Palestine

[blindpig]

Department of State Daily Press briefing April 6, 2023

Biden administration refuses to condemn Israel storming Al-Aqsa mosque, blocks Security Council statement
By Philip Weiss (Posted Apr 08, 2023)

Originally published: Mondoweiss on April 6, 2023 (more by Mondoweiss) |



The Biden administration staunchly took Israel’s side today. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel refused to condemn Israel’s storming of Al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan, then went on to condemn rocket attacks coming from Gaza and Lebanon.

And the U.S. also stepped in to block a U.N. Security Council statement to the press criticizing Israel for the raids, according to an Israeli official (speaking to an Israeli reporter). Jacob Magid reports that Israeli diplomats coordinated with the U.S.:

The UNSC held an emergency session today to discuss recent violence in Jerusalem & several members pushed for panel to issue a statement condemning Israel over police beating of Muslim worshippers at Al-Aqsa on Monday night, according to a UN diplomat for a county on the panel. Some members were also pushing for the statement to include a condemnation of rocket fire at Israel from Gaza and Lebanon, per UN diplomat. Israel pushed against issuing any statement, fearing it would draw equivalency between its actions & terror groups, per senior Israeli official.

The State Department was asked about “unprovoked” attacks in the last two nights by Israeli police and troops on worshipers at the mosque. Patel responded:

We are concerned by the scenes out of Jerusalem. And it is our viewpoint that it is absolutely vital that the sanctity of holy sites be preserved. We emphasize the importance of upholding the historic status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem and any unilateral action that jeopardizes the status quo to us is unacceptable. We call for restraint, coordination and calm during the holiday season.

Notice that Patel does not call out Israel for jeopardizing the status quo. Later Patel commented on the rocket attacks:

We condemn the launch of rockets from Lebanon and Gaza at Israel. Our commitment to Israel’s security is ironclad and we recognize that Israel has the legitimate right to defend itself against all forms of aggression.

Israel’s administrative detention of Jamal Niser
Today, the State Department refused to comment on Israel’s confinement of Jamal Niser, a 76-year-old American, who has been in administrative detention without charges for seven months.

“We are aware of these reports… and are continuing to monitor the situation,” Patel said.

DAWN’s report on Niser says the U.S. government ought to take action against the Israelis for a violation of international law:

When Jamal got out of prison in October 2021, days before his 75th birthday, he attempted to return to the United States to be with his children, but the Israeli army denied him permission to leave the occupied territory without giving any reason. With the intervention of then-Congressman Tim Ryan of Jamal’s home state of Ohio, Israeli authorities gave the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem written assurances that they would allow him to depart for the U.S. Even with that letter in hand, however, the Israeli military denied him permission to leave a second time in October 2021.

Less than a year later, on August 24, 2022, the Israeli military again raided Jamal’s home in the Ramallah-area city of al-Bireh in the middle of the night, this time with an embedded television news crew, breaking down the front door of his home and detaining him…

On March 30, 2023, American consular officials visited Niser in Israel’s Ofer Military Prison in the occupied West Bank, and communicated to his family that he is in need of ocular surgery that he would prefer to undergo in Ohio, where he lived for 40 years and where his family remains.

Niser’s continued detention is a violation of international human rights laws prohibiting arbitrary, indefinite imprisonment without charge, and could amount to a war crime under Article 8(2)(a)(vi) of the Rome Statute, which prohibits “[w]ilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial.” Furthermore, the Secretary of State should designate Niser as wrongfully detained under the “Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act,” demand that Israel immediately release Niser or charge him with a crime in a criminal proceeding. The President should also order sanctions against the Israeli officials responsible for his continued detention, as permitted by the law.

https://mronline.org/2023/04/08/biden-a ... statement/

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Syrian air defenses shoot down several Israeli missilest the missiles were directed at a Syrian army base, radar and artillery post.[/b]


Israel reported that the missiles were directed at a Syrian army base, radar and artillery post. | Photo: @HoyPalestina
Posted 9 April 2023.

Syrian air defenses "intercepted the missiles of the aggression and shot down some of them... and the aggression caused some material losses."

The Syrian Ministry of Defense reported this Sunday that the anti-aircraft defense systems shot down several missiles that Israel launched against points in the south of the country in the Middle East.

The Syrian state news agency (SANA) indicated that a military source recounted that “around 5:00 (local time) today, the Israeli enemy carried out an airstrike with several missiles from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting some points in the southern region.”

According to the source, Syrian air defenses "intercepted the missiles of the aggression and shot down some of them... and the aggression caused some material losses."


The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), for its part, said in a statement that they carried out an attack against points in southern Syria in response to an attack with six rockets that were detonated from southern Syria against the occupied Golan Heights. .

"The IDF artillery forces are now firing at the area from which the shots were fired in Syria, after the launches against Israeli territory carried out previously," the Israeli armed institution published on social networks.

The IDF later reported that the missiles were directed at a Syrian army base, radar and artillery post.

This Israeli aggression occurs in the context of an escalation of clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, which began with the raids on two consecutive days by the Israeli Police in the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/siria-de ... -0001.html

Next time some moron asks"Why do they hate us?" I'm going to ....oh, what's the use?

[blindpig]

Zionism in Crisis: Palestinian Resistance Forges a New Horizon
APRIL 21, 2023


Members of the Palestinian resistance hold their weapons during a memorial service for Mohammed Al-Azizi and Abdul Rahman Sobh, who were killed by Israeli forces in July 2022, in the West Bank city of Nablus. Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/APA images.

By Palestinian Youth Movement – Apr 16, 2023

For too long, the global solidarity movement has only understood Palestinians as victims of Israeli violence. The current moment calls us to question the invincibility of the Zionist project and reassess our struggle.

Over the past few weeks, significant events have been unfolding across historic Palestine. January 7, 2023, marked the start of Zionist protests in response to proposed Israeli judicial reforms. In parallel, we have also seen an intensification of the ongoing settler colonial violence perpetrated by the Zionist entity against Palestinians – January was the West Bank’s deadliest month in nearly a decade, and the last few weeks have seen heightened violence towards Palestinians in Al-Aqsa. In response to these assaults, we have seen increased resistance efforts from groups across historic Palestine, as well as Lebanon and Syria. While the media may lead you to believe that these events are politically, geographically, and temporally isolated, they tell a collective story of significant developments in the Palestinian liberation struggle.

It is easy to dismiss Zionist protests against judicial reforms as insignificant to Palestinians, for whom subjugation to Israeli violence persists irrespective of who is in government. While this is true, the deepening of contradictions within the global Zionist movement reflects the shaky foundations upon which the Zionist state was built and the subsequent tension between its fascist, underlying basis, and the superficial surface of democracy that the entity projects to the world. These tensions expose the artificial nature of the Zionist colony: while all settlers are united against the external threat of Palestinian resistance and in favor of the colonial social order, there is little else politically binding or holding it together.

In this vein, it must then be noted that it is through the excesses of the settlement project, through the colonization and exploitation of the Palestinian people, that Zionism aims to resolve its internal contradictions. Thus, the attempt to construct a binary between “citizen” and “settler” – one where its “liberal” arm at times seeks to distance themselves from the fascism of the settler movement, must be interrogated. We argue that the two exist in relationship to one another and, most importantly: in relationship to Zionist colonialism. Zionism’s settler movement has long been integral to the expansion of the Zionist state: the state through which liberal Zionists have wielded power and within which they exercise the “democracy” that they claim today to be fighting for. By refusing to engage this on the terms of “democracy” versus “fascism” and instead interrogating the relationship of this contradiction to colonialism, we are able to understand the role of Palestinian resistance and unity in the inevitable demise of the Zionist project.

While it is the interests of the fascist settler movement that are being represented by the coalition government’s proposed judicial reforms, it is also their interests that underpin the increasing violence in Al-Aqsa. Many have been quick to correctly point out that the current assaults on Al-Aqsa are text-book: Israeli violence towards Palestinians is heightened during Ramadan each year, whether it’s through invasions of Al-Aqsa or bombings on Gaza. However, violence towards Palestinians also increases during Jewish holidays, and this year, Passover, Easter, and Ramadan are all occurring at the same time and the heightened violence, therefore, has to be read as such: as the manifestation of an extremist state seeking to impose a new reality, one that goes closer to the dismantling of Al-Aqsa in the hopes of building Solomon’s temple atop of it. While it is true that the movement insisting on entering Al-Aqsa during Passover is a community that has been isolated from “pro-democracy” Zionists, these dreams of converting Jerusalem into a city of a single faith are much broader in Zionist society, again revealing the symbiotic relationship between Zionism’s seemingly contradictory currents when placed within its broader colonial setting.

In the face of Zionism in crisis, Palestinians have united and coalesced around increased resistance efforts across historic Palestine, building on the legacy of the 2021 Unity Uprisings. As the May uprisings grew, a common chant rang from Haifa to Ramallah: mishan Allah, ya Gaza yalla (for the love of god, come on Gaza). For the first time in memory, the cities in the interior, lands conquered in 1948, lead an uprising rather than support one. Youth from the two-million-strong community went into uproar over the repeated incursions by police forces into Al-Aqsa. Buses from tens of Palestinian cities descended upon Jerusalem, with the police dispatched to block the main streets. The dramatic images of the elderly choosing to walk on foot and bypass the checkpoints crystallized the unity between two areas that Zionist policies have spent 75 years attempting to fragment. When the resistance entered into the fray, the isolated and besieged Gaza responded to Jerusalem and imposed itself on the calculus of Tel Aviv. Around the same time in Jenin, the 25-year-old martyr Jamil Alamoury and his comrades coalesced into the Jenin battalion, beginning a new chapter in confrontation that takes the local urban environment as its area of operation and the popular cradle as its shield. Small resistance units began forming throughout the West Bank and today preoccupy close to 60% of occupation forces. When Gaza can guarantee war, the interior and Jerusalem an uprising, and the West Bank a war of attrition and popular resistance, the costs of Zionist impunity become unbearable. The Palestinian people today possess something Israel has strived to dismantle: unity and revolutionary optimism.

The May 2021 uprisings amalgamated into the ‘Unity of All Fronts’ approach, and we are currently witnessing this slogan being transformed into a political reality. In particular, we are seeing the expansion of this notion to Lebanon and Syria. In response to a repeat of the 2021 abuses on worshipers in Al-Aqsa, Palestinian factions operating in Lebanon and Syria on two occasions in the past week launched rocket barrages into northern Palestine. Protests are growing in the cities of ‘48, and the West Bank battalions have redoubled their efforts. Zionist leaders chose to attack Gaza in response, confirming that policies of containment and isolation have failed and that the ‘Unity of All Fronts’ prevails. For the first time in memory, it was the Zionist entity that acted with restraint, rushing to absolve regional actors in Lebanon and Syria of the role they undoubtedly play in supporting the Palestinian resistance. The Zionist regime also ensured that its bombardment of Gaza avoided large loss of life and resistance assets.

On April 10th, Israeli journalists confirmed that the occupation forces stopped using the name “Operation Break the Wave” to describe their attempts to stifle Palestinian resistance in the West Bank, implicitly acknowledging that Palestinian resistance groups are here to stay. On April 11th, Netanyahu announced that settlers would not be able to enter Al-Aqsa for the duration of Ramadan in fear of rising tensions in Jerusalem. These examples collectively illustrate the lack of confidence in the Zionist entity’s security calculus as it comes to terms with the strength of Palestinian resistance today.

Advocates of Palestine must never forget the truth that this reveals: gone are the days of the Zionist entity’s invincibility, and it is the persistence and accumulation of Palestinian resistance that have brought this about.

For too long, the Palestinian diaspora and the global solidarity movement have been paralyzed by a reactive position that understands Palestinians to only be victims of Israeli violence. However, this moment calls us to question the invincibility of the Zionist project and to reassess the tools of our struggle. Today, we can argue that Zionist project is as fragile as it has ever been. At the same time, Palestinian resistance is the strongest it has ever been. The global shift we are currently witnessing reflects the potential for a paradigm shift in this framing: we are victims of their violence but we are also capable of taking our fate into our own hands. In the diaspora, this means joining organizations to build transnational power and engage in principled struggle to realize the promise of liberation.

https://orinocotribune.com/zionism-in-c ... w-horizon/

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Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman chairs a meeting of Saudi Arabia’s cabinet on 4 April. Saudi Press Agency/ZUMAPRESS

Why the Saudis have called off their Israeli wedding
By Ali Abunimah (Posted Apr 22, 2023)

Originally published: The Electronic Intifada on April 19, 2023 (more by The Electronic Intifada) |

After leading Israel’s extreme far-right to victory in last November’s elections, a buoyant Benjamin Netanyahu hoped to quickly resume Tel Aviv’s march towards full normalization with Arab regimes.

Netanyahu was still flying high from the so-called Abraham Accords, the deals brokered under the Trump administration between Israel on the one hand, and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco on the other.

But there was major unfinished business for the incoming government: Saudi Arabia.

Although Riyadh has made major moves to cozy up to Tel Aviv, the kingdom still remains formally outside the Abraham Accords.

And as Netanyahu himself acknowledged in November, the diplomatic and trade relations deals with the smaller Arab states “didn’t happen without Saudi approval.”

Netanyahu claimed that finally establishing formal ties with the Saudis would be a “quantum leap” that would“effectively end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict”—presumably by isolating and weakening the Palestinians even further, or so the Israelis must hope.

It would also solidify the American-led axis against Iran, long the arch-enemy of the regimes in Tel Aviv and Riyadh.

Perhaps hoping to butter up the Saudis, Netanyahu in December publicly urged Washington to reaffirm its commitment to Saudi Arabia’s security—amid shaky ties between the White House and the absolute monarchy.

The Biden administration—which has always been as enthusiastic about the Abraham Accords as Trump—apparently did its best to broker backchannel talks to try to clinch a Saudi-Israel deal, as The Wall Street Journal revealed in March.

But the exorbitant demands reportedly put forward by the Saudis—U.S. security guarantees, more arms sales and assistance with a civilian nuclear program—looked like they were designed to be rejected, and thus to provide Riyadh with a way out of formally embracing Israel.

This was the first significant sign that the Saudis were having a change of heart about turning their engagement with Israel into a marriage.

“Dangerous development for Israel”
Meanwhile, that same month came a diplomatic earthquake: Rather than consummate its relationship with Tel Aviv and sign up formally to Israel’s obsessive crusade against Iran, the Saudis decided instead to make their peace with Tehran.

Even worse from the Israeli—and more importantly, the American—perspective, the historic rapprochement was brokered by China, whose growing international stature, confidence and power is setting alarm bells ringing among the imperial managers in Washington.

China, which had never before brokered such a major diplomatic breakthrough in the region—a role always monopolized by the Americans—is now offering to facilitate peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.


Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett described the resumption of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia as a “grave and dangerous development for Israel and a significant diplomatic victory for Iran.”



The Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University, a think tank populated by veterans of Israel’s intelligence and military establishment, published an article lamenting that “Israel, which appeared to be on the threshold of acceptance into the Arab world, is rejected for the time being.”

Following the Iran-Saudi breakthrough, the Biden administration dispatched CIA director William Burns to Riyadh to read the Saudis the riot act.

But the top American spy was evidently met with a rebuff from Mohammad bin Salman, simultaneously the crown prince, prime minister and effective ruler of the kingdom.

According to David Ignatius, a Washington Post columnist who reliably reflects U.S. government thinking, Mohammad bin Salman “has told Saudi confidants that the United States remains the kingdom’s partner, but not its only partner.”

The crown prince told these insiders that his predecessors would immediately grant U.S. requests, but according to Ignatius, the current Saudi ruler said “I broke that because I want things in return.”

Among other things, the Saudis are now regularly rebuffing American requests to increase oil production to bring down prices.

Ignatius interprets this as a Saudi message that the “United States doesn’t call the shots in the Persian Gulf or the oil market anymore. For better or worse, the era of American hegemony in the Middle East is over.”

Meanwhile, the Saudis and Iranians are charging ahead with reopening embassies and inviting each other’s heads of state to their respective capitals.

Most importantly, their rapprochement has—once again with skilled Chinese mediation—paved the way for an agreement to finally end the war in Yemen.

That would be the most concrete and immediate benefit to the people of that country, where eight years of Saudi-led, U.S.-backed bombing, war and resulting hunger have killed hundreds of thousands of people amid what the UN has called the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

America on the decline
The latest Saudi moves and their implications for the United States and its client Israel can only be understood in the context of epochal geopolitical changes. Namely, the rise of China as a world power, its deepening alliance with Russia and the erosion of American power.

The latter seems to be accelerating due to Washington’s ill-advised and open-ended commitment to a proxy war against Russia which Ukraine has no chance of winning.

The hubris with which American and European elites embraced that war—just months after their humiliating and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan—has been dashed against the rocks of reality.

For all its massive military spending, the U.S. just doesn’t have the industrial and military resources—especially air defense systems and artillery—to sustain Ukraine in a grueling old-fashioned land war on the European continent.

The shock-and-awe EU and U.S. sanctions that in President Joe Biden’s words would turn the ruble into “rubble” and sink the Russian economy have not only totally failed, but have backfired on their authors.

Now countries around the world are accelerating de-dollarization—trading in their own currencies rather than the American one—in order to shield themselves from Washington’s much-used sanctions weapon.

Even Biden’s Treasury secretary Janet Yellen publicly recognized this month that “there is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar.”

All of this is a far cry from where the United States stood at the end of the Cold War: a military, diplomatic and economic colossus with no rival.

No other power could assemble a half-million strong army and deploy it halfway around the world as the United States did in 1990-91 to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.

That “new world order” of American military and diplomatic dominance—as President George H. W. Bush famously called it—was supposed to last forever.

At least that’s what the neocons who conceived the post-9/11 U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq hoped to ensure.

Unreliable ally
But it hasn’t worked out that way. The disastrous and criminal U.S. aggression against Iraq in 2003 led to no lasting U.S. presence and influence and only ended up strengthening Iran—another target on the neocon hitlist.

It is Chinese companies, not U.S. corporations, which are ultimately rebuilding Iraq.

The Obama administration’s regime change war in Libya overthrew the government of Muammar Gaddafi and replaced it with a lawless failed state and a hub for human trafficking.

The U.S.-led regime-change war in Syria—also long a target of the neocons—using al-Qaida-linked jihadist proxies was stopped in its tracks by Russia’s intervention.

Now, amid the Iran-Saudi rapprochement, Syria is being welcomed back into the Arab fold.

And of course there is the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan.

Why normalize?
Given all this, one can hardly blame the Saudis for looking for a way out of their total dependence on Washington—a relationship that began in 1945 and only intensified in the unipolar moment at the end of the Cold War and following the 1990-91 Gulf War.

Normalization with Israel—on Washington and Tel Aviv’s terms—only made sense in a context where the Saudis had to do whatever it took to please their American patrons. And if that meant selling out the Palestinians and embracing the Zionists, so be it.

In the emerging multipolar world, the Saudis have options and Mohammad bin Salman clearly intends to pursue them. Washington is 7,000 miles from Riyadh and is increasingly seen as mercurial and unreliable.

Iran, meanwhile, will always be next door and Saudi Arabia sits on the same Eurasian continent as Russia and China.

Soaring economic ties mean that China is now Saudi Arabia’s top trading partner.

Ultimately, Saudi security can only be guaranteed by good relations with those it lives near and with whom it trades.

Reality sinking in
As well as leading the Arab restoration of ties with the Syrian government they had been helping the Americans try to overthrow for years, the Saudis are set to welcome the leadership of Hamas in coming days.

This move, which comes after years of estrangement, is “further dimming Israeli hopes for ties” with Saudi Arabia, according to The Times of Israel.

The reality appears to be sinking in even with some of Washington’s most hawkish neocon warmongers that the Saudis are no longer acting as a dependent vassal that can be ordered about to America’s whim.

Earlier this month, hawkish Republican Senator Lindsey Graham met with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

“The opportunity to enhance the U.S.-Saudi relationship is real and the reforms going on in Saudi Arabia are equally real,” Graham gushed after the meeting.

The senator added that he looked forward to “working with the administration and congressional Republicans and Democrats to see if we can take the U.S.-Saudi relationship to the next level.”


This is the same Graham who had promised a “bipartisan tsunami” against Saudi Arabia over the gruesome 2018 murder and dismemberment of Saudi dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA concluded was personally ordered by Mohammed bin Salman.

But Graham made no mention of that unpleasantness, instead focusing on the good news of the Saudis ordering $37 billion worth of Boeing airliners manufactured in South Carolina, the senator’s state.

Israeli delusions
Following his visit to Riyadh, Graham went to Jerusalem, where he told Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. was still working hard to secure Israeli-Saudi normalization.

“I told [Mohammad bin Salman] that the best time to upgrade our relationship is now, that President Biden is very interested in normalizing relationships with Saudi Arabia and in turn, Saudi Arabia recognizing the one and only Jewish state,” Graham informed his Israeli host.

“We want normalization and peace with Saudi Arabia,” Netanyahu reiterated.

This agreement could have monumental consequences, historic consequences both for Israel, for Saudi Arabia, for the region and for the world.

But those are delusions. The Saudi interest in “peace” with Israel peaked when Riyadh felt most vulnerable and needed to shore up its relationship with the U.S. Now that the kingdom is pursuing a multipolar strategy, what is the rush?

The Saudis with their vast oil wealth will always have something to offer other countries, and therefore other options.

What can Israel offer? Its spy technologies and overhyped hi-tech may be useful to some regimes but are hardly unique.

Israel has a tiny and uncompetitive manufacturing industry and isn’t a major energy producer.

It is, rather, a toxic settler-colonial project of the West that is only becoming more horrifying and extreme. It has little prospect of finding another sponsor as devoted and generous as the United States.

That means that as U.S. power continues to recede regionally and globally, so will Israel’s.

At the same time, no one should be under the illusion that the Saudi regime has any principled objection to embracing Israel and Zionism. It has already demonstrated that it is more than willing to do so if it suits regime interests.

But if and when Saudi-Israeli normalization does arrive, it will much more likely be because the Israelis, not the Saudis, are desperately seeking a lifeline wherever they can out of a permanent, existential crisis:

Without massive external support, the Zionist settler-colony in Palestine faces a grim future.

https://mronline.org/2023/04/22/why-the ... i-wedding/

[blindpig]

Israeli Aircraft Launches Heavy Strikes Against Gaza


The number of dead or injured has not been reported. May. 2, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@Filomen03258997

"There have been multiple Israeli airstrikes against several Palestinian Resistance sites."


Israeli aircraft launched heavy strikes on Tuesday against the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military confirmed.

"There have been multiple Israeli airstrikes on a number of Palestinian Resistance sites in the southern Gaza Strip, as well as in the southwest of Gaza City," Al-Jazeera's Gaza reporter Hisham Zaqout said.

Palestinian sources have not reported the number of dead or wounded, nor alleged material damage.

This comes after the Palestinian resistance in Gaza fired rockets at Israeli settlements in response to the death of 44-year-old Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan.


Adnan was the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement. He spent 87 days on hunger strike in Israeli custody, awaiting trial.

Israel forcibly detains, by administrative detention, Palestinians who do not even know what they are accused of. Last year, the number of Palestinian administrative detainees rose to more than 1,000, the highest number in two decades.

Palestinian Prime Minister Muhamad Shtayeh denounced Adnan's martyrdom as a deliberate assassination carried out by the Israeli regime.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Isr ... -0018.html

Hamas Calls on Mediators to Stop Israeli Air Strikes on Gaza


Israeli shelling in Gaza, May 2, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @MuhammadSmiry

Published 3 May 2023 (2 hours 26 minutes ago)

Israeli fighter jets, drones, and helicopters carried out dozens of intensive airstrikes on Hamas military posts in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night.


On Wednesday, Ismail Haniyeh, the politburo chief of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), called on Arab and international mediators to stop the ongoing Israeli aerial strikes on the Gaza Strip.

He held phone talks with Egyptian and Qatari officials, urging them "to stop the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip".

The official also spoke with Tor Wennesland, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), and asked him to pressure Israel to stop the airstrikes on the Gaza Strip.

Meanwhile, Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations are holding intensive talks with the Palestinian and Israeli sides to contain the current wave of tension and reach a ceasefire to stop the hostility.

Israeli fighter jets, drones, and helicopters carried out dozens of intensive airstrikes on Hamas military posts in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday night.


No injuries were reported, but several homes and sites were struck and severely damaged by Israeli missiles all over the coastal enclave that has been ruled by Hamas since 2007.

While Israeli fighter jets were striking the Gaza Strip, militants continued to fire dozens of rockets and projectiles from the coastal enclave at southern Israel, wounding at least nine Israelis and causing damage to buildings and vehicles.

Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), claimed responsibility for firing rockets and projectiles at southern Israel.

The firing of rockets came in response to the death of Khader Adnan, a senior PIJ member who died in Israeli custody after he went on a hunger strike for 86 days.

Adnan's death in Israeli prison has raised tension between Israelis and Palestinians, which has been flaring up since early January.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ham ... -0007.html

[blindpig]

Israeli operation leaves at least three dead in the West Bank


Palestinian citizens condemn the murder of a young Arab in the West Bank during an Israeli military operation. | Photo: EFE
Posted May 4, 2023 (5 hours 47 minutes ago)

The Red Crescent said two Palestinians were injured in the clashes and were taken to hospital.

In a new military operation, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in the West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday.

According to the Ministry of Health, the faces of two of the young Palestinians were completely disfigured due to the impact of bullets, a fact that made it difficult to identify the deceased.

A group of hooded Israeli soldiers entered the al-Yasmina neighborhood and surrounded a house while large army vehicles proceeded to break into the Old City.


Witnesses to the military operation stated that the soldiers opened fire on a house, while preventing the arrival of rescue teams and Palestinian doctors to the area of ​​the attack.

The Red Crescent said two Palestinians were injured in the clashes and were taken to hospital.


The Palestinian cities of Nablus and Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank have been frequently attacked by Israeli forces amid a new escalation of Israeli actions that has left 106 Palestinians dead so far in 2023.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/palestin ... -0006.html

Israel has demolished 290 Palestinian structures in the first quarter of 2023


As a result, 413 Palestinians were displaced, including 194 children. | Photo: palestinalibre.org
Posted 3 May 2023

Compared to the first quarter of last year, the infrastructures attacked by the Zionists increased by 46 percent in 2023.

Data provided by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Palestine revealed that in the first quarter of 2023 alone, the Israeli authorities demolished or confiscated 290 Palestinian structures in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem.

As a result of these actions, 413 Palestinians were displaced, including 194 children, as well as the means and basic services for more than 11,000 people were affected by the confiscations.


Compared to the first quarter of last year, the infrastructures attacked by the Zionists increased by 46 percent in 2023.

Regarding displacements resulting from demolitions, compared to the same period of the previous year, they were 78 percent higher.

It is worth mentioning that the year 2022 was the year in which the most Israeli demolitions were registered in Palestine since 2016.

According to OCHA data, out of 102 buildings, 35 percent of those attacked by the Israeli authorities were residential.

Of the non-residential structures (188) the majority was intended to support agriculture, grazing, commerce in the communities, animal shelters, warehouses, among others for similar purposes.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/ocha-isr ... -0040.html

Google Translator

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Israel agrees to ceasefire after bombing Gaza overnight, one Palestinian killed and five injured
Israel started bombing the besieged Palestinian territory after Hamas and Islamic Jihad launched rockets inside Israel following the death of Khader Adnan. Adnan, an administrative detainee, was on a hunger strike in prison for 87 days

May 03, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch


Photo: Times of Gaza/Twitter)

After carrying out multiple airstrikes overnight in the besieged Gaza strip, Israel agreed to a ceasefire after reaching an agreement with Palestinian resistance groups on Wednesday, May 3. According to Reuters, the ceasefire was mediated by Egyptian, Qatari, and United Nations officials and came into force at around 3:30 am on Wednesday.

The ceasefire is “reciprocal and simultaneous,” according to two unnamed Palestinian officials quoted by Reuters.

The latest Israeli airstrikes targeted multiple civilian areas inside the Gaza strip, including locations south of Gaza city, near Jabalia in the north of the territory, and Khas Yunis in the south. The strikes continued throughout the night on Tuesday and early morning on Wednesday.

According to the Palestinian Information Center, at least one Palestinian was killed and five others were injured in one of the attacks carried out early morning on Wednesday. According to the Palestinian Wafa news agency, the attacks also caused “massive damage” to civilian infrastructure.


Israel claimed that it had responded to multiple rockets being fired from Gaza into its territory following news of the death of Palestinian prisoner Khaler Adnan, a senior member of the Islamic Jihad resistance group, who had been on hunger strike inside an Israeli prison for 87 days to protest his administrative detention. Protest marches were taken out by Palestinians across the occupied territories on Tuesday and general strikes were observed at multiple places to demand justice for Adnan.

Al-Jazeera quoted Islamic Jihad spokesperson Tareq Selmi saying that fighting in Gaza ended on Wednesday morning. It also reported that Hamas confirmed that talks were held between its leaders and the Egyptian, Qatari, and UN officials to end the latest Israeli aggression in Gaza. Both groups admitted that they had jointly responded to the Israeli attacks.

Since 2005, Israel has carried out numerous attacks inside the densely populated Palestinian territory of Gaza—some of them lasting for weeks—killing hundreds and injuring thousands. It has also imposed a strict blockade of the territory. Repeated Israeli attacks and the blockade have destroyed the economy of Gaza, depriving its residents of basic amenities like food, healthcare, shelter, water and electricity.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/05/03/ ... e-injured/

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A 16-year-old teenager was arrested for burning an Israeli flag in Montreal. (Photo: video grab)

Hypocritical outrage: What’s wrong with burning flag of an Apartheid State?
By Yves Engler (Posted May 03, 2023)

Originally published: Palestine Chronicle on May 1, 2023 (more by Palestine Chronicle) |

We are supposed to be outraged by a teenager burning Israeli flags but ignore a publicly funded school indoctrinating six and seven-year-olds to worship a faraway apartheid state.

On Wednesday a Montréal teenager filmed himself taking five Israeli flags attached to the outside fence of Hebrew Foundation School in the borough of Dollard-des-Ormeaux (DDO). With Arabic music playing in the background, he subsequently burned them.

The Israel lobby cried bloody murder and the Montréal Gazette, CBC, CTV, Global and others reported on the incident.

The Liberal MP in the riding, Sameer Zuberi, tweeted,

Images of a young person removing Israeli flags from Dollard’s Hebrew Foundation School, and later burning them, are shocking and abhorrent. Hate, intolerance, and antisemitism have absolutely no place in our community or country. Everyone must be and feel safe in Canada.

For his part, the executive director of Hebrew Foundation School, Glenn Eisenberg, called it an “act of overt Jew-hate” and “there is no doubt this was motivated by antisemitism.”

The Montreal police’s hate crimes unit later arrested a 16-year-old.

But the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects Canadians’ right to burn flags and there is a tradition of doing so. In principle, it is illegal to take someone else’s flags but there’s a good chance the school violated municipal bylaws by placing unsanctioned material on the outside of its fence and public sidewalk. At most, the five flags cost $20 (hundreds of the same style of the flag were handed out at the Israel rally downtown Montréal earlier that day).

The apartheid lobby’s outrage is flagrantly hypocritical. On one hand, they claim Jews find it hateful to see the Israeli flag burned. Simultaneously, however, they ignore how those who’ve been disenfranchised by that state (or oppose apartheid) may find the Israeli flag hurtful or provocative.

According to the Hebrew Foundation School’s Facebook page, the flags that were burned were put up to celebrate a day Palestinians associate with the Nakba (catastrophe). Before the incident was reported the school posted,

Parading the streets of DDO and showing off our pride for the state of Israel! Thank you to the parents who joined the parade in decked-out cars, blasting the best Israeli music!

Is anyone surprised someone reacted negatively to this pro-apartheid rally?

The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs’ Quebec vice-president, Eta Yudin, told the Gazette “This incident is a sad reminder that youth are being radicalized so young.” In fact, he’s got things backward. A quick search of Hebrew Foundation School’s Facebook and Instagram pages reveals an institution indoctrinating young minds into worshiping a violent faraway state that oppresses millions. One post included a big board with the emblem of the IDF and multiple photos of Israeli soldiers. Another post mentions students assisting a charity supporting injured Israeli soldiers while another notes, “Our students and staff were enthralled with Eli’s story as a soldier during the Yom Kippur war.” Set featured image

The grade schoolers often sing Israel’s national anthem and participate in events put on by the explicitly racist Jewish National Fund, which has played an important role in the colonization of Palestine. A large map shown to the grade schoolers at a recent JNF Day included the illegally occupied West Bank as Israel.

Hebrew Foundation School’s promotion of apartheid is, of course, to the detriment of those dispossessed by Israel. The kids are being melded to speak, vote, fundraise, etc. in a manner that will reinforce Palestinian subjugation. Some of the Montrealers may even be inspired to leave Canada’s greatest city to join a military force killing Palestinians and regularly bombing neighboring countries.

Beyond the damaging impact the school has on Palestinians, is it good for kids growing up in Montréal to be obsessed with a faraway land most of their parents or grandparents have probably never lived in? How does that impact their sense of place? While the photos posted by the school on Facebook and Instagram showed many Israeli flags, I didn’t see a single Canadian or Québec flag.

Yet all Québecers are subsidizing the school. In 2021-22 the school received $1.3 million in direct government assistance and hundreds of thousands of dollars more in public subsidies through charitable tax receipts.

It is outrageous that taxpayers are subsidizing private schools indoctrinating kids into celebrating a state human rights groups say is committing the crime of apartheid. A 16-year-old challenging that makes me think that at least some of the kids are all right.

https://mronline.org/2023/05/03/hypocritical-outrage/

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Israeli occupation airstrike on Gaza leaves three Palestinians dead


The Israel Defense Forces quantified 469 rockets fired on Wednesday by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. | Photo: EFE
Published 11 May 2023

Israel's latest siege has left at least 24 Palestinians dead, including women and children, and some 70 wounded.

A new air strike by Israeli forces during the early hours of Thursday against the Gaza Strip left three people killed and others injured, Palestinian media reported.

According to local media counts, Israel's latest siege has left at least 24 Palestinians killed, including women and children, and around 70 wounded in three days.

The Palestinian news agency WAFA indicated that the three deceased on Thursday lived in an apartment building in the city of Khan Younis, located in the southern Gaza Strip, which was attacked by Israeli warplanes.


The attack against the civil building also left seven people injured, one of whom was reported in critical condition.

The Palestinian media detailed that the most recent Israeli military operation against Gaza has left 24 people killed, mostly women and children, while another 64 were injured.

Other media place the death toll at 25 and around 70 the injured.

Hamas, the political party that runs the Strip, has reported that it has launched hundreds of rockets at points in Israel, including the capital Tel Aviv, in response to what it called a "massacre committed by the Israeli occupation."

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF), for its part, quantified 469 rockets fired on Wednesday by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, while they responded with attacks on 133 resistance targets in the Palestinian enclave.

The IDF press office mentioned in an infographic that 333 rockets reached the territory of Israel, of which 153 were intercepted by anti-aircraft defense and more than 100 launches were unsuccessful.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/palestin ... -0004.html

Google Translator

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UN Secretary-General Condemns Civilian Casualties In Gaza


António Guterres urged all parties involved to exercise maximum restraint and work to end hostilities immediately. May. 10, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/@ians_india

Published 10 May 2023

At least 21 Palestinians have been killed and 64 injured in two days of Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Wednesday called for an immediate end to the loss of civilian life in the Gaza Strip.

"The secretary-general condemns the loss of civilian lives, including those of children and women, which he considers unacceptable and must cease immediately," Farhan Haq, UN deputy spokesman, said in a statement.

Guterres is following with deep concern the current escalation of tensions in the Palestinian territories, Haq said, warning of the ongoing escalation and the risk of further loss of life.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 21 Palestinians have been killed and 64 injured in two days of Israeli air strikes on Gaza.


"The Secretary-General also condemns the indiscriminate firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel, which violates international humanitarian law and endangers both Palestinian and Israeli civilians," Haq also said.

"Israel must comply with its obligations under international humanitarian law, including the proportional use of force and taking all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects in the conduct of military operations," the spokesman added.

The Secretary-General urged all parties involved to exercise maximum restraint and work to end hostilities immediately.

The Gaza Ministry of Education has announced a decision to "maintain the suspension of working hours of all educational institutions, schools and kindergartens on Thursday, May 11." Through a statement, the ministry extended "its deepest condolences to the families of the martyrs."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/UN- ... -0024.html

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Israeli forces must be held accountable for killing of journalists: CPJ

According to the CPJ, in the last 22 years, Israeli defense forces have killed at least 20 journalists, 18 of them Palestinians. All the killings have taken place inside the occupied Palestinian territories

May 09, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch


Journalists killed by Israeli armed forces between 2001 to 2022. (Photo: via CPJ)

The international press freedom group Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released a report on Tuesday, May 9, detailing how the Israeli armed forces have killed at least 20 journalists since 2001, without anyone ever being held accountable.

The report titled “Deadly Pattern” claims that the impunity with which journalists have been killed has “severely undermined the freedom of the press, leaving the rights of the journalists in precarity.” It was released ahead of the anniversary of the killing of Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli armed forces.

The Palestinian journalist was shot dead by an Israeli sniper last year on May 11 when she was covering the Israeli army’s raid on a refugee camp in Jenin in the occupied West Bank. One of her colleagues was also injured in the targeted killing—both of them were wearing gear clearly indicating that they were from the press.

Israel first tried to evade responsibility for her death by accusing Palestinians of killing her, but later admitted that its forces may have been responsible. However, Israel has since refused to investigate the killing, calling it accidental. No one has been charged for Akleh’s death, so far.

According to the CPJ, in the last 22 years, Israeli defense forces have killed at least 20 journalists, 18 of them Palestinians. All the killings took place inside the occupied Palestinian territories. The CPJ report also noted that at least 13 of them were killed when they could be clearly recognized as journalists. Despite occasional investigations, no one has ever been charged or held responsible for any of these killings.

“The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the failure of the army’s investigative process to hold anyone responsible is not a one-off event,” said CPJ Director of Special Projects Robert Mahoney. The report says that it “is part of a deadly, decades-long pattern,” which, Mahoney adds, is “designed to evade responsibility.”

The report recommends that Israel, the US, and the international community take actions to prevent such killings of journalists in the future and end the impunity of the Israeli armed forces.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/05/09/ ... lists-cpj/

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Israel at 75: Fascist, apartheid and genocidal watchdog for US imperialism
Richard BeckerMay 11, 2023
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/112875


Palestinian children react to Israel's bombing of a residential Gaza neighborhood. Photo: Prensa Latina.

In three straight days of shelling of civilian areas in Gaza, Israeli planes have killed 30 Palestinians and injured more than 90, including six children and three women. The deliberate bombardment of civilians began the night of May 9, as families slept in their beds. The attacks, allegedly aimed at a few leaders of the Palestinian resistance group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, killed entire families, destroying to date five buildings and damaging more than 300 apartments in what can only be called a massacre. The air strikes continue.

Such is the nature of the Israeli state, which marks the 75th anniversary of its founding on May 14.

Born out of the massacre and displacement of 750,000 Palestinian people in 1948, Israel has always been an artificial colonial state, and all of Israel’s governments have been racist and anti-Palestinian. Attempts were made to hide this, however, along with the fact that Israel has always been an agent of imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, and a dagger aimed at the Arab people.

Today, however, the poison is no longer sugar-coated. Israel is governed by open fascists and self-declared advocates of racist genocide, homophobia and misogyny.

On Dec. 30, 2022, a new government was formed in Israel headed by the murderous Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been prime minister several times before. Israel has a parliamentary system of government meaning that the party or coalition of parties that win a majority of seats in the Knesset — the parliament — gets to name the prime minister and other members of the cabinet who will govern the country until the next election. In this election, Netanyahu’s coalition won 64 of 120 seats. Two of the parties in his coalition are religious fundamentalists — Shas and United Torah Jerusalem — who don’t allow women to serve in government. These two parties won 18 seats between them. And a bloc of two fascist parties — Jewish Power and Religious Zionism — won 14 seats. So, if any of these four parties withdraw support for the government, it would collapse and a new election would have to be held. This partly explains the strong influence that these ultra-reactionary parties have in the government.

This is not to say that the previous government — or any of the governments in Israel’s history — have been progressive. All have been racist and anti-Palestinian. As an example, under the last so-called “centrist” government led by Yair Lapid, multiple attacks on Palestinian homes, olive groves and people took place on more than a daily basis. Between just October 10-21, 2022, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, more than 100 such attacks took place, with the Israeli occupation forces joining in the assault with the fascist settler gangs.

The term “fascist” is not used here in a hyperbolic or exaggerated way. The favorite chant of these fascist gangs is “Death to the Arabs.”

Fascists in key government positions

What is new about the latest government is the presence in key positions of the leaders of the fascists, particularly Itamar Ben-Gvir of the “Otzma Yehuda” (Jewish Power) party and Belazel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party in key positions in the government. A new “National Security Ministry” position was created by the passage of the “Ben-Gvir bill” on December 27. As minister, Ben-Gvir will have control over the infamous Border Police in the West Bank, one of the key instruments of the repressive colonial apparatus.

Nothing could be more revealing about Ben-Gvir than his hero-worship of Baruch Goldstein. In 1994, Goldstein, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen from New York, murdered 29 Palestinian worshippers and wounded 125, including many children, inside the Mosque of Ibrahim, in the West Bank city of Hebron. Ben-Gvir kept a photo of Goldstein on his living room wall until grudgingly taking it down in order to run for the Knesset in 2020, saying, “For the sake of unity and a right-wing victory in the elections, I’m removing the photograph in my living room.” Ben Gvir’s response to the Israeli bombing of Gaza on May 9 that killed 13 people and wounded 20: “It’s a nice start.”

Like Ben-Gvir, Smotrich stands for the expulsion of Palestinians from the West Bank and inside 1948 Israel. In October 2021, he told Palestinian members of the parliament: “You’re here by mistake, it’s a mistake that Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and throw you out in 1948.” Ben-Gurion was Israel’s first prime minister who presided over the mass expulsion of Palestinians.

Also like Ben-Gvir and several other members of the new government, Smotrich is deeply racist, misogynistic and homophobic. In 2016, he Tweeted that he supported the segregation of Palestinian and Jewish women in maternity wards. (Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2016). And in 2015 he said that developers should not have to sell houses to Palestinians (J.Post, July 16, 2015). In a mockery of a Gay Pride parade in 2006, Smotrich organized a “Beast Parade,” made up of animals. Ten years later he Tweeted, “I am a proud homophobe.”

For many years, Smotrich has advocated a “shoot-to-kill policy” for the occupation forces in the West Bank. Asked in 2017 what he would do about a Palestinian child throwing stones at a demonstration, he answered: “Either I will shoot him, or I will jail him, or I will expel him.” (Guardian, Mar. 12, 2017)

Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are not the only ultra-reactionaries in the cabinet. The so-called “Minister for Women’s Advancement,” May Golan, says, “Radical feminism is a hate movement,” and believes women already have too many rights. And it goes on from there.

Massive protests in Israel refuse to bring up violence aimed at Palestinians

Massive anti-regime protests, unprecedented in their size and scope, have erupted in cities and towns across the state of Israel over the past four months.

Demonstrations which had been taking place every Saturday night since mid-January exploded in numbers on March 26, when huge protests followed the firing of the “Defense” Minister, Yoav Gallant earlier the same day. Gallant was dismissed by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for speaking out against a plan for “judicial reform” that if adopted would constitute a legislative coup. The “reform” would be a crucial first step opening the door for a wide-ranging series of reactionary measures by the ruling coalition.

On March 26, hundreds of thousands took to the streets and much of the country was shut down by a general strike the following day. This came after thousands of military reservists announced that they would not report for duty in protest of the plan. On March 27, Netanyahu announced that a final vote would be postponed for four weeks, obviously hoping that the interlude would diminish opposition energy.

The glaring omission in the demonstrations has been any mention of those who are the primary targets of the new regime — the Palestinian people. Even participation by Palestinians living inside the 1948 borders of Israel with the Palestinian flag has been discouraged or, in some cases, prevented. Instead, the protests have been seas of blue and white Israeli flags.

The fascist National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Givr announced that anyone carrying a Palestinian flag in the Jerusalem protests would be arrested and jailed.

He was saved the trouble of carrying out his threat by the protest organizers who made it clear that they didn’t want to “confuse” the message that this is a family dispute among Israel-loyal Zionists. Video has been widely circulated of attacks by protest participants as well as security forces on the tiny handful of who dared to unfurl Palestinian flags.

In exchange for tolerating the pause in voting on the judicial reform, Ben-Givr was promised by Netanyahu that he would be able to set up a “national guard” under his direct command. Such a new military formation is expected to be composed of thousands of volunteers from the most fascistic elements of Israeli society and carry out horrible atrocities against Palestinians.

There can be no democracy in an apartheid system

Leaders of the Israeli protests say that they are fighting for democracy. But it is not possible to speak of democracy in any real sense inside an apartheid system. Under the defunct South African apartheid system, whites could vote, go to court, print newspapers, etc. But no one could credibly call apartheid South Africa a “democracy,” and no one today can credibly claim that Israel does not have an apartheid. system. Whether in Gaza, a huge outdoor prison, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, or inside the 1948 borders, Palestinians live under a system of racist discrimination and apartheid. Apartheid is an international crime.

Given the $3.8 billion in military aid and the invaluable diplomatic/political protection provided by the U.S. to Israel, Washington’s view is of the utmost importance to any Israeli government. The inclusion of undisguised fascists and other extraordinarily regressive ministers doesn’t match up well with the time- worn notion of Israel as ”the only democracy in the Middle East.”

Israel’s key role in the U.S. empire

Why does the U.S. give such generous support to Israel, $3.8 billion per year in military aid along with other forms of aid? This for a country that has a western European standard of living, where 65% of the population vacations abroad every year, has on average 19 days of vacation and universal health care. In other words, much of the Israeli population has a higher standard of living than at least half the U.S. population.

And Congress regularly votes overwhelmingly for nearly every resolution supporting Israel. This has led many people to believe that support for Jewish people is the reason why. But some of the most vicious anti-Semites are among the biggest supporters of funding and arming Israel. It was in 1969, during the administration of Richard Nixon — an extreme hater of Jewish people — that annual U.S. funding for Israel soared from the millions to the billions of dollars annually.

And it is not a question that pro-Israel organizations are well organized, well-funded and influential. Nor is it in dispute that they can stampede nearly the entire Congress into voting for the most one-sided and outlandish positions of support for Israel. But does the pro-Israel lobby — or Israel itself through the lobby — control and direct U.S. policy in the Middle East? To put it another way, does the tail wag the dog? Is it really conceivable that a small, dependent country could call the shots for the most powerful empire in the history of the world? The answer to all of these questions is no. Israel is part of the U.S. global empire, not the other way around.

The pro-Israel lobby has been empowered by the U.S. ruling class and political establishment, which see Israel as an important instrument against the liberation movements of the Arab and other peoples of the Middle East. The pro-Israel lobby has been allowed to grow strong in the same way as the now-declining Cuban counterrevolutionary lobby.

Supporting apartheid South Africa

Israel gave key support to the apartheid government in South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, particularly when it was “inconvenient” for Washington to be seen openly supporting the racist regime. In the mid-1970s, Israel built an electrified fence along the Namibian-Angolan border. Namibia was then a colony of South Africa, and the liberation movement, the Southwest Africa People’s Organization, was waging an armed struggle to free the country. The SWAPO guerrillas had bases in Angola, a country that had just achieved its independence from Portugal.

Israeli-South African collaboration led to South Africa testing a nuclear bomb in the South Atlantic in 1979. From Washington’s point of view, this was a very positive development, one that the U.S. leaders fully supported. The South African apartheid regime not only ruthlessly oppressed the African people inside its own borders and in Namibia, it also served as the enforcer of U.S. and other imperialist interests in all of Africa below the equator. Apartheid South Africa’s counterrevolutionary role in Africa was much like that of Israel’s in the Middle East.

Bolstering Washington’s fascist clients in Latin America

During the 1980s, Israel trained and armed the Guatemalan army when it was carrying out genocide against the Indigenous peoples of that country. The U.S. Congress had cut off direct aid to Guatemala’s extreme right-wing government, but the White House and Pentagon were dedicated to destroying the revolutionary movement. This was at the height of the U.S. proxy wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The Israeli secret police joined with the CIA to train torturers in Chile and other countries of Latin America after CIA-coordinated military coups in the 1970s. Israel gave military aid to Taiwan, and supported right-wing dictatorships in Africa.

Hammering Arab liberation

Nowhere has Israel’s role as a watchdog for imperialist interests more benefited its sponsor than in the Middle East. Israel has been an ever-menacing hammer against the Arab countries — especially more progressive governments — that won real independence in the two decades after World War II.

Israel joined with the British and French imperialists in attacking Egypt and the new Nasser government in 1956.

Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, when it took over the West Bank, Gaza, Golan and Sinai, was a major blow to the more progressive nationalist forces, especially in Syria and Egypt. It was after this war that the U.S.-Israel alliance became what it is today.

In the mid-1970s, Israel intervened to support the fascist elements in Lebanon’s civil war. In 1978 and 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon. In 1982, Israel occupied Beirut and carpet-bombed the capital throughout the summer. In 2006, Israel’s five-week assault on Lebanon deliberately destroyed much of the infrastructure, which had just been rebuilt after years of civil war that Israel helped fuel.

Israeli bombers destroyed an Iraqi nuclear power plant that was under construction at Osirak in 1981. This was at a time when the Iran-Iraq War was raging. The U.S. government was publicly “supporting” Iraq in its war against Iran — where the U.S.-installed Shah had been overthrown in 1979 — and did not want to take responsibility for such an extremely hostile act. As the Iran-Contra affair later revealed, the United States was supporting Iran as well as Iraq in the hopes that they would destroy each other.

In a thousand different ways, the existence of the state of Israel as an artificial and colonial state in the heart of the Arab world has profoundly distorted regional development for the benefit of imperialism, and to the detriment of the Arab and other peoples of the region. Today we are witness to frequent Israeli attacks in western Syria.

The leaders in Washington are above all businesspeople or their representatives. They are investors, who do not hand out money based on sentimentality or generosity. Sentimentality and imperialist diplomacy are mutually exclusive categories. As it has often been said, great powers have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.

U.S. leaders have sent hundreds of billions of dollars to Israel. Most of them view the money as being well spent. Because they are hard-headed investors, that assessment is subject to revision at any time. Having an understanding of Israel’s basic relationship with U.S. imperialism is key for supporters of the Palestinian struggle against Zionism and imperialism today. It is also important to know the conflict’s colonial roots, the origin and development of Zionist thought and the dynamics of the ongoing Palestinian struggle for liberation.

The current crisis in Israel has sent a shock wave through Washington. For a while, U.S. leaders have tried to play down the crisis, with President Biden, Secretary of State Blinken and others making repeated bland statements about “friendship, shared values,” and so on.

But a statement last month from White House National Security Council contained an unusual moment of honesty: “We are deeply concerned by the ongoing developments in Israel, including the potential impact on military readiness which further underscores the urgent need for compromise.”

So, there it is. All the talk about “shared values” and “friendship” is just that, talk. The real concern in Washington is about Israel’s readiness to play its assigned military role in the U.S. empire, the role for which it is so lavishly rewarded.

It’s more than a little ironic, that at the same time as extreme right-wingers, religious fundamentalists and outright fascists have taken control of the Israeli government, and when numerous organizations — Palestinian, U.S, Israeli and other International bodies — have issued reports documenting in great detail the apartheid nature of the Israeli state, supporters of the Zionist state in the U.S. and in other western countries have stepped up their campaign to make it a crime to criticize Israel in any way!

Unable to deny the grotesquely racist character of the Israeli state and government, defenders of Israel have fallen back on the long-discredited tactic of falsely claiming that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism, and therefore any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic.

In their towering arrogance, the rulers of Israel have exposed the profoundly racist character of their state and society. There can be no more credible denials. Now is the time for all people who believe in justice to join in solidarity with the heroic and long-suffering Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination and liberation, and to demand that the U.S stop all funding to Israel.

https://www.liberationnews.org/israel-a ... rationnews

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Around 800,000 people are believed to have been displaced during the Nakba in 1948.

“Israel is built on the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages”
By Peoples Dispatch (Posted May 12, 2023)

Originally published: Peoples Dispatch on May 11, 2023 (more by Peoples Dispatch) |

Today’s Israel is built over the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages which were destroyed by Zionist militias during Israel’s formation in 1948, said professor and historian Ilan Pepe. He emphasized that the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their lands and homes was nothing but ethnic cleansing carried out by Israeli armed forces.

Professor Pepe was speaking during an online event called “75 years of Nakba, 75 years of people’s resistance,” organized by the International People’s Assembly (IPA) on Wednesday, May 10, ahead of the Palestinian Nakba Day which is commemorated annually on May 15.

Thousands of Palestinians were killed and hundreds of thousands (according to some estimates around 750,000 to 800,000) were forcefully expelled by Israeli forces from their lands and villages inside the historic Palestine during the months leading up to Israel’s creation in 1948. Each year, Palestinians commemorate their forceful expulsion and dispossession as the Nakba, or the “great catastrophe” in Arabic.

Apart from Professor Pepe, Bassam al-Salhi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti, and Mehdi Salhi from the Belgium Workers Party also spoke during the event moderated by Georgia Gusciglio of IPA Belgium.

The occupation is unleashing Nakba every day
All the speakers underlined the fact that Nakba was not a one-time event and that Palestinians continue to face Israeli oppression, atrocities, discrimination, killings, and forceful displacement on a daily basis.

Pepe pointed out that contrary to common understanding, even in 1948, the Nakba was not a brief event but, as now established by professional historians, went on for months between November 1947 and December 1948. He claimed that during these months, more than half of all Palestinian villages in historical Palestine were demolished (530 villages) and nearly half of the Palestinian population was forced to become refugees.

Pepe claimed that with the collaboration of the colonial powers at the time, Zionists were able to undertake this ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in order to establish the “facts on the ground” to legitimize their occupation of the land. He categorically refuted Israeli claims that Palestinians were asked to leave their homes by the Arab armies, who were in fact trying to defend the Palestinian land from Israeli aggression.

Now, “the only possible way of rectifying the past evil is by respecting Palestinian refugees’ right to return and by the establishment of a state all over the historical Palestine based on the principles of democracy, equality and social justice built through the process of restitutive justice which compensates the people who have lost land, careers, and lives,” Pepe emphasized.

Palestinian resistance has never ceased
Agreeing with Pepe, Bassam Salhi said that Palestinians “continue to fight against the apartheid Zionist system on a day-to-day basis and a third intifada is already building up” in the occupied territories. However, he also emphasized the need to promote international solidarity movements such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to build greater popular pressure on the occupation.

Mariam Barghouti, who was unable to attend the event, sent her views in writing which were read by Gusciglio. She reiterated that the Nakba neither started nor ended on May 15, 1948. The date is remembered because on this day, the massacre and bloodbath of Palestinians was institutionalized by the creation of Israel. She pointed out that Israel still continues to massacre Palestinians because the world community is silent and the Palestinians are termed as “terrorists.”

Noting that it has been a year since senior Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli forces and no one has been held guilty for the crime yet, and that Gaza is being bombed again—as in the last several years with scores of innocent civilians killed—Barghouti questioned the logic of peace as propagated by the West, which asks Palestinians to make peace with the entity that has killed and massacred their family members.

Mehdi Salihi spoke on the growing strength of Palestinian solidarity movements in Europe. He highlighted that due to growing engagements with larger working class sections across Europe, a new solidarity with Palestinians is emerging. He cited examples of how public campaigns have led to city councils in Barcelona in Spain and Liege in Belgium, among others, taking proactive positions in support of Palestine and against Israeli apartheid.

All speakers noted the need to expand movements like BDS which are facing greater challenges due to the weaponization of anti-Semitism as well as anti-BDS legislation in several countries. They also acknowledged the growing significance of anti-apartheid committees across the globe.

https://mronline.org/2023/05/12/israel- ... -villages/

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75 years of al-Nakba: Palestinian struggle continues against Israeli apartheid
Sameena RahmanMay 15, 2023 19 5 minutes read
Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/112934

May 15, 2023 marks the 75th year of al-Nakba – the Arabic word for catastrophe – inflicted upon the people of Palestine in 1948. Every year, this day is commemorated to support the ongoing resistance against Israeli apartheid. Israel and the U.S. government, on the other hand, celebrate this event as Israeli “independence” – an independence that emerged out of terror, massacres, and mass expulsions.

It is clear to all that Israel could not have continued to exist for the last 75 years without the political, financial and military support of the United States. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. aid – amounting to a staggering $150 billion to date. It is a loyal servant of the interests of U.S. empire in the Middle East.

Ethnic cleansing at the heart of creation of Israel

Extensive media disinformation and propaganda seeks to intentionally complicate the origin story of Israel. However, the destruction of Palestinian lives and homes is an indisputable fact.

With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War One imminent, leaders of Britain, France, and Czarist Russia signed the Sykes-Picot agreement in secret, laying out plans for the divvying up of the Middle East to take as colonies. With its “Balfour declaration” in 1917, British imperialism officially became supportive of the establishment of a Zionist state. In true colonialist fashion, any and all settlement talks entirely excluded Palestinians. This scheme was exposed by the new Bolshevik government after the October Revolution in 1917.

The process of carving up Palestine for the new Israeli state was a repulsive expression of Western colonialism and imperialism. In November 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the British colony of Palestine: 55% for a Jewish state, 44% for an Arab state, and 1% for an international zone. The Palestinians were not consulted before the UN vote.

Plan Dalet unleashes terror against Palestinians

It was clear from the start that the goal of the Zionist leaders was not just to seize territory, rather to uproot and expel as much of the Arab population as possible out of Palestine.

Israel’s Prime Minister Ben-Gurion, although delighted at the UN’s capitulation to illegally carving up Palestine for settlements, was wary of Washington’s shifting sentiments, where the State Department was floating a proposal to scrap partition and replace it with a five-year trusteeship. The Zionist leaders rejected it outright, but were acutely conscious of the importance of maintaining support from the United States.

Confronted with rising political pressures and the loss of support from the British army after its withdrawal, Prime Minister Ben-Gurion green-lighted increasing terror to squash Palestinian resistance, unleashing “Plan Dalet” on March 10, 1948.

Before this plan, the ruling Jewish Agency government could not clear Palestinian villages fast enough and had only pushed out 5% of the Palestinian population. To complete the expulsion of Palestians, Israel’s paramilitary forces launched a systematic terror effort and staged heinous acts of violence against “quiet” Palestinian villages.

The escalation of terror against Palestinian civilians was unimaginable. For example, the Zionists would “plant explosives around Palestinian houses in the middle of the night, drench them in gasoline, and open fire… Arbitrary executions became routine, particularly directed against men and boys who were designated as being of fighting age – whether they were involved in resistance or not.”

Plan Dalet was a precursor for the criminal Deir Yassin massacre in April 1948. Zionist forces wiped out Deir Yessin village on the outskirts of Jerusalem. The brutality of this massacre in particular has become a symbol of the brutal, criminal character of the Israeli government from its very beginning.

No Israel without U.S. support

The U.S. financially supported Israel from as early as the 1950s. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war was a watershed event in the region’s history. Israel captured massive amounts of Palestinian territory and expanded into Syria, a watershed event in the region’s history.

More than 35,000 Arabs were killed, many of them burned to death by Pentagon-supplied napalm bombs. 90,000 Syrians and Palestians were driven out of the Golan region of Syria. This war revealed to U.S. leaders that Israel could be a highly effective weapon against Arab and Palestinian liberation struggles.

Israel receives $3.8 billion in military aid from the United States every year – a sum that is also a subsidy for U.S. weapons corporations, which Israel is required to purchase the weaponry from. While more and more countries around the world join the consensus that Israel is an apartheid state, U.S. diplomatic support remains a vital lifeline. Put simply, Israel could not and would not exist without unilateral U.S. economic, political and military support.

Even with the rise of extremist right-wing forces in the Israeli government, the U.S. government is committed to supporting Israel. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said last year that the “U.S.-Israel partnership … has always been underwritten by the [United States’] ironclad commitment to Israel’s security” – all of this support continues as Israel continues repressing and murdering Palestinians daily.

Al-Nakba and resistance continues

Seven decades after Al-Nakba, the right of return still remains a central issue in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Today, 46% of the six million Palestinian refugees reside inside historic Palestine – the 1948 borders of Israel, or the West Bank and Gaza. Another 42% live within 100 miles of its borders – in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. Israeli troops have been systematically disabling and murdering peaceful Palestinian protesters who resist this injustice – including in horrific fashion during the 2018 Great March of Return protests.

In 2021, the Israeli Supreme Court officially sanctioned apartheid by upholding the constitutionality of a legal statute called Basic Law: Israel – The Nation State of the Jewish People. This law states that “Israel is unique to the Jewish people”, established Hebrew as the official language and officiated “Jewish settlement as a national value”.

In the same year, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Affairs, Fernand de Varennes said “Reports of extreme right-wing violence and disproportional use of force by law enforcement officials during protests in recent weeks, including in Sheikh Jarrah, Damascus Gate and the Al-Aqsa mosque, have led to some of the worst cases of violence against Palestinian[s].” Lack of international consequences continues to embolden the Zionist state to take innocent lives like that of prominent Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh one year ago.

The resistance by the Palestinian people has not let up, and the struggle is joined by more and more people with each passing year. The Palestinian cause is growing in popularity around the world, including in the United States. The Israeli and U.S. ruling classes adamantly oppose the right of return, but the Palestinian struggle for liberation has persisted for generations. The last 75 years has made it clear that this fight for freedom will continue until the collapse of the Israeli apartheid system.

https://www.liberationnews.org/75-years ... rationnews

[blindpig]

The Arabs Are Reunited And Israel Is Out

Just ten weeks ago I was in awe. "This is huge!" I wrote about the surprising news of the restoration of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran after mediation by China (and Russia).

With that it was obvious that the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen between Iran friendly and Saudi sponsored forces would be coming to an end. But no one predicted the speed with which that is now happening.

Today President Assad of Syria was welcomed back in Saudi Arabia to a summit of the Arab League.

Syria's Assad shakes hands, kisses cheeks with onetime foes at Arab League summit

Every handshake would count, and Syria's President Bashar al-Assad had plenty of them at Friday's Arab League Summit - along with hugs and kisses - from his onetime foes in the region.
As he strolled into the summit venue in the Saudi city of Jeddah on Friday afternoon, a beaming Assad extended his arms to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who grabbed them both and kissed Assad once on each cheek.

It was a symbolic moment, sealing Assad's reintegration into the Arab fold after being suspended from the League and isolated by most of the region for over a decade over his crackdown on protests against him.

Attempts by the U.S. and the neoconned foreign minister of Germany Annalena Baerbock to prevent this have failed. Even countries still somewhat hostile to Syria - Qatar, the United Emirates and Marocco - refrained from vetoing the step. Arab unity is more important to them than some out-of-area interests.

As Juan Cole summarizes:

Washington is now the skunk at the diplomats’ party. The Iranians were never likely to trust the Americans as mediators. The Saudis must have feared telling them about their negotiations lest the equivalent of another Hellfire missile be unleashed.
...
Where two sides are tired of conflict, as was true with Saudi Arabia and Iran, Beijing is clearly now ready to play the role of the honest broker. Its remarkable diplomatic feat of restoring relations between those countries, however, reflects less its position as a rising Middle Eastern power than the startling decline of American regional credibility after three decades of false promises (Oslo), debacles (Iraq) and capricious policy-making that, in retrospect, appears to have relied on nothing more substantial than a set of cynical imperial divide-and-rule ploys that are now so been-there, done-that.

With the Arabs united Israel is now an isolated outlier. Salman Rafi Sheikh analyses the new situation it finds itself in:

While the US and Israeli officials have stated that the Iran-Saudia deal doesn’t impact the politics and the possibility of the possible extension of the Abraham Accords, it remains that the deal has not materialised despite various rounds of talks. While one of the key reasons is the change of government in the US, with the Biden administration not sharing the Trump administration’s enthusiasm for both peace in the Middle East and deep ties with Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia, too, is not keen to make this deal. In other words, the China-led ‘new’ peace process in the Middle East is nothing short of a setback for Israel.
...
As irony would have it – and as it may further complicate the US position – China recently offered its services to mediate between Israel and Palestine to develop a realistic peace plan. If the US fails to convince Saudia, Israel, fearing increasing isolation, may ultimately move towards China for a new peace process.

The Saudis are even rebuilding their relations with Hamas, the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood entity which the U.S. has declared to be a 'terrorist group':

For Israel, this move is a major setback for two basic reasons. First, it shows that the Saudi state is not mindlessly pursuing talks with Israel. In fact, Saudi moves are aimed at squeezing regional space for Israel in order to force it to make difficult choices. Secondly, the report shows that Saudi Arabia is actively countering the US in the Middle East. Establishing ties with Hamas directly confronts the US insofar as the Saudis do not consider Hamas as a terror group, at least in the same sense as Washington and Jerusalem evidently do.
...
For Israel, this is a challenging situation. It can either stick to its traditional way of geopolitics and pursue its interests aggressively and risk wider confrontation, or it can turn to China for the ‘new’ peace process. The latter option will, however, further undermine the US position in the Middle East.

I do not see much hope for any talks with Israel as it can not commit to any reasonable solution. Jonathan Cook provides that it is falling apart:

The surprise is that Israel’s woes spring not, as generations of its leaders feared, from outside forces – a combined attack from Arab states or pressure from the international community – but from Israel’s own internal contradictions.

...

Israel’s long-term problem is underscored by the current, bitter standoff over Netanyahu’s plan for a so-called judicial overhaul. The Israeli Jewish population is split down the middle, with neither side willing to back down. Rightly, each sees the confrontation in terms of a zero-sum battle.
And behind this stands a political system in near-constant paralysis, with neither side of the divide able to gain a stable majority in the parliament. Israel is now mired in a permanent, low-level civil war.

Israel's problem, since its founding, are the two distinct groups that it attempted to unite under the roof of Zionism. The more secular and liberal European Ashkenazi have mostly led the country while the Middle Eastern Mizrahim and Ultra orthodox Haredim played a side role. But they have the higher birthrate and are on their way to become the majority. The aims these different groups have are incompatible and feed a permanent conflict:

For decades, the Ashkenazi leadership assumed the religious right, especially the Mizrahim and Haredim, would accept their inferior status in Israel’s Jewish hierarchy so long as they were bought off with privileges over the Palestinians.
But the religious right is now greedy for more than the right to oppress Palestinians. They want the right to shape Israel’s Jewish character too.

The religious fervor the Ashkenazi establishment hoped to weaponize against the Palestinians, especially through the settlement enterprise, has come back to bite it. A monster has been created that increasingly cannot be tamed – even by Netanyahu.

The new Middle East has now only one entity that is swimming against new the Zeitgeist current. That entity is disunited and unable to decide on anything. There is no one on the Israeli side with whom China, or anyone else, could make a deal over Palestine that would stick.

Should the Mizrahim and Haredim win, which they likely eventual will, the more secular Ashkenazi may even start to leave. Israel's capabilities would leave with them. A reabsorption of a less capable and rich Israel into a wider Middle East might then become possible.

It would an astonishing development.

But so is the current one.

Posted by b on May 19, 2023 at 16:54 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/05/t ... .html#more.

[blindpig]

‘Apartheid’ Designation Ignored as Israel Kills Children in Gaza Again
BRYCE GREENE


Washington Post depiction of Israel airstrikes on Gaza (photo: Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images)

Human Rights Watch (4/27/21) recognized Israeli domination of Palestinians as an apartheid system more than two years ago.

Israel’s recent bombing of the Gaza Strip from May 9–13 killed 33 Palestinians, including seven children. FAIR looked at coverage of these attacks from the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN, and didn’t find a single reference to Israel as an apartheid state, despite this being the consensus in the human rights community.

Since apartheid is the overriding condition that leads to Israel’s violent outbursts, and since the US has vigorously supported Israel for the last 60 years, US media should be putting it front and center in their coverage. Omitting it allows Israel to continue to portray any violence from Palestinians as a result of senseless hostility, rather than emerging from the conditions imposed by Israel. For audiences, that distortion serves to justify Israel’s attacks on civilians and continued collective punishment of all Palestinians.

The term apartheid originated with the South African system of systematic racial segregation, which was not unlike Jim Crow in the United States. Apartheid is considered a crime against humanity—defined in the UN’s Apartheid Convention as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.”

The term has been increasingly applied to the Israeli apparatus of checkpoints, segregation, surveillance, arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial murders that it uses to oppress Palestinians. In particular, the exclusion of most Palestinians under Israeli control from participation in Israeli politics, under the pretense that Palestinian areas either are or someday will be independent, mirrors the disenfranchisement of Black South Africans through the creation of fictitious countries known as bantustans.

Human Rights Watch published a report in 2021 titled A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution. That same year, the leading Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, labeled Israel’s rule “a regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.” Amnesty International published a major report in 2022 on “Israel’s Apartheid Against Palestinians.”

After the biggest, most respected human rights organizations labeled Israel an apartheid state, much of the US political establishment erupted in bipartisan indignation in defense of Israel. The New York Times actually refused to even mention the Amnesty International report for 52 days (Mondoweiss, 3/24/22).

‘Trading fire’

The Washington Post (5/12/23) depicts a “face off” between a society under siege and the besieging forces.

Gaza, the Palestinian enclave between Israel and the Mediterranean, is arguably the most abused territory under the apartheid regime. Most of the water in the enclave fails to meet international standards, and was even called “undrinkable” by the United Nations. The illegal blockade regularly prevents important medicine and other supplies from being widely available in the country.

Regular Israeli military attacks on the Gaza Strip are a key part of the repression, killing unarmed civilians, destroying neighborhoods, schools and hospitals—most notably in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. These periodic attacks on the Palestinians, often crassly referred to as “mowing the grass,” have killed 5,460 Palestinians since 2007. International observers have often referred to Gaza as an “open-air prison,” with 2 million people being crammed into 146 square miles.

The recent Gaza coverage fails to capture this context, and instead portrays the situation as a conflict between equals. The Washington Post (5/12/23) described it as a “face off” when (at that point) 30 Palestinians, including six children, were killed by Israeli airstrikes, along with one Israeli killed by Palestinian rocket fire; a New York Times article (5/11/23) described the conflict as Israel and Islamic Jihad “trad[ing] fire.” Another New York Times (5/12/23) headline vaguely referred to the attack as “A New Round of Middle East Fighting.”

CNN (4/12/23) used the classic whitewashing word “clash” in describing the attacks. CNN’s use of the term was even more striking because it appeared in a headline that included the incongruity between 30 dead Palestinians and one dead Israeli.

Outlets gave several “how we got here” pieces that purported to give context for the current escalation (e.g., New York Times, 5/9/23; Washington Post, 5/13/23). Again, not a single article FAIR reviewed used the term “apartheid” or referenced the recent findings from human rights NGOs to describe the current situation in Palestine.

UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese (Guardian, 5/12/23): Israel “cannot justify the occupation in the name of self-defense, or the horror it imposes on the Palestinians in the name of self-defense.”

On a recent trip to London, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories, criticized the the tendency to omit important context and trends in the discussions about Israel (Guardian, 5/12/23):

For me, apartheid is a symptom and a consequence of the territorial ambitions Israel has for the land of what remains of an encircled Palestine…. Israel is a colonial power maintaining the occupation in order to get as much land as possible for Jewish-only people. And this is what leads to the numerous violations of international law.

Member states need to stop commenting on violations here or there, or escalation of violence, since violence in the occupied Palestinian territory is cyclical, it is not something that accidentally explodes. There is only one way to fix it, and that is to make sure that Israel complies with international law.

The dominant and overriding context of anything that happens in Israel/Palestine is the fact that the state of Israel is running an apartheid regime in the entirety of the territory it controls. Any obfuscation or equivocation of that fact serves only to downplay the severity of Israeli crimes and the US complicity in them.

https://fair.org/home/apartheid-designa ... aza-again/

************

Palestinian Resistance’s Tactical Triumph: Missiles Multiply Despite Losses
MAY 26, 2023


Photo Credit: The Cradle

In its latest act of aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip, Israel dealt a severe blow to the resistance movement Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). High-ranking commanders, including the majority of the members of the group’s military council in Gaza, were assassinated in rapid succession during the battle.

These targeted killings sought to weaken the PIJ’s leadership structure and disrupt the organization’s command and control. However, despite these setbacks, the PIJ pulled some new tricks out of its hat, managing to expand the range of its missile strikes, which reached as far as Tel Aviv.

To gain a deeper understanding of these strategic PIJ developments and its advancements in retaliatory strikes, it is important to examine two significant past military operations: “Black Belt” (2019) and “Breaking Dawn” or “Unity of Fronts” (2022).

Learning from the past
Those two battles were triggered by the killing of prominent leaders in the PIJ’s military wing, the Quds Brigades, which appears to have further emboldened Israeli occupation forces in their policy of targeted assassinations. From Israel’s perspective, the perceived political gains outweighed the costs incurred during these two rounds of conflict.

In November 2019, following the assassination of Quds Brigades commander Baha Abu al-Ata, the fighters responded recklessly without proper planning. Rocket launchers were emotionally fired immediately after the assassination, making the missile unit vulnerable to Israeli detection.

As a result, the Quds Brigades suffered significant losses, with around 27 missile force staff members, including three field commanders, being killed. This battle also had a secondary, more dangerous consequence: It established an Israeli policy of singling out a specific resistance group, leaving the PIJ to face their fate alone without the participation of other key resistance elements like Hamas.

During the 2022 “Unity of Fronts” battle, a similar fate befell the Quds Brigades following the arrest of PIJ leader Bassam al-Saadi. Although they fired over 400 rockets at Israeli settlements in retaliation and employed improved tactics compared to the previous battle, Palestinian public opinion fell victim to Israeli propaganda.

The Israelis’ narrative portrayed the PIJ as endangering the lives of two million people in the Gaza Strip—and neglecting the plight of 4,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails—for the purpose of securing the freedom of just one person. Furthermore, when some errant rockets fell in Gaza due to technical errors, doubts were raised about the PIJ’s ability to successfully wage war independently.

Trying new tactics
But on May 9, a significant shift occurred in the conflict. Despite the initial heavy blow from Israel’s first strike, which resulted in the loss of three prominent PIJ leaders—Khalil al-Bahtini, Tariq Ezz al-Din, and Jihad Ghanem—the movement’s response was purposefully delayed for approximately 35 hours.

This unusual stalling tactic confused Israeli calculations. During the brief lull, discussions were held between the PIJ, Hamas, and other resistance factions to ensure coordination and readiness for the upcoming fight. On May 10, “Operation Revenge of the Free” was launched, as announced by this Joint Operations Room.

The PIJ’s initial missile response unfolded in three stages. The first stage employed a “dumping and neutralization” tactic, focusing on Israeli settlements bordering the Gaza Strip within a 15-kilometer range. These targets included Sderot, Nahal Oz, Nativ Ha’atsarah, and Kerem Shalom.

The resistance’s aim was to first deplete the batteries of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Following this, missile barrages were launched at about 30 cities, reaching depths of 20 to 75 kilometers into Israeli territory. Targets included Ashkelon, Ashdod, Beersheba, and extended all the way to Tel Aviv, Rishon Lezion, and Palmachim. By the end of the first day, the Quds Brigades had fired approximately 400 rockets.

Discussions in the joint command center
Amidst these developments, discussions were ongoing in the Joint Operations Room, while reports in the Arab and international media hinted at an imminent ceasefire. Egyptian news channels reported that Cairo’s intelligence efforts had led to a truce agreement between Israel and the Joint Ops Room.

This aligned with the Israeli security establishment’s assessment that the scale of retaliation would not surpass what was witnessed in the 2019 and 2022 rounds. The Israeli assessment viewed the PIJ as incapable of waging a prolonged battle, even with the involvement of smaller military factions such as the Al-Nasser Salah al-Din Brigades of the Popular Resistance Committees, The Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the National Resistance Brigades of the Omar al-Qasim Forces, and the Mujahideen Brigades.

Informed sources reveal to The Cradle that Egyptian intelligence did indeed reach an agreement of sorts with the leadership of Hamas, as a representative of the Joint Ops Room, on the first day of the conflict. However, a deal did not take place because it excluded any significant achievements for the Palestinian resistance.

During this time, Egyptian mediators attempted to establish contact with PIJ Secretary General Ziyad al-Nakhala, but he did not respond to the call. Subsequently, a phone conversation took place between Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas’s political bureau, and Nakhala. Then, at approximately 7:00 p.m. on May 12, the Quds Brigades responded to the Egyptian proposal by launching a series of missile strikes targeting Israeli cities.

‘Deterring’ the Resistance
Despite the ongoing and surprising resilience displayed by PIJ, a statement on May 14 by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted that the balance of deterrence had been altered in Israel’s favor:

“Since Guardian of the Walls [Sword of Jerusalem or Sayf al-Quds], Hamas has not fired a single rocket into our territory. They are deterred. Operation Guardian of the Walls dealt Hamas the hardest blow in its history and caused a change in the deterrence equation and it has been working for two years now.”

“Our intention in Operation Shield and Arrow was to change the balance of deterrence against Islamic Jihad. The difference comes not only because of the targeted assassinations that we have been doing for the 16 years that I have been prime minister, but that we did so so calmly and effectively. We took down half of Islamic Jihad’s leadership in a surprise blow, and the other half during the operation.”

Assassinations: A failed policy
Despite the heavy losses suffered in the initial strike, the subsequent days of fighting proved equally devastating. Israel continued its targeted assassinations, eliminating key figures such as the commander of the missile force in the Quds Brigades, Ali Hassan Ghali, and his deputy, Ahmed Abu Daqqa, followed by the assassination of Operations Staff Commander Iyad al-Hassani on the fourth day.

Remarkably, after each targeted killing, the Quds Brigades intensified its missile strikes and introduced new tactics into the battle. This had the effect of shrouding the Israeli ground forces, which had misread the PIJ’s capabilities, in the fog of war.

The Quds Brigades employed tactics such as utilizing suicide drones, anti-tank missiles, and launching intensive mortar attacks. Its intention was clear: to demonstrate through firepower and brute force that the policy of targeted assassinations had not diminished its effectiveness in the field.

Not taking the bait
A source in PIJ tells The Cradle that the Quds Brigades leadership had carefully analyzed the lessons learned from the previous two battles. According to the source, Israel’s objective was to provoke another “emotional reaction” from the Brigades, through heavy firepower. To counter the Israeli tactic, the Brigades have focused on strengthening the discipline of field fighters. “The instructions were clear: do not shoot and wait for orders.”

This discipline led to an expansion of the area of missile launch sites, which reduced the effectiveness of Israel’s technological monitoring of the firing points, and weakened the possibility of identifying and targeting them.

The source explains: “When we decide to launch 50 missiles, we do so from 10 launch points, although we are able to launch them all from one or two points. By doing so, we preserve the safety of fighters and launchers.”

According to Israeli statistics, PIJ alone fired about 1,500 missiles, “which completely paralyzed the cities of the south, and caused the evacuation of 12,000 settlers,” killing an Israeli and a foreign worker, and injuring 77 others, in addition to hundreds of minor injuries and panic attacks.

These numbers, according to Palestinian researcher Ismail Muhammad, show that the PIJ was able, during only a 10-month interim between operations “Unity of the Fronts” and “Revenge of the Free,” to rebuild its missile stockpile and to address all previous technical problems. As Muhammad tells The Cradle:

“Despite the losses at the command level, no significant field losses were recorded. Four field fighters from the artillery unit and the armor unit were martyred, while the losses in the missile unit remained zero.”

“The continued firing of missiles at the same pace until the last moment indicates that that the assassination of the commanders did not affect the effectiveness of the field, and that the Brigades were able to assign new commanders, whom Israel described after the bombing of the city of Jerusalem on the last day as crazier than their predecessors.”

Down but not out
Shortly before the ceasefire took effect, PIJ launched over 120 rockets targeting Ashkelon, Tel Aviv, Palmachim, Rishon Lezion, and Rehovot. This was an attempt by the PIJ to remind Israelis that its military capabilities remained intact and plentiful and that it retained the upper hand, even though the ceasefire deal did not accurately reflect PIJ’s gains on the ground.

During the ceasefire negotiations, the PIJ was successful in persuading mediators to include the phrase “stop targeting individuals” in the agreement, signaling a halt to assassinations. However, it is widely acknowledged that Israel is unlikely to honor this commitment.

The military assessment of Operation Revenge of the Free is that it allowed the Quds Brigades to increase the cost for Israel by singling out PIJ cadres. Despite the loss of six commanders, a source confirms to The Cradle that the Brigades appointed new commanders during the battle who effectively resumed operations without missing a beat.

Predictably, Israel has already deviated from the spirit of a ceasefire by supporting the controversial Flag March of Jewish extremists through East Jerusalem, assisted and emboldened by the presence of 3,200 Israeli security forces. This visceral challenge to Palestinians represents a crucial test not only for PIJ but also for all resistance factions that have pledged to disrupt Israel’s provocative actions in Jerusalem.

The Flag March aims to project a false “image of victory” for Netanyahu and restore Israel’s deterrence – something he failed to achieve during the five-day confrontation with the second most powerful organization in the Gaza Strip in terms of strength and military capabilities, and arguably, the most militant and uncompromising in its armed struggle for national liberation.

https://orinocotribune.com/palestinian- ... te-losses/

[blindpig]

Israel to Ease Process for Expanding West Bank Settlements


Rubble from a school destroyed by the Israeli occupation forces, West Bank, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @PetraSchur

Published 19 June 2023 (58 minutes ago)

"Every construction on the occupied territories is illegal, rejected, and will be legally pursued everywhere. Israel is playing with fire," the Palestinian presidency said.


During a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, the Israeli government authorized pro-settlement Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to assume main responsibility for settlement planning and construction in the West Bank, and shortened political approval process for settlement planning and construction that had been in place for 25 years.

The Palestinian presidency spokesperson Nabil Abu Rudeineh said that Palestine rejects the Israeli government's decision to accelerate settlement construction.

The Palestinian leadership also rejects the Israeli government's authorization of Smotrich to be in charge of making decision for settlement planning and construction, stressing that all settlements are "illegal" and "Israel has violated international laws and signed agreements."

"Every construction on the occupied territories is illegal, rejected, and will be legally pursued everywhere. Israel is playing with fire, whether in the Jerusalem or settlement issues, despite fully aware that these are Palestinian, Arab, and international red lines," Abu Rudeineh said, adding that "such a behavior will lead to more tension on the ground."

Abu Rudeineh held the U.S. responsible for allowing Israel "to cross the red lines," adding that "Israel cannot set up a single stone without an American decision."


Israel took control of the West Bank in 1967 and established dozens of settlements there, which are considered as violations of international law.

The settlement issue is one of the most prominent aspects of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and one of the main reasons for halting the previous round of U.S.-sponsored peace talks between the two sides in 2014.

On Sunday, the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) said that "the settlement expansion projects will not give the occupation legitimacy on our land and that our people will resist them with all available means."

Hamas called on the international community and the United Nations "to take serious and urgent steps to stop these projects that will bring more escalation in the region and threaten peace and security."

Palestinian Islamic Jihad spokespersonTariq Selmi warned Israel of the consequences of the decision "which will be confronted with more Palestinian resistance and steadfastness."

[youtube]http://twitter.com/i/status/1641508658482667540[/youtube]

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Isr ... -0009.html

[blindpig]

Israel Cannot Rebut Apartheid: The Twenty-Sixth Newsletter (2023)

JUNE 29, 2023


Samia Halaby (Palestine), Palestine, from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River, 2003.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 24 June 2023, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) Herzl Halevi, Chief of Shin Bet (Intelligence) Ronen Bar, and Police Commissioner Kobi Shabtai released a joint statement. They pointed to ‘violent attacks… by Israeli citizens against innocent Palestinians’, which they characterised as ‘nationalist terror in every sense’. Such a statement is rare, particularly the description of the violence as ‘nationalist terror’ and the rendering of Palestinian victims as ‘innocent’. Typically, high-ranking officials in the Israeli government portray such attacks as retaliation for terror attacks by Palestinians.

Three days before this statement, the US government said it had heard ‘troubling reports of extremist settler violence against Palestinian civilians’. Settler groups – or, more accurately named, Israeli nationalist terrorist groups – have been running rampages across the West Bank alongside the Israeli armed forces, killing Palestinians at will to sow fear in this part of Palestine and urging further ethnic cleansing, euphemistically referred to as ‘demographic engineering’.

Israeli violence against Palestinians is not new, but it has been escalating rapidly. From January to May of this year, the United Nations calculated that Israeli forces have killed 143 Palestinians (112 in the West Bank and 31 in Gaza) – more than twice the number of Palestinians killed in the same period last year. In 2022, 181 Palestinians were killed in total (151 in the West Bank and 30 in Gaza). Meanwhile, UN agencies found that 2022 was the sixth year of consecutive annual increases in settler attacks, which have been rising since 2006, after the Second Intifada was crushed by Israel. In 2009, the UN warned that 250,000 Palestinians in 83 communities in the West Bank ‘are at risk of heightened violence’ from Israeli settlers. They called these ‘price tag’ attacks because the settlers want to exact a high price from Palestinians for their existence in lands that Israelis call Judea and Samaria.


Tayseer Barakat (Palestine), Shoreless Sea #11, 2019.

At a cabinet meeting on 25 June, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told his colleagues that he too found the ‘calls to grab land illegally and actions of grabbing land illegally’ to be ‘unacceptable’. A close reading of Netanyahu’s statement to the cabinet finds, however, that he did not differ with the policy of land grabs and demographic engineering. The violent actions of the settlers, he said, ‘do not strengthen settlement – on the contrary, they hurt it. I say this as someone who doubled settlement in Judea and Samaria despite great and unprecedented international pressure to carry out withdrawals that I have not carried out and will not carry out’. These settlements, which Netanyahu extols, are illegal according to international law. As recently as 2016, the UN Security Council voted for resolution 2334, which ‘condemn[s] all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character, and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes, and displacement of Palestinian civilians’.

Over the past few years, a suite of policies and actions by the Israeli government has raised the spectre of apartheid, the Afrikaans word meaning ‘the state of being apart’. This term has increasingly been used to describe the institutionalised discrimination of Palestinians by Israel within the 1948 lines of Israel, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (the OPT, which is made up of East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank) from 1967, and exiled in the diaspora. In 2017, the UN’s Economic and Social Commission of West Asia (ESCWA) published a strong report, Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid. ESCWA’s then leader, Rima Khalaf, said that Israel’s apartheid regime works on two levels. First, it fragments the Palestinian people (inside Israel, the OPT, and the diaspora). Second, it oppresses Palestinians through ‘an array of laws, policies, and practices that ensure domination of them by a racial group and serve to maintain the regime’.

The use of the word apartheid to describe Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is now nearly ubiquitous. Amnesty International, for instance, published a 2022 report with a powerful title: Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity. In a blunt conclusion, Amnesty wrote:

Israel has perpetrated the international wrong of apartheid, as a human rights violation and a violation of public international law wherever it imposes this system. … [A]lmost all of Israel’s civilian administration and military authorities, as well as governmental and quasigovernmental institutions, are involved in the enforcement of the system of apartheid against Palestinians across Israel and the OPT and against Palestinian refugees and their descendants outside the territory.


Dina Mattar (Palestine), Untitled 1, 2019.

From 20 to 22 June, two former senior UN officials, Ban Ki-moon (former UN secretary-general) and Mary Robinson (former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and president of Ireland), visited Palestine and Israel. They went to the region on behalf of The Elders, a group formed by Nelson Mandela in 2007 to bring together former government staff and top officials from multilateral institutions to address the dilemmas of humanity. When they left Tel Aviv, the two Elders published a scathing report on their visit.

Based on their conversations with human rights organisations and their own investigations, Ban and Robinson pointed to the ‘ever-growing evidence that the situation meets the international legal definition of apartheid’. When they discussed this evidence with Israeli officials, they ‘heard no detailed rebuttal of the evidence of apartheid’. The Government Guidelines for Netanyahu’s cabinet, Ban and Robinson pointed out,

clearly show an intent to pursue permanent annexation rather than temporary occupation, based on Jewish supremacy. Measures include the transfer of administrative powers over the occupied West Bank from military to civilian authorities, accelerating the approval processes for building settlements, and constructing new infrastructure that would render a future Palestinian state unviable.

These are powerful words from senior officials who held two of the highest offices of the United Nations.



On 25 March 1986, the Israeli authorities arrested Walid Daqqah, who is from the town of Baqa al-

Gharbiyyeh. He was sentenced to 37 years in prison for being part of a group that killed the Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam. His imprisonment violates the Oslo Accords of 1993, which say that all Palestinian prisoners held before the signing of the agreement must be released. His 37-year prison term expired on 24 March 2023, but Daqqah, who since his imprisonment has become an accomplished novelist, remains incarcerated on a new charge from 2018 for smuggling cell phones into the prison. This extended his sentence by two more years. Now 61 and battling cancer (a diagnosis he received in 2022), Walid was scheduled for a parole hearing, but this has been postponed by the Israeli government.

Amidst increasing international outcry, the International Union of Left Publishers, of which Tricontinental: Institute of Social Research is a member, has released a statement calling upon the Israeli government to release Daqqah. Please read it below:

We, the International Union of Left Publishers (IULP), call on all publishers, writers, artists, intellectuals, and people of conscience to demand the immediate release of the revolutionary writer and thinker Walid Daqqah from the jails of the Israeli Occupation.

Walid Daqqah has been imprisoned since the age of 25 for his resistance to the Israeli Occupation and his defence of the Palestinian people. Now 61, he has endured this unjust imprisonment for 37 years. His medical condition is rapidly deteriorating, and it is critical that he receive a bone marrow transplant and other urgent medical care, but he has been denied medical treatment by the Israeli authorities.

As one of the most important thinkers and visionaries of the Palestinian resistance today, Walid Daqqah has been subjected to extra levels of the routine torture, abuse, and neglect that Palestinian prisoners face in the Occupation’s jails. He is a voice of the people, a voice that the Occupation fears and hopes to silence. But though his body is behind bars, his voice has broken free through his novels, essays, and letters, which have nourished and motivated the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, the resistance, and the international solidarity movement in all corners of the world. Walid Daqqah’s imprisonment is a violation of his most basic human rights, those of his family and of his people, and also a violation of the rights of all people in struggle who deserve to learn from, listen to, and exchange with him and his ideas.

The ongoing imprisonment of Walid Daqqah is a sentence to death, and the world is witness to the US-backed Israeli Occupation’s attempts to silence the Palestinian resistance by any means possible. We demand the immediate release of Walid Daqqah to his family and immediate access to medical care. We raise our voices in firm solidarity with Walid Daqqah, the almost 5,000 Palestinian prisoners who remain unjustly behind bars, and the imprisoned and repressed voices of reason who suffer from the attacks of imperialism across the world.

In 2018, Daqqah published his first novel for children, The Oil’s Secret Tale. It tells the story of 12-year-old Jood, who goes to see his father in prison for the first time but is denied access by the authorities. The boy travels around Palestine, meeting with Samour the rabbit, Abu Reesha the bird, Ghanfour the cat, Abu Nab the dog, and an ancient olive tree, Um Rami, and speaking about the Israeli apartheid regime. Um Rami, who was to be felled by the Israeli authorities to free up land for an illegal settlement, tells Jood that she has an oil he can rub on his body to make him invisible. He uses the oil, walks into his father’s cell, and says to his bewildered father, ‘I am your son Jood’.

Warmly,

Vijay

https://thetricontinental.org/newslette ... id-daqqah/

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“How many more will Israel kill with impunity?”

The Palestinian Authority, the BDS movement, and activists around the world condemned the exclusion of Israel from the UN Secretary General’s annual “list of shame.” The list includes parties and states who recruit and use children, kill and maim them, commit sexual violence against them, or attack schools and hospitals

June 29, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch


Palestinian children killed by Israeli gunfire. (Photo: Wafa)

The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in a statement on Tuesday, June 27, condemned UN Secretary General António Guterres’ failure to include Israel in his annual “list of shame” despite acknowledging its widespread crimes against children in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The statement notes that Guterres “has ignored the call from numerous human rights groups and refused to add Israel’s occupation army to the list” of parties endangering children in “armed conflict.”

Guterres submitted this year’s report to the UN Security Council on June 22. It includes parties who recruit and use children, kill and maim them, commit sexual violence against them, or attack schools and hospitals. It also lists countries and parties which hamper disbursal of aid to children in any way.

Palestinian Authority also questioned the exclusion of Israel from the list.


The deliberate exclusion of other countries in this year’s list has also invited criticism. For example, the list includes Russia for the first time. However, it excludes Ukraine which is accused of similar crimes.

The report notes that there were 24,300 violations against children across the world in 2022. Democratic Republic of Congo, Israel and occupied Palestinian territories, and active conflict zones in Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Yemen and Somalia had the largest number of verified violations.

Israel is one of the worst violators against children
BDS National Committee, a coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations leading an international movement of boycott and sanctions against Israel to force it to end the occupation of Palestine, noted that despite being one of the worst violators against children for decades, Israel has never been on the list.

The report acknowledges that at least 42 Palestinian children were killed and at least 933 others were injured by the occupying Israeli forces in 2022, a highest in the last 15 years. The BDS statement says that “apartheid Israel’s occupation forces” have already murdered at least 31 Palestinian children this year.

“How many more will Israel kill with impunity before the UN ends its racist double standards and holds Israel accountable?” the statement asks.

“The BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian society, condemns in the strongest terms this blatant colonial hypocrisy.”

Israeli forces have repeatedly bombed and demolished schools in occupied Gaza and the West Bank apart from killing children in indiscriminate firing and raids. Israel tries to ward away criticism by calling such incidents “collateral damage” and no one is held accountable in most of the cases.

According to estimates provided by Defense of Children International Palestine (DCI-P), more than 1,000 Palestinian children have been killed in numerous air raids carried out by Israeli forces inside besieged Gaza since 2005. During the recent Israeli raids in Gaza in May, at least seven Palestinian children were killed.

More than 2,270 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli forces in all the occupied territories since 2000, according to DCI-P. Thousands others have been injured or maimed.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/06/29/ ... -impunity/