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The Liberal’s Lament over Israel

By James J. Zogby | LobeLog | June 18, 2018

I find it exceptionally irritating when I hear liberals worry about whether Israel will be able to remain a “Jewish and Democratic State” if it retains control of occupied Palestinian lands. It’s irritating because Israel is not now a democratic state nor has it ever tried to be one.

A state that prioritizes rights for one group of citizens (in this case Jews, who comprise 80% of the population) over the rights of another group (Arabs, who are 20% of Israel’s citizenry) cannot be democratic. Israel discriminates against its Arab citizens in law, social services, funding for education, and in everyday life. So although the concerns of liberals in the West are about the future of Israeli democracy, what they ignore is the reality of Israel, in practice. 

As I document in my book, Palestinians: the Invisible Victims, from its inception in 1948, Israel has guaranteed rights and opportunities for Jews at the expense of the indigenous Palestinians who remained after the Nakba. Instead of experiencing democracy, these Arabs were subjected to harsh military law, as a result of which they were denied fundamental human and civil rights. Their lands and businesses were confiscated. And they were even denied the opportunity to join the labor movement, or form independent political parties.

During the past 70 years, these Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel have made significant advances as they organized and fought to expand their rights. But as two stories that have appeared recently in the Israeli media make clear, the contradiction inherent in being a democracy and a Jewish state continues to plague Israel.

In the first story, the leadership of the Knesset disqualified a proposed piece of legislation offered by a group of Arab legislators. The bill “Basic Law: Israel, a State of All Its Citizens” sought to guarantee equal rights for all Israelis—Jews and Arabs alike.

Apparently the Knesset leaders were so threatened by this bill that they were unwilling to even allow it to be introduced and debated. At the same time, however, Jewish members of the body are advancing another piece of legislation that defines Israel as the “national state of the Jewish People,” making it clear that Arabs are at best, second-class citizens.

In another story, Jewish residents of Afula, a town in Northern Israel, demonstrated against the proposed sale of a home in their community to an Arab family. The flyer, mobilizing Afula residents to come to the demonstration, criticized “the sale of homes to those who are undesirable in the neighborhood.” The former mayor of the community is quoted in the story saying “the residents of Afula don’t want a mixed city, but rather a Jewish city, and it’s their right.”

This is the impact of the apartheid system that Israel established to govern the lives of its Arab citizens. Since 1948, Israel not only confiscated lands surrounding Arab towns and villages to make way for Jewish agriculture and development, it denied Arabs the right to purchase land and homes in Jewish communities. Reflecting how this history has led to the demonstration in Afula, the leader of the Arab bloc in the Knesset said, “It is not a surprise that in a country that has founded 700 towns for Jews and not even one for Arabs, the idea that Arabs should be pushed aside does not shock citizens… our hope of living together is crumbling due to hatred and racism fueled by the government.”

Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Israel appears to be preparing a similar fate for the Palestinians living under occupation. Continuing the practice the Israelis instituted in the Galilee region, they have been slowly and steadily concentrating captive West Bank Palestinians into enclaves, denying them access to their land and in some cases, evicting them from their communities. One recent case reported in the Israeli press involves a Supreme Court decision allowing the state to demolish the West Bank community of Khan al Ahmar and to forcibly relocate “its citizens to a site near a dumpster in Abu Dis”—a Palestinian community near occupied East Jerusalem. At risk are Khan al Ahmar’s 173 residents and the community’s school that serves 150 youngsters from there, and neighboring villages. This is one of four recent forced evictions to clear areas of Palestinians in order to consolidate Israeli control.

These three stories combined have two things in common. On the one hand, they establish that it is a contradiction in terms to consider that Israel can be both Jewish and democratic at the same time. Liberals therefore can stop fretting about the danger facing Israeli democracy in the future. It already is, in practice, an apartheid state.

Next to consider is the fact that none of these stories made it into the U.S. press and so I suppose I can almost understand the Western liberal’s lament. Since they just don’t know how Israel behaves, they have no idea that the future they fear, is already here.

James J. Zogby is the president of the Arab American Institute.

June 19, 2018 Posted by | Book Review, Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

IDF Videos Aimed Squarely at Spurring Arab-on-Arab Hate and Sectarianism

By Whitney Webb | Mint Press News | June 11, 2018

GAZA – A new video released by an Israeli Defense Force (IDF) spokesman has unnerved many in the global Muslim community for its use of sectarian rhetoric and slurs targeting Shia Muslims that are often used by leaders of extremist Wahhabi terror groups.

The video, released on social media on Thursday and already with more than 20,000 views, shows IDF Major Avichay Adraee asserting that Palestinian resistance group Hamas is “imitating Iran’s mullahs” — thereby making the group “officially Shiites,” even though Hamas is nominally Sunni.

Adraee — fluent in Arabic, given his family’s Syrian roots — then expounded on the “dangers” of Shia Islam, the followers of which he referred to as “rafidha” — a derogatory slur frequently used by Wahhabi terror groups like Al Qaeda and Jaish al-Islam for any Muslim who does not follow their radical interpretation of the religion.

Indeed, Adraee directly quotes Muhammad ibn abd al-Wahhab, the founder of the political movement of Wahhabism, stating that Shiites are “more harmful to Islam than Jews and Christians,” as he seeks to convince his viewers that supporting “these corrupt ones” who “claim” to be Muslim – i.e. the region’s “resistance axis,” composed of secular and Shiite governments – is a rejection of Islam.

Adraee singled out Shiites in the video as a means of targeting Iran, a Shia-majority nation whose government is the archenemy of the Israeli state, largely due to its obstruction of Israeli expansionism and continued support for Palestine. Adraee makes this clear in the video by asserting that “Shia Iran’s” recognition of the Palestinian Nakba, known as “Al-Quds Day,” is a “bid’ah” or heresy invented by Iran’s government. This, again, is an appeal to Wahhabism, as Wahhabist doctrine holds that any attempts to “innovate” within Islam must be rejected completely.

While an IDF soldier quoting extremists like al-Wahhab may seem unusual, Adraee – head of the IDF’s Arabic-language media division – has been making videos of a similar nature for over a decade, many of which similarly accuse Hamas of “profaning” Islam. Though his videos are often the butt of jokes in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine, they seem to be aimed more at the global Sunni Muslim community. Indeed, Adraee boasts over 1.5 million followers on Facebook and Twitter and has found sympathetic ears in some Arab countries — such as Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabi Islam is the official religion.

As Adraee himself has hinted, his videos are aimed at robbing Palestinians of Arab support by seeking to foment sectarian hatred for Shiites. Adraee recently told Bloomberg:

The idea was that if there was a person who you could curse at or request something from, or who you knew, it would be much easier to connect through some kind of feeling, not necessarily love, it could also be hatred.”

By preaching anti-Shia sermons on social media, it is clear which feeling Adraee is seeking to promote through his videos.

A long history of colonial and post-colonial dividing and destabilizing

Adraee’s videos and their recent success is part of a long-standing effort, backed by Israel and select Western powers, to chip away at support for a Palestinian state among Sunni Arabs in the region. Such efforts have been more successful of late, with Saudi Arabian leadership recently chiding Palestinians for resisting Israel’s colonial ambitions amid warming ties between the Gulf kingdom and Israel.

Yet this strategy aimed at reducing regional support for Palestinians is based upon much older efforts seeking to divide and thereby weaken the entire Middle East. Indeed, Wahhabism itself was created by al-Wahhab at the behest of the British Empire, which sought to erode the Muslim community as a means of weakening the Ottoman Empire by breeding sectarianism and religious in-fighting.

That same century-old strategy is still used today with great effect. Indeed, the manipulation of sectarianism has been used by the United States to destabilize Iraq and, subsequently, to destabilize Syria. Israel has similarly sought to use sectarianism to its advantage by leveraging such divisions to push for the partition of surrounding Arab countries, in order to allow Israel to emerge as a regional superpower while Sunni and Shiite governments are constantly at each other’s throats.

Adraee’s latest video is not only part of that larger project, however. It also lays bare the roots of both Wahhabism and Zionism – intolerance and hate.

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

Photo | IDF Arabic media spokesman Avichay Adraee. Screenshot | YouTube

June 19, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

Blood Diamonds: Human Rights Campaigners Want ‘Kimberley Process’ to Suspend Israel

Palestine Chronicle | June 16, 2018

Human Rights campaigners say that Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) must suspend Israel and ban Israeli diamonds exports.

A global coalition of organizations working for justice and peace in Palestine have called on the EU to seek the suspension of Israel from the Kimberley Process and a ban on Israel diamond exports at next week ’s meeting of the diamond regulatory body in Antwerp.

The KPCS is the process established in 2000 to prevent “conflict diamonds” from entering the mainstream rough diamond market by United Nations General Assembly Resolution 55/56 following recommendations in the Fowler Report.

The process was set up “to ensure that diamond purchases were not financing violence by rebel movements and their allies seeking to undermine legitimate governments.”

In the wake of the latest Israeli massacres in Gaza, which Human Rights Watch said “may amount to war crimes” and called on the international community to “impose real costs for such blatant disregard for Palestinian lives” it is imperative that diamonds which generate revenue used to fund the Israeli military are banned.

Israel is the biggest net beneficiary of the global diamond trade with exports worth US$11 billion net in 2014 when diamonds accounted for 30% of manufacturing exports.

Revenue from the Israeli diamond industry is a highly significant source of funding for the Israeli government and its violent settler-colonial project in Palestine.

Despite generating an estimated $1 billion per year in funding for Israeli occupation forces which stand accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, the proliferation of unregulated nuclear weapons and the enforcement of a system of apartheid jewelers claim diamonds processed in Israel are conflict-free.

Diamonds that are a significant source of funding for violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law are regarded as blood diamonds.

The jewelry industry refuses to ban all blood diamonds and limited the remit of the KPCS to “conflict diamonds” which are defined as rough diamonds used by rebel groups to fund violence against legitimate governments.

June 16, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

In Their Own Words: Was Every Israeli Prime Minister A Racist?

A compilation of various racist and hateful quotes by Israeli Prime Ministers demonstrating the extent to which racism is entrenched as well as normalized in Israeli political culture.

By Robert Inlakesh | 21st Century Wire | June 15, 2018

Most nation states in our world today have dealt with their fair share of institutionalized racism and bigotry, and Israel is no exception. However when it comes to Israel, the volume of racism expressed by prominent political figures is both astounding and concerning.

 

DAVID BEN-GURION:

David Ben-Gurion was the first Prime Minister of the state of Israel, serving his first term between 1948 and 1953, he later served a second term from 1955 to 1963. Other than being a member of – what the British considered a terrorist organization at the time – the Haganah, David Ben-Gurion also notably presided over the ethnic cleansing of an estimated 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.

David Ben-Gurion made his contempt for Palestinian human rights evident from his actions and therefore giving an example of his hatred for Palestinians would be nothing new. Instead it is crucial to understand that, from the very first Prime-Minister, the Israeli government viewed non-European Jews as “the other” and were very much racist.

On the 11th of June, 1962, David Ben-Gurion made the following statement at a meeting with the head of Israel’s teachers federation, Shalom Levin:

“The danger we face is that the great majority of those children whose parents did not receive an education for generations, will descend to the level of Arab children”. (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.653134)

The statement was addressing the question as to whether Israel should segregate the “Mizrahi” (Jews of Middle-Eastern origin or “oriental communities”) from the “Ashkenazi” (European Jewish) population.

This quote is crucial to understanding the attitude of the Prime Minister towards Jews, who were not of European descent.

This information comes from the Israeli Labour Party archives and was reported upon by the Israeli media outlet Haaretz on the 24th of April, 2015.

 

MOSHE SHARETT:

Moshe Sharett was Israel’s second and shortest serving Prime Minister (1953-1955), he was perceived by many as a liberal Zionist. Unfortunately for Israel romanticists, the fictional depiction of Moshe Sharett, as the ‘dove amongst hawks’, really came under fire when he revealed his racially charged descriptions of Palestinian refugees.

The following is an entry from Moshe Sharett’s diary on the 15th of November, 1953, where he refers to returning Palestinian refugees as infiltrators:

“In the last three years [Shani reported] 20,000 infiltrators settled in Israel, in addition to 30,000 who returned immediately after the war…. Only because these 20,000 have not been given permanent documents has the brake been put on the flow of infiltration directed toward settlement. To abolish the military government would mean to open the border areas to undisturbed infiltration and to increasing penetration toward the interior of the country. Even as things are, around 19,000 Arabs in Galilee are in possession of permanent permits to move freely around but only to the West and the South and not toward the North and the East…. it is true that the troublesome problem of the evacuees must be liquidated through a permanent resettlement”.

The entry was made addressing a report, which was submitted to the Israeli cabinet, that same day, by the chief Military governor of the Arab minority in Israel, ‘Colonel Yitzhak Shani’.

A leading right-wing Israeli scholar, Benny Morris, in his book Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict quotes Sharett as saying; “We have forgotten that we have not come to an empty land to inherit it, but we have come to conquer a country from people inhabiting it”, confirming that the liberal Zionist, isn’t so representative of liberty when it comes to Palestinian human rights.

 

LEVI ESHKOL:

Levi Eshkol served as Israeli Prime Minister between 1963 and 1969. Eshkol oversaw 1967’s ‘six day war, in which Israel was responsible for attacking a defenseless  Egypt and initiating a war in which they would illegally occupy the Golan Heights (From Syria), the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula.

On the 17th of November, 2017, Haaretz News reported upon declassified documents previously release by the Israeli government. The documents unearth some very revealing opinions and the way in which Levi Eshkol discussed Palestinians.

In December 1967, months after the war, Levi Eshkol discusses the Palestinians of Gaza, labelling them a “problem” that needs to be dealt with by making life so miserable for them that they would just leave, he even began discussing the “luxury” of another war which would deal with the “problem” Israel faces.

Eshkol goes on to state:

“I cannot imagine it – how we will organize life in this country when we have 1.4 million Arabs and we are 2.4 million, with 400,000 Arabs already in the country?” (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.823075)

Evidently someone who declares Palestinians as a “problem” and “cannot imagine” living with them, actively working to violently expel them and/or force their departure, is no friend to any kind of peace in the region.

 

GOLDA MEIR:

Golda Meir became Prime Minister of Israel in 1969 and served until the year 1974. Golda Meir notably spoke of non-European Jews in a very demeaning way, perpetuating a very popular European Zionist stereo-type, that Jews from parts of the world other than Europe were essentially primitive.

Golda once said, whilst addressing the Zionist federation of Great Britain (in 1964):

“We in Israel need (Jewish) immigrants from countries with a high standard, because the future of our social structure is worrying us. We have immigrants from Morocco, Libya, Iran, Egypt and other countries with a 16th century level. Shall we be able to elevate these immigrants to a suitable level of civilization?”

Golda’s statement speaks for itself as to what she thought of non-European Jewry, hardly holding those from countries foreign to Europe at high esteem.

A notable concept pushed by the likes of Golda Meir, is the idea that Palestinians don’t exist, they are just Arabs and that Palestine never existed, an outright denial of history.

Golda Meir stated this idea loud and clear, on the 8th of March, 1969:

“It was not as if there was a Palestinian people in Palestine and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist.” (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.654218)

Although the statement above is one that Golda Meir gave, she seemed to acknowledge the existence of Palestine when she wrote letters, during her time living under the British Mandate of Palestine.

 

YITZHAK RABIN:

Yitzhak Rabin was Israel’s Prime Minister twice, the first time between 1971 and 1977 and then the second time he served 1992-95. Yitzhak Rabin, for the most part, was seen through the eyes of the West as a liberal president, ultimately facing assassination at the hands of a fanatical right wing Israeli in 1995.

The Yitzhak Rabin known to the Palestinians however, was the bone-breaker, who oversaw mass murder and the brutalization of their people.

Something very kept quiet, is Yitzhak Rabin’s greeting of John Vorster in April, 1976. Yitzhak Rabin threw a Banquet for the Prime Minister of Apartheid South Africa, expressing that Israel and Apartheid South Africa both face “foreign-inspired instability and recklessness”, he then went on to praise Apartheid South Africa and hailed “the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa”.

 

MENACHEM BEGIN:

Menachem Begin was Israel’s Prime Minister between the years 1977 and 1983. Menachem Begin was once described by Albert Einstein as a terrorist, he and 25 other prominent Jews even wrote an open letter to the ‘New York Times’ in 1948. Begin was involved in the infamous bombing of the King David Hotel as well as many other terrorist attack, which claimed the lives of innocent men, women and children.

To point to the language, by which Menachem Begin used, to characterize his Palestine “enemy”, I would simply turn to Ammon Kapeliouk’s article from the New Statesman (June 25,1982). The article entitled ‘Begin and the Beasts’ sums up the dehumanizing way in which Menachem Begin referred to Palestinians, stating that they were “beasts walking on two legs” according to Kapeliouk’s account from the observation of his speech delivered to the Knesset.

 

YITZHAK SHAMIR:

Yitzhak Shamir was Prime Minister of Israel twice, first from 1983 to 1984 and then again from 1986 to 1992. Yitzhak Shamir was formerly a leader of the Lehi (Stern Gang), a terrorist group responsible for the Deir Yassin massacre of 1948, along with countless attacks on civilians before this.

Yitzhak Shamir said, prior to the Madrid peace talks (in 1991), “The Arabs are the same Arabs and the sea is the same sea”. With this statement he was insinuating that the Palestinians and Arab neighboring countries had never changed, asserting that engaging with them in a negotiable manner was not something he was so happy about.

Yitzhak Shamir also referred to Palestinian protesters in 1988 as “grasshoppers compared to us”, vowing to crush the demonstrations. (http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/01/world/shamir-promises-to-crush-rioters.html)

 

SHIMON PERES:

Shimon Peres was elected twice as Prime Minister of Israel, serving the first time from 1984-1986, then again from 1995 until 1996. Peres also served the ninth President of the state of Israel (2007-2014) taking over from the convicted rapist Moshe Katzav.

Although dubbed as a champion of peace, Shimon Peres was in fact the man who led the initiative to create Israel’s first illegal settlements. He was also the founding father of Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

As Prime Minister Shimon Peres oversaw the massacre of Qana Massacre (South Lebanon, 1996) in which more than 100 civilians were killed, this occurred after Israel targeted and blew up a United Nations facility where roughly 800 people had gathered to take shelter.

Despite the often used, flowery language he chose to consult international media with, Shimon Peres actively enforced the strategic, zionist objective, of pacifying the Palestinian population through the means of strangling them financially.

During an interview, conducted by al-Jazeera, (published on the 30th of December, 2012) Peres blamed Palestinians for the hardships they endure, stating that; “They are self victimizing. They victimize themselves. They are a victim of they’re own mistakes, unnecessarily .” (https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/frostinterview/2012/12/2012122610132412135.html)

 

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU:

Benjamin Netanyahu was also Israel’s Prime Minister twice, beginning his first term in 1996 leaving office in 1999, he was then again elected in 2009 where he currently remains to this day.

Benjamin Netanyahu has a large track record of massacring Palestinians, most notably in Gaza during the large scale bombardments in 2012 and 2014. Netanyahu has on multiple occasions announced that settlements will never be reversed and constantly allows the approval of more settler units in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

A sample of things that commonly come from Benjamin Netanyahu’s mouth are as follows:

On March the seventeenth, 2015, in order to urge Israeli Jews to vote for him, Benjamin Netanyahu released a video on Facebook and other social media platforms, where he said; “The right-wing government is in danger. Arab voters are heading to the polling stations in droves.” (https://www.facebook.com/Netanyahu/videos/10152778935532076/)

As reported by Haaretz News, Netanyahu on the ninth of February, 2016, visited the construction of a concrete wall that was being constructed on the border between Gaza and Israel. In his own words, the wall was necessary to “defend ourselves against the wild beasts”. (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.702562)

Something else that is notable about Mr. Netanyahu is his views on African migrants. Haaretz News reported upon the comments made by the Prime Minister – on the 31st of August, 2017 – in which he referred to African Migrants as “infiltrators”. A portion of what Netanyahu said was; “We will return south Tel Aviv to the citizens of Israel, they are not refugees, but infiltrators looking for work,” he said. He added: “If needed, we will legislate an amendment to the law or change the agreements with the African countries, or both.” (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.809999)

 

EHUD BARAK:

Ehud Barak was Israel’s Prime Minster between 1999 and 2001, he saw the beginning of the second Intifada during his time in office.

In April of 1973 Ehud Barak entered Beirut, dressed in drag (as a woman), in order to assassinate members of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization), in killing innocent people.

On the 13th of June, 2002, Ehud Barak was interviewed by the New York Review of Books, during this interview he said the following:

“They [Arabs] are products of a culture in which to tell a lie… Creates no dissonance. They don’t suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture”.

 

ARIEL SHARON:

Serving from 2001 until 2006 as Israeli Prime Minister leaving behind a lengthy trail of blood.

Ariel Sharon was most infamous for commanding the Qibya massacre,along with the massacres at Sabra and Shatila. Sharon also used his death squads to execute people in mass numbers in Gaza during the 50’s, especially upon the strips establishment.

Other than his willingness to massacre Palestinians and Arabs, it is also important to be aware of Ariel Sharon’s stance on stealing Palestinian land. Ariel Sharon said (as Foreign Minister) on Israeli radio in November of 1998; Everybody has to move, run and grab as many [Palestinian] hilltops as they can to enlarge the [Jewish] settlements because everything we take now will stay ours… Everything we don’t grab will go to them. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11576714)

 

EHUD OLMERT:

Prime Minister from 2006 until 2009, Ehud Olmert, inflicted devastating wars of aggression upon the civilian population of Lebanon (2006) and the Gaza strip (2008-2009), targeting and killing thousands of innocent people.

Like former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Olmert also liked to compare Israel to Apartheid South Africa. Olmert spoke to Haaretz News following the Annapolis conference – which ended in an agreement to try and reach a Middle-East peace settlement by the end of 2008 – making the following comments:

“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, as soon as that happens, the State of Israel is finished”.  (https://www.haaretz.com/news/olmert-to-haaretz-two-state-solution-or-israel-is-done-for-1.234201)

In 2014 Ehud Olmert was sentenced to 27 months imprisonment, over charges on the grounds of corruption, he served 16 of those months before being released.

 

Racism and bigotry have been prominent features of Israeli politics since the states very inception. Israeli political leaders have repeatedly expressed dehumanization of Palestinians and Jews of non-European origin, across the political spectrum.

June 15, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | 2 Comments

Demystifying Myths of the Six-Day War

By Miko Peled | American Herald Tribune | June 14, 2018

The war that Israel initiated in June of 1967 became the stuff of myths and legends on many levels. Now, after fifty one years it may be time to unravel and demystify what took place during those fateful six days in June. There is the myth of the existential threat which called for Israel to engage in a preemptive strike which started the war, then there is the myth of the greatness of the Israeli army and its remarkable abilities, and there is a claim which one can argue is also a myth, that it was this war that changed the face of the Middle East forever. Then, there is an even greater myth and that is that Palestine was occupied as a result of the 1967 war. That the West Bank and The Gaza Strip, which are no more than two small parts of Palestine artificially created when Israel was established, are The Occupied Palestinian territories, as opposed to two areas within occupied Palestine. It can be no coincidence that most immediately after the war of 1967 these areas were named “The Occupied Territories” and the fact that the greater part of Palestine had been occupied for almost twenty years at point had somehow slipped the collective memories of all but the Palestinians themselves.

It was almost immediately after the war that liberal minded Zionist figures like Uri Avneri, Meir Pa’il and my own father, Matti Peled – who was a general and a member of the Israeli army high command in 1967 – began talking about the Two State Solution as a solution to the question of Palestine. However, they did not mean the partition of Palestine into two states as was mandated by the November 1947 United Nations resolution, resolution 181. They had something very different in mind. They and others like them saw an opportunity to solve the Palestinian question by dividing the country on terms that were far more favorable to Israel. The Two State Solution they envisioned meant a small, weak and demilitarized Palestinian state on 22% of Palestine that would be totally dependent on Israel.

The rationale behind their thinking could not have been clearer. Keeping territories with such a large Arab population would upset the Jewish majority and was detrimental to the Jewish state. In the aftermath of the war the Arab regimes surrounding Israel were weaker and more demoralized than ever before, the Palestinians had no allies on which to rely and so, what choice did they have? For Israel this meant solidifying the conquest of 1948 and securing the borders it established in 1949 which were in violation of UN resolutions and international law. It also allowed Israel to keep the western part of Jerusalem, which also was taken in 1948 even though the city was not to be under the sovereignty of any state. These liberal Zionists, even with their impeccable Zionist credentials were pushed aside and ridiculed to the point that they were considered radicals and even traitors for suggesting that Israel should allow the creation of a Palestinian state anywhere in mandatory Palestine, or the Land of Israel.

From that moment on however, the conversation on Palestine had shifted to those two small pieces of Palestine and whether or not Israel should agree as part of a future peace agreement to “give” them to the Palestinians. As this question was being debated, both in Israel and on the international arena, Israel embarked on a dedicated campaign of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and destruction of Palestinian towns and communities all over East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and at the same time invested heavily in building for Jews only. The new conquests within Palestine were tossed in with the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights which Israel also occupied in 1967 and even though the circumstances of each of these territories were different, all three fell under the general title of “The Occupied Territories.”

In 1979 Israel eventually returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt as part of a peace agreement and a commitment from the UN for $3 billion in foreign aid. However, even though Israel made a few gestures pretending that it might be willing to negotiate other “land for peace” deals, the Golan Heights and the West Bank and Gaza were never negotiable and remain firmly in the grip of the State of Israel which continues to develop and settle them like any other region in Israel. Today it is clear that neither war torn Syria nor the Palestinians are able to make any demands of Israel at this point.

Fifty one years after the 1967 war the time has come to dismantle the myths and undo the legends that were created in its aftermath. Israel was not under an existential threat, this was made clear by the generals who headed the IDF, as is chronicled in my book, The General’s Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine. The Israeli army was able to defeat the Arab armies not because of some extraordinary powers but because the Arab armies were in disarray and the Israeli generals knew it. It was not the 1967 war that changed the Middle East but rather the war on 1948, which is more accurately defined as the ethnic cleansing campaign of Palestine. The West Bank, has all but become Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip is an enclosure with two million people cooped up in what can only be described as a humanitarian catastrophe and the two combined only make up 22% of Palestine. Palestinians in other parts of Palestine, what has become known as pre-1967 Israel, live below the poverty line with little access to resources and under laws that discriminate against them specifically. There can be little doubt that all of Israel is occupied Palestine and that there are no Palestinian territories which are not occupied. A just solution must realize the right of all Palestinians to a life of freedom and dignity without discrimination in their own country and must include the right of all Palestinians to return to their homes and their lands.

Miko Peled is a writer and human rights activist. He is an international speaker and the author of “The General’s Son, Journey of an Israeli in Palestine”.

June 14, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 1 Comment

The World Must Work to Peacefully De-nuclearise the “Israeli” Regime

By Adam Garrie | EurasiaFuture | June 14, 2018

Now that the DPRK, a former signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which later withdrew has agreed to a full de-nuclearisation process, it is time to focus on other nations that possess nuclear weapons that have yet to sign the NPT.

Of all the world’s nuclear powers only “Israel”, India and Pakistan have refused to sign the NPT and of these three only “Israel” refuses to officially declare its nuclear capability even though unofficially, officials of the Tel Aviv regime have boasted of their illegal nuclear arsenal. While India and Pakistan only became nuclear capable in the late 1990s, Tel Aviv’s first successful nuclear tests came in the early 1960s and were privately a bone of contention between US President John F. Kennedy and the Tel Aviv regime. Even more worryingly, Tel Aviv maintains a plan to launch a large scale nuclear war on its neighbours and the wider region should it fear that it is on the verge of losing a traditional conflict. The award winning journalist Seymour Hersh first revealed the existence of the Samson Option – a classified “Israeli” military doctrine advocating for the use of nuclear weapons on a wide scale should the regime feel sufficiently threatened. As the regime recently stated that it feels threatened by the kites and balloons being flown by Palestinains to attempt and disrupt airstrikes on Gaza, it is clear that Tel Aviv has a very low threshold for what it considers “threatening”. Against this background, the existence of the Samson Option should be incredibly worrying to the so-called international community.

Not only has “Israel” had its illegal stockpile of nuclear weapons for longer than India or Pakistan, but “Israel” has been at war with and has occupied more countries over the last 50 years than either south Asian nuclear power. Since its inception, the Tel Aviv regime has been at war with Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan and Syria. It has occupied Palestine since 1947 and part of Syria since 1967.

The regime also occupied part of Egypt between 1967 and 1982. 1982 was also when “Israel’s” full scale occupation of southern Lebanon began while hostile regime forces only vacated in 2006, subsequent to a  partial withdrawal in the year 2000. The regime had also occupied parts of Lebanon as early as 1978 while in 1981 the “Israeli” air force launched an illegal aerial assault on Iraq. While continually occupying Syria, recent years have seen ever more unprovoked “Israel” bombardments of south-western Syria which have increased in terms of their frequency and intensity in recent months.

While India and Pakistan have had a hostile relationship ever since both nations became independent of UK imperial rule, they have nevertheless engaged in fewer conflicts than those inaugurated by “Israel” and this fact in and of itself is quite remarkable. Furthermore, in spite of an alliance dating back many decades, “Israel” has also engaged in hostilities with the United States.

In 1967, the American Naval Ship USS Liberty came under a sustained attack from the “Israeli” air-force and torpedo boats without any warning or justification. In spite of Liberty’s commanders sending communications informing “Israel” that they were an “allied” US ship, the attack persisted for hours. Archival material has revealed that some of the pilots were aware that the ship was American, but that they were ordered by their superiors to keep attacking. Ultimately, 34 Americans died in the attack while 171 were severely wounded. The incident was systematically hushed up by the US government and media. Many researchers suspect that “Israel” had attempted to stage a false flag incident that would later be blamed on Egypt, in order to coerce the US into attacking Egypt and its Soviet ally. Because “Israel” was not able to kill all the men on board, the plan failed as the survivors knew full well that it was “Israel” and not Egypt nor any other Soviet ally that had attacked their ship.

While the ultimately non-lethal incident of the American Navy ship USS Pueblo being captured by the DPRK in 1968 received a great deal of attention in the US media, the USS Liberty incident from the prior year was quickly hushed up. Later, many scholars and journalists accused then US President Lyndon B. Johnson of covering up “Israel’s” wanton aggression upon a US flagged ship.

With Donald Trump publicly declaring that the DPRK no longer poses a threat to the United States, it remains clear that the undeniably aggressive “Israeli” should be the next nation to de-nuclearise for the benefit of wider global peace. While nuclear weapons in south Asia are indeed a worrying prospect, no regime has been so wantonly aggressive, so frequently in violation of UN resolutions and so threatening to all of its neighbours than the “Israeli” regime has been since its dubious inception.

With the DPRK out of the equation, it now remains a matter of focusing on countries which continue to stockpile nuclear weapons without signing the NPT. Of all such nations, “Israel” is by far the most dangerous and should be the next to be pressured by the wider world to give up its nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, the close and frequently sycophantic US relationship with Tel Aviv means that this might not happen until it is too late. Such a worrying prospect ought to galvanise a wider support throughout the world for such a peaceful de-nuclearisation process to begin at once.

June 14, 2018 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | 1 Comment

UN General Assembly condemns Israel for ‘excessive use of force’ on Gaza border

RT | June 13, 2018

The UN General Assembly has adopted a nonbinding resolution condemning Israel’s use of ‘excessive force’ against Palestinian protesters in Gaza. A US amendment to condemn Hamas did not get enough support.

The resolution condemns Israel for “excessive use of force” against Palestinian demonstrators on the Israeli-Gaza border and calls for the “protection of the Palestinian civilian population” in Gaza. It was adopted with 120 votes in favor and eight votes against, with 45 abstentions.

The amendment offered by US envoy Nikki Haley sought to condemn Hamas, which runs the elected government in Gaza, for firing rockets at Israel. The amendment received 62 votes in favor, with 58 nations opposed and 42 abstaining. It needed a two-thirds majority to pass, however, so it was not included in the final resolution.

The nearly identical resolution proposed by Kuwait was vetoed by the US in the Security Council on Tuesday. Unlike the Security Council resolutions, those adopted in the General Assembly are non-binding.

Haley condemned the adopted resolution as “morally bankrupt.”

“The resolution is one-sided, makes not one mention of Hamas which routinely initiates violence,” the US envoy said during the debate preceding the vote, adding that “What makes Gaza different is that attacking Israel is their favorite political sport.”

Israeli ambassador Danny Danon slammed the resolution as “empowering Hamas” and the countries that support it as “colluding with a terrorist organization.”

“I have a simple message for those who support this resolution. You are the ammunition for Hamas’s guns, you are the warheads for its missiles,” he said.

Over 130 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces during the protests along the border with Gaza that began on March 30. The deadliest day so far has been May 14, when the US embassy officially moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“We cannot remain silent in the face of the most violent crimes and human rights violations being systematically perpetrated against our people,” said Riyad Mansour, Palestinian envoy to the UN.

June 13, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , , , | 4 Comments

Israeli forces take over archaeological house in Hebron, turn it into outpost

WAFA | June 13, 2018

Israeli forces Wednesday took over an archaeological house in the Old City of Hebron and turned it into a military outpost.

The house is located in an area that has been under full Israeli military control for over 15 years now.

The house, which is located in an area that was declared a closed military zone and belongs to two Palestinian families; al-Qudsi and al-Kard, is considered one of the oldest heritage houses in the area.

Hebron Rehabilitation Committee said Israeli forces blocked the windows with sand bags and turned the roof into a military outpost.

Director General of the committee, Imad Hamdan, said archaeological buildings in Hebron’s Old City are considered a strategic target for both the Israeli authorities and settlers.

He explained that Israeli authorities take over the archaeological buildings in the area, turn them into military outposts and prevent Palestinians from living there and from rehabilitating them, while settlers steal their stones and use them on their own homes to give the houses a historic landmark status in an attempt to falsify history.

 

June 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , | 2 Comments

HP Faces $120 Million Potential Loss Due to Complicity in Israel’s Violations of Palestinian Human Rights

IMEMC News & Agencies | June 13, 2018

Hewlett Packard (HP) faces over $120 million in potential losses since India’s largest student federation passed a resolution to support the BDS movement and to boycott Hewlett Packard companies over their well-documented complicity in Israel’s grave violations of Palestinian human rights.

Apoorva Gautam, the India-based South Asia coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee, which leads and supports the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, explained:

The Students Federation of India (SFI) is more than 4 million members strong, and on June 9, they joined the global campaign to boycott HP. This means that Hewlett Packard companies now risk losing over 4 million potential clients in India because of their complicity in Israel’s gross violations of Palestinian human rights.

Given that the cheapest HP laptop in India costs about $300, this means that HP may be losing a potential student market of over $120 million. This is enormously significant.

What Palestinians and Indian students are showing is that companies seeking to profit from Israel’s military occupation and discriminatory regime face growing popular opposition and risk a serious hit to both their reputations and pocket-books.

HP has provided technology and services that support Israel’s military occupation and racial discrimination policies, including its devastating siege suffocating nearly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, and illegal settlements built on stolen Palestinian land.

Today, HP-branded companies provide the Israeli government with the servers that house its notorious population registry, a key component in the apparatus of apartheid. Records also indicate that HP-branded companies are still responsible for selling computers to the Israeli military. As such, HP products and services enable racial segregation and denial of basic rights.

In its resolution to boycott HP, the Students Federation of India (SFI) condemned Israel’s recent violence against unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza, where Israel killed at least 121 Palestinians and injured more than 13,000 in just the last two months. It also criticized the current right-wing government in India for its “close security and military ties with Israel” and for having become “the largest arms buyer from Israel.”

Vikram Singh, the federation’s General Secretary, promised that the campaign to boycott HP in India would grow:

Our federation will spread the BDS movement and the HP boycott campaign in college and university campuses across India. We will work to convince university administrations to adopt procurement policies that prohibit doing business with HP companies until they prove that they are no longer complicit in Israel’s egregious violations of Palestinian human rights. Until then, this boycott will continue and will grow even stronger.

Abdulrahman Abunahel, a Gaza-based community organizer and coordinator for the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) welcomed the resolution:

Palestinian students and youth movements deeply appreciate the solidarity expressed by our counterparts in the Students Federation of India. As a young Palestinian in Gaza, I know first hand how difficult it is to study, and to simply live, under decades of Israel’s brutal military rule and devastating siege. And I’m heartened by this important gesture of support from India, which reaffirms that where governments fail, people have the the power to act and make a difference.

In the past few years, US church denominations such as the US Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ have divested from HP. Friends Fiduciary Corporation, the socially responsible investment firm serving over three hundred Quaker institutions in the United States, divested from HP in 2012. Most recently, the Dublin City Council joined the BDS movement and called for ending ties with HP because of the company’s complicity in Israeli apartheid.

June 13, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine denounces Indonesian clerics’ participation in interfaith conference

Palestine Information Center – June 13, 2018

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Sheikh Mohamed Hussein, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, has strongly denounced the participation of some Indonesian religious figures in the Zio-American interfaith conference in Occupied Jerusalem.

In press remarks, Sheikh Hussein described the conference as part of Israel’s systematic misleading campaigns that are intended to embellish it and make it appear as a country that advocates for peace and rapprochement between religions.

He condemned the Indonesian delegation’s visit as “a crime against the Palestinian cause and against the Muslim nation,” and said it ignored the international boycott campaigns against the occupation and its racist practices, especially after the relocation of the US embassy to Jerusalem.

The Mufti also slammed the visit as “shameful and unacceptable” and “contradicting the official and popular Indonesian position that support the Palestinian people and their just cause.”

June 13, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | 1 Comment

NYT Carries IDF Attack on Murdered Medic–Reveals It’s a Smear in 20th Paragraph

By Adam Johnson | FAIR | June 11, 2018

A reporter at the most influential paper in English-language media appears to not know the difference between a government “tightly editing” and selectively editing video.

New York Times reporter Herbert Buchsbaum (6/7/18) wrote up a propaganda video posted by the Israeli Defense Force, showing Rouzan al-Najjar–a 21-year-old medic the Israeli Defense Force shot and killed earlier this month—apparently throwing a tear-gas canister, along with a brief clip of her purportedly saying, “I am here on the front line and I act as a human shield.”

The video seems to suggest that throwing a device spewing caustic gas away from people into an empty field is a sort of violence. (“This medic was incited by Hamas,” the video reads as she grabs the canister.) But the primary problem with the IDF video is that it deceptively edits her comments to distort what she said—a fact not noted by the Buchsbaum until paragraph 20, when he threw in this crucial piece of information:

In the longer video, the comment that the military translated as “I act as a human shield” was part of a sentence in which Ms. Najjar said, “I’m acting as a human rescue shield to protect the injured inside the armistice line.”

“Acting as a human shield to protect the injured inside the armistice line” has a radically different meaning than the commonly understood canard about Palestinians using “human shields” to protect “terrorists.” This hugely consequential fact should have led the story; instead, it’s casually tossed out in the third-to-last paragraph. The story here is that the IDF—as it has been doing for decades—casually lies and distorts facts to suit its narrative. Like all militaries, the Israeli military is not presenting a “dueling narrative” in good faith, as a New York Times tweet suggested; it’s manipulating video, hoping credulous journalists help them muddy the waters, as Buchsbaum did.

Indeed, the bizarre IDF press release write-up serves no other purpose than to reframe the gunning down of the unarmed medic from a clear crime committed by Israel to a Fog of War “dueling narratives between Israel and Hamas” tale of “both sidesism.” Buchsbaum vaguely alludes to—but strangely omits—the deceptive editing in the opening with his risible turn of phrase in paragraph two:

The tightly edited video shows a woman identified as the medic, Rouzan al-Najjar, throwing what appears to be a tear-gas canister.

“Tightly edited”? What does this mean, exactly? “Tight” editing is generally considered a compliment in the film and TV world, and says nothing about deliberate omissions for the purposes of misleading the viewer. When videographer Tate B. James confronted Buchsbaum about this fact, Buchsbaum appeared to think he had covered his bases:

Either Buchsbaum doesn’t know he’s being misleading, and is thus severely unqualified to be writing for a major paper, or he knows he’s spinning in Israel’s favor, but was hoping no one would really notice. Either way, the New York Times is once again (FAIR.org, 7/14/17, 5/17/18, 5/15/18) using its pages to confuse readers to the benefit of the Israeli military.

You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter:@NYTOpinion). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.

June 13, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | 4 Comments

Israeli Authorities Demolish Graves at Historic Palestinian Cemetery

Sputnik – June 11, 2018

Israeli authorities were caught on video excavating portions of the historic Bab al-Rahma cemetery next to Al-Aqsa mosque in occupied East Jerusalem. The cemetery is believed to contain the final resting places of two companions of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

Video from June 5 shows about a dozen men, presumably members of Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority, at a work site in the Bab al-Rahma cemetery, through which Israel is planning to build a national park trail.

​The cemetery sits adjacent to Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam. It is believed to hold the graves of Ubada ibn as-Samit and Shadad ibn Aus, two of the Prophet Muhammad’s companions. The cemetery has remained in use for more than 1,000 years.

Israel plans to seize about 40 percent of the cemetery for the national park under murky legal pretexts, Sputnik News recently reported. The plan has supposedly been in place since 2015, but Palestinian lawyers and conservation activists claim Israel is jumping the gun, as court cases over the fate of the cemetery remain pending.

Israeli authorities have recently resumed work on the park and have been seen digging up and marking graves, removing trees and fencing off areas to halt future burials. During the first weekend of June, several Palestinians were injured and arrested while protesting the desecration of the cemetery.

Outside of Jerusalem proper, in the West Bank, authorities are also clearing the way for a new settlement over the village of al-Khana Ahmar, a village mostly inhabited by Bedouin refugees who were expelled from southern Israel in 1952. In 2009, an Italian aid organization constructed a school there, but Israel ordered it to be demolished one month after it opened. After that, residents in neighboring Israeli settlements petitioned the courts to demolish the community, which has been slated for destruction since February 2010. In 2015, authorities confiscated solar panels that provided the only source of electricity to the village.

​Israel plans to relocate them yet again, this time north to a village called An-Nuway’imah, allowing Jewish settlers to claim the strategically significant spot. Building an Israeli settlement there would allow the government to connect the urban Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem and to control the gateway between northern and southern parts of the West Bank.

Abu Khamiss, a spokesman for the current Khan al-Ahmar villagers, told France 24 in 2014 that “the place where Israel wants us to ‘relocate’ would be like a prison for us. We’d be surrounded by Israeli settlements, a checkpoint and military training camps.”

The demolition is expected to begin any day now. Already, Israeli authorities have been accused of poisoning locals’ dogs under cover of night, robbing the villagers of the “faithful shepherds.”

Palestinian schoolchildren queue outside a tent where they attend lessons after Israeli troops confiscated caravans used as school classrooms, due to the lack of an Israeli-issued construction permit, in the West Bank village of Jubbet Al Dhib, near Bethlehem August 24, 2017

© REUTERS / Mussa Qawasma

For Palestinian children living in the West Bank, getting to school is an incredibly difficult task because of their scarcity and the difficulty of traveling due to the abundance of Israeli checkpoints that control movement around the territory and can take hours to pass through. Israel is slated to destroy the Palestinian school in al-Khana Ahmar as well, a move the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East said in 2011 “would effectively deny the children of the community their education and jeopardize their future.”

According to a January report from the the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, at least 61 schools in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have pending demolition orders or stop work orders against them from the Israeli government.

See Also:

Israel’s Demolishing of West Bank Schools May Amount to Int’l Crime – Watchdog

June 12, 2018 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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