Brits protest outside BAE Systems for weapons sales to Israel
By Ahmed Kaballo – Press TV – May 28, 2021
London – Hundreds of pro-Palestine protestors gathered outside the BAE Systems factory in Blackburn in the north of England, to call upon the weapons manufacturer to stop supplying components for F-35 fighter jets that have been used in the recent bombardment of Gaza.
The protest came on the back of one the largest pro-Palestine demonstrations in British history on Saturday and similar demonstrations throughout the week led by Palestine action groups who have been protesting outside the Israeli-owned Elbit Systems factory that provides drones, weapons, and military hardware to the Israeli army.
We have seen protests in Leicester, Tamworth, Oldham, and today in Blackburn as the anger amongst the British public begins to swell at the thought that UK weapons have been used by the Israeli army to kill Palestinian children.
It has become increasingly clear that the British government’s unwavering support for Israel is not representative of the feeling on the ground with more than 383,000 Brits calling on their government to sanction the Israeli regime for their crimes against the Palestinian people.
But while the UK remains complicit through the hundreds of millions of pounds worth of weapons sold to the Israeli army. Some might wonder if the UK should also be held accountable.
From Here On, Palestine Calls the Shots
By Taxi | Plato’s Guns | May 27, 2021
From rocks to rockets. This is now the recorded evolution of the armed Palestinian Resistance. From throwing Intifada rocks that barely scratched occupation tanks, to lobbing rockets that can now reach anywhere in Israel: this is presently the undeniable status of the Palestinian Resistance. Hard, therefore, not to deduce that some impressive progress has been achieved by the armed Palestinian Resistance in Gaza, despite Gaza being under a severe land, sea and air siege. Right under the very noses of the bulky Israeli military and its lauded hi-tech Intel, the Palestinian Resistance has managed to arm itself in a significant way – and indeed, it continues to improve its arsenal, undetected. Of course, Israel’s weaponry remains by far more superior to that of the Palestinians, but this superiority in arms became meaningless during the recent ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ combat: a small war that found the Israeli forces unilaterally withdrawing from the battlefield after only some ten days. In normal military parlance, this would be defined as a defeat, yet this defeat is being referred to in the West as a ‘ceasefire’. Well, semantics aside, the simple takeaway is that Israel’s mighty military lost to pitiful Gaza rockets. The biblical story of David and Goliath repeated itself right before our modern eyes. And from here on, the hulking Israeli military will be powerless to protect Israeli Jews and their properties in the holy land.
In 1948, Zionism had promised the Jews of Israel two vital services: security and prosperity. Indeed, it had kept good on its promise for some 73 years. But now, in 2021 and post the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ war, it can no longer provide either. From here on, Zionism cannot guarantee either security or prosperity for its Jewish population – not with Gaza rockets now permanently looming and ready to disrupt daily Jewish life in the holy land. It used to be that the Israeli military was the one capriciously disrupting the security and prosperity of Palestinians, but overnight, the success of the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ has turned the tables on Israel. From here on, Palestine calls the shots. From here on, Israel will pay a very heavy price for any significant aggression against the suffering, occupied Palestinian people. This equation is now fixed; immovable. This is the new status quo.
Moreover, Zionism, appealing specifically to Jewish zealots, had also promised the total Judeofication of Jerusalem. A project that is contrary to International Law. A project that entails illegal land theft and the total ethnic cleansing of native Palestinians from their ancestral homes. Now, this project has come to a total standstill, with Hassan Nasrallah announcing recently that his resistance army, Hezbollah, as well as the armies of other members of the Axis of Resistance, will from here on militarily involve themselves in defending Jerusalem from this Judeofication project. Therefore, what we have now is Gaza’s improved rocketry checking Israel from within, and from without, we have several million Axis of Resistance fighters and their immense arsenal standing by, all ready to liberate Jerusalem at a moment’s notice. “Jerusalem for regional war,” was Nasrallah’s succinct warning to Israel. A regional war that will in fact be an existential war for Israel. A regional war that even the staunchest Israeli supporters are deathly fearful of because it will completely destroy modern Israel and cost tens of thousands of Jewish lives.
With Israel’s Zionism now unable to fulfill any of its fundamental promises, where does all this leave Zionism but collapsing before the very eyes of Jews themselves.
It is now simply impossible for Israel to reverse its sinking fortune without igniting a suicidal, regional war. No power on earth, not even mighty US powers can reverse this track. All the US and other Western friends of Israel can do now is delay the inevitable destruction of Israel with the use of a proverbial band aid here and a band aid there. Blinken, who is currently visiting the holy land is offering nothing but band aids to both sides. Other Western leaders will soon enough also come to Tel Aviv and to Ramallah with offers of more band aid. In reality, no one has anything else to offer Israel but band aid, because everything else has already been gifted to Israel in the past, and Israel appears to have squandered and abused, instead of used these gifts wisely for its longevity’s sake. There is no more that the West can do for Israel, save for actually sending their troops to the holy land to die for the Jews. An unlikely and most controversial move to now send democratic Western troops to die for ‘Apartheid Israel’, especially in the current depressive economic state that the whole world finds itself in. And Even if some Western nation was foolish enough to send its troops to fight for Tel Aviv, these troops will not be able to stop the intensive waves of Resistance precision missiles and rockets already poised to saturate Tel Aviv and the rest of Israel proper. Here, even geography is against Israel.
The ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ has irreversibly weakened Israel, not just on the home front, but the world over too. Overnight, Israel’s universal image went from its traditional ‘victim State’, straight to ‘Apartheid state’. Now, in the minds of the majority of the world, Israel is believed to be an Apartheid state. And in this new Apartheid definition of Israel, the so-called holocaust violin and begging bowl are nowhere to be found. The world is no longer interested in considering the sentimental holocaust when it comes to Israel. All the world can see now are the numerous and unconscionable Crimes Against Humanity that Israel has wantonly engaged in against the Palestinians – numerous crimes that israel has committed without a single instance of accountability. The world is no longer prepared to remain silent on this, or to accept the status of Israel as eternal victim.
So very much has been shattered within the Zionist machinery by the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’. And there are no spare parts to be found anywhere to replace them. Not even a false flag operation by Israel will return it to the victim chair. The whole gaggle and cackle of Jewish deceptions are by now also known and exposed to global populations. What in the past used to work in favor of Israel, is no longer working. The apple has lost its shine.
And another major victim of the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ is the Deal of the Century. At this stage of the game, with Jerusalem currently being a focal and highly emotive topic deluging Arab world medias, it is impossible for any corrupt Arab leader to now sign up anew to the Deal of the Century. And who in their right mind would sign a highly controversial deal with a sinking nation that can offer nothing in return? Mindful here too that two out of the four Arab nations that have already normalized with Israel under the Deal of the Century, did so purely for personal and not ideological reasons. These two nations are Sudan that signed the Deal in exchange for the removal of its name from the US’s terrorism list; and Morocco that signed the Deal in exchange for US support in Morocco’s illegal land claims over the Western Sahara. We can therefore safely say that out of 22 Arab nations, only two despotic Arab dictatorships are ideologically aligned with Israel: the UAE and Bahrain. These petite Zioninst-Arab nations cannot save Israel from even a single Gaza rocket, let alone from the combined weapons of the Axis of Resistance that now surround Israel: all coiled and waiting for Israel to miscalculate. Kushner’s attempt at wiping out the Palestine cause from the Arab world by creating a normalization program has utterly and completely failed. The Palestine cause has never been stronger in the Arab mind than it is now. The Deal of the Century has become the Tomb of the Century.
Moreover, an even more important pro Israel project has also collapsed at the swipe of the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’: The Oslo Agreement. No longer are the Palestinians happy with just a pitiful ‘crumb of land with no autonomy’ offered to them by Israel under Oslo, they are now unanimously demanding the return of all their land ‘from the river to the sea’. Their supporters worldwide are backing this notion by loudly chanting ‘from the river to the sea’ at all their mass protests. The ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ has veritably stabbed Oslo in the heart. The Two State Solution is dead. The One State Palestine Solution has grown massive wings.
Indeed, with Palestine now demanding all its land back ‘from the river to the sea’, Zionism appears to have symbolically lost all the land it acquired by force of arms since 1948. This symbolism will now become a reality in the next war between Israel and the Axis of Resistance. And war is coming. Plans and maps for the final War 0f Liberation remain very much on the table. Over the past 7 decades, Israel had stridently rejected numerous calls by friend and foe alike to surrender to the Levant’s historic culture of equitable coexistence between religions; rejected blending into the local scenery, opting instead to war against all its neighbors so as to assert itself as a vastly dominant power beyond reproach. Now it finds itself with many missed opportunities for peace and with its jugular bleeding: cut by no less than an over-zealous, blunt Zionist knife. War is coming to the holy land because Zionism has relentlessly expressed itself as a supremacist ideology that is fundamentally incapable of compromise, incapable of equality and justice, incapable of making real and genuine peace with any of its non Jewish neighbors. Through unchecked savagery, through arrogance and overreach since its inception, Israel has now become impotent in the face of the real existential threat it faces today. Apartheid policies and land-kleptomania will only get you so far. The Jews should have learned this lesson from the now defunct Apartheid South Africa.
Israel and its Jewish population now find themselves in an unsustainable and untenable position. They have now but two choices: depart from the Jewish colony in peace and physically intact, or from here on face a daily life of fear of Palestinian rockets and whatnot, followed eventually by a violent death when the big war breaks out.
Addressing Israeli Jews in his speech yesterday, Nasrallah stated: “We see how Muslim and Christian holy places are these days under dangerous attacks by you. When you destroy homes and people in Palestine: we leave this to the internal Palestinian Resistance to address. But we as the Axis of Resistance cannot stand idly by when you violate the sanctity of Muslim and Christian holy places in Jerusalem. Any further violations of Jerusalem by you will lead to regional war.”
Will Israeli civilian and military societies listen to Nasrallah’s warning, or will they, in their traditional arrogance, dismiss his words as being mere empty threats?
The Axis of Resistance now has all its war ducks lined up. The much longed for and necessary Palestinian unity is now a reality. All the needed weapons for victory are a reality. Global moral support for Palestinian liberation is now a reality. The War of Liberation is but one single step away. And the timing of this war will be triggered when Israel foolishly violates Jerusalem again. And violate it will, in its attempt to put oxygen back in the collapsing lung of Zionism. After all, violation is the only method that Israel knows. Violation is the definitive Israeli MO.
Will the Jews of Israel now risk life and limb and continue clinging to and supporting a shattered Zionism that can no longer deliver them its promised goods? Or will their survival instinct kick in and have them packing suitcases and returning back to their European, Russian and American origins?
A combination of both, I suspect. Some Jews will leave Israel. Some won’t. The die-hard Zionists are pathologically deluded enough to remain: believing that present conditions are militarily reversible. They’re not. Not anymore. Not ever. All that the Zionist Israeli government can do now in the aftermath of the ‘Sword of Jerusalem’ is ease up a small measure of pressure on the Palestinians and on the city of Jerusalem: buying itself time to come up with a solution that would be acceptable to both Israeli Jews on one hand, and Palestinian Muslims and Christians on the other. But Zionism, by its own definition does not allow for equitable co-existence with non-Jews. Sober minds on both sides do not believe that a win-win solution is available, or feasible. They estimate that this too-little-too-late path of Israel releasing some pressure on Jerusalem will lead to nowhere, and at some point en route, the Israeli government will become insensible with frustration to the point of miscalculation. Indeed, it will be Israel’s very last miscalculation.
We shall soon enough see a costly but heroic and historic return of the nation of Palestine: from the river to the sea.
No stopping now the winds of change that favor the suffering Palestinians.
Coexistence in Israel’s ‘mixed cities’ was always an illusion
By Jonathan Cook | Axis of Logic | May 26, 2021
Last weekend Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as “terrorists” those Palestinian citizens who have been protesting decades of state-sponsored discrimination. Vowing that “anyone who acts like a terrorist will be handled like one”, he said: “Arab law-breakers are attacking Jews, burning synagogues and Jewish homes.”
Netanyahu has been far from alone in his denunciations of nearly two weeks of protests inside Israel by the fifth of Israel’s population who are Palestinian by origin. They are the remnants of the Palestinian people, most of whom were ethnically cleansed at Israel’s founding in 1948.
Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, who is usually seen as far more moderate than Netanyahu, has called Palestinian protesters inside Israel a “bloodthirsty Arab mob” and described their actions as a “pogrom” against the Jewish community.
Both have remained largely silent about the wave of even greater violence against Israel’s Palestinian minority, both from the police and armed Jewish far-right gangs.
General strike
On Tuesday the Palestinian minority observed a general strike in protest at the wave of violence being directed at Palestinians in the region, most especially in Gaza. There, more than 200 people – and more than 60 children – have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.
At the same time, the minority’s main political body, the Follow-Up Committee, called on international organizations to protect Israel’s 1.8 million Palestinian citizens from the combined – and seemingly coordinated – backlash by Israel police and mob Jewish mobs.
Adalah, a leading legal organization for the minority, echoed the Follow-Up Committee, saying the Israeli government was “giving a free hand to racist and violent oppression” Arab citizens have been left with no alternative except to appeal to the nations of the world to force Israel to protect them”.
In the main sites of confrontation, in a handful of what Israel misleadingly terms “mixed cities”, it is Palestinian citizens who have been paying the steepest price.
These cities, several of them close to Tel Aviv, are historic Palestinian communities most of whose inhabitants were expelled in 1948. Even since, the small ghettoized Palestinian populations left behind have been aggressively “Judaized” – in what amounts to a long-term process of Jewish ethnic and religious gentrification to erase their presence.
Danger of pogroms
The first death from the clashes in the “mixed cities” was a Palestinian citizen who was shot in Lod, near Tel Aviv, by a group of Jewish residents. All the suspects in the murder are reported to have been released after the police minister, Amir Ohana, was among the senior politicians expressing outrage at the arrests.
Another early incident involved a Palestinian taxi driver being dragged from his car south of Tel Aviv by hordes of masked Jews who beat him savagely in front of Israeli TV cameras and hundreds of onlookers, with police nowhere in sight. Earlier, the same mob rampaged through the town of Bat Yam smashing any stores that looked like they were owned by Palestinian citizens.
Despite Netanyahu and Rivlin’s claims, it is Palestinian communities inside Israel that have been in far more danger of pogroms than the Jewish majority.
In the balance of power, the state’s security forces are tribally Jewish, the government and policy-makers are all Jews, a large proportion of the Jewish citizenry own weapons, and the media speaks for its Jewish population, not its 1.8 million Palestinians.
In a sign of the growing dangers, the Israeli media reported this week that applications for gun licenses – usually available only to Jewish citizens – had risen seven-fold.
Ohana, the police minister, has suggested Jewish citizens act as a “force multiplier” for the police – that is, they should be allowed to take the law into their own hands. And footage has shown police and armed far-right Jewish gangs cooperating in attacks on Palestinian communities in the mixed cities, even as those cities were supposed to be under curfew.
‘Reload the gun magazine’
Like Netanyahu, leading Israeli media figures have been openly inciting vigilante-style violence against Israel’s Palestinian minority.
In one example, a senior TV anchor, Dov Gil-Har, equated the protests by Palestinian citizens against state-sponsored discrimination with historic pogroms against Jews. Earlier, he had suggested to his Jewish viewers – 80 per cent of the country’s population – that the solution to the protests was to “reload the gun magazines”. When challenged by a Palestinian interviewee, he added that he might use his own weapon on the protesters.
The constant message to the Jewish majority has been the Palestinian public are a menace and that it may be necessary for Jews to take the law into their own hands.
And this has been happening just after the violent far-right – Jewish fascists – made unprecedented ground in March’s election, securing six seats in the 120-member parliament and possibly a place in government if Netanyahu can engineer a coalition.
Liberal incitement
But worrying as the direct incitement by Israeli politicians and the media against the Palestinian minority is, it is being strongly reinforced by a much more subtle “othering” by Israeli Jewish liberals. They have masked their own incitement in the more refined language of archeological preservation, Jewish-Arab coexistence, and religious tolerance.
In official Israeli discourse, the “mixed cities” – with Haifa the showroom – have long been presented as rare places where Jewish and Palestinian citizens live in close proximity, offering a potential model for greater understanding and cooperation between the two populations.
The flip side is less often highlighted: the “mixed cities” are just about the only communities where Jewish and Palestinian citizens have some sort of daily interaction.
In the rest of the country, Israel has imposed strict residential segregation. Palestinian citizens are confined to some 120 overcrowded, communities where they are starved of land, planning permits, industrial areas and classrooms for their children.
Herded together
But even in the “mixed cities”, there is no real mixing.
Before Israel’s creation on the ruins of the Palestinians’ homeland in 1948, cities like Haifa, Acre, Jaffa, Lod (Lydd), and Ramle were some of the most important in Palestine.
Israel’s leaders made it a priority to drive almost all of the Palestinian residents out of these cities during the Nakba and into exile, as part of a policy of making sure there was no educated, urban elite to organise political or diplomatic resistance to its ethnic cleansing campaign.
Today, most of the Palestinians in the “mixed cities” are descended not from the original families living there but from refugees who got trapped in them as they were trying to flee to safety in 1948. The Israeli army often herded the refugees together into the poorest areas of these historic Palestinian cities – neighborhoods Jews did not want to inhabit – while Israel decided what to do with them.
The descendants of the refugees still live in these deprived neighborhoods, typically renting from Amidar, an Israeli state-run property company. For decades, Amidar has denied them permission to renovate or improve their homes. It is usually only too ready to evict them if a state agency or Jewish investors decide these Palestinian families are in the way of a “Judaization” project.
Which is the necessary background for understanding the way the Israeli media, including a respected liberal newspaper like Haaretz, has been engaging in its own covert incitement when covering the latest events in the “mixed cities”.
Much attention has been given to the torching by Palestinian protesters of synagogues and yeshivas, or Jewish seminaries. The sight of Torah scrolls being evacuated from charred buildings has encouraged the Jewish public to conclude that these attacks were driven by antisemitism – a variation of the fear that Palestinians want to push the Jews into the sea.
Preposterously, Lod’s mayor compared these scenes to Kristallnacht – the notorious night of Nazi pogroms against German Jews in 1938 – as if Israel’s Jewish majority were not protected by one of the strongest armies in the world.
But there are practical, far more mundane reasons why synagogues and yeshivas were among the first buildings attacked in Lod.
Settler outposts in Israel
Over the past three decades, Israel’s main effort to “Judaize” the “mixed cities” has been waged through a religious war of attrition. A section of the settler population has been encouraged to “redirect” their attention from the West Bank and East Jerusalem to Israel. They have slowly encroached into the “mixed cities” as local municipalities and state agencies have lured them with special funding for their extremist seminaries and synagogues.
Homes and land are being taken over in Palestinian neighborhoods to house these new fanatical outposts of the main West Bank settlements inside Israel.
That has had very damaging consequences. The religious extremists have tried to whip up more nationalist sentiments among the local Jewish population of the mixed cities, increasing tensions with Palestinian neighbors. Just as is happening in East Jerusalem’s Old City, these Jewish religious fanatics are seeking to drive Palestinian families out of their own communities.
For years there has been especial anger in Jaffa about the takeover by Jewish religious extremists of the Palestinian parts of the city. That culminated weeks before the current clashes with an attack by two brothers on the head of a yeshivathere.
Even the Israeli court that examined the indictment against the brothers ultimately rejected police claims that the attack was antisemitic. Like many other families, the brothers have been fighting eviction from their home by a government agency. The attack reflected their anger that religious extremists are seeking out, and being offered, new properties in their neighborhood.
Following the incident, Palestinian families held a demonstration chanting: “Jaffa for Jaffans, settlers out.”
The huge resentment among Palestinians in the “mixed cities” towards these new religious occupiers can be explained by the urgent desire for self-preservation, not antisemitism.
‘Barbarians at the gate’
Similarly, the Israeli media have been aghast at the attacks on important archeological sites in places like Acre and Lod. The media’s barely veiled thesis is that these attacks have revealed Palestinian citizens to be, as Israeli Jews long suspected, barbarians at the gate. The impression has been cultivated that the minority’s behavior is little different from the Taliban blowing up the Buddhist Bamiyan statues.
Last week the Israel Antiquities Authority’s chief scientist, Gideon Avni, told Haaretz : “In Acre, an entire life’s work, meant to capture world attention through its archaeological value, went down the drain. In Lod, they [Palestinian residents] tried to destroy the attempt to empower and lift up the city as a center of antiquities.”
But again, there are good practical reasons why Palestinian residents of the “mixed cities”, especially in Lod and Acre, would be targeting archeological sites.
The Palestinian cities now defined as “mixed” are mostly located next to or over Roman, Crusader and Mumlak ruins.
Israel destroyed the Palestinian character of these communities from 1948 onward by expelling most of the Palestinian population, and then gradually Judaized their [environs] as public spaces. Archeology, like religion, has been weaponized against the Palestinian inhabitants of the “mixed cities” to assist in their erasure.
Archeology theme parks
Israel’s politicization of archeology has focused on layers of history unrelated to, and meant to overshadow, its recent Arab Palestinian past. Further, archeological preservation and related tourism ventures have become the pretext for yet again ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their historic cities.
The clearest example has occurred in occupied East Jerusalem, where the Israel Antiquities Authority has allied with a settler organization, Elad. Together, using highly dubious archeological evidence, they have been creating a Disney-style “Kingdom of David” theme park within and below a Palestinian neighborhood called Silwan.
The City of David site has been expanding for more than three decades, aided by the government and Jerusalem municipality. Dozens of armed Jewish settler families have moved into the neighborhood in violation of international law.
In the latest development, Israel is preparing to evict many dozens of Palestinians in the coming weeks as it expands the City of David.
It was these moves that in part fueled the tensions that sparked the current Palestinian protests inside Israel and the rocket fire from Gaza.
Lod mosaic attacked
Watching Silwan’s long-running oppression through archeology, Palestinians in the “mixed cities” have seen a strong echo of their own experiences. The main difference is that the archeological assault inside Israel focuses not only on Jewish history but embraces any historical period that distracts from Palestinian heritage.
Israel has misleadingly sold these archeological projects as “tourism development” and “urban renewal”, often claiming they are designed to improve “Jewish-Arab relations”.
One of the targets of the current protests was a soon-to-be-opened museum for the Lod Mosaic, a world-renowned, almost complete Roman mosaic found in 1996. It had been traveling the world until belated funding meant it could be housed in a poor Palestinian-majority neighborhood next to the old city where it was unearthed.
Although the mosaic was unharmed in last week’s attack, the new building’s glass frontage was smashed.
The residents’ resentment towards the new Lod Museum needs to be understood in two contexts: decades of obscuring the Palestinian heritage of Lod, as well as the visibility of its current Palestinian population; and the investment by Israeli authorities in projects to bring tourists to Lod, even as they continue to neglect local Palestinian residents, who suffer from high levels of poverty.
Lod’s old city was mostly destroyed in the 1950s to erase its Palestinian character. The streets, even in Palestinian neighborhoods, have been given Hebrew names.
Lod municipality recently unveiled plans to renovate another historic site, a Mamluk khan that was used as the city’s main market until 1948. Over the heads of the local population, it is due to be turned into a Judaized cultural space, housing cafes and arts and crafts shops.
And as with Silwan, Lod is developing local tour programs – sometimes in coordination with incoming settler populations – that highlight an ancient Jewish heritage and ignore the city’s Palestinian past and present.
Or as a report from Emek Shaveh, an Israeli organization of dissident archeologists, recently concluded: “The city of Lod thus erases once again the city’s glorious heritage and views its Arab residents as a nuisance.”
Families face eviction
In Acre, archeology has become an even more overt weapon to be used against the local Palestinian population. Since 1948, they have been largely confined to the seafront old city, where they were long ignored and mired in poverty.
But while the United Nations’ decision to designate the old city a World Heritage Site 20 years ago came to the rescue of the ancient buildings there, it did little to help the local inhabitants. In fact, their situation has become even more precarious as Israel, Jewish investors and foreign countries have poured money into the old city’s “development”.
Overseeing these projects are the Israel Antiquities Authority and the Acre Development Corporation, neither of which have consulted with the local or national Palestinian leaderships in Israel.
Gideon Avni, of the Antiquities Authority, told the Haaretz newspaper: “These symbols [in Acre] are being destroyed in front of our eyes.” Another unnamed expert echoed him: “Gangs of looters have systematically destroyed property after property.”
One of the main targets in Acre was the Antiquities Authority’s conservation center, supported by the Italian government.
The old city of Acre was built in the 18th century by a Palestinian ruler, Daher el-Omar, atop the ruins of an earlier Crusader city. But the Israeli authorities have been sidelining this important Palestinian layer – just as it has excluded the local Palestinian population – to encourage tourists to head into the underground, Crusader Acre.
Even when Palestinian heritage is being preserved in Acre, it has been repackaged as “Ottoman” – presented to Israeli Jews and tourists as a legacy of Turkish colonial influence rather than as the cultural and architectural artifacts of local Palestinians who lived under Ottoman rule.
One of the most visible Palestinian buildings is the well-preserved Khan al-Umdan, once the city’s main market, located in the harbor.
It has been sealed off for years as the Development Corporation has been finding investors to turn it into a luxury hotel. Palestinian families living in the warrens of alleys around the khan are facing eviction so as not to detract from the new ambience the Israeli authorities hope to create for tourists.
Disneyfication of Acre
Aiding this process have been wealthy Jewish investors, such as Uri Jeremias. They have been the driving force behind the gentrification of Acre’s old city above ground to take advantage of the new tourism. Jeremias’s small empire started with a fish restaurant on the seafront and has expanded to include a popular ice cream parlor and an ambitious hotel called the Efendi.
As the name suggests, the Efendi has contributed to the Disneyfication of Acre, remaking some of the old city’s most impressive Palestinian buildings into a hotel where tourists can experience generic “Ottoman” splendor, shielded from the poverty outside and from any trace of meaningful Palestinian heritage.
It is not surprising that Jeremias’s properties were also attacked, as was another hotel, the Arabesque.
In a fawning portrait in the Haaretz newspaper, Evan Fallenberg, owner of the Arabesque, was able to present his hotel as simply a site of cultural and economic renewal, and a symbol of “Jewish-Arab coexistence”. He called it “a labor of love shared by Muslims, Jews and Christians alike”.
Referring to his assumptions about Acre as a “model of successful coexistence”, Fallenberg added: “What gave me hope over the past few years is that this was some kind of microcosm of what could happen in this country, and it’s in danger of being lost now.”
Illusion of coexistence
But that coexistence model in the “mixed cities” was always an illusion, one that the protests finally served to smash. Coexistence worked for one ethnic group only, Jews. It was built on the continuing Judaization of these historic Palestinian communities to erase their Palestinian heritage and drive out their Palestinian populations.
Tourism and archeological preservation were simply more convenient, image-conscious ways to go about Judaization in the 21st century. They attracted less attention and international opposition than Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations and wholesale community demolitions of the previous century.
By stripping out this context – of Israel’s ongoing Judaization of Palestinian communities inside Israel – Israeli liberals have only deepened the incitement against Palestinian citizens. They have confirmed the picture presented by the right, whether it be President Rivlin’s “bloodthirsty mob”, Netanyahu’s “terrorists”, or the mayor of Lod’s “Kristallnacht”.
In doing so, Israeli liberals have offered their own form of legitimacy to the rationalizations by Jewish far-right gangs for their violence against Palestinian citizens: that they are protecting Jews and Jewish honor, that they are averting pogroms.
In defense of a non-existent coexistence, Israeli liberals have thrown their hand in with the far-right, exposing the Palestinian minority to the very real threat of Jewish pogroms.
The author lives in Nazareth, Israel.
Biden Regime Support for Palestinian Unity and Conflict Resolution with Israel?
By Stephen Lendman | May 27, 2021
Since Hamas won the last democratically held Palestinian legislative elections in January 2006, the US and Israel pursued a divide and control strategy.
In January 2005, Israel installed Mahmoud Abbas as puppet Palestinian Authority (PA) president.
A figure with no legitimacy, he serves Israeli/Western interests and his own at the expense of millions of Palestinians he long ago betrayed for special benefits afforded him.
Despite his term of office expiring in 2009, he remains in office, refusing to hold new elections for one invented reason after another, none legitimate.
Throughout at least most of his illegitimate tenure, he’s been hostile toward Hamas and indifferent toward millions of Palestinians he doesn’t give a damn about and it shows.
He’s a quisling leader hostile to what democratic rule is all about.
A former aide once called him the “sultan of Ramallah” — thin-skinned and vengeful, tolerating no opposition, remaining in power as long as Israel considers him useful.
In 1993, he was part of the Oslo team that negotiated unilateral Palestinian surrender to Israeli interests, his signature on the capitulation.
In office over 16 years, he did nothing to interfere with Israeli theft of Palestinian land — nothing to contest their dispossession, nothing to support their rights beyond meaningless lip service.
Collaborating with the enemy is treason — the highest of high political crimes.
Abbas has been guilty at least since abandoning Palestinian liberation efforts in September 1993.
In service to Israeli interests, he prevented Palestinian unity by supporting Israeli opposition to what’s important in pursuing their liberating struggle.
On Monday, Haaretz dubiously reported that “a new US approach to Hamas could be in the making (sic).”
It cited a 2018 report by the Washington-based Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in cahoots with the Brookings Institution. See below.
According to former Congressman Ron Paul, CNAS is the “neocon wing of the” undemocratic Dem party, adding:
It “argu(es) against US troops ever leaving Iraq and has endorsed the…doctrine of preventative warfare” — aka naked aggression against invented enemies.
“The Center is perhaps best known for pushing the failed counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
It supports US global dominance by brute force — no matter the cost — if less extreme methods don’t work.
The CNAS/Brookings report expressed support for “pursu(ing) the political and physical reintegration of Gaza and the West Bank, in a manner that promotes a two-state solution and avoids the permanent separation of the two territories,” adding:
It also called for “stabiliz(ation) (of) Gaza, address(ing) the dire humanitarian and economic conditions, and prevent(ing), or if necessary shorten(ing), any future conflicts between Hamas and Israel.”
CNAS and Brookings one-sidedly support all things Israel, what’s always been at the expense of long-suffering Palestinians.
CNAS supported Hillary’s presidential ambitions because of her rage for military solutions in pursuit of Washington’s hegemonic aims
In October 1997, the Clinton co-presidency falsely designated Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah as foreign terrorist organizations in deference to Israeli interests.
Hamas is historic Palestine’s legitimate government.
In 2018 legislative elections, Hezbollah candidates and allies won a 67-seat majority.
They’re not terrorist organizations, not earlier or now.
It’s inconceivable that Israel would go along with supporting or at least permitting Palestinian unity to include an end to its Gaza blockade — in place since 2007.
Given US/Israeli rage for endless wars and instability to advance their hegemonic agendas, it’s also inconceivable that they’d go another way on what relates to over half a century of Occupied Palestine.
The Jewish state has longstanding rock-solid bipartisan support in Washington that’s highly unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.
The CNAS report also expressed concerns about Palestinian unity. Contradicting what it appeared to endorse, it said:
Unity “could partially legitimize Hamas or, worse, give it an opening to gain power in, or even seize control of, the West Bank.”
“Reintegration could also lead to a model like that of Lebanese Hezbollah, in which Hamas remains a heavily armed militia, free from the burdens of civilian governance but wielding veto power in government.”
Hamas and Hezbollah maintain military wings for self-defense, their UN Charter right — what the CNAS report left unexplained.
Both Israel and the US have always opposed a legitimate peace process and Palestinian self-determination — while pretending otherwise.
It’s why over half a century of Israeli/Palestinian negotiations on these issues always failed.
With dominant hardline US/Israeli regimes in power, a sea-change from longstanding support by both nations for divide, control, and perpetual war by hot and/or other means to endorsing Palestinian unity, self-determination and conflict resolution sounds more like Hollywood fiction than reality.
A Final Comment
During 11 days of Israeli terror-bombing and shelling of Gazan residential areas — causing large-scale mass slaughter and destruction — the Biden regime blocked four Security Council statements that expressed mild criticism of Israel.
One-sided US support for the Jewish state and indifference toward Palestinian rights reflect longstanding bipartisan policy in Washington.
It remains unchanged.
Palestine: Hamas Defeats Israel
Just like in 2006, when both Ehud Olmert and George Bush declared that the “invincible IDF” had, yet again, achieved a “glorious victory” and the entire Middle-East almost died laughing hearing this ridiculous claim, today both the US and Israeli propaganda machine have declared another “glorious” victory for the “Jewish state of Israel” cum “sole democracy in the Middle-East”. And, just like in 2006, everybody in the region (and in Zone B) knows that the truth is that the Zionist entity suffered a huge, humiliated, defeat. Let’s try to unpack this.
First, a few numbers. The combat operations lasted two weeks. All other missile numbers are in dispute. Rather than trust this or that source, I will simply say that Hamas fired many thousands of missiles into Israel. Some, probably less than 50%, were truly intercepted by the Israeli air defenses, others hit in no man’s land, and some actually landed and caused plenty of destruction and at least 12 deaths. The Israelis executed hundreds of artillery and airstrikes causing massive destruction in the Gaza strip and killing about 250 Palestinians. Again, these numbers are guesstimates and they don’t really tell the full story. To understand the story, we need to forget about these numbers and look at what each side was hoping for and what each side achieved. Let’s begin with the Israelis:
The Israeli scorecard
To understand Israel’s goals in this war, we first need to place this latest war in its context, and that context is that Israel was comprehensively defeated in Syria. To substantiate this thesis, let’s remember the goals of the Zionists when they unleashed a major international war against Syria. These objectives, as listed in my July 2019 article “Debunking the Rumors About Russia Caving in to Israel” were:
The initial AngloZionist plan was to overthrow Assad and replace him with the Takfiri crazies (Daesh, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, ISIS – call them whatever you want). Doing this would achieve the following goals:
- Bring down a strong secular Arab state along with its political structure, armed forces, and security services.
- Create total chaos and horror in Syria justifying the creation of a “security zone” by Israel not only in the Golan but further north.
- Trigger a civil war in Lebanon by unleashing the Takfiri crazies against Hezbollah.
- Let the Takfiris and Hezbollah bleed each other to death, then create a “security zone,” but this time in Lebanon.
- Prevent the creation of a Shia axis Iran-Iraq-Syria-Lebanon.
- Break up Syria along ethnic and religious lines.
- Create a Kurdistan which could then be used against Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran.
- Make it possible for Israel to become the uncontested power broker in the Middle-East and force the KSA, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and all others to have to go to Israel for any gas or oil pipeline project.
- Gradually isolate, threaten, subvert, and eventually attack Iran with a broad regional coalition of forces.
- Eliminate all centers of Shia power in the Middle-East.
As we all know, this is what actually happened:
- The Syrian state has survived, and its armed and security forces are now far more capable than they were before the war started (remember how they almost lost the war initially? The Syrians bounced back while learning some very hard lessons. By all reports, they improved tremendously, while at critical moments Iran and Hezbollah were literally “plugging holes” in the Syrian frontlines and “extinguishing fires” on local flashpoints. Now the Syrians are doing a very good job of liberating large chunks of their country, including every single city in Syria).
- Not only is Syria stronger, but the Iranians and Hezbollah are all over the country now, which is driving the Israelis into a state of panic and rage.
- Lebanon is rock solid; even the latest Saudi attempt to kidnap Hariri is backfiring. (2021 update: in spite of the explosion in Beirut, Hezbollah is still in charge)
- Syria will remain unitary, and Kurdistan is not happening. Millions of displaced refugees are returning home.
- Israel and the US look like total idiots and, even worse, as losers with no credibility left.
Seeing their defeat in Syria, the Zionists did what they always do: they used their propaganda machine to list an apparently never-ending victorious strikes on supposed “Iranian targets” in Syria. While a few civilian simpletons with zero military experience did buy into this nonsense, the truth about Israeli operations in Syria is simple: the Syrian air defenses have successfully prevented the Israelis from striking at important, sensitive, targets, and the Israelis have been forced to declare as major victories the destruction of empty barns as “destruction of important IRGC headquarters” thereby “proving” to a few naive folks in Zone A and to themselves (!) that the IDF is still as “invincible” as it “always was”. As for the Neocons, they doubled-up on that and declared that 1) Russian air defenses are useless 2) that Russia and Israel work hand in hand and 3) that the Israelis are still invincible. Yet if any of that was true, why has Israel failed to achieve a single one of its goals? And why are both the Russians and the Iranians still in Syria where the Russians just finished a 2nd runway at Khmeimim and they have just deployed a group of Tu-22M3 at that air base from where they can now threaten any ship sailing in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. In their otherwise “free time” they can drop tons of bombs and missiles on the remaining Takfiri forces in Syria.
As I have been saying for many years now, the truth is that the IDF is a poor fighting force. Why? First, they have the exact same problem as the USA (and the KSA, for that matter): they rely on expensive technology, but don’t have good combat-capable “boots on the ground”. That is now how modern wars are won (see here for a list of popular misconceptions about modern wars).
In its recent history, the entire gamut of Israeli “elite” forces (including the air force, the navy, the artillery and even the Golani Brigade) got its collective butt handed to them by about 1000 and only lightly armed regular Hezbollah fighters in 2006: keep in mind that the elite Hezbollah forces were deployed only north of the Litani river to protect Beirut against a possible land invasion by Israel. Instead of taking Beirut or “disarming Hezbollah” (that was an official goal!), the Israelis could not even control the small town of Bint Jbeil located right across the official Israeli border! So much for being “invincible”!
What the IDF is very experienced at is terrorising Palestinian civilians and executing what could be called a slow-motion genocide of the Palestinian people. The problem with Gaza now is the same that the failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006 has revealed: just like the Lebanese in 2006, the Palestinians of 2021 are not afraid of the Zionists anymore. Furthermore, with a great deal of help from Iran and others, Hamas in Gaza is now much, much better armed than in the past. True, some of its missiles are decidedly low tech and not very effective (low accuracy, small warheads, simple trajectory, limited range), but Hamas also has shown some pretty decent UAVs too. Most importantly, from now on for Hamas it is only one way: up the “quality ladder” (just like the Houthis did in Yemen, starting with modest drones but eventually getting very capable ones).
The other major goal of the Israelis in this war was to prove to the world (and, even more importantly for the always narcissistic self-worshipping Israeli cowards, to themselves!) that their “Iron Dome” air defense network was the “super-dooper most bestest” in the world (no doubt, due to the famed “Jewish genius”!). It now appears that at best, the Israelis intercepted somewhere around 30-40% of the Hamas missiles. The way the Israeli hid this is by claiming that their fancy shmancy Iron Drone did not even try to engage missiles which were not deemed dangerous. But in the age of the ubiquitous smartphone, that kind of silly nonsense can easily be debunked (including by showing the total chaos in the Israeli skies or, for that matter, the missile strikes on Israeli military objectives). While the full Iron Dome air defense system probably works marginally better than the quasi-useless US Patriot, the Israeli air defenses are clearly at least a generation behind the Russian ones, including the S-300s the Russians sold to Syria (again, in the age of of the ubiquitous smartphone, this is not hard to prove).
It is crucial to remember that Hamas’ missiles are much inferior to those of the Houthis and the Syrians, and even more inferior when compared to Hezbollah or Iranian drones and missiles! In other words, the “invincible” IDF can’t deal with even its weakest, least sophisticated enemies (Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad) and the grotesquely expensive Iron Done cannot protect the Zionists from any determined missile attacks by the Resistance coalition (Palestine, Yemen, Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia).
In their utter despair, the Zionist entity did what the AngloZionists always do when they fail to defeat a military force: they will turn their wrath on the civilian infrastructure and murder as many as they can. They will also strike highly symbolic targets such as the International Press Center in Gaza or a Red Crescent hospital (under the pretext that Hamas, which is the democratically elected local government) has offices there (this is clearly a F-you to those who condemn Israel for violating international law). To a normal human being, this sounds both obscene and ridiculous. But remember, the Israelis are first and foremost narcissists and they have no means of imagining how normal human beings think or feel. All these guys can feel is self-worship and hatred for all “others”.
We could say that in this war, the Palestinians defeated both military high tech and truly medieval type of genocidal hatred.
In other words, far from showing how “invincible” the Zionist entity is, this latest war against the Palestinians has shown beyond reasonable doubt that the IDF cannot deal with any of its enemies.
Besides missiles and bombs, the Israelis love to use terror, as their ideology has convinced them of two things: the Arabs only understand force and we, the Israelis, are invincible. But this begs the question of why the Israelis did not dare to move into Gaza, not even symbolically. Yeah, I know, the official doxa of Zone A is that “Biden called Netanyahu and told him to stop”. As if “Biden” could give orders to the Israelis!
The truth is that even with a casualty rate of 10:1 in the IDF’s advantage and no armor or artillery, the Palestinians are much more willing to engage in street battles than the IDF. Would the IDF eventually win a ground battle against Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Maybe, probably, the objective advantages in everything (except courage!) for the Israelis is so huge that no amount of skills and courage can forever negate the immense superiority in means of the Israelis.
However, as most people in the West tend to forget, wars are but means towards a political goal. If the IDF decided to basically flatten Gaza and kill many thousands of Palestinians at the cost of casualties probably in the hundereds, then this would be politically suicidal for the Zionist regime. This is why I offer this very basic conclusion:
During the latest Gaza war, deterrence did work. But only in the sense that the Palestinians successfully deterred the Israelis from launching a ground attack against Gaza.
There is another crucial political development which should also be noted: while both Iran and Hezbollah did give their full political support to Hamas+Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the latter did not request any assistance. In other words, not only did the Palestinians defeat the Israelis, but they did so absolutely alone, with no help from the other Resistance members.
Again, those Zone A civilians who believe that Israel is scoring huge victories in Syria on a quasi daily basis won’t get it, which is par for the course. But you can be darn sure that at least most of the IDF top commanders know the true score and for them it is yet another huge disaster.
There is also a political factor to consider. While there have been coordination resistance actions by the Palestinians in Israel (proper, as defined by the UN), this is the first time when the Palestinians from Gaza, those from the Occupied Territories and those in “Israel” truly fought, if not side by side (yet!), then at least at the same time and in a common cause. This is a major political victory for Hamas+Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a major problem for Fatah and the Zionists. Now let’s look at the rest of the Palestinian scorecard:
The Palestinian scorecard:
Let’s start by the obvious one: the Palestinians were not defeated. This victory can be further subdivided in the following:
- The Palestinian leadership has mostly physically survived, it still exists as a local authority. Plenty of Palestinians were murdered, but that did not affect the operational capabilities of the Palestinian forces (any more than the IDF succeeded in affecting Iranian operational capabilities in Syria).
- The Palestinian leadership has also survived politically. It was not blamed by the “Palestinian street” for starting the war, nor was it blamed for how it executed it. As for Fatah, it is now, by all accounts, lost somewhere in a political no man’s land which, admittedly, it richly deserves for its incompetence, corruption and subservience to Israel and the USA.
- Militarily speaking, the Palestinian missile strikes were not nearly as effective as, say, Hezbollah (nevermind Iranian!) strikes would have been, but, hey, they made huge progress and we can all rest assured that the Palestinians of Gaza will, sooner or later, catch up with the Houthis and, further down the road, maybe even Hezbollah.
- By many accounts, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have made major political inroads into the Palestinian political scene outside Gaza. Even in spite of a truly immense hasbara effort by the Israelis, the international public opinion was blaming Israel for the orgy of violence.
It is interesting to note here that the famous Israeli journalist Gideon Levy has written an article for Ha’aretz entitled “Israeli Propaganda Isn’t Fooling Anyone – Except Israelis” which was further subtitled “’Hasbara’ is the Israeli euphemism for propaganda, and there are some things, said the late ambassador Yohanan Meroz, that are not ‘hasbarable.’ One of them is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.” This is how Levy’s article began:
And propaganda shall cover for everything. We’ll say terrorism, we’ll shout anti-Semitism, we’ll scream delegitimation, we’ll cite the Holocaust; we’ll say Jewish state, gay-friendly, drip irrigation, cherry tomatoes, aid to Nepal, Nobel Prizes for Jews, look what’s happening in Syria, the only democracy, the greatest army. We’ll say the Palestinians are making unilateral moves, we’ll propose negotiations on the “settlement bloc borders,” we’ll demand recognition of a Jewish state and we’ll complain that “there’s no one to talk to.” We’ll wail that the whole world is against us and wants to destroy us, no less.
Now comes the best part: Levy wrote this on Jun. 4, 2015 and updated it on Apr. 10, 2018 – years before the current disaster! Since then, things have only gone south for the IDF and the Israelis in general. Just the blowback from the war in Syria is, for the IDF, a true disaster.
Of course, “Israel” is still worshipped and faithfully served by many ruling classes worldwide (that is one of the functions of the Empire, to enforce this), but that officially lauded Israel is viewed with disgust and revulsion on most of the planet. Hence the inevitable failure of the truly galactic PR effort to brainwash the regular people into believing that Israeli is a polyyanish country, a “place without people for a people without country”, etc. etc. etc. This “Ziolatry”, if you wish, was effective when the PLO was blowing up Jewish grade schools in Western Europe, but today it has lost almost all of its traction, especially amongst thinking people.
The sad and disgusting reality about the Zionist entity is truly coming out, seeping under the propaganda walls of the Empire, and slowly but inevitably resulting in a common reaction of outrage and utter disgust for what is nothing else but the last officially racist country on the planet, the only country with an open air concentration camp it surrounds on all sides, the only country which truly, openly and sincerely does not give a damn about international law or about the lives of non-Jews (while calling their own lives sacred, of course!). This is a state which constantly repeats the mantra about the supposedly “sacred” blood of Jews while, at the same time, committing a slow motion (but very real) genocide of the Palestinian people while using non-stop terrorist attacks against any country daring to defy the order of the latest, and hopefully last, wannabe “superior race” in human history. This is also why the “crime of crimes” for politically correct and successfully brainwashed people is to declare that Israel has no right to exist. This is such a major crimethink that I want to conclude by committing it right now and asking others to join me in this “crimethink”!
Israel has no right to exist whatsoever first and foremost because it is an artificial creation of West European imperialist powers. Second, it is a country which has always engaged in atrocities and massive violations of international laws and norms. Instead, Israel is based on a racist ideology which is, for all practical purpose, indistinguishable from Hitler’s Nazi ideology (both National Socialism and Zionism have the same roots in both time, space and culture, both being products of European secularism and nationalism). For these reasons, Israel, and the Zionist ideology which supports it, are both a clear and present danger for international peace and stability (for details on Zionism as an ideology and its toxicity, please see here). Furthermore, the only possible way for the Palestinian people to ever recover their land and their rights under international law is that the Zionist “regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time” (to quote the often mistranslated sentence by Ayatollah Komenei). By the way, this awareness also presupposes a clear understanding that the so-called “Two State Solution” (2SS) is an impossibility. Yes, I know, the 2SS is currently the only one under international law, but that is hardly surprising since the state of Israel was created with not only many of the trappings of “being an internationally recognized state” but also with the shameful complicity of the country which won WWII. There is one thing which Israel has in common with the so-called “Republic of Kosovo”: they will be the very first to be liberated as soon as the AngloZionist Empire finally crashes visibly (of course, it has already crashed, hence the many disastrous outcomes for the USA and Israel on the international scene, but that is still denied officially in Zone A and, of course, by the AngloZionist propaganda and those who pay attention to it.
In truth, there is only one true “solution” to this war: the so-called “One State Solution”, meaning that those who live in this land will get to choose their leaders and lifestyles according to the old “one person, one vote” principle. All other “solutions” simply perpetuate the current genocide!
As for those Jews who still want an ethnically pure state of Israel, they can either grow up and get real, or they can choose to colonize some other planet. As long as they don’t persecute local lifeforms, that might work. But if they do this will all happen again, over and over.
Conclusion: “Gaza” and the future of the Zionist entity
I want to end here with what I believe is a glance at the future (or lack thereof!) of Israel. The website Islamic World News Analysis Group (which I highly recommend!) recently posted what it claims to be a video of a new Iranian combat drone named “Gaza” described as so: “The Gaza drone, capable of carrying 13 bombs and 500 kilograms of equipment, as well as 35 hours of flight up to a radius of 2,000 kilometers, is capable of carrying out a variety of combat and intelligence operations. According to the published images, it seems that the Gaza drone uses the Rotary Bomb Launcher mechanism under its fuselage, which can carry up to 5 bombs. This is the first Iranian drone to use this mechanism. 8 bombs are also installed under the wings and in total this drone is capable of carrying 13 bombs”. Here is the footage of this new drone. Take a look for yourself and imagine what the next round of this campaign to liberate Palestine might look like.
Israel carries out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, robs them of their homes, yet pretends it’s the victim
By Richard Medhurst | RT | May 25, 2021
The Israelis are seeking to reframe their occupation of Palestine as something else, in order to hide their inhumane oppression. What’s happening in Gaza is not a ‘war’ nor a ‘conflict’, but a brutal military colonization.
Israel launched its latest offensive against the Gaza strip on May 10, bombing the Palestinian enclave by land and air. For several weeks prior, tensions had swelled in occupied Palestine, as Israeli forces cracked down on Palestinian protesters. At the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, protests began against restrictions that Israel imposed on gatherings during the Holy Month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Palestinians also marched against Israel’s plans to evict families living in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and the protests became intertwined.
While Israeli mobs marched through the streets unimpeded, damaging Palestinian-owned stores and chanting “Death to Arabs,” Palestinians were met with a brutal backlash from Israeli police, culminating in Israeli forces storming the Al-Aqsa mosque, firing tear gas and rubber coated bullets at people as they prayed, injuring more than 90.
Israel’s desecration of the third holiest site in Islam drew international condemnation and Hamas, which runs Gaza, demanded that Israel immediately withdraw from the mosque. This was ignored, so Hamas responded with rockets. Israel then began its offensive, which continued for eleven days. Thousands of reservists were also called up, prompting fears of a ground invasion.
Israel’s Dahiya doctrine: ‘punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population’
Like previous wars against Gaza in 2009 and 2014, Israel purposely targeted public and health infrastructure – a hallmark of its military strategy, and a war crime under the Geneva Convention.
Israel put a desalination plant out of action which provided water to hundreds of thousands. Electricity lines were cut leaving barely five hours of power a day. Water mains were damaged so that sewage overflowed onto streets. The main road leading to al-Shifa hospital, the enclave’s biggest, was bombed, and other clinics were damaged. The only laboratory able to do Covid-19 tests was rendered inoperable.
Health workers and residents described horrific scenes of loved ones and neighbors buried alive under rubble, and of having to dig out dead bodies. By the end of the assault, 12 Israelis had died; while 242 Palestinians were killed, among them 23 girls and 43 boys. Around half were women and children.
Several Palestinian families were entirely wiped out. Dr Ayman Abu al-Ouf, one of Gaza’s most renowned medical specialists, was killed in an airstrike on his home, alongside 12 members of his family.
The IDF’s twitter account proudly tweeted a graphic saying, “200+ terrorists neutralized.”
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, almost 2,000 Palestinians were wounded. It was reported that at least 2,000 housing units were destroyed and an additional 15,000 homes damaged.
Several residential buildings were completely leveled by airstrikes. On May 15, Israel bombed the offices of the Associated Press and Al Jazeera in Gaza. This was met by silence and feigned concern by Western liberal democracies, whose appreciation of a free press did not extend to Palestine that day.
Disproportionate force has always been a core pillar of Israel’s military, known as the Dahiya doctrine, which dates back to the 2006 war against Lebanon, and which was ruthlessly implemented against Gaza in 2009 and onwards.
Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth, with two million Palestinians living on a tiny strip of land under blockade from Egypt and Israel since 2007. Its residents live at the mercy of a military occupation that bombs them with impunity, shielded by Western nations who whitewash its crimes.
On several occasions at the United Nations Security Council, the Biden administration blocked the release of a statement calling for a ceasefire because the language condemned Israel – which Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz thanked the US for in a tweet.
The animosity between Benjamin Netanyahu, whose 12-year tenure as Israel’s prime minister had been at risk, and his political rivals vanished once the strikes began. The attack on Gaza and Hamas bought him a little more time in office.
Protests in support of Palestine erupted worldwide. In London, 100,000 people took to the streets in solidarity. Palestinians themselves held a general strike on May 18. Shops closed as people marched in record numbers against Israel’s crimes. Two people were killed and over 100 were wounded by Israeli occupation forces who fired water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets at them.
After 11 days of incessant air strikes from Israel and rocket fire from Hamas, a ceasefire was finally brokered by Egypt, entering into effect on May 21, 2am local time. Israel continued its bombings until the last minute. In the days after, Israeli police again entered the compound of Al-Aqsa mosque, firing tear gas and providing armed escorts to Jewish settlers who showed up in an act of provocation.
While the shelling may have stopped for now, the blockade and occupation have not. Gaza remains the world’s largest open-air prison, its residents unable to leave or rebuild, as generations continue to live in the ruins of one conflict after the other.
‘Israel’s right to defend itself’
A point often raised in Western political discourse is “Israel’s right to defend itself.” What of the Palestinian people? Do they not have a right to defend themselves? Are they expected to just tolerate apartheid, occupation and violence? How can a colonizer speak of defending themselves, when their very presence and occupation is an act of oppression? When one speaks of defense, then it is surely the unequivocal right of Palestinians to defend themselves, as millions of them remain stateless on their own land, dispossessed of their homes and human rights.
Israel claims to only target “terrorists” and “militants,” yet half the casualties, if not more, are always civilians. Decimating infrastructure and residential buildings is not defense. Leveling schools, hospitals, UN buildings and the offices of the international press is not defense. One of the most advanced militaries in the world unleashing its wrath on a civilian population without an army, let alone an air force or navy, is not defense. This is offense; it is cruel, barbaric aggression in its most violent form.
In a recent conversation I had with Palestinian Ambassador to Austria Salah Abdel-Shafi, he eloquently summarized how the Palestinian issue poses a fundamental problem for so-called Western liberal democracies who claim to champion human rights and equality, while giving Israel carte blanche as it denies Palestinians their human rights and levels their homes with no repercussion.
Israel is never held to account and sits above international and humanitarian law, annexing, colonizing and killing with impunity.
Its entire existence depends on ethnically cleansing Palestine and robbing Palestinians of their homes to make way for settlers from around the world. Israel wants to control the narrative around its actions, pretending that it is a victim and that this is all about Hamas.
This is naught but an attempt to reframe the occupation of Palestine and Israeli apartheid as something else in order to hide the oppression and inhumane behavior. What’s happening in Palestine is not a ‘war’ nor a ‘conflict’, it is a brutal military occupation which seeks to ethnically cleanse Palestine in order to make way for Jewish settlers. It’s colonization. The Palestinian cause is fundamentally rooted in human rights; in anti-imperialism and anti-racism. It is and always has been the story of resistance against colonizers.
Richard Medhurst is a British journalist born in Damascus. Owing to his coverage of international relations, US politics, the Middle East and Julian Assange extradition he has built a successful YouTube channel and hosts a program on Press TV.
Israel’s Friends overwhelm Capitol Hill
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • May 25, 2021
Yes folks, there is an international conspiracy and it is all about “protecting” Israel. It operates through front and lobbying groups that uniquely promote the interests of a foreign country, Israel, even when those interests do serious damage to the host country where the lobbyists actually live. In Britain, for example, there are a Conservative Friends of Israel and a Labour Friends of Israel, comprising together 216 members of parliament and party officials. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been silent about Gaza apart from expressing “deep concern” and blaming both sides while Labour leader Keir Starmer, who has also been under pressure to say something, has focused on how four car loads of alleged Palestinian supporters in London may or may not have driven around shouting out “anti-Semitic” comments. Starmer, one recalls, ran on a leadership campaign pledging to root out “anti-Semitism” in the party as a response to previous leader Jeremy Corbyn’s apparently ill-advised public recognition that Palestinians are human beings. Also in Britain, contesting details of the standard narrative of the so-called holocaust can result in a large fine and even some jailtime.
In 2017, Al-Jazeera ran an undercover operation directed against various Israeli front groups in Britain and in the US which determined that officers from the respective Israeli Embassies, presumably intelligence linked, were meeting regularly with members of the alleged non-government organizations that had been set up to provide support for the Jewish state. In Britain, the interaction included explicit discussions on how to destroy the careers of politicians who were deemed to be insufficiently pro-Israeli. In the US the objective has been to disrupt the activities of pro-Palestinian groups, most particularly the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The pro-Israeli and anti-Arab initiatives were coordinated with and sometimes initiated by the Israeli Embassy officers, suggesting that they were actually intelligence operations.
That many American Jewish groups are collaborating directly with the Israeli Embassy raises two concerns. First, it is ipso facto a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), which should require registration and complete transparency regarding one’s sources of income and interactions with the foreign embassy. And second, as many of the groups are in tax exempt status with the IRS as either charitable or educational foundations, that status should be rescinded given their foreign affiliation. Of course, the reality is that the Treasury Department has known all that and more for many years and has never taken any action relating to deceptive behavior by pro-Israel groups.
Elsewhere in Europe, “Holocaust denial” even if it only consists of challenging clearly fabricated “factual” details of the event can also land you in jail in Germany and France while criticizing the state of Israel is construed as anti-Semitism, a hate crime. Jewish groups have, in fact, promoted an official “International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance” (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which includes any criticism of Israel as a defining characteristic. The United States Department of State has accepted that definition and language.
Yes, the United States has an office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and it is always headed by a Jew, as has been also the office in the Justice Department that continues to be dedicated to rooting out 90 year old Nazis. Meanwhile, the Republican Party, most particularly in its Trump version, is so close to Israel that it might reasonably be regarded as part of the Israel Lobby. And the Democrats are not much better, though there has been some dissent from progressives, which has led to the creation of a Zionist pressure group within the party called the Democratic Majority for Israel. It exists to defend Israel against any and all criticism while also protecting the billions of dollars and other benefits that the Jewish state receives from the US Treasury and government annually.
One might speculate that there is a whole federal government infrastructure devoted to Jewish and Israeli issues. How did that develop? Well, of course, money is what has made it happen. American politicians have notoriously always been easily corruptible, all it takes is a little cash. But no one is allowed to point out that obvious truth as linking Jews to money is regarded, by Jews and their captive media of course, as some kind of “anti-Semitic trope.”
Now it appears that a ceasefire is more-or-less in place but Israel’s ethnic cleansing that preceded its high-tech slaughter of Palestinian civilians who were being deliberately targeted has been perceived by the world, including many Americans, as particularly brutal. Which means the Zionist propaganda plus coercion machine has been working full time. Capitol Hill offices and the White House have no doubt been inundated with calls, emails and visits from constituents, are now all singing the same song that was also being repeated by the President and Congress. It goes like this: “Israel is being attacked by Hamas terrorists and has a right to defend itself!” Sometimes there is a second verse which includes “The only democracy in the Middle East and America’s best friend and ally.”
Too bad that none of it is true, but the media also did its best to support the narrative by reporting how Hamas was launching “swarms” of rockets against Israel, making it appear as if a beleaguered Israel was valiantly defending itself against terrorist hordes. But the actual numbers told a different tale with only 12 Israelis killed after the violence erupted versus 232 Palestinians, including 65 children. Considerable infrastructure was also deliberately targeted and destroyed in Gaza versus limited damage in Israel while the calculated destruction of the building housing Associated Press (AP) and al-Jazeera should be seen as an attempt to eliminate any independent media observers on the ground in Gaza, even though AP predictably has hardly been critical of the Jewish state.
The Israel Lobby is, to be sure, expert at promoting and marketing its product. It is currently engaged in attacking celebrities and others who expressed any sympathy with the Palestinians while they were being slaughtered by the Israelis as anti-Semites. The larger and more openly combative Lobby groups like the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) have supporters in virtually every congressional district in the United States who can be called upon to get on the phone and start pouring out emails as needed. So every congress critter hears the call and knows what it means. And no one wants to have a hostile Israel Lobby on one’s back if there is any thought of being re-elected. In some cases, approaches include suggestions that significant donations to support one’s political campaign will either increase or be denied depending on what the legislator chooses to do or say.
And then there are the personal visits on Capitol Hill from the Israel lobbyists. The door is always open for the man or woman from AIPAC. Sometimes the Congressman is actually urged to sign a statement on his or her view of the conflict, a document carefully prepared in advance by The Lobby, of course. And the work by the Israel Firsters is almost always effective. Witness for example what took place concerning the assault on Gaza, where Congress and the White House tried to outdo each other in declaring how much they love Israel even though they don’t necessarily have to say or do anything as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did what he wanted anyway. Biden reportedly spoke with Netanyahu six times urging teethlessly “de-escalation” of the fighting but the Israeli each time insisted that he would continue the operation “mowing the grass” in Gaza until “its aim is met.”
The Israeli grip on the US government is and should be astonishing and one has to ask why the American people put up with it. They likely endure because they are unaware of the extent of it. If anyone still doubts the degree to which Jewish power is a major force in the United States it is only necessary as a test case to look at the Congressional and White House comments on Gaza, which served absolutely no American interest and which will only make the world even more anti-US due to the Administration’s enablement of the slaughter of the Palestinians. Washington’s UN Ambassador vetoed three Security Council resolutions calling for a cease fire, as is often the case, the only country to vote “no.”
Several aspects of the US role in the fighting particularly demonstrate the ability of Israel and its domestic lobby to get what they want from Washington even when it seems counterintuitive for the Administration and Congress to be falling in line. To be sure, 138 Congressmen and 29 Senators eventually signed onto letters urging a cease fire, but the texts tended to be generic, lacking any context, which means the recommendations were basically useless and not intended to go anywhere.
A highly partisan approach, in line with many of the comments by other government spokesmen, was reflected in a letter from Kevin McCarthy, the “leading Republican” (sic) in Congress, who released a statement confirming his allegiance to Israel. Part of it read:
“The ongoing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians show why America must act immediately to support Israel, condemn Hamas, and sanction those who fund terrorism. Instead of pressuring Israel to compromise with this terrorist group, Democrats should join Republicans in voting to cut off international funding for terrorists.
“That is why today, Rep. Brian Mast, a U.S. Army combat veteran who served alongside the Israel Defense Force (IDF), will push for a vote on the Palestinian International Terrorism Support Prevention Act of 2021.
“This bipartisan bill, which passed the House last Congress, would sanction foreign governments and individuals who fund Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, such as Iran.”
For starters, how exactly is it that a US Army combat veteran served alongside the Israeli Army? And now this great admirer of Israel is in Congress? Once upon a time one would lose US citizenship for serving in a foreign army. Mast must have missed something about swearing an oath to uphold the US Constitution, not Benjamin Netanyahu and his band of thugs and war criminals. And why are McCarthy and Mast including Iran in their indictment? Possibly because Tehran support of the Palestinian cause would be a pretext for another war? And what are McCarthy and Mast doing pledging anything at all to a foreign country which at the time was engaged in genocide?
Bad enough, but what is really appalling is the role of Joe Biden “the peacemaker” in hurriedly pushing through approval to provide the Israelis with $735 million dollars-worth of precision guided missiles, exactly the kind of weapon being used by Israel currently to kill Gazans. One might reasonably ask “What was Joe thinking?” but that raises the second question of “Was he thinking at all, apart from exercising knee jerk loyalty to Israel and its psychotic leader?” He did not have to provide more weapons to the Jewish state, which apparently was not running out of weapons of its own, but he did it anyway.
The United States already pays one fifth of Israel’s so-called “defense” budget and this extra contribution, as well as the funds provided annually to pay for Iron Dome defense, is on top of that. If there was any question whether the US was enabling the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians the question was surely answered by the decision made by the president, who knowingly provided US made weapons to be used by Israel to commit war crimes in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the US Arms Control Export Act and the existing Arms Supply Agreement between the US and Israel. He also was providing advanced tactical weapons to a country which is in violation of the Leahy Law due to its uninspected nuclear arsenal and is therefore ineligible for US government military assistance of any kind.
To be sure, some in Congress introduced a resolution to stop the weapons “sale” (a euphemism as Israel never pays for anything). Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib have proposed blocking the presidential authorization based on its one-sidedness and unsuitability when fighting is actually going on, but it was a futile gesture as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will surely let the bill die in committee. It will never reach the House floor for a vote. Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a similar resolution in the Senate which will likely suffer the same fate.
Tlaib has argued that “The US cannot continue to give the right-wing Netanyahu government billions each year to commit crimes against Palestinians. Atrocities like bombing schools cannot be tolerated, much less conducted with US-supplied weapons. To read the statements [from the Biden Administration] you’d hardly know Palestinians existed at all. No child, Palestinian or Israeli, whoever they are, should ever have to worry that death will fall from the sky. How many of my colleagues are willing to say the same, to stand for Palestinian human rights as they do for Israel? How many Palestinians have to die for their lives to matter?”
So it is all same old, same old. Biden, who boasts that American ties to Israel are “unbreakable,” has welcomed the cease fire in Gaza but it is at best a pause in what has become generational intercommunal warfare based on Israeli intentions to eliminate the Palestinians. And Biden will even be seen as having provided the weapons to further that process. Americans, who have no compelling interest in being involved at all apart from their domination by a ruthless Israel Lobby on foreign policy issues relating to the Middle East, will pay the piper as they rearm the Israelis and enable the next round of killing. Some believe that the tide of public opinion is turning against Israel due to its brutality, but I have my doubts as the Lobby has been in control for so long and knows exactly which buttons to push to get what it wants. That, the subversion and corruption of American democracy, is the real tragedy.
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 https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org
Has Palestine resistance won?
By Robert Inlakesh | Quds News Network | May 21, 2021
When this Friday’s ceasefire was announced between Palestinian resistance groups and ‘Israel’, there was only one side celebrating, the Palestinians, who had taken to the streets to celebrate a historic defeat of Israel’s military machine.
During the 11-day conflict between Gaza and ‘Israel’, 248 Palestinians in Gaza were killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, this included 66 children, 39 women and 17 elderly people, in addition to 1,948 people having sustained injuries. On the Israeli side, 12 casualties were reported, it is unclear how many Israeli soldiers were killed as ‘Israel’ goes to great lengths to cover this up. Despite the disparity in death statistics, which clearly indicate much greater Palestinian suffering, Israel’s military and politicians were left utterly embarrassed and defeated.
A Unified Palestinian Resistance To Occupation & Netanyahu’s Political Failure
The Israeli aggression against the people of Jerusalem, specifically with its provocative attacks on worshippers at al Aqsa Mosque, its backing of far-right fascist settlers and the planned expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, all triggered a nationwide Palestinian response.
For the first time, in such a forceful way, the Palestinian citizens of ‘Israel’ joined in with Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem and the diaspora, to confront ‘Israel’ with all means necessary. National strikes, confrontations with settlers, mass non-violent demonstrations, riots, lone-wolf armed attacks and the unified armed groups in Gaza all piled on ‘Israel’.
Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had originally backed the hard-line settlers in their provocative actions in order to keep himself aligned with his Religious Zionism Party allies and to maintain support from right wingers in general. He had just lost his mandate to form a coalition, which was handed over to his rival Yair Lapid to form an anti-Netanyahu coalition, a task delayed due to recent tensions, along with the PM’s corruption trial. It seems that Netanyahu thought he would be able to buy time politically through an escalation with Palestinians, yet miscalculated the scale of the response and found himself in an embarrassing predicament. Instead of gathering more support, Netanyahu has instead now further divided the Israeli political scene and has entered a game of pointing fingers, whilst the right-wing is condemning him for his defeat.
The armed resistance from the Gaza Strip also proved more challenging for ‘Israel’ this time around also, no matter what ‘Israel’ did and up until the last moments before the ceasefire, the resistance was firing rockets. The armed groups also revealed new weapons technology, including drones, unmanned submarines and new rockets capable of hitting any part of historic Palestine. The armed groups also fired on Israeli warships, gas pipelines, ports, electrical facilities, chemical plants, airfields, military bases and even gave curfews to be followed for residents of Tel Aviv, along with forcing Israel’s airports to close.
The response to Israel’s aggression in Jerusalem was aimed to have ‘Israel’ abandon its settler march planned to raid al-Aqsa compound, the Palestinian resistance achieved the goal of stopping this march. The goal of forcing ‘Israel’ to accept that Palestinians will retaliate and put it in its place when Jerusalem is under attack, was also reached.
The Palestinians are now more unified than ever, with all Palestinians, regardless of their political affiliation, standing together in order to confront their occupier. The ceasefire was also agreed to without ‘Israel’ having achieved any victory against the Palestinian resistance in any of the territories, they simply backed off when confronted with the might of a unified people.
The Israeli “Ground Invasion” of Gaza
The important takeaway from the latest round of tensions is that ‘Israel’ failed to put a dent in any of the Palestinian armed groups and instead turned to targeting Palestinian civilians. ‘Israel’ failed to launch a ground invasion and after announcing it, only then to back track, attempted to paint their failure to do so as the result of a cunning plan to eliminate Hamas tunnel systems.
Much of the mainstream Western Press, which originally had taken the word of ‘Israel’ that its ground troops had entered Gaza, on May 14, also without hesitation published Israel’s excuse as to why it hadn’t done so. It was claimed by the Israeli military that there had been a “miscommunication”, which later turned into Israel’s “cunning plot” to allegedly deal a killer blow to Hamas and its tunnel system.
Israeli analysts, such as Channel 13 TV’s Or Heller, began to claim that ‘Israel’ had tricked Hamas into believing the ground invasion was coming through media reports and drew militants into their complex web of tunnel networks. Then as the Israeli military claimed, it destroyed the tunnels utilising 130 warplanes, bombing the tunnels for a period of 40 minutes.
It sounds like a triumphant story, but there’s one small problem, there isn’t any evidence to suggest this happened at all, in fact all of the evidence points to the contrary. ‘Israel’ did move its reservists close to the separation lines, but not actually “on the border”, they were nowhere to be seen close to the physical barriers. The confusion which was caused also by the countless excuses provided before ‘Israel’ got its narrative together, as to explain what happened, should also invite more scepticism.
‘Israel’, despite having 24 hour drone surveillance, could not provide a single photo proving this alleged destruction of “hundreds of kilometres” of the “metro” tunnel system, nor were there any combatant deaths reported in Gaza from the strikes. On top of this, anyone who was actually following the news cycle closely, or who lives in Gaza, knows that residential areas were heavily targeted during these strikes in the north of Gaza, around Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, causing civilian deaths. The strategy which was observed on the ground in Gaza did in fact look like a ground invasion strategy, that is, the Israeli military flattens everything in sight so that it can move its ground forces into an area. Then we have the Hamas sources which reported to al-Jazeera Arabic, that they had thwarted an Israeli attempt to launch a ground invasion.
The credibility of the Israeli military is also very low, it was able to even hide the deaths of at least 5 soldiers – killed in February of 2018 – by the Salahudeen brigades (Palestinian armed group), being forced to admit the incident only after the armed group released video showing the armed attack in the month of November. It is also yet to release the proper statistics for its own military losses, soldier deaths, soldier injuries and most likely never will.
Then we next have to ask the question, if ‘Israel’ could actually pull off a successful ground operation, why didn’t it do so at any time. Why did the Israeli military also withdraw from most of the close by areas to the actual separation lines too, which has been shown by drone footage released by Palestinian armed factions? The answer is, ‘Israel’ cannot occupy Gaza and it understands that it likely can’t even defeat the ground forces of Hamas.
If ‘Israel’ had known where the tunnel system actually was, they would have had years to launch attacks on it and to prepare for confronting Hamas’ al-Qassam brigades and Islamic Jihads’ Saraya al-Quds, but resorted to killing civilians.
The truth is, Israel’s military are scared of entering Gaza, or even merely operating too close to Gaza. Israeli military and political leaders understand that high troop casualties will mean the end of them politically, so they do not dare risk it. This is the same case when it comes to dealing with Hezbollah in Lebanon, ‘Israel’ is petrified of confronting Lebanese Hezbollah, so much so that they place dummies along the border hoping to trick the enemy into striking dud targets so as to not escalate tensions.
If a ground invasion was possible, ‘Israel’ would have taken to this straight away, but it clearly was not. Israeli Premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been dealt a severe blow by this round of tensions and if a ground invasion would have been an option, he would have taken it to save his own political life.
Israel’s Only Real Military Strategy Was Targeting Civilians
The proof of what really happened is there, on the ground, in Gaza. Over 75,000 people displaced, around half of those killed were women and children, civilian infrastructure was also pummelled the most severely, not key military sites. Were there tunnels hit? Yes, but of real significance? No. ‘Israel’ bombarded areas like al-Wehda street in the more prosperous area of al-Rimal, in Gaza City, it also destroyed factories, agricultural lands, mosques, malls, medical clinics, water purification sites, electrical sites, hit schools, bookstores and the list goes on.
After Israel’s announcement of a ground invasion amounted to nothing, the strategy had clearly been to beat down the spirits of the people of Gaza. When they had done massacring scores of innocent civilians, and only killing around roughly 40 members of Palestinian resistance armed wings, they realised that their military “operation”, called “Guardian of the Walls”, was leading nowhere and ‘Israel’ was looking for a way out.
It is also important to note that of the members of armed factions killed in Gaza, ‘Israel’ murdered most of them whilst they were at home and not actively fighting, which means these were not legitimate military targets, especially as some of them were at home with their families. Israeli PM Netanyahu announced, in his first speech after the ceasefire agreement was reached, that around “200 terrorists” had been killed, but even the Israeli public knows this to be a blatant lie. Statistically, it’s impossible for ‘Israel’ to argue it killed a significant number of Palestinian fighters and what is perhaps most ridiculous, is that Netanyahu used images of bombed roads to try and prove he destroyed significant tunnels.
The conclusion that can be drawn from recent events, is that a unified Palestinian people can successfully put the Israeli regime in its place and prevent it from crossing red-lines. A new political awakening has taken place, a new set of rules have been established. This moment, will go down in history as an important marker in the road to the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of Palestinian human rights.
Third of British cabinet, including Boris Johnson, has been funded by Israel or pro-Israel lobby groups
By Matt Kennard • Declassified UK • May 22, 2021
While the UK government has been backing Israel’s intense bombing campaign in Gaza, Declassified can reveal that a third of cabinet ministers and the foreign minister responsible for the Middle East, have been courted by the Israeli government or pro-Israel lobby groups.
More than a third of the British cabinet, including Prime Minister Boris Johnson, has made overseas trips funded by the Israeli government or affiliated lobby groups, it can be revealed.
Of the 23 cabinet ministers, eight have been funded to visit Israel or Washington DC while members of parliament, to the tune of at least £14,000.
Johnson went on a five-day trip to Israel in November 2004, three years after he first entered parliament. It was jointly funded by the Israeli government and Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a powerful Westminster lobby group which does not disclose its funders but has claimed 80% of Conservative MPs are members.
CFI says it “works to promote its twin aims of supporting Israel and promoting Conservatism in the UK”.
Johnson did not declare the trip in his parliamentary register of interests until four years later, in 2008, and did not disclose the cost of the trip, which may be a breach of parliamentary standards. Former chancellor George Osborne, who was also on the trip, registered it two weeks after returning.
The only public record of the visit is an article in the Spectator magazine Johnson authored soon after, in which he refers to his “affable minder from the Israeli foreign office”.
In 2012, CFI organised a “battle bus” to take Johnson on a tour of north London as part of his London mayoral election campaign.
As mayor, in 2015, Johnson visited Israel again, saying on the trip there is “something Churchillian about the country” due to its “feats of outrageous derring-do”. Two years later, now foreign secretary, Johnson referred to the “miracle of Israel” at a CFI event.
Then Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, tastes spices during a visit at the Mahane Yehuda market on 10 November 2015, in Jerusalem, Israel. (Photo: Lior Mizrahi/Getty Images)
Five other ministers in the cabinet – Alok Sharma, Kwasi Kwarteng, Robert Jenrick, Oliver Dowden and Amanda Milling – took paid-for trips to Israel from 2011 to 2016. Kwarteng and Milling visited the year after they first entered parliament, while Dowden went before he became an MP.
A further two cabinet ministers, Michael Gove and Priti Patel, were funded to visit Washington DC to attend conferences put on by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the premier Israel lobby group in the US.
The UK government has been criticised for its backing of Israel’s bombing of schools, medical facilities, media organisations and residential towers in Gaza over the past 11 days.
At least 227 Palestinians in Gaza, including 121 civilians, have been killed since Israel’s bombardment began on 10 May, according to the health ministry in the territory. A ceasefire began early on Friday morning.
While the UK government repeatedly condemned the Palestinian group Hamas for firing rockets into Israel, it did not condemn Israel for launching hundreds of airstrikes on Gaza, an occupied territory.
At the height of the violence, Johnson said: “I am urging Israel and the Palestinians to step back from the brink and for both sides to show restraint. The UK is deeply concerned by the growing violence and civilian casualties and we want to see an urgent de-escalation of tensions.”
The UK government has so far refused to halt its arms exports to Israel and significant cooperation with the country’s military, which has deepened in recent years.
AIPAC
The home secretary, Priti Patel, was given £2,500 by the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) in 2013 to be a delegate at a “forum” organised by AIPAC.
The London-based HJS does not disclose its funders but has a staunch pro-Israel position and close links to Israel. At least two HJS staffers have moved directly from the group to working for the Israeli foreign ministry, while the group’s executive director, Alan Mendoza, was a founding director of the Friends of Israel Initiative.
Patel was on the HJS’s “political council” in 2013, leaving at some point in 2016, and also previously served as parliamentary officer of CFI. She was later forced to resign as a minister in David Cameron’s government after it emerged she held secret meetings with several Israeli politicians during a “family holiday” to Israel in August 2017.
The meetings, including one with prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, were arranged by Lord Polak, the honorary president of CFI.
The head of the Cabinet Office, Michael Gove, is also closely associated with CFI and has spoken at its annual business lunch, describing Israel as a “light to the world” and “an inspiration”.
In 2017, Gove received over £3,000 from AIPAC to speak at its conference in Washington DC. The Henry Jackson Society also contributed to this trip. The previous year, the HJS had paid another £2,764 for Gove to fly to New York to pick up an award from pro-Israel newspaper, The Algemeiner Journal.
UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab is also closely associated with the HJS, having also sat on the group’s “political council” while minister for justice. It is not known what membership of this council involves or if Raab is still a member.
‘Fact-finding delegation’
In 2011, the year after he entered parliament, Kwasi Kwarteng, now minister for business, was funded by the Israeli foreign ministry to visit Israel, in a trip costing £1,242.
The other visits by now serving cabinet ministers were funded by CFI, and were mostly described as being part of a “fact-finding political delegation to Israel and the West Bank”. They lasted up to six days and cost between £1,500 and £2,000.
It is not known if the MPs were given Israeli “handlers” during their visits like Johnson, but the Israeli government is known to be involved in programming such trips.
The current minister for the COP26 climate negotiations, Alok Sharma, made a CFI-sponsored trip to Israel in 2013, while Oliver Dowden, now culture minister, went the following year.
In 2016, Robert Jenrick, now minister for housing and local government, visited alongside Amanda Milling, the current minister without portfolio, who had entered parliament the previous year.
According to CFI: “The centrepoint of the [2016 CFI] visit was a high-profile meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the announcement of the UK Government’s plans to stop local councils boycotting Israel.”
This announcement was made by Matt Hancock, then head of the Cabinet Office whose trip to Israel coincided with the CFI delegation. Hancock is now health secretary.
The CFI group also met then British ambassador to Israel, David Quarrey, at his residence in Tel Aviv. Quarrey is now Johnson’s international affairs adviser.
Robert Jenrick later called Israel “one of the great achievements in human history” at a CFI event. He told parliament last week that the UK government supports the idea that “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism”, a controversial position that could be regarded as itself anti-Semitic as it conflates all Jewish people with the state of Israel.
Meanwhile, the current Attorney General, Michael Ellis, who is not a minister but attends cabinet, went on a CFI-funded trip to Israel in 2014. Current foreign minister James Cleverly visited the following year, just three months after first entering parliament.
On his 2015 trip, Cleverly said: “Israel is an amazing country, there’s no doubt about that.” Now minister for the Middle East, Cleverly on Wednesday provided strong support for the Israeli bombing campaign in Gaza.
He told parliament: “The UK unequivocally condemns the firing of rockets at Jerusalem and other locations within Israel,” adding: “We strongly condemn these acts of terrorism by Hamas and other terrorist groups who must permanently end their incitement and rocket fire against Israel. There is no justification for the targeting of civilians.”
Cleverly also told parliament that his government opposes an International Criminal Court enquiry into Israeli war crimes in the occupied territories and continues to reject calls to halt arms exports to Israel and recognise a Palestinian state.
Aside from trips to Israel paid for by lobby groups, other members of Johnson’s cabinet have been funded by pro-Israel individuals. Defence secretary Ben Wallace has received a donation to his constituency party from Lord Steinberg, the founder and president of the Northern Ireland Friends of Israel group until his death in 2009.
Meanwhile, Liz Truss, minister for international trade, in 2015 received a donation from David Meller, a British businessman who was a director of CFI from 2012 to 2014. Meller has also donated to Michael Gove. DM
Matt Kennard is head of Investigations at Declassified UK, an investigative journalism organisation that covers the UK’s role in the world.
Weakened Israeli Immunity?
By Stephen Lendman | May 22, 2021
Did Netanyahu go too far this time?
Did he shoot himself in the foot for massacring Gazan civilians — and by doing so generate mass pro-Palestinian protests in cities worldwide?
Did his international support weaken for terror-bombing and shelling residential neighborhoods on the phony pretext of claiming that Hamas used families and others as human shields?
Is his Western and regional media support diminished for targeting their Gazan facilities to silence them?
Did he generate widespread international anger for destroying Gazan infrastructure essential to sustain life and well-being, for striking medical facilities and much more in Gaza intensively?
For time immemorial, US and other Western media provided one-sided support for Israel, including earlier wars on Gaza and against Syria and Lebanon.
Did 11 days in May change things — even if only partially?
Did it put a chink in longstanding Israeli impregnability?
Days earlier, the most always pro-Israel NYT said the following:
The IDF “damaged 17 hospitals and clinics in Gaza, wrecked its only coronavirus test laboratory, sent fetid wastewater into its streets and broke water pipes serving at least 800,000 people, setting off a humanitarian crisis that is touching nearly every civilian in the crowded enclave of about two million people,” adding:
“Sewage systems inside Gaza have been destroyed.”
“A desalination plant that helped provide fresh water to 250,000 people in the territory is offline.”
“Dozens of schools have been damaged or closed, forcing some 600,000 students to miss classes.”
“Some 72,000 Gazans have been forced to flee their homes.”
“And at least 213 Palestinians have been killed, including dozens of children.”
“The level of destruction and loss of life in Gaza has underlined the humanitarian challenge in the enclave, already suffering under the weight of an indefinite blockade by Israel and Egypt even before the latest conflict.”
The above and more that followed was sharp criticism of Israel rarely ever reported about a US allied state.
On Friday, NBC News said “Israel-Gaza cease-fire doesn’t mean the IDF should be excused for striking health facilities.”
“Even if the fighting soon stops, not holding Israel to account for potential war crimes green-lights future heinous attacks.”
At times of war, civilians are protected persons under international law.
Targeting and “preventing them from receiving effective care for their wounds compounds their suffering,” NBC News added.
WaPo has been notably critical of Israeli aggression this month.
An opinion piece it published by Columbia University Professor of Arab Studies Rashid Khalidi said the following last week:
Days of Israeli aggression on Gaza reflect “the latest episode in the hundred-plus year war on Palestine,” adding:
“Israel’s brutal actions in and around Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque, and its attempts to forcibly displace Palestinians in the nearby neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, were triggers for another violent, asymmetrical confrontation” between Israel’s powerful military and Palestinians armed with no more than crude rockets and their redoubtable will to resist oppression.
What went on for days and continues throughout the Occupied Territories through daily oppression of Palestinians has nothing to do with “riot(ing)” or a “real estate dispute” as phony Israeli “talking points” claimed, Khalidi explained.
It’s all about pursuing Israel’s longstanding aim for maximum Jews and minimum Arabs throughout all valued parts of historic Palestine — notably to assure that the world community recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s exclusive capital.
On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 181.
The Palestine Partition Plan granted 56% of historic Palestine to Jews (with one-third of the population), 42% to Palestinians.
Jerusalem was designated an international city under a UN Trusteeship Council.
Res. 181 also called for an Independent Arab state by October 1, 1948.
It called for “all governments and peoples to refrain from taking any action which might hamper or delay the carrying out of these recommendations.”
The Security Council was and continues to be empowered with “necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation.”
Security Council (SC) Resolution 242 (1967) called for an end of conflict and withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the Occupied Territories.
The UN Charter, Fourth Geneva, and other international laws protect the rights of everyone everywhere, including Palestinians and other oppressed people.
Like the US and West, Israel operates exclusively by its own rules.
A permanent state of war by hot and other means has existed by Israel against Palestinians for nearly three-fourths of a century — with no end of it in prospect.
WaPo contributors Noura Erakat and Mariam Barghouti said Israel’s intention to expel Palestinian Sheikh Jarrah residents from their East Jerusalem homes and land “highlights the violent brazenness of (its) colonialist project.”
WaPo contributor Michael Chabon accused Israel of “violat(ing) the Fourth Geneva Convention, which limits the duration of military occupation to a year and prohibits an occupying power from transferring its own citizens to occupied territory.”
WaPo accused Israel of “leav(ing) Gaza in shambles.”
Questioning Netanyahu’s future, it said “Jerusalem is on verge of erupting again” because of Israeli violence on its people straightaway after agreeing to ceasefire in Gaza.
According to Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman Mohammad Fityani, Israeli forces on Friday injured 21 Palestinians in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque, adding:
Similar confrontations occurred throughout the West Bank.
WaPo quoted Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh, saying:
“Our people rose up… to defend the al-Aqsa Mosque with their bare chests, and to prove to the whole world that (East) Jerusalem is (the exclusive Palestinian capital), and that Al-Aqsa is a red line.”
WaPo quoted Oxfam’s policy officer in Gaza Laila Barhoum, last week saying:
“We dread the darkness of the night, when you can no longer tell where or how close the black smoke is” from Israeli missiles and shells.
“You can only hear it, feel it and, if you’re lucky, survive it.”
“So, we gather together, support each other and tell ourselves that we will survive the night.”
“And we wait for the condemnation from the international community — condemnation that never comes,” notably not from the West.
WaPo contributor Raphael Mimoun said “(t)he Israeli occupation of the West Bank is, by every definition, apartheid: two legal systems for two ethnic groups.”
“Zionism cannot produce a just peace. Only external pressure can end Israeli apartheid.”
The above and more like it in WaPo and in other US media editions expressed uncharacteristically harsh criticism of Israel.
Does it reflect a crack in its longstanding invulnerability to justifiable criticism?
Or is it the emotional response of the moment that’s likely to pass in the days and weeks ahead?
A Final Comment
Al Jazeera stressed that 11 days of Israeli bombardment… left (Gaza) in ruins,” adding:
The Biden regime “faced unprecedented criticism for failing to demand an immediate ceasefire to end Israel’s devastating bombing campaign, instead putting out what rights advocates described as milquetoast statements reaffirming Washington’s unequivocal support for Israel.”
Following ceasefire on Friday, “(w)hat’s Biden’s plan” for besieged Gazans and Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories?
Al Jazeera quoted Nader Hashemi, director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver saying:
“There’s zero (US) plan” — other than supplying Israel with more heavy weapons and munitions for further war at its discretion against Palestinians and neighboring states.
Hashemi also stressed that “the more Israel is coddled, supported, and sustained (by the US and West), the more belligerent and intransigent (it) becomes” — knowing it can do what it pleases unaccountably.
Israel bombing destroys water supplies of 20% of Gaza residents
MEMO | May 20, 2021
Israeli forces have deliberately targeted two water pipelines in the Al-Saftawi area cutting supplies to 20 per cent of the residents of Gaza City, the municipality said in a statement today.
“The Israeli air strikes on Al-Saftawi area last night damaged two main water pipelines feeding the northwestern residential areas,” the statement said.
“The Municipality of Gaza regrettably confirms that the bombing of these two water pipelines, one of which serves more than 200,000 citizens, leaves them with no water supply and aggravating the water crisis that the city suffers due to the deliberate targeting of its infrastructure,” the statement said.
The municipality of Gaza has begun inspecting the destruction and creating temporary solutions to reduce the water crisis caused by the destruction.
It went on to renew its condemnation of the deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure, buildings and vital facilities.
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From the Archives
A low-fat, high-carb diet has been the largest public health experiment in history. It’s past time for a rethink.
By Malcolm Kendrick | RT | November 25, 2020
New research suggests that four billion people globally will be overweight in 2050. This trend can be traced back to the ‘low-fat, high-carb’ guidelines first issued in the 70s, and should prompt a major U-turn on dietary advice.
A recent report from the Potsdam Institute predicts that by 2050 there will be four billion overweight people in the world, with one-and-a-half billion of them obese. This is not entirely surprising. The world has been getting fatter for years, and things do not seem to be slowing down.
Why is this happening? … continue
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