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The apartheid regime’s Christmas propaganda and oppression of Palestinian Christians

By Denijal Jegic | Press TV | December 26, 2021

As people around the world are celebrating Christmas, occupied Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity, remains under brutal Israeli apartheid. Meanwhile, the Israeli regime targets Western Christians with Zionist propaganda.

Zionist propaganda

The Israeli propaganda apparatus “Hasbara” has long invested large amounts of money and significant PR efforts in legitimizing the Zionist settler-colony in the eyes of its international audiences. In portraying the colony as a democracy with alleged human rights and co-existence between various religions, the Israeli regime has attempted to whitewash its genocidal oppression of Palestinians in the eyes of the West. The propaganda attempts have been successful to a large degree, as many Christians in the West either ignore the Palestinian plight, or provide outright support to the apartheid regime.

Evangelical Zionists in the United States have been amongst the most radical supporters of Israel. Christian tourism has contributed to the colony’s economy. This year again, Zionist politicians and officials have extended their holiday greetings to “Christian friends” around the world.

Such greetings are packed with colonial propaganda and appropriation of history. Israeli PM Naftali Bennett published a video on Christmas Eve this year from occupied Jerusalem, connecting the “ancient land” and the Bible to the current colony in his address to Christians. Bennett, who previously bragged about how many Arabs he killed in his life, lied that the colony provided “religious freedom, tolerance, and prosperity in a region where Christians are routinely persecuted.” The illusion that Israel offered religious freedom and that Christians outside of the colony are persecuted is widespread in the West. Bennett claimed that Israel is the “only one place” that “protects Christian life” and thanked his audience for “fighting for the state of Israel.”

While such proclamations further add to the positive image of the colony in the West, they stand in stark contrast to the reality on the ground.

The plight of Palestinian Christians

In fact, the world’s oldest Christian communities are victims of Israel’s genocidal settler-colonialism.

As a result of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign, the Christian population in Palestine has sharply declined throughout the decades. Places of significant importance for Christians are cut off from the outside world. The town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is surrounded by the apartheid wall.

Besides suffering under the structures of the apartheid regime, Palestinian Christians are also oftentimes prevented from exercising their religion. While foreign visitors may access Palestinian churches, the Palestinian right to worship is tightly controlled by the apartheid regime. Depending on where they live, Palestinians require permits issued by the apartheid authorities to attend Mass in churches. This year again, Palestinian Christians from Gaza applied for permits to travel to Bethlehem to attend prayers. Their requests were either rejected or outright ignored.

Palestinians are harassed by apartheid authorities on holy days, such as Easter and Christmas. This year on Easter, apartheid authorities escalated their ethnic cleansing campaign by expelling Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah (East al-Quds) from their homes. This Christmas again, hundreds of Palestinians were injured by occupation forces when they protested against settlement expansion in the West Bank.

Israeli violence has always extended beyond the borders of historic Palestine. The Israeli colonial regime has a history of targeting indigenous Christians in the region. It has done so during its military occupation and numerous wars in Lebanon and its continuous attacks on Syria. During last year’s Christmas celebrations, the Israeli regime invaded the Lebanese airspace to conduct airstrikes on Syria from there, killing several people.

The fallacy of a religious war

The Israeli regime is terrorizing Palestinians of all religions, but has been trying to portray the settler-colonial conquest as a “conflict” that is allegedly religious in its nature. Exploiting traditional Orientalism and anti-Muslim sentiments that are prevalent in Western cultures, the Israeli rhetoric has long focused not only on portraying Palestinian resistance – and oftentimes the very Palestinian existence as such – as anti-Jewish, but the regime has also tried to identify all Palestinians as Muslims to better advance its Islamophobic dichotomy and to frame the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation as a religious movement. It is the religious frame and the anti-Muslim prejudice amongst Israel’s backers that allows the apartheid regime to advance its goals. It is thus not surprising that the Israeli project is highly popular among the far-right and fascists around the world.

Of course the Palestinian struggle was never a sectarian one and many leading figures of Palestinian resistance have been Christians. Nor should the religion of colonized people determine the solidarity and support they receive from the outside world.

After all, destroying the cultural diversity of the region and dividing the population according to sectarian and ethnic lines have been long established practices of imperialist and colonialist forces.

Numerous Palestinian Christian leaders have appealed to Christians around the world to not turn a blind eye toward the continuous oppression and exploitation of Palestine. The Palestinian Archbishop of the Greek Orthodox Church in al-Quds, Atallah Hanna, himself a crucial figure in the Palestinian resistance, has repeatedly affirmed that al-Quds (Jerusalem) and the holy sites will remain Palestinian. The Archbishop reminded Christians around the world that while streets and squares in Western cities are decorated with lights and Christmas trees, there would be no point in celebrating Christmas if they do not pay attention to what is happening in Palestine. He called upon all churches to urgently defend Palestine. The archbishop has reportedly been poisoned by Israeli authorities, but survived the attack.

The racist ideology of Zionism targets people of all religious affiliations who stand in the way of the settler-colonial conquest. This is, unfortunately, more often than not ignored internationally, and particularly by Western Christians. This year again, many Christians in the West celebrate the birth of Jesus without talking about the struggle in Palestine.

Denijal Jegic is a writer and researcher, currently based in Beirut, Lebanon. He holds a PhD in American studies.

VIDEO:

Not just Muslims, Christian Palestinians suffer apartheid as well

While the Christians across the world are celebrating Christmas, the Palestinian Christians are enduring systematic apartheid In their homeland.

December 26, 2021 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli authorities remove original name of neighborhood in occupied Haifa

Quds News Network | December 25, 2021

Occupied Haifa – The Israeli municipality of the 1948-occupied city of Haifa has removed the original Palestinian name of Wadi Al Jimal neighborhood and refused to add it to signs and official documents, replacing it with the Hebrew name ‘Ein Hayam’.

The Israeli move sparked outrage among residents of the neighborhood, who are all native Palestinians.

Wadi Al Jimal is located in the southwest of Mount Carmel in occupied Haifa. It was constructed in the second half of the 19th century by native Palestinians.

Over 3000 Palestinians live in the neighborhood, which was a main station for travelers from Syria and Lebanon to Egypt before the city was occupied by zionists in 1951.

Israeli right-wingers have been pushing towards removing the neighborhood’s name since 2016.

‘Israel’ changed the names of most of the cities and villages that it occupied, however, Palestinians could keep the names of many places.

December 25, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Israel ‘infuriated’ by claim Christians are ‘driven away’ from Jerusalem

RT | December 21, 2021

Church leaders in Jerusalem have complained that “fringe radical” settler groups are mounting a violent “systematic attempt” to drive Christians from the city. Israel has criticized their statement as “baseless” and “infuriating.”

Last week, the Patriarchs and Heads of Local Churches of Jerusalem – a collection of various Christian denominations – launched a campaign to protest“frequent and sustained” radical violence and “strategic property” acquisition. They said these tactics were aimed at “diminishing the Christian presence.”

In a statement issued by the Diocese of Jerusalem, the church leaders pointed to “countless incidents” of physical and verbal assaults against priests, “intimidation” of local Christians and the “desecration” of holy sites and churches. They called out the “failure of local politicians, officials and law enforcement agencies” to stem the violence, which they dated back to 2012.

The joint statement was signed by the leadership of all the city’s major churches, including the Custody of the Holy Land representing the Vatican, the Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and the head of the Anglican Church.

The campaign was amplified by the UK’s Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who tweeted the joint declaration last Tuesday and termed it a “heart-cry” and an “unprecedented statement … about the future of Christians in the Holy Land.” The World Council of Churches and other bodies also lent support.

The church heads also requested “urgent dialogue” with political authorities in “Israel, Palestine and Jordan,” noting that these were bound by a “declared commitment” to protect religious freedom. Besides dealing with the “challenges presented by radical groups,” the talks would explore the creation of a “special Christian cultural and heritage zone to safeguard the integrity of the Christian Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.”

The allegations of Christians being discriminated against in Jerusalem have since attracted media attention, with the Israeli government finally responding to them this week.

In a statement on Monday, the Israeli foreign ministry branded the concerns as “baseless” and “infuriating” and claimed that they “distort the reality of the Christian community” in the country.

“Religious leaders have a critical role to play in education for tolerance and coexistence, and Church leaders should be expected to understand their responsibility and the consequences of what they have published, which could lead to violence and bring harm to innocent people,” the ministry said.

December 22, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Why is Israel allowed to own Palestinian history?

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 21, 2021

An investigative report in Haaretz — “Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew” — is a must-read. It should be read in particular by all who consider themselves to be “Zionists” as well as those who, for whatever reason, support Israel, anywhere in the world.

“In the village of Al-Dawayima… troops of the 8th Brigade massacred about 100 people,” reported Haaretz, although the number of the Palestinian victims later grew to 120. One of the soldiers who witnessed that horrific event testified before a government committee in November 1948: “There was no battle and no resistance. The first conquerors killed 80 to 100 Arab men, women and children. The children were killed by smashing their skulls with sticks. There wasn’t a house without people killed in it.”

The Haaretz report of nearly 5,000 words is filled with such painful details: stories of Palestinian elders who could not flee the Zionist invasion and ethnic cleansing of historic Palestine (1947-48), and were lined up against various walls and massacred; of an older woman being shot at point-blank range with four bullets; of other elders who were crammed inside a home which was then shelled by a tank and hand grenades; of many Palestinian women raped. The devastating stories just go on and on.

Historians often refer to the way that Palestine was ethnically cleansed of its native inhabitants by making a typical assertion that Palestinian refugees were “… those who fled or were expelled from their homes”. The use of the word “fled” has been exploited by supporters of Israel, who claim that the Palestinians left Palestine of their own accord.

It was also Haaretz that, in May 2013, reported on how Israel’s founding father and first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, had fabricated history to protect Israel’s image. Document number GL-18/17028, which was found in the Israeli military archive, demonstrated how the story of the Palestinians who “fled” — supposedly at the behest of Arab governments — was invented by the Israelis themselves. Sadly, as the latest revelations unearthed by Haaretz prove, Palestinians who stayed behind due to their disability, age or illness were not spared; they were massacred in the most horrific way imaginable.

However, something else struck me about the latest report by the Israeli newspaper. There was (and still is) a constant emphasis by delusional Israeli leaders that those who carried out the many grisly murders were few in number and do not represent the conduct of an entire army. It is important to note here that “army” refers to Zionist militias, some of whom operated under the title of “gang”.

Moreover, much emphasis has always been attached to the concept of “morality” when it comes to those who don uniforms representing the occupation state. Thus, “Israel’s moral foundations” were, according to those early “ethical Zionists”, jeopardised by the misconduct of a few “soldiers”, for which read militiamen and women, and even “terrorists”.

“In my opinion, all our moral foundations have been undermined and we need to look for ways to curb these instincts,” Haim-Mosh Shapira, the then Minister of Immigration and Health, was reported by Haaretz as saying during a meeting of the government committee.

Shapira, who represented the voice of reason and ethics in Israel at the time, was not arguing about Israel’s right to be established on the ruins of colonised — and eventually destroyed — Palestine. Nor was he questioning the killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians or the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands during the Nakba. Instead, he was referencing and protesting against the violent excesses which followed the Nakba, once the future of Israel and the destruction of Palestine were assured.

Needless to say, very few Israelis, if any, have been held accountable for the crimes of the past. Seventy-three years later, Palestinian victims continue to cry out for a justice that continues to be deferred.

Shapira’s brand of “humanistic” Zionism, with its selective and self-serving morality, continues to exist to this day. As odd as this may seem, the editorial line of Haaretz itself is the perfect manifestation of this supposed Zionist dichotomy.

Some may find this conclusion to be somewhat harsh. Zionist or not, they may protest that Haaretz has at least exposed these massacres and the culpability of the Israeli leadership. Such assumptions, however, are grossly misleading.

Generation after generation of Palestinians, along with many Palestinian historians — and even some Israelis — have known about most of these “previously unknown” massacres such as those at Reineh, Meron (Mirun) and Al-Burj, as reported by Haaretz. The assumption here is that these massacres were “unknown” until acknowledged by the Israelis themselves. Since Haaretz’s editorial line is driven by Israel’s own misconstrued historical narrative, the killings and destruction of these villages simply didn’t happen officially until an Israeli researcher acknowledged that they did.

Walid Khalidi, one of Palestine’s most authoritative historians, has been aware, as have many others, of these massacres for decades. In his seminal book, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948, Khalidi speaks of Al-Burj, of which the only sign of its existence now is “one crumbled house… on the hilltop.”

The Palestinian historian discusses what remains of the village of Meron (Mirun) in detail: “While the Arab section of the village was demolished, several rooms and stone walls still stand. One of the walls has a rectangular door-like opening and another has an arched entrance.” His records are very precise.

This is not the first time that an Israeli admission of guilt, although always conditional, has been considered as the validation of Palestinian suffering. Every Palestinian claim of Israeli misconduct, even though it may be verified by eyewitnesses and survivors, or even filmed, remains questionable until an Israeli newspaper, politician or historian acknowledges its validity. Why is Israel allowed to own Palestinian history in this way?

Our insistence on the centrality of the Palestinian narrative is becoming more urgent than ever, because marginalising Palestinian history is a form of denial of that history altogether; the denial of the bloody past and the equally violent present. From a Palestinian point of view, the fate of Al-Burj is no different to that of Jenin; the fate of Mirun is no different to that of Beit Hanoun; and the fate of Deir Yassin is no different to that of Rafah — in fact, the whole of the Gaza Strip.

Reclaiming history is not an intellectual exercise, it is a necessity. Yes, there are intellectual and ethical repercussions, but there are political and legal consequences too. Palestinians do not need to re-write their own history, because it is already written. It is time for those who have paid far more attention to the Israeli narrative to abandon such sophistry and, for once, listen to Palestinian voices. The truth conveyed by the victim is very different to that claimed by the aggressor.

December 21, 2021 Posted by | Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Israeli official calls for demolition of Palestine homes in Area C

MEMO | December 14, 2021

The Chairman of Israel’s Yesha Council, David Elhayani, yesterday called for the demolition of 95,000 Palestinian homes built in recent years in the so-called ‘Area C’ of the occupied West Bank.

“We need to stop thinking about what the Palestinians are doing and start thinking about what we have to do. Israel knows how to deal with illegal construction, as it did after approving the Kaminitz Law,” Elhayani was quoted by Channel 7 as saying.

The Kaminitz Law, an amendment to the Planning and Building Law of 1965, stipulates increasing Palestinian home demolitions and further criminalisation of what Israel calls “unauthorised housing and construction” in the occupied West Bank.

“The heads of settlement councils are abandoned in the campaign against Palestinian construction, and we do not have the legal tools to deal with the seizure that takes place against us,” the settlements official added.

Area C, which makes up about 60 per cent of the occupied Palestinian territory, is under both Israel’s military and administrative control as per the Oslo Accords. It is also the site of the majority of the more than 200 illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, where more than 400,000 settlers live.

December 14, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Canada’s NSA

CSE spied on Israel’s enemies and shared the intelligence with that country

By Yves Engler | December 10, 2021

This year marks the 75th anniversary of a little known but influential arm of Canada’s foreign policy apparatus. An entity called the Communications Security Establishment was established to spy internationally in 1946, operating secretly during its first four decades.

With an annual budget of $780 million and 3000 employees, the CSE has a variety of high-tech gadgets, including surveillance planes. In 2011 CSE moved into a new $1.2 billion home. The seven-building, 110,000 square metre complex is connected to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s (CSIS) headquarters in Ottawa.

Unlike CSIS, CSE is largely foreign focused. It seeks to “protect the computer networks and information of greatest importance to Canada” from international attack. CSE also gathers international signals intelligence (SIGINT), which it defines as “intelligence acquired through the collection of electromagnetic signals.” Historically, CSE largely intercepted electronic communications between embassies in Ottawa and other nations’ capitals. Today, CSE monitors phone calls, radio, microwave and satellite, as well as emails, chat rooms and other Internet exchanges. It engages in various forms of data hacking, sifting through millions of videos and online documents daily. Or, as Vice reporter Patrick McGuire put it, CSE “listens in on phone calls and emails to secretly learn about things the Canadian government wants to secretly learn about.”

After WWII the government established the Communications Branch of the National Research Council, which was renamed Communications Security Establishment three decades later. In Cautious Beginnings: Canadian Foreign Intelligence, 1939-51 Kurt Jensen explains: “the Gouzenko story [a Soviet diplomat who defected in September 1945, alleging widespread Russian spying in Canada] is almost entirely absent from the debate on Canadian postwar foreign intelligence. While the Soviet Union figured prominently in Canadian foreign intelligence interests, it was not an exclusive focus. The available evidence suggests that Canada had broad foreign intelligence interests that reflected current Canadian foreign policy interests.”

Since its creation CSE has been part of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing framework though Ottawa didn’t admit its Five Eyes relationship until 1995. The main contributors to the Washington-led Five Eyes are the US’s NSA, Australian Signals Directorate, New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau, British Government Communications Headquarters and CSE. A series of post-WWII accords, beginning with the 1946 UKUSA intelligence agreement, created the “AUS/CAN/NZ/UK/US EYES ONLY” arrangement.

CSE established SIGINT posts on the east and west coasts as well as in the north. According to a table produced by blogger Jerry Proc, there have been more than 50 Canadian SIGINT stations opened during the past century.

Canadian diplomatic posts have long housed SIGINT equipment. According to a NSA document released by whistleblower Edward Snowden, CSE operated clandestine surveillance activities in “approximately 20 high-priority countries.” In his 1994 book former CSE agent Mike Frost describes CSE listening posts at a number of embassies or consular posts while two papers in the early 2000s cite Beijing, Abidjan, New Delhi, Bucharest, Rabat, Kingston (Jamaica), Mexico City, Rome, San Jose (Costa Rica), Warsaw and Tokyo as diplomatic posts where CSE (probably) collected information.

Since the start of the 1960s CSE has listened to Cuban leaders’ conversations from an interception post inside the embassy in Havana. (Ottawa maintained diplomatic and economic relations with Cuba after its 1959 revolution, reports Three Nights in Havana, partly because “the United States secretly urged [Prime Minister] Diefenbaker to maintain normal relations because it was thought that Canada would be well positioned to gather intelligence on the island.”) Canada also spied on Cuba from a diplomatic post outside that country. In the early 1980s CSE wanted to establish a communications post in Jamaica, notes Frost, to intercept “communications from Fidel Castro’s Cuba, which would please NSA to no end.”

CSE also gathered intelligence on Palestinians for Israel. Frost notes, “[former Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman] Yasser Arafat’s name, for instance, was on every [CSE] key word list. NSA was happy about that.” According to files released by Snowden, CSE spied on Israel’s enemies and shared the intelligence with that country’s SIGINT National Unit. “Palestinians” was a “specific intelligence topic” of an NSA-GCHQ-CSE project shared with their Israeli counterpart.

In the late 1980s the Soviets jammed US and British listening operations in Moscow. In response, they asked CSE to take up the slack. “From summer 1987 to summer 1989”, notes Frost, “it was Canada that was providing the most powerful Western nations with the intelligence that had been so crucial to them and, in fact, to the whole Western Alliance.”

Economic espionage is a significant and growing component of CSE’s focus. In 1995 the agency began hiring more individuals with economics, commerce and international business qualifications “to build up its own analytical capacity in economic intelligence.” As part of the Snowden revelations, it came to light that CSE spied on Brazil’s Department of Mines and Energy.

In 1985 the government asked CSE to gather intelligence that could help a Canadian firm bidding for a major pipeline contract in India. A few years earlier the CSE overheard the US ambassador in Ottawa detailing his country’s negotiating position on a US$5 billion wheat sale to China, which helped Canada win the contract. CSE is also thought to have secured information useful to negotiating the mid-1990s North American Free Trade Agreement and World Trade Organization.

CSE has contributed intelligence to Canada and its allies’ wars. The agency’s sophisticated equipment and analytical and linguistic resources contributed significantly to the 2001-14 occupation of Afghanistan. The agency’s website says it played a “vital role” in the central Asian country and CSE head John Adams boasted that they were responsible for more than half the “actionable intelligence” Canadian soldiers used in Afghanistan. That included monitoring Taliban forces and leaders as well as allied Afghan government officials. Information CSE provided protected Canadian troops from attack and helped special forces assassinate Afghans.

As the Internet came onto the scene CSE was instructed to conduct Computer Network Exploitation. It went from intercepting communications (“data in motion”) to seeking information on foreign computer systems (“data at rest”). According to CSE expert Bill Robinson, “it became a hunter as well as a gatherer.” CSE could hack into computer systems, implant malware and copy information.

In 2017 CSE was further empowered to carry out offensive operations against foreign actors. The Communications Security Establishment Act authorized CSE “to degrade, disrupt, influence, respond to or interfere with the capabilities, intentions or activities” of international targets. In effect the intelligence agency could seek to take a government offline, shutter a power plant, knock a drone out of the sky or interfere in court proceedings and elections in countries Ottawa doesn’t deem “democratic”. There is no requirement that the target threaten Canadian security.

The legislation forbids offensive cyber activities that could cause injury or death or “obstruct, pervert or defeat the course of justice or democracy.” But, these limitations don’t apply if CSE conducts cyber-attacks on behalf of a Canadian military operation or receives approval of the foreign minister. Additionally, there is no independent oversight of CSE’s new offensive capabilities and CSE is allowed to do “anything that is reasonably necessary to maintain the covert nature of the activity.”

To mark the 75th anniversary of the Communications Security Establishment, it’s time to place this clandestine organization under far greater scrutiny.

On December 15 the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute will be hosting a webinar on “Canada and the Five Eyes”.

December 13, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

PA condemns Israeli killing of a Palestinian man

Israeli soldiers in Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on August 23, 2021. (Photo by JAAFAR ASHTIYEH / AFP) (Photo by JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images)

WAFA | December 13, 2021

RAMALLAH – Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates today condemned the Israeli killing late last night of Jamil Kayyal, 31, in the northern West Bank city of Nablus.

“The crime of executing the young man, Kayyal, in Nablus is appalling and reflects the doctrine of murder that articulates the ideology and behavior of the leaders of the military establishment of the (Israeli) occupying state,” said Shtayyeh in a statement, calling on international human rights organizations to condemn the killing, “which is one more of many crimes of the occupation against our people.”

The Foreign Ministry said “this crime is one episode in the series of field executions carried out by the occupying forces in accordance with the instructions and directives of the political and military levels in the occupation state, which allow and facilitate the shooting by soldiers and others members of the occupation of the Palestinian and treat him as a practice target that can allow killing him without conscience, morals or law.”

It added, “These crimes also reflect the racist culture of the occupation that dominates the decision-making centers of the occupying state.”

While holding Israel fully responsible for this crime, the Foreign Ministry called on the International Criminal Court to speed up its war crime investigation of Israel to force it to immediately stop its crimes and start investigating the violation of its forces and colonial settlers.

Kayyal was killed late last night during an Israeli army incursion into Nablus to arrest a local activist. Two others were injured when run over by an army vehicle.

The city of Nablus today observed a general strike against the killing of Kayyal, who was later buried in a mass funeral in his hometown.

December 13, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Eight Palestinian students from Al-Najah University seized by Israeli occupation forces

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network | December 12, 2021

On Thursday, 9 December, Israeli occupation forces seized eight Palestinian students at An-Najah National University after raiding their homes in pre-dawn invasions. Following the arrests, occupation forces then sent threatening text messages to fellow students at the university, warning them that they too would be arrested if they participated in the activities of the Islamic Bloc or other student blocs at the university.

The students seized by the Israeli occupation forces were: Hamza Tabanja, Hassan Tuffaha, Omar Shaksheer, Ayoub Dwaikat, Ibrahim Dwaikat, Ibrahim Abed, Anas Shtayyeh and Ibrahim Shalhoub. Several of the detained students had previously been jailed by the Israeli occupation and accused of participating in the activities of the Islamic Bloc.

Hundreds of Palestinian students are routinely detained by the Israeli occupation, especially those who are part of student organizations involved with campus political life. At Bir Zeit University alone, approximately 74 students were detained by occupation soldiers during the 2019-2020 academic year. They are among nearly 5,000 Palestinian political prisoners jailed by Israel. The work of student organizing, from holding book fairs to organizing events and participating in student elections, is criminalized by the Israeli occupation. Still more students are detained for joining demonstrations or posting on their social media profiles.

Palestinian students have been seized by Israeli occupation forces and abducted for their participation in the student movement in their homes, at their workplaces and on their campuses.

Once arrested, Palestinian students are routinely subjected to torture under interrogation — subjected to stress positions and stretched out over chairs, suspended from walls and forced to stand on tiptoe, deprived of sleep, cuffed and pressured on injured limbs, and beaten.

One of the most common charges is “membership in a prohibited organization,” typically referring to the student blocs. These represent the full spectrum of Palestinian politics. They organize lectures, book fairs, rallies and other campus events and participate in student elections. The charge sheets often refer to these standard activities of campus life, which are widely interpreted as a barometer for broader Palestinian political opinion.

These are not isolated cases, but a direct and collective violation of Palestinian students’ right to education, as affirmed in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 13 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.  The targeted repression of students is just one facet of Israel’s crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people. … Full article

December 12, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , | Leave a comment

Details of massacres against Palestinians revealed in classified Israeli documents

An elderly Palestinian and a child during the Nakba [Hanini/Wikipedia]

An elderly Palestinian and a child can be seen during the Nakba in 1948 [Hanini/Wikipedia]
MEMO | December 10, 2021

Israeli government discussions on the massacres perpetrated by Israeli soldiers in 1948 were declassified for the first time this week in an investigative report published by Haaretz and the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research.

Entitled, Classified Docs Reveal Massacres of Palestinians in ’48 – and What Israeli Leaders Knew, the report exposes two large-scale operations launched by the army in October 1948, one based in the south, known as Operation Yoav, which opened a road to the Negev; and another in the north, Operation Hiram.

As part of the latter, within 30 hours Israeli soldiers attacked dozens of Palestinian villages, forcefully expelling tens of thousands of Palestinian residents, while thousands of others fled.

Nearly 120,000 Palestinians, including the elderly, women and children resided in the area, however, following Israel’s massacre only 30,000 Palestinians were left.

“Within less than three days, the IDF [army] had conquered the Galilee and also extended its reach into villages in southern Lebanon. The overwhelming majority of them took no part in the fighting,” reported Haaretz.

The investigation also revealed accounts regarding previously unknown massacres that took place in the villages of Al-Reineh, just north of Nazareth, Meron and in Al-Burj.

Before the brutal attacks against Palestinians during Operation Hiram, the village of Al-Burj, presently known as Modi’in Illit, a large ultra-Orthodox settlement in the occupied West Bank, was raided in July 1948.

According to a document found in the Yad Yaari Archive, four elderly men remained in the village after its capture. “Hajj Ibrahim, who helped out in the military kitchen, a sick elderly woman and another elderly man and elderly woman.”

Eight days after the village was raided by Israeli occupation forces, Ibrahim was sent on an errand to pick vegetables by an Israeli soldier, in order to keep him away from the atrocity the soldiers were ready to commit.

“The three others were taken to an isolated house. Afterward an anti-tank shell was fired. When the shell missed the target, six hand grenades were thrown into the house. They killed an elderly man and woman, and the elderly woman was put to death with a firearm,” according to the document.

“Afterward they torched the house and burned the three bodies. When Hajj Ibrahim returned with his guard, he was told that the three others had been sent to the hospital in Ramallah. Apparently he didn’t believe the story, and a few hours later he too was put to death, with four bullets,” added the document.

The declassified State Archives also consist of several pages of minutes from those years, including the testimony of Shmuel Mikunis, a member of the Provisional State Council (predecessor to the Knesset) from the Communist Party, who reported on the atrocities perpetrated in the Meron region.

Mikunis requested clarification from former Prime Minister of Israel David Ben-Gurion about acts that had been carried out by members of the Jewish terrorist group, Irgun.

According to the declassified documents, “A. They annihilated with a machine gun 35 Arabs who had surrendered to that company with a white flag in their hands. B. They took as captives peaceful residents, among them women and children, ordered them to dig a pit, pushed them into it with long French bayonets and shot the unfortunates until they were all murdered. There was even a woman with an infant in her arms. C. Arab children of about 13-14 who were playing with grenades were all shot. D. A girl of about 19-20 was raped by men from Altalena [an Irgun unit]; afterward she was stabbed with a bayonet and a wooden stick was thrust into her body.”

The declassified documents, investigated in Haartez’s report also includes details on the Hula massacre in Lebanon and the depopulated Palestinian village of Deir Yassin. Though the report is lengthy, the paper highlights that many more details remain unknown; “This is not surprising, considering how much material remains locked away in the archives,” it explained.

December 10, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Watchdog urged to investigate Jewish charity over ‘political’ activities

MEMO | December 8, 2021

Pro-Palestine campaigners have called on the charities regulator, the Charity Commission, to launch an urgent investigation into the activities of a pro-Zionist lobby group after it falsely accused anti-Israel demonstrators of extremism, racism, and intimidation at a recent protest rally.

The Community Security Trust attempted to turn what was a peaceful anti-Israel protest against the presence of Israeli ambassador to the UK, Tzipi Hotovely, at a university event last month into a panic about anti-Semitism.

The CST is a registered charity that ostensibly exists to “provide safety, security, and advice to the Jewish community in the UK”. However, rather than serving this purpose it routinely engages in political activities designed to protect the state of Israel from criticism and censure.

The latest evidence of this came at a debate hosted by the London School of Economics Debating Society on Tuesday 9 November 2021. This was a peaceful protest that attracted scores of students and others from all backgrounds, with many wishing to express their opposition to racist Israeli policies that have seen Palestinians dispossessed and oppressed for over 70 years.

Although the event passed off peacefully without any arrests the CST has since made unsubstantiated allegations about supposed anti-Semitism amongst the protestors and about the threat these types of protests pose to Jewish students, deliberately conflating anti-Israel activity with anti-Semitism. The CST has increasingly relied on this false equivalence to demonise anti-Israel campaigners, attempting to damage their credibility using the charge of racism.

The letter reminds the Charity Commission of its differential treatment of Jewish and Muslim charities. In recent years the watchdog has been at pains to remind Muslim charities to steer clear of taking positions on the Palestine issue, but it appears to have given the CST a free pass to support Israel, using underhand methods if desired.

The signatories call on the Charity Commission to launch an investigation into the CST which they say has breached the code on charities engaging in political activity, spreading racial hatred, and the requirement to remain impartial. The full letter can be read here.

IHRC Chair Massoud Shadjareh said: “It would seem that in the eyes of CST there is no good pro-Palestinian and everybody who opposes Israel’s subjugation of Palestinians is fair game for demonisation. This latest episode highlights once again how CST primarily behaves as an apologist for apartheid and a brutal illegal occupation.”

December 8, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestine Action Activists Found NOT GUILTY After Defacing Israeli Arms Company In UK

Palestine Action | December 6, 2021

Three Palestine Action activists, dubbed the ‘Elbit Three’, have today been found not guilty of criminal damage charges in a trial taking place at Newcastle-under-Lyme Magistrates Court. The trial, which commenced on Friday 3rd December, saw Elbit Systems and the Crown Prosecution Service attempt to criminalise individuals who took a stand against the manufacture of drones and drone parts. The products manufactured at the site of the protest, the UAV Engines factory in Shenstone, Staffordshire, are key components for a range of Elbit’s combat drones, used extensively by Israel for bombardments of Gazan civilians.

Elbit Systems are Israel’s largest private arms company, supplying 85% of Israel’s drone fleet. Their Hermes drones, manufactured with UK-made components, are regularly deployed in bombardments of Gaza, with Elbit also supplying a range of surveillance equipment, armaments, and specialist military technologies for the Israeli military and police. Palestine Action have undertaken a campaign of sustained direct action against Elbit Systems – across their 10 sites in the UK – with this action in Shenstone having occured in January 2021, six months since Palestine Action launched. Despite many dozens of actions taken, and over £15,000,000 in damages caused (according to police), this is the first time that activists had faced trial, with all previous charges having been dropped in the run-up to trial dates.

The presiding judge, Judge Waites, stated that the Crown had failed to prove that convicting the defendents would be proportionate with their freedom to protest. He stated further points which included: Palestine is an important issue, the arms trade is an important issue, the defendants believed in what they were doing, and the location was specifically chosen. These are the points that Palestine Action has long stated: through targetted and deliberate direct action, individuals can make a measured impact on the lives of civilians in Palestine by disrupting and undermining Israel’s arms trade.

This verdict represents a serious defeat for Elbit Systems, who have long maintained that their business is lawful and that they are therefore to be protected from such actions. This belief has been shared by the British state: the police have offered a round-the-clock rapid response and extensive protection to Elbit’s death factories, and the CPS have attempted to prosecute those who take a stand against Elbit’s business of bloodshed.

The defence, represented by Palestinian barrister Mira Hammad and Richard Brigden of Garden Court North (instructed by Kelly’s solicitors), presented their case that the action taken was to prevent a greater crime. An activist involved in the trial elaborated, stating that the action was taken to shut down the factory for one day in an attempt to stem the flow of drones and stop the bombings. They stated that Elbit provide 85% of Israel’s drones, with Elbit describing themselves as the ‘backbone’ of the Israeli airforce, adding that there is extensive documentation of the drones being used for attacks on the civil population of Gaza. They stated that this is not only during intensive military excursions, but also for extrajudicial killings and indescriminate bombings – with Elbit drones being linked directly to the killing of four children playing on a beach in Gaza in 2014.

Another activist, Sarah, later stated that:

“Throwing this paint may not protect Gaza. What protects Gaza is stopping the bombing. Elbit produce weapons, tanks and drones used to commit crimes against humanity, and this is what is unlawful. Export licenses should not be granted while Elbit continue to violate human rights. In the face of these crimes, you have to do something. If you do nothing, then Elbit continues to make its smart weaponry which enables Israel to kill efficiently. Elbit has no business being allowed to be in the UK. It has no values that are shared with humanity”. Following this, a standing ovation was given from the public gallery.

December 7, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Is Israel a ‘Sick Society’?

By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | December 6, 2021

For whatever reason, some mistakenly perceive the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, as liberal, progressive, and even ‘pro-Palestinian’. Of course, none of this is true. This misconstrued depiction of an essentially Zionist and anti-Palestinian newspaper tells of a much bigger story of how confusing Israeli politics is, and how equally confused many of us are in understanding the Israeli political discourse.

On 28 November, newly-elected Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil (Hebron) with hundreds of soldiers and many illegal Jewish settlers, including the who’s who of Israel’s extremists.

The scene was reminiscent of a similar occurrence where late Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, had stormed, along with thousands of soldiers and police officers, the Haram Sharif Compound in occupied East Jerusalem in September 2000. It was this particular event that unleashed the second Palestinian uprising, Intifada (2000-05), which led to the killing of thousands.

Herzog’s gesture of solidarity with the Kiryat Arba settlers was identical to Sharon’s earlier gesture, also made to win the approval of Israel’s burgeoning and influential right-wing extremists.

Only a few months ago, Haaretz had described Herzog as a “centrist, soft-spoken, ‘no drama'” person who had, at times, “felt out of place on Israel’s stormy and fractured political battlefield”. According to Haaretz, Herzog “may be exactly what Israel needs.”

But is this really the case? Marvel at some of the statements made by Herzog as he visited a site where twenty-nine Palestinians were massacred by a Kiryat Arba extremist, Baruch Goldstein, and where many more were shot dead by Israeli soldiers in the aftermath of the tragic event. Not only did many Israelis celebrate the memory of Goldstein with a shrine befitting of heroes and saints, but many of Herzog’s companions during the provocative ‘visit’ are ardent followers of the Israeli Jewish terrorist.

“We have to continue dreaming of peace,” Herzog declared while marking the first night of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah inside the Ibrahimi Mosque compound, which was previously emptied of its Muslim worshippers. Proudly, he “condemn(ed) any form of hatred or violence”. Meanwhile, hundreds of Israeli soldiers were terrorising 35,000 inhabitants of the old city of Al-Khalil. These Palestinians, who suffer daily violence at the hands of nearly 800 armed Jewish settlers in Kiryat Arba, along with an equal number of Israeli soldiers, were all locked in. Their shops were closed, their life was put on hold, their walls covered with racist graffiti.

“If he had walked around the corner,” the Israeli news website 972Mag reported referring to the Israeli president, “Herzog might have seen the graffiti on the walls reading ‘gas the Arabs.’

Chances are Herzog already understands – in fact, supports – such racism; after all, he was joined by the likes of Eliyahu Libman, who heads Kiryat Arba regional council, and Hillel Horowitz, the leader of the Jewish settlers of Al-Khalil. It is these two men who preach extremism and violence against the Palestinians as a matter of course. Aside from hosting the Goldstein grave and shrine, the settlement has a park that carries the name of Meir Kahane, the spiritual leader of Israel’s most violent extremists.

In an emotional speech given by Horowitz in the company of Herzog, the settler leader announced that the Israeli president’s violent storming of the Ibrahimi Mosque “reminds us that we did not take the land of foreigners.” He followed with “Your visit here strengthens our mission.”

From Horowitz, Libman, and their ilk’s point of view, their ‘mission’ has been a great success. They have managed to steer Israeli politics almost entirely towards the right. Even the “centrist, soft-spoken” president is now fully embracing their sinister mission.

But will Haaretz acknowledge this reality? That the ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ editorial line they have allegedly championed for many years has completely failed, and purposely so, to depict the truth about Israel?

Compare Haaretz‘s positive portrayal of Herzog with their coverage of the former right-wing Israeli President, Reuven Litvin. The latter, on various occasions, and rightly so, was criticised for his pro-Likud political line and for his divisive role that contributed to an already fragmented Israeli political scene. But when Rivlin, in October 2014, had declared that “Israeli society is sick, and it is our duty to treat this disease,” a Haaretz columnist lashed out suggesting that “Rivlin’s comments are positively bursting with Jew-hatred”.

“First he called Jewish society ‘sick’ – dredging up anti-Semitic tropes about Jews as carriers of cultural and ideological disease. Then he asked whether Jews are ‘decent human beings’: Questioning their humanity itself,” the article argued.

Of course, the sickness of “violence, hostility, bullying, (and) racism”, that Rivlin had then pointed out, is very much real. Other symptoms of this horrible disease also include military occupation, apartheid, and genocidal violence like that frequently meted out against the besieged Gaza Strip.

While this Israeli ‘disease’ is becoming common knowledge globally, with such organisations as Human Rights Watch and many others describing it in the most honest and blunt terms, the vast majority of Israeli society, including their representatives and their ‘soft-spoken’ president, remain blind to it, shielded from the truth by their own hubris, infatuated with their military power and intoxicated by the humiliation and violence to which Palestinians are subjected to, in Al-Khalil, in Gaza, in Jerusalem, and throughout occupied Palestine.

There are no indications that Israeli society, government, and media – ‘liberal’ or right-wing – will, on their own, develop the necessary antibodies that will cure the disease of racism, military occupation, and apartheid. Yes, it will ultimately be the Palestinian resistance that will make the decisive difference of holding Israel accountable. But that can only happen when the international community takes a courageous stance in advocating Palestinian rights and unconditionally supporting the Palestinian quest for freedom.

Whether right-wing, left-wing, or centre, Israel is committed to its military superiority, its racism, and to the military occupation more than ever before. The sooner we accept this fact, and quit subscribing to the illusion that change in Israel will happen from within, the sooner the Palestinian people will finally achieve the justice they need and deserve.

December 6, 2021 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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