The PLO’s Committee for Prisoners and Freed Prisoners revealed on Monday that the Israeli authorities pay stipends to Jewish settlers indicted of crimes against Palestinians, Quds Press has reported. Israel has complained frequently about payments to the families of Palestinian prisoners by the Palestinian Authority, claiming that they “encourage terrorism”.
As an example of the Israeli payments, the rights group mentioned the case of Israeli settler Yoram Skolnik, who shot dead Musa Abu Sabha while he was lying with his face on the ground and his hands tied behind his back in March 1993. The killing took place near the illegal settlement of Susia in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron, and the killer has been receiving a monthly salary in addition to his national insurance payments.
Furthermore, Skolnik also received financial assistance from the government to start a business after he was released from prison, the Committee pointed out. It noted that the Israeli authorities reduced his sentence from life to just eight years.
Israel’s official and popular support for criminals and appeals for their release from prison are part of the “rising racism, fascism and encouragement of extremism against the Palestinians,” the Committee claimed. Ninety-nine per cent of Israeli Jews who were imprisoned after killing Palestinians were released and received legal and social support, as well as full protection by successive Israeli governments, it added.
According to the Head of the Committee, Issa Qaraqe, the international community must take steps against Israeli laws which clearly target human rights and the rights of the Palestinians.
February 20, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Israeli authorities in Jerusalem have begun construction of a new checkpoint on the edge of Al-Walaja, in what has been described as “the final step in blocking the village’s access to a national park built on land confiscated from its residents”.
According to Israeli NGO Ir Amim, the Jerusalem municipality initiated the construction on 14 February, some weeks after Mayor Nir Barkat and Minister of Jerusalem Affairs Ze’ev Elkin inaugurated the Emek Refaim National Park.
“The new checkpoint will replace the one now in operation between Al-Walaja and Gilo [settlement], bringing it directly to the edge of the village… in order to block resident’s access to 1,200 dunams of national park land between the village and the Green Line,” the NGO explains.
The park will thus “deepen the isolation of the village, already encircled by the Separation Barrier on its East Jerusalem side (half of the village lies beyond the municipal border, in the West Bank)”.
According to Ir Amim, these developments in Al-Walaja, “more than half of which is under threat of demolition, on its annexed side”, occur in “the context of a much larger campaign to consolidate the southern perimeter of East Jerusalem and fatally disrupt contiguity with the West Bank”.
To that end, Israel has “steadily promoted plans” in recent years including the expansion of Har Homa and Gilo settlements, and the approval of plans in Givat Hamatos, “which would supplant Har Homa as the newest settlement in East Jerusalem”.
The NGO also cites the “construction of the six-lane highway through residential Beit Safafa, which serves to further disrupt contiguity between East Jerusalem and the Bethlehem area while reinforcing the connection between settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem”.
February 19, 2018
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Human rights, Israel, Israeli settlement, Palestine, Zionism |
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View from the tower of the Church of Redeemer shows the Dome of the Rock mosque and the cross of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, [Saeed Qaq/Apaimages]
Palestine was never really there. A thousand years is just a worthless length of time, and all you see on the ground is a layer waiting to be stripped away completely. This is not my imagination speaking; it is what dominates the mindset of too many Israelis and their supporters thanks to decades’ worth of sustained propaganda, which has fed the minds of generations with uncompromising convictions which accept neither discussion nor review.
One of the most sensitive taboos in this respect is the mere recognition of the existence of the Palestinian people in the past, or even in the present. The truth is at odds with the very roots of Zionism. Israelis used to talk crudely about “Arabs”, a convenient solution to the problem of saying “Palestinian”. The Arabs, they reason, are just people who came from the desert and can go back to it or can be expelled there. “This country won’t be enough for all of us together,” the Zionists argue. “They have 20 Arab countries, why won’t they go there?” Such naïve “logic” can be used both ways: You have a great friend in US President Donald Trump, so why didn’t you go and join him?
This Israeli mentality has provided the cultural pretext for the ethnic cleansing that Israel’s “New Historians” have described in detail, starting with Benny Morris up to the expanded works of Ilan Pappé. Hence, don’t exhaust yourself searching for references to “the Palestinian people” in anything issued by Israeli officials during the “peace process” for a quarter of a century, because you won’t find it. There are only “Palestinians”, but the people have a homeland, history, identity, roots and rights, and these are concepts that Israelis cannot imagine as part of a country which is not Palestine at all in their view. The forgotten fact today is that the founder of political Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, and his colleagues in the early World Zionist Organisation had no choice but to call it Palestine, a name which was also included in all subsequent documents, including the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
In Israeli hands, archaeology and history are saturated with propaganda. Israeli excavations and museums are guided by an arrogance and ideology to reach specific conclusions. The Zionist narrative began in Europe in the late nineteenth century and not in Palestine. Archaeological propaganda must invent an imaginary country to match the Israeli myth. It does not recognise what happened during the past 2,000 or 3,000 years, and does not pay attention to what is beyond even that.
The Israelis face a dilemma, though: what do they do with a place that obviously has an indigenous culture and character; and is an Arab and Palestinian, Muslim and Christian environment, with evidence of this equally obvious? How should they deal with all these minarets, domes and church towers which survived demolition and destruction; the well-known Arab architecture; and even the olive trees and palm trees that have survived the uprooting and burning? The Israeli trick to overcome this very real dilemma is to escape from the reality by basing their state on a relatively very short period of ancient history, smothered with nationalist ideology. This is significant, because what we see of Israel today is superficial; peel this particular layer back and what you will find underneath actually belongs to the Palestinians. Nevertheless, the Zionist myths appeal to Trump and his predecessors in the White House, although only he has dared to declare that Jerusalem is there for Israelis alone.
The celebration of the Israeli narrative justifies the sweeping aside of vast periods of historical facts that are denied in order to create a scenario that corresponds to the imagined history based on Zionist ideology and mythology. In June 1967, for example, a few days after occupying the eastern part of Jerusalem (having occupied the western sector since 1948), Israeli bulldozers destroyed a historic neighbourhood in the heart of the Old City. This represented one of the most extensive campaigns of destruction in the 20th Century. The Moroccan Quarter included 135 historic buildings dating back centuries; it was destroyed completely in order to create an empty space in the heart of Jerusalem that is now a large square next to the Western (“Wailing”) Wall. Who is strong enough today to compare the images of this area before and after 1967? Who remembers the historic Moroccan Quarter, with all the features of the archaeological sites that precede the era of Saladin? Who asks where the rubble of the Quarter’s ancient stones and monuments which lasted for more than 1,000 years has gone?
What is striking about this, as with other incidents of mass destruction that discreetly and hastily followed the military occupation, is the fact that these events have not yet been discussed in any great depth amongst Israelis themselves, or even internationally. This sort of thing remains one of the major Israeli taboos. Everything related to occupied Palestine’s indigenous identity and history is a very serious no-no for discussion in Israeli circles.
Israeli propaganda has shackled its audience to an ideology, which provides them with naive perceptions of the land 2,000 or 3,000 years ago and, of course, not before or since. This propaganda begins with the words of the Zionist anthem, Hatikvah, which the Zionist Organisation later manipulated to include Jerusalem, though the city was not mentioned by the writer, Naftali Herz Imber, when he wrote the song in 1877. This is not only about the historical fabrications of the propaganda, but it is also about the manipulation of the words in the anthem, since some were taken from the Polish national anthem, and its melody was stolen from popular European folk songs in many versions.
The propaganda feeds politicians’ speeches so that they can fill Israeli minds with a specific concept: You were here yesterday, and you are back here today. The implication is that all who were here between “yesterday” and “today” are of no value. They were just wanderers with neither roots nor history of their own. Some enthusiasts who favour this logic may understand it as giving them the green light to destroy the “wanderers” and their property and expel them if necessary. It is the mentality of “transfer” and ethnic cleansing; it is the logic of the bulldozers that are crushing history in favour of an invented history creating “facts on the ground” in accordance with the mindset of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right party that is backed by the army, illegal settler gangs, the Jerusalem Municipality and the Antiquities Authority.
Danny Ayalon, a close associate of Netanyahu, served as Deputy Foreign Minister for years, and was a fierce advocate of illegal Israeli settlements built on the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Jerusalem. Ayalon appeared in a popular propaganda video about Jerusalem in which he appeared to sneak into tunnels under the Old City and started to imagine himself walking around 2,000 years ago. The video is full of historical naivety, as usual, but it includes a truly horrifying image: the destruction of the Dome of the Rock and its surrounding compound, as if the most prominent Jerusalem landmark is just a fast food takeaway or suchlike that can be destroyed and replaced by a garage.
Well-known for his social media activity, Ayalon has done in the virtual realm what the neo-fascist religious organisations have tried to do in the real world by carrying out attacks and incursions of the Noble Sanctuary of Al-Aqsa for decades. These far-right Jewish groups want to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock Mosque and other Islamic and Christian monuments. This started with an arson attack on Al-Aqsa in 1969, since when there have been numerous plots to bomb the sanctuaries. Jerusalem, for them, is just something to be eliminated, as suggested by Ayalon in the video clip.
The so-called “price tag” attacks by Jewish settlers include arson, vandalism and graffiti on mosques, churches, monasteries, houses and the graves of Muslims and Christians, with demands in Hebrew that they leave the country. The people responsible are the products of the Israeli education system. They were subjected to Zionist propaganda, which filled their minds with the notion that they are the masters of history and the masters of the land. The result has been an apparently endless stream of attacks since the beginning of this century, some of which resulted in burning families and children; the then 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was burned alive along with his parents in a 2015 arson attack on their home; his four-year-old brother Ahmed survived, but with serious burns.
A whole raft of theatrical propaganda and props have been created to fuel the mentality of hate that produces the perpetrators of such acts. One of the most important institutions of the state that was founded on the ruins of Palestine is the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Members of the Knesset sit facing a large artificial stone wall, which is meant to provide a sense of historical depth to their country. Racist laws are drafted by these parliamentarians so that the state can impose a Jewish identity on the country while ignoring its real history and denying the existence of the Palestinian people. Such laws are increasing in number, along with restrictions on Israeli human rights organisations that oppose the official propaganda.
Among the Knesset members there are fanatical settlers who live in houses built on lands stolen from Palestinians in the West Bank by force of arms. They are convinced that God gave them this land thousands of years before the inauguration of Netanyahu’s government. Some of them give you the impression that God is there on the side of the armed thugs who use automatic rifles to intimidate Palestinians in their own homes, and burn their olive trees. Because they are the undisputed masters of history, their carefully fortified settlements are usually built in strategic locations on the hills, where they have a superior view over the Palestinian villages at their feet.
In the cities and towns on the Mediterranean coast, the most difficult questions that the resident of a house that has been stolen since 1948 might face are, “Who built this house, father? Who planted this tree, mother? Who made this road, grandfather?” Such questions cover very sensitive Israeli taboos; if peace is to be a genuine option, they must be broken and opened up to honest and open discussion.
February 19, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, Zionism |
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I have often asked myself, why there is an impression that some Western activists and pro-Palestinian organisations are working covertly, to divide and weaken the Palestinian cause. Before addressing the primary issue, a little has to be said about the Palestinian cause itself and how many prominent figures side-track real resolutions, with their own ideas as to how Palestinians should act in the face of their foreign occupier.
Whilst many choose to point out the progression of the Palestinian human rights cause in the West – with groups such as the BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) movement and others seeing success – the movement at its most essential level, on the ground in Palestine, seems to be at its very weakest.
In order for the world to see a reality in which Palestinians are granted their full human rights, the most important place to see an emergence of change should surely be from within Palestine itself?
No amount of pro-Palestine advocacy from university students, nor rallies for human rights in the West, will result in direct evolution of the struggle on the ground for the Palestinians. It is the Palestinians themselves that will ultimately lead their own way to freedom. Whilst it is absolutely essential to have a strong solidarity movement overseas, this is not the Palestinian cause in its entirety.
The Israeli government have proceeded to massacre, destroy and dispossess the Palestinians for 70 years now and it is unrealistic to believe that they will simply stop what they are doing – suddenly growing a conscience – all because people in Western nations are mad at them.
The only way an apartheid regime such as Israel changes/falls, is when it is forced to do so. History has illustrated that there must be forceful measures executed in order to bring about change when confronted by Western Empire. From the expulsion of the French and the liberation of Algeria, to the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, to the fight for Irish independence, the point has been illustrated that resistance is the key to freedom.
Palestinians are generally perceived by foreign onlookers as one of two things, victims or terrorists. The ‘Left’ love the idea of the defenseless civilian that must be saved and the ‘Right’ see Palestinians as violent extremists. Those looking in at the Palestinian struggle seem to have two ultra-polarized views, with little space for the idea that Palestinians are human beings in the struggle to liberate their homeland, thus the general consensus amongst the left is to reject the notion of Palestinians as being engaged in a potentially violent battle for their homeland and existence.
There is no simple solution to what is going on – although it is a conflict that is relatively easy to understand – this article is not claiming to provide all the answers, but certainly is of importance in order to understand a very sinister agenda that has been put into practice for some time now in Palestine.
The agenda to divide and conquer the Palestinian people and how this is being carried out.
Many steps have been taken by the Israeli government, in order to destroy the foundations of Palestinian society. Attempts to suppress the populations of the Gaza strip and West Bank pre-date the occupation/besiegement of these territories themselves and have varied in their approach to achieving this aim.
When Shimon Peres (former Israeli Prime Minister and President) established the first settlements in the West Bank and acted upon his plan to economically coerce the Palestinians of the occupied territories, he changed how the Israeli takeover of Palestine would manifest itself.
Instead of all out genocide, Israel began a process of quietly and sneakily conquering the land they sought to capture and hiding their true intentions through the notion of a ceasefire and what would be seen as “relative peace”.
Israel’s Infiltration of Palestinian Resistance is Exposed
After speaking to countless Palestinian activists in the West Bank, on the current state of the Palestinian cause, one theme remained constant, the lack of unity in Palestine today. Almost everyone I spoke to on this issue would reminisce back to the days of the second Intifada (or uprising) – which started in the year 2000 and lasted roughly five years – everyone spoke of how the people came together against the occupation and of the current erosion of that unity.
Intrigued as to how Palestinian unity had dissipated, as was described, I quickly came to the conclusion that the election of Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority, was a primary factor, then I began to look deeper.
Although the Palestinian Authorities actions had made some impact, I discovered something else lurking behind the scenes. As I travelled from village to village, city to city, everywhere I went I saw division between grassroots organizations and feuds between activists, I saw this often hinder the results of organized demonsrations and campaigns.
After investigating the reasons behind these divisions, I found in every instance the involvement of Western activists and/or organizations.
Palestinians are often offered many things by international organizations/activists, such as celebrity status, money for their families or projects they are working on, the ability to travel to spread their message and much more, but this comes at a price.
These organizations and foreign activists, come with a particular view of how the cause has to be seen and seek to impose boundaries upon those that they promote.
If you would like money and to be highly regarded in the eyes of the many, you are forced to abide to the guidelines you are given, fearing demonization if you do not follow what they prefer you to talk about and focus your energies on.
Other Palestinian activists then often note the capitulation to the boundaries established for those aided by international organizations, this I found to be a primary instigator of infighting.
It is definitely conceivable that these organizations and activists truly believe that what they are doing, is for the good of the people they claim to advocate for. However I cannot simply believe the notion of coincidence without considering a much deeper involvement, one truly insidious in its nature.
If it was happening in one village or two, perhaps I could believe that these wealthy and well established groups were not compromised, but this was persistent throughout the West Bank, in almost every city and village I saw the same trend.
Other than causing feuds between activists and dividing grassroots organizations, the international groups are able to achieve the objective, of forcing those that they “help”, to speak only on very specific issues within occupied Palestine. When the attention is all surrounding one street, or one single instance of a human rights abuse, the wider picture is often fragmented, the wider picture being Israel’s intentions for all of Palestine.
Palestinians are never allowed to voice their opinions on a solution to what Israeli is/has been doing to them and their land, they always must assume the position of a victim, a victim that the West must step in to save. Of course when you depend upon the best friend of the occupier to save the occupied, this is a defeatist cycle.
By allowing these Western organizations – which approach the peaceful solution prospect from a Zionist point of view – to control the Palestinian grassroots organizations, it acts to muddy the water, destroying the foundations of the Palestinian movements.
I would proceed to name specific cases, activists and organizations, but I believe this would do a disservice to the purpose of this article. Rather than encouraging backlash against specific individuals, it is best that the points noted above be circulated in an effort to raise awareness.
Cliques of virtue signalers who seek to make themselves famous or wealthy off of the occupation.
As the Palestinian cause continues to gather support in the West, so does praise for those who choose to stand in solidarity with it. An alarming trend has been sparked recently, with virtue signaling activists who visit occupied Palestine, seeking to draw attention, a following and an income from their short-lived trips.
Insensitive videos have been circulated, by previously unknown activists, in which they feature with smiles on their faces, attempting a happy-go-lucky approach to reporting the horrific crimes committed against the Palestinians. With them, also come those that feel they are entitled to tell Palestinians how they should resist and deal with the occupation they face, otherwise known as the saviour complex.
To illustrate my point about these types of – so called – activists, I would like to share a personal account of my experiences whilst working for a short while with an international activist group.
During my recent visit to Palestine, spanning three months, I decided to get involved with a group called the ISM or International Solidarity Movement (in Hebron or al-Khalil). Whilst the ISM have in the past done some great work, this specific group of entitled university students I encountered, were nothing short of parasitic to the cause they claimed to stand for.
The group that I encountered at this time was five individuals who considered the Israeli firing of tear gas at Palestinian children to be an event to be joked about. This group of individuals brought with them preconceived ideals, feeling that they had a right to better comment on how Palestinians fight their externally imposed occupiers.
After my defending of a Palestinian man’s “legal and moral right” to expel the Israeli occupier with all means available, I was all but told to pack up my stuff and leave the accommodation we were staying in. Having been cast out for my differing views to my western room-mates, I was taken in by a Palestinian family who had none of the advantages of my previous companions but ten times the hospitality and respect for diverging views.
It is my position that Palestinians have every right to choose how they resist their foreign occupier, without the interference of those who claim to be in support of them. The dispute between this group and I took place at a rooftop cafe in the West Bank city of al-Khalil and consisted of them coming from a perspective that Palestinians were not as politically astute as they were.
I later discovered that this push back is a common occurrence when anyone goes against the grain of ISM’s diktat on how the Palestinian cause should be “managed”.
After speaking to many Palestinian friends – such as Iyad Burnat from the village of Bil’in and others – I got the sense that these types of activists were not all that uncommon.
I believe that talking about this issue, of activists who end up doing a great disservice to the Palestinian people, is key to making things better on the ground. One of the most powerful weapons that the Israelis can use against the Palestinians and their supporters – is division through misunderstanding, confusion and lack of education on what these organisations should be trying to achieve in solidarity with the Palestinian resistance – anything else, essentially controlled by the Zionist entity is nothing less than psychological warfare, designed to fragment support for the Palestinians.
It is imperative that we become aware of what division does to a cause that depends upon unity, therefore I wish for this article to be passed on, as a first hand experience. Palestinians often find it difficult making their voices heard, so this report comes from those that wish to communicate this point to the wider community of Palestinian human rights supporters.
Robert Inlakesh recently spent three months in various parts of the West Bank, occupied Palestine, living with Palestinian families and witnessing the crimes of the Zionist occupiers.
February 18, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Anna Baltzer’s amazing book Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories has been updated over the years, and I’ve just read it for the first time. Rather unfairly, and — as it turns out — wrongly, my first response upon turning the initial pages was: Do we really need another one of these? Jewish person believes pile of myths. Jewish person confronts reality. Jewish person tries to open the eyes of others. It’s become as familiar as “Dog Bites Man.” Couldn’t we all just share one book around instead of everyone writing his or her own, and then pool our money until we can afford a television station so that people can be made to wake up in large numbers?
But here’s the thing. While I’ve grown accustomed to describing each such book as the best or one of the best, they are not all the same. One of the many merits of this one is that it would make — and I hope it does make if it isn’t already — an excellent text book in schools. And significant numbers of people are waking up, without television, and presumably in part because of all the books, plus the interviews and events that accompany the books. The movement in the U.S. against Israel’s wars (and occupations and apartheid) demonstrates to the movement against all wars, and that against U.S. wars, that such things are possible. It may also demonstrate to writers that their efforts are in fact worth a bit more than would be spending their time helping Fox News hosts spot hidden sperms in presidential portraits.
I recently debated a West Point professor on whether war can ever be justified, and I tried to get him to name some actual wars that have been justifiable (as opposed to theoretical wars). He claimed that Israel’s Six Days War was the “quintessentially” just war. So in our second debate, I read to him from a Los Angeles Times column by Miko Peled showing that those who launched that war did so because they saw an opportunity for aggression and conquest. The facts that Peled revealed would be spreading virally and becoming universally known if they proved that the United States was created by God to set an example for the dumber people of earth. Information becomes known if it is desirable. But why isn’t the fact that every single war ever has been unjustifiable very desirable news, as it allows the world to do something more useful with $2 trillion a year?
My debate partner was a man who took part in the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan but refused repeatedly to say whether they were just or unjust wars. During our second debate he said that only fresh recruits could be excused for refusing to participate in those wars, but that experienced trained soldiers should have known better. However, he said something seemingly at odds with that, when, after the debate, I asked him yet again whether Iraq 2003-on was a justifiable war, yes or no? He said that it was only unjustifiable after the fact because of new information. And yet he had publicly promoted and participated in that war long after any such supposedly new information (presumably meaning the absence of the WMDs) had become widely known and the fact that the lies had been intentional had been thoroughly documented, and those who had pointed out the blatant falsehoods beforehand had been proven right.
My confused debate partner much preferred talking about analogies to Good Samaritans and doctors and muggers than actual wars, so I pointed out to him that Israel’s concern in 1967 that in 18 months Egypt could be capable of attacking it actually bore no relevant similarity to the immediacy and the urgency of a victim of a mugging. In making this comment I also referred to “decades of genocidal occupation” that followed the war. Someone later accused me of misusing the term genocide. So I pointed out the open advocacy of genocide by top Israelis. Baltzer’s book points out the open advocacy of genocide by many (obviously not all) Israeli settlers and soldiers. But I was then told that the crime of “incitement of genocide” is not the same as genocide. So, apparently it is OK to accuse Israelis of “incitement of genocide” but not of doing anything genocidal. I have no idea Baltzer’s view and don’t want to overemphasize the silly question of the use of a particular word, but I recommend reading her book.
This book documents the normalization of a long-term gradual genocide, one that in its duration serves as a marketing device for generations of new military weaponry. Ambulances are stopped at checkpoints until the ailing person dies. Children are shot for straying too near a fence in pursuit of a soccer ball. Supplies are blocked. Malnutrition is intentionally and successfully imposed. Fishing is restricted. A village is flooded with raw sewage with five people drowning in it. These and hundreds of other techniques serve to reinforce the bigotry behind the apartheid, and to do something that is in a strange way worse than a faster genocide: the banalization of evil. Call it whatever the bloody hell you want to call it. But let’s not let the unpleasantness of it prevent us from working to make it stop.
February 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, United States, Zionism |
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Gaza is the largest open air prison in the world, with 2 million people, mostly children. Now it is lacking potable water, with only 2-4 hours of electricity per day. There is severe widespread physical and psychological trauma and illnesses from numerous Israeli bomb attacks and ground invasions. These have killed thousands and left hundreds of thousands homeless, with widespread infrastructure destroyed. Gaza is suffocating. The UN has predicted that Gaza will become uninhabitable within the next 2 years.
Background
In 1967, Israel invaded and occupied the Gaza Strip. The people of Gaza have suffered under a maritime siege ever since. This blockade is inhumane and illegal. It amounts to collective persecution.
Unlike any other seafaring people in the world, Gaza’s Palestinians have been unable to use their ports to conduct any international commerce for over 50 years — since the 1967 Six Day War. Ships from the Gaza Strip are prevented from leaving Gaza territorial waters, and international cargo is prevented from sailing directly into Gaza. Israel illegally blocks food, medicine, fuel, repair equipment, and other materials to and from Gaza. All goods intended for Gaza must go through Israeli ports, and Israel completely controls what is allowed in and out of Gaza. For the last 11 years, this siege has become extremely severe.
Despite international standards of 20 nautical miles, Gaza fishing vessels are limited to 3-6 nautical miles, depending on the whims of the occupier. Fishers often suffer violent attacks by Israeli warships. They have been injured and killed, and many Gazan fishing vessels have been confiscated, damaged and destroyed.
An international civil society group, the Free Gaza Movement, breached this maritime siege by successfully sailing into Gaza five times in 2008. Ever since, attempts to sail additional boats into Gaza by the Free Gaza Movement, and subsequently the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, have been stopped by violent Israeli piracy in international waters. Activists have been injured and killed, thrown into Israeli prisons, and deported. Boats and ships have been hijacked and confiscated by Israel. In 2014, “Gaza’s Ark,” an international initiative to build a cargo ship in Gaza to sail Gaza merchandise to international markets was crushed when Israeli warplanes completely destroyed the reconstructed ship in Gaza Harbor just before the boat’s renovation was complete. To date, the international community has been unwilling to take any substantial action that could give Gaza the right to maritime commerce like all other countries in the world.
For decades, the U.S. has consistently blocked resolutions at the UN that are critical of Israel. Since the UN Security Council is hopelessly deadlocked with inevitable U.S. vetoes, and since acts of Israeli piracy toward international vessels attempting to reach Gaza occur without consequence, it is time to take the next logical step: A UN General Assembly Intervention Plan (GAIP) toward ending the maritime siege of Gaza.
A Solution
Several groups are now proposing General Assembly action under the “Uniting For Peace Doctrine” to permanently and nonviolently end the Israeli maritime blockade against Gaza. U.S. vetoes have prevented the Security Council from solving the decades-long Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. The international community cannot continue to simply stand by and allow the suffering of the Palestinians to continue, especially in Gaza, where the abuse is so clear and so preventable. The General Assembly can implement this General Assembly Intervention Plan, a flotilla of state-sponsored cargo ships to carry humanitarian supplies to Gaza free of any Israeli interference. The G.A. can also require that the Israeli blockade end under threat of serious sanctions.
The blockade is a clear “breach of the peace.” The Israeli maritime blockade of Gaza is seen by most international experts as illegal. Ironically and to the point, Israel itself identified the creation of a maritime blockade by Egypt in 1967 as being illegal and a casus belli (an act of war). The United States backed that Israeli position in 1967 asserting that uninvolved nations could break an illegal blockade between A and B, and the U.S. President, Lyndon Johnson, proposed such a flotilla of military ships to break what he understood to be an illegal Egyptian maritime blockade of an important Israeli port.
The Uniting for Peace Doctrine states:
“Conscious that (the) failure of the Security Council to discharge its responsibilities where there appears to be a … breach of the peace … does not relieve Member States of their obligations or the United Nations of its responsibility under the Charter to maintain international peace and security, … (The General Assembly states that) in any cases where the Security Council … fails to act as required to maintain international peace …, the General Assembly …. shall … (step in and make) appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures (of any kind) … to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
This General Assembly action would not be vulnerable to any Security Council veto, because it will not need American approval. This blockade is an issue that can be completely solved by the General Assembly without force or violence. Furthermore, such action would stipulate that the Israeli maritime blockade ends under threat of serious sanctions. It is time to take concrete substantial support for the Palestinians, in particular, for the people of Gaza.
Moving Forward
A group of activists from the U.S. and Sweden went to the United Nations for a week this past November, coinciding with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. Our intention was to bring attention to this General Assembly Intervention Plan for Gaza, gain support, and generate discussion among a number of missions.
While at the UN, along with our allied organizations, we had meetings with officials from the Palestine Mission to the UN and 12 other nations.
Riyad Mansour, the Ambassador for the Palestine Mission to the UN, met with us and gave his blessings. Although he was not able to fully endorse this initiative based on a first meeting, he assured us that he would not oppose it. We also paid visits to several other UN Missions and distributed the 11-page General Assembly Intervention Plan for Breaking the Maritime Blockade of Gaza.
We also were able to make contact with Ambassador Fode Seck of Senegal, who chairs the CEIRPP, Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. On Wednesday, November 29, 2017, we attended the UN sessions of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. At the evening reception, we had informal discussions with other mission representatives and members of civil society supporting Palestinian rights.
In summary, the General Assembly Intervention plan is the next logical step, following the giant footsteps of the Free Gaza Movement and the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. Its goal is to permanently end the 50 year old maritime siege of Gaza. The GAIP is gaining a growing list of endorsers, which include, but are not limited to:
Richard Falk, Rima Khalaf, Hans von Sponeck, Denis Halliday, Miko Peled, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Ramzy Baroud, Rashid Khalidi, Freedom Flotilla Coalition, BDS South Africa and the Rachel Corrie Foundation.
– If you would like to see the full General Assembly Intervention Plan and/or endorse our initiative and/or help move this process forward, please contact us at BreakMaritimeBlockade@gmail.com
February 16, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Gaza, Israel, Palestine, United Nations, Zionism |
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The anti-Palestinian consensus among Canada’s three main political parties is crumbling and NDP members could bury it this weekend.
After taking an all-expense paid trip to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s conference in Washington and participating in a Jewish National Fund event in Israel 14 months ago, the NDP’s foreign critic has begun challenging Canada’s contribution to Palestinian dispossession. Hélène Laverdière has repeatedly criticized the Trudeau government’s silence on Donald Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem. In response she tweeted, “a devastating day for those who believe in peace, justice and security in the Middle East. Where is Canada’s voice in protest of Trump’s decision on #Jerusalem? I urge Canada to condemn this decision in the strongest of terms.”
The party’s foreign critic also asked the federal government to condemn Israel’s detention of 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi and hundreds of other Palestinian children who are usually tortured by Israeli forces. Similarly, Laverdière has pressed Ottawa to properly label products from illegal Israeli settlements and submitted a petition to Parliament calling “upon the Government of Canada to demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
Two weeks ago I received an email on behalf of party leader Jagmeet Singh titled “all people deserve the same human rights”, which listed the party’s recent support for Palestinian rights. It noted, “the NDP shares your concerns about Palestine. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh and his team of New Democrats have a consistent record of defending Palestinian rights as well as raising concerns over Islamophobia.”
A series of factors are likely driving Laverdière’s shift. She probably never backed former NDP leader Tom – “I am an ardent supporter of Israel in all situations and in all circumstances” – Mulcair’s position. Additionally, last year’s NDP leadership race unleashed ever bolder expressions of support for the Palestinian cause.
Amidst the campaign, Laverdière was criticized for speaking at AIPAC’s 2016 conference in Washington and participating in an event put on by the explicitly racist Jewish National Fund. In August the NDP Socialist Caucus called for her resignation as foreign critic and it has submitted a motion to this weekend’s convention calling for her to be removed from that position.
Ottawa’s high-profile abstention at the UN General Assembly after Donald Trump announced that he would move the US Embassy to Jerusalem has given the NDP an opportunity to distinguish itself from the Trudeau government. And media coverage of subsequent Palestinian resistance, most notably Ahed Tamimi’s courageous slaps, has provided additional opportunities to highlight the Liberal’s extreme anti-Palestinianism.
The NDP leadership is also trying to head off members’ calls to boycott Israel (according to a 2017 Ekos poll, 84% of NDP members were open to sanctioning Israel). At least five resolutions (among more than ten concerning Palestine/Israel) submitted to the convention call for some type of boycott of Israel. The NDP Socialist Caucus has called on the party to “actively campaign” in support of the (just nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize) Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions‘ movement’s demands.
With probably more backing than any of the 100+ resolutions submitted, 30 riding associations and youth committees endorsed “Palestine Resolution”, which calls for “banning settlement products from Canadian markets, and using other forms of diplomatic and economic pressure to end the occupation.” Of course, party leaders fear the media response to any type of boycott resolution being adopted.
Whatever the reason for Laverdière’s shift away from anti-Palestinianism, it remains insufficient. As I’ve detailed, the NDP continues to provide various forms of support to Israel and the party has an odious anti-Palestinian history. In the mid-1970s the party opposed Palestinian Liberation Organization participation in two UN conferences in Toronto and Vancouver and party leader Ed Broadbent called the PLO “terrorists and murderers whose aim is the destruction of the state of Israel.”
That year NDP icon Tommy Douglas also told the Histadrut labour federation: “The main enmity against Israel is that she has been an affront to those nations who do not treat their people and their workers as well as Israel has treated hers.” (Douglas’ 1975 speech was made while Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai, after it repeatedly invaded its neighbours and ethnically cleansed 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland.)
A progressive party worth its salt campaigns on an international issue in equal measure to its government/society’s contribution to that injustice.
Over the past century Canada has played no small part in Palestinians’ dispossession. Hundreds of Canadians provided military force to realize the crassly anti-Palestinian Balfour Declaration and this country’s diplomats played a central role in the UN’s decision to give the Zionist movement most of Palestine in 1947.
Today, Ottawa regularly votes against Palestinian rights at the UN and subsidizes dozens of charities that channel tens of millions of dollars to projects supporting Israel’s powerful military, racist institutions and illegal settlements. Additionally, Canada’s two-decade-old free trade agreement with Israel allows settlement products to enter Canada duty-free and over the past decade Ottawa has delivered over $100 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority in an explicit bid to advance Israel’s interests by building a security apparatus to protect the corrupt Palestinian Authority from popular disgust over its compliance in the face of ongoing Israeli settlement building.
Hopefully, in the years to come the NDP can help Canada make up for its sad anti-Palestinian history. Perhaps this weekend the party will finally bury official Canada’s anti-Palestinian consensus.
February 15, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Canada, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, Zionism |
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An Israeli occupation military court issued a renewed four-month administrative detention order against Palestinian journalist and prisoners’ rights advocate Bushra al-Tawil on 12 February 2017. Al-Tawil, 26, from el-Bireh, has been jailed by the Israeli occupation without charge or trial since 1 November 2017. Originally ordered to six months in administrative detention, her detention was reduced on appeal to four months; now, an additonal four-month order has been imposed upon her.
Al-Tawil has been detained on several occasions in the past; she is an active defender of Palestinian rights and works with Aneen al-Qaid, an organization that defends Palestinian prisoners. The new order was issued as a “final” order, which ostensibly means it will not be renewed. Administrative detention orders are usually indefinitely renewable, and Palestinians can spend years at a time in jail with no charge or trial under repeatedly renewed orders.
Al-Tawil’s mother said on Tuesday, 13 February, that local and international silence on the prisoners must end, urging unity in action to free the prisoners. Al-Tawil is one of approximately 450 Palestinians currently jailed without charge or trial under administrative detention, among a total of approximately 6,200 Palestinian political prisoners. Administrative detainees have announced that they will boycott Israeli military courts and administrative detention hearings beginning on 15 February.
February 14, 2018
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Writing The Canada Israel Nexus, I came across many ironies.
- Israel is a country, but without borders,
- it has created the largest refugee population in the world (6m Palestinians), rivaling its own diaspora (7m), both ‘exiles’ amounting to half their peoples. However, the Jewish diaspora is comfortably ensconced in the world economic elite or close to it, while the Palestinians mostly live in what amount to outdoor prison camps, or if lucky, snag a ‘landed immigrant’ status somewhere (there are 31,245 in Canada).
- Israel admits it is an occupying force, which implies that it will, according to international law, care for its victims, and leave, leaving behind the civilians and their homes intact. But the occupation is unending (70 years and counting), Israel has never paid to provide sustenance to its prisoners, the civilians persecuted daily, in full sight, and eliciting world condemnation. The EU foots the bill, as Israelis regularly bomb their meagre donations. The result—permanent occupation, theft and all the time more refugees.
- Israel is a ‘nation,’ but without a constitution. What?!
- That brings us to the biggest conundrum—the bright blue Israeli passport. As with all passports, the key box is ‘nationality.’ So there is an Israeli nationality? Which means all Israelis are citizens of Israel, their nation? Right?
Not. The passport is a fraud, or if you prefer the more genteel term, a confidence trick.
Israelis, both Jewish and non-Jewish, when asked at borders what their nationality is, answer politely, ‘Israeli,’ with an ironic smile if they bother to think about what they’re saying. Inside they are saying ‘Israeli Jew’, ‘Muslim’, ‘Christian’, whatever.
The Jews can cavalierly throw around ‘Israeli,’ but the non-Jews know it isn’t really referring to them. They are unwanted guests of the Jewish state. The passport is a lovely dream world, an act to trick the outside world into letting the inhabitants of the Holy Land travel abroad, but is more a laissez-passez, a proto-passport.
The holders return to “the only democracy in the Middle East” or what was proposed in 2011 in the Basic Law, a “Jewish and democratic state.” They go about their lives, but they live in two different worlds. Their real identity is buried at the state registry, with the label ‘Jewish’ or ‘non-Jewish,’ which appears only in your records and determines your civil rights.
- This brings us to the fact that there are two citizenship laws governing their lives, the famous Law of Return of 1950, which gives every Jew in the world the right to come to Israel and instantly receive citizenship. The much less known Citizenship Law, passed two years later, confers citizenship, in very restricted circumstances, to non-Jews.
“Nationality” sleight of hand
A constitutional committee was set up in 1949, but almost 70 years later, whatever rights there are for Arab Israelis are trumped by Jewish Israeli rights. Palestinians make up 20% of the population of Israel, 60% of overall population including the occupied territories. Those who reside in the occupied territories have no rights as citizens at all.
A constitution implies equal rights for all the nation’s citizens. To be a democratic nation, Israeli must be the nationality of Israel, with the Israeli state composed of ethnicities with equal rights. ‘Jewish’ is not even considered a distinct ethnicity anymore, at least according to the US census. Nationality in most cases more or less conforms to ethnicity, but if it differs, nationality trumps ethnicity as a signifier.
As of 2005, ethnicity is not printed on Identity Cards either; a line of eight asterisks appears instead. Sounds good. But the registry knows everyone’s ethnicity and their respective civil rights. Some major violations of civil rights result from this:
- A non-Jew can’t obtain citizenship unless married to a Jewish spouse who is a native Israeli. They must marry abroad or the non-Jewish spouse must convert under the supervision of the Orthodox rabbinate, very difficult. Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens cannot immigrate to join their spouses in Israel.
- Non-Jews, even relatives of Israelis, are not automatically allowed to immigrate to Israel, blocking relatives of Palestinian citizens from returning to join their families.
- The only Arabs who can be Israeli citizens are those born in Israel, i.e., the descendants of those Arabs who were not expelled in 1948 and 1967.
- The Jewish National Fund directly or indirectly controls 93% of the land in Israel, chartered to benefit Jews exclusively. The law claims that Arabs have equal rights, but only Jews are offered land for settlement, Jews do not have land confiscated as do Arabs, and disputes mostly go against Arabs.
- Many services and privileges are granted only to veterans, which means only Jews.
Even the US condemns Israel on these violations of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
Forward-looking Israelis have since the 1950s petitioned to be assigned an Israeli nationality and are denied. In the latest decision in October 2013, the Israeli Supreme Court again denied the request to recognize Israeli as a nationality. This would compel Jewish citizens of Israel to choose between being Israeli and Jewish. Most Israeli Jews would be forced into an impossible predicament, seeing themselves as both Jewish and Israeli. The implication would be that Judaism is not a nationality but solely a religion, as indeed it is.
This idea is antithetical to the fundamental doctrine of Zionism as the national movement of the Jewish ‘people.’ If the nationality of Jewish Israelis is defined as Israeli rather than Jewish, then the national bond which binds together Jews in Israel and Jews in the Diaspora would be severed.
Arab irony
The supreme irony is that the only countries following international norms with respect to Israel are the Arab states that refuse to recognize Israeli passports, which claim a nationality that doesn’t exist. That is why Israeli governments feel it is so important to get these Arab countries and the stateless Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. That would supposedly legitimize Israel without worrying about declaring an Israeli nationality for all Israelis, Jew or Arab.
But that is why it is impossible to do, as that would automatically validate Israel’s de facto dispossession of its non-Jewish citizens. Unlike Canada with the native peoples, the Israelis are not seeking Arab assimilation into Judaism, nor do they want to assimilate them as Israelis with full citizenship. Were it not for the international acceptance of the duplicity of the Israeli passports, the Israeli Arabs would de facto be stateless. One can only marvel that Israel managed this confidence trick with most of the non-Arab world.
The West violated international law by recognizing Israel, a nation with no fixed borders, accepting without question its claim as a Jewish state. The requirement from 1948 onward was to recognize Israel as a normal state, abiding by international norms, without a formal demand on Israel’s part for recognition as a “Jewish state,” which is not an international norm. A clever deceit, but the Arabs saw through it. The latter became an issue only after the Oslo Accord in 1993, where the PLO recognized Israel as a normal state, but when asked to do so as a “Jewish state,” rightly balked. Israel ‘forgot’ to demand this from Jordan. “Why didn’t they present this demand to Jordan or Egypt when they signed a peace agreement with them?” PLO chair Mahmoud Abbas asked the Arab League when they too refused.
The contradiction in attempting to craft a democratic state based on the Jewish race is epitomized in the Kahane amendment to the Basic Law in 1985, which forbids “negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, negation of the democratic character of the State, incitement to racism.” But limiting democracy to ‘Jews only’ is by definition both undemocratic and racist. Most Israeli Jews (79%) don’t see the contradiction, agreeing that Jews deserve preferential treatment in Israel. They do not see an inherent contradiction between a Jewish homeland and a functioning democracy providing equality before the law for non-Jews.
Irony of ironies: Israel as a religious state
The US census effectively undermines Israel’s claim as a Jewish state. As ‘races,’ the US census shows White/ Black/ Asian/ Native/ Polynesian. For ethnic subdivisions, there is no Jewish ethnicity. Jews are considered members of some other ethnicity (European, Russian, Moroccan, etc.). Jewish is only a religious category and the census doesn’t do religion since the 1950s (a blowback from Nazism).
Ergo, a Jewish state can only be a religious state a la Iran/Saudi Arabia, presumably with the titular head of state a chief rabbi, though with laws protecting all citizens equally. All ethnicities have equal rights, and the various confessions either abide by a generally agreed legal system or operate legally according to their religious laws.
Iran uses sharia but as interpreted by the elected government. Israel, in line with Saudi Arabia, uses religious law as issued by the religious establishment (though less and less, mostly limited to family issues), already admitting it is at least the pretense of a religious state, but still falling short of the ‘equal rights’ bit. Wait! Yet another irony: Rather than its enemy, Iran is in fact more a model for Israel as a viable religious state than, say, Saudi Arabia.
This does not please Rabbi Avi Shafran, a spokesman for Agudath Israel of America, “While Judaism is a religion, the Jewish people is a people. Peoplehood, at least Jewish peoplehood, transcends ethnicity and race.” (I’m not making that up.)
Sorry, Rabbi Shafran. The Zionist dream of a Jewish state was built on sand, and is still, 70 years after declaring independence, and fighting to gain international acceptance. Not a shred of “justice and hope” in sight. Almost all Jews wanted no part of this a century ago, when Zionism’s founding father, Hertzl, launched the Zionist Organization. Many Jews and non-Jews have continued to resist this “idea,” though until recently, Jews were cowed, too polite to protest, worried they would be perceived as traitors to their ‘race,’ and be cast out of the tribe.
Any people who recognize the problem, especially Jews, are hounded as “anti-Semites,” the Jewish ones as “traitors” or “self-hating Jews,” including the ultra-Orthodox Jews who reject the very notion of a Jewish ‘state’.
Why this hysteria, 70 years after the state came into being? How will normality ever be established? In researching the history of Canada and the Zionist project, you find unremitting slander, the creation of ever growing mechanisms and institutions to defend the indefensible, avoiding the underlying catch-22.
Canadian Eric Walberg is known worldwide as a journalist specializing in the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia. A graduate of University of Toronto and Cambridge in economics, he has been writing on East-West relations since the 1980s. He has lived in both the Soviet Union and Russia, and then Uzbekistan, as a UN adviser, writer, translator and lecturer. Presently a writer for the foremost Cairo newspaper, Al Ahram, he is also a regular contributor to Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Global Research, Intrepid Report, Al-Jazeerah and Turkish Weekly, and is a commentator on Voice of the Cape radio. His latest book is The Canada Israel Nexus.
February 13, 2018
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Virgin Atlantic faces an ongoing backlash over a salad on its in-flight menu after the meal’s ‘Palestinian’ name was shared on a pro-Israel Facebook page.
The ‘Palestinian couscous salad’ – which includes a mix of Maftoul and other couscous, along with tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, mint and lemon vinaigrette – sparked a backlash after passengers posted it on social media.
An image of the in-flight menu was posted on the Israel Advocacy Movement Facebook page by passenger David Garnelas, who said: “I thought this was an Israeli salad… obviously [airline founder Richard] Branson showing his true colours… Israelis must boycott Virgin and Israel must ask for an explanation. When I complained the stewardess tried to take back the menu from me.”
The negative reaction to the meal’s name saw it changed on the airline’s menu.
“We were aware that Maftoul is not a widely known ingredient – so the dish was listed as a ‘Palestinian couscous salad’, and later as a ‘Couscous salad’,” the airline said in a statement to RT.com.
“We’d like to reassure all customers that our sole intention was to bring new flavors onboard, and never to cause offense through the naming or renaming of the dish.”
However, despite the effort to appease passengers, changing the name of the meal sparked a counter backlash from pro-Palestine groups.
“After an orchestrated campaign by Zionist groups, Virgin Atlantic airlines decides that Palestinian food is offensive. Removes the word ‘Palestinian’, but keeps the food. Shameful,” the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign said of the change.
Twitter user Bassam Mansour said that maftoul is the national dish of Palestine and Virgin should not have caved to the demands of “twisted and hate-filled passengers.”
February 13, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Palestine, UK, Zionism |
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Lorde in concert. (Photo: Lorde’s twitter account)
American Lawmakers in Florida are trying to cancel Lorde’s upcoming shows in the state after the Kiwi songstress and superstar called off her performance in Israel.
Lorde cancelled her Tel Aviv concert in December, following pressure from fans and activists in the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is making a stand against Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.
The decision has seen Republican state Rep. Randy Fine this week pushing for Miami and Tampa to cancel Lorde’s April shows, the Orlando Weekly reported.
Fine based his actions on a Florida law which barred companies that received state funds from doing business over $1 million with organisations associated with BDS.
“When Lorde joined the boycott in December, she and her companies became subject to that statute,” Fine told Orlando Weekly.
“The taxpayers of Miami and Tampa should not have to facilitate bigotry and anti-Semitism, and I look forward to the Miami Sports and Exhibition Authority and the Tampa Sports Authority complying with the law and cancelling these concerts.
“Florida has no tolerance for anti-Semitism and boycotts intended to destroy the State of Israel.”
Florida is one of 20 states with a law in place to deal with businesses that boycott Israel.
In a statement released in December last year Lorde said that “the right decision at this time” was to cancel her June 2018 concert in Tel Aviv.
The Grammy-award winner said that after having “lots of discussions” about the matter, she was “not too proud to admit I didn’t make the right call on this one,” referring to her initial decision to hold the concert.
The cancellation was welcomed by members of the BDS movement.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel posted a statement on Twitter thanking the artist for “heeding appeals from your fans against Israel’s art-washing of its brutal oppression of Palestinians.”
Other artists to have boycotted Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians included Roger Waters, Lauryn Hill and Elvis Costello.
February 11, 2018
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | Florida, Palestine, Randy Fine, United States, Zionism |
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The Israeli occupation authorities arrested a 14 year-old epileptic Palestinian girl for begging. As punishment they dumped her in the Gaza Strip where she knew no-one and was cut off from her parents.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports how the girl was arrested as an “illegal alien” in East Jerusalem (Palestinian territory as everyone knows), her cellular telephone confiscated and a lawyer from the Public Defender’s Office appointed to represent her. She was released on bail and taken to the Gaza Strip because it was listed in Israeli records as her father’s place of residence. She told officials at Erez checkpoint on the Gaza border that she didn’t live in Gaza but in the West Bank.
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court ordered her release on bail after her uncle paid 1,500 shekels. The authorities checked with records and found she was registered as a Gaza resident although her mother is registered as a West Bank resident. Her father, on the other hand, is registered as a Gaza resident and is classified as an illegal alien in the West Bank because he didn’t receive an exit permit from the Strip, which he left in 2000. This administrative muddle, which is deliberate and widespread, hardly makes for happy family life in the illegally occupied territories.
Representatives of HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, who assisted the girl’s family, said she had never been to Gaza. Nonetheless Civil Administration officers instructed the Co-ordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) to pack the girl off to Gaza despite her protests. Only after being deposited in Gaza did she get her phone back.
A HaMoked lawyer said: “With obtuseness that cannot be justified, nobody bothered to tell the minor where she was or made sure the family knew of her release, as is required in view of her age.”
The Guardian reports that, according to HaMoked, twenty-seven Palestinians living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank were forcibly sent to Gaza last year…. condemned to be shredded, incinerated or at least deeply traumatised the next time Israel ‘war-tests’ its weaponry on this tight packed open-air prison where the inhabitants have nowhere to run. It was the first time they had heard of someone as young as 14 being sent there.
Despicable
There’s nothing new about the Israelis’ urge to hurt the most vulnerable. If there’s one thing they are good at its making war on women and children. The self-styled “most moral army in the world” especially loves targeting Palestinian university students. Back in 2009 I wrote about Merna, an honours student in her final year majoring in English. Israeli soldiers frequently rampaged through her Bethlehem refugee camp in the middle of the night, ransacking homes and arbitrarily arresting residents. They took away her family one by one. First her 14-year-old cousin and best friend was shot dead by an Israeli sniper while she sat outside her family home during a curfew.
Next the Israelis arrested her eldest brother, a 22-year-old artist, and imprisoned him for 4 years. Then they came back for Merna’s 18-year-old brother. Not content with that the military came again, this time to take her youngest brother – the ‘baby’ of the family – just 16. These were the circumstances under which Merna had to study.
Israeli military law treats Palestinians as adults as soon as they reach 16, a flagrant violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Israeli youngsters by comparison are regarded as children until 18. Palestinians are dealt with by Israeli military courts, even when it’s a civil matter. These courts ignore international laws and conventions, so there’s no legal protection for individuals under Israeli military occupation.
As detention is based on secret information, which neither the detainees nor their lawyers are allowed to see, it is impossible to mount a proper defence. Besides, the Security Service always finds a phony excuse to keep detainees locked up “in the greater interest of the security of Israel”. Although detainees have the right to review and appeal, they are unable to challenge the evidence and check facts as all information presented to the court is classified.
Despite the horrendous mental stress of it all, Merna determined to carry on with her studies. The most moral army in the world may have robbed her brothers of an education, but she would still fight for hers.
Cruel beyond belief
Dumping students in Gaza to disrupt their studies is nothing new either. Five years earlier the Israelis forcibly removed four Birzeit University students from their studies in the West Bank and illegally sent them back to the Gaza Strip. All four were due to graduate by the end of that academic year. There was an outcry from around the world and the Israeli Army Legal Advisor was bombarded with faxes and letters demanding the students be allowed to return to their studies.
The world’s most moral army agreed that the students might be allowed to return to Birzeit if they signed a guarantee to permanently return to the Gaza Strip after completing their studies. This effectively exposed Israel’s plan to impose a final separation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, even though the two are internationally recognized as one integral territory. Under international law everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence within a single territory, but Israel doesn’t give a damn about international law. The racist regime makes it virtually impossible for Gaza students to reach the eight Palestinian universities in the West Bank. In 1999 some 350 Gaza students were studying at Birzeit. By 2009 there were almost none.
To get to Bethlehem University, or any other, many students have to run the gauntlet of Israeli checkpoints. “Sometimes they take our ID cards and they spend ages writing down all the details, just to make us late,” said one. Students are often made to remove shoes, belt and bags. “It’s like an airport. Many times we are kept waiting outside for up to an hour, rain or shine, they don’t care.” The soldiers attempt to forcibly remove students’ clothes or they swear and shout sexual slurs at female students.
Some tell how they are sexually harassed on their way to university and spend the rest of the day worrying what the Israelis will do to them on their way home. This constant humiliation of course undermines student motivation and concentration.
It was no surprise, then, to hear from Bethlehem University at around that time (2009) that Berlanty Azzam, a 4th year Business Administration student was being held by the Israeli military authorities with the intention of deporting her to Gaza “for trying to complete her studies at Bethlehem University.”
Berlanty, a Christian girl, was originally from Gaza but had lived in the West Bank since 2005 after receiving a travel permit from the military to cross from Gaza to the West Bank. She was detained at the Container checkpoint between Bethlehem and Ramallah after attending a job interview in Ramallah. She too was robbed of her degree at the last minute.
The 21 year-old was due to graduate before Christmas. The most moral army in the world blindfolded and handcuffed her, loaded her into a jeep and drove her from Bethlehem to Gaza, despite assurances by the Israeli Military Legal Advisor’s office that she would not be deported before an attorney from Gisha (an Israeli NGO working to protect Palestinians’ freedom of movement) had the opportunity to petition the Israeli court for her return to classes in Bethlehem.
When they’d crossed the border the world’s most moral army dumped Berlanty late at night and simply told her: “You are in Gaza.”
Berlanty had informed Gisha on her mobile phone before the soldiers confiscated it: “Since 2005, I refrained from visiting my family in Gaza for fear that I would not be permitted to return to my studies in the West Bank,” Now, just two months before graduation, she was arrested and taken to Gaza, with no way to finish her degree.
Bethlehem University was trying to mobilize people from around the world to protest. I contacted the Palestinian ambassador in London, who happens to be a former vice-president of that excellent seat of learning. “Have you contacted the Israeli ambassador for an explanation of this outrage?” I emailed him.
Next day, having heard nothing, I emailed again: “Update… She has been removed to Gaza blindfolded and handcuffed! What is the Embassy doing about this please?” Another 24 hours went by and no response. It wasn’t unusual for the Palestinian embassy to be fast asleep or out to lunch for days on end and no-one covering.
I had simultaneously emailed the Israeli ambassador asking him, please, to make enquiries. “On the face of it, this seems a senseless outrage. The student concerned has, I believe, just started her final year. I wonder what Mr Prosor or Mr Netanyahu would say if the education of their sons and daughters or grandchildren was disrupted in this manner.” Next day, having heard nothing, I sent the same update about Berlanty’s removal to Gaza blindfolded and handcuffed. Another 24 hours… still nothing, not even the courtesy of an acknowledgement from Israel’s press office, which usually responds like lightning to anything with news value.
If this had been a Jewish girl deprived of her university degree and life chances the Israeli embassy would be having hysterics and hurling accusations of religious hatred and anti-semitism. But this was the Jewish state screwing up the young life of a Christian, so that was alright then.
Administrative ‘laws’ designed to foul up every aspect of Palestinian life
Eventually, the Israeli embassy explained that Ms Azzam held a permit to stay in the West Bank back in 2005 and since the permit had expired she’d been living there illegally. “Every Gaza resident who stays in the West Bank requires a permit, failing to do so is a breach of the law. As Ms Azzam has failed to provide a valid permit she was deported back to Gaza.”
The embassy added that if Ms Azzam wished to complete her studies at Bethlehem she should apply for a permit to the relevant authorities (COGAT) in Gaza. But Bethlehem University’s senior management weren’t impressed. According to them 12 students from Gaza had applied to COGAT to attend the University in the previous year and NOT ONE received permission. Did they all pose a security threat to the democratic state of Israel? The Israeli reply simply raised more questions.
To give them their due, the Israelis eventually provided a detailed explanation attempting to unravel the complexities of the ever-changing permit rules and admitting procedural mistakes, but insisted these were not sufficient to justify a different decision.
It was a classic example of how Israel’s administrative ‘laws’ are framed to interfere to the nth degree in Palestinian lives and ride rough-shod over citizens’ rights enshrined in international law, and to disregard its own obligations entirely.
For example, there was no recognition in the Israeli court’s decision that the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are one integral territory and under international law everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence within it. Nor was there the slightest acknowledgement by Israel’s judiciary of the state’s responsibility under the Oslo Agreements to “respect and preserve without obstacles, normal and smooth movement of people, vehicles and goods within the West Bank, and between the West Bank and Gaza Strip”.
While Israel announced its ruling on Berlanty’s fate, its ambassador here was whining about the arrest warrant issued in London against ex-foreign minister Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes. Livni had overseen Israel’s murderous assault on Gaza in December/January 2008-9, which killed 1400, including a large number of women and children, maimed thousands more and left countless families homeless. Israeli top brass, including Ehud Barak, Livni and retired general Doron Almog, had to cancel engagements in London for fear of being arrested.
Israeli prime minister Netanyahu’s office issued this arrogant statement: “We will not agree to a situation in which [former prime minister] Ehud Olmert, [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak and [opposition leader and former foreign minister] Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the bench. We utterly reject the absurdity that is happening in Britain.”
What’s absurd? If Berlanty, who had committed no crime at all, wasn’t allowed to come and go as she pleased in her own country, Palestine, what made Netanyahu and Israel’s ambassador think that the blood-soaked Livni, and others like her, could come and go as they please in the UK?
The following year the incoming Conservative government, said to comprise 80% pimps for Israel, changed UK laws relating to ‘universal jurisdiction’ to prevent such arrest warrants being issued in future. Under universal jurisdiction all states that are party to the Geneva Conventions are under a binding obligation to seek out those suspected of having committed grave breaches of the Conventions and bring them, regardless of nationality, to justice. There should be no hiding place for those suspected of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
But the British government, to its everlasting shame, has turned the UK into a safe haven for Israeli psychopaths. As a result, we have to endure obscene spectacles like the red carpet love-in between Theresa May and Netanyahu at the Balfour centenary celebrations in London before Christmas.
February 11, 2018
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Palestine |
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Aletho News
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