Tag: Israel

President Biden Continues Trump’s Unmerited Hostility Towards Iran

Caitlin Johnstone has written another good article explaining the ridiculous

Caitlin Johnstone

nature of president Biden’s current policy towards Iran.

The article is entitled, “Biden’s Iran Policy is Just Trump’s Iran Policy with a Rainbow Flag Emoji.”

Tragically, Biden is continuing to pursue standard, irrational bullying tactics that have long characterized US foreign policy.

And, of course, no one but no one in the mainstream media pushes back or dares to question the fundamental injustice, not to mention the militaristic dangers, now posed by this administration’s behavior.

I have excerpted a part of the article below, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

In a new interview with CBS Evening News, President Biden confirmed that his administration will not be lifting sanctions imposed upon Iran in order to bring Tehran to the negotiating table for the restoration of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal.

“Will the U.S. lift sanctions first in order to get Iran back to the negotiating table?” Biden was asked by CBS’s Norah O’Donnell.

“No,” the president replied.

“They have to stop enriching uranium first,” asked O’Donnell.

Biden nodded in response.

There are a few things that are ridiculous about this, the first being that the JCPOA does not require that Iran “stop enriching uranium” at all. As explained by Al-Monitor‘s Arash Karami, the deal only calls for Iran to “keep its level of uranium enrichment at up to 3.67 %”, a level it only began exceeding when the Trump administration backed out of the deal and imposed sanctions. The administration later clarified that Biden meant Iran would have to return to its JCPOA levels before negotiations could begin, but the fact that neither the United States president nor the high-profile reporter interviewing him appear to have been clear on this says a lot about the vapid nature of America’s political/media class.

More importantly, this is confirmation from the horse’s mouth that Biden is in effect continuing Trump’s Iran policy. Trump began strangling Iran with crushing sanctions in an effort to force it to obey US dictates, and Biden is continuing that exact same strangulation while continuing to demand compliance with its dictates. The demands might be a little different, but the effect is identical since Tehran would never bow to either of them.

The Iranian government has repeatedly made it abundantly clear that it will not be rejoining the JCPOA until the United States comes back into compliance, since it was the US who first abandoned it. It claims, correctly, that it was in full compliance with the agreement when the Trump administration unilaterally backed out in May 2018. The argument that it is therefore Washington’s responsibility to come back into compliance first is indisputable. Why would it re-enter a deal with a government that is clearly acting in bad faith and could just back out and impose civilian-killing sanctions on the nation again?

ScheerPost: “Israel’s Latest War Crime: Medical Apartheid”

Professor Juan Cole, who manages one of my favorite news blogs, Informed Comment, has written an article exposing apartheid Israel’s refusal to

Professor Juan Cole

distribute the covid vaccines to Palestinians in Israel or the Occupied Territories.

Yes, as I demonstrate in my forthcoming book on Christian Zionism, Israel is an ethnocratic state that prioritizes Jewish lives above all others.

Several of my friends in the West Bank have already contracted covid. Thankfully, none of

Journalist Robert Scheer

them have died, and all seem to have recovered fully.

Due to the corruption of the Palestinian Authority, and its perennial lack of funds (largely due to American and Israeli economic restrictions), the rate of infection is much higher than officially reported.

People are afraid to tell their bosses and supervisors when they do become sick, because they fear losing their jobs and being ostracized.

Cole’s article can be found at Robert Scheer’s new journalism site, Scheerpost.

The piece is entitled, “Israel’s Latest War Crime: Medical Apartheid.”

I have excerpted the article below, or you can read the entire piece here:

Some ten percent of Israelis have already been given the coronavirus shot, showing what an efficient government can do for its citizens with the right medical and administrative infrastructure. The Trump administration has not been able to ramp up the actual shots in arms, despite shipping millions of doses of vaccine to states and localities.

There’s just one problem with Israel’s success. It is only within Israel proper.

Israeli medical teams in Israel welcome the vaccine’s arrival…for them

Israel militarily occupies the Palestinian West Bank and keeps the little Palestinian Gaza Strip under blockade. In international law, Israel is responsible for the health and well-being of the people it militarily occupies. Not vaccinating them against a pandemic is a war crime.

You know how many shots Israeli physicians have given the Palestinians under their rule? None.

This, even though Israeli squatters who have stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank are being given the shot.

There has been a dangerous spike in cases and deaths during the past two months in the Palestinian Territories.

The ministry of health of Occupied Palestine announced on Friday that 18 people died of COVID-19 that day, and 1,450 new cases were recorded, this for a population of 5 million.

These statistics are almost certainly missing many cases and deaths, since Palestinians living under the Israeli boot have lost tens of billions of dollars in potential income and their medical infrastructure is ramshackle. There is a severe shortage, for instance, of intensive care units. On top of all that, the Trump administration has cruelly and ruthlessly slashed aid to the Palestinians and has knee-capped the UN Relief and Works Agency that used to help out Palestinian refugees. These are families ethnically cleansed by the Israelis in 1948 and 1967.

As far as the health ministry can tell, 13% of the Palestinian population tests positive for the virus and about 1% of those stricken end up dying. That would be 650,000 people stricken, of whom 6,500 will die. They wouldn’t die at that rate if they were getting the vaccine.

Gideon Levy: “Israel’s War on Palestinian Children”

Gideon Levy, intrepid Israeli journalist for Haaretz newspaper

Gideon Levy is one of the bravest and most honest journalists in Israel. He writes for the daily newspaper Haaretz. Here is his most recent article on the Israeli army and its brutal treatment of Palestinian children.

I have visited the Al-Arroub refugee camp and spent a pleasant afternoon with a family there. All three sons had been arrested, beaten by Israeli soldiers. One had been shot. All for no particular reason:

Last week, we were in the Al-Arroub refugee camp, searching for an open area in which to sit, for fear of the coronavirus. There wasn’t one. In a camp in which house touches house, whose alleys are the width of a man and strewn with garbage, there’s nowhere to sit outside. One can only dream of a garden or a bench; there isn’t even a sidewalk. This is where Basel al-Badawi lives. A year ago, soldiers shot his brother dead, before his eyes, for no reason. Two weeks ago, Basel was snatched from his bed on a cold night and taken, barefoot, for questioning. We sat in his family’s cramped home and realized there was no “out” to go to. While we were there, Israeli soldiers blocked the entrance to the camp, as they occasionally do, arbitrarily, and the sense of suffocation only grew.

Basel Al Badawi in his home, with photo of Omar hanging on the wall, in Al Arroub refugee camp, November 2020. Credit: Alex Levac

This is Basel’s world and this is his reality. He is 16, a bereaved brother, who was abducted from his bed in the dark of night by soldiers. He has nowhere to go to except for school, which is closed for part of the week due to COVID-19. Basel is free now, more fortunate than certain other children and teenagers. Around 170 of them are currently detained in Israel. Other children are shot by soldiers, wounded and sometimes killed, with no distinction made between children and adults – a Palestinian is a Palestinian – or between a life-threatening situation and a “public disturbance.”

On Friday they killed Ali Abu Alia, a 13-year-old boy. It was a lethal shot to the abdomen. No one could remain indifferent to the sight of his innocent face in photographs, and his last picture – in a shroud, his face exposed, his eyes closed, as he was carried to burial in his village. Ali, as he did every week, went with his friends to demonstrate against the wild and violent outposts that sprouted out of the settlement of Kokhav Hashahar, taking over the remaining land of his village, al-Mughayir. There is nothing more just than the struggle of this village, there is nothing more heinous than the use of lethal force against protesters and there is no possibility that shooting Ali in the abdomen could have been justifiable. In Israel, of course, no one showed any interest over the weekend in the death of a child, one more child.

Mourners carry the body of Palestinian teenager Ali Abu Alia during his funeral in the village of Mughayir near Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on December 5, 2020. Credit: ABBAS MOMANI/AFP

Up until the current school year, around 50 children from the shepherding community of Ras a-Tin studied at the school in al-Mughayir, the village of the deceased boy. They had to walk about 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) each day, round trip, to attend. This year their parents, with the help of a European Commission aid organization based in Italy, built them a modest, charming school in the village. Israel’s Civil Administration is threatening to demolish it, and in the meantime it is harassing the pupils and teachers with surprise visits to check whether the toilets had been, God forbid, connected to a water pipe – in a village that was never connected to the power grid or the water supply. The children of Ras a-Tin must have known Ali, their former classmate, now dead.

The children did not know Malek Issa, of Isawiyah, in East Jerusalem. The 9-year-old boy lost an eye after it was hit by a sponge-tipped bullet fired by an Israeli police officer. On Thursday the Justice Ministry department that examines allegations of police misconduct announced that no one would be charged in the shooting, after 10 months of intensive investigation. It was enough for the policemen involved to claim that stones had been thrown at them, perhaps one of them hit the boy. But no video shows stones being thrown, nor is there any other evidence of this. Ali’s killers can also sleep in peace: No one will prosecute them. All they did was to kill a Palestinian child.

The 9-year-old Palestinian boy who was wounded in Isawiyah at Hadassah Ein-Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem, on February 18, 2020.Credit: Ohad Ziegenberg

These and many other incidents are taking place during a period that is among the quietest in the West Bank. This is the terror taking place, committed by the state. When we hear of such incidents in vicious dictatorships – children who are snatched from their beds in the middle of the night, one boy who was shot in the eye, another who was shot and killed – it sends shivers down our spine. Shooting at demonstrators? At children? Where do such things happen? Not in some faraway land, but rather just an hour’s drive from your home; not in some dark regime, but in the only democracy.

What would you think of a regime that allows the shooting of children, that abducts them in their sleep and razes their schools? That’s exactly what you must think of the regime here in our country [Israel].

Ilhan Omar Continues to Speak Truth to Power

Rep. Ilhan Omar is someone I deeply admire. She is a woman of principle who does not hesitate (as far as I can tell) to speak out on behalf of the

Rep. Ilhan Omar

oppressed, whether in this country or abroad.

Rep. Omar is up for reelection in November. But as someone who defends the rights of the Palestinian people to live freely as equal citizens in the land of Palestine; as someone who condemns Zionist Israel’s continuous oppression of the Palestinians, she is coming under heavy attack from pro-Zionist, pro-Israel lobbying organizations in this country.

This opposition includes a growing number of death threats.

The online journal Mondoweiss has a recent article entitled “The Israel lobby has spent $2 million to defeat Ilhan Omar.”

With all the baseless hysteria in the media nowadays worrying about Russian election interference, the continuing Big-Money election influencing efforts on behalf of Israel make other complaints pale in comparison.

But don’t say that out loud in public. You will be attacked as an antisemite by someone connected to AIPAC.

Here is an excerpt:

But the reaction to Omar has been especially hostile. Many charged that the furious response to her comments quickly devolved into Islamophobic attacks on one of the nation’s first Muslim Congresswomen. Trump capitalized on last year’s uproar, leading chants of “send them back” at his rallies, fanning phony outrage and prompting serious death threats.

The lobby and its allies have zeroed in on Omar for several reasons, said Zaha Hassan, a human rights attorney and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Omar “unabashedly” has called out the lobby, supports BDS, has taken up Israeli human rights abuses, “and hasn’t backed down regardless of how many times folks have come at her with charges of antisemitism.”

“She has come out strongly in support of Palestinian human rights and she has not been afraid of calling what Israel is doing in terms of its control over Palestinian lives ‘apartheid’ — that’s what sets her apart,” Hassan said.

Still, other lawmakers and progressives are increasingly vocal in their criticism of Israel, and they haven’t faced an onslaught of attacks from the president, his supporters, Israel and centrist Democrats.

Hassan pointed to Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum, a white woman who represents a district next to Omar’s, who has similarly denounced Israel as an “apartheid” state but doesn’t face the same criticism.

That’s likely because Omar is an African-American, Muslim woman, Hassan said.

“She presents an easier target for some folks who want to delegitimize that kind of speech about Israel in terms of accountability and conditioning aid and those kinds of issues,” Hassan added.

Beyond that, Omar has become a leader of the pro-Palestine progressive movement, and knocking her out of office in August would represent a major win for Israel. The lobby’s willingness to spend over $2 million on that objective highlights its importance.

You can read the entire article here.

The Israeli Army Doesn’t Have Snipers. It Has Hunters — Gideon Levy

Here is an excerpt from today’s editorial by Gideon Levy at the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. It is entitled, “The Israeli Army Doesn’t Have Snipers

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

on the Gaza Border. It Has Hunters.”

He is addressing the ongoing, daily slaughter of Palestinian men, women and children at the Gaza prison fence.

To date, 8,000 young men have been permanently disabled. The number of deaths is in the hundreds (approximately, 500 I believe) and the serious injuries in the tens of thousands.

And still, the United States and the rest of the world do nothing:

“They’re the best of our boys. One is a “musician from a good high school,” another a “boy scout” who majored in theater.” They’re the snipers who have shot thousands of unarmed protesters along the Gaza border fence.

“In the Gaza Strip there are 8,000 permanently disabled young men as a result of the snipers’ actions. Some are leg amputees, and the shooters are very proud of that. None of the snipers interviewed for Hilo Glazer’s frightening story in Haaretz (March 6) has any regrets. If they are feeling at all apologetic it’s because they didn’t spill more blood. One was mocked in his battalion with “here comes the killer.” They all act like murderers. If their actions don’t show it – more than 200 dead as a result of them – then their statements prove that these young men have lost their moral compass. They are lost. They will go on to study, to have careers and to raise families – and will never recover from their blindness. They disabled their victims physically, but their own disabilities are more severe. Their souls were completely twisted. They will never again be moral individuals. They are a danger to society. They lost their humanity, if they ever had it, on the shooting berms facing the Gaza Strip. They are the sons of our friends and the friends of our sons, the young people from the apartment across the hall. Look how they talk.

“…but it’s hard not to be shocked at the depths to which we have sunk. They recalled the number of knees they shot. ‘I brought in seven-eight knees in one

Israeli soldiers patrol the Gaza fence looking for people to shoot

day. Within a few hours, I almost broke his record.’ ‘He got around 28 knees.’ They shot at unarmed young men and women who were trying in vain to struggle for their freedom, an issue that couldn’t be more just. ‘The regular scenario is supposed to be that you hit, break a bone – in the best case, break the kneecap – within a minute an ambulance comes to evacuate him, and after a week he gets a disability pension.’…

“They chose their victims by their charisma, with a sniper’s precision. Their ‘leadership aura’ has destined young men to a life of disability in the cage that is Gaza. But that was not enough. They become bloodthirsty as only young incited people can be. They wanted more blood, not just blood, a child’s blood. Not just a child’s blood, but in front of his family.

“‘Let me just once take down a kid of 16, even 14, but not with a bullet in the leg – let me blow his head open in front of his whole family and his whole village. Let him spurt blood. And then maybe for a month I won’t have to take off another 20 knees.’

“They wanted blood from a boy’s head only to spare themselves the need to take down 20 more knees. They identified their victims’ age by their shirts: Dress shirts for the older ones, T-shirts for the youngest.

“None was court-martialed. Correction: One got seven days in military jail for shooting a sheep. Soldiers in the world’s most moral army don’t shoot sheep. With 200 dead and 8,000 wounded, they think ‘the restraints on us are shameful.’ That is their shame. They are our shame. They, and their commanders. They and the army that orders them to shoot at protesters as if they were ‘ducks who chose to cross the line.’

“People who shoot ducks aren’t snipers. They’re hunters.”

Read the entire piece here.

 

In Israel, Zionism is the #1 Religion — Gideon Levy

Those of you who follow Israeli politics know that they recently held their third national election in less than a year. And once again Benjamin Netanyahu, despite the numerous legal indictments against him, is again in the top position to form the new government.

Despite its frequent claims to being the only democracy in the Middle East,

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

Israeli-Palestinians still confront an all pervasive Zionist system of Jim Crow laws that suppress Palestinian involvement in government.

Twenty-first century Israel is the Middle Eastern equivalent of Louisiana, Alabama,Georgia, and Mississippi in the early nineteen-hundreds. Palestinians are Israel’s “Negroes.”

Israeli Zionism is the ideological equivalent of the white supremacy, baptized with Christian lingo and accouterments, so idolized by the southern Klansmen who burned crosses to terrorize anyone who forgot “their place.”

Gideon Levy is an opinion writer for the Israeli, daily newspaper, Haaretz. His is a rare voice speaking the truth about anti-Palestinian racism in his homeland. Levy’s  recent analysis of the Israeli elections is entitled, “In Israel, Zionism is a Religion, And It’s Mandatory.” (Note: the joint list is an alliance of the majority-Palestinian parties in Israel.)

Here is an excerpt:

“Voting for a party that doesn’t have the Zionist banner flying over it is a painful, almost impossible step. That’s the result of 100 years of indoctrination that is practically unmatched. With the exception of North Korea, no other country has such a ruling ideology that is not to be doubted or deviated from. Aside from Iran, no other country has a mandatory religion. In Israel, Zionism is a religion, and it is mandatory.

“A Jew who votes for the Joint List is still considered a traitor, or at least a person who has some kind of screw loose. In our childhood, this is how we viewed activists from Rakah and Matzpen, and we shunned them like lepers. The Rakah office on Maza Street in Tel Aviv was like a mysterious, menacing headquarters of an enemy army. You didn’t want to be seen anywhere near it. I remember the first time I went there: I was terrified.

“These were the adolescent growing pains of a young country. But when a strong, thriving country disqualifies a legal ideology and makes it illegitimate, something has gone wrong with its democracy.

“Zionism is a worldview like any other. One can see its attractive and unattractive sides. It is not a religion in which doubters are denounced as heretics – yet it is forbidden to reject Zionism. Why? Because Zionism is not sure of itself. It knows that it brought a catastrophe upon another people and it knows that the fire of evil and injustice is burning beneath the carpet upon which it treads. If Zionism were certain of its righteousness, it would put itself to the test like any other worldview and it would be permissible to doubt it. Israel in 2020 is not yet ready for that. A true left will only arise here when we wean ourselves of the addiction to Zionism and free ourselves from its chains.”

You can read the entire editorial here.

Why is Israel’s Occupation and Annexation of Palestinian Land Illegal?

I won’t go into the various ways in which Israel has taken over (“expropriated”) privately owned Palestinian land in the West Bank (and even within Israel itself). But they do it on a regular basis.

In this post I will focus on the provisions of International Law being violated by Israel’s steady encroachment into the Occupied Territory/West

Israel’s Annexation/ Separation Barrier separating Palestinians from Israel. Observe that it’s not hard to climb. It was not built to stop terrorism, but to steal more land.

Bank.

The Geneva Convention declares that land conquered through war (1) cannot be kept by the conquering power. (2) Neither can it be incorporation as a part of the victorious country. (3) Nor can the conquering country move its own citizens into the occupied region for colonization.

Israel is violating all of these legal requirements.

Here is what International Law says:

Article 49, paragraph 6 of the 1949 Geneva Convention IV says, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Article 85(4)(a) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I adds that “the transfer by

Palestinians live under military occupation. Trump’s plan will expand and deepen its oppression

the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” is a serious breach of the protocol.

Article 8(2)(b)(viii) of the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court states that “[t]he transfer, directly or indirectly, by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” is a war crime.

Why were these restrictions on the ancient attitude of “to the victor goes the spoils” put in place?

The answer is simple. And you’d think Israel might be especially sensitive to this part of the story.

Adolf Hitler.

As I will explain in my next book, during the Second World War, Adolf Hitler

Hitler’s plans for population transfers throughout Eastern Europe — remove the natives and replace them with ethnic Germans

undertook ethnic cleansing in parts of eastern Europe.  He then resettled these areas with ethnic Germans, planning to incorporate the newly settled territories into an expanded German state.

For only one example, the Nazis expelled nearly 122,000 Poles from German occupied Pomerania in 1939-40. They were replaced by 130,000 ethnic Germans who were resettled in place of the former Pomerania population.

German settlement expansion in eastern Europe was a part of Hitler’s “Germanization” program, referred to as Generalplan Ost (the GPO).

The Geneva Convention, at the instigation of the United States, hoped to prevent (or, at least, to outlaw) similar population transfers via warfare in the future.

Israel first violated this part of international law in 1948-49 when it conquered 50% of the territory allotted by the United Nations for a Palestinian state.

Israel continues its violation of international law in the West Bank, which Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 war.  The West Bank has remained under military occupation ever since, hence its identification as Occupied Territory.

Now it becomes United States policy to endorse the violation of international law. Only a few weeks ago Trump announced that the US considers all Israeli settlements in the West Bank as “legal.”

This week’s Apartheid Plan endorses the illegal annexation and Jewish settlement of the entire Jordan Valley, displacing the many Palestinians farmers from their own property.

All of the Palestinian lands stolen by Israeli fiat, and built up by illegal

Illegal Jewish settlers in the Jordan Valley. They have been breaking the law for a long time. Trump now says it’s OK

Israeli settlers, throughout the West Bank will be officially annexed as a part of Israel.

I know this will offend some and appear an exaggeration by many, but facts are facts. They don’t change because some folks are offended.

  1. Israel is a rogue nation. The international community must condemn its avaricious, illegal, inhumane behavior now.
  2. The United States is the world’s most far-reaching enabler of such rogue behavior, not just in the Middle East, but around the globe.
  3. Sadly, nobly intentioned international law has failed to stop the ghost of racist, ethnic nationalism from stealing from and oppressing other human beings.
  4. The ghost of Hitler hangs heavy over the United States, Israel, Donald Trump, and Benjamin Netanyahu.

Professor Erakat Talks About Trump’s Middle East Plan for Israeli Apartheid

Noura Erakat is assistant professor of criminal law at Rutgers University, specializing in international and humanitarian law. You can check out her faculty page here.

Her most recent book, which I read not long ago and highly recommend, is entitled Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine (Stanford, 2019). In this book, she examines the modern history of Palestine through the lens of international law. (I’ll give you a head’s up: Israel has regularly violated, and continues its violations, of international law flagrantly and persistently.)

Recently, Ms. Erakat was interviewed by Aaron Mate, one of my favorite journalists for his independence and investigative abilities, on the Grayzone program, Push Back.

Their conversation concerns the practical effects of President Trump’s recently announced Apartheid Plan for Israeli/Palestinian relations.

Please take the time to watch the complete interview here. It is approximately 15 minutes long.

Her summary: “This plan is much more dangerous than I originally thought.”

Kairos Palestine Responds to Trump’s Middle East “Peace” Plan

Kairos Palestine is an organization made up of Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank who advocate for peace and justice on behalf of all the Palestinian people.

Some years ago I had the opportunity of visiting their offices and speaking with several of their volunteers. Our time together was delightful as we discussed the ethics of Israel’s military occupation and its consequences.

Today Kairos Palestine released a press statement in response to Trump’s unveiling of his administration’s obscene pretense of a “peace plan.” (You can read a few of my thoughts about Trump’s plan  here.)

Below is an excerpt of Kairos Palestine’s press release. You can read the entire statement here:

“Peace, peace, they say when there is no peace”

(Jeremiah: 6:14)

The position announced by the U.S. administration regarding what they termed as the ‘deal of the century’ was in fact an insult to history, humanity, the Palestinian people, and the American dignity itself.

The American-Israeli proposal is premised on consolidating Israeli control over all of Palestine’s land, making sure that the Palestinian people are subjected to this control, in return for economic promises that are closer to a deal for buying the people and their spirit with money.

This proposal seeks to legitimize the Israeli occupation and revoke the history of the Palestinian people and their legitimate inalienable rights, particularly the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and the right to self-determination in an attempt to eliminate the Palestinian question completely and definitively…

…Through this declaration, the U.S. has proclaimed itself clearly as a party to the conflict rather than a peace broker, as it considered this deal, that has no reference to the international law or the UN resolutions, as the final offer to the Palestinians holding them fully responsible, should they reject it, for all the ensuing repercussions.

Israel and the U.S. are yet to listen to the voice of God commanding them, here in the Holy Land and in the world as a whole: do not steal, do not kill, in order to stop killing the Palestinian people and stealing away their lands.

Israel and the U.S. are yet to listen to God’s voice, to the voice of conscience, and realize the truth that cannot be subdued: the Palestinian people are alive, consistently demanding their rights over the past hundred years till this date. The Palestinian people will continue to demand their rights until they obtain them. The only path to peace is that of full equality between the two peoples. Israel peace is preconditioned by Palestinian peace, in fact, Israeli mere survival is based on the just peace for Palestinians. Otherwise, Israel, despite all its power, will live in fear and anticipation of an unknown future. As we already stated in the Kairos document ‘Moment of Truth’ , “our and their future are but one. Either a cycle of violence whereby we all perish, or peace whereby we all thrive.” 

Israel’s Culture of Killing

Today’s edition of Haaretz contains another moment of truth from Gideon

Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy

Levy about Zionist racism, lies, and the currency of anti-Palestinian hatred throughout Israeli society.

The piece is entitled “If There’s Such a Thing as a Murderous Culture, Then It Exists in Israel.”  I have excerpted the piece below, or you can read the entire article here:

“This is what the editor of Haaretz’s Culture and Literature supplement, Benny Ziffer, wrote on his Facebook page upon returning from paying a condolence call in the settlement of Ofra: ‘En route I looked at the Palestinian villages alongside the Jewish communities, and I thought of how for the Palestinians murder is a type of sport or enjoyment, perhaps a substitute for erotica. From that perspective we will never have anything culturally in common with them.’

“And if that weren’t enough, Ziffer also wrote, ‘Regarding this evil and undignified people living among us, we can only yearn for the land to vomit it out, because it isn’t worthy of this land, which is full of Jewish blood that it has spilled.’

“His post generated no comment. Ziffer has apparently exhausted his allotted attention. By contrast, Yaron London succeeded in raising a bigger momentary storm with less serious remarks: ‘Arabs are savages … they don’t only hate Jews, they kill their own first and foremost.’

“More than one straight line connects London and Ziffer. Their comments reflect the spirit of the times in Israel…

“More than they are racists, London and Ziffer are disseminating lies. I was sitting in London’s studio when he said his piece; I tried to respond in real time but to no avail. So I will try here.

“We examined the past decade; those murderous, bloodletting Palestinians, have since January 2009 killed 190 Israelis. How many Palestinians were

An Israeli soldier detains an unarmed Palestinian man following a weekly nonviolent protest against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel, Kfar Qaddum, West Bank, August 23, 2019. Credit AFP

killed by Israel, the seeker of peace and goodness, which will never have anything culturally in common with the Arabs? Some 3,500. Israel was 18 times more murderous. Was it for sport? Erotic pleasure? Of course not, but the blood speaks: Israel draws far more of it.

“Is it permitted to say that it’s Israeli culture to spill blood wholesale? According to London, yes. There is something called national culture, even if it’s a culture of killing. But when one speaks about genetic characteristics, it’s racism. One can even generalize, as London said, a generalization will always be unjust to the individual and the exceptional. But it has to based on reality, and the reality is that the enlightened whites have, in the past 100 years, massacred more people than all the Muslims and savages combined. Not only were Hitler and Stalin not Muslims, since World War II the United States, the land of the free, is guilty of more killing than any other country. Most of its mass killers are decidedly non-Muslim.

“Someone who generalizes isn’t necessarily a racist. But he may turn out to be a liar. If there’s a culture of killing, it actually exists in Israel. Soldiers and policemen who shoot to kill as a first choice testify to a warped morality. Fear, hatred, self-pity, the security cult, dehumanization and an itchy trigger finger are all Israeli cultural traits that lead to this mass blood-letting, but woe unto anyone who dares define Israel as having a murderous culture. He’d be condemned as an anti-Semite. The Palestinian people, on the other hand, are one of the most restrained people in history in its violent resistance to occupation and injustice. That’s the truth, there’s no denying it.

“Israel actually likes cultural and national generalizations, especially when they glorify its image. The ‘Jewish genius,’ ‘the chosen people,’ ‘Jewish morality,’ and ‘eternal Israel,’ are evidence of baseless arrogance. Ziffer has every right to think that the Palestinians enjoy murder and London can think they are savages compared to us, the enlightened and developed. It is our right (and duty) to answer them: There are no lies more abominable than these.” (emphasis mine)