OMNI
ISRAEL-PALESTINIANS
NEWSLETTER #15, May 17, 2021.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE, JUSTICE, and ECOLOGY
(#1 Feb. 22, 2011; #2 Feb. 16, 2012; #3 March 1, 2012; #4 May 18,
2012; #5 August 13, 2012; #6 October 29, 2012; #7 Dec. 17, 2012; #8 March 29,
2013; #9 Oct. 21, 2013; #10 April 28, 2014; #11, July 1, 2015; #12, June 21,
2016; #13, August 13, 2016)).
What’s at Stake: Can’t we just get along? the two Parties are
asked, as though that would necessarily be a good thing. Well, in two important ways they agree, with
infinite harm. They assert neo-liberal
capitalism around the world. They constitute the US War Party of unceasing
expansion and expenditure and resume a New Cold War to control the world for
capitalism.
CONTENTS: ISRAEL-PALESTINE
NEWSLETTER #15, 5-17-21
MAY 18 GLOBAL PROTEST
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
ANSWER Coalition
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION MAY 2021
Weapons to Israel
Chris Hedges, Israel’s War Crimes and US and
Israel’s Lies
Mairead Maguire v. Israel Killings and US
Compliance
Philip Weiss v. Biden’s Secretary of State
Tony Blinken on Israel
Lana Tatour, Not Only Apartheid but Israel Enforces
Settler-Colonialism
Norm Finkelstein Interview
2016-17 CONTINUITY, PRESENT FROM THE
PAST
Jonathan Cook, New Land Law for Annexation
Dooms 2- State Solution
Stephen Zunes, Israeli War Crimes Permitted by
Bipartisan US Congress
RESISTANCE
sraeli Teens Refuse to Serve in Israeli Army
Medea Benjamin, BDS Movement
Washington
Report on Middle East Affairs
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Jewish Social
Justice Tradition
Newsletter #13
TEXTS
MAY 18 GLOBAL PROTEST
TOMORROW,
May 18: Rising up with Palestine
US CAMPAIGN FOR PALESTINIAN RIGHTS
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Dear
Dick, Over
the weekend, people faced off Israel’s ongoing and escalating brutality
against the Palestinian people by flooding the world’s streets. Hundreds of
thousands marched for justice, from DC, to Amman, to Cape Town. People
power has generated a turning point. This is an unprecedented moment of
popular resistance and solidarity. Together, we will continue to resist and
uplift Palestinian demands until justice and liberation are reached. I
believe Palestinians will defeat Israel’s apartheid regime in my
lifetime—just as South Africa’s apartheid regime was defeated by ordinary
people of my parent’s generation and America’s own apartheid system of Jim
Crow segregation was defeated by their parents. We have inherited ongoing
struggles that can build safety and freedom. We
need you with us. Move to action today: Over
the past five days, nearly 39,000 people have sent 100,000+ messages to
Congress to demand an end to U.S. military funding for Israel, support
sanctions on Israel, and elevate the Palestinian call for freedom and
safety.
“We
will continue to strike, organize, and protest for as long as the occupation
exists. Liberation is within our reach.” Join Palestinians in this
global day of action by planning an action at an Israeli consulate
or embassy near you, holding a protest or vigil for Palestinians killed by
Israeli terror, publicly committing to Palestinian liberation and BDS, and
calling on your government to place sanctions on Israel.
What
does Palestine mean for Black America? Over the last several weeks, our
timelines have been filled with pictures and videos of the violence in Sheikh
Jarrah and the Gaza strip. Celebrities who are often silent on issues have
been posting #FreePalestine. Why now? What's it got to do with our struggles
at home? Featured
speakers include: Aja Monet, Angela Davis, Vic Mensa, Janaya “Future”
Khan, Mohammed El Kurd, Fayrouz Sharqawi, Anwar Hadid, and Ahmad
Abuznaid.
Every
year, the U.S. government sends an astounding $3,800,000,000 in unconditional
military assistance to Israel, diverting our taxpayer dollars to fund the
systematic oppression of the Palestinian people through ongoing violence,
forced displacements, home demolitions, checkpoints, travel restrictions, and
a 14-year-long air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza. Together,
we can transform policy to prioritize the safety and well-being of our
communities. Thank
you for all you are doing right now to stand in solidarity with the
Palestinian people during this critical moment. We are growing the movement
for freedom and justice for the Palestinian people, together. In
solidarity, LEAH
MUSKIN-PIERRET Manager
of Congressional & Grassroots Advocacy |
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PALESTINE
CALLS FOR DAY OF ACTION MAY 18: Massive solidarity protests for
Palestine continue worldwide. ANSWER
Coalition. https://www.answercoalition.org/tags/palestine?page=3
Join or organize a protest in your area in the
coming days Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, on Nakba Day. Organized by the the
ANSWER Coalition and Muslims for Social Justice, attended by thousands. The Palestinian people have called for Tuesday, May 18, to be a
day of action. Protests are being organized in front of Israeli consulates
and embassies, and elsewhere. As the Israeli state and Zionist mobs continues
to terrorize the Palestinian people and bomb Gaza, solidarity protests
demanding justice for Palestine continue to be organized in cities across the
U.S. and the world. This past week has made one thing clear: the world stands with
Palestine. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world demand an
indictment of the Israeli state for its murderous crimes against Palestinians
and demand an end to Israeli apartheid. Over 80 cities in the United States
protested in solidarity with Palestine this past week, demanding an immediate
end to all U.S. funding to Israel. From Kenya to Iraq to Japan to U.K., “free
Palestine” resounded in the streets. Protests continue. For May 18, DAY OF ACTION, actions have
already been called in California, Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts,
Pennsylvania, and more. For
updates on current or new actions in U.S. cities, please
check this page. If you have information about an action in
your area not already listed here, or if you are planning an action, please
let us know by clicking here. Free
Palestine! Please make an urgently needed donation
to the antiwar and anti-racism movement today. We can only
carry on this crucial work with contributions from supporters like you. Some photos of solidarity protests in U.S.
cities: https://www.answercoalition.org/tags/palestine?page=3
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MAY 2021, THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
“Biden administration approves sale of $735 mln in weapons to
Israel.” Al Arabiya English (17 May, 2021).
The
United States President Joe Biden’s administration has approved the sale of
$735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel, the Washington Post reported.
US
lawmakers were informed of the sale in early May, nearly a week before violence
erupted between Israeli forces and Hamas militants erupted, a senior
congressional source confirmed to Al
Arabiya English.
The
Washington Post said the latest
decision comes amid rising concerns by some House Democrats about the current
administration’s support of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The
US lawmakers have reportedly questioned the new proposed sale, its timing, and
suggested it may be used as leverage, the Washington
Post added.
An
unnamed lawmaker told the newspaper that allowing the arms sale to go through
without pressuring Israel to agree to a ceasefire would further increase
tensions.
At
least 200 Palestinians have already been killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza,
and over 1,000 people were injured, according to the Palestinian health
ministry.
Once
Congress is officially notified of the sale, lawmakers will have 20 days to
object to the sale with nonbinding resolution of disapproval, according to the Washington Post.
Chris
Hedges: Israel, the Big Lie
May 14, 2021
https://scheerpost.com/2021/05/14/chris-hedges-israel-the-big-lie/ (Also republished in Transcend
Media)
Israel is not exercising “the right to defend itself” in
the occupied Palestinian territories. It is carrying out mass murder, aided and
abetted by the U.S.
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost
Nearly all the words
and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the
media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault
against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days
and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a
lie. Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied
population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles,
heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to
provide a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade, is
not exercising “the right to defend itself.” It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime.
Israel has made it
clear it is ready to destroy and kill as wantonly now as it was in 2014.
Israel’s defense minister Benny Gantz,
who was the chief of staff during the murderous assault on Gaza in 2014, has
vowed that if Hamas “does not stop the violence, the strike of 2021 will be
harder and more painful than that of 2014.” The current attacks have already
targeted several residential high rises including buildings that housed over a
dozen local and international press agencies, government buildings, roads,
public facilities, agricultural lands, two schools and a mosque.
I spent seven years in
the Middle East as a correspondent, four of them as The New York Times Middle
East Bureau Chief. I am an Arabic speaker. I lived for weeks at a time in Gaza,
the world’s largest open-air prison where over two million Palestinians exist
on the edge of starvation, struggle to find clean water and endure constant
Israeli terror. I have been in Gaza when it was pounded with Israeli artillery
and air strikes. I have watched mothers and fathers, wailing in grief, cradling
the bloodied bodies of their sons and daughters. I know the crimes of the
occupation—the food shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, the stifling overcrowding,
the contaminated water, the lack of health services, the near constant
electrical outages due to the Israeli targeting of power plants, the crippling
poverty, the endemic unemployment, the fear and the despair. I have witnessed
the carnage.
I also have listened
from Gaza to the lies emanating from
Jerusalem and Washington. Israel’s indiscriminate use of modern, industrial
weapons to kill thousands of innocents, wound thousands more and make tens of
thousands of families homeless is not a war: It is state-sponsored terror. And, while I oppose the
indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinians into Israel, as I oppose
suicide bombings, seeing them also as war crimes, I am acutely aware of a huge
disparity between the industrial violence carried out by Israel against
innocent Palestinians and the minimal acts of violence capable of being waged
by groups such as Hamas.
The false equivalency between Israeli and
Palestinian violence was echoed during the war I covered in Bosnia. Those of us in the besieged
city of Sarajevo were pounded daily with hundreds of heavy shells and rockets
from the surrounding Serbs. We were targeted by sniper fire. The city suffered
a few dozen dead and wounded each day. The government forces inside the city
fired back with light mortars and small arms fire. Supporters of the Serbs
seized on any casualties caused by Bosnian government forces to play the same
dirty game, although well over 90 percent of the killings in Bosnia were the
fault of the Serbs, as is also true regarding Israel.
The second and perhaps
most important parallel is that the Serbs,
like the Israelis, were the principal violators of international law. Israel is
in breach of more than 30 U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is in breach of
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines collective punishment
of a civilian population as a war crime. It is in violation of Article 49 of
the Fourth Geneva Convention for settling over half a million Jewish Israelis
on occupied Palestinian land and for the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000
Palestinians when the Israeli state was founded and another 300,000 after Gaza,
East Jerusalem and the West Bank were occupied following the 1967 war. Its
annexation of East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights violates
international law, as does its building of a security barrier in the West Bank
that annexes Palestinian land into Israel. It is in violation of U.N. General
Assembly Resolution 194 that states that Palestinian “refugees wishing to
return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be
permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”
This is the
truth. Any other starting point for the discussion of what is taking
place between Israel and the Palestinians is a lie. MORE https://scheerpost.com/2021/05/14/chris-hedges-israel-the-big-lie/
There are many
parallels between the deformities that grip Israel and the deformities that
grip the United States. The two countries are moving at warp speed
towards a 21rst century fascism, cloaked in religious language, which will
revoke what remains of our civil liberties and snuff out our anemic
democracies. The failure of the United States to stand up for the rule of
law, to demand that the Palestinians, powerless and friendless, even in the
Arab world, be granted basic human rights mirrors the abandonment of the
vulnerable within our own society. We are headed, I fear, down the road
Israel is heading down. It will be devastating for the
Palestinians. It will be devastating for us. And all resistance, as the
Palestinians courageously show us, will only come from the street.
[Chris Hedges
writes a regular original column
for ScheerPost. Click here to sign up for
email alerts.]
“Gaza: IDF Kills Palestinians,
Countless Children, by Air Bombardments.”
NOBEL LAUREATES, Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace
Laureate – TRANSCEND Media Service.
17 May 2021.
15 May 2021 – In Belfast, N Ireland, this afternoon hundreds of young people
walked to support the people of Gaza and protest the barbaric actions of the
Israeli military that continue with air strikes, bombing and killing
Palestinian civilians in Gaza. The youngsters also condemned the storming
of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli occupation forces wounding hundreds of Muslim
worshipers. These violations add to the myriad Israeli crimes against the
Palestinians over decades.
Israel is an Apartheid State that continues with a policy of
Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinian people. These latest barbaric cruel
actions by the Israeli Defense Forces are another breach of international law
that must be condemned and stopped immediately. Such State violence must not be
accepted by the peoples of the world. We cannot stand by allowing such Israeli
inhumanity against Palestinians. Our silence will be shameful in the face
of their illegal and brutal murder of Gaza’s children.
We had hoped that when President Biden took office, he would act
against the Israeli governments’ continued destruction of Palestine; instead,
the USA continues its unabated compliance with Israeli military ventures.
The European Union must retaliate financially against Israel.
For too long the Israeli government has been playing victim as they carry out
Ethnic Cleaning of Palestinians by increasing military occupation of their
ancestral lands—which they renamed Real State.
_________________________________________
Mairead Corrigan
Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is
a member of the TRANSCEND
Network for Peace Development Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for
her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book The Vision of
Peace (edited by John Dear,
with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available
from www.wipfandstock.com.
She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.
BIDEN’S SECRETARY OF STATE PRAISES TRUMP’S ACHIEVEMENTS ON ISRAEL
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss.. https://mondoweiss.net/2021/01/bidens-secretary-of-state-praises-trumps-achievements-on-israel
-2/The Biden Administration May Be Looking To
Overturn Many Of The Trump Administration’s Policies — But Not When It Comes To
Israel.
A new administration has
taken over Washington with talk of justice, respect and diversity. However,
when it comes to Israel-the news isn’t so encouraging.
Joe Biden’s foreign policy
team says it wants to return to the Iran deal, but reassures the Israel lobby
that that won’t happen any time soon, and when it comes to actual Palestinian
rights or freedom (the “peace process”), it clearly wants as little friction
with the Israeli government and Israel’s friends in Washington as possible. I
watched all 4-1/2 hours of Tony Blinken’s testimony to Senate Foreign Relations
(help!), and he never mentioned occupation, Palestinian human rights, or even
settlements.
And Blinken spent a lot of
time affirming Donald Trump’s policies in Israel! Notably in his very
respectful exchanges with Senator Ted Cruz, who you’d think Blinken might treat
with some crust because he tried to deny Biden’s victory.
Cruz: A final question because my time has expired, Do you agree
that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and do you commit that the United
States will keep our embassy there?
Blinken: Yes and Yes.
Normalization And The Peace
Process
Blinken repeatedly praised
Trump policy on normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain,
Morocco and the Sudan as opening a pathway to Palestinian peace.
“I
think there are a number of things from where I sat that the Trump
administration did beyond our borders that I would applaud…. The Abraham
Accords, absolutely… [T]he work that was done to push forward on normalization
with Israel, I applaud. It makes Israel safer, it makes the region safer, it’s
a good thing. I would hope we can build on that.“
No wonder South Carolina
Senator Lindsey Graham called Blinken an “outstanding choice.” No wonder
Blinken played ball with Graham:
Graham:
Do you still consider Iran the largest state sponsor of terrorism?
Blinken:
I do.
Graham:
Do you consider Israel a racist nation?
Blinken:
I do not.
Graham:
Good start!
The two men were responding indirectly to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who said that morning on Democracy Now! that Israel is an “apartheid
state” and a “racist state” because it had refused to give coronavirus vaccine
to occupied Palestinians even as it inoculated the largely-Jewish population in
Israel.
Tlaib is of course echoing a couple of new human rights reports
labeling Israel an apartheid nation, but Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL and the rest of the Israel lobby are in denial:
describing
Israel as “apartheid” is false and hateful, and shuts down constructive
engagement. One can be critical of Israel without attacking the Jewish State
with incendiary accusations.
Jeremy Slevin of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s staff had a pointed response.
Human
rights advocates—from B’Tselem to the UN Human Rights Council to Jimmy fucking
Carter—have all used the term apartheid to describe the illegal occupation of
Palestinian land. Yet somehow the ADL only calls it “incendiary” when it comes
from a Muslim woman.
Again, Blinken had nothing
to say about Palestinian human rights. He used questions about the peace
process to gush about the Jewish democratic state, and say two states is a pipe
dream– “however distant it may appear” — but it’s our pipe dream.
Our
commitment to Israel’s security is sacrosanct, and this is something that the
President elect feels very strongly…
The
president-elect believes and I share this conviction, that the best way, and
maybe the only way, to ensure Israel’s future as a Jewish democratic state and
to give the Palestinians the state to which they are entitled is through the
so-called two-state solution, obviously a solution that is very challenged at
this moment. I think realistically its hard to see near term prospects for
moving forward on that.
Blinken said that it was
“important to make sure that neither party takes steps” or “unilateral actions”
that make the prospect of two states even “more challenging.”
But bear in mind that Israel has announced even more illegal
settlements in recent days, and Blinken was careful not to say a
word about that. Though he went on and on about Biden’s “resolute” opposition
to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. “It unfairly and inappropriately singles
out Israel, it creates a double standard, and a standard that we don’t apply to
other countries.” (As if the U.S. accords other countries the “special
relationship” it has with Israel.)
I continue to hope that
Biden is going to take Netanyahu on. The fact that Biden has named three
Israel-supporting Jews to top positions at State (Blinken, Wendy Sherman,
Victoria Nuland) indicates to me that he wants the liberal Zionist lobby on his
side in doing so.
All the same, Blinken’s rhetoric seems a step back from the last
Democratic secretary of state, John Kerry, who blamed Israel for making the
peace process vanish in 2014 — “Poof” — and in 2016 warned that
the U.S. couldn’t continue to give Israel diplomatic cover if it destroyed the
prospect of a Palestinian state and blocked a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem.
Well Tony Blinken is prepared to give Israel that cover. The clear signal from
his hearing is that Biden doesn’t want to tangle with Netanyahu. MORE https://mondoweiss.net/2021/01/bidens-secretary-of-state-praises-trumps-achievements-on-israel
WHY CALLING ISRAEL AN APARTHEID STATE IS NOT ENOUGH
By Lana Tatour, Middle East Eye. January 24, 2021 . https://popularresistance.org/why-calling-israel-an-apartheid-state-is-not-enough/
Above photo: A Palestinian woman stands by a
protest sign reading ‘Arabs are prohibited, this is Apartheid St’ in Hebron on
28 January 2020. AFP.
Report From B’Tselem Highlighting Israel’s Apartheid
Character Is A Welcome Development, But This Finding Cannot Be Divorced From
The State’s Oppressive Settler-Colonialism.
B’Tselem, a leading human rights group in Israel, recently
released a
report concluding that Israel is an apartheid state, with a
regime of Jewish supremacy stretching from the Jordan River to the
Mediterranean Sea.
The report found that Israel meets the definition of apartheid under
international law, which defines apartheid as “inhuman acts committed
for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group
of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing
them”.
The report received widespread international media attention and
was described as a “watershed”
moment. But it was only a watershed moment for B’Tselem, which was using the
term “apartheid” for the first time in its three-decade history, and for an
international community that is so infatuated with Israeli voices. For
Palestinians, none of this is new.
Dominating Palestinians
B’Tselem is not the first human rights group to call Israel an
apartheid regime. In 2009, Palestinian and South African scholars published a comprehensive
report that determined Israel was committing the crime of
apartheid. Two Palestinian human rights organisations, Adalah and Al-Haq, were
part of this initiative.
Two former UN special rapporteurs on human rights in Palestine
reached a similar conclusion. In 2007, John Dugard determined that “elements of the occupation constitute forms of
colonialism and of apartheid”. And, a few years ago, Richard Falk co-authored a report finding that Israel has established “an apartheid regime
that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian
people as a whole”. The UN secretary-general was quick to
distance himself from the report, ordering
its removal from the UN website.
Typical of western racism,
Israelis are deemed more reliable and esteemed, and their contributions more
valid than those of Palestinians who experience apartheid, colonisation
and occupation every day.
Still, the B’Tselem report is a welcome development. As academic
Rafeef Ziadah points
out, it comes “in the face of an orchestrated silencing campaign,
which attempts to foreclose debate before it even begins. In this sense, it is
relevant that an Israeli human rights organisation has stated what Palestinians
have been arguing for years”.
While the use of the
apartheid framework in relation to Israel is not new, it is gaining momentum
amid the one-state reality. While the occupation paradigm is built on the false
assumption of temporariness and sustains a distinction between 1948 and 1967
territories, the apartheid framework recognises that Israel is the effective
governing power between the river and the sea, where it enacts a racialised
regime.
Crime Against Humanity
Under international law, apartheid is a crime against humanity – and the evidence
clearly shows that Israel is an apartheid state. Throughout the territory
between the river and the sea, its political and legal systems are all geared
towards ensuring Jewish racial supremacy and domination. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Israel refused
to vaccinate the millions of Palestinians who
live under its control, while vaccinating Israelis, including Jewish
settlers, in the occupied West Bank.
But Palestine cannot be
understood merely in terms of apartheid, as this offers only a limited and
partial understanding of the situation. Israel is a settler-colonial state that
is practising both apartheid and permanent occupation.
The conversation emerging in liberal circuits around apartheid and
Palestine fails to recognise settler-colonialism as the overarching structure
of the Israeli state. We have seen such dynamics in Peter
Beinart’s recent call for one binational
state, in which apartheid is acknowledged, but not Zionist/Israeli
settler-colonialism.
Racial domination is
treated as a standalone feature of the Israeli state, disconnected from the
settler-colonial enterprise in Palestine. Even when apartheid is acknowledged,
there is no reckoning with Zionism as a racial ideology and movement. https://popularresistance.org/why-calling-israel-an-apartheid-state-is-not-enough/
Lana Tatour is a lecturer/assistant
professor in global development at the School of Social Sciences, University of
New South Wales (Sydney, Australia).
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Hi guys, another must listen-to interview. . . worth every
minute. Norm Finkelstein, you probably are familiar with him, child of
Holocaust survivors, excellent explanation of the situation in
Israel-Palestine. This is one of the most informative interviews I have
ever heard in my life on this subject. I guarantee you’ll hear things you
may not have considered before. Finkelstein thinks change is underway.
George
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=HLVJYmRvvKQ
Attachments area
Preview YouTube video Norman Finkelstein on Israel
& What's happening Here
Norman Finkelstein on Israel & What's happen
WHERE WE’VE COME FROM 2016-17
ONE STATE OR TWO? WILL IT MATTER?
US/ISRAEL JUGGERNAUT OF INJUSTICE
Annexation Will End Justice
Land law is final nail in the
two-state solution coffin
Jonathan
Cook (Also published in Washington Report on ME Affairs)
February 7, 2017 Updated: February 8, 2017 08:19
AM
http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/land-law-is-final-nail-in-the-two-state-solution-coffin
The Israeli parliament passed the legalisation law on
Monday night – a piece of legislation every bit as suspect as its title
suggests. The law widens the powers of Israeli officials to seize the last
fragments of Palestinian land in the West Bank that were supposed to be
off-limits. Now, almost nowhere will be
out of the settlers’ reach.
Palestinian leaders warned that the law hammered the last nail in the coffin of a two-state solution.
Government ministers gleefully agreed. For them, this is the extension of
Israeli law into the West Bank and the first
step towards its formal annexation.
The legalisation law – also commonly translated from
Hebrew as the regulation or validation law – was the right’s forceful response
to the eviction last week of a few dozen families from a settlement
"outpost" called Amona. It was a rare and brief setback for the
settlers, provoked by a court ruling that took three years to enforce.
The evacuation of 40 families was transformed into an
expensive piece of political theatre, costing $40 million (Dh147m). It was
choreographed as a national trauma to ensure such an event is never repeated.
The uniforms worn by police at demolitions of
Palestinian homes – guns, batons, black body armour and visors – were stored
away. Instead officers, in friendly blue sweatshirts and baseball caps, handled
the Jewish lawbreakers with kid gloves, even as they faced a hail of stones,
bleach and bottles. By the end, dozens of officers needed hospital treatment.
As the clashes unfolded, Naftali Bennett, the
education minister and leader of the settler party Jewish Home, called Amona’s
families "heroes". Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu empathised:
"We all understand the extent of their pain."
The settlers have been promised an enlarged
replacement settlement, and will be richly compensated. In a more general
reparation, plans have been unveiled for thousands of extra settler homes in
the West Bank.
But the main prize for Mr Bennett and the far right was the
legalisation law itself. It reverses a restriction imposed in the 1970s – and
later violated by dozens of settlements like Amona – designed to prevent a
free-for-all by the settlers.
International law is clear that an occupying power can take land
only for military needs. Israel committed a war crime in transferring more than
600,000 Jewish civilians into the occupied territories. MORE http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/land-law-is-final-nail-in-the-two-state-solution-coffin
Jonathan Cook is an independent
journalist in Nazareth
US
SITUATION IN 2016: ISRAELI CRIMES ARE BIPARTISAN
Trump’s FAr-Right Israel Stance Creates an Opening for the Left
But congressional Democrats won’t act without a
push.
http://inthesetimes.com/article/19912/trump-democrats-netanyahu-israel-palestine-bds
Democrats
who support Israel uncritically must either be convinced to change or be
replaced.
It was a surreal scene: On
February 15, President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu met in Washington, D.C. and spoke of their “shared values” which have
“advanced the cause of human freedom, dignity and peace,” while at the same
time retreating from the longstanding call for a two-state solution to the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Trump’s appointee for ambassador to Israel, David Friedman has
also insisted the
United States should end the “two-state narrative” and claims that even moderate Zionist groups like
J Street, which support an end to the occupation, are “far worse than
kapos—Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps.”
Many progressives
believe—as a result of ongoing Israeli colonization of land that Palestinians
would need to have a viable state of their own—that a single shared state may
be the best and most realistic solution. But the “one-state” solution Trump and
Netanyahu now speak of is unlikely to be a democratic bi-national state where
Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs have equal rights. Instead, Trump and
Netanyahu’s solution would effectively be an apartheid state, where Israel
would maintain its control over the Palestinian population indefinitely.
While the Obama
administration refused to take any concrete actions, such as targeted
sanctions, to stop the expansion of settlements, its public criticisms of
Israel may have had at least some impact in curbing the extent of their
expansion in the occupied territories. But the new administration is abandoning
even those criticisms. Trump appears to be rejecting the long-held
international consensus that Israeli colonization of the Palestinian West Bank
and East Jerusalem is both illegal and an obstacle to peace, and pledged to
block any international action to prevent it.
This gives particular
urgency for peace and human rights activists to challenge U.S. policy toward
Israel and Palestine—and given Trump’s unpopularity and the far-right extremism
of his stances, it creates an opening to shift the terms of debate.
A Bipartisan Consensus
For years, the United
States has been in the contradictory role of being the sole mediator in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the primary military, financial and diplomatic
supporter of the more powerful of the two parties. At this point, with the
Trump administration effectively endorsing a permanent Israeli occupation,
there should no longer even be the pretense that the United States is an
“honest broker.”
The Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation
Organization have long recognized Israel within its internationally accepted
borders, which encompass 78% of historic Palestine, and
agreed to a mini-state comprising only the territories seized by Israel in
the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. However, as the remaining Palestinian population
centers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank have become surrounded by large
Israeli settlement blocs, the creation of a viable contiguous Palestinian state
alongside Israel is becoming increasingly problematic.
If changing demographics makes the creation of a viable
Palestinian state alongside Israel impossible, Palestinians would have no
choice but to demand equal rights within a greater Israel. Israelis would then
have to decide whether to remain a Jewish state, in which non-Jewish
Palestinians are second-class citizens, or become a truly democratic state, in
which both peoples participate in governance on equal footing. They could no
longer claim to be both. This reality was recognized by then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s address on Dec. 28, 2016— an address that was
strongly denounced by the Israeli government, the Republicans and many
congressional Democrats.
That even Kerry’s
relatively moderate observation was opposed by members of both major U.S. party
establishments shouldn’t be surprising.
The Republican Party’s 2016 platform not only fails to support the
establishment of a Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel, as it had in
previous years, it puts the party in opposition to virtually the entire
international community by proclaiming Republicans “reject the false notion
that Israel is an occupier.” It also insists that Israel “stands
out among the nations as a beacon of democracy and humanity,” that “support for
Israel is an expression of Americanism,” and that there should be “no daylight
between America and Israel.”
The platform also declares
that the United States should withhold funding from the United Nations, the
World Court or any other international authority that attempts to pressure
Israel to withdraw or impose any kind of peace settlement.
The Trump administration
has already put this extreme anti-Palestinian position into action. In early
February, the United States blocked the appointment of former Palestinian Prime
Minister Salam Fayyad, a pro-Western moderate, to become the UN Secretary General’s
Special Envoy to help resolve the conflict in Libya—simply because he was
Palestinian.
Ironically, this rightward
shift in U.S. policy comes at a time when public opinion has never been more
moderate. This is an area where the Democratic Party could take some leadership
in distinguishing itself from Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress on a
key foreign policy issue. However, it appears unlikely that this will happen
any time soon.
For example, the 2016 Democratic Party platform—while
supporting the concept of a two-state solution in theory—insists it could only
come on Israeli terms through direct negotiations, ignoring how the gross
asymmetry in power between the occupying power and those under occupation
provides little incentive for Israel’s rightwing government to compromise. Not
only did the platform refuse to oppose or even acknowledge the occupation and
settlements, it criticized the United Nations and civil society movements for
their efforts to stop them, while praising Israel’s supposed commitment to
“equality, tolerance and pluralism.”
There is probably no issue
where elected Democratic Party officials take positions so far to the right of
their constituents. Polls show most Democrats believe the United States should
impose sanctions or even more strenuous measures against Israel to stop the
expansion of illegal settlements. Yet when Obama refused to veto a mildly worded
and largely symbolic UN Security Council resolution critical of Israel’s
colonization drive, most congressional Democrats voted for a resolution
criticizing the president. A majority of rank-and-file Democrats believe the
United States should support the United Nations formally recognizing the State
of Palestine, but the overwhelming majority of Congressional Democrats have
gone on record insisting the United States should veto such a measure.
In fact, Democrats in
Congress have joined bipartisan majorities this past year passing a series of
bills and resolutions defining “Israel” as including “territories controlled by
Israel.” Such a legal redefinition of what constitutes “Israel” has in large
part been designed to make it more difficult to oppose the Israeli occupation
or colonization of the West Bank, such as through boycotting or even simply
labeling products produced in illegal settlements.
The list goes on: Eighty
percent of Democratic voters believe the United States should at least be
neutral (some even said the U.S. should favor Palestinians) in the peace
process, yet the voting records and statements of congressional Democrats
near-universally favor Israel. Less than one-third of registered Democrats
believed that Israel’s actions during the 2014 war on Gaza were justified, yet
congressional Democrats joined Republicans in backing a series of resolutions
by unanimous consent giving unconditional support for the Israeli offensive.
This disconnect between the
Democratic rank-and-file and their elected leadership is growing, particularly
given that younger Americans take a far more critical, or at least more
balanced, view of Israel than older Americans. The movement on college campuses
in support for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the Israeli
occupation has support comparable to similar campaigns on South Africa thirty
years ago, yet Democrats in both Washington and in state capitols have joined
Republicans in denouncing BDS as “anti-Semitic,” alienating many up-and-coming
activists whose support they will need in future campaigns. MORE http://inthesetimes.com/article/19912/trump-democrats-netanyahu-israel-palestine-bds
RESISTANCE
‘We’re taking responsibility’: Sixty teens announce refusal to serve in Israeli army.
Mronline.org (1-26-21). Dozens
of Israeli teens sign public letter objecting to military service over Israel’s
policies of apartheid, neoliberalism, and denial of the Nakba. | more… 
THE BDS MOVEMENT
BY
http://thehumanist.com/magazine/november-december-2016/features/active-duty-dedication-liberty-justice-end-wars
3539
Photo by Lexey Swall
Medea Benjamin has been an advocate for social justice for more
than forty years. As an economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and
World Health Organization in the 1970s and early ’80s, she brought attention to
overseas sweatshops, Nestlé’s anti-breastfeeding campaign, and poor labor
practices at Dole and Nike. In 1988 she cofounded the human rights group Global
Exchange and in 2002 she cofounded the women-led peace group CODEPINK.
Benjamin’s work for justice in Israel-Palestine includes taking
numerous delegations to Gaza after the 2008 Israeli invasion, organizing the
Gaza Freedom March in 2010, participating in the Freedom Flotillas, and
opposing the policies of the Israel lobby group AIPAC. In 2011 she was in
Tahrir Square during the Egyptian uprising and in 2012 she was part of a human
rights delegation to Bahrain in support of democracy activists.
Benjamin is the author or coauthor of nine books, including Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control (2012) and her latest, Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind
the U.S.-Saudi Connection. She is the recipient of the Martin Luther
King Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation; the Peace Prize
from the US Peace Memorial; the Gandhi Peace Award; and the Nuclear Age Peace
Foundation Award. This year Benjamin was named the Humanist Heroine by the
Feminist Caucus of the American Humanist Association. The following is adapted
from her May 28, 2016, speech in acceptance of the award at the AHA’s annual
conference in Chicago.
. . . .
Another issue that humanists
should address is the issue of the
Israel-Palestine conflict. I’ve heard it’s a difficult
subject for some of you in this group. Believe me, it’s been a difficult
subject for me as a secular Jew who had close ties to Israel from the time I
was sixteen working in a kibbutz. But I forced myself to learn more. I forced
myself to read. I forced myself to travel to the region under the most
difficult of times, like right after the
2008 twenty-two-day military assault on Gaza that killed over 1,400
Palestinians; many of them civilians and many of them children. I was shocked
and horrified by what I saw and was determined to get more involved in
protesting the US support for the Israeli military by joining the nonviolent movement of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions,
also known as BDS. I, and the others I know, don’t do this out of any
hatred for Israel. In fact, I do it out of love for Israel. Thanks to Bernie
Sanders, it’s now okay for a mainstream politician to express sympathy for
Palestinians. The BDS movement is growing within faith-based communities,
including the Jewish community, and on college campuses around the country. It
should be supported by the American Humanist Association. . . . http://thehumanist.com/magazine/november-december-2016/features/active-duty-dedication-liberty-justice-end-wars
WASHINGTON
REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, January/February 2017
This pro-Palestinian monthly magazine is the best general peace and justice news magazine on the
Middle East I know of. Only $29 for
dozens of well-written articles and reports.
Every month there’s a section on “The U.S. role in the Middle East and
the Israeli Occupation of Palestine”:
eleven articles in this no.; for example: “The Trump Era Begins—Five
Views”; “Israel Moves to Legalize Settlements and Further Its Crackdown on
BDS”; “The Senate Passes a Dumb and Dangerous Bill” (to censor criticism of Israel). And every month “Special Reports,” six this
month, for example, “Hands Off the Iran Deal.”
And then regular “Departments”: Cartoons, Israel and Judaism: “Is It
Fair to Use the Term ‘Apartheid’ to Characterize Israel’s Occupation?”; Waging
Peace: “Conference Examines Future of Palestinian Christians”; Human Rights,
Diplomatic Doings, Arab American Activism, Music and Arts, Books, and
more. --Dick
Jewish social justice
tradition a voice of hope
|
We wish you could
have felt it
Dear Dick, Wow. JVP’s National
Member Meeting concluded Sunday night with one of the most moving
political experiences of either of our lives. Forget about wishing you had
seen it (which you'll be able to as soon as we get recordings up
online). We wish you could have felt it. "This conference has been about much more
than naming oppressions. We danced (some of us), sang, laughed, wept,
mourned, strategized, debated and disagreed and most importantly we dreamed.
We dreamed of a beloved community" - Nyle Fort At our closing
plenary, Rev. Nyle Fort, Linda Sarsour, and Rasmea Odeh delivered more than
just three inspiring speeches. More than inspiration and hope. More than a
multi-racial, multi-faith, intergenerational barnburner. In that
room, the future of the Jewish community burst to life. And that was just one
hour of an unbelievably intense 3-day sprint. The NMM kicked off with a
historic day-long convening for Jews of Color and Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews
in solidarity with Palestine. Then more than 40 workshops expanded our
understanding of Jewish histories of resistance, tactical skills for taking
on Congress and state legislatures, report backs from cutting edge campaigns
fighting Islamophobia, militarism, and the alt-right’s melding of
anti-semitism and extreme Zionism from the White House on down. Together, we proved
that radical inclusivity builds genuine Jewish community. It’s time to get back
to work now. We are ready. We are all in. And so as we finish
cleaning up, we have three asks of you today (depending on your role and work
already in JVP, they might not all apply exactly to you - but you could
definitely consider sharing them all with friends!): 1.
Our May Member Drive
is around the corner - and we need to get 4,000 new and renewed members in
the door by the end of the month. What we experienced together in Chicago
needs to used a launching pad to build the organization and movement. We are
an organization of organizers - so please click here to
lend your hand to this mass outreach effort. . . . By
the time we reconvene for the 2019 NMM, our entire movement will be
even more loving, intentional and connected. We will have more power to
demand a just US and foreign policy - not just to endure during the Trump
era, but to make sure those who sooner or later will replace him understand
why Palestinian freedom is integral not just to the progressive agenda - but
to any and every moral vision of what the world should be. See
you soon at the 2019 NMM - and hopefully much, much sooner! Stefanie
Fox & Rabbi Alissa Wise Jewish Voice for Peace is a
national membership organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for the
freedom, equality, and dignity of all the people of Israel and
Palestine. Become a JVP Member today. |
||||||||
Contents
Israel-Palestinian Newsletter #13, August 13, 2016
http://jamesrichardbennett.blogspot.com/2016/08/israeli-palestinian-newsletter-13.html
Nuclear Armed
Israel: Vanunu
Jailed Again
Occupation Conflict
Today
Documentary on Israeli Media Control: The
Occupation of the American Mind,
How Israel Occupies the US: Mnar Muhawesh meets Sut Jhally
Dov Waxman,The American
Jewish Conflict over Israel, why Israel has
become such a divisive issue
Resistance
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
(ELCA) Divestment
WRL
supports Black & Palestinian solidarity
Congressional Supporters of Palestinians
Americans for Peace Now, “Do This Not That”
Bernie Sanders’ Critique of Israel
CodePink BDS Movement:
Codepink: RE/MAX
stop selling properties in Israeli settlements built on
occupied Palestinian land
Codepink: Letter to John Kerry on Human Rights in Israel and Palestine
Illegal settlements acquired
illegally, and Ban Ki-Moon
“Despair Is Not an Option”: Muste
grantees speak out
Sloan, “The Olive Grove”
END ISRAEL-PALESTINE NEWSLETTER #15
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