Posted by Internationalist 360° on August 2, 2024
Kit Klarenberg
IDF ExtortionOn July 18, independent media outlet Mondoweiss reported that an anonymous collective of tech professionals, known as Zionism Observer, had successfully led a campaign to shut down a horrific “extortion” website managed by Israeli Defense Forces for the third time since its April launch. In a remarkable and inspiring example of effective grassroots anti-Zionist activism, multiple major online hosting, domain registration and software companies were publicly pressured into purging the monstrous resource from the web. But today, it’s operational once more.
Known as Alkasheff Gaza, the website hosts a searchable database of Palestinians, along with their names, government identification numbers, addresses, places of worship, and more. It is claimed that the individuals listed spied for Hamas. This information is drawn from local municipal police files seized by IDF operatives. The resource burst into public view in May when Israeli forces rained down leaflets on Gazans featuring pictures and names of 130 purported spies and a QR code for visiting their contactable Telegram channel.
Even more sinisterly, these leaflets threatened that the IDF would publish damaging details on even more Gazans if they didn’t first call the IDF on a number included on the leaflet.
Hundreds of thousands of reports on you, the people of Gaza, have been collected…Do you want to know if you were spied on and reported? Go to the website, enter your ID number, and find out who reported you.
A “military source” told Israeli publication Haaretz that the IDF had “legal permission to engage in this extortion.”
“Collaborator with [Hamas] General Security! Have you found out if your ID number is on the website? We will soon reveal your details to everyone. You can still save yourself – call us,” the pamphlet warned. Adjacent, the photo and name of a Palestinian man featured, along with the caption, “today’s snitch.” He allegedly provided information to Hamas on an individual who frequently visited Egypt to have sexual relations with a married woman whose husband spent extended periods away from home in the Gulf States.
Such disclosures starkly contrast to the declarations of a nameless IDF official, who, in defending the leaflet drop, told Haaretz that Israel’s military “didn’t put personal stories there” or “provide details about what these people knew or collected.” The same source also dismissed suggestions that Alkasheff Gaza was a “means of extortion.” Instead, they claimed the intention was to “awaken the public there, showing it what Hamas has done.”
People whose photos we’ve published were carefully selected by Hamas, which recruited them for spying and extorting people. These are people from clans which are identified with Hamas. It’s part of the way Hamas uses people. We propose to all civilians and people who’ve had similar experiences to give us information.”
Gravely undermining this benign explanation, some of the “informants and collaborators” pictured on the IDF’s leaflets were just children, some of whom looked no older than 10, while others appeared younger than five. In addition to allegations that individuals featured on the leaflets had spied for Hamas, they featured an ominous threat to reveal deeply damaging personal information on targets, including criminal records, extramarital affairs and sexual proclivities. These were accompanied by requests for intelligence on Hamas and the location of remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Mental coercion of civilians in war zones is a brazen violation of established laws of war and the Genocide Convention. Yet, these tactics have been a core component of IDF operations since October 2023. Israel has bombarded Palestinians with leaflets demanding “surrender now or you will die” or simply mocking their impossibly bleak situation. One airdrop in December even featured a Quranic quote about the fate of “wrongdoers.”
This is what the Israeli military threw over city of Khan Younis. It’s part of a Quran verse that describes how God punished the people of Noah by a flood all over the world.
“The flood seized them while they were wrongdoers. + Along with a star of david. pic.twitter.com/RVFQqBqNgA
— Younis Tirawi | يونس (@ytirawi) December 6, 2023
In reality, it appears the purpose of Alkasheff Gaza is psychological torture – to spread distrust, disunity, and disillusionment among the area’s already embattled population, who live under the daily threat of total annihilation. As monstrous as this effort might be, there are substantial grounds to believe its repeated respawning is reflective of the IDF’s broader catastrophic failure in Gaza. And, in turn, yet another harbinger of Israel’s impending, inevitable extinction.
‘Very Sloppy’
A Zionism Observer activist – a software developer who wishes to remain anonymous – tells MintPress News that the ease and speed with which their activist group initially succeeded in purging Alkasheff Gaza from the internet “felt like a substantial victory.” But then, the IDF completely rebuilt the online database using new tools and hosts. The second time around, the website featured a note stating without irony: “Suspicious people are trying to keep us from exposing Hamas.” Zionism Observer promptly added “suspicious people” to their X bio.
Incoming information on this. Stay tuned https://t.co/xUZgmUA3yz
— Tali {️}{} (@TalulaSha) May 20, 2024
The software developer suspects that the website’s earlier, “scarier” incarnation was a significant factor in compelling NameCheap, Webflow, and Twitter/X to deplatform Alkasheff Gaza within a matter of days in May. Zionism Observer and many named and unnamed online activists bombarded these companies with requests to remove the site, and they acquiesced. In addition to photos and biographical information on innocent children, “the site had a timer, along with a warning that when the timer expired, damaging information would be released on average citizens without delay.”
Zionism Observer was very surprised by the third relaunch, on May 25, which they then took down in the days. The fourth led to its current iteration, which remains extant as of July 31 and can be accessed via .com, .info and .net domains. For a variety of reasons, Zionism Observer is at a loss as to why the IDF persists in maintaining the site, let alone relaunching it whenever it’s taken down:
The database became useless after the 12th evacuation order, if not before. It lists information on locals, where they are, and where they pray, but do the mosques listed even exist anymore? Israel has been shoving people all over the place. Despite facial recognition cameras throughout Gaza, I don’t think the IDF has any clue where people are. This could just be psychological warfare, intended to make the population not trust each other and terrify individual citizens into believing the Zionists have dirt on them somehow.”
Mossad has a lengthy, deplorable history of blackmailing LGBT Palestinians, threatening them with public exposure if they refuse to turn agent and spy on their families, friends, and local communities. “This would be doing that at scale,” Zionism Observer’s software developer tells MintPress News. Although, they aren’t entirely convinced of that explanation. They are also confused by the site’s unsophisticated construction. Despite apparently being a formal IDF project, it isn’t built using the same tools as the Forces’ official websites:
They’re using ‘no/low-code’ tools that help people who aren’t programmers build software. If professional developers created the site instead, there is a good chance that I wouldn’t even be able to figure out what tools were used to build and power the site, and there certainly wouldn’t be abuse-reporting forms and e-mails to direct people to. This could have been running on a server in an IDF datacenter, completely opaque to researchers. Perhaps someone unqualified to do this kind of thing got the contract, did it in a very sloppy way, and they’re now desperately trying to keep it going?”
Another mystery for Zionism Observer is whether the database is working from the IDF’s perspective and, if not, whether it ever did. What “working” would entail is likewise opaque. Have any scared Palestinians reached out to the IDF? That was clearly a core founding objective of Alkasheff Gaza, given that accompanying Telegram accounts were registered and leaflet recipients and website visitors were directed to contact the Forces anonymously through these resources.
Eerily, what’s clear is that Alkasheff Gaza was intended to gather information on all its visitors. Among the back-end revelations, Zionism Observer identified was that the site’s searchable database of entries forwarded not only any terms entered to the IDF but also a visitor’s IP address, latitude, longitude, and city and region of residence.
In addition to whatever search term, Make’s software also receives and process the visitor’s
– IP address
– Latitude
– Longitude
– City
– Region (state in the US) pic.twitter.com/sj1toEYpk2
— Zionism Observer (@receipts_lol) May 22, 2024
This would, of course, harvest a wealth of deeply sensitive intelligence on both Palestinians and foreign citizens. The software developer speculates:
Perhaps that is the site’s value, and why they refuse to give up. Or, is the IDF as technologically incompetent as they are militarily? Maybe all they’re really good at is spying on people, and the operatives spying on people are spending more time jerking off to webcams than they are doing their actual jobs?”
XXXX
Alkasheff Gaza is not the only ineptly constructed IDF resource over which Zionism Observer has run roughshod. Another, a subsection of Israel’s dedicated “Iron Swords” website, ostensibly provided an interactive “evacuation” – read: forced displacement – map for trapped Gazans. It relied heavily on a secret Israeli military intelligence database, which was openly revealed in the site’s publicly and easily accessible source code. As a result, the IDF effectively leaked its own secrets to every site visitor, both English and Arabic.
Strikingly, the map divided Gaza into 620 “population blocks” – so too did the database, which dated to April 2022. This could just be a coincidence. Or it may suggest that the ongoing genocide has been in Israel’s pipeline for a long time. Whatever the truth of the matter, Zionism Observer turned the tables on the “evacuation” site, using its source code to construct a resource of their own – Gaza Maps.
They hope it will soon be interactive, allowing visitors to click on areas of Gaza and see TikTok videos shot there by the IDF, relevant evacuation orders, and much more. This is one of many Zionism Observer projects under development, and the collective intends to keep going in the name of Palestine solidarity. Like the tireless Resistance, time, justice, and virtue are on their side. So, too, is international law.
All of these videos can be found archived at TikTokGenocide-dot-com. pic.twitter.com/zSsuE3P7N1
— Zionism Observer (@receipts_lol) July 30, 2024
Throughout the U.S., state laws designed to damage or outright proscribe the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement are on the local statute. This could make it illegal for companies to deplatform Alkasheff Gaza or any other Israeli government-affiliated website. In Arizona, where NameCheap is based, for instance, “an amended anti-boycott law in effect…prohibits state contracts with and state investments in entities that boycott Israel or territories occupied by Israel.”
Yet, in the wake of the International Criminal Court seeking arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his Security Minister Yoav Gallant in May for “crimes against humanity” committed in Gaza since “at least” October 8, 2023, there is now a significant degree of legal protection for pursuing and enforcing boycotts against Israel, that would override such anti-BDS legislation. As MintPress reported in June, an analysis by the University Network for Human Rights spells out the legal obligation to prevent genocide in the wake of ICC rulings:
The duty to prevent genocide in Gaza encompasses a range of measures. First, it is imperative that states exercise all means of political and diplomatic pressure toward the cessation of Israeli military operations in Gaza. States exporting arms or military equipment to Israel or providing other forms of military aid or logistical assistance that contribute to or enable Israel’s military operations against Palestinians in Gaza have an obligation to immediately terminate all forms of aid and assistance.
The duty to prevent genocide starts as soon as a state learns or should have learned, about a serious risk of genocide. The ICC highlighted this serious risk of genocide in Gaza in a preliminary finding in January in a case brought against Israel by South Africa. All of Israel’s Western allies, who are signatories to the Genocide Convention and provide military and political support to Tel Aviv, are consequently obligated to attempt to stop the violence in Gaza. There has been little state-level action on this since the genocide began. As such, it falls to concerned citizens and major corporations to fulfill those obligations. The success of Zionism Observer’s efforts to date should give us pause—and the motivation to pressure all companies providing services of any kind to Israel to boycott, divest, and sanction accordingly.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/08/ ... civilians/
If Anyone is Being ‘Funded’, it’s the Zionists on Campus
Posted by Internationalist 360° on August 2, 2024
Walid Tamtam
Jewish-led demonstrators hold a banner reading, “AIPAC Funds Genocide” near the lobby group’s New York office on February 22, 2024. (Photo: Jewish Voice for Peace/X)
Billions of dollars are funneled from pro-“Israel” business and state figures into the Western world to then return political action and tax-payer funds for “Israel’s” strategic domination of the Middle East.
In recent months, American politicians such as Nancy Pelosi have thrown baseless accusations that pro-Palestinian marches and student encampments were the result of foreign funding from Russia, China, and Iran. It suites a perfect irony where the many well-funded Zionist campus groups and United States-based Zionist organizations are well funded through well-connected political donors and the Israeli regime propaganda arm.
Unlike any regime in the world, “Israel” performs one of the most sophisticated, well-funded, and aggressive foreign influence campaigns, specifically in Academia, targeting students who are either ignorant of “Israel’s” crimes or those who willfully collaborate with their agenda for financial compensation. Billions of dollars are funneled from pro-“Israel” business and state figures into the Western world to then return political action and tax-payer funds for “Israel’s” strategic domination of the Middle East.
In the United States, nearly every university has a grassroots-funded chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine group, along with its Jewish pro-Palestine counterpart, Jewish Voice for Peace, as both groups often fight political battles to retain their status as campus clubs due to Zionist influence on the administrations of their school. Columbia University, where the encampment solidarity campaign began, had both SJP and JVP suspend any campus activities and club recognition due to their effective popularity in mobilizing students against “Israel’s” genocide in Gaza.
The Table below cites Zionist organizations registered as non-profits, receive tax breaks, and perform partial or complete activities on North American College campuses:
Organization Strategy Annual Revenue
Stand With Us* Right-wing focused Israeli propaganda $23,212,771
Hasbara Fellowships Media training for students $1,249,655
CAMERA on Campus Journalism and video media $4,860,520
Israel 21c Online Blog and Liberal Zionism $1,107,296
Students Supporting Israel Campus events and intimidation campaigns $1,562,012
Canary Mission** Doxing and Intimidation campaign Shadow funding
Hillel International The Zionist conflation of Jewish Culture and Campus Life $57,858,837
B’nai B’rith Legal and Political Defamation Network $7,681,450
Anti-Defamation League Professional reputation-smearing network $159,935,377
Christians United for Israel Israeli lobbying efforts targeting evangelical Christians $204,821
Israel on Campus Coalition Pro-Israel events and demonstrations on college campuses $9,721,662
American Israel Public Affairs Committee Government lobbying and Political campaign contributions $73,512,996
Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee Government lobbying and Zionist youth political engagement programming $4,900,000*
Honest Reporting Zionist Journalism Pressure Campaign $2,052,913
A total of $347,860,310 from only 14 Zionist organizations demonstrates the deep pockets of Zionist donors, which include both state funding routed via non-profit organizations in America and notable donations from the Adelson family, as well as from pornographic business tycoon and majority owner of Only Fans, Leonid Radvinsky, who pledged $11 million to AIPAC.
Top Zionist projects of 2023 to 2024
Since 2020, with the so-called Arab-Zionist normalization project, two goals have been primary to Zionist proxies globally, [the first is in] furthering the “human bond” between “Israel” and the co-signing Arab states to avoid a “cold peace” outcome as seen in Egypt and Jordan, while the second imitative is perhaps most focused in the West, where a darker legacy of antisemitism exists, whereby the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and as per its Zionist-focused “working definition” of antisemitism states that it is antisemitic to deny “Israel’s” “right to exist” and [applies] applying “double standards to Israel” in criticizing the crimes of the Zionist project. IHRA is not an NGO, it is an organization made of government officials from over 35 countries, according to the government of Canada website, which is one of the many governments that send representatives to their organization.
After the UAE normalized relations in August of 2020, followed closely by Bahrain, a quiet move by Sudan, and the last move by Morocco in December of the last Trump year, “Israel’s” Ministry of Strategic Affairs through its social media accounts, proxies, and funded propaganda have prepared programs such as the “peace” delegations, where Arabic speaking influences from the region are invited on a loaded trip within the Zionist entity, in order to repackage Israeli propaganda to a targeted Arab audience and a western audience naive enough to follow.
Firstly, it must be said that the term peace does not apply to Bahrain and UAE, as the two states have never been in active war or military conflict with “Israel”, so the term normalization fits best, along with Arab betrayal, given previous Arab standards that have barred Arab league members from engaging with “Israel” without the achieving justice for the Palestinians, even with tremendous concessions on the Palestinian side.
Ministry of Strategic Affairs, the Orwellian Zionist machine
“Israel” hosts a government department known as the Ministry of Strategic Affairs to address its public image within foreign countries and media. The Ministry publicly claims to strengthen the US-Israeli alliance. What its mission statements translate to is direct control of social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Tiktok and elsewhere, and funding Israeli propagandists like Hananya Naftali, Emily Schrader, Yoseph Haddad, Eylon Levy, Rudy Rochman, Hen Mazzig, and many others, all of whom have appeared on mainstream American media and have appeared on American college events, with travel and accommodations paid by the host Zionist organization.
It is the Zionists who are ‘funded’
The Zionist political and campus-based organizations have deep pockets to spread Israeli government talking points and public affairs strategies. With both state and private funds involved, it is evident that it is not Palestinian groups who are “funded” but rather pro-“Israel” organizations with foreign ties, cash, and political resources, unlike any other section of academic activism.
Notes:
*Stand With Us names itself “Israel Emergency Alliance” in tax filings.
**Canary Mission operates as a shadow-funded organization receiving private contributions through Jewish not-for-profit charities registered under multiple banners, an example includes Megamot Shalom
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/08/ ... on-campus/
Golan: Adhering to Syrian Identity, Resisting ‘Israelization’ Attempts
Posted by Internationalist 360° on August 2, 2024
Ahmad Karakira
From armed Resistance to nonviolent strikes, the residents of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights have foiled Israeli conspiracies and confirmed their Syrian Arab identity.
The Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights made headlines on Saturday after a missile landed on a football field in the Druze town of Majdal Shams, killing 12 people and injuring dozens.
“Israel” was quick to pin the blame on Hezbollah and claimed that the Lebanese group targeted the town with an “Iranian rocket”.
Playing the role of the “hero”, Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also vowed that “Israel will not let this murderous attack go unanswered and Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for it, a price it has not paid before,” according to a statement from his office.
Hezbollah denied that it targeted Majdal Shams, a town where many residents have rejected Israeli nationality since the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights in 1967.
In a statement, the Lebanese Resistance group said it “categorically denies the allegations reported by certain enemy media and various media platforms concerning the targeting of Majdal Shams.”
“The Islamic Resistance has no connection to this incident,” it affirmed.
Later, Axios cited an American official as saying that Hezbollah officials told the UN that the Golan Heights incident was the result of an Israeli interceptor missile hitting the playground in Majdal Shams, the largest town in the Golan.
Moreover, reporters of several media outlets cited some anonymous eyewitnesses as saying they saw an interceptor missile falling on the field but noted that they refused to speak in front of the camera out of fear of retaliation from Israeli authorities.
Al Araby journalist reported that some eyewitnesses at the explosion site in Majdal Shams town told her that the Israeli air defense was the cause of the heavy explosion. pic.twitter.com/MoLwVn8AMl
— IRNA News Agency (@IrnaEnglish) July 28, 2024
A couple of days later, Israeli occupation forces launched an aggression on Beirut’s southern suburbs, resulting in the assassination of Hezbollah’s top military leader Sayyed Fouad Shokor.
In a speech delivered at a large funeral ceremony held for Shokor, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said the Israeli regime tried to label its aggression on Beirut as a “response” to the incident in Majdal Shams.
He reiterated that the Resistance has rejected this accusation and denied responsibility after a thorough investigation, adding that “we have the courage to take responsibility if it was our attack, even if it was a mistake, and we have precedents in this matter.”
Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out that “Israel cannot accept the hypothesis that the incident in Majdal Shams was due to an Israeli interceptor missile” despite the massive evidence suggesting it, which was even put forward by numerous military experts.
He affirmed that “the aim of accusing the Resistance is to incite sectarian strife between the [Druze] people of the occupied Golan and [Hezbollah] and behind it the Shiite sect, in order to undermine the most significant achievements of Al-Aqsa Flood” of unity and solidarity among Arabs and the people of the region.
The Hezbollah chief confirmed that this strife was quelled and disabled “thanks to the awareness and firm positions of the leaders of the Druze community,” extending his gratitude to the political and spiritual leaders of the Druze for their stance.
The town held Saturday a funeral ceremony for the victims of the attack, with the Israeli Channel 13 reporting that residents of Majdal Shams attacked members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party who showed up for the ceremony.
Meanwhile, the Israeli news website Walla mentioned that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich was met with rejection and protests upon his arrival in the town.
“Get out of here. We don’t want you here, you killer,” the residents told Smotrich, accusing the Israeli minister of making use of their children’s blood.
A circulated video on social media shows residents of Majdal Shams in the occupied Syrian #Golan expelling Bezalel Smotrich, the Minister of Finance in the Israeli government, from a funeral held by the village’s residents for the victims.
Residents of #MajdalShams in the… pic.twitter.com/EPs5zynB0y
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) July 28, 2024
Al Mayadeen‘s correspondent Hanaa Mahameed visited the site where the projectile landed and gathered testimonies from the town’s residents, who challenged the Israeli narrative that Hezbollah was behind the attack.
The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) also reported that the residents of Majdal Shams attempted to kick out Netanyahu from the town, calling him a “fascist” and a “criminal”.
Netanyahu had arrived in Majdal Shams alongside a convoy of high-ranking security officials.
People in the occupied Syrian #Golan prevent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from entering Majdal Shams, calling him a fascist and criminal.
In a similar incident, the residents kicked out Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, Minister of Economy Nir Barakat,… pic.twitter.com/V5gslxYhly
— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) July 29, 2024
Al Mayadeen‘s correspondent in the occupied territories reported that Netanyahu arrived in Majdal Shams at around 2:00 pm (local time) and was received by the town’s Israeli-appointed council chief in an administrative building. Netanyahu entered through the back door of the building to avoid being seen.
After news had gotten around to the town’s residents, hundreds gathered outside the said building, protesting Netanyahu’s visit to the occupied Syrian town.
The demonstrators berated the Israeli prime minister, denouncing him as a “child killer” and a “criminal”.
Netanyuahu’s visit to the town did not last for more than 15 minutes, locals told Al Mayadeen, after the incident had enraged residents who refused to receive the Israeli prime minister.
Al Mayadeen also found that several locals refused to allow Israeli occupation forces to use their homes and rooftops as guarding points ahead of Netanyahu’s arrival.
It is noteworthy that, to this day, the vast majority of Majdal Shams’ residents maintain their Syrian identity, with only about 20% having accepted Israeli citizenship.
Israeli media previously reported that in 2018, only 272 people out of a population of about 12,000 voted in local elections held by the Israeli occupation authorities.
Illegal Israeli occupation of Syrian Golan Heights
To better understand the current situation in the Golan Heights following the Majdal Shams incident, it is only crucial to look back at the history of this region since its occupation by “Israel”.
In the 1967 war, known as the Six-Day War, between the Arab and Israeli forces, the latter managed to occupy the Gaza Strip, West Bank, al-Quds, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights.
The Golan spans an area of 1,860 square kilometers, accounting for 1% of Syria’s total land area. During the June 1967 war, “Israel” occupied approximately 1,250 square kilometers of this territory, of which Syria regained 100 square kilometers following the October 1973 war.
Israeli occupation forces displaced over 95% of the Golan’s population—around 140,000 Syrian citizens—and demolished their villages, totaling 340 villages and the city of Quneitra.
As part of its settler colonial project, “Israel” has gradually established 33 agricultural settlements and the city of Katzrin on the ruins of Syrian villages, with a settler population of at least 26,000. They also planted 76 minefields containing approximately two million mines, some within and around inhabited villages.
Currently, “Israel” occupies about 1,176 square kilometers of the Golan Heights, including 100 square kilometers of demilitarized zones as per a 1949 Armistice Agreement.
There are five villages in the occupied Golan Heights: Majdal Shams, Mas’ada, Buq’ata, Ein Qiniya, and Ghajar. About 10% of the residents of the five villages work in the agricultural sector, utilizing only about 21,000 dunams for farming compared to 110,000 dunams used by Israeli settlers, according to local data.
The people of Golan have cultivated the region for decades, if not centuries, and are renowned for their olives and fruits, particularly apples. However, the limited use of water does not meet local irrigation needs, with farmers receiving approximately five million cubic millimeters of water annually, affecting the quantity of their agricultural production.
According to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, expanding Israeli settlements and their activities have limited Syrian farmers’ access to water through discriminatory pricing and fees.
Some of the main water sources in the Golan have been seized for exclusive use by settlers, and other water sources are partially diverted for use in “Israel”, according to a study by researcher Scott Kennedy titled “The Druze of the Golan: A Case of Non-Violent Resistance.”
Central Golan is also known as one of the richest areas in livestock, but this sector has disappeared from the local economy due to the Israeli occupation’s usurping of grazing lands.
In a move reflecting its savage nature, in 1981, the Israeli government officially “annexed” the Golan Heights through the “Golan Heights Law” passed by the Knesset, violating international resolutions that deemed the decision “null, void, and without international legal effect,” a stance reaffirmed by the United Nations on November 28, 2023.
Despite the UN and the international community not recognizing the “annexation” of these territories and international law considering the 33 Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights illegal, “Israel” has desperately sought recognition of its step, finally receiving it in 2019 by then-US President Donald Trump.
Subsequently, a new settlement was established in the occupied Golan Heights named after Trump.
Even after Joe Biden assumed office in 2020, his administration did not reverse the decision and has referred to the region as “northern Israel” rather than occupied Syrian territory.
In the same context, on December 26, 2021, the Israeli government, led then by Naftali Bennett, approved a plan to double the Jewish population in the Golan by 2030, with an initial budget of one billion dollars aimed at attracting 23,000 settlers to the area.
Golan residents refuse Israeli citizenship, affirm Syrian identity
The void Israeli decisions did not prevent the residents of the occupied territory from asserting their right to self-determination, where more than 90% of the Golan Heights residents rejected Israeli “citizenship” in 1981.
Jonathan Kuttab, a Palestinian attorney and human rights activist, recalled in an interview in 1983 that “those who accepted Israeli identity cards were often shunned by the entire community.”
“They decided that anyone who accepts Israeli identity cards is really cutting themselves off from the community ‘They are no longer one of us, no longer a Druze,'” he says.
In his study, The Druze of the Golan: A Case of Non-Violent Resistance, Scott Kennedy also detailed the matter, writing:
“A harsh reception greeted those who took Israeli identification: few would speak to them or enter their homes; they were not invited to community events, weddings or funerals; and they were not welcomed to religious gatherings. Their dead were denied the community’s prayers. Such tremendous social pressure was exerted on them that all but a few diehard quislings returned their cards. Those who repented were required to recant publicly, or to go door-to-door to apologize to their neighbors, and to contribute money to support the families of those imprisoned.”
According to Kuttab, after the Israeli Knesset passed a law authorizing the “annexation” of the Golan, the region’s residents appealed to the Israeli government and petitioned for a reversal of the decision, which would entail forcing Israeli citizenship on them. When their demands were rejected, they announced that they would not comply with the occupation authorities’ measures.
“Israel can do whatever it wants to us: they can confiscate our land. They can kill us. But they cannot tell us who we are. They cannot change our identity,” Kuttab cited Golan villagers as saying.
Following the “annexation” decision, Golan residents launched a heroic nonviolent Resistance in an attempt to defy Israeli diktats.
Detailing these steps, Kennedy indicated that the laborers’ refusal to work disrupted industry in northern occupied Palestine for several weeks, and the elderly and young defied Israeli-imposed curfews to harvest crops.
Groups of women confronted Israeli soldiers, seizing at least 16 weapons and handing them over to army officers, demanding the withdrawal of troops. The weapons were sometimes exchanged for the release of detainees.
One village, taking advantage of the strike, completed a major sewer project that had been denied funding and permits by Israeli authorities for years. The strike also saw trenches dug and pipelines installed.
Villagers began developing cooperative economic structures, such as community-wide tree spraying with the understanding that the crops would be shared by all. They also started establishing their own schools.
After four months, Israeli authorities indicated that efforts to force Golan residents to accept Israeli “citizenship” would be suspended. The residents were led to believe that, on April 1, 1982, the Israeli efforts to impose “citizenship” on them would cease, only for “Israel” to further escalate its repressive measures against the people of the Golan.
Amid a media blackout, an estimated 14,000-15,000 Israeli soldiers raided the region and imposed a 43-day siege, cutting off electricity and water to the villages and destroying several homes.
In one demonstration, nine people were injured, and at least two died as ambulance services to nearby hospitals were blocked. At least 150 people were detained daily, with fourteen receiving four-to-five-month sentences and most fined for not having Israeli identification.
During the siege, Israeli troops conducted door-to-door raids, seizing Syrian-era identification papers and replacing them with Israeli IDs. The following morning, the town squares of various Golan villages were littered with discarded Israeli identity cards, a sign of the resident’s firm refusal of Israeli identification, even if it means that they have to endure direct threats of personal harm and communal suppression.
As a result of the residents’ fierce resistance and adherence to their land and Syrian Arab identity, the Israeli government eventually lifted the siege, withdrawing troops, removing checkpoints, and leaving the Golan residents alone.
But today, most Golan residents unwillingly hold Israeli ID cards, where their status is described as residents and non-citizens, primarily to travel to their workplaces. Their situation is similar to that of the residents of the eastern part of occupied al-Quds who have refused Israeli “citizenship”.
Israeli media highlight that the residents of the occupied Golan Heights have maintained close ties with homeland Syria even after “Israel” occupied the area in 1967 and “annexed” it in 1981, which proves that the occupation has failed to isolate and detach the Golan from its true Arab identity and surroundings.
Amid the Israeli restrictions imposed on the movement of residents in the occupied Golan Heights, the region’s citizens still head to a hill that separates Majdal Shams from the liberated part of Syria and use loudspeakers to communicate with their separated relatives during weekends and holidays to exchange greetings, well-wishes, and conversations, which led to the site being named “The Shouting Hill.”
According to Israeli figures, among the 21,000 Druze living in the Golan, only 4,300 are considered Israelis, including some who inherited their “legal status” from parents who previously accepted citizenship, while the vast majority identify as Syrian.
The aforementioned historical details are evidence that the residents of the occupied Golan Heights have historically resisted Israeli laws aimed at their “Israelization”. Now, it seems that “Israel” is using the Majdal Shams incident as a pretext to further tighten its occupation of the Golan and detach its people from their Syrian Arab identity.
Armed Resistance
Regarding armed Resistance, Eduardo Aboultaif’s study traced the history of the military Resistance against Israeli occupation in the Golan Heights.
The study, based on interviews with Resistance members, indicated that a group of about 50 young men from the Golan formed a secret Resistance movement immediately after the Israeli occupation of the region.
According to one of the founding members, the group’s aim was to provide intelligence to the Syrian army, motivated purely by its members’ patriotism, without any religious, familial, tribal, or sectarian affiliations.
The main activity of this Resistance network, which comprised three operational cells, was gathering intelligence and establishing communication with the Syrian army.
A group of 12 young men also escalated their military Resistance by planting mines near Israeli military sites in the Golan, culminating in a successful attack on an Israeli tank ammunition depot containing 1,200 rockets.
Following the discovery of the Resistance cell, some members were sentenced to 25-32 years in Israeli prisons and two were killed at the hands of Israeli occupation forces.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/08/ ... -attempts/
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Israel launches overnight air raids on Lebanese-Syrian border area
Tel Aviv has continued its aggression against regional nations as it awaits a response to the assassination of top Hezbollah and Hamas leaders
News Desk
AUG 3, 2024
(Photo Credit: Israeli Air Force)
Israeli warplanes launched at least two air raids on the Lebanese-Syrian border area late on 2 August, targeting the Matraba crossing in the town of Al-Qasr and later the village of Hosh al-Sayyed Ali.
BREAKING | Again: Israeli warplanes bomb the Lebanese-Syrian border, targeting the village of Hosh al-Sayyed Ali. pic.twitter.com/GTT9BJ2DDq
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 2, 2024
According to Lebanon's National News Agency (NNA), the second attack targeted a convoy of trucks carrying food from Lebanon to Syria. AFP reported that at least one Syrian driver was injured in the attack.
On Saturday morning, an Israeli airstrike also hit a vehicle in the town of Bazourieh, near the southern Lebanese city of Tyre.
Israel's latest cross-border aggression comes as the nation awaits retaliation from Hezbollah and Iran following the twin attacks in Beirut and Tehran that killed top resistance commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh.
“You do not know which lines you have crossed and what kind of aggression you have committed … We are in an open battle on all fronts, and we have entered a new phase [in the war]," Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah warned on Thursday.
During a phone call on Friday with EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, Iran's interim Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani stressed that it is "Iran's natural and legitimate right to punish the criminal Zionist gang."
He also denounced the failure of some nations in the west countries to condemn the assassination of Haniyeh, noting that the silence of these countries "will encourage the Zionist entity to continue its attacks."
Bagheri Kani's comments came hours before the US government ordered the deployment of more fighter jets and warships to the waters of West Asia after President Joe Biden pledged with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to help him overcome the coming retaliation.
https://thecradle.co/articles/israel-la ... order-area
NYT 'completely fabricated' report saying Haniyeh killed by remote bomb: Hamas
Hamas representative in Iran Khaled Kaddoumi told The Cradle that Haniyeh was killed by an air-dropped projectile
News Desk
AUG 3, 2024
Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, center, praying near the coffin of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his bodyguard in Doha, Qatar, August 2, 2024. (Photo credit: Qatar TV via AP)
Speaking to The Cradle, Hamas representative in Iran Khaled Kaddoumi called "ridiculous" and "completely fabricated" a recent New York Times (NYT) report claiming to reveal how Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Iran this week.
The NYT report from 1 August claimed Haniyeh was killed by an explosive device planted in his room in a guest house controlled by the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC). The bomb was planted two months ago and detonated remotely by Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad, NYT report claimed.
Haniyeh was in the Iranian capital, Tehran, for the inauguration of newly elected President Masoud Pezeshkian.
In contrast, Kaddoumi stated that Haniyeh and his bodyguard were killed by explosives dropped from the air.
"I was there, and the wall and ceiling of the place where he was were collapsed. It is clear from the appearance of the place after the attack, and from the body of the martyr leader Ismail Haniyeh, that the targeting was carried out by an air-dropped projectile," Kaddoumi told The Cradle.
He noted further, "There are ongoing investigations, and technicians who inspected the crime scene will issue detailed reports on what happened."
The Hamas representative told The Cradle, "The cheap scenarios promoted by some Western media about the assassination of martyr Ismail Haniyeh are very ridiculous. The narrative published by the New York Times about Mossad agents planting explosive devices inside the apartment where Haniyeh stayed is completely fabricated … They are trying to evade responsibility and its consequences for Israel."
Kaddoumi made similar comments to the New Arab and Anadolu Agency about Haniyeh's killing.
The NYT story supported the narrative of the Israeli military. After Haniyeh's killing, Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a press conference that "The air force was not on any mission that night except for the attack that targeted Beirut."
Haniyeh was killed in the early hours of 1 August. The night before, Israel assassinated top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shakr in an airstrike on a residential building. The strike also killed two women and two children.
The NYT story regarding Haniyeh's killing was authored by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman, US journalist Mark Mazetti, and US-Iranian journalist Farnaz Fassihi.
Bergman and Mazzetti are veteran reporters with close contacts within the Israeli and US intelligence agencies, respectively.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah vowed to respond to Israel's killing of Haniyeh and Shukr while stating that the conflict with Israel is in a "new phase."
"The enemy, and those who are behind the enemy, must await our inevitable response … You do not know what red lines you crossed," he said, in reference to Israel and its most important ally, the US.
The Kayhan daily, which is closely aligned with Iran's IRGC, emphasized that "the Zionists" would "pay blood" for Haniyeh's assassination.
"Avenging the bloodshed of a guest is the host's duty; the world is watching," the daily wrote.
https://thecradle.co/articles/nyt-compl ... bomb-hamas
US warships, fighter jet squadron en route to Mediterranean to 'protect' Israel
The Axis of Resistance has vowed to respond to Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr
News Desk
AUG 3, 2024
US Aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and its accompanying warships in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in October (Photo credit: U.S. Department of Defense
The US military will move an aircraft carrier, fighter jet squadron, cruisers and destroyers with ballistic missile capability, and land-based ballistic missiles to West Asia, the Pentagon announced on 2 August, to help defend Israel from possible retaliatory attacks by the Axis of Resistance, led by Iran.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is ordering the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to West Asia, where it will join the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group, which is in the Gulf of Oman.
It is unclear if the USS Abraham Lincoln will replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is scheduled to return to the US later this summer, or whether the USS Theodore Roosevelt will remain in the region alongside the USS Abraham Lincoln and be directed to the Mediterranean Sea to help defend Israel.
The Pentagon did not say where the fighter jet squadron was coming from or where it would be based in West Asia. The US has multiple Arab allies in the region who are willing to base US military forces but request that their presence not be made public.
The statement did not identify which vessels and units will be involved, but says they will be added to the "broad range of capabilities the U.S. military maintains in the region."
US defense official told The Washington Post on 1 August that the US Navy has already assembled at least a dozen warships nearby to defend Israel.
The announcement of the new deployment came a day after US President Joe Biden spoke by phone to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden affirmed his commitment to Israeli security "against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis."
"The President discussed efforts to support Israel's defense against threats, including against ballistic missiles and drones, to include new defensive U.S. military deployments," said a brief statement summarizing the two leaders' call.
Israel is bracing for an attack from the Axis of Resistance, an alliance comprising Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Ansarallah in Yemen, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, and Hamas in Gaza. Axis leaders have promised to retaliate for Israel's assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on 31 August and top Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut on 30 August.
The US and its regional Arab allies are seeking to defend Israel as part of a coalition that helped defend Israel from an Iranian retaliatory attack in April.
Iran attacked Israel with a barrage of missiles and drones in response to Israel's bombing of the Iranian consulate in Damascus two weeks prior. The Israeli attack killed sixteen people, including eight officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and two Syrian civilians.
"As we have demonstrated since October and again in April, the United States' global defense is dynamic and the Department of Defense retains the capability to deploy on short notice to meet evolving national security threats," Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said in her statement on Friday.
https://thecradle.co/articles/us-warshi ... ect-israel
Iran and Hezbollah are preparing to attack Israel on the holy day of Tisha B'Av - Sky News Arabia
Western intelligence sources have told Sky News Arabia that Iran is planning an attack on Israel on Tisha B'Av (August 12-13) in response to the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyya.
