A Special Relationship Born in Hell
The United States should cut all ties with war criminal Israel
By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • April 3, 2018
If you want to understand what the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States really means consider the fact that Israeli Army snipers shot dead seventeen unarmed and largely peaceful Gazan demonstrators on Good Friday without a squeak coming out of the White House or State Department. Some of the protesters were shot in the back while running away, while another 1,000 Palestinians were wounded, an estimated 750 by gunfire, the remainder injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.
The offense committed by the Gazan protesters that has earned them a death sentence was coming too close to the Israeli containment fence that has turned the Gaza strip into the world’s largest outdoor prison. President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East negotiator David Greenblatt described the protest as “a hostile march on the Israel-Gaza border… inciting violence against Israel.” And Nikki Haley at the U.N. has also used the U.S. veto to block any independent inquiry into the violence, demonstrating once again that the White House team is little more than Israel’s echo chamber. America’s enabling of the brutal reality that is today’s Israel makes it fully complicit in the war crimes carried out against the helpless and hapless Palestinian people.
So where was the outrage in the American media about the massacre of civilians? Characteristically, Israel portrays itself as somehow a victim and the U.S. media, when it bothers to report about dead Palestinians at all, picks up on that line. The Jewish State is portrayed as always endangered and struggling to survive even though it is the nuclear armed regional superpower that is only threatened because of its own criminal behavior. And even when it commits what are indisputable war crimes like the use of lethal force against an unarmed civilian population, the Jewish Lobby and its media accomplices are quick to take up the victimhood refrain.
Last week, the Israeli government described the protests an “an organized terrorist operation” while Gazans are dehumanized by claims that they act under the direction of evil Hamas to dig tunnels and rain down bottle rockets on hapless Israeli civilians. The reality is, however, quite different. It is the Gazans who have been subjected to murderous periodic incursions by the Israeli army, a procedure that Israel refers to as “mowing the grass,” a brutal exercise intended to keep the Palestinians terrified and docile.
The story of what happened in Gaza on Friday had largely disappeared from the U.S. media by Sunday. On Saturday, the New York Times reported the most recent violence this way: “… some began hurling stones, tossing Molotov cocktails and rolling burning tires at the fence, the Israelis responded with tear gas and gunfire.” Get it? The Palestinians started it all, according to Israeli sources, by throwing things at the fence and forcing the poor victimized Israeli soldiers to respond with gunfire, presumably as self-defense. The Times also repeated Israel’s uncorroborated claims that there were gunmen active on the Gazan side, but given the disparity in numbers killed and injured – zero on the Israeli side of the fence – the Palestinian shooters must have been using blanks. Or they never existed at all.
The Israelis reportedly also responded to “suspicious figures” on the Gazan side with rounds from tanks, killing, among others, a farmer far from the demonstrations who was working his field. Israeli warplanes and helicopters also joined in the fun, attacking targets on the Palestinian side. Drones flew over the demonstrators, spraying tear gas down on them. One recalls that the major Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014 included vignettes of Israeli families picnicking on the high ground overlooking the assault, enjoying the spectacle while observing the light-and-sound show that accompanied the carnage. At that time, more than 2,000 Gazans were killed and nearly 11,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled. If the current slaughter in Gaza continues, it would be a shame to forego the entertainment value of a good massacre right on one’s doorstep.
The reliably neocon Washington Post also framed the conflict as if Israel were behaving in a restrained fashion, leading off in its coverage with “Israel’s military warned Saturday it will step up its response to violence on the Gaza border if it continues…” You see, it’s the unarmed Palestinians who are creating the “violence.” Israel is the victim acting in self-defense.
The newspaper coverage was supplemented by television accounts of what had taken place. ABC News described “violent clashes,” implying that two somewhat equal sides were engaged in the fighting, even though the lethal force was only employed by Israel against an unarmed civilian population.
The backstory to the killing is what should disturb every American citizen. When it comes to disregard for US national sovereignty and interests, the Israelis and their amen chorus in Washington have dug a deep, dark hole and the U.S. Congress and White House have obligingly jumped right in. Since June 8, 1967, when the Israelis massacred the crew of the U.S.S. Liberty, Israel has realized it could do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants, any time it wants, to anybody… including American servicemen, and the U.S. would do nothing.
Let me speak plainly. The existence of many good Israelis who oppose their own government’s policies notwithstanding, the current Israel is an evil place that Americans should be condemning, not praising. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not be receiving 29 standing ovations from Congress. He should be rotting in jail. Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and dehumanization of the Palestinian people is nothing to be proud of. That the United States is giving this band of racist war criminals billions of dollars every year is a travesty. That the reputation of American has been besmirched worldwide because of its reflexive support of anything and everything that this rogue regime does is a national disgrace.
Gazans are demonstrating in part because they are starving. They have no clean drinking water because Israel has destroyed the purification plants as part of a deliberate policy to make life in the Strip so miserable that everyone will leave or die in place. And even leaving is problematical as Israel controls the border and will not let Palestinians enter or depart. It also controls the Mediterranean Sea access to Gaza. Fisherman go out a short distance from the shore to bring in a meager catch. If they go any farther they are shot dead by the Israeli Navy.
Hospitals, schools and power stations in Gaza are routinely bombed in Israel’s frequent reprisal actions against what Netanyahu chooses to describe as aggressive moves by Hamas. Such claims are bogus as Israel enjoys a monopoly of force and is never hesitant to use it.
Over in the other Palestinian enclave the West Bank, or what remains of it, the story is the same. Brutal heavily armed Israeli settlers rampage, poisoning Palestinian water, maiming and killing their livestock and even murdering local residents. Children throw stones or slap a soldier and wind up in Israeli prisons. The settlers are backed up by the army and paramilitary police who also shoot first. The Israeli military courts, who have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, rarely convict a Jew when an Arab is killed or beaten.
And here in America a bought-and-paid-for Congress continues to do its bit. Last week President Trump signed the so-called Taylor Force Act, part of the marathon spending bill, which will cut aid going to the Palestinian Authority while also increasing the money going to Israel. Back in January, Congress had also cut the funding going to support Palestinians who are still living in U.N. run refugee camps in spite of resolutions demanding that they should be allowed to return to their homes, now occupied by Israeli Jews. During the perfunctory debate on the measure, Congressmen were lied to by pro-Israel lobbyists who claimed that Arabs are terrorism supporters and use the money to attack Israelis.
I could go on and on, but the message should be clear to every American. There is no net gain for the United States in continuing the lopsided and essentially immoral relationship with the self-styled Jewish State. There is no enhancement of American national security, quite the contrary, and there remains only the sad realization that the blood of many innocent people is, to a considerable extent, on our hands. This horror must end.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
NPR Runs IDF Playbook, Spinning Killing of 17 Palestinians
Photo credit – Said Khatib, AFP
By Adam Johnson | FAIR | April 2, 2018
NPR, as FAIR has noted throughout the years (e.g., 8/14/01, 11/01, 2/5/02, 11/15/12, 10/10/14), takes a default pro-Israel line when reporting on the affairs of Israel/Palestine. Its correspondents almost always live in West Jerusalem or in Israel proper, are rarely Palestinian or Arab, and they work consistently to deflect blame for Israeli violence—either shifting blame onto Palestinian victims or dispersing it through false parity.
A segment from Friday (All Things Considered, 3/30/18) on Israel’s killing of Gaza protesters provides a case study in this process. NPR host Ari Shapiro set up the segment, an interview with reporter Daniel Estrin, by blaming the 17 dead and hundreds of injured Palestinians on “the militant group Hamas,” framing Israel as totally defensive. From the very first line, blame is deflected from the Israeli military:
Today saw some of the most violent clashes in years between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli troops.
We do not have one party’s snipers opening fire on another, unarmed party; we have “violent clashes”—a term, as FAIR (8/12/17) has noted before, that implies symmetry of forces and is often used to launder responsibility. The whitewashing got worse from there:
Tens of thousands of people in Gaza answered the militant group Hamas’ call to protest.
Palestinians have no organic reasons for wanting to protest the occupation of their homes; the whole thing was a top-down decree from “the militant group” Hamas.
They threw rocks and firebombs near the border fence with Israel. On the other side, Israeli troops assembled.
This conveys the impression the Israeli military was just sitting around, minding its own business, when it was aggressively attacked by hundreds of Palestinians, then responded to this assault.
The “firebombs” claim is repeated later in the piece by Estrin himself: “Israel responded to Palestinians throwing rocks, firebombs, burning tires.” This isn’t qualified with “according to the IDF” or “the Israeli government”—even though as of now, there’s no independent evidence firebombs were used, much less used before any sniper fire from Israel.
The issue isn’t trivial: The matter of first blood when it comes to the Palestinian/Israeli “conflict” is a crucial one (FAIR.org, 12/8/17); framing Israel as always responding to threats, rather than inflicting aggressive violence on an occupied people, is a critical difference. And subtle framing devices like “clashes,” distorting timelines of who did what, or morphing IDF claims of “firebombs” into fact are how media keep this myth alive, and further delegitimize Palestinian resistance. (It should be borne in mind that opposition to occupation, even armed opposition, is a right guaranteed by international law.)
When FAIR pointed out to Estrin on Twitter that he had reported the “firebombs” as fact and not a claim by the IDF, he responded, “I reported the firebombs as an Israeli claim.” When FAIR showed evidence he and host Shapiro had done the opposite, Estrin deflected: “Be kind; it’s live radio.”
“Explain why this violence broke out today,” host Shapiro asked. It’s not a massacre or an attack or “firing on protesters,” as it is when official US enemies do it; it’s simply “violence breaking out.”
Estrin again took care to re-establish Hamas as the “driving force” and guilty party:
And it was billed as an independent Palestinian protest campaign. But actually Hamas, which controls Gaza, was a driving force.
This effectively militarized the whole of the protest, treating it not as an outpouring of popular grievances but as an operation quarterbacked by “a militant group.” This is where Estrin asserted the protesters used “firebombs” without attributing the claim to the Israeli attackers. Instead, he cited the IDF as a source on crowd size:
And according to the Israeli army, there were more than 30,000 Palestinians at six different spots along the border. Israel responded to Palestinians throwing rocks, firebombs, burning tires. Israel fired tear gas and live fire. It was the most violence in Gaza since the Gaza War in 2014.
A brief mention of the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza was thrown in, but it is blamed on an “ongoing internal Palestinian political fight” that has made the situation “even worse.” Estrin then erroneously told listeners “Hamas took control of Gaza by force a decade ago,” when Hamas actually gained power in Gaza in 2006 through an internationally recognized election. In 2007, Hamas won a civil war with US-backed Fatah, the faction it had defeated in the election, but to say Hamas “took control of Gaza by force” falsely paints it as an usurping force with no legitimate authority.
Asked what will happen next, Estrin shrugged and says more of the same, and that is it.
It’s a brief report, but a highly revealing one: Hamas is at fault, the Palestinians threw “firebombs” first, then the Israeli army “assembled.” The illegitimate Hamas astroturfed the protest, the people are being exploited. Israel just killed those 17 protesters in self-defense.
You can contact NPR ombud Elizabeth Jensen via NPR’s contact form or via Twitter: @EJensenNYC. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
Anti-Semitic claims against Corbyn, Labour exaggerated: Poll
Press TV – April 1, 2018
The majority of Labour Party members in Britain say Israel is “a force for bad” and believe accusations of anti-Semitism within UK’s main opposition party are being exaggerated to damage Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and stifle legitimate criticism of Israel, according to a new poll.
The YouGov survey, which was commissioned by The Times newspaper, showed that 65 percent of the party’s members held a negative view of Israel.
The poll’s findings sent a clear message as Israeli military forces continued to brutally stifle a six-week protest by Palestinians near the border with Gaza.
Called the Great March for Return, the march has seen around 30,000 Palestinians pitch tents along the coastal enclave’s borders to mark the Land Day, the 42nd anniversary of Israel’s murdering of several Palestinians who protested Israel’s land grab plans in 1976.
Israeli soldiers have so far killed 16 protesters and injured dozens more since Friday, the day the new protests began.
Palestinians have pledged to stand firm and continue the event until Nakba Day, or Day of Catastrophe, on March 15, one day after the Israeli regime was created in 1948.
The poll also saw Labour members express solidarity with Corbyn, who as a pro-Palestinian politician, has long been accused of anti-Semitism and come under pressure from the Israeli lobby in the UK to resign.
The pressure peaked last year, when Corbyn announced in his manifesto for the June 8 snap election that a Labour government will “immediately recognize” a state of Palestine.
The manifesto also called for an end to Israel’s blockade and occupation of Palestinian territories, as well as construction of illegal settlements on Palestinian lands.
In the latest case, Corbyn has been accused of partaking in a secret Facebook group that was used by some senior Labour members to allegedly post anti-Semitic content.
Around 77 percent of the participants in the poll said the allegations were “exaggerated” to damage Corbyn and stifle legitimate criticism of Israel. Some 61 percent said he was handling the situation well.
Corbyn’s popularity soaring
The poll also found that Corbyn was enjoying high approval ratings as an astounding 80 percent of Labour member supported him despite internal rebellions and anti-Semitism claims.
About 64 percent of Labour members also thought a Corbyn government was “likely,” compared to 62 percent who last year said it was “unlikely” for the opposition leader to be elected as PM.
How the Guardian became the West’s Pravda
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | March 31, 2018
Here is a good example of pure, unadulterated western propaganda from the Guardian, written by one of their most senior journalists, Julian Borger. This could be straight out of of the old Soviet mouth-piece Pravda.
According to the Guardian :
China and Russia are leading a stealthy and increasingly successful effort at the United Nations to weaken UN efforts to protect human rights around the world, according to diplomats and activists.
The article continues in similar vein, blaming the two official enemies of the west for the increasingly degraded status of human rights at the UN.
As far I can tell, none of the facts in the Guardian’s story is untrue. But that does not stop it from being a blatant lie. Providing only a partial account – one serving western interests – of what is happening to human rights at the UN is not only a distortion of the truth but outright propaganda.
The only allusion to the truth – possibly inadvertent – is to be found in this quote from Louis Charbonneau, the UN director for Human Rights Watch:
The fifth committee [the UN budget panel] has become a battleground for human rights. Russia and China and others have launched a war on things that have human rights in their name.
Yes, did you spot it? You have to be quick. It was there in that word “others”. Easy to miss.
Reading between the lines of this article, one can understand that Russia is causing problems to western interests at the UN because it has an agenda – in supporting the Syrian government of Bashar Assad – that conflicts with Washington and Israel’s agenda of breaking apart the central authority holding Syria together.
Both sides are dressing up their own, self-interested agendas in the language of human rights. A real journalist should be wary of taking either side’s word at face value on this matter.
But the failure of this article as journalism goes way beyond this kind of one-sidedness.
How can a supposedly serious journalist in a supposedly serious liberal newspaper write about current threats to the protection of human rights at the UN and refer only to Russia and China? It is possible only if Borger sees his job not to act as a watchdog on power but as a promoter of a western diplomatic agenda intended to stoke anti-Russian and anti-Chinese sentiment.
Right now, the United States is defunding a vital UN institution, the refugee agency UNRWA caring for millions of Palestinian refugees. Their rights are being trampled underfoot by Israel and the US.
The Trump administration is also threatening to quit and defund the UN Human Rights Council, one of the most important international bodies monitoring human rights abuses. It is targeting the UNHRC because it regularly highlights Israel’s abuses of Palestinians under belligerent occupation.
This is the start of a report in Israel’s liberal Haaretz newspaper this week over the decision of the US yet again to threaten the Human Rights Council after it passed a resolution on Israel’s illegal settlements, which steal land and water from Palestinians and whose inhabitants regularly attack Palestinian men, women and children:
US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley slammed the UN Human Rights Council on Friday, saying that “the United States would continue to examine our membership” in the organization following a series of decisions the council took against Israel’s policy in the occupied territories.
Sources in Brussels told Haaretz that most European countries supported decisions only after their wording was softened so as not to evoke immediate practical significance.
In short, spineless European diplomats are toning down the UN’s monitoring of Israel for its human rights abuses in an effort to stop the US from pulling down the whole edifice of the Human Rights Council.
None of this is secret information. The Trump administration has been throwing temper tantrums against the UN over its human rights work out in the open.
So was this information and context not vitally relevant to a report considering threats to the status of human rights at the UN? Or do Borger and his editors think his job is only to parrot what western officials tell him is important?
Return marches are humanitarian and a holy duty, insists senior Christian official
MEMO | March 31, 2018
The secretary of the Episcopal Commission for Islamic-Christian Dialogue in Lebanon insisted on Friday that the Palestinian return marches are humanitarian activities and a holy, ethical and national duty, Al-Resalah has reported.
“Any Palestinian resistance action aimed at protecting the country and human dignity is a religious duty guaranteed by all religions,” said Father Antoine Daou. He noted that the aim of the return marches is to achieve freedom and regain rights. “These are spiritual goals also guaranteed by all religions.”
Israel’s fear of such marches, suggested Daou, reflects the aggressive face of the state. “This was evident in its brutal treatment of the unarmed civilians.” Gaza’s residents, he added, are looking for salvation for all oppressed Palestinians. “They are taking the path of freedom which aims to end persecution and oppression.”
The senior Christian official said that such action corrects the moral compass of the Arab nations, which has been lost recently.
Hamas: No alternative to right of return
Ismail Haneyya
Palestine Information Center – March 30, 2018
GAZA – Head of Hamas’s Political Bureau Ismail Haneyya affirmed on Friday that Palestinians will continue to demand their right of return in all possible ways.
In a statement on Palestinian Land Day, Haneyya said that the Palestinians will no longer accept that the right of return remains a slogan chanted in every occasion here or there; rather, they will work to make it a tangible and achievable goal.
While taking part in the activities of the Great March of Return in Gaza, Haneyya hailed the Palestinian martyrs who fell while defending their lands on 30th March 1976.
He continued to say that the crowds taking part in the Great March of Return represent the real Palestinian unity.
Haneyya added that the Great March of Return came as the attack on the Palestinian cause has reached its peak following the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and in light of increasing talks about the deal of the century.
The marching Palestinians wanted to say that there is no alternative to Palestine and the right of return, he stressed.
Saudi de facto leader meets leaders of pro-Israeli lobbies in US
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordering coffee with former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg at a coffee shop in New York, March 28, 2018.
Press TV – March 30, 2018
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has met with the leaders of a number of pro-Israeli lobbying groups during his tour of the United States as the kingdom is moving towards normalization of diplomatic relations with the Tel Aviv regime at the expense of the Palestinian issue.
According to a leaked copy of his itinerary, the Israeli Haaretz daily reported that bin Salman had conferred with officials from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Stand Up for Israel (ADL), the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), Presidents’ Conference, B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee (AJC).
The meeting comes as AIPAC, ADL and the JFNA have long fought against the pro-Palestine movement Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), and spared no efforts to confront the global campaign.
Additionally, the groups donated millions to the Israeli regime to advance its expansionist policies and construct more settler units on occupied Palestinian territories.
Speaking in an interview with France 24 television news network on December 13, 2017, Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said the kingdom has a “roadmap” to establish full diplomatic ties with the Tel Aviv regime.
In mid-November last year, a Lebanese paper published a secret document showing that the Saudis were willing to normalize relations with Israel as part of a US-led Israeli-Palestinian peace effort and unite Saudi-allied countries against Iran.
The document, published by al-Akhbar daily, was a letter from the Saudi foreign minister to bin Salman, explaining why it was in the kingdom’s interest to normalize relations with Israel. The letter said a rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Israel has risks for the kingdom due to the strength of the Palestinian cause among Muslims.
The Saudis’ willingness to boost ties with Israel has offended several Arab countries, including Jordan.
As for the Palestinian refugee issue, the letter says the Saudis would be willing to help the estimated five million Palestinian refugees worldwide settle in the host countries rather than being brought back to the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Israeli military’s chief-of-staff, Gadi Eizenkot, recently said the regime was ready to share intelligence with Saudi Arabia on Iran.
Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz has indicated that Israel has had secret contacts with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries over their mutual concerns about Iran, an apparent first acknowledgment by a senior official about covert dealings. He made the comments in November last year but did not specify the nature of the contacts.
AP’s slanted report on Gaza Return March, corrected and annotated
The Associated Press’s news story on the upcoming Great Return March echoes Israeli talking points…
By Kathryn Shihadah | If Americans Knew | March 30, 2018
The Associated Press, a (usually) trusted name in global news, has been unmasked for its pro-Israel bias, and the ruse continues.
Today’s exhibit is of particular significance, as the people of Gaza are about to embark on a large-scale nonviolent protest. True to form, AP has cranked out a Hamas-bashing, Israel-congratulating piece that fails to provide the accurate information its readers deserve. The report largely replicates Israel’s public relations strategy.
Below are excerpts from the AP article with commentary that will fill in some of the gaps and clear up some misrepresentations. Truth matters.
AP: Gaza’s embattled Hamas rulers are imploring people to march along the border with Israel in the coming weeks in a risky gambit meant to shore up their shaky rule, but with potentially deadly consequences.
Many Americans fail to recognize what is going on in Gaza for precisely this reason: nearly every word of this paragraph is problematic. Hamas has not imposed some kind of tyrannical regime over Gaza; their “rule” is shaky in that Israel has such a chokehold on the territory that the people are starving to death. There is little governing going on.
Grassroots movements have been in the making for years – decades, even – because Palestinians don’t need to be told they should resist the occupation. Many can see their original homes in what is now Israel or the location of their villages from the fence imprisoning them. They remember every day; they pray to God to bring them back home. Their people are being slowly, systematically eradicated.
The “gambit” is indeed “risky” – because Gazans will be nonviolently protesting while in the crosshairs of Israeli snipers, and the “potentially deadly consequences” of the initiative will almost certainly involve unarmed Palestinians dying.
Israel has essentially promised this outcome: Major General Yoav Mordechai vowed, “We intend to do everything to prevent violent demonstrations and terror demonstrations.” While Palestinians have made it clear that they will not so much as throw rocks, Israel has 100 sharpshooters at the ready, drones lined up to drop tear gas canisters, and thousands of troops armed to the teeth.
AP: But the first-of-its-kind protest also comes at a low point for the Islamic militant group and the 2 million residents of Gaza, where conditions have deteriorated since Hamas seized control of the territory from the internationally-backed Palestinian Authority in 2007.
Conditions have indeed deteriorated, but this statement is misleading: Hamas was voted into office by the people of Gaza, and Israel collectively punished them for this by imposing a blockade. Combine that with multiple “wars” against the essentially unarmed population with thousands killed and tens of thousands left homeless. “Conditions have deteriorated” is an understatement.
AP: Beginning Friday, Hamas hopes it can mobilize large crowds to set up tent camps near the border. It plans a series of demonstrations culminating with a march to the border fence on May 15, the anniversary of Israel’s establishment, known to Palestinians as “the Nakba,” or catastrophe.
Let’s take a minute to unpack the phrase that tried to sneak past. “The Nakba” is not just an Arabic name for the anniversary of Israel’s birth: it is the name for the forced exile of 75% of their population and the loss of 78% of their land. This catastrophe occurred in 1948, and tens of thousands of Palestinians who live in Gaza today are among those refugees.
AP: The group aims to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people for the effort, though it hasn’t been able to get such turnouts at past rallies. Nonetheless, a jittery Israel is closely watching and vowing a tough response if the border is breached.
Israel lives in a constant state of jitter, but why? Because the stones in Palestinians’ hands are so dangerous? Because the rockets are so deadly? (See here) Or because if Palestinian voices are heard, Israel will be exposed?
AP: An Israeli-Egyptian blockade, along with three wars with Israel and a series of sanctions by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, have left Gaza’s economy in tatters. Unemployment is well over 40 percent, tap water is undrinkable and Gazans receive just a few hours of electricity a day.
Israel is the occupying power over Gaza. The occupation is now in its 6th decade, and the blockade in its 11th year. Israel has an obligation as occupier to maintain the lives and wellbeing of the occupied. Egypt and Abbas are minor players in this situation.
AP: “Hamas has realized it’s besieged from three sides; Israel, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, political science professor at Gaza’s al-Azhar University. “It feels the crisis is suffocating.”
All Gazans are suffocating, not just Hamas. That is why this movement is happening right now. This is not some ploy by a terrorist organization to make trouble for Israel. It is the organic response of Palestinians who can endure no more, who must resist.
AP: [Mkhaimar Abusada] said that for Hamas, the protests can divert attention from their domestic woes while avoiding renewed war with Israel. “They think busying Israel with this issue may put it under pressure,” he said.
What the people actually think is that perhaps this time, the world will pay attention and finally realize that the level of cruelty and injustice being perpetrated on Palestinians is a huge, ongoing crime against humanity. The hope is not to “busy Israel” but to seek the rights that have been promised them by international law: the right to self-determination, the right to return to the land from which they were exiled, the right to be heard and to receive justice.
AP: A combination of social pressure and curiosity in a territory with few options for recreation could help attract people.
This statement shows an inexcusable level of ignorance: it assumes that Palestinians are content with a never-ending, illegal occupation and blockade; that they would not be inclined to march in resistance against their oppressor; and above all that people attending the protest would come for recreational purposes.
AP: Israel opposes any large-scale return of refugees, saying it would destroy the country’s Jewish character.
It’s hard to decide how to respond to this statement. Yes, having refugees pour into one’s country can be upsetting to one’s culture. The Palestinians were willing to take in Jews in the early 20th century, at a high social cost. The thanks they got for this gesture was to be themselves made refugees. Of course Israel opposes the return of non-Jews. But return they must, according to international law and consensus.
AP: Israeli Cabinet Minister Yoav Galant said, “Hamas is in distress. They are using in a cruel and cynical way their own population in order to hurt them and to hurt Israel.”
Israel has massive military might, and Israel and AP both know it. With one of the most advanced armies in the world, $10 million a day in military aid coming from the US, at least 100 nuclear weapons, and a military that is armed to the teeth, this march is not going to “hurt” Israel in any reasonable sense of the word. The only real pain the state can anticipate is the fear of being found out.
AP: “We will try to use the minimum force that is needed in order to avoid Palestinians wounded and casualties. But the red line is very clear. They stay on the Gazan side and we stay in Israel.”
Only time will tell what “minimum force” looks like, but in a nation where children can be imprisoned for years if they are suspected of throwing a stone, chances are Palestinians will die.
Most Western media, if they cover this event at all, will publish inaccurate, biased accounts that will make the Palestinians out to be the aggressors. They will completely fail to ground the story in the context of illegal occupation and blockade, not to mention dispossession and forced exile. Israel will come out looking like it acted in self-defense, and the injustice will continue unchecked as it has for lo these many years.
Kathryn Shihadah is a staff writer for If Americans Knew.
7 Palestinians killed, dozens injured as Israel suppresses massive protest in Gaza
Ma’an – March 30, 2018
GAZA CITY – Six Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and dozens more injured since early Friday morning, as thousands of Gazans took to the borders with Israel as part of “The Great March of Return” taking place across the besieged coastal enclave to mark the 42nd Land Day.
In 1976, Israeli police shot and killed six Palestinian citizens of Israel as they were protesting the Israeli government’s expropriation of thousands of dunums of Palestinian land. Since then, Palestinians have commemorated March 30 as Land Day with mass protests across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, Gaza, and inside Israel.
A Palestinian farmer was killed around dawn and another was injured as Israeli forces targeted the southern Gazan district of Khan Younis with mortar shells.
Spokesperson of the Gaza Ministry of Health, Ashraf al-Qidra, identified the slain farmer as Omar Sammour, 31, adding that another Palestinian, whose identity remained unknown, was injured during the shelling.
Israeli media reported that Sammour and the other man with him were targeted for approaching the border fence with Israel in a “suspicious manner,” though local sources reported that Sammour was simply gathering crops from his land to sell later in the day.
On Friday afternoon, medical sources confirmed to Ma’an that two more Palestinians were killed during the protest along the border.
One of the slain Palestinians was identified as Amin Mahmoud Muhammar from Rafah in southern Gaza. His age remained unknown.
The other slain Palestinian was identified as Muhammad Kamal al-Najjar, 25, from eastern Jabaliya in northern Gaza.
Around 2:20 p.m. medical sources told Ma’an that a fourth Palestinian had been killed. He was identified as Muhammad Abu Omar, 19.
Fifteen minutes later, the Gaza Ministry of Health confirmed that a fifth Palestinian had been killed. He was identified as 16-year-old Ahmad Ibrahim Odeh from the northern Gaza Strip.
Around 3:15p.m. the ministry reported that Jihad Freineh, 33, from Gaza City was killed.
Minutes later, the ministry reported that the seventh Palestinian had been killed by Israeli forces. He was identified as Mahmoud Saadi Rahmi, from Gaza City.
Leading up to the march, the Israeli army released a statement saying it had declared the border area along Gaza a “closed military zone,” meaning that any Palestinian who got close to the border fence could risk getting shot.
The Israeli army released statements on Twitter describing the protests as “violent riots.”
“17,000 Palestinians are rioting in 5 locations along the Gaza Strip security fence. The rioters are rolling burning tires and hurling firebombs & rocks at the security fence & IDF troops, who are responding w riot dispersal means and firing towards main instigators,” the statement said.
Despite the Israeli army’s claims, Palestinian activists and leaders in the Gaza Strip have maintained that the “March of Return” was organized as a massive non-violent, weeks-long protest advocating for the return of Palestinian refugees to their original homelands in historic Palestine, now present day Israel.
Leading up to Friday, the first official day of the march — which will continue until the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, in May — Palestinians set up tents along the border with Gaza, where protesters plan to stay until the Nakba anniversary.
Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas politburo, gave a speech at the March of Return, saying it “demonstrates that there are no alternatives to Palestine and the right of return (for the Palestinian people),” praising the people who left their homes to attend the march.
When speaking about the goal of the march, Haniyeh said it constitutes “the beginning of a return (of the Palestinian people) to the entirety of the land of Palestine.”
“We will not give up and we will not bargain with the Zionist entity over even a small piece of the land of Palestine,” Haniyeh continued, stressing that the Palestinians will reject any deal proposed by the Trump administration.
“Our people went out today to make it clear that we will not give up Jerusalem and that there is no alternative to Palestine and the right of return. We will not accept the right of return staying only a slogan.”
On eve of rally, Israel threatens to kill Hamas leaders
MEMO | March 29, 2018
Israel on Thursday threatened to assassinate top Hamas leaders in the event of any major “escalations” during mass demonstrations planned for Friday in the blockaded Gaza Strip.
“We will not allow Hamas leaders to continue to hide in Gaza while women and children are sent to the border fence,” Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adaree tweeted.
Adaree’s warning comes only one day before planned demonstrations during which Palestinian protesters plan to converge en masse on the Gaza Strip’s roughly 45-kilometer eastern border with Israel.
“If necessary, we will respond — near the fence and inside the Gaza Strip — against those promoting violent demonstrations: the military wing of Hamas,” Adaree said.
All major Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, have endorsed the planned rally, in which thousands of Gazans are expected to participate.
According to organizers, the demonstration — dubbed the “Great Return March” — is to be entirely peaceful in nature.
Israeli Housing Minister Yoav Galant, however, said: “If the situation on the Gaza border escalates, the assassination of Hamas leaders is an option that remains on the table.”
Speaking to Israel’s Walla news website, he added: “In times of conflict, everything is allowed.”
The planned rallies are intended to pressure Israel to lift its decade-long siege of the Gaza Strip and reaffirm the Palestinians’ right to return to their ancestral homes in historical Palestine.
Since 2007, the Gaza Strip has suffered a crippling Israeli/Egyptian blockade that has gutted its economy and deprived its more than two million inhabitants of many basic commodities.
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