Eight-month-old Laila is youngest Palestinian killed in Gaza on Monday, the deadliest day since 2014 war.
From left: Ahmed Alrantisi, Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, Ahmed Altetr, Alaa Alkhatib Ezz el-din Alsamaak, Motassem Abu Louley (screengrab)
Sixty-two people were either killed or died of wounds inflicted by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip on Monday and Tuesday as thousands of Palestinians demonstrated across the occupied territory to mark the 70th anniversary of the Nakba.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Gaza Ministry of Health released the names of 59 Palestinians killed:
1. Laila Anwar Al-Ghandoor, 8 months old
2. Ezz el-din Musa Mohamed Alsamaak, 14 years old
3. Wisaal Fadl Ezzat Alsheikh Khalil, 15 years old
4. Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, 16 years old
5. Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, 16 years old
6. Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, 18 years old
7. Eman Ali Sadiq Alsheikh, 19 years old
8. Zayid Mohamed Hasan Omar, 19 years old
9. Motassem Fawzy Abu Louley, 20 years old
10. Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh, 21 years old
11. Mohamed Abd Alsalam Harz, 21 years old
From left: Fadi Abu Salah, Motaz Al-Nunu, Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, Anas Hamdan Salim Qadeeh
12. Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, 22 years old
13. Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, 22 years old
14. Ezz Eldeen Nahid Aloyutey, 23 years old
15. Mahmoud Mustafa Ahmed Assaf, 23 years old
16. Ahmed Fayez Harb Shahadah, 23 years old
17. Ahmed Awad Allah, 24 years old
18. Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, 25 years old
19. Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, 26 years old
20. Bilal Ahmed Abu Diqah, 26 years old
21. Ahmed Majed Qaasim Ata Allah, 27 years old
From left: Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, Ibrahim Ahmed Alzarqa, Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, Saeed Mohamed Abu Alkheir, Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah (screengrab)
22. Mahmoud Rabah Abu Maamar, 28 years old
23.Musab Yousef Abu Leilah, 28 years old
24. Ahmed Fawzy Altetr, 28 years old
25. Mohamed Abdelrahman Meqdad, 28 years old
26. Obaidah Salim Farhan, 30 years old
27. Jihad Mufid Al-Farra, 30 years old
28. Fadi Hassan Abu Salah, 30 years old
29. Motaz Bassam Kamil Al-Nunu, 31 years old
30. Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, 31 years old
31. Jihad Mohammed Othman Mousa, 31 years old
32. Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, 32 years old
33. Mousa Jabr Abdulsalam Abu Hasnayn, 35 years old
From left: Shahir Mahmoud Mohammed Almadhoon, Khalil Ismail Khalil Mansor, Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, Mohamed Ashraf Abu Sitta, Mustafa Mohamed Samir Mahmoud Almasry, Obaidah Salim Farhan (screengrab)
34. Mohammed Mahmoud Abdulmoti Abdal’al, 39 years old
35. Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Hamdan, 27 years old
36. Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk, 30 years old
37. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Alrantisi, 27 years old
38. Alaa Alnoor Ahmed Alkhatib, 28 years old
39. Mahmoud Yahya Abdawahab Hussain, 24 years old
40. Ahmed Abdullah Aladini, 30 years old
41. Saadi Said Fahmi Abu Salah, 16 years old
42. Ahmed Zahir Hamid Alshawa, 24 years old
43. Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, 33 years old
44. Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, 34 years old
45. Mokhtar Kaamil Salim Abu Khamash, 23 years old
46. Mahmoud Wael Mahmoud Jundeyah, 21 years old
47. Abdulrahman Sami Abu Mattar, 18 years old
48. Ahmed Salim Alyaan Aljarf, 26 years old
From left: Mohammed Hani Hosni Alnajjar, Yehia Ismail Rajab Aldaqoor, Mohammed Riyad Abdulrahman Alamudi, Ahmed Adel Musa Alshaer, Fadl Mohamed Ata Habshy, Ismail Khalil Ramadhan Aldaahuk (screengrab)
49. Mahmoud Sulayman Ibrahim Aql, 32 years old
50. Mohamed Hasan Mustafa Alabadilah, 25 years old
51. Kamil Jihad Kamil Mihna, 19 years old
52. Mahmoud Saber Hamad Abu Taeemah, 23 years old
53. Ali Mohamed Ahmed Khafajah, 21 years old
54. Abdelsalam Yousef Abdelwahab, 39 years old
55. Mohamed Samir Duwedar, 27 years old
56. Talal Adel Ibrahim Mattar, 16 years old
57. Omar Jomaa Abu Ful, 30 years old
58. Nasser Ahmed Mahmoud Ghrab, 51 years old
59. Bilal Badeer Hussein Al-Ashram, 18 years old
60 – 62: Unidentified
Middle East Eye has live coverage of protests in Palestine and Israel here.
May 15, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Zionism |
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Considering the sequence of recent events in the Middle East, it is obvious that the circumstances regarding the US withdrawal from the nuclear accord with Iran were carefully thought out in advance, as a pre-arranged strategy to pave the way for escalating Israel’s conflict with Iran and the war in Syria.
In presenting their own self-serving narrative of lies and distortions that Iran is conducting a ‘secret’ nuclear weapons program, Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump remain oblivious to the stunning hypocrisy of their own duplicity and stupidity; as if the rest of the world does not see through their pathological deceits. In their most recent public presentations, both pathetically flawed individuals, trapped in a Matrix of their own, continue to confuse war with peace and have no clue how to distinguish the difference.
Publicly projecting one’s own evil agenda onto an ill-fated population is an old political trick to deflect attention from one’s own sins while pointing the finger elsewhere and it would come as no surprise to discover that National Security Advisor John Bolton, who has dual citizenship with Israel, has been the key choreographer.
Immediately after Trump’s April 3rd “time to get out of Syria” and ‘bring our troops home” statement, an alleged gas attack occurred on April 7th that was allegedly ordered by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. That attack was followed by Netanyahu’s April 30th dog and pony show as a warm up for Trump’s much anticipated announcement withdrawing from the nuclear accord with Iran (JCPOA) on May 8th. By May 9th, Netanyahu was in Moscow viewing the Russian Victory Day parade along side Russian President Vladimir Putin.
We can only speculate on the details of the Putin-Netanyahu conversation but it is an unlikely coincidence that Russia’s previous plan to provide its sophisticated S300 surface to air missile system to Syria has been put on the backburner and it appears the Russians took no active role to counter the Israeli offensive.
As reported in Haaretz, Netanyahu used the old cliché with Putin that “Israeli has the right to defend itself in the face of Iranian aggression” and as Putin should be aware, that is smokescreen lingo for Israel will pursue its policy of death and destruction throughout the Middle East with no apologies to anyone and international law be damned.
All this of course comes after the US, Israel, Saudis and their proxies suffered a humiliating defeat in Syria thanks to the Russians in the air and Iranians on the ground, both of which provided military assistance at the request of Assad.
Netanyahu’s promise to provide a ‘new and conclusive proof of a secret nuclear weapons program that Iran has been hiding for years from the international community in its secret atomic archive” proved to be nothing more than a rehash of outdated, useless talking points.
It was not an oversight that Netanyahu failed to provide his own data about Israel’s super secret nuclear weapon arsenal which has been kept top-secret since the 1960’s. Estimated at 200 nuclear warheads in a 2016 email by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former President Jimmy Carter revised his estimate upwards in 2014 to 300 Israeli nuclear warheads while in 1996 the authoritative Jane’s magazine put the number at 400 Israel nuclear warheads. If American intelligence was correct in 1986 that Israel had 200 nuclear warheads, with a production schedule of ten each year since the mid 1970’s, a more accurate current estimate could be as high as 600 Israeli nuclear warheads.
It might have been worth the price of admission to hear Netanyahu’s response to Iran’s Hassan Rouhani’s first UN visit as President in 2013 when he called for a ‘nuclear free zone’ in the Middle East? Or let’s hear Netanyahu or Trump explain how Iran signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty in 1968 with its Parliament ratifying the Treaty in 1970 while Israel has consistently refused to sign and refused to allow IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) inspections of its nuclear facilities? The NNPT has now been signed by 191 nations, not including Israel.
It is astonishing that after his ‘fake news’ testimony before a subservient Congress in 2002, Netanyahu continues to perpetuate the Iran lie practically word for word as he perpetuated the Iraq wmd lie in 2002:
“there is no question whatsoever, that Saddam is seeking and is working and is advancing towards the development nuclear weapons, no question whatsoever – and there is no question that once he acquires it, history shifts immediately…”
While Trump’s long anticipated declaration relied heavily on scare tactics, bombast and a barrage of belligerent, unverified accusations citing ‘new evidence’ presented at Netanyahu’s flim-flam event, Trump failed to provide one iota of evidence that Iran had not been in compliance with the Agreement. Trump failed to explain how attempts to improve the Agreement had failed and totally missed the irony when he dutifully parroted that Iran’s ‘regime has funded a long reign of chaos and terror by plundering the wealth of its own people” as if America’s history of spreading global chaos and terror remains a Deep State secret.
Within hours of Trump’s green light, Israel initiated a massive bombing attack on Iranian positions in Syria, according to Haaretz, firing from Israeli positions in the disputed Golan Heights in southwest Syria. The GH, which is within missile range of Damascus, has been occupied by Israel since the Six Day War in 1967 and remains internationally recognized as Syrian territory.
The IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) reported that its Iron Dome missile defense system was deployed and intercepted some twenty incoming projectiles in what may have been an unprecedented return volley from Syria which Israel labelled as an “act of aggression”. The Iron Dome system was built for Israel by the American weapons manufacturer Raytheon and with Congress funding the system, courtesy of $705 Million from the American taxpayer.
As Israel Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said referring to an increased US budget allotment for Israel, “I thank our great friend the United States, which has invested $6.5 billion to defend the skies of the State of Israel.”
The speed and ease with which Israel stepped in and took control has been stunning, requiring the capitulation of Trump and Putin as Israel assumed all the authority to initiate attacks with no fear of reprimand or being held accountable to anyone. With the same confident assurance since the confiscation of Arab lands for Israeli settlements began in 1947, Israel has never been a nation that respected diplomatic protocol or honored international law.
Meanwhile, Members of the US Congress continue to “sit in their places with bright, shiny faces.”
Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC.
May 15, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Syria, Zionism |
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US President Donald Trump has been served with a legal notice reminding him of his Constitutional duties with regard to the situation in the Middle East, especially his decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, and warning him of an impending Israeli false flag operation likely to threaten the lives of US citizens. America’s responsibilities as a permanent member of the UN Security Council are also pointed out by the signatories to the notice, who are British journalist Sarah Jane (Lauren) Booth; former CIA Operations Officer Phil Geraldi; ex-Pentagon official Michael Maloof; Scott Bennett, a former US Army Officer and State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism; ex-US Diplomat and Attorney J. Michael Springmann; and Edward C Corrigan, a Canadian Barrister and Solicitor.
Their formal letter has been sent to Trump with copies going to the International Criminal Court, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, among others. The signatories give the US President “legal notice” of “a massacre beginning at the time of the Nakba anniversary in order for you to register a response and call upon the Israelis to cease and desist in your capacity as President of the United States and a Permanent Member of the Security Council and NATO.” The address for receipt of the notice to be acknowledged is given as International Delegates of the New Horizons Conference in Tehran.
The US President is reminded that he is expected to advise the US Congress, the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court in The Hague) about this legal matter. He is warned “that ‘false flag’ attacks may be used by Israeli agents in order to assign blame to Palestinian factions and escalate the ongoing protests in Gaza and the West Bank into a larger conflict in order to falsely draw the United States and American military personnel into this artificially created conflict.” Such an attack, claim those behind the legal notice, “represents a clear and present danger to the citizens of the United States of America, because it may be designed to trigger and escalate American military actions against Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Russia, since these nations are opposed to the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem; and rising tensions already exacerbated by the US withdrawal from the [nuclear deal with Iran].”
The initiation of this impending attack, Trump has been told, will involve a new and higher level massacre of Palestinian civilians protesting against the move of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. Furthermore, the letter serves as “Legal Notice [that] the United States can have no military alliance due to the fact that Israel has no internationally recognised fixed territorial borders which are required to be defined in such an agreement.” This notice, it is pointed out, will be “EXHIBIT 1 in any war crimes investigation and prosecution (past, present, future) relating to this matter.” There are, it is claimed, “national and international legal violations” involved.
The signatories cite a number of publications as evidence of the seriousness of their claims and warning to the President, and seek legal protection for themselves against “any retaliation, detainment, investigation, sequestration, interrogation, discrimination, imprisonment, torture, financial consequences, or any other negative or prejudicial consequences or actions taken against them.” Indeed, the former government and military officers and officials seek “whistle-blower protection” because they are “fulfilling [their] oaths to the US Constitution.”
May 15, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism | Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Syria, United States |
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This is the final article in a four-part series on the NDP leadership’s suppression of debate on the Palestine Resolution. Here are the first, second and third installments on the topic.
To effect change people need to know what and who they are up against. By nakedly suppressing debate on the Palestine Resolution at its recent convention the NDP leadership did internationalist minded party members the favour of clarifying that. They demonstrated the need to directly confront anti-Palestinianism within the party.
Over the next year NDPers who support Palestinian rights and care about party democracy should hound the leadership over their suppression of the Palestine Resolution. Every single elected representative, staffer, riding association executive and party activist needs to be prodded into deciding whether they side with Palestinian rights and party democracy or suppressing the Palestine Resolution and enabling ongoing Canadian complicity in Palestinian dispossession.
The best way to channel disgust with suppression of the Palestine Resolution is by forcing the party to sever its ties with Israel lobby organizations. NDP officials must stop participating in expenses-paid Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) lobbying trips to Israel and reject requests from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to speak at its conferences. They also need to remove their MPs from the Canada–Israel Parliamentary Group, stop inviting Israeli Labor Party MPs to their convention and refrain from events put on by the explicitly racist and colonial Jewish National Fund.
Any MP who takes a CIJA-funded lobbying trip to Israel should receive a deluge of emails from across the country, visits to their office by local activists and the withdrawal of any form of activist support until they apologize. MPs and party representatives need to understand that these lobbying tours may be free, but they have a political cost.
Palestine solidarity activists in Victoria should immediately launch a campaign to force Randall Garrison and Murray Rankin to withdraw from the Canada–Israel Parliamentary Group. If emails don’t do the trick, visiting their offices, questioning them at community events or occupying their offices might.
At an individual level anti-Palestinian comments should be socially stigmatized. Just like members making openly sexist or homophobic statements, individuals espousing anti-Palestinian views need to feel isolated in NDP circles.
An example of the wild anti-Palestinianism accepted in the party, the president of an NDP riding association sits on the board of the explicitly racist and colonialist Jewish National Fund. President of the Windsor-Tecumseh federal NDP, Noah Tepperman is a board member of the Windsor JNF and has funded the organization’s events in other cities. Before the party convention Tepperman sent an email to all riding associations calling on them to oppose Palestine resolutions and he has tweeted that “BDS = Racism” and “Distressed to hear Canada’s Green Party endorsed the anti-free speech/anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic BDS movement.” Heir to the southern Ontario Tepperman furniture, appliance and electronics business, Noah Tepperman should be removed from his position, just as a supporter of a White nationalist group or Christian anti-abortion activist would be.
At the convention, representatives of the NDP-aligned Broadbent Institute supported the party establishment’s move to suppress debate on the Palestine Resolution. Any donor or supporter of that organization who believes Palestinians are human beings or cares about party democracy should ask if those supporting suppression of debate were acting on behalf of the Broadbent Institute. During his time as federal party leader Ed Broadbent (1975 – 89) took a number of anti-Palestinian positions. He should be prodded to apologize and distance himself from suppression of the Palestine Resolution.
Ditto for former Ontario leader (1970-78) Stephen Lewis. Probably the loudest anti-Palestinian at the NDP convention, Janet Solberg works at the Stephen Lewis Foundation and has long worked for her brother. Does Stephen Lewis agree with his sister and will he apologize for his previous anti-Palestinian statements?
While it is essential to challenge various personal and institutional ties to Palestinian dispossession, NDP officialdom’s connections to Israel lobby groups wasn’t what drove their suppression of the Palestine Resolution. Rather, as I detailed, the party establishment’s overriding concern was media backlash. But, silencing and driving out extreme anti-Palestinian voices and disrupting the party leadership’s ties to Israel lobby groups is a more achievable medium-term objective than shifting the dominant media. Additionally, getting the NDP — a powerful political institution — to forthrightly criticize Canada’s complicity in Palestinian dispossession is necessary in order to force open space within the dominant media to challenge Israeli policy.
Confronting suppression of the Palestine Resolution and the party establishment’s ties to Israel lobby groups is also essential to constrain their capacity to repeat the same anti-democratic practices at the next convention. Putting the party leadership on the defensive over the Palestine Resolution and its ties to Israel lobby organizations also increases the likelihood that they will criticize the federal government’s indifference to Israel’s killings in Gaza, detention of Palestinian children, Donald Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem and opposition to proper labeling of Israeli settlement wine (issues the NDP foreign critic has recently criticized). The party leadership has taken these basic steps partly as a way to head off activist pressure. Of course, a party serious about opposing Canadian complicity in Palestinian dispossession would also challenge Canada-Israel military ties, a free trade agreement that allows settlement products to enter Canada duty-free, registered charities that channel tens of millions of dollars to projects supporting Israel’s powerful military, racist institutions and illegal settlements, etc.
At a certain level the question is which ideology and individuals are at home in the NDP: Those in favor of suppressing debate on the Palestine Resolution and Canadian complicity in Palestinian dispossession or those who support Palestinian rights and party democracy.
It is necessary, for justice and democracy’s sake, that those who thwarted the Palestine Resolution come to regret their decision. They must realize that while not in control of the party machinery or dominant media, Palestine solidarity activists have righteousness on their side and wind in their sails.
Yves Engler is the author of A Propaganda System: How Canada’s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Canada in Africa: 300 Years of Aid and Exploitation .
May 15, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Canada, Human rights, NDP, Zionism |
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The true face of the organisation calling itself “Labour Friends of Israel” has been revealed today, in truly disgusting victim-blaming tweets reacting to the massacre of over fifty Palestinians – including yet more children – by the Israeli Defence Force in Gaza.
No Israelis were injured and no “border communities” attacked. This amplification of the worst extreme right wing zionist propaganda by the Likud government shows beyond doubt that “Labour Friends of Israel” is nothing whatsoever to do with the professed values of the Labour Party, but rather a well-funded entryist front solely intended to promote the interests of a violent, expansionist and aggressive foreign state.
I am not a Labour Party member and I do not know what institutional ties the “Labour Friends of Israel” has to the Labour Party, but whatever they are they should be cut off immediately.
The “Labour Friends of Israel” featured very prominently on our TV screens after the recent English local elections, beating the drum for their widespread accusations of anti-semitism within the Labour Party. They have been driving that agenda for many months. One would like to think that the mainstream media would, after today, cease to accept them as a genuine and well-motivated group and understand them for the hate-filled fanatics they truly are. Of course that will not happen, and they will be back on television shortly accusing yet more lifelong anti-racism campaigners who have the temerity to criticise Israel.
May 15, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Israel, Labour Friends Of Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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On the day the Israeli Defence Force massacred dozens of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza and maimed over 400 more, our media has carefully avoided the use of the word massacre. Here is a Google search of News I did five minutes ago on the word “massacre”.
A massacre occurred today in which more people were killed than at Glencoe. All of them were unarmed and the majority were well over a hundred yards from the border fence. It says everything about the kind of nightmare fascist state Israel now is, that if you look through those news results for “massacre”, the only mention you get of Palestinians is a claim by the Israeli Defence Force that the Palestinian Defence Forces were planning a massacre of Israelis.
The Turkish government have now come out with a statement condemning the massacre, and in the UK the Daily Express and the Daily Star have both reported that; but both have chosen to put the word “massacre” in the Turkish statement into inverted commas, as though it were not true.
The Western media far prefers the word “clashes” to “massacre”. Because those terrible Palestinians insist upon demonstrating against the continuing theft of all their land and resources, and keep attacking innocent Israeli bullets with their heads and bodies. If you look through the Google search of News this time for “clashes”, you discover that the western and Israeli media peculiarly have precisely the same preference for this entirely inappropriate word. That, again, is fascinating.
The gross injustice of the apartheid state of Israel appears immutable. The overwhelming force of the political and financial Establishment is behind Israel in the West, in the Russian oligarchy and even in most of the horribly corrupt leadership of Arab states. But the situation is not as dire as it seems, because the hold of those Establishment elites on the people they exploit has never been more shaky. Israel remains a touchstone issue. In order to help redress the terrible agony of the Palestinians, we must first effect a change in our own system of elite exploitation of the people at home. That change is coming.
May 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Israel, Palestine, UK, United States, Zionism |
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How obscenely ironic. Embassies traditionally symbolize diplomacy and peace. The opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem was occasioned by a grotesque baptism of murder of Palestinians, heralding wider war in the Middle East.
Not only that, but on the very anniversary of one of the most shameful episodes of ethnic cleansing and dispossession over the past century – the 1948 Nakba or Catastrophe for Palestinians – the US government is brazenly siding with the heirs of that historic violence, the Israeli state.
Trump’s wholesale abandonment of any shame in endorsing Israeli violations against Arab historic rights is an incitement to regional conflagration.
It’s hard to express the horror. Israeli snipers shooting unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, while some 100 kilometers away in Jerusalem, US dignitaries and evangelical pastors were blessing the opening of Washington’s new embassy as ‘God’s work’.
US President Donald Trump’s policy in the Middle East, if you could call it “policy”, has descended into absolute lunacy. No wonder, most European states stayed away from the US reception for unveiling its new diplomatic center.
Trump’s reckless disregard for Palestinian-Israeli peace is plunging the region into a blood bath. This week’s incendiary snub to Palestinians and the wider Arab region followed his tearing up of US obligations to the Iran nuclear accord. That violation of an international treaty has left diplomats from Europe, Russia, China and Iran scrambling to salvage a deal, which if it falls apart will unleash more instability and even war in the Middle East.
When Trump announced in December the moving of his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem it was roundly rebuked at the United Nations. The move violates decades of international consensus that Jerusalem should be a shared capital between Palestinians and Israelis pending the outcome of peace negotiations.
Trump said his decision was merely a “reflection of reality”. Cynically, it marks US acquiescence to illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.
To be fair, Washington’s decision to relocate its embassy to Jerusalem was made over 20 years ago in 1995. Presidents Clinton, GW Bush and Obama opted to delay the actual move, claiming that such a move depended on progress in peace talks. Trump has now put into action legislation that was already on the books.
But what his declaration signifies is the jettisoning of any pretense by the US of being an “honest broker” between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinian leaders now refuse to even engage with US officials, such is their disgust.
Paradoxically, Trump is helping to clarify the situation. The US is openly backing Israeli conquest of Palestinian territory and oppression of Palestinians. Washington is now transparently complicit in criminal Israeli policy rather than hiding behind a facade of mediation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed Trump this week for “making Israel great again”. With typical chutzpah, Netanyahu urged other nations to follow suit, absurdly claiming that by relocating their embassies from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem they would facilitate peace.
The perverse logic, as proven already by the US policy, is that any chance of peace between Palestinians and Israelis is being utterly destroyed.
The hellish conditions that Palestinians are subjected to under relentless Israeli occupation are driving them to the desperate act of lining up in their thousands under the fire of Israeli snipers.
Over the past six weeks since Gaza’s population began the “Great Return March” some 50 unarmed protesters have been murdered by Israeli live fire. On the day of the US Embassy opening, dozens of more civilians were shot dead, within hours of the Jerusalem ceremony.
Israeli commanders have openly admitted that a shoot-to-kill tactic is being used whereby soldiers are even targeting children who dare to approach a separation barrier on Gaza’s eastern border with Israeli-held territory.
The Gaza protests were organized by ordinary Palestinians to highlight their desperate plea against a barbaric occupation and prevention of residents returning to their historic homes, including in Jerusalem. Some 70 per cent of Gaza’s population are descended from refugees who were displaced by Israeli settlers in the 1948 pogroms and later in the 1967 War.
Under Israeli siege, which the UN has described as illegal, Gazans are prevented from moving out of the coastal strip. Some two million people – half of whom are under 18 years old – subsist in unlivable conditions. Over 90 per cent of Gaza’s water supply is contaminated, electricity is available for only a few hours per day, fisherman are prevented from going beyond a few miles from the shore where human sewage runs directly into the sea.
As American historian Norman Finkelstein points out, Gaza is being tormented by military occupation, an inhuman blockade, massacres conducted with impunity by Israeli military, and children being poisoned. It is this context of genocide in which the recent protests are taking place.
Those protests were organized to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s declared foundation on May 14, 1948. The next day, May 15, is what the Palestinians and many supporters around the world prefer to focus on – the Catastrophe.
Trump’s decision to open the US Embassy in Jerusalem this week could not be more provocative and criminally insane.
It truly is a shockingly callous display of US support for seven decades of barbaric oppression against Palestinians and the wider Arab region.
Jerusalem is seen as a holy site for Muslims and Christians. Washington’s acquiescing to Israel’s declaration of the city as “undivided capital” of the Jewish Israeli state is an outrageous blow to hundreds of millions of people from other faiths. As well as a vandalistic swipe at world opinion based on ordinary principles of justice, morality and compassion towards the long-suffering Palestinian people.
Europe bears a heavy responsibility for the plight of Palestinians. After Hamas won the parliamentary elections in 2006, the EU and the US both moved to sanction the new Hamas government owing to its refusal to recognize the state of Israel. The Israeli siege on Gaza has thus been perpetrated with the complicity of the EU and the US, albeit the latter appearing more brazenly complicit under Trump.
European governments may be discomfited by Trump’s strident contempt for Palestinian rights and international law. But they have contributed to the present deterioration in the Middle East by pandering towards Washington’s policies of sponsoring Israeli occupation, as well as sponsoring reactionary Arab client regimes like Saudi Arabia, and fomenting illegal wars and regime-change operations.
Trump’s impetuousness and ignorance – no doubt encouraged by multi-million-dollar donations from rich Jewish Americans like Sheldon Adelson – has set the US on a collision course with the Arab masses from his insolent indifference to their rights. As if that could not be any more combustible, Trump is pushing the same Israeli-Saudi despot agenda of hostility towards Iran, as evinced by the nuclear accord sabotage.
Europe has for too long tied itself to the shipwreck that is US policy in the Middle East. Surely, European governments must realize by now that if explosive violence and conflict is to be avoided in the Middle East, they must abandon the US shipwreck and begin asserting an independent foreign policy.
A genuine peace process advocating for long-neglected Palestinian rights, and repudiating US attempts to collapse the Iran nuclear accord are two immediate matters for the Europeans to claw back some sanity and respect – before it’s too late.
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May 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | European Union, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Young Palestinians protestors at the Gaza border carry signs in Hebrew: “Soldier, we are not objects, we are human beings.’
Zionism promised to solve the Jewish problem. It vowed to fix Diaspora Jews by means of a ‘homecoming,’ to make the Jews loved, empathic, bond them to the soil; in essence, to make them ‘people like all other people.’
The horrific scenes flooding in from Gaza today demonstrate that Zionism failed miserably. The Jewish State is an embarrassment to its original humanist endeavour and to humanity in general.
Just today, at least 43 Palestinian protestors have been killed and 2,200 wounded by Israeli troops at the Gaza border. Some reports suggest that half of the injuries were caused by live ammunition. This is devastating news. The criminality of Israel is institutional. This is not about one odd sniper who laughs as he shoots a young Palestinian in the knee, crippling him for life. Israel is displaying a systematic hierarchic murderous apparatus designed to sustain the oppression of the indigenous people of the land for an unlimited period.
Despite the Zionist dream, the Jewish state isn’t loved by its neighbours. It isn’t loved by the rest of the world either. In fact Israel’s actions evoke global repulsion. Instead of solving the Jewish problem, Zionism has only relocated the problem and amplified the symptoms it vowed to eliminate.
Truth can be a disturbing notion; no matter how much you try to suppress it, truth manages to come out. Accordingly, it is impossible to grasp the history of Jewish suffering without taking into consideration the atrocious actions of the Jewish state. As it happens, Israeli politics is driven by a complete dismissal of the other. The Israeli military operation in Gaza is simply a license to murder. One would hope that a state that names itself the Jewish State would be slightly more vigilant with its excessive use of power.
By now I believe that Israel is going to be remembered as the darkest chapter in Jewish history and beyond.
May 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Israel, Judaism, Palestine, Zionism |
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Introduction
For some time, critics of President Trump’s policies have attributed them to a mental disorder; uncontrolled manic-depression, narcissus bullying and other pathology.
The question of Trump’s mental health raises a deeper question: why does his pathology take a specific political direction?
Moreover, Trump’s decisions have a political history and background, and follow from a logic and belief in the reason and logic of imperial power.
We will examine the reason why Trump has embraced three strategic decisions which have world-historic consequences, namely: Trump’s reneging the nuclear accord with Iran; Trump’s declaration of a trade war with China; and Trump’s meeting with North Korea.
In brief we will explore the political reasons for his decisions; what he expects to gain; and what is his game plan if he fails to secure his expected outcome and his adversaries take reprisals.
Trump’s Strategic Framework
The underlying assumption of Trump’s strategic thinking is that ‘power works’: the more intransigent his posture, the greater his belief in a unipolar world based on US power. As a corollary, Trump interprets that any ally, adversary, competitor who seeks negotiations, reciprocity or concessions is ‘weak’ and should be pressured or forced to concede greater concessions and further retreats and sacrifices, up to the ultimate goal of surrender and submission. In other words, Trump’s politics of force only recognizes counter-force: limitations in Trump’s policies will only result when tangible economic and military losses and costs in US lives would undermine US imperial rule.
Reasons Why Trump Broke the Peace Accord with Iran
Trump broke the accord with Iran because the original agreement was based on retaining US sanctions against Iran; the total dismantling of its nuclear program and calling into question Iran’s limited role on behalf of possible allies in the Middle East.
Iran’s one-sided concessions; trading military defense for market opportunities encouraged Trump to believe that he could intimidate Iran militarily by closing all its markets.
Trump views President Rohani as a rug seller not a military strategist. Trump believes that an economic squeeze will lead President Rohani to sacrifice his allies in Syria, Lebanon (Hezbollah), Yemen (Houthi), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (Shia) and to dismantle its ICBM defense strategy.
Trump pursues the strategic goal of weakening Iran and preparing a regime change, reverting Iran into a client state – as it was prior to the 1979 revolution under the Shah.
The second reason for Trump’s policy is to strengthen Israel’s military power in the Middle East. The Trump regime is deeply influenced by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) in the US, dubbed ‘the Lobby’.
Trump recognizes and submits to Zionist-Israeli dictates because they have unprecedented power in the media, real estate, finance and insurance (FIRE). Trump recognizes the ZPC’s power to buy Congressional votes, control both political parties and secure appointments in the executive branch.
Trump is the typical authoritarian: at the throat of the weak, citizens, allies and adversaries and on his knees before the powerful ZPC, the military and Wall Street. Trump’s submission to Zionist power reinforces and even dictates his decision to break the peace accord with Iran and his willingness to pressure France, Germany, the UK and Russia to sacrifice billion-dollar trade agreements with Iran and to pursue a policy of pressuring Teheran to accept part of Trump’s agenda of unilateral disarmament and isolation. Trump believes he can force the EU multi-nationals to disobey their governments and abide by sanctions.
Reasons for Trump’s Trade War with China
Prior to Trump’s presidency, especially under President Obama, the US launched a trade war and ‘military pivot’ to China. Obama proposed the Trans-Pacific Pact to exclude China and directed an air and naval armada to the South China Sea. Obama established a high-powered surveillance system in South Korea and supported war exercises on North Korea’s border. Trump’s policy deepened and radicalized Obama’s policies.
Trump extended Obama’s bellicose policy toward North Korea, demanding the de-nuclearization of its defense program. President Kim of North Korea and President Moon of South Korea reached an agreement to open negotiations toward a peace accord ending nearly 60 years of hostility.
However, President Trump joined the conversation on the presumption that North Korea’s peace overtures were due to his threats of war and intimidation. He insisted that any peace settlement and end of economic sanctions would only be achieved by unilateral nuclear disarmament, the maintenance of US forces on the peninsula and supervision by US approved inspectors.
Trump’s unilateral declaration of a trade war against China accompanied his belief that military threats led to North Korea’s “capitulation” – its promise to end its nuclear program.
Trump slapped a trade tariff on over $100 billion dollars of Chinese exports in order to reduce its trade imbalance by $200 billion over two years. He demanded China unilaterally end industrial ‘espionage’, technological ‘theft’ (all phony accusations) and China’s compliance monitored quarterly by the US.
Trump demanded that China not retaliate with tariffs or restrictions or face bigger sanctions.
Trump threatened to respond to any reciprocal tariff by Beijing, with greater tariffs, and restrictions on Chinese goods and services.
Trump’s goals seek to convert North Korea into a military satellite encroaching on China’s northern border; and a trade war that drives China into an economic crisis.
Trump believes that as China declines as a world economic power, the US will grow and dominate the Asian and world economy.
Trump believes a successful trade war will lead to a successful military war. Trump believes that a submissive China, based on its isolation from the ‘dynamic’ US market, will enhance Washington’s quest for uncontested world domination.
Trump’s Ten Erroneous Thesis
Trump’s political agenda is deeply flawed!
Breaking the nuclear agreement and imposing harsh sanctions has isolated Trump from his European and Asian allies.
His military intervention will inflame a regional war that would destroy the Saudi oil fields. He will force Iran to pursue a nuclear shield against US-Israeli aggression and lead to a prolonged, costly and ultimately losing war.
Trump’s policies will unify all Iranians, liberals and nationalist, and undermine US collaborators.
The entire Muslim world will unify forces and carry the conflict throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Tel Aviv’s bombing will lead to counter-attacks in Israel.
Oil prices will skyrocket, financial markets will collapse, industries will go bankrupt.
Trump’s sanctions and military aggression against Iran will lead to mutual economic destruction.
Trump’s trade war with China will lead to the disruption of the supply chain which sustains the US economy and especially the 500 US multi-nationals who depend on the Chinese economy for exports to the US.
China will increase domestic consumption, diversify its markets and trading partners and reinforce its military alliance with Russia.
China has greater resilience and capacity to overcome short-term disruption and regain its dominant role as a global economic power house.
Wall Street will suffer a catastrophic financial collapse and send the US into a world depression.
Trump’s negotiations with North Korea will go nowhere as long as he demands unilateral nuclear disarmament, US military control over the peninsula and political isolation from China.
Kim will insist on the end of sanctions, and a mutual defense treaty with China.
Kim will offer to end nuclear testing but not nuclear weapons. After Trump’s reneged on the Iran deal, Kim will recognize that agreements with the US are not trustworthy.
Conclusion
Trump’s loud, threatening gestures are a real danger to world peace and justice. But his assumptions about the consequences of his policy are deeply flawed. There is no basis to think his sanctions will topple the Iranian regime; that Israel will survive unscathed from a war with Iran: that an oil war will not undermine the US economy; that Europe will allow its companies to be frozen out of the Iran market.
Trump’s trade war with China is dead in the water. He cannot find alternative production sites for US multi-nationals.
He cannot freeze China out of the world market, since they have links with five continents.
Trump cannot dominate North Korea and force it to sacrifice its sovereignty on the basis of empty economic promises to lift sanctions.
Trump is heading for defeats on all counts. But he may take the American people into the nuclear abyss in the process.
Epilogue
Are Trump’s threats of war part of a strategy of bluff and bombast designed to intimidate, in order to secure political advantages? Is Trump playing the Nixon-Kissinger ‘madman’ tactic, in which the Secretary of State tells adversaries to accept his ‘reasonable’ demands or face the worst from the President? I don’t think so.
Nixon, unlike Trump, was not led by the nose by Israel. Nixon, unlike Trump, was not led by pro-nuclear war advisers. Nixon, in contrast to Trump, opened the US to trade with China and signed nuclear reduction agreements with Russia.
Nixon successfully promoted peaceful co-existence.
Trump is a master of defeats.
© Copyright 2018 by AxisofLogic.com
May 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | North Korea, Sanctions against Iran, United States, Zionism |
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When Google Earth was initially released in 2001, I immediately rushed to locate a village that no longer exists on a map, which now delineates a whole different reality.
Although I was born and raised in a Gaza refugee camp, and then moved to and lived in the United States, finding a village that was erased from the map decades earlier was not, at least for me, an irrational act. The village of Beit Daras was the single most important piece of earth that truly mattered to me.
But I could only find it by estimation. Beit Daras was located 32-kilometers northeast of Gaza, on an elevated ground, perched gently between a large hill and a small river that seemed to never run dry.
A once peaceful village, Beit Daras had existed for millennia. Romans, Crusaders, Mamluks and Ottomans ruled over and, even tried to subdue Beit Daras as in all of Palestine; yet they failed. True, each invader left their mark – ancient Roman tunnels, a Crusaders’ castle, a Mamluk mail building, an Ottoman khan (Caravanserai) – but they were all eventually driven out. It wasn’t until 1948 that Beit Daras, that tenacious village with a population of merely 3,000 was emptied of its population, and later destroyed.
The agony of the inhabitants of Beit Daras and their descendants lingers on after all of these years. The tragic way that Beit Daras was conquered by invading Zionist forces has left behind blood stains and emotional scars that have never healed.
Three battles were bravely fought by the Badrasawis, as the dwellers of Beit Daras are called, in defense of their village. At the end, the Zionist militias, the Haganah, with the help of British weapons and strategic assistance, routed out the humble resistance, which consisted mostly of villagers fighting with old rifles.
The ‘massacre of Beit Daras’ that followed remains a subdued scream that pierces through the hearts of Badrasawis after all of these years. Those who survived became refugees and are mostly living in the Gaza Strip. Under siege, successive wars and endless strife, their Nakba – the catastrophic ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1947-48 – has never truly ended. One cannot dispel the pain if the wound never truly heals.
Born into a family of refugees in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp in Gaza, I took pride in being a Badrasawi. Our resistance has garnered us the reputation of being ‘stubborn’ and the uncorroborated claims of having large heads. We truly are stubborn, proud and generous, for Beit Daras was erased but the collective identity it has given us remained intact, regardless of whichever exile we may find ourselves.
As I child, I learned to be proud from my grandfather: A handsome, elegant, strong peasant with unshakable faith. He managed to hide his deep sadness so well after he was expelled from his home in Palestine, along with his entire family. As he aged, he would sit for hours, between prayers, searching within his soul for the beautiful memories of his past. Occasionally, he would let out a mournful sigh, a few tears; yet he never accepted his defeat, or the idea that Beit Daras was forever gone.
“Why bother to haul the good blankets on the back of a donkey, exposing them to the dust of the journey, while we know that it’s a matter of a week or so before we return to Beit Daras?” he told his bewildered wife, Zeinab as they hauled their children to navigate an endless exile.
I cannot pinpoint the moment when my grandfather discovered that his “good blankets” were gone forever, that all that remained of his village were two giant concrete pillars, and piles of cactus.
It isn’t easy to construct a history that, only several decades ago, was, along with every standing building of that village, blown to smithereens with the very intent of erasing it from existence. Most historic references written of Beit Daras, whether by Israeli or Palestinian historians, were brief, and ultimately resulted in delineating the fall of Beit Daras as just one among nearly 600 Palestinian villages that were often evacuated and then completely flattened during the war years. It was another episode in a more compounded tragedy that has seen the dispossession and expulsion of nearly 800,000 Palestinians.
But for my family, it was much more than that. Beit Daras was our very dignity. Grandpas’ calloused hands and leathery weathered skin attested to the decades of hard labor tending the rocky soil in the fields of Palestine. It was a popular pastime for my brothers and I to point to a scar on his body to hear a gut-busting tale of the rigors of farm-life.
Later in life, someone would give him a small hand-held radio to glean the latest news and he would, from that moment, never be seen without it. As a child, I recall him listening to the Arab Voice news on that battered radio. It once had been blue but now had faded to white with age. Its bulging batteries were duct-taped to the back. Sitting with the radio up to his ear and fighting to hear the reporter amidst the static, grandpa listened and waited for the announcer to make that long-awaiting call: “To the people of Beit Daras: your lands have been liberated, go back to your village.”
The day grandpa died, his faithful radio was lying on the pillow close to his ear so that even then he might catch the announcement for which he had waited for so long. He wanted to comprehend his dispossession as a simple glitch in the world’s consciousness that was sure to be corrected and straightened out in time.
But it didn’t. 70 years later, my people are still refugees. Not just the Badrasawis, but millions of Palestinians, scattered in refugee camps all across the Middle East. Those refugees, while still searching for a safe path that would take them home, often find themselves on yet another journey, another dusty trail, being pushed out time and again from one city to the next, from one country to another, even lost between continents.
My grandfather was buried in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp cemetery, not in Beit Daras as he had wished. But he remained a Badrasawi to the end, holding so passionately onto the memories of a place that for him – for all of us – remain sacred and real.
What Israel still fails to understand that the ‘Right of Return’ for Palestinian refugees is not merely a political or even a legal right to be overpowered by the ever-unfair status quo. It has long surpassed that into a whole different realm. For me, Beit Daras is not just a piece of earth but a perpetual fight for justice that shall never cease, because the Badrasawis belong to Beit Daras and nowhere else.
May 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Israel has been crafting a dishonest counter-narrative ever since the Nakba, one that historians scouring the archives have exploded
The National – May 13, 2018
On Monday and Tuesday, Palestinians will commemorate the anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, their mass expulsion and dispossession 70 years ago as the new state of Israel was built on the ruins of their homeland. As a result, most Palestinians were turned into refugees, denied by Israel the right to return to their homes.
Israel is braced nervously for many tens of thousands to turn out in the occupied territories this week to protest against decades of its refusal to make amends or end its oppressive rule.
The move on Monday of the US embassy to Jerusalem, a city under belligerent occupation, has only inflamed Palestinian grievances – and a sense that the West is still conspiring in their dispossession.
The expected focus of the protests is Gaza, where unarmed Palestinians have been massing every Friday since late March at the perimeter fence that encages two million of them.
For their troubles, they have faced a hail of live ammunition, rubber bullets and clouds of tear gas. Dozens have been killed and many hundreds more maimed, including children.
But for more than a month, Israel has been working to manage western perceptions of the protests in ways designed to discredit the outpouring of anger from Palestinians. In a message all too readily accepted by some western audiences, Israel has presented the protests as a “security threat”.
Israeli officials have even argued before the country’s high court that the protesters lack any rights – that army snipers are entitled to shoot them, even if facing no danger – because Israel is supposedly in a “state of war” with Gaza, defending itself.
Many Americans and Europeans, worried about an influx of “economic migrants” flooding into their own countries, readily sympathise with Israel’s concerns – and its actions.
Until now, the vast majority of Gaza’s protesters have been peaceful and made no attempt to break through the fence.
But Israel claims that Hamas will exploit this week’s protests in Gaza to encourage Palestinians to storm the fence. The implication is that the protesters will be crossing a “border” and “entering” Israel illegally.
The truth is rather different. There is no border because there is no Palestinian state. Israel has made sure of that. Palestinians live under occupation, with Israel controlling every aspect of their lives. In Gaza, even the air and sea are Israel’s domain.
Meanwhile, the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former lands – now in Israel – is recognised in international law.
Nonetheless, Israel has been crafting a dishonest counter-narrative ever since the Nakba, myths that historians scouring the archives have slowly exploded.
One claim – that Arab leaders told the 750,000 Palestinian refugees to flee in 1948 – was in fact invented by Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion. He hoped it would deflect US pressure on Israel to honour its obligations to allow the refugees back.
Even had the refugees chosen to leave during the heat of battle, rather than wait to be expelled, it would not have justified denying them a right to return when the fighting finished. It was that refusal that transformed flight into ethnic cleansing.
In another myth unsupported by the records, Ben Gurion is said to have appealed to the refugees to come back.
In truth, Israel defined Palestinians who tried to return to their lands as “infiltrators”. That entitled Israeli security officials to shoot them on sight – in what was effectively execution as a deterrence policy.
Nothing much has changed seven decades on. A majority of Gaza’s population today are descended from refugees driven into the enclave in 1948. They have been penned up like cattle ever since. That is why the Palestinians’ current protests take place under the banner of the March of Return.
For decades, Israel has not only denied Palestinians the prospect of a minimal state. It has carved Palestinian territories into a series of ghettos – and in the case of Gaza, blockaded it for 12 years, choking it into a humanitarian catastrophe.
Despite this, Israel wants the world to view Gaza as an embryonic Palestinian state, supposedly liberated from occupation in 2005 when it pulled out several thousand Jewish settlers.
Again, this narrative has been crafted only to deceive. Hamas has never been allowed to rule Gaza, any more than Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority governs the West Bank.
But echoing the events of the Nakba, Israel has cast the protesters as “infiltrators”, a narrative that has left most observers strangely indifferent to the fate of Palestinian youth demonstrating for their freedom.
Once again, these executions, supposedly carried out by the Israeli army in self-defence, are intended to dissuade Palestinians from demanding their rights.
Israel is not defending its borders but the walls of cages it has built to safeguard the continuing theft of Palestinian land and preserve Jewish privilege.
In the West Bank, the prison contracts by the day as Jewish settlers and the Israeli army steal more land. In Gaza’s case, the prison cannot be shrunk any smaller.
For many years, world heads of state have castigated Palestinians for using violence and lambasted Hamas for firing rockets out of Gaza.
But now that young Palestinians prefer to take up mass civil disobedience, their plight is barely attracting attention, let alone sympathy. Instead, they are criticised for “breaching the border” and threatening Israel’s security.
The only legitimate struggle for Palestinians, it seems, is keeping quiet, allowing their lands to be plundered and their children to be starved.
Western leaders and the public betrayed the Palestinians in 1948. There is no sign, 70 years on, that the West is about to change its ways.
May 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are slowly being suffocated. Over 40 per cent of Gazans are unemployed; there is virtually no economy; no electricity; the water is undrinkable; and the medical system has collapsed. It is the Israeli occupation that is responsible for the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza due to its 11-year-old siege imposed on the coastal enclave.
Since 2007, following Hamas’s victory in internationally-monitored elections, Israel has retained absolute control over the movement of people and goods via Gaza’s airspace, territorial waters, and land borders. This blockade subjects Gaza’s population to collective punishment, in contravention of international law.
Confronted with such oppression and the world’s silence in response to Israeli war-crimes, Palestinians in Gaza have no other option than to raise their voices in protest. Seventy per cent of Gaza’s population are refugees, or descendants of refugees, who were violently expelled from their homeland in 1948 to make way for the Zionist state of Israel. Israelis celebrate this land-grab as “independence” but for Palestinians it is the Nakba (catastrophe).
We, Palestinians have never been allowed to return to our land, despite United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 guaranteeing us this inalienable right. In the Israeli apartheid state, Palestinians are stripped of their humanity; their identity reduced to that of “demographic threat”.
Since 30 March, thousands of Palestinians have been participating in the Great Return March (GRM), sending a united message to Israel and the world: We have the right to return to our homeland that was stolen from us in 1948. We have the right to move freely, to have electricity, to travel, to work. Through the GRM movement, Palestinians are not only demanding the right to return – but also the right to live.
The GRM is not Hamas-driven; it is Palestinian-inspired and driven. It is the embodiment of Palestinian popular resistance involving youth, women, and all Palestinians that steadfastly refuse to collaborate with the occupiers, accept Israeli occupation and submit to Zionist apartheid. They are fighting back, armed only with their rights and international law.
The GRM also shows that the Palestinian people are determined to achieve their freedom, their independence, and their right to return to the villages that they were forced out of 70 years ago.
These protests have also shown the world the brutality of the Israeli occupation government. Israeli forces use jeeps and drones to fire tear gas at paramedics and children. Dozens of snipers, armed with internationally-prohibited explosive bullets designed to permanently maim, have been stationed along the border, targeting and killing unarmed protesters like 15-year old Mohammed Ibrahim Ayoub, and journalists Yaser Murtaja and Ahmed Abu Hussein. Israeli bullets have, so far, killed 50 Palestinians and injured more than 7000 people over the last six weeks.
By killing and wounding so many, Israel had hoped that the masses would retreat, that the protests would subside and, eventually, end. This was not the case, and popular resistance will intensify as we approach 15 May, the 70th anniversary of the Nakba.
Like the apartheid South African government, Israel justifies its decades of state terrorism by demonising legitimate resistance movements, especially Hamas. Hamas was established only in 1987. What then explains the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since 1948? What explains Israeli settlements and land thefts, Palestinian home demolitions, forced displacement, disproportionate use of force, detention without trial, arrest without due process, denial of entry, land confiscations, and movement restrictions against Palestinians for over 50 years? Israel can no longer rationalise its oppression of Palestinians by blaming Palestinians who exercise their natural and internationally-recognised right to resist.
The GRM is a turning point, just as the 1960 Sharpeville massacre was a turning point in South Africa’s liberation struggle. In Gaza, the world is witnessing an apartheid military regime killing non-violent protesters. The world did not look away from Sharpeville, and it must not look away from occupied Palestine either. The Palestinian call for justice, freedom and dignity must be heard and respected. Seventy years after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to become refugees through Zionist massacres and violence, we, our children and our grandchildren remain firm on our desire to exercise our right to return home. For Palestinians – and especially Palestinian refugees – the GRM represents a reclaiming of our dignity, and an announcement to the world that we will not accept the oppression of our people. We will continue resisting, the occupation will end, and we will achieve our liberation.
May 14, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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