Israel issued 50,000 administrative detention orders since 1967
MEMO | June 9, 2017
Israeli occupation forces have issued 50,000 administrative detention orders against Palestinians since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs revealed on Wednesday.
Head of the research and documentation department in the researcher in the Commission for Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, Abdel Nasser Farawneh, said that the administrative detention orders have increased since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, as the occupation authorities issued nearly 27,000 orders since September 2000.
He noted that of the total number of orders, nearly 1,704 were issued in 2016, a 50 per cent increase compared to 2015. While, since the beginning of 2017, over 4,000 orders were issued, including new orders and extensions.
Farawneh added that the increased number of detention orders and the increase in administrative orders issued against the Palestinians has led to a noticeable rise in the total number of administrative prisoners. As of today, nearly 5,000 administrative prisoners are held in Israeli prisons and detention centres without any charges against them or trials.
Israeli Deputy FM calls on UN to stop using the term ‘occupation’
MEMO | June 9, 2017
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister, Tzipi Hotovely, has called on the United Nations to stop using the term “occupation” in reference to Israel’s control over Palestinian lands.
The senior official claimed that the international organisation has been lured to repeating the “Palestinian propaganda vocabulary” and claimed that Israel does not occupy the land of anyone.
“As a proof, this year marks the 50th anniversary of Israel’s liberation of Jerusalem and the West Bank,” she claimed.
Hotovely’s remarks came in response to UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, who accused the Israeli occupation of putting more burdens on the Palestinians and preventing them from developing.
The Israeli politician has called on the UN chief to reform what she called the distortion in the United Nations terms and to retract his statements.
“These are facts on the ground,” she said, adding that the term occupation was invented by the Palestinian propaganda machine, and it is very regrettable that the United Nations is being drawn to echo and use it in its speech and literature.
When the international organisation stops using distorted and false terms such as “occupation”, confidence will be restored in it as an institution established for justice and truth.
US Congress and Knesset celebrate ‘reunification’ of Jerusalem in joint event
Joint US Congress-Knesset event celebrating “reunification” of Jerusalem (Credit: Knesset)
Ma’an – June 8, 2017
BETHLEHEM – In the latest event celebrating the “reunification” of Jerusalem in Israel, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, and the US Congress held a joint live broadcast event marking the occasion on Wednesday, in which leaders from both countries celebrated their shared colonial histories and applauded Israel’s control over occupied East Jerusalem.
During each year that Israelis celebrate the “reunification” of Jerusalem to mark the Israeli military takeover of the territory decades ago, Palestinians, in contrast, have commemorated the Naksa, meaning “setback,” marking the Israeli invasion and occupation of the West Bank — including East Jerusalem — Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights that began on June 5, 1967 during the Six-Day War, displacing some 300,000 Palestinians, as well as thousands of Syrians, from their homes.
Since 1967, Israel has stood accused of committing major violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the occupied Palestinian territory, including excessive and deadly use of violence; forced displacement; the blockade of the Gaza Strip; unjustified restrictions on movement; and the expansion of illegal settlements.
“For the sake of Jerusalem, let us not remain silent. Let us promise that support for unified Jerusalem remains high on both sides of the aisle, across the political spectrum, and throughout the United States,” Speaker of the Knesset Yuli-Yoel Edelstein said during the event.
“Looking around the world, and especially at this region, one thing becomes crystal clear: Only Israeli sovereignty will ensure that the city’s holy sites remain open, free, and safe for members of every religion,” he added.
However, while Israelis are permitted freedom of movement in Jerusalem and even in the majority of the occupied West Bank, most Palestinians are not permitted to enter Jerusalem without Israeli-issued permits, which means that the city is a rare sight and far from being “open and free.”
Edelstein also applauded the US’ own colonial history, saying that “your country was settled by pilgrims building a city upon the hill,” and developed a “just society based on the values that the Hebrew Prophets preached right here thousands of years ago,” without mentioning the mass killings and displacement of the indigenous peoples of that land; some academics have noted that some 20 million indigenous peoples died as a result of the European invasion and subsequent colonization of the Americas.
US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also reiterated a similar point of equal rights at the holy sites, before saying that ”without Jerusalem, the Israel we know today would simply not exist” and called members of the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) “terrorists” for taking Israeli hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel in 1976.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu greeted the leaders by once again stating that Jerusalem is “the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish state,” in contravention of international law, which, according to the Fourth Geneva Convention, prohibits Israel from transferring any of its population to occupied East Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, while Israel officially annexed East Jerusalem in 1980, in a move never recognized by the international community, according to Palestinians and the international community the city has remained an intricate part of the occupied Palestinian territory and would be considered the capital of any future Palestinian state.
Netanyahu also said that Israel had “made sure that the holy sites for Judaism, Christianity and Islam were available to all,” again failing to mention the millions of Palestinians who do not have free access to these sights in Jerusalem.
“In this great convulsion that is taking place around us, there is one free city, where Christians, Jews and Muslims are free to worship undisturbed, and that’s in the free, united city of Jerusalem, and that’s how it will stay,” Netanyahu added.
In response to the event, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Executive Committee Member Hanan Ashrawi said in a statement last week that the move was “unprecedented” and “provocative” and that the US Congress was “singularly contravening longstanding American policy and becoming party to Israel’s egregious violation of international law and international humanitarian law.”
“If the US wants to play a constructive role as a peacemaker rather than as a supporter of an illegal occupation, it must demonstrate respect for the law and recognition of equal rights for all peoples, foremost the Palestinian right to self-determination and freedom,” Ashrawi concluded.
Meanwhile, the US Senate passed a resolution on Monday declaring Jerusalem the “undivided” capital of Israel.
The Senate reportedly passed the nonbinding resolution in order to express its support for the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which would move the US embassy to Jerusalem. US President Donald Trump signed a presidential waiver to prevent the act’s implementation last week, following on the footsteps of every US president since the act’s introduction.
However, on the issue of Palestine, Trump has remained largely elusive, saying in February that when it came to a solution for the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict he could “live with either” a one- or two-state solution, in a significant departure from the US’ publicly held position in favor of a two-state solution to the conflict.
Nevertheless, his elusiveness has not belied the fact that Trump and his administration have maintained their pro-Israel stance, despite stated efforts to renew the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, which he said in the past was “not as difficult as people have thought over the years.”
Israel’s Liberty Attack Did Not Begin or End in 1967
USS Liberty Before Israeli Attack
By Free Palestine Movement | Dissident Voice | June 8, 2017
On June 8th, 1967, with cold-blooded mass murder as the objective, Israeli warplanes and warships made every effort to sink the USS Liberty, a mostly unarmed US intelligence vessel off the coast of Gaza, and to kill all 294 on board. Thanks only to the heroism of the Liberty crew and possibly a Soviet vessel’s offer of assistance (refused), the attack was called off before completion, although the attackers had plenty of reason to think that the sea would do the rest of the job for them.
Twice, US warplanes from the US Sixth Fleet responded to distress calls from the Liberty, only to be recalled by direct order of the White House and the US Department of Defense. In retrospect, it is clear that Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara in turn got their orders from the Israel Lobby and the Israeli leadership. 34 were killed and 174 wounded, with many permanently disabled.
USS Liberty Following Israeli Attack (US Navy Photo)
The subsequent coverup, the suppression of investigation, the falsification of evidence, the manipulation of history and the denial of justice to loyal US servicemen on board is now well documented and readily available to all who wish to see (which many do not). Nevertheless, the attack continues to this day, with Israeli and US resources devoted to maintaining a variety of false and often conflicting narratives to hide the truth.
Of course, Israel’s attack on liberty itself goes far beyond this one incident, however outrageous, arrogant, blatant and hideous it may be. Israel owes its very existence to Plan D, a detailed and carefully prepared military strategy for depopulating Palestine of its non-immigrant Palestinian population and replacing it with immigrants in order to create a majority (and ultimately exclusive) Jewish state, according to a racist agenda. Since late 1947 (and even before) and up to the present, Palestinians have had, and are still having, many Liberty incidents, without benefit of a Sixth Fleet, recalled or not. It is clearly Israel’s intention to continue until there are no Palestinians left in Palestine.
Liberty assaults are continuing in the US and other powerful countries, as well, as Israel and its Zionist interests in these countries wield sufficient power on their governments to bend military and political power to their ends. Thus it is no accident that US and western countries’ might has been used to destroy Israel’s potential enemies and rivals in the region, such as Iraq, Libya and Syria, and to bring to heel others, such as Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies. The people of half the world are paying the price for Israel’s ambitions, not least in countries like the US, whose military budgets swallow funds for infrastructure, health, and education, and create an ongoing supply of shattered veterans who are neglected by the very government they served.
But millions of people have also been killed and tens of millions made refugees in the wars for Israel, for the purpose of weakening Israel’s enemies, enabling Israel’s capture of territory, the ongoing ethnic cleansing of populations that Israel considers undesirable, and confiscation of resources. By allying itself with the most destructive elements in the US and other countries it wishes to influence and manipulate, Israel is able to multiply its destructive capability far beyond its own borders.
We are all Palestinians. Israel is crushing us all, robbing us of our resources, our livelihood and our liberty. Fifty years on, let us remember and honor the crew of the USS Liberty, who paid a high price for liberty, never receiving proper remuneration. Let us also remind ourselves that we continue to pay this price.
Free Palestine Movement is an accredited NGO of the United Nations whose purpose is to defend and advocate for the human rights of all Palestinians, and in particular the right of access to all of Palestine. Visit Free Palestine Movement’s website.
An Intolerable Europeanization of ‘Antisemitism’ Blackmail
Union Juive Française Pour La Paix* | June 7, 2017
On 1 June, the European Parliament voted, by a very large majority, for a new resolution on antisemitism. It goes without saying that we deplore, yet again, the singling out of antisemitism from other manifestations of racism. Not a word on the others, whereas, for example, Islamophobia is rampant and Romophobia is deadly. But it’s more serious. At closer inspection, it’s not so much a matter of reining in antisemitism as of restricting free speech and of criminalizing any criticism of Israel.
The resolution, by means of paragraph 2, embodies the criteria proposed by the ultra-Zionist International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) to define antisemitism. If this recognizes as antisemitism the hate of Jews qua Jews, the definition does not stop there. Thus “Denying the Jewish people (sic) their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” also falls within the definition. Ditto “Applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic (sic) nation”. Antisemitism? *
The UK and Austria have recently adopted this definition, and the disastrous effects have not taken long to make themselves felt. It is in this environment that the Palestine Expo 2017 in London was almost cancelled under pressure, planned for early July.
In France as well, the refrain which insidiously combines the least criticism of Israel and/or of Zionism to that of antisemitism plays non-stop. No need for the IHRA definition in France!
However, if the vote of this resolution in the European Parliament is not legally binding, it contributes to reinforcing the rancid climate where criticism and Israel in the same sentence is silenced and criminalized. The vote constitutes a devious attack against free speech through the medium of the only democratic institution in the European Union.
With the notable exception of the European United Left / Nordic Green Left and some Greens, all the Parliamentary groupings have listened more or less religiously to the whingeing of the hyperactive pro-Israeli lobbies – in the first rank of which is the IHRA and the European Jewish Congress – which have ultimately won out after a long and costly campaign.
But we’re not deceived. This resolution has not been gained only under pressure. It’s a vote of conviction. It has been approved by a large majority comprising an alliance not as diverse as appears at first sight: from the right wing of the social democrats to the nationalist and anti-Semite extreme right – all, with rare exceptions, have voted for the resolution.
Without a tacit ideological bond founded on an Islamophobia essentially taken for granted and the unfailing strategic support of the Neoconservatives for Israel, such a coalition would have been inconceivable. It suffices to scratch below the surface of the ‘good intentions’ of this resolution to readily discern its raison d’être, which besides has little to do with the situation of Europe Jewry. It’s necessary to highlight that there is no officially condoned antisemitism in Europe, and that this vote is clearly intended to prevent not genuine antisemitism but the legitimate political criticism of a state, of its policies and of its character.
The vote on this resolution brings home to us that, here in Europe, the right to criticize Israel is based on the general freedom of political expression – an asset so precious and fragile that it is necessary to defend it at all costs.
The Union Juive Française pour la Paix was established in 1994, and was a foundation member of the Fédération des Juifs européens pour une Paix juste in 2002. The UJFP has as its masthead: The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians can only be resolved by the cessation of the dominance of one people by another, by the implementation of the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people and of the right to create its own independent state. No just and durable solution is possible without a total withdrawal of Israel from all territories that it has occupied since 1967, without the right of return for Palestinian refugees and without an end to internal Israeli apartheid which constrains its Palestinian population to second-class status.
This article appeared on the UJFP website on 3 June, and was reproduced on Comité Valmy.
* Translated by Evan Jones.
Translator’s Note:
The May 2016 IHRA declaration includes in its list of ‘contemporary examples of antisemitism’ the item ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’. Given that the central thrust of the IHRA definition of antisemitism fuses the state of Israel indissolubly with Jewry in toto, this item is a glaring anomaly. More, are there ‘actions of the state of Israel’ that Jews might find distasteful? It suggests that the authors are either thick as two bricks or they have a brutal sense of humour.
Hamas: Israel will exploit Arab rift to kill our people
MEMO | June 7, 2017
Hamas today criticised statements made by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir that Qatar should stop backing the Palestinian resistance movement as a condition to ending the rift with its neighbours.
In a statement the movement said: “Hamas is a legitimate resistance movement against the Zionist occupation, which represents the central enemy of the Arab and Islamic nations, especially Hamas.”
Yesterday evening, Al-Jubeir told journalists on a visit to France that Qatar was undermining the Palestinian Authority and Egypt in its support of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. “We don’t think this is good. Qatar has to stop these policies so that it can contribute to stability in the Middle East.”
In response, Hamas said: “It is no secret to anyone how the Zionist enemy exploits such statements to commit more violations and crimes against our people and our land and our sanctities and the right of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
The movement stressed that Al-Jubeir’s statements violate international laws and Arab and Islamic positions which emphasise the right of the Palestinian people to resist and struggle to liberate their land and holy sites. Hamas called on the brothers in Saudi Arabia to stop these statements that harm the kingdom and its positions on the issue of the Palestinian people and their legitimate rights.
Someone has just declared war on Iran
By Adam Garrie | The Duran | June 7, 2017
Terrorist acts of brutality and terrorist attacks in the service of traditional war are two different things.
Differences between an act of terrorism and a terrorist act which serves as a declaration of war carry an important distinction.
Attacks throughout the west from 9/11 to the recent Salafist/ISIS attack on London are dictionary definitions of terrorism (false flag or otherwise). This means that they are acts of bestial savagery designed to kill as many as possible, sow fear into a civilian population and force governments into a state of either infighting or panic. The terrorists behind every major attack on the US or Europe over the last decades did not intend to overthrow any one let alone several regimes. They simply wanted to cause as much chaos and carnage as possible given the weapons at their disposal.
In this sense, the terrorists won and no amount of virtue signalling hashtags can refute this. They wanted to kill, sow terror and discord, and they manifestly succeeded.
The wars in Syria and Libya by contrast, are wars spearheaded by terrorist groups who technically do not represent a state but are funded by and serve the foreign policy objectives of states ranging from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel the United States, Britain, France and Turkey. The assaults on Syria and Libya saw terrorists who perhaps are better described as NGO’s with heavy weapons, working with major regional and world powers with the clear objective of conquest and regime change.
In Libya, the result was mission accomplished. In Syria, the move has largely failed as the Syrian government remains in power and its allies Russia, Iran and other non-state groups have helped Syria in this respect.
In Iran, while things are not yet entirely clear, it would appear that today’s attack was an opening salvo in a wider war to destroy the very government and society of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Although a few terrorists with guns and bombs cannot overthrow any nation, the objectives of regional players ranging from Saudi Arabia to Israel are well known. It is difficult to believe that this attack was not orchestrated at some level by at least one state actor which openly seeks illegal regime change in Iran.
Iran is a vast state with incredibly powerful and well equipped armed forces, so much so that it would still seem unlikely that any state, including the US would actually attempt to wage open war on Iran.
That being said, today’s terrorist atrocity, aimed at two important centres in Tehran has a clear message.
Those who seek war on Iran will not resist stooping to terrorist means in order to attempt to accomplish their goal.
Iran will almost certainly not end up like Syria or Libya, but the attack on Iran, at least at an ideological level, seeks that which was done in Libya and what many are still attempting to do in Syria.
This was not the act of lone loonies and of course unlike the west which funds Salafism, this was not blow-back. It was the opposite. Iran fights Salafism and Iran opposes Saudi Arabia and Israel. This was a terroristic declaration of war, one that Iran may not have necessarily expected but one which it is entirely prepared for.
Qatar is about to fall in one way or another. If others seek to change the government in Iran… get ready for regime change blow-back.
If this piece isn’t automatically censored in Riyadh, it ought to be read with seriousness.
Saudi tells Israel: No place for Hamas in Middle East
MEMO | June 6, 2017
A Saudi expert has for the first time been interviewed on Israeli television. Abdel Hamid Hakim, who heads the Jeddah-based Institute for Middle East Studies, told Israel’s Channel 2 via Skype that the decision by three Gulf countries to sever relations to Qatar “comes in the framework of a new policy in which there is no room for terrorism.”
Asked what the aim of the Saudi, Egyptian, Bahraini, Emirati step regarding Qatar was, Hakim replied:
“There is a political stance which Saudi, Egypt and the Emirates agreed to, especially after the Riyadh Summit which was the first visit by the new American administration to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, that there is no place in the political arena of these countries for terrorism or for groups who use religion for political gains like Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad.”
“I believe these countries took a decision in a step towards peace, and achieving piece in the Middle East.”
He added:
“The first for this is to weed out terrorism. There is no place for any religious group, be it the [Muslim] Brotherhood or any other, which uses religion for political gain or commits terrorism in the name of religion, in the name of resistance or in the name of jihad.”
Venezuelan Youth Burned for ‘Being Chavista’ Dies from Injuries
By Lucas Koerner – Venezuelanalysis – June 5, 2017
Caracas – A Venezuelan man burned alive by opposition protesters has died of his injuries as anti-government unrest claimed two more lives over the weekend.
Afro-Venezuelan Orlando Figuera died in the hospital on Saturday evening after suffering six knife wounds as well as first and second-degree burns on 54 percent of his body.
On May 20, the 21-year-old was passing through the opposition stronghold of Chacao when he was accused of being a government supporter by masked protesters, who brutally beat him before dousing him in gasoline and setting him on fire.
The death was made public by the national ombudsman, Tarek William Saab, who called for the “maximum sentence against the lynchers”.
“Orlando Figuera, beaten, stabbed, and burned alive by “protesters”, is the symbol of hate crimes in Venezuela,” the top human rights official declared via Twitter.
In an interview with state broadcaster VTV, Figuera’s mother, Ines Esparragoza blamed opposition leaders for the murder.
“Why does [National Assembly President] Julio Borges allow this? Why does [Miranda Governor] Henrique Capriles allow it? Who do I blame? The opposition, because they are the ones who doused my son in gasoline like an animal,” she stated.
Esparragoza has reported being fired from her job as a domestic worker in a private residence, which she has denounced as a reprisal over the VTV interview.
For its part, the Public Prosecutor’s office (MP) has indicated that investigations into the murder continue and that the alleged perpetrators have been identified.
In addition to Figuera, two more people have died of injures linked to violent protests that have rocked the country for the past two months.
On Friday, Luis Miguel Gutierrez Molina (20) died of a bullet wound he suffered during a protest on May 17 in Merida state. El Universal has reported that the incident took place during clashes between demonstrators and authorities.
The MP has dispatched a state prosecutor to investigate the homicide.
Meanwhile in Lara, another man died in the hospital on Saturday after being shot in the vicinity of a protest on April 11.
According to the preliminary MP report, Yoiner Peña (28) was shot in the back near a protest in Barquismeto by unknown assailants in a pickup truck who reportedly opened fire on those present.
However, the national ombudsman’s office has issued a conflicting account, suggesting that Peña was “mortally wounded in an [anti-government] barricade”.
According to Saab, Peña was the ninth person killed at opposition barricades since the violent protests began on April 4.
Seventy-three people have lost their lives as a result of the unrest, including at least 11 people killed by authorities and 22 deaths caused by demonstrators.
Opposition leaders have announced a fresh round of protests for this week, vowing to remain in the streets until the government meets their various demands, including holding presidential elections one year ahead of schedule.
Question Deleted
By Rima Najjar | CounterPunch | June 5, 2017
For some time now, the discourse on Israel has been shifting from a place where Israeli “hasbara” disinformation had the upper hand no matter where one turned, to a place where Israeli criminal policies are more frankly discussed and the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), is now championed by some academic associations, church groups and labor unions in the United States and elsewhere.
Jewish Voice for Peace and other activist groups have come out with statements not only advocating BDS, but also criticizing Zionism and its definition of Jewish nationalism as practiced by the Jewish state. In a letter protesting the cancellation of a hiring search for the ‘Edward Said Professor of Middle East Studies’ professorship at CSU Fresno, Jewish Voice for Peace states: “The Jewish people are not a monolith on this or any other issue.”
In response to these advances in the struggle for Palestinian liberation, one area remains taboo and that is to question (and thereby delegitimize) Israel by opposing its heart of darkness – i.e., its “right to exist” as a Jewish state (a partition of Mandate Palestine) belonging, not to its indigenous population, but to the “Jewish people” worldwide. This right to exist as a Zionist entity presupposes that Jewish communities around the world are a monolith Zionist “nation” in the way Israel defines Jewish identity, which in its corollary, denies the self-determination of Palestinian Arabs in their own homeland.
What’s appalling is that not only is it taboo to discuss the legality and legitimacy of Jewish self-determination, it is also taboo to even ask the question. The following is my answer to a question asked on the social media Q/A service called Quora, which was promptly thrown into the trash bin along with my answer and that of others posted there.
Because Israel’s creation is based on force of arms, Zionist terror and pre-planned ethnic cleansing, that is to say, the near-eradication of Arab Palestine, as well as violations of international law and is therefore an easy target of delegitimazation, it has relied heavily on the Balfour Declaration (1917), which supports the establishment in Palestine of a “Jewish national home” for the “Jewish people” to legitimize itself.
The Balfour Declaration was incorporated by the League of Nations in 1922 into the British Mandate of Palestine (with the caveat that the rights of the absurdly-phrased “non-Jewish communities,” then 90% of Palestine’s population, would be maintained). That document, however, does not translate into “self determination in the form of a Jewish state,” nor was it meant as such, despite its deceptive language .
Jewish identity politics and literature are rife with contradiction, controversy and confusion. But Israel, while denying the legal existence of Palestinian Arabs as “a people,” defines Jewishness through descent – supposedly unbroken bloodlines from antiquity to the present.
The following is quoted from the UNESCO document on Israel and Apartheid found here.
“The State of Israel enshrined the central importance of descent in its Law of Return of 1950 (amended in 1970), which states that: ‘For the purposes of this Law, ‘Jew’ means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion.”
Descent is crucial to Jewish identity discourse in Israel because direct lineal descent from antiquity is the main reason given by political-Zionist philosophers for why Jews today hold the right to self-determination in the land of Palestine. In this view, all Jews retain a special relationship and rights to the land of Palestine, granted by covenant with God: some schools of Zionism hold that Israel is the successor State to the Jewish kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon. That claim is expressed, inter alia, in the Declaration of Independence of Israel, which affirms that Jews today trace their ancestry to an earlier national life in the geography of Palestine and therefore have an inalienable right to “return”, which is given precedence over positive law…. That claim to unbroken lineal descent from antiquity attributes collective rights to the “land of Israel” to an entire group on the basis of its (supposed) bloodlines. The incompatible claim that Jewishness is multiracial, by virtue of its character as a religion to which others have converted, is simply absent from this formula.
So where does that leave the Palestinians, the indigenous people of Palestine? Keep in mind that indigeneity is defined as:
… populations composed of the existing descendants of the peoples who inhabited the present territory of a country wholly or partially at the time when persons of a different culture or ethnic origin arrived there from other parts of the world, overcame them, by conquest, settlement or other means, reduced them to a non-dominant or colonial condition; who today live more in conformity with their particular social, economic and cultural customs and traditions than with the institutions of the country of which they now form part, under a state structure which incorporates mainly national, social and cultural characteristics of other segments of the population which are predominant.
(a) they are the descendants of groups, which were in the territory at the time when other groups of different cultures or ethnic origin arrived there;
(b) precisely because of their isolation from other segments of the country’s population they have almost preserved intact the customs and traditions of their ancestors which are similar to those characterised as indigenous;
(c) they are, even if only formally, placed under a state structure which incorporates national, social and cultural characteristics alien to their own.
In 1986, the following rather important line was added;
any individual who identified himself or herself as indigenous and was accepted by the group or the community as one of its members was to be regarded as an indigenous person.
Today, Israel pursues its claim to legitimacy primarily through discrediting Palestinians, the indigenous people, in a relentless, public relations, diplomatic and lawfare campaign, so successful, it has rendered the international community impotent in upholding international law as it applies to the Palestinian people, including the right of self-determination. Lawfare efforts, for example, are currently focused on criminalizing Boycott (BDS) activism.
The European Union Parliament Working Group on Antisemitism has accordingly included in its working definition of anti-Semitism as: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavour”.
In 2016, the United States passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, in which the definition of anti-Semitism is that set forth by the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism of the Department of State in a fact sheet of June 8, 2010. Examples of anti-Semitism listed therein include: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist”.
In my opinion, Israel will be legitimized only when it stops obstructing the exercise of Palestinian right to self-determination, a right “authoritatively” recognized by international law:
“The status of the Palestinians as a people entitled to exercise the right of self-determination has been legally settled, most authoritatively by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 2004 advisory opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory”.
The counterarguments advanced by Israel and supporters to rationalize and legitimize policies that deny Palestinian rights and affirm the rights of “the Jewish people” include claims that the determination of Israel to remain a Jewish State is consistent with practices of other States, such as France; Israel does not owe Palestinian non-citizens equal treatment with Jews precisely because they are not citizens; and Israeli treatment of the Palestinians reflects no “purpose” or “intent” to dominate, but rather is a temporary state of affairs imposed on Israel by the realities of ongoing conflict and security requirements. … A further claim that Israel cannot be considered culpable for crimes of apartheid because Palestinian citizens of Israel have voting rights rests on two errors of legal interpretation: an overly literal comparison with South African apartheid policy and detachment of the question of voting rights from other laws, especially provisions of the Basic Law that prohibit political parties from challenging the Jewish, and hence racial, character of the State.
Yes, Palestine does exist and will continue to exist, because of Palestinians’ incredible steadfastness.
As Rabbi Brant Rosen expressed it:
“The choice we ultimately face is one between a Jewish state vs. international law, justice and human rights for all.”
Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank.
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- US September “Heat” Was No Record…Many Records Set Decades Ago
- Latest European Green Energy Debacle; Portugal’s Largest Flagship Solar Park Insolvent!
- Green Energy Debacle: German Expert Professor Fritz Vahrenholt Warns Of Severe Economic And Social Consequences
- Two More Paleo Reconstructions Affirm Meters-Higher Sea Levels Across Ireland, Brazil 7000-6000 Years Ago
- New Study: Earth And Venus Surface Warmth Largely Explained By Convection And Lapse Rate, Not CO2 Or Radiation
- 2025 Nature Paper Claiming Worsening Global Drought Gets RETRACTED …Heavily Flawed
- New Study: ‘Global Drought Shows No Detectable Recent Acceleration Under Climate Warming’
- Economic Masterminds: German Socialists Suggest Taxing Productivity Gains Stemming From Using AI
