Israel #3

(Trump)

“And we moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the Evangelicals.
You know, it’s amazing with that: the Evangelicals are more excited by that than Jewish people.”

0:19 ( https://twitter.com/dpinsen/status/1295483079662997504 )

- David Pinsen @dpinsen | 6:10 PM · Aug 17, 2020

The rapture happy especially want to see Armageddon. They want to see Jesus descend from the clouds and rout the infidels and evildoers. They're living in a cartoon fantasy world but they see the potential in a global war for them to be lifted up into the clouds with Jesus, the choirs of angels---the whole nine yards of snake oil salesman christian propagandizing coming to fruition. It's not all that different from an Islamist suicide bomber who thinks 70 virgins are waiting for him on the other side either. Your megachurch christian told that if he closes his eyes and believes hard enough--puts his arms in the air and bobs his head to the music that anything can come true---how many millions of those are there in this country?

All of this is beyond Trump's comprehension which is why he's amazed.

The reality on the ground in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza is quite different. For instance in Gaza you have 2+ million inhabitants sealed off from the world in a very small fenced in area with guard posts all along the fence line and a pretty liberal shoot to kill whoever comes into your rifle's sights policy. Israeli warships constantly patrolling the harbor and Israeli warplanes continually flying overhead. They have nowhere to go. 2% of the water within is potable-the rest is pretty much sewage or sea water and the restrictions on anyone entering or leaving are extremely harsh. It is an open air prison.

The West Bank is different in that it's all about letting Jewish settlers steal more and more land from the Palestinians. The army and security forces meeting rocks and stones from protesters with rubber bullets (if they're lucky), live ammunition, warplanes and bulldozers. Most Palestinians are not allowed to vote for the real govt. and have no political say over the shit that happens to them. If their land is stolen or homes are taken or destroyed--it's too bad--they are non-citizens in the state of Israel. The United States aids and abets Israel--sometimes less (Obama) sometimes more (Bush, Trump). There is plenty of historical precedence I suppose for what's happening--that said Israel is still an apartheid like nation and any American politicians who get the support of organizations that fall under the umbrella of AIPAC are complicit in civil rights crimes to the Palestinian people. How can you be for Black Lives Matter and be against the Palestinian people?

The Israel deal may give the UAE a boost – but it doesn’t bring us any closer to peace in the Middle East (Independent)

The new agreement is good for all the political leaders involved, including Donald Trump, but answers few of the bigger questions...

Somewhat protected until now by Israeli embargo, densely populated Gaza suffered its first COVID outbreak, so shutdown. Poverty + restricted electricity + poor water + COVID. What hell...

Hamas: Gaza will not 'remain silent' as Israel escalates siege
Ali Adam | 8/26/2020

Gaza City - The threat of a new Gaza war continues to rise as Palestinians demand an end to the devastating 13-year-long blockade and Israel tightens the screws on Gaza's economy while targeting Hamas positions.

Israeli warplanes and tanks bombed Hamas military sites early on Tuesday in response to the incendiary balloons launched from Gaza towards Israel's south, according to an Israeli army statement.

...Over the past two years, following the momentum of the Great March of Return protests, multiple deals were reached between Palestinian factions in Gaza and Israel with the mediation of Egypt, Qatar, and the United Nations.

Hamas, which governs Gaza, was to provide security along the demarcation dividing the Palestinians and Israelis, in return for Israel's alleviation of the blockade.

But Palestinian leaders in Gaza accused Israel of continuing to renege on implementing its side of the bargain.

According to local Palestinian media reports, Israel has failed to extend Gaza's allowed fishing zone to 20 nautical miles, allow the construction of a new power line into the Gaza Strip, permit Gaza's power plant to operate on natural gas, and facilitate the movement of goods, including the entry of 1,200 trucks a day, through the Karem Abu Salem (known as Kerem Shalom to Israelis) crossing.

In response to the launching of incendiary balloons, Israel has taken punitive measures against Gaza by restricting goods coming through the crossing, fully closing the sea to Gaza's fishermen, and halting fuel supplies, causing the territory's sole power plant to shut down with electricity reduced to four hours a day....

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/gaza-israel-war-fears-grow-palestinians-d...

#4--almost all of the 'provocations' by the Gazan's are bow and arrow stuff that has as much chance of actually killing or hurting someone or destroying something of any significance than I have of winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning. The response by the Israeli government and IDF is always super disproportionate and the 'provocations' used by Israel as well to justify not living up to agreements they've made though if there were no provocations they would find some other reasons. Israel also has the United States supporting everything they do and not just the current administration. They have the majority of politicians on both sides of the aisle in their back pocket.

Why Trump wants Sudan to befriend Israel (BBC)

With Sudan in desperate straits - a collapsing economy, hyperinflation looming and a nationwide food crisis - the administration of US President Donald Trump and the Israeli government have seen an opportunity...

Interesting, sad, but hopeful to think green sprouts of democracy survive against all odds. Another story for the 'How to Democracy' thread?

>7 margd:

Yes indeed. The story of how a nonviolent popular uprising, led largely by women and youth, overthrew a brutal military dictatorship in Sudan is an inspiring one, although the struggle continues to build a new democratic society in the face of continued influence by the generals who were formely in power and shameless self-interested pressure from the USA and Israel. Perhaps the one overriding lesson which could be learned by other popular movements (including the Palestinians and Black Lives Matter) is that a nonviolent struggle has more credibility and ultimately a greater chance of success than a violent one.

JCB challenged over machinery used to demolish Palestinian homes (Guardian)

The British heavy machinery firm JCB’s sale of equipment used in the destruction of Palestinian villages in the Israeli-occupied West Bank may have breached Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development guidelines on human rights, a UK government body has assessed.

The case is likely to test the degree to which multinationals are responsible if their export goods are being sold by local distributors in ways that infringe human rights...

‘God help us’ if Trump wins re-election, Palestinian PM says (Al Jazeera)

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has said a Donald Trump victory in the upcoming presidential elections in the United States will be disastrous for his people – and the world at large.

In comments made during a meeting with European legislators on Tuesday, Shtayyeh said the last four years of the Trump administration have greatly harmed the Palestinians.

“If we are going to live another four years with President Trump, God help us, God help you and God help the whole world,” the prime minister said, repeating comments he made a day earlier in a virtual address to the European Parliament...

European powers condemn Israel’s settlement approvals (Al Jazeera)

EU ministers say pushing ahead with more settlements violates international law and further imperils the viability of a two-state solution...

Israel stops issuing visas to UN human rights agency (Al Jazeera)

OHCHR country director among 9 of 12 of UN agency’s workers forced to leave after visas were not renewed...

‘It’s a New Day’: Sudan Exults in Move to Take It Off List of Terror States
Abdi Latif Dahir | Oct. 20, 2020. Updated Oct. 21, 2020

...after 27 years the United States plans to remove (Sudan) from its list of state sponsors of terrorism...

President Trump announced on Monday over Twitter that he will lift the terrorist designation as soon as Sudan deposits a payment of $335 million in compensation to victims, and their families, of attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and the U.S. Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.

The deal would allow the northeastern African nation of Sudan, one of the continent’s largest, to once again access foreign aid, investment and debt relief, as well as military aid. The announcement is likely to bolster Sudan’s fledgling transitional government, which came to power last year after the ouster of the strongman leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and has been facing protests from those calling for a quicker pace of reform.

...In exchange, American officials say they expect Sudan to take steps in coming days to normalize relations with Israel, becoming the fifth Arab state to do so, and notching a diplomatic win for Mr. Trump in the weeks before the presidential election. But that move could prove unpopular with Sudan’s populace, analysts say....

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/world/africa/Sudan-terror-list.html

‘Ignition of new war:’ Sudan political parties reject Israel deal (Al Jazeera)

Sudanese demonstrate in the capital against the deal that several political parties say transitional gov’t is not authorised to sign...

This meddling by the USA and Israel in the internal affairs of a fragile nation which has only just overthrown thirty years of military dictatorship in a nonviolent popular uprising is very unfortunate. It's a complex issue, but the current Sudanese government is a transitional one and many Sudanese feel that it does not therefore have the authority to make major foreign policy decisions - its proper role is to try to resolve domestic issues leading to democratic elections. US pressure on the fragile transitional government to implement this unpopular decision is both unfair and unhelpful.

While Israel and its supporters in the USA are hailing this as step forward for peace, it is far more complex than that.

Sudan’s Normalization Deal with Israel Faces Hurdles (Voice of America)

unlike Israel’s recent deal with Abu Dhabi where hotels are already promoting packages for Israeli tourists, the deal with Sudan still faces several hurdles, including some public opposition...

Head of Sudan’s Largest Party Slams Recognizing Israel (Haaretz)

Sudan’s former Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi on Saturday slammed an announcement by U.S. President Donald Trump that Sudan would start normalizing ties with Israel... “This statement contradicts the Sudanese national law … and contributes to the elimination of the peace project in the Middle East and to preparing for the ignition of a new war,” al-Mahdi said...

Sudan's Normalization With Israel Looks Like An American 'Quid Pro Quo' (World Politics Review)

When is a peace deal not all it’s chalked up to be, even if it ends a formal state of hostility? The Trump administration’s race to pressure Arab countries to normalize their ties with Israel, goaded by promises of American financial assistance and weapons, isn’t really changing the Middle East, despite the White House’s own publicity and some breathless, boosterish commentary...

Sudan confirms moving ahead with Israel accord, despite growing opposition (Times of Israel)

some factions within the political alliance supporting the government have voiced their opposition to normalization with Israel, including Sudan’s former prime minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, who heads the country’s largest political party... Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the head of the sovereign council, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok took the decision to normalize “without consultations within the sovereign council or the Cabinet”...

How US blackmail pushed Sudan to normalise ties with Israel (The New Arab)

Analysis: The normalisation deal between Sudan and Israel was the result of political and financial extortion by the Trump administration...

In another thread I looked up some figures to respond to a poster who demanded sources documenting the fact that Israeli violence against Palestinians is far greater than vice versa. Might be worth reposting it here.

From the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

the number of Palestinians and Israelis who were killed or injured since 2008 in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) and Israel in the context of the occupation and conflict...

5,586 Palestinian fatalities plus 114,226 injuries

249 Israeli fatalities plus 5,624 injuries

Human Rights Watch reports for 2019:

This is a narrative report divided into different sections, so it doesn't give a single comprehensive figure, but here are a few snippets:

Israel continued to fire live ammunition at demonstrators inside Gaza who posed no imminent threat to life, pursuant to open-fire orders from senior officials that contravene international human rights standards... Israeli forces killed 34 Palestinians and... injured 1,883 with live ammunition...

During a flare-up in early May, Israeli airstrikes killed 25 Palestinians, 13 of whom were civilians killed in strikes that appeared to contain no military objective or caused disproportionate civilian loss in violation of the laws of war, while Palestinian armed groups fired 690 unguided rockets towards Israeli population centers, war crimes, killing four Israeli and two Palestinian civilians...

As of November 11, lethal force by Israeli forces resulted in the killing of 71 and injuring 11,453 Palestinians in Gaza, OCHA reported. An additional 33 were killed and 114 injured... during escalated fighting between November 12 and 14...

Attacks by armed groups in Gaza have killed four Israeli civilians and injured more than 123 Israelis...

In the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Israeli security forces killed 23 Palestinians and wounded at least 3,221... attacks by Israeli settlers killed two Palestinians, injured 84, and damaged property in 234 incidents... Palestinians killed five Israelis and wounded at least 46 in the West Bank...

Disproportionate?

Worth remembering also that attacks and assaults resulting in death or injury are not the only form of violence. Human Rights Watch also references the "practice of demolishing the homes of families in retaliation for attacks on Israelis allegedly carried out by a family member, a violation of the international law prohibition on collective punishment"; holding hundreds of thousands of people virtually as prisoners without proper access to food, water, medical treatment, education, etc; the forcible occupation of Palestinian land to build illegal Israeli settlements; and holding minors in detention.

Sudan weakened by US demands on compensation & ties with Israel (The Africa Report)

Battered by an economy in freefall, Sudan’s transitional government is paying a heavy price to access international finance...

The tension between the security holdovers from the Bashir era and the reformers under premier Hamdok is the key fissure in the current government... The worse the economy gets, the harder it will be for the civilians to maintain popular support. Then the danger will be that the military uses that loss of support as a pretext to take back full control and wipeout the transition...

Israel rebuked for 'biggest demolition of Palestinian homes in years'
BBC | Nov 5, 2020

The United Nations has rebuked Israel for carrying out what it said was the biggest demolition of Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank for a decade.

Some 73 people, including 41 children, were made homeless when their dwellings were knocked down in the Bedouin settlement of Khirbet Humsa, in the Jordan Valley...

The Israeli military said the structures had been built illegally. (within Israeli-designated "firing zones" )

But the UN called the Israeli actions a "grave breach" of international law.

According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha), 76 structures - including homes, animal shelters, toilets and solar panels - were destroyed when Israeli bulldozers moved in late on Tuesday.

...Footage from the scene following the demolition, released by Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, showed the area strewn with wreckage including twisted metal, sheets and cots...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54823660

Pentagon senior adviser accused Pompeo and senior politicians of taking money and getting rich from 'the Israeli lobby' (CNN)

A new senior adviser at the Pentagon repeatedly said the United States' support for Israel was the result of "Israeli lobby" money and accused prominent officials, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, of becoming "very very rich," from their support for Israel. Retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor, who was appointed as senior adviser to newly installed acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller this week, made the comments in two media appearances in 2012 and 2019...

Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons (Guardian) by Desmond Tutu

The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians...

Israel is a non-democratic apartheid regime, says rights group (Guardian)

Israel is not a democracy but an “apartheid regime” that enforces Jewish supremacy over all the land it controls, a leading domestic rights group has alleged in a position paper bound to provoke fierce controversy.

“One organising principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians,” said B’Tselem, an organisation that documents human rights violations...

>22 John5918:. Gee, I thought that was already self-evident and widely acknowledged.

>23 2wonderY:

Me too. But not amongst the right wing in the USA, including right wing evangelical Christians. I have been blocked on LT by one longstanding right wing evangelical Christian poster for simply saying that Biden should "reverse the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and join the rest of the international community in recognising the illegality of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land."

ICC rules it can investigate alleged war crimes in Palestine despite Israeli objections (Guardian)

Palestinian Authority welcomes ruling that could see prosecution of Israeli officials and military as well as Hamas figures...

ICC rules it has jurisdiction over West Bank and Gaza 'abuses' (BBC)

The International Criminal Court ruled on Friday that it has jurisdiction over war crimes and atrocities committed in the Palestinian territories. The judgement paves the way for the court to open a criminal investigation. Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda had previously called for investigations, saying there was "a reasonable basis to believe" war crimes had happened...

How the Media Cracks Down on Critics of Israel
I was fired as a newspaper columnist after I joked about U.S. military aid to Israel on social media.
by Nathan J. Robinson
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2021/02/how-the-media-cracks-down-on-critics-of-i...

It is widely recognized that critics of Israel, no matter how well-founded the criticism, are routinely punished by both public and private institutions for their speech. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has documented a pattern by which “those who seek to protest, boycott, or otherwise criticize the Israeli government are being silenced,” a trend that “manifests on college campuses, in state contracts, and even in bills to change federal criminal law” and “suppresses the speech of people on only one side of the Israel-Palestine debate.” The Center for Constitutional Rights has shown that “Israel advocacy organizations, universities, government actors, and other institutions” have targeted pro-Palestinian activists with a number of tactics “including event cancellations, baseless legal complaints, administrative disciplinary actions, firings, and false and inflammatory accusations of terrorism and antisemitism” and concludes that there is a “Palestine exception to free speech.”

The effort to keep critics of Israel quiet sometimes takes the form of explicit government action—there is an open campaign to criminalize speech critical of Israel and some states even require oaths from government employees promising not to boycott Israel. But as Israeli journalist Gideon Levy notes in the Middle East Eye, it often comes in the form of baseless (and offensive) accusations that criticisms of Israel are definitionally anti-Semitic. In the United States, academic critics of Israel have had job offers rescinded or been otherwise kept from teaching, and CNN fired academic Marc Lamont Hill over his call for a free Palestine. In Britain, there has been a years-long absurd campaign to tar former Labour leader (and critic of Israeli government policy) Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite. Human Rights Watch notes that the United States government has wielded unfounded accusations of anti-Semitism against it and against other human rights groups like Amnesty and Oxfam that have exposed Israel’s shoddy human rights record. Within Israel itself, the free speech rights of Palestinians are brutally suppressed, and even Jews supportive of Palestinian rights are regularly harassed by the state. Abeer Alnajjar of OpenDemocracy wrote last year about how “major, mainstream news media outlets are sensitized against any reference to Palestinian rights or international law, and any criticism of Israel or its policies.”

Personally, I had never thought about the question of whether I could suffer consequences for criticizing the government of Israel (and U.S. support for it). I have just about as much “free speech” as you can get in this world. Perhaps I should have thought about it more, though, because as soon as I crossed an invisible line, it was very quickly made clear to me. The moment I irritated defenders of Israel on social media, I was summarily fired from my job as a newspaper columnist....

It was the Grauniad, for those keeping score.

Israel expands nuclear facility previously used for weapons material (Guardian)

Israel is carrying out a major expansion of its Dimona nuclear facility in the Negev desert, where it has historically made the fissile material for its nuclear arsenal...

Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, rights watchdog says (Guardian)

Human Rights Watch has accused Israeli officials of committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution, claiming the government enforces an overarching policy to “maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians”... after decades of warnings that an entrenched hold over Palestinian life could lead to apartheid, it had found that the “threshold” had been crossed...

Pax Christi International urges the United Nations to oppose impending home evictions by Israel in the neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan (Pax Christi International)

Pax Christi International has sent an urgent letter to the members of the UN Security Council to immediately oppose Israel’s impending plans to forcibly evict Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem.

These families, expulsed from their land during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, were resettled in the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan. They are now threatened to lose their homes once again. Under international law, East Jerusalem was illegally annexed in 1967 by Israel and is considered by the international community as occupied territory.

The first of these eviction orders are to be executed on 2 May 2021 leaving numerous persons, many of whom are old or children, homeless during a global pandemic. Any hope for a just and sustainable peace is slowly being chipped away by such attempts to create facts on the ground...

Full text of letter here

Sudan calls on Israel to stop violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem (Kuwait News Agency)

A reluctant Sudan has recently been pressured by the USA to establish relations with Israel, but it's good to see that they are still ready to speak out against Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

Not about Israel, but about the ingenuity and hope of the people oppressed by Israel.

Palestinian engineer behind helicopter flight on Mars (Anadolu)

A Palestinian engineer, who was in the team that designed NASA’s mini Mars helicopter Ingenuity, is proud of being part of a historic event. Loay Elbasyouni, born and raised in Gaza’s Beit Hanoun city...

Noting that his father is one of the best surgeons of Palestine in Israeli occupied Gaza City, he said people living in his country strive for success. From a young age, Elbasyouni did not see circumstances as an obstacle before his success and said: “I always knew I will succeed. Honestly, I have not reached my goals yet.” Due to Israel’s occupation, he could not see his parents for 12 years and his brother for 14 years, he noted, saying his parents have moved to Germany. “There's nothing legally stopping me {from going to Gaza} but there is a risk,” he said. “In engineering, we can predict everything, we can calculate everything and we can follow a project timeline. “If I do the same thing with the situation in Gaza, if I say, I want to visit Gaza, what is the timeline? I cannot answer that question,” he said, adding that border closure and opening may occur anytime there... He recalled that once his parents were stuck in Gaza for nine months and their visas got expired. “They used to go to the Rafah crossing every day. It’s not easy”... Elbasyouni called on Gazan people not to lose hope despite challenges, stating that he worked on a mission he called “impossible.” “I think they should dream, and they should believe in their hope”...

125 Democrats Say Military Aid to Israel Shouldn’t Depend on Human Rights Record (truthout)

In an apparent response to growing calls for making U.S. aid to the Netanyahu government conditional on Israeli adherence to human rights law, 330 members of the U.S. House of Representatives signed a letter late last month insisting that the $3.8 billion in annual military aid the United States provides Israel remain unconditional.

The letter — which was signed by virtually all of the Republicans and over half of the Democrats — was a slap in the face to those who have argued that military aid to Israel, like all recipients of taxpayer-funded weaponry, be conditional on at least some level of compliance with human rights and international law.

The lawmakers’ overwhelming bipartisan opposition to conditioning aid is not a product of political pressures coming from their constituents. Polls show that barely one-third of U.S. voters, and barely one-tenth of Democrats, oppose such conditions. Rather, it appears to be part of a longstanding tradition going back decades of Congress rejecting the will of constituents in favor of the interests of arms exporters and the Pentagon...

Eoin Higgins @EoinHiggins_| 11:54 AM · May 15, 2021:
You see all of the kids around me, they’re just kids.
Why would you just send a missile to them?
— a 10-year-old girl in Gaza
A 10-year-old Palestinian girl breaks down while talking to MEE

1:19 ( https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/1393595559705972739 )
From Middle East Eye

After Years of Quiet, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Exploded. Why Now?
A little-noticed police action in Jerusalem last month was one of several incidents that led to the current crisis.
Patrick Kingsley | May 15, 2021

JERUSALEM — Twenty-seven days before the first rocket was fired from Gaza this week, a squad of Israeli police officers entered the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, brushed the Palestinian attendants aside and strode across its vast limestone courtyard. Then they cut the cables to the loudspeakers that broadcast prayers to the faithful from four medieval minarets.

It was the night of April 13, the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. It was also Memorial Day in Israel, which honors those who died fighting for the country. The Israeli president was delivering a speech at the Western Wall, a sacred Jewish site that lies below the mosque, and Israeli officials were concerned that the prayers would drown it out.

The incident was confirmed by six mosque officials, three of whom witnessed it; the Israeli police declined to comment. In the outside world, it barely registered.

But in hindsight, the police raid on the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam, was one of several actions that led, less than a month later, to the sudden resumption of war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, and the outbreak of civil unrest between Arabs and Jews across Israel itself...

...But last month, several factors suddenly and unexpectedly aligned that allowed this slight to snowball into a major showdown.

A resurgent sense of national identity among young Palestinians found expression not only in resistance to a series of raids on Al Aqsa, but also in protesting the plight of six Palestinian families facing expulsion from their homes. The perceived need to placate an increasingly assertive far right gave Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s caretaker prime minister, little incentive to calm the waters.

A sudden Palestinian political vacuum, and a grass-roots protest that it could adopt, gave Hamas an opportunity to flex its muscles.

These shifts in the Palestinian dynamics caught Israel unawares. Israelis had been complacent, nurtured by more than a decade of far-right governments that treated Palestinian demands for equality and statehood as a problem to be contained, not resolved.

...The loudspeaker incident was followed almost immediately by a police decision to close off a popular plaza outside the Damascus Gate, one of the main entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem. Young Palestinians typically gather there at night during Ramadan.

...To the police, the protests were disorder to be controlled. But to many Palestinians, being pushed out of the square was a slight, beneath which were much deeper grievances...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/world/middleeast/israel-palestinian-gaza-war....

For the Israeli’s who continue to elect Netanyahu there is no two state solution. They have their own version of a final solution which only ends with the deaths or expulsions of every single Moslem or Christian Palestinian.

In Gaza you are automatically criminalized at birth. You are fenced in by land and and at the mercy of snipers if you stray too close to an Israeli military outpost. You are patrolled constantly by a hostile Israeli Air Force flying overhead and blockaded from the open sea by the Israeli Navy. What’s more is 2% of a available water is actually drinkable and you’re dependent on Israeli whims for foodstuffs and goods entering the strip and it’s almost impossible to get a visa to leave even temporarily. All this is why some people consider the Gaza Strip an open air prison.

Power Up: Biden administration approves $735 million weapons sale to Israel, raising red flags for some House Democrats
Jacqueline Alemany | May 17, 2021

The Biden administration has approved the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel...Congress was officially notified of the proposed sale on May 5...That was nearly a week before Hamas, the terrorism-designated organization that controls the Gaza strip began intense rocket attacks against Israel that have reportedly killed at least 10 Israelis. The rockets have been answered with ongoing Israeli airstrikes that have left nearly 200 Palestinians dead and sparked worldwide calls for diplomatic action. The crisis is the worst since a 2014 Hamas-Israeli war that lasted nearly two months.

While calling for an immediate cease-fire, the administration has said that Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas — a position that a majority in Congress has previously supported. But a new generation of House Democrats more open to questioning Washington’s support of Netanyahu is raising some concerns. Some lawmakers want to know more about the new proposed sale, and its timing, suggesting it be used as leverage...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/17/power-up-biden-administration...

Israel-Gaza Conflict: Patriarch Pizzaballa Asks Catholics to Pray for Peace and Justice (ACI Africa)

{The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem} Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa has urged Catholics worldwide to pray for “peace and justice” as violence racks the Holy Land...

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time and I fear not even the last in which we will have to deal with these explosions of violence and war in the Holy Land. These outbreaks of violence will only leave more rubble, deaths, animosities, and feelings of hatred, but they will bring no solution. We will see mutual accusations on the use of power, probably we will resort to international courts, accusing each other, but in the end, everything will be as before, until the next crisis. Until we decide to really face the problems that have afflicted these countries and these peoples for decades, in fact, I fear that we will be forced to witness more violence and other grief...

“Jerusalem is the heart of the problem and this time it was the spark that ignited the country. As is well known, it all started with the well-known question of Sheikh Jarrah, which has been presented as a legal question. However, as we have already reiterated in our previous declaration {referring to a May 10 statement by the Latin Patriarchate}, it is also evidently a political decision of further expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. It is a decision which changes the already many times broken balance between the two parts of the city and this creates tensions and suffering. This crisis, however, indicates that this methodology does not work and that no solution on Jerusalem can be imposed. The solution can only be the result of the dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians, who will both have to make their own the open, multi-religious and multicultural vocation of the city...

“The Palestinian people have been waiting for years for a dignified solution, a serene and peaceful future, in their land, in their country. For them, however, there seems to be no place in the world and, before being able to live with dignity at home, they are continually invited by the various chancelleries to await an unknown and continually postponed future”...

He argued that the clashes resulted from years of “violent political language” that had driven an “ever-deeper” wedge between the two peoples. “It will take a long time to rebuild these deeply wounded relationships. We will have to work with the many people, of all faiths, who still believe in a future together and are committed to it. They are a lot. But they need support, someone who can bring their voice to the whole world,” he said. “We will have to start rebuilding the relationships between all of us all over again, and in this sense, it will be a priority to start from the painful discovery of these days, that is, from the hatred that harbored above all in the hearts of young people... We must not cultivate or allow feelings of hatred to develop. We must make sure that no one, whether Jewish or Arab, feels rejected...

“We will have to learn to be more attentive to the language we use and become aware that the reconstruction of a serious model of relations between us will require a long time, patience, and courage... We will need a new alliance, between people of goodwill who, regardless of faith, identity, and political vision, feel the other as part of themselves and wish to commit themselves to live with this conscience”...

I quote this at length as I think it contains some important points. It's also important for westerners who promote a false caricature of Palestinians as Islamist extremists to hear the words of a Palestinian Christian leader who preaches justice, peace and reconciliation. His moderate stance is not as rare as the bigots might want to suggest, and is shared by many ordinary Palestinians, whether Muslim or Christian, and probably also by many ordinary Israelis.

#37–unfortunately for the above it does work for Netanyahu as in allowing for the stealing of more Palestinian land keeps him in power and has kept him in power for a long time. Put another way there are not enough ‘ordinary’ Israeli’s who would choose the peaceful route of not coveting their neighbor’s land.

At least this time around the mainstream press that’s not on the hard right in the United States is not so blatantly pro-Israel.

Israel-Gaza conflict: Blinken vows to repair relations with Palestinians (BBC)

the US has promised to repair ties with the Palestinians by reopening a consulate in Jerusalem and help rebuild the conflict-torn Gaza Strip...

The headline assumes the reader knows who or what "Blinken" is. The story reveals that he is the US Secretary of State.

Ilan Pappe's Ten myths about Israel is offered free--in the e-book format--on Versobooks:

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2430-ten-myths-about-israel

UN to launch inquiry into ‘systematic discrimination’ in Israel and Palestine (Guardian)

The UN’s main human rights body will launch an investigation into “systematic discrimination and repression” in Israel and Palestine, with the aim of identifying what it said were the root causes of recent Gaza bloodshed...

Opening the session in Geneva, the UN rights chief, Michelle Bachelet, said Israel’s attacks on Gaza this month could constitute war crimes if they were found to be disproportionate, and accused Hamas of firing indiscriminate rockets on Israel. “There is no doubt that Israel has the right to defend its citizens and residents. However, Palestinians have rights too – the same rights,” said Bachelet, a former president of Chile. “The death of and injury of children in this escalation is a source of shame for all”...

An eye-opening article about the role cartography and the census played (and still play) in controlling and harassing the Palestinian population. Adapted by the author from Jess Bier's book Mapping Israel, Mapping Palestine: How Occupied Landscapes Shape Scientific Knowledge

Removing Borders, Erasing Palestinians: Israeli Population Maps after 1967

‘Violence Begets Violence’: Turmoil and Fear in the Holy Land (Catholic Near East Welfare Association)

May 10 is fraught with tension every year, as the narrow streets of the Old City become the parade route for extremist Jewish groups whose actions are described as increasingly confrontational and provocative, designed to elicit violent responses. While Israelis celebrate the military victory as a unification of their ancient capital, Palestinians lament it as a de facto divorce of the city from the West Bank, the vast majority of which remains occupied by the Israeli Defense Forces...

Life Under Occupation:
The Misery at the Heart of the Conflict
David M. Halbfinger and Adam Rasgon | May 22, 2021

...Even in supposedly quiet periods, when the world is not paying attention, Palestinians from all walks of life routinely experience exasperating impossibilities and petty humiliations, bureaucratic controls that force agonizing choices, and the fragility and cruelty of life under military rule, now in its second half-century.

Underneath that quiet, pressure builds...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/22/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-conflict.html

From the Jacobin October 2020:

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/10/boycott-divestment-sanctions-movement-israel-pale...

Basically there has been an ongoing campaign in the United States to squash any kind of criticism of Israel and to reference the same as anti-Semitism. The same was also effectively used against the Labour Party leader in England Jeremy Corbin to drive him out of power. In the meantime the real victims are the Palestinian people who have no rights or very restricted rights to live in the country they were born in....and the Trump administration and conservatives in the United States have been working very much in partnership with Netanyahu’s right wing regime to smother any kind of dissent vis-a-vis Israel’s apartheid agenda and that all became an avenue of attack for them on the BLM movement as well.

>45 lriley:

Here we see the true "cancel culture" in action. It is a tool used far more comprehensively by the right wing than by the left, yet the right has created a narrative that it is the left which is trying to limit free speech. 'Twas ever thus.

Senior figures attack ‘obstruction’ of ICC’s Palestine investigation (Guardian)

More than 50 former foreign ministers, prime ministers and senior international officials, including two British Conservative former ministers, have signed an open letter condemning political interference in efforts by the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate alleged war crimes in Palestine... Condemning the “increasing attacks on the ICC, its staff and cooperating civil society groups”, the letter identifies the Trump administration’s moves against the court as part of a wider trend...

“Deeply worrying is now the unwarranted public criticism of the court regarding its investigation of alleged crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territory, including unfounded accusations of antisemitism. It is well established and recognised that accountability for serious rights violations by all sides to a conflict is essential for achieving a sustainable and lasting peace. This is the case in Israel-Palestine, just as in Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, Bangladesh/Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine. Attempts to discredit the court and obstruct its work cannot be tolerated if we are serious about promoting and upholding justice globally”...

Amnesty: ‘catalogue of violations’ by Israeli police against Palestinians (Guardian)

The latest flare-up of violence in the Gaza Strip has been accompanied by a “catalogue of violations” committed by Israeli police against Palestinians in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem, according to research from Amnesty International.

Arab citizens of Israel have been subjected to unlawful force from officers during peaceful demonstrations, sweeping mass arrests, torture and other ill-treatment in detention, and police have failed to protect Palestinians from premeditated attacks by rightwing Jewish extremists, the human rights watchdog said on Thursday...

Sudan: Civilian lawmakers concerned by military's contacts with Israel's Mossad (Middle East Monitor)

The head of Sudan's governing council, Abdel Fatah Al-Burhan, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok expressed their disapproval of the contacts between Israel and army Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemeti).

According to Israel's Walla news site, Burhan and Hamdok see contacts between Hameti and the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, as being against Sudan's legitimate civilian authorities, which reached a deal to normalise relations with the occupation state last year.

The concerns of the leaders of Sudan's transitional civilian authorities intensified after an Israeli private jet affiliated with Mossad landed in Khartoum last week, according to the American news website Axios. Mossad officials who were on board met with Hameti in Khartoum.

Since the beginning of the normalisation process, Hameti has tried to establish separate channels of communication with Israel, independently from the country's civilian authorities headed by Burhan and Hamdok...

For those who have never heard of him, Dagalo (aka Hemeti) leads a militia which was implicated in war crimes and alleged genocide in Darfur and which was later incorporated into the military of ousted Islamist dictator Omar Hassan al Bashir. Given Israel's own appalling human rights record, it's hardly surprising that the Israeli regime would want to be associated with such a figure.

Have ‘Human Shields’ Accusations Become an Excuse for War Crimes? (The Progressive Magazine)

From photos of dead Palestinian children on the front page of The New York Times to gripping accounts of people digging through the wreckage of high-rise apartment complexes and office buildings, evidence of last month’s horrific death toll from Israel’s eleven-day bombing campaign was hard to deny.

Yet those defending the devastating military offensive are insisting that somehow Israel is not at fault for such massive destruction of the civilian infrastructure. Rather, they argue, it is actually the fault of the Palestinians themselves, specifically their use of “human shields.”

Despite repeated claims by both Israel and the United States, there is absolutely no evidence that any of the more than 3,000 Palestinian civilians killed in Israeli military operations against Gaza since 2008 were a result of Hamas using human shields...

What neither Republican nor Democratic leaders have acknowledged, however, is that even if a terrorist group was using human shields in the narrower legal definition of the term, it still does not absolve armed forces from their obligation to avoid civilian casualties. Protocol I of the Fourth Geneva Convention makes clear that even if one side is shielding itself behind civilians, such a violation “shall not release the Parties to the conflict from their legal obligations with respect to the civilian population and civilians”...

#50–so many killed from bombings. How does their human shield theory work with that?

Ben & Jerry’s to stop sales in occupied Palestinian territories (Guardian)

Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream has announced that it will no longer sell its ice-cream in the occupied Palestinian territories, saying the sales are “inconsistent with our values.” The announcement on Monday was one of the highest-profile rebukes by a well-known brand of Israel’s settlements which are regarded as illegal under international law...

Ben & Jerry's will stop selling ice cream in Palestinian territories (CNN)

Ben & Jerry's will no longer sell ice cream in occupied Palestinian territories, saying it's inconsistent with the values of the socially conscious brand...

International law considers East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and Gaza as occupied territory under United Nations Security Council Resolutions...

We are Google and Amazon workers. We condemn Project Nimbus (Guardian)

We cannot support our employer’s decision to supply the Israeli military and government technology that is used to harm Palestinians...

Palestine olive harvest: Campaign begins to protect farmers (Al Jazeera)

As olive harvest season sets in Palestine, a 10-day campaign to aid and protect farmers has been launched in areas considered to be at high risk of Israeli settler attacks. Dozens of Palestinian volunteers, young and old, arrived on Wednesday morning to the village of Jalud, on the southern outskirts of Nablus in the occupied West Bank, to help landowners harvest their olive trees – as quickly as possible. Another group of volunteers worked simultaneously with landowners in the next-door village of Qaryout. The campaign, organised by the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), will cover 12 villages, mainly across southern Nablus, but also in the Ramallah and Bethlehem areas. It will bring together more than 250 volunteers including university students, farming committees, local councils, and residents of the villages...

By banning six Palestinian NGOs, Israel has entered a new era of impunity (Guardian)

I was one of the founders of the human rights organisation Al-Haq in 1979 and remain proud of its work over the past four decades in defending human rights in the Israeli occupied territories. I was horrified when it was declared to be a terrorist organisation by the Israeli defence minister on 19 October, along with five other Palestinian NGOs. During the many years of direct Israeli occupation, from 1967 to 1995, there was a long and expanding list of proscribed groups issued by the Israeli military commander under “emergency” regulations first put in place by the British in 1945. Al-Haq was never on this list...

Israel’s charge against the six NGOs, which include groups that offer legal support to prisoners and a women’s rights organisation, is based on a supposed connection to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Over the years, this claim has been used by Israeli officials to justify their refusal to permit travel for Al-Haq staff. The claim was that Al-Haq was not a genuine human rights organisation, but a PFLP front. Yet this unfounded and patently untrue accusation was never followed by issuing such a devastating order as happened last Tuesday. B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organisation that Al-Haq often collaborates with, has described the Israeli government’s declaration as “an act characteristic of totalitarian regimes, with the clear purpose of shutting down these organisations”. The policy change is evidence of how far Israel has gained confidence in feeling immune from the consequences of its actions, in this case interfering with civil society organisations that do tremendous work in the West Bank...

Israeli official voices support for Sudanese military coup in interview (The New Arab)

An unnamed Israeli official has voiced support for a military coup in Sudan in an interview with the Israel Hayom newspaper. The official said that Israel should support the head of the Sudanese military, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, who led the coup on Monday because he was more likely than Prime Minister Abdulla Hamdok to normalise ties with Israel...

Ironic to see the Israelis supporting an Islamist coup d'etat.

Israeli woman jailed three times for refusing to join the army (BBC)

n September, a young Jewish ultra-orthodox Israeli man asked for leave to remain in the UK because he feared being imprisoned as a deserter from the military if he returned to his home country. The unusual case has shone a light on the issue of conscientious objectors in Israel. Most Jewish Israelis do compulsory military service for at least two years. However, every year a small number take an ideological stance to oppose their conscription and end up in military prison...

NSO Group: Israeli spyware company added to US trade blacklist (BBC)

The Israeli company behind the controversial Pegasus spyware has been added to a US trade blacklist. Pegasus has reportedly been used by nation states to target the phones of rights activists and journalists. The US has now put its maker, NSO Group, on its "entity list", banning business dealings with them. NSO Group said it was "dismayed" by the decision, adding that its technology helped maintain US national security by "preventing terrorism and crime". It has long maintained that its software is sold only to military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records. But earlier this year, it was accused of having sold its technology to authoritarian governments, which then targeted innocent people...

Amnesty International calls Israel’s actions against Palestinians apartheid (Guardian)

Amnesty International has joined other leading human rights groups in stating that Israel’s “system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians amounts to the international definition of apartheid. The report immediately prompted fury among Israeli politicians who called for it to be withdrawn...

Amnesty says Israel is an apartheid state. Many Israeli politicians agree (Guardian)

While some in Washington DC and US media decry Amnesty’s conclusions, it’s a different story among some Israeli leaders...

As Yossi Sarid, a former Israeli cabinet minister, ex-leader of the opposition, and member of the Knesset for 32 years, put it in 2008: “What acts like apartheid, is run like apartheid and harasses like apartheid, is not a duck – it is apartheid.” Leading Israeli politicians have warned for years that their country was sliding into apartheid. They include two former prime ministers, Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert, who can hardly be dismissed as antisemites or hating Israel... “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish or non-democratic,” Barak said in 2010. “If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.” Israel’s former attorney general, Michael Ben-Yair, was even clearer. “We established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That oppressive regime exists to this day,” he said in 2002. Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service, has said his country has “apartheid characteristics”. Shulamit Aloni, the second woman to serve as an Israeli cabinet minister after Golda Meir, and Alon Liel, Israel’s former ambassador to South Africa, both told me that their country practices a form of apartheid. Israel’s leading human rights group, B’Tselem, published a groundbreaking report last year that described “a regime of Jewish supremacy” over Palestinians that amounted to apartheid. Another Israeli group, Yesh Din, gave a legal opinion that “the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank”. The reckoning is not confined to the political class. “The cancer today is apartheid in the West Bank,” AB Yehoshua, one of Israel’s greatest living writers, said in 2020. “This apartheid is digging more and more deeply into Israeli society and impacting Israel’s humanity”...

Democrats Attack Amnesty Report on Israel to Justify US Complicity in Human Rights Abuses (Truthout)

The Biden administration and congressional leaders of both parties have launched a full-frontal assault on the integrity of Amnesty International, the world’s largest human rights organization. This decidedly mainstream nongovernmental organization (NGO) — which is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, boasts more than 10 million members worldwide and is cited frequently by U.S. government agencies — was embraced by most leading Democrats until it released its latest report last week regarding systemic violations of international humanitarian law by Israel, a very close U.S. ally.

The 280-page report systematically examined Israel’s fragmentation of the Palestinian population into zones of control, dispossession of land and property, segregation, restrictions on economic and social rights, home demolitions and forced evictions, family separations, and other human rights violations. It made a very strong case that such practices collectively constitute the legal definition of apartheid — that is, serious human rights violations “perpetrated in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over another, with the intention to maintain that system”...

State Department spokesperson Ned Price... prevaricated when asked by a reporter why the State Department was so quick to denounce Amnesty in this case while being quite willing to cite Amnesty authoritatively when it criticized governments opposed by Washington...

>61 John5918: well support for Israel’s apartheid regime is the one area where all our political divisiveness disappears and the ultra right breaks bread with the Pelosi’s of the world.

The Democratic Party is not a left party and hasn’t been for a long time. As the Republican Party moves further right they follow behind taking up old Republican Party positions.

Europe: Ban Trade with Illegal Settlements (Human Rights Watch)

The European Commission should prohibit EU trade with settlements in occupied territories globally, Human Rights Watch said today as it signed onto a European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI). The citizen-led initiative, registered with the European Commission in September 2021 and initiated on February 20, 2022, calls for adopting legislation to prohibit products originating from unlawful settlements from entering the EU market and to ban EU exports to settlements. The transfer of an occupying power’s civilian population to a militarily occupied territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention and, under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, is a war crime. Trading in products produced in settlements in occupied territory or with them helps to sustain these violations of international humanitarian law. It also entrenches the human rights abuses that often stem from settlements, including land confiscation, natural resource exploitation, and displacement of and discrimination against the local population. “Settlements unlawfully rob local populations of their land, resources, and livelihoods,” said Bruno Stagno, chief advocacy officer at Human Rights Watch. “No country should be enabling the trade in goods produced as a result of land theft, displacement, and discrimination.” The EU should also ban trade that contributes to unlawful resource extraction in occupied territories, which is also a violation of international humanitarian law, Human Rights Watch said...

US accused of hypocrisy for supporting sanctions against Russia but not Israel (Guardian)

The US and some of its European allies are facing accusations of double standards for supporting sanctions and international war crimes investigations against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine while blocking them over Israeli military actions in the occupied Palestinian territories... While pressing for action against Russia, however, the US and other governments have resisted similar measures against Israel...

U.S. urges Israel to not normalize with Sudan’s coup leader (Sudan Tribune)

May 27, 2022 (KHARTOUM) – U.S. State Department urged Israel to not normalize relations with the military-led government in Sudan, the Jewish Insider reported on Friday. The Sudanese military officials, in October 2021, overthrew a civilian government implementing democratic reforms and working to bring peace to the country, because their economic interests and privileges were threatened by the process. Military delegations intensified their visits to Israel to reaffirm their commitment to Abraham Accords which Sudan joined in January 2021. They also requested Israel’s support to quell anti-coup protests...

Israeli forces raid offices of six Palestinian human rights groups (Guardian)

Israeli forces have raided the offices of six Palestinian human rights groups in the occupied West Bank that it previously accused of being terrorist organisations, a move decried as an “appalling attack” on Palestinian civil society... At the offices of Al-Haq, an internationally respected human rights organisation based in Ramallah, the front door was welded shut and a Hebrew statement left saying it would remain closed for “security reasons”. The minister of an Anglican church on the ground floor of the building, which rents the space to Al-Haq, said the church was also raided and its glass doors smashed... In October Israel outlawed Al-Haq; Addameer, which advocates for Palestinian prisoners; the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees; the Union of Agricultural Work Committees; the Bisan Center for Research and Development; and Defence for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P)... Israel has provided little evidence to back up the accusations... Washington said it was “concerned” by Israel’s closure of the Palestinian NGOs...

So, how bad has it gotten? The Kahanists are no longer being held at bay by the police. They're now running the police.

Theocratic fascists rise to key security posts in Israel's gov't
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4jYq-Swezw

My reading list:

Opinion | How Can American Jews Confront Israel's Horrific New Government?
American Jews are desperate for a plan on how to respond to the Team Crazy nightmare of Israel's new government. From Homeland Security bans to telling the truth to our political allies, this is what I suggest
Eric H. Yoffie, Dec 11, 2022
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2022-12-11/ty-article-opinion/.premium/how-can-u...

Smotrich is about to become the West Bank’s overlord. Here’s what’s at stake
Under the new coalition agreement, millions of Palestinians are about to fall directly at the mercy of one of the most extreme figures in Israeli politics.
By Eliav Lieblich December 7, 2022
https://www.972mag.com/smotrich-west-bank-civil-adm

How Ben-Gvir blows apart the ‘security’ story of Israel’s occupation
Jonathan Cook
Published date: 6 December 2022 12:32 UTC
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israel-ben-gvir-occupation-security-blows-...

Very often leftists, anti-Semites and godless intellectuals go hand in hand with anti Zionists and irrational anti Israel behaviors. Old bigotries die hard. These people are always caught by surprise, the 1948 founding after the decimation of European Jewry just three short years after the holocaust was somewhat miraculous. Jerusalem returning to Jewish sovereignty in 1967 drives them nuts with the culmination of Trump's symbolic return of the US embassy to Jerusalem. What really frosts their derriere is that conservative Catholics and Fudamentalist protestants would have the audacity to believe that maybe this is God's doing....JMJ....

>69 brone: I think a lot of us are waiting for any attempt by the Israeli government to assimilate the Palestinian people into their society. Basic things like granting citizenship, shit like that that would at least bring them into some kind of third class, second class citizenships. As of now they're not citizens at all and do not have anything like the same rights as Jewish Israelis. Barring that that the Israeli government would stop Israeli settlers from illegally annexing more of the West Bank. For me this is very much about bigotry but it starts with a right wing Israeli government creating and allowing an apartheid like system to exist.

On the question of being 'godless' I would refer you to the Crass song 'So what'. Beliefs and faith are certainly fine and help a lot of people but believing is not the same as knowing and acting like it is the same has long been a huge problem. Pretty much every religious conflict (and for German and Austrian WWII Nazi's their faith in Nazi ideology or post WWI Russian communist their faith in that ideology amounts to religion) is a matter of we know better and we are better than those guys over there and therefore we deserve what they have and they (maybe) deserve to die for that difference.

>69 brone: Very often leftists, anti-Semites and godless intellectuals go hand in hand with anti Zionists and irrational anti Israel behaviors.

Which, like it frequently is, is just a way of avoiding actual discussion about what Israel is doing.

What really frosts their derriere is that conservative Catholics and Fudamentalist protestants would have the audacity to believe that maybe this is God's doing

As an atheist, if there's an omniscient omnipotent creator deity, I'm not sure what can be labeled as not their doing. Certainly a direct implication of that claim is that God arranged the Holocaust in order to create Israel.

And as Terry Pratchett wrote, “Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.” And that viewpoint is very much treating people as things. We could talk about the Israeli Jews need for safety and unwillingness to see value in negotiating with terrorists when previous negotiations have achieved little and unilateral behavior has achieved a lot. We can talk about Palestinians need for safety and security, and feels that non-violent behavior has been largely unproductive, and unwillingness to accept any situation that cedes a lot of the Holy Land to the Jews.

But "this is God's doing" throws that all out; everyone is just doing lines in a play, and what the people of Israel and Palestine want and need and deserve is all irrelevant. (And note this is all about the people of the Middle East; many people who make these arguments still seem to think 'Mericans have free will and rights and stuff.)

I read somewhere yesterday that people on the right side of the political spectrum tend to view people more on the left side of the political spectrum as evil whereas people on the left side tend to look at people on the right side as stupid. There is a big difference between being thought of in terms of evil or stupid…..and when we throw in the religious component whether it’s murdering people of a different faith or taking your wrath out on non-believers who let’s say are pro choice or not threatened by people from the LBGTQ community. The likelihood anyway of doing violence to somebody is greater when people think they’re evil. Being dumb just doesn’t rise to that.

Palestinian fears heightened as Israeli far right takes power (BBC)

Palestinians in Hebron say they feel increasingly vulnerable to attack after Israel's recent election. The vote saw a massive rise in support for the far right, empowering an ultranationalist hardcore of the settler movement in Hebron and elsewhere, and reigniting a culture war within Israeli society over the role of the military in the occupied territories...

There’s no cycle of violence in Jerusalem – only Israel’s lethal oppression of my people (Guardian)

From house demolitions to military detention, the violence we Palestinians face daily reflects the power imbalance of occupier and occupied...

What We Saw, What We Heard, What We are Compelled to Do: A Testimony of Witness (Pax Christi International)

During the first two weeks of February, a delegation of thirteen members of the international Catholic peace movement, Pax Christi, travelled to the Holy Land. We came from six countries with a united purpose to reconnect with Pax Christi partners, see, first-hand, the facts on the ground, meet with religious leaders, activists, and those providing direct service and to speak with those affected by the occupation. Most importantly, we wanted to reaffirm our steadfast commitment and solidarity with our Palestinian sisters and brothers in their legitimate demand for freedom, justice, and equality. What we witnessed was nothing short of heartbreaking. Families living in daily fear that their homes could be demolished, at a moment’s notice, for lack of a building permit which is rarely approved by the Israeli authorities. Farmers who must choose between tending their animals and crops or being violently attacked by settlers. Human rights activists and other civil society spokespeople threatened for speaking truth to power and advocating for children, women, prisoners, or anyone whose rights are being violated. Bedouin communities who struggle to retain their way of life as they face sweeping eviction orders. We listened to stories of grief, dispossession, land confiscation, and imprisonment. We heard voices filled with fear, anger, defiance, and hopelessness. Everywhere, individuals expressed their frustrations with the ineffectiveness of the Palestine Authority and their grave concern for increased violence and repression in the future as the new Israeli ultra-nationalist government took control...

UN urged to reject antisemitism definition over ‘misuse’ to shield Israel (Guardian)

More than 100 Israeli and international civil society organisations have asked the United Nations to reject a controversial definition of antisemitism because it is being “misused” to protect Israel from legitimate criticism... “Adoption of the definition by governments and institutions is often framed as an essential step in efforts to combat antisemitism. In practice, however, the IHRA definition has often been used to wrongly label criticism of Israel as antisemitic, and thus chill and sometimes suppress, non-violent protest, activism and speech critical of Israel and/or Zionism, including in the US and Europe,” the letter said. Signatories include Israel’s largest human rights group, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Israeli and Palestinian civil society groups. Some of the signatories are concerned that if Guterres formally adopts the IHRA definition it will be used to curb criticisms of Israeli policies by UN bodies including the special rapporteur for the occupied territories...

Abbot asked to remove his cross: Government does not accept Jerusalem as holy to 3 religions (YNet)

The German abbot who was instructed to remove the cross he was wearing when he accompanied a German Cabinet member to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem told Ynet Thursday that the incident is part of a changed atmosphere of the government toward the Christian community in Israel and a denial that it is a holy city for three religions. Nikodemus Schnabel, a high-ranking member of the Benedictine Order serving as the abbot of the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem, escorted German Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger Wednesday on her visit to the holy Jewish site when he was approached by an usher and told he must remove his cross which she saw as a provocation, despite his explanation that he was a man of the Church...