‘Longest trial in history’: Palestinian aid worker charged with funding Hamas attends 129th hearing
Former World Vision employee Muhammed al-Halabi (L) at a district court in Beersheva, Israel. © AFP / Dudu Grunshpan
RT | October 23, 2019
A former charity manager in the Gaza Strip accused of funding Hamas has attended court for the 129th time in what has become the longest trial of its kind in Israel’s history, dragging on as witnesses are blocked from testifying.
The 41-year-old aid worker, Muhammed al-Halabi, was arrested in June 2016 while working for World Vision, a Christian humanitarian group, charged with funnelling kickbacks to Hamas and its armed wing. For nearly four years, however, Halabi has been denied his proper day in court, instead forced to endure an endless series of stop-go proceedings in which key witnesses are barred from testifying.
His most recent hearing on Wednesday was no different, quickly hitting a dead end soon after it began.
“Today’s hearing was cancelled shortly after it started because the witnesses were not present,” Halabi’s brother, Hamed, told Middle East Eye. “The prosecution then threatened that any witnesses who come from Gaza to give their testimony will be detained.”
“They do not want anyone to prove them wrong. All the eyewitnesses and even the officials at World Vision gave proof that he was innocent. But this is not what the prosecution is looking for.”
The Israeli government has denied travel permits to crucial witnesses in the former charity worker’s case, preventing them from leaving Gaza to give testimony in Israeli courts. Halabi’s lawyer, Maher Hanna, says that guarantees he cannot receive a fair trial.
One of those witnesses – the owner of a company implicated in the alleged money transfer scheme – “could totally undermine the accusations they made against Muhammed,” Hanna told the Times of Israel. “He has begged Israel to allow him to go to the court and testify, but they have not permitted him to do so.”
A father of five from Gaza’s Jabalya refugee camp, Halabi has maintained his innocence since his 2016 arrest and refused to confess to the charges, according to his family, despite facing pressure and even threats from judges. His father said that at one his hearings, a judge promised “long term imprisonment” if Halabi did not admit to collaborating with terrorist groups.
“[The judge] threatened him and tried to force him to confirm the accusations in front of everyone,” Halabi’s father told Middle East Eye.
Halabi’s family also says he has suffered “horrific torture” at the hands of Israeli authorities during several interrogations, including beatings, humiliation and forced sleep deprivation.
A former employee at World Vision said Halabi’s case was part of an ongoing attack on the charity’s aid work in the Gaza Strip and other Palestinian territories.
“There was a political attack on the organisation given that one of its main offices is in the United States,” the employee, who wished to remain anonymous, told Middle East Eye. “The Israeli lobby in the US must have played a major role in impeding the work of the organisation.”
Halabi’s father seconded that take, adding “They know very well that he is innocent, but they cannot release him after four years of interrogation and torture and prove themselves wrong.”
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UK protestors face jail for campaigning against Israel owned arms factory
MEMO | October 23, 2019
Seven people are facing the prospect of three months in prison for protesting against an Israeli-owned arms factory based in the UK.
The case against the seven activists will be heard in a Folkestone Magistrates Court Kent today. They are expected to plead not guilty of the charge of Aggravated Trespass, an offence which carries a maximum sentence of three months in prison. A number of the activists are locally connected to Kent.
The activists were arrested in August following a two-day occupation at the Elbit-Instro arms factory, which is newly situated in Discovery Park business park in Sandwich, Kent. Its parent company Elbit Systems supplies military equipment to Israel and activists claim that its products are the “backbone” of Israel’s drone fleet.
Elbit Systems also supplies weapons to a number of other countries accused of committing war crimes including Saudi Arabia. The weapons manufacturer is Israel’s largest privately-owned arms company. Campaign groups say that it provides 85 per cent of Israel’s drones which were used to attack Gaza’s civilian population repeatedly. Drones were used during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge which killed over 2,300 civilians, including over 500 children.
A statement released by the Stop Elbit-Instro Defendants Solidarity Campaign said: “The skilled engineers of Elbit-Instro could be working to make the world a better place, yet instead they are employed to build machines that incinerate children.” It added: “Shame on them all.”
According to the campaign group locals resent the arms manufacturer and relations between Elbit-Instro and Kent residents soured following its attempted take-over of an airport site.
A spokesperson for East Kent Campaign Against the Arms Trade said: “There are urgent questions about whether Instro’s specialist targeting technology is employed by Israel for targeting Gazan civilians every Friday during the Great Return March civil rights demonstrations, or in maintaining the surveillance of Palestinians along its illegal separation barrier, enabling the occupation’s apartheid infrastructure.”
DFLP criticises continuous PA security cooperation with Israel
MEMO | October 22, 2019
The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) has criticised the continuous security cooperation between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israeli occupation, a statement said yesterday.
The DFLP wondered about the “feasibility” of the security cooperation in light of the Israeli aggression on Palestinians and the daily desecration of Islamic holy sites in the occupied territories by settlers and officials.
“The daily violations carried out by the Israeli Jewish settlers and Israeli officials against the Palestinians and their properties aims to uproot Palestinians from their historic land and destroy its political and national character,” the statement said.
The DFLP said that the Israeli occupation “is carrying out daily aggression on the ground and steals Palestinian land and property.”
The movement went on to call on the PA and its leadership “to move on from issuing warnings to the international community to tangible responses.”
The DFLP demanded the PA carry out the decisions of the Palestinian National Council regarding the immediate halt of security cooperation with the Israeli occupation.
Europe’s oldest political prisoner, Georges Abdallah, has served 35 years
By Ramin Mazaheri – Press TV – October 19, 2019
Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, known as the “Nelson Mandela of the Arab World”, has now marked 35 years in a French prison. The pro-Palestinian resistance leader remains Europe’s longest-held political prisoner.
In 1982, during Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, Abdallah headed a group which accepted responsibility for the death of Israeli and American agents in Paris. Abdallah has refused to express regret or remorse for defending his country, which was under military occupation.
Abdallah has become an immense inspiration to leftists and anti-imperialists worldwide, despite a Western media blackout on his case.
Abdallah has been eligible for release since 1999, but Washington and Tel Aviv put pressure on France to deny him parole. His own lawyer has admitted to working for French intelligence, and his trial and parole process has been marked by obvious political manipulation.
Abdallah, described as a model prisoner, reads daily in four different languages. He writes letters of support for just causes, and he remains in regular contact with the outside.
Despite his unjust incarceration Abdallah continues to fight for Palestine and against imperialism, and many activists around the world will continue to fight for his release.
Bedouin Mass Eviction is Part of Israel’s Efforts to Drive Palestinians off their Historic Lands
Tens of thousands are to be driven out of their homes because their numbers pose a major demographic threat to a Jewish state
By Jonathan Cook | The National | October 16, 2019
The decades-long struggle by tens of thousands of Israelis against being uprooted from their homes – some for the second or third time – should be proof enough that Israel is not the western-style liberal democracy it claims to be.
Last week 36,000 Bedouin – all of them Israeli citizens – discovered that their state is about to make them refugees in their own country, driving them into holding camps. These Israelis, it seems, are the wrong kind.
Their treatment has painful echoes of the past. In 1948, 750,000 Palestinians were expelled by the Israeli army outside the borders of the newly declared Jewish state established on their homeland – what the Palestinians call their Nakba, or catastrophe.
Israel is regularly criticised for its belligerent occupation, its relentless expansion of illegal settlements on Palestinian land and its repeated and savage military attacks, especially on Gaza.
On rare occasions, analysts also notice Israel’s systematic discrimination against the 1.8 million Palestinians whose ancestors survived the Nakba and live inside Israel, ostensibly as citizens.
But each of these abuses is dealt with in isolation, as though unrelated, rather than as different facets of an overarching project. A pattern is discernible, one driven by an ideology that dehumanises Palestinians everywhere Israel encounters them.
That ideology has a name. Zionism provides the thread that connects the past – the Nakba – with Israel’s current ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, the destruction of Gaza, and the state’s concerted efforts to drive Palestinian citizens of Israel out of what is left of their historic lands and into ghettos.
The logic of Zionism, even if its more naive supporters fail to grasp it, is to replace Palestinians with Jews – what Israel officially terms Judaisation.
The Palestinians’ suffering is not some unfortunate side effect of conflict. It is the very aim of Zionism: to incentivise Palestinians still in place to leave “voluntarily”, to escape further suffocation and misery.
The starkest example of this people replacement strategy is Israel’s long-standing treatment of 250,000 Bedouin who formally have citizenship.
The Bedouin are the poorest group in Israel, living in isolated communities mainly in the vast, semi-arid area of the Negev, the country’s south. Largely out of view, Israel has had a relatively free hand in its efforts to “replace” them.
That was why, for a decade after it had supposedly finished its 1948 ethnic cleansing operations and won recognition in western capitals, Israel continued secretly expelling thousands of Bedouin outside its borders, despite their claim on citizenship.
Meanwhile, other Bedouin in Israel were forced off their ancestral lands to be driven either into confined holding areas or state-planned townships that became the most deprived communities in Israel.
It is hard to cast the Bedouin, simple farmers and pastoralists, as a security threat, as was done with the Palestinians under occupation.
But Israel has a much broader definition of security than simple physical safety. Its security is premised on the maintenance of an absolute demographic dominance by Jews.
The Bedouin may be peaceable but their numbers pose a major demographic threat and their pastoral way of life obstructs the fate intended for them – penning them up tightly inside ghettos.
Most of the Bedouin have title deeds to their lands that long predate Israel’s creation. But Israel has refused to honour these claims and many tens of thousands have been criminalised by the state, their villages denied legal recognition.
For decades they have been forced to live in tin shacks or tents because the authorities refuse to approve proper homes and they are denied public services like schools, water and electricity.
The Bedouin have one option if they wish to live within the law: they must abandon their ancestral lands and their way of life to relocate to one of the poor townships.
Many of the Bedouin have resisted, clinging on to their historic lands despite the dire conditions imposed on them.
One such unrecognised village, Al Araqib, has been used to set an example. Israeli forces have demolished the makeshift homes there more than 160 times in less than a decade. In August, an Israeli court approved the state billing six of the villagers $370,000 (Dh1.6 million) for the repeated evictions.
Al Araqib’s 70-year-old leader, Sheikh Sayah Abu Madhim, recently spent months in jail after his conviction for trespassing, even though his tent is a stone’s throw from the cemetery where his ancestors are buried.
Now the Israel authorities are losing patience with the Bedouin.
Last January, plans were unveiled for the urgent and forcible eviction of nearly 40,000 Bedouin from their homes in unrecognised villages under the guise of “economic development” projects. It will be the largest expulsion in decades.
“Development”, like “security”, has a different connotation in Israel. It really means Jewish development, or Judaisation – not development for Palestinians.
The projects include a new highway, a high-voltage power line, a weapons testing facility, a military live-fire zone and a phosphate mine.
It was revealed last week that the families would be forced into displacement centres in the townships, living in temporary accommodation for years as their ultimate fate is decided. Already these sites are being compared to the refugee camps established for Palestinians in the wake of the Nakba.
The barely concealed aim is to impose on the Bedouin such awful conditions that they will eventually agree to be confined for good in the townships on Israel’s terms.
Six leading United Nations human rights experts sent a letter to Israel in the summer protesting the grave violations of the Bedouin families’ rights in international law and arguing that alternative approaches were possible.
Adalah, a legal group for Palestinians in Israel, notes that Israel has been forcibly evicting the Bedouin over seven decades, treating them not as human beings but as pawns in its never-ending battle to replace them with Jewish settlers.
The Bedouin’s living space has endlessly shrunk and their way of life has been crushed.
This contrasts starkly with the rapid expansion of Jewish towns and single-family farming ranches on the land from which the Bedouin are being evicted.
It is hard not to conclude that what is taking place is an administrative version of the ethnic cleansing Israeli officials conduct more flagrantly in the occupied territories on so-called security grounds.
These interminable expulsions look less like a necessary, considered policy and more like an ugly, ideological nervous tic.
The EU’s conditional aid and suppression of Palestinian rights
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | October 14, 2019
The European Union’s incoming Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell has already signalled a continuation of the bloc’s prevailing politics when it comes to Palestine – preserve the two-state compromise by ensuring funding to the Palestinian Authority.
“If anyone helps the Palestinians today and their right to have their own state, that is Europe,” Borrell declared at the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. The truth is Europe does neither; it is merely concerned with maintaining its influence when it comes to the two-state compromise and peace-building narratives, all of which serve the EU’s political agenda.
Summarising the gist of the EU’s foreign policy when it comes to Palestine, Borrell tweeted: “The EU contributes almost one million € a day to attend the Palestinian Authority. We must continue to defend a peaceful coexistence and the two states solution.” A succinct description of what EU funding constitutes – providing the PA with the necessary backing to function without the existence of a Palestinian state.
For the EU, maintaining the two-state paradigm at the helm of policy works better than implementation, which is now inapplicable anyway. The pretence of state-building, which the PA forms part of, is also a veneer that shifts focus away from the EU’s lucrative trade deals with Israel. Borrell has already stated, unsurprisingly, that the EU’s trade agreements with Israel will not be broken. In 2017, Israel-EU trade amounted to €36.2 billion, which pales in comparison to EU assistance to the PA.
For Palestinians, therefore, the EU only finances hypotheses – in Borrell’s words, “the possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state that can coexist peacefully with an Israeli state.” The EU can claim to be the biggest donor to the Palestinians, yet it is financing its own agenda, rather than providing the means for Palestinians to demand their legitimate political rights.
The Oslo Accords, which allowed Israel to colonise additional Palestinian land, have not been repudiated by the EU. On the contrary, there has been no contestation of the framework on the grounds that it has stripped Palestinians of what remained of their land and freedom. With the PA a willing accomplice, the EU has never been challenged by Palestinian political bureaucrats to uphold the rights of the Palestinian people. Conversely, the PA reaches out to the EU for assistance in maintaining the violations imposed by Israel and to which the international community turns a blind eye.
Europe is not helping Palestinians towards statehood – it is maintaining the illusion of statehood as an interim project, while Israel colonises what remains of Palestinian territory. The Oslo Accords are vague and so is EU policy towards Palestine. Instead of seeking clear parameters to decolonise Palestine, the EU is adopting the same ambiguities that have transformed Palestinians into a humanitarian project against their will.
The EU is merely financing its unwarranted justification of the two-state paradigm and forcing Palestinians into conditional financial aid. While nothing new is expected when it comes to the EU’s farcical peace and state-building for Palestinians, Borrell has indicated the EU’s agenda upfront – the financing of agendas and illusions to enable Israel’s ongoing colonial project.
Jewish terrorist involved in Duma operation prepares to join Israel army
MEMO | October 11, 2019
Yedioth Ahronoth reported on Thursday that a Jewish terrorist who participated in the killing of members of the Dawabsheh family in the village of Duma, in the occupied West Bank, is currently located in an Israeli military establishment in preparation to join the Israeli army. Thus, Israel follows a policy of integrating terrorists who kill Palestinians in cold blood, as in the case of the killer and soldier to be, Elor Azaria.
The terrorist is in a preparatory institution for military service in the centre of the country. He was not identified at the time of his arrest, claiming that when the terrorist attack took place, he was 16 years old. He was referred to by the letter “A.”
Lawyers of terrorist “A” reached a plea bargain with the Public Prosecution, following which he was as acquitted of having a direct connection with the planning of the terrorist attack. They also claimed that he had never entered the Dawabshah family home; instead, the defence required the plaintiff to confess to conspiracy.
According to the prosecutors’ deal, “A” must remain in prison for five years, despite the brutality of the crime committed in July 2015. Back then, the Dawabsheh family home was burned down, leading to the death of the father, Saad, his wife, Reham, and their child, Ali, in addition to seriously wounding their other child, Ahmed.
According to the same deal, “A” confessed to burning a warehouse in the village of Aqraba, vandalising property and setting fire to a car in the village of Jubb Yusuf on racially motivated grounds, in addition to deflating tires in Beit Safafa. The Prosecution removed charges, including setting fire to the Abbey of the Dormition in occupied Jerusalem, as well as committing several crimes as part of the “price paying” movement. The deal also stipulated that prosecutors should not seek five and a half years sentence.
The District Court approved the deal in Lod on 12 May. In July last year, the same court ordered “A” to be placed under house arrest after spending two years in prison. Although the Prosecution objected to his release, the court decided to issue such decision upon the recommendation of the Department of Juvenile Justice.
This was preceded by another court decision, in April last year, abolishing the confessions of “A” and the terrorist Amiram Ben-Uliel, who was convicted of carrying out the terrorist attack, claiming that the confessions were obtained under torture.
The court claimed at the time that the boy was a minor and the period he spent in prison justifies a review of the sentence. The Department of Juvenile Justice also maintained that “A” changed his attitudes and expressed regret for his actions. However, the Prosecution confirmed that this was to mislead the court.
Israeli security officials, including former Shin Bet chiefs, have warned against the tolerant treatment of Jewish terrorists who commit crimes as part of the “price-paying” movement, particularly by refusing to treat them as terrorists.
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Hunger striker reveals details of her horrific torture in Israeli prisons
![Palestinian prisoner, Heba Al-Labadi is on the eighth day of hunger strike after being sentenced to administrative detention for five months without charge or trial on 20 August 2019 [Twitter]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/ECYxESYWkAAW0NB-e1569940375372.jpg?resize=1024%2C683&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
Palestinian prisoner, Heba Al-Labadi was sentenced to administrative detention for five months without charge or trial on 20 August 2019 [Twitter]
MEMO | October 8, 2019
A Palestinian-Jordanian who has been on hunger strike for 15 days in Israeli prisons has revealed the details of her horrific interrogation and torture, the PLO Prisoners’ Committee reported on Monday. Heba Al-Labadi, 24, was arrested on 20 August by Israeli soldiers as she crossed the Allenby Bridge from Jordan to attend a wedding in the occupied West Bank with her mother.
According to her lawyer, Al-Labadi has been subjected to inhumane treatment in detention. She was apparently stripped of all of her clothes as soon as she was arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded and leg-chained before being moved to the Bitah-Tikva investigation centre. She told her lawyer that she was embarrassed when she saw the female Israeli soldiers looking at her private parts when she entered and left the toilet.
Al-Labadi also explained that she was interrogated for 20 consecutive hours during the first 16 days of her detention and said that she was given only two breaks for meals every day. She was then moved to rooms full of collaborators, who started to interrogate her; this lasted for up to 35 days, during which she was subjected to verbal, physical and psychological abuse and torture. The Israeli interrogators, she insisted, got close to her body intentionally and used the dirtiest words to insult her.
“They also insulted Islam and Christianity,” she said, “and said that I am an extremist and told me that they had arrested my mother and sister and they would put me under renewable administrative detention for seven and a half years and then release me to the West Bank and put me under 24-hour surveillance.”
A large number of investigators are said to have interrogated Al-Labadi and kept her in a very dirty cell with insects and spiders. The cell had rough walls and a bright light which prevented her from sleeping. The “very thin” mattress had no cover or clean sheets. The interrogators told her that she would “rot” in prison.
On 25 September, Heba Al-Labadi was issued with a 5-month administrative detention order with neither charges made against her nor a trial. That was why she started her hunger strike.
Two days later, she was moved to a cell monitored by four cameras. The toilet in her cell has a see-through door, so her every move is monitored by the prison guards.
Despite being ordered to end her hunger strike, she insisted that the “tragedy” of the administrative detention must end first. “I will continue until the end or I shall die.”
Israel to build camps as preparation for displacing Arab citizens
MEMO | October 8, 2019
Israel’s District Planning and Building Committee considered a plan on Sunday submitted by the Bedouin Settlement Authority in the Negev which aims to build camps as preparation for the displacement of 36,000 Arab citizens, Arab48.com has reported. The plan targets Palestinian-Arab residents within Israel who live in Bedouin villages “unrecognised” by the Israeli occupation government.
Such villages have often been in place for hundreds of years before the creation of the Israeli occupation state. Nevertheless, it is insisting on displacing their residents and replacing the villages with housing projects for Jewish Israeli settlers.
A letter has been sent to the head of the District Planning and Building Committee asking them not to accept the plan. It was sent on behalf of Adalah Centre, an Israeli rights group seeking justice for Arab residents, along with the Regional Council for the Unrecognised Villages in the Negev, the Peaceful Coexistence Club and Shatil Association.
Submitted by lawyer Suha Bsharah from Adalah, the letter stressed the importance of rejecting the plan, which is simply a tool to displace Arabs from their homes and villages within Israel. It also reiterated that such an action amounts to a “flagrant violation of the basic rights of the Arab citizens on top of which is the right to respect, dignity and equality.”
The letter noted that this plan reinforces the suffering inflicted on the Arab residents of the unrecognised villages as Israel is planning to displace them under the pretext of carrying out government projects. “It is unreasonable that the authorities displace tens of thousands of residents from their homes and lands,” wrote the signatories. “[The plan] will destroy a complete generation of Arab children, women and youths.”
According to Bsharah, “The Israeli authorities are seriously looking for a legal cover for the displacement of Arabs by getting the approval of the District Planning and Building Committee. They are not looking for a just and appropriate solution that would maintain the right to live with respect, dignity and safety for the Arabs who have been living here for decades, if not hundreds of years.”
The head of the Council of the Unrecognised Villages, Atiyyeh Al-Asam said: “The Council rejects this plan because its implicit and explicit goal is to forcibly displace the residents of the unrecognised villages. We believe that this plan is materialising the spirit of the [withdrawn] Prawer Plan which was based on displacing tens of thousands of Arabs.”
On Racism and ‘Wild Beasts’: Why Israel besieges Palestinians
![A segment of the Israeli Seperation Wall sean near Abu Dis, in the occupied West Bank on 15th April 2016 [file photo]](https://i0.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/images/article_images/middle-east/israel-apartheid-seperation-wall-dome-of-the-rock-background-abu-dis.jpg?resize=600%2C350&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
A segment of the Israeli Seperation Wall near Abu Dis, in the occupied West Bank on 15th April 2016.
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | October 7, 2019
The Israeli Apartheid Wall, which is being built largely on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, once more underscores the ugliness of military occupation. As such, it truly epitomises the nature of Israeli apartheid and also delineates the siege-driven, isolationist mentality that dominates the ruling-class thinking in Israel.
Even years before the establishment of the state of Israel over the ruins of the Palestinian homeland in May 1948, Zionist communities in Palestine perfected the stratagem of besiegement, isolating themselves behind massive walls while blockading Palestinians, the native inhabitants of the land, in every way possible.
Throughout the Nakba – the catastrophic ethnic cleansing and destruction of Palestine in 1947-48 – Israel used this military theory in abundance. Neighbourhoods, villages and entire towns would be besieged for days, weeks or months, while being bombarded from all directions before their residents were finally pushed out. None of these ethnically-cleansed Palestinian communities, which numbered in the hundreds of thousands, were ever allowed to return to their homes.
In fact, besiegement and isolation remain at the core of the Israeli military strategy to date.
No other place, however endured the brutality of the seemingly never-ending siege like the Gaza Strip. Gaza, that small region of 365 square kilometres, has been under various stages of besiegement and blockade since 1948.
The most hermetic stages of this perpetual siege began some time in 2006 and intensified in the summer of the following year. Three factors make the latest siege on Gaza particularly horrific: its long duration, the lack of any serious respite for besieged Gazans and, most importantly, the fact that it has been interrupted by massive Israeli wars that killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians. With much of Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed or dilapidated, the Israeli blockade on the Strip has proved to be the most savage and deadliest of all sieges.
On 30 September, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that nearly 70 per cent of an underground barrier east of Gaza is now complete. An estimated 1,400 Israeli and foreign workers are reportedly taking part in building the barrier, which when finished, will extend to reach 60 kilometres in length.
Considering the layers of walls, fences, trenches and no-go military zones, the additional underground wall around Gaza seems frivolous. Is it possible that Israeli leaders truly believe that Gaza is not isolated enough?
In actuality, the latest wall will likely satisfy a psychological, not a practical objective, as it gives the Israeli army and southern settlements a temporary sense of safety, while once more hailing Israeli leaders as the protectors of a defenceless and exposed nation.
Oddly, while scores of young Gazans continue to be killed at the fence separating Gaza from Israel while protesting the Israeli siege on the Strip, it is the Israelis who claim to be targeted, unsafe and victimised.
The newest wall, once it is officially launched with massive fanfare, will still make no difference. It will not upgrade the status of the Gaza siege in any way, nor will it alter the collective fear that has been thoroughly instilled in ordinary Israelis.
For Gazans, wall or no wall, the siege will remain intact.
Israeli wall architects may argue that the latest wall will deter Palestinians from digging tunnels as well as preventing resistance fighters from circumventing the siege via the sea – since part of this underground barrier will also extend into the Mediterranean Sea.
However, there is no proof that walls or fences, over ground or underground barriers have prevented Palestinians from retaliating against Israeli attacks. If the Israeli logic holds any truth, Palestinian resistance would have dissipated or folded decades ago as the Israeli siege mentality was put into practice from the very start of the Israeli war on the Palestinian people.
Israel receives $3.8 billion in US funding every year, in addition to hundreds of millions in loans and other financial giveaways which are mostly used to fortify Israel’s so-called security. To no avail. Palestinians, impoverished and incarcerated in Bantustan-like structures and open-air prisons, continue with their resistance unhindered.
It is clear that the Israeli security model has failed. In fact, that model never had a chance of success in the first place. The additional Israeli wall around Gaza and the hundreds of other walls and fences that are yet to be built are only meant to feed the collective illusion among Israelis and their leaders that the answer to their problem does not lie in ending the apartheid regime, military occupation and siege, but in adding more layers of “security”.
“At the end of the day as I see it, there will be a fence like this one surrounding Israel in its entirety. We will surround the entire state of Israel with a fence, a barrier,” Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on 9 February 2016 during a visit of the construction site of the barrier around Gaza.
Netanyahu added: “In our neighborhood, we need to protect ourselves from wild beasts.”
While such language and behaviour reflect the deeply-rooted racist mentality at work in Israel, they also underscore the dehumanized way in which Israel sees Palestinians. Since “wild beasts” are not human, they can be killed en masse, besieged and ethnically cleansed in their millions without an iota of regret or remorse.
The problem then is not that of “security” or so-called “terrorism”. Not that of Hamas, or any other group, secular or Islamist. It is not that of Gaza’s March of Return or of children approaching the fences around Gaza. The problem is the entrenched Israeli racist mentality that perceives Palestinian natives as sub-humans and as “wild beasts” to be exterminated or forever besieged.
Amazon, Israel, and the Occupation of Palestine
International Solidarity Movement | October 2, 2019
On September 22nd, Amazon quietly launched its operations in Israel, offering local delivery from a number of Israeli brands, with a Hebrew-language version of its Israel platform coming soon. Consumers in Israel now have faster and broader access to the world’s largest e-commerce marketplace, yet questions remained unanswered about Amazon’s ties with Israeli military, financial, and technology companies involved in the Occupation of Palestine as well as accusations of anti-Palestinian bias against the platform and its founder Jeff Bezos.
Though Amazon Israel was launched barely two weeks ago, Amazon’s business operations with Israel go back much further. As early as 2015, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) began servicing Amazon’s fleet of cargo planes, and now services 80% of Amazon’s aircraft. IAI is a wholly Israeli state owned aerospace and weapons manufacturer which supplies the Israeli army with aircraft, drones, missiles, armored vehicles, spy satellites and more. Its weapons have been used in assassinations and military invasions of Gaza. In the 1970s, IAI sold weapons to the Shah of Iran, and more recently, a UN report in August this year found IAI had sold weapons to Myanmar’s military after it began its genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority. IAI subsidiary Elta North America was recently commissioned to build a prototype of Donald Trump’s wall on the US-Mexico border. Amazon also works with Israeli technology firm NSLComm, which receives funding from the Israeli government, and builds network satellites “that will be used for… military applications”, according to Haaretz.
IAI, which services 80% of Amazon’s cargo planes, also provides aircraft, missiles, and other weapons to the Israeli government. Credit: MOHAMMED SALEM/ REUTERS
While Amazon’s ties with IAI and NSLComm are rarely reported in the media, its multi-million dollar contracts with another security firm has attracted widespread condemnation and protest. Amazon makes millions off providing web servers and database storage for Palantir, a private US data analysis firm which aids Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in identifying and deporting migrants. A petition this summer for Amazon to cut ties with Palantir and ICE gained over 270,000 signatures. Palantir also provides the Israeli government with so-called “predictive systems”, which analyze social media posts to identify Palestinians deemed a “threat”. The result of Palantir’s racially profiled analytics systems is that Palestinians are arrested and face long prison sentences for simply posting photos of family members killed by Israeli forces or in prison, citing Quranic verses, or calling for protests.
In the financial sector, Amazon signed agreements this year with Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi, two major Israeli banking institutions, to provide discounts to Amazon customers using Leumi and Hapoalim bank accounts. A 2018 report by Human Rights Watch found both banks guilty of financing construction and expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, while Bank Leumi also funds academic institutions in illegal settlements and programs for IDF recruits, even sponsoring gift packages and additional vacation days for Israeli soldiers during the 2014 invasion of Gaza, in which over 2,200 Palestinians, including more than 550 children, were killed. Pension funds and banks in Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK have divested from Bank Leumi and Hapoalim due to their human rights violations, while Amazon signs new cooperation agreements with them.
Amazon’s dealings with Israeli companies supporting and profiting from the Occupation aside, many more questions remain. The most troubling of these questions surround how Amazon Israel will deal with realities on the ground in its operations. Will Amazon deliver to customers in illegal settlements? Will Amazon sell products manufactured or grown on Palestinian land seized by armed settlers and considered illegal by the UN and the international community? Will Amazon give Palestinian and Israeli sellers equal access to its platform?
A quick look at Amazon’s policies on its global site, amazon.com, give some indication as to how it might run its Israeli site. Last year, Amazon removed a top-selling T-shirt that reads “Make Israel Palestine Again”, on the grounds that it did not fulfill Amazon’s content policy. Amazon’s content policy prohibits the sale of “products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.” Amazon seems to have no problem, however, with selling “IDF” merchandise; at the time of writing this article, IDF T shirts, dresses, Halloween costumes, and even baby clothes were available on its global site. The occupation army has been accused of racism, sexism, religious intolerance, and countless acts of violence, torture, and human rights violations, not only by Palestinians but also by Israeli soldiers.
A screenshot of the “Make Israel Palestine Again” T-shirt removed by Amazon.
Amazon president, CEO, and largest shareholder Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world since 2017 (and according to Forbes, the richest man in history) has yet to speak publicly about Palestine or Israel; he rarely gives public comments on any political issues. But indications of the Amazon founder’s political stances can be seen in the Washington Post. Jeff Bezos purchased the US paper for $250 million USD and has been its sole owner since October 2013.
The Washington Post has published a wide range of articles on Israel and Palestine, and a quick look at their articles and editorials since Bezo’s takeover in October 2013 shows where its editorial staff and leadership stand. It describes the shooting of unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli snipers as “clashes”, and Netanyahu as a “prudent, even cautious, statesman” who “quietly restrained the building of Jewish settlements”, even though during his last 10 years in office over 20,000 settlement units were built in the Occupied West Bank. One Washington Post article, titled “Palestinians Kill 3 Israelis as Violence Mounts in ‘Day of Rage’”, acknowledges only in the 6th paragraph that “28 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis.” Israelis are routinely described as “killed”, but Palestinians merely “die”. Another article on electricity cuts in Gaza makes sure to inform the readers in the headline that “it’s not all Israel’s fault”. Last year, the Washington Post ran a full page advert calling New Zealand artist Lorde a “bigot” for canceling a concert in Israel.
From the Washington Post (of which Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the sole owner) on May 6, 2019. Israelis are killed, but Palestinians just “die”
Jennifer Rubin, a journalist for the Washington post, once retweeted an article describing Palestinians as “death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages”, “devils spawn”, and “unmanned animals” who should be thrown “into the sea, to float there, food for sharks”. Her writing in the Washington Post declared that endorsements of the one-state solution “amount to calls for genocide”, and called then–Secretary of State John Kerry “intentionally obtuse”–or a liar–for not denouncing the Palestinian right of return. The Washington Post has rejected calls to remove Rubin for promoting racism and Islamophobia.
Given Amazon’s record of involvement with corporations deeply entrenched in the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, there is a high possibility of Amazon Israel failing to comply with international and human rights law in its Israeli operations. Should it fail to respect international law and engage in operations directly normalizing, supporting, and profiting from violations of Palestinian rights, Amazon may face boycott calls similar to those taken by BDS against companies like HSBC, SodaStream, Airbnb, Caterpillar, and Hewlett Packard. It remains to be seen what kind of corporate values Amazon Israel will deliver.
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Fear Is the Mind Killer
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From the Archives
Alarmist climate science as a textbook example of groupthink
By Paul MacRae | May 1, 2012
A while ago, I received an email from a friend who asked:
How can many, many respected, competitive, independent science folks be so wrong about [global warming] (if your [skeptical] premise is correct). I don’t think it could be a conspiracy, or incompetence. … Has there ever been another case when so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?
The answer to the second part of my friend’s question—“Has there ever been another case where so many ‘leading’ scientific minds got it so wrong?”—is easy. Yes, there are many such cases, both within and outside climate science. In fact, the graveyard of science is littered with the bones of theories that were once thought “certain” (e.g., that the continents can’t “drift,” that Newton’s laws were immutable, and hundreds if not thousands of others).
Science progresses by the overturning of theories once thought “certain.” … continue
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