Tag: West Bank

Ramallah Is On Lock-down

Terry and I were visiting Ramallah, the provisional capital of the West Bank in Palestine, only a few weeks ago.  We drove with friends from the Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem.

Along the entire route my friend pointed out the many, ever expanding Jewish settlements that spring up and grow like pestilent weeds in the Palestinian territories, taking more and more of EVERYTHING for themselves while leaving the native Palestinians with less and less.

Less water to drink.  Less land to live on. Less air to breath.  Less money to spend – on necessities.  Less freedom.  Less respect.

Israel’s goal is to strangle the life out of every Palestinian remaining in Palestine, until the Zionists finally have it ALL to themselves.

Today Ramallah is on lock-down.  Perhaps you’ve heard the news.

Israeli soldiers conduct a search for Palestinian suspects of a terror attack yesterday in the West Bank City of Ramallah, December 10, 2018. 6 Israelis were injured in the drive-by shooting attack, near Ofra. December 10, 2018. Photo by FLASH90

You may have heard about the attacker who killed one Israeli soldier and shot a pregnant woman, leading to the death of her baby.   A number of others were injured.  It was a horrible act of violence, deserving strong condemnation.

But there is more to the story that you may not have heard about.  This lamentable attack was carried out in response to the earlier killing of 3 Palestinians by Israeli soldiers.  Very few news outlets have reported that piece of the story.  But that is par for the course when it comes to the news about Israel/Palestine.  (When you listen to the link above, be sure to notice the blatant assertion of racial privilege expressed by the female settler in the red head scarf.)

And of course, precious few reporters ever remind their viewers about the larger context of the violence that Palestinians must endure EVERY DAY OF THEIR LIVES.  For the state of Israel has imposed an extremely violent, racist, inhumane military occupation upon the entire population of Gaza and the West Bank.

But, hey…it seems that the Palestinians don’t have enough sense to simply lay down and die quietly, as the Israeli government would like.  Believe it or not, they actually resist and occasionally fight back, in an extremely modest sort of way.  Imagine that!

With an Israeli boot pressed against their throat, strangling the life out of them, the uppity, ungrateful (and, of course, as we all know, “inherently violent”) Palestinian people have the unmitigated chutzpa to resist their occupiers!  Imagine that.  The gall of those people.

And the average Israeli says, “Why don’t you all just DIE already!  Or leave.”  (I am not exaggerating.  That’s the attitude.  Remember the words of the woman settler in the video above.)

So, Israel sends in more soldiers to kill more Palestinian civilians, to wreak more havoc, to tear apart more families.  To blow up more homes in repeated acts of collective punishment (which also violate international law, by the way).

Why?  Because the Palestinians rudely insist, “We will not lay down and die for you so easily, Israel.”

Today, I would not be allowed into Ramallah.  The beautiful, hospitable al-Azzeh family would no longer be free to share their home with my wife and I.  We wouldn’t be able to eat maqluba together while talking, laughing, drinking strong Arabic coffee and sharing our lives with each other.

As I write this post, Israeli soldiers, and rabid, illegal settlers from nearby outposts, continue on the rampage throughout the city.  No one is safe.  No Palestinians have any rights or protections.  Soldiers and settlers may attack anyone they see, kick down any door they choose, shoot at any car or whatever window that happens to tickle their fancy.

Yet, the anchors for U.S. news will continue to repeat the propagandistic lies written for them by the Israeli embassy describing how Palestinian “terrorists” have been attacking innocent Israelis.

Folks, in Israel today:  up is down, black is white, right is wrong and wrong is right.

That, my friends, is the Israel-Palestine “conflict” in a nutshell.

Hear Hagai El-Ad’s Address to the U.N. Security Council

The B’tselem website has posted a video (with a transcript) of Hagai El-Ad’s recent speech to the United Nations’ Security C0uncil.  You may recall from an earlier post that Mr. El-Ad is the current president of B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

This speech offers a clearer description of the systematic racism embedded at the heart of Israeli society than anything you will ever hear or read from a typical American news source.

Mr. El-Ad should know.  He is an Israeli, an Israeli with a conscience who understands that all people, including Palestinians, are created in the Image of God.

Thus, Mr. El-Ad has the courage to call out the racism and the apartheid system that make Israel what it is today — one of the most extensive abusers of human rights in the world.

The paragraph below is an excerpt from El-Ad’s speech.  I encourage you to check out the entire speech when you can.

“Consider these historical analogies: Voter suppression was a cornerstone of the American South under Jim Crow laws, but we [Israel] have gone and done one better, delivering no less than voter obliteration. As the occupied Palestinians remain non-citizens, not only can they not vote, but they have absolutely no representation in the Israeli institutions that govern their lives. Or take a look at the discriminatory planning mechanisms and the separate legal systems in the occupied territories. They are reminiscent of South Africa’s grand apartheid. Granted, neither analogy is a perfect fit, but history does not offer precision: rather it offers a moral compass. And that compass points towards rejecting Israel’s oppression of Palestinians with the same unwavering conviction with which humanity’s conscience rejected these other grand injustices.”

B’Tselem Head Speaks to U.N., Condemned by Netanyahu

B’Tselem is the Hebrew work for “in the Image.”  It appears twice in Genesis 1:27, “So God created humanity in his own image, in the image of God he created humanity.”

B’Tselem  is also the name of an important Israel-based human rights organization (its full name is The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territory) that gives special attention to the inhuman treatment of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (i.e. the West Bank and Gaza).

B’Tselem is staffed by Israeli men and women of conscience who understand that all people are created as the Image of God.  Building upon this Biblical foundation, they also understand the dehumanization and systematic abuse inflicted upon the Palestinian people by Israel’s illegal military occupation.

As their website explains:

“B’Tselem – The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories strives to end Israel’s occupation, recognizing that this is the only way to achieve a future that ensures human rights, democracy, liberty and equality to all people, Palestinian and Israeli alike…”

B’Tselem finds creative ways to inform the world about Israel’s egregious, daily crimes against humanity.  If you want to know the truth about Israel/ Palestinian relations, forget about Christian news outlets.  Turn off the corporate news media.  They only repeat the acceptable lies, misrepresentations and puerile mutterings of Israel’s Zionist propaganda.

Instead, as a first step towards learning the truth, read the regular updates available from B’Tselem.  Subscribe to their newsletter.  Order a few of their many publications.  Watch the numerous videos on their Youtube channel.

Discover the truth for yourself.

Hagai el-Ad is the current head of B’Tselem.  He recently spoke to the

Hagai El-Ad, Executive Director of Israeli NGO B’Tselem.
AFP / JACK GUEZ (Photo credit should read JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images)

United Nations about Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people and was instantly condemned by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.

You can watch Amy Goodman’s two-part interview with Mr. el-Ad here and here.

Mr. al-Ad and his coworkers are a shining ray of light, truth and humanity in an otherwise very dark, oppressive land known as Israel.

Nabi Saleh, The Toughest Little Village You Probably Have Never Heard Of

Terry and I stepped off the bus and walked to the small gathering area beneath a few shade trees.  It was still morning but you could already feel that it was going to be another hot day.

We sat on one of the village’s shaded benches and waited for others to arrive.  It did not take long.  Soon we were joined by a handful of international supporters who came, like us, to link arms with the residents of Nabi Saleh, a small Palestinian village in the central-western portion of the West Bank.  (A great deal has been written about Nabi Saleh, much of it malicious and false.  For some introduction, check out here, here and here).

Every Friday morning a small group of villagers, together with whoever else wants to come along, attempt to walk down the narrow, one-lane road

Do these people look like dangerous terrorists to you?

offering the only access to their homes.  It is also the only paved access to the nearby spring that historically served as the village’s primary water supply.

The spring is owned by the Tamimi family, an extended network of men, women and children who compose a sizeable portion of the village. The spring at the foot of the hill has been in their family for generations.

Not anymore.

The Nabi Saleh spring

A Jewish settlement now “occupies” the Nabi Saleh spring, making it inaccessible to their Palestinian neighbors across the road.

The settlement is called Halamish.  It now occupies the neighboring hillside, easily overshadowing the  village of Nabi Saleh only a stone’s throw away.

According to international law, settlements like Halamish should not exist.  They are prohibited by the international convention on apartheid.  But people who build such illegal, fortified settlements and then live in them

The illegal settlement of Halamish

while stealing the neighbors’ only water supply obviously do not care about such niceties as international law or anti-apartheid conventions.

Israeli-Jewish settlers often don’t even care about Israeli law, since the Israeli supreme court has, on rare occasions, also ruled against these West Bank settlements.  In fact, Jewish settlers in the West Bank are notorious for committing the most egregious, violent acts against Palestinians with total impunity.

On this particular Friday morning, our march began with 30 to 40 people, mostly villagers, including many children and young people.  Our only armaments were flags and banners, though a few teenage boys eventually pulled out their sling-shots and began throwing rocks after the Israeli soldiers arrived and began pelting us with tear gas.

This march has happened every Friday for years.  The goal is very simple.  The villagers want to walk down to their spring, affirming their right of access.  The village leaders want to talk with the people of Halamish and ask them by what right they not only took over their water supply but now exclude Palestinians from using it.

That goal has never been achieved, to my knowledge.  What happened to us happens every week.  In fact, we got off easy.  We hadn’t walked more than

Soldiers begin to block the road

20 yards before several military vehicles appeared from nowhere, sped onto the village road and blocked the intersection about 75 yards away.  Dozens of soldiers armed with automatic rifles and tear gas launchers jumped from armored personnel carriers and fanned out in a long line.  Troops not only blocked the road but watched us from the nearby hills ensuring that we all were targets wherever we went.

Soon the tear gas canisters began to fall among the unarmed, peaceful

Shooting tear gas

demonstrators who only wanted to walk to a spring.  In Israel it is a crime for Palestinian villagers to visit and take a drink from their only source of drinking water, a spring that refreshed their parents, grandparents and great grandparents as far back as anyone can remember.

For Zionist Israel, Palestinians pose a threat by their mere existence.  Israeli’s commonly refer to them as the “demographic” or the “existential” threat to Israel.  For political Zionists, Israel can only exist as a purely Jewish state.  Thus, all Palestinians must go, one way or another.  Allowing them to drink from a traditional pool of water is, apparently, a slippery slope to another Holocaust.  Or so it would seem.

The march came to a halt.  I suspect that we got just about as far as it has ever gotten.  We were barely out of the village.  Yet, we had been quarantined as if we were a dangerous band of Typhoid Marys threatening to unleash an unstoppable epidemic among the Jewish population beyond.

Who is David and who is Goliath now?

I decided to walk forward in order to talk to the soldiers.  Behind me teenage boys began to swing their slingshots at the soldiers in the same way that David felled Goliath.  The villagers knew how to protect themselves against the gas.  Most of the younger children returned to their homes.  There were no guns or weapons of any kind, except those carried by the Israelis.

When I was close enough I shouted out to the soldiers, “Why?  Why are you doing this?  They only want to walk to their spring!”

The soldiers, including this boy with peach fuzz, act as if I am invisible

After first shouting at me to go back, they all decide to ignore me.  No one so much as turned his head to look when I yelled.  I suspected that these soldiers had plenty of experience in ignoring western visitors coming to protest the grotesque inhumanity they show towards their fellow human beings.  It was my own up close and personal experience of the stone-cold poker face Israel has cultivated over the years as it consistently ignores the numerous protests, boycotts and complaints lodged against it by members of the international community still possessing a conscience.

The tires begin to burn

I am certain that had I not been such an obvious western visitor, one of these soldiers would have shot me in the head or chest without a second thought.  The families of Nabi Saleh have grieved many times over the dead and wounded loved ones who have been shot on that single-track

road leading to Halamish.

Chest and head shots are the soldiers’ favorites.

It wasn’t long before a few young men had set tires on fire in front of the marchers, masking them from the line of fire.  The black smoke obscures the soldiers’ vision so that, hopefully, fewer tear gas canisters hit their target.

Slowly the marchers began to disperse.  I turned back to the village.  The soldiers eventually climbed into their armored vehicles and drove

Soldiers and a manned sniper tower keep watch over the only road into Nabi Saleh

away, though the small installation with its sniper tower at the end of the road remained occupied, guns always pointed at the people of Nabi Saleh.

I also knew that the villagers who marched that day would steel themselves against the threat of after-dark raids by these very same soldiers.  Who might be arrested or shot or thrown into the back of a truck conveying them to the local military prison for interrogation?

(Below is a film showing a military night-raid in Nabi Saleh.  Protesters are arrested and removed from their homes while a skunk wagon sprays skunk water into their homes).

It happens regularly.

While waiting for our bus Terry and I met Bassem Tamimi, one of the village leaders and the father of (now internationally known) Ahed Tamimi, whom I will write about another day.  Mr. Tamimi kindly invited us into his home for tea where he talked about his life, his wife and children, his village, and his commitment to continued peaceful resistance against Israel’s military occupation and continued theft of his property.

I wondered how many of the residents of Halamish kept their binoculars near the window sill in order to watch Mr. Tamimi’s weekly efforts to visit his family spring.  I suspect that the struggles of Nabi Saleh makes for interesting sport among these settlers.

Do they cheer when the soldiers arrive, screeching to a halt in their massive gray machines?

Did they root for the men shooting at us?

Do they shout when someone is hit and injured, as so many have been in the past?

Does anyone in Halamish ever stop to ask themselves, Why did we take their water away from them?  Why can’t we share it with Nabi Saleh, or even give it back to the villagers outright?

Does anyone in Halamish have conscience enough to see their neighboring Palestinians as people no different than themselves?

These are some of the questions I pondered as I sat with Terry on Bassem Tamimi’s couch, waiting for his wife to finish making our tea.  We enjoyed a friendly conversation that day with a generous man and his wife whose primary concern in life is ensuring that his children and grandchildren will have a safe, peaceful future to look forward to in the family village.

Why does that make him a criminal in his own land?

Why should asking for a safe, peaceful future in his own home put his family at risk every Friday morning in the Occupied Territory of the West Bank?

Take a moment to watch Ahed Tamimi describe her life in Nabi Saleh, a tiny Palestinian village under Israeli military occupation:

Meet the Skunk Wagon. Palestinians Know It Well

Today I want to introduce you to the Skunk Wagon.  I call it the Skunk Wagon because its one and only job is to shoot a long stream of skunk water through a water cannon, powerful enough to knock people — typically Palestinians — off their feet.

Skunk water is one of several new crowd control devices developed by Israeli arms manufacturers.

A BBC reporter described skunk water like this:

“Imagine the worst, most foul thing you have ever smelled. An overpowering mix of rotting meat, old socks that haven’t been washed for weeks – topped off with the pungent waft of an open sewer. . .Imagine being covered in the stuff as it is liberally sprayed from a water cannon. Then imagine not being able to get rid of the stench for at least three days, no matter how often you try to scrub yourself clean.”

Don’t worry.  Numerous American police departments have purchased skunk water from Israel so that it can be used on US protesters, too.  You may have a chance to smell it for yourself one day.

Below is a picture of a Skunk Wagon lumbering down a narrow alley way in the Palestinian refugee camp where Terry and I periodically live with my friends.  As you can see, there are no conveniently located crowds of terrorists immediately in need

The Skunk Wagon approaching my home away from home

of dispersal, but that never stops the Israeli army from taking the initiative in looking for someone in need of a good skunk water bath.  The army is nothing if not industrious when it comes to oppressing Palestinians, even when they are living peacefully in their own neighborhoods.

Typically, when Israeli soldiers can’t find anyone to spray on the streets, they begin looking for open doors and windows in order to shoot the skunk water into people’s homes.  Apparently, the soldiers assume that the families inside are a sufficient “crowd” in need of military control.   I guess you could call it an Israeli strategy for domestic crowd control.

On this particular day, my friend’s elderly mother had her windows open to catch the morning breeze.   She is in her late 80s and suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, so she was unaware of the Skunk Wagon’s approach.  Even though she was home alone — not malingering in a dangerous crowd of family members — the Israelis decided that she posed an imminent threat and needed to be dispersed.

After all, she is a Palestinian.  As far as the political Zionism of modern Israel is concerned, the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian, or one who lives somewhere else, far removed from the real estate claimed by Israel’s government.

Even feeble, senile women in their late 80s deserve to be sprayed by the Skunk Wagon simply because of who they are and where they live:  they are Palestinians in the Occupied Territories.  As far as the Israeli forces are concerned, that is reason enough to beat, batter, control and dehumanize Palestinian residents in any way possible.

This day was no exception.

So, this Palestinian matriarch saw both her bedroom and living room generously bathed in skunk water.  And hers was not the only home visited by high-powered, mechanical projectile vomiting.

Imagine all of your rugs, chairs, sofas, bedding, curtains, walls, floors, clothing — everything! — drenched in skunk water.  The stench is unbelievable.  After several weeks of intensive scrubbing and cleaning by her family members, the home still reeked.  I have no idea how long it took for the smell to finally dissipate.

But this was only the beginning of the army’s fun.  The soldiers returned several days later, angered that a few boys had dared to throw rocks at them while they shot teargas down the streets and into open windows during another of their frequent invasions.  Driving a mobile teargas launcher

with a PA system, Israeli soldiers returned to deliver a message:  stop throwing rocks at us or we will slaughter you all, young and old, women and children alike.

Listen to the announcement for yourself in the video above.  You can also read a good account of the incident in the online newspaper, Middle East Eye here. (Several friends have confirmed the accuracy of the translation.)

I know of at least one instance where an asthmatic woman died in her own  living room after soldiers fired teargas through her window.  Of course, the military never acknowledges any responsibility, much less liability, for the deaths and numerous injuries caused by their reckless behavior in the camp.

My friends would have bust a gut laughing had I suggested that they send a bill to the army base next door charging them for the time and money spent cleaning up the skunk water in their mother’s home.

At least the soldier speaking in this  video was honest enough — an arrogant lapse for which he may well have been reprimanded later on — to call his comrades what they really are:  THE OCCUPATIONAL ARMY.  (A description consistently denied by Israeli/Zionist apologists.) Of course, as an occupying army they can do no wrong while the subjugated Palestinians can do nothing right.

Terrorizing the locals in any way they please is perfectly acceptable.  There are no repercussions.  But should a few testosterone driven boys decide to express their youthful anger; should they exercise human agency by refusing to lie down and play dead beneath another barrage of teargas

Israeli soldiers conduct a night raid, their favorite time to abduct people, including children, from their beds

and skunk water; should they resist Zionist  oppression by (oh my, heaven forbid!) throwing rocks at the very soldiers who daily treat them as subhuman scum in need of a good skunk water bath before their mass deportation, well then, those rebellious children deserve arrest and imprisonment.

This kind of action serves as Zionist justice in the Occupied Territories.

Teargas on the Playground

Children in the Aida refugee camp – 7/10ths of a densely packed, square kilometer containing nearly 6,000 people on the outskirts of Bethlehem – have one playground.  It is nestled behind the Lajee Center, one of several community development organizations in this Palestinian community.

No one goes to the playground hoping to play dodge-ball with incendiary teargas canisters, not even Palestinian kids.  But it never hurts to be prepared.  Especially when there is an active Israeli military base across the street from the swing sets and the slide.

Actually, the concrete Annexation Wall (as I call it) is directly across the

Annexation Wall & sniper tower overlooking Aida refugee camp

street, but the resident army unit snuggles tightly against their side of the barrier overlooking the playground.  So, the soldiers have a bird’s eye view of the little boys pushing their toy cars in the sand box.

The army base also has its own set of steel gates, large enough to accommodate trucks, tanks and fully loaded personnel carriers, built into the Wall that grants them immediate access to Aida’s largest street.  The very street passing by the Lajee Center and its playground.

This mammoth, gray gate can only be opened and closed from the outside, the Israeli army side.  The residents of Aida have no control at all.  They cannot lock the soldiers out of their neighborhood, but the soldiers can, and do, invade their homes as they please.

What seems to please the Israeli soldiers most often these days is shooting teargas, rubber bullets and skunk water at the people whose only “crime” is being Palestinian living in Israeli-occupied territory.

Naturally, the crime of being Palestinian includes little children, too.

Why else would Israeli soldiers fire teargas onto the Lajee Center

Children run from teargas on their playground

playground, terrorizing Aida’s preschoolers that sunny, spring morning?  It’s hard for a 4-year-old to outrun the gas, especially when the wind speeds its dispersal.  But the youngsters do their best.  Fortunately, most of them have a parent or older sibling present to help their escape.

The soldiers paused occasionally as they strolled down the wide street, gas masks covering their faces.  Over and over they calmly lobbed canisters of fuming noxious smoke among the panic-stricken children.

Imagine the chaos as people flee in all directions, either trying to escape the plumes of blinding gas or frantically searching for their little ones now vanishing inside a wet cloud of white smoke that can easily suffocate a small child in less than a minute.

Teargas blinds your senses.  It blinds your eyes with incredible, stinging pain, flooding your cheeks with acidic tears.  It also blinds your brain to the neural impulses that tell your lungs TO BREATHE!  So, you think you can’t.

Teargas in the streets

First, because of the burning gas torching your mouth and throat, you can’t breathe.

Second, because your brain has been tricked into suppressing the automatic reflex, you can’t breathe without great, deliberate effort.  But, unless you’ve covered your mouth sufficiently or escaped the cloud of smoke, taking another breath of teargas is the last thing you want to do.  But you need to breath!  So, what do you do

Soldiers do as they please, when they please, wherever they please. This day it pleased them to shoot teargas at little children

I have no idea how the minds and bodies of tiny infants, delicate toddlers, baby brothers and bigger sisters managed to cope with this surprise attack.  Nor do I know the stories of the family members and friends, all blinded themselves, whose only thought was to rescue the screaming child they heard somewhere off in the murky distance. (I heard this story from a friend who filmed the incident as it unfolded from the balcony of her home.  The image above is one frame from that film.)

No one had expected to play dodge-ball with teargas canisters on the playground that day.

But Israeli soldiers are inventive at coming up with new games to play with Palestinians, especially in the Occupied Territories.  And aren’t we told repeatedly that this is the most moral army in the world defending the only democracy in the Middle East?

The Blatant Hypocrisy of “Liberal Zionism” #zionism #christianzionism

Liz Rose, a public school teacher and writer living in Chicago, has an excellent article in Mondoweiss (6/27/18) explaining the hypocrisy of liberal Zionism.  It is entitled “It’s time for Tom Friedman to face the contradictions of liberal Zionism, and move on.”

Because Friedman frequently waves his Zionist banner in the pages of the New York Times, he has become the paradigmatic liberal Zionist in America whose blind loyalty to Israel forces him to speak out of both sides of his mouth.

Trump with al-Sisi

On the one hand, Friedman and his Zionist compatriots complain about an American president embracing fascist dictators, such as Egypt’s al-Sisi, but they remain deafeningly silent about America’s blind support for Israel’s far-right leader, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump with Netanyahu

Friedman happily quotes and defends Human Right’s Watch when it condemns the abuse of human rights in Egyptian, but he will ignore or condemn the same organization when it highlights identical abuses suffered by Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Here is an excerpt.  You can find the full article here.  It is well worth reading.

“It’s becoming more and more difficult for liberal Zionists to balance their support for human rights and global justice in Trump’s America with their support for Israel. But liberal Zionists in the U.S. still believe they can.

“This tension is evident in Thomas Friedman’s June 19, 2018, opinion piece in the New York Times, “Trump to Dictators: Have a Nice Day.” Friedman compares Trump to dictators and defends human rights, but Israel is left out of the column, and it feels like a glaring evasion. “What’s terrifying about Trump is that he seems to prefer dictators to our democratic allies everywhere,” Friedman rightly suggests, and uses North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as his examples. These dictators don’t just “crush their revolutionaries or terrorists but even their most mild dissenters,” Friedman writes.  There’s no “space for even loyal opposition.” Friedman is correct, of course, that dissent is criminalized in these countries, and that Trump’s administration puts no limit on these dictators.

“When looking at Friedman’s column with a non-Zionist lens, however, the alliance between Trump and Netanyahu seems simply too obvious to leave out.  Netanyahu’s dictator-like behavior is clear. The recent murder of 135 Palestinians at the Gaza border (and the wounding of more than 14,000), the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem that Netanyahu pushed, Israel’s decision to ban 20 groups who support BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) from entering Israel, and the ongoing occupation and colonization of the Palestinian people that Israel has never taken responsibility for, are just a few indicators of Netanyahu’s desire for total control.

“That Netanyahu is left out of this column speaks to this growing tension between a universal liberalism and liberal Zionism; to reconcile the two, Friedman is forced to avoid the topic altogether.

“Similarly, Friedman can only sound as though he supports human rights if Israel is not mentioned.  He cites Human Rights Watch to show the changes occurring in Egypt:

“Take Egypt. On May 31, Human Rights Watch reported that the Egyptian police had ‘carried out a wave of arrests of critics of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in dawn raids since early May 2018.’ Those arrested included Hazem Abd al-Azim, a political activist; and Wael Abbas, a well-known journalist and rights defender; as well as Shady al-Ghazaly Harb, a surgeon; Haitham Mohamadeen, a lawyer; Amal Fathy, an activist; and Shady Abu Zaid, a satirist.

“Again, Friedman accurately warns of increased censorship among Egypt’s citizens.  But a site like Human Rights Watch becomes a convenient and valid source for liberal Zionists as long as it is not used to criticize Israel.  When it does, it is accused of perpetuating an anti-Israel bias, rather than being a source that has authority and shows human rights violations by Israel. But Friedman’s liberal Zionism prevents him from acknowledging that Israel might violate the very rights he insists all people should have. For liberal Zionists, however, the only way Zionism and human rights can coexist is to erase Palestinian history and give Israel a pass.”

Munther Amira’s Statement after Prison Release #Palestinians #Israelioccupation

I am happy to say that my friend, Munther Amira, was released from an Israeli military prison about 1 1/2 weeks ago. Munther released a thank you statement on Facebook yesterday, and I want to share it with any of my readers who may have participated in the “free Munther” actions I posted here.

Recall that Munther was arrested for quietly, non-violently protesting Israel’s policy of imprisoning children in its military prisons. He was peacefully walking down the street in his own neighborhood holding up a picture of the Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi, who remains in prison for the “crime” of slapping one of the soldiers who shot her young cousin in the head.

Here is Munther’s letter:

JUN 17, 2018 — My dear friends,

I would like to start my message “post” by thanking each and every woman, man, organization, union, and group for your tremendous support and solidarity. My imprisonment is no more than one small event in the series of the long lasting occupation’s violations of human rights. Since the beginning of occupation 70 years ago, the violations of human rights never stopped. They just varied in shape from cold blood killing, to injuring or imprisoning. They included land confiscation, home demolitions, road blockage, siege, exile, individual and public punishments, all of which contribute to a system of ethnic cleansing. All of which destroy human lives, deprive freedom, erase dignity, end lives, kill hope, and steal childhoods.

My short, but tough and humiliating, six month imprisonment empowered me and strengthened my convictions. Since the beginning I knew that the nonviolence approach I adopted to defend Palestinians human rights, dignity, and freedom will be difficult. This is still true and was confirmed by the violence of the Israeli occupation’s response to my, and many other activists, nonviolent resistance. Your solidarity and support makes it easier for me and others like me to lead this every day fight.

This support will empower the nonviolence movement in Palestine in this long-term endeavor. I hope this support will continue and grow in scale and forms.
During my imprisonment I met with comrades, spending, 36, 30, 28 or 26 years in Israeli political prisons. A lifetime of prison is their fate on this earth. Each of them has their own heartbreaking and incredibly strong story. I listened to them tell me about their dreams, feelings, and hopes for freedom. I learned from their enthusiasm and was stunned by their positive, ongoing energy. They have an incredible discipline and are eager to learn and to teach each other. In prison, I attended lectures discussing global sustainable environments, social sciences, human rights, and international humanitarian laws. It was not – and is still not – easy for me to grasp the source of their hope, their energy, and their ability to think about things like economics and the environment, all while living in a 9 square meter cell.

I saw them touch the glass separating them and their mothers during the monthly visits, imagining they could actually feel them.
I admire their spirit, and hope that one day, sooner rather than later, they will wake up outside, next to their loved ones. As a human rights defender, activist, social worker, father, and most importantly as a human, I and many others in and outside of Palestine will continue our peaceful fight for justice, dignity, freedom and a brighter future.

Finally, I would to like to thank you all again, and to extend my gratitude to all your tremendous support during my time in Israel’s kangaroo courts, which fail to meet the basic standards of fair trial and due process.
These military courts are designed to criminalize Palestinian rejection of the occupation and punish Palestinians for demanding their basic human and national rights. They are a conveyor belt of convictions and injustice that prosecute between 500 and 700 Palestinian children every year, with a near 100 percent conviction rate.

I would like to thank all who demonstrated in the streets, and those who were punished for it. Thank you to the 15,000 people who signed the petition for my freedom. I wish I could thank them all one by one. Thank you to all human rights defenders, unions, human rights NGOs, grassroots NGOs, journalist, bloggers, individuals and groups.

Last but not least I would like to thank my family who has stood by me in this dangerous endeavor from the very first day.

Munther Amira
Aida Refugee Camp
Occupied Palestinian Territories

(Posted on Facebook on 17 June 2018)

A Twitter Storm for my Friend Munther Amira on Nakba Day

Last March I wrote about my Palestinian friend, Munther Amira.  Munther is a social worker who lives near Bethlehem. He had just been arrested for protesting the way Israeli soldiers regularly arrest, abuse and imprison Palestinian children.

For important information documenting these widespread abuses, please check out the Defense for Children International/Palestine website as well as the work of an Israeli human rights organization called B’TSELEM, The Israeli Information Center on Human Rights in the Occupied Territory.

Change.org has launched a petition and a Twitter campaign on Munther’s behalf.  The campaign is scheduled for May 15, known as Nakba Day to the Palestinian people.  The Nakba, Arabic for The Catastrophe, is the Palestinian designation for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine that was put into effect by Israeli military forces in 1948-49.

It is illegal for Palestinians to commemorate this day in Israel.

Munther’s arrest and imprisonment also demonstrate that there is no such thing as freedom of speech in the Occupied Territories.  It is also against the law (apparently) to protest Israel’s imprisonment of minors in military prisons.

Please, read the full petition at Change.org and speak up for Munther on May 15th.

I have excerpted the announcement below, complete with suggested tweets.

“It would be great if as many people as possible could join us in expressing solidarity with Munther by tweeting using #FreeMuntherAmira #FreePalestine #Nakba70 . Please share this information widely too, and let’s make this twitter storm as big as possible.

“Here are some suggestions for tweets that you could use, or you might want to compose your own, but do include the hashtags.

“Greetings to Munther Amira from [your country]. We stand alongside you in your continuing campaign for freedom and justice #FreeMuntherAmira #FreePalestine #Nakba70

“Greetings to Munther Amira from social workers in [your country]. We stand alongside you in your continuing campaign for freedom and justice #FreeMuntherAmira #FreePalestine #Nakba70

“Solidarity with fellow social worker, Munther Amira, thank you for standing up for the rights of Palestinian children and for being a shining example to us all #FreeMuntherAmira #Nakba70

“We stand in solidarity with Munther Amira & all Palestinian refugees on #Nakba70 and recognise the UN Declaration of Human Rights “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country” #FreeMuntherAmira #FreePalestine #Nakba70

“Freedom and justice for Munther Amira, Ahed Tamimi and all Palestinian children in Israeli military detention #FreeMuntherAmira #FreePalestine #Nakba70

Where Palestinian Lives Don’t Matter

17 dead.  773 wounded, or is it 1,400?  How many more victims will there be this week, or in the weeks ahead as Palestinians continue their Land Day protests?

Every victim shot with live ammunition.  Bullets fired at unarmed people standing dozens, if not hundreds, of yards away from the soldiers.  Unarmed marchers and high-powered rifles separated by a steel fence and a wide no-man’s land imposed from on high.

Over 100 snipers staring through high powered scopes.

Deadly shots fired into crowds kneeling in prayer, marching in protest.  Smoke and tear gas wafting through the air, encircling their heads, burning eyes, nose and throat like Hades’ own sulpherous fumes reminding them of hell on earth.

The army is proud, boasting that they know precisely where every bullet landed (a tweet since removed from Twitter). Each death a deliberate murder.  Every injury an intentional maiming.  Every wound a purposeful assault on the image of God.

The largest, most technically advanced military in the Middle East tries to convince us that young men with rocks, slingshots and burning tires pose an “existential threat” (as they say) to nuclear armed Israel.

Perhaps Israeli soldiers now fear deadly smoke inhalation from 100 yards away, as Palestinians cover their faces, sputter and gag against the hundreds of tear gas canisters raining down on their heads.

We are reminded that Palestinian lives don’t matter, not to Israel.

Nor do Palestinian lives matter to America, which once again seeks to block the U.N. resolution condemning the slaughter.  America, the lumbering moral Frankenstein, mesmerized by Israeli propaganda, suffers from a cauterized, national conscience seared like a piece of raw meat by a red-hot iron.

No.  Palestinian lives don’t matter to the United States, where Israeli lobbyists write US foreign policy in the Middle East.  Palestinians are inconvenient human fodder in need of bulldozing by Zionist racism and international neglect.

It is impossible for these Palestinian to make contact with the Israeli soldiers aiming at them from the opposite side of the fence.  Yet, these soldiers posture heroically while discussing the Palestinian “threat” they now mow down by bravely firing remote-controlled machine guns into the Gazan killing fields – the guns’ operators safely sitting many miles away in the Sinai desert.

It is like shooting fish in a barrel, except that these fish are human beings and the barrel is the Gaza Strip, a place that many observers have described as “the world’s largest open-air prison.”

Glenn Greenwald (one of the most important investigative journalists working today) asks a most revealing question, “Imagine if an Arab-majority country were imprisoning 1.8 million Jews in an open-air cage, preventing them from leaving, controlling all aspects of their deprived civic lives, then picking them off with snipers in the back when they protested. Might the reaction be different?”

What would the United States be saying to the United Nations then?

No, Palestinian lives don’t seem to matter, except to their Creator.

The Christian church knows that the Lord God Almighty cares deeply for the Palestinian people, as he does every human being.  And the Lord keeps score. He will not forget their suffering, come judgment day.

  • Please take a few minutes to watch Max Blumenthal – an investigative journalist who has spent a considerable amount of time in Gaza – describe what is happening now.
  • Also, read Gideon Levy’s article containing this lead: “The shooting on the Gaza border shows once again that the killing of Palestinian’s is accepted in Israel more lightly than the killing of mosquitoes.”