “misinformation” and “disinformation” allegedly aimed at Hispanics, according to funding records reviewed by the Washington Examiner. The grant aims “to expand research on mitigating the effect of misinformation and disinformation” regarding “COVID-19 prevention and treatment initiatives among Hispanics.”
Timeline: Kicking off on May 10 and set to wrap up in April 2024, this grant is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)’s Food and Drug Administration’s portfolio. It’s part of Biden’s broader push to censor alleged disinformation by joining forces with social media platforms on content moderation – a move likened to “censorship” by some Republicans.
What GOP says: This funding allocation may prod GOP lawmakers to probe deeper into the Biden administration’s methods in countering certain types of speech. House Republicans, according to the Washington Examiner, are considering wielding the appropriations process as a tool to block federal agencies from pumping money into domestic initiatives tagged as combating “disinformation.”
What HHS did before: In 2021, HHS, spearheaded by Secretary Xavier Becerra, allegedly dabbled in misinformation tracking, by offering guidance to Twitter and Facebook on handling virus-related content. The US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy admitted in an August 2021 call with education groups, that the government was “working to combat misinformation in many ways, one being working with tech companies.”
Skeptical voices: Brian Harrison, a former HHS chief of staff under Trump and a current GOP Texas state House member, communicated his skepticism to the Washington Examiner: “I have no confidence this is anything more than Biden’s HHS spending money we don’t have on government censorship efforts.”
Inside the project: Texas Woman’s University’s venture consists of crafting a “social network analysis” to scrutinize “misinformation consumed by the Hispanic community.” It involves conducting focus groups, creating “an economic impact analysis of proposed informational strategies for Hispanics,” and establishing a “longitudinal misinformation/disinformation index.” The study, set in El Paso, Texas, is also sifting through social media content in both English and Spanish.
Deja vu?: The aforementioned “index” has set off alarm bells due to its echo of a tool from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which previously backed the Global Disinformation Index, a British entity that faced criticism for supposedly operating blacklists of conservative media outlets.
HHS’s stance: In response, HHS spokeswoman Anne Feldman said: “HHS does not censor speech.”
Europe is shielding Israel under guise of combating anti-Semitism, new report finds
By Nasim Ahmed | MEMO | June 16, 2023
The chilling repercussions of the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism have been revealed in a recent report by the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC). Titled “Suppressing Palestinian Rights Advocacy through the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism”, the report by the independent Dutch-based organisation uncovered shocking examples of the IHRA’s weaponisation against critics of Israel and the suppression of free speech under the guise of combatting anti-Semitism.
Using dozens of case studies from across Europe, ELSC showed that the endorsement, adoption and implementation of the IHRA in the European Union, its member states and the UK, has led to widespread restrictions of the right of assembly and freedom of expression. Despite strong opposition and warning against its adoption by Jewish groups, experts on anti-Semitism, academics and activists, the controversial definition has been implemented by public and private bodies as if the IHRA is legally binding. Despite qualification by advocates of the IHRA that it is “non-legally binding”, a definition of anti-Semitism which conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish racism has been placed at the centre of regulatory frameworks across Europe.
Some of the shocking findings include the following: Advocates of Palestinian rights who are targeted using the IHRA suffer a range of unjust and harmful consequences, including loss of employment and reputational damage; advocates of Israel routinely weaponise the IHRA to intimidate and silence people defending Palestinian rights; allegations of anti-Semitism that invoke the IHRA within the documented cases uncovered by the ELSC found that they are overwhelmingly used to target Palestinians and Jewish people opposed to Israel’s brutal occupation.
In one of the many remarkable findings, ELSC discovered that, not only was there a failure to carry out a risk assessment prior to IHRA’s adoption, the EU appeared to lie about the checks it had conducted. When asked if the Commission had conducted a risk assessment of the implications of the IHRA on fundamental rights, the EU Commissioner on anti-Semitism, Katharina von Schnurbein, affirmed that an assessment of the consequences had indeed been carried out. “Yes, we assessed“, said Schnurbein in a tweet on 23 November 2022, in response to critics who accused the Commission of failing to carry out basic due diligence.
However, responding on 9 December 2022 to a Freedom of Information request, the European Commission acknowledged it “has not conducted ‘any fundamental rights assessment or scrutiny (…) into the human rights implications of its endorsement and/or promotion of the IHRA Working Definition of Anti-Semitism.” Details of the misleading information by the Commissioner on anti-Semitism were covered at length by the advocacy group, Law for Palestine.
Misinformation about risk assessment is just one of the many examples of underhanded practices revealed by the ELSC report. The European Commission also failed to address and reflect the diversity of positions regarding definitions of anti-Semitism. The EC not only ignored that the IHRA is highly controversial and contested, it completely ignored less controversial definitions of anti-Semitism such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism, and the Nexus Document. In contrast to the EU, the US has referenced other controversial definitions of anti-Semitism.
In sharp contrast to the IHRA definition, the Jerusalem Declaration states that, “Even if contentious, it is not anti-Semitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid.” The Nexus Document is equally explicit. It states that “Paying disproportionate attention to Israel and treating Israel differently than other countries is not prima facie proof of anti-Semitism.”
The US also appears to favour a less politicised definition that is not centred on shielding Israel and the political ideology of Zionism. In detailing its plan to combat the rise of anti-Jewish racism, the White House opted for the following definition: “Anti-Semitism is a stereotypical and negative perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred of Jews” said the strategy document, without mentioning Israel once. “It is prejudice, bias, hostility, discrimination or violence against Jews for being Jews or Jewish institutions or property for being Jewish or perceived as Jewish. Anti-Semitism can manifest as a form of racial, religious, national origin, and/or ethnic discrimination, bias, or hatred; or, a combination thereof. However, anti-Semitism is not simply a form of prejudice or hate. It is also a pernicious conspiracy theory that often features myths about Jewish power and control.”
Questions were also raised over why the EU adopted a definition that had been discarded because of its threat to fundamental rights to free expression. In 2004-2005, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC) published a “Working Definition of Anti-Semitism”. This definition, according to the ELSC report, featured “contemporary examples of anti-Semitism”, including examples relating to the State of Israel. The examples were criticised due to its conflation between opposition to Israel and anti-Semitism. The definition was abandoned by the EUMC’s successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), which removed it from its website in 2013. In its explanation for discarding the IHRA, FRA explained that it had “never been viewed as a valid definition of anti-Semitism; that the Agency was not aware of any official EU definition of anti-Semitism; and that the document was removed in a clear-out of non-official documents.”
The most serious bad-faith attempt to mislead the public in order to roll out the IHRA is the claim that the definition is “non-legally binding”. Despite promoting the IHRA as “non-legally binding”, most of the EU Member States have endorsed the IHRA as the authoritative instrument for addressing anti-Semitism which, according to the ELSC, has given the definition centred on shielding Israel and Zionism “soft law power”. EU statements and policies through which the IHRA is being applied, is said to show that it has gained law like force and impact.
“Hard-core advocates of the IHRA always intended it to have binding legal status and force” said ELSC. “The ‘non-legally binding’ provision was only added to secure its adoption by the IHRA Plenary in May 2016. Efforts have been made since, in some Member States to introduce the IHRA as a basis for legislation.
The real-life impact has been devastating for critics of Israel. The IHRA has been implemented in the UK, Austria and Germany by public and private bodies in ways that have led to widespread infringement of the fundamental rights to freedom of expression and assembly, ELSC found. Advocates of Palestinian rights, who are targeted, are said to suffer a range of unjust and harmful consequences, including loss of employment and reputational damage. IHRA is often found to be weaponised by pro-Israel advocates to intimidate and silence those advocating for Palestinian rights.
The good news is that, when challenged in court, most of the allegations of anti-Semitism based on the IHRA are found to be unsubstantiated and thrown out. Though this is a silver lining, the adoption of the IHRA has created a perverse situation which undermines democracy and the principal of “innocent until proven guilty”. In this toxic culture, some sections of the population are having to go to court to protect basic freedoms, like the right to free speech. According to the ELSC report, even though most challenges to the implementation of the IHRA were successful, the disciplinary procedures and litigation resulting from false allegations of anti-Semitism have produced a “chilling effect” on the freedom of expression and assembly.
Kiev intends to kill as many Russians as possible – top Zelensky aide
RT | June 15, 2023
Ukraine currently has only one plan, which is a campaign to kill the maximum number of Russians, Mikhail Podoliak, an advisor to the chief of President Vladimir Zelensky’s office, said on the air during a telemarathon on Thursday.
“There is only one plan: the most brutal advance with the maximum killing of Russians on this route,” he said, noting that Kiev “can’t just stop somewhere and say ‘alright, let’s think and talk about something now.’“
“The only possible scenario for Ukraine is to reach its 1991 borders,” he said.
Back in May, Podoliak also proclaimed that his country hates Russia and those who represent it and vowed to “persecute” Russians “always and everywhere.” That followed comments by Kirill Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, who boasted that his agents had murdered Russian public figures and pledged that Kiev will “keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world.”
Earlier this week, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov revealed that Kiev had been instructed by its Western backers in the early days of the conflict to “kill as many Russians” as it could before surrendering.
“We asked, ‘can we have stingers?’” Reznikov told Foreign Policy magazine in an interview published on Tuesday. “We were told, ‘No, dig trenches and kill as many Russians as you can before it’s over.’”
The minister boasted that since then Ukraine’s forces have received a large number of Western weapons and heavy arms and stated that Kiev will also soon be equipped with F-16 fighter jets.
The West has continued to provide billions of dollars worth of military aid to Kiev, with the stated intention of helping Ukrainian forces score as many battlefield successes as possible before the conflict is eventually settled at the negotiating table.
Last month, however, US Senator Lindsey Graham hinted at Washington’s true intentions in continuing to fuel the conflict. During a meeting with Zelensky in Kiev, Graham expressed glee at the fact that “the Russians are dying” and said later in the meeting that the billions of dollars that the US has poured into Ukraine was “the best money we’ve ever spent.”
Israeli Soldiers Shoot Dead Palestinian Two-Year-Old
While Blinken tells AIPAC of Team Biden’s “iron clad” support for Israel
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • JUNE 13, 2023
There would appear to be no limit to Israeli bestiality towards the Palestinians and likewise no limit to how much that brutality has been enabled by the positions taken by successive US governments and the national media. Indeed, the self-defined Jewish state, which ironically claims to be a democracy, is perhaps the leading human rights violator in all the world due to its officially condoned genocide directed against the Palestinian people and its bombing and killing of neighboring Syrians and Lebanese without providing any convincing evidence that it is being threatened by them.
That apartheid Israel is essentially a criminal state that blithely goes about killing and stealing from the original inhabitants of the Middle East region might well be accepted as substantially true by most observers. But even given all of that, there is sometimes a story that emerges that is so shocking and disturbing that it becomes difficult to contemplate why the rest of the world has not risen-up and demanded an end to Israeli atrocities.
One such story is the recent murder by Israeli soldiers of a two-year-old boy Mohammad al-Tamimi. Unfortunately, heavily armed Israelis illegally occupying the West Bank and killing Palestinian children is not a rare occurrence. Fully 27 children have suffered that fate in the past six months, including some children being killed by Israeli bombing and rockets in Gaza. And the stories are often the same, with the Israeli government claiming that there were “terrorist threats,” often deliberately contrived provocations that rapidly develop into shooting ranges with the unarmed Palestinians as targets.
In this case, Mohammad al-Tamini was with his father, Haytam al-Tamimi, and had just been buckled into the back seat of the family car to go on a short trip to visit an uncle in a nearby village to celebrate an aunt’s birthday. The al-Tamimis live in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, located twelve miles northwest of Ramallah, which passes for the capital of what fragments of land the Palestinians have been able to preserve as a symbol of their national identity. The Israelis de facto are occupiers of nearly all of the West Bank and have military outposts scattered through the region to protect the armed and illegal Jewish settlers who are constantly harassing the remaining Palestinians and destroying their crops to force them to emigrate. The remaining Palestinians in their villages and towns are constantly under siege and are subject to checkpoints, arbitrary arrests, and even murder at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces. One observer notes how the remaining Arab “communities are actually Palestinian enclaves that are prisons” with heavily armed 18 year old Israeli conscript soldiers free to run amok as they see fit. And when a Palestinian is killed, the Israeli soldiers know well that they will not in any way be punished. An Israeli peace group has calculated that between 2017 and 2021 a soldier who murdered a civilian faced only a 0.87% probability that he would be investigated and indicted. There were only 11 such indictments in those years and the punishments eventually meted out were slaps on the wrist.
On June 1st, Mohammad was the victim of a band of Israeli soldiers, who later claimed to be chasing a car from which shots had allegedly been fired at a nearby illegal Jewish settlement Neveh Tzuf. The problem with the tale is that no one heard any shots until the Israeli soldiers blocked the village entrance before arriving in the center of Nabi Saleh in their jeeps and starting shooting in all directions. They then settled in for a few hours to engage in a bit of tormenting of the local residents by beating them and even firing at them at close range. Haytam Tamimi and his son Muhammad were among five Palestinians injured during the raid.
Seated in their vehicle, Mohammad was shot through the head and his father was wounded in the shoulder, apparently by fire from a sniper. Taken to a hospital, Mohammad lingered for four days before dying on Monday June 5th. His body was returned to his village for burial, which took place on the following day, but even then the Israelis chose not to avoid interfering in what was a tragic ceremony. Before and during the funeral, the Israeli military had surrounded the village and later that afternoon, while mourners were gathered at the al-Tamimi grandparents’ home, they entered into it for the third time since Mohammad was shot, beating and shooting villagers, injuring six people. One man sustained a gunshot wound in the pelvis, with the bullet entering his intestines. A woman was struck in her face with a rifle butt while another mourner was hit in the face with a rubber-coated steel bullet.
Ironically, on same day that Mohammad died the American Secretary of State Antony Blinken addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) at its annual policy summit in Washington. AIPAC, it might be observed, exists to promote Israeli interests, which should make it subject to registry under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) but no one in the White House seems interested in enforcing that particular law or any other existing legislation pertaining to secret nuclear arsenals when Israel is involved. The last president who tried to register AIPAC’s predecessor organization the American Zionist Council was John F. Kennedy, and consider what happened to him possibly as a result.
Blinken, is himself a Jew and an avowed Zionist in an Administration awash with Jews and Zionists to include President Joe Biden, a supermarket Catholic, who calls himself a Zionist and effectively swears fealty to the Jewish state. Blinken is not really very good at blaming Israel for anything and when he is with a hardline Jewish gathering like the AIPAC Summit he is fully energized while he is making the audience feel good about its love for Israel. He enthused how the US-Israel partnership “touches on every aspect of our lives, from security to business, from energy to public health. And the depth and breadth of that partnership between our governments are matched only by the strength of the ties between our peoples. This partnership between the United States and Israel is indispensable.”
Blinken chose not to acknowledge that the “indispensable ties” between the US and the Jewish state is attributable to the large scale corruption of America’s political system by Israel and its Lobby to achieve such a status. And inevitably, Blinken made sure his friends in AIPAC understood that the Biden Administration sees the “blame” for the unrest in the Middle East just as does the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran and Palestinian “terrorists” are largely at fault and Israel is the perpetual victim. He recalled how “Over the past several years, we’ve seen a rising tide of horrific violence that’s tragically and senselessly resulted in the loss of life of scores of civilians on both sides. That violence must end; its perpetrators must face equal justice under the law. The recent acts of terrorism – including nearly 1,000 rocket attacks launched toward Israel over just three days, some of them targeting Jerusalem – demonstrate the daily threat under which Israelis are forced to live. The fatal event at the border with Egypt – which resulted in the deaths of three Israeli soldiers – is another tragic reminder of these daily dangers.”
Blinken did not seem interested in the dead Palestinian children nor in the murder of Palestinian-American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli soldiers back in May 2022. He is more enthusiastic when he is telling AIPAC how much US Treasury money and other goodies are flowing to a wealthy Israel from the American taxpayer, describing how “Now, we have to start from this. The US-Israel relationship is underwritten by the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security. That commitment is non-negotiable; it is ironclad. We are – we are providing $3.3 billion in foreign military financing to Israel each year. On top of that, Israel receives $500 million in funding for missile defense. Tens of millions more for new counter-drone and anti-tunneling technologies. That is in keeping with the 2016 memorandum of understanding negotiated by the Obama-Biden administration – and it is more than at any point in the history of our relationship. We’re also delivering an additional $1 billion in funding to replenish supplies for Israel’s Iron Dome, the missile defense system that we developed together and that has saved countless lives. All of this – all of this has been secured in partnership with our Congress, with bipartisan support. We’re also expanding our joint military exercises that improve how our forces work together seamlessly. This year, we have more joint exercises scheduled than at any point in our history. We’re also conducting joint research and development on advanced military capabilities, working together on cutting-edge defense systems, including Israel’s new laser-focused Iron Beam. This robust support continues to be critical in [my emphasis] maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge, buttressing its ability to defend itself, and to advancing our national interests. America is more secure when Israel is strong.” [My emphasis]
It is interesting how Blinken concludes his argument supporting throwing bushels of money to Israel based on serving an American “national interest” and making us “more secure,” which is a complete lie, similar to what is being promoted to explain why we are in Ukraine. Maybe the Administration might consider some new talking points as the lies are getting ever more preposterous and the deficit spending of trillions of dollars has reached the point of no return. Blinken also lies big time when he attempts to resurrect the totally dead two state solution to Israel-Palestine, saying “Israel was founded — our partnership was built — on democratic values which include equal access by all people to their rights. And a two-state solution is vital to preserving Israel’s identity as a Jewish and democratic state.”
Blinken should perhaps be someday reincarnated as a Palestinian who has just lost his livelihood and home to an “equal access” Jewish settler and who every day experiences the Israeli organized increasing state violence that is directed against him. That might provide a different perspective. And it is interesting to note that the threat to Blinken’s imaginary two-state solution is also framed as coming from the Palestinians rather than from Israel. He denounced in his speech to AIPAC “any actions taken by any party that undermine the prospects of a two-state solution. That includes acts of terrorism, payments to terrorists in prison, violence against civilians, incitement to violence.” Take note that bombing and shooting children is not included, which is an Israeli speciality.
And, by the way Mr. Blinken, Israel was not founded on “democratic values.” It engaged in a massive program of ethnic cleansing that defined its creation — the Nakba for Palestinians, which killed thousands and drove at least 650,000 civilians from their homes. For the first 19 years of Israel’s existence, its Arab “citizens” were ruled under martial law and since then Palestinians have been legally discriminated against with Jewish supremacy and entitlement serving as the defining characteristics of the state.
Interestingly, in contrast to Blinken and Biden, at least one US Senator appears to have a conscience regarding dead people and he is surprisingly enough a Democrat! Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is calling on the Joe Biden administration to “publicly release its findings” into the shooting death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Van Hollen believes that a report compiled by the US security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority shortly after the fact provides important information about the “the conduct of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) unit involved in that operation as well as other IDF units operating in the West Bank.” He commented “I strongly believe that its public release is vital to ensuring transparency and accountability in the shooting death of American citizen and journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and to avoiding future preventable and wrongful deaths – goals we should all support.” Van Hollen has been denied access to the classified State Department report over the past eleven months, which has been attributed to Biden Administration desire to block any demands for accountability on the part of Israel.
Van Hollen obviously was not briefed on the fact that Israel has a White House approved license to kill Americans and just about anyone else due to its “chosen” status. He should check out what happened to the death by Israeli army bulldozer of Rachel Corrie in 2003 and to the 34 sailors murdered and another 172 wounded by an Israeli attack on the USS Liberty on June 8th, 1967. When the Liberty was struggling to stay afloat President Lyndon Johnson ordered a cover-up which has led to Washington de facto taking orders from Tel Aviv and paying what amounts to an annual tribute to Israel as outlined in some detail by Blinken in his AIPAC speech. So, there you have it. We have on one hand a militarized ethno-religious state that rules over a suppressed minority with terror and killing that is being coddled by both US Republican and Democratic administrations because of Jewish power and, more to the point, the corruption obtainable by money and knowing how to use it for political advantage.
Killing a two-year-old little boy sitting in a car with his father is only the most recent of Israel’s war and human rights crimes, but it is particularly heinous and no one in the White House or State Department dares say squat. The murders in Palestine and the fantasy denial of Israeli culpability for anything by Blinken and Biden as well as by Donald Trump when he was in office speak for themselves. Who really rules the United States? What kind of monsters have we become under neocon/Zionist control? Is the bell that is tolling ringing for the demise of us as a nation? Ask about all those things now, because when Biden’s War on Antisemitism really goes into high gear one will likely be facing a jail sentence just for daring to pose those questions.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Permanent Apartheid in Palestine: This is why Israel wants to reactivate E1 Plan
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 12, 2023
The Israeli government is at it again, actively discussing the construction of thousands of illegal settlement units as part of a massive settlement expansion scheme known as E1.
Though Israeli construction in the East Jerusalem area has supposedly been halted under international pressure, the Israeli government has found ways to keep the plan alive.
It did so through constant expansion of the various settlements in the name of ‘natural expansion’, confiscation of Palestinian land and the ruthless yet routine demolition of Palestinian homes.
But why does Washington, Israel’s main defender and benefactor, oppose, at least verbally, the construction in E1, while turning a blind eye to illegal construction throughout the West Bank?
The answer lies in the fact that E1 will further expand the Jerusalem municipal boundaries, minimise any Palestinian demographic presence in the city (from the current 42 per cent to about 20 per cent), and prejudice any political solution that includes East Jerusalem.
East Jerusalem is a Palestinian city, occupied by Israel during the June 1967 war. It is recognized by the United Nations and international law as part of the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Israel should have neither legal rights nor jurisdiction there.
Washington, which rarely cares about the rights of Palestinians, is concerned that, without East Jerusalem as part of the political equation, any discussion of a ‘two-state solution’ will become forever obsolete.
In other words, the US is more worried about the political, not territorial consequences of the Israeli decision. Indeed, the US’s entire political program in Palestine and Israel is situated within the two-state solution template. Without it, Washington’s role would cease to serve any purpose.
This is precisely why US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, criticized Israeli settlements during his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on 5 June.
Though he covered the habitual US commitment to Israel’s security, describing it as “non-negotiable” and “ironclad”, he also warned against “any move toward annexation of the West Bank … disruption of the historic status quo at holy sites (and) the continuing demolitions of homes.”
These steps, and more, will “damage prospects for two states”, the cornerstone of US foreign policy in the Middle East.
Israel, on the other hand, is neither interested in a two-state, one-state nor any ‘solution’ to its military occupation and apartheid in Palestine. Instead, Tel Aviv is working towards a specific end, a formula of permanent domination, one that would satisfy its quest for ‘security’, demographic superiority and ‘defensible’ borders.
It matters little that Israel’s vision for its own border lines is largely inconsistent with international law. All that matters to the current, in fact, all Israeli governments, are the ‘national interests’ of the country’s Jewish population, whose future has been linked to the crushing of political aspirations and civil rights of the country’s native Arab, Palestinian inhabitants.
Jerusalem’s particular significance stems from two factors: one, its historical, spiritual, economic and administrative centrality to all Palestinians and, two, the fact that it has been the Holy Grail of Israel’s settler colonialism in Palestine for the last 75 years.
A quick look at the map of Occupied East Jerusalem is enough to explain Israel’s ultimate motive in the Palestinian city: Maximum land with an absolute Jewish majority.
For this to take place, much work has to be done, namely ensuring the territorial continuity between the massive illegal Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem.
Israel’s motives are not a secret. A long report by the Zionist Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs champions and illustrates Tel Aviv’s objectives in detail. The report warns against allowing “security and urban discontinuity between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim, or the reversion of Jerusalem to a border-town status … that would preclude the city’s eastward development.”
The reference to ‘eastward development’ is particularly dangerous, as many illegal Jewish settlements have purposely been planted in various parts of the West Bank, all the way to the Jordan Valley for the sole purpose of linking them all up, thus dividing the West Bank into two main regions, south and north.
Considering the current administration and ‘security’ divisions of the Occupied West Bank, a major territorial division will deny Palestinians any sense of physical continuity, let alone statehood. In other words, apartheid will become permanent and, from Israel’s perspective, also sustainable.
As for the westward expansion, connecting Ma’ale Adumim to the so-called “metropolitan Jerusalem” through construction in E1 will help Israel resolve a fundamental component of its expansionist strategy. According to the Zionist Jerusalem Centre, such a merger will “incorporate both settlement and security as two vital, complementary components of Israel’s national interest.”
And, wherever there is Israeli construction in Occupied Palestine, there is always the destruction of Palestinian properties and confiscation of land.
According to the European Union Office in Palestine, in 2022, 28,208 illegal settlement units “were advanced” in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, compared to 22,030 in 2021. A higher number is expected in 2023.
As for Palestinian home demolition, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) paints a grim picture: in the first quarter of 2023 alone, 290 Palestinian structures in East Jerusalem and the West Bank were demolished or seized. This represents an increase of 46 per cent, compared to the same period of the previous year.
East Jerusalem has had a major share of this destruction, specifically 95 homes and other structures between 1 January and 28 March, according to the World Council of Churches. The outcome has been the displacement of 149 Palestinians. Among them, 88 children have been rendered homeless.
The price of Israel’s major plans in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank is not just humanitarian. It is essentially political, aimed at cutting off Palestinian communities from one another, isolating Jerusalem completely, and ensuring a Jewish demographic majority for generations to come.
Though Secretary Blinken tries to emphasise the danger of such actions to the two-state solution, the real danger lies in the fact that such measures threaten the very fabric of Palestinian society and the political future of the Palestinian people.
Israel’s quest to reactivate its E1 plan requires not just mere condemnation, but tangible and decisive action, especially as Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government is more unhinged than ever before.
Tel Aviv to Announce Plans For Thousands of New Settlement Units in West Bank
By Connor Freeman | Libertarian Institute | June 12, 2023
Israel has informed the White House that it intends to announce the planning and building of thousands of new settlement units in the occupied West Bank later this month, according to US and Israeli officials speaking to Axios. One of the sources told the outlet, at a minimum, the plan includes 4,000 new housing units being built in existing West Bank settlements.
The Joe Biden administration is ostensibly opposed to these moves as the settlements are seen as undermining prospects for a two-state solution in Palestine. However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition includes extremist settlers dead set on substantial colonial expansion, eyeing annexation of the West Bank, and this has not diminished US support.
According to the report, the White House wants Tel Aviv to either cancel its plans or at least tone down the announcement to draw as little attention as possible. This seems unlikely even though the US provides almost $4 billion per year to Israel in military aid.
Jewish only colonies, or settlements, which continue to be built inside these territories – militarily occupied for almost sixty years – are illegal per international law. This is a view shared by most of the world community, including in Middle Eastern capital cities like Riyadh where Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently urged Gulf Cooperation Council foreign ministers to normalize with the Israeli apartheid state.
The Israeli government is also facing criticism from its supporters for temporarily shelving a meeting to discuss a plan for settlement expansion in the West Bank’s E1 area. Located between Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement, the area is highly sensitive. If a Jewish-only settlement is built there it would remove any remaining territorial contiguity between the northern and southern West Bank. Thus, these additional “facts on the ground” would make a future Palestinian state even more unviable.
On Monday, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, the extremist leader of the Religious Zionism party, vowed “we will have big news for the settlements in the West Bank imminently.” Smotrich holds sweeping powers over the West Bank including the approval of new settlements and the demolition of Palestinian homes.
2022 was one of the deadliest years for Palestinians in the West Bank since 2005, according to the UN. Since taking power last December, the current regime in Israel has waged a brutal bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip which murdered 33 people, while Israeli forces and settlers have killed at least 119 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem so far this year.
Muhammad Tamimi, a two-year old Palestinian boy from the Nabi Saleh village in the West Bank, succumbed to his wounds last Monday after he was shot in the head by the Israeli army.
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