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BDS founder unable to attend UK Labour event due to visa delay

MEMO | September 22, 2019

Co-founder of Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) will be unable to speak at an event at the UK Labour Party’s upcoming annual conference due to his visa request being delayed, according to Palestine Post 24

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), a pro-BDS group hosting the event on the sidelines of the Labour conference in Brighton, said on Friday that Omar Barghouti would instead address the gathering by video due to the UK government’s “unexplained, abnormal delay” in issuing him a visa.

“The unprecedented delay in processing Barghouti’s travel visa application by the British government is part and parcel of the growing efforts by Israel and its allies to suppress Palestinian voices and the movements for Palestinian rights,” PSC said in a statement.

Barghouti had been set to speak at the “Palestine in the age of Trump” event alongside Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott and Unite union chief Len McCluskey, both allies of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

“They fear our shining a light of truth that reveals their lies. They dread our tireless quest for freedom, justice and equality,” Barghouti said, according to the PSC statement.

There was no immediate comment from the UK Home Office, which handles visa requests.

Earlier this year, Barghouti was denied entry to the US for a multi-city speaking tour.

The Arab American Institute said at the time that Barghouti, a resident of Acre who is married to an Arab Israeli and holds Israeli permanent resident status, was not provided an explanation for his denial of entry beyond being told it was an “immigration matter.”

James Zogby, the head of the Arab American Institute, called Barghouti’s ban an “arbitrary political decision,” and accused the Trump administration of working to “silence Palestinian voices.”

Israel has barred Barghouti from leaving the county a number of times in recent years by refusing to renew travel documents granted to Palestinian residents of Israel who do not have full citizenship.

The BDS campaign, a non-violent movement, advocates boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

September 22, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

On the liberty to teach, pursue, and discuss knowledge without restriction

By Gilad Atzmon | September 22, 2019

It didn’t  take long for the American Administration to crudely interfere with an open society’s most sacred ethos, that of academic freedom. We learned this weekend that the US Department of Education has ordered Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to remake their joint Middle East studies program after concluding that they were offering students “a biased curriculum that, among other complaints, did not present enough “positive” imagery of Judaism and Christianity in the region.”

Academic freedom is a relatively simple principle. It refers to the ”liberty to teach, pursue, and discuss knowledge without restriction or interference, as by school or public officials.”

This principle seems to be under attack in America. The American administration has openly interfered with the liberty to freely teach, pursue and discuss knowledge.

The New York Times writes: “in a rare instance of federal intervention in college course content, the department asserted that the universities’ Middle East program violated the standards of a federal program that awards funding to international studies and foreign language programs.”

According to the NYT the focus on ‘anti Israeli bias’ “appears to reflect the views of an agency leadership that includes a civil rights chief, Kenneth L. Marcus, who has made a career of pro-Israel advocacy and has waged a years long campaign to delegitimize and defund Middle East studies programs that he has criticized as rife with anti-Israel bias.”

One may wonder why America is willing to sacrifice its liberal ethos on the pro Israel altar? Miriam Elman provides a possible answer. Elman is an associate professor at Syracuse University and executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which opposes BDS. Elman told the NYT that this “should be a wake-up call… what they’re (the Federal government presumably) saying is, ‘If you want to be biased and show an unbalanced view of the Middle East, you can do that, but you’re not going to get federal and taxpayer money.”

In Elman’s view academic freedom has stayed intact, it is just the dollars that will be withheld unless a university adheres to pro Israel politics.

Those who follow the history of Zionism, Israeli politics and Jewish nationalism find this latest development unsurprising. Zionism, once dedicated to the concept of a “promised land,” morphed decades ago into an aspiration toward a ‘promised planet.’ Zionism is a global project operating in most, if not all, Western states. Jewish pressure groups, Zionist think tanks and Pro Israel lobbies work intensively to suppress elementary freedoms and reshape the public, political and cultural discourse all to achieve Zionism’s ambitious goal. After all, Jewish power, as I define it, is the power to suppress criticism of Jewish power.

This authoritarian symptom is not at all new. It is apparently a wandering phenomenon. It has popped out in different forms at different times. What happened in the USSR provides a perfect illustration of this  symptom. In the early days of Soviet Russia, anti-Semitism was met with the death penalty as stated by Joseph Stalin in answer to an inquiry made by the Jewish News Agency : “In the U.S.S.R. anti-semitism is punishable with the utmost severity of the law as a phenomenon deeply hostile to the Soviet system. Under U.S.S.R. law active anti-semites are liable to the death penalty.”

In the Weimar Republic, Jewish anti defamation leagues attempted to suppress the rise in anti Jewish sentiments in the 1920s. There’s no need to elaborate on the dramatic failure of these efforts in Germany. And despite Stalin’s early pro-Jewish stance, the Soviet leader turned against the so- called “rootless cosmopolitans.” This campaign led to the 1950s Doctors’ plot, in which a group of doctors (mostly Jewish) were subjected to a show trial for supposedly having plotted to assassinate the Soviet leader.

In Britain and other Western nations we have seen fierce pro Israel campaigns waged to suppress criticism of Israel and Jewish politics. Different lobbies have been utilizing different means amongst them the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism by governments and institutions. In Britain, France, Germany and other European countries, intellectuals, artists, politicians, party members and ordinary citizens are constantly harassed by a few powerful Jewish pressure groups. In dark Orwellian Britain 2019, critics of Israel have yet to face the death sentence, but they are subjected to severe reprisals ranging from personal intimidation to police actions and criminal prosecution. People have lost their jobs for supporting Palestine, others have been expelled from Corbyn’s compromised Labour Party for making truthful statements. Some have even been jailed for satirical content. And as you might guess, none of this has made Israel, its supporters or its stooges popular. Quite the opposite.  

I learned from the NYT that the administration “ordered” the universities’ consortium to submit a revised schedule of events it planned to support, a full list of the courses it offers and the professors working in its Middle East studies program. I wonder who in the administration possesses the scholarly credentials to assess the academic level of university courses or professors? Professor Trump himself, or maybe Kushner & Ivanka or Kushner’s coffee boy Avi Berkovitch, or maybe recently retired ‘peace maker’ Jason Greenblatt?

It takes years to build academic institutions, departments, libraries and research facilities. Apparently, it takes one determined lobby to ruin the future of American scholarship.

September 22, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

All Points Alert: Killer State at Large

By Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle | September 20, 2019

The most important news coming out of occupied Palestine last week was not the blow delivered to Benyamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu or Gantz, it will be business as usual, now that the elections are over: more attacks on Gaza, possibly a large-scale war on Gaza, possibly a war on Lebanon, or Iran, who would know, as Israel always has a profusion of targets.

No, the most important news was not the elections but the killing of a Palestinian woman in the West Bank, only a few days after a 10-year-old boy, Abd al Rahman Yasir Shtewi, had been shot in the head by a soldier near the northern West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum during a demonstration over the closure of an access road. He was taken to hospital in critical condition.

The woman, Alaa Wahdan, was shot with an assault rifle as she walked towards a checkpoint near the Qalandiya refugee camp, built for refugees after the massacres and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Lydda and Ramle in 1948.

She was walking on the road, having missed the pedestrian lane allotted to the Palestinians. That was the crime for which she had to die. She was told to stop. According to the five heavily armed men who blocked her way, she pulled out a knife, a small yellow-handled thing photographed lying on the road. Alaa was five to seven meters away and the knife could have been knocked away with the butt of a gun but one of the armed men shot her instead, the bullet apparently severing an artery in her leg.

Alaa fell to the road and was left there unattended for half an hour, bleeding to death. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it was prevented from attending to her. The soldiers watched her drag herself along the roadside on her front, the blood pouring out of her body, leaving a long, wide red stain behind her. Not one of them made any attempt to comfort her or staunch the wound. They watched her bleed to death. They let her die, in line with unstated state policy.

Who Alaa was precisely, a mother, a sister, a daughter or an aunt, was of no interest to the occupiers. She was a down-page story in the media, not even worthy of being given a name, no more than the African ‘terrorists’ of the 1940s or 50s were worthy of being given a name by the British or French occupiers of their land who tortured and murdered them. In the words of Mickey Rosenfeld, the police gauleiter of occupied Jerusalem, she was no more than a “female terrorist” who was “injured moderately.” If this is so, Mr Rosenfeld, why did she die?

In the background, while Alaa crawled along the road, her lifeblood draining away, the spivs, the thieves and the war criminals quarreled over who should be next to take over the occupation of Palestine. The choice was between Netanyahu and Gantz, the outcome of the elections so close that the ‘kingmaker’ will be Avigdor Lieberman, the Moldovan immigrant who arrived in Palestine when he was 20 and lives with his wife and children on Palestinian land in the settlement of Nokdim.

Like Menahim Begin in the 1970s, Lieberman was once regarded as a thug and fanatic who would never make it into the mainstream of Zionist politics but as the mainstream has shifted further right year by year it finally reached him. He once advocated the bombing of the Aswan dam as a means of shutting up the Egyptians. He thinks the ‘Arab’ members of the Zionist ‘parliament’ are the allies of terrorists.

He wants Muslim and Christian Palestinians to be required to swear an oath of loyalty to a state which has declared itself to be a Jewish, which has practically stripped them bare of all they possess and which plans to keep going until nothing is left.

His philosophy can be summed up in his own words: “Whoever is against us there’s nothing to do …. We have to lift up an axe and remove his head … otherwise we won’t be here.” The option of handing back part of what has been stolen as a means of making peace is not even within his realm of thinking.

As for Netanyahu, his campaigning was nakedly racist. He warned against an ‘Arab’ party ending up in government and his Likud party stationed cameras outside polling booths to intimidate Palestinians and prevent them from voting. It didn’t work. They turned out in higher numbers than ever. It is the measure of this individual’s vile nature that he wanted to attack Gaza either to win or postpone the elections, riding to eventual victory over the bodies of more dead Palestinian men, women and children.

Gantz got in his way, but only for the same electoral reason, because he also is a killer of Palestinians, and currently the subject of prosecution in the Netherlands for the bombing of an apartment building in Gaza in 2014 which killed six members of the same family.

As the Palestinians well know, it makes no difference which of the parties is in power because their policies – more war, more killing, more settlements, with annexation now only a few steps away – are all the same.

The pathology of the Zionists puts them beyond reason. They do not connect up with any laws or values except their own and trying to reason with them on the basis of international law and universal values is a waste of time, pebbles thrown against the side of a tank.

In 2013 Mehdi Hassan interviewed Dani Dayon as the centerpiece of an Oxford Union debate. Until recently Dayon was the head of the Yesha settler council. Sitting in the front row, Ghada Karmi, born in Al Quds to a family that owns land on the West Bank taken over by foreign settlers like Dayon, had to endure the lies and delusions that flowed from this man’s mouth. Cutting through the arrogance and his smiling, self-assured attempts to deceive the audience, she told him what he actually was in her eyes and the eyes of the world – a common thief.

There is no mystery about what has ‘happened’ in Palestine. There is no ‘conflict of rights,’ ‘contested narratives’ or ‘disputed’ ownership. These are all propaganda phrases designed to conceal the indisputable reality. From the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, Palestine has been stolen by people whose moral right to stay there can only be conferred on them by the people whose land they have stolen. Had they ever accepted this principle, had they ever apologized for their crimes, had they agreed to share instead of wanting to take the lot, using all the brutal means at their disposal, this moral right could have been secured but they forfeited this possibility long ago, preferring endless war to the possibility of peace. There is no ‘two state’ solution in sight. Add it to the list of myths still being purveyed. There is no solution in sight at all, at least not one based on rational discussion and the application of international law.

There is no statute of limitations here. The land was stolen and will remain stolen no matter how long the Zionists hold it. There is no ‘land of Israel’. There is no ‘Temple Mount’ and no ‘tomb of the patriarchs’ in Hebron. These are all deceptions sitting atop a mountain of lies intended to bury the truth. There is Palestine, there is the Haram al Sharif, the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron, where the settler state pogrom against the Palestinians continues without pause, and countless other sites on the map, all of them occupied and renamed. Not a drop of water in the sea or a speck of sand on the beach belongs to the Zionists. It has all been stolen.

As soon as the elections were over, ‘kingmaker’ Lieberman, leading the party of Russian ‘immigrants’ to an illegally occupied land, started stitching together a ‘national unity’ government. As excited or as preoccupied with the process as the Zionist population of Palestine might be, there is no prospect of change for the Palestinians except change for the worse.

Gantz is as much a warmonger as Netanyahu or Lieberman and as the Palestinians will continue to resist occupation of their land where and when they can, as is their natural right and their right under international law, more large-scale violence is only a matter of time. In their arrogance the Zionists are ignoring all the warning signs, the cries of ‘death to Israel’ from the Houthis, the tens of thousands of missiles in Hizbullah’s armory and the determination of Iran to defend itself and its allies. The Zionists can kick the Palestinians around, but not these powerful enemies, who have behind them the support for Palestine of Muslims everywhere, not to speak of the numerous defenders of Palestine and Palestinian rights in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and many other countries.

The Zionists came to the Middle East as a ‘rampart’ of ‘western civilisation’ and that is where they have remained, on the ramparts, behind the palisades, the fences and the wall, fencing others out and fencing themselves in. They wanted to be in the Middle East but not of the Middle East. It was beneath them. They hijacked those aspects of its culture that suited them but looked down with contempt on the rest and they still do.

In any case, western domination was the accurate phrase, not western civilization. The ‘west’ has never been civilized, not in the Middle East or in any other lands against which it went to war and occupied. Rather, it has been utterly barbaric, as the word is generally understood, and Zionism has been part of that barbarism.

Not wanting to be part of the Middle East except on its own unacceptable terms, Zionism has to rely on powerful outside backers, a role currently filled by one of them, the United States. However, will it always be there to give the Zionist state the support it demands, will it always be capable of giving it the support it demands, will it ultimately be willing to put its own life on the line for a small state far away that is held in contempt by much of the world, not for bad reasons but for perfectly understandable ones, and one that is held in contempt as well by an increasing number of Americans?

Only arrogance could be the reason for the willingness of the Zionists to stake their future on such uncertainties, when for a small price, except in their own greedy eyes, they could have secured their place in the Middle East long ago. There is one other reason for their confidence, though, and that is their possession of nuclear weapons. At the worst, backs finally against the wall, they can take everyone down with them.

Take a serial killer out of the psychiatric ward, hand him a machine-gun and wait to see what happens. That is the prospect ahead of the Middle East as long as the Zionist state remains a killer at large.

– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press).

September 20, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation forces raid office of Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | September 19, 2019

Israeli occupation forces raided today, Thursday, 19 September 2019 at around 2:00am the office of Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association in Ramallah.

The Israeli forces stole five laptops, memory cards, three laptop memories, one laptop card, several books and additionally searching through the belongings of the office.

This is the third incident where the Israeli soldiers have raided the office, the first was in 2002 and the second incident was in 2012.

Addameer reassures that those constant raids will not stand in the face of any duties the organization has for Palestinian political prisoners. The organization will continue to support Palestinian prisoners to flight all human rights violations they suffer from including torture, arbitrary detention and unfair trails.

Addameer sees this raid as a part of ongoing and systematic attacks against the Palestinian civil society organization. Those attacks are targeting the organizations that have a role in facing the occupation’s violations and claiming accountability for those violations. This is additionally a part of the occupation’s campaign to shrink space, delegitimize and de-fund those human rights and civil society organizations.

September 19, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

On Criticism of Palestinian Resistance

By Eve Mykytyn | September 18, 2019

The Oxford definition of ‘terrorism’  is: “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.” Although the term could apply to the belligerents in many wars, the term ‘terrorism’ takes on its everyday meaning when violence is perpetuated by the weak in resistance to the powerful.

What other form of resistance is available to an oppressed people? One does not have to search hard to find a Jewish source begging for the peaceful resistance of a Palestinian Gandhi or King.

The request itself is odd, it invites a comparison to the conditions Gandhi and King fought, and is an implicit, although perhaps unintended,  admission that Israel represents another oppressive racist regime.

It takes chutzpah to complain about the form of resistance employed by the people you are oppressing. Why are the Palestinians obliged to meet violence with nonviolence? Certainly  you have to take your victims as they are.

Gandhi wrote about the uses of nonviolent resistance and King referred to Gandhi’s writings. For Gandhi and King nonviolence was not an end in itself, it was a strategy, a means to achieve a goal. Despite later deifications, neither Gandhi nor King was a saint, they were leaders who employed non violent resistance because it was effective under their circumstances.

Both men were vastly outpowered by the brutal regimes they opposed. Nonviolence did not allow them or their followers to escape injury or death, their battles required at least as much physical bravery as for any soldiers.

Both Gandhi and King deliberately provoked their enemies and then refused either to back down or to physically fight back. The decision to meet violence with nonviolent resistance was a powerful tool used to expose the brutality of the regime. The march to Selma would have amounted to little without the press. What they ‘achieved’ was an unforgettably painful display of violence. To the extent nonviolence succeeded for King, it was because the ‘soldiers’ on the other side gave Americans a clear picture of the savagery to which blacks were subjected. It became increasingly difficult for those who had long averted their eyes to claim ignorance.

One reason the Palestinians are portrayed as ‘failing’ to meet the standard set  by Gandhi or King is that their use of the tactic of nonviolence has not attracted sympathetic coverage, it has not been effective enough in exposing Israel’s brutality. There are, of course, numerous examples of peaceful Palestinian resistence. One example is commemorated on ‘Land Day’ remembering the day in 1976 that Israel killed peaceful Palestinian protestors. Another occurred during the first intifada, as Neve Gordon writes in 972, when the “Palestinians adopted massive civil disobedience strategies, including daily protests” against Israel’s occupation. Israel responded with violence and  mass incarcerations. While they could easily provoke violence through peaceful protest, the Palestinians could not win the media nor shame the Israelis into change.

This, of course, begs the question of control of the media. King  was extensively covered in the media. Do the Palestinians have access to the same? At best, Haaretz might decry the proportionality of Israel’s violence, but will it explore the true meaning of Palestinian protest, both the original and the ongoing taking of their property and destruction of their society? Would the international press do any better?

As I was writing this I realized that Palestinian nonviolent protests in Gaza have had perhaps a small effect on public opinion. The mainstream media in the US is universally favorable to Israel, but although they tried, the media was not entirely successful in creating sympathy for the  Israeli snipers. For example, The Guardian, in reporting that one year into the protest, the Israelis had killed 190 and wounded 28,000, noted that, “Children, journalists and medics have been killed, even when they were standing far back from the fence.”  Spin that one. Here’s an attempt by Eric Yoffe,  a self-described ‘liberal’ American Jew,  to justify killing protestors who had not killed a single Israeli. “If 100 Jewish bodies were strewn across southern Israel, would the American left more readily forgive Israel’s defensive actions against an angry mob of tens of thousands propelled by the murderous, anti-Semitic terrorists of Hamas?” This is simply a variation on the “I thought he was going to hit me so I hit him back first” defense. Perhaps the need to resort to such a  feeble rationale helps explain why we finally have a tiny Congressional support group for the Palestinians. Seventeen were so daring as to vote against an anti BDS bill.

Further, Israel has shown little sign that it is willing to change its basic  oppressive policies in response to any actions or restraint by the Palestinians. This is an interesting video in which Israeli ‘settlers’ are asked if they would move if told to do so by their government and knowing the move would mean peace in the region. Their responses are variations on “No, I would not, it is my land.” Perhaps they are merely following the lessons of their religion.

In the story of Exodus, recounted annually even by many secular Jews at Passover, Moses unsuccessfully begs the Pharaoh for his peoples’ freedom. The lesson to be learned: Jewish liberation comes only after Egyptian civilians are subjected to terrible brutality.

September 19, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Israelis Have Made their Verdict Clear: Benjamin Netanyahu’s Time is Up

There looms the possibility of weeks of horse-trading and the Joint List of Arab legislators becoming the official opposition

By Jonathan Cook | The National | September 18, 2019

For most Israelis, the general election on Tuesday was about one thing and one thing only. Not the economy, nor the occupation, nor even corruption scandals. It was about Benjamin Netanyahu. Should he head yet another far-right government, or should his 10-year divisive rule come to an end?

Barring a last-minute upset as the final ballot papers are counted, Israelis have made their verdict clear: Netanyahu’s time is up.

In April’s inconclusive election, which led to this re-run, Netanyahu’s Likud party tied with its main opponent in the Blue and White party, led by retired general Benny Gantz. This time Gantz appears to have nudged ahead, with 32 seats to Netanyahu’s 31 in the 120-member parliament. Both parties fared worse than they did in April, when they each secured 35 seats.

But much more significantly, Netanyahu appears to have fallen short of the 61-seat majority he needs to form yet another far-right government comprising settler and religious parties.

His failure is all the more glaring, given that he conducted by far the ugliest – and most reckless – campaign in Israeli history. That was because the stakes were sky-high.

Only a government of the far-right – one entirely beholden to Netanyahu – could be relied on to pass legislation guaranteeing him immunity from a legal process due to begin next month. Without it, he is likely to be indicted on multiple charges of fraud and breach of trust.

So desperate was Netanyahu to avoid that fate, according to reports published in the Israeli media on election day, that he was only a hair’s breadth away from launching a war on Gaza last week as a way to postpone the election.

Israel’s chief law officer, attorney general Avichai Mendelblit, stepped in to halt the attack when he discovered the security cabinet had approved it only after Netanyahu concealed the army command’s major reservations.

Netanyahu also tried to bribe right-wing voters by promising last week that he would annex much of the West Bank immediately after the election – a stunt that blatantly violated campaigning laws, according to Mendelblit.

Facebook was forced to shut down Netanyahu’s page on two occasions for hate speech – in one case after it sent out a message that “Arabs want to annihilate us all – women, children and men”. That sentiment appeared to include the 20 per cent of the Israeli population who are Palestinian citizens.

Netanyahu incited against the country’s Palestinian minority in other ways, not least by constantly suggesting that their votes constituted fraud and that they were trying to “steal the election”.

He even tried to force through a law allowing his Likud party activists to film in Arab polling stations – as they covertly did in April’s election – in an unconcealed attempt at voter intimidation.

The move appeared to have backfired, with Palestinian citizens turning out in larger numbers than they did in April.

US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, intervened on Netanyahu’s behalf by announcing the possibility of a defence pact requiring the US to come to Israel’s aid in the event of a regional confrontation.

None of it helped.

Netanayhu’s only hope of political survival – and possible avoidance of jail time – depends on his working the political magic he is famed for.

That may prove a tall order. To pass the 61-seat threshold, he must persuade Avigdor Lieberman and his ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party to support him.

Netanyahu and Lieberman, who is a settler, are normally ideological allies. But these are not normal times. Netanyahu had to restage the election this week after Lieberman, sensing the prime minister’s weakness, refused in April to sit alongside religious parties in a Netanyahu-led government.

Netanyahu might try to lure the fickle Lieberman back with an irresistible offer, such as the two of them rotating the prime ministership.

But Lieberman risks huge public opprobrium if, after putting the country through a deeply unpopular re-run election, he now does what he refused on principle to do five months ago.

Lieberman has nearly doubled his party’s seats to nine, by insisting that he is the champion of the secular Israeli public.

Most importantly for Lieberman, he finds himself once again in the role of kingmaker. It is almost certain he will shape the character of the next government. And whoever he anoints as prime minister will be indebted to him.

The deadlock that blocked the formation of a government in April still stands. Israel faces the likelihood of weeks of frantic horse-trading and even the possibility of a third election.

Nonetheless, from the perspective of Palestinians – whether those under occupation or those living in Israel as third-class citizens – the next Israeli government is going to be a hardline right one.

On paper, Gantz is best placed to form a government of what is preposterously labelled the “centre-left”. But given that its backbone will comprise Blue and White, led by a bevy of hawkish generals, and Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu, it would, in practice, be nearly as right wing as Netanyahu’s.

Gantz even accused Netanyahu of stealing his idea in announcing last week that he would annex large parts of the West Bank.

The difficulty is that such a coalition would depend on the support of the 13 Joint List legislators representing Israel’s large Palestinian minority. That is something Lieberman has rejected out of hand, calling the idea “absurd” early on Wednesday as results were filtering in. Gantz appears only a little more accommodating.

The solution could be a national unity government comprising much of the right: Gantz’s Blue and White teamed up with Likud and Lieberman. Both Gantz and Lieberman indicated that was their preferred choice on Wednesday.

The question then would be whether Netanyahu can worm his way into such a government, or whether Gantz demands his ousting as a price for Likud’s inclusion.

Netanyahu’s hand in such circumstances would not be strong, especially if he is immersed in a protracted legal battle on corruption charges. There are already rumblings of an uprising in Likud to depose him.

One interesting outcome of a unity government is that it could provoke a constitutional crisis by making the Joint List, the third-largest party, the official opposition. That is the same Joint List described by Netanyahu as a “dangerous anti-Zionist” party.

Ayman Odeh would become the first leader of the Palestinian minority to attend regular briefings by the prime minister and security chiefs.

Netanyahu will continue as caretaker prime minister for several more weeks – until a new government is formed. If he stays true to form, there is plenty of mischief he can instigate in the meantime.

September 18, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

UK minister vows to pressure councils and universities to adopt IHRA definition of anti-Semitism

MEMO | September 18, 2019

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s newly appointed Communities and Local Government Secretary, Robert Jenrick, has pledged to come down hard on local councils and universities that fail to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.

Jenrick made the pledge in a speech to the British Board of Deputies on Sunday, while also promising over $100,000 from the government to tackle anti-Semitism on social media and to go after supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

He said he will come down heavily on both local councils and universities that did not adopt the IHRA definition, which has been the source of controversy in the UK. Critics say the definition conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism and undermines free speech. Jenrick dismissed these concerns. He insisted that the “suggestions that the IHRA definition curtails legitimate criticism of the Israeli government is wrong and must be countered.”

The Representative for Newark said that he “will be writing to all councils insisting that they adopt the IHRA at the earliest opportunity and use it at all appropriate occasions — including in their disciplinary proceedings.”

In his comments regarding BDS, Jenrick alleged that the global non-violent movement was “divisive” and promised not to tolerate supporters of the movement on his watch. He expressed unease about the annual Israel Apartheid Week on campuses, and said he would look at the issue in his department.

Jenrick assured the Board of Deputies that he can be relied on to contact local councils as well as vice-chancellors of Britain’s universities who should expect to get a phone call from him to oblige them to adopt the IHRA definition.

September 18, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

Dutch court starts hearing in war crime case against Israel’s Gantz

Press TV – September 17, 2019

A Dutch court has held a hearing on a war crime case against a former Israeli general challenging incumbent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in ongoing general elections.

The Hague District Court weighed on Tuesday whether it should hear a lawsuit brought by a Palestinian man seeking compensation from Benny Gantz for his role in the killing of six of his relatives during the Israeli war on the besieged Gaza Strip in 2014.

On July 20, 2014, Ismail Ziada lost his mother, three brothers, a sister-in-law, and a 12-year-old nephew when their family home was bombed by the Israeli air force.

A visitor was also killed in the Israeli bombardment.

“I was shot at a very close range with a rubber coated metal bullet in the head. I witnessed another boy being shot in the head next to me, dying on the spot,” said Ziada about his encounters with the Israeli army.

Ziada, who now lives in the Netherlands, filed a civil lawsuit in 2018 seeking damages from Gantz, who was the chief of staff of Israel’s military at the time of the bombing, and the then-air force commander Amir Eshel.

Ziada says the attack violated international humanitarian law because it deliberately targeted civilians.

The Tuesday session addressed a motion filed by Gantz and Eshel’s lawyers asking the court to dismiss the case. They argued the ex-commanders were immune because the Dutch court had no jurisdiction over the case.

Ahead of the hearing, Ziada’s lawyer, Liesbeth Zegveld, said Palestinians from Gaza could not receive fair treatment in Israeli courts.

Dutch courts can exercise universal jurisdiction over war crimes, provided the accuser cannot get a fair trial elsewhere.

Israel launched several wars on the Palestinian coastal sliver, the last of which began in early July 2014. The military aggression, which ended on August 26, 2014, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians. Over 11,100 others were also wounded in the war.

The Gaza Strip has been under Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

September 17, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Apartheid Made Official: Deal of the Century is a Ploy and Annexation is the New Reality

By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | September 17, 2019

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is moving quickly to alter the political reality in Palestine, and facing little or no resistance.

On September 10, Netanyahu declared his intentions to annex swathes of Palestinian land adjacent to the Jordan River, an area that covers 2,400 square kilometers, or nearly a third of the Occupied West Bank. That region, which extends from Bisan in the north to Jericho in the south, is considered to be Palestine’s food basket, as it accounts for an estimated 60 percent of vegetables that are produced in the West Bank.

While Israel has already colonized nearly 88 percent of the entire Palestinian Ghoor (or Jordan Valley), dividing it between illegal agricultural settlements and military zones, it was always assumed that the militarily occupied region will be included within the border of a future Palestinian state.

Netanyahu’s announcement has been linked to Israel’s general elections of September 17. The Israeli leader is desperate, as he is facing “unprecedented alliances” that are all closing in to unseat him from his political throne. But this cannot be all. Not even power-hungry Netanyahu would alter the political and territorial landscape of Israel and Palestine indefinitely in exchange for a few votes.

Indeed, talks of annexation have been afoot for years and have long preceded the September elections or the previous ones in April.

A sense of euphoria has been felt among Israel’s rightwing officials since the advent of Donald Trump to the White House. The excitement was not directly linked to Trump but to his Middle East team, like-minded pro-Israel US officials whose support for Israel is predicated on more than personal interests, but religious and ideological beliefs as well.

White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, selected his team very carefully: Jason Greenblatt as special envoy for Middle East peace, David Friedman as United States Ambassador to Israel, and layers of other second-tier officials whose mission was never aimed at resolving conflict or brokering peace, but supervising a process in which Israel finalizes its colonization of Palestine unhindered.

Kushner’s masterstroke is epitomized in the way he presented his objectives as part of a political process, later named “Deal of the Century”.

In all fairness, Kushner’s team hardly labored or even pretended to be, peacemakers, especially as they oversaw the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and of the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territories. Indeed, none of these officials tried to hide their true motives. Just examine statements made by the just-resigned Greenblatt where he refused to name illegal Jewish settlements as such, but as “neighborhoods and cities”; and Friedman’s outright support for the annexation of parts of the Occupied West Bank, and much more.

The US political discourse seemed in complete alignment with that of Israel’s right-wing parties. When right-wing extremist politicians, the likes of Naftali Bennett and Ayelet Shaked, began floating the idea of annexing most or all of the Occupied West Bank, they no longer sounded like marginal and opportunistic voices vying for attention. They were at the center of Israeli politics, knowing full well that Washington no longer had a problem with Israel’s unilateral action.

It could be argued, then, that Netanyahu was merely catching up, as the center of gravity within his right-wing coalition was slipping away to younger, more daring politicians. In fact, Israel, as a whole, was changing. With the Labor Party becoming almost entirely irrelevant, the Center’s political ideology moved further to the right, simply because supporting an independent Palestinian state in Israel has become a form of political suicide.

Therefore, Netanyahu’s call for the annexation of Palestinian land east of the Jordan River must not be understood in isolation and only within the limited context of the Israeli elections. Israel is now set to annex large parts of the West Bank that it deems strategic. This is most likely to include all illegal settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley as well.

In fact, Netanyahu said on September 11 that he was ready to annex the Jordan Valley region even before the election date, but was blocked by the Attorney General’s office. Netanyahu would not have taken such a decision if it represented a political risk or if it faced pushback from Washington. It is, then, sadly, a matter of time.

Suspiciously absent in all of this are the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Arab League, the European Union and, of course, the United Nations and its many outlets and courts. Aside from a few shy statements – like that of the spokesperson of the UN, Stéphane Dujarric, decrying that “unilateral actions are not helpful in the peace process” – Israeli leaders are facing little or no hindrance whatsoever as they finalize their complete colonization of all Palestinian land.

Unable to stage any kind of meaningful resistance against Israel, the Palestinian leadership is so pathetically insisting on utilizing old terminologies. The official Palestinian response to Netanyahu’s annexation pledge, as communicated by Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, came only to underscore the PA’s political bankruptcy.

“Netanyahu is the chief destroyer of the peace process,” Shtayyeh said, warning that annexing parts of the West Bank would have negative consequences.

For his part, the PA leader Mahmoud Abbas resorted, once more, to empty threats. Abbas said in a statement, “All agreements and their resulting obligations would end if the Israeli side annexes the Jordan Valley, the northern Dead Sea, and any part of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967.”

Neither Abbas nor Shtayyeh seem troubled by the fact that a “peace process” does not exist, and that Israel has already violated all agreements.

While the PA is desperately hanging on to any reason to justify its continued existence, Netanyahu, with the full support of Washington, is moving forward in annexing the West Bank, thus making apartheid an official and undisputed reality.

The Palestinian leadership must understand that the nature of the conflict is now changing. Conventional methods and empty statements will not slow down the Israeli push for annexation nor Tel Aviv’s determination to expand its apartheid to all of Palestine. If Palestinians continue to ignore this reality altogether, Israel will continue to single-handedly shape the destiny of Palestine and its people.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. His last book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’, and his forthcoming book is ‘These Chains Will Be Broken: Palestinian Stories of Struggle and Defiance in Israeli Prisons’. Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a non-resident research fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Zaim University in Istanbul. His website is www.ramzybaroud.net.

September 17, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Will pro-Israel rabbi heading top theology center change its direction?

Will pro-Israel rabbi heading top theology center change its direction?

Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, with a history of advocating for Israel despite its many human rights abuses, is about to be inaugurated president of the ‘most comprehensive center for the graduate study of religion in North America’ – a ‘mostly-Christian’ center with a focus on peace and justice. Lehmann has already opposed a prominent Muslim professor and aired misgivings about America’s first Muslim college, located right across the street…

By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | September 16, 2019

On October 24th, Rabbi Daniel Lehmann will be inaugurated as the President of the Graduate Theology Union (GTU), reportedly “the most comprehensive center for the graduate study of religion in North America.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), reports GTU is a “mostly Christian theology center,” stating that it is “a consortium of more than 20 mostly Christian institutions.”

Located in Berkeley, California, GTU is known for its focus on world peace and social justice.

Its website emphasizes that it is “more than a school of theology” and “more than a graduate school.” It works to educate “innovative leaders for the academy, religious organizations, and the nonprofit sector” in ways that will equip them to build “a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world.”

In the announcement naming Lehmann as the new president, GTU board chair Susan Cook said: “Rabbi Daniel Lehmann is unquestionably the right person to lead the Graduate Theological Union in its interreligious engagement of the critical issues of our time.”

Lehmann supports Israel despite its human rights violations

Regarding one of those critical issues – Israel/Palestine – Rabbi Lehmann’s past history and current statements suggest that he brings a perspective opposed, at least on this issue, to GTU’s avowed goal of justice and peace.

Rabbi Lehmann has a long history of advocating for Israel in spite of its violations of international law and human rights (he calls himself a “Zionist”), and publicly opposes the international nonviolent protest movement to boycott Israel over those violations, known as “BDS” –  Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. According to its website, “BDS is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.” (Lehmann’s statements are quoted extensively below.)

Numerous highly respected humanitarian organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Christian Aid, the Red Cross, Unicef, the National Lawyers Guild and many others have documented Israel’s long record of human rights violations and systemic discrimination.

Israel was established in 1948 through a war of ethnic cleansing, as Israeli historian Ilan Pappé and many others have documented.

It then instituted a discriminatory system in which most of the previous inhabitants, largely Muslim and Christian, were either forced out of the new state or treated as second-class citizens.

In 1967 Israel launched a war against its neighbors, resulting in the military occupation of the rest of Mandatory Palestine. Ever since, it has oppressed the inhabitants of what are now called the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israeli forces invade Palestinian towns and villages, demolish homes, abduct people, raze farmland, and more on a weekly and often a daily basis.

Israel has also steadily confiscated more and more Palestinian land to create Jewish-only settlements, which are illegal under international law, and perpetrated major military invasions of Gaza that have killed and injured thousands of civilians, including numerous children.

Antipathy toward Muslim college & professor

Furthermore, some of Rabbi Lehmann’s statements seem unbecoming to a leader of interfaith programs.

While Rabbi Lehmann is the past president of a Jewish college, he appears ill-disposed toward a Muslim college across the street from GTU and verbally attacked one of its professors: a respected, decades-long member of Berkeley’s peace and social justice community – a faculty member at UC Berkeley who is also a leader in the Muslim community.

In a 2018 interview with Rabbi Lehmann after he had been named GTU head, Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) asked him: “What do you expect will be the biggest challenges in your new position?”

Lehmann replied:

“UC Berkeley, from a BDS perspective, is a challenging place. GTU is only a block off the Berkeley campus, and I suspect there will be times in which what happens there will impact me and others at GTU.”

Lehmann was referring to the fact that Berkeley’s student senate has twice passed pro-BDS resolutions. (After the first resolution, an AIPAC official said: “ We’re going to make certain that pro-Israel students take over the student government and reverse the vote. This is how AIPAC operates in our nation’s capital. This is how AIPAC must operate on our nation’s campuses.”) GTU has long had a collaborative arrangement with Berkeley.

Muslim college across the street “a challenge”

Lehmann continued:

“Another challenge is that across the street is the first and currently only Muslim undergraduate college, Zaytuna. The relationships so far between them and GTU have been good, but depending on the culture there and what kind of political engagement is taking place on the Israeli-Palestinian situation, there could be challenges.”

In the past year, Israeli forces have killed over 300 unarmed demonstrators and injured about 30,000 (6,000 of them children) in Gaza. In response, Palestinian resistance groups in Gaza killed 8 Israelis and injured around 280. Most of those listed in Israel’s official count of “injuries” were never hospitalized; many of them were described as “suffering from shock.”

By contrast, the UK Guardian reports about Gaza: “Thousands have bullet wounds through their legs. The streets of Gaza are filled with people limping or in wheelchairs. Children, journalists and medics have been killed, even when they were standing far back from the fence. The UN has said Israel’s military may have committed war crimes, deliberately targeting civilians.”

(More information on deaths among both populations is here.)

While the U.S. has long had Christian and Jewish colleges, Zaytuna College is the first accredited Muslim undergraduate college in the United States. It was founded in 2009 by individuals considered to be  “among the best-known and most-respected Muslim scholars in America.”

Religious News Service reports that Zaytuna, which means ‘olive tree’ in Arabic, hopes to be a vehicle for interfaith dialogue and help promote cross-cultural understanding.

A college official says:

“These kinds of institutions in the long term are absolutely necessary for bridging the divide that currently exists and the misunderstanding that many have about Islam and Muslims.”

In his interview with JNS, Lehmann went on to say:

“I know they have a prominent member of their community who is a vociferous and vitriolic pro-Palestinian voice from Nablus; he is a concern for me, as I’m interested in making sure the culture is not toxic in any way or has tension as a result of that. I’m pretty out there as a Zionist…”

The individual he is referring to is Dr. Hatem Bazian. Dr. Bazian, a longtime member of the UC Berkeley faculty, has been active in anti-racist, pro-peace activities for decades. He is widely respected in the community, including by members of GTU’s consortium.

In fact, two GTU member institutions, Pacific School of Religion and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, sponsored a talk in which he was a panelist. It is unknown whether these institutions are aware that  Rabbi Lehmann called Dr. Bazian “vitriolic” and potentially “toxic.” Both institutions are founding members of GTU.

As a leader in the BDS movement and founder of American Muslims for Palestine, Dr. Bazian has been attacked by Israel partisans for many years. The New Yorker reports that internal documents from a private Israeli intelligence firm called Psy-Group show that it was “targeting Bazian because of his leadership role in promoting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement, known as B.D.S.”

In former position, Lehmann worked to strengthen Hebrew College’s connections to Israel

Lehmann moved to Berkeley from Massachusetts, where he was president of Hebrew College, a Jewish graduate school in Newton Centre, outside of Boston. While there, Lehmann “emphasized and nurtured Hebrew College’s relationship with Israel, expanding partnerships and collaborations with institutions there, and spearheading the formulation of the College’s Israel Statement,” according to Hebrew’s chairman.

In Lehman’s farewell letter to Hebrew, he wrote that the “the strong connections we have made with Israel” were among the actions that “brought new life to our sacred mission.”

In an article for Jewish Boston, Lehmann wrote:

“Hebrew College from its inception has been and continues to be a Zionist institution with strong bonds to Israel and the Hebrew language. Our rabbinical school shares our commitment to foster a deep attachment to the land, people and state of Israel.”

In the article he discussed how to “foster a love for Israel among our rabbinical students.”

Lehmann stated:

“We need to help [students] understand what is necessary to protect the Jewish people and the State of Israel from nefarious and hateful groups and governments, especially those that David Brooks has recently described as ‘depraved regimes.’ [Editor’s note: Brooks’ son served in the Israeli military.] We must do a better job in bringing this awareness of our precarious condition to those students who bask in the light of the universal, but we ought not to ignore the powerful messages of strength and independence that the State of Israel sends about its place in the world.”

Israel’s “messages of strength” have been excruciating for multitudes of Palestinians and others. Its forces have launched several major invasions of Gaza in which multitudes of children have been killed and injured alongside adults and the elderly, equally ruthless invasions of Lebanon, and also frequent invasions of the West Bank, where they regularly abduct Palestinians, demolish homes, and oppress villagers, as mentioned above.

Lehmann is also a cofounder of the Hevruta gap-year program in Israel. The program’s website states: “After completing the program, Hevruta alumni will be well-positioned to use their influential voices to shape the Jewish people’s most important conversations and communal decisions.”

Chair of world’s largest theological consortium

While he was living in Massachusetts, Rabbi Lehmann was board chair of the Boston Theological Institute, a historically Christian institution that has been called “the largest theological consortium in the world.”

The Complete Pilgrim, a blog that focuses on religious sites around the world, reports:

“The Boston Theological Institute is possibly the largest religious education institution of its kind in the world. Not itself a school, it is a consortium of ten of the most prestigious and historic theology colleges and departments in the United States. Some of the oldest divinity schools in the nation are part of the BTI, including the oldest, Andover Newton Theological School.”

JNS reports that Lehmann had “successfully led Hebrew College to become the first non-Christian institution to join that theological consortium.”

In a 2016 article, New Boston Post described how this came about:

“Five years ago, Lehmann approached the Boston Theological Institute, a consortium of nine Christian theology schools. He thought Hebrew College should join other institutions that train clergy. The organization had been entirely Christian, but they modified their mission statement to welcome their new participant. Lehmann was recently elected board chair of the organization.”

In an article for Jewish Boston, Lehmann wrote:

“Our request for membership was not without some controversy given the explicit Christian orientation of the consortium for more than 40 years, but after some intense conversations within the BTI board, the invitation to join was extended and in January of 2011 we officially became a member of the consortium of nine other schools.”

Lehmann states:

“Subsequent to our joining the BTI, the mission statement of the BTI had to be revised to reflect the new interreligious nature of the consortium. I, together with a number of other board members, drafted a new mission statement that focused on our goals as theological institutions preparing religious leaders and scholars for a pluralistic world.”

In May 2018, the institution changed its name to “Boston Theological Interreligious Consortium.”

Why is all this relevant? To understand, we need to look at BTI’s history on Israel-Palestine.

A few years before Lehmann approached BTI about joining, the institute had co-sponsored a pro-Palestinian conference by a Christian organization, Sabeel, that featured a keynote address by South African anti-apartheid leader, Bishop Desmond Tutu, as well as talks by Noam Chomsky, UN Rapporteur John Dugard, and others. We can’t find any evidence that BTI has supported such events in recent years.

Lehmann will bring ‘different set of perspectives”

While Berkeley’s GTU does not seem to have sponsored similar conferences, in past years it has promoted events that have included speakers such as Sabeel member Rosemary Radford Ruether, a longtime supporter of Justice and peace for Palestinians; Stanford Professor Khalil Barhoum, a Palestinian refugee and eloquent speaker on the issue; Judith Butler, a Jewish journalist who opposes Zionism; Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb, an advocate for Palestinian human rights; and an event against Islamophobia at Zaytuna College.

Now that Rabbi Lehmann is in place, it is uncertain whether GTU will again announce these or similar speakers. While the past events it has endorsed have often featured voices from both sides of the issue, Rabbi Lehmann’s appointment means that one side will now be at the helm – and a side that is a particularly hardcore. An event featuring a prominent Palestinian theologian that took place after Rabbi Lehmann began acting as president does not seem to have been announced on the GTU Website, even though it was co-sponsored by members of the GTU consortium, and the event took place on the GTU campus.

Last year, Jewish News of Northern California interviewed Rabbi Lehman about his appointment to lead GTU.

In the interview Lehmann said:

“I’m coming as an outsider to the dominant Christian culture that has nurtured GTU, and that’s inevitably going to bring a different set of perspectives.”

Rabbi Lehmann told JNS :

“I’m pretty out there as a Zionist and politically centrist, while most GTU leadership has been on the progressive Christian side.”

A diversity of perspectives could be a good thing. But only time will tell what Lehmann’s perspectives on the Middle East will mean for GTU’s actions regarding Israel-Palestine – and for its neighbors who are Palestinian and Muslim.

GTU officials were asked to comment for this article, but a GTU spokesperson (recently hired by Rabbi Lehmann) said they were unable to be reached.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of the best selling book Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

September 16, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , | Leave a comment

Israel to rule on revoking BDS founder’s residency

Omar Barghouti

Omar Barghouti, the Palestinian co-founder of the BDS movement
MEMO | September 16, 2019

Efforts to revoke the residency of Omar Barghouti, the co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), have been escalated to Israel’s deputy Attorney General for a decision over his status in the country.

Barghouti, considered “major threat to the citizens of Israel” by the country’s ultra-right politicians, has already been banned from entering the US; a decision denounced by the Palestinian human rights activists as “McCarthyite repression”. His entry ban in April along with Israel’s decision to block American Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar from entering the country due to their support for BDS, is being used by Barghouti’s opponents in Israel to revoke his residency status.

Keti Shitrit, a member of the Likud Party, which does not recognise the right of Palestinians to a state of their own and campaigns for a Zionist state from the “Jordan River to the Sea”, is reported protesting against the “absurd situation where Israel denied entry to two Congresswomen due to their support of BDS, while allowing the BDS founder and leader to reside in Israel and receive full benefits from the State of Israel”.

The remarks came as the Israeli government faces further pressure to expel Barghouti from the country. The initial call to revoke his residency status came from Betzalmo. In its letter to the Israeli Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit and Interior Minister Arye Deri, the right-wing NGO noted the US’ denial of entry and asked why the Israeli government has not acted in a similar fashion to strip Barghouti of his residency rights.

According to Arutz Sheva, Mandelblit has referred the decision to Deputy Attorney General, Dina Zilber.

“We are pleased that the AG [Attorney General] has finally decided, after years of appeals from Betzlamo and several MKs, including the Minister of the Interior who addressed him on the matter, to pass this decision to the Deputy AG,” the Israeli group said in a letter. “We have no doubt that the Deputy AG shall decide that anyone who harms the State of Israel will not receive benefits from it. Any other decision would ridicule and curtail Israel’s struggle against the boycott movement and the Israel’s demand from other countries to fight against it,” it added.

Knesset member Shitrit is reported to have written to Deputy Attorney General, in what seems to be an attempt to put further pressure on Zilber. “It has been brought to my attention the decision whether to revoke the BDS leader Omar Barghouti’s residency is at your desk,” the Likud MK said. After denouncing BDS she added: “honorable Deputy AG, I urge you to exercise your authority, to weaken the power of the BDS leader, to maintain our dignity and not to let our major enemy dwell within us.”

September 16, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Jews vs. Israelis

By Gilad Atzmon | September 16, 2019

 Now would be the correct time for Ali Abunimah, JVP,  & CO to form an orderly queue to issue their deep and sincere apology to me. Since the early 2000s my detractors within the so called Jewish ‘Left’ together with  their sometime stooges, have been harassing me, my publishers and my readers for pointing out that Zionism is an obsolete concept with little meaning for Israel, Israelis  and their politics let alone the conflict that has been destroying the Eastern Mediterranean region.

In my 2011 book The Wandering Who, I argue that “Since Israel defines itself openly as the ‘Jewish State’, we should ask what the notions of ’Judaism’, ‘Jewishness’, ‘Jewish culture’ and ‘Jewish ideology’ stand for.” Just before the publication of the book I was urged by both JVP’s leader and Ali Abunimah to drop the J-Word and focus solely on Zionism. In Britain, a gang of so called ‘anti’ Zionist Jews relentlessly terrorised my publisher and promoters. Funny, most of these authoritarian tribals who worked 24/7 to silence me have been expelled from the British Labour Party for alleged anti-Semitism. Now, they promote the ideal of ‘freedom of speech.’

In ‘The Wandering Who’ and in the years preceding its publication, I realised that the Palestinian solidarity discourse has been suffocated with misleading and often duplicitous terminology that was set to divert  attention from the root cause of the conflict and that acted  to prevent intelligible discussion of  possible solutions.

Let’s face it. Israel doesn’t see  itself as the Zionist State: not one Israeli party integrated the word ‘Zionism’ into its name. To Israelis, Zionism is a dated and clichéd concept that describes the ideology that promised to erect a Jewish homeland in Palestine. For Israelis, Zionism fulfilled its purpose in 1948, it is now an archaic term. In ‘The Wandering Who’ I presented a so-far unrefuted argument that an understanding of ‘Jewishness’, a term familiar to every self-identified Jew, may provide answers to most questions related to Israel and its politics. It may also help us to grasp the fake dissent that has dominated the so- called Jewish ‘anti’ Zionist campaign for the last two decades.

Though I was probably the first to write about the crucial shift in Israeli society in favour of Judeo-centrism, this shift is now mainstream news. Haaretz’s lead writer, Anshel Pfeffer, just wrote a spectacular analysis of this transformation. Pfeffer’s view is that Israelis are going to the polls this Tuesday to decide whether they are “Jews” or “Israelis.”

According to Pfeffer, in the mid 1990s it was Netanyahu’s American campaign guru, Arthur Finkelstein, who promoted  “a message that could reach secular and religious voters alike. In his polling, he had asked voters whether they considered themselves ‘more Jewish’ or ‘more Israeli.’ The results convinced him there was a much larger constituency of voters, not just religious ones, who emphasized their Jewish identity over their Israeli one.”

In light of Finkelstein’s observation, Likud focused its message on Jerusalem. Its campaign slogan was: “Peres will divide Jerusalem.” In the final 48 hours before Election Day there was also “an unofficial slogan, emblazoned on millions of posters and bumper stickers distributed by Chabad Hasidim: “Netanyahu is good for the Jews.”

In a Haaretz interview after his narrow 1996 defeat, Peres lamented that “the Israelis lost the election.” When asked then who had won, he answered, “The Jews won.”

Pfeffer points out that Netanyahu learned from Finkelstein that the “Jew” is the primary unifier for Israelis. This certainly applies to religious Jews but also to those who regard themselves as secular. After all, Israel has really been the “Jewish State” for a while.

This is probably the right place to point out that Netanyahu’s move of locating Jewishness at the heart of Israel is a reversal of the original Zionist promise. While early Zionism was a desperate attempt to divorce the Jews from the ghetto and their tribal obsession and make them “people like all other people,” the present adherence to Jewishness and kinship induces  a return to Judeo-centric chauvinism. As odd as this may sound, Netanyahu’s transformation of Israel into a ‘Jewish realm’ makes him an ardent anti Zionist probably more anti Zionist than JVP, Mondoweiss and the BDS together.

Pfeffer points out that when Netanyahu returned to power in 2009 and  formed a right-wing/ religious coalition, was when “the Jews prevailed — and have done so ever since in four consecutive elections, including the last one in April 2019.”

To illustrate this Pfeffer cites the 2012 Israeli  High Court of Justice decision to deny a petition by writer Yoram Kaniuk and others to allow themselves to be registered solely as ‘Israelis’ as opposed to ‘Jews.’

Every so often we hear from one Torah rabbi or another that “Zionism is not Judaism.” Those who have reached this point surely grasp that ‘Zionism vs. Judaism’ is a fake dichotomy. It serves to confuse and to divert questioning minds from the path toward an understanding of the conflict: In Israel Zionism is an empty concept, politically, ideologically and spiritually. Israel defines itself as ‘The Jewish state’ and orthodox rabbis are at the centre of this transition in Israeli politics and life.

I guess that Abunimah and JVP were desperate to silence me at the time as they foolishly believed that shooting the messenger or alternatively burning books was the way forward for human rights activism. I stood firm. The observations I produced in ‘The Wandering Who’ were endorsed by the most profound thinkers associated with the conflict and the anti war movement. My observations are more relevant than ever and in Israel they have entered mainstream analysis. When it comes to Palestine solidarity we have managed to waste a good two decades of intellectual progress thanks to authoritarian lobbies operating in our midst. For truth and justice to prevail, we have to learn to speak the truth as we see it, and to accept JVP and Abumimah’s apologies when they are mature enough to come clean.

September 16, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

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