According to the Israeli army, Jews are now a minority in Israeli-controlled territory. Palestinians outnumber them. This is despite all the creative measures Israel has used to minimize the number of Palestinians and boost the number of Jews.
These measures include killing, starving and preventing adequate medical treatment for Palestinians (especially in Gaza but also in the West Bank), seizing and destroying their homes and property, separating families, outright expulsion (from Jerusalem, for example), capturing and terrorizing children, and making economic activity all but impossible. The purpose is to get Palestinians to leave, reproduce in smaller numbers or simply die more quickly. Despite some success with each of these, the goal continues to elude its pursuers.
Part of the reason is that the number of Jews is not keeping pace. More than a million are estimated to have emigrated from Israel in the last decade, even though they continue to be counted as Israeli Jews. Israel has found “Jews” among Peruvian Indians, Ethiopian tribes and minority groups from India. American Jews who opt to be buried in Israel are considered “immigrants” and given Israeli citizenship. Nevertheless, it appears to be a losing battle, according to army statistics.
Now the Diaspora Ministry is coming to the rescue. It recommends admitting as “Jews” populations that have an “affinity to Israel and Judaism. These include communities that declare themselves to be Jewish but are not recognized as such, as well as communities (like the marranos in Spain), that have a historical Jewish connection, in some cases more than half a millennium old. In these cases, the immigrants would have to “convert” to Orthodox Judaism, as was done with the Ethiopians, Peruvians and Indians.
Although this proposal is controversial, it holds potential for a more creative (but possibly more justified) solution to the demographic “bomb” that the other measures are attempting to address. Ancestry has always been the eligibility criterion for becoming an Israeli citizen. Currently, proving a Jewish grandparent is sufficient. The Diaspora Ministry proposal would extend the definition to include those descended from a historically Jewish population.
This is the key that enables a creative solution. Since Israelites were the original Jewish population, who better to recruit than their descendants, some of whom may have converted to other religions since that time? The most likely candidates are those still living in the region where the Israelites lived. There is strong historical evidence that many of them were among the first to convert to Christianity and later Islam. Many of them can trace branches of their family back hundreds of years or even more than a millennium in the same location.
While it is true that much of this population might be uninterested in converting, there are many Israeli “Jews” that are already Buddhist, Baha’i, Christian (Russian Orthodox), and atheist. Religion need not be an obstacle; just consider them Jews and give them Israeli citizenship, as has been done with so many others without asking for conversion. This has the advantage of eliminating the non-Jewish Palestinian population (by considering them Jewish) while doubling the Jewish population (by the same means) of Israel and all the territories that it controls.
Giving Palestinians Jewish status is obviously much more than a demographic solution, because it holds the potential to solve a host of other problems – perhaps most of the outstanding issues – with the Palestinians. Considering them Jews would make them legally indistinguishable from other Israeli citizens (not the “second-class” status of Palestinian citizens of Israel) and therefore endow them with truly equal rights.
Of course, this proposal is unlikely to be considered seriously, no matter how well it fits the twisted logic of who qualifies as a Jew and is eligible to become an Israeli citizen. This is because of an insurmountable obstacle that trumps all others – racism. Whatever other considerations might be relevant, Palestinians are for Israel and the Zionist leadership, “the Enemy”. Israel defines itself and its Jewish population in opposition to Palestinians, who are to be kept out of sight and functionally disenfranchised if their existence has to be conceded at all. In fact, the objective is to make them disappear altogether, as more than a century of Zionist vision and planning has made clear.
There is little point in trying to find logical and acceptable solutions of this kind. Israel is not seeking peace, accommodation, compromise, or tolerance. From the point of the Zionist leadership, there is no benefit to it. The Israeli economy, culture and social structure depend entirely upon a hostile relationship with Palestinians and Israel’s neighbors. The only currently acceptable solution for Israel is complete capitulation; i.e., for Palestinians to give up all claims to their land and existence as a nation. Even that is doubtful, because Israel could potentially collapse if it doesn’t find new enemies. But there is no danger of that.
Paul Larudee is one of the founders of the Free Gaza and Free Palestine Movements and an organizer in the International Solidarity Movement.
A Palestinian video journalist and photographer who had just been contracted to work with MEMO has been hospitalised after being shot by Israeli sniper fire today while covering The Great March of Return near Gaza’s eastern border.
Though wearing a vest marked ‘PRESS’, Yaser Murtaja, co-founder of Ain Media production company, was shot in the abdomen by Israeli snipers perched on a hilltop on Gaza’s border.
Israeli sniper shoots journalist on #Gaza border and now he is in the operation room in hospital. pic.twitter.com/m3Pw21SWRK
Ain Media, which is made up of a dozen Palestinian media professionals, has been covering the events taking place near Gaza’s border with Israel since Friday. In the past, the team have produced work for Al JazeeraDocumentaries, BBC Arabic, VICE, Alaraby TV, UNICEF, UNRWA and Oxfam amongst others.
In an interview with MEMO earlier this month, Yaser said that his passion for filming and photography was born out of his desire to document the events taking place in the besieged Gaza Strip and to do what he could to help shed light on the reality of life in Gaza and the plight of fellow countrymen under occupation and blockade.
At least 23 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza and more than 1,500 others wounded during the Great March of Return, a six-week demonstration and sit-in which started last Friday to mark Palestine Land Day and is calling for the implementation of the Right of Return.
Palestinians come together near Gaza’s eastern border for ‘The Great March of Return’
Demonstrators are demanding that Palestinian refugees be granted their right to return to their towns and villages in historical Palestine, from which they were driven in 1948 to make way for the state of Israel.
In the run-up to the mass demonstrations last week Israel deployed thousands of troops on the border, threatening to use live ammunition against anyone who threatened Israel’s “security infrastructure”.
Geraldo Rivera was asked on the Fox show “The Five” on April 3, 2018 whether he ever regretted a story he had done.
In reply he said that he regretted not supporting Palestinians during the Second Intifada (uprising) against Israeli “occupation and oppression.” He said he regretted “chickening out” and not “adding my voice as a Jew.”
That’s an excellent excellent question. Let me tell you what I regret. I regret in 2002 backing down from backing the Palestinians in their conflict with Israel, the Second Intifada. Because I saw with my own eyes how, and I know this is going to resonate very poorly with the people watching right now– but still, I have to tell you how I feel. I saw at firsthand how those people were– and now you just had 14, 15 people killed in Gaza. Palestinians killed by the IDF forces. I saw what an awful life they live under constant occupation and oppression, and people keep saying, “Oh, they are terrorists, or they are this or they are that.”
They are an occupied people and I regret chickening out after 2002 and not staying on that story and adding my voice as a Jew, adding my voice to those counseling a two-state solution. It’s so easy to put them out of sight, out of mind, and let them rot, and be killed, and keep this thing festering. And I think a lot of our current problems stem from – that’s almost our original sin, Palestine and Israel. I want a two-state solution. I want President Trump to re-energize the peace process.
The Second Intifada was a mass, largely unarmed Palestinian uprising that began in fall of 2000. To see those killed on both sides scroll down here. For information on the current situation in Gaza go here.
Beyond the general concerns regarding the nomination of John Bolton as National Security Advisor, there is also the specific issue of his impending access to the most highly classified intelligence information that the United States possesses.
There are a number of reasons why Bolton should be denied a clearance, including his well-known record of abusing subordinates at State Department and colleagues at the United Nations. Bolton also has a close personal relationship with Israel and its government that may have included divulging classified information. The Israeli connection is particularly sensitive because Bolton is beholden to casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who has funded his activities since he left State Department in 2006. And Bolton knows how to return a favor, approving of Adelson’s suggestion to detonate a nuclear bomb in the Iranian desert, just to warn them what might be coming. Adelson, a major GOP donor, was displeased with Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster, and to have been instrumental in their removal. Both men supported the nuclear agreement with Iran and both are now gone. McMaster was also targeted as “anti-Israeli” for having opposed moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Bolton’s regard for Israel has included unauthorized disclosure of classified information when he was Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. He collaborated with the Israelis, often without the State Department being aware of what he was doing, to justify a US attack on Iran. The strategy to bring about a war included diplomatic pressure, crude propaganda, and the production of fabricated evidence by Mossad.
Bolton was technically under the supervision of Secretary of State Colin Powell, but he violated existing State Department regulations by taking a series of secret trips to Israel in 2003 and 2004. Thus, when Secretary of State Colin Powell was saying administration policy was not to attack Iran, Bolton was working with the Israelis to lay the groundwork for a new war. During a February 2003 visit, Bolton assured Israeli officials in private meetings that he had no doubt the United States would take down Saddam Hussein, before dealing with Iran and Syria.
During multiple trips to Israel, Bolton had unannounced meetings, including with the head of Mossad, Meir Dagan, without the usual reporting cable to the Secretary of State. Those meetings clearly dealt with a joint strategy on how to bring about political conditions for an eventual US strike against the Iranians.
John Bolton, while serving as US ambassador to the United Nations, also went behind his boss’s back to supply Israel with crucial information on American plans at the U.N. so as to redirect US policy. Dan Gillerman, who served as Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. in 2006 when Bolton was US ambassador has described how “in more than one case, Ambassador Bolton called me and alerted me to the fact that his mission—the United States mission to the U.N.—was about to vote against Israel and asked that I alert the prime minister, who at that time was Ehud Olmert. In more than one case the prime minister called the president, who was then George W. Bush, and got him to overrule the State Department.”
Bolton would regularly reach out to the Israelis to subvert positions being supported by the US government, as in August 2006 when the U.N. Security Council was considering Resolution 1701, with the purpose of ending a month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Bolton warned the Israelis what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was planning to support the initiative. Gillerman reports that “In that case John Bolton got in touch with me at about 8 o’clock in the evening, which was 3 in the morning in Israel, calling to say ‘You have to call your prime minister and tell him that Condi Rice sold you out to the French.’”
Given what John Bolton did when last in office, he should never again be allowed to have access to classified information since he would clearly abuse that privilege to satisfy his own agenda. That President Trump will undoubtedly grant Bolton access to all sensitive information is discouraging, particularly as the new Advisor, supremely sure of himself and possessing a proclivity to do what he considers expedient without regard for consequences, cannot be relied to do the right thing when it comes to national security. He should never be granted a clearance to use top level intelligence and should never be placed in a position of authority that would permit him to do mischief. Unfortunately, urging President Trump to reverse the Bolton decision because of the grave damage it will inevitably do to the United States is not likely to be received favorably by the White House.
One Democratic State (ODS) has the wind at its back. The last two years have seen a flurry of organizing for ODS, increasingly since December 2017 when the US/Israel axis rejected the central Palestinian demand for its capital, Jerusalem, thereby rendering the Palestinian ‘state’ of the two-state solution once and for all unacceptable.
But ODS is not a reaction to the infeasibility, impracticality, impossibility or ‘death’ of the two-state solution. First, ODS always said the two-state solution is primarily undesirable, whether it is feasible or not: it partitions the homeland, does not involve real sovereignty, and leaves the refugees and the Palestinians in Israel out in the cold.
Rather, ODS has always been based on first principles: The unity of Palestine, human rights, citizenship for all who live between the river and the sea and the absolute inalienability of the right of return as citizens and property restitution for the ethnically-cleansed Palestinians wherever they live.
Such a clear position, thwarted by the Zionism of the powers that be, was held by the Palestinian leadership from 1918 until 1948 in testimony before the King-Crane Commission in 1919, resolutions of the seven Palestine Arab Congresses between 1919 and 1928, petitions to the British Mandatory and League of Nations in the 1930s, positions at the St James Roundtable talks of 1939, at the Anglo-American Commission in 1946 and at the UN Special Committee on Palestine in 1947.
While the PLO Charters of 1964 and 1968 lack detail about the envisaged independent Palestinian state, until 1974 the Palestinian National Councils pursued one secular, democratic state in all of Palestine, supported by 99% of Palestinians. This leadership then over a period of fifteen years gradually abandoned ODS in favor of the Bantustan solution promised by the Oslo accords twenty years later.
That is, until the late 1980s the core of the two-state solution – accepting partition, accepting Jewish ethno-religious rights in Palestine, ditching the refugees – was never really worth talking about. The Galilee-basedAbnaa al-Balad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine rejected the PLO change, keeping the ODS vision alive under severe repression by the Zionist entity. The revival of the ODS vision after the Oslo disaster was led by such as Edward Said, Ghada Karmi, Azmi Bishara and Tony Judt.
Between 2004 and 2007 the books appeared: Mazin Qumsiyeh’s Sharing the Land of Canaan, Virginia Tilley’s The One-State Solution, Ali Abunimah’s One Country, Ghada Karmi’s Married to Another Man. Conferences were held in Madrid, Southampton, Haifa, Boston, London, Stuttgart, Munich, Zürich, Dallas, Toronto. Articles were written, anthologies appeared: Jamil Hilal’s Where Now for Palestine?, Lowenstein & Moor’s After Zionism, Hani Faris’s The Failure of the Two-State Solution, as well as Ofra Yeshua-Lyth’s The Case for a Secular New Jerusalem.
As well as these authors, leaders like Omar Barghouti, George Bisharat, Susan Abulhawa, Ilan Pappe, Nur Masalha, Leila Farsakh, Haim Bresheeth, Annemarie Jacir, Joseph Massad, Salman Abu Sitta and Norton Mezvinsky all came out publicly for ODS. BADIL and academics such as Walid Khalidi, Victor Kattan, Rex Brynen, Naseer Aruri, Francis Boyle, Rosemary Sayigh and John Quigley worked ceaselessly for the right of return, which can happen only within the ODS framework.
Finally, organisation
The political party National Democratic Assembly (Tajammua, or Balad), currently part of the Joint List in the Knesset, has for the last twenty years advocated an Israel that is ‘the state of its citizens’, not of Jews only, while standing strongly by the right of return. Its program would render the areas occupied in 1948 truly democratic, but was less specific on re-unification of Palestine and the modalities of return. ODS – that is, bog-standard democratic ideology – was the reason for the effective exile of its then leader Azmi Bishara in 2007.
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) of course also implies ODS. If the three conditions stated in 2004 for calling off the boycott were fulfilled – sovereignty for the West Bank and Gaza Strip, absolute equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Return – you would have what might be called Two Democratic States. But if one adds the fourth BDS demand, that for Palestinian self-determination, which since Woodrow Wilson’s day adamantly included rejection of partition of the homeland, re-unification into a single state follows rigorously.
Three declarations similar to ODS but leaning somewhat towards the contrasting bi-national solution appeared in 2006-2007, written by Palestinians in Israel:The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel of the National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel,The Democratic Constitution of Adalah, andThe Haifa Declaration of Mada al-Carmel, the Arab Center for Applied Social Research.
The sites 1not2 and One Democracy, based in England, and One Democratic State, based in Texas (website presently hijacked), carried the torch internationally for some time. The latter group is led by Samir Abed Rabbo, author of the Munich Declaration of 2012 which unites three further groups formed in 2013: in May the Popular Movement for One Democratic State on the Land of Historic Palestine, also in May the Jaffa ODS group, and in July in England the group ODS in Palestine Ltd. The straightforward, one-page Munich Declaration builds upon and is consistent with several ODS declarations that went before, written by people named above.
Most of the fifty members of the Popular Movement for ODS live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also in Turkey, Switzerland, England and the US. It is registered as a Swiss Association at Handelsregisteramt Zürich, Nr. CHE-390-290.948. Its Board members include Radi Jarai, Imad Saed, Ibrahim Saad, Ghada Karmi, Munir Abbushi, Ilan Pappe, Sameer Sbaihat, Walid Abu Tayeh and myself.
Most of the thirty members of ODS in Palestine Ltd live in England, some remaining anonymous in order to avoid the wrath of the apartheid state. It is registered as a Company Limited by Guarantee, Nr. 08615817. It has organised talks on ODS by Ghada Karmi, Ilan Pappe, Karl Sabbagh, Salma Karmi, Awad Abdelfattah, Ruba Salih and Gideon Levy, made a large metal key of return which stands in front of St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh, and seeks to complement the solidarity work being done on other fronts by focusing on the ODS solution.
Two further groups have emerged in 2016 and 2017. The One State Foundation is a non-membership group registered in Holland. Its three Board members are Hamada Jaber, Ofer Neiman and Angelique Eijpe, a Dutch diplomat. It laudably publishes in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and its Facebook page already has around 6,000 likes. Another group, organised primarily by Jeff Halper, is made up almost exclusively of Jewish Israelis and Palestinian citizens of Israel, and has been meeting in Haifa and Exeter. It leans somewhat towards the collective political rights of groups of citizens, defined on ethnic criteria, rather than the strictly individual-rights approach of ODS.
Other active individuals insist that the word ‘secular’ should appear in the name or title of an ODS movement or group, but it remains to be seen if they will become publicly visible as such a group.
Finally, some liberal Zionists as well as the group Independent Jewish Voices have put forth the idea of a true democracy for all now living between the river and the sea, but their position of compromise on right of return and retention of the Israeli Law of Return is incompatible with ODS.
Debates and Unity?
The right of return is the linchpin of the liberation of Palestine. This right means that any Palestinian wishing to return to places of origin (homes) in the territory now called Israel, from which they were displaced since 1948, could literally do so. Over 8 million Palestinians fit this description, and could join the almost 2 million Palestinians now living in the 48-occupied territory.
It also means that they all would be re-enfranchised as citizens of Palestine – whatever the formal structure of that state is, and whether or not they immigrated to Palestine. It also means full restitution of their property and compensation for losses incurred by dispossession and displacement since 1948. As in 1947, well over 90% of the land of historic Palestine would be under Palestinian private or municipal or waqf ownership.
While the right of return, respect for the human rights listed for instance in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and normal democratic rules of governance unify all of these groups and individuals, there are some areas of debate.
Most importantly, should ethnic or religious groups be explicitly granted political rights in Palestine? The century-old tradition of a state of its citizens, a continuation actually of the Ottoman regime from 1908 onwards, which included Muslims, Jews, Christians, Armenians, Druze, Europeans, and Circassians, was overturned by Britain with the words of Herbert Samuel and Winston Churchill in the White Paper of 1922, stating that “the Jewish people… is in Palestine as of right and not on the sufferance.”
That is, it is not some Jewish individuals, but all Jews anywhere, that have political rights in Palestine. The British had adopted this Zionist nation-state goal. Of course this notion, like the idea that Hindus or Druze or Roman Catholic Christians, say, have political claims to Palestine by virtue of their genes or religion, is not to be taken seriously.
The fear of many supporters of ODS, however, is that acknowledging any collective rights defined in terms of race or religion could open the door to some such bi-nationalism, the ideology that there are two (actually there are more) ethnically-defined ‘nations’ in historic Palestine with equal collective rights: the old, false picture of parity, two sides with equal ethical claims fighting for one state.
It is often overlooked that the collective claims of Palestinians are not defined racially, but rather multi-racially as the land’s indigenous people. Their claims are justifiable in terms of collective self-determination, but the collective is territorially and historically defined, not racially.
Of course it is possible that the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), one of the two large Palestinian political groups, is making political claims for Muslims which would trump those of non-Muslims. Its new Document released last May, after all, states that Palestine’s “frame of reference is Islam” and that it is “an Arab Islamic land”.
Hamas of course envisions a re-unified independent Palestine and supports right of return without any ifs and buts, but likely differs from ODS in regarding as “Palestinians” only “Arabs who lived in Palestine until 1947”, leaving the question of the citizenship of non-Arabs open. While ODS would treat all present Israeli Jews also as citizens, albeit comprising a minority, Hamas on this formulation would have to adopt a concept of ‘non-Palestinian citizen of Palestine’. Similarly, the Islamic Movement in Israel would have to square the circle of a state which is both democratic and either ‘Arab’ or ‘Islamic’.
Another debate is over the word ‘secular’, which in English means not atheism or state opposition to religion, but rather merely the separation of state and religion (and ethnicity). However, in Arabic and in the political history of Palestine and the wider Near East the term does apparently carry such connotations. Thus, the Munich Declaration in Articles 4 and 5 describes a secular state without using the word.
A final issue is the exact nature of the restitution of property. The wheel must not be re-invented, as precedents abound, not least pertaining to the property of Jews confiscated in the 1930 and 1940s in Europe. The view applied in those cases took property rights strictly, and in the case of Palestine would mean that once ownership reverts to Palestinians or a Palestinian political or religious institution, the restored owners would have the right to say what happens on that land and who lives and works there. That is what ownership normally means.
The contrasting view would abrogate this conception of property rights in order to assure that no Jewish individual – or, for that matter, no Palestinian resident on other Palestinians’ land – would be evicted; the search is for a politically necessary collective compromise in spite of the inalienability of property rights in international law. Here, it seems, the human rights of dispossessed Palestinians might have to be weighed against the humanitarian situation of people, descendants of recent immigrants, who were born into residency and life in Palestine.
ODS is a Positive Vision
Again, in portraying ODS we don’t have to even mention the two-state solution, or its demise, its impossibility or even its blatant violation of most of the rights of the vast majority of Palestinians. Whatever the ethics and practical politics of the two-state farce, they are a negative distraction and can be safely ignored.
What’s more, ODS can be argued for while avoiding any obsession with Israel, what it does, what it wants, who it is. The argument proceeds from Palestinian rights, period. Such focus on Israelis – on whether they will ‘accept’ ODS or not – is even a form of normalization. A shift from criticizing Israel to ignoring it might be salutory.
Anything other than the one undemocratic, apartheid state now existing, which bars 7 million Palestinians from entering Palestine, much less returning to it, must be achieved by extreme and manifold outside pressure on the Israeli state. While ODS wholeheartedly welcomes any Jewish Israeli, it tends to take a sober look at dialogue with Zionism, a dialogue that has been going on in vain for over 100 years – the more so as between 80 and 90% of Jewish Israelis hold firmly to Zionism.
Working on convincing Palestinians to stand behind ODS, on the other hand, holds promise – the more so as at least half of them are sympathetic to it. While visiting Lebanon last year I met no Palestinian who did not support ODS. Recent polls of only West Bank and Gaza Strip residents even show over 40% support, and since ODS is the only solution that does justice to the Palestinians in the diaspora, it is a safe assumption that ODS has an overwhelming majority when all Palestinians are asked.
Encouraging is the movement of Diaspora Palestinians which, as the Palestine Abroad Conference, co-chaired by Majed Al-Zeer of the Palestinian Return Centre, held a meeting attended by over 5,000 people in Istanbul in February 2017. While I know little about this group, its program is likely to be uncompromising on right of return and de-partition of the homeland.
Like other international supporters of all the rights of all Palestinians, I have had to pick and choose from among Palestinian positions. There is no unifying position. What’s more, there is no vision. Like other seemingly impossible yet ultimately successful quests – anti-slavery, say, or women’s suffrage, or anti-South African Apartheid or, indeed, Zionism – it seems to me the Palestinian cause needs a vision.
The two-state solution is anything but a vision. While no non-Palestinian should argue for one second with any Palestinian who has paid the dues, who believes that suffering has gone on long enough, and that one must take anything that would count as a Palestinian state in the homeland, we do have the option of respecting Palestinians who hold that two-state position but working with those Palestinians and Jewish Israelis who want democracy beyond ethnicity, religion and colonialism, and the return, as citizens, of all Palestinians.
– Blake Alcott is an ecological economist and the director of One Democratic State in Palestine (England) Limited. The author welcomes any information on ODS or bi-nationalism activity sent to blakeley@bluewin.ch.
French Armed Forces, armed with FAMAS F1 assault rifles, participate in the Memorial Day ceremony at the LaFayette Escadrille Monument in Paris, France.
French President Emmanuel Macron kept his word. On April 1-2, French troops moved into northern Syria. This is the first time France deployed substantial forces there to turn Paris into a new actor actively involved in the war. The troops advanced toward Manbij and Remelin to join American allies and did it hastily.
The move was made at the time Ankara warned about the plans to control this territory with Russia, Turkey and Iran working together to define Syria’s future. It significantly changes the situation and makes one ask questions about the goals pursued by the US and France and the prospects for war and peace in the conflict-torn country. Summing up the recent events leads to the conclusion that the US and France have a hidden agenda to expand the conflict, wreak havoc and stymie the Russia-led peace efforts.
The news about French deployment came just before the April 4 Russia-Turkey-Iran summit in Ankara stated the goal to “speed up their efforts to ensure calm on the ground” in Syria. On April 3, US President Donald Trump said he would “decide very quickly” to remove forces from that country. The statement was made right after about 300 US Marines accompanied by armored vehicles and engineering equipment were moving toward Manbij as reinforcements to repel possible Turkish inroads. The construction of two bases in Syria’s northern Manbij region is underway.
The Marines have already launched daily patrols along the Sajur River, a tributary that feeds the Euphrates River from sources in Turkey, with observation posts built to monitor the area. This is unheard of – two leading states of the North Atlantic Alliance blocked the other NATO member’s land access to Manbij! On April 3, CNNreported that plans to send reinforcements have been discussed for several days before Trump’s remarks on leaving Syria soon.
The US also wasted no time to press Iraq into sending its 5th Army Division to Sinjar province and line the forces on the Iraqi-Syrian border to obstruct the possible advance of Turkish army from Syria into Iraq.
Obviously, the US is trying to partition Syria while creating a quasi-state on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and up to the Iraqi border. In Deir-ez-Zor, the US-led coalition resists the restoration of Syrian government institutions. It makes one think that the words about “leaving soon” may be nothing more than wishful thinking or an attempt to baffle those who are trying to predict further steps America will take.
The list of goals includes controlling the oil fields and chunks of the territory. Donald Trump wants Saudi Arabia to pay for US operations in Syria and it probably will. If the decision to leave were taken, he wouldn’t raise the question. According to the president, Saudi Arabia is interested in America staying in Syria.
That’s what the US “rocking from side to side” foreign policy is like. Rex Tillerson is fired to make the world know about it from tweets. The US wants to leave Syria but will stay if Saudi Arabia pays. Donald Trump invited the Russian leader to visit him in Washington against the background of Russia diplomats expelled and the consulate office in Seattle closed. Is it being short-sighted or far-sighted? Is this swinging back and forth a well-thought over policy or no policy at all? Is it done on purpose to keep everyone guessing with no predictions possible? You never know. Donald Trump once denounced Saudi Arabia as extremist and then sold a huge package of weapons while calling the kingdom a great friend and close ally against Iran.
The Syrian forces are preparing an offensive in the Daraa – Quneira – Suweida area in the south while denuding other fronts. The territory is huge and the terrain is hard to cross. There are at least 25 heights to fire at advancing forces from. The Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups are much more numerous than the ones being defeated in Eastern Ghuta. Their defenses are strong. Unlike in other places, the rebel forces can easily get logistical support from Jordan. That’s where the US and Saudi Arabia can contribute greatly. Israel has been involved in such activities since 2015. It took roughly six months to liberate Eastern Ghuta, with an active phase to dislodge rebel fighters launched in mid-March. It’s easy to surmise that it will take at least a year, may be much more, to liberate the area in question.
A conflict is easy to provoke. The operations of Syria’s government forces aimed at cutting off supplies coming from Jordan could be presented as an act of aggression against the Hashemite Kingdom. Chemical substances could be transported from Jordan to stage another provocation used as a pretext to attack Syria.
The operation could become a war of attrition to make Syria concentrate more and more of its forces in one place at the expense of other battlefields. They will be stuck there for a considerable period of time. That’s when the US-coalition will be in good position to attack anywhere it wants using the base of Al-Tanf as a springboard. Manbij as well as the Al-Tabka air base located to the south of Raqqa are perfect places for launching an offensive to drive Syria out from Aleppo. Then the country will plunge again into an “all-against-all” fight.
The efforts applied so far by Russia, Turkey and Syria will go down the drain. This time the US will not be alone to have substantial presence on the ground. It’s hard to imagine that the French forces arrived in Syria could be anything but the start of broader NATO presence with other members of the bloc to follow the French example. Russian military personnel and NATO soldiers will be looking at each other through the sights of guns. This scenario will be fraught with a great risk of international military conflict and a real tragedy for Syrian people but those who are provoking it don’t care.
During peaceful protests on March 30 in eastern Gaza, an unarmed Palestinian man walked on farmland towards the fence built by his occupiers. Within minutes, he was shot by one of the 100 Israeli special forces snipers deployed along the fence precisely to quash dissent—by any means necessary—under the old pretext of “self-defense.”
On the same day, a Palestinian woman, armed solely with a flag, walked towards the fence which has imprisoned her for so many years. She, too, was targeted by one of the snipers.
Among the 17 killed that day was a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old farmer, the latter killed by Israeli tank fire.
Even the BBC, which is not generally known to report fairly on Palestine, noted: “The first to die was Omar Samour, 27 – a Palestinian farmer killed in Israeli shelling as he worked his land near Khan Younis early on Friday, before the protests began.”
Yet, according to Israel, this farmer was a “terrorist infiltrator,” the lexicon which Israel uses to whitewash its extrajudicial assassinations.
Sputnik reports that the Israeli Army spokesperson proudly tweeted they knew “where every bullet landed,” but later deleted the tweet, likely because it was clear these bullets landed in the bodies of unarmed protesters.
In my three years living in Gaza, I frequently accompanied such demonstrations, and also did so in countless demonstrations when I stayed as an activist for eight months in the West Bank. Having experienced these first hand, I’m acutely aware that Israel has zero moral authority on conduct.
In the tens of demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza which I accompanied, “violence” always began with the Israelis shooting live ammunition, lead bullets covered with a thin rubber layer, and suffocating tear gas at unarmed Palestinians. That Palestinian youths chose to respond with slingshot-spun rocks is entirely within their rights. But in my experiences, it was always Israel which began, shooting to maim and kill, kidnapping and imprisoning unarmed protesters.
On Land Day in March 2010, I joined one of six demonstrations that were held in the Gaza Strip. It was in Khoza’a village, east of Khan Younis. The four young Palestinian men targeted by Israeli snipers all reported being shot with live ammunition without any prior warnings, including one man shot in his head.
And as with the March 2018 Land Day demonstrations, Israel deemed the 2010 assault acceptable: “an investigation showed ‘soldiers operated in accordance with accepted dispersal procedures,’ in regards to the IDF violence against unarmed protestors.”
The “accepted dispersal procedures” of Israel occur on a daily basis throughout occupied Palestine, whether against unarmed protesters in Bil’in village near Ramallah, or against unarmed farmers—from children to elderly—in Gaza.
These procedures include firing on Palestinian civilians from remotely-controlled Israeli gun towers stationed along the fence enclosing Gaza. Israel also targets other civilians working in border regions, including children and youths collecting rubble and scrap metal for use in construction.
Western media is reporting that the 2018 attacks on Palestinian protesters was the single bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 “clashes.” The lexicon of “clashes” – used to refer to Israel’s brutal summer 2014 bombardment of Gaza, and also the recent Israeli assassinations of civilians in protests – is corporate media’s typical distortion of reality and of the balance of power. When unarmed protesters calling for human rights are literally gunned down, these are not “clashes,” these are assassinations.
Further, this negates the near-daily Israeli targeting of Palestinian farmers, fishers, and people working in the border regions. This including sniping at and shelling women, elderly, and children.
In the farmer accompaniment work I did in Gaza, many Israeli soldiers fired live ammunition at and around myself and other volunteers, at close proximity, in an effort to aggress and frighten farmers off of their land. Israel’s policy of attacking Palestinian farmers and fishers is a part of their larger policy of rendering Palestinians utterly dependent on inadequate food aid and utterly, needlessly, impoverished.
In 2011, I wrote about the Israeli destruction of Palestinian agriculture in Gaza, noting:
“Around a decade ago, Palestinian farmers could still access land up to 50 metres from the border. The Israeli-deemed ‘no-go zone’ expanded over the years to 150 metres, then 300 metres, cutting Palestinian farmers from their orchards, crops and grazing land.
“A decade later, those orchards bulldozed by Israeli bulldozers, farmers now struggle to access land in some areas up to two kilometres along the 300 metre buffer zone violently rendered off-limits by the Israeli soldiers.
“Over 30 percent of Gaza’s agricultural land is not worked on because of the buffer zone. This is Gaza’s more fertile land, where olive, fruit, citrus and nut trees once flourished, along with wheat, barley, rye and other crops, providing much of Gaza’s needs.”
Two brutal Israeli bombardments of Gaza later, the percentage of workable agricultural land will have decreased still further.
Turkey and Israel compete for moral supremacy
Following Israel’s attacks on Palestinian protesters, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan bashed Israel, stating:
“I do not need to tell the world how cruel the Israeli Army is. We can see what this terror state is doing by looking at the situation in Gaza and Jerusalem. Israel has carried out a massacre in Gaza and Netanyahu is a terrorist.”
While I happen to agree with this statement, it is particularly ironic that it comes from the leader of a state that is warring on Syria, has given safe passage, and weapons, to terrorists to enter Syria, and has in recent months killed hundreds of civilians in northwestern Syria.
Since late January, Turkey has been bombing Afrin, northwestern Syria. The latest casualty count I have found was 222 civilians murdered and 700 injured as of March 10, 2018. A later report states, “more than 1000 civilians martyred and injured,” thousands displaced, by the Turkish bombings.
Then, of course, there is Israel’s direct support to terrorists in Syria, including treating terrorists from the FSA to Al-Qaeda in Israeli hospitals.
Thus, both Israel and Turkey have civilians’ blood on their hands, and neither has been held accountable.
No justice has ever come to those civilians maimed, murdered, imprisoned by Israel. Nor has any international body truly pushed for justice. Weak words, quickly forgotten, are not the pursuit of justice and accountability of the perpetrators of crimes.
Predictably weak UN reaction
Following Israel’s assassination of Palestinian protesters, the United Nations issued weak statements of concern, but no actual condemnation of Israel’s brutality.
Absent the outrage which UN bodies and representatives reserve almost exclusively for war propaganda and whitewashing terrorists in Syria, UN Secretary-General António Guterres blandly offered his “thoughts” to the families of those murdered by Israel. He called for “an independent and transparent investigation into these incidents.” Just who would do such an investigation? Israel? The UN?
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman, known for his rabid anti-Palestinian statements, vetoed the call, stating, “There will be no commission of inquiry. We shall not cooperate with any commission of inquiry.”
The UN assistant secretary-general, Tayé-Brook Zerihoun, described the day of slaughter as having “devolved into violence at several locations across Gaza.” Seventeen unarmed Palestinians murdered by elite Israeli snipers is not “devolving into violence,” it is slaughter. Premeditated slaughter, at that.
We can expect precisely zero action or justice via the UN, when such a massacre is downplayed, and when prior Israeli massacres of Palestinians have never been held accountable by the UN or by the state which the UN routinely requests look into its own murdering.
At that same UNSC meeting, America’s UN delegate, Walter Miller, had the gall to put the blame on Palestinians. Miller described Palestinian civilians as: “Bad actors who use protests as a cover to incite violence [and] endanger innocent lives.”
America is fine with “rebels” like Al-Qaeda “protesting” in Syria, but when genuinely unarmed protesters in Palestine exercise their right under international law to protest the occupiers who violently expelled them from their homes and land, they are “inciting violence.” The hypocrisy of America and the UN never ends, and as a result, the violence of Israel will never end.
While Turkey cries crocodile tears for Palestinians, Israel pretends to be the most moral army in the world, and the UN turns endless blind eyes to Israel’s war crimes and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and Palestinians continue to bravely protest the crimes of Israel.
As Gareth Porter tweeted, “many 1000s of Gazans are ready to die as martyrs rather than submit to Israel’s policy of slow death; Israeli snipers will continue 2 kill Palestinian demonstrators in cold blood; US gov’t & news media have given Israel a green light.”
Indeed, the UN, corporate media and world leadership may, and do, ignore or vilify them, but Palestinians keep standing up to the most immoral military and government in the region.
Eva Bartlett is a freelance journalist and rights activist with extensive experience in the Gaza Strip and Syria. Her writings can be found on her blog, In Gaza.
On March 30, 2018 the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) committed cold-blooded murder in Gaza. Thousands of unarmed Palestinians marched peacefully to protest the occupation and declare their right to return to their homeland. The Great Return March was met with gunfire and 18 people died.
The killings were caught on camera but the response from the United States, its allies and their friends in corporate media reveal as much as any photography ever will. The massacre was either disappeared as if it never took place, or was described as a “clash.” The BBC, CNN, the New York Times and the rest of their cohort used this word which implies some equality in defense capability when one side, the one with the dead people, was completely unarmed.
The media covered up for Washington’s friends and politicians were silent. Bernie Sanders’ mealy mouthed response was one of the few to be heard. He called the shootings “tragic” and said that the IDF “over reacted.” Crediting him with these weasel words is damning with faint praise but this minimal response is not surprising given the degree of Israeli influence in American politics.
While the media and the politicians work themselves into a frenzy about alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election the Israeli government happily continues its decades long influence over American politics. It is quite open and understood by everyone that obedience to Zionism is a necessity in political life. Any politician who questions Israeli policy is at immediate risk of being defeated by a well-funded opponent. The media also collude and ensure silence on this subject, which is one of the most open secrets in American life.
One need only compare the official and media reaction when any nation declared an enemy is under attack. The differences in treatment are obvious and glaring. When the Iranian government faced domestic protests the United States demanded a United Nations Security Council investigation. Now the U.S. turns the tables and blocks Security Council investigation of Israel’s latest killing spree.
It is always clear who is on the outs with the United States and its NATO friends. There is no evidence that the Russian government poisoned former spy Sergie Skripal. Yet more than 20 countries followed the lead of the U.K. and expelled Russian diplomats over flimsy assertions. Any nation that dared to show skepticism quickly fell into line and repeated the unproven trope. New Zealand initially made the reasonable statement that it didn’t believe Russian diplomats stationed in that country were spies. Just one day later they announced that the expelled Russians wouldn’t be welcome there either. The quick change is itself proof of pressure exerted when the powerful nations want something done.
Everyone from journalists to politicians censor themselves. The process has been perfected to such a decree that no threat needs to be made. Everyone understands the risk of speaking out and few are willing to pay the price.
Consider the story of Steven Salaita, a highly regarded scholar of American Indian history. When he used social media to vent his outrage over Israel’s Gaza war crimes in 2014 he lost a tenured position at the University of Illinois. He eventually recovered monetary damages but four years later he was turned down for every position he sought in countries all over the world. The message is clear to any would-be critics of Israeli policy.
The American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) holds its annual conference and gets Democrats and Republicans to show up and say the same thing. Any politician who wants to run for office doesn’t stray from Zionist orthodoxy and even those with leftish credentials repeat verbatim the same words as the most hawkish conservative.
In 2014 Congress voted unanimously to support the Israeli government’s killing spree in Gaza. Even the vote to declare war on Japan in December 1941 was not unanimous. Nothing is ever unanimous in Congress. But this coordinated falling in line is itself proof of the heavy handed meddling that is a fact of political life in this country.
Israel would not exist at all without U.S. support. But its supporters have turned the dependency upside down. The recipient of American largesse is firmly in control of the debate and the result is that “serious” journalists keep a straight face when a massacre is labeled as a clash.
Steven Salaita spoke very eloquently about his experience as an opponent of Zionism. “I condemned a brutal ethnocratic state. On this count, I will die unapologetic. And insofar as we are forced to contemplate life in binaries, I prefer unemployment to subservience. My heart is with those who struggle for dignity amid terrible oppression.”
Those are courageous words. We should all strive to do likewise and not hesitate to say that a criminal apartheid state is just that. Like the endless videos showing police murder in the U.S., there was ample evidence of Israel’s brutality before the Great Return March. If Palestinians are willing to brave bullets the very least we can do is speak the truth and perhaps make life a little more difficult for people who interfere with what is left of democracy in this country.
Pro-Palestinian groups including the Boycott, Disinvestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement along with the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) have called on Netflix to discontinue the series ‘Fauda’ (Chaos in Arabic) for “sanitizing and normalizing war crimes” and “promoting and justifying these grave human rights violations.”
Originally produced by a network named, Yes, the series depicts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and justifies the crimes against humanity by the Israeli intelligence.
Calling the series, “racist propaganda material for the Israeli occupation army,” the BDS movement wrote a letter to Netflix, the United States-based entertainment company to remove the series.
The series produced by the two former Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) officers is scheduled to be broadcast in May, which also marks the 70th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) of the Palestinian people.
“The two authors [of the series], who are graduates of one of these teams, without any ambiguity have collaborated with the occupation, colonization and the Apartheid regime,” the letter noted, referring to the series’ creators, Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff’s former service in elite IDF units.
The series has won over 11 awards at the Israeli Academy for Film and Television awards in March, after which it was picked up by Netflix.
Netflix needs to “stop broadcasting and not to produce the third season of the series and remove the previous seasons” as “the series promotes and legitimizes the war crimes committed by death squads disguised as people pretending to be Arabs,” the BDS movement said in a statement.
“Fauda promotes and legitimizes violent acts committed against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory by Israeli army death squads — the so-called “Mistaravim.” The show’s writers, who were members in these units, have based the series on the war crimes committed by these squads against Palestinians,” PACBI said in a press release.
Adding that if Netflix fails to pay heed to the call of Palestinian social movements, it will face “nonviolent grassroots pressure and possible legal accountability.”
The Israeli army’s trigger-finger against Palestinian protesters close to the fence surrounding Gaza at the weekend, killing at least 18 and injuring hundreds more, has an explanation rooted in more than normal conceptions of security.
Even before Israel’s creation, its leaders were obsessed with demography and winning a zero-sum numerical war of attrition with the Palestinians. The consequences are still playing out to this day.
Last week, ahead of the Gaza protests, the Israeli army made an unexpected admission. It told parliamentarians that for the first time Jews are outnumbered by Palestinians living under Israeli rule, both inside Israel as citizens and in the territories under occupation.
It was a moment whose significance was not lost on Israeli legislators. Many were appalled, refusing to accept the army’s assessment that there are now half a million more Palestinians than Jews between the Mediterranean Sea and the river Jordan.
Avi Dichter, a right wing legislator and a former head of Israel’s secret police agency the Shin Bet, called the data “disconcerting”.
In 1948, when the Zionist movement saw a chance to seize control of as much of Palestine as possible, it understood that this goal could be achieved only through the ethnic cleansing of most of the native population. It was Zionism’s moment to create the “empty land” mythologised in its early slogans.
Today, the demographic successes of 1948 have been largely reversed. The Six-Day War of 1967 was over too quickly for Israel to expel more than a small proportion of the Palestinians living in the rest of the historic Palestine it had just conquered.
Higher Palestinian birth rates have been eroding the Jewish majority ever since while various schemes to force or pay Palestinians to leave have mostly failed.
Israeli officials’ ultimate fear in this demographic war is that the world will judge a minority of Israelis ruling over a majority of Palestinians as a new form of apartheid.
Seven decades on from its creation, Israel has won every battle, bar this one. The Palestinians are crushed. Washington now does little more than cheerleading for the settlers. Parts of the Middle East are in disarray. The Europeans have lost interest.
But in terms of the most pressing of all Israel’s struggles – for numerical dominance over Palestinians – Israel appears to be losing its seven-decade fight.
In a sign of growing levels of desperation, the Diaspora Affairs Ministry, headed by settler leader Naftali Bennett, announced a plan last week to track down those around the globe with an “affinity” to Israel or Judaism. In the ministry’s view, 90 million people may qualify.
According to an editorial in the Israeli daily Haaretz, officials regard this group as “demographic treasure … potential candidates to join the Jewish people and immigrate to Israel”.
But Israel is not only trying to bolster its Jewish population. It has been devising tangible ways to reduce the Palestinian population too.
Since 2003, Israel has effectively banned family reunifications for Palestinians in Israel who marry Palestinians in the occupied territories. Such families are under pressure to move abroad so they can live together.
More significantly, two years later Israel pulled its few thousand settlers out of Gaza, in part so it could claim it was no longer occupying the coastal enclave, even as it blockaded it from land, air and sea. It has argued unconvincingly – as the weekend’s events prove – that about two million Palestinians there, who constitute the fastest-growing Palestinian population, have been removed from the demographic equation.
Withdrawing from the rest of the territories has proven even harder. There is almost no support among Israeli Jews for giving up East Jerusalem and its holy sites, even though it is home to 300,000 Palestinians.
And a rapidly shrinking Israeli centre-left has lost the campaign to withdraw from the parts of the West Bank where large numbers of Palestinians live.
The right is committed to seizing all of the West Bank. The question now is how to annex it without the Palestinians becoming the majority population. Palestinian legislator Ahmed Tibi warned his Jewish colleagues last week that they were bringing closer their nightmare scenario of a Greater Israel ruled by an “Arab prime minister”. But no one, including Mr Tibi, believes that will be allowed to happen.
Instead two varieties of annexationists have emerged.
The first are those who want to intensify the campaign to force Palestinians out of most of the West Bank, gradually herding them into a handful of cities, in preparation for a series of ever-expanding annexations.
The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem issued a warning last week that dozens of Palestinian farming communities were facing imminent expulsion from Area C, which forms two-thirds of the West Bank.
Israel has stepped up home demolitions, torn up roads, denied Palestinians electricity and water, encouraged settler violence and conducted military and live fire training on Palestinian land. The aim, said B’Tselem, is to avoid international censure as Israel makes “life unbearable to force them to leave, as if by free choice”.
These are the “moderates” in the government. The other camp, exemplified by deputy defence minister Eli Ben Dahan, believes all the West Bank can be annexed, with the Palestinians viewed more like trees than human beings.
Last week he told Arutz Sheva, a settler news agency, that the army’s warning of a Palestinian majority should not “scare us”. Palestinians would simply be denied voting rights for the foreseeable future.
“They are far from [a] meaningful democracy as we know it,” he said, adding that Palestinians might eventually earn citizenship in a Greater Israel if they submitted absolutely. “There are many examples of citizenship that are given gradually,” he added.
Seventy years on, as the massacre in Gaza has underscored, Israeli leaders are faced with the same dilemma as its founders: should they again use violence to drive Palestinians from their homeland or establish an unapologetic and brutal apartheid state ruling over them?
Fear has consistently shaped Zionism’s approach towards the indigenous Palestinians. As Palestinians have been blamed for merely standing in the way of the colonizer, their removal which has entailed multidimensional policies of ethnic cleansing and genocide, has been rhetorically rationalized through Orientalist transformations of Palestinians from the original owners of the land into “Islamist” terrorists. While Palestinians face a multitude of structural and physical violence, reoccurring culminations of Israeli aggressions resulting in the mass production of Palestinian death have repeatedly highlighted the always-already dehumanized position of Palestinians in the Western political and public sphere.
The Great Return March, a popular, peaceful protest of Palestinian refugees in Gaza, discloses once again that Palestinians are being blamed for their very existence by Israel and its allies. The protest is a colonized population’s call for the implementation of international law. Gazans are collectively incarcerated, besieged at land, air, and water, denied the right to return – a right that was granted in UN Resolution 194 in 1948 – for seven decades, while simultaneously facing a tremendous humanitarian catastrophe that entails the lack of food, water, and electricity. Reduced to bare existence, Israel regularly bombards them – like in the 2014 war – and tests new weapons on their bodies.
It was not surprising that this time again Israel’s advanced military immediately attacked the protesters. Audio-visual material shared on social media by Palestinians shows how Israeli snipers indiscriminately shot anyone who came near Israel’s “border fence.” This banal violence that resulted in a massacre of Palestinians was encouraged by the Israeli government, largely ignored by Western governments, and legitimized by Western media.
Major news outlets euphemized Israeli aggression as passive response, linguistically appealing to the readers’ implicit Orientalism and rationalizing the use of military aggression against peaceful protesters. For example, the Washington Post wrote about “deadly clashes” (March 30) and CNN narrated that Palestinians were “killed in confrontations with Israeli forces” (March 31). According to a New York Times article (March 30), which merely paraphrased the Israeli narrative, “the Israelis responded.” The same article concludes by retrospectively justifying Israel’s three wars on Gaza as a combat against “the threat posed by rockets fired by Hamas and other militant groups, and from tunnels crossing under the border.” Fox News blamed “Gaza attacks” on Hamas. Most reports included pictures of Kuffiye-wearing Palestinians throwing stones. Pictures and videos of heavily armed Israeli soldiers, or of the shootings of unarmed Palestinian civilians – though omnipresent on social media – were omitted.
This fantasy of “clashes” and “confrontations” projects a conflict between two independent countries. Like the Israeli government, media deprives Palestinians of their geo-political and historical context, suggests a parity of power between colonizer and colonized, and implies that Palestinians simply die because they have to, not because they are massacred.
This is also Israel’s standard rhetoric. A cable sent out by Israel’s Foreign Ministry to Israeli diplomats outlines the simple copy-paste tactic the Israeli government has perpetually employed to justify any new killings of Palestinians: as usual, the protest is demonized as “dangerous,” “premeditated,” and a “Hamas-led confrontation campaign.” All Palestinians are rhetorically transformed into terrorists fighting for Hamas, which is depicted as the world’s most dangerous terror organization capable of rapidly destroying Israel. Hence, all violence against Palestinians is necessary self-defense. Concurrently, Palestinians are blamed for their own death – like in 2014, when Naftali Bennett blamed Hamas for a Palestinian “self-genocide.”
Following the narrative behind this widespread criminalization of Palestinian dissent, Palestinians would not protest because of unsustainable living conditions, because of the omnipresence of death, or because they are facing a brutal military occupation – but because they simply hate for no reason. These Orientalist assumptions suggest that Palestinians do not have any agency.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) defined the protests “a call for the end of the state of Israel.” The ADL is right. Palestinian demands, i.e. the implementation of international law, an end of the occupation, and the granting of human rights, would certainly lead to an end of Israel in its current forms. Indeed, Israel is based on settler-colonialism, occupation, apartheid, ethnocracy, ethnic cleansing, and genocidal policies, all of which presuppose the perpetuation of Orientalist, Eurocentric, and Islamophobic racialization and dehumanization of Palestinians, who remain simultaneously unknowable and imagined as violent. Palestinians are seen as guilty for not surrendering and for drawing worldwide attention to their struggle. Hence, they are blamed for their very human survival instinct and for not embracing their own death.
Media narratives reveal that Palestinians are comprehended as a plague. If the Israeli military’s shooting of an unarmed protester is considered a “clash,” then the danger stemming from Israeli weapons is on par with the danger coming from an unarmed Palestinian. Thus, Palestinians do not need to take weapons in order to be understood as dangerous. Their existence is comprehended as an attack per se, and the visibility of that existence continues to haunt the Zionist colonial project, as Israel continues trying to make Palestinians disappear discursively and physically.
– Denijal Jegić is a doctoral researcher in Transnational American Studies.
If you want to understand what the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States really means consider the fact that Israeli Army snipers shot dead seventeen unarmed and largely peaceful Gazan demonstrators on Good Friday without a squeak coming out of the White House or State Department. Some of the protesters were shot in the back while running away, while another 1,000 Palestinians were wounded, an estimated 750 by gunfire, the remainder injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.
The offense committed by the Gazan protesters that has earned them a death sentence was coming too close to the Israeli containment fence that has turned the Gaza strip into the world’s largest outdoor prison. President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East negotiator David Greenblatt described the protest as “a hostile march on the Israel-Gaza border… inciting violence against Israel.” And Nikki Haley at the U.N. has also used the U.S. veto to block any independent inquiry into the violence, demonstrating once again that the White House team is little more than Israel’s echo chamber. America’s enabling of the brutal reality that is today’s Israel makes it fully complicit in the war crimes carried out against the helpless and hapless Palestinian people.
So where was the outrage in the American media about the massacre of civilians? Characteristically, Israel portrays itself as somehow a victim and the U.S. media, when it bothers to report about dead Palestinians at all, picks up on that line. The Jewish State is portrayed as always endangered and struggling to survive even though it is the nuclear armed regional superpower that is only threatened because of its own criminal behavior. And even when it commits what are indisputable war crimes like the use of lethal force against an unarmed civilian population, the Jewish Lobby and its media accomplices are quick to take up the victimhood refrain.
Last week, the Israeli government described the protests an “an organized terrorist operation” while Gazans are dehumanized by claims that they act under the direction of evil Hamas to dig tunnels and rain down bottle rockets on hapless Israeli civilians. The reality is, however, quite different. It is the Gazans who have been subjected to murderous periodic incursions by the Israeli army, a procedure that Israel refers to as “mowing the grass,” a brutal exercise intended to keep the Palestinians terrified and docile.
The story of what happened in Gaza on Friday had largely disappeared from the U.S. media by Sunday. On Saturday, the New York Times reported the most recent violence this way: “… some began hurling stones, tossing Molotov cocktails and rolling burning tires at the fence, the Israelis responded with tear gas and gunfire.” Get it? The Palestinians started it all, according to Israeli sources, by throwing things at the fence and forcing the poor victimized Israeli soldiers to respond with gunfire, presumably as self-defense. The Times also repeated Israel’s uncorroborated claims that there were gunmen active on the Gazan side, but given the disparity in numbers killed and injured – zero on the Israeli side of the fence – the Palestinian shooters must have been using blanks. Or they never existed at all.
The Israelis reportedly also responded to “suspicious figures” on the Gazan side with rounds from tanks, killing, among others, a farmer far from the demonstrations who was working his field. Israeli warplanes and helicopters also joined in the fun, attacking targets on the Palestinian side. Drones flew over the demonstrators, spraying tear gas down on them. One recalls that the major Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014 included vignettes of Israeli families picnicking on the high ground overlooking the assault, enjoying the spectacle while observing the light-and-sound show that accompanied the carnage. At that time, more than 2,000 Gazans were killed and nearly 11,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled. If the current slaughter in Gaza continues, it would be a shame to forego the entertainment value of a good massacre right on one’s doorstep.
The reliably neocon Washington Postalso framed the conflict as if Israel were behaving in a restrained fashion, leading off in its coverage with “Israel’s military warned Saturday it will step up its response to violence on the Gaza border if it continues…” You see, it’s the unarmed Palestinians who are creating the “violence.” Israel is the victim acting in self-defense.
The newspaper coverage was supplemented by television accounts of what had taken place. ABC News described “violent clashes,” implying that two somewhat equal sides were engaged in the fighting, even though the lethal force was only employed by Israel against an unarmed civilian population.
The backstory to the killing is what should disturb every American citizen. When it comes to disregard for US national sovereignty and interests, the Israelis and their amen chorus in Washington have dug a deep, dark hole and the U.S. Congress and White House have obligingly jumped right in. Since June 8, 1967, when the Israelis massacred the crew of the U.S.S. Liberty, Israel has realized it could do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants, any time it wants, to anybody… including American servicemen, and the U.S. would do nothing.
Let me speak plainly. The existence of many good Israelis who oppose their own government’s policies notwithstanding, the current Israel is an evil place that Americans should be condemning, not praising. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not be receiving 29 standing ovations from Congress. He should be rotting in jail. Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and dehumanization of the Palestinian people is nothing to be proud of. That the United States is giving this band of racist war criminals billions of dollars every year is a travesty. That the reputation of American has been besmirched worldwide because of its reflexive support of anything and everything that this rogue regime does is a national disgrace.
Gazans are demonstrating in part because they are starving. They have no clean drinking water because Israel has destroyed the purification plants as part of a deliberate policy to make life in the Strip so miserable that everyone will leave or die in place. And even leaving is problematical as Israel controls the border and will not let Palestinians enter or depart. It also controls the Mediterranean Sea access to Gaza. Fisherman go out a short distance from the shore to bring in a meager catch. If they go any farther they are shot dead by the Israeli Navy.
Hospitals, schools and power stations in Gaza are routinely bombed in Israel’s frequent reprisal actions against what Netanyahu chooses to describe as aggressive moves by Hamas. Such claims are bogus as Israel enjoys a monopoly of force and is never hesitant to use it.
Over in the other Palestinian enclave the West Bank, or what remains of it, the story is the same. Brutal heavily armed Israeli settlers rampage, poisoning Palestinian water, maiming and killing their livestock and even murdering local residents. Children throw stones or slap a soldier and wind up in Israeli prisons. The settlers are backed up by the army and paramilitary police who also shoot first. The Israeli military courts, who have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, rarely convict a Jew when an Arab is killed or beaten.
And here in America a bought-and-paid-for Congress continues to do its bit. Last week President Trump signed the so-called Taylor Force Act, part of the marathon spending bill, which will cut aid going to the Palestinian Authority while also increasing the money going to Israel. Back in January, Congress had also cut the funding going to support Palestinians who are still living in U.N. run refugee camps in spite of resolutions demanding that they should be allowed to return to their homes, now occupied by Israeli Jews. During the perfunctory debate on the measure, Congressmen were lied to by pro-Israel lobbyists who claimed that Arabs are terrorism supporters and use the money to attack Israelis.
I could go on and on, but the message should be clear to every American. There is no net gain for the United States in continuing the lopsided and essentially immoral relationship with the self-styled Jewish State. There is no enhancement of American national security, quite the contrary, and there remains only the sad realization that the blood of many innocent people is, to a considerable extent, on our hands. This horror must end.
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 http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
At one time, the ‘Arab-Israeli Conflict’ was Arab and Israeli. Over the course of many years, however, it was rebranded. The media is now telling us it is a ‘Hamas-Israeli conflict’.
But what went wrong? Israel simply became too powerful.
The supposedly astounding Israeli victories over the years against Arab armies have emboldened Israel to the extent that it came to view itself, not as a regional superpower, but as a global power as well. Israel, per its own definition, became ‘invincible’.
Such terminology was not a mere scare tactic aimed at breaking the spirit of Palestinians and Arabs alike. Israel believed this.
The ‘Israeli miracle victory’ against Arab armies in 1967 was a watershed moment. Then, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Abba Eban, declared in a speech that “from the podium of the UN, I proclaimed the glorious triumph of the IDF and the redemption of Jerusalem.”
This, in his thinking, could only mean one thing: “Never before has Israel stood more honored and revered by the nations of the world.”
The sentiment in Eban’s words echoed throughout Israel. Even those who doubted their government’s ability to completely prevail over the Arabs, joined the chorus: Israel is unvanquishable.
Little rational discussion took place back then, about the actual reasons why Israel had won, and if that victory would have been possible without Washington’s complete backing and the West’s willingness to support Israel at any cost. … continue
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The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
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