The Israelization of the Middle East Quagmire in the US Media
Like other Israeli leaders who preceded him Netanyahu is both an extremist and a terrorist, not to mention a proficient and shameless liar. No American paper or television channel will dare criticize him. He’s the only leader invited to openly propagandize the US Congress.
By M. REZA BEHNAM | Greanville Post | August 2, 2017
Not only is Israel waging a military campaign in the occupied territories, but a second battle is being waged through the American media to ensure continued U.S. support for its expansionist policies.
Israel’s colonizing aims, begun in the 1900s, were laid out in the doctrine of Vladimir Jabotinsky, founder of Revisionist Zionism, now the ideological cradle of today’s ruling Likud Party.
In his writings, “The Iron Wall” and “The Iron Law,” Jabotinsky set out the Zionist rationale for carving a Jewish state out of most of Palestine through force. He wrote, “Zionism is a colonizing adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of armed force.
“It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot. …”
When the 1947 United Nations Special Committee on Palestine partition plan granted 55 percent of Palestine to the future Jewish state, Jews owned 6 percent of the land in Palestine, but they made up only 32 percent of the population. After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, Israel expropriated approximately 4.2 million acres of Palestinian land, about 78 percent of historic Palestine.
The dispossession continues today, with settlement enterprises covering about 42 percent of the remaining 22 percent. Palestinian cities, towns, homes, orchards and businesses have been systematically destroyed and repopulated by more than 650,000 illegal Jewish settlers.
Israel’s defenders say that the causes of violence go far back in history. However, the raison d’etre of Palestinian violence is not rooted in some inherent hatred of Jews, or historical animosity, or religion. It is about the land.
Without this historical context, today’s news events seem episodic and inconsequential.
After the 1967 Six Day War, Jewish organizations undertook a propaganda campaign to ensure Israel’s legitimacy and cement its relationship with the United States. It included the conflation of Israel with the Holocaust and victimhood and the writing of a mythical history of Palestine as an unpopulated desert that “good” Israelis made bloom.
That uncontested and false tale reverberated in Prime Minister Golda Meir’s outrageous 1969 claim that, “There was no such thing as a Palestinian; they never existed.”
In 1982, the narrative changed with Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. The indiscriminate bombing of Beirut and the death of more than 17,000, mostly civilians, turned the Arabs into victims and the Israelis into victimizers and temporarily sullied the carefully crafted story.
To regain control of public opinion, the American Jewish Congress sponsored a 1983 conference in Jerusalem with the goal of devising a strategy for reselling Israel. Top executives, journalists and academics from Israel and the United States developed talking points that are recognizable in today’s rhetoric, which stresses the following ideas:
* Israel’s strategic importance to the United States.
* Israel’s physical vulnerability.
* Israel’s shared cultural values with the West.
* Israel’s desire for peace.
Participants also understood the importance of an all-out campaign to convince the public that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are not an obstacle to peace. Thousands of illegal Jewish settlements constructed on Palestinian land are a testament to the effectiveness of that strategy.
The conference also produced the Hasbara (propaganda) Project. Its goal was to guarantee that the United States did not waver in its economic and military support, and to make it almost impossible to critique Israel’s actions.
News organizations have come to expect pressure if they go outside the level of acceptable discourse regarding Israel. Hence, they avoid potentially troublesome subjects and punish journalists who expose them. For example, Ariel Sharon, then minister of defense, filed a libel suit after Time magazine accused him of encouraging the massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. The lobbying group Americans for a Safe Israel filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission requesting that NBC’s license be revoked over its reporting of the invasion.
Israel, the size of New Jersey, has an estimated defense budget of $20 billion. It has 4,170 tanks, 1,500 large artillery pieces, 10,185 armored fighting vehicles, 2,000 combat airplanes, 15 to 20 warships, five submarines, 200 to 300 nuclear weapons, 175,000 regular troops and 430,000 reserves.
CBS faced much the same criticism in 2012 after correspondent Bob Simon’s “60 Minutes” report about Palestinian Christians living under Israeli occupation aired. The report challenged the Israeli narrative that Islamic extremists were making Christians’ lives difficult; instead, they complained about the hardships of living under occupation.
The American-born Israeli ambassador, Michael Oren, pressured the president of CBS News to quash the program. It aired only after the ambassador received the time he demanded for a rebuttal. A full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal excoriated Simon.
Alternative narratives such as Simon’s are often dismissed as anti-Israel or given the most intimidating and feared of all labels — anti-Semitic. The fear of this slur has been a potent rhetorical device to shield Israel from fault, and has proven fatally effective. The accusation has destroyed the careers and reputations of journalists, academics, politicians and entertainers.
Helen Thomas, a respected member of the Washington press corps, had her 57-year career end after she publicly questioned U.S. support for Israel. An onslaught of well-orchestrated denunciations forced her retirement in 2010. Thomas later remarked, “You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive.”
President Jimmy Carter, before and after publication of his book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” received his share of intimidation and vitriolic accusations of anti-Semitism. Ran Baratz, communications director appointee for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accused President Obama of “modern-day anti-Semitism” after the United States reached an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program in July 2015.
Masterfully, Israel has marketed a number of myths that have become a part of the media lexicon. One of the most glaring fabrications sold to Americans is that the struggle is between two peoples with equal resources and claims. In reality it is a conflict between the colonizer, Israel, and the colonized, Palestinians.
Israel, the size of New Jersey, has an estimated defense budget of $20 billion. It has 4,170 tanks, 1,500 large artillery pieces, 10,185 armored fighting vehicles, 2,000 combat airplanes, 15 to 20 warships, five submarines, 200 to 300 nuclear weapons, 175,000 regular troops and 430,000 reserves.
Palestinians have none of these. And unlike Israel, Palestinians have few organized groups to tell their story or to lobby for them before the U.S. Congress. Yet Tel Aviv continues to perpetuate the myth of vulnerability.
Another persistent fallacy is that of gratuitous violence. Words matter; they manage perceptions.
Violent Jewish settlers are referred to as extremists, while Palestinians reacting to occupation are called terrorists. Palestinians “attack,” while Israelis merely “retaliate.”
With a compliant U.S. press, Israel’s propaganda network has successfully linked the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States to Palestinians’ continued rebellion in the territories.
In 2015, Netanyahu suggested a relationship between the carnage in Paris and the Palestinian struggle for freedom, saying “Behind these terrorist attacks stands radical Islam which seeks to destroy us, the same radical Islam that struck in Paris and threatens Europe.”
In another unchallenged remark, the prime minister contended that “ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same political tree.” Whatever one may think of Hamas, it is not the Islamic State. It is an internal resistance movement in a singular battle with Israel.
The association of terrorism with Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East has created an unhealthy climate of indifference and fear in many Americans’ minds.
The media are replete with anti-Arab stereotypes, exemplified by the popular TV program “Homeland,” based on the Israeli series Hatafim (Prisoners of War). Middle Easterners rarely are presented in their full humanity, making them vulnerable to aggression. Racist remarks and vitriol directed at Muslims have become acceptable political theater and commonplace in the rhetoric of some American politicians.
News organizations unquestionably proffer another fiction: that Washington has been an “honest and neutral” interlocutor in Palestine-Israel peace negotiations.
Israel’s viability has been based on the $500 billion in aid it has received from the United States since 1949 and the $6 billion it continues to receive annually. American administrations have vetoed all but one U.N. Security Council resolution critical of Israel. Essentially, the United States has been financing the occupation and rewarding colonial policies.
America has more often than not been an obstacle to peace because of its bias in favor of Israel. The 2000 Camp David meeting is a poignant example. The press praised Prime Minister Ehud Barak for proposing the “most generous offer ever made” to the Palestinians while rebuking President Yassir Arafat for failing to accept Barak’s offer.
Had the press published maps, the prime minister’s proposed Palestinian state would have looked like a collection of balkanized enclaves. All Jewish settlements and roads in the West Bank would remain, and Israel’s control over Palestinian borders, air space and water would stay intact. Palestinians would have been encircled by hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers on small disconnected islands, or Bantustans, much as they are today.
To further understand the imbalanced standard of reporting, it is useful to look at whose voices are heard.
Pro-Israeli syndicated columnists Thomas Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Jonah Goldberg, Max Boot and David Brooks — whose son serves in the Israeli army — dominate newspapers’ op-ed pages. Wolf Blitzer was the editor of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s journal Near East Report before joining CNN as its chief political anchor. Such prominent magazines as The New Republic, Atlantic Monthly and Commentary are Israel-centric.
The occupation — with its curfews, 500 checkpoints and harassment by the Israeli army — has made access by journalists to the Palestinian experience almost impossible.
The Committee to Protect Journalists lists the West Bank as one of the worst places to be a journalist. Palestinians who are allowed on rare occasions to speak or write in the mainstream media have to use language acceptable to Israel and America.
Israelis who oppose their government’s policies are excluded as well. Ignored are the growing number of Israelis refusing military service in the occupied territories.
One such group, Breaking the Silence, founded in 2004, has published the chilling stories of abuse and devastation told by 700 former soldiers who served in combat units in the West Bank and Gaza. Peace movements such as Women in Black — Israeli women who gather every Friday on main squares in some cities with signs that read, “Stop the Occupation” in Arabic, Hebrew and English — have received inadequate coverage in the United States.
News companies give little attention to how the rest of the world has responded to the occupation.
The global human rights campaign represented by the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is growing internationally. The European Union recently announced that some goods produced on land seized by Israel in the 1967 war must be labeled “made in settlements.”
A Palestine Media Watch survey of The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and USA Today revealed that of 680 op-ed columns on Palestine and Israel published between September 2000 and December 2005, 214 were written by Israelis and 86 by Palestinians.
A 2004 study of the Associated Press coverage disclosed that Israeli children’s deaths were covered at a rate of 7.5 times greater than Palestinian children’s deaths.
A six-month study of The (Portland) Oregonian by Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights observed that its headlines had reported Israeli children’s deaths to Palestinian’s at a rate of 44 to 1.
The treatment of Palestinians in Israeli prisons is hardly ever reported. The number of Palestinian political prisoners per capita is the highest in the world. More than 9,000 Palestinians are imprisoned by Israel (4,000 without trial). Amnesty International and numerous human rights organizations list torture in Israeli prisons as a major concern.
The right of return for millions of Palestinian refugees, the unequal allocation of water resources, the concrete wall of separation built on Palestinian land are among the myriad of crucial but unexplored news stories.
The media’s tone deafness to the Palestinian condition has contributed to Americans’ support of policies that are contradictory to their interests. Uncritical U.S. support for Israel has fueled anti-Americanism and radicalism throughout the Middle East. What is best for Israel has not always been best for the United States.
American government officials and media rarely ask whether Israel is strategically important to the United States as was once believed during the Cold War years. Close scrutiny suggests it is not.
Gen. David Petraeus, while head of the U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March 2010, “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR (Area of Operations). …
“The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR. …”
The Anti-Defamation League was so alarmed by the general’s testimony that it issued a statement condemning it.
News organizations must be held accountable for their lack of skepticism and reliance on officially constructed realities. Journalism functions best when it questions and challenges power.
American politicians and journalists must wake up to the fact that the strife in the Middle East is rooted in the Western and Israeli colonial and imperialist policies of the past and present. Unless acknowledged and reversed, anti-American sentiment and the tumult will continue unabated.
The urgency to speak up and to witness the corrosive reality of the occupation of Palestine and to address its ethical dimensions is greater than ever.
Inside and outside of Israel, neutrality and silence in the face of injustice is not an option.
M. Reza Behnam, Ph.D., a scholar specializing in the politics and cultures of the Middle East, is the author of the award-winning book, “Cultural Foundations of Iranian Politics.”
‘No Time For Shallow Diplomacy Christians’ In The Religious War On Churches In The Holy Land
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | August 2, 2017
A month ago, after reading a desperate cry for help from the National Coalition of Christian Organisations in Palestine (NCCOP) addressed to the World Council of Churches, I emailed eight churches in my locality asking whether that heart-rending appeal had trickled down to them at parish level.
If not, I hoped to find out where the break in communications occurred, as this wasn’t the first time churches in the Holy Land had sought support from Western Christendom. Previous appeals were largely ignored and left to civil society for action.
Now, say the Palestinians, the situation is “beyond urgent”. So had the NCCOP’s latest plea actually arrived on the desks of parish priests in my neighbourhood? And if so, how were grass-roots Christians responding?
I included a link to the actual crisis document, which should have made every churchman sit up, and a gentle reminder that their faith and their job of work are rooted in the Holy Land. “So what are the chances, I wonder, of seeing concerted action from Western churches before it’s too late? And what part can local parishes play?”
The key point was this: it’s beyond urgent. So are our spiritual leaders, those upstanding ‘men of the cloth’, mobilising their troops?
Only one of the eight replied — the local Catholic vicar-general — who dismissed the subject in two sentences. So there you have it. If this local bunch are representative of the Christian community in the UK, they don’t give a four-X for their brothers and sisters in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. And they are utterly indifferent to the fact that the place where Christianity was born is being stolen from under their noses.
If that’s a wrong interpretation, and Christians in the West do actually wish to help, the issue is straightforward enough. Churches in Palestine are asking churches here to call things as they are: to recognize Israel as an apartheid state in terms of international law and the UN report which says so. They are concerned that States and churches are still dealing with Israel on a business-as-usual basis, as if the situation were normal, and ignoring the criminal reality of military occupation.
Churches came together in opposition to apartheid in South Africa and helped end it. Why haven’t they done the same in Palestine?
They ask us to unequivocally condemn the Balfour Declaration as unjust, and they rightly demand that the UK asks forgiveness and compensates the Palestinian people for their losses. Theresa May’s government, however, plans to celebrate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration “with pride” and has invited Mr Netanyahu to the fun.
Clearly Mrs May, God-fearing churchgoer that she is, needs to feel the heat of His wrath. The woman is so arrogant that her government intends to appeal against the recent decision by the Royal Courts of Justice defending our right to boycott Israel.
End the ‘Ecumenical Deal’, put interfaith dialogue through the wringer
The Palestinians want us to take the strongest possible stand against any theology or group that seeks to justify the occupation. That means of course challenging our religious dialogue partners and withdrawing from those partnerships if they won’t condemn Israel’s brutal occupation.
But I can hear our canting clerics muttering: “Oh dear, no, no, no. We mustn’t upset our interfaith colleagues. That would never do.”
Churches that sell their holdings or otherwise divest from companies that profit from the occupation of Palestinian lands often take years of agonising confab to reach such a commonsense position. But they needn’t think just moving their money is enough. A recent example is the Mennonite Church USA, where it took (they say) a three-person writing team and a 10-member reference group working intensely during the past two years and consulting widely across the church and with Palestinian and Jewish partners, to come up with a modest proposal. And to sugar the divestment pill they declared that “the legacy of Jewish suffering is intertwined with the suffering of Palestinians”. What the Palestinians had to do with Jewish suffering or ever did to deserve having their lands and homes confiscated, isn’t explained. But it is used to provide an excuse to call on Mennonites to strengthen relationships with Jewish communities.
Why? Can they not understand that you have to be consistent in boycotting Israel? It involves boycotting the people who also support and advocate for Israel including those who fail to condemn the Zionist regime’s vile policies that hurt our Palestinian friends. As George Galloway has said, you simply don’t engage with them.
Christians who cannot grasp what is really going on out there, and don’t see what is needed to stop it, might find Robert Cohen’s excellent article Brace Yourselves for Costly Palestinian Solidarity helpful in pointing towards proper, meaningful action.
He explains why the Christian-Jewish dialogue needs re-setting. Central to the problem is the so-called Ecumenical Deal, a reluctance to question Jewish support for Israel for fear of unpicking decades of interfaith reconciliation following the Holocaust. We appear to have cast ourselves in the self-defeating role of repenting for age-old Christian anti-Jewishness. Breaking out of it and criticising Israel would be seen as a re-emergence of that anti-Jewishness.
I’m not aware of Christian anti-Jewishness although continuing failure on the part of Jewish leaders to condemn the cruel policies of the Israeli regime, aka ‘the Jewish State’, is surely asking for it. Does anyone inside or outside the bubble of the Church seriously buy into this repentence stuff? From outside, among people who would never set foot in a church again but still call themselves Christians because they were brought up according to the Christian code, it looks pathetic.
Christians in Palestine, says Cohen, despair of our Church leaders’ endless hiding behind the cover of political neutrality and their unwillingness to offend their religious dialogue partners. Consequently, he predicts, Jewish-Christian dialogue “is about to go through the wringer”.
Time for some ‘really uncomfortable conversations’
Pressing the re-set button means “refusing to allow your local Jewish communal leadership to set the boundaries of permissible debate on Israel”. It also means “listening to the Christian voice under occupation before the Jewish voice living comfortably, with full equal rights, many thousands of miles from that same occupation”.
Operating the wringer, of course, will be followed by a distinct chill in relationships forcing Church leaders, local ministers and their congregations, as well as the Jewish leaders they have dialogue with, out of their comfort zone. Good. As Rebecca Vilkomerson, Jewish Voice for Peace, recently wrote in Haaretz, after 70 years of dispossessing and expelling Palestinians, 50 years of Israeli military occupation and 10 years of blockading Gaza, it is time for Jewish communities “to have some really uncomfortable conversations”.
Palestinians say no to ‘shallow diplomacy’ but it’s all they’re likely to get
How does the World Council of Churches react to those urgent pleas from Palestine?
They will study and analyse. “As we at the WCC consider our plans for 2018 and beyond, we want churches in Palestine to know that their perspective is heard and it is vitally important,” said the WCC’s general secretary. “We will continue with the same passionate spirit to work on specific objectives, strategies and partners for advocacy to end the occupation and to work for just peace in Palestine and Israel.”
The WCC’s Commission of the Churches on International Affairs has been asked to contribute a thorough analysis of the changing political landscapes and dynamics in the Holy Land with an eye toward developing a more specific advocacy strategy that works through nations and organizations with significant influence.
WCC has also started an online campaign, Seek #JusticeAndPeace in the Holy Land, which features profiles of peacemakers and various cries for justice.
WCC also plans to “explore theological reflections, studies and projects that will bring a perspective on just peace in the Holy Land from all parts of the world”, and strengthen communication about the situation in Palestine so that it can “help churches and other ecumenical partners address their constituencies and governments in a more systematic way”. This includes developing a set of principles and practices of responsible pilgrimages of justice and peace to the Holy Land.
Will the Palestinian churches be impressed? Their cry for help stated specifically: “We stand in front of an impasse and we have reached a deadlock. Despite all the promises, endless summits, UN resolutions, religious and lay leader’s callings, Palestinians are still yearning for their freedom and independence, and seeking justice and equality.”
They stressed that religious extremism is on the rise, with religious minorities paying a heavy price. “We need brave women and men who are willing to stand in the forefront. This is no time for shallow diplomacy Christians.”
When I called the Church of England press office yesterday they didn’t think any response had been made. Such concern, then. And when I ran through the members of the WCC’s Central Committee I noticed the two representatives from the Church Of England were both based in Europe. How helpful is that?
The power of hope
Christianity sometimes has great trouble telling right from wrong and doing something about it. The Holy Land is a case in point. Evil reigns there. Christianity across the world cowers. What would Christ say to that?
I know what Michel Sabbah says. He is a former Catholic Patriarch of Jerusalem, a courageous man of the front line and one of the great heroes of the struggle.
“The current situation is hopeless. In reality, there are no signs of hope at all for the Palestinian people. In spite of that, we hope.
We hope because we are Christians, and God is present.
We hope because we believe in the fundamental goodness of the human being, Israeli and Palestinian. Human goodness will prevail at the end upon the human power of evil.We hope because Palestinians are persevering in claiming their rights.
It is a source of hope that we never gave up….We hope because among Israelis, there are people who are trying to work with Palestinians for what is right. And there are an increasing number of movements for peace, strong in will….
If we had no hope we would not live. Hope is life, and history gives us hope. What is right will prevail.”
Michel Sabbah
Catholic Patriarch Emeritus
I fear that if he pins any hopes on the wets of the Western churches he’ll be disappointed. But he already knows that, surely.
Russian envoy: Hamas national movement
Palestine Information Center – August 1, 2017
TEHRAN – Hamas is a national liberation movement and Moscow does not consider it a terrorist organization, Russian Ambassador to Tehran Levan Dzhagaryan said Tuesday.
Reporting from Tehran, a PIC news correspondent said Dzhagaryan told Hamas representative in Iran, Khaled al-Kaddoumi, that Hamas is a national resistance movement and one of the Palestinians’ main legitimate representatives.
The Russian ambassador reiterated his country’s support for the Palestinian cause and people.
Al-Kaddoumi briefed the Russian envoy on the Israeli violations in Occupied Jerusalem and the crimes committed against the Palestinian people and holy sites.
Israel shoots Palestinian minor in both legs and arm
MEMO | July 31, 2017
Israeli forces shot an unarmed Palestinian minor in both legs and in one arm last week, according to Haaretz.
Thirteen-year-old Mohammed Qaddumi was collecting firewood near the West Bank Separation Wall on Tuesday when Israeli occupying forces fired at him. Qaddumi was admitted to Meir Hospital in Kfar Saba and underwent a long operation. His condition remains severe though his health has improved.
Qaddumi’s father said his son was one of four children walking by the barrier next to their home in the village of Jayus:
He was by the fence, the children were there, four children, and there were soldiers under the olive trees. They went up there by the fence, they could have grabbed him by the arm but they shot him three times.
His father emphasised that Qaddumi did not try to cross into Israel as the army claims, nor did the children throw stones at the soldiers who were hidden from their view.
Israel’s Civil Administration initially prevented Qaddumi’s family from accompanying their son to hospital in Israel, but relented after NGOs Mahsom Watch and Physicians for Human Rights intervened.
The army is said to have initiated legal proceedings against the wounded teenager, on suspicion of throwing stones.
Israeli forces have long been accused of implementing a “shoot to cripple” campaign against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. A report released by the Badil resource centre found that in the first six months of 2016, at least 30 of the 86 Palestinians that were shot in Bethlehem alone were shot in the legs or knees.
Israeli generals have also been known to encourage such tactics against Palestinian youth. Reports surfaced last year that Palestinians in numerous West Bank cities speak of Shin Bet officials known only as “Captain Nidal” and “Captain Imad” among others, who regularly threaten to disable young men if they fail to comply with Israeli soldiers.
Israeli forces shoot, injure Palestinian in Salfit tending to his land near separation wall
Ma’an – July 29, 2017
SALFIT – Israeli forces shot and injured a Palestinian on Friday while he was tending to his land near Israel’s separation wall in the village of Deir Ballut in the western part of Salfit district in the occupied West Bank.
Medical sources at the Palestinian Red Crescent told Ma’an that Faed Saleh Odeh Moussa, 33, was injured with a live bullet in his left hand after Israeli forces opened fire on him while he was on his land watering trees.
The sources added that he was transferred to the Yasser Arafat Hospital in Salfit, where doctors reported his injury as moderate.
Saed, Moussa’s brother, told Ma’an that they were caring for their land near Israel’s separation wall, like every Friday, when Israeli forces arrived in the area at 7:30 p.m. and randomly opened live ammunition on them.
Saed said that they quickly hid behind rocks before his brother was injured. He added that their children were also with them at the time and two men from Qalqiliya city in the northern West Bank who were en route to Israel.
Israeli forces remained in the area for some time before leaving following the incident, Saed noted. He added that he had called the Deir Ballut municipality to inform them of the incident, who said that they would notify the Palestinian liaison of the incident.
An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an she would look into reports on the incident.
According to the Bethlehem-based Applied Research Institute — Jerusalem, the village of Deir Ballut has had thousands of dunams of land confiscated for the purpose of illegal Israeli settlement building, while Israel’s separation wall — deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 — is expected to swallow up at least 35 percent of the village’s lands.
Such Israeli activities in Palestinian villages coincide with upticks of Israeli violence against Palestinians — both by Israeli forces and settlers, as Palestinians are stripped of their lands and often barred from entering Israel’s so-called security “buffer zones” on the Palestinian side of the separation wall.
The UN has reported that at least 92 Palestinians are injured by Israeli forces every two weeks, while 1,444 Palestinians were injured by Israeli forces this year, as of July 17. However, this data does not include the hundreds of Palestinians who were injured during Al-Aqsa protests post-July 17.
‘An attempt to drown out Palestinian voices’: RT’s office building raided in Ramallah
RT | July 29, 2017
The Israeli military raided the PalMedia building in Ramallah on the West Bank early Saturday morning. It is home to a number of international media organizations, including RT’s regional office. Property belonging to other media channels was either damaged or seized.
No RT employees were harmed during the raid on the PalMedia building which also houses the offices of Al-Quds, Al-Mayadeen, France 24 and Al-Manar.
Witnesses told the Ma’an News Agency that 10 Israeli army vehicles had surrounded the building before carrying out the search.
Several doors and editing rooms were damaged while some computers and other property were taken away.
An Israeli army spokesperson told Ma’an that Israeli forces had “seized media equipment and documents used for incitement” from a media office in Ramallah, though did not say which agency they were specifically targeting.
The satellite channel Al-Quds said the search was directed at them.
The Palestinian Union of Journalists condemned the raid, which it said had led to “the destruction of property and the theft of equipment, computers and archival materials belonging to the satellite channel Al-Quds,” adding, that it was “an obvious attempt to drown out the voice of the Palestinians and make the Palestinian narrative invisible.”
The Palestinian Ministry of Information also released a statement denouncing the raid, saying, that targeting the media “proves Israel’s intentions to prevent the guardians of truth from continuing their media, national, and ethical role of transferring the message of our people’s desired freedom.”
This is not the first time Israeli authorities have mounted a search of the building, having done so in June 2014. At the time, Reporters Without Borders said the raid “joined the long list of violations of Palestinian news media rights by the Israeli security forces, with never-ending threats, arrests and military operations.”
RT’s offices in the Gaza Strip were also hit by an airstrike during Operation Pillar of Defense in November 2012. Though the building was severely damaged, none of RT’s employees were hurt.
Israeli authorities have long restricted Palestinian freedom of expression through censoring social media activity and imprisoning journalists, activists, poets, and novelists.
AIPAC threat to free speech
By Ron Forthofer | Dissident Voice | July 26, 2017
There is a Senate bill, along with a companion bill in the House, working its way through Congress with strong bipartisan support, that poses a significant danger to free speech. One would think this bill would be a big deal but, surprisingly, the bill has not received much coverage in the mainstream media.
Fortunately the American Civil Liberties Union is alert to efforts undermining free speech. Thus, in a July 20th article on the ACLU website about S. 720/H.R. 1697, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Bryan Hauss, Staff Attorney, wrote:
The bill would amend existing law to prohibit people in the United States from supporting boycotts targeting Israel — making it a felony to choose not to engage in commerce with companies doing business in Israel and its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Violations would be punishable by a civil penalty that could reach $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.
Hauss continues:
The bill is aimed at advocates of boycotts targeting Israel, most notably the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement — a global campaign that seeks to apply economic and political pressure on Israel to comply with international law. Specifically, the bill sponsors intend the act as a response to the U.N. Human Rights Council’s 2016 resolution calling on companies to respect human rights, including in occupied Palestinian territories. No matter what you think about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one thing is clear: The First Amendment protects the right to engage in political boycotts.
Amazingly, supporters of this bill seem to have a problem with calling on companies to respect human rights! Who would draft such a problematic bill that stifles free speech and nonviolent political action?
The Intercept website carried a July 19th article by Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Grim that said:
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the bill “was drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.” Indeed, AIPAC, in its 2017 lobbying agenda, identified passage of this bill as one of its top lobbying priorities for the year.
This AIPAC-influenced bill is consistent with AIPAC’s long-term pattern of advocating for the interests of a foreign nation, Israel. AIPAC is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, D.C. and many members of Congress seem to automatically toe its line. Thus it is not surprising that 46 senators and 245 representatives have already signed on to the bill originally introduced on March 23rd.
Greenwald and Grim added that cosponsors include liberal Senators Ron Wyden, Richard Blumenthal, Maria Cantwell as well as conservative Senators Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Ben Sasse. In the House, cosponsors include conservatives such as Jason Chaffetz, Liz Cheney, and Peter King as well as liberals Ted Lieu, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell. Greenwald and Grim noted that these latter three members, who have built a wide public following by posturing as opponents of authoritarianism, are cosponsoring one of the most oppressive and authoritarian bills that has pended before Congress in quite some time.
Many of the cosponsors claim they were unaware of the penalties that could be applied in the bill whereas a few others state that they have a different reading of the bill, particularly related to the criminal penalties.
In addition to using AIPAC and other groups to lobby Congress, Israel previously directly inserted itself into our legislative process. For example, in 2015 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blatantly campaigned to derail the nuclear agreement with Iran. Also of concern, many U.S. and Israeli political experts thought Netanyahu clearly tried to sway the outcome in the 2012 U.S. Presidential election in favor of the Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
We must protect our free speech by opposing this highly questionable bill designed to benefit a foreign nation. In Colorado this means questioning Senator Bennet and Representatives Lamborn, Coffman and Buck, about their support for this appalling bill. We can also thank the other members of the Colorado delegation for not cosponsoring this terrible affront to free speech and the Constitution.
Ron Forthofer is a retired professor of biostatistics from the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston and was a Green Party candidate for Congress and also for governor of Colorado.
Tillerson to Remain at State Department Despite Reports of Resignation
Sputnik – 26.07.2017
WASHINGTON – US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will remain in office contrary to reports that he was going to resign, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said in a press briefing.
“The Secretary has been very clear he intends to stay here at the State Department,” Nauert said on Tuesday.
On Monday, CNN reported that Tillerson was considering resigning from the State Department before the end of the year due to growing frustration with President Donald Trump’s administration.
The report claimed Tillerson was at odds with the White House over several issues including department staffing and Iran policy.
RELATED:
ZOA Calls For Tillerson’s Resignation
Jewish Insider · July 24, 2017
Amid reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is growing frustrated with the White House, even considering stepping down, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) on Monday called on Tillerson to resign. The group accused Tillerson of contradicting pro-Israel statements made by President Donald Trump and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
“In light of the U.S. State Department’s new, bigoted, biased, anti-Semitic, Israel-hating error-ridden terrorism report, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) calls on Secretary of State Tillerson to resign,” the ZOA said in a statement.
The ZOA — headed by Morton Klein — took issue with the State Department’s annual terrorism report listing Israeli settlement construction, violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, and the perception that Israel’s government was changing the status quo on the Temple Mount as “continued drivers of violence.” … Full article
MK calls for building synagogue in Al-Aqsa
MEMO | July 25, 2017
Extremist Israeli Jewish MK from the Jewish Home party, Bezalel Smotrich, has called for building a synagogue inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque courtyard, Al-Resalah newspaper reported yesterday.
The Palestinian newspaper said that the Israeli TV Channel 7 reported Smotrich saying that the best Zionist response to the Palestinian rejection to the Israeli measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque is to let them understand that they had paid a “high price” for their acts.
He said that the best response would be to build a synagogue in the yards of Al-Aqsa Mosque in response to the attack on the settlement of Halamish, where three Israeli settlers were killed.
“I would set up a synagogue on the Temple Mount today, this morning.”
“The Zionist response would largely be to make the other side understand and feel that they have lost. They must understand that they gain nothing from terrorism. They are the only ones who will lose, and this will happen on three levels,” Smotrich told Arutz Sheva. “If I am the Prime Minister – this morning I would close the Temple Mount to Arab prayer and establish a Synagogue for Jews.”
Palestinians have been rejecting Israel’s latest security measures at Al-Aqsa Mosque which include metal detectors and advanced surveillance cameras. The metal detectors were removed late last night however more cameras were setup at the mosque. Mass protests have been held against the latest Israeli policies with occupation forces responding in a heavy handed manner. Seven Palestinians were killed in the ten days since 14 July and 1,090 were injured.
Palestinians, B’nai Brith and Canada’s New Democratic Party
Niki Ashton injects vital ideas and principles into the NDP leadership campaign
Niki Ashton. Image credit: Matt Jiggins/ flickr
By Prof. Tony Hall | American Herald Tribune | July 24, 2017
Like many NATO countries, Canada has suffered from an impoverishment of free and open debate when it comes to the issue of relations with the Israeli government and the Palestinian people. In country after country the Israeli lobby dominates not only governing parties but opposition parties as well.
The Canadian Parliament has epitomized the pattern. Elected federal officials have conspicuously failed to reflect the anxieties felt by many Canadians of conscience who have managed to become well informed on Palestinian-Israeli relations. There has been little in Canadian parliamentary debates or in mainstream media reports to reflect the views of those most attuned to the unmitigated suffering of Palestinian people under the jack-booted authoritarianism of Israeli domination.
In recent years the Liberals and Conservatives and the New Democrats (NDP) have maintained a blind eye towards Israeli assaults on the Palestinian people especially in Gaza and in the Occupied Territories seized through Israeli conquest a half century ago. Typically Canadian parliamentarians parrot one another across party lines on the sanctity of the “Israeli right of self-defence.” Concurrently our elected representatives mostly fail to notice that Palestinians share with all peoples a basic human right to protect themselves against systematic bouts of dispossession, disempowerment, mass incarcerations, and industrial-scale military murders sometimes heartlessly described as “cutting the grass.”
In 2016 Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined with the Conservative Party of Canada in backing a motion to condemn all groups and individuals supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement aimed at penalizing Israel for its anti-Palestinian infractions. Only one federal party, the diminutive Bloc Québécois, has openly argued that “the BDS campaign constitutes legitimate criticism of Israeli policies.”
Tom Mulcair. Image credit: United Steelworkers/ flickr
In the prelude to the federal election of 2015 Tom Mulcair, the leader of the party that is supposed to embody Canadian social democracy, highlighted his own attachment to Zionist extremism by purging the New Democratic Party of federal candidates who expressed support for Palestinian rights. For Mulcair, those seeking to represent the NDP under his leadership were punished for noticing that the United Nations agencies had accused the Israeli Defence Force of “war crimes” in the military invasions of Gaza in 2009 and 2014.
The NDP’s venerable veteran parliamentarian, Libby Davies, was an early casualty of Tom Mulcair’s marked bias in taking sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Other casualties included Morgan Wheeldon, Jerry Natanine and Paul Manly, the son of long-serving NDP parliamentarian and United Church clergyman, James Manly. The son’s alleged crime was to have called for the release of his father from custody after the elder Manly was arrested in a Finnish ship carrying humanitarian supplies through the Israeli-enforced blockade encircling Gaza.
B’nai Brith Canada versus NDP Leadership Candidate, Niki Ashton
Is the conformist complacency in the glum parliamentary proceedings concerning Palestine and Israel about to come to an end? Perhaps that change will occur if a spark of controversy in the NDP leadership race ignites wider debate on such crucial issues of Canadian public policy.
The contest to replace Tom Mulcair is showing signs of vibrancy that began with a clash of interpretations pitting NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton’s pro-Palestinian politics against B’nai Brith Canada. B’nai Brith Canada is the local extension of the US and Israeli-based Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Ms. Ashton represents a huge and largely Aboriginal riding in the northern part of the Canadian province of Manitoba. As many see it, Ms. Ashton’s convictions concerning the importance of Palestinian rights are a natural extension of her representation in Parliament of so many Indian and Metis people. In both Canada and the Middle East, Indigenous peoples share similar perspectives on the incursions of newcomers bent on asserting ownership and control over their Aboriginal lands.
The conflict between Niki Ashton and B’nai Brith Canada has much to do with how disparate perceptions of history impinge on contemporary politics. The nub of the current dispute has to do with Palestinian perceptions of the founding acts of the new Jewish state in 1948 as a “catastrophe,” as the “Nakba” in Arabic. The Palestinian view of the Nabka is very close to the Jewish perception of the Shoah. Shoah is the Hebrew term to identify the disaster engulfing European Jewry during World War II.
In 1998 Yasser Arafat instituted May 15 as Nakba Day. The timing was meant as a response to the annual commemoration on May 14 of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. As many Palestinians see it, the founding of Israel led to the initial violent displacement of about 700,000 of their people, almost half of the Palestinian population at that time.
The horror of the Israeli military assault was epitomized by the murderous atrocities committed at Deir Yassin of the Irgun and Lehi militias. Led by a future Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin, Irgun and Lehi had been instrumental in displacing the British administrators of colonial Palestine through a hugely publicized act of international terrorism at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946.
In reflecting on this history, NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton announced on her Facebook page,
For more than 60 years, Palestine has been struggling to simply exist. Many in our country have been fighting in solidarity for many years. This week in Montreal I was honoured to stand with many in remembering the Nakba. It was also powerful to join many at a rally in solidarity with those on hunger strike in Palestine today. The NDP must be a voice for human rights, for peace and justice in the Middle East. I am inspired by all those who in our country are part of this struggle for justice.
Michael Mostyn, the CEO of B’nai Brith Canada, responded as follows to Ms. Ashton’s actions and comments. In a Toronto Sun opinion piece Mr. Mostyn observed,
The re-emergence of the Jewish State in 1948 is a miraculous story of indigenous survival and resilience, not a “catastrophe” to be mourned.
Mr. Mostyn’s rejection of the Nakba narrative harkens back to many similar divergences when it comes to the position of Indigenous peoples on a variety of commemorations in the colonized world. Not surprisingly, Native groups often have severe problems and reservations when they are asked to join in anniversary celebrations of, say, 1492, or 1776, or 1867.
Michael Mostyn doing in interview with Christina Stevens, 2016. Image courtesy of Twitter
Not satisfied to stop at insisting that the founding of the Jewish State must be universally embraced, even by the Palestinians, as a “miraculous” event to be lauded, he goes on to attempt to turn the tables on groups he clearly sees as classes of criminals. Mr. Mostyn thereby seeks to transform the Palestinian memory of the Nakba into the lionization of an Israeli military campaign to clear aside the human obstacles to Israeli ascendance. He writes,
Had Jewish forces not prevailed [in 1948], the likely result would have been another genocide of the land’s Jewish inhabitants, just after the Holocaust, by invading Arab armies who had sworn to exterminate them.
In a news item on B’nai Brith Canada’s own web site Mr. Mostyn adds
To suggest that we should commemorate and mourn the Arab world’s inability to successfully commit a genocide against the Jewish people is beyond comprehension.
In her Facebook post Ms. Ashton combined her comments on the Nakba with a reference to Palestinian hunger strikers currently making their stand throughout the elaborate Israeli prison system. Mr. Mostyn treats this act of protest with contempt. He accuses Ms. Ashton of joining in solidarity with “convicted murders,” with her “advocating for vile terrorists.” The B’nai Brith CEO fails to mention in his remarks on the hunger strike that many of the thousands of jailed Palestinians are being held for months and even for years under “administrative detention certificates.” They have been jailed but not charged with any crime.
Mr. Mostyn concludes by condemning Ms. Ashton as the possessor of “a defective moral compass.” He asserts
Ms. Ashton’s comments are a shocking and insulting departure from the traditional position of her party and those of mainstream Canadians…. Every Canadian, and every honest NDP supporter, should be shocked by Ashton’s ignorance, callousness, and blatant double-standards… Her ignorance as to the reality of the situation in Israel, particularly when it comes to the hunger strike of convicted murderers, is alarming from someone aspiring to be leader of this country.
Who Is Out of Step with the Opinions of Mainstream Canada?
Yves Engler has closely studied the controversy and concluded that it has worked in the favour of Niki Ashton’s leadership campaign and against the credibility of B’nai Brith Canada. He observes that the B’nai Brith backed down once it realized that its interest in Ms. Ashton’s politics was feeding a broader discussion rather than discrediting its target. Engler writes,
Their silence on Ashton’s recent moves is deafening. B’nai B’rith is effectively conceding that their previous attacks backfired and they now fear drawing further attention to Ashton’s position since it would likely strengthen her standing among those voting for the next NDP leader.
Reflecting on the experience Engler observes,
The first ever pregnant major party leadership candidate in Canadian political history has gained this support by speaking truth to power and taking a principled position on an issue most politicians have shied away from. And, she has demonstrated that the purpose of Israeli nationalist attacks is to silence them, not to have a debate. In fact, real debate is what organizations like B’nai B’rith fear the most because the more people know about Israel and the Occupied Territories, the more they support the Palestinian cause.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-canadas-ndp-supporting-israeli-racism/20576
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/yves-engler/ndp-foreign-policy_b_15430872.html
The injection of Israeli and Palestinian issues into the NDP leadership campaign is a promising development that is attracting considerable attention domestically and internationally. This turn of events holds out the promise of bringing the parliamentary facet of Canadian social democracy more into line with the existing Middle East policies of agencies like the United Church of Canada, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, the Canadian Labour Congress and student groups like the Canadian Federation of Students-Ontario.
The enthusiasm generated by open debate is proving to be infectious. About 80 prominent academics and community activists have come up with an open letter urging the NDP to formulate a more balanced, enlightened and intelligent Middle East policy. Among those who signed the document are Noam Chomsky and former UN special rapporteur on Israel-Palestine, Prof. Richard Falk. The letter concludes with a list of proposals indicating,
WE propose that the New Democratic Party of Canada commit to the following, both in opposition and in government:
1. condemning Israeli settlements as a violation of international law and as an impediment to a just resolution;
2. calling upon the State of Israel to halt any further settlement construction, respect the political and civil rights of its Palestinian citizens, pursue a fair solution to the plight of Palestinian refugees, lift its blockade on Gaza and end its military occupation of the Palestinian Territories;
3. calling upon legitimate representatives of the State of Israel and the Palestinian people to negotiate in good faith a just resolution that respects the spirit and intentions of UNGA Resolution 194 and UNSC Resolution 242;
4. pursuing and supporting the use of diplomatic and economic means to exert pressure on the State of Israel in such a manner as to achieve a just resolution. This includes:
> using Canada’s stature and position in the international community to push for meaningful progress on the topic of Israel and Palestine
> renegotiating the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement in such a manner as to divert from the Canadian market any product made in Israeli settlements
> suspending security trade and cooperation between Canada and Israel indefinitely and until the Gaza siege is lifted, the occupation ends and a just peace is achieved
> revoking the tax-exempt status of any organization operating within Canada that is known to financially support or benefit from Israel’s military occupation
> requesting that the International Criminal Court give greater attention to the situation in Israel and Palestine
> recognizing the State of Palestine
B’nai Brith Canada accuses Ms. Ashton of making “a shocking and insulting departure from the traditional position of her party and those of mainstream Canadians.” Yves Engler and others conclude otherwise. They allege it is B’nai Brith Canada that is increasingly out of step with mainstream opinion of well informed Canadians.
I agree. Certainly I continue to be dismayed at B’nai Brith Canada’s deployment of the hate speech deceptions of Joshua Goldberg in the initiation of a campaign of smear and disinformation against me. The campaign began with a publicity stunt based on the planting on my Facebook wall of a reprehensible Facebook post whose origins go back not to me but to Joshua Goldberg and quite possibly to B’nai Brith Canada and related agencies.
Some explanations are in order from the responsible parties. The time is past when Mr. Mostyn can play the victim card when the B’nai Brith is so deeply implicated in hate speech victimization of others. To accuse an attractive and rising social democratic politician like Niki Ashton of “advocating for vile terrorists” is a blasphemy of a high order. Taking the side of oppressed groups over the side of their oppressors is not only legitimate but laudable in the context of these dangerous times through which we are living.
‘Palestinians reject Israel’s system of apartheid and racial discrimination’
RT | July 24, 2017
The escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn’t religious, it’s about the rights of Palestinian people to be free from the longest occupation in modern history, says Mustafa Barghouti, the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas suspended all ties with Israel on Friday after deadly clashes erupted between protesters and Israeli police. Protests broke out after Israeli authorities installed security cameras and metal detectors at the revered Al-Aqsa Mosque, Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site.
Temple Mount, or Haram esh-Sharif as it is known to Muslims, is one of the most contested religious sites in the world. For Jews, it is believed to have been the site of two biblical temples, the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the hill is Islam’s third holiest site.
The Arab League has warned Israel about crossing “a red line” in the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the sacred city of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, an Israeli minister said the metal detectors that triggered the violence will remain.
The League’s foreign ministers will hold an emergency meeting in Cairo on Wednesday.
RT: Palestinian President Abbas suspended all relations with Israel. How would you comment on that? Are you surprised?
Mustafa Barghouti: No, I am not, actually. He should have done that some time ago because the Israeli behavior is a behavior that wants to kill any possibility of peace in this place. Its policy is directed at destroying the two-state solution either by the measures they are taking at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is a very provocative act or by the law they have just passed which prohibits even negotiations over Jerusalem or by the increased settlement activities which have exceeded any previous expansion before. All these factors have led to this reaction. They have killed three of our people and injured no less than 432 demonstrators. All the people were just praying peacefully, I was there myself, and I saw myself – there was no violence from the Palestinian side and suddenly we were attacked with bullets, with the clubs, they were very aggressive toward the Palestinian prayers.
RT: Surely Israel has the right to step up security given what has happened [two Israelis policemen were killed at the entrance to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem on July,14]? Can you understand Israel’s nervousness?
MB: No, I think Netanyahu has heard his own security people advising him to take away these metal detectors and stop changing the status quo in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but he didn’t listen to them. He proceeded by listening to the extreme ministers in his cabinet. The result is this explosion that we see. Not only in Jerusalem but all over the West Bank. You must understand this is not a religious conflict. This is about national rights; this is about the right of the Palestinian people to be free from occupation. To get their freedom after 50 years of occupation which is the longest occupation in modern history. This is about people rejecting to be treated as third class citizens; this is about rejecting a system of apartheid and racial discrimination that Israel has created. To people in Jerusalem and the rest of the Palestinian territories, people are saying “enough is enough, we cannot take it anymore, we want our freedom, we want our independence.” This is the essence of what is happening.
‘Palestine freezing contacts with Tel Aviv is right move amid constant Israeli provocations’
RT: What is your reaction to the move by Palestinian President Abbas to freeze all contacts with Israel?
Miko Peled, peace activist: It is certainly the right move. Israeli provocations have led to these massive protests; this is definitely the right approach and the right move. We need also to remember Israel has been denying two million people in Gaza water and electricity in this terrible heat – people are dying of thirst and heat just a 45-minute drive away from Jerusalem. Israel has been engaged in serious provocations against the Palestinians.
RT: What is your opinion about the Israeli argument that more security measures are needed?
MP: The presence of the Israeli security forces in the old city of Jerusalem, around the Al Al-Aqsa Mosque are a constant provocation to the Palestinians and an infringement of the Palestinians’ right to practice their faith, to worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque… And the provocation is not just an existence of this huge number of forces but also the way they behave, the way they treat the Palestinians, the way they arrest youth, the constant harassment as people try to get in and out of the old city, in and out of the holy sanctuary. So, to expect that there will be such oppression on the rights of Palestinians and there will be no violence in return is a little naïve. But we have to look at the fact that the main form of resistance has been in a form of civil disobedience with thousands of worshipers refusing to go through the metal detectors, standing outside the mosque and praying peacefully albeit standing under the weapons and the guns of the Israeli security forces…
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From the Archives
Israel Is A Genocidal Society
The Israeli Political Spectrum From The “Liberal Left” To The Far Right, Is United In Genocide
The Dissident | May 5, 2026
… The fundamental issue of Israel is not Benjamin Netanyahu, but the fact that Israel is overwhelmingly a bloodthirsty, war-ready, genocidal society.
Historian Zachary Foster has documented that the overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis have supported every Israeli war since the 2006 invasion of Lebanon, writing:
2006
86% of the Israeli adult population justified “the IDF operation in Lebanon against Hizbollah,” or 2006 Lebanon War, in which Israel killed 1,191 people, the vast majority civilians according to HRW (Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher)2008-2009
82% of the Israeli public thought that the 2008-9 war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, the vast majority civilians.) Note that the % of Jewish Israelis who supported the war was even higher2012
90% of Israeli Jews supported war on Gaza ( in which Israel killed 160 Palestinians, 66% civilians)2014
95% of Jewish Israelis believed the war on Gaza was justified (in which Israel killed 2,310 Palestinians, 70% civilians)2021
72% of Israelis believed the war on Gaza should continue (as of May 21) after Israel had already killed 250 Palestinians in Gaza, vast majority civilians. The % of Jewish Israelis who supported killing more Palestinians was much higher.2024
A January poll found 95% of Jewish Israelis thought the Israeli military was using either the “appropriate” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza at a time when Israel had already killed >25,700 Palestinians in Gaza.2024
In September, 90% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Lebanon (in which Israel killed 800+, including hundreds of civilians)2025
In March, 82% of Israeli Jews supported the forced expulsion of residents of Gaza, Israel’s main goal in it’s genocide & war on Gaza.2025
In June, 82% of Jewish Israelis supported the war on Iran known as the “twelve day war”2026
On March 4, 93% of Israeli Jews expressed support for the war on Iran. 97% of “right-wing” Jewish Israelis support it, compared with 93% in the center and 76% on the left.
The overwhelming majority of Jewish Israelis also have openly genocidal views towards Palestinians.
Polls in Israel have shown that:
- 84% of the (Israeli )public gives the IDF an excellent or very good grade regarding the moral conduct of the army
- 75% of Jewish Israelis agree with the idea that ‘there are no innocents in Gaza.’
- A vast majority of Israeli Jews – 79 percent – say they are ‘not so troubled’ or ‘not troubled at all’ by the reports of famine and suffering among the Palestinian population in Gaza.
The fundamental problem in Israel is Zionism, not Benjamin Netanyahu. – Full article
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