Palestine

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Sep 17, 2018 11:27 am

US revokes PLO ambassador family visas
US has taken its attempts to blackmail Palestinians to new level, says official

Published: 14:39 September 17, 2018 Gulf News
Reuters

Washington - The United States revoked visas for the family of the Palestine Liberation Organisation ambassador, the envoy said on Sunday, the latest development in the worsening relations between the Trump administration and Palestinian leadership.
Ambassador Hussam Zomlot, head of the PLO General Delegation to the United States, said his family, including his two young children, left the United States after being informed their visas would now expire when the diplomatic office is closed next month. The visas were originally set to expire in 2020.

The Trump administration said last Monday the office in Washington would close. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the PLO’s executive committee, criticised the Trump administration for being “vindictive”. “As if the announcement that the US would close our office in Washington, DC was not enough, this vindictive action by the Trump administration is spiteful,” Ashrawi said in a statement.
“The US has taken its attempts to pressure and blackmail the Palestinians to a new level.” Zomlot said in an interview that two of his embassy employees met last week with State Department staff, who had requested the meeting.


“The State Department informed our colleagues, as part of the discussion on the closure, that the visas of my wife and children are dependent on the PLO delegation and as such will not be valid after the closure of the office and that if they wanted to stay they would have to change their immigration status” Zomlot said.
He added: “This goes against diplomatic norms. Children, spouses and family have nothing to do with political rows.” Last month, the United States halted all funding to a UN agency that helps Palestinian refugees.
The Palestinian leadership has angered the White House by boycotting its peace efforts since President Donald Trump recognised occupied Jerusalem as the Israeli regime’s capital and moved the embassy there, reversing decades of US policy.
The status of occupied Jerusalem - home to sites holy to the Muslim, Jewish and Christian religions - is one of the biggest obstacles to any peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
Palestinians claim occupied East Jerusalem for the capital of an independent state they seek.
Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, is leading an effort to craft a “peace plan” meant to launch negotiations between the Israeli occupation regime and the Palestinians to end a decades-long conflict. A decision on when the initiative would be rolled out has not yet been made.

https://gulfnews.com/news/mena/palestin ... -1.2279357
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue Nov 13, 2018 8:03 pm

The Short War With Gaza Exposed Israel's Weakness
Last week a ceasefire was agreed upon between Palestinian factions in Gaza and Israel:

The aim of the change, in a plan mediated by Egypt and with money supplied by Qatar, is to provide much-needed relief for Gaza, restore calm on the Israeli side of the border and avert another war.
On Sunday night Israeli special forces broke the ceasefire by invading Gaza under disguise. Such incursions happen quite often but are usually left unreported. The invaders wore civilian clothing and some were cloaked as women. Their cars arrived at the house of a local Qassam commander but suspicious guards held them up. A firefight ensued in which 7 Palestinians and 1 Israeli officer were killed. It is not clear what the intent of the Israeli raid was. A car left behind held what appeared to be surveillance equipment. The intruders fled back to Israel.

It is likely that rivalry within the Israeli government was behind this provocation:

[T]he perception that Israel, by allowing the fuel and cash shipments into Gaza, was paying off Hamas set off acrimonious wrangling between two rival right-wing members of Israel’s security cabinet.
Earlier Sunday, Education Minister Naftali Bennett called the cash infusion “protection money.” Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman accused Mr. Bennett of having supported such payments and of having opposed in recent weeks the more aggressive military reprisals against Hamas that Mr. Lieberman favored.
...
By night’s end Mr. Netanyahu had cut short his trip [to Paris] and was flying back to Israel in response to the Gaza hostilities.

Did Lieberman order the incursion to undercut Netanyahoo ceasefire and his rival Bennet?

Image

The breach of the ceasefire by Israel set off another round of tit for tat strikes. A commando unit of Hamas' Qassam brigade launched an attack against a bus that had carried Israeli soldiers to the border. To avoid further escalation the shooter waited until the soldiers were out of the way before hitting it. Only the driver was injured. Then the Israeli air force destroyed the al-Aqsa TV station in Gaza city after notifying the Palestinians of its intent. It also damaged a university building. Rocket volleys from Gaza followed and the Israeli air-force hit several buildings. After 48 hours the ceasefire was renewed.

During the conflict the Palestinian side demonstrated a series of new capabilities:

The Palestinian command published a video of the strike against the bus by a Kornet anti-tank guided missile (ATGM). Since it lost dozens of tanks to ATGM attacks in the 2006 war against Hezbullah in Lebanon, the Israeli army is extremely afraid of such missiles. The arrival of these weapons in the besieged Gaza will be a serious concern.
The Palestinians also launched over 460 artillery missiles and mortars within 25 hours. This by far exceeds the firing rate during Israel's 2014 war on the Gaza strip. Some of these missiles had a larger range then previous models. Israel's Iron Dome missile defense systems fired some 100 missiles but their accuracy is questionable and teh price high. Each Iron Dome missile costs some $65,000 while a mortar round or rocket costs a few hundred dollar. Many of the Palestinian rockets reached their targets in the Zionist settlements Ashkelon, Netivot, and Sderot.
Israel announced only two hits on missile launching cells. It seems that the Palestinians have perfected their camouflage and remote firing capabilities.
The rival Palestinian groups in Gaza -Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others- operated under a central command. No group claimed missile strikes for itself. In the past each volley of missiles was followed by a news statement in which this or that group claimed responsibility. This time all groups worked from a common operations room. None released responsibility claims or other information that would help Israel's intelligence.
It was Israel that practically begged to return to the ceasefire. Egypt led the negotiations:

Earlier Tuesday, the Political-Security Cabinet meeting that convened following the escalation in the south came to a halt after seven hours. After hearing the army's and the security establishment's assessments, the cabinet instructed the IDF to continue to operate in Gaza as necessary.
All the officials from the defense establishment who participated in the cabinet meeting — IDF chief of staff, the head of Military Intelligence, the head of the Shin Bet, the head of the Mossad, and the head of the NSC— supported the Egyptian request for a cease-fire.
...
"If we had intensified the attacks, rockets would have been fired at Tel Aviv," senior cabinet officials said.

Since 15:30 local time today the situation is again quiet and calm. But the squabbling within the Israeli cabinet immediately resumed:

All the ministers— including Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Minister Naftali Bennett—did not object to a cease fire.
Following this report, the Defense Ministry said that Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman's support of a cease-fire deal were "fake news." The statement said that the Defense Minister's position was consistent and had not changed. Ministers Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked and Ze'ev Elkin also said they did not support a cease-fire deal with Hamas.

In total 13 people were killed in Gaza and at least 2 on the Israeli side. A Hamas spokesperson accused Lieberman of being responsible for the breach of the ceasefire and demanded that Netanyahoo fires him.

The short conflict demonstrated that:

Israel is deterred. It does not want to launch another war on Gaza.
The siege of Gaza, by Israel, Egypt and by the Palestinian authority under Mahmoud Abbas, failed. The reputational cost of the siege became too high after Israel killed some 160 Palestinians during weekly protests along the demarcation fence. It had to allow diesel fuel and money from Qatar to reach Gaza.
The siege failed to prevent that Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other groups acquired a larger number of missiles and other new capabilities.
The Palestinians in Gaza are united. The resistance against the occupation is alive and well.
For decades the Zionist entity was able to attack its neighbors as it pleased. That changed. It no longer dares to step into Lebanon for fear of Hezbullah's reprisal. Syria's western airspace is closed for Israel thanks to the new S-300PMU2 air defense Russia delivered to the Syrian army. The resistance in Gaza has new capabilities and surprises for Israel should it attack.

Israel's newly won "friends" in the leadership of Saudi Arabia and the UAE proved to be unstable and of little value. The Boycott, divest and sanctions movement against the self declared apartheid state has undermined its image. Its lobby has been exposed.

The short conflict in Gaza only demonstrated that Israel is weak and that its downward trend continues.

Posted by b on November 13, 2018 at 02:52 PM | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/11/s ... kness.html

The reportage is good, the rest is speculation.
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Nov 14, 2018 4:08 pm

#Nasrallah: "Yes, there are two locations that we sent weapons to, in all honesty. The first is occupied #Palestine. We are honored that we participated in the transfer of Coronet rockets, for example, to the Gaza Strip. We are very proud of this.” #GazaUnderAttack #Resistance48

Courtesy Abbas Hamideh @Resistance48

(video wouldn't copy)
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 04, 2018 2:55 pm

Video: Hezbollah Warns Israel: ‘If You Dare Attack, You Will Regret it’
Despite the August 2006 ceasefire, Lebanon and Israel remain in a state of war.
By Sayed Hasan
Global Research, December 03, 2018

On the evening of Friday, November 30, Hezbollah’s war media broadcasted this video addressed to Israel and subtitled in Hebrew, in response to recent Israeli military exercises simulating an aggression against southern Lebanon, an escalation of violations of Lebanese airspace –from which aggressions against Syria are usually carried out– by Israeli drones, and new threats to assassinate Hezbollah Secretary General. The statement in the video is excerpted from the latest speech by Hassan Nasrallah on November 10, 2018, and the footage shows in particular the precise coordinates of Israeli military bases that would be targeted in case of aggression. Let us remind that Hezbollah’s policy is to target exclusively the military, and to hit the colonies and cities of the enemy only in response to the ongoing Israeli aggression against Lebanese civilians. The civilian/military ratio of the victims of the 2006 war was 1/10 on the Israeli side, and 10/1 on the Lebanese side, a striking proof of the fact that Israel strikes civilians above all, and that Hezbollah favors military targets.

Despite the August 2006 ceasefire, Lebanon and Israel remain in a state of war, and if direct clashes have ceased, information & psychological warfare continue to rage, as are indirect clashes in Syria or even Yemen, where Israeli planes are directly involved in the conflict. At a time when the Gulf countries are openly engaging in the normalization policy of relations with Israel, when yet another futile attempt to strangle Iran economically is at work, and where MBS is touring North Africa to promote Israel’s peace agreement with Israel, Hezbollah recalls that its hostility to Israel remains irreducible, demonstrating its solidarity with the Resistance in Gaza that has recently scored a new victory, which foreshadows a real disaster in the event of a confrontation with such a powerful actor as Hezbollah. Hassan Nasrallah has several times announced as imminent the Great War to Liberate Palestine, in which the extended Resistance Axis (Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Iraq and Yemen) would participate.

Blowback Against Israeli State Terror
This video made headlines in Israel Friday night and throughout the weekend, and senior military officials of the Zionist entity reacted to it. In accordance with its policy of anti-Nasrallah censorship, Youtube immediately deleted this video broadcast, among others, by Al-Manar (French) and Sputnik (English) for alledgedly “violating Youtube’s Terms of Service”, but Israeli media like Ynet were able to broadcast it on the platform without fear of censorship –proof that the content itself has no valid reason to be censored according to the Youtube’s Terms of Service. Only sources that are a priori favorable to Hezbollah are tirelessly hunted down by IDF cyber-soldiers and deleted.


https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6y895v
*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Resistance News Unfiltered.

The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Sayed Hasan, Global Research, 2018

https://www.globalresearch.ca/video-hez ... it/5661708
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Dec 26, 2018 1:59 pm

Report: Israel armed rebels in south Syria for years, in effort to block Iran
Fighters tell Foreign Policy the Jewish state provided them with funding and weapons from 2013, but pulled support as Assad’s troops regained control of border area
By TOI STAFF
6 September 2018, 8:58 pm 2

Image
Syrian rebel fighters sit behind deployed machine guns during a military parade near the southern city of Daraa on June 7, 2018. (Mohamad Abazeed/AFP)
Israel covertly provided arms and funds to at least 12 Syrian rebel groups in order to prevent Iran-backed forces and Islamic State jihadists from setting up shop along its border, Foreign Policy magazine reported Thursday.

The report, citing interviews with numerous rebel figures, said Israeli support included paying rebel fighters a salary of some $75 a month and providing groups with weapons and other materials.
Israel did not comment on the report. Israeli leaders have in the past said the Jewish state is not involved in Syria’s internal fighting.

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Foreign Policy said that Israel’s support for the rebel groups began in 2013, funding groups in places such as Quneitra and Daraa. It ended two months ago as the regime’s forces advanced and made increasing gains in southern Syria against rebels. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s troops regained control of the border area in July.

The Syrian army had said in 2013 it had seized Israeli weapons in rebel hands.

The report said Israel sent the rebel groups weapons that included assault rifles, machine guns, mortar launchers, and vehicles. It initially sent the rebels US-made M16 rifles that would not identify Jerusalem as the source, and later began supplying guns and ammo from an Iranian shipment to Lebanon’s Hezbollah group that Israel captured in 2009, according to Foreign Policy.

The report noted that Israel’s total support was small compared to the funding and backing the groups received from other interested parties including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States.

Last year, Israel significantly increased its support, the report said, moving from backing groups of hundreds of fighters to aiding those with thousands, as part of a more aggressive policy to keep Iran and Iranian-backed forces out of the region.

A few months ago a fighter from the Forsan al-Jolan (the Golan Knights) group told the magazine, “Israel is the only one with interests in the region and a little bit of humanity and [provides] assistance to civilians.”

Image
Syrians, displaced by fighting in the country’s southwest, approach the border fence between Syria and Israel the Syrian village of Bariqu in the southern province of Quneitra, on July 17, 2018. (AFP /JALAA MAREY)

The magazine reported that Israel’s backing led to an expectation among rebel groups that the Jewish state would intervene to assist them against the regime’s offensive in southern Syria. This led to bitter disappointment when Israel stood on the sidelines as Syrian forces captured areas bordering the Golan Heights this summer.

Once government troops loyal to Assad reached the area, and Israel reached an apparent understanding with Russia to keep Iranian troops away from the border, Jerusalem reportedly cut its funding and refused to offer aid to the rebels seeking to flee from regime forces.

A handful of commanders and their families were reportedly granted asylum, but most rebels who asked for assistance were turned back.

“This is a lesson we will not forget about Israel. It does not care about…the people. It does not care about humanity. All it cares about it its own interests,” the same Forsan al-Jolan fighter said afterwards.

Image
A picture taken on July 4, 2018 from the Golan Heights shows displaced Syrians from the province of Daraa staging a protest (top L) calling for international protection, in the Syrian village of al-Rafid, near the border fence with Israel. (AFP/Jalaa Marey)

Many of the rebels who had expected Israeli intervention to protect them reportedly regretted their reliance on the Jewish state.

“Trust me, Israel will regret its silence over what had happened in southern Syria,” a community leader told Foreign Policy. “We in our town and neighboring towns grudgingly reconciled with the regime, but this reconciliation will affect Israel in the near future.”


Israeli humanitarian aid is prepared for deliver to displaced Syrians fleeing the civil war in Syria, July, 2018. (IDF)
Although it has never commented on military aid to the rebels, Israel last year revealed the scope of its humanitarian assistance in Syria that included treating chronically ill children who had no access to hospitals, building clinics in Syria, and supplying hundreds of tons of food, medicines, and clothes to war-ravaged villages across the border.

Israel initially responded by providing medical treatment to Syrians wounded in the war, treating more than 3,000 people in field hospitals on the border and in public hospitals, mostly in northern Israel, since 2013.

But the army revealed that since June 2016 it had quietly been working on Operation Good Neighbor, a massive multi-faceted humanitarian relief operation, to keep starvation away from the thousands of Syrians who live along the border and provide basic medical treatment to those who could not access it in Syria because of the war.

Judah Ari Gross contributed to this report.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/report-is ... lock-iran/

$75 a month? Well, ya get what ya pay for.....The allegations of humanitarian impulse on the part of Israel are no doubt fiction or gross exaggeration.
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sun Jan 13, 2019 6:51 pm

7 Palestinians injured as IOF storms Ramallah

Image
RAMALLAH, (PIC) +-

At least seven Palestinians were injured on Saturday evening when the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) raided Ramallah city.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced in a statement that seven Palestinians were injured by Israeli gunfire.

The Ministry said that one of the wounded was hit by a rubber-coated metal bullet to the eye, and described his injury as "moderate".

Local residents said that the IOF broke into several buildings in the city and seized their surveillance camera recordings.

They added that the IOF heavily fired live ammunition, rubber-coated metal bullets, and teargas canisters at the Palestinian youths who took to the streets to confront the raid.

The IOF over the past week has conducted daily raids into Ramallah and al-Bireh cities in search for Palestinians allegedly involved in a shooting attack on an Israeli bus near Beit El checkpoint.

https://english.palinfo.com/news/2019/1 ... s-Ramallah

Another day on the rez....
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 18, 2019 12:19 am

Israel spraying herbicides inside Gaza violates int'l law, rights groups say
In an urgent letter to Israeli military officials, three human rights groups demand that Israel immediately stop spraying the dangerous chemicals into Gaza.

The Israeli army is continuing to spray dangerous herbicides on agricultural fields inside the Gaza Strip, three years since +972 Magazine first reported on the practice. This week, three Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups sent a letter to Israeli military officials demanding they immediately cease spraying the dangerous chemicals into Gaza.

The latest instance of spraying herbicides, using a reportedly carcinogenic chemical, took place in early December. A variety of crops inside Gaza were damaged as a result, according to the rights groups.

“The farmers have sustained massive losses in the past as a result of spraying, and been exposed to the health risks associated with the chemical agents used in the spraying,” Al Mezan, Gisha, and Adalah wrote in their letter to Israeli Defense Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with the country’s attorney general and military advocate general.

“The spraying is a highly destructive measure, infringing on fundamental human rights and violating both Israeli and international law,” the rights groups added in a joint statement Wednesday.

Israel has for years maintained a unilateral “no-go zone” inside the Gaza Strip, and regularly sends bulldozers and other equipment across the fence to level land and destroy plants and trees in order to maintain a clear line of sight. Since the start of 2015, the Israeli army crossed the fence upwards of 207 times in such operations, an average of more than twice a week.

In December 2015, the Israeli army admitted for the first time, in response to questions from +972 Magazine, that it was also using herbicides inside Gaza. According to follow-up reporting by Amira Hass in Haaretz, close to 3,500 acres (14,000 dunams) of farmland in Gaza have been damaged by the practice. The spraying has also damaged Israeli crops along the fence.

The letter from the three human rights groups further reveals that the chemical being sprayed by Israeli military contractors, Roundup, has been determined by the World Health Organization to be a carcinogen and is not meant for aerial spraying, both due to the health risks and also the risk posed to nearby crops.

Image
Palestinian workers collect peas during the harvest in a field in Khuz’a, next to the fence between Israel and the southern Gaza Strip on January 27, 2014. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

In 2016, the farmers demanded the army compensate them for the damage. The army refused.

Despite the IDF’s confirmation to +972, and later to Gisha, that it had sprayed herbicides inside the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Defense Ministry claimed in court filings that the planes only flew over Israeli territory. Gaza farmers have said, however, that the planes do, indeed, fly inside Gaza’s airspace.

Furthermore, based on documents obtained by the rights groups through a freedom of information request, the spraying is deliberately conducted when the wind would carry the chemicals further into Gaza and not toward Israeli fields.

During the Vietnam war, the United States famously sprayed Agent Orange, napalm and other herbicides and defoliants to destroy vast swathes of jungle in Vietnam for military purposes. After the health and environmental effects of such practices became clearer, however, the international community initiated the Environmental Modification Convention restricting the use of herbicidal warfare, which came into force in 1978. Israel is not a party to the convention.

Israel unilaterally “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip in 2005, removing the troops that had been stationed there for close to four decades. The Israeli military did not relinquish control over the strip, however, and still maintains control over: who and what goods may enter and exit Gaza; the strip’s maritime borders, including dictating where fishermen may fish; the “no-go zone” inside Gaza on its eastern and northern borders; its airspace; its population registry; and movement between Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories.

https://972mag.com/gaza-israel-herbicid ... aw/139591/

There is no low to which those genocidal bastards will not stoop.
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 21, 2019 12:35 pm

"Oh you foolish little Zionists"
By Justine Sachs
Justine Sachs on the cruelty and inhumanity of Zionism, the movement supposed to solve the 'Jewish question'.



“Oh you foolish little Zionists
With your utopian mentality
You'd better go down to the factory
And learn the worker's reality
You want to take us to Jerusalem
So we can die as a nation
We'd rather stay in the Diaspora
And fight for our liberation”

English translation of an old Yiddish folk song



In recent years, Aotearoa New Zealand’s small but vibrant Jewish community has begun to show fissures and cracks, revealing fundamental tensions and disagreements about the future of Jewish identity. These cracks, however, are neither new nor exclusive to Aotearoa; they have simply become more difficult to ignore. The question of Israel and of Zionism as a political ideology takes on a greater sense of urgency with every passing year. There is growing disharmony and conflict within the Jewish diaspora over our support for and identification with Israel in the face of increasing awareness of Israel’s colonial history and its ongoing incursions into Palestinian lives and land. For many diasporic Jews around the world, Israel’s inhumanity towards Palestinians is no longer something that can, in good conscience, be smoothed over for the sake of peace and quiet at the Passover dinner table.

Zionism emerged in the 19th century as one of many competing movements aiming to find a solution to the ‘Jewish question.’
That these conflicts are now being openly discussed by our communities at all speaks to a small but significant change in Jewish hegemony. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, it has been assumed that Jewish people throughout the globe, from South Africa to Spain, understand their Jewishness as fundamentally and inextricably linked to the so-called ‘Jewish state.’ This has come about because of the rise of Zionism, the founding ideology of the Israeli state. Zionism emerged in the 19th century as one of many competing movements aiming to find a solution to the ‘Jewish question.’ Its power comes largely from the fact that it promises an appealingly straightforward solution to a very real problem, proposing that Jewish people could never escape the constant anti-Semitism and oppression they were facing until they had an exclusively Jewish state. Zionism is thus, at its core, a nationalist movement: it attempts to disentangle Jewish identity from its complex religious, ethnic, cultural – and otherwise diasporic – elements and transform it into a static national identity. This national identity has been deeply bound up in the ongoing colonisation and occupation of Palestine from Israel’s inception, functioning to continually justify the actions of the Israeli state as representing the best interests of the Jewish people.

French historian Ernest Renan, in an essay written in 1882, argued that the act of selectively forgetting and remembering is essential in the construction of a nation. George Orwell echoed this in his 1945 essay, ‘Notes on Nationalism,’ commenting that “every nationalist is haunted by the belief that the past can be altered.” That is to say, a settler-colonial state is always built on the ongoing and often brutal process of erasing, rewriting and ‘forgetting’ the Indigenous past. However, it is constantly haunted by this very same past, which never truly disappears from the physical and social world, and which threatens at any time to break through and call into question the legitimacy of the settler-colonial state’s existence. Israel is no exception: like any settler-colonial state in its infancy, it is forged in blood and fire. While Jewish kids around the world are taught to celebrate Israel’s inception, Palestinians refer to it as “Al Nakba,” a name which translates to “the catastrophe.” Al Nakba saw 700,000 Palestinians forcibly expelled from their homes and villages by Israeli militias, creating a refugee crisis that persists to this day. This tragedy is selectively forgotten and remembered by the Israeli state, which celebrates the anniversary of Al Nakba as Israeli Independence Day.

Israel, a settler-colonial nation in its infancy, is thus not only erasing and forgetting an Indigenous past, but is also actively rewriting an Indigenous present
Israel, a settler-colonial nation in its infancy, is thus not only erasing and forgetting an Indigenous past, but is also actively rewriting an Indigenous present. The Israel/Palestine conflict today is characterised by the haunting of this Indigenous present, demonstrated every day in the resistance and survival of Palestinian people who refuse to be forgotten. That first catastrophe, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, created 700,000 external refugees whose direct descendants now comprise 7.2 million people. The existence of this community, and its struggle for justice alongside the Palestinians who live in Israel proper and the occupied territories, represents an existential threat to Israel. The Zionist project relies on the myth that Israel currently is, and always ought to have been an exclusively Jewish state, a myth that is fundamentally undermined by the struggle for Palestinian self-determination. This threat weighs heavy on Israel’s collective national psyche, which regards Palestinian life itself as an obstacle to its aims. With this history in frame, Israel’s descent into a paranoid apartheid state should not come as any surprise.

Last year, I attended a talk by visiting Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. Gideon works for Haaretz, a progressive and critical Israeli newspaper which works from within to keep Israel accountable. During his speech, Gideon acknowledged a simple yet radical truth: that Israel could either be “a Jewish state, or a democracy; it could not be both.” His words struck a chord with me as a painful reminder of how, growing up in the diaspora, my own Jewish identity was so embroiled in the myth and mythos of Israel. I wondered how to go about disentangling it. Looking over my own life and ancestry, I began to realise that Israel, and Zionism, is haunted not only by an Indigenous past and present, but equally by a Jewish past and present. More than that, it cannot contain the possibility and potential that this past opens up. I thought about the history of anti-Semitic oppression, marginalisation and suffering in Europe, and how it has informed Jewish identity. My own family immigrated to New Zealand from South Africa when I was eleven years old. My mother and father were third- and second-generation South Africans respectively; they were born in South Africa, but their parents and grandparents hailed from Lithuania. Indeed, the majority of the Jewish diaspora in South Africa is made up of refugees from Lithuania, who arrived in South Africa on boats, fleeing state-sanctioned waves of anti-Semitic violence. These bursts of targeted violence were referred to as pogroms, a Russian term which describes “wreaking havoc or destruction.”

As young men, my grandfather and his brother fled to Germany to escape pogroms in Lithuania. Their parents had recently died of pneumonia, brought on by their impoverished living conditions. Unfortunately, they arrived in Germany at the dawn of the Nazi Party’s emergence. When my grandfather got on a boat to flee Germany in the 1930s, I’m told he was unsure of where he was going. All he knew was that if he stayed, he would not survive. Although I never met my grandfather, my father made sure to tell me his story. His intention in passing on this knowledge was not only to keep his father’s memory alive, but to keep my generation accountable to the promise that “never again” would humankind permit such horror, cruelty and inhumanity.

Although I never met my grandfather, my father made sure to tell me his story. His intention in passing on this knowledge was not only to keep his father’s memory alive, but to keep my generation accountable to the promise that “never again” would humankind permit such horror, cruelty and inhumanity
My father was not the only person who tried to instill this lesson in me. Kadimah College, the small Jewish school I attended in Auckland, also endeavoured to remind us that events like the Holocaust happened because of indifference, and fear of difference or anything Other. According to the school, the only way to make good on the promise of “never again” was to live an ethical, moral life and to remember the lessons of the Talmud: “he who saves one life saves the entire world.” It seems abundantly clear now that memories of dispossession, oppression and anti-Semitic violence are embedded into Jewish values and education. But Kadimah’s version of “never again” was complicated and deeply contradictory. On one hand, it taught us the value of all life, and instilled in us an imperative to fight for social justice. But on the other hand, this was constantly used to defend Israel’s existence as an exclusively Jewish state, and its constant incursions on Palestinian lives and land.

The invocation of the Holocaust ­– an example of brutal disregard for human life ­– to defend Israel, another example of brutal disregard for humanity, transformed the universal lesson of “never again” into a cynical and selective one. Within Zionism, “never again” has a caveat. For Zionists, “never again” is exclusive to Jewish lives. So while I was taught the value of all life at Kadimah, I was never taught what the word ‘Palestine’ meant or who the Palestinians were. In our Jewish studies, Palestinians were faceless and dehumanised, a people that could not be defined or placed, and whose lives we were never taught to value.

In this way, Zionism is ultimately a paranoid and conspiratorial ideology. To establish a stable Jewish national identity, and ensure the stable running of a settler-colonial state, it has to appeal to our desire to transcend our history of oppression and anti-Semitism while, at the same time, closing off the possibility of meeting that goal with an empathetic, non-violent, and anti-colonial Jewish movement. This bit of ideological sleight of hand is achieved by foreclosing our ability to see Palestinians as human, and keeping their own experiences of oppression out of our sight. There’s a fundamentally authoritarian bent to this. Zionism cannot handle or reason with difference or otherness. It seeks to dominate and subdue its others through brute force. This was exemplified in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chilling comments at an Israeli nuclear research facility earlier this year. He argued that, in order to ensure the survival of Israel, “there is no place for the weak,” stating that “the weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive.” Netanyahu’s remarks are revealing and frightening. They expose the inhumanity of the current Israeli administration, reflecting a militaristic “survival of the fittest” ideology that despises vulnerability, empathy and difference.

Netanyahu’s nationalist rhetoric drips with a specific kind of loathing for Palestinians and, interestingly, for diaspora Jews. In fact, his words reflect early Zionist ideas of “Muscular Judaism,” which saw the need to design a “new Jew” for a “new land.” This new Jew was to be the antithesis of the “old” diaspora Jew, who was often stereotyped in anti-Semitic propaganda as a physically weak and intellectually esoteric person. This sentiment is ubiquitous in Israeli society, where offhand remarks and jokes about the “wimpy” nature of diaspora Jewry are commonplace. Indeed, it is very telling that Israel’s leader of the opposition, Avi Gabbay, recently commented that the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, which killed 11 people, should “teach Jews to make aliyah.” Zionism is constantly haunted by the diasporic Jewish past and present, precisely because our experience of vulnerability, oppression and marginalisation mirrors so closely that of Palestinians and other oppressed people all over the world.

the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism as misleading and deeply dangerous. It is an ideological device that limits the possibilities of what Jewishness can be, and shuts down important dialogue about Israel’s apartheid regime and colonial history
Judith Butler, in her book Parting Ways – Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism, notes that perhaps the defining characteristic of diasporic Jewishness is “cohabitation with the non-Jew,” and that it is therefore “possible to conclude that commitments to social equality and social justice have been an integral part of Jewish secular, socialist, and religious traditions.” She observes a painful irony, then, in the fact that the struggle for social justice in Israel/Palestine is often cast as anti-Semitic. However, that perception is starting to change owing to the work of progressive Jewish people throughout the diaspora who are doing the work of disentangling Jewishness from Zionism. We see the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism as misleading and deeply dangerous. It is an ideological device that limits the possibilities of what Jewishness can be, and shuts down important dialogue about Israel’s apartheid regime and colonial history.

Indeed, Jewish people within the diaspora overwhelmingly tend to be politically progressive. With this in mind, the current conflict brewing within the Jewish diaspora over the question of Israel/Palestine and Zionism is a long time coming. Israel and Zionism has always been a blind spot within our community, a contradiction in our politics and values. In recent times, this contradiction has become increasingly irreconcilable, a result of Israel’s slide into fascism and our growing awareness of the oppression of Palestinian people in the occupied territories.

While there is certainly a generational element to the conflict, with young Jewish people seeming particularly disillusioned with Zionism, it would be a mistake to reduce the conflict to that. Rather, I would argue that it is the result of an irreconcilable contradiction between Jewish nationalism and diasporic Jewishness. For me personally, I attribute my turn away from Zionism to the fact that I am from a family of immigrants. I came to Aotearoa from South Africa, my grandfather went to South Africa from Lithuania, and my ancestors went from the Middle East to Europe thousands of years ago. I do not see myself as rootless, but as rooted firmly in my experiences with difference and multiplicity. In both Aotearoa and South Africa, I was confronted with the legacies of colonialism, dispossession, and the pervasive racism that animates settler-colonial society. In Aotearoa, as I grew up, I began to see how I benefited from these systems that were built to privilege settlers and dispossess Māori. I saw how this was not an individual problem but a structural one. I learned that the early Jewish settlers who came to Aotearoa in the colonial period were complicit in this process. I began to map the connection between the colonial history of Aotearoa and Israel’s formation, and what I saw was a mirror image. As a result, I feel an obligation to live up to the ethical obligations passed on to me in Hebrew school, the obligations of ‘tikkun olam’ which translates to ‘repairing the world,’ and ‘tzedek tzedek tirdof’ which translates to ‘justice justice you shall pursue.’

Across the world, we are seeing the formation of Jewish groups committed to fighting for Palestinian rights and justice in the region. These groups play an important role in challenging the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, and function to carve out a creative space for diaspora Jews to find new ways of being Jewish
I am not the only one. Across the world, we are seeing the formation of Jewish groups committed to fighting for Palestinian rights and justice in the region. These groups play an important role in challenging the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, and function to carve out a creative space for diaspora Jews to find new ways of being Jewish. These new ways are in fact old, they seek to reimagine the present and create something new by conjuring up the powerful memory of our past. They also constitute a rebellion against a Jewish establishment that refuses to consider the possibility of Jewishness beyond Zionism. That refusal puts progressive Jewish people in a double bind, leaving them feeling alienated and outcast from the communities they grew up in. That has certainly been my experience. I knew from a very early age that criticising Israel was taboo, and I was taught to regard those who did so as self-hating and self-destructive. Confronting the reality that our upbringing was wrong, that the ‘outcasts’ were right, is not an easy process for progressive Jews.

For some, the solution has been to reject their Jewishness completely in order to escape the conflict, but I couldn’t do that. I began to feel neither here nor there: no longer welcome in the Jewish community, but not at home in mainstream Pākehā culture either. The stories about my grandfather's life, my experiences with anti-Semitism, the values my Jewish education instilled in me, and the rich, wonderful traditions that have been passed down for millennia are an integral part of who I am. It was impossible for me to throw those aside and pretend I was not, for better or worse, a Jew. This realisation led to another: it was necessary to speak out and confront these issues, both within my community and within broader society.

In other words, the only option was to rebel, and that is exactly what we are doing. Ultimately, my act of rebellion was daring to publicise my views and write about them. In doing so I overcame my fears of ostracisation and claimed a space within my community as an anti-Zionist Jew. In December 2017, I co-wrote an open letter to New Zealand pop-singer Lorde with a Palestinian friend, urging her to respect the cultural boycott of Israel called for by Palestinian civil society. The letter went viral, and Lorde’s later decision to cancel the concert meant that we were suddenly thrust into the international news cycle. We were inundated with support, but we were confronted just as strongly with an onslaught of abusive messages from an online army of Zionists, incensed that a Jewish person had publicly criticised Israel. The abuse, racism and misogyny I was met with only proved to me how desperately my rebellion was needed. For so long, Zionism's entanglement with Jewishness has left us unable to face Palestinian people and recognise their humanity. In turning away from the imperative to repair the world and pursue justice, our own humanity faded away too.

One article written about me in the Israeli press illustrated this point to me perfectly. The author Assaf Wohl writes that “the difference between you and me, Justine is that I am an Israeli Jew and you are a Jew. That’s it. You have no nationality. You live in a negligible, insignificant sheepfold stuck somewhere at the end of the universe: New Zealand, which robbed the Indigenous Māori people of their land in favor of a European colony.” Later, he remarks that I have “chosen to play the role of the classic Jewish wimp.” His words bear a revealing similarity to the rhetoric of Netanyahu, demonstrating the same contempt towards me as a “wimpy” diaspora Jew. Wohl’s article, then, accuses me of being self-hating while invoking old anti-Semitic tropes and stereotypes about Jewish people. While the cognitive dissonance is almost funny, it demonstrates how Zionism's dehumanisation of Palestinians has in turn dehumanised Jewish people. In order to fully realise our own humanity, we must recognise theirs.

As for Wohl’s comment about me living in a settler colony in which the Indigenous people have been systematically dispossessed of their land, he is not wrong. But the idea that I should stay quiet about Israel because I structurally benefit from colonisation in Aotearoa is bizarre. The struggle for peace and justice in Palestine and Aotearoa are connected and intertwined. “Never again” demands a universal recognition that all life, everywhere in the world, has value. Finding new/old ways of doing Jewishness means rejecting any kind of Jewish exceptionalism or particularism. Instead, we must stand in solidarity with all oppressed people. There is work to be done at the end of the universe.

https://www.pantograph-punch.com/post/f ... e-zionists
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Feb 20, 2019 5:40 pm

A poem by leila @ainiladra, a Palestinian:

i am against my country’s fighters hurting a single ear of corn
i am against a child - any child having to carry a gun
i am against my sister learning weapons drill
i am against what you will ... but
what would even the saints have done
had their eyes been filled with killing?

i am against children becoming heroes at ten
against the tree bearing shells for fruit
against branches in my garden becoming gallows
i am against the sanctuary of my land being made into a scaffold
against the rose beds turning to trenches
and yet

after the burning of my land
and my friends
and my youth
how can my poems not become guns?
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sun Apr 07, 2019 5:16 pm

Netanyahu Says Will Begin Annexing West Bank if He Wins Israel Election

Netanyahu tells Channel 12 three days before election that he will not 'evacuate any community' nor divide Jerusalem: 'A Palestinian state will endanger our existence'

Haaretz
Apr 07, 2019 1:24 PM

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FILE PHOTO: The Jewish settlement of Neve Yaakov in the northern area of east Jerusalem, April 1, 2019.AFP

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israel's Channel 12 News on Saturday evening that he will start extending Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank if re-elected prime minister in the election on April 9.

It remains unclear at this point whether Netanyahu was referring to all of the West Bank, or only parts of it.

"A Palestinian state will endanger our existence and I withstood huge pressure over the past eight years, no prime minister has withstood such pressure. We must control our destiny," the premier said.


After boasting that he was responsible for U.S. President Donald Trump's declaration recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Netanyahu told the program "Meet the Press": "Will we move ahead to the next stage? Yes. I will extend sovereignty but I don't distinguish between the settlement blocs and the isolated ones, because each settlement is Israeli and I will not hand it over to Palestinian sovereignty."

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planting a tree in a West Bank settlement, January 28, 2019.Marc Israel Sellem
"I will not divide Jerusalem, I will not evacuate any community and I will make sure we control the territory west of Jordan," Netanyahu told the show's host, Rina Matzliah.

Asked what will happen to the Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar, which Netanyahu has vowed to evacuate but has still not been and which has been at the center of international condemnations against the decision, Netanyahu promised that "it will happen, I promised and it will happen at the soonest opportunity."

The prime minister refused to say whether he would support term limits, saying there is still a lof of work he needs to do.

'No force in the world will stop us'

Other party heads were also interviewed on the same show. Benny Gantz said his Kahol Lavan "will be the biggest party" after Election Day. "There's no force in the world, even that of smaller parties who know the Netanyahu era is over" to prevent Kahol Lavan from heading Israel's next government, he said.


Gantz added chances of him joining a Netanyahu-led government are "non-existent," adding he was hoping to "discuss some fundamental issues" with Netanyahu, who "didn't take up the gauntlet." He also said "Israelis know very well where 13 years of Netanyahu brought them … The public will have its word."

Asked whether Kahol Lavan supports a two-state solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Gantz only said it "is for striving toward peace … We'll push for a diplomatic process." He added his party "wishes to keep Israel a Jewish and democratic state, and not a bi-national state."

Gantz also said the Labor Party "is a future partner in any constellation … it's an important partner." Responding to calls to eliminate his rotation agreement with Yair Lapid for prime minister, Gantz said he "is a senior, excellent partner, who will be an excellent prime minister."


Labor Party Chairman Avi Gabbay vowed to support Gantz for prime minister, saying he "is an excellent man, and we want him to succeed … [But] if it won't be the Labor's way, there'll be a right-wing coalition, no matter who leads it … Any voter who wants change, who doesn't want to see Netanyahu as prime minister, must vote Labor."

Hadash-Ta'al Chairman Ayman Odeh said "the prime minister lies just like he breathes and just like he incites" against Israel's Arab citizens.

Asked whether he would join Gantz if he is elected, Odeh answered: "I didn't say I'll be part of Gantz's coalition, we're not in his pocket. He'll have to come to us, talk to us and respect us. He said he respects the Arab public but not the Arab leadership; that is wild incitement."

Meretz chairwoman Tamar Zandberg said her party would back Gantz as prime minister, despite reports about his intentions to potentially form a national unity government with Netanyahu. “That is the reason supporters of the left must vote Meretz, so that Gantz will have to form a government with the left. If he turns to Likud, or Likud turn to him, supporters of the left are going to bang their head against to wall the next day.”

'I will not crown the left'

Hayamin Hehadash leader Naftali Bennett said he wouldn't enter a Gantz-led government "not even in a thousand years. Gantz is a leftist. He's a nice person but unfit to run the country."

Asked about removing Netanyahu's immunity should he be indicted in his corruption cases, Bennett said his position "would depend on the charges," adding that the press doesn't "really care about the rule of law, but wants to take down an incumbent prime minister. I will not crown the left … in the name of this immunity, because I'm a right-wing man."

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon said his Kulanu party is "making it into the next Knesset big time," despite its poor performance in recent public opinion polls. Appealing to Likud voters, he added: "You have no reason to vote for Netanyahu, he's going to form the next government. If you want a compassionate right … I said I'll only be finance minister, I won't take any other position."

Avigdor Lieberman, former defense minister under Netanyahu and Yisrael Beiteinu leader, said he would support Netanyahu as prime minister after the election, but "there's a long way" before his party enters a Netanyahu-led coalition. "We won't accept surrendering to terror … and won't accept surrendering to what the ultra-Orthodox [parties] dictate," he said.

Former Yisrael Beiteinu MK Orli Levi-Abekasis, now leader of Gesher, said both Netanyahu and Gantz "don't take interest in public issues. They're fighting cockfights, there's not much difference between them."

Far-right Zehut's Moshe Feiglin said he "struggles to tell the difference between Netanyahu and Gantz," refusing to declare which candidate for prime minister would receive his backing.

Speaking about his conditions for entering the governing coalition, he added: "Without the finance portfolio I can't see us fulfilling" the party's libertarian platform," and if [we get] enough seats – we'll also ask for the education portfolio."



Asked about his past homophobic statements, Feiglin said: "I love members of the LGBT community just like any other person … The only dispute I have with them is whether the first priority when the state puts a child up for adoption should be by a man and a man or a man and a woman. I still think a child needs a mother and a father. Same goes for surrogacy, I'm backward like that."

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/ele ... -1.7089387

So, a one state solution? Careful what you wish for.

The hubris of the ruling class grows with their super profits. I suppose that is inevitable, as is nemesis.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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