![Mahran Baajour, Palestinian businessman who has disappared in Ghana [File photo]](https://i1.wp.com/www.middleeastmonitor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/4.jpg?resize=1200%2C800&quality=75&strip=all&ssl=1)
Palestinian businessman Mahran Baajour
The Ghanaian authorities must open an investigation into the kidnapping and torturing Palestinian Mahran Baajour and bring those responsible to justice, Arab Organisation for Human Rights in the UK (AOHR UK) said in a statement today.
Thirty-nine-year-old Baajour has been subjected to enforced disappearance and torture in Ghana by security agents, believed to be Mossad agents, since his arrest on 13 December 2018 until his release in March 2019.
Baajour arrived in Ghana on 13 December 2018 on a business trip. He was arrested after leaving the airport of Ghanaian capital Accra, without justification. He was arrested along with two other Ghanaian nationals who were at the airport to receive him; they were taken to an unknown location. The two Ghanaian men were later released and they informed Baajour’s family of his arrest.
“He was detained at the airport and when the family asked about his whereabouts, the reply was that he wasn’t in their custody,” his brother Jehad Baajour told reporters.
One of Mahran’s brothers who lives in Denmark subsequently flew to Ghana in a bid to locate him, but Ghanaian intelligence services again denied he was in the country.
AOHR UK confirmed that Baajour was “subjected to physical torture, beating all over his body, psychological torture, insult and verbal abuse by white-skinned officers speaking little Arabic”.
“Some officers’ clothes had Hebrew writings on it.”
In his statement to the organization, Baajour said:
“As soon as I left the airport in Accra, four cars surrounded the car I was in.
They arrested us without showing a legal warrant, without disclosing the agency they belong to and took us to another place, where they exchanged cars. They took me to an unknown place, I still do not know, and I was handcuffed the whole time.
White-skinned men, who knew little Arabic, started investigating me. They were 14 men from different nationalities as they told me. I noticed on a coat, which belongs to one of them, Hebrew badges, Hebrew written papers, and some of them used Hebrew words like ‘Shekel’.
I was interrogated about the situation of the refugees in Lebanon, the Lebanese and Palestinian political forces, some terrorist activities and operations that were not related to me and I told them so. They tortured me in various ways for 35 days.
They detained me in a narrow room, 1×1 meters, deprived me of sleep for up to three consecutive days, poured cold water on me and beat me on the head strongly, in addition to handcuffing my hands and feet all the time. They threatened me with kidnapping my 12-year-old daughter and killing her, while verbally abusing me.”
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Ghana government attitude towards Mahran Baajour’s abduction repugnant – Minority
April 1, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Africa, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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If Zionism was the political movement to establish a homeland for the Jewish people in the Middle East, then surely it achieved its goal and the term ceased to have meaning in terms of defining the objectives of a political movement.
Alternatively, if Zionism then morphed into support for the continued existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East, then the only point of view what would not be Zionist would be the one that calls the Jewish state illegitimate and calls for it to be dismantled. Yet there are few political voices that call for such an approach, and governments that have referred to the Jewish state as illegitimate have been demonized for doing so. Clearly, such a view is regarded as a fringe one.
So, what is Zionism today? Is everybody who does not declare Israel to be an illegitimate state that should be dismantled and the land given back to its dispossessed people a Zionist? Would that not make nearly everyone a Zionist? And, if so, does that not deprive the term of any meaning whatsoever?
This is not just semantics. Clearly, considerable effort goes on, particularly within movements like BDS and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to imprint the mantra into people’s minds that it is “Zionism not Judaism” that is responsible for the ongoing plight of the Palestinian people; and that, more importantly, we should not ask any questions about the role of Judaic teaching or ideology in attempting to understand what motivated and continues to motivate the supporters of what is now a genocidal apartheid state that openly defines itself as a “Jewish state” in the Middle East. If it is Zionism and not Judaism that is the problem, then clearly we need to understand what Zionism is (and, relatedly, whether it is rooted in Jewish religious teaching). And if Zionism turns out to be an empty concept, then we should be asking ask what are the ideological underpinnings of Israel’s brutal treatment of the Palestinians (and the lack of action on the part of the international community in that context) for more than 70 years.
Personally, I reject the “Zionism is not Judaism” approach and see that we are being fobbed off with nonsense. It seems clear that this wonderfully popular term “Zionism” is now devoid of content. Either no one is now a Zionist (because the goal of Zionism was achieved via the Catastrophe of 1948) or almost everyone is a Zionist (because there are very few people who would declare that the Jewish state should be dismantled and returned to its dispossessed owners). And,as Israel Shahak argued eloquently in his important and insightful work Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, I would suggest that we cannot begin to understand Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians without examining the roots of Judaic thinking and Jewish identity in the ethnically and religiously discriminatory doctrines of Judaic religion, which has shaped the Jewish mindset for most of its history. It seems, however, that Shahak’s writing continues to reap far less attention than it merits.
Yesterday, I attended a social evening organized by BDS Granada. Towards the end of the evening, I spoke to a couple of members, who seemed very nice people, but they instantly became uncomfortable when I made this point, namely, that we cannot understand Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinians without looking at its ideological roots and justification in the Jewish religion. ‘Oh no,’ they said, ‘that is dangerously close to anti-Semitism. Zionism is not Judaism,’ etc. Then their Jewish friend popped up and, well, let’s just say things went downhill from there.
Clearly, the topic continues to be both policed and silenced within many circles. It is thus no surprise that the activities of the many nice people within the BDS movement and various PSC collectives have failed to gain any real traction over the last decades, when discussion of issues highly relevant for understanding the problem continue to be policed and rendered taboo out of fear of offending Jewish feelings. And while I agree that there is always a need to respect the feelings of others in all forms of discourse, this needs to be balanced against many other needs, including the right to free speech – especially when the matter involves attempts to resolve ongoing crimes against humanity being committed against a specific collectivity, in this case the Palestinian people. To say that we cannot understand the roots of Israel’s ongoing genocide without examining the doctrines of Judaic teaching over the centuries is not to call for violence or discrimination against people who identify as Jews (and there are various different mechanisms of identification involved here, which merit considerable academic analysis in themselves). Nor is it an attempt to say that all people who identify as Jewish are involved in or support the illegal, oppressive and discriminatory actions of the Jewish state. Attempts to suggest otherwise violate our right to and need for free and open discourse on matters of great importance. Furthermore, discourse about justifications of violence in religious texts have taken place without problem in the context of other religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam (and also, “Hinduism”, though this term is something of a misnomer for the various traditions that are usually grouped together under this name).
Like Professor E Michael Jones, who has also sought to open up discourse surrounding Jewish thinking so that we might understand what is going on in our world, I have never advocated violence against any specific collectivity. And, like Gilad Atzmon, too, I reject racially or biologically based generalizations to examine questions related to the political and social influence of Jewish power and ideology in our world. I have lost count of the amount of times I have had to explain that to talk about discriminatory and supremacist teachings at the core of Judaic teaching does not mean that all individuals who identify as Jewish are as equally influenced by such doctrines. Jewish thought runs the gamut from the belief that all human beings (including non-Jews) should have the same rights and be valued and treated equally to the view that non-Jews have Satanic souls, that only Jews have a Higher Soul that comes from God, and that the non-Jew exists only to serve the Jew like a clever beast of burden, with a vast range of shades in between representing various attempts to reconcile (or not) the notion of being a “chosen people” with a private covenant with their own god (hence the commandment that ‘thou shalt not have other gods before me’) and own set of laws, on the one hand, with the Enlightenment ideals of universalizable morals and the equality of all human beings, on the other. Certainly, there are many people who identify as Jews today who would seek to distance themselves from views espoused by groups such as that of the powerful ultra-Orthodox sect Chabad that it is only Jews that have a Higher Soul, or that expressed by the chief rabbi of the Sephardic community that Gentiles exist only to serve Jews. On the other hand, in noting that, we must also recognize that such an egalitarian strand within Jewish thinking is a relatively recent phenomenon, stretching back only to the post-Enlightenment period, when many Jews sought to break free of the strict mental and social control of the rabbis that had sought to keep them segregated from the rest of humanity in ghettos for so long. And the deep traces of the ancient religious teachings can still be found, and thus merit serious examination, even within today’s secular Jews. As the joke has it, and not without some merit, many secular Jews say they don’t believe in God that but still seem to think He granted them their “promised land”.
Leaving all that aside for now, though, the fact that there exist individuals who identify as Jewish but who reject (consciously or otherwise) the discriminatory ideology of Judaic teaching does not mean that we cannot or should not be allowed to talk meaningfully about the role of supremacist and genocidal teachings within Jewish thought as a Jewish phenomenon as a whole, just as the fact that there are many Americans who have opposed US exceptionalism throughout history does not mean that we cannot or should not be allowed to talk meaningfully about American exceptionalism. This should be fairly obvious. Even in the recent farcical allegations of Russian collusion made against the Trump campaign, no one suggested that all Russians were colluding with Trump, or that Trump’s team was colluding with all Russians. It’s quite simple really. The fact that there are people who see themselves as Jewish who reject (to greater or lesser degree) Jewish supremacist ideology and activity does not mean that we cannot and should not be allowed to talk about supremacist and genocidal thinking within Jewish ideology and religious teaching, nor to examine how far such thought influences events in the social and political sphere. And the fact that so much effort goes into attempting to prevent us from doing so should set off red warning lamps in the minds of any true defender of freedom of speech and academic enquiry.
I thus repeat my claim from a day or two ago, that we need (but of course will not get for what should be by now obvious reasons) full academic recognition of a critical discourse on questions related to Jewish identity, Jewish thinking and Jewish power. We might perhaps call such discourse Critical Jewish Studies. And it should be understood by any legitimate scholar of integrity that Critical Jewish Studies is not anti-Semitism, and that any attempt to silence such studies or discourse on such grounds would represent a violation of principles of free enquiry that any true academic should seek to defend, as well as of the natural law right to freedom of speech.
April 1, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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A senior official in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has called on Arab nations to change their decades-long strategy of having no diplomatic relations with Israel, which he brands as a mistake.
Anwar Gargash, the tiny Persian Gulf regime’s minister of state for foreign affairs, said that the Arab world needed a “strategic shift” in its ties with the regime in Tel Aviv.
“Many, many years ago, when there was an Arab decision not to have contact with Israel, that was a very, very wrong decision, looking back,” he told the UAE-based news website The National.
“The strategic shift needs actually for us to progress on the peace front,” said Gargash, who also believed that the boycott of Israel has made finding a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more complicated.
“From the perspective of the UAE, we do need to resolve it, because this issue has this tendency of jumping out of the background when it’s quiet to suddenly becoming headline news.”
Among the Arab countries, the governments of Egypt and Jordan are the only ones having formal diplomatic ties with Israel.
The call for open ties with Israel comes after US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Syria’s occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territories.
Israel occupied the area during the Six-Day War with Arab armies in 1967 and went on to annex the East Jerusalem al-Quds. The international community has condemned both moves and repeatedly called on Israel to give back the territories.
Trump, however, recognized Jerusalem al-Quds as the Israeli “capital” in December 2017 and moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city in May last year, sparking global condemnations.
Israel lays claim to the whole city, but the Palestinians view it as the capital of their future sovereign state. The city has been designated as “occupied” under international law since it fell to Israel.
The UAE, along with Saudi Arabia, are known to have secretly developed expansive ties with Tel Aviv over the past years.
Israeli media reported in late January that UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and the country’s national security adviser had paid a not-so-secret visit to Israel with a direct flight from Abu Dhabi to Tel Aviv.
The trip came a few days after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took a tour of regional countries in a bid to unite Arab countries and the Israeli regime against Iran.
In an interview with Fox News on January 4, Pompeo was asked about an unofficial anti-Iran alliance between the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan.
“Undoubtedly. We have set the conditions in the Middle East where these countries are now working together across multiple fronts,” Pompeo said.
The outgoing chief of staff of the Israeli military, Gadi Eisenkot, reportedly made two secret visits in November to the United Arab Emirates, where he met with senior officials.
In June, the New Yorker magazine reported that Israel had maintained a secret but extremely close relationship with the UAE for more than two decades, with a special focus on intelligence sharing and military cooperation, including potential weapons deals
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March 29, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Egypt, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, UAE, United States, Zionism |
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Hannah Rosenthal at Walk for Israel day in 2016
The U.S. State Department is offering to pay up to a million dollars each for two projects “that counter the rise of anti-Semitism” in Europe and Central Asia. The State Department uses a new definition of anti-Semitism that includes criticisms of Israel.
The projects will be funded through two State Department offices: the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitism envoy position was created through 2004 legislation over the objection of the State Department. All four such envoys have been Israel partisans.
The objective of the new projects, according to the announcement of the program, is to address anti-Semitism abroad that is manifested in several ways, including “the use of hateful or inflammatory speech in public discourse, traditional media and online.” The announcement does not specify what language will be considered “hateful or inflammatory speech.” (In the U.S., the First Amendment prohibits the censorship of free speech.)
Special Anti-Semitism Envoy Hannah Rosenthal adopted the new Israel-centric definition of anti-Semitism in 2009. The formulation had been created by Israeli minister Natan Sharansky.
The new projects will “include training law enforcement to adequately and holistically respond to hate crimes from a legal, social, and community perspective; and to better equip police and prosecutors to engage effectively with local Jewish populations.”
The grants will be available to both nonprofit organizations and for-profit, commercial businesses. Organizations winning the grants may be allowed to keep aspects of their identity secret.
The current Anti-Semitism Envoy is Elan Carr, who ran for Congress in 2014 with the promise that he would be “a reliable vote for Israel.” Carr, who was backed by billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, said he visits Israel every year.
Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, president of the Council for the National Interest, and author of “Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.”
March 29, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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In a fair world, the contemporary leadership of India and Israel would understand the mistakes of the past and try to rectify the occupation of Kashmir and the occupation of Palestine. But back in the real world, both India and Israel thrive on perpetuating a cycle of violence against the occupied while spinning a narrative to the outside world that the victims are the aggressors and that somehow those armed with sticks and stones are a “threat” to states with nuclear arms and a modern air force.
These unfortunate characteristics have come to the fore in ever more prominent ways in recent years. This is largely due to the fact that far from just carrying on old traditions of war and occupation, Indian Premier Narendra Modi and Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu have become grossly hyperbolic representatives of the most militant, extremist and sectarianism tendencies within their own political cultures. Whilst Modi and Netanyahu did not invent Hindutva extremism nor Zionist extremism, respectively, they have both come to be the most effective representatives of the most extreme tendencies of both ideologies.
This year was not the first time that Modi and Netanyahu have used military violence against an occupied people in order to secure the ultra-jingoistic vote during an election season. That being said, this year has seen both Netanyahu and Modi become ever more brazen in their violent electoral tactics. India’s full scale mobilisation against occupied Kashmir in the aftermath of the Pulwama incident saw ever more soldiers and heavy artillery enter the most militarised zone in the world. It was this same aggressive attitude which saw Israel conduct large scale airstrikes against occupied Gaza over the last 12 hours.
Furthermore, whilst Netanyahu scapegoats all of Israel’s internal problems on the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Modi does the same in respect of the existence of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Modi’s “surgical tree strike 2.0” against Pakistan was little different than Netanyahu’s frequent air raids against alleged Iranian personnel in neighbouring Syria.
But the similarities do not end there. For Netanyahu and his supporters, occupied Palestinians are not humans but terrorists. When one realises that women, children, the elderly and the limbless are also scoffed at as “terrorists” by Netanyahu’s ultra-Zionist base, one can begin to understand how for Modi’s ultra-Hindutva base, the same applies to the civilians of Indian occupied Kashmir.
When it comes to Indian Muslims and so-called “Arab Israelis”, things are not much better. Modi’s government has continued to either turn a blind eye or even encourage violent and sexual assaults against Indian Muslims whilst working to culturally cleanse India’s rich Muslim heritage from the streets and monuments of the country. Recent legislation has even made it clear that while undocumented Hindu migrants can become Indian citizens, the same does not apply to Muslims in the same position. This is the case in spite of India’s technically secular constitution.
As if taking cues from Modi, in 2018, Netanyahu passed the Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People law which defines Israel not just as a “Jewish State” but as a state of and for Jewish people. This has effectively ended the long held myth that the minority of Arab citizens of Israel have a truly equal footing in society.
But it is not just Arab Muslims and Indian Muslims who are discriminated against in their respective countries. The ever growing Hindtuva movement is also suppressible of the right of Sikhs to hold a peaceful referendum for self-determination in Indian Punjab. Meanwhile, in Israel, the many black African Jewish migrants to Israel are in many ways treated even worse than indigenous Arabs.
Of course in both instances, due to the large global powers seeking strategic partnerships with both India and Israel, little is said and virtually nothing is done about these worrying trends.
But there is one important difference. Whilst recent years have seen western celebrities join the BDS movement to oppose Israeli occupation and discrimination against Palestinians, India’s black propaganda continues to convince many self-described “peace activists” of the wider world and in western states in particular, that occupied Kashmiris and Pakistan are to blame for regional strife. While Netanyahu’s mask has slipped among influential artist-activists like Roger Waters, Kashmir and Pakistan have yet to receive support from those who dare to speak out against India’s culture of extremist Hindutva violence.
Thus, while Israel’s Hasbara propaganda is beginning to show its limitations, India is far ahead of the game when it comes down to portraying itself as a victim abroad whilst the international community gives it a blank cheque in respect of aggression against occupied Kashmir and even against its own Muslim citizens.
March 27, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | India, Israel, Kashmir, Palestine, Zionism |
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It has become clear that US President Donald Trump, despite his vaunted prowess as the Dealmaker-in-Chief, isn’t interested in brokering peace between Israel and Palestine. His Middle East peace has no room for Palestine at all.
Trump promised to bridge the impossible gap between the incredible shrinking Palestinian territories and the Israeli government that long ago left behind such niceties as international law. Along with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Trump declared he would build a peace where none before him had succeeded. Unfettered by the rules of international sovereignty, as he displayed by handing Israel a Golan Heights that wasn’t his to give, Trump’s peace-making abilities are – in theory at least – limited only by his imagination.
Instead, his “Deal of the Century” – which Kushner has hyped across the Middle East for months – remains unseen by Palestinian eyes, and even Trump’s own diplomats have expressed concern over the viability of an Israeli-Palestinian peace that lacks any input from the Palestinian side. To make matters worse, February’s Warsaw conference that was supposed to tease a peaceful way forward for the region instead exposed the US and Israel’s real agenda when Israeli PM Netanyahu mistweeted its goal was “to advance the common interest of war with Iran.”
The “Deal of the Century” is rumored to throw Palestine a few economic crumbs in exchange for Jerusalem, most of the West Bank, and relinquishing the right of return. Is it any wonder that no countries appear to be taking it seriously?
Trump claims the deal will be revealed in all its glory after the Israeli election in two weeks, when Netanyahu is presumably reelected, though with even staunch allies like Saudi Arabia condemning Trump’s gift-wrapping of the Golan as a dire threat to regional peace, it’s difficult to believe such a peace could be revived.
Lucky for him, then, that it doesn’t have to be. The big plan – and the reason it’s kept such a big secret from Ramallah – doesn’t include Palestine at all. When Trump’s through, there will be no Palestine left worth negotiating with.
Like his Golan Heights move, Trump’s out-of-left-field decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem last year provoked international condemnation. The UN censured the move; the Palestinians took to the streets, where a few more were gunned down by IDF soldiers than on a typical Tuesday. But this week’s AIPAC conference has seen several US allies quietly sign on with their own embassy moves. Recent US coup-beneficiary Honduras joined its neighbor Guatemala in moving its embassy to Jerusalem, while Romania broke with the EU to do the same.
Bezalel Smotrich, deputy speaker of the Knesset, knows a giving mood when he sees one and has matter-of-factly asked Trump to recognize over half a century of illegal West Bank settlements by handing over the whole territory. It wouldn’t be any more of a stretch than the Golan was, after all – the same UN resolutions and international law have condemned the Israeli land-grab, the same US vetoes in the Security Council have negated the condemnation, and the same Manifest Destiny has spurred the theft of other people’s land. Trump’s primary financial backer, casino magnate and IDF fan-boy Sheldon Adelson, is one of the main funders of West Bank settlements, so the business connections are already in place. The ostensibly Palestinian territory is already so honeycombed with illegal dwellings, walls, and apartheid roads it’s practically a done deal.
Perhaps most tellingly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo posted a highlight reel of his pre-AIPAC Israeli jaunt, complete with the al-Aqsa mosque – a Muslim holy site sitting on real estate revered by both Jews and Christians – surgically excised, replaced by a rendering of the Third Temple. Pompeo spent his CIA years buttonholing colleagues in the hallway to chat about the coming Rapture – the Third Temple means a lot to him, eschatologically speaking. Palestinians, Muslims, international law? Not so much.
Earlier this month, the new and improved US embassy in Jerusalem absorbed the consulate that had served as de facto Palestinian Authority liaison. So goes the last diplomatic link with the would-be Palestinian state. Most US lawmakers espouse support for a two-state solution, even as Israeli settlements have engulfed the West Bank over the last decade and Netanyahu has legally declared non-Jews second-class citizens; Trump has refused to commit to either model. It’s clear what state he prefers.
Lest anyone think the move to efface all traces of Palestine is accidental, a parallel linguistic campaign is underway. No longer do US government reports refer to the “occupied” West Bank or Golan Heights, both territories illegally seized by Israel in 1967 and held to this day. Israeli groups have even rewritten history textbooks to frame Israel’s conquests in a more flattering light – why not remove Palestine altogether.
The US has curtailed its financial support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, leaving a $125 million hole in the group that sustains much of what’s left of Palestine’s civilian infrastructure after decades of ruinous blockades, bombardments, and apartheid policies so egregious South Africa has recoiled with déjà vu. The decision followed the discontinuation of $200 million in economic aid for the West Bank and Gaza. Netanyahu applauded the financial coups de grace, calling the millions of Palestinians descended from those who were evicted from their land during the 1948 Nakba “fictitious refugees.” Kushner himself has called for two million Palestinian refugees living in Jordan to be delisted as “refugees.”
And what of Gaza, which international observers have called an “open air concentration camp” and “Israel’s weapons-testing laboratory”? They have a few more weapons to test before taking it over completely, and Uncle Sam has already got his checkbook out. It’s no wonder Trump is more popular in Israel than he is in his own country. If there were truth-in-advertising laws governing elections, MAGA would be MIGA: Make Israel Great Again.
March 27, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Israel, Palestine, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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Predictably, the UN’s first remarks about Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip focused more on a single rocket reaching north of Tel Aviv than the Zionist state’s ongoing colonial violence against Palestinian civilians and its destruction of what remains of the enclave. Likewise, the Palestinian people themselves will be of no concern to the international body unless there is a rising death toll and images of severely wounded people splashed across social media.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, we are told, is “gravely concerned” and, again predictably, has asked for maximum restraint from “both sides”. However, his “concern” was framed thus: “Today’s firing of a rocket from Gaza towards Israel is a serious and unacceptable violation.”
Nickolay Mladenov, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, echoed the statement from Guterres in a tweet which deplored the firing of a rocket as “absolutely unacceptable”. So far, Mladenov has not updated his concerns to describe the shelling of Gaza by Israel in the same terms, despite its bombs inflicting infinitely more damage. The EU has followed suit, emphasising its “fundamental commitment to the security of Israel.” The lives and property of Palestinians mean nothing to such people.
Even as a ceasefire was purportedly reached, Israel continued targeting the densely-populated enclave and the Gaza border was declared to be a closed military zone. It is more than likely that international institutions are waiting for further violations before they order pointless inquiries and studies, and issue conclusions and recommendations, all the while forcing Palestinians into diplomatic irrelevance by allowing Israel to exacerbate the humanitarian situation which has conveniently erased the political obligation to end colonisation.
Since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Israel has targeted Gaza repeatedly to the point that it has now normalised air strikes and the international community has accommodated its violence and rights violations by refusing to respond and react accordingly. Both Israel and international institutions, however, need a point of reference to justify such impunity. A rocket, despite its relative insignificance, when compared with Israeli air strikes and shelling, is enough to prompt official statements that start off with concern and end with declaring the priority of Israel’s security over Palestinian lives.
An unnamed diplomatic source referred to by Israel National News has dismissed the possibility of a large-scale operation and described the reinforcements along Gaza’s nominal border as “deterrents”. Air strikes, however, are set to continue.
In line with the current General Election frenzy in Israel, several ministers and candidates, including former Israel Defence Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, have requested further action. Gantz described Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who also holds the defence portfolio — as having “lost his grip on security”, while Economy Minister Eli Cohen called for targeted assassinations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders. All this in retaliation for a rocket, as Israel would have the rest of the world believe.
As an aggressive occupier, though, Israel cannot define its actions as “retaliation” and “self-defence”. It is an instigator and has committed war crimes ever since its creation on Palestinian land in 1948.
Why, we must ask, are the UN and the EU intent on removing the distinction between possible war crimes and security when it comes to Israel? Both are trying to frame their political intent as a response to the rocket which landed north of Tel Aviv, yet the UN and the EU have clearly planned strategically for the moments when they can declare their allegiance and support for Israel without having to maintain an illusion of concern for human rights. Yet another opportunity for them to reveal their overt support for the colonial-occupation state arrived on Monday.
March 26, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | European Union, Gaza, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, Zionism |
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When President Donald Trump moved the US embassy to occupied Jerusalem last year, effectively sabotaging any hope of establishing a viable Palestinian state, he tore up the international rulebook.
Last week, he trampled all over its remaining tattered pages. He did so, of course, via Twitter.
Referring to a large piece of territory Israel seized from Syria in 1967, Mr Trump wrote: “After 52 years it is time for the United States to fully recognize Israel’s Sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which is of critical strategic and security importance to the State of Israel and Regional Stability.”
Israel expelled 130,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights in 1967, under cover of the Six Day War, and then annexed the territory 14 years later – in violation of international law. A small population of Syrian Druze are the only survivors of that ethnic cleansing operation.
Replicating its illegal acts in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel immediately moved Jewish settlers and businesses into the Golan.
Until now, no country had recognised Israel’s act of plunder. In 1981, UN member states, including the US, declared Israeli efforts to change the Golan’s status “null and void”.
But in recent months, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu began stepping up efforts to smash that long-standing consensus and win over the world’s only superpower to his side.
He was spurred into action when Bashar Al Assad – aided by Russia – began to decisively reverse the territorial losses the Syrian government had suffered during the nation’s eight-year war.
The fighting dragged in a host of other actors. Israel itself used the Golan as a base from which to launch covert operations to help Mr Assad’s opponents in southern Syria, including Islamic State fighters. Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, meanwhile, tried to limit Israel’s room for manoeuvre on the Syrian leader’s behalf.
Iran’s presence close by was how Mr Netanyahu publicly justified the need for Israel to take permanent possession of the Golan, calling it a vital buffer against Iranian efforts to “use Syria as a platform to destroy Israel”.
Before that, when Mr Assad was losing ground to his enemies, the Israeli leader made a different case. Then, he argued that Syria was breaking apart and its president would never be in a position to reclaim the Golan.
Mr Netanyahu’s current rationalisation is no more persuasive than the earlier one. Russia and the United Nations are already well advanced on re-establishing a demilitarised zone on the Syrian side of the separation-of-forces line. That would ensure Iran could not deploy close to the Golan Heights.
Mr Netanyahu is set to meet Mr Trump in Washington on Monday, when the president’s tweet will reportedly be converted into an executive order.
The timing is significant. This is another crude attempt by Mr Trump to meddle in Israel’s election, due on April 9. It will provide Mr Netanyahu with a massive fillip as he struggles against corruption indictments and a credible threat from a rival party, Blue and White, headed by former army generals.
Mr Netanyahu could barely contain his glee, reportedly calling Mr Trump to tell him: “You made history!”
But, in truth, this was no caprice. Israel and Washington have been heading in this direction for a while.
In Israel, there is cross-party support for keeping the Golan.
Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the US and a confidant of Mr Netanyahu’s, formally launched a plan last year to quadruple the size of the Golan’s settler population, to 100,000, within a decade.
The US State Department offered its apparent seal of approval last month when it included the Golan Heights for the first time in the “Israel” section of its annual human rights report.
This month, senior Republican senator Lindsey Graham made a very public tour of the Golan in an Israeli military helicopter, alongside Mr Netanyahu and David Friedman, Mr Trump’s ambassador to Israel. Mr Graham said he and fellow senator Ted Cruz would lobby the US president to change the territory’s status.
Mr Trump, meanwhile, has made no secret of his disdain for international law. This month, his officials barred entry to the US to staff from the International Criminal Court, based in The Hague, who are investigating US war crimes in Afghanistan.
The ICC has made enemies of both Washington and Israel in its initial, and meagre, attempts to hold the two to account.
Whatever Mr Netanyahu’s spin about the need to avert an Iranian threat, Israel has other, more concrete reasons for holding on to the Golan.
The territory is rich in water sources and provides Israel with decisive control over the Sea of Galilee, a large freshwater lake that is crucially important in a region facing ever greater water shortages.
The 1,200 square kilometres of stolen land is being aggressively exploited, from burgeoning vineyards and apple orchards to a tourism industry that, in winter, includes the snow-covered slopes of Mount Hermon.
As noted by Who Profits, an Israeli human rights organisation, in a report this month, Israeli and US companies are also setting up commercial wind farms to sell electricity.
And Israel has been quietly co-operating with US energy giant Genie to explore potentially large oil reserves under the Golan. Mr Trump’s adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has family investments in Genie. But extracting the oil will be difficult, unless Israel can plausibly argue that it has sovereignty over the territory.
For decades the US had regularly arm-twisted Israel to enter a mix of public and back-channel peace talks with Syria. Just three years ago, Barack Obama supported a UN Security Council rebuke to Mr Netanyahu for stating that Israel would never relinquish the Golan.
Now Mr Trump has given a green light for Israel to hold on to it permanently.
But, whatever he says, the decision will not bring security for Israel, or regional stability. In fact, it makes a nonsense of Mr Trump’s “deal of the century” – a regional peace plan to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that, according to rumour, may be unveiled soon after the Israeli election.
Instead, US recognition will prove a boon for the Israeli right, which has been clamouring to annex vast areas of the West Bank and thereby drive a final nail into the coffin of the two-state solution.
Israel’s right can now plausibly argue: “If Mr Trump has consented to our illegal seizure of the Golan, why not also our theft of the West Bank?”
March 25, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Israel, Palestine, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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Romania will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, Prime Minister Viorica Dancila announced at the AIPAC summit in Washington on Sunday, in a controversial move that goes against the rest of the European Union.
Speaking at the Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s (AIPAC) conference, Dancila said Romania intends to relocate its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which she referred to as Israel’s capital, in a move that follows the US’ controversial decision to do so last year.
Most nations with diplomatic relations with Israel have their embassies in Tel Aviv, as, although Israel claims Jerusalem as its capital, it is not recognized as such by the international community. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their future capital, and Israel has occupied East Jerusalem since the 1967 war, when it annexed the area from the rest of the West Bank.
Dancila is currently president of the Council of the European Union and the move is a marked departure from the position held by the rest of the EU. Romania, along with Hungary and the Czech Republic, reportedly blocked an EU resolution objecting to the US embassy move, which said Jerusalem should be capital of both Israel and Palestine.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Dancila to move Romania’s embassy when she visited Israel in January. “I hope you will act to stop the bad resolutions against Israel in the European Union,” he said. “And also, of course, to move your embassy and other embassies to Jerusalem.”
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis called for Dancila to resign last April after she pushed a secret memorandum to move the embassy without consulting him, and after she went on a state visit to Israel without consulting him. As president, Iohannis is in charge of foreign policy and has the final decision on such moves.
Speaking before another meeting between Romania and Israel in November, Netanyahu explained some of the reasons they enjoy good relations: “We cooperate in matters of security, anti-terror. Romania stands often with Israel in difficult diplomatic arenas and we appreciate this. We recognize our friends and we consider Romania a great friend.” Netanyahu also referred to their shared concerns about “radical Islam.”
The president of Honduras also told AIPAC it would open diplomatic representation in Jerusalem, and hinted that if AIPAC would lobby on behalf of his country, he would consider opening an embassy too, Haaretz reports. Brazil has also said it will consider moving its embassy. Guatemala is the only country apart from the US to have moved its embassy to Jerusalem so far.
March 24, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Israel, Palestine, Romania, Viorica Dancila, Zionism |
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The U.S.-Israel Directed Energy Cooperation Act would deepen Israel’s access to grotesque weapons of war that have been developed by the US military but have also been banned for use by American troops
WASHINGTON — Last Thursday, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-CA) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY) introduced the “U.S.-Israel Directed Energy Cooperation Act,” which would authorize “the Department of Defense to carry out bilateral cooperation with Israel to develop directed energy capabilities,” according to a press release.
Directed energy weapons include laser weapons and particle beams; they are highly destructive but embraced by militaries for their “infinite magazines” and “incredible speed and range.”
More specifically, the bill — which is identical to a bill of the same name that Lieu and Stefanik introduced last year but failed to pass — would allow the Pentagon “to carry out research, development, test, and evaluation activities, on a joint basis with Israel, to establish directed energy capabilities that address threats to the United States, deployed forces of the United States, or Israel, and for other purposes.”
Arguably more troubling is the fact that this bill would deepen Israel’s access to grotesque weapons of war that have been developed by the U.S. military but have also been banned for use by American troops. For instance, in the late 1990s, the U.S. and Israel collaborated on the “Nautilus” program that created lasers that cause permanent blindness in those targeted by literally “melting the eyeball.”
Though the “Nautilus” lasers were banned for use by the U.S. under the Clinton administration because they could cause permanent blindness, they were nevertheless shared with Israel’s government. A spokesman for U.S. Army Space and Strategic Defense Command, John Cunningham, at the time told the Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs that the decision to share the technology with Israel had not been made by the command — which was the lead agency overseeing the program — and instead stated that “We are taking our orders from the Secretary of Defense [William Perry] and President Clinton.”
The “Nautilus” lasers were later shelved for use as missile defense by Israel in 2006, despite the U.S. and Israel having spent $300 million, owing to the “prohibitive cost” of their operation. However, Israel has continued to use the highly experimental technology to develop a new system it claimed was on the “verge of completion” this past December.
In light of this current bill, it is important to revisit the “Nautilus” example, as it clearly shows that the U.S. government, in past “collaborative” efforts, has provided experimental, hi-tech weapons to Israel even when they are so controversial, potent and deadly that the U.S.’ own military is banned from using them. This point is even more troubling when one considers that Israel regularly tests its experimental and newly developed weapons on Palestinians, including civilians, who live in the blockaded Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank.
U.S. to subsidize Israeli arsenal
While it has been touted as a means of “jointly” researching directed energy weapons, the text of the bill reveals that it would be used to funnel U.S. taxpayer funds to subsidize Israeli directed energy weapon research in Israel.
For instance, the bill states: “The Secretary of Defense is authorized to provide maintenance and sustainment support to Israel for the directed energy capabilities research, development, test, and evaluation activities authorized.” It then states that Israel’s financial contribution to said research would not necessarily need to be equal to the U.S.’ contribution, but merely “an amount that otherwise meets the best efforts of Israel, as mutually agreed to by the United States and Israel.”
Furthermore, the “memorandum of agreement” between the two countries states that the bill would require “the United States Government to receive semiannual reports on expenditure of funds, if any, by the Government of Israel, including a description of what the funds have been used for, when funds were expended, and an identification of entities that expended the funds.” This passage strongly suggests that the research will take place in Israel under Israeli government supervision.
The bill is part of a recent congressional effort to mandate close cooperation between the Israeli and U.S. governments in sensitive technology, despite Israel’s history of using such collaboration to steal state secrets. For instance, a widely overlooked provision of the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018 — which was nearly passed but ultimately blocked last year in the Senate by Rand Paul (R-KY) — would have mandated that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) work closely with the Israel Space Agency (ISA) “to identify and cooperatively pursue peaceful space exploration and science initiatives in areas of mutual interest.”
The provision was included despite the fact that an Israeli postdoctoral student, Amir Gat, at Caltech had illegally transmitted to Israel classified information on NASA technology. Gat is now employed by an Israeli state-run research institution.
Considering the source(s)
This current bill appears not to provide any direct benefit to the United States and, instead, promises to be a way of subsidizing hi-tech weapons research of an allied government that regularly commits war crimes. Though Rep. Lieu has claimed that the legislation is an “opportunity” for the U.S. and would “save lives,” it seems that the $31,850 Lieu received from the pro-Israel lobby just last year may have swayed his opinion.
Yet, in contrast, the bill’s other sponsor, Rep. Stefanik, has not received such largesse from the Israel lobby. Instead, Stefanik is connected with and used to work for the country’s most notorious and zealously pro-Israel neoconservatives, when she served as communications director for the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI). FPI was founded in 2009 by neoconservatives Robert Kagan and Bill Kristol as the successor to the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which had fallen into disrepute for its role in promoting — and some argue helping to plan — the Iraq War. Yet, Stefanik’s association with neoconservatives goes beyond her association with FPI, as neocon National Security Adviser John Bolton endorsed her re-election campaign bid in 2017.
Given the lack of benefit for the U.S. — and Israel’s history of war crimes and testing its newly developed weapons on disenfranchised Palestinians in blockaded Gaza or the occupied West Bank — this bill is a perfect example of yet another “Israel first” bill now making its way through the U.S. Congress.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
March 23, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, United States, West Bank, Zionism |
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Hubris grips Israel. Absolute power has had its usual effect of absolute corruption, of morality, legality, and justice as well as the money deals that have enriched corrupt Israeli politicians.
No one dares stop Israel. Not the UN and not western governments. They can but they don’t or they won’t. Israel can kill Palestinians on the West Bank, in Jerusalem, in Gaza, without any meaningful intervention by the ‘international community.’
On the West Bank, a corrupt Palestinian Authority has done much of its dirty work, administering the occupied territory on behalf of the occupier, not the occupied. In East Jerusalem, it has acted as the conduit for the sale of Jerusalem properties to Zionist settlers, with straw men, Palestinians, and bogus companies set up to transfer properties without owners knowing that the real purchasers are Zionist settlers.
Most of the money for these purchases comes from the US, where Donald Trump has now followed up his “recognition” of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital with his “recognition” of the occupied Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.
He did this in a tweet, without telling the relevant arms of his own administration beforehand. The State Department was taken by surprise and so was everyone else, except the Israeli government. It knew because Trump had passed on the word. Behind the scenes, John Bolton and the US ambassador to Israel, David Freedman, effectively Israel’s American ambassador to Israel, worked to set this up.
The parallel to Trump’s unilateral White House action is US recognition of Israel in 1948. Because of the probability of extreme bloodshed, early in 1948 the US had backed away from the 1947 partition plan and was seeking a UN trusteeship over Palestine. That was the policy followed until Truman upended it on May 14 by recognizing Israel de facto, without informing the State Department or the US delegation at the UN.
The UN Secretary-General had been informed, and it was in the wastepaper basket in his office that the screwed-up ticker tape message sent to him was found. The US delegation ’s head, Warren Austin, was so disgusted he walked out of the UN building and left it to his deputy to make the formal announcement of recognition. The enraged Cuban delegation threatened to pull Cuba out of the UN.
The US has never been an honest broker but at least in the 1940s and 1950s, there were sensible people who recognized the great dangers for the US in supporting Zionism and the state of Israel.
Loy Henderson, a senior State Department official, responsible for Middle Eastern policy, wrote that support for a Jewish state would violate US policy of allowing a majority vote by the population of any territory to determine its form of government.
He warned that support for Israel would involve the US “in international difficulties of so grave a character that the reaction throughout the world as well as in this country will be very strong.”
Secretary State George Marshall opposed partition and wrote that if Truman recognized Israel, he would vote against him in the next elections.
Truman’s double-dealing was to repeated by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s when he told the Israeli ambassador, Yitzhak Rabin, that he need not worry about being forced into signing the nuclear-non proliferation treaty in return for the supply of US planes and tanks.
Johnson would make sure they would be provided without any conditions, blindsiding his own officials, who thought they were going into negotiations with a strong hand, only to be treated with discourtesy by Rabin.
Israel got the lot then, the tanks and the planes and the freedom to develop nuclear weapons without having to sign the NPT, and it has got the lot ever since. Military and economic grants have now reached unprecedented levels. On top of the $3.8 billion aid, Israel will receive for 2019 it is now the beneficiary of a ten-year $38 billion ‘defense’ package, signed into law in August 2018.
These sums of money, enabling the occupation of Palestine and the killing of Palestinians, are augmented by smaller grants, $50 million here or $50 million there, the icing on an enormous and very tasty cake. Israel still has the freedom to develop nuclear weapons without US interference.
In December 2017, Donald Trump “recognized” Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, on the same day that Zionist snipers were killing unarmed Palestinians along the Gaza fence line. He has now followed this by “recognizing” the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.
The banality of the man is summed up in the means of communication, not a White House press conference, not a State Department communique, but a tweet, the same conduit he uses for talking about his children or abusing his political opponents or telling the world how great the Mexican wall will be.
Of course, there can be no “recognition” because both East Jerusalem (‘at least’ as there is no good reason to separate the occupation of the east in 1967 from the occupation of the west in 1948) and the Golan Heights are occupied territories in fact and under international law.
With these two announcements, the US has finally ruled itself out as any kind of honest broker between Israel and the Palestinians. It never has been, of course. Some presidents tried hard to bring balance into the relationship – Jimmy Carter for example – but all eventually caved in.
The Golan Heights is part of Syria. In 1967 it was seized by Israel during its war against Egypt and Syria. This was no “pre-emptive” attack as the Zionists have claimed ever since but a blitzkrieg aimed at destroying Arab military capacity, destroying Egypt’s leader, Gamal Abd al Nasser and seizing the rest of Palestine.
The seizure of the Golan involved the expulsion of 90,000-130,000 Syrians and Palestinians. Some fled, others were driven out but, just like 1948, no one was allowed back. About 100 villages were destroyed and ploughed over.
In 1974, after a war which Egypt and Syria would have won on the battlefield had not Anwar al Sadat betrayed the Syrian president, Hafez al Assad, new lines of demarcation were drawn up on the Golan, leaving about 70 percent in the hands of the Zionists.
Before withdrawing from some of the territories they had occupied, Zionist units deliberately destroyed the city of Quneitra. It was never rebuilt, the ruins standing as testimony to the complete bastardry of the army which had occupied it.
Since that time Israel has filled the occupied Golan with about 30 settlements and 25,000 settlers. Archaeological relics are plundered, the Golan’s vital water resources are drained off and Israeli and foreign tourists contribute to the economy of occupation. In recent years the occupied Syrian communities, mainly Druze, have had to put up with wounded terrorists being transported across their land from Syria to receive treatment in Israeli hospitals. On occasion, they have attacked these convoys. Most Druze remain committed to their Syrian identity.
In his tweet, Trump wrote that the “recognition” of the occupied Golan as Israeli is important to “regional stability.” The opposite is true, of course. ‘Regional stability’ is even more seriously threatened. With these announcements, Trump has put his administration entirely in Israel’s pocket.
Trump may well give Netanyahu’s election prospects a boost by turning his tweeted intention into a formal policy statement before the Israeli elections in early April. Both the Jerusalem and the Golan declarations, however, are a sign that Israel and its lobbyists in the US have seriously overplayed their hand and that in buckling to their pressure, Trump has worsened Israel’s standing in the US.
The US groveling to Israel over many decades would now seem to have reached its apogee. All that remains is the plan being cooked up by Trump, John Bolton, Jared Kushner, and David Freedman, in continuous consultation with the Israeli government, to bury the Palestinian question forever.
Americans are aware more than ever of how Israel dictates US foreign policy. Jewish Americans know it in increasing numbers, especially on university campuses. They have the same moral consciousness as anyone else and are appalled by Israel’s atrocious record over many decades. They are distancing themselves both from Israel and Zionism and of course, they completely abhor the Netanyahu government and Israel’s even more openly racist and fascist parties.
Two Muslim members of Congress have recently sharpened the debate with exposure of the lobby’s vote-buying political influence. Senior Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, have declared they will not be attending the annual AIPAC conference in Washington on March 24-26. In years gone by, such defiance by a US politician would be regarded as suicidal but not now. This is partly the measure of how the wind is blowing in the US.
Trump’s two declarations end all illusions. Even in the minds and the hearts of those who desperately cling to the hope of a genuine peace process, there can surely be no hope left. One would have to be completely deluded to see something in nothing. What is left is surrender or resistance. Either you or us. Not a peace of the brave as pronounced on the White House lawns in 1993 but a peace of the grave.
Many Palestinians never thought peace with Israel was possible. They have been proven right. Those who continued to place their trust in the “international community” or in the application of international law or the bona fides of the Israeli government have been proven wrong. George Habash read the situation correctly back in the 1950s and 1960s. Hasan Nasrallah reads it correctly now.
The abandonment by the US of the remnants of a peace process that was never a peace process in the first place creates grave dangers, not regional stability, especially when taken in the context of a possible Israeli war with Hizbullah or Iran or on both of them.
The US has left the supporters of a genuine peace process with nothing in their hands. There is no two-state solution in sight, only a bogus one-state ‘solution’ which turns all of Palestine into Netanyahu’s apartheid Jewish state.
If Palestine, any part of it, is to be redeemed, only the option of force seems left for those who will not surrender. After more than seven decades of chicanery, lies, and brutality from Israeli governments, this conclusion would be self-evident.
It is not a question of wanting it or wishing for it. Force is abhorrent but there has never been a time in history when an occupied people have not resisted the occupier to the utmost limits of their endurance.
Both the Palestinians and the Zionists conform to the historical pattern, one as the occupied and the second as the occupier. Israel thinks it can break the Palestinians down by the application of brute force but after more than seven decades it has still not succeeded. Instead, in the minds of many, it has only strengthened the lesson that what has been taken by force, ultimately can only be taken back by force.
When there is no peace, no remote possibility of peace, the pendulum must swing back to war. When it comes, and sooner or later it will come, Israel is going to take such punishment that it might finally see reason, if by then it is not too late to see reason. It would be better to see reason before the event but that is not going to happen.
Hizbullah has the capacity to inflict great damage on Israel. The Iron Dome and the Arrow anti-missile ‘defense’ systems will stop only a fraction of the volume of missiles that will pour into Israel in the event of war with Hizbullah or the war with Iran which Netanyahu has wanted for years. Even Hamas now says it has rockets that can reach any part of Israeli territory. Even if Israel ‘wins’, a nebulous concept in the context of such a destructive war, it will be seriously wounded.
Israel’s greatest defense system would have been to reach a generous settlement with the Palestinians long ago but what it has actually settled for is ideology, the fulfillment of the Zionist dream that is a Palestinian nightmare, and the continued theft of Palestinian land over the security of its Jewish citizens.
They are in the Middle East and want to stay there. They want a future for their children, but what kind of future is on offer from Israel’s racist politicians, settlers and rabbis? The answer? The same kind of violent future that is on offer for the Palestinians. Is this the choice any sane person would want to make?
March 23, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Hezbollah, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Syria, United States, Zionism |
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The United Nations Human Rights Council has voted to adopt a report accusing Israel of War Crimes committed against civilians during Gaza demonstrations.
The report was adopted with 23 votes in favor, 8 against and 15 abstentions. Despite the statements of UK foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, the UK abstained from voting against the adoption of the report.
The UN report investigated the killings of 189 demonstrators, including 35 children, in Gaza, between the 30th of March and the 31st of December, 2018. The report concluded that Israel had committed serious violations of international law.
The report was instantly denounced as “biased” and “anti-Semitic” by Israel and its closest allies, according to Days of Palestine.
However, despite the slanderous comments against the UN by Israel, the report may now be taken to the International Criminal Court. The report calls for international arrest warrants to be handed out to the Israeli soldiers responsible, as well as individual sanctions to be applied to those guilty, for the illegal use of lethal force against unarmed demonstrators.
March 22, 2019
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Israel, Palestine, United Nations, Zionism |
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Aletho News 