Palestine

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blindpig
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon May 16, 2022 2:22 pm

Israeli police beat pallbearers at journalist’s funeral
By JOSEF FEDERMAN
May 14, 2022

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Israeli police confront with mourners as they carry the casket of slain Al Jazeera veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in east Jerusalem, Friday, May 13, 2022. Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American reporter who covered the Mideast conflict for more than 25 years, was shot dead Wednesday during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin. (AP Photo/Maya Levin)

Israeli police confront with mourners as they carry the casket of slain Al Jazeera veteran journalist Shireen Abu Akleh during her funeral in east Jerusalem, Friday, May 13, 2022. Abu Akleh, a Palestinian-American reporter who covered the Mideast conflict for more than 25 years, was shot dead Wednesday during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin. (AP Photo/Maya Levin)
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli riot police on Friday pushed and beat pallbearers at the funeral for slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, causing them to briefly drop the casket in a shocking start to a procession that turned into perhaps the largest display of Palestinian nationalism in Jerusalem in a generation.

The scenes of violence were likely to add to the sense of grief and outrage across the Arab world that has followed the death of Abu Akleh, who witnesses say was killed by Israeli troops Wednesday during a raid in the occupied West Bank. They also illustrated the deep sensitivities over east Jerusalem — which is claimed by both Israel and the Palestinians and has sparked repeated rounds of violence.

Abu Akleh, 51, was a household name across the Arab world, synonymous with Al Jazeera’s coverage of life under Israeli rule, which is well into its sixth decade with no end in sight. A 25-year veteran of the satellite channel, she was revered by Palestinians as a local hero.

Late Friday, the Palestinian public prosecutor said preliminary findings show Abu Akleh was killed by deliberate fire from Israeli troops. The prosecutor said the investigation would continue. Israel’s military said earlier Friday that she was killed during an exchange of fire with Palestinian militants, and that it could determine the source of the shot that killed her.

At the funeral, thousands of people, many waving Palestinian flags and chanting: “Palestine! Palestine!” It was believed to be the largest Palestinian funeral in Jerusalem since Faisal Husseini, a Palestinian leader and scion of a prominent family, died in 2001.

Ahead of the burial, a large crowd gathered to escort her casket from an east Jerusalem hospital to a Catholic church in the nearby Old City. Many of the mourners held Palestinian flags, and the crowd began shouting, “We sacrifice our soul and blood for you, Shireen.”

Shortly after, Israel police moved in, pushing and clubbing mourners. As the helmeted riot police approached, they hit pallbearers, causing one man to lose control of the casket as it dropped toward the ground. Police ripped Palestinian flags out of people’s hands and fired stun grenades to disperse the crowd.

Abu Akleh’s brother, Tony, said the scenes “prove that Shireen’s reports and honest words ... had a powerful impact.”

Al Jazeera correspondent Givara Budeiri said the police crackdown was like killing Abu Akleh again. “It seems her voice isn’t silent,” she said during a report.

East Jerusalem, home to the city’s most important Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites, was captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. It claims all of the city as its eternal capital and has annexed the eastern sector in a move that is not internationally recognized.

The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future independent state. Israel routinely clamps down on any displays of support for Palestinian statehood. The conflicting claims to east Jerusalem often spill over into violence, helping fuel an 11-day war between Israel and Gaza militants last year and more recently sparking weeks of unrest at the city’s most sensitive holy site.

Outside of prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque, Israel rarely allows large Palestinian gatherings in east Jerusalem and routinely clamps down on any displays of support for Palestinian statehood.

Police said the crowd at the hospital was chanting “nationalist incitement,” ignored calls to stop and threw stones at them. “The policemen were forced to act,” police said. They issued a video in which a commander outside the hospital warns the crowd that police will come in if they don’t stop their incitement and “nationalist songs.”

Shortly before midnight, the Israeli police issued a second statement claiming that they had coordinated plans with the family for the casket to be placed in a vehicle, but that a “mob threatened the driver of the hearse and then proceeded to carry the coffin on an unplanned procession.” It said police intervened “so that the funeral could proceed as planned in accordance with the wishes of the family.”

The police claims could not be immediately verified. Earlier this week, Abu Akleh’s brother had said the original plans were to move the casket in a hearse from the hospital to the church, and that after the service, it would be carried through the streets to the cemetery.

Al Jazeera said in a statement that the police action “violates all international norms and rights.”

"Israeli occupation forces attacked those mourning the late Shireen Abu Akhleh after storming the French hospital in Jerusalem, where they severely beat the pallbearers,” it said. The network added that it remains committed to covering the news and will not be deterred.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called the images “deeply disturbing.”

The focus should be “marking the memory of a remarkable journalist who lost her life,” Psaki said. “We regret the intrusion into what should have been a peaceful procession.”

During a Rose Garden event, U.S. President Joe Biden was asked whether he condemns the Israeli police actions at the funeral, and he replied: “I don’t know all the details, but I know it has to be investigated.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “was deeply disturbed by the confrontations between Israeli security forces and Palestinians gathered at St. Joseph Hospital, and the behavior of some police present at the scene,” according to a statement from his deputy spokesman, Farhan Haq.

Israeli police eventually escorted the casket in a black van, ripping Palestinian flags off the vehicle as it made its way to the church.

“We die for Palestine to live!” crowds chanted. “Our beloved home!”

Later, they sang the Palestinian national anthem and chanted “Palestine, Palestine!” before her body was buried in a cemetery outside the Old City.

Her grave was decorated with a Palestinian flag and flowers. The Palestinian ambassador to the U.K., Husam Zomlot, and Al Jazeera’s bureau chief, Walid Al-Omari, placed flowers on the grave.

Salah Zuheika, a 70-year-old Palestinian, called Abu Akleh “the daughter of Jerusalem,” and said the huge crowds were a “reward” for her love of the city.

“We already miss her, but what had happened today in the city will not be forgotten,” he said.

Abu Akleh was a member of the small Palestinian Christian community in the Holy Land. Palestinian Christians and Muslims marched alongside one another Friday in a show of unity.

She was shot in the head Wednesday morning during an Israeli military raid in the West Bank town of Jenin.

In preliminary findings released late Friday, the Palestinian public prosecutor disputed the military’s claim that Abu Akleh was caught in crossfire. The prosecutor said that at the time she was shot, Israeli troops were the only ones firing, with the nearest forces about 150 meters (yards) away.

The report said Abu Akleh was shot deliberately, citing traces on the tree next to where she was hit which, the prosecutor argued, indicated that the shots were fired directly at her. It said the shooting continued after she was hit, hindering first aid attempts.

Earlier Friday, the Israeli military said it could not could not determine who was responsible for her death without a ballistic analysis.

“The conclusion of the interim investigation is that it is not possible to determine the source of the fire that hit and killed the reporter,” the military said.

Israel has called for a joint investigation with the Palestinian Authority and for it to hand over the bullet for forensic analysis to determine who fired the fatal round. The PA has refused, saying it will conduct its own investigation and send the results to the International Criminal Court, which is already investigating possible Israeli war crimes.

Reporters who were with Abu Akleh, including one who was shot and wounded, said there were no clashes or militants in the immediate area. All of them were wearing protective equipment that clearly identified them as reporters.

The PA and Al Jazeera, which has long had a strained relationship with Israel, have accused Israel of deliberately killing Abu Akleh. Israel denies the accusations.

Rights groups say Israel rarely follows through on investigations into the killing of Palestinians by its security forces and hands down lenient punishments on the rare occasions when it does. This case, however, drew heavy scrutiny because Abu Akleh was well-known and also a U.S. citizen.

Palestinians from in and around Jenin have carried out deadly attacks in Israel in recent weeks, and Israel has launched near daily arrest raids in the area, often igniting gunbattles with militants.

Israeli troops pushed into Jenin again early Friday, sparking renewed fighting.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said 13 Palestinians were wounded. The Israeli military said that Palestinians opened fire when its forces went in to arrest suspected militants. Police said a 47-year-old member of a special Israeli commando unit was killed.

https://apnews.com/article/shireen-abu- ... f4a9aa2fb3

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Palestinians determined to resist following assassination of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh
Kenya ElliottMay 13, 2022

Download PDF flyer https://flyer-generator.herokuapp.com/? ... sts/105247

Tens of thousands of mourners marched today as part of the funeral procession for assassinated Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. In a continuation of their long history of killing those in Palestine who work to show the truth of brutal apartheid rule, Israeli forces murdered Abu Akleh on Wednesday. She was covering an Israeli military raid in the Palestinian city of Jenin when she was assassinated by an Israeli sniper.

Israeli forces outrageously attacked mourners present at the funeral, shooting stun grenades and beating many of those in attendance.

Abu Akleh was with a group of three other Palestinian journalists when she was killed. Another member of the group, Ali al-Samoudi, was also shot and injured. All four journalists were wearing vests and helmets that clearly identified them as being members of the press. In addition, no Palestinian fighters were present at the scene when Israeli forces opened fire, and the Israeli forces continued to shoot even after they had hit Abu Akleh. The group of journalists were clearly targeted by the Israeli forces, despite the fact that there was no mistaking their status as members of the press.

One of the most well-known and respected journalists in Palestine, Abu Akleh was viewed as honest, brave and powerful. She had been covering news related to the Israeli apartheid state for decades, and her name was a household one. She was widely considered to be a voice of the Palestinian struggle and experience living under occupation, and was known not only for her reporting, but also for her social involvement.

The murder of such a prominent journalist is a significant escalation by Israel. However, the targeting of Palestinian journalists by Israel is nothing new. Israeli forces are reported to have killed 83 Palestinian reporters over the course of the last 50 years. According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, over 46 of those killings have happened since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000. Also within that time frame, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate typically recorded between 500 and 700 instances per year of attacks on and crimes against Palestinian journalists by Israeli forces. Israeli authorities have been attempting to silence Palestinian journalists in their attempts to show the violence that’s been perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinian protests, which are themselves a response to acts of brutality by Israeli police and armed forces.

Some of the tactics employed by Israel to attack Palestinian media workers include firing live ammunition on journalists, targeting photojournalists with steel bullets, police intimidation of the press while covering events, and disruption of live reports and footage. Israel has also launched airstrikes on buildings that housed the offices of media organizations, including the bombing of a building in Gaza that was home to several media offices less than a year ago.

The murder of Shireen Abu Akleh has had a profound impact on the Palestinian people, but the will to resist has only gotten stronger. Her death has become a focal point of mass struggle. There is such global outrage that criticism of the assassination of Abu Akleh, who held U.S. citizenship, has even come from the halls of the U.S. Congress and White House. All U.S. aid to Israel must immediately end in light of this and many other horrific crimes.

https://www.liberationnews.org/palestin ... rationnews

New York Times targeted for calloused coverage of assassination of Palestinian journalist
Jose GarzaMay 16, 2022

On May 13, more than 100 protestors gathered at the southwest corner of the New York Times building to protest the assassination of beloved Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by the Israeli military. The United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner has said that the killing of Abu Akleh may constitute a war crime.

Organized by Al-Awda NY: The Palestinian Right to Return Coalition , they targeted the New York Times and other mainstream media for their callous coverage of the act. Members of different organizations spoke, each adding to the charge that the New York Times was “complicit in colonial violence.”

Wassim from Al-Awda took to the mic and said, “I was looking for the New York Times headlines, and all they said was she died at 51. That is unacceptable!” He continued to elucidate that this “devaluing of lives” is part of a system of oppression that will only end if we continue to fight back.

Amongst the outrage, others shared their deep grief for the loss of a respected member of the Palestinian community. Rabbi Joseph Kohn of Neturei Karta International shared in the anguish, “we send our condolences to Shireen’s friends and families, we stand united with Palestine.”

During the last half of the demonstration, speakers outlined what is ultimately required to stop this violence. Black Alliance for Peace speaker Margaret Kimbel told the crowd that it was not enough to just oppose Israel. Living in the U.S., “we needed to also oppose U.S. imperialism,” she said.

Hannah Craig, shared with the crowd the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s call for solidarity with “the people of Palestine who continue to resist the violent Israeli apartheid regime and the brave journalists who put their lives on the line to tell their stories.” It is only by building socialism at home and abroad that we can oppose the brutal actions of global U.S. imperialism.

Lamis Deek, from Al-Awda said that by demonstrating at this busy corner the action “hoped to reach the hearts of the masses of New York,” because “our strength and power lies in the masses.”

The crowd then took to the streets, blocking all eastbound traffic on 42 St. They marched to the Israeli embassy where the protestors rallied one more time.


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Liberation photo.

https://www.liberationnews.org/new-york ... rationnews
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue May 17, 2022 2:22 pm

Stop lying about Zionist murder! Shireen Abu Akleh was assassinated
May 16, 2022 Struggle - La Lucha

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New York, May 13. SLL photo

Hundreds protested on short notice outside the headquarters of the New York Times on May 13, 2022. They came to protest the coverage by the capitalist media about the murder of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh by an Israeli sniper.

The Times’ coverage was typical. Its headlines disguise the fact that the Palestinian journalist was assassinated.

The emergency memorial and protest was called by Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition. It called for “justice for honorable journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.”

During the rush-hour rally on Manhattan’s Eighth Avenue, news was received that Zionist cops attacked the pallbearers of Abu Akleh’s casket and tore Palestinian flags from it. Their viciousness underlined the desperation of the apartheid regime occupying Palestine.

Lamis Deek of Al-Awda described how Shireen Abu Akleh helped give a voice to the Palestinian people. Deek denounced the corporate media for covering-up Zionist war crimes. Deek, a human rights attorney, hailed Palestinian resistance groups.

Protesters marched from the Times building to the Zionist regime’s U.N. mission on Second Avenue. Forty-Second street was filled with Palestinian flags as protesters took to the streets.

People on the sidewalk greeted the marchers while many cars honked in approval.

Long live the memory of Shireen Abu Akleh! Palestine will win!

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https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... assinated/

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The Nakba never ended, and Palestinian resistance hasn’t either
Palestinians continue to resist the continued attempts to displace, dispossess, and expel them from their native land by the Israeli state

May 15, 2022 by Abdul Rahman

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Thousands of Palestinians commemorate the 74th anniversary of the 1948 Nakba in downtown Ramallah, center of the occupied West Bank. Photo: Mohammad Abu Zaid

A few days before Palestinians were set to commemorate the 74th anniversary of their forceful displacement from their ancestral lands, known as the Nakba or catastrophe, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected a 23-year-old petition by the residents of Masafer Yatta in the occupied southern West Bank and allowed the Israeli military to demolish hundreds of their houses arguing that they are in “firing range”. The incident is part of a systemic policy of the Israeli state to grab more and more Palestinian lands and force the Indigenous Palestinians to live as a refugees in their own country. This everyday Nakba, however, fails to dampen the will of Palestinians to fight for their freedom, land, and right to return.

Since 1948, when the largest single event of forced displacement, ethnic cleansing, and violence against the Palestinian people took place, tens of thousands more Palestinians have continued to face the violence of the settler-colonial Zionist project. The map of Palestinian land continues to shrink while Israeli state institutions continue to rule in favor of illegal Israeli settlement expansion and further displacement of Palestinians.

Arwa Abu Hashhash, a political activist from Palestine told Peoples Dispatch, “we consider that the Nakba is a continuous process since 1948 until today, and it has many manifestations (displacement, killing, arrest, land grab, water theft..and many more). The Israeli occupation keeps killing and displacing the Palestinian people on a systematic basis and on a daily basis.”

“Masafer Yatta is just an example we are living today of the displacement that Palestinians are subjected to on an ongoing basis… Sheikh Jarrah is another example, where dozens of families live under the threat of eviction from their home,” she emphasized.

January 2020 figures of United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), indicate that there are 6,293,390 Palestinian refugees in the Arab world alone which includes refugees living in occupied Gaza and West Bank. There are over a million more such refugees, not necessarily registered with UNRWA in West Asia. At the time of the Nakba, at least 700,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homes in places which now fall inside Israel.

On May 11 of this year, the Neftali Bennet government issued a fresh order to construct over 4,000 new homes for settlers in the occupied West Bank. 3,000 more settlements were approved in October last year.

There are already over 250 illegal Israeli settlements inside the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem where close to 750,000 illegal settlers live. Nearly half of Area C of the occupied West Bank or 18% of its total has been declared as “firing zones” for Israeli military.

Bassam Al-Salhi, the general secretary of Palestinian People’s Party told Peoples Dispatch, despite the destruction of their entire social fabric, “the Palestinian people rose from the impact of the Nakba to regroup themselves and launch again their national movement and renaissance as a people occupied.” He added that the Palestinian people “are still struggling for their legitimate rights to self-determination, the state, the return [to Palestine], and against the colonial apartheid project in Palestine.”

Arwa Abu Hashhash asserted, Palestinians know that “living under the Israeli occupation means living under the threat of displacement, killing and violence at any moment.” They have no other option but to resist and so they are doing.

For the last two years, Palestinians have resisted the Occupation Forces in every occasion, whether it be against their repeated attacks on Al-Aqsa, aggression on Gaza, or raids on Palestinians villages in Jenin and other places in the occupied West Bank.

With the brutal assassination of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the violent attacks on mourners at her funeral, once again the world has seen the sheer violence of the Zionist project and the Israeli state. While it continues to enjoy financial and political backing from the United States, United Kingdom, and other global north countries, more and more, the people of the world are standing in solidarity with Palestine and rejecting the actions of Israel.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/05/15/ ... nt-either/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Thu May 19, 2022 5:47 pm

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Why Did Israel Execute Shireen Abu-Akleh?
May 18, 2022
By Steve Salaita – May 13, 2022

Simply put, because she was Palestinian.

Immediately after Israeli soldiers executed Al-Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu-Akleh and fired at a group of her colleagues, observers began asking how such a horrible thing could happen. Why would Israel murder a journalist well-known throughout the Arab World? A noncombatant wearing appropriate press gear? A high-profile Palestinian with U.S. citizenship? At best, it seemed like a terrible PR move. It didn’t make any sense.

Except it did make sense. In fact, from a certain point of view killing Abu-Akleh was painfully sensible.

It’s natural to seek rational explanations for what appear to be mindless acts of violence. Explanation is contingent on material conditions, though, and so we have to understand the situation in context of Zionist settler colonization. Using the humanistic logic prevalent in most civil societies, Israel’s conduct was baffling. Its soldiers murdered a civilian in full view of people whose job is to report news. Those soldiers had to know that they couldn’t keep their act a secret, that targeting journalists would result in worldwide outrage. And yet they did it anyway.

Why?

To arrive at an answer, we have to discern the colonizer’s psyche. We’re not dealing with normal civil society standards, first of all. The relevant context is military occupation. In such a context, gratuitous state violence is normal. Obviously, killing Abu-Akleh has the immediate benefit of silencing a prominent voice of Palestinian resistance, one that had long exposed Israeli crimes of aggression.

There is more to the story, however.

We also have to explore the assumptions underlying a desire for simple explanations. By asking for reasons over and over again, observers seek answers to incongruous questions. In so doing they’re apt to tacitly implicate the victims in their own suffering. The journalists must have done something. There had to be a provocation. Israeli soldiers don’t just shoot innocent people for the hell of it.

But that’s exactly what Israeli soldiers do. Israel has murdered around fifty journalists over the past two decades. One or two might be an aberration. Fifty is a policy.

We needn’t turn to the victim’s behavior for answers to the colonizer’s violence. He is violent because of colonization.

So there’s no need to seek legible reasons for Abu-Akleh’s murder according the rationale of civic decency. The settler doesn’t need a “reason” to kill the native. The settler kills because deracinating the native is a precondition of his social identity. It is a function of his legal status and class position. Israeli forces viciously attacked a crowd carrying Abu-Akleh’s coffin—abusing our beloved martyr even in death—which only affirms the fact that the settler kills precisely when confronted by the native’s vulnerability. There is a higher purpose to his violence. The settler doesn’t kill simply to produce death; he kills to negate the native’s existence.

Israeli forces attacked Abu-Akleh’s corpse because killing her wasn’t enough. They needed to expunge her from a land they claim by divine mandate. Her body impedes a mythological birthright underlying the settler’s entire sense of self. She has to be rendered nonexistent in order for the settler to survive. Such is the logic of desecrating ancient Muslim cemeteries and planting flora over the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages.

The same forces attacked hundreds of mourners not because they were unruly, but because they weren’t also in the casket.

The settler’s violence, in short, is endless. It is the only way he knows how to be a good citizen. And it is the only way, in the end, he can imagine a meaningful existence.

https://orinocotribune.com/why-did-isra ... abu-akleh/

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‘If Only the Natives Had Stayed Silent’: On Responding to Settler Colonialism
May 17, 2022
By Benay Blend – May 12, 2022

In an American History class that I taught at the local community college, a student made a comment that has stayed with me all these years. To paraphrase, he explained that if Native Americans had just accepted their colonized position without fighting back, there would have been no massacres of Indians.

That refusal to recognize the right of the colonized to resist makes its way into contemporary thinking, including the supposedly well-informed. Very often there is no context, no background history to explain why the oppressed resist. Instead, the journalist, academic, or whoever is speaking describes any opposition to the established order as “barbaric,” “uncivilized,” a “subhuman” who has gone on a rampage for no reason.

For example, Maureen Clare Murphy, writing for Electronic Intifada, reported that on May 5, 2022, two Palestinians allegedly murdered three Israelis and injured two others in the city of Elad. In her article, Murphy puts the incident into the context of rising tensions over increasing Israeli provocations during Ramadan, all of which led up to illegal settlers storming Al Aqsa Mosque on Israeli Independence Day.

The 16th October Group, a collective of young journalists and activists in the Gaza Strip, explained more clearly that the attack came “as a response to the Israeli occupation violations in the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” and moreover, noted that El’ad, the location of the incident, is an illegal settlement in “1948-occupied Palestine.”

Coverage by even the liberal Western media was not so generous. For example, National Public Radio (NPR) merely repeated news from the Associated Press. According to this account, two Palestinian “attackers” went on a “stabbing rampage near a town in Tel Aviv” on Thursday night,” adding to “the latest in a string of deadly attacks in Israeli cities in recent weeks.”

There is very little context, no reference to 74 years of ongoing Nakba. Instead, events leading up to May 5th are described as “clashes” for which Palestinians were mainly responsible. The only Palestinians quoted were President Mahmoud Abbas, who said that the attacks only led to increased instability, and Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem, who described the stabbings as an act of resistance.

There is no mention in the article of how Israel might be instigating the resistance, no mention of increased settlement building, illegal settlers who have provoked Palestinians to respond, and no mention of the overarching cause: settler-colonial occupation.

Also very seldom mentioned, under international law, the occupier has a responsibility to protect those under occupation, not ethnically cleanse and displace them. Moreover, international law ensures the right of “armed struggle” for peoples who seek self-determination under “colonial and foreign domination.”

Indeed, United Nations resolution 37/43, dated 3 December 1982, “reaffirms the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle.”

As Noura Erakat explains, a state cannot claim control over another group of people while at the same time attacking that group of people by “claim[ing] that it is ‘foreign’ and poses an exogenous national security threat.” Nevertheless, Israel repeatedly claims the right to defend itself, a reversal of facts on the ground that is often picked up by Western media.

Historical contortions that transform the victim into the cause of their own victimhood are not new. In 1831, Nat Turner, an enslaved man in Southampton County, Virginia, organized others to go from plantation to plantation, murdering at least 55 men, women, and children. Howard Zinn described this as “rampage” (A People’s History of the United States, 1980, p. 74) which perhaps was correct. But it was also a rebellion which, despite the aftermath of collective punishment, showed slaveowners that their “property” would not acquiesce.

More recently, Martin Luther King is more often honored than Malcolm X, perhaps because the dominant population feel less threatened by a religious leader who preached nonviolence that a fiery orator who believed in self-defense. This does not diminish the courage of either man; indeed, as MLK became increasingly vocal against the Vietnam War abroad and poverty at home, he became a target of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Rather, it illustrates that certain kinds of resistance tend to get written about more favorably than others.

In that vein, Whitney Webb explores how Biden’s new “domestic terror” agenda targets “primarily those who oppose US government overreach and those who oppose capitalism and/or globalization.” Far from being a war against “white supremacy,” the administration’s new “domestic terror” strategy clearly targets “primarily those who oppose US government overreach and those who oppose capitalism and/or globalization.” While ostensibly aimed at reducing racially motivated violence, it equates those labeled “anti-government” or “anti-authority” with “racist extremists,” and lists policies that could be construed to “silence or even criminalize online criticism of the government.”

“If you just shift through the noise,” warns Erica Ryan, organizer for Black Alliance for Peace, “you realize all of the rhetoric is about repressing protesting and when you take that into context alongside the multiple states that have passed anti-protest laws, and the federal increase of policing on top of the collapsing infrastructure—what you are expected to do is grin and bear it with the occasional ‘angry tweet’…not organize to act.”

Finally, Ilan Pappé describes the hypocrisy behind Western media reporting on the Ukraine/Russia conflict. Careful not to diminish the humanitarian suffering for victims of any war, Pappé notes that in the past Western media warned about the danger of increasingly powerful neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. Nevertheless, as a by-product of increasing Russophobia, the same media now whitewashes these neo-Nazi groups, thereby ignoring their recent past in Ukrainian history but also what he calls their present danger for “Europe and beyond.”

Pappé concludes with a reminder that the West reserves its support for any country willing to support its aims, preferably white, European countries or those who have adopted a Western outlook. As for the Palestinians, they do not seem to meet these qualifications, so when they resist the occupying state they are reduced to Orientalist stereotypes of savages who sometimes go on a rampage with no apparent motive for their actions.

https://orinocotribune.com/if-only-the- ... lonialism/

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Demonstrations in West Bank for Palestinian Prisoner’s Day and Jenin Camp
By Mohamed Ahmed, Contributor May 17, 2022

Occupied West Bank, Palestine – Palestinian demonstrations in the Occupied West Bank were violently suppressed throughout April by Israeli forces. Videos from two separate nights in Hebron show Israeli forces shooting metal-coated rubber bullets and tear gas at Palestinian protesters who responded by throwing rocks and burning barricades and tires.

On April 10, 2022, young Palestinians in Beita and Hebron protested against Israeli occupation forces for their continuous deadly raids into Jenin Refugee Camp in March and April 2022. Many of the Israeli raids were in response to lone-wolf attacks on Israelis inside Israel carried out by Arab-Israelis and Palestinians.


Jenin Refugee Camp was formed in 1953 for Palestinians displaced by Israeli colonialism and has become a bastion of resistance to the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. Nearly 13,000 people live Jenin Camp and upward of 40,000 plus live in Jenin city which is located in the northern part of the Occupied West Bank.

Israeli forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at young men who responded by setting rubber tires alight and throwing rocks.

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Activists also organized a stand of support for Jenin on the Ibn Rushd roundabout in the center of the city of Hebron.

Israeli Raids on Jenin Refugee Camp Leave Many Dead, Dozens Shot
In the Occupied West Bank city of Hebron, hundreds marched in support of prisoners for Palestinian Prisoner’s Day on April 17. Many participants carried torches as they chanted slogans in support of Palestinian prisoners and against ongoing Israeli aggression.


The march was organized by the Prisoners’ Club, the Prisoners’ Affairs Authority and National Security Forces in Hebron Governorate. While marching, the crowd denounced international and Arab silence towards the mistreatment of prisoners of the Israeli occupation.

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Heavily armed Israeli forces aiming live fire weapons at civilians and demonstrators in Hebron – one person was shot. Images from screenshots of video contributed by Mohamed Ahmed taken on April 17, 2022
Over 1 million Palestinians have been imprisoned by Israel’s occupation forces since 1967, with more than 60,000 being incarcerated under ‘administrative detention’ for indefinite periods of time without charge.

According to MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, at least 4,450 Palestinians are being held in prison as of April 2022. At least 32 women are incarcerated and 530 Palestinians are being held in administrative detention, while there’s a total of 160 Palestinian children locked up with 20 of them in solitary confinement.

As the Palestinian Prisoner’s Day demo in Hebron was coming to a close, a civilian was shot by live rounds when Israeli forces fired live bullets, sound bombs, and tear gas canisters, injuring dozens. During the night, Israeli forces and settlers raided the Khaled bin Al-Walid Mosque in the Al-Kasara area, east of the city.

Two days earlier, Israeli forces stormed the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque along with hundreds of settlers, leading to hundreds of injuries and 400 arrests.

Al-Aqsa Mosque Stormed: Israeli Police Detain 400, Injure 153
For more on Palestinian Prisoner’s Day, see a summary factsheet created by MIFTAH.

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue May 24, 2022 2:58 pm

Israel Killed Reporter Abu Akleh—but US Media Disguised the Facts
ROBIN ANDERSEN
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Mondoweiss report (5/11/22) on Shireen Abu Akleh’s killling.
Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known and much-loved Al Jazeera reporter who covered Palestine for two decades, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper May 11 while documenting an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank.

Footage of the moments after her death show Abu Akleh, still wearing her press vest and helmet, lying face down on the ground below a tree, as Shatha Hanaysha, another Palestinian journalist and writer for Mondoweiss, sits by her side and attempts to reach out to her. Writing for Mondoweiss (5/11/22), Yumna Patel described the video:

A young Palestinian man is then seen jumping over a wall behind Abu Akleh and Hanaysha. When he attempts to retrieve Abu Akleh’s body, another round of sniper fire can be heard, and he quickly takes cover behind the tree.

No armed combatants are there. Journalists are shouting for an ambulance. The young man tries a second time to remove Abu Akleh, but fails. He manages to help a shaken Hanaysha hide behind the tree. The footage is harrowing.
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Shatha Hanaysha crouches near her slain colleague Shireen Abu Akleh—both wearing jackets that clearly identify them as press.
The Qatar-based news network interrupted its broadcast (5/10/22) with breaking news reporting that “an Al Jazeera correspondent has been shot by Israeli forces” and killed in Jenin. The network called it “deliberate,” adding that the killing of Abu Akleh was a “heinous crime which intends to only prevent the media from conducting their duty.”

Reporter Nida Ibrahim, on the phone from Ramallah, recounted the announcement of Abu Akleh’s death by the Palestinian Health Ministry, saying she was shot in the head. Her voice broke up as she talked about Abu Akleh’s dedication, her long experience covering Palestine, and the grief Ibrahim and her fellow journalists were experiencing. She carried on, saying, “This is the reality of Palestinian journalists covering the news”; unfortunately, they find “themselves part of the story.”

Outpourings of grief
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Twitter (5/12/22)
News of Abu Akleh’s death spread across the world at the speed of the internet, with outpourings of grief, tributes, and international condemnation for her killing. Journalists who have covered the Israeli occupation of Palestine provided context, hitting Twitter with art, videos, eyewitness testimony and images from Palestinian activists, advocacy groups and press critics, among many others. Clips of Al Jazeera footage were prominent.

Late Wednesday, the Israeli military posted an online video and an implausible scenario to deflect blame for the murder, a denial that, with a few notable exceptions, corporate media would assiduously repeat. Yet the documentation and eyewitness accounts continued to mount.

Mondoweiss‘s Hanaysha told Al Jazeera (5/11/22):

The [Israeli] occupation army did not stop firing even after she collapsed. I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her, because of the shots. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.

Electronic Intifada (5/11/22) included the Twitter post of another Palestinian-American journalist—Dena Takruri, host of Al Jazeera‘s Direct From—who said, “Shireen was shot near her ear, where the helmet didn’t cover. This was a shot of extreme precision.”

Abu Akleh was taken in a private vehicle to a hospital in Jenin, where she was declared dead. The shot to the head killed her instantly. An Al Jazeera producer, Ali Samoudi, was also shot in the back by an Israeli gunman, but will recover.

At the hospital, Samoudi told reporters, “We were covering the raid of the Israeli occupation forces when they suddenly opened fire at us; the first bullet hit me and the other killed Shireen.” He went on to say, “They killed her in cold blood.”

WSWS (5/11/22) also reported that Samoudi confirmed that “there was no Palestinian military resistance at all at the scene.”

“We pledge to prosecute the perpetrators legally, no matter how hard they try to cover up their crime, and bring them to justice,” the Qatar-based network said in a statement (NBC, 5/11/22).

The Israeli response
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The Israeli prime minister offered video of a Palestinian fighter firing a weapon as evidence that Israel’s military did not kill Abu Akleh.
The video the Israeli military posted online depicted a lone Palestinian resistance fighter shooting down an alleyway, purportedly evidence that the Al Jazeera team were victims of Palestinian gunfire. In a series of statements on Twitter (Mondoweiss, 5/11/22), the office of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said:

According to the information we have gathered, it appears likely that armed Palestinians—who were firing indiscriminately at the time — were responsible for the unfortunate death of the journalist.

Israel’s claim was refuted by a number of sources, in addition to other eyewitness testimony. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem’s field researcher in Jenin documented the location of the Palestinian gunman depicted in the Israeli government video. “According to B’Tselem, the location of the video is in a completely separate location than where Abu Akleh was killed,” Mondoweiss (5/11/22) reported, and “cannot be the gunfire that killed the journalist.”

NBC’s Raf Sanchez’s reporting from Jenin corroborated B’Tselem’s. He posted on Twitter (5/11/22) that NBC researcher Matthew Mulligan “has geolocated the Al Jazeera video” and found that the “area doesn’t match the alleyways shown in the video being put out by the Israeli government.”

A thorough debunking by human rights groups, witnesses and journalists aired on Al Jazeera (5/12/22) also exposed the online video as Israeli military fabrication. Using a map of the occupied West Bank, the network illustrated how occupation forces had a direct line of fire to where Abu Akleh was shot, while the Palestinian resistance fighter shown was too far away to have shot her, blocked as he was by alleyways and buildings.

Hagai El Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, told viewers that the Israeli version of events is based “on a false narrative designed to protect the perpetrators.” He explained the “impossible logistics” of the Israeli scenario, adding that he recognized this as a “trick” often used for the “blanket impunity that Israel provides for itself.” He went on to say that

Israel has a track record of not punishing its soldiers who have committed crimes against Palestinians, and it has never jailed one of its soldiers for the killing of a journalist.

Though it provides another point of evidence, the geolocation data is hardly necessary, as simply looking at the videotapes and listening to corroborating journalistic and eyewitness testimony renders Abu Akleh’s death at the hands of the occupation forces beyond dispute.

Attacks on journalists
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Intercept (4/5/22): “The journalist will be told that the reports he posts on Facebook are considered incitement—and although he is only reporting news, the fact that that news is made public is tantamount to incitement.”
Many independent news outlets provided context by including numbers and details of journalists killed and wounded by Israeli forces. Though well-documented, the numbers may be different due to different criteria and the difficulty of recording.

Cross Currents (5/12/22) reported that since 1972, the Amman-based Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists, “has documented 103 deaths of Palestinian journalists and nearly 7,000 injuries, plus many detentions and imprisonments.”

According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (Mondoweiss, 5/11/22):

Abu Akleh is the 86th Palestinian journalist to be killed by Israel since the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967. And since 2000, more than 50 Palestinian journalists have been killed, including six in the past two years.

In April, the Intercept (4/5/22) revealed the ongoing harassment, jailing, repeated interrogations and threats against Palestinian journalists, so severe that many abandoned the work of journalism. The primary charge against them was ‘incitement.’” Vice reporter Hind Hassan posted a string of horrific videos on Twitter (5/12/22) documenting Israeli attacks on journalists. One dated April 15, 2022, shows an Israeli police officer run across the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in a surprise attack, breaking the arm of journalist Alaa Sous with a baton smash (Mondoweiss, 4/22/22).

‘Armed with cameras’

The Middle East Eye (5/11/22) reported Israeli military spokesperson Ran Kochav telling Army Radio that even if soldiers shot at someone, “this happened in battle, during a firefight,” so “this thing can happen.” Kochav went on to say Abu Akleh was “filming and working for a media outlet amidst armed Palestinians. They’re armed with cameras, if you’ll permit me to say so.”

Numerous press advocates responded to this statement. Reporting on a tribute for Abu Akleh held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Cross Currents (5/12/22) called the accusation “an outrageous and egregious claim by any standard.” Reporters Without Borders has condemned Israel’s disproportionate use of force against journalists, saying under no circumstances should they “be treated as parties to the armed conflict.”

Vox (5/11/22) noted that if Abu Akleh’s was killed by the IDF, her death “will fit into a larger pattern of attacks on the press in Palestine and in the systemic violence against Palestinians more broadly.” It called the “armed with cameras” assertion “a not-subtle comparison between the work of journalism and that of violence.”

Viewing cameras as weapons, together with the history of escalating attacks on reporters and charges of “incitement” for bearing witness to Israeli attacks, makes clear that the Israeli government considers journalists to be the enemy, and by extension suitable targets for snipers. Because journalists document the actions of Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinians, they jeopardize the military’s continued ability to act with impunity. Repressing press freedom in the Occupied West Bank seems to now be part of the state’s increasingly militarized strategy.

Calling for investigation
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Anadolu Agency (5/11/22) reported on Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s moment of silence for Shireen Abu Akleh.
The Turkish international news outlet Anadolu Agency (5/11/22) covered Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s moment of silence for the slain journalist on the floor of the House of Representatives, including Tlaib’s opening that quoted President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:

We honor journalists killed, missing, imprisoned, detained and tortured covering war, exposing corruption and holding leaders accountable. The free press is not the enemy of people, far from it; at your best, you are the guardians of the truth.

Though she is a Palestinian American like Abu Akleh, no US corporate news outlet used Rashida Tlaib as a source for covering the slain journalist.

Tlaib also called on the US government to investigate the killing, saying that Washington should not allow “the same people committing those war crimes to do the investigation.” (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22). The International Criminal Court launched an investigation last year into possible Israeli war crimes (AP, 3/3/21).

In an interview between MSNBC news host Ayman Mohyeldin and on-the-ground reporter Raf Sanchez (5/13/22), Sanchez explained why the Palestinians don’t trust the Israelis to investigate Abu Akleh’s death. In 2018, he said:

I was in Gaza; an Israeli sniper killed a young Palestinian journalist called Yaser Murtaja. He, like Shireen Abu Akleh, was wearing a vest that clearly showed he was a member of the press. That was four years ago. The Israeli military said they were investigating then, and I asked them today to give me the report…. They sent me a very short statement saying that they had looked into the incident, they had determined that there was no criminal activity by any Israeli soldiers, and they had closed the case. That gives you a sense of why Palestinians feel that they are unlikely to get the full story out of the Israeli military.

Murtaja’s story also appears in the Intercept (4/9/18).

Palestinian rights advocates in the United States have called on the Biden administration to demand an independent probe into the killing of Abu Akleh, saying that Israel should not be allowed to investigate itself. Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said investigations are “empty gestures” if the probe is to be left for Israel (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22).

Addressing reporters at UN headquarters in New York, Palestine’s UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22) said:

The story of the Israeli side does not hold water, it is fictitious, and it is not in line with reality, and we do not accept to have an investigation on this issue with those who are the criminals in conducting this event itself.

He said what is needed is an investigation that is “internationally credible.”

House Democrats demanded an independent investigation. Though US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price (Reuters, 5/11/22) called for a “thorough investigation and full accountability,” when asked whether the US would support an international investigation, Price repeated: “Israel has the wherewithal to conduct a thorough investigation.”

Al Jazeera reported the calls by US sources for an independent investigation, while most US corporate news repeated Israel’s demand to control any investigation.

US corporate coverage

The context of escalating Israeli attacks on freedom of the press and on journalists in the Occupied Territories did not enter the frame of most US news coverage. Instead, many used a back-and-forth blame frame for reporting the murder of a veteran war correspondent who knew well how to negotiate crossfire in the field of battle. This was acknowledged by Ali Samoudi, who said from his hospital bed, if there had been crossfire, they wouldn’t have been there.

Amidst the debunking of the Israeli messaging, by late Wednesday some news outlets, including NBC (5/11/22), noted that Israel “appeared to step back from that claim” that Abu Akleh may have been killed by Palestinian gunmen.

Yet most big media would continue to include Israeli messaging in their reporting, while failing to disclose any of the factchecking done on the Israeli video. They “balanced” on-the-ground testimony with Israeli statements, keeping the propaganda story alive.
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CBS News (5/11/22) carefully avoided attributing responsibility to Israeli forces.
The second sentence of the CBS report (5/11/22) from Jerusalem said, “The broadcaster and a reporter who was wounded in the incident blamed Israeli forces, while Israel said there was evidence the two were hit by Palestinian gunfire.” The opening set the tone for a long series of opposing claims, in which every fragmented aspect about Israel and Palestine becomes a tedious set of contentions, rendering the truth incomprehensible.

The story included the “camera as weapon” comment, followed with the unrelated, “CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab knew Abu Akleh personally,” adding more laudable details about the slain journalist. It continued, “Israelis have long been critical of Al Jazeera‘s coverage, but authorities generally allow its journalists to operate freely”—presented not as a requirement for democracy, but as a generous act of tolerance.

CBS said that the relationship between Israeli forces and Palestinian journalists “is strained,” and ended with a series of toned-down examples of Israeli attacks on journalists, without one unifying critical comment. It even included the killing of three Palestinian journalists, including AP (12/21/18) reporter Rashed Rashid in 2018, followed by: “The military has never acknowledged the shooting.” It failed to connect that history to Palestinian demands for an independent, international investigation into Abu Akleh’s murder.

The most disingenuous comments, which revolved around the investigation, were included early on. CBS offered fragments of truth—saying, for example, that US Ambassador Tom Nides called for “a thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death,” without saying by whom. It stated uncritically, “Israel said it had proposed a joint investigation and autopsy with the Palestinian Authority, which refused the offer,” with no explanation as to why.

The reporting illustrated how “balance” and fragments of disjointed “facts” have become a stylistic method to confuse and obliterate meaningful connections that drain compassion, outrage and demands for justice for the victims of state violence.
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The New York Times (5/11/21) ran a home-page headline that could have run if Abu Akleh had died of natural causes.
In a similar manner, the New York Times (5/11/22) attributed Abu Akleh’s death to “gunfire” in the second paragraph. A second article posted later that day was more definitively structured by false balance: “The network and Palestinian authorities blamed Israeli troops for the killing. Israel said the blame could lie with Palestinian gunmen.”

ABC News (5/12/22) presented the same style of decontextualized back-and-forth, referring to a proposed Israeli investigation in the lead paragraph: “The head of the Palestinian Authority blamed Israel for her death and rejected Israeli calls for a joint investigation.” It evoked the “angry Arab” lexicon, saying, “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas angrily rejected that proposal,” while “Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accused the Palestinians of denying Israel “access to the basic findings required to get to the truth.” No mention was made of past Israeli failures to investigate the killing of journalists.

ABC dismissed the investigation into Israeli war crimes with one phrase: “Israel has rejected that probe as being biased against it.”

An end in sight?

When the Al Jazeera news anchor (5/10/22) asked Nida Ibrahim what could be done now, the reporter answered that a “powerful military occupation has been targeting journalists for years,” and if no one is brought to justice, “there will be no end to this.” She explained that Palestinian journalists are targeted by the IDF because “part of what we do is uncover the crimes,” or what the Israeli army doesn’t want to be shown. “Palestinian journalists will show you injuries where they’ve been shot by the Army or settlers,” she noted.

Responding to Representative Tlaib’s statement on the House floor, the New York Post (5/12/22) called it an “anti-Israel tirade,” charging that Tlaib was only interested in “slamming the Middle East’s only true democracy as it defends itself against terrorists.”
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Chris Hedges (Consortium News, 5/17/22): “The execution of Abu Akleh was not an accident. She was singled out for elimination.”
Writing for Consortium News (5/17/22), former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges called Abu Akleh’s death an execution. “Assassination” may be a better word for her killing, but she did not simply “die,” as the New York Times reported. As the Chicago Sun Times (5/14/22) pointed out, “Palestinian Journalist Dies” is an “especially egregious” New York Times headline, “blatantly ignoring” that Abu Akleh “was struck by a bullet.”

That the state of Israel can continue to be labeled a “true democracy” after years of human rights violations, the repression of press freedoms and the extreme of killing journalists outright—not to mention that approximately 30% of the population under its control not allowed to participate in national elections—attests to the strength of the dominant narratives that have long guided US news coverage of Israel, recently identified by writer Greg Shupak in The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel & the Media. The misleading and distorted frames of “both sides,” and “Israel’s right to defend itself” even as they are aggressors, are presented in a manner that benefits Israel.

Yet with the targeted killing of the globally prominent Al Jazeera reporter, as global calls for accountability mount (The Nation, 5/18/22), a crack seems to have appeared in the media armor of the Israeli military. Some US corporate media, most notably NBC, have shown a willingness to follow on-the-ground truth instead of Israeli fabrications. Other outlets, however, seem resigned to repeat increasingly implausible, transparently incoherent reporting that fails the basic test of decent journalism practices.

https://fair.org/home/israel-killed-rep ... the-facts/

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Israel records 1,200 Palestinians arrested in April

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The information ensures that the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons reached about 4,700 until the end of last April, including 32 women and 170 minors. | Photo: The Palestine Project
Published May 23, 2022 (23 hours 0 minutes ago)

The figure would include 165 minors and 11 women, in the midst of the holy month of Ramadan and the increase in Zionist evictions.

Some 1,228 Palestinians were imprisoned by the Israeli occupying forces during the month of April, according to figures released Monday by various non-governmental organizations led by the Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Jerusalem.

In the count, in which the Committee on Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners Club and the Addameer Foundation for the Care of Prisoners and Human Rights also participated, there are 165 minors and 11 women victims of Zionist imprisonment during the month of April.

According to these institutions related to prisoners' affairs reported that the Israeli authorities launched a massive campaign of arrests during the last month, which is the highest rate of arrests since the beginning of this year.


The statement indicated that the highest rate of arrests was recorded by the city of Jerusalem, where it registered 793 arrests, including 139 minors. According to the statement, Israel has issued 154 administrative detention orders (without charge), including 68 new orders and 86 detention extension orders.

Likewise, the communication indicated that the arrests were accompanied by "serious violations against the detainees and their families, as well as after their transfer to investigation and detention centers, in addition to the record of various injuries, including serious among the detainees, shot by the Israelis. ". army."

The set of institutions indicated that "the Israeli authorities fired on the detainees, in addition to using the policy of collective punishment that affected the majority of their families through vandalism and destruction of homes, and the use of police dogs and other methods. ”.


Finally, the information ensures that the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons reached about 4,700 until the end of last April, including 32 women and 170 minors, while the number of administrative detainees reached about 600.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/israel-p ... -0010.html

Google Translator

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Israeli academics and activists demand criminal probe into sale of Pegasus to Ghana

A former speaker of Israel’s parliament along with academics and activists in Israel have requested an investigation into the sale of the Pegasus software to Ghana in 2016 through a private reseller in a transaction that was judged as illegal and corrupt by the High Court in Ghana’s capital Accra in 2020

May 23, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni

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A criminal investigation has been demanded in Israel, six years after the NSO group sold its Pegasus spyware to Ghana, through a private Reseller to whom the responsibility of ensuring compliance with Ghana’s laws and human rights obligations was allegedly illegally outsourced.

On behalf of Israeli parliament’s former speaker, Avrum Burg, prominent sociologist Eva Illouz and 51 other academics and human rights activists, Advocate Eitay Mack wrote to the Attorney General (AG) of Israel, Gali Baharav-Miara, on Sunday, May 22, seeking a probe.

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The complaint addressed to the AG asks her “to open a criminal investigation” into the allegedly illegal sale of the defense equipment by NSO to Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) in 2016, through a Ghana-registered private company called Infralocks Development Limited (IDL).

Already under scrutiny in Israel and accused by journalists and activists across several continents of aiding violations of privacy and human rights, the NSO maintains that all its contracts with customers have clauses obliging compliance with all applicable laws – including those to protect human rights and privacy. In the case of Ghana, however, a reading of the contracts of this USD $8 million deal reveals that the NSO had actually placed these obligations, not on the NCA, but on IDL.

This little known private company based in Ghana’s capital Accra did not even possess the license to handle the export of Pegasus, according to the complaint. It further states that neither the NSO nor the officials in the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), who were involved in approving this sale, had verified whether this company was actually authorized by Ghana’s NCA.

When the equipment was exported to Ghana, set-up and demonstrated by NSO’s engineers in mid-2016, it was not installed in any premises of the NCA, but in a private residence. Yet, no investigation has been conducted by Israeli authorities, the complaint points out.

Years later, in May 2020, Accra High Court ruled that this purchase of Pegasus was corrupt, illegal and unauthorized. Two senior NCA officials involved in the illegal purchase – along with the then National Security Coordinator (NSC) at whose behest the former two had acted – were convicted and imprisoned by this judgment. Noting that the purchase, which had not been budgeted for, had caused significant losses to the state, the court had also ordered the seizure of US$3 million worth of assets from the convicted government officials.

Earlier this year, Channel 13 ‘Hamakor’ report aired footage of the Pegasus equipment in Ghana, along with testimonies of NSO’s engineers who had installed the equipment at the private residence, set-up the software and trained the local staff in operating it. However, no heads have rolled in Israel.

“It is shameful that the former Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit, did not open an investigation on his own initiative,” Mack stated in the letter. He has asked the AG on behalf of the complainants “to open criminal investigation against the company NSO and the officials in the MOD and MFA because of suspicion for their involvement in conspiracy and corruption in the Republic of Ghana.”

Recounting that in an earlier complaint he had filed in 2018 “on exports to Guatemala, the MOD [had] refused to provide relevant documents to the Ministry of Justice”, Mack has sought measures to prevent concealment of evidence and “disruption of investigation”.

He has asked the AG “to order the immediate seizure of all existing documents in the offices of the MOD and MFA, and in the office of NSO, about the export license to Ghana, the minutes from the discussions that preceded the approval of the license, the transfer and physical assembly of the system in Ghana, and the training and day-to-day services that NSO workers gave for operating the system.”

No contract between NSO and its customer

Central to this case for criminal investigation is the fact the NSO did not enter into a contract with Ghana’s NCA, the end-user to whom Pegasus was being sold. Instead, on December 17, 2015, the NSO’s group’s sales manager Ori Magal signed a contract with IDL’s Director of Business Development, George Oppong. IDL was recognized as the reseller in this contract. IDL in turn signed another end-user contract with Ghana’s NCA. As a result, there was no direct contract between NSO and NCA.

As per the Israeli Defense Export Control Law, 5766-2007, IDL was required to procure an interim-user license to handle export of such equipment. “There is no doubt that the Pegasus system is considered defense equipment as defined in section 2 of the Control Law,” Mack argues. The contract with NSO, however, does not require IDL to procure such a license.

“There is no plausible explanation as to why the agreement does not state that NSO must also require an interim-user license for IDL,” the complaint explains. “This reinforces the wonder why a reseller company was required in the first place and encourages suspicion that it was convenient for NSO company and the officials in the MOD and MFA that the IDL will not be part of the official chain of licenses.”

It further states, “Even assuming there was some (unknown) reason to use IDL as a reseller and not directly sign a contract with the NCA, encouraging suspicion, NSO company and the officials in the MOD and MFA did not condition the export of the Pegasus system by IDL” on the confirmation of IDL’s authorization to make representations on behalf of Ghana’s NCA.

In the second contract IDL’s Oppong signed with Ghana NCA’s Director General William Tevie, the NCA did not validate, or even refer to, these representations. For instance, Section 17.5 of the contract between NSO and IDL states:

“The Reseller (IDL) hereby represents that under an agreement to be entered into with the End-User (NCA), the End-User will warrant that it and its respective employees and agents shall: (i) fully comply with all applicable privacy and national security related laws and regulation that are applicable to the use of the System, including by the way of obtaining consents and/or decrees to the extent required by law, and (ii) use the System only for prevention and investigation of crimes and will not be used for human rights violations.”

There is no such commitment made by the NCA in its contract with IDL. Despite the fact that this failure of the NCA to make such a commitment in its contract with the IDL is a contravention of the contract between NSO and IDL, the NSO went ahead with the sale.

This is also a contravention of NSO’s stated position that its clients commit in their contracts with NSO to use Pegasus only for the “legitimate and lawful prevention and the investigation of serious crimes and terrorism”. Its Transparency and Responsibility Report (TRR) of 2021 and Human Rights Policy 2019 reiterate that all its contracts with customers have obligations to not use Pegasus in a manner that violates any of the domestic or other applicable laws, human rights and rights to privacy.

However, as explained before, NSO did not even enter into a contract with its customer in Ghana. The contract its customer had was only with the reseller of its equipment. And no such obligations are placed on the customer in this contract.

“Are private resellers involved in the sale of Pegasus to other countries’ government bodies as well?”, was among the questions Peoples Dispatch had asked the NSO’s spokesperson in an email on April 10. Despite follow-up mails and several calls and messages, NSO’s spokesperson has not provided any response.

The absence of commitment to human rights, privacy rights etc in NCA’s contract with IDL is not the only irregularity, which should have stopped NSO from making the sale. Section 17.1 of the contract between NSO and IDL states:

“Reseller (IDL) hereby represents and warrants that the execution and delivery of this Agreement and the fulfillment of its terms: (i) will not constitute a default under or conflict with any agreement or other instrument to which the End-User (NCA) is a party or by which it is bound; and (ii) other than as specifically set forth in this Agreement, does not require any further consent of any person or entity.”

NSO accepted assurances from unauthorized private businessman

The NCA never gave the aforementioned assurances in its contract with the IDL. The May 2020 judgment of Accra High Court established that all claims made in these representations by IDL on behalf of NCA were false. However, IDL’s Oppong, who made these representations, was the only accused to be acquitted in this case.

The reason stated for his acquittal in the judgment was that he was “not a public servant but a private businessman” who was only “engaged as a reseller of the equipment.. (and) was not in a position to know the internal processes and procedures that NCA had undertaken before NCA embarked on the quest to procure the cyber equipment.”

This line of reasoning that a private businessman cannot be expected to know the internal processes of a government body is fairly obvious. “How do you explain the fact that the NSO had accepted the assurances given by a private businessman regarding a government body which he neither heads, nor is a part of?,” was another question the NSO did not answer.

In case the contract between NSO and IDL is terminated “for any reason”, it is this private businessman who is required by Section 9 to “cause the End-User (NCA) to return to the Company (NSO), all Confidential Information, including all records, products and samples received, and any copies thereof, whether in its possession or under its control”. NSO has not answered on what grounds it had convinced itself that a private businessman will be able to “cause” a government body to do so.

Despite the two contracts contradicting each other and NSO’s stated policy on imposing contractual obligations on its customers, NSO went ahead with the sale, with the evident approval of the MOD.

“Even after we have completed our internal human rights processes, we are closely regulated by export control authorities in the countries from which we export our products: Israel, Bulgaria and Cyprus,” NSO’s TRR states, implying that, in case of violations, the buck does not stop at its doorstep.

“The Defense Export Controls Agency (DECA) of the Israeli Ministry of Defense strictly restricts the licensing of Pegasus, conducting its own analysis of potential customers from a human rights perspective,” it adds.

The complaint addressed to the AG on Friday states “an investigation is needed against the director of the Defense Exports Control Agency (DECA) in the Ministry of Defense, and the head of the defense exports unit in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who were together responsible on regulating the export of the Pegasus system to Ghana.”

MOD’s regulatory authority is also recognized in Section 5.1 of both contracts, which subject fulfillment of the contract to several conditions, including “the approval of the IMOD for the provision of the License, System and the Services [to NCA] as set forth herein (the “Approval”)”. Section 5.2 adds. “For the avoidance of any doubt, no products, licenses, equipment or services shall be provided.. until.. the Approval is obtained.”

A six months-leeway is provided in the same section, which explains that if the Approval is not obtained within six months of signing, or if the Approval is denied, canceled or suspended, NSO retains the right to terminate the agreement. Before the end of these six months, on June 10, 2016, in a “Letter of Confirmation” to EcoBank Ghana Limited and to the NSO (written to fulfill a requirement for the processing of the payment of second installment of US$3 million to NSO), NCA stated:

“…as of June 10, 2016, the following terms were fully completed and accomplished:

1.The Hardware Equipment was delivered to the End-User’s site and installed on premises.
2.The Company (NSO) performed the Deployment, provided software set-up, installation and configuration services (the “Software Services”).
3.The Company (NSO) presented to the End User, on site, the capabilities of the system on a sample of two devices per each Operating System (i.e Android, IOS and Blackberry)”.


This letter, read in conjunction with the section 5.1 and 5.2 of the two contracts, indicates that since “products, licenses, equipment or services” were provided to the End-User, the MOD did give the Approval.

In an email on April 10, Peoples Dispatch asked the MOD to explain why it had given the Approval despite all the above stated irregularities. While assuring a response on follow-up phone calls, a month and half since the email, Peoples Dispatch is yet to receive a response. The article will be updated to reflect the same when and if responses are provided.

Was technical equipment operated in Ghana?
The letter and the contracts have come to public domain because, later in December that year, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), which had signed the contract to purchase this spyware a year before election, was voted out. The new government formed by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) initiated an investigation in 2017, since when the matter had been brought before the Accra High Court, which gave its order in May 2020.

A five year jail term was handed to Salifu Osman, the National Security Coordinator at the time, and to William Tevie, who signed the contract with IDL’s Oppong as NCA’s Director General. NCA board’s chairman at the time of the purchase, Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie, who had profited US$200,000 from the deal, was given a prison sentence of six years.

Subsequently, when NSO’s spokesperson was contacted by Channel 13 before publishing their report in January 2022, his initial response was “NSO has never operated systems in Ghana.” The complaint points out that only after realizing that Channel 13 was in possession of footage, the NSO updated its response with:

“The chain of events in Ghana illustrates well the strict implementation of the ethics and human rights policy that the company has enshrined in its banner. After receiving all legal permits, the company installed the technical equipment in Ghana without operating it. A few months later, during the training for the client, significant questions arose from the Israeli training team regarding the ethics and manner of Ghana’s future use of the system. After the inspection, it was decided in an unusual manner not to allow the customer to operate the system.”

However, this claim that the technical equipment was never operated contradicts the letter on July 10, 2016, in which NCA confirmed otherwise to Eco Bank and to NSO. The Accra High Court’s judgment also established the fact that the equipment had been operated, by noting that the second installment of US$3 million, to process which the July 2016 letter was sent, was to be made only after Eco Bank receives:

“written confirmation signed by the end user confirming that the hardware equipment had been delivered together with assurance that NSO had performed the deployment, software set-up, installation and configuration services.”

After these conditions were met by NSO, the NCA paid USD $3 million to IDL, and IDL initiated the payment of the same to NSO. However, Ecobank did not process the payment. It sought more documentation to be in compliance with the Foreign Exchange Act. While this was being sorted with back and forth correspondences between the bank and the NSO, the government changed and investigation began.

“Contrary to the NSO response that it stopped its services in Ghana because of its ‘strict ethics’, according to the convicting ruling, it is clear that even after NSO realized that there was a problem transferring the balance of payments to its bank account and that its system was installed in a private apartment, the company and the officials in the IMOD and IMFA did not report to the Ghanaian authorities that they suspect something was wrong,” the complaint states.

“NSO’s decision to discontinue its services appears to have been only due to the cessation of payments, and in any case since it chose not to file in its own initiative a complaint and to conceal its suspicions, there is an impression that NSO preferred that no investigation be opened into a transaction in which it was involved,” adds the complaint filed by Mack on behalf of the parliament’s former speaker Avrum Burg and 52 other academics.

It is to be noted, however, that this discontinuity in services does not necessarily imply that Pegasus is presently not in use in Ghana.

Where is the Pegasus equipment now?
Ghana Business News reported in January 2022 that among those potentially targeted with the spyware in Ghana last year was Stanislav Dogbe, former aide to president John Mahama, under whose NDC-led government Pegasus was purchased in 2016. Others potential targets named in this report were NDC General Secretary’s son, Kweku Asiedu-Nketia, and David Tamakloe, editor in chief of Whatsup News, whom the report describes as “a known sympathizer of the NDC”.

Emmanuel Dogbevi, chief editor of the news portal and author of this report confirmed to Peoples Dispatch that all three had received an Apple alert notification, titled “State Sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone” in November 2021. Attempts to collect more information from Dogbe and Tamakloe in February have not been successful.

Several journalists and activists Peoples Dispatch spoke to are of the opinion that the Pegasus remains in use in Ghana. However, many opined, there is a sort of an omerta – a vow of silence – on the question of what happened to the equipment after the investigation and whether it is in use. Because the ruling NPP, which is reportedly using it against the opposition, as well as the largest opposition party NDC, under whose former government Pegasus was illegally purchased, are both now in the same boat. Rocking it is not in the interest of either.

Peoples Dispatch had also contacted Ghana’s NCA in February to inquire under whose authority or control is the Pegasus equipment currently placed, and whether NCA has any existing contracts with the NSO. Nana Badu, Director of Consumer and Corporate Affairs of NCA, replied, “The NCA respectfully refrains from responding to the questions.”

Section 9 of both agreements require that in case the agreement is terminated, the Pegasus equipment, along with any data gathered using it, should be returned to the NSO, and any copies made of this data should be erased. Neither the NSO nor the NCA has confirmed that the equipment has been returned.

If the Attorney General of Israel orders the criminal investigation demanded in this complaint, it could cause further trouble to NSO which is already under scrutiny. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had said in February that the Deputy Attorney General was “looking quickly into” the well-documented allegations that police in Israel are using this military grade spyware on its own citizens, without securing any court order. Public security minister, Omer Barlev, also said that he would open an inquiry.

A complaint was filed in France in April by French-Palestinian human rights defender Salah Hammouri, whose phone was illegally infiltrated with this spyware. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Ligue desdroits de l’homme (LDH) are his fellow-complainants in this case.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), along with two French-Moroccan journalists, Omar Brouksy and Maati Monjib, who had been facing persecution by the Moroccan government also filed a case in France last year.

“Other complaints will follow in other countries. The scale of the violations that have been revealed calls for a major legal response,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire had said at the time. 17 other targeted journalists from seven countries including India, Mexico, Spain, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Morocco and Togo subsequently joined this complaint. The RSF has also referred all these cases to the UN.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/05/23/ ... -to-ghana/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue May 24, 2022 2:58 pm

Israel Killed Reporter Abu Akleh—but US Media Disguised the Facts
ROBIN ANDERSEN
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Mondoweiss report (5/11/22) on Shireen Abu Akleh’s killling.
Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known and much-loved Al Jazeera reporter who covered Palestine for two decades, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper May 11 while documenting an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank.

Footage of the moments after her death show Abu Akleh, still wearing her press vest and helmet, lying face down on the ground below a tree, as Shatha Hanaysha, another Palestinian journalist and writer for Mondoweiss, sits by her side and attempts to reach out to her. Writing for Mondoweiss (5/11/22), Yumna Patel described the video:

A young Palestinian man is then seen jumping over a wall behind Abu Akleh and Hanaysha. When he attempts to retrieve Abu Akleh’s body, another round of sniper fire can be heard, and he quickly takes cover behind the tree.

No armed combatants are there. Journalists are shouting for an ambulance. The young man tries a second time to remove Abu Akleh, but fails. He manages to help a shaken Hanaysha hide behind the tree. The footage is harrowing.
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Shatha Hanaysha crouches near her slain colleague Shireen Abu Akleh—both wearing jackets that clearly identify them as press.
The Qatar-based news network interrupted its broadcast (5/10/22) with breaking news reporting that “an Al Jazeera correspondent has been shot by Israeli forces” and killed in Jenin. The network called it “deliberate,” adding that the killing of Abu Akleh was a “heinous crime which intends to only prevent the media from conducting their duty.”

Reporter Nida Ibrahim, on the phone from Ramallah, recounted the announcement of Abu Akleh’s death by the Palestinian Health Ministry, saying she was shot in the head. Her voice broke up as she talked about Abu Akleh’s dedication, her long experience covering Palestine, and the grief Ibrahim and her fellow journalists were experiencing. She carried on, saying, “This is the reality of Palestinian journalists covering the news”; unfortunately, they find “themselves part of the story.”

Outpourings of grief
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Twitter (5/12/22)
News of Abu Akleh’s death spread across the world at the speed of the internet, with outpourings of grief, tributes, and international condemnation for her killing. Journalists who have covered the Israeli occupation of Palestine provided context, hitting Twitter with art, videos, eyewitness testimony and images from Palestinian activists, advocacy groups and press critics, among many others. Clips of Al Jazeera footage were prominent.

Late Wednesday, the Israeli military posted an online video and an implausible scenario to deflect blame for the murder, a denial that, with a few notable exceptions, corporate media would assiduously repeat. Yet the documentation and eyewitness accounts continued to mount.

Mondoweiss‘s Hanaysha told Al Jazeera (5/11/22):

The [Israeli] occupation army did not stop firing even after she collapsed. I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her, because of the shots. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.

Electronic Intifada (5/11/22) included the Twitter post of another Palestinian-American journalist—Dena Takruri, host of Al Jazeera‘s Direct From—who said, “Shireen was shot near her ear, where the helmet didn’t cover. This was a shot of extreme precision.”

Abu Akleh was taken in a private vehicle to a hospital in Jenin, where she was declared dead. The shot to the head killed her instantly. An Al Jazeera producer, Ali Samoudi, was also shot in the back by an Israeli gunman, but will recover.

At the hospital, Samoudi told reporters, “We were covering the raid of the Israeli occupation forces when they suddenly opened fire at us; the first bullet hit me and the other killed Shireen.” He went on to say, “They killed her in cold blood.”

WSWS (5/11/22) also reported that Samoudi confirmed that “there was no Palestinian military resistance at all at the scene.”

“We pledge to prosecute the perpetrators legally, no matter how hard they try to cover up their crime, and bring them to justice,” the Qatar-based network said in a statement (NBC, 5/11/22).

The Israeli response
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The Israeli prime minister offered video of a Palestinian fighter firing a weapon as evidence that Israel’s military did not kill Abu Akleh.
The video the Israeli military posted online depicted a lone Palestinian resistance fighter shooting down an alleyway, purportedly evidence that the Al Jazeera team were victims of Palestinian gunfire. In a series of statements on Twitter (Mondoweiss, 5/11/22), the office of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said:

According to the information we have gathered, it appears likely that armed Palestinians—who were firing indiscriminately at the time — were responsible for the unfortunate death of the journalist.

Israel’s claim was refuted by a number of sources, in addition to other eyewitness testimony. The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem’s field researcher in Jenin documented the location of the Palestinian gunman depicted in the Israeli government video. “According to B’Tselem, the location of the video is in a completely separate location than where Abu Akleh was killed,” Mondoweiss (5/11/22) reported, and “cannot be the gunfire that killed the journalist.”

NBC’s Raf Sanchez’s reporting from Jenin corroborated B’Tselem’s. He posted on Twitter (5/11/22) that NBC researcher Matthew Mulligan “has geolocated the Al Jazeera video” and found that the “area doesn’t match the alleyways shown in the video being put out by the Israeli government.”

A thorough debunking by human rights groups, witnesses and journalists aired on Al Jazeera (5/12/22) also exposed the online video as Israeli military fabrication. Using a map of the occupied West Bank, the network illustrated how occupation forces had a direct line of fire to where Abu Akleh was shot, while the Palestinian resistance fighter shown was too far away to have shot her, blocked as he was by alleyways and buildings.

Hagai El Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, told viewers that the Israeli version of events is based “on a false narrative designed to protect the perpetrators.” He explained the “impossible logistics” of the Israeli scenario, adding that he recognized this as a “trick” often used for the “blanket impunity that Israel provides for itself.” He went on to say that

Israel has a track record of not punishing its soldiers who have committed crimes against Palestinians, and it has never jailed one of its soldiers for the killing of a journalist.

Though it provides another point of evidence, the geolocation data is hardly necessary, as simply looking at the videotapes and listening to corroborating journalistic and eyewitness testimony renders Abu Akleh’s death at the hands of the occupation forces beyond dispute.

Attacks on journalists
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Intercept (4/5/22): “The journalist will be told that the reports he posts on Facebook are considered incitement—and although he is only reporting news, the fact that that news is made public is tantamount to incitement.”
Many independent news outlets provided context by including numbers and details of journalists killed and wounded by Israeli forces. Though well-documented, the numbers may be different due to different criteria and the difficulty of recording.

Cross Currents (5/12/22) reported that since 1972, the Amman-based Center for Defending Freedom of Journalists, “has documented 103 deaths of Palestinian journalists and nearly 7,000 injuries, plus many detentions and imprisonments.”

According to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (Mondoweiss, 5/11/22):

Abu Akleh is the 86th Palestinian journalist to be killed by Israel since the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza in 1967. And since 2000, more than 50 Palestinian journalists have been killed, including six in the past two years.

In April, the Intercept (4/5/22) revealed the ongoing harassment, jailing, repeated interrogations and threats against Palestinian journalists, so severe that many abandoned the work of journalism. The primary charge against them was ‘incitement.’” Vice reporter Hind Hassan posted a string of horrific videos on Twitter (5/12/22) documenting Israeli attacks on journalists. One dated April 15, 2022, shows an Israeli police officer run across the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in a surprise attack, breaking the arm of journalist Alaa Sous with a baton smash (Mondoweiss, 4/22/22).

‘Armed with cameras’

The Middle East Eye (5/11/22) reported Israeli military spokesperson Ran Kochav telling Army Radio that even if soldiers shot at someone, “this happened in battle, during a firefight,” so “this thing can happen.” Kochav went on to say Abu Akleh was “filming and working for a media outlet amidst armed Palestinians. They’re armed with cameras, if you’ll permit me to say so.”

Numerous press advocates responded to this statement. Reporting on a tribute for Abu Akleh held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Cross Currents (5/12/22) called the accusation “an outrageous and egregious claim by any standard.” Reporters Without Borders has condemned Israel’s disproportionate use of force against journalists, saying under no circumstances should they “be treated as parties to the armed conflict.”

Vox (5/11/22) noted that if Abu Akleh’s was killed by the IDF, her death “will fit into a larger pattern of attacks on the press in Palestine and in the systemic violence against Palestinians more broadly.” It called the “armed with cameras” assertion “a not-subtle comparison between the work of journalism and that of violence.”

Viewing cameras as weapons, together with the history of escalating attacks on reporters and charges of “incitement” for bearing witness to Israeli attacks, makes clear that the Israeli government considers journalists to be the enemy, and by extension suitable targets for snipers. Because journalists document the actions of Israeli occupation forces against the Palestinians, they jeopardize the military’s continued ability to act with impunity. Repressing press freedom in the Occupied West Bank seems to now be part of the state’s increasingly militarized strategy.

Calling for investigation
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Anadolu Agency (5/11/22) reported on Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s moment of silence for Shireen Abu Akleh.
The Turkish international news outlet Anadolu Agency (5/11/22) covered Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s moment of silence for the slain journalist on the floor of the House of Representatives, including Tlaib’s opening that quoted President Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner:

We honor journalists killed, missing, imprisoned, detained and tortured covering war, exposing corruption and holding leaders accountable. The free press is not the enemy of people, far from it; at your best, you are the guardians of the truth.

Though she is a Palestinian American like Abu Akleh, no US corporate news outlet used Rashida Tlaib as a source for covering the slain journalist.

Tlaib also called on the US government to investigate the killing, saying that Washington should not allow “the same people committing those war crimes to do the investigation.” (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22). The International Criminal Court launched an investigation last year into possible Israeli war crimes (AP, 3/3/21).

In an interview between MSNBC news host Ayman Mohyeldin and on-the-ground reporter Raf Sanchez (5/13/22), Sanchez explained why the Palestinians don’t trust the Israelis to investigate Abu Akleh’s death. In 2018, he said:

I was in Gaza; an Israeli sniper killed a young Palestinian journalist called Yaser Murtaja. He, like Shireen Abu Akleh, was wearing a vest that clearly showed he was a member of the press. That was four years ago. The Israeli military said they were investigating then, and I asked them today to give me the report…. They sent me a very short statement saying that they had looked into the incident, they had determined that there was no criminal activity by any Israeli soldiers, and they had closed the case. That gives you a sense of why Palestinians feel that they are unlikely to get the full story out of the Israeli military.

Murtaja’s story also appears in the Intercept (4/9/18).

Palestinian rights advocates in the United States have called on the Biden administration to demand an independent probe into the killing of Abu Akleh, saying that Israel should not be allowed to investigate itself. Ahmad Abuznaid, executive director of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said investigations are “empty gestures” if the probe is to be left for Israel (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22).

Addressing reporters at UN headquarters in New York, Palestine’s UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour (Al Jazeera, 5/11/22) said:

The story of the Israeli side does not hold water, it is fictitious, and it is not in line with reality, and we do not accept to have an investigation on this issue with those who are the criminals in conducting this event itself.

He said what is needed is an investigation that is “internationally credible.”

House Democrats demanded an independent investigation. Though US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price (Reuters, 5/11/22) called for a “thorough investigation and full accountability,” when asked whether the US would support an international investigation, Price repeated: “Israel has the wherewithal to conduct a thorough investigation.”

Al Jazeera reported the calls by US sources for an independent investigation, while most US corporate news repeated Israel’s demand to control any investigation.

US corporate coverage

The context of escalating Israeli attacks on freedom of the press and on journalists in the Occupied Territories did not enter the frame of most US news coverage. Instead, many used a back-and-forth blame frame for reporting the murder of a veteran war correspondent who knew well how to negotiate crossfire in the field of battle. This was acknowledged by Ali Samoudi, who said from his hospital bed, if there had been crossfire, they wouldn’t have been there.

Amidst the debunking of the Israeli messaging, by late Wednesday some news outlets, including NBC (5/11/22), noted that Israel “appeared to step back from that claim” that Abu Akleh may have been killed by Palestinian gunmen.

Yet most big media would continue to include Israeli messaging in their reporting, while failing to disclose any of the factchecking done on the Israeli video. They “balanced” on-the-ground testimony with Israeli statements, keeping the propaganda story alive.
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CBS News (5/11/22) carefully avoided attributing responsibility to Israeli forces.
The second sentence of the CBS report (5/11/22) from Jerusalem said, “The broadcaster and a reporter who was wounded in the incident blamed Israeli forces, while Israel said there was evidence the two were hit by Palestinian gunfire.” The opening set the tone for a long series of opposing claims, in which every fragmented aspect about Israel and Palestine becomes a tedious set of contentions, rendering the truth incomprehensible.

The story included the “camera as weapon” comment, followed with the unrelated, “CBS News correspondent Imtiaz Tyab knew Abu Akleh personally,” adding more laudable details about the slain journalist. It continued, “Israelis have long been critical of Al Jazeera‘s coverage, but authorities generally allow its journalists to operate freely”—presented not as a requirement for democracy, but as a generous act of tolerance.

CBS said that the relationship between Israeli forces and Palestinian journalists “is strained,” and ended with a series of toned-down examples of Israeli attacks on journalists, without one unifying critical comment. It even included the killing of three Palestinian journalists, including AP (12/21/18) reporter Rashed Rashid in 2018, followed by: “The military has never acknowledged the shooting.” It failed to connect that history to Palestinian demands for an independent, international investigation into Abu Akleh’s murder.

The most disingenuous comments, which revolved around the investigation, were included early on. CBS offered fragments of truth—saying, for example, that US Ambassador Tom Nides called for “a thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death,” without saying by whom. It stated uncritically, “Israel said it had proposed a joint investigation and autopsy with the Palestinian Authority, which refused the offer,” with no explanation as to why.

The reporting illustrated how “balance” and fragments of disjointed “facts” have become a stylistic method to confuse and obliterate meaningful connections that drain compassion, outrage and demands for justice for the victims of state violence.
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The New York Times (5/11/21) ran a home-page headline that could have run if Abu Akleh had died of natural causes.
In a similar manner, the New York Times (5/11/22) attributed Abu Akleh’s death to “gunfire” in the second paragraph. A second article posted later that day was more definitively structured by false balance: “The network and Palestinian authorities blamed Israeli troops for the killing. Israel said the blame could lie with Palestinian gunmen.”

ABC News (5/12/22) presented the same style of decontextualized back-and-forth, referring to a proposed Israeli investigation in the lead paragraph: “The head of the Palestinian Authority blamed Israel for her death and rejected Israeli calls for a joint investigation.” It evoked the “angry Arab” lexicon, saying, “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas angrily rejected that proposal,” while “Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett accused the Palestinians of denying Israel “access to the basic findings required to get to the truth.” No mention was made of past Israeli failures to investigate the killing of journalists.

ABC dismissed the investigation into Israeli war crimes with one phrase: “Israel has rejected that probe as being biased against it.”

An end in sight?

When the Al Jazeera news anchor (5/10/22) asked Nida Ibrahim what could be done now, the reporter answered that a “powerful military occupation has been targeting journalists for years,” and if no one is brought to justice, “there will be no end to this.” She explained that Palestinian journalists are targeted by the IDF because “part of what we do is uncover the crimes,” or what the Israeli army doesn’t want to be shown. “Palestinian journalists will show you injuries where they’ve been shot by the Army or settlers,” she noted.

Responding to Representative Tlaib’s statement on the House floor, the New York Post (5/12/22) called it an “anti-Israel tirade,” charging that Tlaib was only interested in “slamming the Middle East’s only true democracy as it defends itself against terrorists.”
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Chris Hedges (Consortium News, 5/17/22): “The execution of Abu Akleh was not an accident. She was singled out for elimination.”
Writing for Consortium News (5/17/22), former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges called Abu Akleh’s death an execution. “Assassination” may be a better word for her killing, but she did not simply “die,” as the New York Times reported. As the Chicago Sun Times (5/14/22) pointed out, “Palestinian Journalist Dies” is an “especially egregious” New York Times headline, “blatantly ignoring” that Abu Akleh “was struck by a bullet.”

That the state of Israel can continue to be labeled a “true democracy” after years of human rights violations, the repression of press freedoms and the extreme of killing journalists outright—not to mention that approximately 30% of the population under its control not allowed to participate in national elections—attests to the strength of the dominant narratives that have long guided US news coverage of Israel, recently identified by writer Greg Shupak in The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel & the Media. The misleading and distorted frames of “both sides,” and “Israel’s right to defend itself” even as they are aggressors, are presented in a manner that benefits Israel.

Yet with the targeted killing of the globally prominent Al Jazeera reporter, as global calls for accountability mount (The Nation, 5/18/22), a crack seems to have appeared in the media armor of the Israeli military. Some US corporate media, most notably NBC, have shown a willingness to follow on-the-ground truth instead of Israeli fabrications. Other outlets, however, seem resigned to repeat increasingly implausible, transparently incoherent reporting that fails the basic test of decent journalism practices.

https://fair.org/home/israel-killed-rep ... the-facts/

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Israel records 1,200 Palestinians arrested in April

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The information ensures that the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons reached about 4,700 until the end of last April, including 32 women and 170 minors. | Photo: The Palestine Project
Published May 23, 2022 (23 hours 0 minutes ago)

The figure would include 165 minors and 11 women, in the midst of the holy month of Ramadan and the increase in Zionist evictions.

Some 1,228 Palestinians were imprisoned by the Israeli occupying forces during the month of April, according to figures released Monday by various non-governmental organizations led by the Wadi Hilweh Information Center in Jerusalem.

In the count, in which the Committee on Prisoners and Ex-Prisoners Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners Club and the Addameer Foundation for the Care of Prisoners and Human Rights also participated, there are 165 minors and 11 women victims of Zionist imprisonment during the month of April.

According to these institutions related to prisoners' affairs reported that the Israeli authorities launched a massive campaign of arrests during the last month, which is the highest rate of arrests since the beginning of this year.


The statement indicated that the highest rate of arrests was recorded by the city of Jerusalem, where it registered 793 arrests, including 139 minors. According to the statement, Israel has issued 154 administrative detention orders (without charge), including 68 new orders and 86 detention extension orders.

Likewise, the communication indicated that the arrests were accompanied by "serious violations against the detainees and their families, as well as after their transfer to investigation and detention centers, in addition to the record of various injuries, including serious among the detainees, shot by the Israelis. ". army."

The set of institutions indicated that "the Israeli authorities fired on the detainees, in addition to using the policy of collective punishment that affected the majority of their families through vandalism and destruction of homes, and the use of police dogs and other methods. ”.


Finally, the information ensures that the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons reached about 4,700 until the end of last April, including 32 women and 170 minors, while the number of administrative detainees reached about 600.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/israel-p ... -0010.html

Google Translator

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Israeli academics and activists demand criminal probe into sale of Pegasus to Ghana

A former speaker of Israel’s parliament along with academics and activists in Israel have requested an investigation into the sale of the Pegasus software to Ghana in 2016 through a private reseller in a transaction that was judged as illegal and corrupt by the High Court in Ghana’s capital Accra in 2020

May 23, 2022 by Pavan Kulkarni

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A criminal investigation has been demanded in Israel, six years after the NSO group sold its Pegasus spyware to Ghana, through a private Reseller to whom the responsibility of ensuring compliance with Ghana’s laws and human rights obligations was allegedly illegally outsourced.

On behalf of Israeli parliament’s former speaker, Avrum Burg, prominent sociologist Eva Illouz and 51 other academics and human rights activists, Advocate Eitay Mack wrote to the Attorney General (AG) of Israel, Gali Baharav-Miara, on Sunday, May 22, seeking a probe.

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The complaint addressed to the AG asks her “to open a criminal investigation” into the allegedly illegal sale of the defense equipment by NSO to Ghana’s National Communications Authority (NCA) in 2016, through a Ghana-registered private company called Infralocks Development Limited (IDL).

Already under scrutiny in Israel and accused by journalists and activists across several continents of aiding violations of privacy and human rights, the NSO maintains that all its contracts with customers have clauses obliging compliance with all applicable laws – including those to protect human rights and privacy. In the case of Ghana, however, a reading of the contracts of this USD $8 million deal reveals that the NSO had actually placed these obligations, not on the NCA, but on IDL.

This little known private company based in Ghana’s capital Accra did not even possess the license to handle the export of Pegasus, according to the complaint. It further states that neither the NSO nor the officials in the Israeli Ministry of Defense (MOD) and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), who were involved in approving this sale, had verified whether this company was actually authorized by Ghana’s NCA.

When the equipment was exported to Ghana, set-up and demonstrated by NSO’s engineers in mid-2016, it was not installed in any premises of the NCA, but in a private residence. Yet, no investigation has been conducted by Israeli authorities, the complaint points out.

Years later, in May 2020, Accra High Court ruled that this purchase of Pegasus was corrupt, illegal and unauthorized. Two senior NCA officials involved in the illegal purchase – along with the then National Security Coordinator (NSC) at whose behest the former two had acted – were convicted and imprisoned by this judgment. Noting that the purchase, which had not been budgeted for, had caused significant losses to the state, the court had also ordered the seizure of US$3 million worth of assets from the convicted government officials.

Earlier this year, Channel 13 ‘Hamakor’ report aired footage of the Pegasus equipment in Ghana, along with testimonies of NSO’s engineers who had installed the equipment at the private residence, set-up the software and trained the local staff in operating it. However, no heads have rolled in Israel.

“It is shameful that the former Attorney General, Avichai Mandelblit, did not open an investigation on his own initiative,” Mack stated in the letter. He has asked the AG on behalf of the complainants “to open criminal investigation against the company NSO and the officials in the MOD and MFA because of suspicion for their involvement in conspiracy and corruption in the Republic of Ghana.”

Recounting that in an earlier complaint he had filed in 2018 “on exports to Guatemala, the MOD [had] refused to provide relevant documents to the Ministry of Justice”, Mack has sought measures to prevent concealment of evidence and “disruption of investigation”.

He has asked the AG “to order the immediate seizure of all existing documents in the offices of the MOD and MFA, and in the office of NSO, about the export license to Ghana, the minutes from the discussions that preceded the approval of the license, the transfer and physical assembly of the system in Ghana, and the training and day-to-day services that NSO workers gave for operating the system.”

No contract between NSO and its customer

Central to this case for criminal investigation is the fact the NSO did not enter into a contract with Ghana’s NCA, the end-user to whom Pegasus was being sold. Instead, on December 17, 2015, the NSO’s group’s sales manager Ori Magal signed a contract with IDL’s Director of Business Development, George Oppong. IDL was recognized as the reseller in this contract. IDL in turn signed another end-user contract with Ghana’s NCA. As a result, there was no direct contract between NSO and NCA.

As per the Israeli Defense Export Control Law, 5766-2007, IDL was required to procure an interim-user license to handle export of such equipment. “There is no doubt that the Pegasus system is considered defense equipment as defined in section 2 of the Control Law,” Mack argues. The contract with NSO, however, does not require IDL to procure such a license.

“There is no plausible explanation as to why the agreement does not state that NSO must also require an interim-user license for IDL,” the complaint explains. “This reinforces the wonder why a reseller company was required in the first place and encourages suspicion that it was convenient for NSO company and the officials in the MOD and MFA that the IDL will not be part of the official chain of licenses.”

It further states, “Even assuming there was some (unknown) reason to use IDL as a reseller and not directly sign a contract with the NCA, encouraging suspicion, NSO company and the officials in the MOD and MFA did not condition the export of the Pegasus system by IDL” on the confirmation of IDL’s authorization to make representations on behalf of Ghana’s NCA.

In the second contract IDL’s Oppong signed with Ghana NCA’s Director General William Tevie, the NCA did not validate, or even refer to, these representations. For instance, Section 17.5 of the contract between NSO and IDL states:

“The Reseller (IDL) hereby represents that under an agreement to be entered into with the End-User (NCA), the End-User will warrant that it and its respective employees and agents shall: (i) fully comply with all applicable privacy and national security related laws and regulation that are applicable to the use of the System, including by the way of obtaining consents and/or decrees to the extent required by law, and (ii) use the System only for prevention and investigation of crimes and will not be used for human rights violations.”

There is no such commitment made by the NCA in its contract with IDL. Despite the fact that this failure of the NCA to make such a commitment in its contract with the IDL is a contravention of the contract between NSO and IDL, the NSO went ahead with the sale.

This is also a contravention of NSO’s stated position that its clients commit in their contracts with NSO to use Pegasus only for the “legitimate and lawful prevention and the investigation of serious crimes and terrorism”. Its Transparency and Responsibility Report (TRR) of 2021 and Human Rights Policy 2019 reiterate that all its contracts with customers have obligations to not use Pegasus in a manner that violates any of the domestic or other applicable laws, human rights and rights to privacy.

However, as explained before, NSO did not even enter into a contract with its customer in Ghana. The contract its customer had was only with the reseller of its equipment. And no such obligations are placed on the customer in this contract.

“Are private resellers involved in the sale of Pegasus to other countries’ government bodies as well?”, was among the questions Peoples Dispatch had asked the NSO’s spokesperson in an email on April 10. Despite follow-up mails and several calls and messages, NSO’s spokesperson has not provided any response.

The absence of commitment to human rights, privacy rights etc in NCA’s contract with IDL is not the only irregularity, which should have stopped NSO from making the sale. Section 17.1 of the contract between NSO and IDL states:

“Reseller (IDL) hereby represents and warrants that the execution and delivery of this Agreement and the fulfillment of its terms: (i) will not constitute a default under or conflict with any agreement or other instrument to which the End-User (NCA) is a party or by which it is bound; and (ii) other than as specifically set forth in this Agreement, does not require any further consent of any person or entity.”

NSO accepted assurances from unauthorized private businessman

The NCA never gave the aforementioned assurances in its contract with the IDL. The May 2020 judgment of Accra High Court established that all claims made in these representations by IDL on behalf of NCA were false. However, IDL’s Oppong, who made these representations, was the only accused to be acquitted in this case.

The reason stated for his acquittal in the judgment was that he was “not a public servant but a private businessman” who was only “engaged as a reseller of the equipment.. (and) was not in a position to know the internal processes and procedures that NCA had undertaken before NCA embarked on the quest to procure the cyber equipment.”

This line of reasoning that a private businessman cannot be expected to know the internal processes of a government body is fairly obvious. “How do you explain the fact that the NSO had accepted the assurances given by a private businessman regarding a government body which he neither heads, nor is a part of?,” was another question the NSO did not answer.

In case the contract between NSO and IDL is terminated “for any reason”, it is this private businessman who is required by Section 9 to “cause the End-User (NCA) to return to the Company (NSO), all Confidential Information, including all records, products and samples received, and any copies thereof, whether in its possession or under its control”. NSO has not answered on what grounds it had convinced itself that a private businessman will be able to “cause” a government body to do so.

Despite the two contracts contradicting each other and NSO’s stated policy on imposing contractual obligations on its customers, NSO went ahead with the sale, with the evident approval of the MOD.

“Even after we have completed our internal human rights processes, we are closely regulated by export control authorities in the countries from which we export our products: Israel, Bulgaria and Cyprus,” NSO’s TRR states, implying that, in case of violations, the buck does not stop at its doorstep.

“The Defense Export Controls Agency (DECA) of the Israeli Ministry of Defense strictly restricts the licensing of Pegasus, conducting its own analysis of potential customers from a human rights perspective,” it adds.

The complaint addressed to the AG on Friday states “an investigation is needed against the director of the Defense Exports Control Agency (DECA) in the Ministry of Defense, and the head of the defense exports unit in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who were together responsible on regulating the export of the Pegasus system to Ghana.”

MOD’s regulatory authority is also recognized in Section 5.1 of both contracts, which subject fulfillment of the contract to several conditions, including “the approval of the IMOD for the provision of the License, System and the Services [to NCA] as set forth herein (the “Approval”)”. Section 5.2 adds. “For the avoidance of any doubt, no products, licenses, equipment or services shall be provided.. until.. the Approval is obtained.”

A six months-leeway is provided in the same section, which explains that if the Approval is not obtained within six months of signing, or if the Approval is denied, canceled or suspended, NSO retains the right to terminate the agreement. Before the end of these six months, on June 10, 2016, in a “Letter of Confirmation” to EcoBank Ghana Limited and to the NSO (written to fulfill a requirement for the processing of the payment of second installment of US$3 million to NSO), NCA stated:

“…as of June 10, 2016, the following terms were fully completed and accomplished:

1.The Hardware Equipment was delivered to the End-User’s site and installed on premises.
2.The Company (NSO) performed the Deployment, provided software set-up, installation and configuration services (the “Software Services”).
3.The Company (NSO) presented to the End User, on site, the capabilities of the system on a sample of two devices per each Operating System (i.e Android, IOS and Blackberry)”.


This letter, read in conjunction with the section 5.1 and 5.2 of the two contracts, indicates that since “products, licenses, equipment or services” were provided to the End-User, the MOD did give the Approval.

In an email on April 10, Peoples Dispatch asked the MOD to explain why it had given the Approval despite all the above stated irregularities. While assuring a response on follow-up phone calls, a month and half since the email, Peoples Dispatch is yet to receive a response. The article will be updated to reflect the same when and if responses are provided.

Was technical equipment operated in Ghana?
The letter and the contracts have come to public domain because, later in December that year, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), which had signed the contract to purchase this spyware a year before election, was voted out. The new government formed by the New Patriotic Party (NPP) initiated an investigation in 2017, since when the matter had been brought before the Accra High Court, which gave its order in May 2020.

A five year jail term was handed to Salifu Osman, the National Security Coordinator at the time, and to William Tevie, who signed the contract with IDL’s Oppong as NCA’s Director General. NCA board’s chairman at the time of the purchase, Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie, who had profited US$200,000 from the deal, was given a prison sentence of six years.

Subsequently, when NSO’s spokesperson was contacted by Channel 13 before publishing their report in January 2022, his initial response was “NSO has never operated systems in Ghana.” The complaint points out that only after realizing that Channel 13 was in possession of footage, the NSO updated its response with:

“The chain of events in Ghana illustrates well the strict implementation of the ethics and human rights policy that the company has enshrined in its banner. After receiving all legal permits, the company installed the technical equipment in Ghana without operating it. A few months later, during the training for the client, significant questions arose from the Israeli training team regarding the ethics and manner of Ghana’s future use of the system. After the inspection, it was decided in an unusual manner not to allow the customer to operate the system.”

However, this claim that the technical equipment was never operated contradicts the letter on July 10, 2016, in which NCA confirmed otherwise to Eco Bank and to NSO. The Accra High Court’s judgment also established the fact that the equipment had been operated, by noting that the second installment of US$3 million, to process which the July 2016 letter was sent, was to be made only after Eco Bank receives:

“written confirmation signed by the end user confirming that the hardware equipment had been delivered together with assurance that NSO had performed the deployment, software set-up, installation and configuration services.”

After these conditions were met by NSO, the NCA paid USD $3 million to IDL, and IDL initiated the payment of the same to NSO. However, Ecobank did not process the payment. It sought more documentation to be in compliance with the Foreign Exchange Act. While this was being sorted with back and forth correspondences between the bank and the NSO, the government changed and investigation began.

“Contrary to the NSO response that it stopped its services in Ghana because of its ‘strict ethics’, according to the convicting ruling, it is clear that even after NSO realized that there was a problem transferring the balance of payments to its bank account and that its system was installed in a private apartment, the company and the officials in the IMOD and IMFA did not report to the Ghanaian authorities that they suspect something was wrong,” the complaint states.

“NSO’s decision to discontinue its services appears to have been only due to the cessation of payments, and in any case since it chose not to file in its own initiative a complaint and to conceal its suspicions, there is an impression that NSO preferred that no investigation be opened into a transaction in which it was involved,” adds the complaint filed by Mack on behalf of the parliament’s former speaker Avrum Burg and 52 other academics.

It is to be noted, however, that this discontinuity in services does not necessarily imply that Pegasus is presently not in use in Ghana.

Where is the Pegasus equipment now?
Ghana Business News reported in January 2022 that among those potentially targeted with the spyware in Ghana last year was Stanislav Dogbe, former aide to president John Mahama, under whose NDC-led government Pegasus was purchased in 2016. Others potential targets named in this report were NDC General Secretary’s son, Kweku Asiedu-Nketia, and David Tamakloe, editor in chief of Whatsup News, whom the report describes as “a known sympathizer of the NDC”.

Emmanuel Dogbevi, chief editor of the news portal and author of this report confirmed to Peoples Dispatch that all three had received an Apple alert notification, titled “State Sponsored attackers may be targeting your iPhone” in November 2021. Attempts to collect more information from Dogbe and Tamakloe in February have not been successful.

Several journalists and activists Peoples Dispatch spoke to are of the opinion that the Pegasus remains in use in Ghana. However, many opined, there is a sort of an omerta – a vow of silence – on the question of what happened to the equipment after the investigation and whether it is in use. Because the ruling NPP, which is reportedly using it against the opposition, as well as the largest opposition party NDC, under whose former government Pegasus was illegally purchased, are both now in the same boat. Rocking it is not in the interest of either.

Peoples Dispatch had also contacted Ghana’s NCA in February to inquire under whose authority or control is the Pegasus equipment currently placed, and whether NCA has any existing contracts with the NSO. Nana Badu, Director of Consumer and Corporate Affairs of NCA, replied, “The NCA respectfully refrains from responding to the questions.”

Section 9 of both agreements require that in case the agreement is terminated, the Pegasus equipment, along with any data gathered using it, should be returned to the NSO, and any copies made of this data should be erased. Neither the NSO nor the NCA has confirmed that the equipment has been returned.

If the Attorney General of Israel orders the criminal investigation demanded in this complaint, it could cause further trouble to NSO which is already under scrutiny. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had said in February that the Deputy Attorney General was “looking quickly into” the well-documented allegations that police in Israel are using this military grade spyware on its own citizens, without securing any court order. Public security minister, Omer Barlev, also said that he would open an inquiry.

A complaint was filed in France in April by French-Palestinian human rights defender Salah Hammouri, whose phone was illegally infiltrated with this spyware. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the Ligue desdroits de l’homme (LDH) are his fellow-complainants in this case.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), along with two French-Moroccan journalists, Omar Brouksy and Maati Monjib, who had been facing persecution by the Moroccan government also filed a case in France last year.

“Other complaints will follow in other countries. The scale of the violations that have been revealed calls for a major legal response,” RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire had said at the time. 17 other targeted journalists from seven countries including India, Mexico, Spain, Hungary, Azerbaijan, Morocco and Togo subsequently joined this complaint. The RSF has also referred all these cases to the UN.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/05/23/ ... -to-ghana/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 14, 2022 1:47 pm

The Ethnic Cleansing of Masafer Yatta: Israel’s New Annexation Strategy in Palestine
JUNE 10, 2022

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Israeli forces demolish Palestinian structures in Masafer Yatta. Photo: via ActiveStills.

By Ramzy Baroud – Jun 1, 2022

The Israeli Supreme Court has decided that the Palestinian region of Masafer Yatta, located in the southern hills of Hebron, is to be entirely appropriated by the Israeli military and that a population of over 1,000 Palestinians is to be expelled.

The Israeli Court decision, on May 4, was hardly shocking. Israel’s military occupation does not only consist of soldiers with guns, but elaborate political, military, economic and legal structures, dedicated to the expansion of the illegal Jewish settlements and the slow – and sometimes not-so-slow – expulsion of the Palestinians.

When Palestinians state that the Nakba, or Catastrophe – which led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel on its ruins – is a continuous, unfinished project, they mean exactly that. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the endless torment of Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab and, now in Masafer Yatta, are all testaments to this reality.

However, Masafer Yatta is particularly unique. In the case of occupied East Jerusalem, for example, Israel has made a fallacious, ahistorical claim that Jerusalem is the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people. It combined its unsubstantiated narrative with military action on the ground, followed by a systematic process that aimed at increasing the Jewish population and ejecting the original native inhabitants of the city. Such notions as ‘Greater Jerusalem’ and legal and political structures, like that of the Jerusalem Master Plan 2000, have all contribute towards turning the once absolute Palestinian majority in Jerusalem into a shrinking minority.

With the Naqab, Israel’s similar objectives were put into motion as early as 1948, and again in 1951. This process of ethnically cleansing the natives remains in effect to this day.

Though Masafer Yatta is part of the same colonial designs, its uniqueness stems from the fact that it is situated in Area C of the occupied West Bank.

In July 2020, Israel purportedly decided to postpone its plans to annex nearly 40% of the West Bank, perhaps fearing a Palestinian rebellion and unwanted international condemnation. However, the plan continued in practice.

Moreover, a wholesome annexation of West Bank regions would mean that Israel would become responsible for the welfare of entire Palestinian communities. As a settler-colonial state, Israel wants the land, but not the people. In Tel Aviv’s calculation, annexation without the expulsion of the population could lead to a demographic nightmare; thus, Israel’s need to reinvent its annexation plan.

Though Israel has supposedly delayed the de jure annexation, it continued with a de facto form of annexation, one that has generated little international media attention.

The Israeli Court’s decision regarding Masafer Yatta, which is already being carried out with the expulsion of the Najjar family on May 11, is an important step towards the annexation of Area C. If Israel can evict the residents of twelve villages, with a population of over 1,000 Palestinians, unhindered, more such expulsions are anticipated, not only south of Hebron, but throughout the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian villagers of Masafer Yatta and their legal representation know very well that no real ‘justice’ can be obtained from the Israeli court system. They continue to fight the legal war, anyway, in the hope that a combination of factors, including solidarity in Palestine and pressure from the outside, can ultimately succeed in compelling Israel to delay its planned destruction and Judaization of the whole region.

However, it seems that Palestinian efforts, which have been underway since 1997, are failing. The Israeli Supreme Court decision is predicated on the erroneous and utterly bizarre notion that the Palestinians of that area could not demonstrate that they belonged there prior to 1980, when the Israeli government decided to turn the area into ‘Firing Zone 918’.

Sadly, the Palestinian defense was partly based on documents from the Jordanian era and official United Nations records that reported on Israeli attacks on several Masafer Yatta villages in 1966. The Jordanian government, which administered the West Bank until 1967, compensated some of the residents for the loss of their ‘stone houses’ – not tents – animals and other properties that were destroyed by the Israeli military. Palestinians tried to use this evidence to show that they have existed, not as nomadic people but as rooted communities. This was unconvincing to the Israeli court, which favored the military’s argument over the rights of the native population.

Israeli firing zones occupy nearly 18 percent of the total size of the West Bank. It is one of several ploys used by the Israeli government to lay a legal claim on Palestinian land and to, eventually, years later, claim legal ownership as well. Many of these firing zones exist in Area C, and are being used as one of the Israeli methods aimed at officially appropriating Palestinian land with the support of the Israeli courts.

Now that the Israeli military has managed to acquire Masafer Yatta – a region spanning 32 to 56 sq km – based on completely flimsy excuses, it will become much easier in ensuring the ethnic cleansing of many similar communities in various parts of occupied Palestine.

While discussions and media coverage of Israel’s annexation scheme in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley have largely subsided, Israel is now preparing for a gradual annexation scheme. Instead of annexing 40% of the West Bank all at once, Israel is now annexing smaller tracts of land and regions, like Masafer Yatta, separately. Tel Aviv will eventually connect all these annexed areas through Jewish-only bypass roads to larger Jewish settlement infrastructures in the West Bank.

Not only does this alternative strategy allow Israel to avoid international criticism, it will also permit Israel to eventually annex Palestinian land while incrementally expelling Palestinians, helping Tel Aviv prevent demographic imbalances before they occur.

What is happening in Masafer Yatta is not only the largest ethnic cleansing scheme to be carried out by Israel since 1967, but the move should be considered a first step in a much larger scheme of illegal land appropriation, ethnic cleansing and official mass annexation.

Israel must not succeed in Masafer Yatta, because if it does, its original, mass annexation scheme will become a reality in no time.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-ethnic-c ... palestine/

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Israeli Settlers Celebrate Capturing Jerusalem, Police Arrest Palestinians
By Mohamed Ahmed, Contributor June 11, 2022

Old City, Occupied East Jerusalem, Palestine – Celebrating the Israeli capture of Jerusalem in 1967, thousands of Israeli nationalists marched thru Palestinian corridors of the Old City on May 29, periodically chanting “death to Arabs” while taking provocative tours under the guard of police. At least 21 Palestinians were arrested in Jerusalem and a Palestinian counter-march in Ramallah was violently suppressed by Israeli forces.


In a move still unrecognized by the international community, Israel annexed Jerusalem after the 1967 war and has occupied the city since. While Palestinians claim now-occupied East Jerusalem as the capital of their desired state.

The Old City of Jerusalem is the historical walled-in portion of the city. It houses the Temple Mount, where some of the most important sites for the Abrahamic religions are located including the Dome of the Rock, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Western Wall.

Deploying in the morning of May 29, Israeli police officers preempted the settlers’ incursions into Al-Aqsa where provocative tours around Temple Mount were carried out.

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An infantry soldier in the Israeli Army joined the provocative settlers tours of Al-Aqsa

Throngs of settlers, including the extremist Itamar Ben Gvir, stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque with police guards. After leaving the Mosque’s courtyard, Ben Gvir said that he came to confirm that “we – the State of Israel – are sovereign” in the city of Jerusalem.

Jewish people are allowed to enter the Al-Aqsa courtyard, but they are prohibited from performing prayers there. Yet, the number of those who perform secret prayers is increasing, which angers the Palestinians, who consider these visits “incursions” that seek to “Judaize” the Islamic holy site.

The settlers used the Mughrabi Gate to enter Al-Aqsa where police had closed the prayer hall, surrounded worshippers inside and arrested at least 10 young men. Settlers harassed press and a group performed a Talmudic ritual at Bab al-Hadid (Iron Gate) and attacked a family with pepper spray. Settlers sang and chanted nationalist songs and at times provoked Palestinians and Arabs with racist chants like “death to Arabs.”

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Settlers antagonize a Palestinian press member in the Old City

The Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported settlers attacked an ambulance crew and a woman was injured from an assault in the courtyards. Police climbed up portions of the mosque, walked on the roof and also prevented Al-Aqsa students from reaching their schools.

Prominent activist Muhammad Abu Hummus said that settlers attacked Palestinian shops around the Old City, forcing them to close.

“There were intermittent marches of settlers. At the Al-Buraq Wall (Western Wall) and Bab al-Amud (Damascus Gate) they [settlers] attacked the Palestinians and their shops, forcing shops to close. There were beatings, assaults with sticks, and arrests at Bab al-Amud and there was a girl arrested. In the meantime, the situation is very difficult in Jerusalem with dozens of arrests at Bab al-Amud.”

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Muhammad Abu Hummus speaks about the events happening in the Old City during the 2022 “Flags March”

Hundreds of Palestinian citizens had responded to the calls to gather in Al-Aqsa with many traveling, performing the dawn prayer and stationing in its courtyards and chapels to protect the mosque. Israeli police prevented dozens from entering Al-Aqsa at dawn, forcing a large group of them to perform the dawn prayer outside, at the gates of Al-Asbat, Hatta and Al-Gahanna.

Meanwhile, in the Occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, thousands of Palestinians denounced the Israeli “Flags March” with a march their own.

Many Palestinians taking part in the march expressed the view that the Israeli “Flags March” is a blatant provocation and violation of one of the few places in the Old City still retaining its Arab character after the ongoing occupation of the area.

March participants chanted slogans affirming their adherence to Jerusalem, condemning the Israeli occupation, and demanding legitimate national rights.

Dozens were injured when Israeli forces shot rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas at the march as it reached the northern entrance to the city of Al-Bireh. Al-Bireh is adjacent to Ramallah in the central West Bank and near the Israeli colony Beit El, settled by ultranationalists on Palestinian lands in 1977.

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https://unicornriot.ninja/2022/israeli- ... estinians/

Other photos, video at link.

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‘Washington Post’ concludes that Israeli soldier killed Shireen Abu Akleh — building pressure on U.S. gov’t

A Washington Post investigation openly disputes shifting Israeli "claims" about who killed Shireen Abu Akleh, and all but accuses the Israeli army of withholding evidence that its soldier killed her.
BY PHILIP WEISS JUNE 12, 2022 11

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(FILE) A PHOTO TAKEN ON OCTOBER 15, 2018. AL JAZEERA JOURNALIST SHIREEN ABU AKLEH TAKES A PHOTO DURING THE COVERAGE OF THE CLOSURE OF LUBBAN AL-SHARQIYA SCHOOL SOUTH OF NABLUS CITY, IN THE WEST BANK. (PHOTO: WAJED NOBANI/APA IMAGES)

The Washington Post today published an investigation of the killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh a month ago and it concludes just what the AP, CNN, and Bellingcat investigations found, and that eyewitnesses said on May 11: An Israeli soldier likely killed Abu Akleh in the occupied territories.

The Post openly disputes the shifting Israeli “claims” about who killed Abu Akleh, and all but accuses the Israeli army of withholding evidence that its soldier killed her. The lengthy investigation will add pressure on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to actually demand an independent investigation and accountability. It will put Joe Biden on the hot seat with journalists when he visits Israel later this month (and surely embraces the prime minister and defense minister and foreign minister).

The Post cites interviews with “multiple eyewitnesses” and reviews of numerous videos and two independent analyses of audio/ballistic evidence to reach the exact same conclusion as CNN: that the gunman was about 600 feet away from Abu Akleh in Jenin, just where the Israeli convoy was that morning.

The Washington Post examined more than five dozen videos, social media posts and photos of the event, conducted two physical inspections of the area and commissioned two independent acoustic analyses of the gunshots. That review suggests an Israeli soldier in the convoy likely shot and killed Abu Akleh. The Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, has said it is possible one of its soldiers fired the fatal shot, but claimed any gunfire was directed toward a Palestinian gunman who was standing between the Israeli soldiers and the journalists, and that the reporters might have been shot unintentionally.

The Post specifically disputes the Israeli claims:

Israel’s military has not released any evidence showing the presence of a gunman. The available video and audio evidence disputes IDF claims there was an exchange of fire in the minutes before Abu Akleh was killed and supports the accounts of multiple eyewitnesses interviewed by The Post, who said there was no firefight at the time.

Reporters Sarah Cahlan, Meg Kelly and Steve Hendrix grant authority in their story to Ali al-Samoudi, the producer for Al Jazeera who was also shot by the soldier and who was coordinating his every movement with Abu Akleh that morning.

[Samoudi said] “It was totally calm, there was no gunfire at all.” Suddenly, there was a barrage of bullets…

The shots seemed to come from the military vehicles, Samoudi recalled.


So the Israeli army story is falling apart before our eyes.

Shifting explanations from the IDF about the source of gunfire that killed Abu Akleh emerged from the beginning.

The Post publishes a statement from the Israeli army that it “will continue to responsibly investigate the incident, in order to get to the truth of this tragic event.” But again the Israeli Defense Forces insist that they must have the bullet to reach a conclusion, and the Palestinian Authority has refused to turn it over.

This is horsefeathers, because the Israeli army obviously knows right now that its soldier killed Abu Akleh and it has a ton of its own evidence it’s not showing anyone.

Notice how the Post says that the Israeli army is holding out that evidence– video from drones and body cameras. And notice how the Post questions the Israeli army conclusion that no Israeli soldier deliberately targeted Abu Akleh.

The IDF did not say how it arrived at the conclusion that its soldiers did not know journalists were present, or that they were not deliberately targeted. An IDF spokesman directed Post reporters toward statements made by an Israeli military official, Col. Arik Moel, in a television interview, in which he says there was a “better chance” Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian fire than by “one of the five bullets” shot by an Israeli soldier who had been present that day. No evidence was provided for the assertion.

The IDF did not respond to a question about what, if anything, Israeli footage of the incident — from drones or body cameras — may show.


The Post’s analysis of the gunshots is precisely what CNN’s was, as to the distance of the shooter.

[Steve] Beck found the first two bursts of gunfire, 13 shots in total, were shot from between 175-195 meters (574-640 feet) away from the cameras that recorded the scene — almost exactly the distance between the journalists and the Israeli military vehicles.

This is great news because it suggests that the press is not going to abandon Shireen Abu Akleh in death. It also puts a lot of pressure on the New York Times, our leading newspaper, to stand up for Shireen Abu Akleh. And it gives political capital to the 57 Congresspeople who have demanded an independent investigation of the killing.

https://mondoweiss.net/2022/06/washingt ... -u-s-govt/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 05, 2022 2:04 pm

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World Peace Statue in Haifa, Israel 2013(Photo: Dr. Avishai Teicher via the PikiWiki – Israel free image collection project)

Between the sword and the neck: why the Arab streets rejects Zionist normalization with Arab states
By Danya Nasser (Posted Jul 02, 2022)

[Peace talks with the Israelis]… that’s the kind of conversation between the sword and the neck.

— Ghassan Kanafani


U.S. media outlets and politicians have nearly all parroted the same praises of the recent “peace agreements” between Israel and the repressive U.S.-backed governments of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Rather than acknowledging such agreements as the product of longstanding U.S. support for existing security and economic relations between these governments and Israel, outlets like the New York Times are more interested in promoting Donald Trump as an “international peacemaker,” calling the agreements a “breakthrough” and “landmark accord.”1 Unwritten and unspoken about, such agreements are part of the history of intense U.S. and Zionist repression against all forms of anti-normalization, of which many Palestinian and Arab organizations have faced the brunt internationally.2

For the governments of countries like the United States and Israel, the use of the word peace always means the opposite. The reactionary Arab governments who have signed the recent “peace agreements” have never actually been at war with Israel, with the agreements amounting to a celebration of nothing. What these agreements did accomplish, however, was to publicly entrench normalization between Israel and its regional allies in an unprecedented manner, and strengthen their collective abilities to repress true fighters for peace.

Normalization cannot be reduced to a signature from a few Arab puppet leaders on a piece of paper. It is not merely an abstract set of commitments to “open markets” and “public dialogue.” Normalization is Emirati capitalists purchasing Palestinian homes in Jerusalem, on behalf of fascist Israeli settler organizations.3 Normalization is Gulf monarchies using Israeli spyware to repress their own citizens, alongside billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. attack aircraft and precision-guided munitions to wage a devastating war on Yemen. Normalization is Emirati officials defending Israel’s “right to defend itself” as the Israeli occupation forces terrorize Syrians.

It must be noted that the capitalist elites of the Gulf, Sudan, and Morocco structurally do not represent the interests of the majority of their working-class, disenfranchised, and impoverished peoples. In fact, the 2019–20 Arab Opinion Index, the largest public opinion survey carried out in the Arab world, shows us that these citizens overwhelmingly reject normalization with Israel, with the number one stated reason being that it is a “colonialist occupying power in Palestine.” According to the survey results, the vast majority of the Arab public across the region, including Palestine, objectively understand the Palestinian struggle as a pan-Arab struggle, thus recalling one of the historic principles and successful lessons of the Arab Nationalist Movement, among the largest anticolonial movements in Arab history.1

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Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, The 2019–20 Arab Opinion Index: Main Results in Brief, Figure 87 (Doha: Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, 2020), 55.

Recognizing the function and role that the Gulf states in particular play in the Arab region is critical to understanding their decades of cooperation with Israel, facilitated largely by the United States through neoliberal financial agreements. Adam Hanieh, a scholar of the political economy of the Arab region, has researched how U.S. support for normalization between Israel and Gulf states was central to the political and economic subordination of the wider Arab region:

The U.S. has pursued a policy of integrating its bases of support in the region within a single, neoliberal economic zone tied to the U.S. through a series of bilateral trade agreements. The region’s markets will be dominated by U.S. imports, while cheap labor, concentrated in economic “free” zones owned by regional and international capital, will manufacture low-cost exports destined for markets in the U.S., the EU, Israel, and the Gulf.

A central component of this vision is the normalization and integration of Israel into the Middle East. The U.S. envisions a Middle East resting upon Israeli capital in the West and Gulf capital in the East, underpinning a low-wage, neoliberal zone that spans the region. What this means is that Israel’s historic destruction of Palestinian national rights must be accepted and blessed by all states in the region.


Ali Kadri, another specialist of the political economy of the Arab region, has succinctly defined neoliberalism as “taking what is public and making it private.” This has meant that private financial institutions (dominated by the West) are given the power to control economic policies, rather than there being any local state regulation or public control. Neoliberal policies have allowed resources to drain out of the Middle East, a type of vampiric force that undermines sovereignty and social welfare for the majority of people. Therefore, U.S. support for Zionist normalization has been deeply connected to the rapid neoliberal restructuring of the Arab region since the 1980s. These relationships are clear to the Arab streets, who experience these conditions and thereby recognize that the Palestinian struggle holds immense strategic weight in the political struggles of the region as a whole, as Israel represents the central pole of imperialist power and political-economic domination over the region.

Historically, it was boycott and resistance that led to the defeat of apartheid in South Africa, not appeasement or capitulation. South African politician Ronnie Kasrils drew a candid historical comparison, stating that “independent African states and the then Organisation for African Unity showed far more backbone, unity and solidarity in the struggle against South African apartheid, than Arab states and the Arab League with respect to the Palestinian cause.” Kasrils spent three decades first as a member of the African National Congress’s armed wing co-founded by Nelson Mandela, and later as its chief of intelligence, as well as a member of the central committee of the South African Communist Party. The South African liberation movement received material support and military training from fellow African countries including Libya, Algeria, Egypt, and Ethiopia. However, Frontline States were the target of destabilizing attacks by the apartheid regime, instigating civil wars and massacring people in consistent raids into neighboring countries. Despite such attacks, the Frontline States persevered and added to an effective unified resistance that ultimately isolated and defeated apartheid.

The United States and Israel engage in their own form of destabilization campaigns, targeting countries like Iran and Syria with vicious sanctions, and placing groups who reject normalization on “terrorist” lists. Most recently, Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz officially declared six prominent Palestinian human rights groups to be “terrorist organizations” last year: Al-Haq, Addameer, Defense for Children International Palestine, the Union of Palestinian Women Committees, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Bisan Center for Research and Development. To Israel, any sector of organized society that is committed to promoting the well-being and rights of Palestinians, including medical, legal, environmental, and even cultural nonprofits, are guilty of so-called terrorism. Such classifications have a tremendous impact on outside funding, ability to travel, and have led to random arrests and raids of civil institutions by Israel. On the Palestinian side, the Oslo normalization agreement between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Israel in 1993 produced the Palestinian Authority as an institution of collaboration with Israel that represses Palestinian resistance even further, while Israel has quadrupled the number of illegal Israeli settlers in the West Bank and mercilessly assaulted the besieged Gaza Strip on all fronts.

We should be clear and objective with our people: there are two defined camps in the region, the camp that is of the people and for resistance, and there is the camp of elites and kings who are for collaboration and safeguarding their wealth in exchange for our national rights. Our task as Arabs living in the United States is to join with an organization that has always openly rejected normalization and that centers Palestinian and Arab leadership over our own struggle, such as the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, and Palestinian Youth Movement, to name a few. The U.S. Palestinian Community Network is led by our working-class community members, across generations, from Nakba survivors to young students in high school and college. It is important to learn from the experience of our elders who were participants in the Arab Nationalist Movement and the height of Palestinian organizing in the United States during the 1970s and ’80s, as they have been doing this work for the longest amount of time. One of our most important projects currently has been the creation of an original political education curriculum, which we have used to give in-depth workshops on Palestinian history to our own community members as well as teacher unions, student groups, and partner organizations. Many of us in the younger generations of Palestinian and Arabs, especially in the United States, have not been exposed or have not had the opportunity to learn our history in an accessible and discussion-oriented setting, particularly from an anti-imperialist perspective. While Arab states may have forgotten the lessons of our history, we are making sure that our people in the diaspora never do.

Notes:
1.↩ Peter Baker, Isabel Kershner, David D. Kirkpatrick, and Ronen Bergman, “Israel and United Arab Emirates Strike Major Diplomatic Agreement,” New York Times, August 13, 2020.
2.↩ The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel has defined normalization specifically in a Palestinian and Arab context “as the participation in any project, initiative or activity, in Palestine or internationally, that aims (implicitly or explicitly) to bring together Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (people or institutions) without placing as its goal resistance to and exposure of the Israeli occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people.” This is also the definition endorsed by the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee.
3.↩ Mohammad Ayesh, “Arabic Press Review: UAE Accused of Selling Palestinian Lands in East Jerusalem,” Middle East Eye, April 9, 2021.

https://mronline.org/2022/07/02/between ... -the-neck/

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Palestinians ‘Are Not Animals in a Zoo’: On Kanafani and the Need to Redefine the Role of the ‘Victim Intellectual’
JULY 4, 2022

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Late Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani . Photo: Twitter.

By Ramzy Baroud – Jun 29, 2022

Dedicated to the memory of Ghassan Kanafani, an iconic Palestinian leader and engaged intellectual who was assassinated by the Israeli Mossad on July 8, 1972

Years before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, US media introduced many new characters, promoting them as ‘experts’ who helped ratchet up US propaganda, ultimately allowing the US government to secure enough popular support for the war.

Though enthusiasm for war began dwindling in later years, the invasion of Iraq had begun with a relatively strong popular mandate that allowed US President George W Bush to claim the role of liberator of Iraq, the fighter of ‘terrorism’ and the champion of US global interests. According to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll conducted on March 24, 2003 – a few days after the invasion – seventy-two per cent of Americans were in favour of the war.

Only now are we beginning to fully appreciate the massive edifice of lies, deceit and forgery involved in shaping the war narrative, and the sinister role played by mainstream media in demonising Iraq and dehumanising its people. Future historians will continue with the task of unpacking the war conspiracy for years to come.

Consequently, it is also important to acknowledge the role played by Iraq’s own ‘native informants’, as late professor Edward Said would describe them. The “native informant (is a) willing servant of imperialism”, according to the influential Palestinian intellectual.

Thanks to the various American invasions and military interventions, these ‘informants’ have grown in number and usefulness to the extent that, in various western intellectual and media circles, they define what is erroneously viewed as ‘facts’ concerning most Arab and Muslim countries. From Afghanistan, to Iran, to Syria, Palestine, Libya and, of course Iraq, among others, these ‘experts’ are constantly parroting messages that are tailored to fit US-western agendas.

These ‘experts’ are often depicted as political dissidents. They are recruited – whether officially via government-funded think tanks or otherwise – by western governments to provide a convenient depiction of the ‘realities’ in the Middle East – and elsewhere – as a rational, political or moral justification for war and various other forms of intervention.

Though this phenomenon is being widely understood – especially as its dangerous consequences became too apparent in the cases of Iraq and Afghanistan – another phenomenon rarely receives the necessary attention. In the second scenario, the ‘intellectual’ is not necessarily an ‘informant’, but a victim, whose message is entirely shaped by his sense of self-pity and victimhood. In the process of communicating that collective victimhood, this intellectual does his people a disfavour by presenting them as hapless and having no human agency whatsoever.

Palestine is a case in point.

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Palestinian’s culture and heritage is the best weapon against the Occupation – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

The Palestine ‘victim intellectual’ is not an intellectual in any classic definition. Said refers to the intellectual as “an individual endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion”. Gramsci argued that intellectuals are “(those) who sustain, modify and alter modes of thinking and behaviour of the masses”. He referred to them as “purveyors of consciousness”. The ‘victim intellectual’ is none of these.

In the case of Palestine, this phenomenon was not accidental. Due to the limited spaces available to Palestinian thinkers to speak openly and truly about Israeli crimes and about Palestinian resistance to military occupation and apartheid, some have strategically chosen to use whatever available margins to communicate any kind of messaging that could be nominally accepted by western media and audiences.

In other words, in order for Palestinian intellectuals to be able to operate within the margins of mainstream western society, or even within the space allocated by certain pro-Palestinian groups, they can only be ‘allowed to narrate’ as ‘purveyors’ of victimhood. Nothing more.

Those familiar with the Palestinian intellectual discourse, in general, especially following the first major Israeli war on Gaza in 2008-9, must have noticed how accepted Palestinian narratives regarding the war rarely deviate from the decontextualised and depoliticised Palestinian victim discourse. While understanding the depravity of Israel and the horrendousness of its war crimes is critical, Palestinian voices which are given a stage to address these crimes are frequently denied the chance to present their narratives in the form of strong political or geopolitical analyses, let alone denounce Israel’s Zionist ideology or proudly defend Palestinian resistance.

Much has been written about the hypocrisy of the West in handling the aftermath of the Russia-Ukraine war, especially when compared to the decades-long Israeli occupation of Palestine or the genocidal Israeli wars in Gaza. But little has been said about the nature of the Ukrainian messaging if compared to those of Palestinians: the former demanding and entitled, while the latter mostly passive and bashful.

While top Ukrainian officials often tweet such statements that western officials can “go f**k yourselves”, Palestinian officials are constantly begging and pleading. The irony is that Ukrainian officials are attacking the very nations that have supplied them with billions of dollars of ‘lethal weapons’, while Palestinian officials are careful not to offend the same nations that support Israel with the very weapons used to kill Palestinian civilians.

One may argue that Palestinians are tailoring their language to accommodate whichever political and media spaces that are available to them. This, however, hardly explains why many Palestinians, even within ‘friendly’ political and academic environments, can only see their people as victims and nothing else.

This is hardly a new phenomenon. It goes back to the early years of the Israeli war on the Palestinian people. Palestinian leftist intellectual, Ghassan Kanafani, like others, was aware of this dichotomy.

Kanafani contributed to the intellectual awareness among various revolutionary societies in the Global South during a critical era for national liberation struggles everywhere. He was the posthumous recipient of the Afro-Asia Writers’ Conference’s Lotus Prize for Literature in 1975, three years after he was assassinated by Israel in Beirut, in July 1972.

Like others in his generation, Kanafani was adamant in presenting Palestinian victimisation as part and parcel of a complex political reality of Israeli military occupation, western colonialism and US-led imperialism. A famous story is often told about how he met his wife, Anni, in South Lebanon. When Anni, a Danish journalist, arrived in Lebanon in 1961, she asked Kanafani if she could visit the Palestinian refugee camps. “My people are not animals in a zoo,” Kanafani replied, adding, “You must have a good background about them before you go and visit.” The same logic can be applied to Gaza, to Sheikh Jarrah and Jenin.

The Palestinian struggle cannot be reduced to a conversation about poverty or the horrors of war, but must be expanded to include wider political contexts that led to the current tragedies in the first place. The role of the Palestinian intellectual cannot stop at conveying the victimisation of the people of Palestine, leaving the much more consequential – and intellectually demanding – role of unpacking historical, political and geopolitical facts to others, some of whom often speak on behalf of Palestinians.

It is quite uplifting and rewarding to finally see more Palestinian voices included in the discussion about Palestine. In some cases, Palestinians are even taking centre stage in these conversations. However, for the Palestinian narrative to be truly relevant, Palestinians must assume the role of the Gramscian intellectual, as “purveyors of consciousness” and abandon the role of the ‘victim intellectual’ altogether. Indeed, the Palestinian people are not ‘animals in a zoo’ but a nation with political agency, capable of articulating, resisting and, ultimately, winning their freedom, as part of a much greater fight for justice and liberation throughout the world.

(Middle East Monitor)

https://orinocotribune.com/palestinians ... ellectual/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Thu Jul 07, 2022 2:42 pm

In the Wake of Abu Akleh’s Murder, Media Continued to Obscure Israeli Violence
ROBIN ANDERSEN

On May 13, two days after the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli Occupation Forces, as her loss still dominated international news cycles, thousands of Palestinian mourners gathered to pay tribute to the woman who had given them voice for so long. They came to lay her body to rest.
Emir Nader Tweet
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Twitter (5/13/22)
Immediately, as the funeral procession was just starting, images emerged of Israeli forces attacking the pallbearers as they attempted to carry her coffin across the courtyard from the French hospital in East Jerusalem. One of the first reports came from British-Egyptian correspondent Emir Nader with BBC News investigations, who posted footage and said on Twitter (5/13/22): “Horrible scenes as Israeli security forces beat the funeral procession for slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the crowd momentarily lose control of her casket.”

Al Jazeera carried the funeral live on air, and the footage showing the attack was widely shared over social media. One Twitter user (5/13/22) described the video, referring to the IOF, or Israeli Occupation Force:

Everyone switch on to Al Jazeera right now. This is one of the most horrifying things I’ve seen. IOF is attacking mourners carrying Shireen’s body from the hospital right now. They’re using stun grenades and tear gas and charging at them with horses and batons.

The Intercept (5/13/22) noted the footage that unfolded on live television, stunned viewers and only “intensified the outrage over her death.” Video was quickly remixed and shared, and the article linked a 45-second video on Twitter (5/13/22) posted by Rushdi Abualouf, a Palestinian journalist working for the BBC. Described as “the closest video” of the attack, it mixed Arab instrumental music over a slowed version that show helmeted, uniformed riot police singling out pallbearers and smashing bare arms with batons as mourners struggled to keep the casket upright.

The language of obfuscation

Mirroring the euphemism-dominated coverage of Abu Akleh’s killing (FAIR.org, 5/20/22), many of the first corporate press reports employed language that mystified what was happening at the funeral.

MintPressNews editor Alan MacLeod recognized the language of obfuscation, posting a series of news headlines on Twitter (5/13/22) that transformed black-clad Israeli riot squads wantonly beating pallbearers into “clashes.” Referring to an article he wrote for FAIR (12/13/19), MacLeod (5/14/22) observed that the word “clash” is used by media “when they have to report on violence, but desperately want to obscure who the perpetrators are.”

Violence comes from nowhere, it simply erupts: CBS‘s headline (5/13/22) was, “Shireen Abu Akleh Funeral Sees Clashes Between Israeli Forces and Palestinian,” updated later that day to report that “Violence Erupts” at the funeral as Israeli forces “Confront” mourners. The Times of Israel (5/13/22) had “Violence Erupts as Journalist’s Casket Emerges From Jerusalem Hospital.” And the BBC (5/13/22) went with “Shireen Abu Akleh: Violence at Al Jazeera Reporter’s Funeral in Jerusalem.”
CBS Abu Akleh Story
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CBS News (5/13/22)
CBS‘s language prompted one Twitter user (5/13/22) to wonder about

the best term for lies by omission, untruths couched in deliberately obfuscating language. Perhaps “willfully misleading”? Denial of facts, even gaslighting, given the footage circulating of attacks on pallbearers….

An exception was a report from Jerusalem by Atika Shubert for CNN (5/13/22) headlined, “Video Shows Israeli Police Beating Mourners at Palestinian-American Journalist’s Funeral Procession.” It opened:

Israeli police used batons to beat mourners carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh…. Tear gas was fired by Israeli forces and at least one flash bomb was used.

Mondoweiss (5/13/22) pointed out that the “White House says it ‘regrets the intrusion’ into Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral, but it doesn’t condemn Israeli police actions.”

Repression as retaliatory

Reporting went from bad to worse when the Israeli government issued an official statement claiming that police had to respond to Palestinian violence. Many Western news outlets repeated the claims.

Under an early BBC video (5/13/22), after “clashes broke out” and “violence erupted,” the text read, “Projectiles are seen flying towards the police, who also fired tear gas,” and then, “Israeli police said officers at the scene were pelted with stones and ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’”
Intercept on Abu Akleh
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Intercept (5/13/22)
In a later, longer version, the BBC text (5/13/22) opened with, “Police said they acted after being pelted with stones,” and repeated, “Police said officers ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’” The body of the text included on-the-ground reporting that accurately described what happened, only to be followed with more back-and-forth accusations.

The descriptive reporting on the funeral attack and Israeli brutality, followed with patched, confused “balance” between Palestinian and Israeli statements–contention often going back decades–began to characterize coverage. This style of journalism presents repression surrounded in a fog of inevitability, rendering even eyewitness accounts inexplicable, without context or solution.

As many reports repeated Israeli justifications for the attacks, presenting Israeli state repression as retaliatory, the Intercept (5/13/22) refuted the official Israeli version, showing how it fabricated Palestinian violence.

On Twitter (5/13/22), activist Rafael Shimunov explained how the Israeli police account used drone video to “prove” that two of the mourners had thrown rocks at police:

But a comparison of that video to ground-level news footage showed that the police video had been edited to remove the initial police charge and slowed down to make it seem as if a man who just waved his arms in frustration had thrown something at the officers.

Shimunov concluded that the mourner had no stone, his “action was putting his body between them and Shireen Abu Akleh’s casket.” He added: “To be clear, no stone justifies attacking mourners at a funeral of a journalist assassinated by your military.”

‘This isn’t a tussle’

All the media techniques come together on a CBS video posted on Twitter (5/13/22), with overlaid text saying police “clashed” with mourners, and that the “tussling” was so bad they almost dropped the coffin. “Projectiles could be seen flying through the air as Palestinians chanted anti-Israeli slogans,” the network declared.

The response on Twitter was outrage. One user (5/13/22) replied:

This isn’t a tussle or push back. This is an occupying force abusing its power. The sooner @CBSNews calls it how it is, the sooner we can pressure change. Do better.

Another “fixed” the headline, changing “clashes” to “attacking,” and switching Abu Akleh being “killed” to “assassinated.” Another Twitter used said, “These are violent occupiers (who killed journalists prior #ShireenAbuAkleh) invading a funeral… not a ‘tussle.'” Yet another asked:

Oh clashing was it? Clashing? Very interesting choice of words for being attacked by armored thugs during a peaceful memorial for a journalist those armored thugs also murdered.

Another tweeter was “imagining the headline ‘Ukrainians left dead in Bucha after clashes with Russian forces.’”

Posting an unedited video in response to CBS, a user asked: “Why was this clip cut?… to falsify the facts of course.”
Western Media Slammed for Coverage
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Al Jazeera (5/12/22)
In fact, the actual footage was stunning for its clear view of one-sided violence—beginning unmistakably when helmeted Israeli forces stormed the crowd and began to beat pallbearers with batons. The pallbearers stumble and are sometimes ripped from their positions, but they never retaliate. One tries to shield his head with his arm. A man wearing jeans, tennis shoes and a sleeveless shirt kicks at the helmeted, uniformed police, trying to stop them from hitting the pallbearers. Those carrying the coffin do all they can to prevent it from falling, ignoring the blows.

Al Jazeera (5/12/22) interviewed Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, who said that Israel has a track record of creating ambiguity over social media as a strategy to “muddy the waters,” knowing that many press accounts will repeat their claims.

‘Incitement’ or expression?

Explaining the funeral attacks, the Intercept (5/13/22) reported, Israeli police “said they attacked the procession because mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted nationalist slogans.”

NPR (5/13/22) also reported, “Police said the crowd at the hospital was chanting ‘nationalist incitement,’ ignored calls to stop and threw stones at police.” It added, citing police, that “the policemen were forced to act.” NPR went on to explain why police raided Shireen’s family home, saying they “went” there “the day she was killed and have shown up at other mourning events in the city to remove Palestinian flags.”

The CBS video (5/13/22) posted on Twitter overlaid with text also read, “Al Jazeera said Israel had warned her brother to limit the size of the funeral and told him no Palestinian flags should be displayed and no slogans chanted.” They followed with, “The network said he neglected to take that guidance given the outpouring of grief and anger over the reporter’s killing.”
“I Did Have Some Trouble Reporting the Truth”
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Slate (5/22/21)
No comment is made about Israeli repression of Palestinian freedom of expression. “Neglected” and “guidance” are unlikely choices of words from Al Jazeera, given that the network published a scathing piece (5/12/22) slamming Western media coverage for obscuring and denying Israel’s murder of its journalist, calling it a “whitewash.” Al Jazeera has assigned a legal team to refer the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces to the International Criminal Court (Al Jazeera, 5/27/22).

Though CNN journalist Atika Shubert (5/13/22), reporting from the funeral, acknowledged Israeli attacks, she ended by saying that the family was “told not to display the Palestinian flag, that was a special request, but as you can imagine, it’s very difficult to control these crowds,” and the flags were flying. The “request” was a raid on Abu Akleh’s family home, where flags were forcibly removed. Restrictions on flying the Palestinian flag are normalized within these stories, not exposed as violations of human rights and freedom of expression.

When US media routinely repeat without comment Israeli “reasons” for “clamping down” on any display of support for Palestinian statehood, or that Palestinians were “chanting nationalistic slogans,” amounting to “incitement,” they condone the repression of Palestinian rights, which would cause other countries to be called dictatorships, or at least authoritarian regimes. Yet Israel is still listed as a democracy. As Nolan Higdon (5/28/22) pointed out, “You Can Kill and Censor Journalists or You Can have Democracy—You Can’t Have Both!” Such attitudes toward Israeli repression of Palestinian expression are a major contradiction by US media institutions, which themselves enjoy press freedoms and should be able to recognize when those freedoms are being violated.

Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian American and Columbia University professor, told FAIR that US media are “terrified of being attacked if they don’t repeat the Israeli versions of events. They live in constant fear. This happens on the ground, and during editing.” These practices were confirmed in an article published in Slate (5/22/21) last year, when a journalist admitted having trouble “reporting the truth” from Gaza.

‘System of domination’
There are rules for occupying forces articulated by the International Committee of the Red Cross on Occupation and International Humanitarian Law (4/8/04); these prohibit the collective punishment of occupied peoples. Violent repression of nationalist slogans and the Palestinian flag violates the International Declaration of Human Rights, rights which are established for those living under occupation.
Tony Karon on Twitter
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Twitter (5/13/22)
Writing for Common Dreams (5/23/22), the Institute for Policy Studies’ Phyllis Bennis and Princeton’s Richard Falk noted that Israeli forces “threw Palestinian flags to the ground and violently beat mourners—including the pallbearers.” They placed the attacks into a context of “the structural nature of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” citing an Amnesty International report on Israeli violence in the Occupied Territories characterizing it as a “Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity.”

The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the supposedly defensive attacks on mourners are part of a “pattern of repression…far more pervasive,” and in fact codified in the country’s Law of 2018, which grants only Jewish citizens the right of self-determination. Along with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem, Bennis and Falk concluded that this “constitutes the crime of apartheid.”

This point was made visually online by Tony Karon (Twitter, 5/13/22) , a lead editorial writer at Al Jazeera, who set pictures of South African apartheid next to Israeli attacks on the funeral with the text:

African police in ‘87 attacking the coffin of Ashley Kriel to seize the ANC flag that draped it: Israeli police attacked the coffin of #ShireenAbuAkleh today, trying to seize Palestinian flags. Apartheid regimes waging war on their victims, even after death.

US responsibility

For decades, the United States has unconditionally provided Israel with “political, diplomatic, economic and military support,” Bennis and Falk wrote. Military subsidies alone amount to about $3.8 billion every year, “most of it used to purchase US-made weapons systems, ammunition and more. This makes the US complicit in Israel’s criminal wrongdoing.”

With 20% of Israeli’s military budget supplied by the US, “the bullet or the gun used to kill Shireen could have even been purchased from US weapons manufacturers with our own money.” The use of US military aid for repression is a violation of US law:
'They were shooting directly at the journalists': New evidence suggests Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in targeted attack by Israeli forces
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CNN (5/26/22)
The Leahy Law’s restriction on military aid is unequivocal: “No assistance shall be furnished,” it says, “to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”

To date, there have been six investigations into the killing of Abu Akleh, all that find conclusive evidence that the journalist was killed by Israeli Forces. “A reconstruction by the Associated Press lends support to assertions” from both the Palestinian Authority and Abu Akleh’s colleagues, the news service (5/24/22) reported, “that the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun.” CNN (5/26/22) explained, “There were no armed clashes in the vicinity,” and the text over a map reads, “Footage from the scene showed a direct line of sight towards the Israeli convoy.”

Demanding the fatal bullet

Much has been made of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, and the Israeli demands that it must be turned over to them (New York Times, 5/12/22). This offers a last talking point for Israeli’s claim that Palestinian fighters are responsible for shooting her.
News investigations suggest Israeli military culpability in killing of Shireen Abu Akleh
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Committee to Protect Journalists (5/26/22)
For example, when Reuters (5/26/22) reported on the investigations into her killing, it added Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s response on Twitter (5/26/22): “Any claim that the IDF intentionally harms journalists or uninvolved civilians is a blatant lie.” Reuters also included his demand that the Palestinian Authority hand over the bullet for ballistic tests to see if it matched an Israeli military gun.

Palestinian tests, noted by Reuters (5/27/22), have determined that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh “was a 5.56 mm round fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle, which is used by the Israeli military.” But Reuters followed that with the Defense minister’s claim that the “same 5.56 caliber can also be fired from M-16 rifles that are carried by many Palestinian militants,” adding: “Al-Khatib did not say how he was sure it had come from an Israeli rifle.”

As Khalidi pointed out, “Anything the Israelis say, even about an investigation, will be repeated, you will still get the Israeli version—that in the name of balance.”

The Committee to Protect Journalists (5/26/22) cited the numerous reports, including the findings of the Dutch-based Bellingcat Investigative Team, confirming Israeli culpability, and joined 33 other press freedom and human rights groups calling for an independent investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing.

‘The world knows very little’

Yet on June 3, 2022, the New York Times’ editorial board wrote, “The world still knows very little about who is responsible for her death.” The wordy piece repeated every Israeli talking point, including the justification of the funeral attack, saying Israeli police “appeared to want to prevent” the funeral from becoming a “nationalist rally,” and said the officers had acted against a mob “in violation of a previously approved plan.” In other words, pallbearers and mourners were attacked for expressing political opinions and allowing Palestinian society to participate in the burial of Abu Akleh.

The Middle East Eye (6/8/22) reported that when Abby Martin, host of the Empire Files, confronted Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, she asked why there has been “absolutely no repercussions” for Israel over Abu Akleh’s killing. Blinken responded that the facts had “not been established” in the killing of the veteran Al Jazeera journalist, yet no independent investigation has been started.
Abby Martin Confrontation
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Twitter (6/7/22)
Washington Post reporters (6/12/22) reviewed the audio, video, social media and witness testimony of Abu Akleh’s killing, and confirmed that an Israeli soldier likely shot and killed her. Mondoweiss (6/12/22) reported the findings, expressing hope that the report would “add pressure on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to actually demand an independent investigation and accountability.”

Yet even though the Post’s editorial board (6/13/22) referred its its own reporter’s investigation as “impressive,” it still called on the Palestinian Authority to agree to a joint investigation with Israel, with US participation. In what amounts to an attempt to control the narrative about Abu Akleh’s killing, the Post editorial cited “emotional” reasons for refusing to back calls for an international investigation, saying, “We’re skeptical such an impartial inquiry is possible given the high emotions, and low trust, that permeate global discussion of the Middle East.”

On June 14, 2022, journalist Dalia Hatuqa, who covers Israeli/Palestinian affairs, told Slate’s Mary Harris (6/14/22) that Blinken had promised Shireen’s famliy that there would be a full investigation, then she continued: “But honestly, nothing’s happened. It’s been a month. It’s not that hard: There’s footage, eyewitnesses, all kinds of stuff. This isn’t a mystery.”

https://fair.org/home/in-the-wake-of-ab ... -violence/

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Hezbollah warns Israel against extraction from the disputed Karish gas field

The warning comes days after Israeli forces shot down three drones launched by Hezbollah towards the Karish gas field, 80 kilometers off the coast of Haifa, allegedly on a reconnaissance mission

July 06, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: www.upstreamonline.com)

The deputy secretary general of Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah, Sheikh Naim Qassem, claimed on Tuesday, July 5, that Israel should not be allowed to extract Lebanon’s natural resources from the Karish gas fields. Claiming that the “equation is clear,” Qassem said that Hezbollah will not sit and watch the loot of Lebanon’s resources. He said, “We demand our oil and our rights uncompromised,” al-Mayadeen reported.

Qassem was speaking during the ceremony commemorating Hezbollah’s 40th foundation day. Just days prior, Israeli forces claimed to have shot down three Hezbollah drones before they could hit the Karish gas field.

On Saturday, July 2, Hezbollah claimed that it had launched three drones towards the Karish field on a reconnaissance mission.


One Hezbollah official claimed that Israel cannot extract gas from Karish “before we reach a deal to mark the boundaries in disputed areas.” He said that the objective behind sending the drones towards Karish was to “send a message to Israel” regarding Lebanon’s stance on the indirect talks with the Zionist regime. He said that the objective was “accomplished” before Israel shot down the drones. The unnamed Hezbollah source was quoted by the Iranian Press TV.

The Karish gas field is located around 80 kilometers west of the port city of Haifa in the Mediterranean Sea. Israel signed a USD 2 billion deal with European company Energean Power in May to extract gas from Karish, which is expected to come online by the end of this year.

Lebanon claims that the gas field falls within its own Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends till Line 29, and Israel has violated Lebanese sovereignty by claiming the Karish field as its own. Lebanon disputes the Israeli claims of sovereignty over the fields, which are exclusively based on a 2011 map prepared by US ambassador Frederic C Hof. The map demarcates Line 23 as the Lebanese line, giving the Karish field completely to Israel.

Since Lebanon does not have any diplomatic relations with Israel, it has been negotiating the border dispute indirectly under mediation by the US for years now.

Israeli aggression was also criticized by the Lebanese Communist Party and the Forces of Change, a new group made up of left and progressive forces that won 13 seats in the latest parliamentary elections in May this year. Forces of Change organized several protests against Israel and called for all Lebanese groups to unite to demand Line 29 as the line of Lebanese sovereignty.

Israel recently signed a gas deal with the European Union and the Karish field is expected to boost its overall gas production to fulfill its export commitments. Israel produces roughly 12 billion cubic meters of gas annually, most of which is used domestically. Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz and caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid have claimed on different occasions that Israel is prepared to go to any extent to defend its claims over Karish.

Extraction from Karish is a threat to peace in the region

After the arrival of the Energean Power ship to the Karish field last month, Lebanese Defense Minister Maurice Slim had claimed that Israeli activity in the disputed territory “constitutes a challenge and provocation to Lebanon and is a flagrant breach of stability” in the region. Prime Minister Najib Mikati and President Michel Aoun had also called for immediate international intervention to prevent Israel from again violating Lebanese sovereignty and international law.


Since its formation in 1948, Israel has invaded Lebanon several times. The UN constituted its Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in 1978 and later extended its mandate to include, among other things, the monitoring of cessation of hostilities in the region following Israel’s 2006 attack in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah was originally formed in 1982 as a resistance movement against the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. It was a leading force against the occupation, which lasted for almost two decades, and against repeated Israeli aggression, including the last invasion in 2006. Hezbollah has emerged as a leading political group in Lebanon.

Lebanon’s caretaker government criticized Hezbollah’s drones launch on Saturday as unacceptable, and is looking for a negotiated settlement with Israel. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah had said last month that the group’s main goal is to prevent “the enemy from extracting oil and gas from Karish and impending the activity that will start or that have already started.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/07/06/ ... gas-field/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sat Aug 06, 2022 3:03 pm

Fatalities “desirable”: Israeli documents on Kafr Qasim massacre declassified
Israeli Border Police forces killed at least 48 Palestinians in the village of Kafr Qasim in 1956. Now-unsealed court transcripts reveal a deliberate plot for displacement.

August 01, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Image via Documenting Palestine)

A slate of newly-declassified court documents have revealed additional details about the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli forces in the village of Kafr Qasim on October 29, 1956. At least 48 people were brutally gunned down and killed by the Israeli Border Police (a unit of the Israeli occupation forces) on what became the first day of the Suez Crisis, beginning with the invasion of Egypt.

Before the massacre, fearing that Jordan might get involved in the with Egypt, Israel imposed a curfew on the Palestinian villages along the border on the eastern side, including Kafr Qasim. Palestinians citizens of Israel had already been under martial law since 1949, a practice that would continue until 1966.

Kafr Qasim was located in the southern portion of the land that Jordan had surrendered to Israel in the 1949 armistice agreement. The area, known as the “Little Triangle”, stretched to more northern villages such as Umm al-Fahm.

At 4:30 PM on October 29, an Israeli border police officer informed the mayor of Kafr Qasim that a curfew would be imposed, starting at 5 PM. Israel issued “shoot to kill” orders to soldiers against anyone seen outside their homes beyond the curfew. This was despite the fact that hundreds of people from the village had gone out to work, and as such, had no way of knowing that a curfew had come into force.

In nine attacks that day, Israeli border police killed 48 Palestinians. Among those killed was a pregnant woman, whose unborn fetus was counted among the casualties by the local villagers, bringing the toll to 49. Israeli forces shot Palestinians at close range after forcing them out of their vehicles. A boy and a man from nearby villages were reportedly also killed. Israel forced Palestinians from Jaljulya, a neighboring village, to dig a mass grave for the massacre’s victims. Those who were injured were only brought to the hospital after the 24-hour curfew had expired.

Escalating outrage meant that Israel could not cover up the massacre, despite imposing a media blackout. Israel was eventually forced to bring soldiers to trial in 1957.

Israel kept the court transcripts of the trial sealed for decades, claiming that their release would pose a threat to national security. The documents were finally released to the public by the Defense Ministry on July 30, following a request by Adam Raz of the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research.


Among those called to testify was Chaim Levy, the commander of the Border Police unit responsible for Kafr Qasim. His statements confirmed that the Israeli forces knew that the Palestinians were unarmed and unaware of the curfew. He was asked, “Doesn’t your reason tell you that ‘violating a curfew’ means by someone who knows that there is a curfew?” Levy would agree, stating later that at the time he thought an order to kill people who were unaware of the curfew was “reasonable”.

Levy was also questioned as to why he had always said that “the commander [referring to Colonel Issachar “Yiska” Shadmi, the commander of the Border Police Central District in charge of the area] allegedly said that it’s best if there be some casualties”. Levy stated that Shadmi had said that “it’s desirable that there be some fatalities”.

While the fact that the Kafr Qasim massacre was even brought to trial was unusual, the proceedings and testimonies laid bare the fact that little would change in terms of actual accountability and justice. As has been customary in instances where Israel has “investigated” its own crimes, the soldiers were given light sentences. All were released and pardoned within two years.

Shadmi, who would be the highest-level official prosecuted for the massacre, was asked to pay a fine of one pruta (a discontinued coin amounting to one thousandth of the Israeli pound prior to 1960).

Meanwhile, the people of Kafr Qasim were forced to observe the massacre’s first anniversary and to attend a traditional “reconciliation ceremony” or sulha. They were also coerced into accepting a privately-arranged settlement for damages.

In 2021, 65 years after the massacre, the Israeli Knesset rejected a bill that would have had the government recognize its responsibility for the killings, including the massacre in the Israeli school curriculum, and declassifying related documents. In March 2022, an Israeli court ruled that classified documents could be released, however, it issued a two-month gag order on the verdict itself.

Operation Hafarperet

The unsealed documents show that during the trial, Levy was also asked if the policy was to “get rid of Arabs”. He replied, as reported by Israeli news outlet Haaretz, that the order was not given in writing, but verbally: “The company commander said that the eastern side should be open. When they want to leave, they’ll leave”. Levy’s testimony alluded to a secret plan, named Hafarperet (Mole), to forcibly expel Palestinians from the Little Triangle to Jordan, under the threat of violence and death.

Levy made references to “creating enclosures” and “transporting people”, which can be understood as the internment of Palestinians in camps and their expulsion from the land. When asked what connection there was between Palestinians fleeing and the order to shoot those violating curfew, Levy would say “The connection is that as a result, part of the population would get scared and decide that it’s best to live on the other side. That’s how I interpret it.”

The unsealed documents also contain testimony given by Shadmi, who, when similarly asked if a curfew would push people to flee, stated “It may encourage that thought…that the killing of a few people as an intimidation measure can encourage movement eastward, as long as we hint to [the Palestinians] about the movement eastward.”

Similar views were echoed by soldiers during the trial, with one stating that the immediate goal was to keep the Palestinians scared and in their houses and the second goal was to “not need to intimidate them in the future”. Two soldiers would use the term “innocent sheep” to describe Palestinians who did not flee and would be terrified into inaction.

One soldier would also affirm that it was deemed “desirable” to leave people dead in villages– “I said it would be best to knock out a few people…so that in the future there would be quiet, and we would not need to have this much manpower overseeing these villages.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/08/01/ ... lassified/

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Israeli Airstrikes on Gaza Kill 10, Injure 55, Tension Grows

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Smoke and fire are seen rising during an Israel airstrike in Gaza City, on Aug. 5, 2022. | Photo: Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua

Published 5 August 2022 (12 hours 13 minutes ago)

At least 10 Palestinians, including a child and an armed group commander, were killed and 55 injured on Friday in Israeli airstrikes on military targets of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an Islamist organization active in the Gaza Strip.

A 5-year-old girl and Tayseer al-Jabari, commander of the PIJ armed wing Al-Quds Brigades, as well as his three aides were killed in the heavy Israeli air raid on a residential apartment in the Palestinian Tower in central Gaza that houses media offices, according to eyewitnesses, the PIJ, and the Palestinian health ministry.

At least six of the injured were in critical condition, the health ministry said in a statement.

The Israeli airstrikes, dubbed the Breaking Dawn operation, targeted "10 terrorist operatives" of the PIJ in Gaza, to "eliminate the threat to the citizens of Israel," according to the Israeli military.

Security sources in Gaza said Israeli airstrikes targeted military lookout posts and a motorcycle in northern and southern Gaza. The Palestinian health ministry has announced emergency readiness across all local hospitals and ambulances stations.

The heightened tension came after Israeli forces arrested a senior official of the PIJ in the West Bank city of Jenin on Monday. The PIJ vowed to take revenge, prompting the Israeli military to raise its alert along the border with Gaza.

Late on Friday, the Israeli military announced that up to 25,000 reservists will be called up to the border with Gaza in case of rocket firing from the Palestinian enclave, adding the country's Iron Dome defense system has intercepted rockets fired from Gaza into Israel in the evening.

The PIJ said they fired more than 100 rockets toward southern and central Israeli towns in the evening after the Israeli airstrikes.

"The Israeli enemy is the one who started the escalation against the resistance in Gaza, and committed a new crime. It must pay the price and bear full responsibility for it," said Fawzi Barhoum, spokesman of Gaza's ruling faction Hamas.

Meanwhile, the PIJ spokesman Daoud Shehab told Xinhua that just before the Israeli raid, Egypt was contacting the movement for a possible meeting between the two sides on Sunday "to break up the crisis."
"But what happened today is a message of disdain for the mediators," Shehab said.

An Egyptian official told a local TV that Egypt is conducting intensive communications with the Palestinian and the Israeli sides to end the ongoing escalation in Gaza and to contain the situation, according to official Ahram online news website.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah Party said in a statement that the Israeli bombing of Gaza and the targeting and intimidation of defenseless civilians "is a new crime added to the crimes" committed by Israel against the Palestinian people.

Munther al-Hayek, Fatah spokesman in Gaza, called on the international community and mediators (Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations) to intervene immediately to prevent Israel from "committing massacres" against the Palestinians in Gaza.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Isr ... -0023.html


Israel Sends More Troops Near Gaza Amid Rising Tensions

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Israel’s military has announced that it was sending more troops to the area near Gaza in case there were possible reprisal attacks following the arrest of a senior militant in the West Bank this week. | Photo: Twitter @Deccan_Cable

Published 5 August 2022

Israel on Thursday deployed attack drones over the Gaza Strip and continued to close major roads in the south amid rising tensions with the Palestinians.

Israel's military announced Thursday it was sending more troops to the area near Gaza in case there were possible reprisal attacks following the arrest of a senior militant in the West Bank this week.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement that after evaluating the situation in the region, it decided to add extra soldiers to its Gaza division to "improve the IDF's readiness in the area."

The reinforcement includes artillery, infantry, armored and combat engineering units as well as special forces units, according to the IDF.

On Thursday morning, local authorities in Israel blocked roads and the Israeli army closed the Erez Crossing, the main passage between Israel and Gaza, for the third consecutive day.


The tensions were sparked by an Israeli raid in the flashpoint Palestinian city of Jenin in the northern West Bank overnight between Monday and Tuesday, during which a 17-year-old Palestinian boy was killed, and members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, including the group's senior figure Bassem al-Saadi, were arrested.

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

Post by blindpig » Tue Aug 09, 2022 2:15 pm

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Mourners attend the funeral of seven Palestinians, including Islamic Jihad senior commander Khaled Mansour, who were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Rafah in southern Gaza, on 7 August 2022. (Photo: Ashraf Amra APA images)

Children bear brunt of Israel’s savagery in Gaza
Originally published: The Electronic Intifada on August 7, 2022 by Tamara Nassar (more by The Electronic Intifada) | (Posted Aug 09, 2022)

A ceasefire between Israel and the Islamic Jihad resistance group took effect before midnight Sunday, ending a deadly Israeli assault on Gaza.

In the hours before the Egyptian-mediated truce took hold, Israel ramped up its killing and assassination spree for the third consecutive day.

By late evening on Sunday, the Gaza health ministry said 44 Palestinians had been killed in the territory, including 15 children, since Israel started the bloodshed by assassinating a senior leader of Islamic Jihad on Friday afternoon.

More than 300 Palestinians have been injured, almost a third of them children.

No one was killed in Israel and there were no reports of serious injuries.


Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization, said Sunday that Israel had “indiscriminately targeted civilians and non-military structures” and that the attack constituted “a grave breach of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

For six consecutive days, Israel closed Gaza’s only commercial crossing as well as the only crossing for people between Gaza and Israel.

Difficult negotiations

Sunday night’s ceasefire came after tense negotiations mediated by Cairo that appeared to stall on several occasions, fueling fears of an even more violent escalation.

The stumbling block, according to the network Al Jazeera, was Islamic Jihad’s demand that Israel release Bassam al-Saadi, one of its leaders in the occupied West Bank, and another member of the group, Khalil Awawdeh.

Awawdeh is seriously ill, having been on hunger strike since March to protest his detention by Israel without charge or trial.

Israel’s violent arrest of al-Saadi from his home in the West Bank city of Jenin last Monday marked the start of the current escalation.

Although Israel initially rejected Islamic Jihad’s demands, an agreement was finally reached after Tel Aviv conceded that it would “discuss” the two men’s release following a ceasefire.

Egypt committed itself to securing the men’s release as soon as possible. Ziyad al-Nakhala, the secretary general of Islamic Jihad, announced on Sunday evening that Awawdeh would be released to hospital on Monday and then allowed to go home.

Israel did not immediately confirm this.

U.S.-sourced warplane

While the ceasefire will come as a relief to Palestinians in Gaza who have been terrorized by repeated Israeli assaults, the latest attack by Tel Aviv has left a brutal toll, especially for children who make up half of Gaza’s 2.1 million population.


Without warning on Saturday evening, an Israeli warplane supplied by the United States targeted a three-story home in a densely populated neighborhood in Rafah, south of Gaza.

At least six missiles were fired by Israeli warplanes during the attack, killing seven people and destroying eight homes, according to Defense for Children International-Palestine, which conducts field investigations.

Around 35 people were injured, including 18 children.

The attack was apparently targeting senior Islamic Jihad leader Khalid Said Shehadeh Mansour, 46. Six others were killed in the assassination, including a child.

They were identified as Raafat Saleh Ibrahim Sheikh al-Eid, 41, Ziad Ahmad Khalil al-Mudallal, 35, Alaa Saleh Abdulhamid al-Malahi, 30, and Ismail Abdulhamid Muhammad Salameh, 30, and his mother Hana Ismail Ali Dweik, 50.

The attack also claimed the life of Muhammad Iyad Muhammad Hassoun, a 13-year-old boy. Muhammad “sustained severe lacerations all over his body, specifically the right side of his chest,” DCIP said.


The U.S., which consistently endorsed Israel’s killing campaign in Gaza over the past three days, provides Tel Aviv billions of dollars in weapons annually which are frequently used to attack Palestinian civilians.

“The United States supplies all the warplanes, bombs and weapons necessary for Israeli forces to continue systematically killing Palestinians,” Ayed Abu Eqtaish, DCIP’s accountability program director, said.

Jabaliya explosion

An explosion near a convenience store in the Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday evening killed seven Palestinians, including four children.

The attack also injured more than 40 others, including 26 children.

Al-Mezan, a human rights group based in Gaza, said the explosion was caused by a rocket-propelled grenade, but did not specify its source.

“At the time of the explosion, Israeli warplanes were visible in the sky and Palestinian armed groups were firing rockets,” DCIP said.

The group added that it was still investigating the source of the explosion, which occurred in an area where people were sitting outside due to the power outages in Gaza.

The Israeli army said the explosion was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short. But given the Israeli army’s record of lying and targeting civilians, its claims cannot be taken at face value.

Those killed include 9-year-old Hazim Muhammad Ali Salem, 16-year-old Ahmad Walid Ahmad al-Farram, and 11-year-old Ahmad Muhammad Ahmad al-Nairab and his brother 5-year-old Mumin Muhammad Ahmad al-Nairab, as confirmed by both human rights groups.



The explosion also killed 18-year-old Khalil Iyad Mustafa Abu Hamada, 19-year-old Muhammad Muhammad Ibrahim Zaqout and 50-year-old Nafid Muhammad Misbah Juma al-Khatib.

In northern Gaza on Saturday, Israeli warplanes struck a group of Palestinians, fatally injuring 18-year-old Nour al-Din Hussein Ali al-Zuwaidi.

An Israeli missile struck a group of Palestinians in Jabaliya on Saturday, injuring 22-year-old Abdulrahman Ali Hussein Ibrahim, who died of his injuries hours later.

A rocket-propelled grenade struck a home in the Jabaliya refugee camp on Sunday morning, killing Dia Zuheir Ahmad al-Buri, 32, and injuring others. Israel denied responsibility for the attack.

In a Sunday attack on al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, Yaser Nimr Mahmoud al-Nabahin, 49, a member of the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, was killed along with three of his children.

The end of Israel’s bombing of Gaza–for now–means that the plight of Palestinians will quickly fall out of the headlines. But they will not return to anything resembling a normal life.


Their situation remains dire and intolerable as a result of the ongoing Israeli siege, a form of silent violence that targets every man, woman and child in the territory 24 hours a day.

Israel is able to perpetrate this violence against them thanks to the international impunity and support it continues to enjoy, especially from the United States, Canada and the European Union–the same countries that never cease their lectures about “human rights” and “international law.”

https://mronline.org/2022/08/09/childre ... y-in-gaza/

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Ceasefire in Gaza after three days of Israeli bombings, 44 Palestinians killed

Israel’s latest aggression in the densely populated occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza constitutes ‘war crimes’ committed with the support of the US and other Western powers, assert Palestinians

August 08, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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Palestinans inspect the rubble of their homes destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the recent aggression on Gaza. Photo: Quds News Network

A ceasefire came into effect at around midnight on Sunday, August 8, ending the three-day-long Israeli bombing campaign inside the occupied Palestinian territory of Gaza. The latest round of Israeli aggression on the besieged territory, which began on Friday, killed at least 44 Palestinians and wounded more than 360 others.

Contrary to the Israeli claims that its airstrikes targeted leaders of Islamic Jihad, most of the Palestinians killed were civilians, including 15 children.

This was the second large-scale air raid carried out by the Israeli occupation in a little over a year inside the Gaza strip which has been placed under a comprehensive air, sea and land blockade since 2008. Similar raids were carried out in May last year, in which over 260 Palestinians were killed and over 2,000 injured. The raids also caused large-scale destruction of civilian infrastructure.

As per the terms of the truce, Islamic Jihad will seize its rocket attacks inside Israel in return of Israel stopping its air strikes inside Gaza. Al-Jazeera reported that Islamic Jihad leader Ziad al-Nakhala said that the truce was agreed to on the condition that Israel will take steps to end its blockade of Gaza and release two Islamic Jihad leaders currently held in Israeli jails.

Though the ceasefire has been effective so far, Israeli raids inside Gaza continued until the last moment before the truce came into force, targeting different locations inside one of the world’s most densely populated regions.

Israeli bombardment inside the Gaza strip began on Friday. Occupation authorities claimed that the strikes were “preemptive” in nature in order to prevent Islamic Jihad from carrying out its attacks. Israel called its operation “breaking dawn”.

Last week, Israeli forces arrested Sheikh Basan al-Shadi, a senior leader of the Islamic Jihad, from Jenin in the occupied West Bank. During the midnight raid, they also killed a Palestinian teenager Dirar al-Kafrayni and wounded Shadi’s wife. Since the Jenin raid on Monday, Israeli forces had been preparing for a “response” and took aggressive preemptive action such as reinforcing their blockade of the Gaza borders by closing all crossings into the territory.

Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq wrote in a statement on August 7 that “Israel’s aggressive assault and bombardment of the civilian population and infrastructure in the occupied Gaza Strip is being conducted disproportionally and excessively, relative to Israel’s anticipated military advantage, constituting a grave breach of international humanitarian law and may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Palestinians’ right to self defense

The latest round of Israeli aggression inside Gaza led to a fresh debate over the Israeli claims of “self defense” and the Palestinian right to resistance. Israel’s justification for initiating the bombing campaign was also widely criticized.

Husam Zomlot, Palestinian ambassador to the UK, condemned statements issued by the US and the UK wherein they declare that they stand by Israel’s right to self defense and Israel’s classification of Palestinian resistance movements as “terrorist”.

In an interview to BBC, Zomlot said, “under international law, the only people who have rights here are the occupied people. Therefore, this whole talk of Israel’s right to self defense-to defend itself as per the US statements, the UK statements, some western countries’ statement-is simply giving Israel–a green light to continue its murderous policies, to continue its war crimes.”

Ali Abuminah, editor of Electronic Intifada, called for a global debate on the Palestinians’ right to resistance in light of the international community’s failure to prevent the repeated crimes of occupation and attempts to justify Israeli aggression on the basis of rockets fired into Israel.

Most of the rockets fired by Islamic Jihad were intercepted by the Israeli missile defense system without causing any significant damage.

Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, asserted that there is no justification for Israeli aggression inside occupied Palestinian territories as “international law only permits the use of force in self defense.” She termed the Israeli aggression “illegal, immoral and irresponsible.”

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/08/08/ ... ns-killed/
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