Victoria government lied about who had access to Covid contact tracing data
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 28, 2021
The government of the Australian state of Victoria not only decided to deliberately keep citizens in the dark about court rulings exposing the fact the privacy of their data collected by contact tracing apps can be compromised – but is now doubling down.
And the way the state’s Acting Premier Jacinta Allan, who has currently taken over while Premier Dan Andrews is being investigated for “concealing treason and fraud,” chose to defend the failure to inform people about matters pertaining to sensitive private information about them was to say the government was – shielding them from misinformation.
Australian media say the attempts to hide the truth have been made repeatedly, and Allan’s logic in defending the move is that if revealed, the Supreme Court’s secret ruling that said the data was not “absolutely protected” would have given rise to a “baseless scare campaign” as media reporting the facts would have caused “fear and misinformation.”
She did not clarify what type of “misinformation and fear” was expected to arise from the truth.
“The decision was taken in the balance of providing confidence in the Victorian community that this wasn’t a matter that needed to have that level of misinformation spread about it,” Allan said on Tuesday of the way the multiple levels of deceit had been handled.
This Supreme Court finding came to light after the Herald Sun reported that despite explicit promises of information safety, and its use only for health purposes, this was a lie – and one ongoing for two years.
Instead of making contact tracing data available only in order to fight the epidemic, it was also available to law enforcement, and authorities like the WorkCover agency.
It was precisely that agency’s demands to be given access to tracing app data that launched the legal case, when the Department of Health asked the court to order WorkCover to stop.
Another revelation is that the state’s Covid commander Jeroen Weimar petitioned the court to keep the case secret for five years. He tried to persuade the court that maintaining Victorians’ trust in the tracing system was what really matters – at the same time downplaying the importance of the citizens’ right to know their data can be shared, despite assurances from Covid tracers that this was not possible.
Asked if it was right to hide from the public the truth about the safety of their data – and the fact a court case was unfolding financed by their tax money, Allan said, “They don’t deserve a fear campaign, they don’t deserve misinformation,” and added that their data “will be protected.”
Shadow Attorney-General Matt Bach sees the scandal differently:
“People should be shocked and appalled. We should never become accustomed to this level of dishonesty.”
Israel refuses to provide evidence for banning Palestinian rights groups
MEMO | December 28, 2021
The Israeli occupation authorities have failed to provide evidence for outlawing six Palestinian human rights and civil society groups, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) said on Tuesday.
“The organisations have not received any of the evidentiary materials that the Israeli authorities purport to justify this draconian and sweeping measure,” Adalah said in a statement.
Adalah pointed out that it had sent a letter to the Israeli security authorities, demanding that they reveal all of the evidence forming the bases of the designations.
“There is no justice, fairness or due process for the organisations, without access to these materials in their entirety in order to defend themselves,” Adalah stressed.
On 19 October 2021, Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz designated six leading Palestinian human rights and civil society groups as “terrorist organisations” under Israel’s domestic Counter-Terrorism Law which was ratified in 2016.
The Israeli military commander in the occupied West Bank also outlawed all the six groups, declaring them “unlawful associations.”
Adalah’s legal team said that “the designations constitute a blatant political decision aimed at destroying Palestinian civil society, based on arbitrary law and emergency measures.”
In its statement, Adalah described the six groups as “the most vocal against Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies locally and internationally and provide needed services to a wide range of Palestinian communities,” hinting that this is the real reason behind banning them.
“These baseless designations aim to delegitimise and discredit the work of these groups, placing the organisations, their staff and their supporters in danger of criminal charges,” the statement said.
Adalah reiterated that the six groups did not have any information about the reason for their designation. “To date, they have had no meaningful opportunity to review and challenge the bases of the designations, as no evidence has been provided to them,” Adalah said.
Why is Israel Amending Its Open-Fire Policy: Three Possible Answers
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 28, 2021
At the outset, the Israeli military decision to revise its open-fire policies in the occupied West Bank seems puzzling. What would be the logic of giving Israeli soldiers the space to shoot more Palestinians when existing army manuals had already granted them near-total immunity and little legal accountability?
The military’s new rules now allow Israeli soldiers to shoot, even kill, fleeing Palestinian youngsters with live ammunition for allegedly throwing rocks at Israeli ‘civilian’ cars. This also applies to situations where the alleged Palestinian ‘attackers’ are not holding rocks at the time of the shooting.
The reference to ‘civilians’ in the revised army manual applies to armed Israeli Jewish settlers who have colonised the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in defiance of international law and Palestinian sovereignty. These settlers, who often operate as paramilitary forces in direct coordination with the Israeli army, endanger the lives of their own families by residing on occupied Palestinian land. Per Israel’s twisted standards, these violent Israelis, who have killed and wounded numerous Palestinians throughout the years, are ‘civilians’ in need of protection from rock-throwing Palestinian ‘assailants.’
In Israel, throwing rocks is a “serious crime” and Palestinians who throw rocks are “criminals”, according to Liron Libman, Israel’s former chief military prosecutor, commenting on the new rules. For Israelis, there is little disagreement on these assertions, even by those who are questioning the legality of the new rules. The point of contention, according to Libman and others, is that “a person who is fleeing does not present a threat,” though, according to Libman himself, “the new policy could potentially be justified,” The Times of Israel reported.
The ‘debate’ on the new open-fire policy in Israeli media, gives one the false impression that something fundamental has changed in the Israeli army’s relationship with occupied Palestinians. This is not the case at all. There are numerous, daily examples in which Palestinians, including children, are shot and killed with impunity, whether throwing rocks or not, going to school or merely protesting the illegal confiscation of their land by the Israeli military or armed settlers.
In the Palestinian village of Beita, in the northern occupied West Bank, eight unarmed Palestinians have been killed since May. This small village has been the scene of regular demonstrations against Jewish settlement expansion and against the illegal settlement outpost of Eviatar, in the Palestinian rural area of Mount Sabih. The victims include Muhammad Ali Khabisa, the 28-year-old father of an eight-month-old child, who was shot dead last September.
Though the new rules have placed much emphasis on the status of the supposed Israeli victims, labelling them ‘civilians’, in practice, the Israeli military has used the exact same standard to shoot, maim and kill Palestinian alleged rock-throwers, even when armed settlers are not present.
A famous case, in 2015, involved the killing of a 17-year-old Palestinian teenager, Mohammad Kosba, at the hands of an Israeli army colonel, Yisrael Shomer. The latter alleged that Kosba had thrown a rock at his car. Subsequently, Shomer chased down the Palestinian teenager and shot him in the back, killing him.
The Israeli officer was “censored” for his conduct, not for killing the boy, but for not stopping “in order to aim properly,” according to The Times of Israel. The Israeli military chief prosecutor at the time concluded that “Shomer’s use of deadly force under the framework of the arrest protocol was justified from the circumstances of the incident.”
Israel’s disregard of international law in its targeting of Palestinians is not a secret. Israeli and international human rights groups have repeatedly condemned the Israeli army’s inhumane and barbaric behaviour in the occupied territories.
In an extensive report as early as 2014, Amnesty International condemned Israel’s “callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank” over the years. AI said that such killings had taken place “with near total impunity.”
“The frequency and persistence of arbitrary and abusive force against peaceful protesters in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and police officers – and the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators – suggests that it is carried out as a matter of policy,” the Amnesty report read.
Even Israel’s own rights group, B’tselem, concurs. The organisation decried the Israeli army’s “shoot-to-kill policy”, which is also applied to “people who have already been ‘neutralized'”. Indeed, in the case of Abdel Fattah al-Sharif, a Palestinian man who was shot point-blank in Al-Khalil (Hebron), by an Israeli military medic, Elor Azaria, in 2016, was not only ‘neutralized’ but also unconscious.
According to B’tselem, Israeli “soldiers and police officers have become judge, jury and executioner”. With this tragic and sinister trajectory in mind, one is left to wonder why the Israeli army would amend its open-fire policy at this particular moment. There are three possible answers:
One, the Israeli government and army are anticipating a surge in Palestinian popular resistance in the coming months, possibly as a result of the massive expansion of illegal settlements and forced evictions in occupied East Jerusalem.
Two, by perfectly aligning the existing open-fire policy with the aggressive shoot-to-kill military practice already in place, Israeli courts would no longer have to contend with any legal repercussions for killing Palestinians, including children, regardless of the circumstances of their murders.
Finally, the revised rules would allow Israel to make a case for itself in response to the open investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC), concerning human rights violations and war crimes in occupied Palestine. Israel’s Attorney General will now argue that no war crimes are taking place in Palestine since the killing of Palestinians is consistent with Israel’s own military conduct and judicial system. Since the ICC is investigating alleged war criminals, not the government itself, Israel hopes that it can spare its own murderers from having to contend with the legal expectations of the Court.
Though the timing of the Israeli military decision to amend its open-fire policy may appear sudden and without much context, the decision is still ominous, nonetheless. When a country’s military decides that shooting a child in the back without any proof that the alleged ‘criminal’ posed any danger whatsoever is a legal act, the international community must take notice.
It is true that Israel operates outside the minimum standards of international and humanitarian laws, but it is the responsibility of the international community to protect Palestinians, whose lives remain precious even if Israel disagrees.
Kennedy’s Fauci revelations – Part Two
By Sally Beck | TCW Defending Freedom | December 22, 2021
This is the second of two parts. The first appeared yesterday.
THE revelations in Robert F Kennedy Jnr’s book about Anthony Fauci’s handling of the Covid crisis are damning. That is putting it politely.
He illustrates how the United States chief medical adviser, in charge of healthcare for the American people for over 40 years, presided over the worst coronavirus death rate in the world, nearly double that of many countries. The US suffered 2,107 deaths per 100,000 citizens, while Sweden, who accidentally became the world’s control group by ignoring damaging lockdown and mask mandates, had 1,444 deaths per 100,000.
Fauci is blinkered to affordable treatments, and inexplicably banned them. The rest of the world followed suit with the result that thousands who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 were left to deteriorate at home until gasping for breath, when they were finally admitted to hospital and ventilated. Many never came home.
RFK Jnr, 67, son of assassinated US attorney general Bobby Kennedy and nephew of assassinated President John F Kennedy, began his legal career as an environment lawyer. Time.com named him ‘hero for the planet’. These days he is accused of being an antivaxxer, but like most activists in this arena he is simply pro-vaccine safety.
As he says at the beginning of his book The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health: ‘Complex scientific and moral problems are not resolved through censorship of dissenting opinions, deleting content from the Internet, or defaming scientists and authors who present information challenging to those in power. Censorship leads instead to greater distrust of both government institutions and large corporations.’
Many formerly respected medics, as well as RFK Jnr, now find they are victims of cancel culture, while those in power are able to dictate undemocratic, unproven and draconian measures with the capability to destroy our lives and economies without censure or challenge.
Here is an edited extract from chapter 1:
‘Peer-reviewed science offered anaemic if any support for masking, quarantines and social distancing, and Dr Fauci offered no citations or justifications to support his diktats. Both common sense and the weight of scientific evidence suggest that all these strategies, and unquestionably shutting down the global economy, caused far more injuries and deaths than they averted.
‘During a speech to HHS [Health and Human Services] regulators, Fauci explained the fruitlessness of masking asymptomatic people. “The one thing historically people need to realise, that even if there is some asymptomatic transmission, in all the history of respiratory borne viruses of any type, asymptomatic transmission has never been the driver of outbreaks. The driver of outbreaks is always a symptomatic person. Even if there’s a rare asymptomatic person that might transmit, an epidemic is not driven by asymptomatic carriers.”
‘Dr Fauci observed in March 2020 that a mask’s only real efficacy may be in “making people feel a little better”. Perhaps he recognised that what masking lacked in efficacy against contagion, it compensated for with powerful psychological effects. These symbolic powers demonstrated strategic benefits for the larger enterprise of encouraging public compliance with draconian medical mandates. Dr Fauci’s switch to endorsing masks after first recommending against them came at a time of increasing political polarisation, and masks quickly became important tribal badges – signals of rectitude for those who embraced Dr Fauci, and the stigmata of blind obedience to undeserving authority among those who balked. Moreover, masking, by amplifying everyone’s fear, helped inoculate the public against critical thinking.
‘By serving as persistent reminders that each of our fellow citizens was a potentially dangerous and germ-infected threat to us, masks increased social isolation and fostered divisions and fractionalisation – thereby impeding organised political resistance.
‘The impact of masking on the national psyche reminded me of the subtle contribution of the “duck and cover drills” of my youth, drills that sustained and cemented the militaristic ideology of the Cold War. Those futile exercises reinforced what my uncle John F Kennedy’s Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, called “National Mass Psychosis”. By suggesting to Americans that full-scale nuclear war was possible, but also survivable, ruinous investments in that project were justified. For the government and mandarins of the Military Industrial Complex, this absurd narrative yielded trillions in appropriations.
‘Social distancing mandates also rested on a dubious scientific footing. In September 2021, former FDA Commissioner Dr Scott Gottlieb admitted that the six-foot distancing rule that Dr Fauci and his HHS colleagues imposed upon Americans was “arbitrary,” and not, after all, science-backed. The process for making that policy choice, Gottlieb continued, “is a perfect example of the lack of rigour around how CDC made recommendations”.
‘Finally, the lockdowns of the healthy were so unprecedented that the World Health Organisation’s official pandemic protocols recommended against them. Some WHO officials were passionate on the topic, among them Professor David Nabarro, Senior Envoy on Covid-19, a position reporting to the Director General.
‘On October 8, 2020, he said, “We in the World Health Organisation do not advocate lockdowns as a primary means of controlling this virus. We may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We’ll have at least a doubling of child malnutrition because children are not getting meals at school and their parents in poor families are not able to afford it. This is a terrible, ghastly, global catastrophe, actually, and so we really do appeal to all world leaders: Stop using lockdown as your primary control method . . . lockdowns just have one consequence that you must never ever belittle – and that is making poor people an awful lot poorer.”
‘Dr Fauci and other officials made no inquiry or claims as to whether lockdowns would cause more harm and death than they averted. Subsequent studies have strongly suggested that lockdowns had no impact in reducing infection rates. There is no convincing difference in Covid infections and deaths between laissez-faire jurisdictions and those that enforced rigid lockdowns and masks. Dr Fauci’s mask deceptions were among several “noble lies” that, his critics complained, revealed a manipulative and deceptive disposition undesirable in an even-handed public health official. Dr Fauci explained to the New York Times that he had upgraded his estimate of the vaccine coverage needed to insure “herd immunity” from 70 per cent in March to 80-90 per cent in September not based on science, but rather in response to polling that indicated rising rates of vaccine acceptance.
‘He supported Covid jabs for previously infected Americans, defying overwhelming scientific evidence that post-Covid inoculations were both unnecessary and dangerous.’
Under questioning on September 9, 2021, Dr Fauci conceded he could cite no scientific justification for this policy.
‘In September 2021, in a statement justifying Covid vaccine mandates to school children, Dr Fauci dreamily recounted his own grade-school measles and mumps vaccines – an unlikely memory, since those vaccines weren’t available until 1963 and 1967, and Dr Fauci [who is 80 years old] attended grade school in the 1940s. Dr Fauci’s little perjuries about masks, measles, mumps, herd immunity, and natural immunity attest to his dismaying willingness to manipulate facts to serve a political agenda.’
Big Brother Watch launches legal challenge to England’s vaccine passport
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2021
London-based rights group Big Brother Watch, a vocal opponent of Covid passes being introduced in England, has launched a legal challenge to the scheme it considers an example of divisive and discriminatory dystopia.
After raising nearly a quarter of a million pounds online to fund its cause (and crowdfunding campaign continues) – which Big Brother Watch said would go entirely towards fighting against Covid passes, including via costly legal challenges – the group has decided to oppose the government’s Covid passes law in court.
Big Brother Watch is challenging the law on mandatory Covid passports in England claiming that it violates privacy, and is draconian and discriminatory in nature. They are also raising concerns that the Human Rights Act and equality law may fall victim to the new Covid pass rules.
Previously, the rights group urged its supporters to speak up against the scheme as unnecessary and counterproductive, as well as introducing a checkpoint society, surveillance state, along with mission creep and detrimental measures that will become irreversible.
In a pre-action letter to launch the legal battle against the law that is proving to be highly controversial even among the ruling majority in the UK parliament, the group notes that the government failed to provide any evidence about the Covid passes benefiting public health, while a damning parliamentary report said that there was no scientific or logical justification for their introduction.
In addition, Big Brother Watch stated, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) failed to recommend Covid passports, and for all these reasons the scheme is seen as draconian, and pointless.
Nonetheless, PM Johnson’s government recently pushed the proposal through parliament despite nearly 100 MPs from his Conservative Party voting against – the biggest rebellion of the Johnson era.
Since mid-December, those entering nightclubs, sports and other large events must show the pass that proves they have been fully vaccinated or recently tested.
In announcing the bid to reverse this policy by legal means, Big Brother Watch Director Silkie Carlo said that Covid IDs “don’t tell you that a person doesn’t have Covid or can’t spread Covid, but do make society less free, less equal and less accessible for people.”
New York Democrat introduces new social media censorship bill
The bill aims to curb people’s speech by targeting platforms
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | December 27, 2021
If a state senator got his way, the state of New York could soon get a new law aimed at regulating what content can appear on social media. The bill is designed to circumvent existing federal-level solutions in some instances and is reportedly inspired by internal documents leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen.
But many legal experts believe that the bill, if passed, would eventually be overturned as unconstitutional for preventing dissemination of protected content.
The bill sponsored by state Senator Brad Hoylman wants to tackle what’s referred to as unlawful online content such as “misinformation” (particularly around Covid/vaccines), and posts that might allegedly lead users to develop eating disorders or engage in self-harm.
Envisaged in the bill is an amendment to New York’s penal code that lets citizens, the state attorney general and city corporation councils sue tech companies behind social media networks, or individuals, if they are suspected of “contributing” to spread of misinformation in a manner that’s “knowing or reckless.”
And while the bill is worded in a way that states content seen as endangering people’s safety or health should be clamped down on if it is “promoted” – including (but not exclusively) by means of algorithms and other methods of recommendation, experts say the distinction between that and any post created by users is not clear enough to stand up to legal scrutiny.
“The distinction between ‘hosting’ and ‘amplifying’ content is incoherent,” Santa Clara University School of Law professor Eric Goldman has told the New York Post, adding that Hoylman has taken that “incoherent” idea – “and embraced its most censorial option.”
According to Goldman, content that Hoylman’s bill takes aim at, such as, but not limited to, what’s considered false or harmful information that concerns Covid or political issues is in fact protected free speech under the First Amendment.
And for that reason, this expert believes, the draft legislation is unconstitutionally overbroad.
Commenting on the bill, David Greene of the Electronic Frontier Foundation concurred that the law would face First Amendment hurdles, and noted that because of the rapidly changing official guidance regarding the pandemic, it is very hard to even define what qualifies for Covid misinformation (when so much “expert” information has turned out to be false.)
“It’s really very difficult to impose liability in an environment where the truth can be hard to grasp at any point in time,” this attorney remarked.
Children with disabilities offered ‘do not resuscitate’ orders amid pandemic
RT | December 27, 2021
The UK’s efforts to “protect the NHS” from being overwhelmed during the Covid-19 pandemic reportedly extended to asking families of disabled minors whether they should be resuscitated in the event their heart stopped beating.
The so-called “do not resuscitate” orders, known as DNACPRs, were offered to families of children with autism and other learning disabilities amid concerns about pressure on the UK’s socialized National Health Service, the Telegraph newspaper reported on Sunday.
The media outlet cited interviews with families that were presented the opt-out for resuscitation during routine medical appointments. For instance, the mother of a 16-year-old boy with Down’s syndrome said that a clinic employee offered her the option of a DNACPR for her son during a checkup.
“It is a disgusting question,” said the mother, Kent resident Karen Woollard. “The health assistant was following a form and she was very polite about it – suggesting she knew I wouldn’t want it to be ticked – but the question should not have appeared. It was very upsetting.”
The mother of a 16-year-old boy with autism said her son was offered a DNACPR during an NHS appointment and initially agreed because he didn’t understand the question. The boy is happy and healthy and has won gold medals in swimming competitions, said his mother, Debbie Corns.
“I collapsed on the floor crying when I got home,” Corns said. “I am a strong person, but I was devastated… The doctor devalued his life.”
The article follows British media reports earlier this year on patients with mental illness and learning disabilities being given DNACPRs during the pandemic. But unlike the latest report, those allegations concerned adult patients, at least one of whom reportedly died unnecessarily for lack of resuscitation.
DNACPRs are typically used for people who are too frail to be saved through cardiopulmonary resuscitation in the event their heart stops or they stop breathing. Mencap, a UK charity that advocates for people with learning disabilities, reported in January that disabled adults were being told by medics that they wouldn’t be resuscitated if they fell ill from Covid-19.
The UK’s Care Quality Commission said in March that some patients and family members had been denied the opportunity to discuss their DNACPR status or challenge NHS decisions on whether they would be resuscitated. Hundreds of elderly care home residents were written off with unlawful DNACPR decisions, the commission found.
Health agency spied on millions during Covid lockdowns
RT | December 26, 2021
Canada’s Public Health Agency has admitted to secretly tracking location data from at least 33 million mobile devices to analyze people’s movements during Covid-19 lockdowns.
The agency earlier this year collected data, including geolocation information from cell-towers, “due to the urgency of the pandemic,” a PHAC spokesperson told the National Post, essentially confirming a report by Blacklock’s Reporter. The tracking data was allegedly only used to evaluate the effectiveness of lockdown measures and identify possible links between the movement of people and the spread of Covid-19.
PHAC obtained the information, which was “de-identified and aggregated,” through an outside contractor, Canadian telecommunications giant Telus. The contract ran from last March to October, and PHAC said it no longer had access to the data after the deal expired.
However, the agency plans to similarly track the movements of citizens over the next five years toward such ends as preventing the spread of other infectious diseases and improving mental health. PHAC last week posted a notice to prospective contractors seeking anonymous mobile data dating as far back as January 2019 and running through at least May 2023.
Critics argued that government tracking of citizens is likely more extensive than has been revealed and may become more troublesome in the years ahead.
“I think that the Canadian public will find out about many other such unauthorized surveillance initiatives before the pandemic is over—and afterwards,” privacy advocate David Lyon told the Post. He noted, too, that “de-identified” data can easily be “re-identified.”
Author Julius Reuchel said the tracking initiative smacks of a surveillance state spying on citizens “for your safety.” Another author, Paul Alves, said that with its new contract, PHAC will have direct access to all mobile location data, and expressed fear that “contact tracing will no longer require permission or a warrant.”
The apartheid regime’s Christmas propaganda and oppression of Palestinian Christians
By Denijal Jegic | Press TV | December 26, 2021
As people around the world are celebrating Christmas, occupied Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, remains under brutal Israeli apartheid. Meanwhile, the Israeli regime targets Western Christians with Zionist propaganda.
Zionist propaganda
The Israeli propaganda apparatus “Hasbara” has long invested large amounts of money and significant PR efforts in legitimizing the Zionist settler-colony in the eyes of its international audiences. In portraying the colony as a democracy with alleged human rights and co-existence between various religions, the Israeli regime has attempted to whitewash its genocidal oppression of Palestinians in the eyes of the West. The propaganda attempts have been successful to a large degree, as many Christians in the West either ignore the Palestinian plight, or provide outright support to the apartheid regime.
Evangelical Zionists in the United States have been amongst the most radical supporters of Israel. Christian tourism has contributed to the colony’s economy. This year again, Zionist politicians and officials have extended their holiday greetings to “Christian friends” around the world.
Such greetings are packed with colonial propaganda and appropriation of history. Israeli PM Naftali Bennett published a video on Christmas Eve this year from occupied Jerusalem, connecting the “ancient land” and the Bible to the current colony in his address to Christians. Bennett, who previously bragged about how many Arabs he killed in his life, lied that the colony provided “religious freedom, tolerance, and prosperity in a region where Christians are routinely persecuted.” The illusion that Israel offered religious freedom and that Christians outside of the colony are persecuted is widespread in the West. Bennett claimed that Israel is the “only one place” that “protects Christian life” and thanked his audience for “fighting for the state of Israel.”
While such proclamations further add to the positive image of the colony in the West, they stand in stark contrast to the reality on the ground.
The plight of Palestinian Christians
In fact, the world’s oldest Christian communities are victims of Israel’s genocidal settler-colonialism.
As a result of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign, the Christian population in Palestine has sharply declined throughout the decades. Places of significant importance for Christians are cut off from the outside world. The town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is surrounded by the apartheid wall.
Besides suffering under the structures of the apartheid regime, Palestinian Christians are also oftentimes prevented from exercising their religion. While foreign visitors may access Palestinian churches, the Palestinian right to worship is tightly controlled by the apartheid regime. Depending on where they live, Palestinians require permits issued by the apartheid authorities to attend Mass in churches. This year again, Palestinian Christians from Gaza applied for permits to travel to Bethlehem to attend prayers. Their requests were either rejected or outright ignored.
Palestinians are harassed by apartheid authorities on holy days, such as Easter and Christmas. This year on Easter, apartheid authorities escalated their ethnic cleansing campaign by expelling Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah (East al-Quds) from their homes. This Christmas again, hundreds of Palestinians were injured by occupation forces when they protested against settlement expansion in the West Bank.
Israeli violence has always extended beyond the borders of historic Palestine. The Israeli colonial regime has a history of targeting indigenous Christians in the region. It has done so during its military occupation and numerous wars in Lebanon and its continuous attacks on Syria. During last year’s Christmas celebrations, the Israeli regime invaded the Lebanese airspace to conduct airstrikes on Syria from there, killing several people.
The fallacy of a religious war
The Israeli regime is terrorizing Palestinians of all religions, but has been trying to portray the settler-colonial conquest as a “conflict” that is allegedly religious in its nature. Exploiting traditional Orientalism and anti-Muslim sentiments that are prevalent in Western cultures, the Israeli rhetoric has long focused not only on portraying Palestinian resistance – and oftentimes the very Palestinian existence as such – as anti-Jewish, but the regime has also tried to identify all Palestinians as Muslims to better advance its Islamophobic dichotomy and to frame the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation as a religious movement. It is the religious frame and the anti-Muslim prejudice amongst Israel’s backers that allows the apartheid regime to advance its goals. It is thus not surprising that the Israeli project is highly popular among the far-right and fascists around the world.
Of course the Palestinian struggle was never a sectarian one and many leading figures of Palestinian resistance have been Christians. Nor should the religion of colonized people determine the solidarity and support they receive from the outside world.
After all, destroying the cultural diversity of the region and dividing the population according to sectarian and ethnic lines have been long established practices of imperialist and colonialist forces.
Numerous Palestinian Christian leaders have appealed to Christians around the world to not turn a blind eye toward the continuous oppression and exploitation of Palestine. The Palestinian Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in al-Quds, Atallah Hanna, himself a crucial figure in the Palestinian resistance, has repeatedly affirmed that al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the holy sites will remain Palestinian. The Archbishop reminded Christians around the world that while streets and squares in Western cities are decorated with lights and Christmas trees, there would be no point in celebrating Christmas if they do not pay attention to what is happening in Palestine. He called upon all churches to urgently defend Palestine. The archbishop has reportedly been poisoned by Israeli authorities, but survived the attack.
The racist ideology of Zionism targets people of all religious affiliations who stand in the way of the settler-colonial conquest. This is, unfortunately, more often than not ignored internationally, and particularly by Western Christians. This year again, many Christians in the West celebrate the birth of Jesus without talking about the struggle in Palestine.
Denijal Jegic is a writer and researcher, currently based in Beirut, Lebanon. He holds a PhD in American studies.
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Not just Muslims, Christian Palestinians suffer apartheid as well
While the Christians across the world are celebrating Christmas, the Palestinian Christians are enduring systematic apartheid In their homeland.
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From the Archives
British Intel Tried to Make N Irish Gang ‘Shoot Up’ School, Documentary Claims
Sputnik – 23.02.2019
A new documentary, based on an interview with a self-confessed member of the Glennane Gang, gives some insights into allegations that British military intelligence was behind a shocking murder plot to cause the situation in Northern Ireland to “spiral out of control”.
In a documentary, Unquiet Graves: The Story of the Glennane Gang, John Weir, a former officer from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), alleges that British intelligence tried to persuade paramilitary group Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to attack a Catholic primary school at Belleeks in County Armagh.
Weir claimed that the UVF was urged to kill children and teachers in retaliation for the 1976 Kingsmill massacre, in which gunmen stopped a minibus carrying twelve workmen and shot them; only one person survived despite having been shot 18 times.
“The plan that was decided on was to shoot up a school in Belleeks”, he said, adding that the British intelligence plot was to make the situation in Northern Ireland “spiral out of control”. … continue
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- Americans voted against Israel-First; Schumer, Jeffries, establishment will try to continue it
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- DAILY UPDATE: Latest essential news on Palestine, Israel, & region
- No Tricks Zone
- Zonal Asymmetry of Temperature Change in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current
- New Study: The Net Fossil Fuel Contribution To Rising Atmospheric CO2 Has Been Zero For 500 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Transition Becoming Increasingly Expensive…Another 6 Trillion Euros!
- Sudden Stratospheric Warming, Powerful El Niño Combination May Lead To Extreme Europe Cold, Energy Crisis!
- Two New Studies Find Thwaites Glacier Melt Cannot Be Driven By Human Activity Or A Warming Ocean
- E-Cars Reduce CO2 Emissions By Only 41% Compared To Internal Combustion Engine Vehicles
- Predictions Made By Renowned Climate Professor Over Past Decades Have Been Proven To Be Poor
- New Study Suggests Large Regions Of The Pacific Ocean Have Been Cooling For The Last 80 Years
- Germany’s Green Energy Debacle: High Energy Costs Force Kahla Porzellan to Close After 182 Years!
- New Study: 50 Years Of The Most Aggressive ‘Net Zero’ Policies Can Only Affect The Global Climate By 0.03°C
