Tag: Zionism

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].

A Glimpse of Daily Life in the West Bank

Below is a 2 minute video showing Israeli soldiers randomly firing tear gas and rubber bullets in a West Bank Palestinian neighborhood.

I have witnessed and photographed identical behavior many times. I have also watched a video filmed by one of my friends showing Israeli soldiers shooting tear gas onto a neighborhood playground, causing little children, mothers, and grandmothers to flee.

The soldiers do not need “a reason” for doing these things. Their only reason is the fact that Palestinians are not Jews (even though there are Arab Jews in Israel called Mizrahis).

The fact that Palestinians dare to live on land that the Zionists want for themselves is all the reason Israel needs for making Palestinian life as unbearable as possible.

The Israeli army calls it “the searing of consciousness.” It’s similar to the torture techniques used by the CIA to reduce detainees to a state of “learned helplessness.”

Israel’s theory is that, eventually, the entire Palestinian population will learn that resistance is futile. They will learn to always do exactly as they are told; or, better yet, move somewhere else so that Israel can take all of their property without a struggle.

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.

Gideon Levy: Making Hypocrisy and Violence Sound Nice and Inescapable

Gideon Levy has a new piece in Haaretz newspaper calling for national self-awareness in Israel.

Gideon Levy

Mr. Levy is a modern day prophet; the lone voice calling for national repentance in the Israeli wilderness.

Although this article focuses on the retired general, and now leading Israeli politician Benny Gantz, you don’t need to know much about Gantz or Israeli politics to grasp Levy’s point.

Think of the way our government continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia so the Saudis can continue their treacherous attacks in Yemen.

Or look at the Federal agents attacking demonstrators with bats, gas, and

Benny Gantz

pepper spray across this country. All in the name of “restoring order.”

Here is an excerpt:

What the state can do, the individual cannot. Let’s leave aside the jargon where everything the other side does is terrorism and everything Israel does is for the sake of security. It’s common wisdom that what the state does is never considered violence, only self-defense. The state and the army can act as violently as they please, as much as they want, and go as crazy as they want. The state will always do this in the name of lofty values of defense. An individual who acts violently is an anarchist, a serial disrupter of law and order. There are laws that are also supposed to apply to countries, but Israel decided a long time ago that it is not bound by such laws.

And yet, is it possible that in one breath you can threaten violence and stand against it? Knowing the impact that state violence has on the way individuals act? One needs a special lack of self-awareness or a special degree of double standards to make such a claim. What Israel threatens to do in Lebanon is immeasurably more violent than anything the most dangerous anarchist could imagine. Israel’s actions in Lebanon have sowed much more anarchy and destruction than any demonstration. And so Gantz, and all his colleagues have no moral right to speak against violence. It’s almost the only language they know and it’s their bread and butter.

You can read the entire article here.

Why Zionists Don’t Enthusiastically Support “Black Lives Matter”

Ali Abunimah, author of the book The Battle for Justice in Palestine and editor at The Electronic Intifada, has written a good article explaining why many Zionist supporters of Israel, including groups like AIPAC and the Zionist Organization of America, are not only refusing to support “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations but are actively repudiating the movement.

It’s not hard to understand if we understand the truth about political Zionism and the reality of Palestinian life in and around Israel.

Below is an excerpt. You can read the entire piece here.

As protests sweep the world in the wake of the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Israel lobby groups are struggling to appear on board with the Black Lives Matter movement while upholding their support for Israel’s racism.

While some are trying to jump on the anti-racism bandwagon, others are dispensing with subtlety altogether.

Morton Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, demanded that the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, “immediately put Black Lives Matter on their list of hate groups.”

——

The Anti-Defamation League is also no more credible as a partner against racism, especially US police brutality.

It has been a major player in the industry of bringing US police on junkets to Israel for “counterterrorism” and other kinds of joint training.

That has become a central focus of the Deadly Exchange campaign which aims to end the links between US and Israeli forces of state repression.

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.”