progressiveissuesblog

Anti-Palestinian Racism

Updated 2023-12-01

Anti-Palestinian Racism: A resource   We offer this resource and hope it will be of use in recognizing a pervasive and mostly unnamed form of racism in the West. You can read it on the AEP site here.    The Anti-Empire Project     https://justinpodur.substack.com/p/10295968_anti-palestinian-racism

2023-11-28 “Atmosphere of Hate”: AFSC Leader & Palestinian Vermonter on Shooting of 3 College Students    We get an update on the three university students of Palestinian descent who were shot Saturday in Burlington, Vermont. Two were wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic at the time of the attack. Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ahmad are now recovering, though Hisham Awartani, who was shot in the spine, has reportedly lost feeling in the lower part of his body. The FBI is reportedly investigating whether the shooting was a hate crime. “This atmosphere of hate” starts “from the federal level,” declares Wafic Faour of the organization Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, who joins us to discuss the recent history of Vermont’s suppression of pro-Palestinian sentiment. “If you talk about Palestinian rights, you’re going to be called ‘terrorist,’” says Faour, yet although “the attacker is a white supremacist, … we don’t call it as is.” We also speak to Joyce Ajlouny, former director of the Ramallah Friends School in the occupied West Bank, where the three victims were students together. She reads poems they wrote in sixth grade and notes that over the course of the decadeslong occupation, “Palestinians of all faiths … have not been offered the humanity and dignity that they deserve.”  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/28/vermont_palestinian_students_shooting_wafic_faour

2023-11-28 Uncle of Palestinian shot in VT: ‘I feel a sense of shame’ believing U.S. ‘would be safer for him’    Three Palestinian college students shot in Vermont this weekend are facing a future forever changed by what many are calling a hate crime. Rich Price, the uncle of worst-injured Hisham Awartani, joins Andrea Mitchell to discuss Hisham’s condition, why he thought his nephew would be safer in New England than the West Bank and the rise in both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism on college campuses. “As an uncle, I feel a sense of shame, Andrea, along with other members of my family, really encouraging him to pursue his studies here in the United States, believing in part that it would be safer for him,” says Price. On coverage of his nephew, Price adds, “We’re excited to have positive representation of Palestinian young men. A representation that is not often shown in this country and these three young men are incredible.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_VHtm7JTu4

2023-11-28 Suspect arrested in shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont   oe Biden has expressed horror at the shooting of three Palestinian students in Burlington, Vermont and, amid heightened tensions with the crisis in Israel and Gaza reverberating in the US, reiterated on Monday that “there is no place for violence or hate in America”. 

The victims – Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmed, all 20 years old – are undergraduate students at Brown University, Haverford College and Trinity College, respectively, and were on their way to Awartani’s grandmother’s house for a Thanksgiving dinner when a white man with a handgun fired on them.

A suspect was arrested on Sunday after the shootings the night before that wounded the men, police said, adding that contrary to media reports the shooter did not speak before firing.  Jason J Eaton, 48, was arrested on Sunday afternoon near where the men were shot, the Burlington police department announced. They said he lives in an apartment close to the scene, a search of which revealed evidence that gave investigators “probable cause to believe that Mr Eaton perpetrated the shooting”, police said.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/suspect-arrested-in-shooting-of-three-palestinian-students-in-vermont/ar-AA1kAUOq

2023-11-27 Bernie Sanders discusses Vermont shooting, Israel-Hamas war     The man accused of shooting three Palestinian students in Burlington, Vermont, pleaded not guilty to attempted murder Monday. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders joins “America Decides” to discuss the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia amid the Israel-Hamas war, and the funding battle on Capitol Hill. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRsL_nyZobU

2023-11-27 See how even in the USA Palestinian being target! Three Palestinian college students Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali and Kenan Abdulhamid were shot in Burlington, Vermont for allegedly wearing the keffiyeh and speaking Arabic!   https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=659430489705510&set=a.101777288804169

2022-10-25 Exodus, Nakba Denialism, and the Mobilization of Anti-Arab Racism     Nakba denialism – that is, denying Zionist culpability for the mass expulsions of Palestinian Arabs from their homeland in 1948 – has long been a feature of US discourse on Palestine. Through a content analysis of Leon Uris’ 1958 novel, Exodus, I argue that Nakba denialism rests on three anti-Arab racist tropes. The first trope presents Palestinian Arabs as lacking religious attachment to Palestine, the second trope claims they lack modern feelings of national identity, and the third trope claims they are easily induced to commit acts of violence by their ruthless leaders. Through the deployment of these tropes, the Exodus narrative popularized key elements of Nakba denialism in US discourse by blaming the victims of settler colonial violence for the expulsions they faced. More broadly, this article shows how the imbrication of race and settler colonialism functions to epistemologically erase the very acts of settler colonial violence that produce racialized Others.    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/08969205221132878

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Anti-Israel is not Anti-Semitic

Updated 2024-07-15

Jewish Voice for Peace JVP isn’t just organizing our people to demand a ceasefire: We’re challenging our opposition’s narrative — one that conflates Jewishness with support for the state of Israel.

Below, you’ll find a roundup of our national staff discussing the dangers of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism, the role of Jewish organizing in the movement for Palestinian liberation, and the Jewish-led protests for a ceasefire happening in cities across the U.S. right now.

2024-04-27 Criticism of Israel is not Antisemitism   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkLu4PIRtOg

2024-02-16 Palestine Talks | Professor Avi Shlaim says “anti-Semitism was an European, not Arab problem”   ritish-Israeli historian Professor Avi Shlaim was born in Iraq to Jewish parents in 1945, and moved to the newly established State of Israel as a 5-year-old. He speaks to TRT World about how Jews lived peacefully in the Arab and Muslim world before Zionism and the import of anti-Semitism from Europe. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krOE1QOWziA&list=PLUW304lJeu3Vg_nM0WQfWDZTDyu6h6PlD&index=12&t=12s

2023-12-08 Equating Anti-Zionism to Antisemitism a Slap in the Face to Jews Like Me      Jewish people of conscience know that Israel’s massacre of Palestine is also an assault on the Jewish faith.  I am a Jewish person who opposes the settler colonial state of Israel. This is not despite my Judaism, but because of it.

My Jewish elders taught me that governments can manipulate and confuse the public to distract from genocide. I learned that media and political leaders dehumanize and demonize the oppressed, turning their backs on mass suffering as an unquestioning public continues to go about their daily lives.   I was also instilled with the belief that this is never acceptable, no matter who the oppressor is. So while Jewish people certainly have a right to exist, genocidal settler colonies constructed on mass indigenous graves, do not. Palestinians have an inalienable right to return to their homeland and live in peace.

According to the US House of Representatives, this viewpoint now makes me antisemitic. https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/anti-zionism-does-not-equal-antisemitism

2023-11-25 Justifying the Unjustifiable in Palestine    Ralph is joined by author and human rights activist Miko Peled. They discuss the excuses that Israel uses to defend the atrocities they commit against Palestinians, and the truth behind all the propaganda.  

Anybody who is not courageous enough to stand up and speak the truth and stand up for what is right, because they might be called this name or that name—it’s cowardice, it’s hypocrisy. Being called antisemitic is a small price to pay when you talk about standing for the rights of millions of people who have been living under such terror for so many decades.

 This is pure revenge. What we’re seeing is vengeance of a military force and a state that have been humiliated. And just like any bully, any gangster who’s been humiliated, they take it out on the weakest people they can find, people who cannot defend themselves… It’s revenge for the sake of revenge. It’s savagery for the sake of savagery. It’s brutality in its purest form. There’s no other reason than the brutality itself.

Palestinians deserve nothing less than the lifting of the siege, release of all prisoners, and the dismantling of the apartheid state. Nothing less than that should be demanded. And all we’re seeing people talk about is ceasefires, as though a ceasefire is some great accomplishment. Ceasefire does not provide the possibility of a future where this is not repeated. What needs to be demanded now is a political solution that will ensure the safety and security of Palestinians—and that is never part of the conversation. A ceasefire does not secure the lives or the security of Palestinians, because we know Israel will violate it a week later.

It’s not going to collapse because Israelis agree. It’s not going to collapse because Israelis wake up one morning in a good mood. Israel is going to have to be forced on its knees. Just like in South Africa, whites in South Africa were on their knees. We’re talking about severe sanctions. We’re talking about closing down all diplomatic missions. We’re talking about not allowing Israelis to participate in sporting events, cultural events, any events, academic arenas. They need to be shunned. Israeli society and the apartheid state that they created need to be brought on their knees.  https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/justifying-the-unjustifiable-in-palestine

2023-11-27 NYC councilwoman blasts failure of ‘modern progressivism’ after anti-Israel high school riot    “I was sickened by what I saw at Hillcrest HS, but sadly I was not surprised,” Republican New York City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino told Fox News Digital on Sunday. “Our education system is fundamentally broken, and antisemitic riots like this are sadly the natural result of years of woke leftist indoctrination replacing real education.   https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/nyc-councilwoman-blasts-failure-of-modern-progressivism-after-anti-israel-high-school-riot/ar-AA1kAfhe

2023-11-26 NYC Mayor Eric Adams blasts students’ ‘vile show of antisemitism’ that forced teacher to hide in office    New York City Mayor Eric Adams said city officials are investigating a “vile show of antisemitism” in which students at a high school in Queens reportedly rioted after learning a teacher attended a pro-Israel rally.   The incident shut down Hillcrest High School in Jamaica Hills, Queens, for two hours on Monday and forced the teacher to hide inside a locked office while the students rampaged down the halls, the New York Post first reported.    “The vile show of antisemitism at Hillcrest High School was motivated by ignorance-fueled hatred, plain and simple, and it will not be tolerated in any of our schools, let alone anywhere else in our city,” Adams wrote on X.https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nyc-mayor-eric-adams-blasts-students-vile-show-of-antisemitism-forced-teacher-hide-office

2023-11-11 Doctors Are Being Fired After Pro-Hamas Posts   A prominent watchdog group has been calling attention to doctors who have posted messages in support of Hamas, and several of those doctors have since reportedly been fired.   StopAntisemitism, an American nonprofit watchdog organization, began resharing alleged pro-Hamas posts from doctors following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/doctors-are-being-fired-after-pro-hamas-posts/ar-AA1jJoq2

2021-05-16 The Most Ardent Practitioners Of “Identity Politics” Are “Pro-Israel” Advocates    But have you noticed that the IDW’s disdain for “identity politics” and all its attendant excesses — the cheap performative outrage, capricious offense-taking, and over-eagerness to ascribe bigoted motivations — seem to go completely out the window when when the discussion turns to Israel? Leading figures in the Intellectual Dark Web responded with such ferocious, emotionally-reactive indignation to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s recent allegedly “anti-semitic” comments that they began to deploy exactly the same stultifying argumentative tactics they’d almost certainly deplore in virtually any other context.  https://mtracey.substack.com/p/the-most-ardent-practitioners-of

2015-If Americans Knew (About Israel) with Alison Weir   Being against the policies Israel is not being anti-Semitic   http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2015/10/if-americans-knew-about-israel-with.html

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

American Jews

2022-11-29 American Jews and Israel  

2:35 Eric’s new book We Are Not One, about changing American Jewish attitudes toward Israel over the years

7:28 Jewish-American identity before its “Zionization”

10:01 Why fewer young American Jews are feeling the pro-Israel vibe

15:25 Israel in American politics

23:04 The “Israel as apartheid state” debate

35:28 How the 1960’s defined Jewish visions of Israel

49:02 Is a “two-state solution” now the conservative position?

52:50 Zionism vs. social justice activism

1:04:22 Why Israel is fine with the Palestinian status quo

1:15:54 Does Israel really need US support?

1:20:32 Could international pressure help solve the Israel-Palestine conflict?   https://nonzero.substack.com/p/american-jews-and-israel-robert-wright#details

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital Airstrike

Updated 2024-02-23

2023-11-03 Media’s In-House Critics to Reporters: Quit Quoting Palestinians About Civilian Deaths      “The initial coverage of a deadly blast at a Gaza hospital last week offers a fresh reminder of how hard it can be to get the news right—and what happens when it goes awry,” wrote NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik.   The New York Times (10/23/23) offered an editorial mea culpa, saying its initial coverage “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified.”    Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post (10/18/23) heaped scorn on “Media Suckered by Hamas’s Hospital Lie,” saying, “We’re not sure why any reputable journo ever believed Hamas in the first place.” “Hard evidence shows that…the rocket was fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, not Israel,” the tabloid confidently asserted.

But the articles that chided media for being overly credulous toward Gazan authorities themselves failed to critically examine the claims they relied on. In fact, the rebukes of news outlets for citing Gazan officials were based on dubious or ambiguous evidence, and were cherry-picked to present a case that absolved Israel. This one-way skepticism suggests less a concern for careful, accurate  journalism than it does a worry that, at a time when a US-allied government is inflicting mass civilian casualties, the institutions of the targeted population will be treated as credible sources.

1. False: IDF has released audio of two Hamas operatives saying, quite literally, that the rocket is ‘from us’ (i.e. Islamist combatants trying to destroy Israel).” 

Truth: recording was fabricated!

• False: video showing an airborne object bursting into flames around the time of the hospital explosion, with Israel asserting that this was the Islamic Jihad rocket that struck the hospital. 

Truth: A closer look at the video captured by the Al Jazeera live feed shows the rocket being completely destroyed and broken apart in the sky.  was able to identify four Israeli airstrikes on Gaza targeting the area near the hospital, starting at 18:54:28, then 18:55:03, then 18:57:42, and then 18:58:04.  

The hospital explosion happened at 18:59:55, in line with the sequence of Israeli airstrikes in the vicinity identified by Al Jazeera. The fact that Israel had been bombing the neighborhood immediately before the blast was left out of the articles bashing news outlets for quoting the Gaza Health Ministry.

• False: “Independent forensic experts…have indicated that the available evidence from the blast was inconsistent with the damage one would expect to see from an Israeli strike.”

Truth:  analysis of the impact site found a shallow channel of the sort an incoming missile would leave leading to the site from the northeast, while shrapnel splash marks fanned out to the southwest—again, opposite to the directions that the Israeli account would predict.

• False:  Israeli government insists that the hospital was never a target

Truth:   Israel does admit that the “hospital administration had received at least three warnings from the Israeli military to evacuate its wards” prior to the blast (New York Times, 10/18/23); Israel had “hit Al-Ahli Arab Hospital with an illumination artillery shell three days earlier, according to video evidence” (New York Times, 10/24/23). This circumstantial evidence was not included in the discussion of the supposed failure of media to be sufficiently skeptical of Palestinian allegations.

• False Bias: The only reason the Times apologia offered for giving more credence to Israeli than to Palestinian assertions was that the former were US-endorsed: “American and other international officials have said their evidence indicates that the rocket came from Palestinian fighter positions.”  

Truth Bias: Of course, a government that is the main supplier of weaponry to another government accused of committing a war crime is not an objective analyst; the US exoneration of Israel (which was also a self-exoneration) should not have been treated as particularly compelling evidence, let alone a definitive judgment.

• Accurate Story: On October 31, Israel bombed a Gaza refugee camp, killing more than 110 people, according to local doctors (Washington Post, 11/1/23)

Watered down Story to protect Isael:  New York Times print edition the next day began:  

An airstrike that Israel said was targeting Hamas militants caused widespread damage in a densely populated neighborhood of Gaza on Tuesday. Hamas and hospital officials said numerous people were killed and wounded.  

Media’s In-House Critics to Reporters: Quit Quoting Palestinians About Civilian Deaths

2023-10-18 Biden Sides with Israel After Airstrikes Level Gazan Hospital, Killing Hundreds of Palestinians    Gaza’s Health Ministry said Israel told the hospital it had sent “warning strikes” one day before the deadly explosion. The U.N. has called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire. Amid international condemnation over the attack, Israel has denied responsibility, blaming a Palestinian rocket. Israeli officials appeared to have deleted a video posted on social media showing Palestinian rockets being fired, after realizing the timestamp on the footage did not match up with the hospital attack. Jordanian King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas canceled a planned summit in Jordan with Biden in the wake of the hospital bombing. Biden said he was “outraged” by the attack, which constitutes a war crime, but sided with Israel as he made remarks alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier today. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/18/headlines/biden_sides_with_israel_after_airstrikes_level_gazan_hospital_killing_hundreds_of_palestinians

2023-10-18 EI livestream: Israel’s al-Ahli hospital massacre    Last night Israel bombed the al-Ahli hospital in northern Gaza. Al Jazeera is reporting this morning that 500 people were killed in the blast. The full death toll may not be known for some time. At least 1,000 children had already been killed by Israel in Gaza before the hospital massacre and the true death toll is almost certainly much higher.   https://asawinstanley.substack.com/p/ei-livestream-israels-al-ahli-hospital

2023-10-17 What we know about the deadly blast at a Gaza City hospital    In the dark of early evening in Gaza, reports emerged of an explosion at Gaza City’s al-Ahli hospital. Al-Ahli was crowded both with victims of 10 days of Israeli airstrikes and with families and others who have taken refuge on hospital grounds.    Video that The Associated Press confirmed as being from the hospital showed an orange ball of fire and flames engulfing the building and grounds.   https://apnews.com/article/hospital-airstrike-gaza-rocket-74ae3e38d9f771abd23d6d49c814b980

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Aid to Palestine

Updated 2024 07-15

2024-05-26 Aid trucks enter Gaza after weeks as Israeli attacks continue across strip     Estimated 200 aid trucks still fall far short of what the UN says is a minimum of 500-600 trucks required daily to feed millions of Palestinians on the brink of starvation.   Aid trucks are entering Gaza through Karem Abu Salem crossing in the south as the living conditions of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians continue to deteriorate under Israel’s relentless war on the Palestinian enclave.

Egypt’s state-affiliated Al-Qahera TV on Sunday shared a video on X, showing aid trucks entering Gaza through the crossing, known to Israelis as Kerem Shalom. Aid officials said 200 trucks loaded with aid are set to enter the strip.  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/26/aid-trucks-enter-gaza-after-weeks-as-israeli-attacks-continue-across-strip

2023-12-05 “There Simply Is No Safe Place in Gaza”: Aid Groups Demand Ceasefire as Israel Intensifies Its War    The World Health Organization is warning the crisis in Gaza is getting worse by the hour as Israel intensifies its ground and air assault across all parts of the Gaza Strip, including surrounding the Jabaliya refugee camp and bombing Khan Younis, where many had fled to from the north. With Israel’s attack killing close to 16,000 Palestinians, Shaina Low from the Norwegian Refugee Council describes the “hectic, chaotic, desperate” conditions on the ground and says she can barely get in touch with her colleagues in Gaza, let alone coordinate a humanitarian response to the destruction. “If they can’t get in touch with each other, our operations come to a standstill,” says Low. “We desperately need a ceasefire in order to be able to finally address these dire needs.” https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/5/no_safe_zones_in_gaza

2023-11-22 Don’t Trust a Model UN Nerd   Aid sites hit: “The Biden administration has been providing Israel with the location of humanitarian groups in Gaza for weeks to prevent strikes against their facilities,” reports Politico. But this has not dissuaded the Israeli military from hitting those areas. “Israel’s continued bombardment of these humanitarian facilities raises more questions about whether Washington has the political sway many in the administration want with Israel.”  

Aid workers have said that the Israeli military’s commitment to protecting humanitarian groups from strikes has been stronger in the past, but that they are showing less concern for those sites now. “We don’t see eye-to-eye on what they consider collateral damage or military necessity and what we consider a very high civilian toll, whether it’s in life or in infrastructure, including ours,” a United Nations official told Politico.   https://reason.com/2023/11/22/dont-trust-a-model-un-nerd/

2023-11-18 UN Forced to Halts Aid Deliveries Into Gaza, Warns of “Immediate Starvation”     On Friday the UN said that it was no longer able to continue aid deliveries into Gaza as an Israeli fuel blockade of the enclave has led to a widespread communications blackout. The World Health Organization warned that the ending of aid deliveries means the “immediate possibility of starvation” for the 2.3 million people in Gaza.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) announced it was forced to halt aid shipments into Gaza. “The communications network in #Gaza is down because there is NO fuel,” the agency said in a statement on social media. “This makes it impossible to manage or coordinate humanitarian aid convoys.” https://www.activistpost.com/2023/11/un-forced-to-halts-aid-deliveries-into-gaza-warns-of-immediate-starvation.html

2023-11-17 UN warns of Gaza starvation as concerns rise about safety in the south    The UN has said Gaza’s civilians face the “immediate possibility” of starvation, amid mounting concerns about Israeli plans to expand military operations in parts of the south where people have sought refuge from fighting.

Fuel shortages on Friday halted aid shipments and blacked out communications across the strip. The UN said its trucks could not move and it could not coordinate deliveries. Palestinian network operators said they could no longer power the phone and internet systems.  Fuel shortages have also in effect shut down water treatment and sewage systems, leading health authorities to warn about the spread of infectious diseases.

Israel said its forces were consolidating control of the north, as they continued the hunt for a Hamas command and control centre under al-Shifa hospital. A spokesperson attacked the “impatience” of demands for proof of Hamas headquarters there.    Since troops entered the compound on Wednesday, the military has published images of what it claimed was one tunnel entrance and weapons found in a truck inside the compound but no further evidence of Hamasactivity. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/17/gaza-un-starvation-disease

2023-10-27 ‘Gaza Is Being Strangled’: Head of UN Refugee Agency Issues Stirring Appeal for Cease-Fire    The head of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees issued an urgent appeal for a cease-fire in Gaza on Friday, warning that Israel’s blockade and incessant bombing are plunging the territory’s population into a horrific humanitarian emergency.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/un-gaza-cease-fire

2023-10-24 UN begs for more aid to enter Gaza as hospitals run out of fuel    Israel’s relentless bombing of Gaza is getting even deadlier, with more than 700 Palestinians killed overnight, the health ministry in the territory said on Tuesday.  Nearly 5,800 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since 7 October, according to the health ministry, including 2,360 children. Hundreds of people remain under the rubble of destroyed buildings.   The UN is begging Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, particularly fuel.

More than 5,000 patients are currently being treated at al-Shifa hospital, “significantly over its capacity of 700 patients,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Monday. Additionally, there are around 45,000 displaced people staying on the hospital grounds.

The UN added that “12 hospitals and 46 primary care clinics across Gaza have been forced to shut down due to damage they had sustained or lack of electricity and supplies.”   The World Health Organization has meanwhile documented 72 attacks on health care in Gaza resulting in 16 deaths and 30 injuries of on-duty health care workers. 

The lives of thousands of patients are at risk as hospitals run out of fuel, including 1,000 patients dependent on dialysis treatment, 130 premature babies and patients in intensive care or who rely on life support equipment.  WHO said that 34,000 liters of fuel were delivered to four hospitals in southern Gaza and the Palestine Red Crescent Society “to sustain its ambulance services.”  “However, this is only enough to keep ambulances and critical hospital functions running for a little over 24 hours,” WHO added.  https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/un-begs-more-aid-enter-gaza-hospitals-run-out-fuel

2023-10-19 Biden’s Gaza “aid” plan a fig leaf for genocide   The Biden administration on Wednesday vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling for humanitarian pauses to deliver urgently needed aid to Gaza.   But it put forward its own bogus “aid” plan that amounts to nothing more than “humanitarian” window dressing for Israel’s genocidal, US-backed bombing campaign.    The resolution introduced by Brazil “called for humanitarian access to Gaza and protection of civilians” and “condemned the Hamas attack on Israel” on 7 October, The New York Times reported.

 Majed Bamya, a diplomat representing the Palestinian Authority at the UN, said that Brazil’s “draft resolution was biased, politicized, failed to acknowledge Palestinian victims and the Israeli indiscriminate attacks against them, failed to call for a ceasefire, all to avoid a US veto.”   “It was just vetoed nevertheless,” Bamya added.   The US cast its veto, according to the Times, “because the US wanted to give diplomacy a chance as President Biden was in Israel and because it did not state that Israel has the right to defend itself.”   https://electronicintifada.net/content/bidens-gaza-aid-plan-fig-leaf-genocide/38976 2023-10-19 Bernie Sanders Blocks Ban on U.S. Aid to Gaza as Pentagon Sends More Materiel to Middle East    In Washington, D.C., Vermont independent Senator Bernie Sanders has blocked legislation that would have effectively barred U.S. humanitarian aid from reaching Gaza. On Wednesday, Sanders objected when Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott tried to pass the so-called Stop Taxpayer Funding of Hamas Act by unanimous consent.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/19/headlines/gaza_death_toll_nears_3_800_as_israels_siege_and_bombardment_enters_13th_day

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Zionism

Updated 2024-08-29

[MEK Note: Zionism orchestrated the Nakba, the violent mass slaughter of some 100 villages’ residents and forced exodus of 750K Palestinians to make Israel.  Today you don’t have to be Jewish to be a Zionist, just someone who blindly supports the state of Israel with no regard for the oppression, occupation, genocide, and ongoing Nakba II of Palestinian people by Israel.]  

Zionism – Wikipedia   

Zionism is a nationalist movement that emerged in the 19th century to enable the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine, a region roughly corresponding to the Land of Israel in Jewish tradition.  Following the establishment of Israel, Zionism became an ideology that supports “the development and protection of the State of Israel”.

From 1897 to 1948, the primary goal of the Zionist Movement was to establish the basis for a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and thereafter to consolidate it. In a unique variation of the principle of self-determination,[19] The Lovers of Zion united in 1884 and in 1897 the first Zionist congress was organized. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a large number of Jews immigrated to first Ottoman and later Mandatory Palestine, and at the same time, diplomatic attempts were made to gain worldwide recognition and support. Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has continued primarily to advocate on behalf of Israel and to address threats to its continued existence and security.

Creating an alliance with Great Britain and securing support for some years for Jewish emigration to Palestine, Zionists also recruited European Jews to immigrate there, especially Jews who lived in areas of the Russian Empire where antisemitism was raging. The alliance with Britain was strained as the latter realized the implications of the Jewish movement for Arabs in Palestine, but the Zionists persisted. The movement was eventually successful in establishing Israel on May 14, 1948 (5 Iyyar 5708 in the Hebrew calendar), as the homeland for the Jewish people.

In the Israeli Declaration of Independence    Major aspects of the Zionist idea are represented in the Israeli Declaration of Independence.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism    

Global Impact of Zionism – USCPR    Zionism impacts not only Palestinians, but people across the region and world. The most glaring example is how the Zionist settler colonial project extends beyond Palestine. Israel’s military occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights continues in parallel to its occupation of Palestinian lands, both defined by the forced displacement of the majority of the native population and construction of illegal settlements.

Israel’s ability to maintain its settler colonial project depends on the complicity and active support of other oppressive regimes. Concurrently, the US backing of brutal regimes in Egypt, Jordan, and elsewhere is intimately connected with the “special relationship” that Israel enjoys with US imperialism. Through US support to such regimes, Israel’s domination in the region is ensured.

Israel has also built economic and political power by exporting the strategies and tools developed repressing Palestinians to dictators, colonial regimes, and apartheid states across the world. Israel has armed and trained violent regimes from Apartheid South Africa, to Rhodesia (present day Zimbabwe), to Central and South America, to North Africa and Southwest Asia, including the Middle East.     https://uscpr.org/activist-resource/global-impact-of-zionism/

Fact Sheet: Rabbi Dov Lior   Dov Lior is an influential extremist Israeli settler rabbi and leading figure in the religious Zionist movement.   https://imeu.org/article/rabbi-dov-lior-a-case-study-in-state-sponsored-incitement 

2024-08-20 Religious Zionism MK calls settler violence ‘a drop in the ocean’ compared to Arab terrorism     Religious Zionist MK Zvi Sukkot characterized the serious incidents of violence committed by settlers in the West Bank as a “super marginal phenomenon, a drop in the ocean compared to Arab terrorism,” the Religious Zionist MK said on Sunday.   .https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/religious-zionism-mk-calls-settler-violence-a-drop-in-the-ocean-compared-to-arab-terrorism/ar-AA1p8Pyy

2024-08-14 OPINION: Israel: Leader of the Free World   For eight decades after the end of World War II, America’s proudest title was “Leader of the Free World.” Today, both on grounds of practical leadership and grasp of what it means to be free, we are yielding the title to Israel.   In order to remain free, we, and the world, must pass the Israel Test.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/opinion-israel-leader-of-the-free-world/ar-AA1oMNKv?

2024-07-23 Zionism Imprisons Palestine; De-centering ‘Jewish Values’ in Anti-Zionist Organizing     Prior to Israel’s current genocide in Gaza, that area was often referred since 2007 as an open air prison due to Israel’s complete control. Our first guest this morning argues that if we explore the violence of zionism – that is, not just Gaza but zionist control more broadly – as a prison, then an abolitionist challenge to it, can come into view. Our guest is Fathi Nemer, a researcher and writer who published a piece in Scalawag Magazine called “Imprisoning Palestine: Zionist colonialism through an abolitionist lens”, in which he and his co-author argue that Israel’s siege on Gaza is not the only carceral structure that zionism has imposed, but rather that the entirety of Palestinian life under zionism is a process of imprisonment.   Read the article here: https://scalawagmagazine.org/2023/06/abolitionist-palestine/   Check out Fathi Nemer’s website here: https://decolonizepalestine.com/

More than nine months of Israel’s genocidal onslaught on Gaza also means more than nine months of a movement against zionist aggression, which has developed more engagement than ever before in the movement for Palestinian lives and dignity. That organizing work is complex and doesn’t come without internal nuance and disagreement. For example, what does it mean for one group of people to take on leadership and accept funds for the liberation of another people? In this segment, we’ll be talking about anti-zionist Jewish organizing, and what it could look like for Jewish people interested in the liberation of Palestine to de-center themselves. Our guest is Anna Rajagopal, a Jewish anti-zionist organizer who lives and organizes in Houston. Her latest piece for Mondoweiss is titled, “No need for ‘Jewish values’ in the fight for Palestine”.  Read Anna Rajagopal’s piece here: https://mondoweiss.net/2024/06/no-need-for-jewish-values-in-the-fight-for-palestine/   https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-july-23-2024/

2024-06-24 ‘Faith in Dialogue’ Won’t Stop Zionist Violence   I spoke at academic institutions, civic organizations, and to religious groups. However there were always two groups which kept me away from their members:

Most synagogues — It was easy enough to explain this. Most organized Jewish institutions are partisan. They were and mostly still are, dedicated to the dream of a Jewish state functioning as a safe haven in an anti-Semitic world.

The downside of racism felt toward, and oppressive policies applied against, the Palestinians were realities they chose not to deal with. Even today, in the midst of overwhelming evidence of Israel’s failure to preserve either Jewish lives or Jewish ethics, most synagogues will not allow anti-Zionists to speak, even if they are Jewish. 

The other group, Black churches, was at first harder to comprehend. During the struggle for racial justice in the U.S., culminating with the civil rights legislation of 1964-1965, there was an alliance between American Jewish and Black organizations.

That alliance was not as smooth and solid as it is popularly believed, but it was real in the sense that you had two groups who saw something to be gained by supporting each other. Black American success in the mid 1960s actually loosened the alliance because it created the space for a Black reassessment of Zionism.

However, that reassessment did not reach those Black Americans who were religiously motivated to identify with a biblically imagined picture of Jewish history. Or, as the authors we are about to analyze put it, “our shared history of slavery and oppression and our common biblical commitment to the prophetic traditions of justice and equality.”    https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/24/faith-in-dialogue-wont-stop-zionist-violence/

2024-06-10 Palestine Post: Zionist Attacks in West Bank plus PYM Launches ‘Masks Off Maersk’ Campaign      Our guests this morning are Rehab Nazzal and Nadya Tannous https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-june-10-2024/

2024-04-27 Genocide Joe Biden is Very Clear Here.  As unintelligible as Genocide Joe’s speeches are today, think long and hard about what he says in this video. He is very clear and he is absolutely right. He doesn’t talk about defending Judaism, protecting Jews and the right of Jews, in particular Arab Jews to live in this region that they have lived in for thousands of years. He is defending US capitalism’s political and economic interests in the region. He is defending US capitalism’s colonial outpost there. He is defending Zionism.    https://weknowwhatsup.blogspot.com/2024/04/genocide-joe-biden-is-very-clear-here.html?

2024-03-13 Palestine Talks | Lauren Booth on Zionism “falling apart”   Writer and activist Lauren Booth illuminates what she believes accounts for the global surge of pro-Palestinian solidarity, how her own travels to Palestine shaped her as a person and challenged her Western views – emphasising the value of individualism over community – and the strength of Palestinians in opposing Zionist and colonial violence, from which key moral lessons – bearing on both Islam and universal principles of justice –can be learned.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y-c69DC0-0&list=PLUW304lJeu3Vg_nM0WQfWDZTDyu6h6PlD&index=8

2024-3-06 Palestine Talks | An Anti-Zionist Roundtable with Miko Peled and Sami Al-Arian    In this exclusive TRT World roundtable discussion featuring Israeli American activist and writer, Miko Peled, and Palestinian activist and professor Sami Al-Arian, who is the director of Center for Islam and Global Affairs based in Istanbul, Zionism is explored as a means of developing anti-Palestinian fear in its followers, a persecutory force against those who – in accordance with key moral principles and international law – stand up for the rights of Palestinians, and, finally, is embedded within American institutions of power.

Drawing largely from their own lived experiences, including remarkable challenges in relation to Zionism they have had to overcome, Miko Peled, who eventually rejected his Zionist upbringing to become an unwavering and outspoken ally to the Palestinian people, and  Sami Al-Arian, who was wrongly imprisoned in the United States after having been framed by Zionist supporters for aiding “terrorism”, speak to how pro-Palestinian solidarity, education and activism can upend Zionist oppression worldwide and lead to a future where both Palestinians and Israelis alike can actually live together – as equals.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AOr1Rfn15Y&list=PLUW304lJeu3Vg_nM0WQfWDZTDyu6h6PlD&index=9

2024-03-04 Not in Our Name: On Jews Rejecting Zionism  Watch this powerful speech given by the artist, writer and anti-imperial organiser, Morgan Bassichis (@morgankindof), at our recent event in London, where they told the audience about the latest in Jewish anti-Zionist organising in the United States.

“American media tries to characterise the massive growth of anti-Zionism amongst American Jews as merely a marginal position amongst young people – but we know better. It is not a generational rift. It is an intergenerational legacy.

“We are proud to come from generations of Jews who opposed each and every form of oppression, including Zionism. Who saw Zionism for what it was, a false solution for the crimes of European antisemitism, that would be used to dispossess indigenous Palestinians of their land. Who connected their own activism against racism and patriarchy at home, to wars and colonialism abroad, and saw a common enemy: white supremacy and empire.”    https://www.instagram.com/p/C4GMYrWt4l-/

2024-02-07 Palestine Talks | Professor David Miller reveals how Zionist lobbies fuel Islamophobia    British professor David Miller explains to TRT World how the Zionist movement is a key pillar in the industry of Islamophobia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AryAIDPbL4k&list=PLUW304lJeu3Vg_nM0WQfWDZTDyu6h6PlD&index=13

2024-02-05 Many Jews and Jewish Organizations Recognized the Dangers of Zionism. They Were Right    Jewish organizations that now are staunch supporters of the Israeli state were concerned with the same issues that Palestinians protest now.   At the November 1917 issuance of the Balfour Declaration of the British government in favor of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, many American Jewish Committee members and officers had observed that, if successful, the goal of a Jewish state to rule the multi-ethnic land of Palestine would lead to oppression of non-Jews.  

In 1919, AJC President Louis Marshall asserted an AJC statement on the Balfour declaration had been definitive in rejecting political Zionism.   In April last the American Jewish Committee defined its position in terms which could not be misunderstood, which indicated that, while it hailed with satisfaction the Balfour Declaration, it did so because of the two conditions annexed, namely, that it would not affect the rights of the non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine and that it was not to be regarded as in any way affecting the status of Jews who lived in other lands.  https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/jewish-organizations-against-zionism

2024-01-22 Don’t Let Zionists Weaponize Jewish Suffering     When Nazi Germany barreled into the Eastern Front, they justified their brutality, particularly against Jews, as a prevention against the same kind of barbarism.    “The broadly conceived propaganda campaign even distorted events like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as proof that Jews would destroy Germany if they were not destroyed first,”     

While demonization and dehumanization are hallmarks of genocide, the victims are also often reframed as perpetrators. Genocide denial is common because those who participate often, at least for a time, cannot accept the fact that they’re the guilty ones.  

During the mass murders of alleged communists in Indonesia between 1956 and 1966, which saw as many as nearly 3 million people killed by the far-right government, militia leaders appeared on television to brag about finding a more “efficient” way to execute communists. 

As the body count in Gaza rises now above 24,000 and human rights groups around the world use the word “genocide” to describe the brutal Israeli assault on civilians areas, much of the sympathetic press continues to frame Palestinians as the genociders.  Statements such as “Palestinians are engaging in an attempted genocide of Jewish people”,  “Hamas has made clear in its words and actions that it is committed to the genocide of the Jewish people, whether they live in Israel or not.” 

While it should be clear that Hamas can’t be conflated with the Palestinian people or even broadly defined as the Palestinian “resistance,” Israel has not made those distinctions clear. “The war is not just with Hamas, the war [is] with all the civilians,”   “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,”,   Israel’s approach to what is often called “mowing the lawn” in Israel, lived up to this framing, using blistering force in civilian areas that has led to an astounding body count in just a matter of months.

The survival of Jewish exclusivity in Israel is always reframed around the survival of Jews, so those seeking to change that are often treated as the genociders amongst us, even as they lose every method of self-sufficiency and survival. Who knows what they would do to us?  https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2024/01/22/israel-jewish-holocaust-gaza

2023-12-02 The Chris Hedges Report with Columbia University Professor Rashid Khalidi on Zionism’s 100-year war against Palestinians.   The conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, which has reached a terrifying crescendo with the savage obliteration of Gaza, is the outcome of a 100-year-old colonial occupation by Jewish Zionists in Israel backed by major imperial powers, starting with the British and a century later with the United States. This century-long assault by Israel has one objective – to force an indigenous people from their land. The historian Rashid Khalid breaks what he calls “the hundred years of war on Palestine” into six periods.

The first is the British support for Jewish Zionists during the British occupation of Palestine from 1917 and 1939. The second declaration of war is the 1947-1948 Nakbeh, or catastrophe, that saw Zionist militias ethnically cleanse 750,000 Palestinians from historic Palestine and carry out a series of massacres. The third is 1967 war when Israel seized the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza and expelled another 250,000 Palestinians. The fourth declaration of war on Palestine was Ariel Sharon’s invasion of Lebanon and the siege of Beirut, followed by the departure of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) fighters to Tunisia and the 1982 massacre at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. The fourth war against the Palestinians began with the first intifada, or uprising in 1987, continued with the second intifada and is taking place with the Israeli brutal assault on Gaza. The backdrop to this century of war by Israel on the Palestinians is the failure by Arab leaders to offer meaningful support to the Palestinians, in fact these leaders often colluded with Israel to weaken the Palestinian resistance movement. Joining me in the studio to discuss Israel’s settler colonial project, how it is being played out in Gaza and its consequences, is Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University and the author of “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonization and Resistance, 1917-2017.”  https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-with-columbia    

2023-11-15 The Long View of Palestine, Israel and War    Zionism existed decades before the founding of Israel in 1948. Zionism was tied to the Balfour Declaration (1917) that called for the establishment of a Jewish homeland far before the Nazi Holocaust. Zionism did not take on its most vicious cast until the end of World War II when the movement became much more than a resettlement program for Holocaust survivors. At the very heart of Zionism is the racist belief that Jews occupied a position of superiority that saw other peoples as subservient to the needs of a state that became increasingly militarized and less tolerant. There were few who differed from the assessment of Israel being ground zero in the Middle East, seen as a bulwark against the former Soviet Union and a part of the projection of US power. Oil was in the mix, but it wasn’t oil that made the husband of a cousin say: “The only good Arab is a dead one.” What had happened to the humanism that I had learned was part of Judaism even in its most secular iteration?

During and following the 1948 Palestine war about 700,000 Palestinians were driven off of their land. Over 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed by Zionist militias and then the Israeli army. The various occupations, embargoes, and wars placed exclamation points in Israel’s racist domination of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Operation Cast Lead (2008-2009), and Operation Protective Edge (2014), were but the latest examples of Israeli brutality against the Palestinian people euphemistically called in Israel “mowing the lawn.”

The first premise of casting an enemy as a lesser human being is to dehumanize them. An example of how effective that strategy has been can be viewed in the YouTube video by journalist Abby Martin as she interviews the so-called man/woman on the street in Israel. “Empire Files: Israelis Speak Candidly to Abby Martin About Palestinians,”  (2017).   https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/11/15/the-long-view-of-palestine-israel-and-war/

2023-11-24 “Why I STOPPED Being A Zionist”   Thanks to the Israeli military’s brutal assault on Gaza, many stalwart Zionists are waking up to the reality of the occupation and what life is like for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. We highlight one video published by a young American Jewish woman who explains everything she’s learned recently about the occupation and why she’s had to let go of her former Zionist beliefs.   Jimmy and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss what it takes to shake someone’s core inculcation after a lifetime of propaganda.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rnl8LOL3rdo    

2023-11-21 Anti Palestine TikTok   In this video we examine a handful of short form content pieces from supporters of Israel, and connect this content to broader Zionist attitudes. this one’s not an easy watch but i hope it gives at least one person some context on what Israel is doing  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdlJqlzOGgU

2023-11-15 Why Africans / Black Folks Should Oppose Zionism: Some Aspects of a Racist Imperialist Ideology in Africa and the Americas      Colonized people must be in solidarity with the oppressed and by definition, that means being anti-zionist.   Political Zionism is a racist ethno-nationalist imperialist ideology and movement founded in the late 19th century that mis-uses Judaism to justify the settler colonial occupation of Palestinian land as a state reserved only for Jews. Christian Zionism, which actually preceded political Zionism, is the belief that the biblical land of Israel should be controlled by Jews thereby ensuring the second return of Jesus which will bring salvation to Christians.

Zionism in Africa long preceded the founding of Israel, and the relationship goes back to at least the South African Zionist federation founded in 1898.  The Zionist movement considered east African countries for resettling Jews before agreeing on Palestine.   Overall, Israel has been a partner to colonialism, Neo-colonialism, economic exploitation, militarization, war and balkanization in Africa. The US, being Israel’s closest imperialist partner, has often coerced countries, through the threat of sanctions, into relations with Israel.

Long before the years of Apartheid, South Africa’s relationship with Zionism and then Israel was extremely close, as evidenced in the settler class collaboration between Chaim Weizmann, Israels’ first president, and the infamous general Jan Smuts, former prime minister and one of the racist founding fathers and military leaders of South Africa. The common ideological roots of this relationship were white settler supremacy supposedly sanctioned by God. It extended from weapons sales including cooperation towards enabling South Africa to build a nuclear bomb, to the lucrative trade in diamonds controlled by the infamous De Beers diamond cartel which controls 90% of the world’s rough diamonds. Israel was long the largest diamond cutting country. https://blackagendareport.com/news/1680/47/Why-Africans-Black-Folks-Should-Oppose-Zionism-Some-Aspects-of-a-Racist-Imperialist-Ideology-in-Africa-and-the-Americas

2023-11-08 “It’s the Zionism, Stupid!”  The foundational issue in the ongoing and existential conflict between Israeli settlers and indigenous Palestinians, not a continued and historical hatred of Jews, as many Zionists claim. But why do we make the distinction that opposition to Zionism is not automatically opposition to Jewish people? I believe that to understand this is to understand what Zionism is and the contradictions therein.

First, Zionism itself is not entirely synonymous with Judaism. Although it is true that the Zionist movement was “officially” organized by Theodor Hertzl in Austria in 1896 to establish a Jewish homeland in response to the bigotry and repression against Jews, it is important to understand that Hertzl was not himself an Orthodox, or “observant” Jew; he was more secular than religious.  Hertzl, according to the website JewishHistory.org, did not envision a Jewish homeland as a place that Jews like himself who were fully assimilated into Western society would want or need to emigrate to. Rather, Hertzl viewed a Jewish homeland as a place where poor Jews from Eastern European nations who did not assimilate into those societies could relocate and rebuild their lives in peace.

But from the beginning, there was always a conflict among the proponents of Zionism regarding the role of the Jewish religion in the movement. Hertzl considered Zionism a purely practical solution to Jewish persecution, providing a way to materially save Jewish people without focusing too much if at all on promoting or preserving Jewish religious tradition. This was the posture of the first four Zionist Congresses, which adopted resolutions that were neutral on the issue of the Jewish religion, identified then as “Jewish culture,” declaring that the movement would never do anything to oppose the Jewish faith, but it would also not do anything to support or promote it, either.  

It is important to note, nevertheless, that there is still a large segment of Orthodox Jews who oppose the establishment of Israel on the religious grounds stated above. One of those groups, and perhaps the most vocal and visible, at least in the US, is the Neturei Karta, which is among other Orthodox Jewish communities in Jerusalem that have been consistent targets of Israeli oppression along with Palestinian Muslims and Christians, as well as Ethiopian and other African-descended Jews and immigrants.

So Israel is a state that exists through the logic of indigenous dispossession and apartheid. There is one set of rights and freedoms for European-descended Zionist immigrants and their descendants. But this set of rights depends on racial discrimination against non-European descended people of all faiths, including Palestinian, African, and other Arab Jews and their descendants. This is the basis for popular resistance to the state of Israel today, not the simplistic and false allegations of hatred of Jews.    https://blackagendareport.com/news/1659/47/Its-the-Zionism-Stupid

2023-11-07 Arendt on Zionism – KPFA – Against the Grain   Why was the political philosopher Hannah Arendt so critical of mainstream Zionism? What did her criticisms have to do with how she understood nationalism and historical antisemitism? According to Jonathan Graubart, Arendt sought to delink Jewish nationalism from Israel’s state project; she also condemned Herzlian Zionism for subscribing to a view of eternal antisemitism. (Encore presentation.)   Jonathan Graubart, Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs Temple University Press, 2023    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/arendt-on-zionism/id78900506?

2023-11-07 America’s Christian Zionists: Israel’s strategic weapon?       Benjamin Netanyahu stated in a recent speech that the “prophecy of Isaiah ” would be fulfilled. This is a reference to a Christian evangelical belief in the second coming of the Messiah, which opposes the mainstream Christian belief that the Messiah was Jesus himself. So why do Christian evangelicals — who constitute a significant voter bloc in the US Republican Party — support Israel?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bprofax5SPk

2023-11-02 Albert Einstein Called Zionists “Criminals”!      Albert Einstein knew a great deal, and came to much of that knowledge before anyone else. One little-known insight of Einstein’s? That the Zionist project to create the state of Israel on land occupied by Palestinians was a bad idea he wanted nothing to do with. In a recently surfaced letter Einstein wrote in 1948 the Jewish scientist even described Zionists as “criminals.”   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQFXStBP9Ro&t=6s

2023-10-19 Professor Ilan Pappé-Crisis in Zionism, Opportunity for Palestine?       A lecture by Professor Ilan Pappé, Professor of History, Director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies, University of Exeter, UK October 19th, 2023  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OcjOP8iUCU&list=PLcKTcNwy7BrF2fsCRkNDSpVvfpG6_RKiW&index=3

2023-10-15 What the media forgets to tell you about Israel and Gaza   The missing context for what’s happening in Gaza is that Israel has been working night and day to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homeland since even before Israel become a state – when it was known as the Zionist movement.   

Israel didn’t just cleanse Palestinians in 1948, when it was founded as a Western colonial project, and again under cover of a regional war in 1967.  It also worked to ethnically cleanse Palestinians every day between those dates and afterwards. The aim was to move them off their historic lands, and either expel them beyond Israel’s new, expanded borders or concentrate them into small ghettoes inside those borders – as a holding measure until they could be expelled outside the borders.  The ‘settler’ project, as we call it, is a misnomer. It’s really Israel’s ethnic cleansing program. Israel even has a special word for it in Hebrew: ‘Judaisation’, or making the land Jewish. It is official government policy.

Gaza was the largest of the Palestinian reservations created by Israel’s ethnic cleansing programme, and the most overcrowded. To stop the inhabitants spilling out, Israel built a fence-barrier in the early 1990s to pen them in. Then when policing became too hard from within the prison, Israel pulled back in 2005 to the outer perimeter barrier.    https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/what-the-media-forgets-to-tell-you 

2023-08-08 Zionism’s Ethnic Cleansing  Political Zionism, as laid down in the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, has been brutal from the beginning—a colonial racist movement aimed to take someone else’s land for its own exclusive use. The only way to accomplish this goal was through forced population transfer. This crime, so hideous that it is deemed a war crime and a crime against humanity, served as the foundation of Zionism as well as Israel, where the forcible removal of Palestinians and the installment of its own identified privileged settler group on that same land formed the basis of the state.

While Zionist forces have used military might over the decades to advance this goal, the Zionist movement has also sought to mask this process by placing its atrocities under a legal umbrella. In Zionist logic, not just the mighty sword but also the mighty gavel of the judge would hammer down on Palestinian rights and existence.  

The Israeli narrative itself describes its own establishment by historic birthright and political turmoil. Zionism wanted to appear modern, democratic, and enlightened—not murderous, supremacist, and authoritarian. In 1948 already, Israel issued a series of military orders to place its crimes within a set of legal regulations. The Absentee Property Military Order, later formed into the Israeli Absentee Property Law, was created to further appropriate Palestinian land and belongings by the appearance of a system ruled by the rule of law. According to that rule, Israel declared that all Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons who were forced out of their homes by the same regime that was prohibiting them from returning were absentees, and therefore all their land and property would be confiscated and transferred to Israeli state ownership. Although a clear violation of international law and principle, the law facilitates ethnic cleansing through legal venues.

Another example is how the state has established “legal” means to prohibit all Palestinian villages and neighborhoods from expanding in size. In practice, this has meant that since 1948 these places have been unable to grow to accommodate their inhabitants, which have quadrupled. A similar regulation was put in place in the territory occupied in 1967, with the same devasting result. The laws and regulations Israel put in place to advance its policies of forced population transfer are almost endless. For instance, in the 1967 occupied cities and areas, more than 2,000 Israeli military orders exist alongside Ottoman, British, and Jordanian laws. Israel chooses which regulations to apply in a specific situation to get the maximum result. And if the law does not exist, a new military order is formulated. This contradictory approach to all international legal principles forms the basis of Israel’s legal illegality.   http://www.socialistviewpoint.org/novdec_23/novdec_23_05.html

2023-06-20 Professor Avi Shlaim answers question about whether Zionism is a racist ideology      “Most certainly Zionism is a racist ideology and it is largely responsible for the Nakba.”    During the UK premiere event of the film Tantura, hosted by the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) in May, British-Israeli historian Avi Shlaim answered a question by Dr Azzam Tamimi about whether he considers Zionism to be a racist ideology and responsible for the Nakba. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTQOudBMf7Q

2022-11-16 Fact Sheet: The Religious Zionism Coalition    Religious Zionism is an extreme right-wing Israeli political coalition made up of three overtly racist, Jewish supremacist, homophobic parties: Religious Zionism, Jewish Power, and Noam. They united for the 2022 election campaign under deals brokered by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud party they are allied with.

As with almost all of the other Zionist political parties in Israel, the parties in Religious Zionism strongly support Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise on occupied Palestinian land and oppose Palestinian statehood or self-determination in any part of Palestine/Israel. The two main objectives of the coalition’s official 2022 platform are expanding settlements, including legalizing more than 100 so-called settlement “outposts” built without official Israeli government approval, and further restricting the ability of Palestinians to build homes on their own land in the occupied West Bank, which is already severely limited by Israel.

Religious Zionism is closely associated with Rabbi Dov Lior, who is something of a spiritual leader to Jewish Power. An influential former chief rabbi of the West Bank settlement where Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich and Jewish Power leader Itamar Ben-Gvir live, Lior is notorious for his virulent racism against Palestinians and other non-Jews and for being the spiritual advisor to generations of violent Jewish extremists.     https://imeu.org/article/the-religious-zionism-coalition

2022-11-02 How Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, in conversation with Tony Greenstein | EI Podcast     On episode 68, we speak with activist and blogger Tony Greenstein, a veteran of the Palestine solidarity movement in the UK, about his new book “Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponization of Memory in the Service of State and Nation.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9evhLCuA_k

2021-06-05 Challenging the Zionist Narrative of Palestine | Dr. Yasir Qadhi, Dr. Hatem Bazian, Miko Peled      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlZZfniE7u0

2019-09-00 Israel–Palestine Today: A Values-Based Approach    I want to begin instead with the political reality in Israel–Palestine, where Zionism, the operative ideology of the state of Israel, is put into practice. I believe this reality demands a politics very different from what Walzer recommends—a politics that Walzer would likely deem anti-Zionist, but that those on the left committed first and foremost to the values of freedom, democracy, and equality should support. “There is one duty,” Ignazio Silone once wrote in Dissent, “that we cannot evade: to be aware of what is happening.” So let us first take stock of what is happening in Israel–Palestine today.

Between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, there is one sovereign state, Israel, which governs, in some places directly, in others indirectly, the lives of roughly 13 million people. Of those 13 million, approximately half are Jews, who enjoy full citizenship and social rights, regardless of where they choose to live. The other half are Palestinians, who live under a range of oppressive systems: codified second-class citizenship in Israel proper; residency, always under threat, without franchise in East Jerusalem; military rule in the West Bank; and siege by air, land, and sea in the Gaza Strip. There are terms to describe similar, now-defunct regimes that enforced separate legal systems and hierarchies of laws, privileges, and rights on the basis of ethno-national identity, but we need not delve into their particular applicability here; for now, we can call this the “one-state reality.”

The one-state reality is not new. Israel has occupied East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank for more than half a century—longer than the apartheid regime lasted in South Africa. (It is also worth remembering that Palestinians within Israel lived under martial law from the state’s founding until 1966.) And though few in number and politically powerless, there were Israeli Jews who, after the 1967 war, called for an immediate withdrawal from the newly occupied territories, the most strident and tireless among them the members of the Israeli socialist organization, Matzpen. They were anti-Zionists.   https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/israel-palestine-today-a-values-based-approach/

2015-11-21 Arno J. Mayer, David Helvarg   Ralph discusses the history of Zionism in Israel, the nature of empire, and also France’s response to terrorism with distinguished Princeton University historian Arno J. Mayer.      https://www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/arno-j-mayer-david-helvarg-4a4#details

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White Phosphorus

Updated 2023-10-28

2023-10-13 Israel Fires White Phosphorus in Lebanon and Gaza    Human Rights Watch has confirmed reports of Israel firing white phosphorus munitions during attacks on Gaza and along its border with Lebanon. White phosphorus poses a high risk of excruciating burns and lifelong suffering, and its use as an incendiary weapon in civilian areas is a war crime. Israel denies using white phosphorus. Israel previously used white phosphorus in attacks on the Gaza Strip, including in 2009.  https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/headlines/competing_pro_israel_and_pro_palestine_demonstrations_raise_tensions_on_college_campuses

2010-05-08 US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza    Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza during its recent military campaign was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released March 25, 2009.

The seventy-one-page report, “Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza,” provides witness accounts of the devastating effects that white phosphorus munitions had on civilians and civilian property in Gaza. Human Rights Watch researchers found spent shells, canister liners, and dozens of burnt felt wedges containing white phosphorus on city streets, apartment roofs, residential courtyards, and at a United Nations school in Gaza immediately after hostilities ended in January.

Militaries officially use white phosphorus to obscure their operations on the ground by creating thick smoke. It has also been used as an incendiary weapon, though such use constitutes a war crime. “In Gaza, the Israeli military didn’t just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops,” said Fred Abrahams, senior emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren’t in the area and safer smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died.” The report documents a pattern or policy of white phosphorus use that Human Rights Watch says must have required the approval of senior military officers.

Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza during its recent military campaign was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released March 25, 2009.     On January 15, several white phosphorus shells fired by the Israeli military hit the headquarters of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza City, destroying medicine, food and other basic aid. One fragment found at the scene had markings indicating it was made by the Pine Bluff Arsenal, based in Arkansas, in October 1991.

9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza

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West Bank (also see Settler Attacks )

Updated 2024-08-29

Hebron Exposed: A Weapon of Life – Documentary   The Palestinians wielding cameras against Israeli violence.   Hebron Exposed: A Weapon of LifeIn this episode of BBC Arabic’s Hebron Exposed, the narrative turns to the Palestinians on the front line of the occupation. The Palestinian Human Rights Defenders (PHRD) have begun to film incidents and educate children to do the same. Unable to trust the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), filming attacks, misconduct, and abuse leads to the clips being used as evidence in court. Though sharing videos online is a non-violent form of protection, the result is often a double edged sword, with clips receiving both support and abuse   https://www.journeyman.tv/film/7396

Hebron Exposed: Among the Settlers – Documentary     Israeli Jews fight expulsion with expansion.  Hebron Exposed: Among the SettlersIn one of the most divided cities in the world, Jewish-Arab hostility in Hebron is under strict military control. Each individual has their own sense of ‘truth’, making the war one of words as much as guns, stones, and bombs. Tours run continually, each with their own route, narrative, and maps of the area. Some want peace, others retribution, with the Jewish community continually looking to expand into what is now Palestinian territory. With camera working against camera, in this instalment of BBC Arabic’s Hebron Exposed, no one perspective seems ‘true’ or ‘right’.   https://www.journeyman.tv/film/7395

2024-08-28 Israel Carries Out Deadly West Bank Raids as Tensions Rise       Israel launched a large-scale military operation in the West Bank to combat what the army said was terrorist activity, the latest surge in hostilities in the Palestinian area since the start of the war in Gaza.

Ten Palestinians have been killed and 11 have been injured, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which said Israeli soldiers blocked access to hospitals and destroyed infrastructure in towns of Jenin, Tubas and Tulkarem.     https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-carries-out-deadly-west-bank-raids-as-tensions-rise/ar-AA1pzHRg?

2024-08-20 Driving in Palestine w/ Rehab Nazzal    On today’s show, Driving in Palestine is a research-creation project by artist Rehab Nazzal, who explores the politics of mobility she encountered firsthand while traversing the occupied West Bank between 2010 and 2020. This photography book consists of 160 black and white photographs, hand-drawn maps and critical essays in Arabic and English by Palestinian and Canadian scholars and artists.   https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-august-20-2024/

2024-08-20 Religious Zionism MK calls settler violence ‘a drop in the ocean’ compared to Arab terrorism     Religious Zionist MK Zvi Sukkot characterized the serious incidents of violence committed by settlers in the West Bank as a “super marginal phenomenon, a drop in the ocean compared to Arab terrorism,” the Religious Zionist MK said on Sunday.   .https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/religious-zionism-mk-calls-settler-violence-a-drop-in-the-ocean-compared-to-arab-terrorism/ar-AA1p8Pyy?

2024-08-14 Extremist Israeli Leaders Slammed for ‘Reckless Pursuit’ of New West Bank Colony      “My life’s mission,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is “to fight the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state”—even as an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations support independence for Palestine.   

The Israeli government said Wednesday that it has completed plans for the first new apartheid settlement in the occupied West Bank since 2017, a move the country’s far-right finance minister said was due in part to increasing international recognition of Palestinian statehood amid Israel’s obliteration of Gaza and a recent World Court affirming the occupation’s illegality.    https://www.commondreams.org/news/new-israeli-settlements

2024-07-26 Jewish National Fund of Canada Has Its Charitable Status Revoked      Score a significant victory against apartheid, genocide and Canada’s most significant contribution to Palestinian dispossession. The powerful Jewish National Fund of Canada has reportedly had its charitable status revoked.

Under pressure from Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) and others the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) instigated an audit of the JNF in 2018. JNF Canada was eventually forced to differentiate itself from its parent organization in Israel and to stop “co-mingling” its funds with that organization. JNF Canada was also instructed to stop assisting projects in the illegally occupied West Bank and initiatives supporting the Israeli military.  But apparently it failed to fulfill the Revenue Agency’s requests and now the CRA has rescinded its ability to grant donors tax credits.

Revoking JNF Canada’s charitable status has been long in the making and has come at some cost for many individuals.   https://truthout.org/articles/jewish-national-fund-of-canada-has-its-charitable-status-revoked/

2024-07-22 UNICEF Reports Israel Is Killing Kids at Shocking Rates Amid West Bank Assault    Three days after the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is unlawful, the United Nations children’s rights agency said that after decades of being “exposed to horrific violence,” the number of children who have been killed in the West Bank since last October has skyrocketed.

Since Israel began its bombardment of the Palestinian territories nearly 10 months ago — with Gaza the primary target of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) attacks, but with West Bank communities also subjected to raids and other violence — 143 Palestinian children have been killed in the West Bank, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The number represents a 250% increase compared to the nine months preceding the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, after which the IDF began retaliating in the occupied territories. https://truthout.org/articles/unicef-reports-israel-is-killing-kids-at-shocking-rates-amid-west-bank-assault/

2024-07-16 A Cancer on the West Bank   Even before that Jewish supremacist incursion, Yigal Alon, Yitzhak Rabin’s deputy prime minister, drafted a plan calling for settlements that would extend Israel’s political boundaries to the Jordan River. Such new Jewish settlements would ring Palestinian villages and towns and separate them from one another. In 1979, when I interviewed the mayor of Halhoul, where those two teens had been murdered, he took me to a hilltop, pointed to Kiryat Arba, and said all too prophetically: “The settlements are a cancer in our midst. A cancer can kill one man. But this cancer can kill a whole people.”  https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/16/a-cancer-on-the-west-bank/

2024-07-15 Palestine Post: West Bank International Solidarity Movement Activists Return to Bay Area     On today’s show we get a report from four Bay Area activists who just returned from the West Bank doing protective presence work with the International Solidarity Movement, an attempt to deter Israel’s continued colonial land grabs in the area, where the zionist state has taken more Palestinian land in the past 9 months than in any similar time period since the early 1990s.

The International Solidarity Movement, or ISM, brings in volunteers from around the world to offer what they call a protective presence, that is, to spend time in endangered Palestinian areas, with a hope that the international presence could prevent zionist attacks.

The ISM is building up its protective presence now in the West Bank, and a group of Bay Area activists have just returned from doing that work in the West Bank areas of Massafer Yatta, and in the Jordan Valley.   That group joins us this morning, using pseudonyms or first names only, because being identified as ISM activists risks being prevented from continuing the work.

Our guests are Bella, Ossa, Nina and Maria.   Check out the International Solidarity Movement’s website: https://palsolidarity.org/    Follow ISM on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ismpalestine/  https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-july-15-2024/

2024-07-15 Settled   In 1979, Israeli settlers and soldiers were already terrorizing residents of the Palestinian village of Halhoul and committing violence elsewhere, writes Ellen Cantarow.     https://consortiumnews.com/2024/07/15/settled/

2024-07-01 Palestine Post: Addressing the Lebanese Border & Report from the West Bank       On this week’s Palestine Post, we speak with Rami Khouri, a Distinguished Public Policy Fellow at the American University of Beirut, and a journalist and author with 50 years of experience covering the Middle East; we also speak with Brendan Maslauskas-Dunn, an independent reporter who recently returned to the US from the West Bank. https://kpfa.org/episode/law-disorder-july-1-2024/

2024-04-22 West Bank Pogrom ‘Underscores Urgent Need to Dismantle Apartheid’: Amnesty     Amnesty International said Monday that the ongoing surge in deadly violence by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank “underscores [the] urgent need to dismantle apartheid” in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.

For more than a week now, Israeli settlers have been attacking West Bank Palestinians in towns and villages including Al-Mughayir, Duma, Deir Dibwan, Beitin, and Aqraba, killing at least four people including a child; wounding dozens of others; and destroying homes, vehicles, and other property.v   Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops have either stood and watched or participated in the settler attacks, which the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem and others are calling a “pogrom.”

Amnesty said the “alarming spike in violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians across the occupied West Bank in recent days highlights the urgent need to dismantle illegal settlements, end Israel’s occupation of the occupied Palestinian territories, and its longstanding system of apartheid.  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-settler-attacks-west-bank

2024-03-20 ‘That sounds like ethnic cleansing’: CNN questions lead figure in Israel’s settler movement     CNN’s Clarissa Ward reports from the West Bank where the Jewish settler movement is seeking a new goal in the wake of the October 7th attack by Hamas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkXJwErm8DM

2024-03-27 How Biden Could Radically Alter the U.S.-Israel Relationship     On February 1, the Biden administration issued an executive order on violent extremism by settlers in the West Bank, which has been increasing over the past several months with the world watching the war in Gaza. The Biden administration accompanied this order with sanctions on four settlers who, it charged, had directly carried out violence or intimidation. This month, the Biden administration expanded the sanctions, adding three more settlers and two illegal outposts, which it said were bases used to “perpetuate violence against Palestinians.”  

Elsewhere, it was heralded as a potentially major development, a warning to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, particularly given that U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that they were considering sanctioning two of his coalition’s extremist members, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. https://newrepublic.com/article/179968/biden-executive-order-west-bank-us-israel-relationship

2024-03-08 UN Human Rights Chief Decries ‘War Crime’ of Rapidly Expanding Israeli Settlements     “The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-settlements-2667464747

2024-02-20 The West Bank’s Unseen Conflict: Palestinians Documenting Israeli Violence | Palestine Documentary There is an invisible war going on in the West Bank. The Israeli settlers are waging a daily war on the Palestinians who remain; they harass their neighbors, attack their houses, move their livestock and generally make life unbearable for them. After years of violent resistance, a new generation of Palestinians have undertaken a new strategy and are fighting back with video cameras rather than guns. They post their videos online to show the world what is happening but what does all this mean for the possibility of peace? An in-depth and eye-opening investigation into life in the West Bank. This documentary was first released in 2013.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5JHsfYCJP0

2024-02-17 Israeli Settler Colonialism Is At An End   The idea that Zionism is settler colonialism is not new. Palestinian scholars in the 1960s working in Beirut in the PLO Research Centre had already understood that what they were facing in Palestine was not a classical colonial project.  They did not frame Israel as just a British colony or an American one, but regarded it as a phenomenon that existed in other parts of the world; defined as settler colonialism.  It is interesting that for 20 to 30 years the notion of Zionism as settler colonialism disappeared from the political and academic discourse.  It came back when scholars in other parts of the world, notably South Africa, Australia and North America agreed that Zionism is a similar phenomenon to the movement of Europeans who created the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.  This idea helps us to understand much better the nature of the Zionist project in Palestine since the late 19th century until today, and it gives us an idea of what to expect in the future.   https://countercurrents.org/2024/02/israeli-settler-colonialism-is-at-an-end/

2024-02-05 Amnesty Condemns Israeli Military’s ‘Shocking’ Violence Against West Bank Civilians    While Israeli officials continue to claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the Israel Defense Forces are targeting Hamas in their bombardment of occupied Palestine, a new report from Amnesty International on Monday details the extent to which the military has frequently used lethal force against civilians across the West Bank in addition to the more than 27,000 people it has killed in Gaza.

Calling for an investigation into possible war crimes, the group said it had analyzed four cases in which the IDF has used “unlawful lethal force” against people in the occupied West Bank and blocked medical professionals from reaching injured residents, with Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab verifying 19 videos and four photos of the incidents. https://www.commondreams.org/news/amnesty-west-bank

2024-02-01 Biden imposes sanctions on violent West Bank settlers in reprimand to Israel    President Joe Biden issued an executive order Thursday that aims to punish Israeli settlers who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.   As part of the roll-out, the Biden administration announced it is imposing sanctions on four individuals who have engaged in such violence, which has killed or displaced many Palestinians from their lands, two senior administration officials told reporters.https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/01/biden-executive-order-israeli-settlers-00139065?

2023-12-29 Israeli Killing of West Bank Children Hits ‘Unprecedented Levels’ in 2023       More Palestinian children were killed by Israeli forces in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2023 than in any previous recorded year, the United Nations Children’s Fund announced on Thursday.    According to the agency, Israeli occupation forces have killed 124 Palestinian minors in the West Bank and East Jerusalem this year. That’s nearly four times the previous record of 36 children killed there in 2022. UNICEF also said that at least 576 Palestinian children were wounded in the occupied territories this year. https://www.commondreams.org/news/west-bank-children-2666831533

2023-12-27 IDF Soldier Allegedly Stabs Wounded West Bank Airstrike Victim in Ambulance       Israeli troops on Wednesday allegedly stabbed and assaulted wounded Palestinian victims of an Israel Defense Forces drone strike that killed six people in a refugee camp near Tulkarem in the illegally occupied West Bank.  Dr. Radwan Blaibla, head of Tulkarem Medical Syndicate, toldAndalou Agency that Israeli troops forcibly stopped and boarded ambulances rushing Palestinians injured in the airstrike on Nur Shams refugee camp to a hospital in Tulkarem.   “One injured was stabbed in his neck by a soldier while in the ambulance, posing danger to his life,” Blaibla said. “Two others were forcibly taken out from an ambulance and were subject to kicking and beating by the rifles’ buttstocks on their injuries.”   https://www.commondreams.org/news/palestinians-killed-in-the-west-bank

2023-12-15 Battle for the West Bank: Israeli settlers step up attacks on Palestinians   While the world’s attention is focused on Israel’s devastating war in Gaza, violence is also taking place every day in the occupied West Bank. Our senior reporter Roméo Langlois has been to West Bank villages that are regularly the scene of raids by extremist Jewish settlers against Palestinians. Since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, this violence has escalated, sometimes with deadly consequences.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNZXl2dbR9Y

2023-12-03 Israeli settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, briefly explained   The world’s eyes have been on Gaza since Hamas’s brutal attack on Israeli citizens on October 7 and Israel’s retaliatory invasion that has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians.  But another front in this long-running conflict is the West Bank, a kidney-bean shaped piece of land on the west bank of the Jordan River and to the east of Israel that is home to nearly 3 million Palestinians and would make up the heart of any future Palestinian state. Alongside those Palestinian cities and villages, however, are Jewish settlements.   

Since the Six-Day War of June 1967, the state of Israel has planned and funded Jewish outposts throughout the West Bank; other settlers have moved in without the state’s explicit backing. The settlers believe they have a right to be there, even though most of the international community views the settlements as illegal.

These populations are largely separated by Israel’s complex security infrastructure, including military checkpoints, armed patrols, a separation barrier, and color-coded identification cards and license plates. This system dictates all aspects of daily life for West Bank residents.   Some settlers have for years harassed and attacked the Palestinians living there, often with impunity and occasionally with the support of Israeli soldiers. In the weeks since October 7, however, the rate of violence has significantly increased. It is already the deadliest year since the Second Intifada, and is getting bad enough for the eyes of the world to occasionally leave Gaza and look to the West Bank. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israeli-settler-violence-against-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-briefly-explained/ar-AA1kT14w

2023-11-27 Israeli Forces Kill at Least 8 West Bank Palestinians Amid Surge in Violence      As the fragile truce held through the weekend, Israeli forces continued deadly attacks on the occupied West Bank, killing at least eight Palestinians, including two children. According to local health officials, at least five of those deaths came during another raid on the Jenin refugee camp. This is a resident of Jenin.   Fatina Ghoul: “They enter houses and demolish them and damage them. They just inflict destruction. They did not arrest any youth from here. It is just a matter of destruction.”    Over 200 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been killed by Israeli forces or settlers since October 7. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/27/headlines/calls_mount_to_extend_truce_as_dozens_of_hamas_captives_and_palestinian_prisoners_freed

2023-11-17 DIFFERENT TACTICS, SAME WAR: THE PERILS OF TREATING ISRAEL’S WEST BANK OFFENSIVE AS SEPARATE FROM GAZA    The horrors in Gaza are just one part of Israel’s unified system of controlling Palestinians from the river to the sea. 

Violence by Israeli forces and settlers has escalated sharply over the last six weeks, in a year that is already the deadliest for Palestinians and Israelis in the West Bank in 20 years. With all eyes on Gaza, where Israel has killed well over 11,000 Palestinians, about half of them children, the West Bank is treated by journalists, policymakers, analysts, and Israel itself as a separate, distinct front, as if compartmentalized. Israel’s head of the Shin Bet, the country’s internal security service, has warned that settler violence could contribute to the West Bank “erupting,” hurting Israel’s war in Gaza. The U.S. has been urging Israel repeatedly to rein in settler violence in the West Bank, warning that it could become another front in this war. “They’re attacking Palestinians in places they’re entitled to be,” President Joe Biden said.   But the West Bank already is a front; it is part of the same war.   https://theintercept.com/2023/11/17/gaza-west-bank-israel-war/

2023-11-10 “I Want American Workers to Be United to Make the Occupation Costly, to Make the Israeli Apartheid Costly.”  Every day, the Palestinian civilian death toll is rising dramatically as Israel continues its genocidal bombing and ground invasion of Gaza and settler and military violence towards Palestinians in the West Bank intensifies.

“It’s a closure, it’s a curfew, in many places in the West Bank,” says Issa Amro. ​“It’s not normal life these days. Soldiers are everywhere, settlers are everywhere, people are afraid to leave their homes, they don’t go to work, they don’t go to school, they don’t go to universities.”

After losing touch with Issa during the day because he was escaping from settlers who were chasing him in Hebron, we managed to reconnect over the phone and record a nine minute conversation about the hell working people in Palestine are going through right now and what their fellow workers in the United States and Canada can do to stop the slaughter. Issa is a Palestinian human rights defender living in Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. He is the co-founder and former coordinator of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements. Days prior to this recording, Issa was evicted from his home in Hebron and tortured by Israeli troops.

I was attacked and beaten and tortured on Oct. 7 by Israeli soldiers and Israeli settlers in armed uniforms.     Yes, to Oct. 7, Israeli settlers in army uniforms and Israeli soldiers kidnapped me from my house, the yard, and they handcuffed me, blindfolded my eyes, tied my mouth, and beat me, beat me, beat me, and I was put in very bad condition, spitting on me, taking selfies with me, celebrating, beating me up, and cursing and insulting me all for 10 hours. And that was so painful, to be tied with plastic cuffs for 10 hours continuously. Until now, I have back problems and back pain, and I have hand issues. I’m suffering from that. I’m not able to move my fingers well and I don’t feel well after the blood was not reaching my fingers for 10 hours. That was Oct. 7. Then settlers and soldiers attacked my house many times, raided my house, damaged my yard at the time, and then they evicted me by force from my house. https://inthesetimes.com/article/issa-amro-palestinian-activist

2023-11-13 ‘They call us terrorists’: Inside the Palestinian resistance forces of Jenin, West Bank       Israel continues to unleash hell upon the 22-by-5-mile concentrated area of Gaza, in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, with relentless airstrikes and indiscriminate bombings of hospitals, residential buildings, schools, and other civilian sites. As besieged Palestinians shelter and flee and die within the walls of their cage in Gaza, Resistance forces are mobilizing to rise up against an Occupation that has presided over lives for 75 years.

Where there is occupation, there is resistance, and numerous Palestinian resistance groups exist across the Occupied Territories. These groups consist of occupied subjects turned freedom fighters—those who have been directly targeted by Israel, who have witnessed their friends and families die at the hands of occupying forces, and who have been labeled “terrorists” for resisting their slow extermination. In Jenin, a 1km square ghetto-like refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, and the target of numerous Israeli incursions, there are many who have chosen the path of armed resistance, and many who felt they had no other choice.

For those who suffer under the direct oppression and daily practices of apartheid—including the suspension of human and civil rights, military-imposed blockades and checkpoints restricting people’s movements, the demolition of homes and killing of family members—there comes a breaking point. Generations of Palestinians, born into Occupation and violence, do not live a life of dignity. As they describe, under these conditions, they have nothing to live for and nothing to lose, and they have everything to fight for.

In July of this year, before the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks and Israel’s genocidal retaliatory offensive in Gaza, The Real News Network spoke to members of the community in Jenin refugee camp about their lives under Occupation, the role of the Resistance there, and the fight for freedom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WfLVa1u4pk

2023-11-09 The Unseen Second Front of Israel’s War on Palestinians   Emboldened by the world’s silence, Israeli settlers are working hand in hand with the military to terrorize Palestinians throughout the West Bank.      As the world’s eyes have been focused, understandably, on the atrocities Israel has been committing in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli military has been intensifying its assaults on Palestinians living in the West Bank. Israel has cordoned off Palestinian communities, blocking the entrances and restricting movement in and out, while settlers have been allowed to roam freely across rural areas, firing eagerly at Palestinians who cross their paths. At the same time, the Israeli military has stepped up their raids all across the West Bank of Palestine. Stories of abject cruelty and torture have emerged, as soldiers and settlers have together rounded up Palestinians and, in at least one case, allegedly stripped, blindfolded, sexually assaulted, and even urinated on them. More than 165 Palestinians have been killed over the last three weeks in the West Bank alone, with at least 2,200 arrested thus far.     https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-unseen-second-front-of-israel-s-war-on-palestinians/ar-AA1jHWAZ

2023-11-04 Amid Genocidal Fury in Gaza, Israel’s Zionist Ambitions Unleashed in the Occupied West Bank     Guterres was calling the world’s attention to Israel’s long record of severe criminal provocations in occupied Palestine, which have been occurring ever since it became the occupying power after the 1967 war.   The occupier, a role expected to be temporary, is entrusted in such circumstances with upholding international humanitarian law by ensuring the security and safety of the occupied civilian population, as spelled out in the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Israel reacted so angrily to Guterres’s entirely appropriate and accurate remarks because they could be interpreted as implying that Israel “had it coming” in view of its severe and varied abuses against people in the occupied Palestinian territories, most flagrantly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank and Jerusalem.  

It has also been forgotten in reacting to Israel’s tactics in Gaza that from day one, the extremist government has initiated a shocking series of violent provocations across the occupied West Bank. Many have interpreted this undisguised unleashing of settler violence as part of the endgame of the Zionist project, aimed at achieving victory over the remnants of Palestinian resistance.

There is little reason to doubt that Israel deliberately overreacted to 7 October by immediately engaging in a genocidal response, particularly if its purpose was to divert attention from the escalation of West Bank settler violence, exacerbated by the government’s distribution of guns to “civilian security teams.”    The Israeli government’s ultimate plan seems to be to end once and for all UN partition fantasies, lending authority to the Zionist maximalist goal of annexation or total subjugation of West Bank Palestinians.      https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/gaza-west-bank

2023-10-10 How West Bank Settlements Led to the Conflict in Gaza  The pilgrimage took place on the night of October 4. A long line of buses entered the city of Nablus in the West Bank. They carried Jewish worshippers to Joseph’s Tomb, a contested holy site whose attraction—especially for religious West Bank settlers—is precisely that it is located inside the Palestinian city.

To protect the pilgrimage, the Israeli army sent three battalions of soldiers—a significant military operation. Those battalions were part of a larger-than-usual Israeli military deployment in the West Bank, where Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and settler attacks on Palestinians, had steadily escalated in recent months.

Three mornings after the pilgrimage, Hamas terrorists poured across the border between Gaza and Israel and committed atrocities that I can no longer bear to describe, and that will remain in my nightmares. According to first reports, some troops that would normally have defended that border were in the West Bank.   

And yet, the West Bank settlement enterprise played multiple roles in creating the current crisis, and one critical implication of the war is that the settlements are a security burden that Israel cannot afford.  https://prospect.org/world/2023-10-20-west-bank-settlements-conflict-gaza/

2023-10-19 Israeli Troops and Settlers Attack Palestinians in Occupied West Bank, Push Death Toll to 69    In the occupied West Bank, health officials say at least seven Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and armed settlers over the past day amid mounting military raids and arrests. Sixty-nine Palestinians have been killed in similar attacks since October 7. Major protests across the West Bank have also taken aim at the ruling Palestinian Authority, which has launched a violent crackdown on demonstrations.   https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/19/headlines/gaza_death_toll_nears_3_800_as_israels_siege_and_bombardment_enters_13th_day

2023-10-13 With All Eyes on Gaza, Israeli Soldiers and Settlers Kill Dozens of West Bank Palestinians  While the world watches Israel’s military pulverize Gaza amid anticipation of an imminent ground invasion of the besieged strip, Israeli soldiers and settlers—who are receiving thousands of assault rifles from the government—have killed dozens of Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem over the past week, officials there said on Friday. https://www.commondreams.org/news/settler-attacks-west-bank?

2023-05-23 Israel’s Far-Right Government is a Gift to Settlers    In December 2022, Israel elected the most far-right government in its history, one that has stated that expanding settlements is its top priority. That’s left Palestinians fearful of a widespread land-grab by settlers and more violence in the occupied West Bank.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=km-ciyqmAus

2023-03-08 Why the Huwwara Pogrom was Inevitable    In early January, as Israel was forming its most openly extreme right-wing government yet, Nadav Tamir, a former Israeli diplomat and current lobby group director, gave a prescient warning .   Tamir said that Zvika Fogel , a previously little-known figure who now chairs the Israeli parliament’s National Security Committee, openly “articulates the venomous truth” of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party, a key player in Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.  Where Ben-Gvir might wish to mask his extremist aims in the language of moderation, Fogel “has been proudly saying the quiet part out loud, and he is worth listening to,” Tamir said.

Fogel played that role on Monday, praising the “deterrent” effect after hundreds of settlers attacked Palestinian communities in the northern West Bank, setting fire to Palestinian homes and vehicles.  

Breaking the Silence, a group of whistle-blowing Israeli veterans, said  on Monday that “the Huwwara Pogrom was state-sanctioned violence.”   Represented at the highest levels of the government, “settlers rampaged with impunity because they know they have the state on their side,” Breaking the Silence added.   And that includes Israel’s military, whose primary function in the occupied West Bank is to protect settlers living in Jewish-only colonies built in violation of international law.   B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, pointed  to the “synergy” of cooperation: “the settlers carry out the attack, the military secures it, the politicians back it.”https://www.blackagendareport.com/why-huwwara-pogrom-was-inevitable

2022-12-08 Israel’s ultra nationalist settlers who brought the far right to power     Now in Israel, the most far-right government in the country’s history is about to take power, at the end of a year marred by soaring levels of deadly violence.  The new government, being brought together by four-time prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, includes ultranationalists who have advocated the annexing of the West Bank and deporting those they deem “traitors”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BETNqgBCjwc

2022-11-00 Israel is Demolishing Palestinian Villages for a Firing Zone  FEATURING SAMI HURAINI – Israeli forces are in the midst of a major demolition of Palestinian homes and infrastructure in the southern part of the occupied West Bank that is going largely unreported. The demolition project of numerous villages in the Palestinian region of Masafar Yatta is considered the largest forced expulsion of native Palestinian people from their homes in 55 years. Farmers have been attacked and imprisoned, schools are being destroyed.   The demolition takes place months after Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the area inhabited by about 1,200 Palestinians can be bulldozed to make way for an Israeli military training ground.   https://risingupwithsonali.com/israel-is-demolishing-palestinian-villages-for-a-firing-zone/

2022-06-22 Expert Q&A: Israel’s Expulsion of Palestinians from Masafer Yatta    On May 4, 2022, the Israeli supreme court ruled that Israel could expel more than 1,000 Palestinians from their homes in the Masafer Yatta region of the occupied West Bank, ostensibly to make way for a training zone for Israel’s occupying army.

While Israel routinely destroys the homes of Palestinians, including entire communities, the expulsions in Masafer Yatta are the largest single such forced displacement carried out by Israel since it began its military occupation of the West Bank in 1967. The United Nations, European Union, and human rights organizations have condemned the displacements as illegal and at least 15 members of Congress have called on Israel to stop.

Since the court’s decision, between 50-60 people have had their homes destroyed by the army. The families are refusing to leave their villages, so most of them have relocated to tents or small caves. After the initial demolitions, the army returned and confiscated the tents, displacing those families yet again.

Two villages in Masafer Yatta, Khalit Al Dabee and Al-Taban, received notification recently that every structure in their villages will be demolished in the coming days. Homes, animal pens, everything. We’re expecting this large-scale demolition at any time.

And there’s been a dangerous new development: the army sent a letter to the Palestinian Authority [which administers parts of the West Bank under overall Israeli control] notifying them that they intend to do training exercises involving the firing of weapons in a large swathe of Masafer Yatta in the coming days, and that they may remove all inhabitants from that area. This could impact six communities in Masafer Yatta.   https://imeu.org/article/expert-qa-israels-expulsion-of-palestinians-from-masafer-yatta

2022-05-05 Israel upholds expulsion order against West Bank hamlets   Israel’s Supreme Court has upheld a long-standing expulsion order against eight Palestinian hamlets in the occupied West Bank, potentially leaving at least 1,000 people homeless, an Israeli rights group representing the villagers said Thursday.

The verdict, issued late Wednesday as Israel largely shut down for its Independence Day, marks the end of a more than two-decade legal struggle by Palestinians in the Masafer Yatta region of the southern West Bank to maintain communities they say go back decades.   “Without warning in the middle of the night, the Israeli High Court of Justice published a verdict with unprecedented consequences,” the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has represented the residents throughout the process, said in a statement.    https://apnews.com/article/business-middle-east-israel-west-bank-364aae76aa6e9ac43043c275bc86c54b

2021-07-08 The draconian law used by Israel to steal Palestinian land      Al Jazeera spoke to several experts who said the eviction did not reflect a change of Israeli policy and only displayed how the Israeli state deploys its instruments to facilitate systematic theft of Palestinian property.    

Instead of being reprimanded by the state for illegally confiscating land that did not belong to them, the settlers were made a promise.

The Israeli media reported Naftali Bennett, Israel’s new prime minister and a staunch supporter of illegal settlements, offered the settlers a deal – the state would ascertain whether the land can be classified as “state land” and if yes – the conclusion the state is expected to arrive at – it would be handed over to the settlers even though it lies in Palestinian villages.

Hagit Ofran, executive director of the Settlement Watch programme at the Israeli NGO Peace Now, surmised it for Al Jazeera. “It was published: The settlers leave; the houses remain; the army puts up a military post; the government starts the process of declaring state lands,” Ofran said.

Israel legalises such outposts or settlements by deploying a draconian interpretation of the Ottoman law that if the land was not cultivated for several years in a row it would become the property of the state.  https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/7/8/how-israel-backs-settlers-to-confiscate-palestinian-lands

2020-06-26 Letter to President Trump – June 26, 2020    Do you think you have enough on your table these days? Wait until the Israeli government, fortified economically and militarily by U.S. taxpayers, illegally annexes a large region of the Palestinian West Bank, including the Jordan Valley, next month. That is the declaration of the Israeli Prime Minister.

This flagrant violation of international law, once again confirmed by various countries and the United Nations, is expected to unleash crushing repression and violence which will be broadcast and shown by photojournalists around the world. This annexation will lead to demonstrations condemning you and the Prime Minister. Inside Israel, there is strong opposition from retired high military and security officials, as well as members of the Knesset from which the Prime Minister is not seeking approval. Sound familiar?

The collateral damage from this unilateral seizure of thirty percent from what is left of Palestinian land (the West Bank is about 20 percent of the original Palestine) will include a rupture of warming relations between Israel and nearby Arab countries, especially Jordan, alienating your friend Recep Tayyip Erdogan, President of Turkey, and lead to unintended consequences that will be arriving at your door as the Covid-19 pandemic widens. Even with your limited attention to detail, your inability to recognize the consequences of international disputes, and your short attention span, you should be able to envision how much time and energy this war crime will take from you.

For the Palestinians, there will be more dread and devastation. Half of their food comes from the Jordan Valley. It would spell the end of the “two-state solution,” and lead to the possible dissolution of the Palestine Authority security arrangements with the Israeli occupation. That would mean more Israeli patrols, more destruction of homes, more innocent Palestinian casualties, and more responsibility on you stemming from your reckless, mindless endorsement of annexation several months ago.

You can prevent these calamities. First, you need to stop your bigotry against the Palestinian Arabs and desperate Syrian Arab refugees that make you a leading anti-Semite against the Arab peoples.  https://nader.org/2020/06/29/letter-to-president-trump-june-26-2020/  

2014-07-17 Pounding Gaza – World’s Largest Open-Air Prison   An already troubling humanitarian crisis has intensified with the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, an area about twice the size of the District of Columbia that has about three times as many residents (1.8 million). Israel has been using its highly touted precise missiles to hit numerous targets. This collective punishment, a war crime per se, wreaks havoc on civilians and their life-sustaining infrastructure.

With over 1,700 explosive strikes so far, the Israeli military has pounded homes, schools, mosques, electric and water facilities, municipal buildings, health clinics, moving vehicles, a home for the seriously disabled and even tiny agriculture areas. As a result of these attacks, over two hundred and thirty Gazans have died and over seventeen hundred have been injured so far, about eighty percent are civilians, a majority of whom are women and children, according to UN observers.

That is only part of the continuing war against Gaza. For years, Israel has maintained a siege/blockade, restricting the importation of adequate food, medicine, water, electricity, construction materials and other necessities needed by the refugees in the world’s largest open-air prison. These daily deprivations have taken a deadly toll. Fatalities, sicknesses, untreated cancers have resulted. Half of the children are seriously malnourished due to the dire poverty associated with the Israeli air, land and sea encirclement. (There are even harsh restrictions on Gazan fishermen.)   https://nader.org/2014/07/17/pounding-gaza-worlds-largest-open-air-prison/

2013-05-30 To Kerry: Get Israeli Peace Leaders Before Congress     The new Secretary of State John Kerry taking four trips to the Israeli/Palestinian region in the past two months means yet another U.S. effort for a negotiated peace process between the Palestinians (under ruthless occupation) and the very dominant Israelis. Why should the prospects be any better than the failed attempts by the esteemed former Senator George Mitchell, and his predecessors?

As senator with a “grade A” from the powerful pro-Israeli government lobby AIPAC, Secretary Kerry has forged a coalition of Israeli and Palestinian businessmen behind a $4 billion economic assistance plan for the West Bank and Gaza. He is also tapping into the significant Israeli public opinion behind a two-state solution.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is outwardly going through the motions of supporting peace negotiations but demands preconditions and no cessation of expanding Israeli colonies in Palestine. Netanyahu knows how to play the U.S. government like a harp. He talks about negotiations for peace, but remains intransigent.   Back in 1996, he told an applauding joint session of Congress that Israel’s mature economy would no longer need U.S. foreign aid. Today, Israel is a prosperous, bigger economy but is still receiving U.S. foreign aid.  

The problem is that almost nobody in Israel – hawks, peace advocates, or those in the middle – believes anything will come out of Kerry’s shuttle diplomacy.   Here are some reasons why. There is no pressure on Netanyahu’s governing coalition to wage peace.   Nor is there any pressure that Netanyahu recognizes from the Palestinian/Arab side. Palestinians are continually subjugated, impoverished, divided internally and on the losing end of the casualty toll by a ratio exceeding 400 to 1. Israel can strike targets in Palestine at will.  https://nader.org/2013/05/30/to-kerry-get-israeli-peace-leaders-before-congress/

2012-11-20 Israel-Palestine – what is the U.S. national interest?  Israeli elections are coming up in January so it is Palestinian hunting season again. Israeli cynics call it a time “for mowing the grass.”   Out comes the well-worn playbook by Israel’s militaristic government that has worked to silence Israeli politicians and citizens who want a two-state solution. This is an opportunity to use and test advanced weaponry from the U.S., compliments of U.S. taxpayers, and squelch ongoing peace efforts, small and large, by Palestinians, Israelis and international peace advocates.

The playbook’s first chapter is provocation to upset a tense but workable truce with Hamas, the elected government of Gaza. Hamas was encouraged at its creation years ago by both Israeli and U.S. backers to counter the secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Bit of a blowback there.  

Back to Israel’s playbook, chapter two can be called the instant, mandatory resolutions by the puppet show in Congress and the automatic one-sided mantra by the White House. “Israel has a right to defend itself,” said President Obama, from the occupied, besieged, defenseless Palestinians, whose lands, water, homes, businesses and freedom of movement are being taken relentlessly by the raiding Israeli government that is not content with possessing 78 percent of traditional Palestine.  Finally, chapter three of the playbook is to make sure that the Israeli government advocates dominate the U.S. media – the talk shows, the news slants, and the opinion columnists. This is becoming less easy in an internet age. Which might explain that, along with homes, water wells, rescue teams, an ambulance, and other civilian installations, the Israeli air force already has bombed the office building housing Palestinian television studios and hosting media from the western world, including Fox TV. That is one indelicate way to tell these western journalists to get out of Gaza so that the truth about the immense civilian suffering and war crimes can no longer be told by them.   https://nader.org/2012/11/20/israel-palestine-what-is-the-u-s-national-interest/

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

Weapon Sales to Israel

2023-10-13 Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin Says U.S. Won’t Place Conditions on Weapons to Israel  U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Pentagon was not placing any conditions on its weapons shipments to Israel.     Today Austin is in Tel Aviv, where he pledged “ironclad” U.S. support for Israel during a meeting with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/13/headlines/competing_pro_israel_and_pro_palestine_demonstrations_raise_tensions_on_college_campuses

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World

War Crimes (also see Israel War Crimes)

Updated 2024-08-29

2024-08-13 Investigation Details IDF Use of Gaza Civilians as Booby Trap Detectors     Believing that “our lives are more important than their lives,” Israel Defense Forces soldiers have widely used Palestinians including civilians as booby trap detectors in Gaza, according to a new Haaretz investigation, the latest of numerous reports detailing IDF use of kidnapped Gazans as human shields.

The report, published Tuesday, features testimonies of IDF soldiers, who said commanders are fully aware of the practice of using captured Palestinians as human shields. One soldier said “there is pride in it,” referring to acts considered war crimes under Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law. https://www.commondreams.org/news/idf-human-shields

2024-07-21 Israeli Soldiers Flaunt War Crimes on Social Media. Why Aren’t They Held Accountable?     Israel’s genocide in Gaza may go down as the first genocide in history where the perpetrators have documented, posted, shared and celebrated their crimes on social media.   Over the past 10 months, Israeli soldiers in Gaza have taken photos and videos of themselves while they blew up homes and schools, and tortured captives.

To boast of their atrocities against civilians, Israeli forces have routinely filmed themselves demolishing residential blocks in Gaza, which they proceeded to share online. In June, an Israeli soldier filmed himself walking triumphantly amid the ruins and rubble of a destroyed neighborhood in Gaza, while boasting: “We were asked to clear the area. Blow it all up. What can I do, I’m an obedient soldier. Tomorrow there won’t be anything here.” https://truthout.org/articles/israeli-soldiers-flaunt-war-crimes-online-why-arent-they-held-accountable/

2024-07-15 Israel Has “Flattened” UNRWA HQ in Gaza in “Blatant” War Crime, Agency Says       After months of successive attacks on humanitarian aid facilities, Israeli forces have now “completely destroyed” the headquarters of the primary aid group for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, the agency reports.

Israeli forces attacked the facility as they carried out their horrific raid of Gaza City last week, leaving nothing but rubble in its place. The building was one of many operated by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), the largest aid group for Palestinians in Gaza and beyond.

UNRWA Commissioner Philippe Lazzarini said that Israel’s attack on the facility represents a “blatant” war crime.https://truthout.org/articles/israel-has-flattened-unrwa-hq-in-gaza-in-blatant-war-crime-agency-says/

2024-04-16 “I’m Jewish, and I’ve Covered Wars. I Know War Crimes When I See Them”: Reporter Peter Maass on Gaza     We speak with veteran journalist Peter Maass about the Israeli war on Gaza and his new opinion piece for The Washington Post headlined “I’m Jewish, and I’ve covered wars. I know war crimes when I see them.” Maass, who was a senior editor at The Intercept until earlier this year, has spent decades covering wars, including the Bosnian genocide in the 1990s that killed about 100,000 people over nearly four years. He says many of the same war crimes he reported then are part of Israel’s current assault, including sniper attacks on civilians, bombing of civilian infrastructure, attacks on bread lines and besieging whole populations by preventing food and other aid from entering. “What seems to be unfolding in Gaza is even worse than what I saw in Bosnia,” says Maass.   Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQV6s0tASGI

2024-03-08 UN Human Rights Chief Decries ‘War Crime’ of Rapidly Expanding Israeli Settlements     “The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.”  https://www.commondreams.org/news/israeli-settlements-2667464747

2024-02-08 Expanded Rafah Assault Would Be ‘Stain on Israel’ and Its Backers: Refugee Group     Accusing Israel of waging war on a “gigantic refugee camp” where more than 1 million Palestinians have moved to escape air and ground attacks over the last four months, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council on Thursday called on the Israel Defense Forces to stop its shelling of the southern Gaza city of Rafah and halt further plans for an intensified assault.

With Israeli military officials reporting that they have not devised a plan to protect civilian lives in Rafah, NRC Secretary-General Jan Egeland said that a ground offensive in the city—previously designated a “safe zone” where more than 1 million Palestinians were told to go as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched air and ground attacks across the enclave—would be a “stain on both Israel and those nations providing arms,” including the United States.

“It would be a bloodbath, and among children and women, among the innocent,” Egeland told CNN, adding that reports of Hamas’ tactic of “blending in with civilians… does not in any way justify indiscriminate attacks.” https://www.commondreams.org/news/israel-attacks-rafah

2024-02-02 Western Officials Warn of War-Crimes Complicity   The “Transatlantic Civil Servants’ Statement on Gaza” signals mounting dissent inside Western governments over support for Israel’s war on Gaza as famine and disease spread across the enclave.  More than 800 government officials in the United States and Europe released a letter Friday criticizing their countries’ leaders for providing unconditional military and diplomatic support to Israel as it inflicts disaster on Gaza’s population.  [The 800-plus figure is ascribed to an organizer of the letter who is quoted anonymously, for fear of reprisal, in a report in The New York Times.]

The authors of the letter, who remain anonymous, wrote that their attempts to voice concerns internally about their governments’ support for Israel’s assault on Gaza “were overruled by political and ideological considerations.”  “We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century,” the letter reads. “We are obliged to warn the publics of our countries, whom we serve, and to act in concert with transnational colleagues.”  “Israel has shown no boundaries in its military operations in Gaza, which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths,” the letter continues.  “There is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes, and even ethnic cleansing or genocide.”    https://consortiumnews.com/2024/02/02/western-officials-warn-of-war-crimes-complicity/

2024-01-09 Documenting Israel’s War Crimes | Centre Stage     Omar Shakir is the Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. He has spent years documenting and investigating human rights abuses and Israeli crimes against humanity across Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories. He joins Al Jazeera presenter Rawaa Auge on Centre Stage to explain the processes and difficulties in carrying out his job as well as provide an overview of the long list of crimes Israel has committed against Palestinians.  This episode is produced in partnership with the Islam and Muslims Initiative, an international platform that connects Muslims and non-Muslims in the realms of religion, politics, business, media, academia and civil society.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkzhjrDEOzQ

2023-12-20 U.S. Is Quietly SUPPRESSING Effort To Discuss Israel’s War Crimes    U.S. diplomats are trying to squelch efforts of their Swiss counterparts to identify violations of the Geneva Conventions by Israel against Hamas in Gaza, according to HuffPost. Ana Kasparian discusses on The Young Turks.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUqd-BneJ98

2023-12-20 ‘TERRORISM!’: Pope Francis Directly Calls Out Israeli War Crimes | The Kyle Kulinski Show      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ookF3F0eCsc

2023-12-04 Dutch Court Hears Case Accusing Government of Complicity in Israeli War Crimes      “When military goods can contribute to human rights violations or international humanitarian law, that export is strictly prohibited,” said one campaigner. “It is incomprehensible that, despite clear warnings, the government has knowingly deviated from this.”  

A Dutch court on Monday heard opening arguments in a case brought by four human rights organizations that have accused the government of the Netherlands of being complicit in Israeli war crimes due to its export of military supplies as Israel kills thousands of civilians in Gaza.   Supplying the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with parts for F-35 fighter jets, which are stored in a warehouse in the Netherlands, puts the Dutch government at risk for “becoming complicit in violations of international humanitarian law,” the director of the Dutch branch of Amnesty International , one of the plaintiffs, said when the lawsuit was announced last month.

Amnesty is joined by Oxfam Novib—the Dutch chapter of Oxfam International—The Rights Forum, and PAX in the case, which is expected to result in a judgement around December 15.   https://www.commondreams.org/news/dutch-israel-war-crimes

2023-11-08 Noura Erakat Interview on the BBC About Possible War Crimes in Gaza      The BBC spoke with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat about possible war crimes committed in Gaza. The anchor insisted it was Israel’s right to self-defense and that it bore no responsibility for civilian casualties. Erakat refuted both propositions as state propaganda and urged news organizations to exercise more scrutiny.  

Noura Erakat is a human rights attorney and an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, New Brunswick Department of Africana Studies. Her research interests include humanitarian law, refugee law, national security law, and critical race theory. Noura is the author of Justice for Some: Law As Politics in the Question of Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2019). She is a Co-Founding Editor of Jadaliyya e-zine and an Editorial Committee member of the Journal of Palestine Studies. She has served as Legal Counsel for a Congressional Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, as a Legal Advocate for the Badil Center for Palestinian Refugee and Residency Rights, and as the national grassroots organizer and legal advocate at the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation. Noura is the coeditor of Aborted State? The UN Initiative and New Palestinian Junctures, an anthology related to the 2011 and 2012 Palestine bids for statehood at the UN. More recently, Noura released a pedagogical project on the Gaza Strip and Palestine, which includes a short multimedia documentary, “Gaza In Context,” that rehabilitates Israel’s wars on Gaza within a settler-colonial framework. She is also the producer of the short video, “Black Palestinian Solidarity.” She is a frequent commentator, with recent appearances on CBS News, CNN, Fox News, and NPR, among others, and her writings have been widely published in the national media and academic journals.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCo_gODySRc

2023-10-26 War Crimes Committed By Israel   Israel’s appalling violations of international law have been on display to the entire world. Since you likely won’t hear about any of them on mainstream media, MintPress director Mnar Adley breaks down some of the worst war crimes carried out by Israel since October 7, 2023.    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A5bEL_88Lg

2023-10-11 Mustafa Barghouti: Israel’s Siege & Bombing of Gaza Are War Crimes. Is Ethnic Cleansing Next?     We’re joined from Ramallah by Mustafa Barghouti, a Palestinian physician, activist and politician who serves as general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, also known as al-Mubadara, and is a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization Central Council. “I don’t want any Palestinian or Israeli civilian to be killed,” says Barghouti, who argues that a ground operation in Gaza would constitute a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and condemns Israeli occupation and settlement under far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as having destroyed any “prospective for a two-state solution.” Barghouti also discusses President Biden’s abnegation of responsibility toward Palestinian Americans, Egypt’s role in the conflict and the relationship within Palestine between the “totally marginalized” Palestinian Authority and groups like Hamas. https://www.democracynow.org/2023/10/11/mustafa_barghouti_gaza_israel_hamas

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Categorized Directory: News and Articles about Israel- Palestine Conflict

Palestine and Israel

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Specific Issues Index

from Creating Better World