Palestinian Prisoners and Israeli national security
By Nasser Nasser | MEMO | January 24, 2019
The attempt by some in Israel to link the escalation on the Gaza border with external factors and Iranian orders was not successful. According to Haaretz newspaper’s military correspondent, Yaniv Kubovich, some security circles in Israel are claiming that the reason for the escalation was the hunger strike organised by the Islamic Jihad prisoners in Ofer Prison. However, the more accurate reason is that security agencies with narrow interests in Erdan’s interior ministry and the prison authorities attacked Palestinian prisoners, beginning with the Islamic jihad prisoners and then extended to the rest of the Palestinian prisoners.
These hostile parties believe that the Palestinian prisoners are living in a vacuum and that the attacks on them will not have any repercussions. They seem to have forgotten the hunger strike by the administrative prisoners, which led to a domino effect that resulted in a war that shook Israel for 51 days in 2014.
The security and political level in Israel can learn a valuable lesson from the escalation in Gaza occurring on January 22nd. The experience is that any attack or assault on prisoners in a barbaric manner is considered an attack on the region’s security and specifically Israel’s security. Based on this, the decision-making rules regarding the prisoners could change in a manner that does not allow those with narrow interests to make decisions that implications and consequences on Israel’s interests and security.
It is unclear whether the sniper bullet that hit the helmet of a secret commander in the Israeli army, almost killing him on January 22nd is in line with the rules of fire and understandings reached by the Palestinian resistance factions in the Gaza Strip with the Israeli occupation authorities mediated by Egypt. However, it is apparent that the Palestinian prisoners are highly regarded and respected, especially among the Palestinian people and all the Palestinian resistance factions, especially in this case the Al-Quds Brigades and Islamic Jihad. This has reached the extent of Islamic Jihad fighters targeting an Israeli officer and exposing the area to escalation. This may be because they are aware that the increase would be limited, and it may be useful to respond to the series of Israeli attacks and delays in all matters relating to understandings regarding prisoners and Gaza.
Yesterday’s incident was followed by Israeli responses, which were exaggerated as usual, in the form of attacking the resistance’s sites, leading to the death of wounding of several Palestinians. This was then followed by Netanyahu’s decision to stop the entry of Qatari funds into Gaza. These actions indicate the extent of national concern, especially in the case of the prisoners, firmly and proudly endured by the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. This is at a time when many Arabs and Palestinians, especially in the leadership, abandoned the issues and concerns of their people to serve personal, narrow, or mistaken interests.
Hence, the escalation incident yesterday highlighted the fact that the prisoner issue is a matter of Palestinian national security, and that the abuse of prisoners inside the prisons and the unjust attacks on them, such as that taking place in Ofer two days ago, will also affect the Israeli national security. Many Israeli leaders and influential figures have acknowledged this, but will Minister Erdan and those like him realise this?
Likud deputy minister enlists Hebron shooter Elor Azaria in primary campaign
Image of a demonstration against Elor Azarya, the Israeli soldier charged with manslaughter after shooting a wounded Palestinian in the head
[Wisam Hashlamoun/Apaimages]
MEMO | January 24, 2019
An Israeli deputy minister has recruited former soldier and convicted killer Elor Azaria in a campaign video ahead of Likud party primaries scheduled for 5 February, reported the Jerusalem Post.
Deputy Environmental Protection Minister Yaron Mazuz posted a video on his Facebook page yesterday showing him seated next to Azaria.
“I am sitting next to my friend Elor Azaria, whom we enlisted to our primaries campaign, and with God’s help, together with him, we will succeed,” Mazuz tells the camera.
According to the report, the video ends “with a picture of Mazuz and Azaria, who appeared to be laughing together”.
Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Mazuz gave Azaria a paid position on his campaign, and called him “intelligent and diligent”.
“We have to support our soldiers and let them act according to the threats they face in the battlefield,” Mazuz told Channel 12. “We cannot tie their hands and neuter them when facing vile murderers.”
In March 2016, Azaria shot wounded Palestinian Abdel Fatah Al-Sharif in the head in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. He eventually served just 14 months of an 18-month manslaughter sentence.
Azaria became a popular cause for a number of right-wing Israeli politicians and groups, with rallies in support of the soldier.
READ ALSO:
Settlers give Hebron shooter a hero’s welcome at crime scene
A Contrast in Murders
Aiia Maasarwe was a student at La Trobe University. (Photo: via Instagram, Ruba Photography)
By Jeremy Salt | Palestine Chronicle | January 24, 2019
In late January Aiia al Maasarwe, initially described in the Australian media as an ‘Israeli student’, then as an ‘Arab Israeli’ but never as a Palestinian, the correct description, was murdered in Melbourne.
Aiia, a student of Chinese and English, was in Melbourne as an exchange student, had traveled home by tram after watching a comedy show and was talking to her sister in Palestine when she was attacked, raped and killed while walking a kilometer home late at night.
It was a shocking crime and Melbourne was appalled. The tram she had taken, no. 86, stopped at all stops so people could get on with bundles of flowers to be delivered to the crime scene. Government officials, including the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, made statements expressing their horror.
Compare this with Israel where, to quote The Times of Israel,
“While the murder is major news in Australia, it is not in Israel despite the fact that the two countries have comparable murder rates … no Israeli official has said anything of substance about the killing … while the murder is on the front page of leading Australian newspapers it merits merely a blip on the front page of Israel’s dailies, as will most killings of a not-terror nature.”
In the week after her death, the Israeli embassy in Canberra made contact with the family in Aiia’s home town, Baqa al Gharbiyya, but there was no personal contact from anyone in the government until President Reuven Rivlin wrote to the family.
Baqa al Gharbiyya is not ‘mostly Arab’ as the Australian media, genuflecting to Israel as always, reported but wholly Palestinian. Until Israel began building its apartheid wall in 2000, there was one Baqa: now the wall cuts it into two, Baqa al Gharbiyya (western Baqa), inside pre-1967 Israel, and Baqa al Sharqiyya (eastern Baqa), inside the territories taken in 1967.
Writing in the Guardian, Jennine Khalik, a Sydney-based Palestinian, wrote that while it should not matter where the murdered young woman came from, it did. Either through ignorance or through deliberate suppression, the Australian media insisted that this young Palestinian was an ‘Arab Israeli,’ the official Israeli description of its Palestinian population, and a term rejected by almost all Palestinians.
In keeping with its drive to eradicate Palestine from the map, in every way and at every level, the government of Israel refuses to call its Palestinian population ‘Palestinian.’ It prefers the generic ‘Arab’ which means they come anywhere and could belong anywhere in the Middle East, except in their homeland.
Haifa University professor Sami Smooha carried out a survey in 2017 which showed that only 16 percent of Palestinians living within pre-1967 Israel was willing to be called ‘Arab Israelis.’
They have exactly the same attitude to their Palestinian identity as Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank, occupied Jerusalem and the occupied Gaza Strip. The Palestinians inside pre-1967 Israel are not living in a state of its citizens like other states but a state for and of the Jewish people. By legal definition they are second class, a status deliberately created by discriminatory laws at every level and now reinforced by the passage last year of the nation-state law.
This law, declaring that Israel is a Jewish nation-state, automatically excludes the Palestinian 17.5 per of the population, Sunni or Christian, plus all others (including the Druze who serve in the armed forces) who are not Jewish.
The law is the inevitable product of a racist ideology which never intended Jews to live peacefully with the Palestinians but to live in Palestine instead of them. The consequence has been an endless round of wars with and on neighboring states, plus deepening oppression of the Palestinian people in the further territories stolen in 1967, as well as oppression of Syrians in the occupied Golan. For Israel to survive as a Jewish state on stolen land this is as it must be.
By and large, this process is supported by the Israeli Jewish population, amongst whom racism has been deliberately inculcated by religious and political leaders to the level of hatred of Palestinians, delight in their suffering and endless justification when they are killed.
Let’s get straight to a central issue here. Had the young woman murdered in Melbourne been Jewish, the media would have reported it entirely differently. The story would have been headlines, it would have run for days and there would have been interviews with the family plus phone calls and visits from senior members of the government.
As it was, little attention was paid to the murder in the media and nothing came to the family from the government until Reuven Rivlin sent his letter. From Netanyahu and senior members of the government, there still has been no personal word of condolence for Aiia’s family.
The killing of Aiia can be contrasted with the response to the murder last October of Aisha al-Rabi. Ayesha, from the Nablus district village of Biddya, was in a car with her husband and a daughter when it was pelted with rocks thrown by youths from a nearby settlement.
These twisted youths, the young Zionist pioneers of the present generation, carrying forward the process of occupation and colonization, are hate-filled fanatics. They glory in the death or discomfort of Palestinians. They terrorize, they scrawl anti-Arab graffiti (not anti-Palestinian as they scarcely recognize the Palestinians as human beings let alone as Palestinian) on walls, they harass women and children, they destroy crops and olive trees, they commit acts of arson, they beat and occasionally they murder.
Violence of this nature has tripled in the past year, with 482 ‘incidents’ reported during the 12 months to December compared to 140 for the previous year.
Time to take a stand, one would think, but not in Israel. Even in the most extreme circumstances the violence every excuse is found for the lenient treatment of these settler youths.
Take for example the stoning of the car which killed Ayesha Rabi’a, the mother of eight children. Many stones were thrown, near the Tapuah checkpoint, not just one, and five youths from the nearby settlement yeshiva – a religious seminary where hatred of ‘Arabs’ seems to be high on the agenda – were arrested.
In a state of its citizens, one might expect messages of sympathy to flow towards the family of the murdered woman from senior members of the government. One might expect assurances that justice would be done and the killers punished to the full extent of the law but in an ostensible Jewish state the sympathy flowed in the other direction, towards the families of the youths accused of killing Ayesha.
They were visited by Ayelet Shaked, the so-called ‘justice minister’ in Netanyahu’s coalition government, a vicious racist by any definition.
In 2015 Shaked paid a similar visit to the families of the youths accused of firebombing a Palestinian home at Douma in July, killing three members of the Dawabshe family, husband, and wife and their 18-month-old son Ali, with only five-year-old Ahmad surviving.
Shaked expressed her sympathy with the families’ plight and encouraged one mother to ‘stay strong.’
There was no visit by Shaked or anyone else in the Israeli government to the relatives of the murdered Palestinian family. While public outrage was expressed in demonstrations, settlers continued to celebrate the murders. At a Jewish wedding in Jerusalem in late 2015, guests brandishing Molotov cocktails, knives and guns danced around holding photos above their heads of Ali Dawabsheh which they then proceeded to stab and burn. The persecution of the Dawabsheh family by settlers continued, with a family house being destroyed in May 2018.
In June 2018 the ‘Lod’ (Lydda – ethnically cleansed in 1948) district court ruled out some of the confessions of the accused youths on the grounds that they had been obtained under torture. One of the defendants who had confessed to previous acts of arson, vandalism and the scrawling of hate graffiti on walls was released to house arrest.
Outside the court several dozen ‘hilltop youth’ celebrated, taunting the Dawabsheh grandfather with cries of ‘Where’s Ali? There’s no Ali. Ali is on the grill.’ When Reuven Rivlin condemned Jewish terror he received a spate of death threats. The case against the main defendant continues.
Ayalet Shaked was a member of the Jewish Home party until she broke away recently and founded, along with Naftali Bennett, who also split from the Jewish Home, the Heyemin Hehadash (New Right) party.
This new grouping is being misleadingly defined as ‘conservative’. In fact, it is violently rightwing and racist, effectively a Jewish fascist party. Bennett has boasted of killing ‘Arabs’, while Shaked, like many Zionist racists before her, has compared the Palestinians to snakes.
In the meantime, while all of this goes on inside occupied Palestine, the retiring Israeli army chief, Gadi Eisenkot, has boasted that Israel has carried out thousands of air attacks on Syria in recent years, attacking, in fact, almost on a daily basis.
Many of these attacks have been carried out from Lebanese air space. Some have been made behind the radar shield of civilian aircraft, once behind a Russian military aircraft which was then shot down by Syrian air defenses. A frequent target has been installations around Damascus international airport, prompting the Syrian ambassador at the UN, Bashar al Ja’afiri, to warn that if the UN does not intervene, Syria might be forced to retaliate against Tel Aviv airport.
Eisenkot was the author of the ‘Dahiye doctrine’ according to which the aerial destruction visited on the Beirut suburb of Dahiya – the political headquarters of Hizbullah – in 2006 will be carried out across Lebanon in the next war.
Israel is also campaigning again for war on Iran, if it does not start one by its attacks on Syria. Internally and externally, this racist and violent state, a time bomb planted in the Middle East by the British a century ago, is destined to erupt cataclysmically at some point in the future.
– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press).
UN Officials Reaffirm that Forcible Transfers are In Breach of Geneva Convention
IMEMC News & Agencies | January 23, 2019
After visiting the Palestinian Sabbagh family, who is facing eviction from its home, in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied Jerusalem, for the benefit of Israeli settlers, United Nations and other officials have again warned that forced eviction and transfer of Palestinians are a breach of Fourth Geneva Convention.
Jamie McGoldrick, Humanitarian Coordinator United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the occupied Palestinian territory, Gwyn Lewis, Director of West Bank Operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), James Heenan, Head of Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in the occupied Palestinian territory, and Kate O’Rourke, Country Director of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said in a statement that they visited the Sabbagh family “who face imminent forced eviction from their home in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, part of the occupied Palestinian territory, and are at heightened risk of forcible transfer.”
According to the statement, the Sabbagh family is a Palestinian refugee family originally from Jaffa city, who were settled in the neighborhood, along with 27 other families, with the support of the United Nations and the Jordanian government, in the 1950s.
Like other families in the area, for years they have been engaged in a legal dispute opposing efforts by Israeli settler organizations to evict them from their homes. Recently, this legal struggle was deemed unsuccessful as Israeli courts have ruled in favor of the settlers’ claims. Thirty-two members of the Sabbagh family, including six children, now face forced eviction, while an additional 19 members will be directly affected by the loss of the family property, should the eviction take place.
“In the occupied Palestinian territory, strict obligations apply with regard to the prohibition of forcible transfer and forced eviction,” said the officials in the statement. “Along with house demolitions, forced evictions are one of the major factors contributing to the creation of a coercive environment that may result in no other choice for individuals or communities but to leave. Forcible transfer is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Forced evictions contrary to international law also violate the right to adequate housing and the right to privacy, and may be incompatible with other human rights.”
They added, according to WAFA : “In many cases in East Jerusalem, including in Sheikh Jarrah, the forced eviction of Palestinians is occurring within the context of Israeli settlement construction and expansion, illegal under international humanitarian law. An estimated 3,500 Israelis are currently living in settlements established with the support of the Israeli authorities in the heart of Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem. In Sheikh Jarrah alone, more than 200 Palestinians face potential eviction, should they be unsuccessful in similar cases currently before Israeli courts.”
They called on the Israeli authorities “to immediately halt plans to evict the Sabbagh family to prevent further displacement of these refugees, cease settlement construction, and abide by their obligations as an occupying power under international humanitarian law and international human rights law.”
In letter, Palestinian Authority asks US to drop all remaining aid
Press TV – January 23, 2019
The Palestinian Authority (PA) says it will refuse American aid in its entirety after Washington cut humanitarian funds to Palestinians, adding that accepting such help could carry unwelcome legal consequences for the Ramallah-based administration.
The Authority “sent an official letter to the US administration requesting it stop all aid to the PA, including assistance to the Palestinian security services,” senior negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Tuesday.
US President Donald Trump has already pledged to cut almost all humanitarian aid to Palestinians. American-funded projects are being phased out gradually.
Erekat further said the decision was made due to concerns over the so-called Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA), approved by President Trump in October 2018, which makes it possible for US citizens to sue foreign entities that receive US aid.
This may prompt US families to start exposing the PA to “costly” lawsuits over alleged “past Palestinian attacks,” AFP said.
American authorities have, in the past, blamed Palestinians for “political violence” targeting American interests inside and outside the occupied territories. This is while Washington provides an annual military aid of around $3 billion to Israel, which engages in routine deadly acts of aggression against Palestinians.
PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah wrote in the letter sent to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo back on December 26, 2018 that “as of January 31st, 2019, it fully disclaims and no longer wishes to accept any form of assistance referenced in ATCA.”
The US aid features roughly $50 million in annual support for Palestinian security services, including support for security coordination with the regime in Tel Aviv. Israel claims that the coordination is “crucial” for maintaining calm in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli acts of aggression are a daily occurrence.
Relations between the PA and the US, already strained due to Washington’s unwavering support for Israel, took an unprecedented dip in late 2017, when Washington recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as Israel’s “capital” in the face of the Palestinians’ internationally-recognized claims to the occupied city.
The PA, in response, stopped recognizing any mediation role by Washington in the decades-long conflict with the Israeli regime.
Syria threatens to ‘strike Tel Aviv airport’ unless UNSC acts against Israel’s impunity
RT | January 23, 2019
Damascus has threatened to exercise its legitimate right for self-defense against Israeli aggression and target Tel Aviv airport in a mirror response, unless the Security Council puts an end to IDF intrusions into Syrian airspace.
Apparently fed up with years of Israeli impunity in the Syrian skies and regular strikes carried out in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport, Syria has threatened to retaliate in explicit terms.
“Isn’t time now for the UN Security Council to stop the Israeli repeated aggressions on the Syrian Arab Republic territories?” Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari wondered Tuesday.
“Or is it required to draw the attention of the war-makers in this Council by exercising our legitimate right to defend ourself and respond to the Israeli aggression on Damascus International Civil Airport in the same way on Tel Aviv Airport?”
Air strikes against alleged ‘Iranian targets’ in close proximity to Syria’s busiest airport have become a norm for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), whose former chief of staff openly confessed last month to running a large-scale bombing campaign in Syria for years. Besides causing casualties and material damage by their “near-daily” strikes, Israeli combat missions into Syria have also repeatedly endangered flights operating over the conflict-torn country.
While the IDF rarely acknowledges striking specific targets in Syria, the Russian military has been keeping a close watch on IDF maneuvers over the Arab Republic. On Christmas Day, Israeli jets endangered two civilian aircraft while engaging targets in Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry said, noting that the IDF F-16s flew in as civilian jets were landing at Beirut and Damascus airports. In September, Israeli actions resulted in the death of 15 Russian servicemen after Israeli jets deliberately used Russian Il-20 recon plane as a cover and placed it into the path of a Syrian air defense missile.
Urging the UN Security Council to adopt measures to stop such blatant violations of Syrian sovereignty by the Jewish state, Jaafari accused France, Britain and the US – all permanent members of the world body – of endorsing Israeli aggression in breach of their responsibility to “maintain international peace and security in accordance with international law.”
Placing little faith into Western intentions to bring long-awaited peace to the country, the diplomat noted that Syria plans to restore full sovereignty over its lost territories, including the Golan Heights, which Israel continues to occupy.
“The restoration sovereignty of the occupied Syrian Golan is a permanent right of Syria that [is] not subject to negotiations,” Jafari stressed.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. While Tel Aviv refrained from extending sovereignty over the Golan for over a decade, in 1981 the Jewish state annexed the area. The Druze of the Golan were offered full Israeli citizenship under the Golan Heights Law of 1981, but only a small minority changed their allegiance from Syria to Israel. Syria repeatedly reiterated that the occupied land is an integral part of its territory, and that it will work to return it by all means necessary. Tel Aviv sees things differently.
“Israel will remain forever on the Golan Heights, and the Golan Heights will forever remain in our hands,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in November, after the US become the only state to vote alongside Israel against a symbolic, non-binding UN resolution calling on Tel Aviv to withdraw from the occupied region.
Malaysia’s Decision to Bar Israeli Athletes Was Much Needed
By Yousef Aljamal | Palestine Chronicle | January 22, 2019
Malaysia has historically been a strong supporter of the Palestinian people who experienced and continue to experience colonization, military occupation and many forms of discrimination for over 100 years.
In fact, it has always been Malaysia’s policy to support the Palestinian people, who have suffered immensely due to the ongoing Zionist colonization project in Palestine, which resulted in establishing Israel on the ruins of Palestinian homes.
Support for Palestine has been expressed under different Malaysian governments, most notably under the administrations of Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who has always been vocal in his criticism of Israel’s discriminatory and militant policies.
Palestine has always enjoyed the support of ordinary Malaysians, who exhibited their strong solidarity, often in emotional ways, during times of Israeli wars on the Gaza Strip in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014.
Islam and its shared values among Palestinians and Malaysians have always played a big part in the existing rapport between both nations.
However, due to existing ethnic tensions in the country, solidarity with the Palestinian people, has, at times, seemed confined to the Malay Muslim community.
While such a truth remains paramount, perspectives began to change in recent years, as Chinese and Indian communities developed a keener understanding of the situation in Palestine. Therefore, seeing Chinese and Indian activists at the forefront of Palestine solidarity in Malaysia is no longer a rare event. A reason behind this important shift is the fact that the approach of solidarity itself evolved from a religious-based appeal to a human-rights based one.
The year 2015 saw the first Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) conference in the country, held at the University of Malaya, where the importance of boycott as a political tool for change was stressed and thoroughly discussed.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that a radical shift started on that very date. More Malaysians engaged with the BDS movement then, launching campaigns against HP, G4S and other international companies involved in facilitating Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Therefore, the decision by Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, to ban Israeli athletes is a rational step in that direction.
Last year, Malaysians voted in historical elections that changed their government to what many Malaysians hoped would be in the best interests of their country. The move by the Malaysian government to ban Israeli athletes from participating in an international sports event set to be held in the city of Kuching this year is a representation of this momentous change.
The elections, many hope, would decrease ethnic tensions and bring more justice to all Malaysians.
Palestinians have been suffering under Israeli colonization and military occupation for more than 70 years. Despite massive Palestinian political and territorial compromises, Israel gave up nothing. For example, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has conceded 78% of historic Palestine in return for peace, which never actualized. To the contrary, the pace of illegal Jewish construction has increased by several folds and military occupation of Palestine is more entrenched than ever before.
This grim reality was the main motive behind the 2005 call by Palestinian civil society to boycott Israel. The BDS movement is the outcome of that collective Palestinian decision.
According to this call, Palestinians demand:
- Ending Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Apartheid Wall.
- Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality.
- Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in United Nations Resolution 194.
The truth is this, Israel has never respected Malaysia, its people and national security. The Israeli Mossad is widely believed to have been behind the assassination of Palestinian scholar Dr. Fadi Al-Batsh on a Malaysian soil last year. Thus, Israel has actively been engaged in harming Malaysia’s national security. This alone should be a compelling rationale for Malaysia – which has no diplomatic relationship with Israel anyway – to ban Israeli athletes.
Sports and politics are directly linked as the boycott of the South African Apartheid regime has shown in the past. Malaysia certainly did the right thing by banning Israeli athletes, especially as the Palestinian people are reduced to live in disconnected Bantustans in the West Bank and under a hermetic siege in Gaza.
Malaysians are important in the global solidarity movement, and their support for BDS can prove crucial considering the country’s large and diverse economy. This country, which has often chosen morality over politics can indeed help the Palestinian people end the oppressed Israeli Apartheid regime.
As a Malaysia Alumnus, and a Palestinian who lost two of my siblings because of Israel’s colonization, I call upon every single Malaysian to support equality for all in Palestine, by contributing to our collective struggle through the BDS movement.
Apartheid can only be defeated when we all realize that “a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
A Tale of Two Walls
Congress prefers the Israeli version
Palestinian women walk next to the separation wall in the West bank village of Abu Dis, November 19, 2007. Photo by Anna Kaplan/Flash90.
By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | January 22, 2019
The demand of President Donald Trump that congress should appropriate money to build a wall securing the nation’s southern border has resulted in the longest federal government shutdown in history with no end in sight. There is considerable opposition to the wall based on two quite different perceptions of border security. The generally “progressive” view is that there is no border threat at all, that the thousands of migrants heading for the U.S. can be assimilated and indeed should be allowed entry because of U.S. government policies in Central America that have created the ruined states that the would-be immigrants have been fleeing.
There is certainly some truth to that argument, though it suggests that the United States should essentially abandon sovereignty over its own territory, which most Americans would reject. The alternative viewpoint, which has a much broader bipartisan constituency, consists of those who do feel that border security is a national priority but are nevertheless critical of building a wall, which will be expensive, possibly ineffective and environmentally damaging. They prefer other options, to include increased spending on the border guards, more aggressive enforcement against existing illegals and severe punishment of businesses in the U.S. that hire anyone not possessing legal documentation. Some also have argued in favor of a national ID issued only to citizens or legal permanent residents that would have to be produced by anyone seeking employment or government services.
Whether the wall will ever be built is questionable, but one thing that is certain is that there is more than enough hypocrisy regarding it to go around. Democratic Presidents including Bill Clinton and Barack Obama when campaigning have called for better border security, as have Democratic Congressional leaders who are now smelling blood and attacking Trump for seeking to do what they have long at least theoretically sought.
Apart from that, many of the Democrats who are currently criticizing the southern border wall on moral grounds have failed to apply the same standard to another infamous wall, that which is being built by Israel. Israel’s “separation wall” is arguably being constructed at least in part using “aid” and charitable money provided by Washington while also being enabled politically by the U.S. government’s acquiescence to the Israeli violations of international law. And if the moral argument for not having a wall to aid suffering refugees has any meaning, it would be many times more so applied to the Israeli wall, which is an instrument in the maintenance of apartheid in areas under Israeli control while also making permanent the stateless status of the more than one million Palestinian refugees, far more in number than the would-be immigrants marching through Mexico.
The Israeli wall is at many points larger and more intimidating than that planned by Trump, and it is also designed to physically and economically devastate the Palestinian population adjacent to it. Israel’s wall is undeniably far more damaging than anything being considered for placement along the U.S.-Mexican border as it operates as both a security measure and a tool for confiscating more Arab land by including inside the barrier illegal West Bank settlements.
There are both physical similarities and differences relating to the two walls. Judging from prototypes, Trump currently appears to favor prefabricated mostly metal sections with barbed wire coils on top that would be high and intimidating enough to deter climbing over. The sections would be set in foundations sufficiently deep to deter most tunneling and there would be sensors at intervals to alert guards to other attempts to penetrate the barrier. Israel’s wall varies in terms of structural material, including large concrete blocks 28 feet high in some areas while other less populated stretches that are considered low security make do with multiple lines of barbed wire and sensors. It is interesting to note that some Israeli companies have apparently expressed interest in building the Mexico wall and, as one of the many perks Israel receives from congress includes the right to bid on U.S. government contracts, they might well wind up as a contractors or subcontractors if the barrier is ever actually built.
As noted above, the principal difference between the U.S. wall and that of Israel is that the American version is all on U.S. land and is engineered to more or less run in a straight line along the border. The Israeli version is nearly 90% built on Palestinian land and, as it is designed to create facts on the West Bank, it does not run in a straight line, instead closing off some areas to the Palestinians by surrounding Arab villages. It therefore keeps people in while also keeping people out, so it is not strictly speaking a security barrier. Indeed, some Israeli security experts have stated their belief that the wall has been only a minor asset in preventing violence directed by Palestinians against Israelis.
If the Israeli wall had followed the Green Line that separated Israel proper from Palestinian land it would be only half the estimated 440 miles long that it will now be upon completion. The extra miles are accounted for by the deep cuts of as much as 11 miles into the West Bank, isolating about 9% of it and completely enclosing 25,000 Palestinian Arabs from areas nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority. One often cited victim of the barrier is the Palestinian town of Qalqilyah, with a population of 45,000, which is enclosed on all sides by a wall that in some sections measures more than 25 feet high. Qalqilyah is only accessible through an Israeli controlled military checkpoint on the main road from the east and a tunnel on the south side that links the town to the adjacent village of Habla.
The wall is therefore only in part a security measure while also being a major element in the Israeli plan to gradually acquire as much of the West Bank as possible – perhaps all of it – for Israeli settlers. It is a form of collective punishment based on religion to make life difficult for local people and eventually drive them from their homes.
The human costs for the Palestinians have consequently been high. A United Nations 2005 report states that :
… it is difficult to overstate the humanitarian impact of the Barrier. The route inside the West Bank severs communities, people’s access to services, livelihoods and religious and cultural amenities. In addition, plans for the Barrier’s exact route and crossing points through it are often not fully revealed until days before construction commences. This has led to considerable anxiety amongst Palestinians about how their future lives will be impacted… The land between the Barrier and the Green Line constitutes some of the most fertile in the West Bank. It is currently the home for 49,400 West Bank Palestinians living in 38 villages and towns.”
Amnesty International in a 2004 report observed:
“The fence/wall, in its present configuration, violates Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law… Since the summer of 2002 the Israeli army has been destroying large areas of Palestinian agricultural land, as well as other properties, to make way for a fence/wall which it is building in the West Bank. In addition to the large areas of particularly fertile Palestinian farmland that have been destroyed, other larger areas have been cut off from the rest of the West Bank by the fence/wall. The fence/wall is not being built between Israel and the Occupied Territories but mostly (close to 90%) inside the West Bank, turning Palestinian towns and villages into isolated enclaves, cutting off communities and families from each other, separating farmers from their land and Palestinians from their places of work, education and health care facilities and other essential services. This in order to facilitate passage between Israel and more than 50 illegal Israeli settlements located in the West Bank.”
Of course, the situation has become far worse for Palestinians since the two reports dating from 2004 and 2005. Israel has accelerated its settlement construction and the wall has expanded and shifted to accommodate those changes, making life impossible for the indigenous population.
Any pushback from the United States has been rare to nonexistent, with successive administrations only occasionally mentioning that the settlements themselves are “troubling” or a “complication” vis-à-vis a peace settlement. The first direct criticism of the wall itself took place in 2003, when the Bush administration briefly considered reducing loan guarantees to discourage its construction. Then Secretary of State Colin Powell remarked “A nation is within its rights to put up a fence if it sees the need for one. However, in the case of the Israeli fence, we are concerned when the fence crosses over onto the land of others.”
On May 25, 2005, Bush repeated his concerns, noting that “I think the wall is a problem. And I discussed this with Ariel Sharon. It is very difficult to develop confidence between the Palestinians and Israel with a wall snaking through the West Bank.” In a letter to Sharon he stated that it “should be a security rather than political barrier, should be temporary rather than permanent and therefore not prejudice any final status issues including final borders, and its route should take into account, consistent with security needs, its impact on Palestinians not engaged in terrorist activities.”
Congress is, of course, Israeli occupied territory so its response was directed against Powell and Bush in support of anything Israel chose to do. Then Senator Joe Lieberman complained “The administration’s threat to cut aid to Israel unless it stops construction of a security fence is a heavy-handed tactic. The Israeli people have the right to defend themselves from terrorism, and a security fence may be necessary to achieve this.”
In 2005, Senator Hillary Clinton declared her support for the wall by claiming that the Palestinian Authority had failed to fight terrorism. “This is not against the Palestinian people. This is against the terrorists. The Palestinian people have to help to prevent terrorism. They have to change the attitudes about terrorism.” Senator Charles Schumer, also from New York, added “As long as the Palestinians send terrorists onto school buses and to nightclubs to blow up people, Israel has no choice but to build the Security Wall.”
So, for many in Washington a legal and relatively apolitical wall by the United States to protect its border is a horrible prospect while the Israeli version built on someone else’s land with the intention to damage the local Arab population as much as possible is perfectly fine. The reality is that America’s Establishment, which is dominated by veneration of Israel for a number of reasons, is completely hypocritical, more prepared to criticize actions taken by the United States even when those actions are justified than they are to condemn Israeli actions that amount to crimes against humanity. That is the reality and it is playing out in front of us right now.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Pro-Palestine group wins UK High Court battle over ‘terrorist’ label
MEMO | January 21, 2019
In a blow to Israel, a British high court has ordered World-Check, a subsidiary of Reuters, to pay compensation and offer an apology to a pro-Palestine organisation listed as a terrorist group on its global online database.
A two-year legal battle concluded with World-Check offering a public apology in open court and a legal settlement of $13,000 plus legal costs to Majed Al-Zeer, the chairman of the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC), for classifying them as “terrorists”.
It was found that Israel’s designation of PRC and its chairman as terrorists was adopted by World-Check which supplies private information on potential clients for corporations, businesses and even governmental agencies, such as police and immigration.
With more than 4,500 clients including 49 of the world’s 50 largest banks and 200 law enforcement and regulatory agencies, World-Check has become essential in satisfying statutory requirements towards due diligence obligations. However their failure to carry out satisfactory checks and independent verification has raised concerns over the misuse and falsification of data that can have severe consequences for victims.
Declaring his victory over World Check service today at a London press conference as “a precedent for those who are on the forefront of human rights and justice” Al-Zeer said he had been a “victim of an organised campaign waged by Israel and its spin machine of propaganda and false information.”
Pointing to World-Check’s failure to carry out independent verification he said that “companies and [news] outlets are failing utterly in protecting the basic ethics of media and reporting by adopting false fabrications often reiterated by Israel propaganda doctors” while claiming that they are “often wittingly or unwittingly mislead by the Israeli propaganda which aims at damaging the reputation and fine image of human rights defenders”.
The PRC has been granted consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council. Over the past 30 years the centre has advocated for Palestinian refugees at international forums like the UN and EU. In addition to producing reports on the situation of Palestinian refugees; hosting conferences to defend their human rights, the UK organisation has been leading parliamentary delegations to refugee camps across the Middle East. Following Israel’s bombardment of Gaza in 2009 during operation “Cast Lead” in which 1,400 Palestinians were killed and thousands more were wounded, the centre organised the largest European parliamentary delegation to the besieged enclave.
In the case summery it was pointed out that Al-Zeer is a British citizen and the PRC is a UK company. The centre has never faced any issue with British authorities let alone being charged with terrorism. They are subject to very high levels of scrutiny with a particular focus on security and any possible links that they may have to terrorists.
Al-Zeer’s lawyers pointed out that he “has never been subject to any charge or even suspicion of terrorism. However, Israel has made this extremely serious and damaging allegation without bringing any proof, thereby subverting the sovereignty of England and are manipulating the banking sector to carry out their policies in an underhand way.”
Al-Zeer’s lawyers described the victory as “shedding light into the secretive and unknown world of regulatory agencies” and the potential for their abuse. During their press conference, both expressed the urgent need to develop mechanisms for independent verification of entries that may have a “crippling effect” on people’s lives. “Such a company has a moral and ethical duty (at least from the perspective of the Media) to provide its clients with verified and real information,” said Al-Zeer, “yet, it has chosen to ignore that and stuff its database with merely politically motivated information.”
“Instead of providing risk management solutions service to expose heightened risk individuals and organisations including corruption and financial crimes,” as they are meant to, Al-Zeer charged World-Check of Reuters Limited of going after people and organisations defending human rights and subjecting themselves to politically motivated campaigns. It was also pointed out that several Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt have taken advantage of regulatory agencies such as World Check to go after political oppositions.
In his comments to MEMO Al-Zeer said that the PRC was targeted because of its long campaign for the rights of Palestinian refugees. Israel has never accepted responsibility for the 750,000 Palestinians that were ethnically cleansed from their homes in 1948 and the hundreds of Palestinian villages that were razed to the ground to make way for the state of Israel. Under International Law, refugees have a right to return to their land and seek compensation. Both have been denied to Palestinians.
Al-Zeer explained that the refugees issue is crucial to resolving the conflict but Israel has continually rejected to address this historical crime against the Palestinian people. PRC’s work in exposing Israel’s responsibility for the plight of refugees and its legal duty under international law has made the centre a target of the Israeli government.
Israel has gone to great length to discredit the PRC, he said, pointing to its efforts to classify the organisation as a terrorist group. He insisted he will not be intimidated by Israel’s disinformation campaign and “vowed to continue working for [my] people and the mission of refugees right of return to Palestine”.
PRC’s legal team believe that hundreds if not thousands of individuals and organisations may have been placed on World-Check’s list without their knowledge. They pointed to several cases including that of a British mosque which also won an apology and compensation after being designated “terrorists” by the risk screening agency.
Israeli forces raid Ofer prison, injure 100 prisoners
Palestine Information Center – January 21, 2019
RAMALLAH – An Israeli force on Monday stormed a section of the Israel-run Ofer Prison in the occupied West Bank and attacked Palestinian detainees.
In a Monday statement, the Prisoners Prisoners Society said members of Israel’s special Metsada Force had stormed a section of the prison where they “attacked Palestinian inmates with rubber bullets and teargas.”
More than 100 prisoners were injured during the attack in which their belongings were damaged.
Monday’s raid was the second raid in Ofer prison this week, with sources describing the previous raid as “brutal” and “violent.”
Currently home to an estimated 1,200 Palestinian inmates, the Ofer Prison is located southwest of the West Bank city of Ramallah.
According to Palestinian figures, more than 6,000 Palestinians — including dozens of women, scores of minors and six lawmakers — are currently being held in Israeli prisons.
Israeli forces regularly use raids, punitive solitary confinement, confiscation of personal belongings, and forcible prison transfers to suppress Palestinian prisoners, whose numbers inside Israeli prisons reached 6,128 as of July, according to prisoners’ rights group Addameer.
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Film Review
We refuse to be silenced’: Gaza film producers blast BBC at BAFTAs
Al Mayadeen | May 11, 2026
The producers of the documentary “Gaza: Doctors Under Attack” used their BAFTA TV Awards win on Sunday to publicly denounce the BBC for refusing to air the film, accusing the network of censoring coverage of “Israel’s” genocidal assault on Gaza and silencing voices that document the atrocities committed against Palestinian medical workers.
The documentary, originally commissioned by the BBC but never broadcast due to what the network called “concerns about impartiality” towards “Israel,” won in the current affairs category at the BAFTA ceremony in London. The film was eventually aired by Channel 4 and investigates the systematic targeting of medical personnel and healthcare infrastructure in Gaza during the ongoing genocide.
Journalist Ramita Navai delivered a speech while accepting the award, in which she stated that the occupation has killed tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza and deliberately targeted hospitals and medical workers. According to the documentary’s investigation, more than 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and over 400 have been abducted by Israeli forces.
Citing United Nations language, Navai described “Israel’s” attacks against Gaza’s medical infrastructure and personnel as “medicide.” She concluded her remarks with a defiant message: “We refuse to be silenced and censored.” … continue
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