Tag: Military Occupation

Business as Usual: Israeli Soldiers Arrest Palestinian Children for Picking Wild Vegetables on Their Own Land

Below is a video of Israeli soldiers arresting 5 Palestinian children, ages 8 through 13. Their “crime” was picking wild herbs and vegetables near an illegal Jewish-only settlement in the West Bank.

It is another example of the way Israel criminalizes Palestinians for merely existing in their own land.

The video was released by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. Below is an excerpt from Aljazeera describing the arrest.

Israeli forces detained five Palestinian children for several hours after they were confronted by Jewish settlers while gathering wild vegetables near a settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank, an Israeli human rights group said on Thursday.

B’Tselem released video of the arrest in the southern Hebron Hills, in which heavily armed Israeli soldiers can be seen dragging the children away.

Footage shot earlier shows the children gathering akoub, a plant similar to artichoke, when two masked settlers emerge from a grove of trees near the illegal settler outpost of Havat Maon.

The outpost is located near Masafer Yatta, a collection of about 19 Palestinian hamlets. The area is a frequent target of assaults by the Israeli military and settlers.

“This is another example of the absolute disregard on the part of Israeli authorities and forces on the ground to the wellbeing and rights of Palestinians, no matter how young or vulnerable,” B’Tselem spokesman Amit Gilutz said.

“The youngest boy from yesterday’s incident is eight years old,” he added.

The children, whose ages range from eight to 13, were held for about five hours

An Israeli soldier detains a Palestinian boy during a protest against Jewish settlements in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, near Ramallah August 28, 2015. REUTERS/Mohamad Torokman

at a police station in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, according to Gaby Lasky, a human rights lawyer who is representing them. The two eldest, who are 12 and 13, were ordered to return next week for more questioning as, under Israeli military law, they are deemed old enough to face charges. . . 

. . . According to Defense for Children International, Israel prosecutes between 500 and 700 Palestinian children in military courts each year. Prisoners’ rights group Addameer has said 140 Palestinian children are currently imprisoned by Israel.

Click here to read the entire article.

 

 

Why is Facebook Censoring My Wife’s Comments About Israel?

Recently, one of Terry’s (my wife) Facebook posts was flagged and deleted for violating Facebook’s content policies.

Her censored comment advocated for Palestinian human rights in the Israeli occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. She noted that it was the Israeli government, not the occupied Palestinians, who were regularly  committing acts of terrorism.

That particular political observation is no longer permitted by the Facebook censorship policies — which we all know are expanding rapidly.

It’s more evidence of the power of the pro-Israel lobby in this country which would love to censor ALL criticism of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people living under its control.

Fortunately, the Jewish-led, Palestinian rights organization called Jewish Voice for Peace has begun a campaign on Facebook aimed at combating the Israel Lobby’s dangerous, anti-first amendment influence online.

They call it, “Facebook We Have to Talk: On Distinguishing Anti-Semitism from Anti-Zionism in Public Spaces.” Below is an excerpt:

In January 2021, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) announced a global campaign “Facebook, we need to talk” about the social media giant’s inquiry into whether criticism of the movement Zionism “falls within the rubric of hate speech as per Facebook’s Community Standards.”

In its current form, the controversy centers around forcing universities, social media platforms, and other public spaces to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) standard which defines current anti-Semitism to include “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards” to Israel, overall a definition that would essentially shut down any criticism of the Zionist state.

According to Lara Friedman, the goal of Zionist groups who are pushing for this action “isn’t to get Facebook to deplatform antisemitism, but to get Facebook to deplatform criticism of Israel.”

In response, hundreds of activists, intellectuals and artists from around the world have launched a petition to ensure that Facebook does not include “Zionist” as a protected category in its hate speech policy—“that is, to treat ‘Zionist’ as a proxy for “Jew or “Jewish.” In its first 24 hours, the open letter gathered over 14,500 signatures, including such figures as Hanan Ashrawi, Norita Cortiñas, Wallace Shawn and Peter Gabriel.

“Cooperating with the Israeli government’s request,” the petition notes, “would undermine efforts to dismantle antisemitism, deprive Palestinians of a crucial venue for expressing their political viewpoints to the world, and help the Israeli government avoid accountability for its violations of Palestinian rights.”

Israel and Sheldon Adelson: Another Example of How Money Influences US Foreign Policy

The Las Vegas casino billionaire, Sheldon Adelson, died on January 11, 2021.

Donald Trump with Sheldon Adelson. Adelson reportedly contributed $75 million to Trump’s 2019 reelection campaign.

Adelson (and his Israeli born wife) was a fanatical political Zionist who, sadly, was the living embodiment of the old antisemitic slander that Jews all secretly loved Israel more than their country of residence.

Occasionally, caricatures — even slanderous caricatures — can be true.

The day after Adelson’s death Alex Kane of The Intercept published an article entitled, “Sheldon Adelson’s Fortune Helped Turn the GOP Into the Party of Israeli Apartheid.”

YES. Israel is an apartheid state.

Israeli apartheid is not limited to the Occupied Territories.

Apartheid reigns within Israel’s recognized borders as well.

Israel is NOT “the only democracy in the Middle East” because Israel is not a democracy.

As I show in my forthcoming book exposing the many errors of Christian Zionism, Israel is actually an extremely rigid ethnocracy. That is, a hierarchical state where one ethnic group (Jews) exercises the legal privilege of systematically discriminating against everyone else in the state (primarily Palestinians).

This is much more than a story about Adelson’s control over the Republican party. It is an expose in how big money donors, CEOs, and corporations are able to control American politics, including our foreign policy.

Below is an excerpt from Kane’s article, or you can read the entire piece by clicking on the title above:

WITH THE death of 87-year-old billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, the Republican Party has lost its biggest benefactor.

A Palestinian girl sits inside a room of her family’s building which was damaged by Israel’s bombing attack in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Feb. 23, 2015. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Adelson’s legacy, however, will live on for generations, not only in his Israeli-born wife Miriam, who is expected to continue giving millions of dollars to the Republican Party, but in the shape of the U.S.-Israel relationship, Adelson’s top concern. “I’m a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” Adelson said in 2017.

More than anyone else, Adelson can claim credit for transforming the GOP into a party devoted to bolstering Israel’s military occupation and its expansion of West Bank settlements. And the Israeli

Israeli settlers regularly harass and attack Palestinians. They are typically protected by Israeli soldiers.

right, also bankrolled by Adelson, saw many of its political aspirations realized under Donald Trump’s presidency, a political turn that has fractured the long-standing bipartisan consensus on the Jewish state.

Adelson’s most important political conviction was that the Israeli right must be supported. The 19th-richest American used his $35 billion fortune to ensure that the GOP’s policy goals united with the Israeli right’s. In a 2010 speech, Adelson, a U.S. Army veteran, lamented that “the uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform.” He added: “All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli-born, Israel is in my heart.”

As for the Palestinians, Adelson saw them as an invented nation and nothing more than a political obstacle. “The purpose of the existence of Palestinians is to destroy Israel,” he said in remarks made in 2014 at an Israeli-American Council conference. During that same appearance, Adelson dismissed concerns about whether Israeli democracy can coexist while Israel rules millions of Palestinians who have no voting rights. So Israel won’t be a democratic state, so what?” he said. . . 

. . . FROM 2008 TO 2016, Adelson opposed President Barack Obama at every turn, backing John McCain and Mitt Romney’s failed attempts at defeating him and bankrolling the groups that fiercely wanted to defeat Obama’s Iran policies. In 2013, Adelson suggested that Obama launch a nuclear strike on Iran. Obama instead pursued his landmark nuclear deal with Iran, which he sealed in 2015.

But Adelson’s crowning achievements were yet to come. During the 2016

Israel’s Apartheid/ Annexation wall. As you see, the wall did not stop suicide bombers from entering Israel.

presidential primary, after all the GOP candidates traipsed to Las Vegas to meet with the casino magnate as part of what’s known as the “Adelson primary,” Adelson appeared to back Sen. Marco Rubio, a foreign policy hawk thought to be a top contender for winning the nomination. The casino magnate was said to be wary of Trump, who had demurred on whether he backed Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital in a speech to the Adelson-backed Republican Jewish Coalition. For his part, Trump, in October 2015, mocked Rubio for being Adelson’s “perfect little puppet.”

. . . Adelson wanted Trump to torpedo diplomacy with Iran; Trump backed out of the Iran deal in May 2018. Adelson believed the U.S. Embassy should move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem; Trump did so, also in May 2018. (In September 2020, Adelson bought the U.S ambassador’s beach-view residence in the affluent Israeli city of Herzliya near Tel Aviv for $67 million, ensuring that the next U.S. ambassador won’t have a place to live near the old location of the U.S. Embassy.)  Adelson wanted the U.S. to legitimize Israel’s policy of building settlements in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem; Trump did so in January 2019, reversing long-standing bipartisan U.S. policy that saw settlements as illegitimate obstacles to peace because they make a geographically viable Palestinian state impossible.

 

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].

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.” 

Observations on the Trump/Netanyahu Apartheid Plan for the Middle East

Trump and Netanyahu unveil the “plan of the century” — remembering, of course, that the century is merely 10 years old.

The Impeached and the Indicted are on the campaign trail together with a shamelessly ridiculous plan for permanent apartheid in Palestine, all under the guise of an Israel-Palestine peace plan producing a viable two-state solution.

Well, attention Mr. Impeached President and Mr. Indicted Israeli Prime Minister — a two-state solution died long, long ago.

Israel’s continuous multiplication of illegal Jewish-only settlements throughout the occupied West Bank put a stake through that two-state dream like a knife cutting through butter.

And the US stood on the sidelines and watched.

Take a look at the map provided with the plan (which you can read for yourself here). By the way, the extremely right-wing Jerusalem Post is thrilled that Trump’s plan comes with a map. They absolutely gush, It is the first plan to come with a map!

Oh joy, I guess the editors at JP like their books to come with big two-tone pictures.

But the map does illustrate one thing clearly. There ain’t no Palestinian state with contiguous borders (as Jared Kushner, the plans’ main presenter, insists there is).

Perhaps someone in the White House needs to explain the meaning of “contiguous” to Mr. Kushner.

The dark blue areas are the holes in the tiny piece of Swiss-cheese that Israel has left for the Palestinians to nibble on. These very non-contiguous dots are what is being called “a Palestinian state.”

They are like tiny Indian reservations linked together by underground tunnels and elevated bridges, all of which will be heavily monitored by the Israel military. So much for freedom of travel and assembly in the new Palestine.

Trump also made it very clear that those ungrateful Palestinian mice ought to be darn thankful for the meager crumbs of cheese left to them by their oh-so generous benefactors, Israel and America.

Take a moment to scan this map tracking the loss of Palestinian land ownership throughout the years of Israel’s settlement expansion and illegal occupation.

A few other details to remember include:

  • The new state of Palestine is prohibited from having any treaties or diplomatic connections with other countries. This is Israel’s idea of Palestinian national sovereignty.
  • Palestine is prohibited from having its own, independent security forces. Whatever forces they have must always support Israeli security interests.
  • None of the Palestinian refugees inhabiting the camps of neighboring nations since their displacement in the wars of 1948 and 1967 may return to Palestine. The Israelis insist, No more of your refugees jumping on the bed!
  • There is a strong likelihood that many Israeli-Palestinians, possessing Israeli passports and citizenship, will be stripped of those possessions and forcibly transported to the new “state.” (Which, by the way, is a violation of International law. But Israel excels at such illegal dealings.)
  • Along with all the other stolen land, Israel has also decided to annex the entire Jordan Valley, displacing all the Palestinian farmers who have owned and cultivated that land for as long as anyone can remember.

And the list could go on.

President Carter called for Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid in his 2006 book by the same name. But I am afraid that forcing brutal apartheid onto the Palestinian people has been the name of the game in Israeli and American politics for decades.

For the one-two punch of ethnic cleansing and apartheid are Israel’s favorite original sin. They just can’t break their national addiction to war crimes, racism and oppression.

And there is no sign of national repentance anytime soon.

Palestinian outrage over the Trump plan is already evident throughout the region, and justly so.  I expect that we may see a Third Intifada on the horizon sometime soon. Frankly, I’d love to be there to join them.

Heck, if I weren’t a Christian and a pacifist, I would be stockpiling rocks and organizing revolutionary resistance right now.