Palestine

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:15 pm

Israeli Security Forces Carry Out Massacre in Jenin, Palestine
By Richard S. Dunn - February 13, 2023 1

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Jenin’s refugee camp is the scene of frequent clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops. [Source: news.yahoo.com]

On the morning of January 26, 2023, Israeli security forces massacred at least nine Palestinians in Jenin, among them a 61-year-old woman; Jenin is located in the north hills of the West Bank, Occupied Palestine. Medical attention was severely delayed because of the presence of security force snipers, and the targeting of hospitals and makeshift clinics with tear gas.

These occupying forces paraded through the streets of Jenin attacking civilian homes with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG’s), live bullets and the use of bulldozers to damage residents’ cars. The people of Jenin have taken to the streets in protest amid mourning for their loved ones, and a general strike has been called for the entire West Bank and the Occupied Territories of Palestine.

It has been reported that, since the beginning of this year, a total of 29 Palestinians have been killed, including five children. Where is the attack on Israel? What are the Zionists and their supporters in the United States government, from Chuck Schumer to Joe Biden, saying about this unprovoked and disproportionate use of force against the Palestinians. Will they use the old self-serving and national chauvinist cliché “Israel has a right to defend itself”? The corollary of that statement is “Palestine also has a right to defend itself.”

Israeli Occupation intensifies
Martin Luther King Jr, advised that violence by the downtrodden is as a result of social injustice issues not being addressed. In the wake of the Jenin massacre, a Palestinian resident killed seven people in the Jewish settlement of Neve Yaakov, East Jerusalem, not far from the site of the Jenin massacre. In response to this retaliatory shooting, the Israeli government announced that it intends to “strengthen” the building of settlements in the occupied territories, and has begun to institute additional draconian measures, to further oppress and colonize the Palestinian people.

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Israeli settlements on the West Bank. [Source: peoplesdispatch.org]

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have vowed to make it easier for Israelis to carry guns, according to Ben-Gvir: “I want weapons on the streets, I want Israeli citizens to be able to protect themselves.” It follows the popular Zionist narrative of demonizing the victim and sanctifying the aggressor.

This irresponsible and self-serving announcement will only worsen an already destructive situation in the occupied territories. On Saturday January 28, 2023 there were 144 attacks on Palestinians by Israeli settlers. Israel’s security cabinet has approved a series of measures, including plans to revoke Israeli Identity Cards of “families of terrorists that support terrorists,” bolstering military and police units, and confiscating weapons from Palestinians. The Palestinian government has condemned these actions as part of “collective punishment” and that “it further incites retaliatory escalation and violence.”

Ronen Bar, the chief of Israeli domestic intelligence Shin Bet, have warned government ministers that any move to seal off parts of East Jerusalem, as a response to recent “terror” attacks, could lead to a much broader conflagration, according to the Kan public broadcaster as reported in the Times of Israel.

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Ronen Bar [Source: wikipedia.org]

The report continues to say that Bar and other security officials pushed back during the cabinet meeting against calls by Ben Gvir and Smotrich, to impose varying levels of lockdowns on neighborhoods in Jerusalem; warning, that any measures against those not directly involved in attacks, could further inflame tensions.

Massacre in Gaza—“Operation Cast Lead”

January 14 to 24, 2023, was designated as a week of solidarity for Palestinian political prisoners, especially the case of Ahmad Sa’adat, national liberation, and international Left leader. The week was significant for all peace-loving and anti-colonialist people, because it marks the 14th anniversary of the sentencing of Sa’adat and also the 14th anniversary of Israeli forces’ repeatedly disproportionate attack on Palestine in Gaza, in what Israel ignominiously called “Operation Cast Lead.”

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Ahmad Sa’adat [Source: infolibertaire.net]

A brutal 22-day military assault on the Gaza Strip that began on December 27, 2008, targeting Palestinian homes, businesses and even a police station; the assault continued until January 18, 2009—two days before the new Obama administration was sworn in. The weapons spearheading the massacre were F-16 fighter jets and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, all made by the United States military industry, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, respectively.

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U.S.-made Hellfire missile linked to killing of a child and three medics in Gaza by Israeli Defense Forces during Operation Cast Lead, January 4, 2009. [Source: mondoweiss.net]

Independent human rights organizations including Israeli, had reported that between 1,385 and 1,419 Palestinians were killed, most of them civilians. The United Nations (UN) reported that 3,540 housing units were completely destroyed and 2,870 severely damaged, and more than 20,000 people made homeless.

The Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU), Amnesty International, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (BTSELEM) and the United Nations, have all confirmed and reported on the human and material destruction caused by the Israeli Defense Forces during the infamous “Operation Cast Lead.”

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Gaza under attack during Operation Cast Lead. [Source: occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com]

Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians in Their Own Territory

Israel’s belligerence and wanton disregard and continued violations of human rights and international law, gained further impetus with the return to power on November 1, 2022, of the arch-racist and Zionist Benjamin Netanyahu. His Likud Party will form a coalition with another arch-racist and Zionist Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has made no secret of his hatred for Palestinians.

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Itamar Ben-Gvir, on left, Benjamin Netanyahu, on right. [Source: peoplesdispatch.org]

Within the same week as the swearing in of the new administration, Netanyahu announced the expansion of the illegal settlements in the West Bank. On Monday, January 23, 2023, hundreds of Palestinians demonstrated in the village of Bedouin, the site of proposed demolition of existing homes, to make way for the construction of new Israeli settlements.

When will the civilized and democratic world unequivocally condemn and punish Israel for its continued genocidal and apartheid treatment of Palestinians within illegally occupied Palestine? On Thursday, August 18, 2022, Israeli security forces raided and forcefully closed the offices of seven civil society organizations in Palestine. This came right after Israeli forces killed 19 Palestinian children within 10 days in occupied Gaza and the West Bank, according to Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. The program Democracy Now reported that the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported that an internal military report had confirmed that one of its air strikes killed five Palestinian children in Gaza on August 5th; the youngest was just four years old.

Middle East Eye reports that at least 220 Palestinians died from Israeli attacks across the occupied territories in 2022, including 48 children; 167 people were from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and 53 were from the Gaza Strip of the total death toll.

Where Are the “Progressives”?

Except for a small group of protesters outside the office of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces in New York on August 8, 2022, where was the public outcry, protest, denunciation and mass action from the “limping” and lethargic left, both Black and White? During the South African Apartheid era these groups were regularly active and vociferous. Is it fear of being characterized as “anti-semitic” or is it that the Palestinian struggle is not that important?

The Black “progressives” suffer from a serious case of benign parochialism and selectivism: Is it only issues occurring on the continent of Africa or within the borders of the United States that matter? These groups are noticeably silent and lukewarm to issues in the Caribbean and Latin America: When it comes to defending Palestine, they have “lockjaw” and a critical case of political laryngitis. Ignorance is no excuse for their silence and apathy; there are numerous publications from objective, unbiased and progressive sources but, sadly, they are again stricken with the malady of selectivity.

Where were the elected officials and candidates on this issue? They did not deserve our vote and should not have received one vote. They should be castigated and sanctioned for their complacency by silence, inaction and ineptness.

Israel has used the self-serving claim that the organizations raided were terrorist organizations and, just like its benefactor the United States, has not provided any credible empirical evidence to support the claim. The same charge is made by the United States in its designation of Cuba as a “State sponsor of terrorism.” The organizations raided and closed are Al-Haq, a human rights organization; the Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association; the Bisan Center for Research and Development; Defense for Children International-Palestine; the Union of Agricultural Workers Committees; and the Union of Palestine Women’s Committees. In keeping with its racist, apartheid ideology of Zionism, the characterization of these civil organizations is meant to demonize and de-legitimize them, thereby erroneously gaining support for Israel’s genocidal occupation of Palestine.

Continued Genocide and Repression in Palestine

In the three-day siege of Gaza which began on August 5, 2022, it is reported that 47 Palestinians were killed, including 17 children. “Lame duck” hypocritical President Joe Biden said, in the aftermath of this crime, which was unprovoked and non-retaliatory, that “my support for Israel’s security is long-standing and unwavering.”

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[Source: trendradars.com]

This is the same president who unashamedly has the gall to criticize and sanction countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Iran citing “human rights abuses” as the administration’s reason. Never once in the belligerent and apartheid history of Israel against Palestine, has Israel been reprimanded for its genocidal and disproportionate attacks against Palestine or its continued government-approved racist policies. Recently, 50 Palestinians in Jerusalem were ordered off a bus that was boarded by three Jewish passengers, who refused to ride with the Palestinians.

Khalil Awawdeh, a Palestinian political prisoner who was arrested and detained in December 2021 under what Israel calls administrative detention, was on a hunger strike for 172 days. Under this policy, Palestinians can be indefinitely detained without charge or trial, which is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Israeli security forces claim Awawdeh is a member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), while providing no evidence to support the claim. On Monday, August 15, 2022, an Israeli military court rejected Awawdeh’s appeal for release.

On the following day, August 16, another Israeli court rejected ending the solitary confinement of 21-year-old Ahmad Manasra, despite his documented poor physical and mental condition.

Manasra was arrested at age 13 for alleged involvement in a stabbing incident in Jerusalem in 2016; in a revised court ruling he was sentenced to nine years in prison. Manasra was run over by a vehicle driven by Israeli settlers and suffered a fractured skull, and his cousin was shot and killed by Israeli settlers during the incident. Neither Palestinian was proved to be involved in the stabbing incident.

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Ahmad Manasra was arrested by Israeli authorities when he was 13 years old. [Source: aljazeera.com]

Amnesty International commented on the Israeli court’s rejection of Ahmad Manasra’s release from solitary confinement: “By approving prolonged solitary confinement, the Israeli court is legitimizing torture. This decision is cruel.” Aren’t these “human rights abuses” by any standard? It would be, for all civilized and democratic people except the Biden administration; or are the “standards” different when it involves people of color or where the United States has no hegemonic interests?

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David Weinberg [Source: idsf.org]

It appears that the Biden administration shares the same immoral, inhumane and racist view about the Palestinians, just like the Israeli military establishment. David Weinberg of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security writes: “Just like mowing your front lawn, this is constant hard work. If you fail to do so, weeds grow wild, and snakes begin to slither around in the brush.” The constant dehumanization and attacks against the people of Palestine are intended to maintain and coerce the Palestinians into accepting Israel’s apartheid occupation of their territory, fomenting division between the Palestinian liberation groups and discouraging and eliminating dissension.

South Africa Led the Way

The Foreign Minister of South Africa, Naledi Pandor, whose country knows very well the material support Israel gave to the Apartheid regime, during its liberation struggle, made a principled and profound statement during Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s visit to South Africa on August 10, 2022. During a press conference with Blinken, the Foreign Minister said in part: “We believe that all principles that are germane to the United Nations Charter and international humanitarian law, must be upheld for all countries, not just some. As much as the people of Ukraine deserve their territory and freedom, the people of Palestine deserve their territory and freedom.” This fundamental and objective truth has been ignored and trampled on by all U.S. administrations since the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

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Naledi Pandor [Source: zimlive.com]

It is obvious in word and deed that the lives and sovereignty of the Palestinian people do not matter to the United States and their European allies. Not once have the air strikes on Palestine and the arbitrary killing of its citizens been condemned by the United States or their European friends. War crimes are taking place in Palestine; they should not be seen as anything else.

What is abominable is that United States taxpayers, who are mainly the working class, are paying for Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism against the Palestinian people. According to the Congressional Research Service, the new agreement between the United States and Israel calls for the sum of $3.8 billion per year to Israel for ten years.

This new agreement, signed in 2016, runs from 2019 through 2028; $3.3 billion of that amount will go to military financing each year, which in most cases is and will be used to purchase American-made weapons, services and training to further Israel’s brutal occupation of historic Palestine, and to make Israel the policeman in the region, able to bomb Syria, Iraq and Iran, and threaten all its neighbor.

Silence and inaction are tantamount to complacency and de facto support for this immoral and inhumane policy; it lends support to a belligerent and bellicose regime that is racist and evil. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement needs to be expanded and ramped up. Innocent people, including young children, are being killed; people are being forcibly driven out of their homes in order to further the settlement goals of the Zionists.

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[Source: palestinehistory.tapestry.org]

It is time for all of us as so-called progressives and activists to put pressure on elected officials who claim to represent us, and on those who aspire to represent us, to take a fearless and principled stand against this human atrocity taking place in Palestine. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was a preacher but he was not afraid to take a stand against injustice wherever it occurred. He sacrificed his life for that cause. He was not selective in his stand for truth and justice. If you say you love Dr. King but shy away from struggle, you are a hypocrite.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... palestine/

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Israel Bombarded the Gaza Strip Again

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Image of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, Feb. 13, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @AmRaadPSF

Published 13 February 2023

Palestine authorities also reported that a 21-year-old men was shot to death by occupying Israeli forces during a raid on Nablus.


On Monday, Israeli F-16 jets launched a series of airstrikes against various sites in Gaza in an operation supposedly aimed at destroying the facilities of the Islamist Hamas movement.

Palestinian militias responded to the attack by the occupying forces by launching four rockets from the coastal enclave.

On Monday, the Palestine Health Ministry also reported that a 21-year-old men, Amir Ihab Bustami, was shot to death by occupying Israeli forces during a military raid on Nablus. News agency WAFA reported that seven people were also injured during the raid.

Since last year, the wave of Israeli violence against Palestinians has involved almost daily Israeli raids and an increase in attacks against Palestinians by Jewish settlers


Israel justified what happened by stating that the military operation was aimed at arresting those suspected of carrying out an armed attack in October 2022, when one of the members of the occupation forces died.

An Israeli army spokesman reported the arrest of Obkamel Guri, Asama Tuille, and three other Palestinians, who were found in an apartment where they were allegedly hiding.

The exchange of fire with Israeli troops comes amid a major escalation of violence in which 47 Palestinians have been killed so far this year.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Isr ... -0002.html
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 23, 2023 4:12 pm

Palestinian populations call strike after massacre in Nablus

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During 2023, 63 Palestinians have been killed by Zionist forces, the highest number of this century in this period. | Photo: EFE
Posted 23 February 2023 (3 hours 13 minutes ago)

According to local media, stores, banks, schools and universities closed their doors.

Palestinian institutions and services went on strike this Thursday in the occupied West Bank after the massacre of the Israeli Army reported the day before in Nablus where 11 Palestinians were killed.

According to local media, shops, banks, schools and universities closed their doors as part of the call made by the group of Palestinian factions.

At the same time, although the protest this Thursday is to denounce the events that occurred yesterday in Nablus where more than 100 injuries were reported, the Palestinians also denounce the repression against those imprisoned in Israel.


According to local media, the busiest streets in the West Bank such as Ramallah or Nablus remained practically empty this day in contrast to the usual crowd.

For its part, the Palestinian Authority called an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to address Tel Aviv's war crimes against the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this Wednesday that 11 Palestinians were killed, including a child under 16 years of age, during an incursion by the Israeli occupation forces in Nablus, a city in the north of the West Bank.

During the course of this year, 63 Palestinians have been killed by Zionist forces, which is the highest number of this century reported in this period.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/huelga-p ... -0008.html

Palestinians killed by Israel in Nablus rise to 11

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Until now, there are 60 Palestinians killed by Israeli hands so far in 2023. | Photo: EFE
Posted 22 February 2023 (13 hours 26 minutes ago)

The deceased was identified as Anan Shawkat Annab, 66, who died of respiratory complications caused by tear gas.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed this Wednesday a new death from the raid of the Israeli Army in the West Bank city of Nablus, bringing the death toll during the incursion of the occupation forces to 11.

According to details provided by the entity, a 66-year-old Palestinian man, identified as Anan Shawkat Annab, died due to respiratory complications caused by tear gas fired during an Israeli military intervention.

Among the 11 people killed for Zionist actions are also a 16-year-old boy, a 72-year-old man and another 61-year-old man.


In the attack this Wednesday in Nablus there were also more than 100 injuries -mostly by shots- and at least six seriously injured.

Among those killed in the raid are six militiamen linked to local armed groups and the rest are civilians, most of them buried this Wednesday in mass funerals.

It is expected that this Thursday a strike will take place in the region as a protest against the armed operation of this day.

Until now, the statistics count 60 Palestinians killed at the hands of Israelis so far in 2023. This is the highest recorded death toll in this time span since the year 2000.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/elevan-p ... -0028.html
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Feb 27, 2023 3:29 pm

Israeli settlers attack Palestinian towns in West Bank, at least one dead and hundreds injured

More than 65 Palestinians, including 13 children, have been killed by Israeli forces in the first 59 days of this year in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem

February 27, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: Wafa)

Hundreds of Israeli settlers attacked different towns and villages near Nablus on Sunday, February 26. At least one Palestinian — identified as 37-year-old Sameh Aqtash — was killed and over 100 were injured, WAFA reported. The settlers also attacked and burnt dozens of Palestinian houses and vehicles across the region.


Palestinians claimed that the settlers had unleashed their violence under the protection of the Israeli occupation forces. They also claimed that the Israeli forces prevented medical aid from reaching those who needed it.


WAFA reported that following the attacks, the Israeli forces imposed a siege around Nablus, restricting the movement of Palestinians. Times of Israel reported that the Israeli occupation forces decided to tighten the siege of Nablus on Monday with increased deployment of forces, claiming that they were attempting to apprehend the gunman who allegedly opened fire and killed two Israeli settlers in Huwara on Sunday.

Nablus and nearby Jenin in the occupied West Bank have been the center of Israeli violence in the last few months. On February 22, Israeli occupation forces killed at least 11 Palestinians and injured over 100 in Nablus city in a daytime raid.

More than 65 Palestinians, including 13 children, have been killed by Israeli forces in the first 59 days of this year in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Last year was the deadliest for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 2005, with the largest number of Palestinians killed in Jenin.

Israel’s extremist government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to increase the building of new settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. On February 12, it authorized nine illegal outposts in retrospect.

Last week, the UN Security Council adopted a presidential statement denouncing the move, and asked Israel to desist from further expansion of illegal settlements and demolition of Palestinian homes.

Aqaba Summit
On Sunday, Jordan hosted a meeting between Israeli officials and the Palestinian Authority in Aqaba, in which both parties agreed to find ways and measures to reduce violence in the occupied territories, including a temporary halt of four months on the building of new settlements and of six months on the legalization of outposts. Representatives from the US and Egypt were also present at the summit.

However, within hours of the news breaking out, Netanyahu, as well as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also in charge of settlements, denied any possibility of a halt in the construction of new settlements.

In a Twitter post, Netanyahu said that “there is and will not be any freeze” in the settlement activities in the occupied territories.

Calling the meeting in Jordan “unnecessary,” Smotrich tweeted on Sunday that “there will not be a freeze on construction and development in settlement, not even for one day (this is on my authority).”

Thousands of Palestinians had marched against the summit in Aqaba, claiming that it was an attempt to undermine the Palestinian resistance.


Critics of the Aqaba meeting argue that it only “reinforces the status quo” of occupation and illegal settlements and does nothing to address settler violence.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/02/27/ ... s-injured/

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Israeli Settlers Set Fire to Houses in the West Bank

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An armed Israeli settler intimidates a Palestinian, Feb. 26, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @TheCradleMedia

Published 27 February 2023 (1 hours 44 minutes ago)

They opened live ammunition at the Palestinians. Israel's Kan TV news reported that the settlers torched a home while a family was inside.

On Sunday night, around 400 Israeli settlers launched violent attacks in the West Bank, killing at least one Palestinian, injuring 390 people, and burning down 75 homes, shops, 25 cars, and farmlands.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said that Sameh Al-Aqtash died after he was shot by Israeli soldiers during clashes with settlers in the village of Zatara. News agency WAFA reported that rampage assaults have taken place also in the towns of Hawara, Burin and Einbus.

The Palestinian eyewitnesses said that Israeli settlers opened live ammunition at the Palestinians and threw Molotov cocktails at Palestinian houses and cars. The Red Crescent Society said that over 100 Palestinians were injured during the clashes.

Israeli Radio reported that around 400 settlers demonstrated near Nablus, adding that the Israeli army sent more soldiers to the area to restore calm between the two sides.

The Palestinian presidency condemns the Israeli assaults on the Palestinians and their homes, adding that the Israeli government is held "fully responsible" for the riots.


Video footage on social media showed huge fires and black plumes of smoke emerging from buildings in the area.

The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Israel's military liaison to the Palestinians, said that Israeli soldiers were assisting the Palestinian rescue services to evacuate "dozens" of local Palestinians whose homes were torched by the settlers.

Photos issued by the office showed soldiers evacuating elderly women whose homes were attacked by the settlers. Israel's state-owned Kan TV news reported that the settlers torched a home while a family was inside, in addition to at least 15 other homes and about 30 vehicles.

The attacks began hours after senior Israeli and Palestinian security officials met in the Jordanian Red Sea resort of Aqaba and agreed to work toward de-escalation of soaring violence in the region.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Isr ... -0004.html

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Palestine condemns Israeli death penalty bill

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Palestinian diplomacy stressed that "the death penalty violates the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people to life." | Photo: EFE
Posted 27 February 2023 (2 hours 30 minutes ago)

The Foreign Ministry rejects "the barbaric reinstatement of the death penalty as a pretext to legitimize its annexation."

The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned on Sunday the Israeli bill that seeks to impose the death penalty on those that Tel Aviv considers to be alleged Arab "terrorists".

Through a statement, the Foreign Ministry indicated that Palestine rejects "the barbaric reinstatement of the death penalty as a pretext to legitimize its annexation and strengthen its apartheid regime, in violation of its obligation under International Law."

The draft legislation that promotes the death penalty, a procedure that has not been applied for 60 years, is promoted by the ruling far-right coalition Jewish Power must be approved by five more instances before it enters into force.


Palestinian diplomacy stressed that “the death penalty violates the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people to life, non-discrimination and self-determination. It is a cruel, barbaric and inhumane bill rooted in Jewish supremacy.”

In this regard, he added that the rule is intended to "deny the Palestinian people their right to exist and their humanity" while stressing that "Israel continues to kill Palestinians disproportionately and deliberately, now it will arbitrarily put them on death row."


In turn, the Foreign Ministry urged the international community to mediate to stop this project while stressing that it is a stain on those who preach in favor of the rule of law but continue to allow, facilitate and encourage Israel and Israeli officials to violate the principles basics with total impunity".

This Sunday, a group of armed Israeli settlers attacked several towns in Nablus, north of the occupied West Bank, where they left one dead and injured more than 300, meanwhile, burning around 75 houses and more than 100 cars.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/palestin ... -0007.html

Google Translator

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The Illusion of Israeli Democracy Has Been Shattered
FEBRUARY 23, 2023

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Palestinians have been excluded from recent Israeli demonstrations. Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/DPA images.

By Haim Bresheeth-Žabner – Feb 20, 2023

People across the world have watched the thousands of Israelis demonstrating against their government with at least some bemusement. After 75 years of Israel denying its own agency in the terrible catastrophe it has inflicted on the Palestinians, its new government is now blamed for doing something most Israeli governments have never done – openly discussing the aim of controlling the whole of Palestine through an exclusive Jewish apartheid state.

That this aim requires a less-than-democratic society seems obvious, and arguably Israel has never been democratic in any real sense. But now that Jews will also face some loss of rights, the old elites responsible for the Nakba – the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine – and all that followed are out on the streets.

They wish to defend their “Jewish democracy,” in which Palestinian flags and self-determination are outlawed.

The recent ructions present Jews abroad with a painful dilemma: Do they – as many do – continue to support Israel in an unqualified and unquestioning manner? Or is it a time for a somber, self-searching reflection – a rethink of their identity, no less?

Not something they would normally choose to embark on, and most seem to be shying away from the need to look in the mirror.

Exceptionalist strategy
The face of Jewish Zionism is hardly an appealing sight. The new Israeli government has been in power for nearly two months and the number and severity of Jewish terror attacks and anti-Palestinian pogroms by settlers and the army have climbed to terrifying heights.

Israel’s exceptionalist strategy has proved a success, allowing it to continue its occupation, its construction of illegal settlements and its denial of rights and the continued oppression of the indigenous people of Palestine.

The United States, Israel’s major funder and mentor, remains strongly wedded to the continued denial of Palestinian rights, even in the face of the current unrest. US President Joe Biden has perhaps proven himself to be even more damaging than Donald Trump to the Palestinian cause, which must be some kind of record.

Such uncritical and shameful US support for Israel has protected it from any sanctions. As long as Israel’s leaders sporadically mention their commitment to the two-state solution, this process of taking over Palestine has gone on mainly unnoticed.

The Western democracies – such as they are – are placated by this meaningless lip service, accepting it as the normative, required noise about the settler-colonial conflict in Palestine.

Terrifying plans in store
This went swimmingly for over five decades and would have continued for another five if Israel had not grown tired of the long series of elections and went on to elect the most right-wing government in its history. This was a government prepared to say aloud that Israel considers the whole of Palestine its own.

This claim is now a new one. Bezalel Smotrich, finance minister and ideological force behind the current right-wing Israeli administration, outlined in a 2017 article titled “Tipping the Scales” the options facing Palestinians (though he refers to them as “Arabs,” since the nationality of Palestinians is denied by his ilk). They may either accept that all of Palestine is rightly Jewish and live there as residents without citizenship, or simply leave the country.

For those who resist this generous offer, Smotrich reserves the promise of “decisive treatment by the security forces, with stronger intensity than is done currently and in conditions favoring us.”

In case such wording might be misunderstood, he describes his solution: “Whoever thinks he can stay here and continue to violently undermine Israel’s right to exist as the nation state of the Jewish people will face a decisive IDF [Israel’s military] that will quash him with God’s help by military means.”

Of course, the West Bank must be annexed to make such changes possible and to make Israeli law the law of the whole of Palestine. One suspects that if this was all Smotrich was suggesting, no Israelis would have chosen to go out and demonstrate.

While past leaders of Israel were much more circumspect when expressing their views – recognizing the need for less bragging and more action – what they did chimes exactly with the aims of the new administration.

Past leaders have known that such open talk might help the opponents of this process of dispossession of a whole nation – a process that most Israelis accept and partake in in a variety of ways.

But this is not all the new rulers of Israel desire. They have other plans, ones that terrify many Israelis.

De jure apartheid

Benjamin Netanyahu, a secular Jew if ever there was one, is adept at donning a kippa and pretending to be a believer, though until now it was seen as one of the embarrassing duties an Israeli prime minister must perform, a mere act. But this time, Netanyahu found himself with the only government on offer – the forces of right-wing, ultra-religious ethno-nationalist parties, which, together with the two ultra-Orthodox parties, enabled his coalition.

A Pew survey revealed some ominous findings: 89 percent of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews have voiced a preference for religious law over Israeli law, while only 3 percent of them say that democratic principles should be favored over religious law. Over 96 percent of ultra-Orthodox Jews believe the state should offer preferential treatment to Jews – a clean way of defining apartheid.

These figures were correct in 2016 when this survey was conducted and are certainly higher now, a fact clearly demonstrated by the 2022 election results. And with it comes the process of replacing Israel’s secular legislation with religious edicts – a process called hadatha, or religionization, in Hebrew.

While this process has been going on for decades, it has now arrived at the heart of the government and its policies and budgets. It’s a process that, despite what the minority of secular Jews would like to believe, is now clearly irreversible.

The near future could look something like this for Israel.

Advances in LGBTQ rights will be reversed; abortion will be made illegal (at least for Jews, one could assume, as it lowers the Jewish population numbers); schools and universities will be split by gender; and public transportation on Saturdays will be outlawed.

Netanyahu has the required number of members in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to pass such and other legislation needed for a de jure apartheid and a Judaic republic.

To clinch this, the Knesset’s so-called reforms to the judicial system will remove high court powers to delay or stop legislation deemed unconstitutional. The court will become a rubber stamp for the religionized Israel, which will remove most of the current realities that secular Jews, once the majority of Jews, took for granted.

The legislative stampede is moving so fast that a month after it started being rolled out the first week of January, it makes the changes made by Hungary’s and Poland’s right-wing governments seem lacking in drive and vision.

Israel is facing the deepest political cleavage in its history. As opposed to the occupation and its many iniquities – not a topic raised by the demonstrators – the intra-Judaic agenda is what drives the big protests, shunned by most Palestinians and Jews who support their rights. Many Palestinians have tried to clarify their choice to avoid the demonstrations but this cuts no ice with Israelis.

A more humane system?

To return to the beginning of this tale, the situation places Jews in Europe, the Americas, Australia and elsewhere in a bind.

Should they continue to support the Jewish state or join the ranks of the opposition? After all, isn’t it their state?

In the US, there is a growing movement combining opposition to the changes with a clear break with Israel. As both Jews and US citizens, their voice counts and may have traction in the White House, eventually.

In Europe and the UK Jewish communities, the changes seem to have left many Jews punch-drunk, not quite realizing what is taking place or even disbelieving the process and its chances for success.

Such Jews may do well to consider whether their Jewish identity includes support of apartheid and ethnic cleansing, or if, alternatively, they prefer another more Jewish and humane value system based on democracy, justice and the ending of a brutal military occupation that harms them and the Palestinians.

Long decades of unquestioning support of Israeli atrocities have formed habits and attitudes that are difficult to ditch. But many Jews are likely instead to consider the old, traditional Jewish values of supporting equality and rights for all.

This is a testing time for not just such communities but for us all in Britain and beyond. A decade of defining any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic has taken its toll on the rest of society, as have the concerted efforts of the Israel lobby to discredit any supporter of Palestinian rights.

Jews everywhere will have to choose. The choice is between the Judaism of the anti-Zionist liberal left – a continuation of the Bund, the socialist organization founded in the late nineteenth century – and that of Joshua, which is the one both sides of the Israeli conflict seem settled on.

Will they return to the cherished values defined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and take a position against the impending atrocity before it takes place?

All world leaders should also take a position against the impending atrocity. This certainly depends on us all.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-illusion ... shattered/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 03, 2023 3:25 pm

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Israeli Forces Kill 11 Palestinians and Shoot Over 100 During Raid on Nablus
By Mohamed Ahmed, Contributor March 2, 2023

Nablus, Occupied West Bank, Palestine – At least 11 Palestinians were killed on Feb. 22, 2023, in a large Israeli army incursion into the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Three of the dead were elderly and one was a child. More than 100 were injured by live bullets and six reported in critical to very critical condition, according to the Ministry of Health.

The raid was one of the largest and deadliest in decades and featured over 150 Israeli soldiers and dozens of military vehicles. Last month, an Israeli raid on the Jenin Refugee Camp killed 10 Palestinians.

Israeli forces have killed over 65 Palestinians in the first two months of the year, putting this year on course to be one of the deadliest in many years as the far-right Israeli government is now in control. Over 171 Palestinians were killed in the West Bank last year by Israeli forces.


The Health Ministry identified the 11 victims as; Adnan Sabe’ Baara (72), Anan Showkat Annab (66), Abdulhadi Abdul Aziz Ashqar (61), Tamer Nimr Minawi (33), Mohammad Khaled Anbousi, 25, Musab Munir Owais (26), Hossam Bassam Isleem (24), and Mohammad Abdulghani (23), Waleed Riyad Dakheel (23), and Jaser Jamil Qan’eer (23), and Mohammad Farid Shaaban (16).

All except 66-year-old Annab — who died from gas inhalation — were killed by Israeli army gunfire while 102 others were injured from live bullet wounds and admitted to Nablus hospitals, six said to be in critical to very critical condition. Two journalists were also shot by live bullets as they covered the army incursion.

“I was here and undercover special forces stormed Nablus at night, taking control of a place for the army later. At nine o’clock in the morning, people say, the army stormed Nablus and besieged the youth. There was heavy shooting and we couldn’t look from the windows or from the door, and they were shooting directly at each other.”

Nablus resident and eyewitness to the raid

The large army force raided the Old City of Nablus at peak business hours while students were in school, and surrounded a house, shooting in all directions.

Residents confronted the soldiers, who, in addition to firing live bullets, fired tear gas and sound bombs at the homes and shops causing many suffocation cases in the densely populated Old City.

The Red Crescent in Nablus said the Israeli army prevented its ambulances from reaching and evacuating the wounded in the old city.

“This is a war of aggression by the extreme right-wing racist government against Palestinian people to impose a new reality and a policy of killing Palestinian people.”

Nasr Abu Jaish, head of the Factional Coordination Committee of Nablus


A New York Times visual investigation (link with no paywall) into the raid provided evidence of destructive and reckless maneuvers by Israeli military vehicles and several Palestinians killed, including at least four people killed by Israeli forces that posed no threat.

Young Palestinians in Nablus are becoming more militant in response to deadly near-daily Israeli raids. Some build barricades, some throw rocks, and some are armed. Called resistance fighters against the occupational forces by Palestinians and terrorists by Israeli forces, young fighters are less frequently giving up themselves for arrest and more frequently fighting to the death.

Members of Lions’ Den, or “Areen al-Usud” one of the more popular militant groups among young Palestinians, was reportedly the target of the raid. Last Fall, Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, the ‘Lion of Nablus,’ maybe the most popular resistance fighter in the last decade, was killed in an Israeli raid on the Old City after evading capture in several earlier raids.


In October, Israeli forces besieged Nablus for over three weeks in an act of collective punishment on the 420,000 residents in the area as they sought the elimination of prominent armed militants from the Lions’ Den.


Tens of Thousands Mourn ‘Martyrs’ in Nablus

Large crowds packed the streets for funeral prayers for those killed. Funeral processions departed from Rafidia Hospital to Martyrs’ Circle. The families of the fallen were given their last looks from the Old City and the Balata and Askar camps, before they were buried in the western and eastern cemeteries in Nablus.

The funeral was attended by the mothers of the ‘martyrs’, who carried the bodies of their sons, amid an atmosphere of sadness, anger, and chants demanding revenge for the crimes of the occupation.

The mourners chanted slogans glorifying the ‘heroism’ of the killed, saluting the armed resistance, the al-Qassam Brigades, the al-Quds Brigades and the Lions’ Den.

A strike was held across the West Bank the next day.

Israeli Settlers Killed, Settlers Attack and Burn Palestinian Property in Huwara

After the deadly raid, a Palestinian gunman killed two Israelis on a West Bank roadway setting off an a violent race riot against Palestinian and Muslim families in Huwara, just south of Nablus. Israeli settlers killed a man and set the homes, cars, and property of Palestinians on fire in retaliation. Nearly 400 Palestinians were injured, at least 30 homes and over 100 cars were burned. Eight settlers were arrested after the attack and all were released. Attacks from both sides have continued into the week.

Nearly 500,000 Israelis live in colony settlements in the West Bank which has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Almost three million Palestinians live in the West Bank. Israelis who live in the West Bank are allowed to vote and participate in Israel’s political system, but West Bank Palestinians are not. A newly released U.S. State Department report, which reviewed counterterrorism and human rights trends, said “Israeli security personnel often did not prevent settler attacks and rarely detained or charged perpetrators of settler violence.”

https://unicornriot.ninja/2023/israeli- ... on-nablus/

Videos at link.

*****

Israeli minister Bezalel Smotrich calls for razing down Palestinian town of Huwara

A long time leader of the illegal settler movement in the occupied territories, Bezalel Smotrich is now a minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-right government and also looks after settler affairs. His vicious statements come days after the town of Huwara was attacked by hundreds of settlers

March 02, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: WAFA)

Days after it came under attack from illegal Israeli settlers, the Palestinian town of Huwara, near Nablus, was targeted by the Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Wednesday, March 1.

In a TV interview, Smotrich claimed that calls made by some of the extremist settlers to raze the town were just, and that instead of leaving the task to private individuals, “the state [of Israel] should be the one to do that.”

Smotrich has been a leader of the settler movement before becoming a minister in the present ultra-right government in Israel led by Benjamin Netanyahu. He also looks after settler affairs in the occupied West Bank.

Huwara was attacked by hundreds of Israeli settlers on Sunday. At least one Palestinian was killed and close to 400 were injured. The attacking settlers torched scores of Palestinian homes and burnt their property under the full protection of Israeli security forces.

The attacks on Huwara have not ceased since. The Israeli security forces shut down all Palestinian businesses in the town, and they remained shut even four days after the attack. A group of settlers reportedly attacked the residents of the town on Wednesday as well, when a US delegation was visiting the town.

Ever since the attacks on Sunday, Smotrich has been making statements justifying the settler violence. On February 27, he had retweeted a post justifying “collective punishment” (which is considered illegal in international law) as a “necessary tool.” He had also called for attacks with helicopters and tanks inside Palestinian residential areas.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) reacted to Smotrich’s statement and called him a “racist terrorist” who needed to be prosecuted under international law for calling for “massacres against Palestinians.”

Reacting to comments made by Smotrich in favor of settler violence, former Israeli defense minister and opposition leader Benny Gantz accused him of wanting to create a second Nakba of Palestinians.

The Nakba was the mass forced migration of Palestinians caused by Israeli occupation forces at the time of the creation of Israel in 1948. According to various estimates, between 700,000 and 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their villages and towns at the time. Most of them live as refugees in different parts of the world, including in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh visited the town of Huwara on Wednesday and proclaimed that Palestinians need to form “popular protection committees in the villages, towns and refugee camps as a real response to the settlers rampage,” Wafa reported.

Shtayyeh also accused the Israeli government of encouraging settlers to carry out attacks against Palestinians “to carry out crimes of occupation” under full security cover.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/02/ ... of-huwara/

Israeli bill advocating death sentence in ‘terror’ cases passes first reading in Knesset

The bill mandates the death penalty in cases where an Israeli citizen is killed in a ‘terrorist act’ by a Palestinian, but will not apply to an Israeli citizen committing the same crime against a Palestinian. Israel classifies resistance acts against its occupation as terrorism

March 02, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

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Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)(Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

On Wednesday, March 1, the Israeli parliament approved, in its preliminary reading, a bill to institute the use of the death penalty in ‘terror’ cases. The bill was passed despite widespread concerns raised by human rights groups and the UN.

The private member’s bill, backed by the government, received 55 votes in favor and nine against in the 120-member legislature. A majority of the opposition boycotted the proceedings. It will now undergo a series of readings in the Knesset.

The bill says that that anyone who “intentionally or out of indifference causes the death of an Israeli citizen when the act is carried out from a racist motive or hate to a certain public… and with the purpose of harming the State of Israel and the rebirth of the Jewish people in its homeland” must be given a death sentence, the Jerusalem Post reported.

As per the Times of Israel, the bill is only applicable to Palestinians and “would not apply to an Israeli who killed a Palestinian.” According to Israeli law, all acts of resistance carried out by Palestinians in the occupied territories are acts of terrorism.

The bill was one of the central promises made by Itamar Ben-Gvir, an extremist politician and Israel’s Minister of National Security in Benjamin Netanyahu’s ultra-right government, during his election campaign last year.

While there already was a provision for the death penalty in Israeli law, it has only reportedly been used twice: once against Nazi official Adolf Eichmann, and once against a military officer court-martialed by the IDF in 1948 for treason. In the second case, the conviction was posthumously reversed.

Bill raises widespread concerns
The bill has raised concerns from various corners of the world. Human rights groups such as Adalah and Amnesty International Israel and countries such as Germany have already formally opposed the law.

A group of UN experts expressed their concerns last month. “The reinstatement of the death penalty is a deeply retrogressive step. More so when, on the face of it, the punishment will apply against minorities living within the State or those who live under the 55-year military occupation and rule,” they said.

Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, who was part of the group of experts, noted that existing counter-terrorism laws in Israel are arbitrarily applied and often violate the fundamental guarantees of international humanitarian and human rights law, and that the “proposed law merely exacerbates these challenges.” They claimed that the proposed bill raises “due process and fair trial challenges” and appears discriminatory, and asked that the Israeli government abandon it.

Reacting to the bill, Palestinian resistance movement Hamas described it as a “racist and criminal move” that “[reflected] the Israeli occupation government’s fascist tendencies.” It also underlined that the move “[represented] an extension of the summary executions [that are] carried out by the Israeli occupation army in cold blood under the nose of the whole world,” Press TV reported.

The Palestinian Authority had issued a statement last month condemning Israel’s “barbaric re-enactment of the death penalty as a pretext to legitimize its annexation and entrench its apartheid regime.”

This bill is the second law passed by the Netanyahu government this year that has raised concerns of discrimination and apartheid. In February, the Knesset approved a law that allows for the removal of citizenship rights and residency permits of Palestinians in Israel if they are convicted of acts of ‘terrorism.’

Human rights groups have also drawn attention to the high rate of “extra-judicial” killings of Palestinians carried out by the Israeli security forces. At least 65 Palestinians have already been killed by the Israeli forces in the first two months of the current year.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/03/02/ ... n-knesset/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sun Mar 12, 2023 4:55 pm

Victory is Defeat: Palestinian Children’s Art Exposes Israel’s Cultural Genocide
MARCH 12, 2023

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This artwork by children from Gaza was removed from a London hospital after complaints by a Zionist group. Photo: Middle East Eye.

By Ramzy Baroud – Mar 8, 2023

The following text tells the whole story of what pro-Palestinian communities around the world are fighting for, and what pro-Israelis are fighting against: “We are delighted to report that Chelsea and Westminster Hospital has removed a display of artwork designed by children from Gaza.”

That was the summary of a news report published on the homepage of the pro-Israel group, UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). The group is credited for being the party that managed to successfully persuade the administration of a hospital in West London to take down a few pieces of artwork created by refugee children from Gaza.

Explaining the logic behind their relentless campaign to remove the children’s art, UKLFI said that “Jewish patients” in the hospital “felt vulnerable and victimized by the display.” The few pieces of artwork were those of the Dome of the Rock in occupied East Jerusalem, the Palestinian flag, and other symbols that should hardly victimize anyone.

The UKLFI article was later edited, with the offensive summary removed, although it is still accessible via social media.

As ridiculous as this story sounds, it is, in fact, the very essence of the anti-Palestinian campaign launched by Israel and its allies worldwide. While Palestinians are fighting for basic human rights, freedom and sovereignty as enshrined in international law, the pro-Israel camp is fighting for a total and complete erasure of everything Palestinian.

Some call this cultural genocide or ethnocide. While Palestinians have been familiar with this Israeli practice in Palestine since the very inception of the state of Israel, the boundaries of the war have been expanded to reach anywhere in the world, especially in the western hemisphere.

The inhumanity of UKLFI and their allies is quite palpable, but the group cannot be the only party deserving blame. Those lawyers are but a continuation of an Israeli colonial culture that sees the very existence of a Palestinian people with a political discourse, including children refugees’ art, as an ‘existential threat’ to Israel.

The relationship between the very existence of a country and children’s art may seem absurd—and it is—but it has its own, albeit strange, logic: as long as these refugee children recognize themselves as Palestinian, as long as they will continue to count as part of a larger whole, the Palestinian people. This self-awareness, and the recognition by others—for example, patients and staff at a London hospital—of this collective Palestinian identity, makes it difficult, in fact, impossible, for Israel to win.

For Palestinians and Israelis, victory means two entirely different things, which cannot be consolidated. For Palestinians, victory means freedom for the Palestinian people and equality for all. For Israel, victory can only be achieved through the erasure of Palestinians—geographically, historically, culturally and in every way that could be part of a people’s identity.

Sadly, the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is now an active participant in this tragic erasure of the Palestinians, the same way that Virgin Airlines bowed to pressure in 2018 when it agreed to remove “Palestinian-inspired couscous” off its menu. At the time, this story appeared as if it was a strange episode in the so-called “Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” though, in reality, the story represented the very core of this “conflict.”

For Israel, the war in Palestine revolved around three basic tasks: acquiring land, erasing the people, and rewriting history.

The first task has been largely achieved through a process of ethnic cleansing and unhinged colonization of Palestine since 1947-48. The current right-wing extremist government of Benjamin Netanyahu is only hoping to finalize this process.

The second task involves more than ethnic cleansing, because even the mere awareness of Palestinians, wherever they are, of their collective identity, constitutes a problem. Thus, the active process of cultural genocide.

Though Israel has succeeded in rewriting history for many years, that task is now being challenged, thanks to the tenacity of Palestinians and their allies, and the power of social and digital media.

Palestinians are arguably the greatest beneficiary of the rise of digital media. The latter has contributed to the decentralization of political and even historical narratives. For decades, the popular understanding of what constitutes ‘Israel’ and ‘Palestine’ in mainstream imagination was largely controlled through a specific Israeli-sanctioned narrative. Those who deviated from this narrative were attacked and marginalized, and almost always accused of ‘antisemitism’. While these tactics are still unleashed at critics of Israel, the outcome is no longer guaranteed.

For example, a single tweet exposing the “delight” of UKLFI has received over 2 million views on Twitter. Millions of outraged Brits and social media users around the world have turned what was meant to be a local story into one of the most discussed topics, worldwide, on Palestine and Israel. Expectedly, not many social media users took part in the “delight” of the UKLFI, thus forcing them to reword their original article. More importantly, millions of people have, in a single day, been introduced to a whole new topic on Palestine and Israel: that of cultural erasure. The “victory” has turned into a complete embarrassment, let alone defeat.

Thanks to the growing popularity of the Palestinian cause and the impact of social media, initial Israeli victories almost always backfire. A more recent example is the dismissal and the quick reinstatement of the former Director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth.

In January, Roth’s fellowship at Harvard University’s Kennedy School was revoked due to the recent HRW report that defines Israel as an apartheid regime. A major campaign, which was started by small alternative media organizations, resulted in the reinstatement of Roth within days. This, and other cases, demonstrates that criticizing Israel is no longer a career-ender, as was often the case in the past.

Israel continues to employ old tactics to control the conversation on the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It is failing because those traditional tactics can no longer work in a modern world in which access to information is decentralized, and where no amount of censorship can control the conversation.

For Palestinians, this new reality is an opportunity to widen their circle of support around the world. For Israel, the mission is a precarious one, especially when initial victories could, in hours, become utter defeats.

https://orinocotribune.com/victory-is-d ... -genocide/

***********

Face the facts: Israel relies on settler violence
March 11, 2023 Ahmed Abu Artema

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One of many cars destroyed by Israeli settlers during the Huwwara pogrom. Photo: Shadi Jarar’ah/APA images

Bezalel Smotrich is one of the main pillars of the current Israeli government. Although generally described as the finance minister, his work is not confined to curbing inflation.

His broad portfolio gives him partial responsibility for the defense ministry and a major role in administering Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

A far-right extremist, Smotrich has used his new platform to incite violence. Just days after Israeli settlers carried out a pogrom in Huwwara – killing one Palestinian and inflicting huge destruction on homes, businesses, and vehicles – Smotrich called for that West Bank village to be “wiped out” by the Israeli state.

That racist statement was denounced internationally. Ned Price, spokesperson for the US State Department, called it “irresponsible” and “repugnant.”

Smotrich is not the only member of the Israeli government who supported the crimes by settlers in Huwwara.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, was initially silent after the pogrom. Yet it did not take long before his admiration for the perpetrators became clear.

Ben-Gvir denounced the detention of two settlers accused of taking part in the pogrom.

Members of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, from Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party have openly applauded the pogrom.

One such lawmaker Zvika Fogel said, “A closed, burnt Huwwara – that’s what I want to see.”

Limor Son Har-Melech, another Jewish Power elected representative, called the pogrom “the righteous cry of hundreds of Samaria residents.” Israel refers to the West Bank as Judea and Samaria.

The Huwwara pogrom took place during a time of mass protests by Israelis against Benjamin Netanyahu and the government he leads, which has declared a war of sorts on the state’s high court.

An estimated 250,000 people took to the streets in one day of protest this month, part of an ongoing series of demonstrations.

Among those joining the protests have been Yair Lapid, the former prime minister, and Benny Gantz, the former defense minister. Gantz, then heading Israel’s military, oversaw a 2014 attack on Gaza that – in his own words – caused so much destruction that parts of the territory were “returned to the stone ages.”

Lapid, Gantz, and other politicians now in opposition are seeking to isolate Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. The opposition has portrayed the violence in Huwwara as an example of the extreme racism that is supposedly at odds with its liberal values.

Abnormal?

From the Palestinian perspective, the Huwwara pogrom is not something abnormal. Rather, it is the logical result of the Zionist colonial project in Palestine.

Israeli settlers – colonizers would arguably be a more accurate word – are not an outlaw group in Israel. They are a strategic tool in the implementation of policies pursued by successive Israeli governments.

The objectives of those policies have been to steal land and to expel Palestinians.

What is new is that the most hardline colonizers now occupy a position of immense power. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are both colonizers themselves, living in settlements that are illegal under international law.

The settlers do not act alone. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, has pointed to how settlers benefit from cooperation. “The settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it.”

B’Tselem has rejected the notion that the Israeli state has somehow lost control. “This is exactly what Israeli control looks like,” the group stated, adding that “the Huwwara pogrom was an extreme manifestation of a longstanding Israeli policy.”

Violence is necessary to achieve the state’s aim of emptying Palestine of its Indigenous population so that it may be replaced by foreign settlers.

Founded on massacres

Settlers often do not represent official institutions.

They are, therefore, not confined by rules. They are unrestrained in committing crimes against Palestinians.

The Huwwara pogrom is eerily reminiscent of the violence which occurred in the period leading to Israel’s establishment in 1948.

A whole series of massacres were carried by Zionist forces out around that time. The most infamous was the massacre at Deir Yassin, a village in the Jerusalem area.

The April 1948 bloodbath at Deir Yassin placed terror in the hearts of civilians. It was a significant factor in the Nakba, the huge displacement of Palestinians.

Israel is a state founded on massacres.

The current Israeli political dispute is between two camps.

One camp – the hardline settlers epitomized by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich – clearly and explicitly expresses the truth of the Zionist colonial project. The other camp also believes in the same strategy of relentless colonial violence against Palestinians but paints itself with a coating of liberal values.

That coating makes the second camp preferable for Western governments.

Israel’s most prominent “liberals” of the past few decades – Benny Gantz, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Tzipi Livni – were all involved in killing Palestinian civilians, collective punishment, the construction, and expansion of settlements and other efforts to deny basic rights to Palestinians when they were in power.

Jonathan Ofir, a trenchant anti-Zionist commentator, has put it well: “Israelis and everyone else are right to be shocked by the explicit genocidal nature of Smotrich’s words. But the righteous, liberal and indignant Israelis should take a good look in the mirror, to see how much of Smotrich’s fascistic vein lives in them.”

For more than a year now, there has been a noticeable uptick in Israeli violence in the West Bank. The formation of a new and overtly racist Israeli government, which clearly supports the settlers and encourages more violence against Palestinians, has helped create a certain atmosphere.

That atmosphere is ripe for more depravity on the part of settlers. Nobody would be surprised if the Huwwara pogrom is followed by similar acts of aggression by settlers, who now have greater access to government and feel stronger politically than before.

But there is another story to be told. It is the story of Palestinians determined to prevent a new Nakba.

The past seven decades have taught Palestinians that the price of resistance is much lower than the price of fear or the price of fleeing.

There has been a noticeable upsurge in resistance activities by Palestinians in recent times. Palestinians are constantly confronting Israel’s forces of occupation.

The coming months and years will undoubtedly be painful. We are witnessing an increase in the level of terror practiced by the Israeli colonizers.

But this period also carries many opportunities for a new phase in the Palestinian struggle against the colonizers.

Ahmed Abu Artema is a Palestinian writer, activist and refugee from Ramle.

Source: Electronic Intifada

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... -violence/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 22, 2023 2:30 pm

Israel Protests Should Not Be Confused With the Palestinian Struggle for Equality
MARCH 21, 2023

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Israeli demonstrators take part in an anti-government protest in Tel Aviv, March 16, 2023. Photo: Ilia Yefimovich/C dpa via AP.

By Ramzy Baroud – Mar 16, 2023

As hundreds of thousands throughout Israel joined anti-government protests, questions began to arise regarding how this movement would affect, or possibly merge, into the broader struggle against the Israeli military occupation and apartheid in Palestine.

Pro-Palestine media outlets shared, with obvious excitement, news about statements made by Hollywood celebrities, like Mark Ruffalo, about the need to “sanction the new hard rightwing government of (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu.”

Netanyahu, who sits at the heart of the current controversy and mass protests, struggled to find a single pilot for the flight carrying him to Rome on March 9 for a three-day visit with the Italian government. The reception for the Israeli leader in Italy was equally cold. Italian translator Olga Dalia Padoa reportedly refused to interpret Netanyahu’s speech, scheduled for March 9 at a Rome synagogue.

One can appreciate the need to strategically use the upheaval against Netanyahu’s far-right government to expose Israel’s fraudulent claim to true democracy, supposedly ‘the only democracy in the Middle East.’ However, one has to be equally careful not to validate Israel’s inherently racist institutions that had existed for decades before Netanyahu arrived in power.

The Israeli Prime Minister has been embroiled in corruption cases for years. Though he remained popular, Netanyahu lost his position at the helm of Israeli politics in June 2021 following three bitterly-contested elections. Yet, he returned on December 29, 2022, this time with even more corrupt – even by Israel’s own definition – characters such as Aryeh Deri, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the latter two currently serving as the ministers of finance and national security, respectively.

Each one of these characters had a different reason for joining the coalition. For example, Smotrich and Ben Gvir’s agenda ranged from annexing illegal West Bank settlements to the deportation of Arab politicians considered ‘disloyal’ to the state.

Netanyahu, though a rightwing ideologue, is more concerned with personal ambitions: maintaining power as long as possible while shielding himself and his family from legal problems. He simply wants to stay out of prison. To do so, he also needs to satisfy the dangerous demands of his allies, who have been given free rein to unleash army and settler violence against Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank, as has been the case in Huwwara, Nablus, Jenin and elsewhere.

But Netanyahu’s government, the most stable in years, has bigger goals than just “wiping out” Palestinian towns off the map. Instead, they want to alter the judicial system that would allow them to transform Israeli society. The reform would grant the government control over judicial appointments by limiting the Israeli Supreme Court’s power to exercise judicial review.

The protests in Israel have very little to do with the Israeli occupation and apartheid and are hardly concerned with Palestinian rights. They are led by many former Israeli leaders, like former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former minister Tzipi Livni and former prime minister and leader of the opposition Yair Lapid. During the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid stint in power, between June 2021 and December 2022, hundreds of Palestinians were killed in the West Bank. UN Special Coordinator described 2022 for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, as the “deadliest” in the West Bank since 2005. Illegal Jewish settlements expanded rapidly during that time, while Gaza was routinely bombed.

Yet, the Bennett-Lapid government faced little backlash from Israeli society for its bloody and illegal actions in Palestine. The Israeli Supreme Court, which has approved most of the government actions in Occupied Palestine, also faced little or no protests for certifying apartheid and validating the supposed legality of the Jewish colonies, all illegal under international law. The stamp of approval by the Supreme Court was also granted when Israel passed the Nation-State Law, identifying itself exclusively as a Jewish state, thus casting off the entirety of the Arab Muslim and Christian population, which shares the same mass of land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Rarely did the Israeli judicial system take the side of Palestinians, and when little ‘victories’ were recorded now and then, they hardly altered the overall reality. Though one can understand the desperation of those trying to fight against Israeli injustices using the country’s own ‘justice system,’ such language has contributed to the confusion regarding what Israel’s ongoing protests mean for Palestinians.

This is not the first time Israelis have gone out on the streets in large numbers. In August 2011, Israel experienced what some called Israel’s own ‘Arab Spring.’ But that was also a class struggle within clearly defined ideological boundaries and political interests that rarely overlapped with a parallel battle for equality, justice and human rights.

Dual socio-economic struggles exist in many societies worldwide, and conflating between them is not unprecedented. In the case of Israel, however, such confusion can be dangerous because the outcome of Israel’s protests, be it a success or failure, could spur unfounded optimism or demoralize those fighting for Palestinian freedom.

Though stark violations of international law, arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial executions and everyday violence against Palestinians mainly occur within Israel’s legal framework. These acts are fully sanctioned by Israeli courts, including the country’s Supreme Court. This means that, even if Netanyahu fails to hegemonize the judicial system, Palestinian civilians will continue to be tried in military courts, which will carry out the routine of approving home demolition, illegal land seizure and the construction of settlements.

A proper engagement with the ongoing protests is to expose further how Tel Aviv utilizes the judicial system to maintain the illusion that Israel is a country of law and order and that all the actions and violence in Palestine, however bloody and destructive, are entirely justifiable according to the country’s legal framework.

Yes, Israel should be sanctioned, not because of Netanyahu’s attempt at co-opting the judiciary, but because the apartheid and regime of military occupation constitute complete disregard and utter violation of international law. Whether Israelis like it or not, international law is the only law that matters to an occupied and oppressed nation.

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 29, 2023 2:39 pm

For Israelis, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians Is Fine, but Judicial Reform Is a Red Line
MARCH 28, 2023

Image
Photo composition presenting Benjamin Netanyahu with a Israeli demonstration photo check marked on the left and a Palestinian demonstration photo in the right with an X mark. Photo: MintPress News.

By Miko Peled – Mar 27, 2023

The successful mobilization of hundreds of thousands of Israelis to stand up against the Netanyahu government is proof of one thing: Israelis do not want to end the oppression and killing of Palestinian people.

Israeli society has never seen such ongoing massive anti-government protests. So it is clear that had Israelis wanted to, they could have mobilized around lifting the brutal and inhumane blockade Israel has imposed on Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip, or the release of political prisoners or any of the myriad mechanisms Israel uses to oppress and terrorize Palestinians.

However, rather than stand up against any of the sadistic measures their government takes against the Palestinians, Israelis who consider themselves liberal (or even progressive) seem quite content to let the torture of Palestinians go uninterrupted as long as their privileges are not compromised.

‘Bring Down the Dictator’, Protesters Shout in Thousands-Strong Anti-Netanyahu Rallies


The army weighs in

According to a report in The Times of Israel, as well as many other Israeli news outlets, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has warned the Israeli government that the army is on the verge of reducing the scope of operations due to a large number of reservists refusing to report for duty in protest over their efforts to weaken Israel’s justice system. General Halevi emphasized that “the judicial overhaul is leading to deep and dangerous divisions within the military, as growing numbers of reservists warn they will not serve.”

In addition to the relatively large numbers of reservists refusing to show up, IDF pilots (the most sacred and admired of all) have also spoken out on the issue. Israeli press reports indicate that “Roughly 200 Israeli Air Force reserve pilots reportedly notified their units that they would not be reporting for their weekly flying session.”

This announcement has serious implications for the military because, without weekly training sessions, pilots cannot be certified to fly operational missions. The pilots’ announcement came following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement that the government will disregard the calls to halt the reform and plans to move forward with its plan to overhaul the judiciary.

Netanyahu’s veiled threat

Netanyahu’s response to the growing numbers of reservists refusing to show up for duty was to say that, “The phenomenon of soldiers and reservists refusing to obey orders as a protest move against the judicial overhaul plan could destroy the state.” Furthermore, he added, “Surrendering to such a threat is an existential threat to the state of Israel.”

According to The Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu passed the buck, stating at the opening of a recent cabinet meeting that he wants the Army Chief of Staff and other heads of the security apparatus to fight this phenomenon. “I expect the Chief of General Staff and the heads of the security forces to fight firmly the [service] refusal [of reservist fighter pilots],” he said.

He thus conveniently ignored the fact that these pilots are volunteers who give the Air Force one day of their working week, year after year.” This piece makes the pilots seem so selfless, when in fact, their entire career – glamorous as it seems in the eyes of Israelis – was built on killing people who have no way to defend themselves. And they love every minute of it. Still, when pilots speak, Israelis listen.

Netanyahu then added a veiled threat; “The use of a refusal to obey orders as a political tool starts on the Left but can move to the Right.” In other words, the message that the prime minister is sending those who use the tool of refusal to serve in the military is that if and when the day comes when settlers need to be removed, or some other political decision is made that favors the Israeli “Left,” then the other side, the Israeli Right, will do the same. In Netanyahu’s cabinet, there is at least one member who not only promoted the refusal of the Right to obey orders but was caught with 185 gallons of gasoline, planning to bomb one of the country’s main highways. This is none other than the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.

Israeli soldiers and soldiers are happy to serve

Still, what is clear from the message sent by these refusers is that they can mobilize and stand up to what they feel is wrong. In response to criticism, one pilot said he was, in fact, doing his duty by refusing to serve and participating in the protest to curb the judicial reform. So, clearly, one can claim that they see no reason to demand an end to the apartheid regime, no reason to demand an end to the bombing of Palestinians in Gaza, and no need to stop bombing targets in Syria. If they did see any of these issues as a problem, they could bring these criminal acts to a halt. But, sadly, they are happy to serve the brutal regime called Israel.

Israelis on the street are calling for democracy. Privileged citizens of a nation that denied democracy to Palestinians are protesting for fear that their democracy is in danger. This is not a new phenomenon; we have seen this in the United States, in Australia, and other settler colonial states.

Internationally, the Biden administration and the British prime minister have stated that they are concerned about the judicial reforms because they fear for Israeli democracy. The debate on this issue is expanding, and while their support for democracy is heartfelt, pretending that there is a democracy called Israel and that it is in danger only diminishes the chances of democracy becoming a reality in Palestine.

We may expect that Netanyahu will find a way to appease the protesters. It is likely that a compromise is reached on the judicial reform, and the protests will quiet down until they are completely gone and Israelis all return to Netanyahu’s warm embrace.

https://orinocotribune.com/for-israelis ... -red-line/

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Israel protests: “Democracy” in an apartheid regime?
Richard BeckerMarch 28, 2023

Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/112234

Massive anti-regime protests, unprecedented in their size and scope erupted on March 26- 27 in cities and towns across the state of Israel. The political crisis in Israel brought a surprising admission from the highest level of the U.S. government regarding its real relationship with the country.

Demonstrations which had been taking place every Saturday night since mid-January exploded in numbers on Sunday, 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 coalition of extreme religious fundamentalists and unabashed fascists who dominate the present government.

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 three weeks, obviously hoping that the interlude would diminish opposition energy.

The glaring omission

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 of attacks on the tiny handful who dared to unfurl Palestinian flags by protest participants as well as security forces have been widely circulated.


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 fascistic elements of Israeli society and carry out horrible atrocities against Palestinians.

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 newspaper, 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. Apartheid is an international crime.

The day before taking office in late December 2022, Netanyahu issued a statement declaring that the new government’s top priority is to “advance and develop settlement in all parts of Israel — in the Galilee, the Negev Desert, the Golan Heights, Judea and Samaria [West Bank].” The Negev and Galilee are areas inside the 1948 borders of the Israeli state that have large Palestinian populations.

Netanyahu’s statement was nothing less than an announcement of his intention to carry out ethnic cleansing, the most extreme undemocratic policy imaginable. But this blatant threat is ignored – or condoned – by the opposition political leaders and protest organizers.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army and its fascist settler partners continue their rampage of terror across the occupied West Bank. There, especially in the northern West Bank cities and refugee camps, the occupiers are facing growing armed resistance.

The Israeli Supreme Court – Myth & Reality

The characterization by the present government and its supporters of Israel’s Supreme Court as a bastion of “leftism” and support for Palestinian human rights has no basis in reality. While the court has made rulings supporting democratic rights in Israel, it continues to validate nearly all attacks on Palestinian rights. It has upheld or ignored countless blatant violations of international law in regard to the occupation.

Among the most egregious violations upheld by the court are the massive building of settlements on occupied land, and the dual criminal justice systems for Palestinians and Israel settlers living in the West Bank. Palestinians endure life under military law and emergency decrees copied from the British colonizers’ regulations. The conviction rate for Palestinians is 99.4%. The settlers live under Israeli civilian rule.

In a February 14 opinion piece for the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Nathaniel Berman wrote of the court at times ruling that the government was not proceeding quickly enough in its illegal actions against Palestinians. Berman cited a recent ruling regarding the expulsion of hundreds of residents of the Bedouin village of Khan Al-Ahmar in violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions. The decision was written by Justice Noam Sohlberg, himself a West Bank settler. Even on the few occasions where the court has ruled in favor of the Palestinians, the decisions have often been ignored by the military or the government.

The Khan Al-Ahmar ethnic cleansing case, like all violations of Palestinian rights, is not on the radar of the Israeli protest organizers.

Why, then, is the regime so determined to permanently weaken the court system? The answer is that Netanyahu and his coalition partners are driven by a determination to remove all obstacles to their expansionist and regressive vision of the future. At the same time, Netanyahu, facing long-standing corruption charges, would very much like to choose his own judge if ever forced back into court.

Out of crisis comes a surprising admission

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 comport well with the time-worn notion of Israel as ”the only democracy in the Middle East.”

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 “shared values,” etc.

But the firing of Gallant, an ally and a proven practitioner of war and occupation, sent a shock wave through the White House and the Pentagon as reflected in a statement from the U.S. National Security Council: “We are deeply concerned by the ongoing developments in Israel, including the potential impact on military readiness raised by Minister Gallant, 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.

https://www.liberationnews.org/israel-p ... rationnews
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 05, 2023 2:07 pm

Israeli attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque leaves at least 300 injured

Image
The Security Forces evicted the women and children from the mosque, and then the confrontation with the men began. | Photo: Anadolu
Published 5 April 2023

This month Muslims celebrate Ramadan and they were praying in the mosque that was full of women, children and elderly people

At least 300 people have been injured in a clash after the Israeli Police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, where tear gas and flash grenades were used to evict the occupants of the compound.

This month Muslims celebrate Ramadan and were praying in the mosque, which was full of women, children and elderly people.

According to local media, around 10:00 p.m. local time, the officers stood at the doors of the mosque, preventing the faithful from entering. Later, they entered the building, leaving dozens injured by rubber bullets, pepper spray and stun grenades, and preventing medical treatment for those affected.


The Security Forces evicted the women and children from the mosque, and then the confrontation with the men began, who according to police sources quoted by Israeli media, confronted the agents with sticks, stones and fireworks.

According to Palestinian media, the spokesman for the Palestinian Presidency, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, warned the Israeli forces "not to cross red lines" in the holy places, assuring that they will be responsible for the damage and warning that an escalation of violence "will have dangerous consequences for all.

The Palestinian prime minister, Mohamad Shtayé, described what is happening in Jerusalem as a religious crime against the faithful and defended the right to pray in the Al-Aqsa mosque of Palestinian Muslims.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/ataque-i ... -0001.html

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47th Anniversary of Land Day: Palestinians Rally Against Israelis’ Theft of Their Land
APRIL 4, 2023

Image
Palestinians rally while carrying flags and chanting "freedom" in the Gaza Strip. Photo: IMEMC.

Palestinians have held rallies to commemorate the 47th anniversary of Land Day, in honor of the struggle against Israeli settler-apartheid oppression and the call for freedom, justice and equality.

People in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East al-Quds took to the streets on Thursday to mark the event that takes place on March 30 every year.

In the Gaza Strip, protesters gathered near the fence that separates the besieged enclave from the occupied territories as Israeli troops fired live bullets and tear gas canisters. According to local sources, five Palestinians were injured, three of them with live bullets, two with gas bombs, and hundreds suffered from tear gas inhalation.

Land Day marks when on March 30 1967, Palestinians in the Galilee region rose up against Israel’s land theft and were confronted by a deadly crackdown by troops who killed six Palestinians and injured hundreds.

On that day, Palestinians – referred to as “Israeli Arabs” by Israel – declared themselves an inseparable part of the Palestinian people and their struggle.

Struggle of land has not stopped
“The main issue and our struggle with the Zionist movement was, is, and will remain to be the issue of land, and we are still suffering from racist policies in everything related to land and housing,” one of the organizers of the protests was quoted by Palestinian media outlet Arab48 as saying.

“The struggle over the land has not stopped. Indeed, the conflict of the Palestinians with Israel and the Zionist movement throughout history has centered on the land at its core,” historian Johnny Mansour commented on the importance of Land Day’s legacy, told The Arab News.

National unity a necessity
In a conference held during the Gaza festival, leader of the Islamic Jihad movement, Khalid al-Batch, said in a speech on behalf of the participating factions, “National unity is a necessity in light of the changes taking place in the Palestinian territories and the world.”

Al-Batch warned of Israeli attempts to “erase Palestinian cities in the West Bank.”

“The eternal Land Day this year comes at the height of the fierce Zionist attacks against our people through persecution, demolition, displacement and siege. I warn the enemy of the wrath of our revolution and our resistance,” he said.

The Islamic Jihad chief pointed out that the Israeli approval of “the formation of a special guard will mainly target the Palestinians, and will lead to more innocent bloodshed.”

On Monday, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the approval of the formation of a special guard under the supervision of far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Meanwhile, Palestinian factions abroad said in a joint statement that Land Day “constitutes a historical shock to the Zionist entity.”

“Our Palestinian people proved that, after nearly three decades of occupation and unjust military rule, it is still steadfast and clings to its land, history, and national identity no matter how long it takes, and it is still one people united around its inalienable historical national rights in the land of Palestine,” the statement said.

They said Land Day this year coincides with the Palestinian people facing the most dangerous stage in the history of their cause, “in light of an Israeli regime that is the most right-wing, racist, extremist and criminal in the history of the occupation.”

This current regime, according to the factions, took a series of racist decisions to escalate aggression against the Palestinian people in al-Quds and the West Bank.

“The Israeli regime has been practicing the most heinous types of killing and assassination, Judaizing Palestinian lands and settlements, and settlers’ continuous violations of the sanctuaries through storming al-Aqsa Mosque and attacking worshipers in places of worship,” the statement read.

Israel seized 2.3 million dunums of land
Meanwhile, the Land Research Center (LRC) of the Arab Studies Society said that the Israeli regime had seized 2.3 million dunums of Palestinian land in the occoupied West Bank.

In a statement it issued on Thursday, the research center pointed out that Israel used those seized dunums for the building of 572 settlements and outposts, where about 850,000 settlers live now, in violation of international resolutions against settlement construction.

During the Israeli annexation, Israel demolished 12,350 Palestinian homes and uprooted over 2,000,000 perennial olive trees, the source said.

On May 15, 1948, Israel was established at the expense of the forced expulsion of nearly 800,000 Palestinians. Since then, the Israeli regime has continued its systematic killing of Palestinian citizens, confiscating land and expanding settlement projects.

https://orinocotribune.com/47th-anniver ... heir-land/

Do you wonder that the cry is "Death to Israel!"?

Not for a second.

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Israeli cabinet approves controversial plan for a new security force

The approval comes even as existing Israeli security forces continue their killing spree against Palestinians with two more killed in the occupied territories over the weekend

April 04, 2023 by Peoples Dispatch

Image
Israeli Border Police officers at the Mahane Yehuda Market in central Jerusalem, September 30, 2022. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

On Sunday, April 2, Israel’s cabinet approved the controversial plan of establishing a ‘national guard’ as a separate state security force to suppress protests and resistance activities, which is likely to be used to mainly target Palestinians resisting occupation. The approval of the plan, introduced by extremist far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, comes just days after the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backed down temporarily on the implementation of its judicial reforms, which had led to massive protests in Israel.

The establishment of the additional security force was one of the conditions put forward by Ben-Gvir in return for agreeing to support suspension of the reforms. Following the approval for the force, the prime minister’s office stated that a committee is to be set up to determine its structure, and whether it will fall under the control of the Israeli police or Ben-Gvir’s ministry. The committee will reportedly comprise members from Israel’s existing security agencies. Ben-Gvir claimed that it will have representation from the Prime Minister’s office, Defense Ministry, Finance Ministry, Justice Ministry, and the Israeli army.

Like the judicial reforms, Ben-Gvir’s plan for a new force also came under heavy criticism and was opposed by various sections even within Israel.

Ayman Odeh, member of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), questioned the need for another security force in a tweet saying, “Why does the State of Israel—which has an army, police, military intelligence, the Shin Bet, Mossad, National Security Council, Prisons Service, riot police, a SWAT team—need another national guard?”

Former Israeli Prime Minister and current opposition leader Yair Lapid called the decision an “extremist fantasy of delusional people” and said that the government’s priorities were “ridiculous and despicable.”

Meanwhile, even as Israeli politicians, security agencies, and the public seem to be up in arms over the recent series of drastic reforms by the present government—which many have termed as the most right-wing in Israel’s history—hardly any of them have raised the same concerns over the ongoing violence against Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

Israeli forces continue with their systematic targeting and killing of Palestinians. Two Palestinian were killed just over the weekend. First, Mohammed al-Osaibi was shot dead by Israeli forces near the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem on Friday. He was shot at least 10 times, reported eyewitnesses. The second killing took place on Saturday near the town of Beit Ummar in the occupied West Bank, which involved an Israeli soldier shooting dead 24-year Mohammad Ra’ed Baradiyah. In both cases, Israeli forces claimed that the slain men had tried to attack the Israeli soldiers, a claim disputed by eyewitnesses.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli forces have killed 92 Palestinians since the beginning of this year in unprovoked attacks, raids, and other violent acts.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/04/04/ ... ity-force/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 07, 2023 3:11 pm

Israel resumes attacks on Lebanon and the Gaza Strip

Image
Israel maintains airstrikes against the Gaza Strip. | Photo: EFE
Posted 7 April 2023 (7 hours 32 minutes ago)

Israel's new attacks focused on the Nusseirat refugee camp in the center of the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

Israel resumed attacks and bombardments against Lebanon and the Gaza Strip early Friday morning as part of the series of aggressions carried out by the Israeli state against Palestinian territories during the holy month of Ramadan.

Lebanese media indicated that one of the Israeli bombs fell in an area located between the Ras al-Ayn plain and the Rashidieh Palestinian refugee camp, south of the city of Tire.

Other rockets hit nearby agricultural areas that do not have a military presence.


For the moment, the Lebanese authorities have not reported any casualties due to the Israeli bombardment.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that the bombing was aimed at alleged targets of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas in southern Lebanon.


In the text, the IDF holds the Lebanese state responsible for the attacks against Israeli territory launched from the Arab country.

Hamas blamed Israel for the attacks and called on Palestinian groups to unite against the Israeli occupation.

The Wafa news agency indicated that the Israeli forces resumed their shelling on the Gaza Strip on Friday.

According to the Palestinian media, the new attacks were concentrated in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the center of the Palestinian territory of Gaza.


Shots were also reported from Israeli warships on the beach in the city of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip.

The Israeli bombings come amid an emergency meeting of the Security Cabinet called by the country's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. At the start of the meeting, he declared that Tel Aviv "will strike back at its enemies, and they will pay the price for any aggression."

The new attacks and attacks by Israel are added to those recorded in recent days, when the Israeli police have broken into the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, brutally attacking Palestinian civilians who were praying.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/israel-r ... -0001.html

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Image
How Money Silences Criticism of Israel (Photo: blacklistednews.com)

Inside the Israeli panopticon
Originally published: Red Pepper on March 31, 2023 by Yara Hawari (more by Red Pepper) | (Posted Apr 06, 2023)

Surveillance has always been a crucial part of Israel’s settler colonial endeavour. Prior to the establishment of the Israeli state in the 1940s, squads from Zionist paramilitary groups roamed Palestine, gathering information on Palestinians, creating what would become known as the ‘village files’. These files contained information and data on all Palestinian villages, towns and cities, including their resistance capabilities. The information collected was central to the eventual takeover and colonisation of Palestine in 1948. By then Zionist forces knew who to execute, who to imprison and which villages would be able to put up a fight.

Today, the surveillance of the Palestinian people continues in violent and terrifying ways. Gaza, often dubbed the largest outdoor prison in the world, is under a panoptican Israeli siege: drones offer a near constant buzz of overhead. The West Bank is carved up into Bantustans with Israeli army checkpoints monitoring – and restricting–Palestinians movements. Facial recognition cameras are dotted across the territories. Drones are here too.

But it’s not only Palestinians who are victims of this surveillance. The technologies used by the Israeli regime are exported all over the world. In 2019 a report from Israel’s Defence Ministry claimed it had doubled its exports of civilian and refugee monitoring technology. In 2022, Frontex, responsible for managing Europe’s borders, and also accused of mass human rights violations, awarded contracts to the Israeli arms company Elbit Systems, to operate its Hermes 900 drone to manage Mediterranean border crossings. Meanwhile India too has invested in drones (and arms) to bolster its surveillance capabilities in Kashmir, which is home to a freedom movement that is being brutally repressed by the Indian state.

A great laboratory

Israel also has no shame in advertising the fact that their army tests out these technologies on Palestinians. In 2012 at a border technology conference in Texas, a former brigadier general for the Israeli army boasted, ‘we have learned lots from Gaza…it is a great laboratory’.

In 2022 an investigation by The Guardian and sixteen other media organisations reported widespread abuse of the hacking software ‘Pegasus’. The spyware was developed, marketed and licensed to governments around the world by the Israeli company the NSO Group. Pegasus had the capability to infect billions of phones running either iOS or Android operating systems. Human rights activists, journalists and lawyers across the world were targeted by authoritarian governments who were sold Pegasus by the NSO group. For many Palestinians, the fact that Israel is at the forefront of surveillance and spying across the world is not surprising.

But the Israeli regime doesn’t only rely on technology it creates. Social media has proven to be a fruitful place to conduct surveillance and monitoring. Over the last decade Israel has arrested hundreds of Palestinians based on social media posts using particular algorithms to pick up words like ‘martyr’, ‘the Zionist state’, ‘Al Aqsa’ and more. These people are marked as suspicious and can be subjected to arrest and detention usually under what the broad charge of ‘inciting violence’.

Israeli intelligence forces have also been known to set up fake social media accounts to monitor and to try and extract information from Palestinians. Palestinians, in turn, often report having content removed from their social media accounts. This was particularly the case during the Unity Intifada in May 2021, where hundreds of Palestinian activists reported that content related to the ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah was removed. This is reportedly done in collaboration with social media companies, including Facebook.

In addition to these institutional forms of surveillance, Palestinians are, of course, also subjected to what might be called ‘low-tech’ surveillance by Israeli citizens. Across the West Bank, Israeli settlers work in tandem with Israeli regime forces, patrolling Palestinian villages and often terrorising their residents. Indeed, settlers frequently prevent Palestinians from accessing their agricultural lands, going to school and even go on rampages like the pogrom in Huwara recently.

The surveillance of Palestinians is massive and intimately intrusive. Crucially, keeping Palestinians tightly monitored curbs resistance and stifles the possibilities of mass mobilisation. This kind of surveillance is not only a violation of fundamental human rights, but also sets a frightening precedent. Many states and regimes who import Israeli security technologies are inflicting these methods onto their populations and ones they rule over. From Palestine, to Kashmir and Latin America, overcoming this kind of surveillance has to be a global fight.

https://mronline.org/2023/04/06/inside- ... anopticon/

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Is Netanyahoo (Again) Looking For War?

Israel's occupation of Palestine is moving towards another hot conflict.

Last night the Israeli police again stormed the al-Aqsa mosque:

More Palestinians had gathered in the mosque, responding to calls by Waqf to pray inside overnight. At one of the mosque entrances, police officers could be seen escorting dozens of Palestinians out of the compound. Residents and shoppers milled around, watching social media videos on their phones showing the renewed clashes that had happened just meters away.
Early on Wednesday, Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque, firing stun grenades at Palestinians who hurled stones and firecrackers in a burst of violence during a sensitive holiday season. Palestinian militants in Gaza responded with rocket fire on southern Israel, prompting repeated Israeli airstrikes.

The violence had calmed by early Wednesday morning, but in the evening, Palestinian militants fired two more rockets from Gaza, with one falling short inside Gaza and the other falling near the security fence separating Gaza from Israel, the Israeli military said. There were no reports of casualties.

The mosque sits in a hilltop compound sacred to both Jews and Muslims, and conflicting claims over it have spilled into violence before, including a bloody 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza. Al-Aqsa is the third-holiest site in Islam and stands in a spot known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism.


Muslims currently celebrate their Ramadan holy month while Jews began their week-long Passover holiday. Last week some ultra-orthodox rabbis had asked prime minister Netanyahoo to allow them to abuse Al-Aqsa:

Fifteen rabbis have asked the Israeli government on Thursday to ascend the Temple Mount and al-Haram al-Sharif next Wednesday, when the Jewish holiday of Passover begins, a move that could exacerbate tensions in Jerusalem during the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The rabbis have put a request to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir on Thursday to ascend to the Temple Mount and for Jews to be allowed to offer the Passover, the way it was practiced in biblical times.

Over the years, a majority of rabbis has ruled that Jews are not allowed to ascend the Temple Mount site, since purification rituals cannot be performed in times when the temple is destroyed. Most rabbis also object to reviving biblical sacrifices of lambs or goats. Still, far-right religious activists have registered a clear trend in recent years of an increase in the number of Jews ascending the Temple Mount compound.


It is dubious that the place where Al-Aqsa is standing is the one where the mythical Jewish temple once stood. Despite intense decades long searches no archeological evidence has been found to prove that.

The Waqf, the authority that administrates the al-Haram al-Sharif, had called for Muslim believers to stay there over night to prevent the sacrilege against the Mosque. In response to the first raid on the mosque earlier this week some rockets had been fired from Gaza to which the Israeli military responded with bombings.

Today missiles were fired from south Lebanon:

Dozens of rockets were fired from southern Lebanon on Thursday afternoon with 25 intercepted by the Iron Dome air defense system over northern Israel, the military said. At least three people were injured and several buildings were damaged.
The Israel Defense Forces said 34 rockets had been fired toward the border with five landing inside Israel, and most of the rest downed by Iron Dome. The impact sites of four others were not yet clear.

Such a massive barrage would this the largest number of rockets fired from Lebanon since the 2006 war, during which thousands of rockets were launched at Israel. In August 2021, Hezbollah fired 19 rockets at northern Israel.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, and a Hezbollah source told the Al-Arabiya network that it was not behind the rocket fire, apparently blaming Palestinian groups based in the area. However, it was unlikely they would do so without at least the tacit approval of the Iran-backed terror group that controls southern Lebanon.


This was indeed a message from Hizbullah.

[Amal Saad @amalsaad_lb - 14:08 UTC · Apr 6, 2023
The unprecedented barrage of rockets fired at Israel today, allegedly by Palestinian factions in Lebanon, was an indirect message from Hizbullah. Nasrallah had warned as recently as January 2023 that Al-Aqsa was a red line that would lead to an “explosion of the whole region” 1/2
Hizbullah is trying to stretch the rules of deterrence with a new equation: violating al-Aqsa will trigger responses not just from Gaza but also from Lebanon. Hizbullah is responding by proxy with grey zone warfare to preserve the rules of engagement and avert an escalation. 2/2


It is not yet clear that a escalation can be prevented. Currently the Israeli security cabinet is meeting. United Nations peacekeepers (UNIFIL) in south Lebanon have allegedly received orders to enter their bomb shelters. UNIFIl called the called the situation "extremely serious".

Netanyahoo and his ultra-right coalition partners might be interested in launching a new war to divert from their attempts to change the secular state of Israel into a religious led one. Large color-revolution like protests have been held against that and Netanyahoo's project of putting (secular) supreme court judgments under (religious led) parliament revision is currently on hold.

A 'nice little war' might be a welcome distraction and a way to silently revive the matter. But the 2006 war against Hizbullah, which Israel lost, showed that nice little wars can easily turn against their instigators.

Posted by b on April 6, 2023 at 15:42 UTC | Permalink

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Unraveling the Paper Tiger: Palestine Action’s Siege

05-04-2023
Dante
Over what has been nearly three years, Palestine Action has been busy. In our campaign to decouple the links between Britain and Israel’s arms trade, we have coordinated dozens upon dozens of acts of sabotage against what started as 10 Elbit Systems and its subsidiaries’ locations in Britain. Approximately 280 arrests have been made as our direct action network advances the struggle to shut Elbit down. Elbit Systems, in contrast, has been comparatively quiet.

An Israeli arms manufacturer, founded in 1966, Elbit is the settler colony’s biggest arms company, providing technology and munitions for the Israeli military apparatus. And while they have released statements and press releases in response to our actions, shutting down 2 of the 10 sites in Britain, there was a conspicuous lack of any attempts to propagandise as is often seen by those linked to the Zionist war machine. Israel famously cultivates the diplomatic strategy of 'hasbara', which can be described in English as a relentless culture of ‘explaining’ Israel, using a variety of lies and myths in the service of apologism for Israel’s crimes against humanity. But, sure enough, as Palestine Action refused to stop, to the extent that Elbit was fired from a contract with the Ministry of Defence worth £280 million, the arms manufacturer began to show signs of cracking.

With the recent publishing of two hit pieces published by the Birmingham Mail and a third in the Leicester Mercury to launder Elbit’s reputation, an old adage of revolutionary action comes to surface once again: all reactionaries and imperialists are paper tigers. Far from being an unassailable enemy, Elbit Systems is a paper tiger, and this fact is accompanied by another truth – that from ‘a long-term point of view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are powerful.’

This is not to say they are harmless, of course. Elbit is a company that provides 85% of Israel’s drone fleet that are used as part of the ongoing process of ethnic cleansing in Palestine. It has also made aggressive acquisitions of other companies to provide Israel with the means to colonise Palestine by land, air or even electronic warfare. And we must note that a significant amount of Elbit’s revenue comes from international business, as they sell not only to Israel but other countries around the world, profiting from oppression on a global scale. To quote our own page on UAV Tactical Systems:

Elbit’s business model is then to sell these technologies on to fuel imperialism elsewhere. Its drones have not only been deployed by British military and border operations, but are employed by the EU’s militarised border agency Frontex. The same technologies outfitting Israel’s apartheid wall run along the US’ border wall with Mexico, and are used for monitoring of indigenous lands. Elbit drones have been purchased in major volumes by India, in turn deploying them in violent military campaigns perpetuating the repression of Kashmiri populations.
Elbit has a lot of money at its disposal, and as Palestine Action begins to threaten their profits it is increasingly likely they will use that capital to try and ensure that they remain active in Britain. Israel’s links with Britain, whatever Elbit’s professional reputation with the MoD, remain strong, and throughout our campaign to end British complicity with apartheid we have had to contend with the British state as well.

In response to unrest and protests against racism, colonialism and the increasingly fascistic state of Britain, the Tory government passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act. As our comrades at Liberty pointed out, this bill ‘includes a clampdown on protest, sweeping new powers for the police, and would criminalise Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities’ way of life.’ But that’s not all: introduced to Parliament in 2022, the National Security Bill is close to reaching Royal Assent. Ostensibly a bill intended protect Britain’s interests from harm by foreign powers, Electronic Intifada noted that while the bill’s stated objective is to replace ‘existing counter-espionage laws with a comprehensive framework for countering hostile state activity’, it was clear that the ‘approach being taken is so “comprehensive” that it is questionable whether the bill is really focused on spying in the conventional sense of that term. Many of its provisions could be used against ordinary people seeking to disrupt the weapons business.’ In particular the section on ‘sabotage’ was highlighted as a part of the bill that looked as if it had been written almost entirely in response to Palestine Action. This section declared that ‘“Sabotage” is defined as “conduct that results in damage to any asset,” particularly if the purpose of that activity “is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.”’ As Elbit has contracts with the UK Armed Forces and styles itself as an ‘established supplier’, to damage Elbit property would be to commit a crime against the Armed Forces and the British State. This legislation constitutes a flagrant attempt to provide cover for arms manufacturers who profit off of death, showing just how important it is to Western imperialism that Israel and the military industrial complex – which receives much of its funds from Western nations – must be protected.

Alongside the introduction of its new bills, it would be hard to not notice that the British state has escalated how it deals with Palestine Action on a carceral front. Clearly frustrated with the victories we have achieved when tried in front of a jury, which has often led to many ‘Not Guilty’ verdicts for our activists, the number of cases being tried in a magistrates court have steadily risen in an attempt to increase the number of prosecutions as much as possible. I began by saying Elbit Systems is a paper tiger, and then moved on to stating that Palestine Action will likely face a concentration of reaction on two fronts. It might be easy to be disheartened at the scene I have painted. But by speaking of the challenges that face us, this is not to say that shutting Elbit down is now impossible. In the words of Amilcar Cabral, it is to ‘Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories.’ When we speak of the very real threats that face us, it is not to undercut the statement by which we began, but to help us understand as much as possible that just ‘as there is not a single thing in the world without a dual nature [...] so imperialism and all reactionaries have a dual nature - they are real tigers and paper tigers at the same time.’ In order to understand how Elbit is a paper tiger, it is important to understand how they are also a real tiger and have proved to be a consistent producer of misery and death for the Palestinians.

This said, how Elbit conducts itself reveals various signs that belie any notion that they are invincible. Whereas once they had declared with relish that their drones and weapons were ‘battle-proven’, tested first upon the people of Palestine before being shipped elsewhere, confidently stating they were going to be a ‘one-stop shop’ for Israel’s defence needs, now their subsidiaries must rely on local journalists to try and attest their supposed ‘innocence’. For example, in the Birmingham Mail hit pieces, the owners and employees of UAV Engines look to present themselves as humble, salt of the earth workers harassed and terrified by extremists. They protest that they don’t even make any weapons, only engines for drones (they manage to contradict themselves in the same sentence as this, where CEO David Kilroy states that in fact, ‘These engines fall under ML10, which is a classification with the UK Government regarding arms exports.’). In the accompanying video to the earlier hit piece in the Birmingham Mail, they proudly display medals of air time milestones that their drones have served in military operations. Specifically, the short clip shows medals awarded for accumulated service hours of the AAI RQ-7 Shadow drone which has been deployed extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan. While ostensibly a surveillance drone, the Shadow has been used to carry and deliver small explosives and munitions. While Kilroy suggests that there is no unethical dimension to selling arms to 'countries that are friendly to us, our allies, America', those who have been on the receiving end of American drone warfare would likely disagree. This approach to masking Elbit’s guilt can be seen not only in Britain but also in Israel itself. At a conference which saw Israeli military Brigadier-Generals meet with arms industry insiders, Reuters reported that the manufacturers of armed drones are barred from advertising them as such, and that an Elbit sales representative cited ‘information security concerns’ as the reason for this. Around the world we see that Elbit no longer proudly touts the blood on their hands as a mark of quality.

But what are we to do with this information? I could end this article now with the conclusion that we have Elbit on the run, and proclaim some slogan in Maoist Standard English like ‘Down with Elbit! Forward for Palestinian liberation!’ Without direction, without a plan of action, any declaration would ring hollow – not least because of the mounting obstacles facing us. If we’re going to use the metaphor of a paper tiger, how does that fit into our next steps? To understand that, we need to use a different and more recent interpretation of the phrase. In his interview with the podcast Guerrilla History, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines Jose Maria Sison, was asked about this very phrase. In his response, he stated that its usefulness came from the specific nature of the image of a paper tiger – that of an origami shape. An enemy which might seem large and invulnerable, he said, is in fact made out of many smaller parts that have been folded together. By this he means that a system, such as the arms trade for example, has come about through various historical processes in a particular place and time, and is compacted into more solid, structured parts. In order to defeat such an enemy, Sison goes on to add, one simply needs to unfold the paper tiger, methodically breaking down the enemy, dealing with each particular part before moving on to the next. By following such a strategy, an asymmetrical conflict can be won by the supposedly weaker force of revolutionaries. And so the people must be encouraged and motivated to take part in revolutionary action because while the enemy might have the advantage of economic and state power, in truth the masses outnumber them.

Accordingly, we have targeted the smaller parts of the apparatus facilitating Elbit's presence in the UK. This has included landlords such as Fisher German and Jones Lasang LaSalle (JLL), or exporters such as The Good Packing Company. Because all the parts of a greater total supply chain are enfolded into each other, to attack one impacts all of the others. This is what theorist Stuart Hall called 'differentiated unity', where the parts of an interconnected system fulfil different functions such that 'we must comprehend both its internal structure – what it is in its differentiatedness – as well as those other structures to which it is coupled and with which it forms some more inclusive totality'.1 It is as a character in Palestinian author Susan Abulhawa's novel Against The Loveless World describes: 'In what appears to be random, there are actually very complex but deterministic systems, with repeating patterns, constant feedback, and organisation that is very sensitive to the starting conditions.'2 To intervene in one produces profound effects for the other parts, giving a concreteness to Ghassan Kanfani's analysis that 'Imperialism has laid its body over the world... Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the world revolution.’ However, we cannot rely on such an effect alone, and we must move onto the next 'fold' of the Elbit tiger.

This, in essence, is what we hope to do. On February 14th 2023, we announced that we will be laying siege to Elbit’s site in Leicester, UK. To quote our press release:

From May 1st, Palestine Action will lay siege to Leicester’s Israeli arms factory, UAV Tactical Systems. The mass action will include hundreds staying put for weeks on end, through day and night, refusing to leave until Elbit does. Drawing parallels with the decades-long siege of Gaza, Palestine Action’s siege will symbolically turn this process on its head and cut off Leicester’s link to Israel’s military supply chain.
We seek to mobilise as many people as possible to lay siege to the war machine, starting with the UAV Tactical Systems factory. Through consistent and unyielding resistance, we hope to shut down another Elbit location, to interrupt the flows of profit vital to both the maintenance of Israeli settler colonialism and world imperialism. We recognise that it lies within the power of working class people within this country to reject imperialism and apartheid, and it is only with them as an amassed force that we can end them.

As a call to readers, check out our site to find a list of talks and workshops leading up to the siege that provide an introductory education to Elbit’s part in the colonisation of Palestine. From there, people can attend workshops where they can get involved with local groups which will take part in the siege.

We believe that action, applied consistently, will not only help to shut down this factory but help people to engage with the tradition of anti-imperialist, working class resistance that so often has been brushed aside and condescended to. By taking part in this, you will not only help build resistance in Britain to our country’s centuries-long crimes of genocide, but also contribute to an culture of internationalist solidarity that can take on a world system of oppression. As we have stated, so many oppressive, capitalist states rely on Palestine as a laboratory for technologies of control, displacement and death – reminding us of what so many others have said, that none of us are free until the Palestinian people are free.

References

1 Stuart Hall, ‘Marx’s Notes on Method’ in Selected Writings on Marxism, ed. Gregor McLennan (London: Duke University Press, 2021), 36.

2 Susan Abulhawa, Against The Loveless World (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 244.

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/unr ... aper-tiger
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 08, 2023 1:29 pm

Israel Bombs Gaza and Lebanon After Palestinian Retaliation Against Al-Aqsa Attacks
APRIL 8, 2023

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Palestinians hold the Palestinian national flag and the flag of the Hamas militant group during a protest by the Dome of Rock at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on Friday. AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean

Caracas, April 7, 2023 (OrinocoTribune.com)—Israeli warplanes bombed parts of the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon after the firing of rockets from those regions in retaliation against the apartheid regime’s savage attacks on Palestinian worshipers inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the occupied city of Jerusalem.

At midnight on Friday, April 7, Israeli occupation warplanes launched a series of missile strikes on various sites in the Gaza Strip, targeting a Palestinian Resistance site in the south of Gaza City, an observatory post in the east of the city, agricultural land in Al-Zeitoun neighborhood of southeastern Gaza, and other Resistance sites in the city of Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza Strip and Khan Younis in the southern part of the blockaded enclave, Al Mayadeen reported.


The Resistance responded to the strikes with rocket barrages that set off airstrike sirens in the illegal settlements of Sderot, Ibim, and Nir Am in the occupied Palestinian territories close to Gaza’s border.

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that the Israeli airstrikes partially damaged the Al-Durra Children’s Hospital in eastern Gaza City. The bombing is a clear violation of international humanitarian law and the Geneva Convention, which provides for the protection of health institutions.


The occupation forces simultaneously launched airstrikes on southern Lebanon, targeting the port city of Tyre.

Lebanese TV stations reported that the attacks targeted the Rashidieh Palestinian refugee camp in Tyre city as well as the towns of al-Qalila and al-Maaliya and the Zabqin region in southern Lebanon, while an Israeli military spokesperson claimed that the Israeli army had attacked Hamas infrastructure and sites in southern Lebanon.


The strikes came hours after more than 30 rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards the occupied territories in retaliation for the occupation regime’s ongoing attacks on Palestinian worshipers observing the holy month of Ramadan in the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

An Israeli spokesperson said that the Iron Dome air security system intercepted 25 rockets, while at least five rockets landed in occupied Palestinian lands.

Lebanon warns against Israeli escalation
The Israeli Foreign Ministry announced that it is instructing Israeli missions around the world to inform the “international community” that “Israel will respond to today’s rocket barrage from Lebanon.”

In response, the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs warned against “Israel’s escalation intentions” that threaten regional and international peace and security.

Israeli Forces Kill Palestinian Youth Near Al-Aqsa Mosque on 2nd Friday of Ramadan


The statement called on the international community to “pressure Israel to stop the escalation,” and expressed the Lebanese government’s willingness to cooperate with the international peacekeeping forces—United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL)—operating in southern Lebanon.

The Foreign Ministry also announced that Lebanon will present a complaint before the UN Security Council against Israel for “flagrant violation of Lebanon’s sovereignty.”

Palestinian Resistance vows retaliation, Hezbollah announces support
The Joint Platform of the Palestinian Resistance factions announced that it is ready to respond to any aggression that the Israeli occupation carries out against Gaza.

“We affirm the readiness of the Resistance to confront and respond with all force to any aggression, and to defend our people in all their places of existence,” the factions announced in a statement.

Israel Attacks Aqsa Mosque; Nightly Protests in Gaza, West Bank Calling For Palestinian Mobilization


They warned the Israeli occupation against attacking the Palestinian people, calling on “the criminal enemy to stop its savage aggression against Al-Aqsa Mosque” and the worshipers stationed inside it.

Earlier on Thursday, April 6, Hezbollah announced that it would support “all measures” that Palestinian resistance groups may take against Israel after the regime forces violently raided the al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

“Hezbollah proclaims its full solidarity with the Palestinian people and the resistance groups, and pledges that it will stand with them in all measures they take to protect worshipers and al-Aqsa Mosque and to deter the enemy from continuing its attacks,” the Lebanese resistance organization said in a statement.

Leaders and organizations across the Middle East, including the president of Iran and the Arab League, have condemned the occupation regime’s desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and its escalation, highlighting that this is pushing the region towards war.

Although attacking Palestinian devotees during Ramadan is a regular tactic of Israel, this time there is the added factor of ongoing protests in Israel against Prime Minister Netanyahu and his proposed judicial reform. According to many analysts, Netanyahu is looking for any excuse to go to war against Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, or Iran in order to try to channel the internal discontent away from him and towards any of the apartheid state’s designated enemies. Netanyahu could even use a probable war situation to declare an emergency in Israel and thus ban all types of protests in the territory.

https://orinocotribune.com/israel-bombs ... a-attacks/

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Western media continue to distort Israeli attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque
April 8, 2023 Robert Inlakesh

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The popular outrage and response from the Resistance factions to the Israeli assaults on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque have again been distorted by Western media, in an attempt to try and pin the blame on the response. The framing of what occurred at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is vital, as this is how the Zionist entity and its Western backers seek to begin their pro-“Israel” narrative.

Before we get into what happened in Al-Aqsa Mosque, perhaps the best way to approach this for a Western audience is to imagine the scenario as follows: A militarized force stormed the Vatican, during Easter, with the aim of purging Christian worshippers so that radicals from another faith background could storm the site under the protection of armed police forces. The militarized force broke through the doors of one of the churches, where some younger Christians had gathered fireworks to attempt to keep the militarized force out. The armed men then entered the church, fired gas and stun grenades, and caused a small fire to break out before beating Christian worshippers who were already on the ground and helpless. This militarized force beat women, guards at the Vatican, and even elderly men, then proceeded to return to the Vatican later to assault Christian worshippers during prayer.

The situation above would not take a genius in the West to figure out who was in the wrong. It would also be ridiculous to suggest that some young Christians who used fireworks to keep their attackers out were the real instigators, and the situation would never be presented as a “clash”. Yet, when it comes to the Western media’s coverage of anything involving “Israel”, somehow, all professionalism, journalistic integrity, and consideration for the facts simply go out of the window. In Ramadan of 2021, in the lead-up to the Israeli war of May, the Western media distorted the facts then too.

In fact, it would be fair to say that if such an assault on worshippers at a Holy Site was to take place during a religious holiday, there would not be any issues for Western media to at least use accurate language to frame the event.

Al-Aqsa Mosque is in the heart of every Muslim and all Palestinians, and it has become a symbol of Arab and Islamic civilization, not to mention it being the third Holiest site in Islam. This is the location where Prophet Muhammed (PBUH) ascended to the heavens, to where the first Muslims directed their prayer. When the site is attacked by a regime, which, under international law, maintains an illegal occupation over the eastern part of Al-Quds, where the site is located, it provokes some of the most intense emotional reactions possible.

Legally, the Zionist entity has no right to any of the occupied eastern part of Al-Quds, which they “annexed,” a decision that was rejected by the international community. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan also holds custodianship over the Holy sites in the Old City of occupied Al-Quds, which gives it the right to maintain the security situation within Al-Aqsa compound itself. The status quo at the site is that there are special tourist hours, where anyone can enter the compound, but the site is for Muslim worship alone, so all talk from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his intention to maintain the status quo are sheer lies. The aim of the Israeli regime is to allow for special hours where extremist Israeli settlers will be escorted inside the compound and are given the ability to freely worship and perform provocative acts whilst this occurs… this is a change to the status quo.

The act of extremist religious settlers praying inside Al-Aqsa compound is used as a sticking point in Zionist propaganda, which they use as a pretext to argue that since the site is also Holy in Judaism, they should be able to pray there. The reality is something very different however, this is not about a prayer; it is about asserting Israeli sovereignty over the area, and for the “Temple Mount” movement that finances the settler incursion movement, they openly seek to build what they call the “Third Temple,” meaning that they want to destroy Al-Aqsa and build a synagogue on top of it. There is a split in the Jewish religious traditions on the issue of whether a Jew should even enter the site, which many Jewish religious authorities rule as forbidden. It is believed by many Jews that the remains of what they believe to have been a synagogue at the site only remain at the “Western Wall” area. This site was once of insignificance except for a small number of Jews who would pray there on religious holidays. In the 1920s, the Zionist movement began focusing its efforts on seizing this area, which caused a number of revolts from the Palestinians, culminating in the largest in 1929, sparked by fears that the Zionist movement would go further and was threatening to lay claim to Al-Aqsa.

Today the issue is clear, this extremist group of settler organizations, which receive funding from registered charitable organizations in the West, most prominently in the United States, seek the destruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as their ultimate goal. On top of this, the Zionist entity continues to assault, kill, arrest, and harass worshippers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Just a week ago, a man from Al-Naqab was shot dead near one of the gates to the compound. Inside “Israel’s” current coalition, holding ministerial positions, are West Bank settlers like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who have openly participated in storming Al-Aqsa with the settler groups. So these extremists are not fringe, they are in the mainstream.

When the initial response to these assaults on worshippers, which resulted in around 400 injured or arrested, or both, the Western media went on to report on the issue of rocket fire from Gaza as a “border exchange.” This is also a key sticking point in Zionist propaganda, which frames exchanges of fire between the resistance in Gaza and “Israel” as occurring across a “border” when no such border exists. Along with “Tel Aviv” never having officially declared its borders, Gaza is an occupied territory, it is not a state. There are separation fences and walls built by the Zionist regime to divide the two pieces of land from each other. Therefore, there is nothing that can be legally claimed as a border. This language is used, despite “Israel” not officially declaring this as a border, because it gives them the excuse to pretend that they have the legal right to defend an internationally recognized boundary. Western media, by using this term, are actively playing into Israeli propaganda.

The starting point, when looking at the current escalation over the assault on worshippers at Al-Aqsa Mosque, has to be rooted in an understanding of how serious such an attack is. When the West protects “Israel’s” so-called “right to defend itself” but then condemns the people of the region for reacting to an Islamaphobic attack on a Holy site during Ramadan, which is supposed to be under the custodianship of an Arab nation, there is a double-standard at play. The Palestinian people have a right to defend themselves, they have a right to defend their national sanctities, and the Muslim and Arab World has the right to protect its Holy sites.

Source: Al Mayadeen

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2023/ ... sa-mosque/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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