For NYT, Israel Is Always Nearing ‘Apartheid,’ but Never Quite Gets There
By Gregory Shupak | FAIR | April 26, 2019
Following Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election as Israeli prime minister earlier this month, the New York Times’ editorial board (4/11/19) wrote:
Under Mr. Netanyahu, Israel is on a trajectory to become what critics say will be an apartheid state like the former South Africa—a country in which Palestinians will eventually be a majority, but without the rights of citizens.
A harsh criticism? Actually, the paper has been saying that Israel/Palestine could “become” an apartheid state for the better part of two decades. It ran a piece in 2003 (1/29/03) arguing that
if Israel does not give up the territories, it will face a choice: relinquish either democracy or the ideal of a Jewish state. Granting Palestinians in the territories the right to vote would turn Israel into an Arab state with a Jewish minority. Not allowing them to vote would result in a form of permanent apartheid.
For almost 20 years, the paper has suggested that Israel/Palestine risks devolving into an apartheid state if it continues to rule over Palestinians in the territories—Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem—who cannot choose their rulers. This population includes approximately 4.75 million occupied Palestinians—320,000 in East Jerusalem, 2.8 million in the rest of the West Bank and 1.8 million in besieged Gaza—to say nothing of the millions of Palestinian refugees who cannot return to their homes and participate in elections because the people who put on those elections won’t let them.
That situation has remained the same, not only for the period that the Times has been publishing material saying the arrangement might someday add up to apartheid, but since 1967. Yet the Times persists in characterizing Israeli apartheid as a hypothetical future development. The paper acknowledges that governing millions of Palestinians but denying them the vote is a form of apartheid, so there’s no justification for saying, after nearly 52 years of such disenfranchisement, that that will eventually constitute apartheid, but for some unspecified reason doesn’t yet at this point.
Tom Friedman’s Groundhog Day
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman appears to be having a Groundhog Day experience: He keeps waking up, looking at Israel’s ethnocracy, and saying that if it continues to be apartheid, it will become apartheid. In 2002 (10/16/02), he commented:
If you think it is hard to defend Israel on campus today, imagine doing it in 2010, when the colonial settlers have so locked Israel into the territories it can rule them only by apartheid-like policies.
2010 came and went, and the “apartheid-like” conditions remained, but Friedman persisted in treating Israeli apartheid as a mere possibility, writing (2/1/11) of the 2011 protests in Egypt:
If Israelis tell themselves that Egypt’s unrest proves why Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinian Authority, then they will be talking themselves into becoming an apartheid state — they will be talking themselves into permanently absorbing the West Bank and thereby laying the seeds for an Arab majority ruled by a Jewish minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
A year later (8/1/12), Friedman said:
It is in Israel’s overwhelming interest to test, test and have the US keep testing creative ideas for a two-state solution. That is what a real US friend would promise to do. Otherwise, Israel could be doomed to become a kind of apartheid South Africa.
Two years after that (2/11/14), Friedman said that “Israel by default could become some kind of apartheid-like state in permanent control over… 2.5 million Palestinians.” Even in this so-called criticism of Israel, Friedman does the state a favor by acting as though the West Bank Palestinians are the only ones disenfranchised by Israel, overlooking the refugees and Gaza, even as Israel continues to control the latter. (He also appears to leave out Palestinian Jerusalemites.)
Evidence for Already-Existing Apartheid
As Friedman and his paper kept predicting that Israel/Palestine could turn into an apartheid entity, evidence mounted that it is exactly that. For example, United Nations special rapporteur John Dugard found in 2007 that “elements of the [Israeli] occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law.” He went on to say that at the checkpoints throughout the West Bank and surrounding Jerusalem,
a [Palestinian] person may be refused passage through a checkpoint for arguing with a soldier or explaining his documents…. Checkpoints and the poor quality of secondary roads Palestinians are obliged to use, in order to leave the main roads free for settler use, result in journeys that previously took 10 to 20 minutes taking 2 to 3 hours…. In apartheid South Africa, a similar system [was] designed to restrict the free movement of blacks —the notorious “pass laws.”
Another UN special rapporteur, Richard Falk, noted in 2010 that “among the salient apartheid features of the Israeli occupation” are “discriminatory arrangements for movement in the West Bank and to and from Jerusalem,” as well as
extensive burdening of Palestinian movement, including checkpoints applying differential limitations on Palestinians and on Israeli settlers, and onerous permit and identification requirements imposed only on Palestinians.
A March 2017 report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia concluded that “Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”
That July, however, Friedman (7/12/17) continued to treat Israeli apartheid as something that might happen down the road, wishing that President Trump had admonished Netanyahu in a meeting between the two:
Bibi, you win every debate, but meanwhile every day the separation of Israel from the Palestinians grows less likely, putting Israel on a “slippery slope toward apartheid,” as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently warned.
Last September (9/19/18), Friedman was still worried about this supposedly theoretical scenario:
Without some dramatic advance, there is a real chance that whatever Palestinian governance exists will crumble, and Israel will have to take full responsibility for the health, education and welfare of the 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel would then have to decide whether to govern the West Bank with one legal authority or two, which would mean Israel would be choosing between bi-nationalism and apartheid, both disasters for a Jewish democracy.
Netanyahu, Friedman went on to say, has failed to offer “any new, or old, ideas on how to separate from the Palestinians to avoid the terrible choices of bi-nationalism and apartheid.”
Erasing Palestinians
Setting aside the troubling assertion that Israelis and Palestinians living as equals would be not only a “disaster,” but as bad a “disaster” as apartheid, Friedman ignored the fact that just two months earlier, the Knesset had passed the Nation State Law that defined Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. The law asserted that “the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” even though 20 percent of the population living inside Israel is not Jewish; encouraged “the development of Jewish settlement” and vowed that the state will “promote its establishment and consolidation.” It declared that “the state’s language is Hebrew,” deprecating Arabic, the first language of roughly half the people under that state’s control.
The Nation State Law demonstrates that the bad faith, future tense descriptions of Israeli apartheid are overly narrow, in that they focus exclusively on the Palestinian territories that Israel has occupied since 1967. Yet on the Israeli-held side of the Green Line, Palestinians are systematically discriminated against.
It’s not only the occupation that make Israel/Palestine apartheid. It’s the Israeli state’s foundational principles and actions: driving two-thirds of the indigenous Palestinian population from their homes at its birth, subsequently making more than 2 million of them refugees, and then denying their right to return, despite its being mandated under international law.
Meanwhile, Jewish people anywhere on Earth are given the right to immigrate, because Israeli leaders want to maintain a demographic advantage. They pursue this goal—with decisive help from their sponsors in Washington—through their longstanding operational policy mantra: maximum land, minimum Arabs.
Not even three full days after the New York Times’ most recent brooding about how Israel might “become” an apartheid state, Israel’s Supreme Court approved the demolition of 500 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem. Is it apartheid yet?
Israeli NGO Demands Israel Revoke BDS Founder’s Residency
teleSUR | April 28, 2019
The Israeli human rights group, Betzalmo, has called on Israel’s Attorney General and Minister of Interior to cancel BDS-founder Omar Al-Barghouti’s residency status, Arutz Sheva reported Sunday.
According to a letter that was dated for April 24, 2019, the Israeli NGO argued how it was possible that Barghouthi could be denied entry into the United States, but not in Israel, which is the country he is calling on the world to boycott.
“A recent law authorizes the Minister of the Interior, with the approval of the Attorney General, to revoke residency for anyone who harms state security or violates allegiance to the state, or endangers public peace,” Betzalmo stated. “Undoubtedly Barghouti’s leadership of the boycott movement against all citizens of the State of Israel severely harms the State of Israel and is a blatant breach of allegiance, as well as a threat to Israel’s security and defense by pushing for an arms embargo against Israel.”
The Israeli NGO said “in addition, the BDS movement collaborates with terrorist organizations, so there is undoubtedly an indirect link between Mr. Barghouti and terrorist organizations.”
Betzalmo CEO Shai Glick also released a statement in which he corroborated the claims in the letter that was dated for April 24.
“The State of Israel is a democratic and liberal state, but it must, in the name of democracy and liberalism, defend itself and its citizens. A determined struggle against the boycott constitutes true defense of the citizens of the State of Israel.” Glick said. “We cannot demand from our allies in the world to prevent the entry of a boycott activist and to prevent conferences of boycott organizations, while allowing those leading BDS activists residency in Israel, giving them State benefits and a platform. We are certain that the Interior Minister and the Attorney General will act with determination and immediately revoke Mr. Barghouti’s residency so he will be able to disseminate his toxic teaching only outside Israel.”
Barghouti was previously denied entry in to the United States, despite having the necessary documentation to enter the country.
The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) is a global campaign that has called for the economic boycott of Israel until it meets its “obligations under international law.”
Third Federal Court Blocks Anti-BDS Law as Unconstitutional
ACLU | April 25, 2019
AUSTIN — A federal court in Texas today blocked a state law requiring government contractors to certify that they are not engaged in boycotts of Israel or companies that do business in Israel or territories controlled by Israel, ruling that the law violates the First Amendment. The ruling came in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Texas on behalf of four Texans, as well as a separate case brought by the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“This is now the third time a federal court has blocked an anti-BDS law on First Amendment grounds,” said Brian Hauss, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “Whatever their views on the BDS movement, members of Congress and state legislators should heed this strong message from the courts: The right to boycott is alive and well in the United States and any attempt to suppress it puts you squarely on the wrong side of the Constitution.”
The ACLU’s lawsuit was brought on behalf of four people who were forced under the law to choose between signing the certification or forgoing professional opportunities and losing income: John Pluecker, a freelance writer who lost two service contracts from the University of Houston; George Hale, a reporter for KETR who was forced to sign the certification against his conscience in order to keep his job; Obinna Dennar, a Ph.D. candidate at Rice University, who was forced to forfeit payment for judging at a debate tournament; and Zachary Abdelhadi, a student at Texas State University, who has had to forego opportunities to judge high school debate tournaments.
In his ruling, United States District Judge Robert Pitman stated that the law “threatens ‘to suppress unpopular ideas’ and ‘manipulate the public debate through coercion rather than persuasion’” and that “no amount of narrowing its application will cure its constitutional infirmity.”
Federal courts in Arizona and Kansas also blocked similar state anti-boycott laws in First Amendment challenges brought by the ACLU and ACLU affiliates in the respective states. In January 2018, a federal district court preliminarily enjoined an anti-boycott law in Kansas, holding that the First Amendment protects citizens’ right to “band together” and “express collectively their dissatisfaction with the injustice and violence they perceive, as experienced both by Palestinians and Israeli citizens.” In September, a district court enjoined a similar anti-boycott law in Arizona.
The ACLU takes no position on boycotts of Israel or of any other foreign country, but it has long defended the right to boycott, which is protected under the First Amendment.
The court’s opinion can be found here: https://www.aclutx.org/sites/default/files/4-25-19_bds_order.pdf.
Baseline of a Desecrated Land X: Demographic Threat
Behind a curtain of wine, war, and industrial tourism, Israel is losing a pyrrhic population race with the more fertile Arabs.
By Dick Callahan | September 30, 2018
“We say to the Jews, to our brothers and sisters, Israel is your home and that of every Jew. Israel is waiting for you with open arms.” Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minster, urging Jews to move to his country.
“Israel is on the road to an ecological, social and quality of life disaster as the population rises it becomes more violent, congested and unpleasant to live in and absolutely no room for any species other than humans.” Professor Alon Tal, Institute for Desert Research, Ben Gurion University on Israel’s population explosion.
The Demographic Threat
Israel has been in an officially declared State of Emergency since 1948. The word ‘crisis’ is as expected in their daily news feeds as fish is expected on seafood restaurant menus. Threat after threat. The population scarcely has time to digest the crisis du jour before the next is on the doorstep.
In this environment, the fact that Israel’s population is growing at 1.58 percent compared with 2.71 percent for Palestinians, is known in the Jewish state as, ‘the demographic threat.’ To forestall this dire eventuality Israel has brought millions of Jews and Jewish-when-it-suits-them people from Russia, Europe, the Bronx or wherever, and they’re always recruiting for more. Any Jew from anywhere in the world can hop on a plane to Israel and be handed citizenship, a gun, help finding a job, and an apartment. Then there’s one more person sucking up a couple hundred liters of water a day. Still, the demographic threat continues to increase because: Jewish recruitment to Israel is slowing down, many Jewish immigrants leave Israel after a few years, and Israelis on the whole are quite a bit older than Palestinians.
The median [half are over, half are under] age of females in Israel is 30.6 years-old. Female median age in the Occupied West Bank is 21.3 years-old. Female median age in Gaza is 17.5 years-old. And so, as Israeli women are aging out of their child bearing years, Palestinian women are just moving into their peak child bearing years. This means that even though Palestinian life expectancy is ten years less than Israeli life expectancy a few miles away, and, even though Palestinian infant mortality rates are five times what they are on the Israeli side of the segregation wall, Palestinian women have more children than Israeli women at total fertility rates of 3.91 children/woman and 2.92 children/woman, respectively. In addition, there are another 5.5 million Palestinian refugees in the diaspora.
One of three core demands of the Palestinian (BDS) movement is that Palestinians–and their descendants–who the Zionists drove off their land in 1948, have the same right to return under international law as say, German Jews have the right to return to Germany. At the end of World War II Germany passed a law that any Jew who fled the Nazis–and their descendants–could get citizenship in Germany. This is why Israeli Jews are “…the largest group of German passport holders in the world outside Germany.” So Israelis get the concept, at least when it’s applied to themselves.
When success arrives for the BDS movement, as it eventually must, how will the land fare? Right now the Israeli Jewish population and the Palestinian population inside Israel and in the OPT are even at about 6.85 million each, (although the Jewish number counts Israelis living outside the country, including up to a million living in America, who probably won’t settle back to Israel). If all the Palestinians in the diaspora return there will be 19.2 million people in that small arid parcel.
Population density in perspective
What would America look with the population density of Israel, the West Bank or Gaza? America has 327 million people on about 3,797,000 square miles. Israel has 8.45 million people on 8019 square miles. The West Bank has 2.7 million Palestinians on 2,183 square miles—except Israel has effectively annexed two thirds of the West Bank Area C, so the Palestinians get 742.22 square miles. Gaza has 2 million people on 141 square miles.
Doing the math as simple ratios, if Amerca had Israel’s population density we would have over 4 billion people. That wouldn’t be viable. We’re already strapped with less than a tenth of that population If America had the full West Bank’s population density we’d have about 4.7 billion people. If America had the West Bank’s population in Area’s A and B but not including Area C, we’d have 13.9 billion people. If America had Gaza’s population density we’d have 53.86 billion people.
Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza have a combined area of about 10,343 square miles. Combining the three populations and the diaspora (about 19.2 million total) on that 10,343 square miles, would give a population density of 1,856 per square mile. Applying that same population density to America’s 3.797 million square miles, would give us a population of 7.081 billion people. That’s more than the entire 2011 human population of earth.
At the end of the day, if you could snap your fingers and make everybody in Israel and the OPT either Jewish or Palestinian, it wouldn’t matter. They’d still be high and dry, water-wise.
Tourism
American support for Israel, especially among college students, has been going down like a tire iron in a swimming pool. It took less than ten years of social media to break the dam holding back a reservoir fifty years deep in carefully crafted Zionist narrative. Today anyone with the inclination can see unfiltered truths about what’s going on in the occupied territories. That, combined with the Trump/Netanyahu bromance culminating in the U.S. embassy move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has created what Israelis view as a public relations crisis. How can Zionism sell American college students on Israel and the embassy move at the same time? They’ve allocated something over $120 million on a tourism campaign called; ‘One Break, Two Cities.’
At some level you’ve got to hand it to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism for trying. Where’s the embassy going? Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. You can go too.
‘One Break, Two Cities’ has a 30 second commercial with two girls, who are clearly majoring in bums and boobs, snapping selfies at the beach, the fountains, the bars, and a boat at sea. What strikes a viewer, after the bums and boobs, is how much clean water there is. Tourists expect water and use more of it than they do at home. They commonly take multiple showers per day. Higher rated hotels use more water than lower rated hotels. The websites want visitors to know that Israeli beaches have public showers.
A typical tourist to Israel spends $1,500 in 8.2 days. Even if they only averaged 300 liters of water per day, the 3.6 million tourists in 2017 soaked up 8,856,000 metric tons of water, which has got to be hard to watch from Gaza or the West Bank where people pay high prices for water and get less than 70 liters per day.
A little glass of wine
Growing wine for the European market in what is now Israel goes back to 1870 when Barron Rothschild funded Mikveh Israel, the first Jewish experimental agricultural station in Palestine. Today, freed by imports from needing water for growing grains and feed, Israeli entrepreneurs use the water for more lucrative crops like cut flowers and wine. The water footprint of that 148 ml (5oz glass) glass of wine on the table is about 130 liters. Over a million Palestinians get less than 60 liters of water per day and in West Bank Area C thousands get by on as little as 20 liters of water per day. (20 liters is what Americans use for every flush of an older toilet.) So, each glass of Israeli wine you pour represents between two and six days worth of water taken from some destitute Palestinian.
In spite of that, or because of it, Israel has built an archipelago of wineries in the West Bank, Syrian Golan Heights and within Israel itself. They’re lucrative and they suck up phenomenal amounts of water that formerly went to Palestinians. Because of mounting European’s concern about the plight of Palestinians, and Israeli concern that the Boycott over Israel’s occupation will cut their market, Israelis attempt to disguise the origin of grapes and wines from the OPT by claiming tiny Israel has five grape growing regions some of which overlap between occupied territories and areas inside the Green Line. Westerners are increasingly aware that Jewish wineries in Palestine are given special concessions by the Israeli government in the form of subsidies, seized [Palestinian] land, extra water, and military troops to protect them. In return, many wineries normalize the occupation by promoting themselves as tourist destinations and offering tours, lodging, hot tubs, etc. Advocates have filmed grapes harvested in the OPT being trucked straight to a major wine maker inside Israel. With no way to be sure that an Israeli wine didn’t come from the occupied territories Americans and Europeans increasingly boycott Israeli wines.
War
The Zionist’s perpetual ‘State of Emergency’ has overwhelmed water infrastructure, and contaminated ground water, surface water, and sea water with petroleum, toxic chemicals, heavy metals, ordinance, radioactive isotopes…and that’s just inside their own country. They’ve invaded all the neighbors multiple times commandeering their water supplies when they can and damaging them when they can’t, in the process making millions of people refugees in over-crowded, water-strapped refugee camps.
Because the United States government has made it a law that Israel will always be the dominant military power in the region, the Israelis brandish the latest American weapons systems with the predictable result that their neighbors try to keep up which creates an endless cycle of water wasting escalation.
Footnote on populations”
Palestine
Population: 5,04,041 (West Bank and Gaza plus about 1.1 million in Israel and 300,000 thousand in E. Jerusalem. Not to mention over 1.5 million Palestinians in camps in neighboring countries, plus 4 million in neighboring countries outside refugee camps.)
Median age Gaza both: 17.2 years (CIA factbook, 2017 est.)
Male Median age Gaza: 16.8 years (CIA factbook, 2017 est.)
Female Median age Gaza: 17.5 years (CIA factbook, 2017 est.)
Median age West Bank both: 21.1 years (CIA factbook, 2017 est.)
Male Median Age West Bank: 20.9 years
Female Median Age West Bank: 21.3 years
Palestine growth rate 2.71% (as of 2017)
Net change per day: 361
Life Expectancy male 71.83 years
female 75.74 years
both 73.73 years
Mean age at childbearing 28.86 years
Total Fertility rate 3.91 children/woman
Sex ratio at birth 1.05 males per female
Infant mortality rate 17.8 deaths/1,000 live births (Gaza)
Infant mortality rate 14.1 deaths/1000 live births (West Bank)
Under 5 mortality rate 20.827 deaths/thousand
*40% of the Palestinian population is under 14 years old.
Israel
Population: As of February 2018, 8,404,916. (Israeli census includes the 650,000 Jewish colonists in the OPT as Israeli citizens but does not include the millions of Christian and Muslim Arabs that live there.)
Median age both: 29.9 (CIA Factbook, 2017 est.)
Male Median age: 29.3 (CIA Factbook, 2017 est.)
Female Median age: 30.6 (CIA Factbook, 2017 est.)
Israel growth rate 1.58% (as of 2017)
Net change per day: 355
Life Expectancy male 81.03 years
female 84.31 years
both 82.74 years
Mean age at childbearing: 30.698 years
Total Fertility rate: 2.92 children/woman
Sex ratio at birth: 1.053 males per female
Infant mortality rate: 2.732 deaths/1,000 live births
(infant mortality among Arab Israeli babies is about 3 times higher than Jewish babies)
Under 5 mortality rate: 3.361 deaths/thousand
*Jewish people from former Soviet Union and Europe and their Israeli born descendants (Ashkenazi) are 50 percent of Jews in Israel. About 6.5 percent of Israel’s Jewish population lives in OPT colonies.
USA:Population: 325,916,518
Median age both: 38.1 (CIA Factbook 2017 est.)
Male Median age: 36.8 (CIA Factbook 2017 est.)
Female Median age: 39.4 (CIA Factbook 2017 est.)
US growth rate 0.93 (as of 2010)
Net change per day: 6,298
Life Expectancy male 77.34 years
female 81.88 years
both 79.62 years
Mean age at childbearing 29.514 years
Total Fertility rate: 1.886 children/woman
Sex ratio at birth 1.04 males per female
Infant mortality rate 5.195 deaths/1,000 live births
Under 5 mortality rate 6.079 deaths/thousand
MLA Citation Palestine population: (2017-12-20) Retrieved 2018-01.07, from http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/palestine-population/
(*Graphic at top by artist Kari Dunn http://kdunnart.weebly.com)
Recognition 10: Demographic Threat Wine, War, Tourism: Selected Sources
04.30.2017 This is how Israel inflates its Jewish majority Haaretz Editorial Haaretz calls the annual Israeli population report “a ludicrous piece of propaganda” that includes the 650,000 Jewish settlers in the occupied territories but excludes the millions of Palestinians who live there. Article shows a map of Israel published in the report that doesn’t include any borders of the occupied territories, so it looks as if the Palestinian territories have been absorbed into Israel.
02.16.2015 Leaders reject Netanyahu calls for Jewish mass migration to Israel The Guardian by Peter Beaumont. “We say to the Jews, to our brothers and sisters, Israel is your home and that of every Jew. Israel is waiting for you with open arms.” Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minster
09.25.2015 Israel’s soaring population: promised land running out of room? Reuters by Tova Cohen & Steven Scheer. “Israel is on the road to an ecological, social and quality of life disaster as the population rises it becomes more violent, congested and unpleasant to live in and absolutely no room for any species other than humans.” Professor Alon Tal, Institute for Desert Research, Ben Gurion University.
04.08.2012 Jews stream back to Germany Forward by Donald Snyder.
Dr. Sima Saltzberg of Bar-Illam University ‘says over 100,000 Israelis have applied for and received German passports.’ “This is the largest group of German passport holders in the world outside Germany.” says Emanual Nashon, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Israeli embassy in Berlin. Article notes that ‘under German law, since 1949 any Jew—or the decendents of a Jew, who fled Nazi Germany has the right the right to become a naturalized German. (emphasis added)
05.01.2017 Editorial/This is how Israel inflates its Jewish majority Haaretz
08.01.2017 Can Israel bring home its million US expats? Jerusalem Post by Ben Soles. Article says hundreds of thousands, up to a million, Israelis have moved to America.
08/0213Average Tourist Spends $1,500 in Israel Y Net news, Israel Travelhttp://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4412806,00.html
Water footprint of wine is 125 ml (4.2 oz glass) costs 110 liters of water to grow.
08.21.2012 Wine Talk: Deep in the desert Jerusalem Post by Adam Montefiore.
Yatir winery close to the Dead Sea.
Tel Arad wineries in the the Negev:
Boker Valley—on route 40, lodge and cabins, hot tub, gift shop. About 15 miles from Eqypt border.
Midbar Winery—in Arad.
Rota Winery—in Erez Rota.
Kadesh Barnea—Nitzana near Egypt border.
Sde Boker Winery—at Kibbutz Sde Boker off route 40
Carmey Andat Winery—off Route 40 near Adat
Neot Smadar Winery—southernmost winery 60 km from Eilat
Israeli Wine Direct
Agur
Assaf
Cremisan
Ein Teina
Kadita
Kishor
Margalit
Meishar
Midbar
Pelter
Ramot
Naftaly
Shvo
04.2011 Forbidden Fruit: The Israeli Wine Industry and the Occupation Aprilhttp://whoprofits.org/content/forbidden-fruit-israeli-wine-industry-and-occupation-0
Coalition of Women for Peacewhoprofits.org The Israelis have built hundreds of wineries in the West Bank, Syrian Golan Heights and within Israel itself. They try to disguise the origin of grapes and wines from the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) by claiming Israel has five growing regions some of which overlap occupied territories with Israel areas inside the Green Line. Wineries are given special concessions by the government in the form of subsidies, land, and extra water. In return, many of them normalize the occupation by promoting themselves as tourist destinations and offering tours, lodging, hot tubs, etc.
01.17.2018 Israeli’s wine industry grows better with age. Jewish News Syndicate by Elina Rudee.“A big part of what we are trying to do is sell Israel as a product.” Vera Ben-Sadon, founder of Tura Winery in the OPT.
03.12.2013 The Best Kosher wine in Israel may not be from Israel Smithsonian, by Yochi Dreazen. “Everything we do is about settling more Jews in Israel.” says Daniella Weiss (chief backer of West Bank Winery, who indicates she thinks the West Bank is part of Israel)
UK cinemas urged to boycott Israeli film festival
Press TV – April 25, 2019
Twenty filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, and film critics have urged film theaters in the United Kingdom to boycott the Israeli film festival Seret, co-organized by the Tel Aviv government, in protest at the Zionist regime’s atrocities against Palestinians.
“We’re shocked and dismayed to see how many mainstream cinemas … are hosting this year’s Israeli film festival, Seret, whose funders and supporters include the Israeli government and a clutch of pro-Israel advocacy organizations,” the cinema professionals said in a letter published by The Guardian on Thursday.
“Two months ago, a commission set up by the UN human rights council concluded that the actions of Israeli soldiers against Palestinian participants in the Great March of Return in Gaza may constitute ‘war crimes or crimes against humanity’. ‘Particularly alarming,’ said a member of the commission, was ‘the targeting of children and persons with disabilities’,” reads the letter.
“This UN report is the latest in 70 years of reports of mass expulsions, killings, house demolitions, detention without trial, torture, military occupation and military onslaught against the indigenous population, the Palestinians. But none of this appears to disturb the cinemas involved in the festival,” the letter added, protesting at the UK cinemas’ indifference to the Israeli atrocities.
“We cannot understand why cultural institutions continue to behave as if Israel is an ordinary democracy. It is not. Palestinians deserve better than this. UK cinemas should not be hosting Seret,” it reads.
Prominent British filmmakers Ken Loach and Mike Leigh are among the artists who have written the letter.
Other signatories include Amir Amirani (director, producer), Roy Battersby (director), Haim Bresheeth (writer, filmmaker), David Calder (actor), Prof Ian Christie (film writer, broadcaster), Dror Dayan (filmmaker), Helen de Witt (film programmer), Saeed Taji Farouky (filmmaker), Deborah Golt DJ (broadcaster), Ashley Inglis (screenwriter), Paul Laverty (screenwriter), Sophie Mayer (film critic, curator), Rebecca O’Brien (producer), Pratibha Parmar (writer, director), William Raban (filmmaker), Leila Sansour (director), John Smith (artist, filmmaker), and Penny Woolcock (filmmaker).
Earlier, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) had also called on all participants to withdraw from the Seret festival taking place in London, Brighton and Edinburgh, from May 6 – 17.
The Seret festival tries to falsely project Israel as “a melting pot of cultures, religions and social backgrounds,” rather than as an apartheid and colonial regime that has more than 65 racist laws discriminating against its indigenous Palestinian citizens, the Campaign said.
“In addition to Israeli ministries and diplomatic missions, the festival is also sponsored by racist, anti-Palestinian, Israeli government-backed agencies, including the World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency,” the Campaign added, in a statement published by the BDS Movement’s website.
Last year, a wave of cancellations and boycotts hit a film festival in Tel Aviv over Israeli government sponsorship, with a total of 14 filmmakers, actors and other artists withdrawing or, if unable to do so, declaring support for the boycott.
Also in 2018, the Oscar-winning star, Natalie Portman, boycotted a ceremony in Israel that would have honored her.
“PACBI, as part of the growing Nobel Prize-nominated Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, calls on filmmakers participating in SERET to withdraw from this blatant propaganda festival and urges people of conscience to boycott it in its entirety,” the statement added.
The BDS movement was initiated in 2005 by over 170 Palestinian organizations that were pushing for “various forms of boycott against Israel until it meets its obligations under international law.”
Jared Kushner, Not Maria Butina, Is America’s Real Foreign Agent
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 25, 2019
Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior advisor to the president.
The Mueller Special Counsel inquiry is far from over even though a final report on its findings has been issued. Although the investigation had a mandate to explore all aspects of the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, from the start the focus was on the possibility that some members of the Trump campaign had colluded with the Kremlin to influence the outcome of the election to favor the GOP candidate. Even though that could not be demonstrated, many prominent Trump critics, to include Laurence Tribe of the Harvard Law School, are demanding that the investigation continue until Congress has discovered “the full facts of Russia’s interference [to include] the ways in which that interference is continuing in anticipation of 2020, and the full story of how the president and his team welcomed, benefited from, repaid, and obstructed lawful investigation into that interference and the president’s cooperation with it.”
Tribe should perhaps read the report more carefully. While it does indeed confirm some Russian meddling, it does not demonstrate that anyone in the Trump circle benefited from it or cooperated with it. The objective currently being promoted by dedicated Trump critics like Tribe is to make a case to impeach the president based on the alleged enormity of the Russian activity, which is not borne out by the facts: the Russian role was intermittent, small scale and basically ineffective.
One interesting aspect of the Mueller inquiry and the ongoing Russophobia that it has generated is the essential hypocrisy of the Washington Establishment. It is generally agreed that whatever Russia actually did, it did not affect the outcome of the election. That the Kremlin was using intelligence resources to act against Hillary Clinton should surprise no one as she described Russian President Vladimir Putin as Hitler and also made clear that she would be taking a very hard line against Moscow.
The anti-Russia frenzy in Washington generated by the vengeful Democrats and an Establishment fearful of a loss of privilege and entitlement claimed a number of victims. Among them was Russian citizen Maria Butina, who has a court date and will very likely be sentenced tomorrow.
Regarding Butina, the United States Department of Justice would apparently have you believe that the Kremlin sought to subvert the five-million-member strong National Rifle Association (NRA) by having a Russian citizen take out a life membership in the organization with the intention of corrupting it and turning it into an instrument for subverting American democracy. Maria Butina has, by the way, a long and well documented history as an advocate for gun ownership and was a co-founder in Russia of Right to Bear Arms, which is not an intelligence front organization of some kind. It is rather a genuine lobbying group with an active membership and agenda. Contrary to what has been reported in the mainstream media, Russians can own guns but the licensing and registration procedures are long and complicated, which Right to Bear Arms, modeling itself on the NRA, is seeking to change.
Butina, a graduate student at American University, is now in a federal prison, having been charged with collusion and failure to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. She was arrested on July 15, 2018. It is decidedly unusual to arrest and confine someone who has failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), but she has not been granted bail because, as a Russian citizen, she is considered to be a “flight risk,” likely to try to flee the US and return home.
FARA requires all individuals and organizations acting on behalf of foreign governments to be registered with the Department of Justice and to report their sources of income and contacts. Federal prosecutors have claimed that Butina was reporting back to a Russian official while deliberately cultivating influential figures in the United States as potential resources to advance Russian interests, a process that is described in intelligence circles as “spotting and assessing.”
Maria eventually pleaded guilty of not registering under FARA to mitigate any punishment, hoping that she would be allowed to return to Russia after a few months in prison on top of the nine months she has already served. She has reportedly fully cooperated the US authorities, turning over documents, answering questions and undergoing hours of interrogation by federal investigators before and after her guilty plea.
Maria Butina basically did nothing that damaged US security and it is difficult to see where her behavior was even criminal, but the prosecution is asking for 18 months in prison for her in addition to the time served. She would be, in fact, one of only a handful of individuals ever to be imprisoned over FARA, and they all come from countries that Washington considers to be unfriendly, to include Cuba, Saddam’s Iraq and Russia. Normally the failure to comply with FARA is handled with a fine and compulsory registration.
Butina was essentially convicted of the crime of being Russian at the wrong time and in the wrong place and she is paying for it with prison. Selective enforcement of FARA was, ironically, revealed through evidence collected and included in the Mueller Report relating to the only foreign country that actually sought to obtain favors from the incoming Trump Administration. That country was Israel and the individual who drove the process and should have been fined and required to register with FARA was President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. As Kushner also had considerable “flight risk” to Israel, which has no extradition treaty with the United States, he should also have been imprisoned.
Kushner reportedly aggressively pressured members of the Trump transition team to contact foreign ambassadors at the United Nations to convince them to vote against or abstain from voting on the December 2016 United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements. The resolution passed when the US, acting under direction of President Barack Obama, abstained, but incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn did indeed contact the Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak twice and asked for Moscow’s cooperation, which was refused. Kushner, who is so close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the latter has slept at the Kushner apartment in New York City, was clearly acting in response to direction coming from the Israeli government.
Another interesting tidbit revealed by Mueller relates to Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos’s ties to Israel over an oil development scheme. Mueller “ultimately determined that the evidence was not sufficient to obtain or sustain a conviction” that Papadopoulos “committed a crime or crimes by acting as an unregistered agent of the Israeli government.” Mueller went looking for a Russian connection but found only Israel and decided to do nothing about it.
As so often is the case, inquiries that begin by looking for foreign interference in American politics start by focusing on Washington’s adversaries but then come up with Israel. Noam Chomsky described it best “First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support. Netanyahu goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies—what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015. Did Putin come to give an address to the joint sessions of Congress trying to—calling on them to reverse US policy, without even informing the president? And that’s just a tiny bit of this overwhelming influence.”
Maria Butina is in jail for doing nothing while Jared Kushner, who needed a godfathered security clearance due to his close Israeli ties, struts through the White House as senior advisor to the president in spite of the fact that he used his nepotistically obtained access to openly promote the interests of a foreign government. Mueller knows all about it but recommended nothing, as if it didn’t happen. The media is silent. Congress will do nothing. As Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi put it “We in Congress stand by Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.” Indeed.
Lebanon ‘willing’ to set maritime border with Israel under UN supervision
MEMO | April 25, 2019
Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said his country is prepared to demarcate its maritime border with Israel through the same mechanism used to draw the Blue Line under the supervision of the United Nations, the Anadolu Agency reported.
“We are ready to draw Lebanon’s maritime borders and those of the Exclusive Economic Zone using the same procedure that was used to draw the Blue Line under the supervision of the United Nations,” Berri said during a meeting with Major General, Stefano Del Col, head of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).
General Del Col said the UN could use the same mechanism to demarcate the maritime border.
The Blue Line refers to the land border between Lebanon and Israel which was drawn under the UN supervision to facilitate Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000.
Lebanon and Israel have an unresolved dispute over the ownership of a nearly 860 square kilometre zone which extends along the edge of three of Lebanon’s energy blocks in the Mediterranean Sea.
Lebanon, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and Syria sit on the Levant Basin in the eastern Mediterranean where a number of big gas fields have been discovered since 2009.
Netanyahu ordered Trump to end sanctions waivers on Iranian oil: Analyst
Press TV – April 22, 2019
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered US President Donald Trump to end exemptions from sanctions for several countries buying oil from Iran, says an American political analyst
Rodney Martin, a former congressional staffer based in Scottsdale, Arizona, made the remarks in an interview with Press TV after Netanyahu praised Trump for not renewing waivers that allowed eight countries to buy oil from Iran without getting sanctioned.
Last November, the US enforced sanctions targeting the Islamic Republic’s banking and energy sector. However, it agreed to grant waivers to China, India, Japan, Turkey, Italy, Greece, South Korea and Taiwan, allowing them to continue buying Iranian oil.
Netanyahu said on Monday that Trump’s decision “is of great importance for increasing pressure” on Iran.
The White House made the announcement earlier in the day saying “Trump has decided not to reissue Significant Reduction Exceptions (SREs) when they expire in early May.”
“This decision is intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
The waivers were scheduled for renewal on May 2.
“I have no doubt that Netanyahu requested if not outright ordered the US State Department via Donald Trump vie AIPAC, via Trump’s Jewish Zionist donors and supporters. And I think he ordered that this policy be implemented. So Israel and Netanyahu are very pleased,” Martin said.
“On a broader scale, it further exposes the fact that Israel has a greater network of influencers in US political system, and not Russia,” he stated.
The analyst said that it’s “a glaring example” that Israel meddles in US policy.
After Trump’s announcement, oil prices on Monday spiked to their highest levels since October. Brent crude rocketed past $74 a barrel, its highest point this year.
US Iran sanctions amount to aggression against entire world: Nasrallah
Press TV – April 22, 2019
The secretary general of the Lebanese Hezbollah resistance movement has denounced US economic sanctions against Iran, describing the punitive measures as “an act of aggression” against all world nations.
“US efforts to increase economic pressure on Iran, especially its pledge to drive the country’s oil exports to zero, will have negative repercussions and will affect the entire world, including the US itself,” Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said as he addressed his supporters via a televised speech broadcast live from the Lebanese capital Beirut on Monday evening.
He then called on world nations to stand up against “US arrogance,” pointing out, “The tyrannical US government has no respect whatsoever for international law and regulations.”
Nasrallah also lashed out at Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates for following in US footsteps and joining Washington’s economic pressure campaign against Iran.
The Hezbollah chief also roundly rejected media allegations that the Israeli regime is planning to launch a surprise war against Lebanon this summer.
“There is very little likelihood that Israel would launch another war on Lebanon. The Israeli army is not prepared for any aggression against the country. I personally don’t think such a thing would happen,” Nasrallah highlighted.
The Hezbollah chief also dismissed claims of infighting between Russian and Iranian forces in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr as well as the northern province of Aleppo, stating that Saudi-owned al-Arabia television news network has “disseminated such lies.”
“Saudi-backed media outlets are spreading lies and fallacies about Hezbollah, Iran and the region to a large extent,” Nasrallah said.
The Hezbollah secretary general then slammed Saudi Arabia and the UAE for spreading terrorism and chaos in countries like Yemen, Sudan and Libya.
Nasrallah also blamed Wahhabism for the emergence of regional terrorism and Takfiri terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and Daesh.
Wahhabism is the radical ideology dominating Saudi Arabia, freely preached by government-backed clerics there, and inspiring terrorists worldwide. Daesh and other Takfiri terror groups use the ideology to declare people of other faiths as “infidels” and then kill them.
“There are many agents in the Middle East, who are pushing for sectarian strife to serve the interest of the Zionist regime (of Israel). All those seeking to colonize the region will only raise public awareness,” the Hezbollah chief said.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Nasrallah touched upon the economic crisis in Lebanon, demanding greater cooperation and unity among Lebanese political factions.
“All Lebanese parties agree that Lebanon is suffering from serious financial woes. They are all involved in coping with the economic crisis. Resolving Lebanon’s problems requires patience and efforts by all political parties. Ministers affiliated to Hezbollah, lawmakers as well as specialists have already prepared a number of draft solutions for Lebanon’s economic crisis,” Nasrallah underlined.
‘Declare war on Lebanon, take out Syria’s S-300s’: Outgoing Israeli general on handling neighbors
RT | April 20, 2019
Israel has the full arsenal needed to take on Hezbollah in Lebanon and eliminate the Iranian threat in Syria, the outgoing IDF Northern Command chief boasted, warning Damascus against using S-300s to protect its sovereignty.
“If our freedom of movement is threatened, we will remove the threat. We know how to do that,” General Yoel Strick told Ynet News, adding that Israel will soon introduce “advanced weapons systems” to ensure it can continue to violate neighboring states’ airspace and to strike targets in Syria with impunity.
If the Syrians employ Russian S-300s against our planes, and we take them out, it will be seen as a legitimate move on our part.
While acknowledging that such a drastic move might damage Tel Aviv’s relations with Moscow, Strick expressed hope that it wouldn’t come to that. Moscow had supplied the Arab Republic with S-300 air defense systems following the downing of a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance plane with 15 airmen on board in mid-September, during an Israeli raid.
Also on rt.com Israel took out ‘Iranian missile site’ in Syria… or something like that
Moscow also warned Israel that it will suppress all satellite navigation, radars and communications systems of combat planes over the Mediterranean Sea if their maneuvers threaten Russian forces. Since then, Israel has been staging its intrusions via Lebanon, where the Jewish State is trying to keep Hezbollah in check.
Also on rt.com Netanyahu confirms Israeli military shelled Syrian province to prevent ‘Iran entrenchment’
Hezbollah is inseparable from Lebanon as a country, due to the militant group’s strong political presence, the general argued. Thus, he claimed, “if it were up to me, I would recommend declaring war on Lebanon and Hezbollah” – not out of bloodlust but only to thwart the group’s alleged plot to “invade” Israel.
I have no doubt what the outcome will be… It will be a decisive victory.
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Israel Is A Genocidal Society
The Israeli Political Spectrum From The “Liberal Left” To The Far Right, Is United In Genocide
The Dissident | May 5, 2026
… The fundamental issue of Israel is not Benjamin Netanyahu, but the fact that Israel is overwhelmingly a bloodthirsty, war-ready, genocidal society.
Historian Zachary Foster has documented that the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis have supported every Israeli war since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, writing:
2006
86% of the Israeli adult population justified “the IDF operation in Lebanon against Hizbollah,” or 2006 Lebanon War, in which Israel killed 1,191 people, the vast majority civilians according to HRW (Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher)2008-2009
82% of the Israeli public thought that the 2008-9 war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians.) Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher2012
90% of Israeli Jews supported war on Gaza ( in which Israel killed 160 Palestinians, 66% civilians)2014
95% of Jewish Israelis believed the war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 2,310 Palestinians, 70% civilians)2021
72% of Israelis believed the war on Gaza should continue (as of May 21) after Israel had already killed 250 Palestinians in Gaza, vast majority civilians. The % of Jewish Israelis who supported killing more Palestinians was much higher.2024
A January poll found 95% of Jewish Israelis thought the Israeli military was using either the “appropriate” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza at a time when Israel had already killed >25,700 Palestinians in Gaza.2024
In September, 90% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Lebanon (in which Israel killed 800+, including hundreds of civilians)2025
In March, 82% of Israeli Jews supported the forced expulsion of residents of Gaza, Israel’s main goal in it’s genocide & war on Gaza.2025
In June, 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Iran known as the “twelve day war”2026
On March 4, 93% of Israeli Jews expressed support for the war on Iran. 97% of “right-wing” Jewish Israelis support it, compared with 93% in the center and 76% on the left.
The overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis also have openly genocidal views towards Palestinians.
Polls in Israel have shown that:
- 84% of the (Israeli )public gives the IDF an excellent or very good grade regarding the moral conduct of the army
- 75% of Jewish Israelis agree with the idea that ‘there are no innocents in Gaza.’
- A vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are ‘not so troubled’ or ‘not troubled at all’ by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza.
The fundamental problem in Israel is Zionism, not Benjamin Netanyahu. – Full article
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