Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

US lawmaker’s bill would ban funds to Israeli military

MEMO | May 1, 2019

Veteran Congresswoman Betty McCollum introduced legislation Wednesday that would prohibit US funding to any foreign military that detains children, including Israel, Anadolu reports.

The bill would additionally authorize the creation of an annual $19 million fund to support non-governmental organizations that monitor rights abuses pertaining to the Israeli military’s detention of children.

“Israel’s system of military juvenile detention is state-sponsored child abuse designed to intimidate and terrorize Palestinian children and their families,” McCollum said in a statement announcing the bill’s introduction.

McCollum said Israel’s military detention of children “must be condemned,” adding that “it is equally outrageous that US tax dollars in the form of military aid to Israel are permitted to sustain what is clearly a gross human rights violation against children.”

Roughly 10,000 children have been detained by Israeli security forces since 2000 and subjected to military court proceedings, according to McCollum’s bill.

“Israeli security forces detain children under the age of 12 for interrogation for extended periods of time even though prosecution of children under 12 is prohibited by Israeli military law,” it says.

It further goes on to note that Human Rights Watch reported in 2018 that Israel’s military “detained Palestinian children “often using unnecessary force, questioned them without a family member present, and made them sign confessions in Hebrew, which most did not understand.”

McCollum’s bill faces an uphill battle in Congress where it is likely to face near-uniform opposition from Republicans and is unlikely to garner sufficient Democratic support to clear the House if Speaker Nancy Pelosi chooses to send it to the floor.

Still, the Democratic lawmaker was adamant that “Congress must not turn a blind eye to the unjust and ongoing mistreatment of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation.”

May 1, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

The New York Times Apologizes for “Anti-Semitic” Cartoon While Enabling Real Bigotry in Israel

By Helen Buyniski | Aletho News | May 1, 2019

The New York Times has begged forgiveness for printing a cartoon that supposedly “included anti-Semitic tropes” in its international edition, but no amount of shameless groveling will stop the Israeli weaponization of the “anti-Semitism” smear as it steamrolls America’s once-sacred First Amendment freedoms. This is a crusade to silence all legitimate criticism of a criminal regime, and if the Times has anything to apologize for, it is its complicity in that quest.

The offending cartoon depicts President Donald Trump as a blind man being led by a guide dog with the face of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, identified by a star-of-David collar. It’s unclear what the “anti-Semitic trope” in this case is supposed to be – the collar is arguably necessary to confirm the dog is Netanyahu, and the reader would have to be a political illiterate to interpret that as a stand-in for “all Jews.” The Times’ willingness to slap the “anti-Semitic trope” label on the cartoon anyway should put to rest the ridiculous “anti-Semitic trope” trope that is tirelessly deployed to smother accusations of wrongdoing by Israel or its lobbying organizations inside the US.

Netanyahu himself has boasted that Trump acted on his orders when he declared Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization earlier this month, and Trump’s willingness to flout international law to unilaterally “give” the Golan Heights to Netanyahu as a re-election present shocked the world, unsettling even some Zionists who believe the land is rightfully theirs but worry the US’ official declaration will galvanize regional opposition to the occupation. Netanyahu’s last election campaign was arguably based on his ability to “lead” the US president blindly off the edge of a geopolitical cliff. Is he guilty of perpetuating anti-Semitic tropes for bragging about it?

Most papers only apologize when they’ve printed something erroneous. The Times has chosen instead to issue a correction for one of the few accurate depictions of the relationship between Israel and the White House, a glimmer of truth even more notable for its contrast with the paper’s usual disinformation painting Trump as some sort of foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Semite.

The Times’ decision to apologize for this cartoon while remaining silent when a cartoon depicting Trump in a gay love affair with Vladimir Putin was condemned by LGBT readers last year betrays the editorial board’s high moral dudgeon as the most transparent hypocrisy. US media has long smeared Putin’s government as homophobic, yet here they were presenting him half-clothed in a stomach-turning romantic embrace with Trump – a president who, it should be noted, has presided over the deterioration of US-Russia relations to levels not seen since the Cold War. But LGBT Twitter ultimately has little power in society, unlike the Israeli lobby, and the unfavorable depiction of Trump ensured most influential LGBT organizations steered clear of criticizing the cartoon. Outrage has become yet another commodity to be traded, not a genuine response to offense.

If it’s in a repentant mood, however, the Times could apologize for its one-sided coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – much of it fed to them by The Israel Project, which skews US coverage of the facts on the ground in Israel by supplying American reporters with talking points in order to “neutralize undesired narratives.” From these spinmeisters we get the passive voice used to frame IDF soldiers mowing down unarmed protesters as “clashes occurred” and “Palestinian protesters were killed,” as well as breathless coverage of tunnels, kites, and rocket attacks that rarely seem to hit anyone.

The Times could apologize for its failure to expose the global campaign to redefine “anti-Zionism” as “anti-Semitism,” instead of playing into it by pretending a truthful cartoon is somehow an affront to Jews – as if all Jews support the racist policies of the Israeli government. Indeed, to assume all Jews back the criminal Netanyahu regime in its openly genocidal campaign to eradicate the Palestinians from the few enclaves of the West Bank in which they remain while maintaining an open-air concentration camp in Gaza is wildly anti-Semitic.

The Times could apologize for failing to report on the massive Israeli spying operation – funded, in no small part, by the US taxpayer – targeting American activists on American soil, exposed in detail in the suppressed al-Jazeera documentary “The Lobby,” which leaked last year to deafening silence in the media. Journalist Max Blumenthal actually spoke with a Times journalist who wanted to cover the explosive revelations of the documentary, but no story ever appeared. As Ali Abunimah, founder of the Electronic Intifada, has pointed out, the suppression of the documentary should have been a story in and of itself – and would have, had it involved any other country.

“Imagine that this had been an undercover documentary revealing supposed Russian interference, or Iranian interference… in US policy, and powerful groups had gone to work to suppress its broadcast and it had leaked out. Just that element of it – the suppression and the leak – should be front page news in the Washington Post and the New York Times,” he told Chris Hedges, whose RT program was the closest thing to mainstream coverage the documentary received in the US.

The Times instead chooses to cover up the actions of groups like the Israel on Campus Coalition as they surveil and smear pro-Palestinian activists – college students, professors, and others sympathetic to Israel’s sworn enemy – using a strategy the ICC’s executive director Jacob Baime admits is based on US General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq. “The Lobby” revealed that agents working for the Israeli government infiltrate pro-Palestinian, pro-peace groups using fake social media accounts and report their findings back to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a shocking fact that none of the organizations named in the film have disputed. A foreign government operating a military-style surveillance network to target and smear American citizens in their own country – for nothing more than exercising their freedom of speech – gets a pass from the Times, but a cartoon showing Trump’s blind loyalty to Israel for what it is must be condemned.

It’s tough to electrify an outraged mob based on a story that wasn’t printed, but the Times’ failure to address the very real threat to Americans exercising their free speech – a threat all the more dire because it is funded by US tax dollars to the tune of $3.8 billion per year – merits at least a full-page apology. Compounding the insult is a domestic economic crisis, with many American cities facing record homelessness, skyrocketing cost of living, a dearth of secure employment and an excess of exploitative “gig economy” temp work, and a rapidly-disappearing social safety net. Israel is a wealthy country, as Netanyahu often boasts, a successful country. Only a truly blind government could continue to fork over such enormous sums of money while Americans languish in poverty.

“The anti-Semitism smear is not what it used to be,” one lobbyist laments to al-Jazeera’s hidden camera-equipped reporter. Perhaps this is why the state of Florida has advanced a bill to criminalize “anti-Semitism,” now broadly redefined to include “alleging myths… that Jews control the media, economy, government, or other institutions.” The bill passed the House unanimously, the one holdout bullied into submission when she voiced concerns about its incompatibility with the First Amendment, yet to point out – as AIPAC does – that this bipartisan approval exists because the Israeli lobby has influence over both parties, or that this influence can make or break a candidate, is about to become illegal. When even a milquetoast like Democratic congressman Beto O’Rourke has stuck his neck out to call Netanyahu a racist – and he receives more money from the Israeli lobby than most of his House colleagues – the Times should be ashamed of itself for pushing the fiction that criticism of Israel and its iron grip on the US government is equivalent to anti-Semitism.

The Times’ own article about its apology quotes an interview with the “guilty” party, Portuguese cartoonist Antonio Moreira Antunes, from the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack, when four cartoonists and the magazine’s editor were murdered, supposedly for printing an offensive cartoon. There is a definite parallel with the Zionist outrage mobs calling for Antunes’ head – figuratively, if not yet literally; many are unsatisfied with the Times’ apology and insist Antunes suffer for his insolence by losing his job, if not his life. Antunes, in the interview, called his job “a profession of risk,” but states “there is no other option but to defend freedom of expression.”

The New York Times, and everyone else who demanded they apologize for a truthful cartoon while ignoring their failure to oppose genuine bigotry in the Netanyahu regime and supporters of Zionism, clearly do not agree that freedom of expression is worth defending. A press that cannot even defend itself does not deserve to be called “free.’

May 1, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Jordan monarch orders changes to $10 billion gas deal with Israel

Press TV – April 30, 2019

Jordanian King Abdullah II has ordered a review of his country’s multi-billion-dollar deal to import natural gas from the Israeli-occupied territories.

The London-based and Arabic-language Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, citing senior Jordanian political sources, reported that the king made the decision “in a technical report that examines Jordan’s interests from the continuation or the freezing of the agreement.”

Khaled Bakkar, the head of the finance committee in the Jordanian parliament, said the gas deal apart from being “blatant normalization” with the Israeli regime, is “economically weak” based on the feasibility studies.

He stressed that Jordan’s energy production surpassed the country’s needs, and the import of Israeli gas was only for the benefit of the Tel Aviv regime.

On September 26, 2016, Jordan’s National Electric Power Company signed a 10-billion-dollar deal with US-based Noble Energy and Israeli partners, which will tap the Leviathan natural gas field in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Israel for the supply of approximately 1.6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, or 300 million cubic feet per day (mcf/d), over a 15-year term. Production is expected to begin around 2019 or 2020.

On March 26, members of Jordan’s parliament called for the cancellation of the gas deal with Israel during a parliamentary session closed to the public.

House Speaker Atef Tarawneh stated that all sectors of the society and members of parliament utterly reject the Jordanian electricity company agreement to buy Israeli natural gas.

Several legislators argued that the multi-billion-dollar deal violates Article 33, section two of the Jordanian constitution, which states: “Treaties and agreements which entail any expenditures to the Treasury of the State or affect the public or private rights of Jordanians shall not be valid unless approved by the parliament; and in no case shall the secret terms in a treaty or agreement be contrary to the overt terms.”

Lawmaker Saddah al-Habashneh said the deal was unconstitutional, stressing that members of parliament were not given access to read what he called the “secret” deal.

“Why are they hiding it? It’s a clue that there is something. It is totally rejected,” he commented.

Habashneh then demanded the deal be scrapped along with Jordan’s peace accord with Israel – known as Wadi Araba Treaty and signed on October 26, 1994.

“We are calling for the Wadi Araba agreement to be dropped. What is peace when they’re attacking Gaza?” the parliamentarian said.

“And with yesterday’s recognition of the Golan Heights, what’s left? We want dignity,” he pointed out.

On March 25, US President Donald Trump signed a proclamation, formally recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The announcement came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the White House.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates, in a statement, called the US decision a “blatant attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Syria.

“The liberation of the Golan by all available means and its return to the Syrian motherland is an inalienable right,” according to the statement carried by Syria’s official news agency SANA, which added, “The decision … makes the United States the main enemy of the Arabs.”

The Arab League also condemned the move, saying “Trump’s recognition does not change the area’s status.”

Iran, Iraq, Russia and Turkey also condemned the US move.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War and later occupied it in a move that has never been recognized by the international community. The regime has built dozens of settlements in the area ever since and has used the region to carry out a number of military operations against the Syrian government.

May 1, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

US, Israel to supply anti-aircraft missiles to Kurdish militants in Syria: Report

Press TV – May 1, 2019

The United States and Israel are reportedly set to supply anti-aircraft missiles to Kurdish militants in northern Syria amid tensions between Ankara and Washington over the latter’s support for the militants, which the Turkish government views as terrorists.

Citing local sources, Turkey’s Yeni Safak daily reported that the US is set to deliver shipments of Stinger Man Portable Air Defense System (MANPADS) to militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

The PKK, it added, has designated the towns of Rmelan and Shaddadah in Syria’s Hasakah Province as well as the Jalabiyah and al-Omar regions as launching points for its American-supplied missiles.

Ankara is unhappy with Washington’s support for Kurdish militants of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which it views as an extension of the PKK, and has repeatedly called on the US administration to stop providing them with arms.

The PKK has been fighting for autonomy inside Turkey for decades and runs bases in neighboring Syria and Iraq as well.

The report further said the regime in Israel has also vowed to supply the Kurds with Spike anti-aircraft missiles in the Syrian provinces of Dayr al-Zawr and Raqqah following high-level meetings between the militants and Tel Aviv.

Israel has long been backing the militants operating against the Syrian government. The regime has, on several occasions, criticized Turkey for its operations against the Kurdish militants.

The US-Kurdish alliance is closely coordinating the missiles’ deployment to Syria as part of a “special joint strategy,” according to the report.

It further said that a group of 30 PKK militants have already received training to handle the advanced anti-aircraft missiles.

Turkey has since 2016 launched two military operations inside Syria against the US-backed Kurdish militants and has threatened a third if they fail to leave the east of the Euphrates.

Like Turkey, the US has listed the PKK as a terrorist group, but views the YPG as an ally in its so-called fight against the Takfiri Daesh terror group.

Turkey has repeatedly questioned Washington’s deployment of heavy weapons in Syria despite the defeat of Daesh.

Last December, US officials said the Pentagon was considering recommending that Kurdish militants be allowed to keep American-supplied weapons after the withdrawal of troops from Syria.

In February, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed Turkey’s NATO allies for supplying huge loads of weapons to Kurdish militants in northern Syria, while ignoring Ankara’s arms purchase requests.

May 1, 2019 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Top CIA analyst: Israel partisans push US to war

If Americans Knew | April 30, 2019

Ray McGovern served as a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John F. Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush. Ray’s duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing the President’s Daily Brief, which he briefed one-on-one to President Ronald Reagan’s five most senior national security advisers from 1981 to 1985. He received the Intelligence Commendation Medal at his retirement.

April 30, 2019 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Attacks on Samidoun: PayPal’s complicity in silencing Palestinian prisoners

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | April 30, 2019

The Israeli state and the Zionist movement are continuing their attacks on the Palestinian prisoners and the Palestine solidarity movement. One of the most recent effects of these attacks was the closing of Samidoun’s PayPal account. On its face, this is nothing new: PayPal has shut down the accounts of numerous groups supporting Palestinian rights around the world, including BDS campaign organizations, political parties and even media organizations at the behest of demands from various pro-apartheid politicians and agencies.

On the other hand, the sensationalistic attacks posted in pro-Zionist, pro-apartheid media on anyone who struggles for the rights of the Palestinian people and especially the Palestinian prisoners reflect an ongoing effort to isolate the Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails by cutting off international moral and political support for their freedom struggle. As a grassroots, unfunded organization, Samidoun very much relies on the small and generous donations provided by contributors, people of conscience who want to ensure that Palestinian prisoners – and the Palestinian people – are not silenced.

On 23 April, we were suddenly told that our account had been “permanently limited,” due to the “nature of our activities.” This is word-for-word the same message that numerous other global Palestine advocacy organizations have received over the years to block them from receiving donations via PayPal. No appeal mechanism is permitted. This cannot be separated from the company’s ongoing refusal to provide services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while continuing to make its products available to illegal Israeli settlements.

Closing our PayPal account is another method designed to make it more difficult for us to continue to do our work. We are committed to do so, however. So long as Palestinian women and men, children and elders, are held behind colonial bars because they struggle for freedom, we are determined to work alongside them to achieve that goal – for the prisoners and all of Palestine.

Your contribution can help to push back against these attacks. You can donate online to Samidoun here, and if you are interested in donating another way or giving your time to help us, please email us at samidoun@samidoun.net.

An entire Israeli state ministry, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, has been granted an undisclosed budget that reportedly numbers in the tens of millions of dollars to fight back against the growing popular movement around the world in solidarity with the just cause of the Palestinian people. In particular, this ministry has directed its efforts against supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. It has also taken a special interest in attacking Palestinian human rights defenders and solidarity organizations working to expose Israeli repression against Palestinian political prisoners and campaign for their freedom, including Samidoun.

This ministry is headed by Gilad Erdan, a far-right Likud politician who also heads the Ministry of Internal Security in Netanyahu’s government – overseeing the Israel Prison Service itself. It was the “Erdan commission” that promulgated the recent repressive attacks against Palestinian prisoners that led to the collective hunger strike of April 2019 – ending in a victory for the prisoners. It comes as no surprise that the same institutions responsible for confiscating the rights gained by Palestinian prisoners through years of struggle also want to silence, criminalize and suppress all activists and organizations who work to support those prisoners’ rights on an international level.

Most recently, this ministry published a report, “Terrorists in Suits.” Full of misinformation, deception and outright false information, the report aims to cast support for Palestinian prisoners, the boycott of Israel and human rights defense as “terrorism.” Samidoun was attacked alongside many other Palestinian and international organizations for one simple reason – because we defend the rights of Palestinian prisoners.

The Ministry is also heavily involved in interfering in campaigns for justice around the world. It was referred to repeatedly in the US “The Lobby” Al-Jazeera documentary series, censored and then revealed by the Electronic Intifada, working to pass anti-BDS laws and attack student groups and community organizers in the United States. It claimed credit for prohibiting a speech by former Palestinian prisoner and torture survivor Rasmea Odeh in Germany, as well as the stripping of her Schengen visa.

Via its social media accounts, it continues to attack Belgian artist, worker and activist Mustapha Awad after he returned home from being released after 253 days of unjust Israeli imprisonment. The ministry’s social media page has hosted death threats against Mustapha from various far-right, racist commenters – after even the notoriously biased Israeli court system released him early from Israeli imprisonment. It is difficult to see these ongoing attacks as anything other than an attempt to silence him from telling his story, including his experiences of cruel and inhumane treatment, and that of his fellow Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

The Palestinian people are facing conditions of siege nearly everywhere, of course most notably in the Gaza Strip and in the Israeli occupation prisons. These arbitrary attacks – and PayPal’s acquiescence to these groundless threats over and over again – are but one small part of that larger siege which we are struggling to break, on the road to victory and liberation for Palestine.

To donate to Samidoun, please click here.

April 30, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel government to fund hotels in illegal West Bank settlements

MEMO | April 30, 2019

The Israeli government will subsidise hotels in illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank, as part of a plan to attract more tourists to the area.

According to an article in Arutz Sheva, citing a report by Israel Hayom, Israel’s Tourism Ministry “will aid entrepreneurs who want to invest in building or expanding hotels in Judea and Samaria [the occupied West Bank]”.

The entrepreneurs can now apply for a grant of up to 20 per cent of their intended investment.

Israel Hayom reported that a meeting held earlier this year between senior settler officials and the managers of Israeli travel agencies in the occupied West Bank “showed that the number of guest units is insufficient, causing tourists to avoid staying in the area for more than a day”.

According to the report, the government grants “are intended to encourage investors to open additional guest units in [illegal settlements in] Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley [the occupied West Bank]”.

Settler leader (Yesha Council chair) Hananel Dorani stated: “We thank [Tourism] Minister Yariv Levin (Likud) for his important work on the issue of tourism in Judea, Samaria, and the Jordan Valley.”

“Building hotels and guest houses in the area is an important step which shows the deepening of our roots in the ground and paves the way for Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria,” he added.

“Giving grants for the creation of hotels is another supplemental step which will help solve the problem of where to sleep and will strengthen settlements and our hold on Judea and Samaria.”

April 30, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Blame Palestinians for Gaza

Israel is the perpetual victim

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • April 30, 2019

If you have read a recent New York Times op-ed entitled “Care about Gaza? Blame Hamas” written by none other than the White House “special representative for international negotiations” Jason Greenblatt you would understand that the misery being experienced by Palestinians in Gaza is all their own fault. Greenblatt, who is Jewish of the Orthodox persuasion, just happens to be a strong supporter of Israel’s settlements, which he claims are “not an obstacle to peace.” He is very upset because some naysayers are actually putting some of the blame for the human catastrophe in Gaza on Israel, which we Americans all know is our best friend in the whole world and our most loyal ally. If that were not so, the New York Times and those fine people in Congress and the White House would surely inform us otherwise. And anyway, what are a few lies and war crimes between friends?

Greenblatt, who knows nothing about foreign policy and diplomacy apart from advising Donald Trump on Israel while serving as the Trump Organization chief legal officer, is supposed to be working hard with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner negotiating “deal of the century” peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Betting is that the arrangement on offer in June will consist of American acquiescence in Israel declaring sovereignty over nearly all of land that the Arabs still hold on the West Bank with the remaining local population being bribed heavily to either move to Jordan or stay in designated non-Jewish sectors and stop complaining.

Jason Greenblatt is a perfect example of the type of “dual” loyalist who cannot appreciate that his overriding religious and ethnic allegiances are incompatible with genuine loyalty to the United States. Willingness to subordinate actual American interests to a those of a foreign nation means that he and others like him are contributing to the decline and fall of the country he was born in and which has made him wealthy. If he had any real integrity, when presented by Trump with the opportunity to benefit Israel at the expense of the United States he should have declined the offer knowing that he would inevitably be biased, making it impossible for him to fairly consider either American interests or those of the Palestinians.

Greenblatt knows that whatever lies he tells it will not matter in the least because no one will ever hold him accountable and it is all done for a great cause, which is Israel, to include anything that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants. And what could be better than to hold down a job that pays in the neighborhood of $200,000 a year plus a full benefits package for doing nothing but “creating facts on the ground” for the country that one loves best?

The Greenblatt op-ed includes some really choice “analysis” that does not correspond with the reality of what is going on in what remains of Palestine. He begins immediately with a heavy dose of Israeli propaganda, asserting that “Hamas has left Gaza in shambles,” before providing a partially accurate but morally neutral assessment of the sorry state of the enclave: “Life there is difficult, sad and abnormal. Only buildings with generators actually maintain steady power. The lack of power affects everything from preserving fresh food to treating sewage. If a person in Gaza falls ill, he is likely to find trained medical professionals unable to help because of the lack of equipment and medicines. The people there — even the talented and educated — can’t find jobs. The store shelves are empty. The shoreline, which in many other places in the Mediterranean would be filled with beach resorts, is covered in the raw sewage and debris from successive wars. The cost of conflict is seen in all aspects of life in Gaza.”

The dismal picture of conditions in Gaza, largely true, does not admit to any Israeli role in the suffering, or, at least, Greenblatt is blind to it. Israel controls both the land border and the seafront. It manages the enclave as if it were an outdoor concentration camp and military free-fire zone for its 2 million Arab inhabitants. Lack of power is caused by Israeli bombing of power plants, which also makes it impossible to treat sewage. Proliferating sewage appears to be a preferred weapon for Israelis as settlers on the West Bank are also fond of letting it flow onto Palestinians farms and villages.

Food in Gaza is limited only to what can be grown locally or to what the Israelis allow in. Likewise medicines are only available when Israel permits. Gazans cannot leave without Israeli permission and on the seafront, fisherman who are brave enough to go out are frequently shot dead by Israeli gunboats if they go too far.

Israel bombs hospitals, schools and places of worship indiscriminately, always claiming that they are being used by terrorists even when United Nations observers are on site and declare that the allegations are palpably untrue. And then there are isolated incidents , to include the deliberate murder by naval gunfire of four young boys innocently playing soccer on a beach and the killing by missiles of nine other children who were watching television. An American military attache stationed in Israel once observed soldiers on the Israel side engaging in target practice by shooting at women hanging out their laundry on the Gaza side of the fence and Israeli snipers have proudly worn t-shirts showing a graphic of a pregnant Arab woman in a gunsight with the text “two for one” underneath.

Currently, protests by unarmed Gazans along the Israel-Gaza fence have resulted in 260 Palestinian deaths, mostly by Israeli sniper fire. Nearly 7,000 others have been shot and wounded. Those killed include 32 medical workers and 50 children. Twenty-one children have had their limbs amputated and many more have been permanently disabled.

Thousands more Palestinians have died from Israeli bombs, rockets and artillery shelling since 2009. In 2014 alone, more than 2,000 Gazans were killed and more than 10,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled. More than 7,000 homes were destroyed. The grossly disproportionate carnage in Gaza initiated by Israel was so outrageous that even many Americans began to wake up to what their tax dollars were buying. After 2014’s death toll, support for Israel began to wane. Currently 51% of Americans view the Israeli government unfavorably in spite of relentless pro-Israel propaganda by the U.S. media.

Jason Greenblatt goes on to claim that “The Arabs in Israel generally live normal lives and, in many cases, thrive. In fact, Arab citizens of Israel live freely compared with Arabs in many other countries in the region… Why are others moving forward while Gaza sinks further into despair and disrepair? Because Hamas, the de facto ruler of the Gaza Strip, has made choices… Hamas is to blame for Gaza’s situation.”

Greenblatt is wrong about the claimed happy lot of Palestinians living in Israel. Israel has recently declared itself a Jewish State. In practice, there are more than fifty laws and regulations that make Christians and Muslims second class citizens. Churches and Mosques are regularly vandalized and Christian and Muslim holy sites are regularly destroyed by the authorities while a prominent Rabbi has recently declared in the wake of Sri Lanka that proposals that all churches should be destroyed inside Israel should be considered but are “complicated.” Arab Israelis cannot get building permits, their schools are underfunded and they are discriminated against or ignored in nearly all their interactions with the government. Local communities can declare themselves Arab-free zones and they can refuse to sell houses to Palestinians.

The fundamental problem with Greenblatt and others like him is that they have a very selective moral compass and choose not to recognize apartheid even when it is right in front of them. Israel is a fundamentally racist occupying power with a colonial-settler mindset, which sees the Arabs as ignorant savages that have to be ideally removed, but if not, restrained by force or even killed if necessary. And, like all purveyors of war crimes, the Israelis and their diaspora cheerleaders blame the victims for their plight. Greenblatt will have an excuse for any atrocity committed by Israel. The Israel Defense Force is shooting Palestinians individually now but if it starts doing them in groups he would no doubt come up with a good rationalization justifying the practice.

Israel is a Middle Eastern superpower, heavily armed and unconcerned over the consequences for starting wars and killing Arabs. To argue as Greenblatt does that there is some kind of “fighting” going on with Hamas “instigating” wars against Israel is ludicrous given the disparity in power between the two sides. It is largely retaliatory Hamas homemade bottle rockets, which kill or injure very few, against fighter jets, snipers and artillery barrages that kill thousands. And the really sad part for Americans is that the United States is deeply complicit in what goes on, sending “special representatives” like Greenblatt into the region on the taxpayer’s dime to argue Israel’s case.

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 councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

April 29, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

50,000 Palestinian Children Imprisoned by Israeli Kangaroo Courts Since 1967

By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | April 29, 2019

JERUSALEM — According to figures released by the Prisoners’ and Freed Prisoners’ Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on Sunday, the state of Israel has imprisoned more than 50,000 children since the occupation of Palestine’s West Bank began in 1967. The PLO report, which was cited by Middle East Monitor, also noted that around 17,000 of those child arrests had occurred since the year 2000. The report used the UN definition that states that a child is any person younger than 18 years of age. However, Israel’s government has defined children younger than 16 as children, while applying the UN definition to Israeli children.

The PLO report — titled “Child Detention… Facts and Statistics… Effects on the Reality and Future of Palestinian Childhood” — was made public as the head of the PLO Prisoner committee, Abdul Nasser Ferwaneh, gave testimony to the 5th European Union conference in support of prisoners. In delivering his report and testimony, Ferwaneh noted that the rate of child imprisonment by the Israeli state had nearly doubled, averaging around 700 children imprisoned annually from 2000 to 2010 but rising to around 1,250 between 2011 and 2018.

Defense for Children International Palestine (DCIP), citing data from the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) and Israeli army temporary detention facilities, recently reported that 414 Palestinian children were imprisoned by Israeli military courts in just the first two months of 2019.

An apartheid system with kangaroo courts

Since 1967, Palestinian children have been subjected to Israeli military law while Israeli settlers living in illegal West Bank settlements are governed by Israel’s civilian criminal legal system. Aside from the fact that subjecting two different populaces in the same area to two different legal systems is a clear manifestation of apartheid, Israel is the only country in the world that automatically tries children in military courts, courts that lack basic fair trial guarantees and have a near-automatic conviction rate. In addition, many Palestinian children are arbitrarily detained, or imprisoned without charge.

Most Palestinian children tried in military court are accused of throwing stones — which, as of 2015, can carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. No Israeli child has ever been tried in an Israeli military court.

Children in detention in Israeli jails are often subjected to various forms of abuse, including “slapping, beating, kicking and violent pushing” as well as verbal abuse, according to prisoner-rights group Adameer. Adameer has also noted that Palestinian children are sometimes threatened with rape in order to extract confessions, which are often written in Hebrew — a language most Palestinian children can’t read or understand.

Obaida Akram Jawabra, a 15-year-old who has already been arrested twice by Israel, told DCIP that in prison “[Israeli] soldiers would beat me in places that would leave no marks so there wouldn’t be evidence on my body that I could use to testify against them.” Figures released by DCIP claim that 75 percent of Palestinian child prisoners report being subjected to physical violence while in prison and 62 percent report being subjected to verbal violence.

The majority of Palestinian children in detention are unable to receive family visits, since nearly 60 percent of all child detainees are transferred from the West Bank to Israeli prisons upon conviction. This practice, which violates the Fourth Geneva Convention — coupled with restrictions on Palestinians’ freedom of movement in the West Bank and the long delays in issuing permits for entry to Israel — prevents the vast majority of West Bank Palestinian families from visiting their imprisoned children.

While Israel’s government often touts itself as the “only democracy” in the Middle East, it is also the only government in the entire world that detains children through military courts with a near 100 percent conviction rate, something that even Saudi Arabia does not do. Israel’s practice of imprisoning Palestinian children is a clear violation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Israel in 1991, as it routinely robs thousands of children of their right to a safe childhood.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.

April 29, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel lets settlers spend Passover at former outpost where Palestinian landowners remain excluded

MEMO | April 29, 2019

Israeli occupation authorities allowed settlers to celebrate Passover at the site of the former Amona outpost in the northern West Bank, despite the fact that the location is a closed military zone.

According to Haaretz, the site “became a recreation spot for Jewish settlers during the Passover holiday”, even though the Palestinians who own the land on the hill “are still not allowed access”.

The outpost was evacuated in 2017 on orders of the Israeli Supreme Court, who ruled it had been established on privately-owned Palestinian land.

As reported by Haaretz, shortly before the removal of settlers from Amona, “the army issued the order barring access to the site by civilians”, an order “now strictly enforced to keep Palestinian landowners from the nearby villages of Ein Yabrud and Silwad from farming their land at the site”.

The order has not been enforced, however, “when it comes to Jews, who are able to access the site fairly easily on a road from the nearby settlement of Ofra”.

“It’s clear that after years during which the state got used to conducting itself in cooperation with the settlers in stealing land in the West Bank, it’s hard to wean itself off,” Dror Etkes of settlement watchdog Kerem Navot told Haaretz.

A Palestinian petition to the Supreme Court demanding access to their land at the site is still pending.

April 29, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

For NYT, Israel Is Always Nearing ‘Apartheid,’ but Never Quite Gets There

By Gregory Shupak | FAIR | April 26, 2019

Following Benjamin Netanyahu’s re-election as Israeli prime minister earlier this month, the New York Times’ editorial board (4/11/19) wrote:

Under Mr. Netanyahu, Israel is on a trajectory to become what critics say will be an apartheid state like the former South Africa—a country in which Palestinians will eventually be a majority, but without the rights of citizens.

A harsh criticism? Actually, the paper has been saying that Israel/Palestine could “become” an apartheid state for the better part of two decades. It ran a piece in 2003 (1/29/03) arguing that

if Israel does not give up the territories, it will face a choice: relinquish either democracy or the ideal of a Jewish state. Granting Palestinians in the territories the right to vote would turn Israel into an Arab state with a Jewish minority. Not allowing them to vote would result in a form of permanent apartheid.

For almost 20 years, the paper has suggested that Israel/Palestine risks devolving into an apartheid state if it continues to rule over Palestinians in the territories—Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem—who cannot choose their rulers. This population includes approximately 4.75 million occupied Palestinians—320,000 in East Jerusalem, 2.8 million in the rest of the West Bank and 1.8 million in besieged Gaza—to say nothing of the millions of Palestinian refugees who cannot return to their homes and participate in elections because the people who put on those elections won’t let them.

That situation has remained the same, not only for the period that the Times has been publishing material saying the arrangement might someday add up to apartheid, but since 1967. Yet the Times persists in characterizing Israeli apartheid as a hypothetical future development. The paper acknowledges that governing millions of Palestinians but denying them the vote is a form of apartheid, so there’s no justification for saying, after nearly 52 years of such disenfranchisement, that that will eventually constitute apartheid, but for some unspecified reason doesn’t yet at this point.

Tom Friedman’s Groundhog Day

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman appears to be having a Groundhog Day experience: He keeps waking up, looking at Israel’s ethnocracy, and saying that if it continues to be apartheid, it will become apartheid. In 2002 (10/16/02), he commented:

If you think it is hard to defend Israel on campus today, imagine doing it in 2010, when the colonial settlers have so locked Israel into the territories it can rule them only by apartheid-like policies.

2010 came and went, and the “apartheid-like” conditions remained, but Friedman persisted in treating Israeli apartheid as a mere possibility, writing  (2/1/11) of the 2011 protests in Egypt:

If Israelis tell themselves that Egypt’s unrest proves why Israel cannot make peace with the Palestinian Authority, then they will be talking themselves into becoming an apartheid state — they will be talking themselves into permanently absorbing the West Bank and thereby laying the seeds for an Arab majority ruled by a Jewish minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

A year later (8/1/12), Friedman said:

It is in Israel’s overwhelming interest to test, test and have the US keep testing creative ideas for a two-state solution. That is what a real US friend would promise to do. Otherwise, Israel could be doomed to become a kind of apartheid South Africa.

Two years after that (2/11/14), Friedman said that “Israel by default could become some kind of apartheid-like state in permanent control over… 2.5 million Palestinians.” Even in this so-called criticism of Israel, Friedman does the state a favor by acting as though the West Bank Palestinians are the only ones disenfranchised by Israel, overlooking the refugees and Gaza, even as Israel continues to control the latter. (He also appears to leave out Palestinian Jerusalemites.)

Evidence for Already-Existing Apartheid

As Friedman and his paper kept predicting that Israel/Palestine could turn into an apartheid entity, evidence mounted that it is exactly that. For example, United Nations special rapporteur John Dugard found in 2007 that “elements of the [Israeli] occupation constitute forms of colonialism and of apartheid, which are contrary to international law.” He went on to say that at the checkpoints throughout the West Bank and surrounding Jerusalem,

a [Palestinian] person may be refused passage through a checkpoint for arguing with a soldier or explaining his documents…. Checkpoints and the poor quality of secondary roads Palestinians are obliged to use, in order to leave the main roads free for settler use, result in journeys that previously took 10 to 20 minutes taking 2 to 3 hours…. In apartheid South Africa, a similar system [was] designed to restrict the free movement of blacks —the notorious “pass laws.”

Another UN special rapporteur, Richard Falk, noted in 2010 that “among the salient apartheid features of the Israeli occupation” are “discriminatory arrangements for movement in the West Bank and to and from Jerusalem,” as well as

extensive burdening of Palestinian movement, including checkpoints applying differential limitations on Palestinians and on Israeli settlers, and onerous permit and identification requirements imposed only on Palestinians.

A March 2017 report by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia concluded that “Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.”

That July, however, Friedman (7/12/17) continued to treat Israeli apartheid as something that might happen down the road, wishing that President Trump had admonished Netanyahu in a meeting between the two:

Bibi, you win every debate, but meanwhile every day the separation of Israel from the Palestinians grows less likely, putting Israel on a “slippery slope toward apartheid,” as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently warned.

Last September (9/19/18), Friedman was still worried about this supposedly theoretical scenario:

Without some dramatic advance, there is a real chance that whatever Palestinian governance exists will crumble, and Israel will have to take full responsibility for the health, education and welfare of the 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank. Israel would then have to decide whether to govern the West Bank with one legal authority or two, which would mean Israel would be choosing between bi-nationalism and apartheid, both disasters for a Jewish democracy.

Netanyahu, Friedman went on to say, has failed to offer “any new, or old, ideas on how to separate from the Palestinians to avoid the terrible choices of bi-nationalism and apartheid.”

Erasing Palestinians

Setting aside the troubling assertion that Israelis and Palestinians living as equals would be not only a “disaster,” but as bad a “disaster” as apartheid, Friedman ignored the fact that just two months earlier, the Knesset had passed the Nation State Law that defined Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people. The law asserted that “the realization of the right to national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” even though 20 percent of the population living inside Israel is not Jewish; encouraged “the development of Jewish settlement” and vowed that the state will “promote its establishment and consolidation.” It declared that “the state’s language is Hebrew,” deprecating Arabic, the first language of roughly half the people under that state’s control.

The Nation State Law demonstrates that the bad faith, future tense descriptions of Israeli apartheid are overly narrow, in that they focus exclusively on the Palestinian territories that Israel has occupied since 1967. Yet on the Israeli-held side of the Green Line, Palestinians are systematically discriminated against.

It’s not only the occupation that make Israel/Palestine apartheid. It’s the Israeli state’s foundational principles and actions: driving two-thirds of the indigenous Palestinian population from their homes at its birth, subsequently making more than 2 million of them refugees, and then denying their right to return, despite its being mandated under international law.

Meanwhile, Jewish people anywhere on Earth are given the right to immigrate, because Israeli leaders want to maintain a demographic advantage. They pursue this goal—with decisive help from their sponsors in Washington—through their longstanding operational policy mantra: maximum land, minimum Arabs.

Not even three full days after the New York Times’ most recent brooding about how Israel might “become” an apartheid state, Israel’s Supreme Court approved the demolition of 500 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem. Is it apartheid yet?

April 28, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »