UN resolutions on Palestine won’t be implemented as long as Israel enjoys US support: Hamas
Press TV – December 31, 2022
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has condemned the United States’ unwavering support for Israel, saying United Nations resolutions concerning Palestine will not be implemented as long as Tel Aviv enjoys Washington’s support.
Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem made the remarks in a statement on Saturday, after the United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution in favor of Palestinians, according to Arabic-language al-Ahad television network.
“This resolution will add to the long list of international resolutions concerning Palestine, which have never tuned into a practical step to put pressure on the occupying regime even once,” Qassem said.
“As long as the US acts as a partner of the occupying regime and covers up Israeli crimes, all such decisions will remain on paper,” he added.
On Friday, the UNGA adopted a resolution calling on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to give an opinion on the legal consequences of the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli “annexation” and the “legal status of the occupation” of Palestinian territories.
The resolution promoted by Palestinians passed by a vote of 87 in favor, 26 against, with 53 abstentions. Russia and China voted in favor of the resolution.
Israel, the US and 24 other members – including the United Kingdom and Germany – voted against the resolution, while France was among the 53 nations that abstained.
The resolution is titled “Israeli practices and settlement activities affecting the rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories” and calls on the Hague-based ICJ to “render urgently an advisory opinion” on Israel’s “prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of Palestinian territory.”
It also calls for an investigation into Israeli measures “aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of al-Quds” and says Israel has adopted “discriminatory legislation and measures.”
The resolution demands the court weigh in on the conflict in accordance with international law and the UN charter.
Palestine’s UN ambassador Riyad Mansour noted that the vote came one day after the swearing-in of a new far-right Israeli cabinet led by hawkish prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which he said promises an expansion of illegal settlements and will accelerate “colonial and racist policies” towards Palestinians.
Earlier this month, Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Riyad al-Maliki announced that the UN General Assembly has adopted a resolution that affirms the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination.
He further called on the international community to work on obliging Israel “to implement international resolutions and guarantee the right of the Palestinian people, as he hailed the resolution.
The General Assembly also adopted five resolutions recently in favor of Palestinians, including the issue of Palestinian refugees.
These decisions are issued every year by the General Assembly, which is consisted of 193 members, and are non-binding.
2022 deadliest year for Palestinians in West Bank since Second Intifada in 2005: Report

Press TV – December 31, 2022
New data has revealed that 2022 has been the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the Second Intifada which ended in 2005, with at least 220 people being killed at the hands of Israeli forces across the occupied territories.
According to figures published by the Middle East Eye, Israeli forces shot dead 167 people in the West Bank and East al-Quds, and 53 people in the besieged Gaza Strip, with 48 children being among the total casualties.
The report further noted that in at least five cases, Israeli settlers were suspected of killing Palestinians while the regime’s military is responsible for the overwhelming majority of deaths.
The London-based news website also said the majority of Palestinian casualties were likely unarmed at the time of their death.
In at least 95 cases, Palestinians were shot by Israeli soldiers as bystanders during military raids or while participating in anti-occupation demonstrations.
At least 22 Palestinians were killed after alleged car ramming, shooting or stabbing attacks against Israelis and security forces. In some cases, Palestinians were fatally shot for allegedly “attempting” to carry out such attacks.
Tensions have been running high across the occupied Palestinian territories over the past months.
Incidents of sabotage and violence by settlers against Palestinians and their property have become a daily occurrence throughout the occupied territories, particularly in the West Bank.
However, Israeli authorities rarely prosecute settlers, and the vast majority of the files are closed due to deliberate police failure to investigate them properly.
Moreover, Israeli forces have recently been conducting overnight raids and killings in the northern occupied West Bank, mainly in the cities of Jenin and Nablus, where new groups of Palestinian resistance fighters have been formed.
Meanwhile, the United Nations says Israeli forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank in 2022 than in any year since the world body began systematically recording fatalities in 2005.
UN experts have held Israel responsible for the recent surge of violence in the occupied Palestinians territories, warning that the brutality could further escalate with the new far-right Israeli cabinet.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Israeli security forces have killed 146 Palestinians in the West Bank and mainly East al-Quds through December 19 of this year, compared with 75 in 2021.
Four more Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers in the West Bank, OCHA added.
Most of the Palestinians were killed during Israeli military raids and clashes in the West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus, the UN said, adding that more than half were under the age of 25.
Earlier this month, UN experts condemned Israeli settler violence and excessive use of force by the Israeli military in the West Bank.
“Unless Israeli forces abandon this dominant settler mindset and rightfully treat Palestinians in the occupied territory as protected persons, Israel’s deplorable record in the occupied West Bank will likely deteriorate further in 2023,” they said.
Israeli occupation soldiers and Israeli settlers have noticeably been escalating their attacks against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and other areas, in an attempt to forcibly expel Palestinians from their lands and make way for expanding illegal Jewish-only settlements.
Between 600,000 and 750,000 Israelis occupy over 250 illegal settlements that have been built across the West Bank since the 1967 occupation.
The UN Security Council has in several resolutions condemned the Tel Aviv regime’s settlement projects in the occupied Palestinian lands.
Report: Israel demolished 950 Palestinian homes in 2022

MEMO | December 29, 2022
Israeli occupation forces demolished 950 Palestinian homes and confiscated more than 113,000 dunams (113 square kilometres) of land in 2022 in an effort to expand illegal Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, a Palestinian research centre said.
The Land Research Centre, operating in Palestine, said in its annual report on “Israeli Violations Against Palestinian Land and Housing Rights for 2022” that the Israeli forces have also torched, ravaged, or attacked 18,900 trees, most of them olive trees.
The report noted that 65 of the homes were demolished by their owners under the orders of Israeli occupation forces.
Some 66 wells were also razed in addition to 3,707 dunums (3.7 square kilometres) of land and pastures.
“The Israeli occupation issued 114 new settlement plans on Palestinian lands, and began construction on more than half of them and built about 2,220 new housing units for the settlers,” it added.
The Palestinian centre warned that all these measures confirm that the Israeli government has decided to destroy all agreements and impose new realities on the ground, making the two-state solution impossible to achieve.
Hamas criticises ‘biased’, ‘contradictory’ EU resolution on two-state solution
MEMO | December 29, 2022
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas issued a statement yesterday criticising the EU over Resolution no. 2949/2022 (RSP), on the prospects for a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.
In a political memorandum, Hamas said the resolution “contained several inaccuracies and contradictions about the Palestinian issue”, noting that it “is heavily biased against the Palestinians’ inherent and legitimate rights to freedom, return and self-determination.”
Among the issues raised with the resolution, the movement said it has sided with the Israeli occupation’s narrative, while ignoring the Palestinian people’s legitimate right to resistance and self-defence.
“Voting against this right is considered a great sin that Europeans have committed, once again. This vote also reflects the double standards with which the European Union deals with issues of peoples and freedoms around the world.”
“In recent months, we have seen the European position on the crisis in Ukraine, and how the Ukrainian resistance was considered legitimate and supported with money and weapons,” the statement said. The resolution, Hamas insists, has disregarded terrorism practised by the Israeli occupation on a daily basis.
The EU resolution was called out over its double standards in regards to its advocating “customised” democracy for the Palestinians and the issue of the participation of resistance factions in free and fair elections, “despite the fact that most of the candidates for the Israeli Knesset have criminal records and terrorist practices and are labeled on terrorist lists in many countries, including Israel itself.”
Hamas acknowledged the resolution’s demand to end the Israeli blockade, imposed on the people of Gaza since 2006 but concluded that the resolution is further proof of “the European bias towards the Israeli occupation and its racist policies” and the EU’s lack of seriousness in pursuing a just and fair solution to the Palestinian cause.
The movement urged the European Parliament to reconsider Resolution 2949 and to correct its position in order to achieve a just solution for the Palestinian people.
Earlier this month, a senior member of Hamas denounced the EU over its silence concerning the complicity of over 700 European financial institutions in supporting illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands.
As usual, defense bill gives millions of dollars to Israel, but no one tells Americans
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | December 23, 2022
Unlike U.S. media, Israeli media announce that the new spending bill contains many millions of dollars for Israel, which is a tiny foreign country known for its human rights abuses and spying on the U.S.
Israel National News reports that the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act signed into law today “includes significant pro-Israel provisions, and the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC commended Congress for the approval.” The report specified:
The bipartisan defense measure authorizes $500 million in FY 2023 for US-Israel missile defense cooperation. This includes funds for Israeli procurement of Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow and for bilateral [sic] research, development, test, and evaluation.
Other important provisions include, as noted in the AIPAC statement:
- The DEFEND Act, which specifically authorizes the US to cooperate with allies & partners in the Middle East–including those who signed the Abraham Accords–to develop & implement an air & missile defense architecture to defend against Iran.
- Increases in the authorization for the US-Israel Counter Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) program from $25 to $40 million per year.
- The Iran Nuclear Weapons Capability Monitoring Act, which establishes a joint task force led by the U.S. Department of State to monitor and regularly report to the appropriate congressional committees on Iran’s nuclear weapons and missile activities.
The US has continuously provided Israel with defense aid, including in the 2016 memorandum of understanding signed during the Obama administration that guarantees Israel $38 billion in security assistance over 10 years, protecting the assistance from the whims of any current or future president.
This past March, the US Senate approved by a majority of 68 to 31 an omnibus spending package which includes defense aid for Israel. The legislation includes more than $4.8 million in aid for Israel and $1 billion in additional funding for Iron Dome.
Related articles:
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the cost of Israel to Americans.
Various U.S. bills provide a combined annual total of U.S. tax money to – and on behalf of – Israel of over $7 billion per year, or approximately $20 million per day.
On top of that are the continuing costs to Americans of the Iraq War (at least $2 trillion), which was promoted by Israel and embedded Israel advocates on behalf of Israel.
More on Anti-Antisemitism
BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 20, 2022
It seems that if there is one thing that those at the top of the United States government and the national media really want for the holidays it is to be able to accuse someone new of being an antisemite. Since the Kanye West story exploded, anti-antisemitism has suddenly become big business in America with the White House hosting a December 7th conference on that theme featuring the media and the usual agitprop suspects and groups proclaiming from on high how hatred of the Jewish people is surging. Of course, it is those very groups that compile the numbers on the alleged surge to benefit their argument and one sometimes wonders if a poster on a college campus wall announcing a meeting to support Palestine that annoys a Jewish student is really antisemitism.
One of the loudest voices calling for a crack-down on the alleged hate criminals, the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Executive Director Jonathan Greenblatt, calls the latest developments a “national crisis.” He has been particularly vocal in demanding strong hate crime type countermeasures to deal with those who dare to challenge the reality of Jewish power in the United States and has inter alia been successful in helping to convince the federal government to define criticism of Israel as ipso facto antisemitism. That leaves many of us wondering what happened to the First Amendment right to free speech, particularly as Israel is a foreign country with a dubious human rights and foreign relations history that merits considerable criticism.
The posing by Israel and its supporting cast of characters as perpetual victims is somewhat ironic, as Jews are the wealthiest, best educated and most politically powerful demographic in the United States. Joe Biden’s special envoy to monitor antisemitism worldwide Deborah Lipstadt oddly disagrees, saying that “For too long, Jew-hatred has been belittled or discounted because Jews have erroneously been considered white and privileged. This is a very real threat to Jews…” but who is she trying to kid? Jews dominate and control the entertainment and news reporting sectors of the economy and are way over represented in many high profile, highly paid and high prestige professions, including medicine, law, financial services, government and academia. Beyond that, more than 90% of the discretionary spending by the Department of Homeland Security goes to Jewish groups and organizations to provide them with “security.”
Much of the Jewish success is due to persistent and successful networking within their ethnicity to advance themselves even when it is achieved at the expense of the common good. When necessary, both antisemitism and the so-called holocaust are cited to silence critics and justify the murderous and genocidal excesses committed by a succession of Israeli governments, likely reaching its peak when the new ultra-conservative government of Benjamin Netanyahu is formed in the next few days.
Politicians, understanding that being perceived as anti-Israel or opposed to the corruption of the political system itself wrought by Jewish money, quickly learn to avoid antagonizing the Tribe. Those who do not, are removed from the system as soon as possible, frequently when they find themselves running for their next office against an exceptionally well-funded and media endorsed opponent.
The recent White House sponsored closed-door meeting bringing together Jewish leaders to discuss what to do about the antisemitism problem was addressed by no less than Doug Emhoff, the Hollywood lawyer described as the “Second Gentleman” by virtue of his marriage to the woman who currently pretends to be the Vice President of the United States. He is the first Jewish spouse of a president or vice president.
Emhoff described his boyhood growing up Jewish in New Jersey and New York and lamented the developing “epidemic of hate” directed against Jews by certain entertainers and public figures. He elaborated ““Let me be clear — words matter. People are no longer saying the quiet parts out loud, they are screaming them,” Emhoff said. “We cannot normalize this. We all have an obligation to condemn these vile acts. We must not stay silent. There is no either or. There are no two sides. Everyone must be against this.”
The meeting, held in the in the Indian Treaty Room in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House Campus in Washington, also featured State Department anti-Semitism envoy Lipstadt and White House domestic policy adviser Susan Rice. There were representatives from a dozen Jewish organizations, including the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Agudath, Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, American Jewish Committee, Orthodox Union, Jewish on Campus, National Council of Jewish Women, Hillel, Secure Community Network, Religious Action Center, Anti-Defamation League, Integrity First for America and American Friends of Lubavitch.
Many of those present urged a major federal government effort to address the developing antisemitism problem, as they see it. Some stressed the importance of improving education on Jews and anti-Semitism in schools where such issues are not taught, which would mean wholesale adoption of the acceptable narrative on both Jewish issues and on what is increasingly referred to as holocaust denial.
The antisemitism meeting was preceded by a December 5th letter to the White House that was originated by Senator Jackie Rosen of Nevada and signed by 124 other Congressmen identifying themselves as the House and Senate Bipartisan Task Forces for Combating Antisemitism. The letter called on the White House to take action against the antisemites through a “unified national strategy.” President Joe Biden responded by setting up an interagency task force to focus on the antisemitism problem, directed by the National Security Council. The group’s first task is coming up with a strategy to tackle the problem. Presidential spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre elaborated how “This strategy will raise understanding about antisemitism and the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans, address antisemitic harassment and abuse both online and offline, seek to prevent antisemitic attacks and incidents, and encourage whole-of-society efforts to counter antisemitism and build a more inclusive nation.”
So the United States government and the so-called Justice Department will soon likely be going to war against alleged antisemites. Like all of America’s pointless wars, this war will be expensive and fundamental liberties will be sacrificed as the government intrudes in the daily lives of its citizens to enforce complete conformity. There are perhaps other signs that the war has already begun, at least for some public figures. One of the most astonishing stories to appear recently concerns how the Democratic Party majority on the House Foreign Affairs committee by a 26 to 22 vote margin rejected a resolution presented by a group of Republican lawmakers that would initiate auditing of the money going to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an effort to determine how it is being spent (or wasted).
The bill had been introduced by controversial Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and a small group of mostly conservative Republicans who either oppose or seek restraint on US aid to Ukraine, but it also received some strong support including from more hawkish Republicans who generally back the war. Republican congressmen Thomas Massie (KY), Matt Gaetz (FL), Barry Moore (AL), and Andrew Clyde (GA) cosponsored Greene’s bill.
Several Democratic congressmen alleged that the legislation to set up the audit was due to the sponsors having been taken in by Russian propaganda, but the prize for Democratic Party response must go to Congresswoman Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, who opined that the bill was “a political stunt designed to tie up and slow down our critical efforts to help Ukrainian forces.” But that was preceded by a personal rant attacking Marjorie Taylor Greene. Wild told her colleagues that “I want to begin on a personal note. As a Jewish American at a time when powerful public figures, including several celebrities with global platforms are putting Jewish communities across our country at risk of violent attacks by engaging in vicious antisemitism and holocaust denial […] it is beyond shameful to see support for a measure like this one introduced by representative Greene. I am not going to attempt to recite even a fraction of the patently false, bigoted, and hateful statements and actions that have characterized Representative Greene’s time as a member of this body. I will just say that her antisemitic conspiracy theories and trivializations of Nazism stand out as particularly reprehensible reflections of her ideology and approach to holding public office. I cannot in good conscience remain silent about any of this. I find the idea of Rep. Greene — the legitimacy that comes with elevating one of her pieces of legislation to be profoundly offensive.”
So, for someone in Congress the fate of a reasonable and much needed bill to audit the billions of dollars going to Ukraine turns out to be all about the alleged antisemitism of the legislation’s sponsor, which is not true in any event unless one defines criticizing the Rothschilds and globalist demon George Soros as antisemitism. Unfortunately, Susan Wild is far from unique.
Another antisemitism event heavily promoted in the media recently concerns Francesca Albanese, an Italian lawyer-diplomat who is currently the United Nations human rights special rapporteur in charge of monitoring the situation in the Palestinian territories. American officials sharply criticized several social media messages that Albanese wrote in 2014, which seemed to them to confirm charges of anti-Israel bias in the UN’s Human Rights Council (UNHRC), where Albanese’s office is located. Michele Taylor, the US Ambassador to the UNHRC exploded, saying “We are appalled. This is outrageous, inappropriate, corrosive, and degrades the value of the UN.”
So, what was among the Albanese messages, which appeared on Facebook? She opined that “America and Europe, one of them subjugated by the Jewish lobby, and the other by the sense of guilt about the Holocaust, remain on the sidelines and continue to condemn the oppressed — the Palestinians — who defend themselves with the only means they have (deranged missiles), instead of making Israel face its international law responsibilities.” In another message she described Israeli behavior as “greedy.”
After the wave of attacks on her Francesca Albanese maintained that the observations were made long ago and that she had failed to contextualize them properly. I will leave it up to the reader to judge the comments, but I find them perfectly acceptable given the reality of what is going on in Israel-Palestine as well as the de facto domination of the process and narrative by Israel and its powerful lobbies in both the anglophone world and Europe. In fact, I would go farther and suggest that the essentially contrived anti-antisemitism campaign that seems to be gaining momentum in both Europe and the US indicates that, if anything, Albanese has understated her case.
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.
Israel’s opposition to criticism exposes its colonial violence

By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | December 15, 2022
The Times of Israel ran a lengthy article this week pinpointing the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s criticisms of Israel, notably her use of the term “Jewish lobby” – a reference from 2014, years prior to her appointment by the UN. Yet, what stands out in the article is that Israel resents being called out for its colonial existence and violence, which have been extensively documented, even though the UN is too entrenched in its complicity with Israel to call for the decolonisation of Palestine.
For example, one criticism directed against Albanese is her refusal to normalise Israeli colonialism as a “conflict”. Undoubtedly, normalising decades of Israel’s colonial enterprise as a conflict has been profitable not only for Israel, but also for the UN. The imaginary equivalence between the coloniser and the colonised does not lend itself to Palestinian rights as an emphasis on decolonisation would. Each time Israel is faced with a prominent figure calling out its inherent violence, suddenly diplomatic endeavours weave their way into opposing the individual, despite the fact that Israel’s only concern with diplomacy is maintaining its security narrative and impunity.
As the article portrayed, any criticism of Israel is considered unsuitable, whether it pertains to the Israeli presence in the occupied West Bank, Zionist colonial expansion, mentioning Israel’s war crimes, which have also been considered as such by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and disputing Israel’s security narrative within the wider colonial framework of violence and Palestinian legitimate armed resistance. The UN itself recognises the right of the colonised to resistance by all means, even if in practice the UN has supported Israel against the Palestinians. Yet, the clause exists, and Palestinians are within their rights to anti-colonial resistance. It is the UN that is in the wrong by denying Palestinians the political support they need.
Another contention the article raised is Albanese’s disagreement with the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) non-legally binding definition of anti-Semitism, which has been exploited by Israel and pro-Israeli entities to stifle criticism of Israel and silence the Palestinian narrative. One such instance is the IHRA’s description of: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour” as anti-Semitism. If Israel practices apartheid based on its colonial origins and expansion, why would such criticism be classified as anti-Semitism? Why not turn attention towards Israel’s colonial enterprise and manipulation of the Jewish religion to sustain its settler-colonial existence?
If Israel continues to express outrage or irritation at criticism of its colonial violence, it must look at itself, not its critics. How much of its historical colonial violence has Israel concealed within its archives? How much of it has been exposed, documented and proven? While on opposite ends of the spectrum, both that which is known and hidden testify to the brutality unleashed upon Palestinians through the Zionist paramilitary organisations prior to Israel’s establishment. Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their land, their villages destroyed and their people massacred. The means have changed, but the intent to expand across all of historical Palestine has not. In light of Israel’s historical and current violations, what security concerns would the settler-colonial state be facing if it made more of its archives accessible?
Israel crushes water pipelines with bulldozers in occupied West Bank
MEMO | December 15, 2022
The Israeli occupation army destroyed the main water pipelines in the village of Al-Auja, in the north-east of Jericho, reported Wafa news agency.
The destruction is seen as being part of the apartheid state’s efforts to control all water sources in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Local residents said that occupation soldiers forced their way into the village and welded-shut the sole pipeline which supplies water to more than 1,200 people and used a bulldozer to crush it beneath the land.
In recent years, Ein Al-Auja villagers have suffered from Israeli demolition and persecution campaigns and repeated attacks and violations by illegal settlers and soldiers.
The supervisor of the Al-Baidar Organisation for Defending the Rights of the Bedouins, Hasan Mleihat, said the community is one of the largest in the West Bank and is a target of frequent assaults and violations by the Israeli soldiers and settlers.
He also noted that such assaults are intended to displace the community and seize their water and land to make room for colonial settlement construction.
Israel violates international law by destroying and pillaging water resources in occupied Palestine. It then uses stolen water to increase the supply to illegal Israeli settlements, which have a much higher demand and consumption rate. The state discriminates blatantly by not boosting or even protecting water supplies to Palestinian communities.
Mleihat noted that Israel’s restrictions force Palestinians to buy water directly from the occupation state, even as it prevents them from constructing their own wells or engaging in other projects to enhance access to fresh water.
Like hundreds of other Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, Al-Auja village is located in ‘Area C’ according to the Oslo Accords, putting it under full Israeli military and administrative control.
How to Trash a Movie in Support of a Lie
The cover-up of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians during the Nakba continues

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW • DECEMBER 13, 2022
Israel’s new government is planning to give de facto operational control of the national police and heavily armed border police to Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of a party of right wing, racist extremists. It can perhaps be regarded as the prelude to the last phase in the uprooting and displacement of the Palestinian people. Those who resist will be killed and not a single Israeli soldier or policeman will be punished for carrying out what the Benjamin Netanyahu government will frame as a war against terrorists blessed by Yahweh in support of his “Chosen” people.
The Zionist view of what should be done to the indigenous inhabitants of a place once called Palestine has been unflinching since the founding of the state of Israel. The Zionist historic boast that a Jewish homeland would be built on “A land without a people for a people without a land” ignored the fact that Palestine already had plenty of inhabitants and a well-established economy where Jews were a distinct minority, less than 20% of the population in the 1930s.
The solution to correct the numbers was to compel the natives to leave by one means or another. Israel’s founding father David Ben Gurion early on endorsed a policy of removal by force if necessary the Christians and Muslims. The fighting that followed in 1948 after the United Nations’ partition of the country into two separate states left the mostly unarmed Palestinians helpless before the well-armed Jewish militias, which quickly expanded their zone of control well into the area that was granted on paper to the Palestinians. It is estimated that 15,000 Palestinians were killed outright by the Zionist forces while 800,000 more were driven from their homes, to which nearly all were denied any right to return. Four hundred Palestinian occupied villages were “ethnically cleansed” and in some cases physically destroyed.
The de facto seizure of the remainder of historic Palestine outside the borders of the Jewish state after the June 1967 Six Day war gave Israel direct control of all key strategic areas as well as land in Syria and Lebanon. Since that time, successive Israeli governments have pursued an ethnic cleansing policy both in Israel itself and on the West Bank consisting of gradually forcing the remaining Palestinians to leave to be replaced by all-Jewish towns and settlements. The Palestinians know that the final push is indeed coming and have begun to resist, though having few weapons they are helpless against the heavily armed Israel Defense Force (IDF), which has killed 195 Palestinians, mostly teenagers, in the past eleven months.
A recent killing captured on surveillance video shows an Israeli border policeman shooting a young man dead after an encounter on the main street of a West Bank town. Far-right Otzma Yehudit Party leader and incoming National Security Minister Ben-Gvir, praised the policeman who did the shooting as a “hero,” citing his “Precise action, you really fulfilled the honor of all of us and did what was assigned to you.”
The Palestinians refer to their dispossession and killing at the hands of the Jewish soldiers in 1948 as the Nakba, meaning “catastrophe,” which has sometimes been popularized as the Arab version of the so-called holocaust. I have recently watched a controversial film called Farha, made in Jordan by a woman filmmaker of Syrian descent, which views the Nakba through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old village girl. She, the eponymous Farha that gives the film its title, was preparing to go off to advance her education, presumably in Jerusalem, when Israeli soldiers attacked her village. The Israelis used loudspeakers to announce that all residents must leave immediately. Anyone seeking to remain would be killed. In a panic, the girl’s father, the village chief, locked her into a storage shed for safety as he tried to figure out what to do, but he then disappears from the tale and it might be presumed that both he and the rest of the family were killed.
Farha has only a crack in the door to witness what is going on outside. In a particularly dreadful sequence, a Palestinian man and his family who are trying to escape but are apparently confused regarding what way to go are detained by an Israeli officer and his men. After some perfunctory questioning, the father, mother and two children are lined up against a wall and shot dead. A newborn baby was left lying on the ground, alive, crying for its mother. The officer tells one of his men to kill it, but adds “Don’t waste a bullet on it.” The soldier prepares to stomp on the baby’s head to carry out the order, but cannot bring himself to do it and walks away. The baby continues to wail until later that day it stops, presumably dead from exposure or other factors.
Eventually Farha escapes from her prison and the movie concludes with her walking away in tears to an uncertain future. The film is very powerful, with excellent acting, cinematography and direction and it is based on a true story as handed down by Director Darin J. Sallam’s mother’s best friend, but I ended up wishing that it were stronger in its depiction of the savagery exercised by the Israelis, perhaps recreating an actual major massacre of Palestinian civilians, like occurred at Deir Yassin, where 107 Arabs, including many women and children, were shot dead by Israeli militiamen from the Irgun and Lehi groups. Other massacres took place in hundreds of villages across Galilee as well as in cities like Haifa or Akka, all far worse than what is revealed by the film. For those who are interested, Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine describes, in detail, the brutality of what Israeli forces unleashed on the largely unarmed Palestinian people during the Nakba.
But even though the film deliberately avoided cliched scenes of mass violence, it has proven very powerful with supporters and critics lined up along the completely predictable political lines. The Israelis have in particular come down hard on the film and they and their many friends in the United States, have reacted in their usual tribal fashion, attacking Netflix, which is streaming Farha on its network including in the United States and Europe. The Israel firsters are advocating striking back against Netflix for its temerity by canceling the service and attacking the decision to air the film at all. Ironically though not surprisingly, Netflix has hitherto been a leader in obtaining and streaming Israeli films and even television series.
In Israel, the government has declared war on the film, also a characteristic of that nation’s circle-the- wagons paranoid response to anything that might even suggest that Jews are just as capable of evil as anyone else. Last month ultra-nationalist Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Lieberman moved to block scheduled screenings of the film in Jaffa, saying that “Israel is a place to present Israeli and international works, but is certainly not the place to slander IDF soldiers and the security forces who are acting day and night to defend and protect all the citizens and residents living here.”
Lieberman, a Russian Jew known for his ethnocentric and essentially racist views, apparently does not believe that soldiers and security forces should actually protect Palestinians and afford them at least some measure of free speech, which is only allowed to Jews. Israel’s ironically titled Culture Minister the oddly named Chili Tropper also attacked the film for its so-called “false plots against IDF soldiers” denouncing how their actions were presented as similar to “behavior of the Nazis in the Holocaust.”
Former IDF soldier and current right wing apologist, Yoseph Haddad also tweeted, “I saw the movie ‘Farha’ and I can tell you that it is much worse than you think. The IDF soldiers are presented there as inhuman with unimaginable evil, all they care about is murdering and slaughtering without mercy (which is the exact opposite of the truth). This is a blood libel that will certainly increase antisemitism and incitement against Israel. If you haven’t canceled your Netflix subscription yet – do it now.”
In an Instagram post, Israeli model Nataly Dadon also demanded that Israelis and their supporters internationally should drop their Netflix subscriptions in an Instagram post, claiming that Farha’s “sole purpose is apparently to increase anti-Semitism against the Jewish people.” Mondoweiss also reports how “author and photographer Laura Ben-David tweeted a photo of her cancellation message with the streaming app and wrote, ‘Buh-bye Netflix! Supporting the false and anti-Israel film Farha is unacceptable.’”
So Israel, which is passionate about its rejection of the non-violent pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) economic pressure movement, is united in its desire to punish Netflix’s bottom line. And the old reliable anti-Semitism tag is being liberally attached to how the argument is being framed. Former Al Jazeera reporter Ahmed Shihab-Eldin suggested to the Middle East Eye that “The pacing of [all the negative posts] reveals it was coordinated. With each passing hour, dozens and dozens of vapid and vile reviews would appear, making wild accusations trashing the film. It was clear people had not seen the film, and only wanted to damage its reputation.”
Finally, it would not be about Israel and Jews if there were not space in The New York Times to twist and spin the story. A review of the film by one Beatrice Loayza, a Peruvian-American film critic based in Brooklyn, describes the movie oddly as a “brutal coming-of-age-story.” At one point, Farha discovers an old handgun wrapped up within a sack of lentils. She eventually uses it to shoot the lock and escape the storage room. But this is how the Times reviewer describes the sequence: “She finds a gun buried inside a sack of grains — was the threat present all along? One day, a scene of great barbarity plays out before her tiny window.” Aha! So those crafty Arabs actually were potentially using the old handgun among the lentils trick to threaten the friendly Israel soldiers who just happened to drop by to shoot to death a Palestinian family, which is dismissed as a “scene of great barbarity” without any suggestion of what that might have been. In truth, the garbage being peddled by the Times as a review of a story of an atrocity committed by Jews is actually achieved without having to include any context or feature any Jews at all. “Remarkable” is all I have to say in conclusion.
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.

