Israel scores painful own goal in run-up to the World Cup
By James M. Dorsey | The Turbulent World of Mideast Soccer | June 6, 2018
Argentina’s cancellation of a friendly against Israel because of Israeli attempts to exploit the match politically is likely to reverberate far beyond the world of soccer and spotlights the risks of Israeli efforts to persuade the international community to recognize Jerusalem as its capital.
The Argentinian decision suggests that despite the fact several countries, including East European nations, are debating whether to follow US President Donald J. Trump’s decision earlier this year to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state and move the US embassy to the city, Israel is likely to find it difficult to capitalize on the US move in ways that convincingly project widespread international support.
Even worse, the decision illustrates that efforts to force recognition could backfire.
The Argentinian move has buoyed the grassroots Boycott, Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign that seeks to isolate Israel in non-violent defense of Palestinian rights after Israel has made countering the movement one of its top foreign policy objectives.
“The cancellation of Israel’s ‘friendly’ match with Argentina is a boost to the Red Card Israel campaign, which has called on FIFA to expel Israel – as it expelled apartheid South Africa – due to its violations against Palestinian football and its disregard for FIFA statutes,” BDS said in a statement.
The cancellation is BDS’s greatest success to date. Before that, it had only persuaded a small number of artists and organizations to boycott Israel.
An online campaign late last year convinced New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde to cancel a planned concert in Israel. She followed other artists who have cancelled performances, including Elvis Costello, Lauryn Hill and Gorillaz.
The Argentinian decision has prompted concern that it could become the model for similar efforts in the future. One immediate target could be Israel’s scheduled hosting next year of the Eurovision song contest.
Argentina decided to cancel the match in the run-up to this month’s World Cup in Russia after Israel insisted on moving it from the Mediterranean port city of Haifa, home to Israel’s best stadium, to Jerusalem as part of the Jewish state’s 70th anniversary celebrations. Tickets for the Jerusalem match had sold out quickly.
The Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and Argentinian media said the decision was in response to a series of unidentified “threats and provocations” against star player Lionel Messi and his wife.
“Since they announced they would play against Israel, various terror groups have been sending messages and letters to players on the Argentina national team and their relatives, including clear threats to hurt them and their families. These included video clips of dead children,” said hard-line Israeli Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev, whom many hold responsible for Israel’s public relations fiasco.
Ms. Regev was referring to video clips that had been circulated by the Islamic State, including pictures of Mr. Messi in an orange jumpsuit and ones that insinuated his beheading. A Palestinian campaign against playing the match in Jerusalem involved images of Mr. Messi’s white and sky-blue striped jersey stained with red paint resembling blood and threats to burn Messi posters.
The Palestine Football Federation (PFF) had early called on its Argentinian counterpart to cancel the match because of the move to Jerusalem, which it described as a violation of world soccer body FIFA’s principle of a separation of sports and politics.
PFF president Jibril Rajoub also urged Palestinian fans to burn pictures of Messi and replicas of his shirt if he played in the match in Jerusalem.
“He’s a big symbol so we are going to target him personally, and we call on all to burn his picture and his shirt and to abandon him. We still hope that Messi will not come,” Mr Rajoub said after talks with Argentinian diplomats based in the West Bank city of Ramallah prior to the cancellation.
It was FIFA’s ban on political interference in soccer that persuaded Argentine President Mauricio Macri to reject a request by Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu to pre-empt the cancellation of the match.
The Israeli failure to have the match played in Jerusalem strengthens not only the BDS movement.
It also boosts Mr. Rajoub’s so far unsuccessful effort to persuade FIFA and the International Olympic Committee to impose sanctions against Israel because of the Israeli settlements in occupied territory and travel restrictions on Palestinian players and other allegedly security-related measures that hinder the development of Palestinian soccer.
Mr. Rajoub and a liberal Israeli newspaper put responsibility for the soccer fiasco at the doorstep of Ms. Regev.
“She’s the main culprit for legitimizing Argentina’s decision not to come… Beyond squandering millions in taxpayer money, in forcing the game to move to Jerusalem, Regev displayed gross intervention… If the game had stayed in Haifa, it would have happened… There’s a saying that a thousand wise men can’t rescue a coin thrown into a well by a fool…. All it takes is one fool to burn down a forest,” said Haaretz reporter Uzi Dann in an article entitled, Who Needs BDS: Israel Scores Spectacular Own Goal in Argentina Soccer Fiasco.
“Instead of soccer, Miri Regev wanted politics and she got politics… It’s a great farce that gives immense momentum to the BDS campaign against Israel”, added Itzik Shmuli, a centre-left member of the Israeli parliament.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin appeared to echo the sentiment by saying that “the politicization of the Argentinean move worries me greatly” even if he blamed the Argentinians for involving politics by cancelling the match.
Assertions by Israeli officials that the Argentinian decision had handed a victory to terrorism may go down well with hard-line public opinion in Israel as well as supporters of Israel across the globe but is unlikely to help Israel forge bridges to opponents of its policies or facilitate its efforts to get a broader international buy-in of its insistence that Jerusalem is the undivided capital of the Jewish state.
Israeli opposition leader Avi Gabbay pinpointed the potential fall-out of the cancellation of the match when he warned on Twitter: “We just absorbed a shot in the face. This is not just sports. This, unfortunately, could start an international tsunami.”
Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture, and co-host of the New Books in Middle Eastern Studies podcast. James is the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog, a book with the same title as well as Comparative Political Transitions between Southeast Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, co-authored with Dr. Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario, Shifting Sands, Essays on Sports and Politics in the Middle East and North Africa, and the forthcoming China and the Middle East: Venturing into the Maelstrom
Medical Aid for Palestinians attacked by pro-Israel lawyers’ groups
MEMO | June 7, 2018
UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has described allegations of anti-Semitism made by two pro-Israel advocacy groups as an “appalling smear”.
According to a report in the Jewish News, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) and the US-based Lawfare Project this week submitted a 17-page complaint against MAP to the Charity Commission.
The complaint claims that the respected humanitarian NGO is guilty of “racial hatred of Jews”, and claims MAP has “links to Palestinian terrorist groups”.
A MAP spokesperson told the paper: “This appalling smear appears to be part of a wider pattern of attacks on legitimate NGOs. Should the Charity Commission raise points with us, we would be pleased to respond.”
The article says that the pro-Israel activists accuse MAP of giving a “false impression” about the health of Palestinians. UKLFI’s Jonathan Turner said: “Readers of its misleading website would no doubt be surprised to hear that life-expectancy in Gaza in fact compares favourably with Glasgow.”
Turner added that MAP was “abusing its position as a charity to spread false information about Israel”, and using “the halo of its status as a charity to disguise its racial hatred of Israelis and Jews.”
Lawfare Project direct Brooke Goldstein said “it is incumbent on the Charity Commission to take action against MAP’s sinister abuse of charitable funds”.
The timing of the attack on MAP is no coincidence, coming after an appeal by the charity raised more than £1 million following Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian protesters.
MAP medics have been on the ground in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, and the charity’s social media accounts have given vital insights into Israel’s brutal crackdown.
Palestinian MEMO cartoonist detained by Israel forces
MEMO | June 7, 2018
Tapestry narrative cartoon
Acclaimed Palestinian cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh was detained by Israeli forces last week as he tried to return to his Ramallah home following a trip to Europe, according to his contracted publishing house Just World Books.
Sabaaneh, who regularly draws cartoons for MEMO, was returning from the international cartooning festival in Bastogne, Belgium, on 31 March when Israeli border-control forces held him for five hours at the Allenby Bridge, intimidated him, and confiscated one of his key works, a cartoon in the form of a tapestry narrative.
The cartoonist has used his talent to raise awareness of Israel’s ongoing and illegal occupation of the West Bank and is the Regional Representative in the Middle East for the Washington DC-based Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRNI).
Last year, Sabaaneh was also honoured as a special guest by the UN at a festival celebrating Palestinian culture, and earlier in 2017 conducted a 15-city speaking tour of America.
This was not the first time Sabaaneh has been detained. In 2013, when trying to return from a trip to Jordan, he was arrested at the border and imprisoned for five months. This particular experience informed a chapter of his recently published book “White and Black: Political cartoons in Palestine” which detailed the plight of Palestinians taken from their loved ones.
Sabaaneh is regularly harassed by both Israeli and Palestinian officials when attempting to cross the border. Israel uses arrest as a means of intimidation, often holding Palestinians for weeks without charge or access to a lawyer.
Israeli raids in Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps are also a daily occurrence in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, during which many of the detentions occur.
Yesterday, human rights groups revealed that Israeli occupation forces arrested more than 600 Palestinians in the occupied territories and besieged Gaza Strip last month, including 94 children and nine women.
Read also:
Palestinian activist threatened with death for exposing Israel crimes
Israel seals Palestinian family’s home with them inside
Front door of the Zahida family home
Ma’an – June 7, 2018
HEBRON – A Palestinian family was trapped inside their home and forced to leave through a broken window after Israeli forces welded their front door shut and temporarily detained them inside their home in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron on Thursday morning.
The incident took place on the al-Shuhada street in the Old City of Hebron, one of the most heavily militarized streets in the occupied West Bank.
Samer Yusri Zahida told Ma’an that Israeli forces broke into his brother’s house at 8 a.m. on Thursday, forcing him and his three other family members into one room in the house.
After detaining the family for a brief period of time, Israeli forces broke one of the windows in the house and exited through it, allegedly telling the family that if they want to leave the house they must also exit through the window. Israeli forces then sealed the front door to the family’s home.
Zahida noted that the window that was broken did not lead to the main road, but to the neighbor’s house.
Coordinator of the Human Rights Defenders Association in Hebron, Imad Abu Shamsieh, told Ma’an that Israeli forces have been trying to force out the family since they moved in two weeks ago, in what he said was an “attempt to empty the al-Shuhada street of all Palestinian residents and provide it to Israeli settlers as a new residence.”
Palestinian residents of Hebron’s Old City face a large Israeli military presence on a daily basis, with at least 20 checkpoints set up at the entrances of many streets, as well as the entrance of the Ibrahimi Mosque itself.
Additionally, Palestinians are not allowed to drive on al-Shuhada street, have had their homes and shops on the street welded shut, and in some areas of the Old City, are not permitted to walk on certain roads.
Meanwhile, some 800 notoriously violent Israeli settlers in Hebron move freely on the street, drive cars, and carry machine guns.
Israel’s red card and own goal
By Yvonne Ridley | MEMO | June 7, 2018
Rotem Kamer, the vice president of the Israeli Football Association, has accused Palestinians of waging “football terror” after Argentina called off a friendly match in Jerusalem. Argentina’s move came after global protests fuelled by the killing and wounding of thousands of Palestinians taking part in the Gaza Strip’s Great Return March protests.
“We are seeing it as crossing a red line and we cannot accept it,” blustered Kamer, without a hint of irony. He and other key figures in the Zionist regime are outraged at the cancellation, especially after tickets for Saturday’s match against Israel sold out within 20 minutes. Criticising human rights and pro-Palestinian protesters, IFA Chairman Ofer Eini stormed, “The aim was to harm our country through soccer.” In fact, the aim of such civil action is to reverse Israeli apartheid and colonial oppression of the people of Palestine.
Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin described the news as “a sad morning for fans” and added his concern about the “politicisation” of Argentina’s decision. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meanwhile, tried in vain to salvage the game in a telephone call to Argentinian President Mauricio Macri. His appeal was unsuccessful. Far-right Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Argentina of folding to “Israeli-hating anti-Semitic terrorist supporters.”
Netanyahu’s government is fuming after being denied the chance to showcase Jerusalem as its “undivided capital”. The decision by Netanyahu to switch the game from Haifa to the Teddy Kollek Stadium built on the site of an ethnically-cleansed Palestinian village, Al-Malha, clearly backfired. It was the switching of venues that many believe prompted Argentina to step back and cancel the match. Culture and sports minister Miri Regev lashed out at critics by claiming ludicrously that, “This is the same terrorism that caused the Munich massacre.”
However, Hugo Moyano, Second Vice President of Argentina’s Football Association (AFA), called the cancellation positive: “It was the right thing to do, it was not worth it,” he told Argentina’s Radio 10. “What happens in these places where so many people are killed cannot be accepted by any human being.” The decision was also welcomed by Argentine striker Gonzalo Higuain, one of the country’s highest-profile players, in an interview with the ESPN television network on Tuesday.
It must now be sinking in with Netanyahu, Rivlin, Eini, his sidekick Kamer and Regev that the Zionist State’s murderous policies have created this massive own goal. Furthermore, their self-righteous indignation and the absurd description of the cancellation as “terrorism” (Israel crying wolf again) conveniently overlooks the fact that Israel has itself crossed many red lines and introduced real terror on many levels when it comes to football, no matter whether it’s the professional game we are talking about, amateur matches or simply a knockabout among friends on the beach. Its murderous acts deserve much more than a paltry red card.
Here are just a few incidents to refresh Israeli memories of what real terror in football means:
13 January, 2009: Three Palestine national team players were killed in separate attacks during Israel’s military offensive against civilians in Gaza called Operation Cast Lead. Targeted within 72 hours of each other, Ayman Alkurd, who also played for his club Falasteen Al-Ryadi, was the first to be killed. Like his team-mates, his home was hit in an air strike. Fellow footballers Wajeh Moshtahe and Shadi Sbakhe, were killed in later Israeli strikes.
30 January 2013: Dzhabrail Aslanbekovich Kadiyev and Zaur Umarovich Sadayev were signed by the notorious Israeli club Beitar Jerusalem. Angry racist fans who regularly chant “Death to all Arabs” torched the club’s offices in protest at the Muslim signings. The club’s fans boast loudly that it has no Arab players. It has also changed its name to “Beitar Trump Jerusalem” in recognition of the US President’s controversial decision to move the US Embassy to the city and recognise it as the capital of Israel.
31 January 2014: Adam Jamous and Jawahar Halbiyeh live in Abu Dis in occupied Jerusalem. As they headed home after football practice they were shot in the legs without warning. Jawahar was shot seven times in his left leg, three times in his right leg, and once in the hand, while Adam was shot three times: twice in his left thigh, and another in his right. Doctors confirmed that neither of them will ever play football again.
9 July 2014: Avid football fans gathered at a beachside cafe in the Al-‘Izbeh area of Khan Younis to watch a FIFA World Cup qualifier between Argentina and the Netherlands. Israel had launched yet another war on Gaza two days earlier, blitzing 750 targets, but this area was not classed as a military zone and the young Palestinians settled down to watch the match in the belief that they were safe. Half an hour later, at 11.30pm, the cafe was shelled. Those killed were: Ahmed Astal, 18; Suleiman Astal, 16; Musa, 16, a cousin of the Astals; Mohammed Ganan, 24; Ibrahim Ganan, 25; Hamdi Sawalli, 20; Ibrahim Sawalli, 28; Salim Sawalli; 23 and Mohammed Fawana, 18.
16 July 2014: Just after 4pm and in the space of 40 seconds, four boys who had been playing football on the beach in Gaza City were killed after an Israeli gunboat fired two shells at them. Aged between seven and 11, two were named Mohammad, one was Zakaria and the youngest was Ahed. All were members of the extended Bakr family. Three others were also injured and given first aid by international journalists who witnessed the atrocity. Hamad Bakr, aged 13, had shrapnel in his chest; his cousin Motasem, 11, suffered head and leg injuries; and Mohammad Abu Watfah, 21, was hit by shrapnel in his stomach.
31 March 2018: This was the day when Israeli snipers killed 17 peaceful protesters at the Great Return March in the Gaza Strip and injured hundreds more. Those wounded included Palestinian footballer Mohammad Khalil whose career was ended after he was shot by an Israeli soldier in both legs. A player for Al-Salah FC, he was shot in his knee by a so-called butterfly bullet which exited one leg and hit his other knee, breaking the bone. He will never play another game of football again and is likely to be bedridden for months.
13 April 2018: Young footballer Attallah Fayoumi, 17, suffered a devastating leg injury after being shot. The wounds required urgent surgery but Israeli forces refused him permission to leave Gaza for a West Bank or Israeli hospital. As the seriousness of his condition worsened doctors were forced to amputate his leg, shattering his dreams of ever becoming a professional footballer.
There are those who believe that Israel deliberately targets Palestinian footballers and other athletes who draw favourable, international attention to Palestine as ambassadors of their sport. Whether traveling abroad from Gaza or moving across the West Bank they are subjected to Israeli interrogations at checkpoints and boundary crossings. In addition to movement restrictions, Israeli forces are suspected of deliberately targeting Palestinian footballers with live ammunition; the evidence is, indeed, mounting.
The Israel Defense Forces boasted during the Great Return March that, “Nothing was carried out uncontrolled; everything was accurate and measured, and we know where every bullet landed.” The army then quickly deleted its incriminating tweet as more evidence of war crimes by its soldiers came to light, but not before a copy was made by the human rights group B’Tselem.
According to Sami Abu Sneima, head of surgery at the European Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, footballer Attallah Fayoumi is not the only case of a leg amputation since the peaceful protests began at the end of March. “Many people who were shot with live ammunition have had to have their upper or lower limbs amputated,” he explained.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza says the majority of injuries being attended to are in the lower limbs, and while most of the wounds are considered serious, hospitals run on a case-by-case basis. So far, 123 protesters have been killed, with more than 14,000 wounded, according to Palestinian hospital staff. At least 32 people, many of them below 25 years old, have had limbs amputated.
So while Israeli FA chief Ofer Eini claims that the move to get the Argentinian match cancelled was a deliberate attempt to harm the Zionist State he should reflect that no one was killed or injured in the process, unlike the heroic Palestinians taking part in the peaceful resistance of the Great Return March. If he and the thousands of Israeli football fans who’ve lost out really want to vent their anger and frustration at anyone at all, it should be Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s inhumane treatment of the Palestinian people.
How Washington Has Lost Its Way
By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 07.06.2018
One might well think that the only serious foreign policy imperative of the Donald Trump administration is to defend Israel. A president elected because he promised to put United States’ interests first has turned out to be little different than his predecessors, bowing to the power of various lobbies and constituencies to carry out their wishes while simultaneously pretending to be serving poorly defined policies to promote the security and well-being of the American people.
Israel possesses, to be sure, the most powerful foreign policy lobby operating not only in the United States but as well in Western Europe and Australasia. When Israel makes its incessant demands, politicians from Washington to Canberra and Wellington pause to listen. In Britain, fully 80% of Conservative parliamentarians are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel.
Israel benefits from a large, influential and wealthy community of diaspora Jews that is willing to do its bidding and which also possesses easy access to the media and to politicians, many of whom are more than willing to be corrupted by money. This has led to the creation of an “Israeli narrative,” most particularly in the United States, which glamorizes the state of Israel through the incessant reiteration of expressions like “the only democracy in the Middle East” and “America’s best friend and closest ally,” both of which assertions are completely false.
It should surprise no one that the Trump administration is packed with Israel-firsters from top to bottom. Those who deal with Israel directly – Ambassador David Friedman, Chief Middle East Negotiator Jason Greenblatt, and Special Envoy and son-in-law Jared Kushner are all Orthodox Jews with long standing ties to Israel and its leadership. They are major financial supporters of Israeli “charities,” to include projects on the occupied West Bank, which are both illegal under international law and contrary to long established U.S. policy. It would seem, without being too hyperbolic, that Israeli interests are at least as important to them as are the American interests that they ostensibly represent and are being paid by the taxpayer to support.
Within the White House, there is virtually no pushback against Israeli pretensions even when American interests are being damaged. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has repeatedly voiced his support of the Jewish state and his animosity towards that state’s enemy of choice Iran. National Security Adviser John Bolton, a long-time neoconservative, has never distanced himself in any way from complete identification with the policies being promoted by Israel and its increasingly right wing and racist governments. Donald Trump himself has declared that he will be the best president for Israel ever, a pledge that he has worked to honor by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in spite of the damage that it does to actual regional American interests.
But the most vocal advocate for Israel within the Administration is Nikki Haley, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who has consistently taken the hardest of all possible lines against Israel’s claimed enemies while also fully endorsing the most brutal actions undertaken by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Haley’s most recent action reveals that the United States has truly lost its sense of direction and moral compass. If one were religious, it might be suggested that it has lost its soul.
Haley’s most recent foray into her own style of what she might refer to as statesmanship came on June 1st. Kuwait had brought a resolution to the United Nations Security Council to call on it to fulfil its responsibility to help protect the people of Gaza, who were being bombed, gassed and shot dead by Israeli Army sniper fire. Nikki Haley, however, was thinking of something quite different, a resolution she had drafted to denounce Hamas for the alleged volleys of rockets that were launched into adjacent Israeli controlled areas in response to the Israeli gunfire and bombings. Votes on the two resolutions followed, with Haley failing to obtain any votes on her resolution except her own.
Haley again voted alone when she vetoed the Kuwaiti resolution to protect the Palestinian people. And it was not Haley’s first such bit of unilateralism. She had walked out of a previous Security Council meeting on Israel’s killing of Palestinian protesters as a deliberate insult to their representative who had risen to begin to speak. Haley unfortunately represents America. America the home of the free and brave? Bullshit.
Poll: 61% of Israel support military response to Gaza protests
MEMO | June 6, 2018
The majority of Israelis support Israel’s military response against the Great Marches of Return, a new poll revealed.
The poll was conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University between 28-30 May and included a sample of 600 people.
According to the monthly Peace Index a majority of respondents believed the Israeli military’s use of force against unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza was “proportionate”.
The poll revealed that 61 per cent of Israeli Jews believe “the Israeli army’s handling of the Palestinian protests near the border fence is correct, and that the force used against the demonstrators is also correct” however, 92 per cent of Arabs in Israel believe the Israeli army used excessive force.
A majority of Israelis, 68 per cent, believe the demonstrations were planned by Hamas, while 62 per cent of Arabs believe the protests resulted from “despair”.
Asked about the living conditions in the Gaza Strip, the index showed that half of Israelis believe the authorities should work to alleviate the hardship in Gaza by facilitating the freedom of movement and the entry of goods.
Of those surveyed, 43 per cent believe there is a possibility of a full-scale war with Iran, while more than half think Israel is ready to protect its citizens if such unrest broke out.
Israeli occupation forces ‘execute’ 21-year-old Palestinian ‘wanted for stone throwing’
Palestine Information Center – June 6, 2018
RAMALLAH – The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) on Wednesday morning shot and killed a Palestinian youth in Nabi Saleh village, northwest of Ramallah.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health, quoting the Palestinian Civil Liaison, announced in a brief statement the death of a Palestinian youth who was shot by IOF soldiers in Nabi Saleh.
Local sources said that the IOF soldiers opened fire at Izz al-Tamimi, 21, injuring him with three live bullets, one of which to the head.
Al-Tamimi has been long chased by the IOF before he was killed during a raid into Nabi Saleh, Quds Press reported.
According to locals, the IOF left al-Tamimi to bleed for more than half an hour and threatened to shoot anyone who would provide him medical treatment or take him to the hospital.
Al-Tamimi’s family said in a statement that the IOF opened fire at their son at very close range, stressing that what happened was a “deliberate execution”.
They affirmed that the Israeli Intelligence had repeatedly threatened to kill their son on several occasions.
Palestinian sources said that the IOF handed over al-Tamimi’s body to the Palestinian Civil Liaison before it was transferred to Palestine Medical Complex in Ramallah in preparation for the funeral later in the day.
Ma’an :
… According to locals, Tamimi has been wanted by Israeli forces for alleged stone throwing, and soldiers have allegedly attempted to detain him on several occasions.
Another Palestinian whose identity remained unknown was also reportedly wounded with live ammunition on Wednesday morning in the village.
An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that the killing took place during “riots” in Nabi Saleh, during which 10 youth threw stones at soldiers who were conducting “detention operations.”
“During the riot, one Palestinian flanked the troops and hurled a rock at a soldier, hitting him in the head. The soldier then responded with live fire, injuring the Palestinian, who was was injured and treated by Israeli forces at the scene, but later died,” the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson added that they would look into reports of a second Palestinian being injured with live ammunition during the clashes.
IMEMC :
… Palestinian medics were called to the scene, but the soldiers also attacked them, preventing them from approaching the seriously wounded young man, who succumbed to his injuries.
Eyewitnesses said the soldiers assassinated the Palestinian, directly and repeatedly firing at him, in addition to attacking dozens of Palestinians.
The soldiers also shot another Palestinian with a live round and caused many others to suffer the effects of teargas inhalation, during protests that took place after the soldiers killed Tamimi.
The Palestinian worked as a car mechanic, and was chased and wanted by the army for 18 months, in which he managed to escape numerous attempts to arrest him.
He was also shot and injured by Israeli army fire several times when the soldiers were trying to abduct him, and the army abducted his brother to pressure him into turning himself in to the army.
A few weeks ago, the army called one of his brothers, and told him that “Ezzeddin will face the same fate of Ahmad Nasr Jarrar, who was killed by the soldiers on February 06, 2018, if he does not surrender.
After the soldiers killed Ezzeddin, they invaded many homes, including his home, and occupied their rooftops.
Palestinians thank Argentina for cancelling match with Israel
MEMO | June 6, 2018
Palestinians have thanked the Argentinian football team and star forward Lionel Messi for cancelling their friendly match with Israel scheduled for Saturday, according to the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI).
Football fans and Palestinian human rights supporters had urged the Argentinian team to cancel the match, set to take place in an Israeli stadium built on the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Al-Maliha in response to Israel’s violent response to peaceful protesters on the Gaza border that left over 120 dead.
Initially set to be held in Haifa, the Israeli government moved the match to the Jerusalem village, offering the organisers $760,000 in compensation. Israel was reportedly already paying Argentina $3 million to play the match as part of its celebrations to mark 70 years of its independence, when it forcibly expelled more than 750,000 Palestinians from their homes.
“This was all part of the Israeli apartheid regime’s sports-washing policy to use international sporting events to cover up its war crimes and egregious human rights violations against Palestinians. The fact that Argentina fans and human rights activists around the world succeeded in thwarting it gives us a lot of hope,” Omar Barghouti of PACBI said.
In a video message, the football team from the Palestinian town of Nabi Saleh, in the occupied West Bank, thanked Argentina and Lionel Messi. Nabi Saleh is home to Ahed Tamimi, the Palestinian minor serving months in an Israeli prison for slapping a heavily-armed Israeli occupation soldier invading her property.
“You scored a goal for freedom, justice and equality,” the video states.
Top Russian pundit calls for Palestine talks in Moscow
By M.K. Bhadrakumar | Asia Times | June 6, 2018
In an interview with the influential Russian daily Izvestiya, the well-known “Orientalist” scholar and establishment figure, Vitaly Naumkin, has floated the startling idea that Moscow must play a role in resolving the Palestinian problem. He said, “Moscow has long urged for [organizing] a top-level meeting between Palestinians and Israelis in Russia, on a Moscow platform. It is necessary to turn Moscow into a venue for such talks.”
Naumkin explains that Moscow has unique credentials to kickstart peace talks, since it is a veto-holding member of the UN Security Council with an obligation to pursue the implementation of relevant UN resolutions on Palestine and is also a member of the Middle East Quartet. Alas, US obduracy has stalled the Quartet, while Washington is stonewalling by casting its veto in the Security Council. He lamented that the US is hobnobbing with extreme right-wing elements in Israel who are not even representative of Israeli opinion.
The idea of Russia acting as a mediator in talks on the Palestinian problem dates back to the Soviet era. It’s been a non-starter due to the West’s dogged determination to keep the Soviets out of the strategic Middle East region. But although Cold War has ended, any Russian attempt to highlight the Palestine problem as the core issue in the Middle East will run into strong headwinds from Tel Aviv and Washington.
So, why is Naumkin, a top establishment pundit (who heads the Russian Academy of Science’s hallowed Institute of Oriental Studies), wading into the whirlpool? In a manner of speaking, he is actually using an “objective co-relative” to clarify the real state of play in the Russian-Israeli ties.
In the interview, Naumkin dispels any notion that Russia and Israel are in any “strategic alliance.” He prefers to call it a “normal trust-based relationship,” which enables the two countries to “fight terror together” and maintain excellent economic ties. Period. Quintessentially, as he puts it, the two countries “no longer see each other as enemies.”
Naumkin points out that Israel’s stance on Ukraine is helpful insofar as it refuses to join western sanctions against Russia, and, secondly, Israel is in harmony with Russia as regards attitudes toward World War II and fascism. But does it mean that Moscow and Tel Aviv have identical stance on everything under the sun? For heaven’s sake, no!
What makes Naumkin’s remarks very interesting is not only his subtlety of mind but that he belongs to the great Soviet tradition of scholar-diplomats who are on the frontline of Russian foreign policy. Quite obviously, Naumkin has marked some distance between Russia and Israel at a complicated juncture when the self-serving western narrative would be that the two countries have struck a deal at the highest level of leadership regarding the future of Syria, leaving Iran out in the cold.
Moscow feels that poison is being injected into Russia’s complex equations with Tehran and Damascus. Who else but Naumkin could provide the perfect antidote? The heart of the matter is that Russia has substantially improved relations with most countries in the Middle East in recent years after a decade of limited cooperation through the first decade following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian diplomacy has shaken off the Soviet-era ideological baggage and is highly pragmatic. Thus, although Saudi Arabia and the UAE significantly contributed to the bleeding of the Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and had covertly fostered “jihadism” in Chechnya in the 1990s, the Kremlin today is eager to build relations with them. In fact, Saudi Arabia is Moscow’s strategic partner in the so-called “OPEC+ deal” aimed at stabilizing the world oil market.
Again, Qatar, which has been called the “Club Med for terrorists” and was a latent ally of Chechen rebels, is currently negotiating the purchase of Russia’s advanced S-400 missile defence system.
Moscow’s diplomacy aims to convey the impression to its Middle Eastern interlocutors – be it Israel, Jordan, Iran or Saudi Arabia – that Russia keeps its end of a mutually beneficial bargain. But if anyone adds mystique to the bargain and elevates it to a Faustian deal, Moscow may be left with no option but to bring it down to terra firma.
Plainly put, Naumkin, (who, interestingly enough, also happens to be Russia’s advisor to the UN Special Envoy for Syria Steffan de Mistura) knows perfectly well what Russia is attempting in southern Syria – namely, to eliminate the remaining strongholds of terrorist groups ensconced in that region bordering Jordan and Israel. Indeed, if Israel could persuade Washington to shut down the base in Al-Tanf (which makes no sense from a military point of view anyway), it will help the overall Russian efforts. On the other hand, Israel has no reason to worry, because Iran does not intend to participate in the liberation of the provinces of Daara and Quneitra that straddle the Golan Heights.
Besides, it is no secret that Russia has nothing to do with Iran’s policy of resistance against Israel. But then, to put two and two together to shout and dance in jubilation that Russia is muzzling Iran is completely unnecessary – and can turn out to be counterproductive. Of course, if anyone tries to create confusion, Moscow will clarify. That is what Naumkin has ably done.
Palestine is not occupied, it is colonised
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 5, 2018
June 5 2018 marks the 51st anniversary of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.
But, unlike the massive popular mobilisation that preceded the anniversary of the Nakba – the catastrophic destruction of Palestine in 1948 – on 15 May the anniversary of the occupation is hardly generating equal mobilisation.
The unsurprising death of the ‘peace process’ and the inevitable demise of the ‘two-state solution’ has shifted the focus from ending the occupation per se to the larger, and more encompassing, problem of Israel’s colonialism throughout Palestine.
Grassroots mobilisation in Gaza and the West Bank, and among Palestinian Bedouin communities in the Naqab Desert, are, once more, widening the Palestinian people’s sense of national aspirations. Thanks to the limited vision of the Palestinian leadership those aspirations have, for decades, been confined to Gaza and the West Bank.
In some sense the ‘Israeli occupation’ is no longer an occupation as per international standards and definitions. It is merely a phase of the Zionist colonisation of historic Palestine, a process that began over a 100 years ago, and carries on to this day.
“The law of occupation is primarily motivated by humanitarian consideration; it is solely the facts on the ground that determine its application”, states the International Committee of the Red Cross website.
It is for practical purposes that we often utilise the term ‘occupation’ with reference to Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian land, occupied after 5 June 1967. The term allows for the constant emphasis on humanitarian rules that are meant to govern Israel’s behavior as the occupying power.
However, Israel has already, and repeatedly, violated most conditions of what constitute an ‘occupation’ from an international law perspective, as articulated in the 1907 Hague Regulations (articles 42-56) and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.
According to these definitions, an ‘occupation’ is a provisional phase, a temporary situation that is meant to end with the implementation of international law regarding that particular situation.
‘Military occupation’ is not the sovereignty of the occupier over the occupied; it cannot include the transfer of citizens from the territories of the occupying power to occupied land; it cannot include ethnic cleansing; destruction of properties; collective punishment and annexation.
It is often argued that Israel is an occupier that has violated the rules of occupation as stated in international law.
This would have been the case a year, two or five years after the original occupation had taken place, but not 51 years later. Since then, the occupation has turned into long-term colonisation.
An obvious proof is Israel’s annexation of occupied land, including the Syrian Golan Heights and Palestinian East Jerusalem in 1981. That decision had no regard for international law, humanitarian law or any other law.
Israeli politicians have, for years, openly debated the annexation of the West Bank, especially areas that are populated with illegal Jewish settlements, which are built contrary to international law.
Those hundreds of settlements that Israel has been building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not meant as temporary structures.
Dividing the West Bank into three zones, areas A, B and C, each governed according to different political diktats and military roles, has little precedent in international law.
Israel argues that, contrary to international law, it is no longer an occupying power in Gaza; however, an Israel land, maritime and aerial siege has been imposed on the Strip for over 11 years. From successive Israeli wars that have killed thousands, to a hermetic blockade that has pushed the Palestinian population to the brink of starvation, Gaza subsists in isolation.
Gaza is an ‘occupied territory’ by name only, without any of the humanitarian rules applied. In the last 10 weeks alone, over 120 unarmed protesters, journalists and medics were killed and 13,000 wounded, yet the international community and law remain inept, unable to face or challenge Israeli leaders or to overpower equally cold-hearted American vetoes.
The Palestinian Occupied Territories have, long ago, crossed the line from being occupied to being colonised. But there are reasons that we are trapped in old definitions, leading amongst them is American political hegemony over the legal and political discourses pertaining to Palestine.
One of the main political and legal achievements of the Israeli war – which was carried out with full US support – on several Arab countries in June 1967 is the redefining of the legal and political language on Palestine.
Prior to that war, the discussion was mostly dominated by such urgent issues as the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees to go back to their homes and properties in historic Palestine.
The June war shifted the balance of power completely, and cemented America’s role as Israel’s main backer on the international stage.
Several UN Security Council resolutions were passed to delegitimise the Israeli occupation: UNSCR 242, UNSCR 338, and the less talked about but equally significant UNSCR 497.
Resolution 242 of 1967 demanded “withdrawal of Israel armed forces” from the territories it occupied in the June war. Resolution 338, which followed the war of 1973, accentuated and clarified that demand. Resolution 497 of 1981 was a response to Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights. It rendered such a move “null and void and without international and legal affect”.
The same applied to the annexation of Jerusalem as to any colonial constructions or any Israeli attempts aimed at changing the legal status of the West Bank.
But Israel is operating with an entirely different mindset.
Considering that anywhere between 600,000 to 750,000 Israeli Jews now live in the ‘Occupied Territories’, and that the largest settlement of Modi’in Illit houses more than 64,000 Israeli Jews, one has to wonder what form of military occupation blue-print Israel is implementing, anyway?
Israel is a settler colonial project, which began when the Zionist movement aspired to build an exclusive homeland for Jews in Palestine, at the expense of the native inhabitants of that land in the late 19th century.
Nothing has changed since. Only facades, legal definitions and political discourse. The truth is that Palestinians continue to suffer the consequences of Zionist colonialism and they will continue to carry that burden until that original sin is boldly confronted and justly remedied.
Knesset blocks bill defining Israel as ‘country of all citizens’
MEMO |June 5, 2018
A bill calling for Israel to be defined as a state of all its citizens was stopped before it reached the Knesset for discussion yesterday.
Submitted by three Joint List Members of the Knesset, the Basic Law: A Country of All Its Citizens stood contrary to efforts to define Israel as “the state of the Jewish people” thus denied equal rights to its non-Jewish citizens.
Haaretz reported Knesset legal adviser Eyal Yinon “said that the legislation seemed to be aimed at altering basic principles – for example, by essentially cancelling the Law of Return (which declares the right of every Jew to immigrate to Israel), and determining instead that receipt of Israeli citizenship will be based on a person’s familial affiliation to another citizen of the state.”
This is the first time proposed legislation has been thrown out before being discussed in the last two Knesset terms.
Arab MKs Jamal Zahalka, Haneen Zoabi and Joumah Azbarga had submitted the draft bill.
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The Crusades – colliding narratives
Ashes of Pompeii | June 13, 2026
They say history is written by the victors, but the Crusades offer an interesting historical contrast: a two-century collision that produced not one history, but two parallel, irreconcilable realities. The dates and the battles are identical in both accounts, but the moral axis is entirely flipped.
In the traditional Western narrative, the Crusades are framed as a heroic, if tragic, epic. The First Crusade is a pious pilgrimage; the knights are romanticized figures of chivalry in shining armor, bravely holding the line in a hostile, exotic land. The eventual loss of the Holy Land is mourned as the “fall of Outremer,” a tragic retreat of European civilization. In this telling, the East is often reduced to a passive backdrop, its inhabitants viewed through a lens of mystique or backwardness, mere obstacles to a divine mandate.
But cross the Mediterranean, and the exact same timeline reads like a chronicle of foreign invasion and eventual, hard-won restoration against the barbarous northerners. The dates do not change, but the adjectives do. Here is the history as it is remembered in the Levant… continue
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