Palestine

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 16, 2022 3:18 pm

Israeli Apartheid on full display amid Ukraine refugee crisis
Reem Zubaidi March 16, 2022 8 4 minutes read
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Washington, DC, protester holds sign with quote from the first Israeli Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion. Liberation photo: Joyce Chediac

Israel reinstated a ban on Palestinian family unification March 11 in an explicit attempt to ensure a Jewish demographic majority. The ban means that Palestinian citizens of Israel cannot pass on citizenship or even residency to spouses or family from the West Bank or Gaza.

Also to ensure a Jewish majority, Israel is making a concerted effort to relocate Ukrainian Jewish refugees to Israel where they would have full Israeli citizenship. Funds from the government and partner organizations have been used to set up six stations along the Ukrainian border to process immigration applications for Jewish refugees only in a program called “Operation Israeli Guarantees.” The motivation for this is not to assist the victims of war, it is to transform them into settlers and colonizers and weaponize them against the Palestinian people.

Racist law applies only to Palestinians

The law renewed on March 11 prohibiting Palestinian family immigration has been reenacted 21 times since its introduction in 2003. This year, a restriction was added on citizenship or residency for those from “hostile countries or from the region.” This specifically targets unification between residents or citizens and spouses from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran.

This law denying citizenship applies only to Palestinians. Under Israel’s 1950 Law of Return, all non-Israeli Jews and Gentile converts to Judaism are entitled to settle in Israel and receive full Israeli citizenship.

Showcasing apartheid

Israeli officials have been very transparent with the reasons behind the ban. Israel’s Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked said that the legislation is intended to prevent Palestinians from gradually returning to their homeland.

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, is plans to challenge the racist and discriminatory law in Israel’s Supreme Court. The law has been criticized by several UN human rights bodies that have urged Israel to allow for family unification for all citizens and permanent residents. They point out that the ban violates international law as it is a clear feature of the apartheid regime.

Human Rights Watch’s recent report on Israeli Apartheid and Persecution includes a section critical of the law featuring this 2005 quote by then-Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: “Instead of making it easier for Palestinians who want to get citizenship, we should make the process much more difficult, in order to guarantee Israel’s security and a Jewish majority in Israel.”

Democrats stress ‘ironclad’ support for Israel

Despite the glaring human rights abuses of the apartheid state, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and seven other Democrats, recently wrapped up totally uncritical visit to that state. Pelosi addressed the Israeli Parliament on Feb. 16, calling the creation of Israel the “greatest political achievement of the 20th century” and stressing the “ironclad” nature of Washington’s support of the racist regime.

Ukraine conflict exposes hypocrisy

More recently, U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have showcased their bi-partisan hypocrisy through their selective outrage at attacks on civilians in the Ukraine. While Washington cannot bring itself to condemn Israeli apartheid, nor its violent eviction of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah and murder of innocent children, it is quick to highlight the plight of Ukraine civilians under Russian bombardment and to place sanctions on Russia. Pelosi, for example, was quick to call out Russian President Vadimir Putin’s “attack on democracy” and “violation of international law, global peace and security” all while whitewashing Israeli genocide.

The mainstream narrative around Ukraine is full of virulent racism and xenophobia in the way that refugees from European countries are perceived and treated in comparison to those coming from the global south. News anchors, politicians and others support the refugees because Ukrainians are “civilized,” or “blonde haired and blue eyed” or “Christian,” or because “they seem so like us. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts.” Notably, people in Ukraine who don’t fit this narrative and are attempting to flee the country are getting stuck at the border while white citizens of Ukraine receive passage.

Resistance is also applauded as brave and heroic in Ukraine, and civilians preparing Molotov cocktails have been glorified in the establishment media. Meanwhile, Palestinian resistance, results in jail time or death, is villified or ignored. Ironically, several of the images supposedly coming out of Ukraine are actually from Palestine, including a well-known video of Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi confronting an Israeli soldier. It was recently circulated on Twitter with the false description: “brave little girl confronts Putin’s Army.” Tamimi spent eight months in Israeli prison for her resistance.

‘Operation Israel Guarantees‘

In a move of demographic engineering, Israel is offering to resettle Jewish refugees from Ukraine as part of a strategic policy to ensure Jewish demographic superiority over Palestinians. “This is not a humanitarian act that Israel is carrying out. Israel is a settler-colonial state. It is a state that is obsessed with demography and ensuring demographic superiority by Jewish people over Palestinians,” said Lana Tatour, professor of settler-colonialism and human rights at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, in an interview with Aljazeera.

Certainly Ukrainians fleeing bombing need support and services, but not at the expense of others. Extending Ukrainian Jews an invitation to Israel under its Law of Return is meant to be at the expense of Palestinian people. Palestinian citizens of Israel are being separated from their families and denied their human rights through discriminatory laws. Ukrainian Jews are being used cynically by the apartheid regime as settlers on stolen Palestinian land.

https://www.liberationnews.org/israeli- ... rationnews
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 30, 2022 1:46 pm

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A PALESTINIAN BOY RIDES A HORSE NEAR THE SEPARATION WALL DURING AN EQUESTRIAN TRAINING AT THE PALESTINIAN EQUESTRIAN CLUB, IN RAFAT NEAR JERUSALEM ON FEBRUARY 3, 2019. (PHOTO: SHADI JARAR’AH/APA IMAGES)

UN Special Rapporteur says Israel is committing ‘pitiless’ apartheid in new report
Originally published: Mondoweiss by Yumna Patel (March 24, 2022 ) | - Posted Mar 26, 2022

UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories Michael Lynk is the latest human rights expert to declare Israel an Apartheid state.

In a 19-page report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Tuesday, Lynk said that the situation in the occupied Palestinian Territory (oPt) has moved beyond occupation and annexation, and now amounts to the crime of apartheid.

“The political system of entrenched rule in the occupied Palestinian territory which endows one racial-national-ethnic group with substantial rights, benefits and privileges while intentionally subjecting another group to live behind walls, checkpoints and under a permanent military rule….. satisfies the prevailing evidentiary standard for the existence of apartheid,” the report said.

In his report, Lynk details how the situation in the oPt amounts to the crime of apartheid under international law, which by definition, must meet three major criteria:

1.Institutionalized regime of systematic racial oppression

*(i.e. Israeli Jews and Palestinians living in the oPt live under one single regime (Israel), but face a very different distribution of rights and benefits on the basis of national and ethnic identity “which ensures the supremacy of one group over, and to the detriment of, the other.”)

2.The intent to maintain the domination of one racial-national-ethnic group over another

*(i.e. The freedoms and privileges of Jewish Israelis is tied to the oppression of Palestinians, for example, through Jewish settlement expansion which requires the expropriation of Palestinian land and resources.)

3.The regular practice of inhuman(e) acts

*(i.e. “Arbitrary and extra-judicial killings. Torture. The violent deaths of children. The denial of fundamental human rights. A fundamentally flawed military court system and the lack of criminal due process. Arbitrary detention. Collective punishment”, which Lynk says are not random isolated acts, but rather “integral to Israel’s system of rule.”)

While Israeli apartheid differs from South African Apartheid, Lynk firmly stated that “This is apartheid.”

“There are pitiless features of Israel’s ‘apartness’ rule in the occupied Palestinian territory that were not practiced in southern Africa, such as segregated highways, high walls and extensive checkpoints, a barricaded population, missile strikes and tank shelling of a civilian population, and the abandonment of the Palestinians’ social welfare to the international community,” the report said.

With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world.

Lynk’s report is the latest in a series of reports by international and Israeli human rights groups accusing Israel of the crime of apartheid—something Palestinian experts and human rights groups have been doing for decades.

Notably, unlike the latest reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and B’Tselem, Lynk’s report pays particular attention to the role that fragmentation has played in establishing and maintaining Israel’s apartheid regime, and acknowledges the settler-colonial nature of Israel’s regime.

In his report, Lynk recommended that Israel “completely and unconditionally” ends the occupation, “all discriminatory and apartheid laws, practices and policies which privilege Jewish Israelis,” and “fully respect the national rights and human rights of the Palestinians.”

Israel “must enable them [Palestinians] to exercise their freedom of movement, assembly, expression and association, and it must remove all arbitrary and inequitable restrictions on family life, property, employment, access and enjoyment of resources, education and daily life,” Lynk said.

He also called on the international community to enforce accountability measures to “bring the Israeli occupation and its practice of apartheid in the Palestinian territory to a complete end.”

https://mronline.org/2022/03/26/un-spec ... ew-report/

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Amidst widespread condemnation, first ever Arab-Israel summit concludes in Negev
In an apparent attempt to strategize against Iran, foreign ministers from Egypt, UAE, Bahrain and Morocco met with Israel and the US

March 29, 2022 by Abdul Rahman

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A Kedma Isrotel hotel worker carries flags out of the Negev Summit after its conclusion, March 28, 2022. (Photo via Lazar Berman/Times of Israel)

Israel has taken hurried steps to devise a common regional strategy against Iran as the possibility of the revival of the Iran nuclear deal increases. Israel hosted foreign ministers from four Arab countries and notably, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Naqab (Negev desert) region for the first ever Arab-Israel summit meeting on March 27 and 28.

Participants included foreign ministers from Egypt, the first Arab country to sign a normalization deal with Israel in 1979, and Bahrain, UAE, and Morocco who had signed various versions of the Abraham Accords in 2020 and 2021.

Attempts to create a common strategy against Iran

Though the stated objective of the meeting was to discuss the situation created by the war in Ukraine and cooperation between Israel and the Arab countries, Israel reportedly pushed for the meeting to discuss Iran and to craft a common strategy to confront it.

Iran is soon expected to finalize the Iran nuclear deal with the Biden administration after over a year of talks in Vienna. The deal will eventually lift the US sanctions imposed during the Trump presidency when the US unilaterally withdrew from the deal also called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

The Negev summit was held immediately after a trilateral meeting held between Egypt, UAE and Israel in Sharm el-Sheikh last week, with a similar agenda.

Former Indian diplomat M K Bhadrakumar argued that apart from building pressure on Ukraine, US official Blinken was present in the meeting in order to “get the regional allies accustomed to the imminent conclusion of the negotiations at Vienna leading to the removal of US sanctions against Iran.” Israel, however, believes that lifting sanctions imposed by the US will strengthen Iran’s presence across the region and as such has tried to exploit the similar apprehensions of the Gulf countries.

Both Bahrain and UAE are part of a Saudi Arabia-led coalition waging a war in Yemen against the Houthi-led government, where these countries have accused Iran of supporting the Houthi movement. Additionally, Bahrain has accused Iran of supporting anti-monarchy elements within the country.

“This new architecture, the shared capabilities we are building, intimidates and deters our common enemies, first and foremost Iran and its proxies,” Yair Lapid said at the end of the summit on Monday, confirming the Israeli objective.

However, as per reports in local media, Israel’s anti-Iran objective was not explicitly shared by other participants of the summit. A UAE official told Times of Israel, “for us, it’s about regional integration and better economic, security and energy cooperation,” in other words, not only about Iran.

Betrayal of the Palestinian cause
Palestinians have denounced the countries who have signed normalization deals with Israel, accusing them of betrayal of the Palestinian cause and the pledges taken under the Arab Peace Initiative of greater unity against Israel. Palestinian organizations such as Hamas, which controls the besieged Gaza, issued a statement on Sunday March 27 absolutely rejecting “all forms of normalization with the occupying regime.” According to Hamas, meetings such as the Negev summit “only serve the enemy in perpetuating aggression against our land, our people and our holy sites.”

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said on Monday that “Arab normalization meetings without ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine are just an illusion, a mirage, and a free reward for Israel.”

Though Israel did not invite Palestinians to the summit, it did extend the invitation to Jordan’s King Abdullah through US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. King Abdullah refused the invitation, instead visiting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to express his solidarity.

Nevertheless, some participants in the summit, such as Antony Blinken and Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, emphasized the need for a two-state solution. Blinken even claimed that “regional peace agreements are not a substitute for progress between Palestinians and Israelis.”

These reiterations of commitment to a two state solution by the US and other Arab countries make little sense given the fact that Prime Minister Naftali Bennet and most of his colleagues in his coalition government have repeatedly denied any possibility of an independent Palestinian state.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/03/29/ ... -in-negev/

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The US Should Remember that Israel’s Squatter-Settlements in Palestine are War Crimes
RAMONA WADI
03/28/2022

( Middle East Monitor ) – US Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, engaged in further diplomatic contradictions, as he fluctuated between asserting the Biden administration’s stance purportedly against Israeli settlement expansion, yet making concessions for earlier encroachment upon Palestinian land.

“We can’t do stupid things that impede us from a two-state solution,” Nides reportedly told Americans for Peace, referencing the E1 project in Ma’aleh Adumim, which has been targeted for settlement expansion by Israel and which would cut off Palestinian access to Jerusalem.

However, Nides maintained the Trump administration’s stance over Jerusalem, effectively exposing how little has changed since Joe Biden became US President. “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,” Nides added, while reminding that the status of Jerusalem would be finalised in negotiations. Hypothetical negotiations, Nides might have added, because the issue of final status agreements puts Palestinians in a position where negotiations are unattainable, given that only Israel stands to benefit from the two-state compromise.

Calling Israel’s settlement expansion “stupid things” downplays the importance of settlements in terms of settler-colonialism and its ramifications for the Palestinian people. Israel has a strategy in which the international community is complicit – to speak out against settlement expansion using Nides’s vocabulary only makes the case to argue that Biden’s alleged anti-settlement stance is nothing but hype. In the same way, the UN’s non-binding resolutions against settlement expansion hold no weight when juxtaposed against Israel’s land grab. In particular, UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (2016), which was hailed as a breakthrough on account of the US veto and which the international community ignored, as it did all previous resolutions.



Earlier this month, the Palestinian Authority’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Riyad Al-Maliki, stated that the PA was discussing Israel’s settlement expansion with the Biden administration and other world leaders, while reminding the international community of non-binding UNSC Resolution 2334. But the international community is not concerned with Israel’s illegal colonial expansion, in the same way it was never concerned with how Israel was established in the first place, upon the ethnically cleansed Palestinian towns and villages.

Nides is simply unconvincing in his rhetoric. Israel will not be swayed by an administration that is still taking its cues from the Trump era. Even if Biden were to take a staunch political anti-settlement stance, the most Israel would do is to slow down the colonisation process. There is no hurry, after all, not when the international community can be depended upon to fail Palestinians continuously.

Settlements are a war crime. That is what Nides should have unequivocally asserted, instead of attempting to trivialise the theft of Palestinian land. Calling settlements “stupid things” only illustrates US contempt for the Palestinian people’s ongoing Nakba experience, while politically undermining the limited avenues available for Palestinians to seek recourse, considering that the UN has given ample evidence of having failed Palestinians. Furthermore, the Biden administration’s two-state adherence should also be brought into question – not only on account of the paradigm itself being a pathway to complete colonisation by Israel, but also due to Trump’s policies still holding sway over the current presidency.

https://www.juancole.com/2022/03/rememb ... stine.html
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 02, 2022 3:11 pm

Zelensky: Don't forget Ukrainian Jewish role in the dispossession of Palestine
Joseph Massad
25 March 2022 15:32 UTC | Last update: 1 week 22 hours ago

The Ukrainian president should be reminded that the Palestinians are the people Ukrainian Jewish colonists displaced and whose land they stole

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A televised video address by Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky in Tel Aviv on 20 March, 2022 (AFP)

A few days ago, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Knesset asking that Israel stand with Ukraine against the Russian invasion of his country.

He cited the Ukrainian Jewish colonist Golda Mabovitch (later Golda Meir), Israel’s former prime minister, who denied that the Palestinian people ever existed. Zelensky spoke of how Ukraine finds itself today in the same situation as Israel, namely that both countries seem to have horrible neighbours who "want to see us dead".


Indeed, Israel has been most concerned about Ukrainian Jews, even before the Russian intervention began.

As early as January 2022, Israel began planning to transfer Ukrainian Jews to become colonists in the land of the Palestinians. Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption proclaimed: "We call on the Jews of Ukraine to immigrate to Israel - your home."

The refugees/colonists began to arrive in early March, receiving preferential treatment, while Ukrainians who could not prove their Jewishness according to Israel’s racist criteria for refugees face myriad difficulties.

Meanwhile, the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division has begun preparing 1000 housing units for Ukrainian Jews on stolen and occupied Palestinian and Syrian land in the occupied West Bank and the occupied Golan Heights.

These Ukrainian refugees/colonists, however, are not the first Ukrainian Jews to colonise Palestine. Ukrainian Jews have played a pioneering role in the colonisation of Palestine since 1882.

A pioneering role

The story of southern Ukraine and of Ukrainian Jews is a principal part of the history of the colonisation of Palestine. It begins in the late 18th century when Catherine the Great (a German Lutheran who converted to Orthodoxy to become Tsarina) defeated the Ottomans in the Russo-Ottoman war of 1768-1774.

This led to the signing of the Kuchuk Kainarji peace treaty, and lost the Ottomans sovereignty over the northern Caucasus, including the Crimea and Kuban regions, saddling Istanbul with thousands of Tatar refugees. Catherine immediately embarked on the settler-colonisation of these areas.

The first wave of Russian settlers arrived in 1778 and elicited an immediate revolt by the Crimean Tatars, which Catherine put down before she formally annexed the Crimea in 1783.

The Russian-Ottoman war of 1787-1792 led to another Ottoman defeat and loss of territory, including the Sanjak of Ozi on the northern parts of the Black Sea, adjacent to Crimea. Russification of what was now called "New Russia" ensued.

The Black Sea Ottoman town of Hacibey was expanded into a new settler-colony established by the Russians and named "Odessa" in 1794, on the mistaken presumption that the ancient Greek colony of Odessos had existed there, which ironically it did not.

Catherine’s philhellenist christening of Hacibey with a Greek name was intended to "dazzle everyone with the brilliant achievements of the Great Catherine... [and] the first step toward ridding Europe of the Mohammedans and conquering Istanbul.”


On the Crimean Peninsula, Catherine established the city of Sebastopol in 1783 (also christening it with a Greek name) on the site of the Tatar town of Akhtiar and renamed the Tatar town of Aqmescit (meaning White or Western Mosque) Simferopol in 1784.

Crimea itself was renamed the "Tauride Governorate" in honour of the ancient Greek Tauris. Other Greek-named colonies included Olviopol, Tiraspol, Melitopol, Nikopol, Grigoriopol, Aleksopol, and Mariupol.

Between Odessa and Palestine

In 1804, the Russian government’s "Regulation on the Jews" promised 10 years of subsidies and tax exemptions to former-Polish-turned-Russian Jews willing to undertake settler-colonisation in the occupied Ottoman regions.

By 1810, 10,000 landless Jews from Russia’s Belorussia and Lithuania regions were dispatched to the Kherson Province on the Black Sea, named by Catherine after the ancient Greek colony of Chersonesus after its conquest from the Ottomans.

Following the anti-Jewish pogroms of the early 1880s, calls on Russia’s Jews to leave to Palestine multiplied

By the 1820s a fresh wave of Jewish colonists settled in Kherson and the neighbouring Ekaterinoslav Province (named in honour of Catherine after its conquest from the Ottomans), and more arrived in the late 1830s and 1840s, officially designated as "Jewish-agriculturalists". By 1859, the ministerial plan of turning Jews into farmers seemed not to have succeeded, and as a result new Jewish colonial settlement in New Russia was officially halted in 1866, while preserving the existing Jewish colonies.

In the meantime, Odessa had grown to encompass the largest urban Jewish population in imperial Russia alongside Warsaw. It was in fact in Odessa where the Jewish Haskalah Hebrew press began to encourage Jewish intellectuals to embark on the settler-colonisation of Palestine.

Odessa’s origins as a colonial settlement, it would seem, had much influence on the intellectual classes raised in the city.

The Greek intellectuals who started the movement for Greek independence and formed the nationalist organisation "Philiki Etairia" (Friendly Society) in the early 19th century also hailed from the settler-colonial Greek community of Odessa.

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Residents cross an empty street next to anti-tank obstacles in Odessa on 13 March 2022 (AFP)

By the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, Odessa - a third of whose population was by then Russian, West Ukrainian and Polish-Jewish colonial settlers and their descendants - became a major centre of Zionist activity.

Following the anti-Jewish pogroms of the early 1880s, calls on Russia’s Jews to leave to Palestine multiplied. While two million would go to the Americas and Western Europe in the next two decades, a trickle of a few thousand would go to colonise Palestine.

Moses L Lilienblum (1843-1910), who was born in Lithuania and arrived as a settler in Odessa in 1869, became in 1884 the leader of the first proto-Zionist settler-colonial movement, namely "Hovevei Tsiyon" or Lovers of Zion, founded in Odessa in 1882. Lilienblum believed that Jews were "a distinct racial and national entity” and that all Russian Jews should be transferred to Palestine to establish agricultural colonies there.

Zionism's birthplace

Odessa was also the birthplace of top Zionist leaders, including most prominently Vladimir Yevgenyevich Zhabotinsky (later renamed “Ze’ev” Jabotinsky), founder of Revisionist Zionism, and himself a direct descendant of Ukrainian Jewish settlers in Odessa. His father Yevgeni "Yona" Grigorievitch was from the Ukrainian town of Nikopol and his mother Eva Zak from the Ukrainian shtetl of Berdychiv.

The French-German Jewish banker and philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild financed the Hovevei Tsiyon movement’s colonies in Palestine, including its first colony in "Rishon le Zion" (meaning First to Zion) in 1882.

In 1890, the movement registered in Russia as a charitable organisation, based in Odessa, under the name "The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine".

It was headed by the Russian Jewish doctor and activist Leo Pinsker, author of the 1882 book Autoemancipation that supported the transformation of Russia’s Jews into colonists.

Hovevei Tsiyon would help establish two more settler-colonies in the 1890s in Palestine, including Rehovot and Hadera (in the latter, they imported hundreds of Egyptian and Sudanese labourers to dry the marshes for them, scores of whom died from malaria). It counted 4000 Jews, most of whom later joined the Zionist Organization (ZO) which Theodor Herzl founded in 1897.

As early as 1884, Palestinian peasants revolted against the theft of their lands and their displacement, and attacked several Ukrainian Jewish colonies, including Hadera and Rehovot. Hovevei Tsiyon colonists continued their activities until the organisation was closed down in 1913 as the colonies became part of the ZO colonial project.

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Ukrainian Jewish refugees wait at the Israeli consulate in the Moldovan capital Chisinau (Kishinev), to register to leave to Israel, on 16 March 2022 (AFP)

Jewish colonies were also established in the Crimea by the Tsars. In the wake of the Russian revolution, Jews were targeted with horrific pogroms which devastated the Pale of Settlement territories where they lived and destroyed their local economy. The Soviets, in partnership with American Jewish bankers-philanthropists who set up "The American Joint Agricultural Corporation", would continue to fund and expand Jewish colonies in the Crimea in the 1920s and 1930s despite vehement local Tatar opposition.

When the Nazis invaded, the Soviet government evacuated as many Jews as it could, including from southern Ukraine and the Crimea behind Red Army lines to protect them. Those who remained were killed by the Nazis and their Ukrainian nationalist collaborators.

When Western Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldavia were re-annexed by Stalin after 1940, the Jews of these regions remained more open to Zionist influence as a result of a wave of antisemitism that dominated these countries after the first World War.

Israel's neighbours

Israel and the US pressured the Soviets in the late 1960s and 1970s about alleged Soviet antisemitism (which is how they described the Soviet crackdown on Zionist activities at the time) for not allowing Soviet Jews to emigrate, when in fact Soviet limits on emigration applied to all Soviet citizens.

The Soviets relented in the 1970s and allowed those Soviet Jews who wanted to emigrate to do so. Most hailed from Western Ukraine, Latvia, Moldavia and Lithuania, and the majority wanted to go to the United States, which led Israel to limit their options and force them to go to Israel as the only possible destination. However more than half of the emigrants settled in the US despite Israeli obstruction.

All of this preceded the arrival of one million Russian and Ukrainian Jews in the 1990s to Israel, many of whom turned out not to be "Jewish" according to Israeli law, not to mention Jewish religious law, where they proceeded to colonise the land of the Palestinians.

When President Zelensky complained about Israel’s neighbours, he should have been reminded that the Palestinians are not the accidental neighbours of Ukrainian Jewish colonists, but the people Ukrainian Jewish colonists displaced and whose land they stole.

Yet, it was the very same Zelensky who withdrew Ukraine's membership from the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People in 2020. As Israel was killing and bombing Palestinians in May 2021, Zelensky depicted it as the victim of the Palestinians and not as a predatory settler-colonial state which Ukrainian Jews helped establish.

Ironically, that Zelensky thinks Israel’s neighbours "want to see us dead" may be no more than a psychological projection of what he and the Israelis want to see happen to Palestinians, not the other way around.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/i ... possession
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 06, 2022 1:19 pm

Palestine Action: Resisting imperialism from within
4 Apr
By Ethan Murphy

‘Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that Fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.’
George Jackson, Blood in my Eye


In January 2022, it was announced that Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems would be permanently closing one of its British sites, a factory in Oldham. The firm is a lynchpin in the occupation of Palestine, Elbit being the largest supplier of arms to the Zionist project; and more broadly an instrument of imperialism, boasting a large clientele of Western-aligned states. This victory for the Palestinian struggle didn’t come out of nowhere – it followed an 18-month campaign of community organising and sustained direct action at the hands of Palestine Action, for whom militancy is key.

In almost two years of operation, the group has shone light on what successful resistance to imperialism can look like in countries such as Britain, and exposed the need for urgent and militant opposition to imperialism. A quick search will show the group’s numerous successful occupations, blockades, and attacks carried out on Elbit infrastructure. In its first year of operation, Palestine Action caused over £15 million in losses to Elbit sites alone, and shut down site operation for 105 days, preventing the manufacture of arms at the base of production.

The campaign to #ShutElbitDown has acted as a stimulus for community organisation and consciousness-raising, drawing attention to the criminal activities of the arms industry, and exposing the British state’s willingness to defend it. Every factory shut down is a call to action, and a demonstration that anti-imperialist struggle is an active duty for people residing in Britain. Palestine Action are taking action here and now, working through cracks in the existing social order – exacerbating them and lending concrete support to a people who are at the forefront of resisting violent imperialism.

It’s not hard to see why Elbit has been the campaign’s principal target. The company is most notorious for its production of the Hermes 450 and 900 series of drones, the same kind used last May when Gaza was being levelled to the ground. They also produce the highly incendiary white phosphorus, used routinely on Palestinian men, women, and children; and the Skylark drone, used for surveillance and policing of Palestinians, among other military goods. Elbit supply the occupation’s military with approximately 85% of its drones, which they boast to be the backbone of the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Surprisingly though, 80% of the company’s market is outside of the settler-colonial state. Anyone familiar with the campaign to shut Elbit down will likely know of how the company markets their weapons as ‘battle tested’ – made in Britain, tested on Palestine, exported elsewhere. Among its customers are the governments of Colombia, a US stronghold in Latin America; India, where Elbit weaponry enforces the Kashmiri occupation; and the Philippines, where resistance to US neo-colonialism is rife and met with state-sanctioned aerial bombings.

If we look to the US, EU, and Britain, we also see Elbit’s role in maintaining their borders. The company won a $145 million contract to aid in surveillance of the US-Mexico border, and its drones are used for the monitoring of British and Mediterranean waters. Elbit subsidiary Cyberbit develops surveillance software that has been used extensively around the world. When Palestine Action target Elbit, it’s not just about one company but a network of occupation, looting, and borders marked by immense human cost.

You need only look to the invasion of Iraq, 19 years on, to see the failures of the British anti-war movement in opposing warfare and imperialism. Despite a march of one million plus and mass public opposition, efforts to stop the war failed. This should not surprise us – the movement favoured passivity, formal protest, and appeals to the British state. Britain has a century long history of nurturing and enabling the Zionist project. It was Britain that issued the Balfour Declaration, that trained and funded Zionist militias, and that (under a Labour government) supplied the occupation with tanks used in the Six Day War.

So-called ‘progressive’ sects in the West will regard these deeply violent acts to be aberrations; regrettable, yes, but not to be seen as the norm. In truth, any basic study of how Britain has operated internationally (and domestically) will tell us this violence is inextricable from the workings of the British state. Support for Palestine holds no substance when channelled through the institutions and mechanisms of an imperialist state, nor when aimed at appealing to that state. Our support is concrete and uncompromising or it is non-existent; our solidarity should be practiced with the intention of forcing imperialism’s hand, rather than appealing to its absent conscience.

We provide no legitimacy to actors in the imperialist system – just as support for the Palestinian struggle ought not to be fought on the terrain of the occupation’s own depraved and colonial morality, we should apply the same principles when resisting within Britain. Those who would consider themselves anti-imperialist should act in constant opposition to, and in a high degree of removal from a social system that has conquest and warfare embedded deep within it. Palestine Action are firm in our commitment to derailing Britain’s wing of the global military industrial complex. We do not appeal to the powers that be. We have an enemy that is operating under our feet, and we have the means to take that enemy head on.

Situated in the imperial core, we hold a privilege and a duty. The social conditions we find ourselves in (though concessionary and often limited) allow us to successfully combat imperialism through direct action as practiced by Palestine Action. What’s more, it can be done at what is relatively little cost to ourselves – the frequency with which cases are dropped, and the consistent failure of the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute members, proves this; and the sacrifice of certain liberties, although impactful, pale when the human cost of Elbit’s business is considered.

It is worth reminding ourselves that if those in occupied Palestine could take down the supply chain that digs their graves en masse, it would no longer exist. These factories exist on our doorsteps, and it is well within the capability of many of us to take action and shut them down. After the Oldham factory’s closure, 9 Elbit sites remain in Britain, and this year Palestine Action are set to heighten the campaign against Elbit. In the US, newcomer group RAM INC have drawn inspiration from Palestine Action, commencing struggle against weapons giant Raytheon through the occupation of one of its facilities in Massachusetts. This February, Berlin-based activists joined forces with Palestine Action to target DIEHL BGT Defense, a German arms manufacturer working with Elbit. Also recently launched is Block Lockheed, targeting Lockheed Martin’s British operations. These groups and activists are leading the way and working to dismantle the military industrial complex and strike back at imperialism wherever it has laid its deadly roots.

It is our absolute and immediate duty to target the arms trade. Simply put, we don’t have the time for anything but militancy. For Palestinians living under the occupation, there is no tomorrow. Colonial violence dominates daily life. Liberation is the question. Inertia and reformist strategies are not the answer. To aid in the dismantling of the settler-colonial project, Palestine Action are picking up the hammer to smash our enemies – out of love for our siblings in Palestine and across the world.

Join Palestine Action today. https://www.palestineaction.org/join-the-resistance/

https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/pal ... rom-within

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Israeli forces attack Palestinians observing Ramadan in occupied East Jerusalem
Israeli forces have increased violence against Palestinians in the occupied territories and killed at least 31 Palestinians since the beginning of 2022. Most of those killed were resisting raids of their homes by Israeli forces

April 05, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: Wafa Images)

With the start of the holy month of Ramadan, Israel has increased attacks on Palestinians celebrating near the Damascus gate in occupied East Jerusalem. Following a visit by Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid near the Damascus gate on Sunday, hundreds of Palestinians gathered at the site in the evening. Israeli forces attacked the crowd with tear gas, rubber coated bullets and stun grenades and arrested at least 14 Palestinians. At least 19 Palestinians were injured, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent. On Monday, April 4, Israeli forces arrested a 21-year-old Palestinian for sharing videos of violence committed by them at the Damascus gate on Sunday.


The Palestinian Authority as well as Hamas, in separate statements, condemned Lapid’s visit to the Damascus gate on Sunday, calling it a “provocative incursion”.

Lapid’s visit followed the arrest of at least four Palestinians from the area by the Israeli forces after they objected and retaliated to their forceful eviction.

A large number of Palestinians gather near the Damascus gate every evening during the month of Ramadan after prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque and to end the day of fasting.

The occupation forces have a policy of not allowing such gatherings near the Damascus gate. They heavily barricade the area and often use brutal force to disperse the crowds which invites retaliation from the people.


Last year, following weeks-long protests, Israeli forces were forced to remove the barriers near the area. The protests took place in the context of evictions from the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and attacks by ultra-Zionist right-wing sections on the al-Aqsa mosque. The protests continued for almost a month and spread throughout the occupied territories.

Increased oppression
There has been a rise in Israeli violence against Palestinians recently despite increasing recognition that the state of Israel is an apartheid state and supposedly heightened international pressure.

According to Quds News Network, at least 31 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli forces since the beginning of 2022. 17 Palestinians were killed in March alone.

Following last week’s attack on its security forces in which five people died, Israeli forces killed three Palestinians in Nablus in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, claiming that they were members of Islamic Jihad.

The number of arrests (mostly illegal detentions) and injuries among Palestinians has also gone up in comparison to last year.

In a news report on Monday, the Palestinian Ministry of Health claimed that Israel killed a total of 355 Palestinians and injured at least 16,500 in 2021. According to the ministry, out of the total Palestinians killed, at least 87 were children and 60 women.

As per data released by the Palestinian Prisoners Society on the eve of Palestinian Child’s Day, at least 160 Palestinian minors are currently languishing in Israeli jails. The group estimates that Israel has detained at least 19,000 Palestinian children since 2000.


The majority of the Palestinians killed were from Gaza, which faced an 11-day bombing campaign by Israel last May. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, a total of 265 Palestinians were killed in those attacks and more than 2,000 were injured.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/04/05/ ... jerusalem/

Screen shots at link.

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he Billion Dollar Deal that Made Google and Amazon Partners in the Israeli Occupation of Palestine
April 5, 2022
By Ramzy Baroud – Mar 23, 2022

“We are anonymous because we fear retaliation.” This text was part of a letter signed by 500 Google employees last October, in which they decried their company’s direct support for the Israeli government and military.

In their letter, the signatories protested a $1.2 billion contract between Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and the Israeli government which provides cloud services for the Israeli military and government that “allows for further surveillance of and unlawful data collection on Palestinians, and facilitates expansion of Israel’s illegal settlements on Palestinian land”.

This is called Project Nimbus. The project was announced in 2018 and went into effect in May 2021, in the first week of the Israeli war on besieged Gaza, which killed over 250 Palestinians and wounded many more.

The Google employees were not only disturbed by the fact that, by entering into this agreement with Israel, their company became directly involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but were equally outraged by the “disturbing pattern of militarization” that saw similar contracts between Google – Amazon, Microsoft and other tech giants – with the US military, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other policing agencies.

In an article published in the Nation newspaper in June, three respected US academics have revealed the financial component of Amazon’s decision to get involved in such an immoral business, arguing that such military-linked contracts have “become a major source of profit for Amazon.” It is estimated, according to the article, that AWS alone was responsible for 63 percent of Amazon’s profits in 2020.

The maxim ‘people before profit’ cannot be any more appropriate than in the Palestinian context, and neither Google nor Amazon can claim ignorance. The Israeli occupation of Palestine has been in place for decades, and numerous United Nations resolutions have condemned Israel for its occupation, colonial expansion and violence against Palestinians. If all of that was not enough to wane the enthusiasm of Google and Amazon to engage in projects that specifically aimed at protecting Israel’s ‘national security’ – read: continued occupation of Palestine – a damning report by Israel’s largest human rights group, B’tselem should have served as that wake up call.

B’tselem declared Israel an apartheid state in January 2021. The international rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW) followed suit in April, also denouncing the Israeli apartheid state. That was only a few weeks before Project Nimbus was declared. It was as if Google and Amazon were purposely declaring their support of apartheid. The fact that the project was signed during the Israeli war on Gaza speaks volumes about the two tech giants’ complete disregards of international law, human rights and the very freedom of the Palestinian people.

It gets worse. On March 15, hundreds of Google workers signed a petition protesting the firing of one of their colleagues, Ariel Koren, who was active in generating the October letter in protest of Project Nimbus. Koren was the product marketing manager at Google for Education, and has worked for the company for six years. However, she was the kind of employee who was not welcomed by the likes of Google, as the company is now directly involved with various military and security projects.

“For me, as a Jewish employee of Google, I feel a deep sense of intense moral responsibility,” she said in a statement last October. “When you work in a company, you have the right to be accountable and responsible for the way that your labor is actually being used,” she added.

Google quickly retaliated to that seemingly outrageous statement. The following month, her manager “presented her with an ultimatum: move to Brazil or lose her position.” Eventually, she was driven out of the company.

Koren was not the first Google – or Amazon – employee to be fired for standing up for a good cause, nor would, sadly, be the last. In this age of militarism, surveillance, unwarranted facial recognition and censorship, speaking one’s mind and daring to fight for human rights and other basic freedoms is no longer an option.

Amazon’s warehouses can be as bad, or even worse than a typical sweatshop. Last March, and after a brief denial, Amazon apologized for forcing its workers to pee in water bottles – and worse – so that their managers may fulfill their required quotas. The apology followed direct evidence provided by the investigative journalism website, The Intercept. However, the company which stands accused of numerous violations of worker rights – including its engagement in ‘union busting’ – is not expected to reverse course any time soon, especially when so much profits are at stake.

But profits generated from market monopoly, mistreatment of workers or other misconducts are different from profits generated from contributing directly to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Though human rights violations should be shunned everywhere, regardless of their contexts, Israel’s war on the Palestinian people, now with the direct help of such companies, remains one of the gravest injustices that continue to scar the consciousness of humankind. No amount of Google justification or Amazon rationalization can change the fact that they are facilitating Israeli war crimes in Palestine.

To be more precise, according to the Nation, the Google-Amazon cloud service will help Israel expand its illegal Jewish settlements by “supporting data for the Israel Land Authority (ILA), the government agency that manages and allocates state land.” These settlements, which are repeatedly condemned by the international community, are built on Palestinian land and are directly linked to the ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

According to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, Project Nimbus is the “most lucrative tender issued by Israel in recent years.” The Project, which has ignited a “secretive war” involving top Israeli army generals – all vying for a share in the profit – has also whetted the appetite of many other international tech companies, all wanting to be part of Israel’s technology drive, with the ultimate aim of keeping Palestinians entrapped, occupied and oppressed.

This is precisely why the Palestinian boycott movement is absolutely critical as it targets these international companies, which are migrating to Israel in search of profits. Israel, on the contrary, should be boycotted, not enabled, sanctioned and not rewarded. While profit generation is understandably the main goal of companies like Google and Amazon, this goal can be achieved without necessarily requiring the subjugation of a whole people, who are currently the victims of the world’s last remaining apartheid regime.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-billion- ... palestine/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 11, 2022 3:01 pm

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PALESTINIANS YOUTH USE SLEDGE HAMMERS TO KNOCK HOLES THROUGH PART OF A WALL CONNECTED TO ISRAEL’S CONTROVERSIAL SEPARATION BARRIER IN THE ABU DIS NEIGHBORHOOD, BORDERING JERUSALEM ON JULY 9, 2013. PALESTINIANS CALL THE WALL AN “APARTHEID WALL.” PHOTO BY ISSAM RIMAWI (C) APA IMAGES.


Harvard Law School ‘apartheid’ report leaves Israel’s defenders speechless
Originally published: Mondoweiss by Steve France (April 5, 2022 ) | - Posted Apr 07, 2022

In case you missed it, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (IHRC) lately issued a report that finds Israel’s treatment of Palestinians on the West Bank amounts to the crime of apartheid. The study, “Apartheid in the Occupied West Bank: A Legal Analysis of Israel’s Actions” came out on February 28 in the wake of five longer, wider-ranging, apartheid reports published since 2020–and just before the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories published another apartheid report on March 21.

Prepared by the law school’s human rights clinic in partnership with Ramallah-based Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, the report was released without fanfare and received minimal press coverage. And it has, so far, drawn no public condemnation by the Israel lobby. The state of Israel reacted only with a perfunctory, non-substantive statement by its UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, that “those who wrote the report on behalf of Harvard . . . decided to delegitimize the Jewish state because of their antisemitic views.”

Although only 22 pages long, the report includes 130 footnotes that deftly back up the text and let readers drill down further. The narrow focus shines a searching light on the customized legal instruments and processes implemented since 1967 to deprive West Bank Palestinians of their human, civil and political rights.

The precise description of the lawfare by which Israel has, with impunity, intimidated, confused, humiliated, bullied, imprisoned, tortured and killed Palestinians since 1967 generates a compelling cumulative impact. Individual items in the litany are not in themselves news but to see them depicted in their coordinated entirety is to see how the Israeli machine of injustice does its anti-human work.

Given the potency of the report and the prestige of the Harvard brand, there is little doubt that the lobby will eventually go after the IHRC. The Israeli ambassador’s phrasing in his comments hints at the probability that there will be attempts made to pressure Harvard and Harvard Law School to disassociate themselves from “those who wrote on behalf of Harvard,” i.e., the IHRC.

In the meantime, the authors of the report have been circumspect, as has the UN body to which the report was submitted. The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, which was convened by the UN Human Rights Council in May 2021, had called on civil society groups to document possible apartheid violations. (Addameer and the legal aid and research group Al-Haq had sent in another such report in January this year, titled “Entrenching and Maintaining an Apartheid Regime over the Palestinian People as a Whole.”) Link here.

After a meticulous outline of the crime of apartheid in international law, including a clear explanation of how and why ethnic groups, such as the Palestinians (or the Rohinga of Myanmar), are considered “racial groups” under the law, the Harvard-Addameer study maps the “dual legal system that entrenches Jewish Israeli supremacy” on the West Bank.

It begins by quoting what the commander of IDF forces in the West Bank proclaimed to the Palestinians in 1967:

[A]ll authority of government, legislation, appointment and administration pertaining to the area or its residents will now be exclusively in my hands and will be exercised only by me or by any person appointed therefore by me or acting on my behalf.

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FRONT PAGE OF APARTHEID REPORT BY HARVARD LAW SCHOOL HUMAN RIGHTS CLINIC IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ADDAMEER, PALESTINIAN PRISONER ORGANIZATION. FEBRUARY 2022.

Fifty-five years later, this dictatorial power, which might be understandable in the immediate aftermath of a recent occupation of enemy territory, has been unwaveringly exercised and institutionalized. The power is deployed by way of military orders, more than 1,800 of which have rained down on the Palestinians, but never on the Israeli settlers in illegal Jewish-only settlements that have spread throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The military orders define “security offenses” ranging from terrorism to traffic offenses. They are prosecuted in military courts, whose workings are ostensibly subject to the Israeli Supreme Court, which over the years, has spoken sternly of the many stringent safeguards that must control the military power. In fact, however, the court defers to the Israeli military’s findings and determinations. Thus, for example, as of 2021, the report says that, out of hundreds of Supreme Court reviews of administrative detention orders, only one has resulted in an order’s revocation.

According to the Harvard-Addameer report, Palestinians can thus find themselves prosecuted for such things as:

’entering a closed military zone,’ which can be a designation attached on the spot to an area of protest, or ‘membership and activity in an unlawful association’ (note that the Israeli army has assumed power to declare as ‘unlawful association[s]’ groups that advocate for ‘bringing into hatred or contempt, or the exciting of disaffection against’ Israeli occupation authorities).

Similarly, there are military orders that criminalize gatherings of more than 10 people that ‘could be construed as political,’ if they take place without a permit; publishing material ‘having a political significance’; and displaying ‘flags or political symbols’ without prior military approval. Peaceful expression of opposition to the occupation may run counter to military orders that criminalize anyone who ‘attempts, orally or otherwise, to influence public opinion in the area [the West Bank] in a manner which may harm public peace or public order’; ‘publishes words of praise, sympathy or support for a hostile organization, its actions or objectives’; or commits an ‘act or omission which entails harm, damage, or disturbance to the security of the area or of the Israeli Defense Forces.’


If this web of orders fails to cover some “act or omission”–or speech or silence–that the Israeli commanders dislike, the terms are easily amended or a new order can be issued. Any Palestinian who wants to argue about his alleged offense is easily shut up–and shut in–using administrative detention, a streamlined incarceration process that the study reports is:

not subject to a warrant and charges do not need to be disclosed to the detainee. Military Order no. 1651 further grants the Israeli military broad powers to withhold a detainee’s right to communicate with a lawyer and to be brought before a judge in a timely manner. In the course of administrative proceedings to confirm an administrative detention order, military courts may rely exclusively on ‘secret evidence’ that is not made available to the detainee. If the detention order is affirmed, the Order provides that the military commander may extend the detention order every six months, subject to no total time limitation.

Thousands of Palestinian men, women and children are locked up this way every year. During their imprisonment, they may experience “prevalent practices of torture and ill-treatment, including beating, physical assault, and positional torture,” the study says, drawing on Addameer’s long history of defending prisoners against abuse.

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PRISONS AND DETENTION CENTERS IN PALESTINE AND ISRAEL, AN IMAGE PUBLISHED AT ADDAMEER’S SITE.

Regarding torture, the Israeli Supreme Court’s decisions are particularly noble-sounding and thoroughly ineffectual in practice. The justices have declared that “torture and ill-treatment of detainees is illegal, emphasizing the absolute prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in international law,” the Harvard-Addameer study says. But the court has also “recognized ‘ticking bomb’ scenarios where ‘necessity’ could be a possible criminal defense for using ‘physical interrogation methods.’” The justices have insisted that the “necessity defense” should apply only if the treatment of a person wasn’t so severe as to constitute torture–a determination that would depend on the “concrete circumstances” in each case. The military interrogators thus have the opening they need to always justify “necessity interrogations.”

Recently, the court has clarified that the “ticking bomb” exception doesn’t mean that danger is imminent but merely that there is an immediate need to obtain information. No bomb is needed, in other words. “In practice,” the study says, the court “has created a grave loophole” that enables “the use of torture and ill-treatment against Palestinian detainees with impunity.”

Palestinians also are “deprived of the right to be tried before an independent and impartial tribunal,” the study shows. “The prosecutors, administrative officers, and, most importantly, judges in the military courts are all Israeli military officers,” the authors wrote, noting that the judges’ impartiality is “fundamentally undermined” because they are subject to the “system of discipline and promotion within the military.”

Given the suffocating oppression that this regime imposes on West Bank Palestinians, one can understand why their lot is sometimes said to be worse in certain respects than that of Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip. Moreover, the report notes how “suppression of Palestinian freedom of association and assembly has intensified in recent years, and criminalization of ‘unlawful’ associations has recently been extended to six prominent Palestinian civil society organizations,” including Al-Haq and Addameer itself.

Ironically, the main reason the six groups have been declared unlawful is believed to be retaliation against their assistance to UN and International Criminal Court and other bodies seeking to investigate conditions in Palestine-Israel.

Having described the travesty of apartheid justice, the report concludes:

“These frameworks and institutions, taken together with ongoing long-term Israeli policies of land confiscation and dispossession, restriction of the movement of Palestinians, and expansion of illegal Israeli settlements, systematically serve the purpose of privileging and maintaining the domination of Jewish Israelis over Palestinians.”

Despite its quiet rollout, the study’s high quality and association with Harvard likely mean it will play a significant role in establishing Israel’s apartheid. Michael Lynk, the UN Special Rapporteur, told me that the study is “exceptionally well researched and reasoned” and that he “relied upon it in [his] UN report because it was persuasive and rigorous.” In his report to the UN Human Rights Council in March, Lynk noted the “pitiless features of Israel’s ‘apartness’ rule in the occupied Palestinian territory that were not practiced in southern Africa.” He memorably wrote:

With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world.

His report encountered no dearth of commentary–“mostly positive and some invective and name-calling, not really adding to the debate,” Lynk says–in other words, the usual, complete absence of substantive criticism of any of the evidence and legal analysis on which the apartheid verdict is based. Lynk declined to speculate on the lack of response to the Harvard-Addameer report.

The Israel lobby’s silence may be explained by the fact that the press has yet to publicize the report, but it seems inconceivable that the lobby will leave unchallenged the idea that Harvard, the sanctum sanctorum of American academia, endorsed such an unsparing condemnation of Israel. The IHRC may be in for some rough weather. At the least, the Clinic’s relationship with Addameer is likely to be attacked.

Addameer itself, of course, is at risk of direct retaliation by Israel, which, as mentioned, already declared it an “unlawful association,” along with the five other distinguished human rights and civil society organizations, in October 2021. Israel has not provided concrete evidence of the “terrorist” links it claims justify the bans. Only alleged “secret evidence” has been invoked, which has led Western countries to hold off imposition of their own related anti-terror sanctions. Moreover, Israel has, to date, largely held off on executing the orders.

This “in terrorem” approach is analogous to the way Israel uses thousands of demolition orders issued against Palestinian structures but held in abeyance, sometimes for years, so as to maintain a continuing threat of sudden demolition. If Israel decides that Addameer, for instance, has gone too far in exposing apartheid crimes, it might–in addition to physically attacking Addameer’s offices and personnel–pressure arrested individuals to give false testimony against Addameer in exchange for a lenient plea bargain. Such evidence might then be presented to other countries to get them to sanction Addameer and its personnel (and, of course, the false charge against Addameer, and such evidence, would be cited by the Israel lobby in attacks on IHRC to get Harvard to condemn the apartheid report).

Nonetheless, the publication of the report is a victory for Palestinian human rights. Moreover, the wariness shown by leaders of the Israel lobby seems to show they are beginning to measure the growing magnitude of the anti-apartheid movement as it continues to build, the potential of the apartheid concept to clarify public perceptions and trigger public outrage, and the risk that flimsy ad hominem attacks on those who carry the apartheid message may only draw more attention to the reports and alienate more uninformed supporters of the Jewish state.

https://mronline.org/2022/04/07/harvard ... peechless/
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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Fri Apr 15, 2022 2:23 pm

International Community Remains Silent About Israel’s Crimes

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The Palestinian authority has said that the international silence on the behaviour of Israel in the occupied territories is a war crime in itself. | Photo: Twitter @MiddleEastMnt

Published 15 April 2022 (2 hours 13 minutes ago)

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that there are and will be no limits to this war, after announcing full freedom of action for the army, the Shin Bet (national intelligence agency) and all security forces to defeat terror.


Palestinian Civil Affairs Minister Hussein Al Sheikh on Thursday denounced the international community's silence regarding the wave of crimes committed by Israel on the reoccupied territories.

The Israeli army spills Palestinian blood daily for everyone to see, the official tweeted amid a new military offensive in the West Bank, which killed at least nine people, and dozens have been wounded and arrested.

Al Sheikh called for a minimum of international protection for his people in the face of systematic Israeli attacks.


In this regard, he condemned the double standards in the implementation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and international law.

Israeli authorities justified the military operation in the West Bank as a response to an attack perpetrated in Tel Aviv last week by a Palestinian from Jenin, during which three civilians and the assailant were killed.

A few days ago, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that there are and will be no limits to this war, after announcing full freedom of action for the army, the Shin Bet (national intelligence agency) and all security forces to defeat terror.


In response, several Palestinian militias such as the Islamic Jihad Movement and the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) vowed to respond to the neighboring State with force.

The Ministry of Health recently charged that Israeli troops killed 355 Palestinians and injured 16,500 in 2021.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Int ... -0003.html

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Israeli attack near Al-Aqsa mosque leaves 152 injured

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About 10 Palestinian worshipers were seized at the mosque by Israeli police forces in occupied Jerusalem. | Photo: @HoyPalestina
Published April 15, 2022 (1 hour 26 minutes ago)

According to the Israel Police, Palestinians were throwing stones and three law enforcement officers were injured.

The Israeli occupation forces had clashes this Friday with Palestinian worshipers in the vicinity of the Al-Aqsa mosque, in the religious area of ​​the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which left at least 152 people injured.

After the attack, about 59 wounded were hospitalized, the Red Crescent said. The organization indicated that the Israeli security forces hindered the work of the ambulances. Local media report that the number of injured may continue to grow.

Social media images show Palestinians throwing stones at soldiers, while officers fire tear gas and stun grenades. Amid the riot, many religious sought refuge in the mosque.


According to local media, the Israel Police reported that around 04:00 in the morning, a dozen young people began to march towards the area with flags of the Hamas movement and the Palestinian National Authority.

In addition, he highlighted that people were throwing stones during morning prayers, also against the Wailing Wall, which is why the agents broke into the place. According to the entity, three of its agents ended up with minor injuries and two of them received medical assistance.

Meanwhile, Israel's Foreign Ministry released a video of the clashes, debunking initial reports that Hebrew police stormed the temple.


“Masked men throw stones and fireworks, desecrating the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Contrary to false reports, the police forces did not enter the mosque," the agency posted on Twitter.

These clashes come after the death of 14 Israelis in recent weeks due to alleged Palestinian attacks. Following these events, the security forces began arrests in the West Bank that ended in violence, leaving several Palestinians dead.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/ataque-i ... -0004.html

Google Translator

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Israel has dropped repeated hints at a major strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future
10904 ViewsApril 14, 2022
By Gav Don for the Saker Blog

Israel has dropped repeated hints at a major strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in the near future

Two weeks ago Israel’s prime minister Naftali Bennett announced the start of a new campaign against Iran at the annual conference of Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. Here Mr Bennett said “the campaign to weaken Iran has begun”. He described the campaign as multi-dimensional, including moves in the nuclear arena, the economy, cyber warfare, and overt and covert action, but gave no details on specific actions or plans.

Israel has carried out attacks on Iran’s centrifuge plant at Natanz twice in the past two years, with a third incident widely reported a couple of months ago. Further offensive action against Iran is in practice dependent on the agreement and cooperation of the United States. At a meeting of Secretary of State Blinken and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid in October 2021 Mr Blinken stated baldly that if negotiations to restart the JCPOA failed then the US would turn to “other options”. Israel’s defence Minister Gantz visited Washington in December 2021, where he is reported to have tabled the proposed timetable for an Israeli strike.

On April 6th Israeli news sources showed Israeli Chief of Staff Lt General Aviv Kochavi addressing a group of NATO air commanders assembled in Israel. Among his remarks he referred to “…preparations for an operation in Iran that is currently undergoing expedited preparatory work.”

A week before General Kochavi’s speech the US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, said on Israeli TV that the US does not expect Tel Aviv to “sit quietly and not do anything” if a new JCPOA deal is struck with Iran. He added ““We’ve been very clear about this. If we have a deal, the Israelis’ hands are not tied. If we don’t have a deal, the Israelis’ hands are certainly not tied,”. He added that whether or not an agreement is reached, “Israel can do and take whatever actions they need to take to”.

An air strike on Iran would probably aim to damage Iran’s Uranium enrichment centrifuges using bunker-busting bombs delivered by either F15 or F16 strike aircraft. Israel is already equipped with the BLU 109 bomb but the penetration capacity of that weapon is measurable in small numbers of metres of combined overburden and reinforced concrete. Tehran has spent the past year visibly building deep bunkers underneath a mountain adjacent to the Natanz surface plant, which are almost certainly too deep for the BLU 109 to damage.

Open source intelligence analysts estimate that the new plant is protected by about 150 metres of overburden. The new chambers are not only deep, but their exact location is also not discernible from surface works. The actual overburden may be much deeper than 150 metres. To succeed in damaging the working chambers of the underground complex even a much larger bomb than the BLU109 will have to be targeted exactly.

The US Air Force has developed a much larger bunker-busting bomb, the 2.5 tonne GBU 72, whose first (successful) test-drop from an F15 took place in July 2021. Israel has a handful of F15s, but no GBU 72s. The GBU 72’s penetration capabilities are not in the public domain but one source suggests that its design specification is to penetrate 50 metres of overburden and 5 metres of concrete. Even that enhanced penetration and blast power may be too little to damage the centrifuge chambers.

Apart from the challenges of targeting, an air strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities demands a 4,000 km/six-hour mission which would probably have to use Saudi air space. The mission would require refuels, either from Israel’s air tankers, or by landing in Saudi Arabia or UAE en route. A month ago Israel carried out a major long-range strike exercise over the eastern Mediterranean, practising air to air refuelling over distance and long endurance missions, and last week concluded a joint exercise with aircraft from the Greek, US, French and Italian air forces, Iniochos 2022, which included an Air Power Contribution to Land Ops component (a long name for ground attack).

Israel has scheduled major joint military exercises for this coming May. Exercises can be used to cover preparations for actual war. An attack would require much more than just the delivery of bunker-busting bombs. Iranian air defences would have to be detected and suppressed in advance, and assets would have to be placed in readiness to recover aircrew whose aircraft were either shot down or lost to accident or mechanical failure en route. An attack on Natanz would be likely to commit most of the Israeli air force and would require active cooperation and support from Sunni Gulf states in the provision of bases for search and rescue, emergency diversion and ground bases for electronic warfare assets.

The large GBU 72 may have marginal prospects for success. Israel may be seeking access to the even larger Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The MOP is a 14 tonne bunker-busting bomb which is reported to be capable of penetrating 60 metres of overburden, where it detonates a 2.5 tonne high explosive warhead with a large kill-radius. Use of the MOP would require use of USAF strategic bombers (the B2 Spirit, in practice) to deliver it.

Another piece of the evidential puzzle in the public domain is the fact (reported by Haaretz in December 2021) that Israel Defence Forces have been allocated $2.9bn to prepare for an attack on Iran. Israel’s air force is equipped with approximately 40 F15 aircraft capable of carrying large ordnance. It’s difficult to see how the bombs themselves can soak up much of that budget, begging the question of what else Israel might be planning to use. It is also, of course, possible that the strike being trailed in public is just an attempt to pressure Iran to come to terms at the JCPOA talks in Vienna.

Three days ago IAEA inspectors reported that Iran has moved machinery used to manufacture parts for enrichment centrifuges into the Natanz plant from Karaj, and that these are currently under IAEA seal. After what appears to be extensive construction work the Natanz site may well have been extended either to a distance from its surface infrastructure or to a greater depth.

Israel captured one Natanz construction plan in 2018, but it seems likely that Tehran will have changed the tunnel design. Public sources show three entrances. These may be duplicate entrances to a single complex or entrances to two or three complexes. Even the size of Natanz’s tunnels and equipment halls is not in the public domain. The early stages of low-enrichment require more centrifuges than later stages (Iran is reported to have reached stocks of 60% U235, and needs 95% U235 to build a functional weapon).

Israel would either need intelligence from inside Natanz to target the halls themselves, or a very large number of bombs and therefore aircraft. Entrance portals are easier to see, and the plan may be to seal the tunnels rather than destroy them. However construction plans for bunkers usually include emergency exits/entrances which are generally concealed from view in innocuous surface structures at some distance from the actual bunker. The Natanz tunnel complex is 2.2 kms southwest of the original (surface) Natanz complex, where its emergency access could be hidden.

Iran is not a state that suffers attacks passively, though it still has an unusual record of being a state that has not directly attacked another state since the Anglo Persian War in 1856. However Iran has actively promoted proxy wars against Sunni states and their clients, and one of its largest proxies – Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Johad – would almost certainly be used to retaliate against Israel for an attack on Natanz. Hezbollah is reported to have a stock of several thousand short-range rockets hidden away on Israel’s northern border.

Historically the use of ballistic unguided rockets and other projectiles has inflicted a highly adverse cost ratio on Israel. A “Qassam” unguided rocket with a 10 kg warhead costs around a thousand dollars to manufacture, while the Iron Dome missile which shoots it down costs a hundred times as much. Israel has been working on this problem and last year announced the successful development of a new 100 kw “directed energy” weapon system (using a laser) capable of destroying small rockets and missiles at a cost of a few dollars in electrical power. The new system (whose name is likely to be Iron Beam) is reported to be functional and is expected to be fully operational by the end of this year but it is possible, indeed likely, that some part of that $2.9bn has been allocated to speeding up the roll-out of Iron Beam units.

It takes just several seconds of laser contact to ignite an incoming rocket, allowing a single Iron Beam to handle many more live targets than Iron Dome. Iron Beam will not be perfect – laser energy is absorbed by rain, dust and cloud – but the new system will blunt a retaliatory missile attack by Hezbollah, and reduce the number of “leakers” – missiles which make it through to be shot down by Iron Dome.

Israel is also presently in the process of carrying out extensive pre-emptive action against PIJ in the West Bank – perhaps a sign of preparations to reduce Iranian blowback.

Another Iranian option for retaliation could be escalation of attacks on Israel-owned shipping. A quiet naval war has already been running between Iran and Israel for at least one year, and possibly two. Israel’s own IDF annual summary admitted to “around 100” maritime operations in 2021, of which “dozens” [so, most] were special operations. Attacks on Iranian shipping appear to have ceased in July 2021, perhaps because Shia militias now effectively control one of the two main road routes from Iran to Damascus, but explained by Israeli sources as a response to the attack on the tanker Mercer Street in the Gulf of Oman by a suicide drone.

Rear Admiral Shaul Chorev, head of the Haifa Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy at the University of Haifa, was quoted earlier this year saying “In my view, those who had the last word here were the Iranians. They challenge our freedom of navigation in the Gulf of Aden, and it appears as if we stopped our activities to target Syria-bound tankers. Russia also entered the picture, saying it would guard Iranian oil tankers. The result was that strategically, a new maritime front was opened, distant from Israel and out of the operational capabilities of the Israeli Navy”.

Syria is not the only state whose oil supply is vulnerable to attack at sea. Israel imports all of its 200 kb per day oil consumption by ship. While Israel will probably be able to protect its oil imports at sea, it would find it much harder to protect the much larger fleet of Israeli-owned merchant shipping, particularly when that shipping is sailing in or past Iranian waters in Hormuz. We may see the IRGC step up attacks on Hormuz traffic via drone strikes, short range missile attacks or even boarding and capture. An extreme reaction might be Iran’s use of its large and capable flotilla of Ghadir submarines to sink non-oil Israeli-owned shipping in Hormuz with torpedo attacks.

In response to that Israel is likely to call the US Navy in aid, leading to possible armed conflict between the US and Iran for the first time. Iran might seek to bring retaliation home to Israel by attacking Israel’s gas production platforms and pipelines in the East Mediterranean. The targets are tough – well protected and at great strategic distance from Iran , but just on the doorstep of Syria. A creative and determined mind could probably find a way, and a successful attack would inflict substantial economic and psychological damage on Israel.

None of the evidence of preparations and intent that we can see is definitive. The level of publicity being given to the preparations may just be Israel setting up a visible latent threat as a spur to a new JCPOA, or as a distraction from other less visible moves. May might bring a clear answer, or it might not. We may not have long to wait to see. Both Israel and Iran might do well to heed the old adage – “when you seek revenge, first dig two graves”.

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon Apr 18, 2022 3:00 pm

Israeli forces attack Palestinian worshippers inside al-Aqsa, over 150 injured
Israeli forces arrested at least 400 Palestinians after entering the Al Aqsa mosque compound during early morning prayers on Thursday, April 14. They also unleashed brutal violence on thousands of worshipers who were present inside

April 15, 2022 by Peoples Dispatch

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(Photo: QNN)

On Friday, April 15, scores of Israeli security forces stormed the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem when thousands of worshipers were performing morning prayers during the holy month of Ramadan. The video footage of the attacks circulating on social media show that Israeli forces carried out large-scale violence against the Palestinians.

There were a large number of women and children among the worshipers when the occupation forces entered the compound from the Moroccan gate firing at them with rubber bullets, stun grenades and tear gas without any provocation or warning. Palestinian youth deployed at the venue to guard the worshipers retaliated with stones pelting.

More than 150 people were injured in the attacks, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent which also claimed that it treated dozens more at the site despite Israeli forces trying to prevent them. The occupation forces also prevented ambulances from reaching the venue.

According to Times of Israel, the Israeli security forces denied that they had entered the mosque compound, instead claiming that the Palestinians inside burst firecrackers and hurled stones at them. However, in the video footage shared by a number of Palestinians, the Israeli forces are seen attacking the worshipers. The video also shows Israeli security forces holding down some Palestinians and pinning them down on the floor with their hands tied behind their backs.


At least 400 Palestinians were arrested during the raids. The security forces were also seen attacking media persons inside the mosque compound who were trying to cover the attack.


The Israeli forces could be seen attacking women and elderly persons without any provocation. They also created panic among the medics on the site who tried to take shelter from the violence.
The video below shows a soldier attacking a journalist covering what’s happening at #Aqsa compound a few hours ago.

On one of the holiest days of the year, Israeli soldiers & police stormed the #Aqsa mosque & attacked worshippers.

Reports of 67 injuries so far. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/zZQ92QgFTq

— Fadi Quran (@fadiquran) April 15, 2022
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas called the increased Israeli violence on Palestinians “unbearable” and asked for immediate international intervention to end the occupation. Hamas also issued a statement saying that all Palestinians are behind those who are struggling against the occupation in East Jerusalem.

A regular affair

Israeli forces regularly storm the Al-Aqsa compound in violation of agreements related to governance of holy sites inside occupied Palestine. They often allow right-wing Israelis to storm the site as well. This year, an Israeli extremist group has given the call for performing Passover sacrifices inside the compound despite the fact that such rituals are not allowed.

Last year, Israeli attacks on Al-Aqsa, in which more than 300 Palestinians were injured, led to an escalation of violence across historic Palestine and an 11-day Israeli offensive in Gaza killing at least 260 Palestinians and causing massive damage to civilian infrastructure.

According to Wafa news agency, Israel has imposed various restrictions on Palestinian worshipers. It has a policy of not allowing men from the occupied West Bank who are below the age of 50 to visit the al-Aqsa mosque. The majority of worshipers from the West Bank are either women or men above the age of 50. Other worshipers come from occupied East Jerusalem and Israeli towns and cities.

Despite the various Israeli restrictions, thousands of Palestinians visit the mosque everyday during Ramadan. On Fridays, the number of worshipers goes up to tens of thousands.

This year’s attack comes at a time when at least two dozen Palestinians have already been killed in increased Israeli violence in the occupied territories. According to the Palestinian health ministry, at least seven Palestinians have been killed in Israeli attacks inside the occupied West Bank in the last two days alone.


The Israeli attacks on Palestinian homes in refugees camps in Jenin, Nablus and other places increased after prime minister Nafatli Bennett gave a “free hand” to the security forces to curb what he called “terror attacks.” A number of individual attacks have been carried out by Palestinians inside Israel since March 22 in resistance to the Israeli occupation and endless violence.

Palestinians in Ramallah and Bethlehem observed a day of strike on Thursday to protest the recent killings by the Israeli forces, Wafa reported.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/04/15/ ... 0-injured/

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A member of the Israeli security forces attacks worshippers at the Dome of the Rock mosque during clashes at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque compound, on 15 April 2022 (AFP)

How Zionism is fuelling a religious war over al-Aqsa Mosque

The Israeli Jewish colonial fundamentalist group “The Returning to the Mount,” which advocates the construction of a “Third Jewish temple” in al-Haram al-Sharif, the third-holiest place in Islam, and is associated with the racist Kach group, announced this week that it plans to sacrifice animals as part of the Jewish Passover rituals on Friday in al-Haram.

In response, Hamas declared that it will not allow such rituals to take place and will prevent them “at any cost”. The Palestinian Authority and the Jordanian government also condemned the plans. Last February, the group, pretending to be Muslims, entered al-Haram al-Sharif and prayed there.

In view of the announcement of the animal sacrifices, the Jordanian-appointed director of the mosque issued a decision banning Muslim worshippers from remaining in isolation in the mosque, a common devotional practice for Muslim worshippers during Ramadan, until the last 10 days of Ramadan, that is, after the end of the passover.

Still, Palestinian worshippers insisted on remaining in the mosque last night to prevent the extremist group from entering al-Haram and were attacked this morning by Israeli security who injured more than one hundred worshippers.

A religious prohibition

After the 1967 conquest of East Jerusalem by the Israelis, Israel‘s then defence minister, Moshe Dayan, decided to allow the Palestinian-turned-Jordanian Waqf (religious endowment), which always administered al-Haram al-Sharif, or what Jews call “The Temple Mount,” to continue to administer it.

Israel’s Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis, along with hundreds of other rabbis, issued a Halachic ruling that it was forbidden for Jews to enter the area, let alone pray there, as that would be in violation of Jewish religious law, or Halacha, on account of the “impurity” of all Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple.

Even the fundamentalist rabbis, disciples of the zealot Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, many of whose followers became religious settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem after 1967, agreed with the religious prohibition.

Nonetheless, some of the extreme non-religious Zionist groups, especially those associated with the pre-state terrorist group Lehi, argued that the rabbis were wrong and that Jews should build a synagogue there. In 1969, an Australian Christian fundamentalist set fire to al-Aqsa Mosque and was arrested by the Israelis, alleged to be mentally ill, and deported years later.

It would be Shlomo Goren, the rabbi of the Israeli army, however, who in 1973 would become Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi and who would weigh in more heavily on the matter. Goren argued that Jews could visit and pray in the areas of the ancient temple that had been expanded at the end of the Second Temple period, and that this would not be in violation of Halacha.

He argued that there was evidence that Jews had built a permanent prayer site on the “Mount” until the 16thcentury, a claim that historians contest.

In his zeal to allow Jews access to the Muslim shrines, Goren correctly claimed that the Western Wall had not been a Jewish prayer site until the 17th century and even then on account of Ottoman restrictions on Jewish worship elsewhere in al-Haram al-Sharif area.

Accessing Muslim shrines

In 1994, Goren wrote to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin that “we cannot claim rights at the Western Wall,” and that Jews should be allowed to pray all over the “Temple Mount” area.

Israel’s chief rabbis in the 1980s began to find the idea partially acceptable, and both its Sephardi and Ashkenazi chief rabbis proposed building a synagogue in the southeastern corner of the area, behind al-Aqsa Mosque, meaning outside al-Haram area, though the Sephardi rabbi insisted that the synagogue should be higher than the mosque.

Indeed, the Buraq Wall itself, or what is known in English as “the Western Wall,” let alone al-Haram al-Sharif, had never had a central religious importance as a prayer site for the Jews before the advent of Zionism.

While Palestinian Jews were allowed to pray there during Ottoman times, it was Zionist colonists and zealots who began to lay claim to the Wall, which instigated a number of violent confrontations with Palestinian Muslims in the 1920s, culminating in the 1929 violence that engulfed the country, which Palestinians refer to as “the Buraq Revolt,” and in which more than 200 Jews and Palestinians were killed.

In 1986, 70 rabbis convened by Goren issued a new injunction that permitted Jews to “enter and pray on the Temple Mount in most of its area,” and that a synagogue could indeed be built there.



By 1990, the Lubavitcher rabbi Menachem Schneersohn instructed his followers to hold celebrations in al-Haram, while in the meantime, the “Temple Mount Faithful,” established in 1967 and led by one Gershon Salomon, were planning to lay the cornerstone for building the “Third Temple” on the grounds of al-Haram al-Sharif.

Salomon is an Israeli nationalist and was not religious at the time, although he seems to have become so by the mid 1990s, as reflected by his movement’s increasing religious-nationalist literature and its connections and financial ties to Christian fundamentalist groups.

Palestinians demonstrated against the plans of the Temple Mount Faithful. On 8 October, Israeli forces killed more than 20 Palestinian protesters and injured more than 150, which led to two UN resolutions that condemned the Israeli government’s use of force and its refusal to allow the UN secretary-general to visit al-Haram al-Sharif.

Suffice it to say that the massacre and the ensuing international uproar aborted Rabbi Schneersohn’s plans.

The Oslo factor

An even more radical Zionist group laying claim to an alleged Jewish “right” to occupy and pray in al-Haram al-Sharif is the Hai Ve-Kayam movement led by Yehuda Etzion, whose father was a member of the Terrorist Lehi group. Etzion spent seven years in Israeli jails for his membership of a Jewish terror group in the 1980s that sought to blow up the Dome of the Rock.

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Muslim women pray during the first Friday prayer of Ramadan in al-Aqsa Mosque (Reuters)

Eztion and his group would insist on praying in al-Haram, which forced the Israeli police to remove them, images of which galvanized more support for the movement in Israel’s colonial Jewish society whether religious or secular.

Other groups making similar claims include “Yemin Israel,” “Kach” and “Kahane Hai,” the “Temple Institute,” the “Movement to Establish the Temple,” and “Ateret Kohanim” among others.

Many of these groups were mobilised after the Oslo Accords for fear that the Palestinian Authority might be granted authority over al-Haram, and especially after the Israel-Jordan Peace Accords in 1994 in which Israel “respects” Jordan’s “special role… in the Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem”.

In February 1997, the Committee of Yesha Rabbis, a central component within the Zionist religious-nationalist colonial-settler movement, issued a ruling permitting rabbis who believe that Jews should pray in the Haram to do so.

In the meantime, many Israeli Supreme Court judges and politicians began to call on the government and the chief rabbinate to lift the prohibition on Jewish prayer in al-Haram. These efforts culminated in the visit staged by the leader of the Likud Party, Ariel Sharon, to al-Haram al-Sharif in September 2000 accompanied by Israel’s riot police.

Palestinian protests ensued, and four Palestinians were killed and dozens shot and injured. Sharon’s visit triggered the second Palestinian uprising, or Intifada. In the following week, Israel killed 70 Palestinians. Sharon was elected as Israel’s prime minister five months later.

Resistance goes on
Before 2003, the Israeli government began to allow no more than three religious Jews to visit al-Haram at a time, but since then has steadily increased that number to more than 50, and does so without the approval of the Islamic Waqf authorities.

By 2009, after making racist remarks about Palestinians, Israel’s Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonvitch of the right-wing Yisrael Beitenu party paid yet another visit to al-Haram. More Zionist provocations and desecrations continued. In September 2015, the Israeli government prevented Palestinians from entering al-Haram to make way for Jews to go and pray there.

A Palestinian uprising ensued in which Israeli police shot scores of Palestinians. Whereas the Israeli government banned members of the Knesset from visiting al-Haram following the uprising, Benjamin Netanyahu lifted the ban in 2018.

In fact, the issue of whether Jews are Halachically allowed to enter let alone pray at al-Haram al-Sharif remains a major point of contention in Jewish religious circles in Israel, so much so that last year Netanyahu was rumoured to have concluded a deal with a conservative rabbi and head of a political party to temporarily bar Jews from entering al-Haram in exchange for joining his coalition government.

The ongoing Palestinian resistance against Israeli colonialism of the past few weeks, whether in Israel or in the West Bank and Gaza, has reached a fever pitch, with Israeli killings of Palestinians across the West Bank, especially in Jenin.

While Palestinians realise that settler-colonialism has targeted and continues to target the entire land of the Palestinians, the ongoing attempts to take over Palestinian Muslim holy places, whether in Jerusalem, Hebron, or in Nablus’ Maqam Yusuf al-Dwayk, a local saint, or what Zionist zealots allege is the biblical “Joseph’s Tomb,” continue apace, as does valiant Palestinian resistance to them.

While the Israelis had been corralling their supporters among Arab leaders in the last month, whether the Jordanian government to pressure the Palestinian Authority to repress any possible uprising during the current Holy month of Ramadan, or the Egyptian government to warn Hamas not to engage Israel as it represses West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinians, the next couple of weeks may see such schemes falter.

Palestinian resistance and uprisings against the settler-colony have not ceased since the first arrival of Jewish colonists in the 1880s. Israel can call upon whatever Arab leaders it wants to help it quell Palestinian protest, but there is no reason to believe that the Palestinians will ever stop resisting as long as Zionist settler-colonialism remains.

https://mronline.org/2022/04/18/how-zio ... sa-mosque/

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Israeli Raids on Jenin Refugee Camp Leave Many Dead, Dozens Shot
By Mohamed Ahmed, Contributor April 15, 2022

Jenin Refugee Camp, West Bank, Palestine – Over a dozen Palestinians have been killed, hundreds injured, and 200 detained in Jenin since the beginning of the year. Amidst a spate of attacks by Palestinians and Arab-Israelis inside Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have launched nearly daily raids on Jenin refugee camp in the last several weeks. A total of at least 41 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in 2022 so far. Since Ramadan started on April 2, 17 have been killed, including six in a 48-hour span from April 13 to April 14.

The latest Israeli raids are in response to the recent escalation in violence across the country. Violent clashes during military raids on Jenin are ringing up historical memories of Israel’s “Operation Defensive Shield” twenty years ago.

In early April 2002, IDF stormed the Jenin Refugee Camp after attacks in Israel. Nearly three weeks later, the IDF dispersed from Jenin after razing a large section of the camp to the ground. At least 52 Palestinians were killed in the offensive along with two dozen Israeli soldiers, while over a third of the population of the camp was displaced from Israeli bulldozers demolishing their homes.

On Thursday, March 31, 2022, Yazid al-Saadi, 23, and Sanad Abu Atiyeh, 17, were fatally shot by Israeli forces during a raid on Jenin Camp. The raid was two days after a Palestinian from a village near Jenin killed five people in central Israel in what became known as the Bnei Brak shootings.

After the two youths were killed in the camp, masses of funeral participants marched through Jenin city chanting slogans condemning their deaths and the Israeli occupation. Amidst spurts of ceremonial gunfire, shouts of anger, and chants, the bodies of the two killed, draped in Palestinian flags, were marched to the homes of their families in the city and camp of Jenin.


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Armed Palestinian resistance fighters attend the funeral procession for two youth killed by Israeli forces during a raid on Jenin Refugee Camp on March 31, 2022

About 40,000 mostly indigenous Palestinian people live in the historic city of Jenin, and about 13,000 additional Palestinians live in Jenin Refugee Camp. The camp was formed in 1953 for Palestinians displaced by Israeli colonialism. Jenin (Ar: جنين محافظة) is also the name of the governorate that the city and the refugee camp are in. It’s the northernmost governorate in the West Bank and is known for its fertile soil, fruits and vegetables.

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Map of the West Bank – Jenin Governorate, city, and refugee camp are in the northern most part via United Nations

On April 9, Israeli occupation forces launched a full-scale military invasion of Jenin Refugee Camp, killing one Palestinian and shooting at least 14 others. Dozens of homes were raided by Israeli forces, with some of them having much of their property destroyed.

The raid of the camp was in response to an attack in Tel Aviv the night before, when Jenin resident Raad Fathi Hazem killed three Israelis and wounded a dozen. Hazem was killed by Israeli authorities in Jaffa after a nine-hour manhunt.

While in the camp, Israeli forces surrounded Hazem’s home, took measurements in preparation of demolishing it and summoned his family, who refused to leave the home.

Palestinians burned tires in attempts to prevent Israeli forces from entering areas of the camp. Ahmed Nasser Al-Saadi, 21, was fatally shot by IDF, who also injured at least 14 others with gunfire. One of those injured included former prisoner Nour El-Din Saber Al-Jarbou, 27, who was handcuffed and dragged into an IDF vehicle after being shot multiple times.


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Burning tires act as barricades in hopes of preventing the incursion of Israeli forces into Jenin Refugee Camp on April 9, 2022

After Israeli forces killed Ahmed al-saadi, large crowds attended his funeral procession which started at the hospital where his family gathered. The procession roamed the streets of the city, the camp and by al-Saadi’s house, before going to the Jenin camp mosque for a funeral prayer.

Mourners chanted slogans against Israeli occupation and called for factions of the Palestinian movement to unite, demanding protection for Palestinians. A massive march then headed toward the camp’s cemetery, where 21-year-old Ahmed Nasser al-Saadi, a relative of Yazid al-Saadi who was killed on March 31, was buried.

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Family members of Ahmed Nasser al-Saadi, 21, who was killed by Israeli forces during a raid on Jenin Refugee Camp on April 9, 2022

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Palestinian Protesters Fight Occupation on Mount Sabih, Nablus
By Mohamed Ahmed, Contributor April 15, 2022


Nablus, Occupied West Bank, Palestine – Israel Defense Forces (IDF) opened fire on Palestinian civilians during confrontations on March 25, 2022. The clashes happened amid olive tree groves in Beita, a village south of Nablus in the occupied northern West Bank. At least 33 Palestinians were injured that day by the Israeli occupation army, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC).

IDF soldiers fired live gunfire, rubber-coated rounds and stun grenades at anti-colonization protesters in Beita. 30 cases of exposure to toxic teargas were reported. Four protesters also sustained injuries after falling on the ground while being chased by IDF soldiers.


For months now, Beita has witnessed almost daily protests in opposition to Israeli control over private Palestinian lands in Jabal Sabih. Beita’s daily clashes between Palestinians and the Israeli occupation forces are part of the protests struggling against the establishment of “Givat Evyatar,” an Israeli settlement outpost on the mountain.

On March 25, Israeli forces violently dispersed Palestinians who continued to converge atop Jabal Sabih (Sabih Mountain), near Beita, to confront settlers who planned to reach the hill to rebuild the evacuated colonial settlement outpost.

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Palestinians from Beita launch stones with slingshots at occupying Israeli Defense Force soldiers near the “Givat Evyatar” settler outpost on March 25, 2022. From video contributed by Mohammed Ahmed

According to Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, since May 2021, at least seven Palestinians from the town were killed and thousands of others were exposed to teargas, and dozens otherwise injured while trying to oust the colonial settler outpost built atop Mount Sabih (Sbeih).

The Palestinians killed were victims of Israel’s “open-fire policy” of using live ammunition on protesters, according to B’Tselem.

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A map of where Palestinian residents of Beita were killed near the Evyatar outpost since May 2021. Under the Oslo Accords, “Area B” is under Palestinian Authority civil control, while Israeli occupation forces control security. (Source: B’Tselem)

Unicorn Riot recently covered other similar stories of resistance to Israeli expansion into Palestinian lands just a short distance from Beita. On March 18, Palestinians protested another settler outpost at Beit Dajan, about four miles northeast of Beita, aimed at cutting off Nablus from access to the Jordan Valley.

A few days after the Mount Sabih protest and just three miles southeast of Beita, IDF soldiers forcibly prevented Palestinians from accessing their agricultural land near Qusra.


Palestinian news agency WAFA reported on earlier attacks on Palestinian protesters in Beita:
“Palestinians across in the territories occupied since 1967 and the rest of Historic Palestine have been rising up against decades of Israeli settler- colonialism and apartheid. The villagers of Beita have not only been protesting decades of Israeli oppression, but also intensified Israeli land pillage of their land.

In addition to Mount Sabih, Israeli forces have erected another colonial settlement outpost atop Mount Al-Arma, north of Beita, a few months ago, as both mounts enjoy a strategic location as they overlook the Jordan Valley, a fertile strip of land running west along the Jordan River which makes up approximately 30% of the West Bank.

Seizing the two hilltops represents a panoptical defensive tool as they would grant the Israeli occupation with a panoramic view over the Jordan Valley and the whole district of Nablus. This is why the Israeli occupation authorities have assigned them a place in its settlement expansion project.

The construction of the two colonial outposts atop Mount Sabih, south of Beita, and Mount Al-Arma, north of the town, besides to a bypass road to the west is an Israeli measure to push Palestinian villages and towns into crowded enclaves, ghettos, surrounded by walls, settlements and military installations, and disrupt their geographic contiguity with other parts of the West Bank.

The number of settlers living in Jewish-only colonial settlements across occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in violation of international law has jumped to over 700,000 and colonial settlement expansion has tripled since the signing of Oslo Accords in 1993.

Israel’s nation-state law, passed in July 2018, enshrines Jewish supremacy, and states that building and strengthening the colonial settlements is a ‘national interest.‘”

WAFA, “Over 60 injuries as Israeli forces crackdown on anti-land-pillage protests in Nablus”, February 18, 2022
Al-Monitor reported that “night confusion” tactics by Palestinian protesters aim to disrupt Israeli settlers’ construction of illegal outposts:
“Since the beginning of the construction of the outpost on Jabal Sbeih on May 3 [2021], the residents of Beita began to resist the settlers as they were inspired by the ‘night confusion’ activities during the return marches that erupted in March 2018 in the Gaza Strip near the barbed wire fence with Israel. […] The night confusion is a popular night protest activity during which young people use various means aimed at disturbing the settlers and confusing the Israeli army, such as igniting rubber tires near the outpost so that the smoke rises toward the army. […] The Beita residents say they will continue their efforts until the settlement outpost is removed from the top of Mount Sbeih even if they had to resort to all means of struggle and confrontation.”
Al-Monitor, “West Bank town draws inspiration from Gaza ‘night confusion’ activities to confront settlers,” June 2021

While the Palestinian Authority has recently adopted the idea of popular resistance to settlements in the West Bank, Israeli expansion continues in the region, despite longtime opposition from most of the international community.

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 20, 2022 1:55 pm

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Israeli Forces Leave 153 Wounded at Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem
April 19, 2022

Once the morning prayer was over, the Israeli police attacked the Palestinians to disperse them from the esplanade and from the Al Aqsa mosque itself, which is the third holiest site in Islam.

On the second Friday of the month of Ramadan, Israeli police violently attacked Palestinian worshipers at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem.

The Red Crescent emergency service reported that people were injured as a result of the shooting of rubber bullets, the explosion of stun grenades, and blows. Previously, sincew the early hours of Friday, hundreds of Palestinians flocked to the site carrying flags of the Palestinian National Authority and the Islamist movement Hamas.

Once the morning prayer was over, the Israeli police attacked the Palestinians to disperse them from the esplanade and from the Al Aqsa mosque itself, which is the third holiest site in Islam.

On Thursday, Palestinian factions, including the Fatah Party led by President Mahmoud Abbas and Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), condemned Israel for killing Palestinians and escalating tensions in the West Bank. Yesterday, two Palestinians were killed in the northern West Bank city of Jenin. Another civilian succumbed to wounds after being shot in Nablus.


“The Israeli government’s disregard for the lives of Palestinians by unleashing the Israeli army and settler groups to carry out field assassinations and military incursions,” the Fatah Party denounced, adding that “Israel is waging war against the Palestinian people and drags the entire region to catastrophic results.”

On the same day, Abbas held a telephone conversation with Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, saying “what is happening in the Palestinian territories due to the aggressive Israeli practices is serious and dangerous.”

Forty-one 41 Palestinians, including women and children, have been killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank since January. In Gaza, Hamas said it mourns the six Palestinians who lost their lives on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Hamas affirms that escalating Israeli measures against the defenseless Palestinian civilians will not stop the heroic resistance operations throughout occupied Palestine,” it said.


Featured image: Israeli occupation forces assault Palestinians at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound, April 15, 2022 | Photo: Twitter/ @kenyan_digest.

(Telesur – English)

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Mon May 09, 2022 1:48 pm

Settler Units To Be Approved in the Occupied West Bank - Israel

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Israel to approve the construction of 4000 settler units in the West Bank. May. 6, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@drogon_dracarys

Published 6 May 2022

According to the Israeli interior minister, the country's authorities will approve 4000 settler units.

On Friday, Ayelet Shaked, the Israeli Interior Minister, announced on his Twitter account that a planning committee will be gathering to approve 4000 settler units next week, describing construction in the West Bank as a “basic, required and obvious thing.”

On Thursday, the Civilian Administration, a military body, would meet to advance 1 452 units as another 2 536 units will be approved by Benny Gantz, defense minister, according to Israel’s Haaretz newspaper report.

The Israeli settlements are a fortified complex housing only Jewish people, built on Palestinian land, representing a violation of international law. In the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem, about 600 000 and 750 000 Israeli settlers live in at least 250 illegal settlements.

Should settlement units be approved, it would represent the most significant advancement of settlement plans since US President Joe Biden took office, as Washington is against the settlement growth because it considers it would further erode the possibility of an eventual two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


The local media has quoted Friday to Thomas Nides, U.S. ambassador to Israel, commenting on the fact that The White House has repeatedly said to Israel it strongly rejects plans for settlement expansion activity.

On the other hand, a Palestinian activist and founder of the Youth Against Settlements NGO, Issa Amro, has said that the approval of new settler homes would play a part in “more Israeli settler violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank” and more “restrictions and apartheid polices” to be imposed on the Palestinians.

Amro said that the settlement plans "is an indicator that Israel is violating international law with impunity and without accountability, and it shows that the international community is using double standards with Israel."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Set ... -0019.html

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Israeli Court Approves Mass Forced Transfer of Palestinians
May 8, 2022
By Maureen Clare Murphy — May 5, 2022

Israel’s high court approved the forced expulsion of more than 1,000 Palestinians from eight villages in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern West Bank overnight Wednesday.

If Israel carries through with the forcible transfer, it will be one of the single largest expulsions of Palestinians since it occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967.


It will also be a war crime, despite the creative legal analysis put forth by the Israeli judges who signed off on the decision and who may be liable for prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

That tribunal is currently investigating alleged war crimes perpetrated in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2014.

In 2018, Fatou Bensouda, the court’s former chief prosecutor, warned Israel that “extensive destruction of property without military necessity and population transfers in an occupied territory constitute war crimes under the Rome Statute,” the ICC’s founding treaty.

Bensouda’s warning was in reference to Israel’s plans to forcibly transfer the Palestinian residents of Khan al-Ahmar in the southern West Bank. Israel has refrained from carrying out those plans, likely in large part because of ICC scrutiny.

That tribunal in The Hague investigates individuals rather than states. By approving the Israeli government’s plans to forcibly transfer Palestinians in Masafer Yatta, the judges who unanimously ruled in favor of the state this week may attract unwanted court attention.

No justice in “occupier’s court”
The judges’ decision will also bolster the arguments of Palestinians and international observers that there is scant justice to be found in “the occupier’s court,” as the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem put it on Thursday.

As a court of last resort, the ICC defers to national proceedings under the principle of complementarity – meaning that it privileges a country’s internal investigations into suspected war crimes, where they exist.

By contrast, with this week’s ruling, Israel’s high court once again demonstrates that its role is to legitimize and facilitate war crimes.

In the Masafer Yatta ruling, the judges reject the claim that forcible transfer is prohibited under international law, treating it as a treaty norm – meaning that it reflects “agreements between states but is not enforceable in a domestic court,” according to Michael Sfard, a human rights lawyer who characterized that analysis as “an embarrassing legal error.”

His view was shared by Francesca Albanese, the new UN special rapporteur for human rights in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, who said that “dismissing the binding force of almost universally ratified [international] treaties” in the context of the occupation amounts to “apartheid.”

This week’s high court ruling would not be the first time that Israel has invented a legal paradigm to justify oppressive measures against Palestinians.

Israel’s judicial system as a whole exists to provide a liberal and democratic facade to a brutal settler-colonial regime


The ruling should also serve as a reminder that just about every facet of the Israeli government is implicated in Israel’s settlement enterprise in the occupied West Bank – likely to be a primary focus of the ICC investigation, should it move forward.


The same goes for Israeli government personnel, including David Mintz, one of the three justices who issued the Masafer Yatta verdict. Mintz, who was born in England, lives in Dolev, a settlement in the West Bank built in violation of international law.

“Expel us one by one”
The ruling by Mintz and the other judges finds that the residents of eight villages in Masafer Yatta, near Hebron, began living illegally in the area after it was declared a military firing zone in 1981, despite Palestinians having resided there before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel presented aerial footage to the court to demonstrate that the villages had existed in Masafer Yatta for generations, according to the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz.

“The court rejected the claim that turning the area into a closed military zone was contrary to international law, and said that when international law contradicts Israeli law, the latter prevails,” Haaretz added.

Ariel Sharon, then Israel’s agriculture minister, admitted in 1981 that the area was declared a firing zone for the purpose of displacing Palestinians from their land so it may be seized by Israel.

Palestinians in Masafer Yatta have mounted a legal challenge to Israel’s plans ever since then.


The high court decision concluding two decades of legal proceedings was delivered overnight on the eve of this year’s commemoration of Israeli “Independence Day.”
Israel declared its independence on 14 May 1948 following a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing that left hundreds of Palestinian cities, towns and villages destroyed and depopulated.

The hundreds of thousands of Palestinians forced from their homes and lands around the time of Israel’s declaration of independence, as well as their descendants, remain refugees or internally displaced within Israel.

Basel Adra, a Palestinian resident of Masafer Yatta, stated after the Israeli high court ruling on Thursday that “the army can now place us on trucks … and expel us from our ancient villages, one by one.”

Breaking the Silence, a group of whistleblowing former Israeli soldiers, said that the forced transfer of Masafer Yatta residents “is not only a humanitarian catastrophe that could set a precedent for other communities across the West Bank, but a clear step in de facto annexation … and cementing military rule indefinitely.”

Each of the Masafer Yatta petitioners were ordered by the high court judges to pay around $6,000 in legal expenses for their bid to remain on their land.

(Electronic Intifada)

Featured Image: Israeli forces conduct a drill in the Masafer Yatta area of the southern West Bank in February 2021.

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Re: Palestine

Post by blindpig » Wed May 11, 2022 3:21 pm

hireen Abu Akleh: Al Jazeera reporter killed by Israeli gunfire
Israeli forces shot Abu Akleh in the head while she was on assignment in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.

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Shireen Abu Akleh was covering Israeli raids on Jenin in the occupied West Bank [Al Jazeera]
By Zena Al Tahhan
Published On 11 May 2022

11 May 2022
Israeli forces have shot dead Al Jazeera’s journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

Abu Akleh, a longtime TV correspondent for Al Jazeera Arabic, was killed on Wednesday while covering Israeli army raids in the city of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank.

Abu Akleh was wearing a press vest and was standing with other journalists when she was killed.


The head of the medicine department at al-Najah University in Nablus confirmed that Abu Akleh was shot in the head. He said that her body was transferred for an autopsy based on an order from the public prosecution.

Another Al Jazeera journalist, Ali al-Samoudi, was also wounded by a bullet in the back at the scene. He is now in stable condition.

‘No confrontations’

Al-Samoudi and other journalists at the scene said there were no Palestinian fighters present when the journalists were shot, directly disputing an Israeli statement referencing the possibility that it was Palestinian fire.

“We were going to film the Israeli army operation and suddenly they shot us without asking us to leave or stop filming,” said al-Samoudi.


“The first bullet hit me and the second bullet hit Shireen … there was no Palestinian military resistance at all at the scene.”

Shatha Hanaysha, a local journalist who was standing next to Abu Akleh when she was shot, also told Al Jazeera that there had been no confrontations between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli army. She said the group of journalists had been directly targeted.

“We were four journalists, we were all wearing vests, all wearing helmets,” Hanaysha said. “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 being fired. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.”

The details of Abu Akleh’s killing are still emerging, but videos of the incident show that she was shot in the head, said Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim.


“What we know for now is that the Palestinian health ministry has announced her death. Shireen Abu Akleh was covering the events unfolding in Jenin, specifically, an Israeli raid on the city, which is north of the occupied West Bank, when she was hit by a bullet to the head,” Ibrahim said, speaking from the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

In her last email to the network, Abu Akleh sent a message to Al Jazeera’s Ramallah bureau at 6:13 a.m. in which she wrote: “Occupation forces storm Jenin and besiege a house in the Jabriyat neighbourhood. On the way there – I will bring you news as soon as the picture becomes clear.”

Separately on Wednesday in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said an 18 year old Palestinian, Thaer Mislet-Yazouri, was shot by Israeli forces in the town of el-Bireh, near the illegal settlement of Psagot.

Shock and grief

Abu Akleh, who was a dual Palestinian-American national, was one of Al Jazeera’s first field correspondents, joining the network in 1997.


Grief and sorrow filled the Al Jazeera offices in downtown Ramallah as the news quickly spread and dozens of colleagues, fellow journalists, friends, and Palestinian figures poured in, including Palestinian politicians Hanan Ashrawi and Khalida Jarrar.

Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar said that Abu Akleh was the voice of Palestinians and was killed by “the monstrosity of Israeli colonialism and occupation”.

“Shireen was always my voice from the prison cells,” Jarrar told Al Jazeera, adding that a month into her last detention by Israel, Shireen was the first person she saw at her court hearings.

“Shireen was our voice. It is unbelievable. It is a crime, it is all clear – intentional and direct targeting. She was targeted. It’s clear,” said Jarrar.


One of Abu Akleh’s former colleagues, Mohammad Hawwash, who knew her for more than 25 years, said she was a “real journalist”.

“Shereen was a professional and unbiased journalist who conveyed the reality and events as they are,” Hawwash, 70, told Al Jazeera.

The Israeli military said its soldiers had come under attack with heavy gunfire and explosives while operating in Jenin, and that they fired back. It added that it was “investigating the event”.

The Palestinian presidency condemned the killing, saying in a statement that it holds the Israeli occupation responsible.


Palestinian Authority (PA) government spokesperson Ibrahim Melhem described it as a “comprehensive crime committed against a well-known journalist”.

“The killing was deliberate… There will be an autopsy by Palestinian medics, which will be followed by a report including all the details of the killing,” Melhem told Al Jazeera. “However, all the witnesses present at the scene of the crime ensures that it was an Israeli sniper that committed the crime in a deliberate way.”

Yair Lapid, the Israeli foreign minister, said Tel Aviv was offering a “joint pathological investigation” into Abu Akleh’s “sad death”. He added that “journalists must be protected in conflict zones”.

Al Jazeera’s offices in the Gaza Strip, in a building that also housed the Associated Press, were bombed by Israeli forces during an offensive a year ago, and Palestinian and international journalists say they have been regularly targeted by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.


Many in Palestine and abroad took to social media to express their shock and grief.

“Israeli occupation forces assassinated our beloved journalist Shireen Abu Akleh while covering their brutality in Jenin this morning. Shireen was most prominent Palestinian journalist and a close friend,” wrote Husam Zomlot, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Kingdom.


Those who knew her described her as brave, kind and a voice for the Palestinians.


“Shireen was a brave, kind and high integrity journalist that I and millions of Palestinians grew up watching,” wrote Fadi Quran, an activist at the campaign group, Avaaz.

“Horrified to hear of Israel’s killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin! Shireen has boldly covered Israel’s aggression in Palestine for over two decades,” wrote Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American activist and lawyer.

“In disbelief,” wrote Salem Barahmeh, a Palestinian activist. “We grew up to her reporting on the second intifada. She was our voice. Rest in power and peace. Another day, another tragedy.”


Giles Trendle, Al Jazeera’s managing director, said the network was “shocked and saddened” by the death of Shireen Abu Akleh.

“We have had a history throughout the world but particularly in this region, where we have had tragedies,” he said, calling for a transparent investigation of the killing of Abu Akleh.

“As journalists, we carry on. Our mission is to carry on. We will not be silenced,” said Trendle. “Our mission is always to carry on to inform the world what is happening. And that is more important ever.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/1 ... journalist

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Israeli occupation forces have killed 50 Palestinians so far this year

Israel has also used collective punishment against Palestinians by repeatedly closing the crossings connecting Israel with the occupied territories, preventing thousands of Palestinians from traveling and working there

May 10, 2022 by Abdul Rahman

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(Photo: Flash90)

According to a statement issued by the Palestinian Ministry of Health on Monday, May 9, Israel has killed at least 50 Palestinians since the beginning of the current year inside the occupied territories. The figure is several times higher than the previous year. 14 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the same period last year.

The majority of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces were protesting against the “military raids” being carried out in their villages or refugee camps inside the occupied West Bank. At least 17 were killed in Jenin and seven in Nablus.

In April alone, 23 Palestinians were killed and over a thousand were arrested by the Israeli forces in such raids.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health claimed in the statement that if Palestinians killed inside the 1948 territories are included, the death toll reaches 53, including three women and eight children.

The increase in Palestinian fatalities is an indication of Israel’s renewed emphasis on the use of force against all forms of peaceful Palestinian resistance. In December, the Naftali Bennett government had given permission to its security forces to open fire on unarmed demonstrations.

After some Palestinians carried out attacks inside Israel, resulting in the death of Israeli citizens in March, the Israeli government announced it was giving a free hand to its forces, leading to increased raids inside the Palestinian villages, mostly during the night.

Meanwhile, the decision by the Naftali Bennett government to promote orthodox Jewish visits in the Al-Aqsa mosque compound during Ramadan led to large-scale protests in occupied East Jerusalem and inside other occupied territories.

Closed crossings increases Palestinian hardships
In the lead up to Israel’s Independence and Memorial days, it had imposed a complete ban on Palestinians entering into the 1948 territories from both occupied West Bank and Gaza, claiming security concerns during the celebrations. On Monday, Israel announced opening of the crossings from the West Bank, but extended the ban on Palestinians entering from the besieged Gaza strip.

Palestinians have claimed that Israel has been closing the crossings as a part of its “collective punishment” policy against Palestinians resisting the occupation.

The Beit Hanoun/Erez crossings between Gaza and Israel were first closed on April 23 until further notice. Initially, Israel claimed that the closure was in response to missile attacks from the territory. Following a public outcry, it announced the opening of the crossings soon after. However, on May 1, under the pretext of the holidays, Israel again announced the closure of the crossings beginning from May 3.

Gaza’s economy has suffered tremendously due the complete air, sea and land blockade imposed by Israel since 2006. Closing of crossings multiplies the sufferings of the nearly two million Palestinians living in the area.

Even after announcing the opening of the West Bank crossings on Monday, the Israeli government announced that it would maintain restrictions on movement on residents of the Rummanah village, alleging that the perpetrators of a recent knife attack against Israelis came from that village.

Israeli authorities also plan to demolish the houses of the Elad accused despite such practices being considered as an illegal act of “collective punishment.”

Thousands of Palestinians travel through the crossings every day for work, health facilities, or to meet their relatives in Israel and other purposes. According to Times of Israel, around 160,000 Palestinians have work permits to work in Israel.

The closure of the crossings has also affected visits of Palestinians to relatives imprisoned inside Israeli jails. Palestinian news agency Wafa reported on Monday that all such visits scheduled for last week had to be cancelled and that the renewal of the closing orders means that people from Gaza cannot visit their relative this week as well.

There are around 4,500 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Most of them have been denied visits by relatives for long as such meetings were suspended for almost two years following the outbreak of COVID-19.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/05/10/ ... this-year/

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Rewriting UNRWA: The US-Israeli Plan to Cancel Out the Palestinian Right of Return
May 10, 2022
By Ramzy Baroud – May 4, 2022

Palestinians are justifiably worried that the mandate granted to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, might be coming to an end. UNRWA’s mission, which has been in effect since 1949, has done more than provide urgent aid and support to millions of refugees. It was also a political platform that protected and preserved the rights of several generations of Palestinians.

Though UNRWA was not established as a political or legal platform per se, the context of its mandate was largely political, since Palestinians became refugees as a result of military and political events – the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by Israel and the latter’s refusal to respect the Right of Return for Palestinians as enshrined in UN resolution 194 (III) of December 11, 1948.

“UNRWA has a humanitarian and development mandate to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight,” the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of December 8, 1949 read. Alas, neither a ‘lasting solution’ to the plight of the refugees, nor even a political horizon has been achieved. Instead of using this realization as a way to revisit the international community’s failure to bring justice to Palestine and to hold Israel and its US benefactors accountable, it is UNRWA and, by extension, the refugees that are being punished.

In a stern warning on April 24, the head of the political committee at the Palestinian National Council (PNC), Saleh Nasser said that UNRWA’s mandate might be coming to an end. Nasser referenced a recent statement by the UN body’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, about the future of the organization.

Lazzarini’s statement, published a day earlier, left room for some interpretation, though it was clear that something fundamental regarding the status, mandate and work of UNRWA is about to change. “We can admit that the current situation is untenable and will inevitably result in the erosion of the quality of the UNRWA services or, worse, to their interruption,” Lazzarini said.

Commenting on the statement, Nasser said that this “is a prelude to donors stopping their funding for UNRWA.”

The subject of UNRWA’s future is now a priority within the Palestinian, but also Arab political discourse. Any attempts at canceling or redefining UNRWA’s mission will pose a serious, if not an unprecedented challenge for Palestinians. UNRWA provides educational, health and other support for 5.6 million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. At an annual budget of $1.6 billion, this support, and the massive network that has been created by the organization, cannot be easily replaced.

Equally important is the political nature of the organization. The very existence of UNRWA means that there is a political issue that must be addressed regarding the plight and future of Palestinian refugees. In fact, it is not the mere lack of enthusiasm to finance the organization that has caused the current crisis. It is something bigger, and far more sinister.

In June 2018, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to former US President Donald Trump, visited Amman, Jordan, where he, according to the US Foreign Policy magazine, tried to persuade Jordan’s King Abdullah to remove the refugee status from 2 million Palestinians currently living in the country.

This and other attempts have failed. In September 2018, Washington, under the Trump administration, decided to cease its financial support of UNRWA. As the organization’s main funder, the American decision was devastating, because about 30 percent of UNRWA’s money comes from the US alone. Yet, UNRWA hobbled along by increasing its reliance on the private sector and individual donations.

Though the Palestinian leadership celebrated the Biden Administration’s decision to resume UNRWA’s funding on April 7, 2021, a little caveat in Washington’s move was largely kept secret. Washington only agreed to fund UNRWA after the latter agreed to sign a two-year plan, known as Framework for Cooperation. In essence, the plan effectively turned UNRWA into a platform for Israel and American policies in Palestine, whereby the UN body consented to US – thus Israeli – demands to ensure that no aid would reach any Palestinian refugee who has received military training “as a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Army”, other organizations or “has engaged in any act of terrorism”. Moreover, the Framework expects UNRWA to monitor “Palestinian curriculum content”.

By entering into an agreement with the US Department of State, “UNRWA has effectively transformed itself from a humanitarian agency that provides assistance and relief to Palestinian refugees, to a security agency furthering the security and political agenda of the US, and ultimately Israel,” BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights noted.

Palestinian protests, however, did not change the new reality, which effectively altered the entire mandate granted to UNRWA by the international community nearly 73 years ago. Worse, European countries followed suit when, last September, the European parliament advanced an amendment that would condition EU support of UNRWA on the editing and rewriting of Palestinian school text books that, supposedly, ‘incite violence’ against Israel.

Instead of focusing solely on shutting down UNRWA immediately, the US, Israel and their supporters are working to change the nature of the organization’s mission and to entirely rewrite its original mandate. The agency that was established to protect the rights of the refugees, is now expected to protect Israeli, American and western interests in Palestine.

Though UNRWA was never an ideal organization, it has indeed succeeded in helping millions of Palestinians throughout the years, while preserving the political nature of their plight.

Though the Palestinian Authority, various political factions, Arab governments and others have protested the Israeli-American designs against UNRWA, such protestations are unlikely to make much difference, considering that UNRWA itself is surrendering to outside pressures. While Palestinians, Arabs and their allies must continue to fight for UNRWA’s original mission, they must urgently develop alternative plans and platforms that would shield Palestinian refugees and their Right of Return from becoming marginal and, eventually, forgotten.

If Palestinian refugees are removed from the list of political priorities concerning the future of a just peace in Palestine, neither justice nor peace can possibly be attained.

https://orinocotribune.com/rewriting-un ... of-return/

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People walk past a mural of former South African President Nelson Mandela in Katlehong, south of Johannesburg, South Africa. (Photo: Themba Hadebe | AP)

My Nelson Mandela is dead
Originally published: MintPress News on May 6, 2022 by Miko Peled (more by MintPress News) (Posted May 11, 2022)

On the wall of the courtyard at “The Citadel” in Beit Sahour is a mural of great Palestinian figures, both women and men. Many of them are dead; those who still live spent time in prison and are prohibited from living in their homeland. And yet Palestinians are constantly demanded to answer the question, “Where is the Palestinian Nelson Mandela?”

“My Nelson Mandela is dead,” my long-time friend Baha Hilo answered, as this question was posed to him by visitors at the “Citadel.” The Palestinian Mandelas are dead and buried, or sometimes buried alive in Israeli prisons with long sentences that in some ways are like a death sentence.

The figures on the mural at the citadel include women who were part of the armed struggle, like Dalal Al-Mughrabi, Laila Khaled, Zakia Shamout. There are cartoonist Naji Al-Ali, who created Handala and was assassinated; the great writer Ghassan Kanafani, brutally murdered by Israel; the poet Ibrahim Touqan; the poet Abdel Raheem Mahmoud, who was also assassinated; Nizar El-Banat, who was murdered by the Palestinian Authority, an arm of the Zionist occupation; and Basel Al-Araj, a writer and fighter who was killed by Israeli forces. All Palestinians who are part of a long story of struggle.

If we insist on bringing up the South African struggle against aparthied, then we would be better to ask Israelis, and perhaps even some Jewish people around the world, “Where is your Ruth First?” Ruth First was a major figure in the fight to bring down the South African apartheid regime and on the 17th of August, 1982 she was killed by a letter bomb. Her assassination is believed to have been the work of the South African security agencies.

One would also ask, “Where is the Israeli Albie Sachs?” His work to free South Africans from apartheid brought the South African security agents to place a bomb in his car on April 7, 1988. The explosion blew up his car and he lost an arm and the sight of one eye. After Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, he appointed Sachs to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court. As a Constitutional Court judge, Justice Sachs was the chief architect of the post-apartheid constitution of 1996.

We should also ask, “Where is the Israeli Joe Slovo?” Slovo was chief of staff of uMkhonto we Sizwe, the military wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He served on the revolutionary council of the ANC and was the first white member of the ANC’s national executive. All three were Jewish and white and they paid heavily for their commitment to justice and their fight for a free South Africa.

Still, people never ask this of Israelis and other Jewish Zionists, because it is much easier to demand an explanation from the victims than to hold the perpetrators accountable.

A strategy
“What is your strategy for liberation?” is another question posed to Palestinians. This is a lot like asking the prisoners in a maximum-security prison what their strategy is for escape. One may assume that prisoners think of little else and strategize on ways to escape or at least get parole, but the question remains ridiculous because the power of the system that holds them is immense and its control over them and their actions is practically absolute. Palestinians live in a sophisticated prison called “Israel” and, like inmates in a prison, they dream of liberation, even as they do their best to live and exist under the brutal regime imposed upon them.

Rarely, if ever, do we hear people ask Israelis, “What is your strategy for peace, equality and justice?” If the question were posed, the answer would be: “There is none.” This is because Israel is interested in neither peace, justice nor equality. Destruction of Palestine was the strategy all along and from the very beginning, the rest of the world was either complicit or just standing by and allowing the destruction to take place.

Keeping the hope
The way to liberate the Palestinians from Israel requires replacing the apartheid regime known as “Israel” with a free, democratic Palestine–and not expecting that Israel itself will allow Palestinians to be free. Israel isn’t just the perpetrator of the crime, it is, in and of itself, the crime. The existence of Apartheid Israel is the crime. So it is up to those of us on the outside, who are not bound by the rules of apartheid, to make every effort to dismantle this system of oppression known as “Israel.” The possibility of this taking place, however, is not something that necessarily inspires hope, because it demands a struggle against forces that seem to be invincible.

People like to “find hope” in the most absurd places. Representations of normalization, the “peace, and dialogue industry,” have been instrumental in creating the ridiculous sense of hope that is based not on a realistic understanding of what must be done, but on a myth of an Israel that will allow the Palestinian people to establish a state one day–a state that will be governed by “good Palestinians” who refrain from violence and “unrealistic demands” like the return of the refugees, full equality, and the dismantling of the Zionist colonialist system.

Israel and its allies know that they have to be vigilant and that even the slightest crack in their wall of lies and misinformation can lead to the collapse of the Zionist regime. This is why in the U.S. they have a presence in every town and city, in school boards and small city councils; they have a presence in the churches and they have a presence on college campuses.

The Zionist campaign is vicious and relentless because the Zionists know that once a crack is made in their line of defense–a line that is made of deception, falsehoods, and fabrication–they will fall, never to rise again. Forcing that wall of deception to fall is the task that must be undertaken by people of conscience working for justice and peace. We must formulate a strategy to dismantle the wall and the system that built it.

https://mronline.org/2022/05/11/my-nels ... a-is-dead/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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