Egypt begins major military operation in Sinai, Nile Delta
Press TV – February 9, 2018
Egypt has begun a sweeping military operation against the militants active in violence-torn North Sinai Province in the extreme northwest and the nearby Nile Delta.
The army announced the launch of ‘Operation Sinai 2018’ on Friday, putting the police and military forces on “maximum alert,” AFP reported.
The goal is to tighten control of border districts and “clean up areas where there are terrorist hotbeds,” it added.
The campaign involves the air force, navy and army as well as police, he said.
“The armed forces calls upon the Egyptian people in all parts of the country to closely cooperate with law enforcement forces to confront terrorism, uproot it and immediately report any elements threatening the security and stability of the country,” the military spokesman, Colonel Tamer al-Rifai, said in a televised address.
Last week, The New York Times reported that President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi had kept northern Sinai a closed military area, barring reporters from the region.
The Associated Press has reported that the Egyptian army was bulldozing homes and olive groves to build “a buffer zone” around North Sinai Province’s only airport in the city of el-Arish.
The report said the buffer zone will destroy dozens of hamlets around the airport, forcing thousands of people to leave their homes for an unknown future, sparking some protest by residents despite the government promises of compensation.
Sisi, who is preparing to seek a second term in the upcoming March elections, has vowed that the army will employ “absolute force” in a bid to eliminate terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula.
The Sinai Peninsula has been under a state of emergency since October 2014, after a deadly terrorist attack left 33 Egyptian soldiers dead.
Over the past few years, terrorists have been carrying out anti-government activities and fatal attacks, taking advantage of the turmoil in Egypt that erupted after the country’s first democratically-elected president, Mohamed Morsi, was ousted in a military coup in July 2013.
The Velayat Sinai group, which is affiliated with the Daesh Takfiri terrorists, has claimed responsibility for most of the assaults.
Associated Press Double Standard in Israel-Palestine Reporting
By Kathryn Shihadah and Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | February 8, 2018
More than half the world’s population reads Associated Press content every day.
But a study of news reports so far in 2018 indicates that this trusted news source has been presenting the deaths of Israelis at the hands of Palestinians, and of Palestinians at the hands of Israelis, in two completely different ways.
This pattern may be a factor in how readers perceive the players in this decades-old issue. It is also, quite likely, a factor in how editors all over the U.S., who read AP stories daily, view the conflict.
So far in 2018, eleven Palestinians have been killed and two Israelis.
(Since December 4th, when President Trump announced that the US would recognize Israel as “the capital of Israel,” overturning decades of US policy, 27 Palestinians and 9 Israelis have died.)
In AP’s 2018 news reports, Palestinian deaths have been reported in far shorter news articles than Israeli deaths, averaging 181 words in length vs. 551.
In addition to the number of words, AP’s choice of words, context, and which facts to report and which to omit appears to tell two totally different kinds of stories for Israelis and Palestinians.
Reports on Israeli deaths included statements by high officials condemning the attacks. These were often strongly worded, politically charged statements that conveyed the Israeli narrative: “[Israel will] do everything possible in order to apprehend the despicable murderer”; “There is no justification for terror… This is not the path to peace!” “Hamas praises the killers and PA laws will provide them financial rewards. Look no further to why there is no peace.”
By contrast, these AP reports rarely included statements by Palestinian officials condemning the killing of Palestinians, which would have provided another perspective for readers. For example, Fatah spokesman Osama Qawassmeh released a statement that Israel was guilty of a long list of actions that “contravene international law.”
Another Palestinian official condemned Israel’s “extrajudicial killings” and warned of Israel’s tendency to turn the West Bank into a “scene for escalation and security tension so as to pressure our people and leaders, and divert attention from colonialist expansion in our state.”
Such Palestinian viewpoints, largely accurate and readily available, were never reported in the AP articles on deaths.
A Palestinian boy weeps during the funeral of Hani Wahdan, killed during “clashes.”
Israeli victims are human beings, Palestinian victims are “gunmen” or anonymous
Israeli victims were also personalized in AP reports: one was characterized as “a 29-year-old father of four”; the attempted rescue of another was described: “immense efforts were made to save the man’s life, but his wounds were too severe.”
On the other hand, AP reported Palestinian victims with impersonal, often negative descriptions: “armed protester,” “instigators,” and “protesters who were hurling massive amounts of rocks.”
Nowhere did AP describe efforts to save the victims’ lives, although certainly those efforts were made. Elsewhere there were reports of noteworthy turns of events from the scene. This is unfortunately a common occurrence at the scene of Palestinian injuries and deaths: “Eyewitnesses said Israeli soldiers …. fired gas bombs at the Palestinian ambulances and medics that arrived on the scene.” In another incident, “soldiers refused to allow ambulances and firefighters to enter the area.” These descriptions would have been valuable additions to the AP reports.
Palestinian relatives of 16-year-old Layth Abu Naeem weep during his funeral, Jan 31, 2018. The boy was killed by Israeli soldiers who had invaded his village. (EPA-EFE/ALAA BADARNEH)
To its credit, AP did identify the five Palestinian teenagers killed as “teens” – in the past this has not always been the case, where the youth of Palestinian victims has often not been mentioned.
The actual killings of the Palestinians were often reported passively, e.g. “shot in the head during a stone-throwing confrontation” or “died in the violence.”
In two of the Palestinian deaths, AP reported that the Israeli military “denied using live fire.” The men were still dead, and no questions were asked.
In fact, other sources paint entirely different pictures of the killing of the Palestinians. For example, one young man named Ali was only described by AP as “shot in the head” during a violent riot.
But according to eyewitnesses, as reported elsewhere, a number of armed Israeli settlers had infiltrated a Palestinian town, and Ali was part of a group that were forcing them out of town – at which time Israeli soldiers began firing at the group. Ali was reportedly killed by an army sharp-shooter.
In another incident, Israeli soldiers were searching for the man who had killed a settler a few days earlier. The AP article explains that they found and killed a suspect and then demolished three homes belonging to his extended family.
The article does not reveal that they killed the wrong man. It also does not mention that at least 30 vehicles participated in the invasion of the wrong home, and that soldiers confiscated surveillance videos from stores in the area.
AP headlines give Israeli spin
The headlines of the news reports are tellingly different as well.
In the cases of Israeli deaths, the headlines indicate one innocent party and one guilty party: “Israeli killed in West Bank shooting attack”; “Israeli killed by Palestinian in West Bank stabbing attack.”
On the other hand, most of the Palestinian death headlines suggest two equal parties in conflict: “Palestinian teen killed in clashes”; “2 teens killed in clashes with Israeli army”; “Troops kill Palestinian teen in West Bank clash.”
In one case, “Palestinians say Israeli army kills 19-year-old rock thrower,” the victim was at least acknowledged as an individual, but the situation in which Ahmad’s death occurred was misrepresented. The article claims that he was “shot in the head during a stone-throwing confrontation,” but there is much more to the story.
Israeli forces raid the village of Wadi Burqin. [Mohamad Torokman/Reuters]
According to IMEMC, Ahmad was killed
during a massive military invasion…carried out by twenty-two armored military vehicles, and two bulldozers…the soldiers also shot two other young Palestinian men with live rounds in their legs, and six with rubber-coated steel bullets, in addition to causing dozens to suffer the severe effects of teargas inhalation…soldiers broke into and searched many homes, and used K9 units in searching the properties, causing anxiety attacks among many Palestinians, especially children…
Some of the villagers protested this aggression, and it was in this context that an Israeli soldier shot Ahmad in the head.
In this incident, the Israeli army was searching for the killer of a settler named Rabbi Raziel Shevach, who had been killed three weeks earlier, and AP again recounted this older death. In fact, there was more about the settler’s death, which had already been reported on several times, than about the innocent man killed in the manhunt.
According to AP, “The Israeli military had no immediate comment about the casualty.”
AP stories about Shevach reported that he taught in a religious school in Yitzhar and lived in the outpost of Havat Gilad. None, however, bothered to mention that Yitzhar has long been known as “an extremist bastion” of settler violence against Palestinians, home of the notorious Yitzchak Ginsburgh, and that Havat Gilad is similarly notorious for violence against Palestinians.
The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported in 2014, for example, that close to 100 people had been been involved in “a wave of hate crimes against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Most of the culprits are known as far-right activists from the Yitzhar settlement and hilltop outposts north of Ramallah and the south Hebron Hills in the West Bank.” This is just one of many such incidents (see video here).
Such context likely would have been included by AP if it had been about Palestinian violence.
AP omits essential context
Palestinian women attempt to pass the Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, Aug. 12, 2011. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)
AP reports often leave out critical facts. For example, its news reports on a Palestinian girl imprisoned by Israel for slapping armed Israeli soldiers, almost always left out or minimized the fact that her anger was triggered by the fact that shortly before the incident, an Israeli soldier had shot her cousin in the face.
Perhaps more significant, essential facts about the greater issue are virtually never included.
Nowhere in these reports does AP tell readers that the U.S. gives Israel over $10 million per day. Without this information, American readers will incorrectly feel this is a foreign issue that has nothing to do with them.
Basic information that would give the reader an understanding of the context of the hostility is absent.
Nowhere in any of the articles does the word “occupation” occur, although the illegal Israeli occupation is a 50-year-old fact of life that affects every aspect of Palestinian life. Omitting the fact that Palestinians are living under Israeli military control leaves readers ignorant of one of the most significant aspects of the conflict.
Nowhere in these reports does AP note that many Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza were pushed out by Israel during the 1948 war that created the Jewish state, their properties confiscated by Israel. These refugees have not been allowed to return and reclaim their homes, a violation of international law. This, too, is essential information.
Israelis soldiers arrest Palestinian teen Fawzi Muhammad Al-Juneidi in Jerusalem, Dec. 8, 2017
Nowhere does AP use the word “resistance,” the usual term for people fighting against military occupation. Instead, Palestinians are always “militants,” “gunmen,” “stone throwers,” etc. Americans fighting against the British in the 18th century, French fighting against the German occupation in the 20th century, etc. were resistance forces. So are Palestinians.
The word “settlement” is used 19 times in the AP reports. According to international law these settlements are illegal. However, only once does AP mention this fact, and even here it does so in a somewhat diluted manner: “most of the international community considers settlements illegal.”
Nowhere in these reports does AP inform readers that Israel is steadily stealing Palestinian land and imprisoning Palestinians who object to this. Nowhere do these report that Palestinians have virtually no freedom of movement, that some 70 percent of Palestinian families have had one or more family members serve time in an Israeli prison, that hundreds of Palestinian children are in prison, and that Israel is known for its physical abuse of prisoners.
Maali, daughter of jailed Islamic Jihad spokesman Khader Adnan, stands next to a picture of her father outside Israel’s Ofer prison.
Without these and other critical details, it is impossible for readers to have a clear picture of the basis of the conflict and the context of the deaths.
At the end of one AP article is this statement:
Since 2015, Palestinians have killed over 50 Israelis, two visiting Americans and a British tourist in stabbings and other attacks. Over 260 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in that time. Israel says most were attackers and the others died in clashes.
To many editors and readers around the country, this means that 260 guilty Palestinians were killed. “Attackers” are guilty by default (“alleged attackers” might be innocent); people in “clashes” are reckless mobs, confronting soldiers and policemen allegedly working to keep the peace. Readers are left to glean on their own, with next to zero evidence, that these Israeli forces are one of the world’s most powerful militaries putting down protests by an occupied, unarmed population.
Astute, knowledgeable readers might wonder how many of those dead Palestinians were really attackers? How many were cases of mistaken identity? And what about those who actually were attacking heavily armed soldiers and settlers… why were they doing this? Could it be because Israel was stealing their land and had killed, injured, and/or imprisoned hundreds of Palestinian children?
And what about the unarmed protesters so often shot in the head by Israeli soldiers? Did they have families who grieve for them? Children who are now orphans? Widows who will weep and struggle? Parents who will forever miss them? We will never know.
A Palestinian boy in Gaza weeps for dead family members.
How many of those dead Palestinians were children themselves? Answer: Since January 2015, at least 100 Palestinian children and 1 Israeli child have been killed in the hostilities. (Between 2000 and 2014, 2,079 Palestinian children and 133 Israeli children lost their lives.)
In the time it has taken to write this article, sadly another Palestinian has been killed.
The headline for this death, “Israeli troops kill Palestinian suspect in settler’s killing,” refers to Rabbi Raziel Shevach’s death in early January. Apparently this time the Israeli military finally found the person they “suspected of being behind the killing” that they had been pursuing. They stormed the house where he was staying, and shot him dead (this may be referred to as “trial by assassination” or “extrajudicial killing”).
The AP article recalls that Israeli troops had already demolished the suspect’s residence (and those of his extended family), but somehow neglects to mention that they had also killed his cousin, who had done nothing wrong, as well as another innocent man, during the course of the aggressive manhunt.
And once again, the article mostly discusses the death of the Israeli settler (as well as repeating details about the other Israeli death that occurred in 2018), and mentions nothing about the Palestinian who had just been killed. Did he have children? Parents? A wife? And if he actually was “behind the killing,” what had motivated him?
In the very last paragraph of the article, AP finally mentions that “19 Palestinians have been killed in the violence since Trump’s announcement.” In reality, it was Israelis who killed these people, and it was actually 24 Palestinians at that time, seven of them teenagers, plus a small boy who died on the day of the announcement.
The Associated Press claims on its website:
For 170 years, we have been breaking news and covering the world’s biggest stories, always committed to the highest standards of objective, accurate journalism.
It is possible that the time has come for AP to take a good, hard look at its objectivity and accuracy when it comes to reporting in Israel-Palestine.
AP’s system of reporting
AP Bureau Chief Josef Federman speaking on C-Span.
AP’s main bureau for Israel-Palestine is in Israel. Reports from Gaza and the West Bank are phoned in to this bureau, where its editors choose and write the news stories that are sent out.
Many (possibly most) of the journalists in this main bureau are Israeli citizens or have partners who are. Some (possibly most) have served in the Israeli military and/or have relatives that have done so. While this doesn’t guarantee pro-Israel bias (some Israeli journalists for Ha’aretz, for example, are excellent, accurate writers on this issue) it does suggest the possibility of partiality influencing their work, either consciously or unconsciously.
It is essential that AP be transparent about its reporting on this extremely important issue.
Whatever the cause of the distortion that continuously characterizes its reporting on this region (see this 2005 report on AP reporting on deaths), it is critical that AP remedy it. Americans, who give Israel over $10 million per day, need full, accurate, unbiased reporting.
Last-minute updates: Two more Palestinians killed
Sadly, during the final edit of this piece, two more Palestinians were killed.
IMEMC, the International Middle East Media Center, has posted the following:
“Israeli soldiers killed, on Tuesday at night, a young Palestinian man, and injured 110, including 32 who were shot with live ammunition, in Nablus city, in the northern part of the occupied West Bank. The Palestinian Health Ministry has identified the Palestinian as Khaled Waleed Tayeh, 22, from Iraq-Tayeh village, east of Nablus. Khaled succumbed to his wounds, after being shot with a live round in the chest.”
Khaled Waleed Tayeh, 22
AP also reports the story: “Israeli guard kills Palestinian after West Bank stabbing” but fails to report the victim’s name, age, or anything else about him.
A few hours later Israeli guards in front of an Israeli outpost shot dead 19-year-old Hamza Yousef No’man Zama’ra, who had attacked one of the armed guards with a knife, cutting the man’s hand. AP reported the death but again failed to give Hamza’s name, age, or additional information about him.
Hamza Yousef No’man Zama’ra, 19
AP also fails to mention that Israel plans to level dozens of Palestinian schools in the West Bank, that Israeli forces have just detained a 52-year-old Palestinian mother and shot a teenager in the face, and that 54 Palestinian patients in critical need of specialized medical care patients died in 2017 when Israel wouldn’t let them leave Gaza.
Perhaps to to AP editors, these stories are of no importance.
However, for many Americans, most of whom believe in justice, fair play, and human rights, such information might diminish the willingness to give Israel massive amounts of their tax money.
* * *
For a list of all Palestinians and Israelis who have been killed by the other side since 2000, see this timeline.
For 2-minute videos of recent Palestinian victims, go here.
US eyes partitioning of Syria, gave up on promise that fighting ISIS ‘only goal’ – Lavrov
RT | February 7, 2018
The US appears to be aiming at dividing Syria, as US troops still linger in the country even after its promise to end the mission after driving out Islamic State fighters, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
“It’s very likely that the Americans have taken a course of dividing the country. They just gave up their assurances, given to us, that the only goal of their presence in Syria – without an invitation of the legitimate government – was to defeat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and the terrorists,” Lavrov said.
Regarding pledges to keep a limited military contingent in the war-town state, Lavrov says the US is not being open about their true objectives.
“Now [the Americans] are saying that they will keep their presence till they make sure a steady process of a political settlement in Syria starts, which will result in regime change,” the minister said during a conference in Sochi.
The foreign minister claimed there are “plans of virtual division of Syria.”
“We know of [them] and we will ask our American colleagues, how they are seeing [Syria’s division].”
The US has nearly 2,000 servicemen currently stationed in Syria. In December, the Pentagon announced the troops will remain on the ground for as long as needed “to support our partners and prevent the return of terrorist groups.” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson later reiterated the plan.
Although the Syrian government regards the deployment of US troops on its sovereign territory as “illegal,” Washington justifies its presence under the pretext of fighting IS militants.
Moscow, which operates in the country on the Syrian government’s request, insists that the US has no grounds to have a military presence in the country without the permission of the Syrian government.
Washington has also been arming and funding various groups under the banners of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
“The US, flirting with various segments of Syrian society that oppose the government with arms in their hands, may lead to very dangerous consequences,” Lavrov warned.
The Turkish-backed FSA is currently engaged in fighting with parts of the SDF forces, namely the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), in Afrin. These issues have caused serious tensions between Ankara and Washington.
Meanwhile, FSA is trying to persuade the US to revive the defunct CIA program which provided cash, weapons and instructors to “moderate” rebels, a high-ranking rebel official told Reuters.
Last July, the Trump administration reportedly ended the respective program launched back in 2013 during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Moscow has consistently warned against arming the so-called moderate rebel factions in Syria, pointing out that weapons supplied to them often fall into the hands of jihadist groups.
Rights groups allege that some rebel factions might have committed war crimes against civilians. In May 2016, Amnesty International said armed groups surrounding the Sheikh Maqsoud district near Aleppo “have repeatedly carried out indiscriminate attacks that have struck civilian homes, streets, markets and mosques, killing and injuring civilians and displaying a shameful disregard for human life.”
Read more:
Academics Who Serve as Israel’s Useful Idiots
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | February 5, 2018
How is it that highly schooled people, those who have risen to positions of authority and influence within the west’s higher education systems, so often behave as if the bit of their brain governing rational thought has turned to mush whenever the issue of Israel is raised?
Let’s take the case of Richard Carver, a senior lecturer in human rights and governance at Oxford Brookes University. He has just published a letter in the London Review of Books in which he seeks to discredit support for BDS – boycott, divestment and sanctions – as evidence of what he (like Israel’s supporters) terms “the new anti-semitism”.
In short, he presents the BDS campaign’s positive support for Palestinian rights as if it were intended to be a negative campaign to harm Jews. The illogic of that ought to be obvious to all.
But let’s dig deeper. Here’s Carver in the LRB :
I would be more inclined to respect the bona fides of the BDS movement if it were equally exercised about China, Morocco, Turkey or any other country engaged in long-term illegal occupations – or, for that matter, war in Syria, torture in Egypt or suppression of dissent in Iran. But the Jewish state is judged by a different standard, which is precisely the phenomenon described by the concept of the ‘new anti-Semitism’.
How derisively would we have treated an academic – an expert in human rights, no less – who argued back in the 1980s that those who supported a boycott of apartheid South Africa must have been secretly anti-white or anti-Christian because they did not equally prioritise a boycott of Israel?
Carver can get away with his intellectually risible logic – and get his letter published in the LRB – only because the combination of words “Israel” and “anti-semitism” make otherwise sensible people become gibbering idiots.
In fact, if we apply some proper logic to Carver’s position, we find that even my counter-proposition above is too kind to him.
Apartheid South Africa was, and Israel still is, a product of western political, diplomatic and economic patronage. Grassroots campaigns like boycott movements can make, and have made, a difference to the viability of these European-originated settler colonial regimes. South Africa was, and Israel is, vulnerable to sanctions from western allies.
Much harder to make the same case for western activism against China, Iran and Syria, for example, which are official “enemies” of the west.
After all, grassroots action in the west is designed to discomfit not just Israel, or before it apartheid South Africa, but the western elites who prop up these regimes. Activism in the west was/is targeted chiefly against the complicity of western elites in these colonial offshoots.
None of that is true of China, Syria or Iran. Western governments are only too ready to harm these states – and the civilians in them – if they think they can get away with it. They don’t need our encouragement. Any grassroots activism directed against Syria or Iran is, at best, doomed to be wasted energy and, at worst, likely to be exploited to justify intensifying the west’s hostile manoeuvres against official enemies.
Those are deductions a schoolchild could make. And yet, for some reason, they elude our esteemed professor of human rights.
Israeli forces kill 19-year-old with bullet to the head
IMEMC | February 3, 2018
Ahmad Samir Abu ‘Obeid, 19, was killed by Israeli soldiers with a live round in the head, during a massive military invasion into Burqin town, west of Jenin, in the northern part of the West Bank.
The Palestinian Health Ministry has confirmed that the soldiers shot Ahmad with a live round in his head, causing a very serious injury, before medics rushed him to Jenin Governmental Hospital, where he died from his wounds.
The Ministry added that the soldiers also shot two other young Palestinian men with live rounds in their legs, and six with rubber-coated steel bullets, in addition to causing dozens to suffer the severe effects of teargas inhalation, after the army attacked locals, who protested the invasion.
The army also arrested four young Palestinian men, and demolished a room and a barn, in addition to causing damage to several structures and cars, before withdrawing from the town.
The invasion was carried out by twenty-two armored military vehicles, and two bulldozers, before the soldiers broke into and searched many homes, and used K9 units in searching the properties, causing anxiety attacks among many Palestinians, especially children.
After the army withdrew from the town, hundreds of Palestinians marched in Ahmad’s funeral procession, while chanting against the ongoing Israeli military occupation.
The Israeli invasion into several areas in the Jenin Governorate started when the soldiers invaded Kafeer village, south of the Jenin city, after surrounding it and declaring it a closed military zone.
The soldiers conducted extensive military searches of homes and detained two siblings, identified as Thieb Walid Ershaid, 43, and his brother Qa’qaa, 42, after surrounding their homes.
The shooting death of Abu Obeid came during the invasion of Wadi Burqin by the Israeli military early Saturday morning to besiege the home where the army believed that the wanted man Ahmad Nasr Jarrar, was hiding.
Ahmad Nasr Jarrar was wanted by the Israeli military for allegedly killing an Israeli settler on January 8th.
Following that killing, the Israeli military invaded many nearby villages and conducted house-to-house searches.
On January 18th, the Israeli army besieged a home where they mistook Ahmad Ismail Jarrar for his cousin, and killed him. Ahmad was from Burin, west of Jenin.
Bahraini Emir Mubarak Al Khalifa in Tel Aviv
Al-Manar | February 4, 2018
The Bahraini emir Mubarak Al Khalifa visited the Zionist entity in the context of normalizing ties between the regime in Manama and the enemy’s authorities.
The Zionist Telecommunication Minister Ayoob Kara revealed that he met with the Bahraini emir, adding that he would welcome him at Knesset on Monday.
Ayoob posted the photo of his meeting with Mubarak Al Khalifa via Twitter.
A Bahraini governmental delegation visited the Zionist entity last December and had a field tour in the occupied Al-Quds accompanied by a staff from the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
Israel imposes taxes on church, UN properties in Jerusalem
MEMO | February 3, 2018
The Israeli municipality in Jerusalem began to impose taxes on church and United Nations properties in occupied East Jerusalem, Israel Hayom reported.
The Israeli newspaper said today that the Israeli municipality will collect tens of millions of dollars from churches and United Nations institutions as a result of the real estate taxes.
It added that the Mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, changed the policy applied since the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.
The Jerusalem Municipality informed the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister’s Office that it is demanding that church and international institutions pay municipal taxes on properties owned by them.
The paper pointed out that the ruling will affect 887 properties which belong to the church and the UN.
It is estimated that the municipality will earn 650 million shekels ($191 million) from the new policy.
“The talk is not about the role of worship, which is excluded from the property tax under the law, but properties that are used for purposes other than prayer and some are used for commercial activities,” Israel Hayom explained.
It added that this week the municipality imposed restrictions on the bank accounts of evangelical, Armenian and Roman churches on the grounds of non-payment of property taxes.
“The decision of the state [exemption] over the past years has caused losses of up to one billion shekels. It is unreasonable for the residents of Jerusalem to pay the price of garbage collection, lighting, gardening and street construction, while preventing the municipality from raising large amounts of money that could help it, Significantly in the development of the city and improve services for the population [of the listed properties].”
“Either the state will compensate us financially for not collecting these funds or we will collect them according to the law,” the municipality said.
US President Donald Trump’s decision last month to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has encouraged the Israeli government to annex large swathes of the city and force its laws on it. World leaders and international organisations rallied to condemn the move and its disregard for the final status negotiations of the 1993 Oslo Accords.
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Film Review
We refuse to be silenced’: Gaza film producers blast BBC at BAFTAs
Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2026
The producers of the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” used their BAFTA TV Awards win on Sunday to publicly denounce the BBC for refusing to air the film, accusing the network of censoring coverage of “Israel’s” genocidal assault on Gaza and silencing voices that document the atrocities committed against Palestinian medical workers.
The documentary, originally commissioned by the BBC but never broadcast due to what the network called “concerns about impartiality” towards “Israel,” won in the current affairs category at the BAFTA ceremony in London. The film was eventually aired by Channel 4 and investigates the systematic targeting of medical personnel and healthcare infrastructure in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Journalist Ramita Navai delivered a speech while accepting the award, in which she stated that the occupation has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and deliberately targeted hospitals and medical workers. According to the documentary’s investigation, more than 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and over 400 have been abducted by Israeli forces.
Citing United Nations language, Navai described “Israel’s” attacks against Gaza’s medical infrastructure and personnel as “medicide.” She concluded her remarks with a defiant message: “We refuse to be silenced and censored.” … continue
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