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Hamas: Land allocated by Israel for US embassy owned by Palestinians

Palestine Information Center – July 16, 2022

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Member of Hamas Political Bureau, Harun Nasser al-Din, said that the archive records and documents and rental contracts conclusively prove the ownership of Palestinian families of the land allocated by Israel for the US embassy in Occupied Jerusalem.

Israel displaced its owners during the Nakba and forcibly confiscated their property in 1950, he clarified in a statement issued Friday.

As US President Joe Biden makes his first visit to the region as US President, Nasser al-Din called for cancelling the plan and returning the lands to their owners.

“We stress that confiscating this land under the so-called Absentees’ Property Law is a continuation of the ethnic cleansing of our people in Occupied Jerusalem,” he added.

Being involved with the Israeli occupation in the seizure of this land, the US administration is actually violating the rights of the legitimate owners of these lands, he continued.

July 16, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

‘Iraq will not join any military alliance, position on Palestine firm’

MEMO | July 16, 2022

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi has announced that the Jeddah conference in Saudi Arabia “will not witness the discussion of normalisation with Israel” and stressed that discussion on the topic is an attempt to confuse Iraq’s restoration of its role in the region.

The prime minister’s media office disclosed in a statement on Friday, posted on Twitter, that: “Iraq’s position is firm and clear on the Palestinian issue and is not open for discussion.”

The media office added that Iraq could not be a foundation to threaten any neighbouring country.

The prime minister stressed that Baghdad would not allow any party to use Iraq as a base to threaten neighbours or create problems by using Iraqi lands.

Al-Kadhimi expressed that they are in dire need of wisdom, patience, reconciliation and restoring confidence for the sake of Iraq and Iraqis. He mentioned that his government’s motto from day one has been “Iraq first” and that they will continue to adopt this approach in order to serve the people.

Moreover, Al-Kadhimi stated during a press conference held in Baghdad before travelling to Jeddah: “Iraq has not and will not be, neither today nor tomorrow, in any military axis or alliance, and the national interest is the goal of these meetings.”

“Today we are responding to an invitation extended to Iraq to participate in the Jeddah conference, which will be attended by the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Arab Republic of Egypt, in addition to the United States.”

Regarding his upcoming meeting with US President Joe Biden, the prime minister made it clear that he will discuss with the US what they agreed on in the strategic agreement, such as revitalising agreements in the field of education, culture, health and other areas that reflect on the economic role.

July 16, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Hamas: “Jerusalem Declaration” will not give Israel legitimacy

MEMO | July 15, 2022

Palestinian factions have categorically rejected the Jerusalem Declaration signed by US President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, saying it represents “an aggression” against Palestinian people and their rights.

In its statement after Biden and Lapid signed the declaration on the strategic partnership between the two sides, Hamas explained that the agreement comes to further “consolidate Washington’s approach of siding with and supporting the occupation’s aggression against our Palestinian people and their Islamic and Christian lands and holy sites and a continuation of the US’ suspicious attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause by integrating this Zionist entity into our Arab and Islamic Ummah [nation].”

“This declaration expresses the blatant and unacceptable bias of the US administration toward the Zionist entity and its occupying agendas. It makes the US administration a partner in the Israeli occupation’s aggression and terrorism against our Palestinian land, people, and sanctities,” it added.

In turn, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine considered the deal a continuation of the aggression against the Palestinian people and their national rights and said it gives Israel more freedom to expand and deepen its colonial project in Palestine and its expansion abroad.

It called for “the escalation of all forms of resistance” against the “aggressive colonial and Zionist policies.”

For its part, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine said the Jerusalem Declaration is an open invitation to ignite regional wars and to reinforce Israel’s aggressive role at the expense of the interests of the peoples of the region under the pretext of Israel’s “right to defend itself”.

It warned of the repercussions of the plans of the United States and Israel to drown the region in “seas of blood and many problems such as impoverishment, starvation, waste of wealth and mass destruction”.

The four-page Jerusalem Declaration includes an American commitment to Israel’s security and its military superiority in the region.

July 15, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Companies pillaging water resources in West Bank are violating international law, warns NGO

MEMO | July 14, 2022

Several companies complicit in destroying and pillaging water resources in occupied Palestine have been warned that they are violating Palestinians’ right to self-determination and international law.

Al-Haq, a Palestinian NGO, has called out a number of companies including Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, Hagihon Company, TAHAL Group International B.V, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Caterpillar, manufacturing giant JCB and Volvo Group.

According to Wafa news agency, the corporations enable Israel’s appropriation of water by supporting the ongoing dispossession of the already restricted water access to Palestinian communities.

An example includes Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, which uses stolen water to increase the supply to illegal Israeli settlements, which have a high demand. It does not do the same for Palestinian communities and cities in the occupied West Bank. Indeed, it discriminates systematically, and denies water to the Palestinian population, the rights group said.

In a letter addressed to the companies, Al-Haq wrote: “By illegally appropriating large water quantities from Palestinians, Mekorot’s actions may amount to the war crime of pillage. Mekorot’s drilling of illegal wells, along with TAHAL’s infrastructural support, serves illegal Israeli settlements with an unlimited supply of water, while simultaneously restricting water supply for Palestinian communities in the same region.”

“This sustains the transfer of a foreign population into the OPT, constituting a violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Through these actions, Mekorot, and many other corporations, blatantly violate Palestinians’ means of subsistence, a violation of Article 1(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 1(2) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.”

The Palestinian rights organisation called on the corporations to terminate their business in the occupied territories and “to act with enhanced due diligence to avoid further involvement in serious human rights violations and war crimes.”

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967. Human rights abuses against Palestinians and breaches of international law are daily occurrences.

July 14, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel confiscates more Palestinian land near Ramallah

MEMO | July 14, 2022

The Israeli occupation army started on Wednesday the process of confiscating 1,480 dunams of land belonging to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. The move was made as US President Joe Biden touched down in the occupation state on his first trip to the Middle East since taking office.

According to Palestinian activists, the land targeted by the Israeli occupation belongs to four Palestinian villages, Jaloud, Qaryut, Turmusaya and Al-Mughayer. All of them are located between Ramallah and Nablus.

Palestinian anti-settlement activist Ghassan Daghlas said that the land was seized after appeals from the owners, who grow olives and almonds there, were rejected. The area was declared to be a security zone by the army to secure adjacent Israeli settlements and outposts. All of Israel’s settlements and settlement outposts are illegal under international law.

According to Daghlas, the land is located around the Jewish settlement of Shilo. He pointed out that this is the largest land grab intended to expand the settlements and outposts that surround the villages, and noted that the confiscation was under a military order issued on 14 April which was not disclosed until after the deadline for objections had passed.

The Israeli occupation authorities are planning to annex the land to increase the size of the illegal Amichai settlement.

July 14, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Biden: ‘You need not be a Jew to be Zionist’

MEMO | July 14, 2022

Speaking after his arrival in Israel yesterday, US President Joe Biden lauded the “ancient land” he’d arrived in and stressed “you need not be a Jew to be Zionist.” Biden was welcomed at the airport by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, his deputy Naftali Bennett and President Isaac Herzog, according to the Times of Israel.

Repeating past comments he’s made about Israel, he said: “You need not be a Jew to be Zionist.”

“This is my tenth visit, and every chance I have to return to this ancient land is a blessing because the connection between the American people and Israeli people is deep,” Biden said.

“It is bone deep, and generation after generation that connection grows as we invest in each other and dream together.”

Lapid, for his part, described Biden’s visit as historic as “it expresses the unbreakable bond between our two countries.”

The Israeli premier called Biden “one of the best friends Israel has ever known,” and referred to the US president calling himself a Zionist in the past.

Biden will visit the West Bank as part of his tour where he will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

July 14, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , , | Leave a comment

How Jewish Is the War Against Russia? Let’s be honest about who is promoting it

BY PHILIP GIRALDI • UNZ REVIEW  • JULY 12, 2022

Five years ago, I wrote an article entitled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s wars.” It turned out to be the most popular piece that I have ever written and I was rewarded for it by immediately being fired by the so-called American Conservative magazine, where I had been a regular and highly popular contributor for fourteen years. I opened the article with a brief description of an encounter with a supporter whom I had met shortly before at an antiwar conference. The elderly gentleman asked “Why doesn’t anyone ever speak honestly about the six-hundred-pound gorilla in the room? Nobody has mentioned Israel in this conference and we all know it’s American Jews with all their money and power who are supporting every war in the Middle East for Netanyahu? Shouldn’t we start calling them out and not letting them get away with it?”

In my article I named many of the individual Jews and Jewish groups that had been leading the charge to invade Iraq and also deal with Iran along the way. They used fake intelligence and out-and-out lies to make their case and never addressed the central issue of how those two countries actually threatened the United States or its vital interests. And when they succeeded in committing the US to the fiasco in Iraq, as far as I can determine only one honest Jew who had participated in the process, Philip Zelikow, in a moment of candor, admitted that the Iraq War, in his opinion, was fought for Israel.

There was considerable collusion between the Israeli government and the Jews in the Pentagon, White House, National Security Council and State Department in the wake of 9/11. Under President George W. Bush, Israeli Embassy staff uniquely had free access to the Pentagon office of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, not being required to sign in or submit any security measures. It was a powerful indication of the special status that Israel enjoyed with top Jews in the Bush Administration. It should also be recalled that Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans was the source of the false WMD information used by the Administration to justify invading Iraq, while that information was also funneled directly to Vice President Dick Cheney without any submission to possibly critical analysts by his chief of Staff “Scooter” Libby. Wolfowitz, Feith and Libby were of course Jewish as were many on their staffs and Feith’s relationship with Israel was so close that he actually partnered in a law firm that had a branch in Jerusalem. Feith also served on the board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), which is dedicated to nurturing the relationship between the US and Israel.

Currently, the top three State Department officials (Tony Blinken, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Nuland) are all Zionist Jews. The head of the Department of Homeland Security, which is hot on the trail of domestic “terrorist” dissidents, is also Jewish as is the Attorney General and the president’s chief of staff. They and their boss Joe Biden do not seem concerned that their client Ukraine is no democracy. The nation’s current government came into power after the 2014 coup engineered by President Barack Obama’s State Department at an estimated cost of $5 billion. The regime change carried out under Barack Obama was driven by State Department Russophobe Victoria Nuland with a little help from international globalist George Soros. It removed the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych who was, unfortunately for him, a friend of Russia.

Ukraine is reputedly both the poorest and most corrupt country in Europe, witness the Hunter Biden saga. The current President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish and claims to have holocaust victims in his family tree, is a former comedian who won election in 2019. He replaced another Jewish president Petro Poroshenko, after being heavily funded and promoted by yet another fellow Jew and Ukraine’s richest oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, who is also an Israeli citizen and now lives in Israel.

It all sounds like deja vu all over again, particularly as many of the perpetrators are still around, like Nuland, priming the pump to go to war yet again for no reason. And they are joined by journalists like Bret Stephens at the New York Times, Wolf Blitzer and Jake Tapper at CNN, and also Max Boot at the Washington Post, all of whom are Jewish and can be counted on to write regular pieces both damning and demonizing Russia and its head of state Vladimir Putin, which means it is not only about the Middle East anymore. It is also about weakening and even bringing about regime change in nuclear armed Russia while also drawing some lines in the sand for likewise nuclear armed China. And I might add that playing power games with Russia is a hell of a lot more dangerous that kicking Iraq around.

To put it bluntly, many US government and media Jews hate Russia and even though they benefited substantially as a group by virtue of their preeminent role in the looting of the former Soviet Union under Boris Yeltsin and continue to be among the most prominent Russian oligarchs. Many of the oligarch billionaires, like Boris Berezovsky, self-exiled when Vladimir Putin obtained power and began to crack down on their tax avoidance and other illegal activity. Many moved to Western Europe where some bought up football teams while others went south and obtained Israeli citizenship. Their current grievances somewhat reflect their tribe’s demand for perpetual victimhood and the deference plus forgiveness of all sins that it conveys, with the self-promoted tales of persecution going back to the days of the Tsars, full of allegations about pogroms and Cossacks arriving in the night, stories that rival many of the holocaust fabrications in terms of their lack of credibility.

Many Jews, particularly younger Jews, are finding it difficult to support apartheid Israel and the constant wars being initiated and fought for no particularly credible reason by both Democratic and Republican parties when in power, which is a good thing. But Jewish power in Washington and across the US is difficult to ignore and it is precisely those Jewish groups and individuals who have been empowered through their wealth and connections who have been the most vocal leading warmongers when it has come to the Middle East and to Russia.

Interestingly, however, some pushback is developing. The Jewish peace group Tikkun has recently published a devastating article by Jeffrey Sachs on the Jews who have been agitating for war. It is entitled “Ukraine Is the Latest Neocon Disaster” and describes how “The war in Ukraine is the culmination of a 30-year project of the American neoconservative movement. The Biden Administration is packed with the same neocons who championed the US wars of choice in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and who did so much to provoke Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The neocon track record is one of unmitigated disaster, yet Biden has staffed his team with neocons. As a result, Biden is steering Ukraine, the US, and the European Union towards yet another geopolitical debacle…”

Tikkun explains how “The neocon movement emerged in the 1970s around a group of public intellectuals, several of whom were influenced by University of Chicago political scientist Leo Strauss and Yale University classicist Donald Kagan. Neocon leaders included Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Kagan (son of Donald), Frederick Kagan (son of Donald), Victoria Nuland (wife of Robert), Elliott Abrams, and Kimberley Allen Kagan (wife of Frederick).” It might be added that Kimberley Kagan heads the Institute for the Study of War, which is often cited in media coverage and even in Congress to explain why we must fight Russia.

It has long been recognized by many that a particular antipathy directed against Russia permeates the so-called neoconservative world view. The neocons are hugely overrepresented at the top levels of government and, as noted above, a number of them are running the State Department while also holding high level positions elsewhere in the Biden Administration as well as in the foreign policy think tanks, including Richard Haass at the influential Council on Foreign Relations. Likewise, the intensely Russophobic US and Western media, foundations and social networking sites are disproportionately Jewish in their ownership and staffing.

And beyond that, Ukraine is to a certain extent a very Jewish-identified place. The Jewish media in the US and elsewhere has been showering Zelensky with praise, referring to him as a genuine “Jewish hero,” a modern Maccabee resisting oppression, a David versus Goliath. T-shirts bearing his image are being sold that read “Resisting tyrants since Pharaoh” while the largely Orthodox Jewish community in New York City has already been raising millions of dollars for Ukrainian aid.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that a “2020 demographic survey estimated that besides a ‘core’ population of 43,000 Jews, around 200,000 Ukrainians are technically eligible for Israeli citizenship, meaning that they have identifiable Jewish ancestry. The European Jewish Congress says that number could be as high as 400,000.” If that is true, it is one of the largest Jewish communities in the world and it includes at least 8,000 Israelis, many of whom have returned to Israel.

As US-Russian negotiations leading up the current fighting were clearly designed to fail by the Biden Administration, one therefore has to wonder if this war against Russia is largely a product of a long enduring ethno-religious hatred coupled with a belief in the necessity for a strong American military applied as needed to dominate the world and thereby protect Israel. The neocons are most visible, but equally toxic are the Jews who would prefer to describe themselves as neoliberals or liberal interventionists, that is liberals who promote a strong, assertive American leadership role to support the basically phony catchwords “democracy” and “freedom.” Both neocons and neoliberals inevitably support the same policies so they have both ends of the political spectrum covered, particularly concerning the Middle East and against Russia. They currently dominate the foreign policy thinking of both major political parties as well as exercising control over media and entertainment industry coverage of the issues that concern them, largely leaving the American public with only their viewpoint to consider.

There is plenty of other evidence that prominent Jews both inside and outside the Administration have been stirring things up against Russia with considerable success as President Biden has now declared insanely that his Administration is engaged in “a great battle for freedom. A battle between democracy and autocracy. Between liberty and repression.” He has confirmed that the US is in Ukraine’s war against Russia until we “win.” How else does one explain the ridiculous trip by Attorney General Merrick Garland to Kiev in late June to help set up a war crimes investigation directed against Russia?

As Garland is supposed to be the US Attorney General, it might first be useful to investigate crimes relating to the United States. He might start with American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan or Israeli war crimes using Washington provided weapons in Lebanon and Syria, not to mention the human rights violations using those same weapons that occur on a daily basis directed against the Palestinians. Some conservatives are also wondering why the Attorney General spends his time pursuing “white supremacists” and has failed to investigate the rioting, looting and killing that rocked the nation in the BLM Summer of 2020.

Nevertheless, an undeterred and fearless Garland announced while in Kiev that Eli Rosenbaum, Jewish of course, and a 36-year veteran of the Justice Department who previously served as the director of the Office of Special Investigations, which was primarily responsible for identifying, denaturalizing and deporting Nazi war criminals, will lead a War Crimes Accountability team made up of DOJ experts in investigating Russian human-rights abuses. After the obligatory photo op sucking up to Zelensky, the diminutive but steely eyed Attorney General declared that “There is no hiding place for war criminals. The US Justice Department will pursue every avenue of accountability for those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine. Working alongside our domestic and international partners, the Justice Department will be relentless in our efforts to hold accountable every person complicit in the commission of war crimes, torture and other grave violations during the unprovoked conflict in Ukraine.” And if any further evidence is required to demonstrate the Jewishness of that week in Kiev, actor Ben Stiller, also a Jew, visited Zelensky and gave him a big hug.

If Eli Rosenbaum is still seriously interested in finding Nazis he will find many more of them in Ukraine than within the Russian Army. So, one has to ask “Whose war is it and who is making it happen?” Can you please explain Joe Biden? Or, given your perpetual blank look, should I ask Merrick Garland or Tony Blinken or maybe even Victoria Nuland?

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US plans to build diplomatic compound on Palestinian land in East Jerusalem: Rights group

MEMO | July 12, 2022

The US is planning to build a diplomatic complex on private property confiscated from Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, a rights organisation said Sunday, Anadolu News Agency reports.

In a statement, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel (Adalah) said they have found new evidence that the land on which the diplomatic compound is to be built under a joint US-Israeli plan is located on private property taken from Palestinians.

“The land on which the US Diplomatic Compound is to be built is registered in the name of the State of Israel, but it was confiscated illegally from Palestinian refugees and internally displaced Palestinians using the 1950 Israeli Absentees’ Property Law,” it noted.

Recalling an upcoming visit by US President Joe Biden to Israel, Adalah said the descendants of the original owners of the property, including US citizens and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, demand the “immediate cancellation of the plan”.

“If built, the US embassy compound will be located on land that was seized from Palestinians in violation of international law,” the statement added.

Biden is scheduled to arrive in Israel on 13 July, as part of a tour that will also include the West Bank city of Ramallah and Saudi Arabia.

July 12, 2022 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

The (almost) unbelievable story of an Israeli killer – and the lies that are protecting him

By Kathryn Shihadah | Israel-Palestine News | July 10, 2022

After Ali Harb’s gruesome death last month, the chronicle of events that followed was unsurprising to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, but mind-boggling to most of the rest of the world.

Eyewitnesses to the incident on June 21 describe what began as a fairly routine episode: Israeli settlers (illegal under international law), spurred on by radical ideology, often show up on Palestinian private property to harass or provoke the indigenous Palestinians. Sometimes the settlers come with the intention to pitch a tent – creating an illegal “outpost” which can be the first step in annexing a piece of property.

These incidents sometimes play out with the Palestinians hiding in their homes for safety; at other times, they confront the settlers and tell them to go away. Often, Israeli soldiers accompany the settlers, protect them, and arrest (or shoot at) the Palestinians who refuse to give in.

In this case, a crowd of about 15 settlers – with Israeli soldiers watching – began constructing an outpost on the Harb family land. “When we tried to prevent them,” explained Harb’s cousin Naim, “one of the settlers took a knife and stabbed Ali in the chest.”

Another relative, Zaid, added, “The police and army were just a few meters away from us, but they did not do a thing to the stabber.”

Eyewitnesses maintain that the Palestinians’ actions before the stabbing had been nonviolent.

As Ali Harb lay bleeding on the ground, “the military pointed their weapons at us and fired in the air,” according to another relative, Firas.

Eventually, bystanders were permitted to move Ali. Firas explained, “We carried him for a distance of approximately two kilometers [about 1 ¼ miles)…while he bled, until we got to the ambulance.” Ali was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Family of Ali Harb mourn his death after a settler stabbed him in the heart. (ajplus/Twitter)

Official Israeli version

The official Israeli version of the incident differs, as is often the case.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military claims that a “violent confrontation” between settlers and Palestinians had already taken place when the soldiers arrived – the account emphasized that the confrontation had taken place before they arrived.

Soldiers allegedly noted a wounded Palestinian, and offered to put him in a military ambulance and take him to a hospital so he could get “the necessary medical treatment.” The official narrative asserts that the Palestinians refused.

Aftermath

A few days later, Israeli soldiers arrested members of the Harb family in a 2 am raid that included stun grenades.

One of those arrested described the interrogation: “They concentrated on the fact that we had said the army and police were present when the incident occurred – they tried to tell us they weren’t there when it happened…That was all they asked about.”

He added, “I maintained my testimony that the settler stabbed Ali in front of the soldiers, just as I had said in my declaration to the Israeli police just after the killing happened.”

Israeli intelligence arrested a 44-year-old Israeli settler; hundreds of Israelis, among them far-right members of the parliament, protested the arrest, demanding the killer be set free.

“Self-defense”

In fact, on Tuesday, July 5th, the settler who killed Ali Harb was released to house arrest.

The Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reports: “Police are now regarding the case as one of reckless homicide… rather than a more serious charge of murder.” If convicted, the maximum sentence would be 12 years. (Reckless homicide is a form of involuntary manslaughter.)

The settler, who was trespassing on private Palestinian property and being asked to leave, has claimed that the stabbing was in “self-defense,”

Shin Bet investigators do not regard the incident as “deliberate” or “terrorism.”

Outpost violence

While all of Israel’s settlements in the Palestinian West Bank are illegal under international law, outposts are not even officially recognized by Israel; nevertheless outposts receive funding and military support from the state.

The violence used to intimidate and ultimately ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land has been practiced since the founding of Israel, and even before – and generally goes unacknowledged and unpunished by the state.

Palestinian activist Ghassan Daghlas explains,

The Israeli government has given the settlers a green light to take over any land they can take by force.

In the Salfit region alone [where Ali Harb was killed], there are 24 settlements and settler outposts, and they are among the most violent settlers in the West Bank.

Palestinians in the region have no protection, and they have to come out to protect their lands, risking their safety and lives.

Settlers come out to establish new outposts on Palestinian land because they know that they have the army and the government’s protection, and that’s why they attack Palestinian farmers and villagers as well.

Palestinian leaders stress that killing of Ali Harb is yet another outcome of Israeli impunity – including Israeli settlers – in the international community.

Of the 650,000 Israeli settlers living on Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, not all seek to expand further, as did those who were involved in the killing of Ali Harb. The Israeli government encourages Israelis to settle, and offers incentives to get them to move to the occupied territories. Their presence impacts Palestinian lives in the form of the government appropriating land for the settlements, Jewish-only roads to the settlements, and space for expansion – all carved out of Palestinian property without Palestinian consent.

The ideological settlers go beyond this disruption and squat on additional Palestinian property besides what they already have. Both types of settlers are in breach of international law.

July 11, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Family of Shireen Abu Akleh asks to meet with Biden

Raşid Necati Aslım/Anadolu Agency
MEMO | July 9, 2022

The family of slain Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh has accused the United States of providing impunity for Israel over her killing and asked to meet President Joe Biden in person during his trip to Israel next week, reports Reuters.

In a letter to Biden posted on Twitter on Friday, the family said the administration simply adopted the Israeli government’s conclusions over her death, which it described as extrajudicial killing while falling short of its own stated goal of ensuring full accountability.

“Your administration’s engagement has served to whitewash Shireen’s killing and perpetuate impunity,” said the letter, signed by her brother Anton Abu Akleh on the family’s behalf.

“It is as if you expect the world and us to now just move on. Silence would have been better.” The family asked to see all the information the administration has collected on the issue.

Abu Akleh was killed on May 11 during an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin under bitterly disputed circumstances.

Last month the United Nations human rights office said evidence suggested Israeli military fire had killed Abu Akleh while she stood with other reporters and was identifiable as a journalist.

The State Department on Monday said she was likely killed by gunfire from Israeli positions but it was probably unintentional and independent investigators could not reach a definitive conclusion about the origin of the bullet that struck her.

Palestinian officials criticized the report and maintained she had been deliberately targeted by an Israeli soldier. Israel denied this.

In his first Middle East trip as president on July 13-16, Biden is expected to meet separately with Palestinian and Israeli leaders. The Abu Akleh case will be a diplomatic and domestic test for new Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid.

A group of 24 US senators in Biden’s Democratic Party last month urged him to ensure direct U.S. involvement in the investigation of Abu Akleh’s killing.

July 9, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , | Leave a comment

15 years of failed experiments: Myths and facts about the Israeli siege on Gaza

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | July 5, 2022

Fifteen years have passed since Israel imposed a total siege on the Gaza Strip, subjecting nearly two million Palestinians to one of the longest and most cruel politically-motivated blockades in history. Back then, the Israeli government justified its siege as the only way to protect Israel from Palestinian “terrorism and rocket attacks”. This is the occupation state’s official line to this day, and yet not many Israelis — certainly not in government, the media or even ordinary people — would argue that Israel today is safer than it was prior to June 2007.

It is widely understood that Israel imposed the siege as a response to the Hamas takeover of the Strip, following a brief, violent confrontation between the movement, which is the current de facto government in Gaza, and its main political rival Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank. However, the isolation of Gaza was planned years before the Hamas-Fatah clash, or even the legislative election victory of Hamas in January 2006.

In fact, the late Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was determined to redeploy Israeli forces out of Gaza long before these dates, making the siege possible. Culminating in the Israeli disengagement from Gaza in August-September 2005, the plan was proposed by Sharon in 2003, approved by his government in 2004 and finally adopted by the Knesset in February 2005.

The “disengagement” was an Israeli tactic intended to remove a few thousand illegal Jewish settlers from occupied Gaza — to go to other illegal Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank — while redeploying the Israeli army from crowded population centres in the Gaza Strip to the nominal border areas. This was the actual start of the Gaza siege.

The above assertion was even clear to James Wolfensohn, who was appointed by the Middle East Quartet as the Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement. In 2010, he reached a similar conclusion: “Gaza had been effectively sealed off from the outside world since the Israeli disengagement… and the humanitarian and economic consequences for the Palestinian population were profound.”

The ultimate motive behind the “disengagement” was not Israel’s security, or even to starve the Palestinians in Gaza as a form of collective punishment. The latter was a natural outcome of a much more sinister political plot, as communicated by Sharon’s own senior advisor at the time, Dov Weisglass. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in October 2004, Weisglass put it plainly: “The significance of the disengagement plan is the freezing of the peace process.” How? “When you freeze [the peace] process, you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, and you prevent a discussion on the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.”

Not only was this Israel’s ultimate motive behind the disengagement and subsequent siege of Gaza, but also, according to the seasoned Israeli politician, it was all done “with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of [the US] Congress.” The US president at the time was none other than George W. Bush.

All of this took place before Palestine’s legislative election, Hamas’s victory and the Hamas-Fatah clash. The latter merely served as a convenient justification for what had already been discussed, “ratified” by Washington and implemented.

For Israel, the siege was a political ploy which acquired additional meaning and value as time passed. In response to the accusation that Israel was starving Palestinians in Gaza, Weisglass was very quick to reply: “The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

What was then understood as a facetious, albeit thoughtless statement, turned out to be actual Israeli policy, as revealed in a 2008 report which was made available in 2012. Thanks to the Israeli human rights organization Gisha, the “redlines [for] food consumption in the Gaza Strip” — composed by the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories — were made known. It emerged that Israel was calculating the minimum number of calories necessary to keep Gaza’s population alive, a number that is “adjusted to culture and experience” in the Strip.

The rest is history. Gaza’s suffering is absolute, with 98 per cent of the Strip’s water undrinkable; hospitals lacking essential supplies and life-saving medications; and movement in and out of the territory more or less prohibited, with relatively few minor exceptions.

Even so, Israel has failed miserably, with none of its objectives achieved. Tel Aviv hoped that the “disengagement” would compel the international community to redefine the legal status of the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Despite pressure from Washington, that never happened. Gaza remains part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories as defined in international law.

Furthermore, Israel’s September 2007 designation of Gaza as an “enemy entity” and a “hostile territory” changed little, apart from allowing the Israeli government to carry out several devastating wars against the Palestinians in the enclave, starting in late 2008.

None of these wars have served a long-term Israeli strategy successfully. Instead, Gaza continues to fight back on a much larger scale than ever before, frustrating the calculations of Israeli leaders, a fact which became clear in the befuddled, disturbing language to which they resorted. During one of the deadliest Israeli wars on Gaza, in July 2014, right-wing Knesset member Ayelet Shaked wrote on Facebook that the war was “not a war against terror, and not a war against extremists, and not even a war against the Palestinian Authority.” Instead, according to Shaked, who a year later became Israel’s Minister of Justice, this was “a war between two people. Who is the enemy? The Palestinian people.”

In the final analysis, the governments of Sharon, Tzipi Livni, Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett all failed to isolate Gaza from the greater Palestinian body; break the will of the Palestinians in the Strip; or ensure Israeli security at the expense of the Palestinians.

Moreover, Israel has fallen victim to its own hubris. While prolonging the siege will achieve no short or long-term strategic value, lifting the siege, from Israel’s viewpoint, would be tantamount to an admission of defeat, and could empower Palestinians in the West Bank to emulate the Gaza model. This lack of certainty further accentuates the political crisis and lack of strategic vision that has defined all Israeli governments for nearly two decades.

Israel’s political experiment in Gaza has backfired, inevitably so. The only way out is for the siege of Gaza to be lifted completely. Not eased; lifted. Completely. And this time, for good.

July 5, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

ICC: International Federation of Journalists to be lawsuit partner against Israel

MEMO | July 4, 2022

The International Federation of Journalists will be a partner in a lawsuit against Israel at the International Criminal Court (ICC) following the murder of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper, Wafa news agency has reported.

“Palestinian journalists are fighters who face on a daily basis the aggression of the occupation in all fields as well as the main project of the occupation to expel the Palestinians from their land,” Ali Youssef, a member of the federation’s executive board, told Wafa. He added that the IFJ has succeeded in exposing Israel’s acts of aggression against media professionals and the Palestinian people.

Palestinians argue that the Israeli military deliberately targeted and killed Abu Akleh. Israel denies this, claiming that she may have been hit by errant army fire or by a bullet from one of the Palestinian gunmen who were clashing with its forces at the scene. According to eyewitnesses, however, there was no such clash at the time that the journalist was killed.

The ICC recognised in a February 2021 ruling that it has jurisdiction over the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This has paved the way for cases to be brought against Israel over alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Last month, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Maliki handed the ICC prosecutor the official outcome of the Palestinian investigation into the murder of Abu Akleh. He noted that it constitutes a turning point in the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

During the meeting with ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan, Maliki demanded that the criminals responsible for targeting civilians, children, women, journalists, doctors and other protected groups be brought to international justice.

Moreover, a video message by Nasser Abu Bakr, President of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, urged Prosecutor Khan to hold Israel to account. “Fifty Palestinian journalists have been killed since 2000 alone,” he explained. “Seven thousand crimes against Palestinian journalists have been documented.”

A detailed account of Abu Akleh’s killing was given by her colleague, Walid Al-Omari. “Why would they target Shireen?” asked Al Jazeera’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief. He suggested that Israel was seeking to inflict a direct and powerful blow against the network. By killing Abu Akleh, he suggested, the colonial-occupation state hoped to silence one of the most powerful voices in the Arab world.

Al Jazeera described Abu Akleh’s killing as a “blatant murder” that violates “international laws and norms”. In its statement following her murder, the network pointed out that according to Article 8 of the ICC Charter, “Targeting war correspondents, or journalists working in war zones or occupied territories by killing or physically assaulting them, is a war crime.”

July 4, 2022 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment