Shadowy Web Site Creates Blacklist of Pro-Palestinian Activists

May 27, 2015, 11:48 am

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Fighting for freedom in a way only Zionist McCarthyists understand

One of the beauties of Orwell’s 1984 and Newspeak is that words can mean their exact opposite.  So the film that the Canary Mission puts out asks people to ‘Join us to protect freedom and make campus life safe for everyone’.  And how does one do that?  By ensuring that ‘todays radicals are not tomorrow’s employees’.  In the name of freedom the Canary Mission quite openly calls for the opposite i.e. denying the freedom to work of those with contrary opinions.  But as RH Tawney said, the freedom of the pike is death to the minnow.

Ensure that today's radicals are not tomorrow's employees intones the narrator in her best McCarthist style

The film itself itself of course tugs at the usual heart strings.  It starts off with Jewish children wearing the Yellow Star during the Holocaust and then cuts to an idiot on a demonstration telling Jews to get back to the ovens.  The clear message being, of course, that most if not all supporters of the Palestinians are just waiting for their chance to reenact the Holocaust.  And then the message at the end exhorts us to believe that blacklisting and freedom are quite compatible.  But of course in the eyes of neo-con Daniel Pipes and the Zionist cohorts, any crime is acceptable when defending Zionism and Israel.

Tony Greenstein

US Zionists Reach for Uncle Joe McCarthy

A new website is publicizing the identities of pro-Palestinian student activists to prevent them from getting jobs after they graduate from college. But the website is keeping its own backers’ identity a secret.

Everything is done in order to protect  future Jewish children from this - the Holocaust becomes a perverted Hollywood scene

“It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees,” a female narrator intones in a slick video posted to the website’s YouTube account.

The Enemy

Called Canary Mission, the site has posted profiles of dozens of students and recent graduates, alongside those of well-known activists like Omar Barghouti, founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Some of the students are active in Students for Justice in Palestine; others were involved in recent pro-BDS resolutions at campuses in California. Many of them have relatively thin activist résumés.

One of the profiles listed

“The focus on young people and students is an effort to try to tell people that there will be a price for you taking a political position,” said Ali Abunimah, founder of the pro-Palestinian website The Electronic Intifada. “It’s an effort to punish and deter people from standing up for what they believe.”

Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, defended the tactic as a way of forcing people to understand the seriousness of their political stands.

A demonstration against Israel, with the focus on Islamic fundamentalists

“Factually documenting who one’s adversaries are and making this information available is a perfectly legitimate undertaking,” Pipes wrote in an email. “Collecting information on students has particular value because it signals them that attacking Israel is serious business, not some inconsequential game, and that their actions can damage both Israel and their future careers.”

Pictures of the Zionists enemies

Despite its dedication to documenting the identities of pro-Palestinian activists, Canary Mission seems to have gone to great lengths to keep the identities of its own members and backers well hidden. There are no names of Canary Mission staff members, volunteers, donors or allies on the site.

Another  profile

The Web domain is registered in a way that hides its ownership. Though the site says that Canary Mission “is a non-profit organization,” no group called Canary Mission is currently registered with the IRS as eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions, and the website indicates no fiscal sponsor through which it can accept donations. The group’s MailChimp account identifies its ZIP code as 10458, a corner of the Bronx that includes Fordham University.

A person named Joanna responded via email to a request for comment from the group, agreeing to an interview but then not calling this reporter over two days. Joanna also did not respond to a list of questions submitted about the group.

A handful of right-wing pro-Israel groups that focus on campuses said they had no relationship with Canary Mission, including the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Pipes’s Middle East Forum, the AMCHA Initiative and StandWithUs.

When asked whether his group had supported Canary Mission, Charles Jacobs, who runs Americans for Peace and Tolerance, a far-right group that purports to expose extremism on campus, said he had no comment. Jacobs is the founder of The David Project, which, under his leadership, produced a 2004 documentary titled “Columbia Unbecoming” that depicted Columbia’s Middle East studies department as unfriendly to Jewish students.

Distributing lists of activists and their activities is not an entirely uncommon tactic in the Middle East debate, on the left or the right. A website called Masada2000, now offline, maintained what it called the “Self-Hating and/or Israel Threatening” list of Jews whose views it considered unacceptable. In early 2014, the anti-Zionist blog Mondoweiss uncovered a password-protected website maintained by StandWithUs that contained backgrounders on pro-Palestinian speakers on the campus circuit. On the left, the website for Right Web, a program backed by the Institute for Policy Studies, profiles hawkish pro-Israel groups and activists.

The individual dossiers on the Canary Mission’s site are lengthy and detailed, and include videos and photographs of the activists. In the case of some current students, the site lists their majors. There are links to Facebook pages, Twitter pages and LinkedIn profiles, and lengthy descriptions of pro-Palestinian student groups and movements to which these students have alleged links.

“I think it’s creepy and I think it’s McCarthyist,” said Max Geller, an SJP member who is profiled on the site. “This is not a badge of honor. This is scary.”

Geller said that some of what is written about him on the site is untrue, and that he has contacted an attorney. 

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Palestinian Authority Quislings Climb Down on Suspension of Israel from FIFA

May 29, 2015, 5:13 pm

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Jibril Rajoub Ends Up Shaking the Hands of the Head of the Israeli FA - Ofer Eini

Palestinian football head Jibril showing Israel a red card - but then changing the colour!

We’ve seen this movie before.  Many times before.  Abbas’s PA climbed down on the Goldstone Report and withdrew its motion from the UN.  The PA climbed down on taking Israel to the International Criminal Court.  And, surprise, surprise, the PA’s stooge puppet Jibril Rajoub has climbed down on a proposed suspension of Israel from FIFA.

Demonstration in Geneva Outside FIFA

In 2014 Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told Israeli journalists and businessmen that the Palestinian Authorities cooperation with the Israeli occupation forces and police is sacred, also for a unity-government of Fatah and Hamas. Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have, for years, used security cooperation to crack down on the Palestinian opposition. [Abbas: Security Cooperation with Israeli Army and Police is Sacred]

Palestinian showing the way ahead

Whilst the defence of Palestinians is anything but sacred, co-operation with the IOF is sacred.   When I proposed a motion to Palestine Solidarity Conference two years ago calling the PA a Quisling authority, the former General Secretary Betty Hunter took exception to the use of the word ‘quisling’.  It’s difficult to know what other term is appropriate but I’m open to suggestions!

Tony Greenstein

Jibril shaking the hand of former Histadrut head Ofer Eini

Pentagon report predicted West’s support for Islamist rebels would create ISIS

May 29, 2015, 5:32 pm

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Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsoredviolent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’

Intelligence document

More evidence that the rise of ISIS was a direct and conscious result of the West’s desire to overthrow the Assad regime, because it was secular, and its opposition to the Iranian regime, which derives from its support for Assad and  Hezbollah.

Tony Greenstein

by Nafeez Ahmed

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A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.

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Hypocrisy

The revelations contradict the official line of Western governments on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home.

Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as “secret,” dated 12th August 2012.

The DIA provides military intelligence in support of planners, policymakers and operations for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.

So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.

Some outlets have reported the US intelligence community’s internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria.

Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said:

“Given the political leanings of the organisation that obtained these documents, it’s unsurprising that the main emphasis given to them thus far has been an attempt to embarrass Hilary Clinton regarding what was known about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012. However, the documents also contain far less publicized revelations that raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

The West’s Islamists

The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies.

Noting that “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the document states that “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition,” while Russia, China and Iran “support the [Assad] regime.”

The 7-page DIA document states that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the ‘Islamic State in Iraq,’ (ISI) which became the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,’ “supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media.”

The formerly secret Pentagon report notes that the “rise of the insurgency in Syria” has increasingly taken a “sectarian direction,” attracting diverse support from Sunni “religious and tribal powers” across the region.

In a section titled ‘The Future Assumptions of the Crisis,’ the DIA report predicts that while Assad’s regime will survive, retaining control over Syrian territory, the crisis will continue to escalate “into proxy war.”

The document also recommends the creation of “safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command centre for the temporary government.”

In Libya, anti-Gaddafi rebels, most of whom were al-Qaeda affiliated militias, were protected by NATO ‘safe havens’ (aka ‘no fly zones’).

 ‘Supporting powers want’ ISIS entity

In a strikingly prescient prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecasts the probable declaration of “an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”

Nevertheless, “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts” by Syrian “opposition forces” fighting to “control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar)”:

“… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran. Crucially, Iraq is labeled as an integral part of this “Shia expansion.”

The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is “exactly” what the “supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.” Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those “supporting powers” as “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.”

Further on, the document reveals that Pentagon analysts were acutely aware of the dire risks of this strategy, yet ploughed ahead anyway.

The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, it says, would create “the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi.” Last summer, ISIS conquered Mosul in Iraq, and just this month has also taken control of Ramadi.

Such a quasi-state entity will provide:

“… a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy. ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of territory.”

The 2012 DIA document is an Intelligence Information Report (IIR), not a “finally evaluated intelligence” assessment, but its contents are vetted before distribution. The report was circulated throughout the US intelligence community, including to the State Department, Central Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, FBI, among other agencies.

In response to my questions about the strategy, the British government simply denied the Pentagon report’s startling revelations of deliberate Western sponsorship of violent extremists in Syria. A British Foreign Office spokesperson said:

“AQ and ISIL are proscribed terrorist organisations. The UK opposes all forms of terrorism. AQ, ISIL, and their affiliates pose a direct threat to the UK’s national security. We are part of a military and political coalition to defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria, and are working with international partners to counter the threat from AQ and other terrorist groups in that region. In Syria we have always supported those moderate opposition groups who oppose the tyranny of Assad and the brutality of the extremists.”

The DIA did not respond to request for comment.

Strategic asset for regime-change

Security analyst Shoebridge, however, who has tracked Western support for Islamist terrorists in Syria since the beginning of the war, pointed out that the secret Pentagon intelligence report exposes fatal contradictions at the heart of official pronunciations:

“Throughout the early years of the Syria crisis, the US and UK governments, and almost universally the West’s mainstream media, promoted Syria’s rebels as moderate, liberal, secular, democratic, and therefore deserving of the West’s support. Given that these documents wholly undermine this assessment, it’s significant that the West’s media has now, despite their immense significance, almost entirely ignored them.”

According to Brad Hoff, a former US Marine who served during the early years of the Iraq War and as a 9/11 first responder at the Marine Corps Headquarters Battalion in Quantico from 2000 to 2004, the just released Pentagon report for the first time provides stunning affirmation that:

“US intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.”

Hoff, who is managing editor of Levant Report —  an online publication run by Texas-based educators who have direct experience of the Middle East — points out that the DIA document “matter-of-factly” states that the rise of such an extremist Salafist political entity in the region offers a “tool for regime change in Syria.”

The DIA intelligence report shows, he said, that the rise of ISIS only became possible in the context of the Syrian insurgency — “there is no mention of US troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State’s rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits.” The report demonstrates that:

“The establishment of a ‘Salafist Principality’ in Eastern Syria is ‘exactly’ what the external powers supporting the opposition want (identified as ‘the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey’) in order to weaken the Assad government.”

The rise of a Salafist quasi-state entity that might expand into Iraq, and fracture that country, was therefore clearly foreseen by US intelligence as likely — but nevertheless strategically useful — blowback from the West’s commitment to “isolating Syria.”

Complicity

Critics of the US-led strategy in the region have repeatedly raised questions about the role of coalition allies in intentionally providing extensive support to Islamist terrorist groups in the drive to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.

The conventional wisdom is that the US government did not retain sufficient oversight on the funding to anti-Assad rebel groups, which was supposed to be monitored and vetted to ensure that only ‘moderate’ groups were supported.

However, the newly declassified Pentagon report proves unambiguously that years before ISIS launched its concerted offensive against Iraq, the US intelligence community was fully aware that Islamist militants constituted the core of Syria’s sectarian insurgency.

Despite that, the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.

As Shoebridge told me, “The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria’s rebellion” — namely, the emergence of ISIS — “but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West’s public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria’s rebellion was overwhelmingly ‘moderate.’”

Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer who blew the whistle in the 1990s on MI6 funding of al-Qaeda to assassinate Libya’s former leader Colonel Gaddafi, similarly said of the revelations:

“This is no surprise to me. Within individual countries there are always multiple intelligence agencies with competing agendas.”

She explained that MI6’s Libya operation in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of innocent people, “happened at precisely the time when MI5 was setting up a new section to investigate al-Qaeda.”

This strategy was repeated on a grand scale in the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, said Machon, where the CIA and MI6 were:

“… supporting the very same Libyan groups, resulting in a failed state, mass murder, displacement and anarchy. So the idea that elements of the American military-security complex have enabled the development of ISIS after their failed attempt to get NATO to once again ‘intervene’ is part of an established pattern. And they remain indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that is unleashed as a result of such game-playing.”

Divide and rule

Several US government officials have conceded that their closest allies in the anti-ISIS coalition were funding violent extremist Islamist groups that became integral to ISIS.

US Vice President Joe Biden, for instance, admitted last year that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Turkey had funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamist rebels in Syria that metamorphosed into ISIS.

But he did not admit what this internal Pentagon document demonstrates — that the entire covert strategy was sanctioned and supervised by the US, Britain, France, Israel and other Western powers.

The strategy appears to fit a policy scenario identified by a recent US Army-commissioned RAND Corp report.

The report, published four years before the DIA document, called for the US “to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”

The US would need to contain “Iranian power and influence” in the Gulf by “shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.” Simultaneously, the US must maintain “a strong strategic relationship with the Iraqi Shiite government” despite its Iran alliance.

The RAND report confirmed that the “divide and rule” strategy was already being deployed “to create divisions in the jihadist camp. Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level.”

The report observed that the US was forming “temporary alliances” with al-Qaeda affiliated “nationalist insurgent groups” that have fought the US for four years in the form of “weapons and cash.” Although these nationalists “have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces,” they are now being supported to exploit “the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties.”

The 2012 DIA document, however, further shows that while sponsoring purportedly former al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq to counter al-Qaeda, Western governments were simultaneously arming al-Qaeda insurgents in Syria.

The revelation from an internal US intelligence document that the very US-led coalition supposedly fighting ‘Islamic State’ today, knowingly created ISIS in the first place, raises troubling questions about recent government efforts to justify the expansion of state anti-terror powers.

In the wake of the rise of ISIS, intrusive new measures to combat extremism including mass surveillance, the Orwellian ‘prevent duty’ and even plans to enable government censorship of broadcasters, are being pursued on both sides of the Atlantic, much of which disproportionately targets activists, journalists and ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.

Yet the new Pentagon report reveals that, contrary to Western government claims, the primary cause of the threat comes from their own deeply misguided policies of secretly sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.

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Dr Nafeez Ahmed is an investigative journalist, bestselling author and international security scholar. A former Guardian writer, he writes the ‘System Shift’ column for VICE’s Motherboard, and is also a columnist for Middle East Eye. He is the winner of a 2015 Project Censored Award, known as the ‘Alternative Pulitzer Prize’, for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian work, and was selected in the Evening Standard’s ‘Power 1,000’ most globally influential Londoners.

Nafeez has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist, Counterpunch, Truthout, among others. He is the author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilization: And How to Save It (2010), and the scifi thriller novel ZERO POINT, among other books. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

Kibbutz Hatzerim Bars Arabs from its Canteen

June 2, 2015, 3:38 pm

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The Racist Face of the ‘Socialist’ Kibbutz

In my youth the Kibbutzim, the collective Zionist colonies, were held up as an example of the ‘socialist’ face of Zionism.  Of course we weren’t told that they barred Arabs or that they exploited cheap Arab and Oriental Jewish labour in their factories or that collectively colonising the land was more efficient that doing it on a private enterprise basis.

They Kibbutzim still exist but they don’t pretend to be socialist anymore.  They are an example of collective capitalism.  As the article below from The Times of Israel shows, they even object to allowing Arabs to eat in their canteens!

Tony Greenstein

Arab laborers barred from kibbutz cafeteria

Arab laborers working in Kibbutz Hatzerim near Beersheba are barred from eating in the kibbutz cafeteria, Yedioth Ahronoth reports.

The traditional image of Kibbutz workers, hoe in hand.  They didn't believe in  exploiting Arab labour.  They instead expelled it altogether.  It was called 'Jewish Labour'

 According to the report, several kibbutz members asked the cafeteria’s management to tell employers of the laborers not to allow them to eat there, and the managers agreed. After a furor was raised, the management decided to allow the laborers to eat in the cafeteria if accompanied by a Jew.

Dancing the hora at Kibbutz Ein Hod in 1936.  Ein Hod was well known as a militarist kibbutz of the Zionist right.

A kibbutz member, Renen Yazerski, posted on Facebook: “Last week the kibbutz management decided that Arab laborers are good enough to enter the kibbutz and renovate and build our homes, but not, God forbid, eat in the same space with us in the cafeteria. Why are they not allowed to eat there? Because some mothers complained to the managers that the laborers look ‘scary’ […] a decision that is miserable, ugly, anti-democratic and racist…”

Women kibbutzniks being trained to right in the 1948 War that expelled the Palestinians

The kibbutz management said in its defense that “Kibbutz Hatzerim is private property, where no foreign persons are allowed without accompaniment.”

Israel Racist? Perish the thought.

June 4, 2015, 2:04 am

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At the same as Israel’s new ‘Justice’ Minister Ayelet Shaked, the genocidalist-in-chief, proposes   minimum  10 year sentences for (Arab) stone throwers, three Jewish teenagers receive 3 months community service for torching a Palestinian café. 

Now if they had been Palestinians setting fire to a Jewish café, just think what the sentence might have been?  10 years, 20 years, life?  Zionist justice at its best in ‘the only democracy in the Middle East.’

Tony Greenstein

Jewish teens who set fire to Palestinian cafe

 

sentenced to community service

Despite declarations by Justice Ministry and prosecutors that they are determined to combat hate crime, recent plea bargain in case of 4 teens who set fire Palestinian cafe shows otherwise.

Aviel Magnezi

Published:       04.14.15, 14:54 / Israel News

The Justice Ministry and state prosecutors have consistently declared that they are determined to combat the hate crime phenomenon known as "price tag" attacks, but a recent plea bargain accepted in the case of four teenage boys who were given a light sentence for setting fire to a Palestinian café indicates otherwise.

Burnt area where cafe stood

The Jerusalem District Court approved a plea bargain on Monday in the case of four teenage boys from Arad and the West Bank who admitted to setting fire to a Palestinian café near Hebron.

As part of the indictment, the prosecution had requested the teenagers receive a six-month sentence; however, the court sentenced them to three months of community service. 

Firefighters inspect a burned classroom at the Max Rayne Hand in Hand Jerusalem School, Nov. 29, 2014.Photo by Tali Meir

The teens were arrested in September 2014 and investigators presented video footage which depicted the four teens running away with their faces covered after they set fire to a Palestinian café in the village of Dura, south of Hebron, and spray painted the word "revenge" on the front door of the establishment.

Site where Israeli teens set fire to Palestinian cafe. (Photo: Police Spokesman)

After their arrest, the four teens were charged with incitement and destruction of land with racist motives.

According to the indictment, the teens had planned to damage the café ahead of time. It was also noted that they arrived at the scene with their faces covered, set fire to couches and armchairs and caused heavy damages to the electrical system and perimeter fence of the café.  

During the trial, the teens' attorneys argued that the act was done because the accused had suspected that residents of Dura had set fire to a entertainment complex in Beit El – a settlement in the central West Bank.

The perpetrators documented after the attack

The parties then reached an agreement on a plea bargain in which the prosecution waived the initial charges of racism and destruction of land. Instead, it was agreed that the teens be charged with one count of arson and that they would only be sentenced to community service.

The prosecution argued that the teens should be sentenced to six months of community service as they had sought revenge and because the act endangered life.

On the other hand, the teens' attorneys argued that the boys did not break the law but rather "were simply teens that had their hangout spot burned and decided to get revenge by burning a similar hang out spot in the village from which the accused thought the original arsons came from."

The teens' attorneys also claimed that they did not pose a threat to anyone's life.

The judge, Shirly Renner, said that it was a serious offense that could cause high risk to human life and expressed her surprise as to why the boys chose that specific café while they did not know if the owner was involved in the arson at Beit El.  

On the other hand, the judge noted the teenagers' clean past and their admission. 

In view of the plea bargain, the judge sentenced the boys to three months of community service, a year of probation and a fine of 500 shekels to be paid to the owners of the café they torched.

Tantura – the Massacre that the Zionists tried to Cover Up

June 4, 2015, 11:34 am

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An excellent article by Jonathan Cook, a British journalist who lives in Nazareth.  He was blacklisted by the Guardian.

Tantura was the scene of one of the worst massacres of the Nakba and there has been a concerted effort to cover it up.  The University of Haifa was complicit in the brow-beating of Teddy Katz, the 

Haifa MA student, who was forced into rewriting his thesis.

Sunbathing at the crime scene: the Israeli resort that covers up a massacre

Jonathan Cook 4 June 2015

The Commemoration of the Massacre at Tantura

For Palestinians, Tantura, the name of a coastal village south of Haifa that was once home to 1,700 inhabitants, has become a byword for the darkest episodes of the Nakba (Arabic for catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing of 1948.

If you're looking for a truly great beach in Israel ... you should consider checking out Dor Beach so goes the blurb on the tourist brochure For Israelis, the site is referred to by a different name — Dor, known as a popular beach resort belonging to two neighboring kibbutzim, Dor and Nahsholim, an hour’s drive north of Tel Aviv.

In May, some 300 activists met in the resort’s car park in an attempt to end the long-enforced silence about Tantura in Israelis’ collective memory. Precisely 67 years after the massacre, they staged the first-ever commemoration at the site.

The Commemoration of the Massacre at Tantura

They laid wreaths in the car park, marking the mass grave in the village cemetery where more than 200 Palestinians were hurriedly interred after they had been executed on 22 May 1948, as Zionist forces swept up the Mediterranean coast.

Some 130 small placards were held aloft, each bearing the name of a victim the organizers had been able to identify.

Then the group held a short procession past baffled Israeli holiday-makers — sunbathing, building sandcastles and barbecuing — through an area where Tantura’s 250 homes once stood. The march finished at the beach, where in 1948 many of the villagers had been interrogated before being put to death.

Quest for justice

Tantura in 1935 during the British Mandate

There are few signs today of the original village to disturb Israelis’ revelries. A Hebrew-language sign admits vaguely that a small domed shrine amid the chalets is the ancient grave of a sheikh.

An impressive large stone structure on the beachfront, once a prominent Tantura home, according to the village’s refugees, is simply marked “Entry forbidden.”

The organizers hope to use the commemoration to increase pressure on the Israeli authorities to allow Israel’s Palestinian minority to erect a permanent memorial at the site to the victims.

By contrast, a monument has stood for decades a short distance away, on the main coastal highway, listing the names of 13 Zionist fighters who were reported to have died in the attack on Tantura.

“This massacre has been kept out of Israelis’ consciousness for far too long,” said Hazar Abu Raya, one of the organizers. “It is time for that to change. This is a first step in our quest for justice for the families.”

Basel Ghattas, a Palestinian member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, who took part, said the commemoration was an important milestone. He mentioned a famous quotation — often attributed to David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister — that “The old will die and the young will forget.”

“Ben-Gurion has been proved wrong,” said Ghattas. “The third generation after the Nakba refuse to forget. They demand a right of return and have intensified the struggle to keep the memory of the Nakba alive.”

Relatives ‘buried under the tarmac’

The event was the first joint venture between Filasteeniyat, a grassroots Palestinian rights movement, and the Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced People in Israel. Both are organizations representing Israel’s 1.5 million-strong Palestinian minority, a fifth of the state’s population. (Government population figures put Palestinians in Israel at 1.7 million, but this includes Palestinians in occupied East Jerusalem, most of whom don’t have Israeli citizenship.)

A handful of now-elderly survivors from Tantura, who, as children, were spared death, were among those attending. Many had fled or been put on trucks by the soldiers to be transported to the Palestinian village of Fureidis, close by.

Palestinian refugees who remained inside Israel’s boundaries after 1948 were given the Orwellian status of “present absentees”: present in Israel, but forced to become absentees from their original homes.

One of the survivors, 73-year-old Mahmoud Amar, who was six at the time of the massacre, said he remembered being woken by his mother, who told him to get dressed quickly. “She said, ‘People are being killed.’”

As they fled the village, he recalled seeing dead bodies all around. One of them was his grandfather.

Many of his other relatives ended up in Syria, including in the Yarmouk refugee camp. He and his mother settled in Fureidis.

His uncle was one of those made to bury dozens of villagers’ bodies, he added.

He said he was very moved by the commemorative ceremony: “I have many relatives buried under the tarmac here, who are invisible to all these visitors who think of this place simply as a holiday resort. It is time the dead were given the respect they deserve.”

Rasmiya Hashmowi, aged 80, who lost several uncles, rested in a chair next to the beach after the procession. She said the event had been very emotional: “Seeing everyone here today gave me hope that one day I or my children might see a real return, on a much larger scale.”

Complete cover-up

Also in attendance were Ilan Pappe, a noted Israeli historian of the Nakba, and Teddy Katz, whose research in the late 1990s provided for the first time Israeli eyewitness testimony confirming long-standing Palestinian claims of a massacre at the village.

Katz’s master’s dissertation created such a furore in Israel that he was eventually forced under mounting legal, financial and academic pressure to renounce parts of it. He suffered a stroke during this period that friends and family attribute to the severe stress he was placed under.

He has struggled to recover since. Giving a short speech seated in a wheelchair, next to the wreaths at the entrance to Nahsholim’s hotel, he called the events at Tantura “shameful” and apologized on behalf of Israelis.

The Tantura revelations would also have a profound impact on the career of Pappe, author of the best-seller The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

As the only academic at the University of Haifa to publicly come to Katz’s defense, Pappe found himself on a path of increasing confrontation with his institution, leading him eventually to leave the country and reestablish his career at Exeter University in the UK.

Tantura, said Pappe, was a test of Israelis’ willingness to set aside their traditional narratives of the Nakba: that the refugees had left their villages largely of their own accord and that Israel’s army was “the most moral in the world.”

A report on the website of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), a Zionist lobby group, claimed only last year that the Tantura massacre was “fictional.”

“Tantura is probably the most extreme example in Israel of a place that is today associated with fun and entertainment that was created over the ruins of a major massacre from 1948,” Pappe said. “The cover-up that took place here was more complete than anywhere else.”

Killed in cold blood

Katz’s revelations were based on taped interviews with 20 Palestinian survivors and 20 former soldiers from the Alexandroni Brigade, which attacked the village a week after Israel unilaterally declared statehood.

According to Israeli and Palestinian historians, Tantura was one of more than 500 Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948. Most were later razed and their lands passed to exclusively Jewish communities like Dor and Nahsholim.

The inhabitants of the destroyed Palestinian villages formed the bulk of the 750,000 refugees Israel refused to allow back to their homes.

From Katz’s testimonies, he was able to estimate that some 20 Palestinians had been killed in the initial fighting at Tantura, a figure backed by a later official account from the Israeli army.

After the village’s surrender, many of the Palestinian men were taken aside. Katz’s research suggests that up to 225 Palestinians were killed in cold blood. A Jewish eyewitness who supervised the burials told Katz that he counted 230 Palestinian corpses himself.

A car park for the beach resort was later built over the village cemetery where the mass grave was dug.

Other massacres

Although historians have identified dozens of massacres by Zionist forces in 1948, most were much smaller in scale than Tantura.

Aryeh Kitzhaki, a former director of the Israeli army’s archives, said in the early 1990s that he had seen files on 10 massacres in which more than 50 Palestinians were killed, and another 100 smaller ones.

The only comparable events to Tantura occurred at Deir Yassin, near Jerusalem, and at Lydd, now the mostly Jewish city of Lod, close to Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport.

Pappe said events like the Tantura commemoration were vital to forcing Israelis to confront their community’s responsibility for the mass dispossession of Palestinians in 1948.

“Deir Yassin was the only massacre that was acknowledged by Israel,” he said. “Ben-Gurion apologized for it to King Abdullah [of Jordan] after he made inquiries.”

Concerning Tantura, he added, the official version is still that those Palestinians who died there were killed during battle.

Tantura, Pappe noted, was the largest and most significant village in a coastal area between Haifa and Tel Aviv that Israeli leaders wanted emptied of Palestinians. Of the 64 Palestinian villages in the area, only two, Fureidis and Jisr al-Zarqa, both close to Tantura, were allowed to survive after intense lobbying by neighboring Jewish communities that wanted the villagers as a labor force.

No escape route

Pappe believes the extent of the massacre at Tantura occurred as a result of a botched expulsion operation. Such expulsions were carried out as part of Plan Dalet, an outline for ethnically cleansing Palestine of as much of its Palestinian population as possible.

Instead of attacking Tantura from three sides, as occurred elsewhere, driving the population northwards towards Lebanon and Syria, the brigade encircled the village, leaving the inhabitants no escape route.

Katz’s research confirmed Palestinian accounts that the massacre occurred in two stages. After village leaders waved a white flag following clashes that left a handful of Palestinians and Israelis dead, the soldiers went on a killing spree, entering homes and executing anyone they found. The rampage left an estimated 100 villagers dead.

The rest were rounded up, with fighting-age men separated from the elderly, women and children. The men were led to the beach, where they were interrogated and another 100 or so — aged between 13 and 30 — executed.

Once the furore over Katz’s research broke, he was stripped of his degree by the University of Haifa and forced to extensively rewrite his dissertation. However, the evidence of the massacre has only grown since.

Documents unearthed a few years later in Israel’s archives showed that, in the wake of the attack, army headquarters had heard fears that the large number of unburied corpses at Tantura might lead to an outbreak of typhoid.

Other reports noted “irregularities” and “over-enthusiasm” in the attack, while a final report from the Alexandroni Brigade observed: “We have tended to the mass grave.”

Fear of speaking out

Pappe has pointed out in his own research that the Tantura massacre went largely unremarked even in Palestinian literature of the Nakba period.

The reason, he suggested, was that many of the traumatized survivors — who had been children at the time — lived close by to Tantura in Fureidis or Jisr al-Zarqa in modern-day Israel. As the years passed, and knowledge of the Nakba grew, they continued to fear that speaking out might lead to fresh retaliations against them and their families.

One of Katz’s interviewees, Mustafa Masri, ended his testimony saying: “One should not mention these things. I do not want them to take revenge against us. You are going to cause us trouble.”

Katz’s work shook Israel in large part because it depended not just on Palestinian accounts — most Israeli scholars have preferred to ignore and discredit Palestinian oral history — but on Israeli witnesses who confirmed the Palestinian testimonies.

According to the accounts of historians and of those involved, the two other large-scale massacres — at Deir Yassin and Lydd — occurred in different circumstances, and were probably more planned.

Deir Yassin was attacked in early April 1948, five weeks before the Zionist leadership announced statehood. Under the auspices of the Haganah, soon to become the Israeli army, a Zionist militia called the Irgun carried out the attack.

The goal was to sow so much fear that Palestinians in other villages would flee without fighting.

The evidence suggests that the Irgun’s leader, Menachem Begin, later to become an Israeli prime minister, even inflated the death toll at Deir Yassin — from just over 100 to 250 — to encourage a mass exodus.

Three months later, at the city of Lydd, soldiers under the command of Yitzhak Rabin, also to become a prime minister, fired on a mosque where dozens of residents had sought refuge from the fighting. Some 176 bodieswere reportedly recovered from the building.

According to Rabin’s own account, Ben-Gurion was keen to see the large Palestinian population centers close to Tel Aviv emptied.

Historical deceptions

Many long-standing Israeli claims about the Nakba have been steadily discredited by historical research.

Two years ago, Israeli scholar Shay Hazkani revealed that the widespread view that Palestinians fled their villages in 1948 under orders from neighboring Arab states had been encouraged by an Israeli misinformation campaigninitiated by Ben-Gurion.

Hazkani had only found out about Ben-Gurion’s efforts because he was erroneously given a classified file in the Israeli military archives.

In May this year, a letter was published in the Haaretz newspaper suggesting claims that Israel tried to persuade 50,000 refugees from Haifa to return to their homes were a deception.

The former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir states in her autobiography that Ben-Gurion ordered her to Haifa to plead with the refugees to stay. Meir wrote: “I sat on the beach there and begged them to return home … I pleaded with them until I was exhausted but it didn’t work.”

However, a few weeks after the mass expulsions in Haifa, Ben-Gurion wrote to Abba Khoushy, soon to become Haifa’s mayor, stating: “I hear that Mr. Marriot [Cyril Marriot, the British consul in Haifa] is working to return the Arabs to Haifa. I don’t know how it is his business, but until the war is over we don’t want a return of the enemy. And all institutions should act accordingly.”

In fact, Ben-Gurion did not reverse his policy after the war, barring the return of Haifa’s refugees as well as those from hundreds of other villages.

- See more at: 

BDS – The Fear Behind the Bluster

June 5, 2015, 2:12 pm

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In recent weeks, Netanyahu has stepped up the war against Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).  There was already a piece of legislation that made it a civil offence, which the Israeli Supreme Court ruled was compatible with free speech.

BDS is a strategic threat

Debate in Brighton's local Argus between Tony Greenstein and the Tory MP for Hove Michael Weatherley

Now Netanyahu has gone one further and branded BDS a ‘strategic threat’ alongside Iran’s nuclear weapons, Hamas and no doubt a few of Israel’s other enemies.  How genuine is this or is it another example of Netanyahu’s need for another ‘existentialist’ enemy?

Egyptian boy displays poster

There is no doubt, as Omar Barghouti says, that on one level it is absurd to equate a peaceful tactic of protest with the alleged Iran threat.  But on the other hand there is some substance to Zionist fears.

Brighton picket of the Sodastream shop

The movement for BDS has, in 10 years, come a long way.  What began in Britain with a narrow vote by the Association of University Teachers to boycott 6 Israeli universities over their complicity with the Occupation has mushroomed.  Virtually every trade union in Britain has a policy in support of BDS. 

A racist Israeli who called a Palestinian demonstrator a 'primitive' and a fundamental Christian were the only supporters of Brighton's Sodastream shop

The academic boycott is feared, rightly, by Israeli universities which have been complicit in the Occupation.  Only last week it was described as 'an iceberg' with a small part visible but a much larger hidden boycott which manifests itself in not holding conferences in Israel and other examples of non-co-operation with Israeli academia.

Picket of Brighton's Sodastream shop

The time when the trade unions were a bastion of support for Zionism are long since gone.  It was about 6 years ago that the then General Secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber, went from the Trade Union Friends of Israel to the Trade Union Friends of Palestine to convey the message that BDS was wrong.  I remember heckling him and asking what he would put in its place.  I got no answer.  It was in 2007 and 2008 that I spoke in support of BDS to the Unison National Conference which voted by about 4-1 to support our motion.

Although so far the economic impact of BDS has been limited, Veolia has pulled out of the Jerusalem Light Railway and Orange, according to recent stories, wants to do the same and G4S has been forced to agree to stop maintaining detention centres, Israeli trade has largely been unaffected.  Europe has made noises but continued to trade in settlement produce.  In the UK we have forced the Ahava shop in Covent Garden to close and in Brighton the Ecostream/Sodastream shop to do likewise, despite a vigorous Zionist picket of far-right Israel supporters and loony fundamental Christians.

Protest in South Africa's Woolworth's shop

But the Cultural BDS has been far more successful with acts like Gill Scott-Heron, Elvis Costello, Stevie Wonder and Roger Waters boycotting Israel.  The threat of this being extended to sport via a suspension by FIFA caused great consternation in Israel.  Stephen Hawking, who has spoken on 4 occasions in Israel, pulled out of a speaking engagement. 

Although it hasn’t had a massive economic impact, the campaign amongst students and at academic institutions has had an immense symbolic effect.  The vote by the National Union of Students Executive to support BDS was unprecedented.  It follows campus victories at places like Sussex University.  In the USA although no university has divested, there have been a number of victories on different campuses in secret ballots. 

It is arguable that until the very end, the Boycott in South Africa was also more politically than economically damaging.  It undermined the confidence of Apartheid’s supporters and their own faith in their system.  Israeli and Zionist arrogance knows no bounds, as is the case with most settler-colonial states.  Appeals to reason and their good faith fall on stony ground.  It is only through coercion that they can be forced to pull back.  The 67 year old Occupation has an Israeli wide consensus.   The 2-State solution, which was never a feasible option, since it didn’t deal with the core racism of Zionism, is now officially acknowledged as dead in the water.  That means that Israel faces the Apartheid scenario – it can accept that the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories are entitled to  full democratic rights, in which case a Jewish state is no more, or it can prioritise a Jewish state above everything else in which case Israel is an Apartheid state.  Although not saying so, Israel has already made this decision and it has chosen the latter option.

What worries Israel more than anything else is that losing the argument on campuses, especially in the US, means losing the argument amongst tomorrow’s opinion makers.  Israel’s alliance with the USA relies on it being a strategic military ally.  In this it is correct and it will take a lot to shift the US from such a position.  But if there were to be a revolutionary upsurge in the Middle East, with the Saudi and  Egyptian regimes toppled, along with the client Gulf states, then Israel’s role might be perceived as very different.

Eighteen months ago Norman Finkelstein  foolishly described BDS as a cult.  It is clear that he regrets these remarks now and has fallen into line.  At that time he had, as he made clear in a talk given to a packed audience at the Institute of Education, illusions that John Kerry was going to be able to achieve a 2-State solution and he certainly did his best.  However the best efforts of the Obama administration foundered on the rocky shores of Israeli intransigence.  Today no one has such an illusion.  BDS is the only game in town.

It is noticeable that the softer non/anti-Zionist groups like Jews 4 Justice for Palestinians and Jewish Voices for Peace in America have also come out in favour of BDS.  As Netanyahu’s reaction has shown, the only thing that worries these racists is a movement which does indeed challenge the legitimacy of the Israeli state.  We should not be afraid of saying that the Israeli state is indeed illegitimate.  It is founded on the dispossession of the Palestinians, it is thoroughly racist to the core, it is willing to engage in limitless violence and should, like the equivalent Apartheid state in South Africa disappear into the mists of time.  That is not the same thing as saying that Israeli Jews don’t have the right to live in Palestine – clearly they do.  But they don’t have the right to do so as oppressors.

Despite the undoubted bombast and hysteria of Netanyahu’s campaign against BDS we should welcome the fact that we have at last found a tactic that has the potential to challenge the core racism of the Israeli state.

Tony Greenstein

Israel brands Palestinian-led boycott movement a'strategic threat'

Netanyahu and Israeli government turn up heat on BDS over its calls for Israel to be boycotted for its occupation of Palestinian territories

Members of the Israeli government - including prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu – have turned on the BDS, using language usually reserved for Hamas or Iran’s nuclear programme. Photograph: EPA

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem

Israel and key international supporters have sharply ratcheted up their campaign against the Palestinian-led Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, with senior Israeli officials declaring it a strategic threat.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign picket of Sodastream

Using language the Israeli government usually reserves for the likes of Hamas or Iran’s nuclear programme, senior figures – including the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and a key backer in the US, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson – have turned on the movement, which is prominent on university campuses and among international trade unions.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin with Heads of Israeli Universities

The moves came as the UK’s National Union of Students (NUS) voted on Tuesday to formally ally itself with the aims of BDS. Following the vote, Hebrew media reported that Israeli MPs were due to hold a special session in the Knesset to discuss the issue.

The non-violent grassroots movement, founded with the support of dozens of Palestinian organisations, is modelled on South African anti-apartheid campaigns and calls for an end to the occupation, equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and a resolution for Palestinian refugees of 1948.

Israeli critics point to the call for a right to return and the opposition of some leaders of the movement to a two-state solution – which they describe as a mistake – as evidence that BDS is antisemitic.

After years in which Israeli officials and commentators have loftily dismissed the impact of BDS – which seeks to persuade businesses, artists, governments and academic institutions to boycott Israel over its long occupation of the Palestinian territories – Israel’s new rightwing government has in recent days singled out the movement for criticism.

Roger Waters of Pink Floyd has been an important advocate of musicians boycotting Israel

The issue appears to have been given added impetus since Palestinian efforts to have Israel suspended from the scandal-ridden world football organisation Fifa failed on Friday.

An empty Sodastream shop in Brighton - no one but Zionists wanted to shop in it

Comments by senior Israeli politicians over the last week have been amplified in the Hebrew media by sympathetic commentary by columnists. Among those who have allied themselves with the latest efforts are the mass circulation Israeli paper Yedioth Ahoronoth – which earlier this week allied itself on its front page with “Fighting the boycott” – and its rightwing columnist Ben-Dror Yemeni, who has echoed the comments of officials.

Giving the red card to Israeli football at FIFA

“The success of BDS,” Yemini wrote earlier this week, “is particularly impressive because it is a movement that uses the language of rights, but deals in practice with denying Israel’s right to exist. The result is a major deception.”

The latest rhetoric has coincided with growing evidence of pro-Israeli activism over BDS, not least in the US. Last week, a new website emerged whose aim was to identify US college students active in the BDS movement with the explicit aim of identifying then to future possible employers. It was not clear who was behind the site.

This weekend, Adelson will reportedly convene a meeting of super wealthy pro-Israel donors for a summit in Las Vegas on countering the influence of BDS and similar movements on US campuses.

On Sunday, Netanyahu explicitly attempted to link boycott movements to historic “anti-semitism”, echoing remarks that Netanyahu made in his keynote address to the US pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC last year, when he described BDS as being on the “wrong side of the moral divide” while predicting that the “movement will fail”.

Website targets pro-Palestinian students in effort to harm job prospects

The latest rhetoric was immediately condemned by Barghouti, who dismissed the recent moves as a “panic-driven, racist and patently propagandistic Israeli attack on the movement”.

He told the Guardian: “Placing a non-violent human rights movement that seeks freedom, justice and equality on par with the so-called Iranian ‘nuclear capacity’ as a ‘first-rate strategic threat’ – as Israeli president Reuven Rivlin announced a few days ago or as the new minister of strategic affairs and public security in the far-right Israeli government Gilad Erdan tweeted on his first day on the job – reflects Israel’s failure in hindering the fast growth of BDS.

 “It also betrays Israel’s inherent inability to face such popular, anti-racist, human rights-based and nonviolent challenges to its regime of oppression.”

Israeli officials told the Guardian that the focus on BDS was not an acknowledgement of its success but rather the reaffirmation of a principal of “moral outrage” both over the recent move by the NUS and by efforts to have Israel suspended from Fifa.

That, however, has led to accusations from critics that Israel is deliberately conflating the BDS movement with separate Palestinian efforts to hold Israel accountable for the occupation.

Facing growing warnings of international isolation in the absence of a peace process with the Palestinians and amid continued settlement building in the occupied territories, the latest moves appear designed to conflate BDS with separate initiatives by Palestinian diplomats to internationalise support for the end to occupation and for the creation of a Palestinian state in global forums.

One Palestinian official familiar with efforts on the international stage said he believed the latest effort was aimed not only at BDS but at the wider Palestinian effort to promote its case in the international criminal Court, the UN and Fifa.

“They are trying to combine all the efforts to hold Israel accountable into creating a monster that is not there yet,” the official said. “If ask the Palestinian leadership, some love BDS as a movement, others hate it. I think what Netanyahu is trying to do is create an idea that even if you believe Palestinian moves in international forums are legitimate, they are undermined because BDS – in the Israelis argument - seeks to ’destroy state of Israel’.”

Netanyahu’s declaration of war on BDS is its

first major victory

The fact that its BDS leaders object to Israel’s very existence doesn’t negate the direct contribution of Israeli actions to the movement’s recent surge.

By Chemi Shalev | Jun. 2, 2015 | 3:27 PM

A BDS demonstration in Melbourne, Australia, 2010.Photo by Mohammed Ouda/Wikimedia Commons

Benjamin Netanyahu with Sheldon Adelson, left Photo by Eyal Warshavsky / BauBau

The international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement has just scored a tremendous victory.

When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issues a manifest in Jerusalem against the delegitimization of Israel and calls for a “wide front” to combat boycott, and then, within 24 hours, Sheldon Adelson convenes an emergency summit in Las Vegas to fight BDS on university campuses - as Nathan Guttman revealed in the Forward on Monday - BDSers can smugly tell themselves that they’ve finally made it. From a nuisance, perhaps even a danger, they have been elevated the status of existential threat, on a par, almost, with Iran and Hezbollah.

In Israel, the sudden upsurge of public alarm and media hype is connected, no doubt, to the near-death experience that Israelis went through on Friday as FIFA came perilously close to expelling them from international soccer. In Israeli political parlance, it also represents a certain switching of roles: Hitherto it was the left who was cast as Cassandra, issuing repeated warnings of impending condemnations and boycotts in the international arena, which the right shrugged off as no more than transparent political scaremongering. In a 2014 Peace Index poll published by the Guttman Center, 71% of left-leaning Israelis described boycott as a clear and present danger, compared with only 42% of those on the right. Now – perhaps in preparation for the post-Iran-nuclear-agreement era - it is the right that looks to turn BDS into a new rallying cry that proves that the whole world is against us, while the left will inevitably claim that this is a cynical ploy aimed at diverting attention from right-wing policies that are the root cause of Israel’s dismal situation in the first place.

In the United States, at least, the boycott movement has yet to register even one major achievement, outside of co-ops or supermarkets here and there, where the short-lived boycotts were mainly symbolic anyway. Student bodies in 29 universities have voted on divestment from Israel, with some measure of success for BDS, especially in California: not one academic institution, however, has decided or is even weighing to adhere to these decisions. Some states, such as Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee, have already adopted anti-boycott legislation, with several others expected to follow suit.

What is troubling for many Jewish Americans, especially parents to students, is the increasingly virulent debate on camps, which, in some cases, has deteriorated from criticism to loathing, from anti-Israeli sentiments in particular to anti-Semitism sentiments in general. Jewish students have also expressed apprehension about the hostility of lecturers, whose academic unions are increasingly preoccupied with arguments for and against boycotts. But contrary to the functionaries for whom this battle is also a livelihood, most parents don’t care so much about Israel winning or Palestine losing: they just want their kids to be left in peace so they can finish their degree.

There is no denying that the BDS movement is picking up steam. And Netanyahu is right in saying that those running BDS don’t object to Israel’s deeds but to its very existence. But his claim that Israeli actions and policies don’t nourish the boycotters, don’t facilitate its enlistment of new recruits and don’t make the defense of Israel that much harder is both disingenuous and childish. Regardless of background and cause, it’s hard to claim with a straight face that the cessation of the peace process, the death and destruction in Gaza, the campaign against African migrant workers, the Tel Aviv riots of Ethiopians, Netanyahu’s speech in Congress, and, perhaps, most injurious of all, his miserable appeal against Israeli Arabs on Election Day – that all these haven’t provided highly combustible gasoline to BDS propaganda in the past year alone.

And this, before we have mentioned the occupation, which will soon mark its 50th anniversary. Israelis and Americans have learned to conveniently repress awareness of the ongoing denial of political rights from the Palestinians or to view it as a force majeure. They can no longer fathom its malignant influence on young and impressionable hearts and minds that are looking at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from afar.

That does not negate the right or the duty of the government and its supporters abroad to fight BDS before it becomes a real danger – the question is what is the best way to go about it.  The emergence of a controversial figure such as Adelson on the front lines, for example, cannot but paint the summit he is convening as a right-wing, conservative even Republican effort, even if other partisan figures, such as the pro-Democrat Haim Saban, are involved. According to report last week by Rosie Gray in Buzzfeed, Adelson and his wife Miriam are looking to appoint their favorite Rabbi Shmuley Boteach to lead legions of boycott-fighting students tentatively known as “Campus Maccabees”.

Adelson’s generous funding could ensure that such a group would be able to organize impressively massive events – like the one put on by the Adelson-funded Israeli American Council (IAC) in honor of Israeli Independence Day in New York on Sunday – but it would equally also deter moderate students from joining the cause. In several campuses, BDS campaigns have been beaten back only with the help of students identified with J Street U, whose parent group is ostracized and shunned by most of those identified with, or dependent on, Adelson.

In a May 29 article in JTA, Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Foxman warned against quick fix solutions. “This fantasy of a magic wand will sap the energy from what is truly needed: a comprehensive approach”. Foxman says the American Jewish community should “reward universities and institutions who stand up to the boycott” and work to deepen the trade, cultural and scientific ties between Israel and academic and other institutions. Foxman makes no mention of the fact that the Israeli government could take steps that could dramatically impact the fortunes of BDS, either because he doesn’t think this is the case, because he doesn’t think it is his role to say so, or because he is biding his time until the end of his 28-year stewardship of the ADL in July.

Hotoveli - Israel's new Acting Foreign Minister and Supporter of Racial Hygiene

June 6, 2015, 4:36 pm

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≪ Previous: BDS – The Fear Behind the Bluster

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Tzipi Hotoveli - Israel's new religious Zionist Deputy Foreign Minister

Racial hygiene under another name - for Hotoveli it is another holocaust

 Israeli Government Attacks the Messenger

It was of course utterly predictable.  How does the Acting Foreign Minister, the religious nutcase Tzipi Hotovely, defend the most moral occupation the world has ever seen?  By silencing those who having seen and served say otherwise.

Hotoveli is one of a number of settlers in the Israeli Cabinet and her other main concern is the fact that some people fall in love without taking into account the need to keep the ‘races’  separate.  No greater crime is there in her jaundiced eye than the fact that an Arab male might have a relationship with a Jewish female.

Measuring facial characteristics as part of racial hygiene

Unfortunately the remedy of Nazism Germany cannot be utilised.  Under the Nuremberg Laws 1935, which the Zionists welcomed at the time, sexual relations between male Jews and Aryan women was made a capital offence (for the Jew).  It was all a question of Rassenhygiene (racial health).  So in 2011 Hotoveli did the next best thing and invited Lehava, a fascist group whose raison d’être is to prevent Jewish-Arab liaisons and which even Israel has now accepted is a terrorist group, to address the Knesset’s Committee on the State of Women and Gender Equality.  Hotoveli still defends her invitation as "it is important to me to check systems to prevent mixed marriages, and Lehava are the most suitable for this."  [Deputy FM orders action against IDF whistle-blowing group, YNet 16.5.15.]http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4657913,00.html

Hotoveli has now embarked on an absurd campaign to pressurise the Swiss Government to ban an exhibition by the group Breaking the Silence in Zurich.  Since the Swiss Government funded the exhibition it is unlikely they are going to back down, especially since the Obama Administration is now setting up a meeting with the organisation.  But as the old saying goes, ‘Those whom the gods seek to destroy they first drive mad’.

Tony Greenstein

Tzipi Hotovely says Breaking the Silence exhibit in Switzerland ‘tarnishes’ soldiers in the international arena

By Stuart WinerJune 2, 2015, 11:38 pm

Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely told the Israeli embassy in Switzerland to take action against an upcoming exhibition by an Israeli organization that gathers testimonies by IDF soldiers alleging abuse of Palestinians and war crimes by Israeli forces in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

How the those with a genetic illness put a burden on the racially pure

 “I sent an instruction to the Israeli embassy in Switzerland to immediately review ways to act against the exhibition by Breaking the Silence,” Hotovely said, according to a report by the Hebrew-language news site NRG.

Racial mixing increasingly diminishes the racially superior specimen

“We will not be complacent when an organization whose whole purpose is to tarnish IDF soldiers acts in the international arena in order to cause serious damage to Israel’s image.”

The Breaking the Silence exhibit is scheduled to open in Zurich later in June, and received funding of some NIS 100,000 ($26,000) from the Swiss government and the city municipality, the report said.

“The Foreign Ministry will continue its extensive actions against organizations that are acting against Israel, at home and abroad,” Hotovely declared.

Andrei Bolog, president of the Zurich Jewish community, said that although opposing the exhibit, local Jews would not act against it.

“Yesterday we had a meeting and decided not to ask our government to prevent the exhibit,” Bolog told NRG. “It is not our affair. We don’t represent Israel. True, we won’t be present at the exhibit, but we will not act to prevent it. That is the job of the Israeli ambassador.”

A group of IDF reservists from the Emet Sheli (“My Truth”) organization that seeks to counter Breaking the Silence and other similar organizations, sent a letter on Monday to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Public Diplomacy Minister Gilad Erdan and Hotovely drawing attention to the exhibit.

“We, reserves combat soldiers who fought in Operation Protective Edge, just like in other operations and wars in the past, declare that we no longer intend to remain silent while the IDF, its soldiers and those who were killed, are defamed in streets around the world by Israeli organizations,” the organization wrote.

“We were very surprised at the Swiss government’s involvement in the campaign against IDF soldiers. The Swiss government and the Zurich municipality contributed NIS 100,000 to an anti-Israel event that at its heart is an exhibit by Breaking the Silence.”

Emet Sheli claimed Breaking the Silence has received NIS 3.5 million ($910,000) over the past three years from the governments of Denmark, Switzerland, Sweden, Holland, Spain, France, the European Union, Belgium and Norway.

Founded in Israel in 2004, Breaking the Silence publishes testimonies, almost always anonymous, by Israeli soldiers who recount their experiences serving in the West Bank and their interactions with the Palestinian population there, as well as in eastern Jerusalem, Lebanon and Gaza. Breaking the Silence’s founders have said they wish to end Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

Breaking the Silence has garnered controversy in Israel, with supporters crediting the group with raising awareness to what they consider to be the immorality of occupation, and critics accusing it of spreading falsehoods and helping Israel’s enemies to weaken and isolate the Jewish state.

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Half Israeli Jewish Teens Oppose Equal Rights for Arab Israelis

June 7, 2015, 12:22 pm

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As Israeli society moves to the Right, so Israeli Jewish teenagers assimilate the values of a ‘Jewish’ state.  There are only 5 mixed Jewish-Arab high schools in Israel and they are private. Jews and Arabs live in different towns and neighbourhoods.  Jews serve in the army of occupation in the West Bank and of course they are the beneficiaries of being the herrenvolk of the Jewish state.

Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid, addresses Israeli classroom.  Yesh Atid is 'centrist' but Lapid says he wouldn't be comfortable if his son were to marry an Arab

Unlike the early period of the Israeli state, when ‘left-wing’ ideology was formally in the ascendent yet the practice was to exclude, expel and massacre the indigenous population, today the ideology has come into line with the practice. 

One of the few mixed Jewish Arab families in Israel - the social and political pressures are enormous

There was no better example of this hypocrisy than Mapam, the ‘Marxist’ Zionists.  In early November 1948, Eliezer Peri, the editor of Mapam’s newspaper Al Hamishmar, received a letter describing a massacre at al-Dawayima.  Benny Morris estimates that there were ‘hundreds’ of dead. [Survival of the Fittest, Ha'aretz 8.1.04.  see also Welcome To al-Dawayima, District of Hebron] Agriculture Minister, Aharon Cisling referred to
a letter he had received about the atrocities from Eliezer Kaplan declaring: ‘I couldn’t sleep all night . . . This is something that determines the character of the nation . . . Jews too have committed Nazi acts.’ [The Birth of the Palestine Refugee Problem Revisited, p.488., Benny Morris, Cambridge University Press, 2004]  Cisling agreed that publicIy Israel must admit nothing; but the matter must be thoroughly investigated.  ‘The children they killed by breaking their heads with sticks.  There was not a house without dead’, wrote Kaplan, the Jewish Agency [JA] Treasurer and later Minister of Finance [Morris, p.470]

The Political Committee was briefed on 11 November 1948 by the recently ousted Chief of Staff of the Haganah, Yisrael Galili, about the killing of civilians during Operations Yoav and Hiram. Aharon Cohen led a call for an independent inquiry. [Falsifying the Record: A Fresh Look at Zionist Documentation of 1948, Benny Morris Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 24, No. 3. (Spring, 1995), pp. 44-62]  The problem was that the commanders of these operations were senior Mapam members, Yitzhak Sadeh and Moshe Carmel.  Fortunately for Mapam, Ben-Gurion was opposed to any investigations of atrocities committed by the Israeli military.

Settlers scrawl 'death to the Arabs' on Palestinian ambulance Today ideology and practice has come into line.  The collectivist ideology that underlay the original colonisation of land, a necessity in the circumstances (private enterprise colonies are not particularly efficient!) and the creation of Kibbutzim as the most efficient means of colonisation, have now become anachronous.  Today the kibbutzim are self-contained units, mainly the employers of cheap labour and collective capitalists.

3 Arabs lynched in Jerusalem by 'death to the Arabs' mob

The election of Likud governments since 1977, the throwing open of Israel to the free market and the dismantlement and selling off of the Histadrut enterprises has been part of the ideological swing to the Right.  The only ideology left today is the ideology of the Jewish state, which is inherently anti-Arab.  Arabs are the other in the Jewish state, the ones who are demonised and caricatured (in Israeli education textbooks the Arab terrorist is invariably the bad guy).

Death to the Arabs slogans on gravestones in Bethlehem's Christian cemetry

It is therefore no wonder that half Israel’s Jewish students oppose equal rights for Arabs. That is the consequence of a Jewish state which privileges one section of the community at the expense of another.

Tony Greenstein

Jewish Israeli teens lean right, many support ‘price tag’

Only 9% of adolescents consider themselves left-wing; 45% say they wouldn’t study in a class with Arabs

Avi Lewis and Gedalyah Reback June 3, 2015, 

Screenshot of Beitar football mob attacking Arabs at Malha shopping mall - Police charged no one

Jewish Israeli teens are becoming increasingly polarized in their political beliefs, with more than half identifying as politically right-wing and less than 30 percent willing to condemn attacks against Arabs, according to a poll published Tuesday.

Without a sense of irony - Hebron

Four hundred teens between the ages of 12 and 18 were canvassed for the survey across a spectrum of religious, national and political backgrounds, including Jews and Arabs, NRG reported.

Death to the Arabs slogans on Arab house

According to the poll, 52% of Israeli adolescents define themselves as right-wing, 30% see themselves as centrist, and only 9% consider themselves left-wing.

When asked about Israel’s Jewish and democratic character, 41% of Jewish students responded that the state’s Jewish character is more important than its democratic one, while 25% answered the opposite.

Death to the Arabs on Jaffa mosque

Among Arab students, 96% responded they believe Israel should be democratic first and Jewish second.

'price tag' is when Israeli terrorists bomb or attack Palestinians in 'revenge' attacks

Divisions between Jews and Arabs were evident throughout the survey. Forty-five percent of Jewish teens said they were not prepared to sit in the same classroom with Arab classmates, while 39% of Arab students said the same of their Jewish peers.

Israeli students in school - not an Arab in sight

Thirty-five percent of Jewish students and 27% of Arabs also said they have never interacted with peers from the other group, while 20% of traditional and secular Jewish-Israeli teens have never held a conversation with an ultra-Orthodox peer.

Posted on “The People of Israel Demand Vengeance” Facebook page. The sign reads: “Hating Arabs is not racism; it's morality!”

While 76% of secular Israelis were willing to live in the same apartment building as Arabs, only 37% of religious Jews and 11% of ultra-Orthodox teens said the same. Sixty-eight percent of Arab adolescents said they were willing to have Jewish neighbors.

The lesson that Israelis have learnt from 'holocaust awareness

Many Arab and Haredi respondents reflected their anxieties about their place in society, with 40% of Arab teens saying they were concerned about their sector’s place in Israeli society, while about a third of Haredi teens responded the same.

Israeli soldiers in Gaza with anti-Arab death slogans

In an alarming trend, only 28% of Jewish respondents said they condemned so-called price tag attacks associated with religious, far-right Jewish groups, with students from a traditional home surprisingly more likely to decry those attacks than their secular peers.

Such incidents of violence or vandalism target Palestinians or Israeli security forces and are asserted to be payback for actions against the settlement enterprise.

The normal death to the Arabs painted on gate in Hebron

Of the students who identified as right-wing, 48% condoned or said they understood the rationale behind such attacks.

The logic of a Jewish state

The support for price tag attacks seem to run contrary to the widespread condemnation for the activity that has been voiced by senior Israeli officials from across the political spectrum.

The survey also examined teens’ willingness to express their political opinions, with an overwhelming 84% noting they avoid airing their views online. Among those who did express themselves, a third reported being harassed for their beliefs on the net.

The results were presented at a confab (Hebrew) on the state of education in Israel on Tuesday, featuring President Reuven Rivlin among other speakers. Co-sponsored by the Israel Democracy Institute and the Open University, the conference examined public education trends and changing demographics in the Jewish state.

The poll was conducted by the Rafi Smith Institute. A margin of error was not provided.
“At a time when we are witnessing increased instances of intolerance, racism, discrimination and violence, education must play a key role in shaping Israeli society as democratic, open and enlightened,” said Professor Kobi Metzer, the president of the Open University.

“[It’s an equality] that should be conferred upon members of various groups regardless of their label or status,” Metzer said.

In the survey of 400 Jewish and Israeli teens, 27% of Arab Israelis reported never having spoken with a Jewish youth

A survey released Tuesday showed 35 percent of Jewish Israeli youth had never spoken with an Arab youth. The survey also showed that 27% of Arab Israelis reported never having spoken with a Jewish youth and 18% of Jewish Israeli youth reported never having spoken with an ultra-Orthodox youth.

For the survey, 400 Jewish and Arab Israelis from the ages of 12 to 18 from all sectors – traditional, religious, secular, and ultra-Orthodox, took part, showing trends of intolerance towards each other.

More findings from the survey showed that 41% of Jewish youth think that Israel should be more Jewish than democratic versus only some 25% who think that Israel should be more democratic than Jewish.

Interestingly, the majority of Arab youth in the survey reported feeling part of Israeli society in some way, with approximately 40% of them stating they feel part of Israeli society "to a large or very large extent". Over a third of ultra-Orthodox youth said they feel part of Israeli society only "to a certain extent" or less.

Approximately 52% of Jewish youth in the survey defined themselves as right-wing, 30% as center, and only 9% as left-wing.

Some 11% of the Jewish youth stated that they had been physically or verbally injured or excommunicated for speaking out on politics in the classroom. The majority of those who claimed to be affected identified as left wing.

Half of the respondents stated that they don't think teachers should express their personal political opinions in class.

Referring to the acts of vandalism known as "price tag attacks", which generally target Arabs, often with messages of hate, only 28% of Jewish youth outright condemn price tag attacks. Surprising to some, more traditional youth condemned the acts than secular youth. Approximately 22% stated they had never heard of price tag.

Nearly half of religious youth, and a quarter of the total Jewish youth questioned, stated they "understand but do not justify" the attacks.

Some 45% of the Jewish youth are not willing to learn in a mixed class with Arabs, while only approximately 39% of Arab youth are not willing to learn in a mixed class with Jews.

Prof. Kobi Metzer, President of the Open University of Israel, said of the findings, "At a time when we are witnessing an increase in instances of intolerance, racism, discrimination, and violence, education must play a key role in shaping Israeli society as a democratic, open and enlightened, society, in which the equal treatment of different sectors in society does not fade away in the face of sectorial labeling." 

The survey, conducted by the Rafi Smith polling institute, was done in preparation for the Dov Lautman Conference on Educational Policy, a two-day conference held in partnership by The Lautman Foundation and the Israel Democracy Institute and hosted by the Open University of Israel. It opened Tuesday morning with discussions on the decline of democratic values in Israel, the lack of tolerance for the other and for different political opinions, and more. 

Poll: Half of Israeli high schoolers oppose equal rights for Arabs

Nearly half of Israeli teens surveyed say they would refuse to evacuate West Bank settlements

Or Kashti Mar. 11, 2010

Nearly half of Israel's high school students do not believe that Israeli-Arabs are entitled to the same rights as Jews in Israel, according to the results of a new survey released yesterday. The same poll revealed that more than half the students would deny Arabs the right to be elected to the Knesset.

The survey, which was administered to teenagers at various Israeli high schools, also found that close to half of all respondents - 48 percent - said that they would refuse orders to evacuate outposts and settlements in the Palestinian territories.

Nearly one-third - 31 percent - said they would refuse military service beyond the Green Line.

The complete results of the poll will be presented today during an academic discussion hosted jointly by Tel Aviv University's School of Education and the Citizens' Empowerment Center in Israel. The symposium will focus on various aspects of civic education in the country.

"Jewish youth have not internalized basic democratic values," said Prof. Daniel Bar-Tal, one of the conference organizers.

The poll was commissioned last month by Maagar Mochot, an Israeli research institution, under the supervision of Prof. Yitzhak Katz. It took a sampling of 536 Jewish and Arab respondents between the ages of 15-18.

The survey sought to gauge youth attitudes toward the State of Israel; their perspective on new immigrants and the state's Arab citizens; and their political stances.

The results paint a picture of youth leaning toward political philosophies that fall outside the mainstream.

In response to the question of whether Arab citizens should be granted rights equal to that of Jews, 49.5 percent answered in the negative. The issue highlighted the deep fault lines separating religious and secular youths, with 82 percent of religious students saying they opposed equal rights for Arabs while just 39 percent of secular students echoed that sentiment.

The secular-religious gap was also present when students were faced with the question of whether Arabs should be eligible to run for office in the Knesset. While 82 percent of those with religious tendencies answered in the negative, 47 percent of secular teens agreed. In total, 56 percent said Arabs should be denied this right altogether.

The survey also delved into the issue of military service and following orders that are deemed politically divisive.

While an overwhelming majority (91 percent) expressed a desire to enlist in the Israel Defense Forces, 48 percent said they would not obey an order to evacuate outposts and settlements in the West Bank.

Here, too, researchers note the religious nexus. Of those who would refuse evacuation orders, 81 percent categorize themselves as religious as opposed to 36 percent who are secular.

"This poll shows findings which place a huge warning signal in light of the strengthening trends of extremist views among the youth,"said an Education Ministry official.

The survey, which also revealed that a relatively high number of youth plan on voting and that democracy is still the preferred system of government, indicates "a gap between the consensus on formal democracy and the principles of essential democracy, which forbid the denial of rights to the Arab population,"the official said.

"The differences in positions between secular and religious youth, which are only growing sharper from a demographic standpoint, need to be of concern to all of us because this will be the face of the state in another 20-30 years,"said Bar-Tal. "There is a combination of fundamentalism, nationalism, and racism in the worldview of religious youth." 

Community Policing - Texas Style

June 9, 2015, 12:24 pm

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Slaughter in Palmyra as Israel Cements Alliance with ISIS

June 9, 2015, 2:24 pm

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Robert Fisk is the best Middle East correspondent by far.  He lives in Lebanon and writes for The Independent.  He was one of the few journalists not to be ‘embedded’ with US security forces in Iraq.

butchered by Isis

Here he is reporting from a town near to Palymyra where the Saudi sponsored IS (or Daesh) murdered 400 people with their butcher’s knives.  Until the people of Syria and Iraq are able to remove this group in totality then there will be no liberation anywhere in the Arab East.

Palmyra's Roman ruins are a target for IS

It is not surprising that as far as Israel is concerned IS are the good guys and the focus should be on the ‘Shi’ite Crescent’.

The savagery of IS - but Israel is happy to deal with the group

Global Research reported that 

‘Israel initially had maintained that it was treating only civilians. However, reports claimed that earlier last month members of Israel’s Druze minority protested the hospitalisation of wounded Syrian fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front in Israel.

A statement issued by a group of Druze activists accused the Israeli government of supporting radical Sunni factions such as the Islamic State (ISIS).

Replying to a question by i24News on whether Israel has given medical assistance to members of al-Nusra and Daesh (the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (ISIS), a Israeli military spokesman’s office said: “In the past two years the Israel Defence Forces have been engaged in humanitarian, life-saving aid to wounded Syrians, irrespective of their identity.”

The demolition of other priceless treasurers - the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia do likewise

The UN report also laid out instances where in Israeli army was seen interacting with armed rebels. In one incident, the report claimed that the IDF gave some boxes to the Syrian armed rebels.’

The Israeli Military themselves admit that they have taken in and treated hundreds of wounded Syrians.  Given that  most civilians have cleared out of the area they can only be IS or al-Nusra fighters.

Israel claims this is a humanitarian endeavour.  One wonders whether Israel would offer the same facilities to Hamas fighters, including repatriating them back to Gaza!

On October 31 2014 in Ha’aretz

West making big mistake infighting ISIS, says senior Israeli officer

‘A senior Northern Command officer said Thursday that the Western coalition is making a big mistake in fighting against ISIS.

Israel's new found friends

The coalition forces' attacks against the Islamic State support the "radical Shi'ite axis," the unnamed officer said. "A strange situation has been created in which the United States, Canada and France are on the same side as Hezbollah, Iran and Assad. That doesn't make sense," he said.

In Hayan, an oil and gas town  (above) Robert Fisk hears from some of the few that escaped IS jihadis.

It was easier to deal with terrorism in its early stages [ISIS] than to face an Iranian threat and the Hezbollah, he said. "I believe the West intervened too early and not necessarily in the right direction.’

From the evidence gathered so far by the UN and Israeli Druze (one of whom was arrested) it is clear that there is a de-facto alliance between IS and Israel.  See 

Israel Secretly Arrests Golani Druze, Accusing Him of Exposing Rebel-IDF Collaboration 

Isis Slaughter in the Sacred Syrian City of Palmyra: The Survivors'Stories

We’ve heard about the threat to the monuments - but what about the human tragedy?

By Robert Fisk

June 07, 2015 

When the black-cowled gunmen of the 'Islamic State' infiltrated the suburbs of Palmyra on 20 May, half of Assad Sulieman’s oil and gas processing plant crews – 50 men in all - were manning their 12-hour shift at the Hayan oil field 28 miles away. They were the lucky ones. Their 50 off-duty colleagues were sleeping at their homes next to the ancient Roman city. Twenty-five of them would soon be dead, among up to 400 civilians – including women and children – who would die in the coming hours at the hands of the Islamist militia which every Syrian now calls by its self-styled acronym ‘Daesh’.

Oil engineer ‘Ahmed’ – he chose this name to protect his family in Palmyra – was, by chance, completing a course at Damascus University on the fatal day when Palmyra fell. “I was appalled,” he said. “I tried calling my family. It was still possible to get through on the phone. They said ‘Daesh’ (also known as Isis) wasn’t allowing anyone to leave their home. My brother later went onto the street. He took pictures of bodies. They had been decapitated, all men.

Destruction of the Jezaa gas and oil processing plant

“He managed to send the photographs out to me from [the Isis-controlled city of] Raqqa on the internet which is the only communications working there.”

Some of the photographs are too terrible to publish. They show heads lying several feet from torsos, blood running in streams across a city street. In one, a body lies on a roadway while two men cycle past on a bicycle. So soon after the capture of Palmyra were the men slaughtered that shop-fronts can still be seen in the photographs, painted in the two stars and colours of the red-white-and-black flag of the Syrian government.

“The Daesh forced the people to leave the bodies in the streets for three days,” Ahmed continued. “They were not allowed to pick up the bodies or bury them without permission. The corpses were all over the city. My family said the Daesh came to our house, two foreign men – one appeared to be an Afghan, the other from Tunisia or Morocco because he had a very heavy accent – and then they left. They killed three female nurses. One was killed in her home, another in her uncle’s house, a third on the street. Perhaps it was because they helped the army [as nurses]. Some said they were beheaded but my brother said they were shot in the head.”

In the panic to flee Palmyra, others perished when their cars drove over explosives planted on the roads by the Islamist gunmen. One was a retired Syrian general from the al-Daas family whose 40-year old pharmacist wife and 12-year old son were killed with him when their car’s wheels touched the explosives. Later reports spoke of executions in the old Roman theatre amid the Palmyra ruins.

The director of the Hayan gas and oil processing plant, Assad Sulieman, shook his head in near-disbelief as he recounted how word reached him of the execution of his off-duty staff. Some were, he believes, imprisoned in the gas fields which had fallen into the hands of the ‘Islamic State’. Others were merely taken from their homes and murdered because they were government employees. For months prior to the fall of Palmyra, he had received a series of terrifying phone calls from the Islamists, one of them when gunmen were besieging a neighbouring gas plant.

He said: “They came on my own phone, here in my office, and said: ‘We are coming for you.’ I said to them: ‘I will be waiting’. The army drove them off but my staff also received these phone calls here and they were very frightened. The army protected three of our fields then and drove them off.” Since the fall of Palmyra, the threatening phone calls have continued, even though 'Daesh' have cut all mobile and landlines in their newly-occupied city.

Another young engineer at Hayan was in Palmyra when the 'Islamic State' arrived. So fearful was he when he spoke that he even refused to volunteer a name for himself. “I had gone back to Palmyra two days before and everything seemed alright,” he said. “When my family told me they had arrived, I stayed at home and so did my mother and brother and sisters and we did not go out. Everyone knew that when these men come, things are not good. The electricity stopped for two days and then the gunmen restored it.  We had plenty of food – we were a well-off family. We stayed there a week, we had to sort out our affairs and they never searched our home.”

The man’s evidence proved the almost haphazard nature of Isis rule. A week after the occupation, the family made its way out of the house – the women in full Islamic covering – and caught a bus to the occupied city of Raqqa and from there to Damascus. “They looked at my ID but didn’t ask my job,” the man said. “The bus trip was normal. No-one stopped us leaving.” Like Ahmed, the young oil worker was a Sunni Muslim – the same religion as ‘Daesh’s’ followers – but he had no doubts about the nature of Palmyra’s occupiers. “When they arrive anywhere”, he said, “there is no more life”.

Syria’s own oil and gas lifeline now stretches across a hundred miles of desert from Homs in the midlands to the strategic oil fields across the broiling desert outside Palmyra. It took two hours to reach a point 28 miles from Palmyra; the last Syrian troops are stationed eight miles closer to the city.

To the west lies the great Syrian air base of Tiyas – codenamed ‘T-4’ after the old fourth pumping station of the Iraqi-Palestine oil pipeline – where I saw grey-painted twin-tailed Mig fighter bombers taking off into the dusk and settling back onto the runways. A canopy of radar dishes and concrete bunkers protect the base and Syrian troops can be seen inside a series of earthen fortresses on each side of the main road to Palmyra, defending their redoubts with heavy machine guns, long-range artillery and missiles.

Syrian troops patrol the highway every few minutes on pick-up trucks – and make no secret of their precautions. They pointed out the site of an improvised explosive device found a few hours earlier - more than 30 miles west of Palmyra. Further down the road was the wreckage of truck bombs which had been hit by Syrian rocket-fire. Assad Sulieman, the gas plant director, declares that his father named him after President Bashar al-Asasad’s father Hafez. He described how Islamist rebels had totally destroyed one gas plant close to Hayan last year, and how his crews had totally restored it to production within months by using cannibalized equipment from other facilities. His plant’s production capacity has been restored to three million cubic metres of gas per day for the country’s power stations and six thousand barrels of oil for the Homs refinery.

But the man who understands military risks is General Fouad – like everyone else in the area of Palmyra, he prefers to use only his first name – a professional officer whose greatest victory over the rebels on a nearby mountain range came at the moment his soldier-son was killed in battle in Homs. He makes no secret of “the big shock” he felt when Palmyra fell. He thinks that the soldiers had been fighting for a long time in defence of the city and did not expect the mass attack. Other military men – not the general – say that the ‘Islamic State’ advanced on a 50-mile front, overwhelming the army at the time.

“They will get no further,” General Fouad said. “We fought them off when they attacked three fields last year. Our soldiers stormed some of their local headquarters on the Shaer mountain. We found documents about our production facilities, we found religious books of Takfiri ideas. And we found lingerie.” 

What on earth, I asked, would the Islamic State be doing with lingerie? The general was not smiling. “We think that maybe they kept captured Yazidi women with them, the ones who were kidnapped in Iraq. When our soldiers reached their headquarters, we saw some of their senior men running away with some women.”

But the general, like almost every other Syrian officer I met on this visit to the desert – and every other civilian – had a thought on his mind. If the Americans were so keen to destroy Isis, did they not know from satellites that thousands of gunmen were massing to strike at Palmyra. Certainly they did not tell the Syrians of this? And they did not bomb them, either – though there must have been targets aplenty for the US air force in the days before the Palmyra attack, even if Washington does not like the Assad regime. A question, then, that still has to be answered.

Soldiers Expel Palestinians from Pool to Enable Settlers to Bathe Undisturbed

June 10, 2015, 5:30 pm

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The Face of Apartheid in the West Bank

One of Israel’s proud boasts has been that there are no signs saying ‘Jews only’ or ‘Arabs only’.  As we saw with the recent proposal to segregate Palestinians on buses into the West Bank, there is an inexorable movement to extend the Apartheid division of the West Bank, with its 2 different legal systems, into social or ‘petty’ apartheid.  Indeed this is a natural progression.

We should not therefore be surprised by the story below where the Israeli army forced 200 Palestinians to make way for a group of settlers intent on bathing in a natural pool.

Soldiers Expel Palestinians from Pool in Area A to Enable Settlers to Bathe Undisturbed

Published: 

7 Jun 2015

On 7 April 2015, during Passover holidays, a group of hundreds of settlers accompanied by Israeli security forces came to Birkat al-Karmil – a natural pool close to the village of al-Karmil, which lies in the southern Hebron Hills within Area A. In 2011, Yatta Municipality renovated the site, creating a park there and restoring an ancient pool at its center.

Soldiers and settlers beside the pool. Photo: Ma’an News Agency, 7 April 2015

B'Tselem’s investigation found that at about 2:00 P.M., hundreds of settlers arrived at the pool accompanied by dozens of soldiers, Border Police, and representatives of the Civil Administration (CA). The security forces ordered the Palestinian bathers to leave the pool and remain on the edge of the park. They allowed the settlers, however, free and exclusive use of the rest of the park. At about 5:30 P.M., the settlers and the security forces left the area.

"According to media reports, reveal that the settlers came to the pool on the initiative of the Susiya Tour and Study Center. In its publications, the center described the pool as the historical site of the Biblical settlement of Carmel and emphasized that the visit was authorized and accompanied by the military. The center reported that some 1,000 people had taken part in the tour, including Chief Military Rabbi Rafi Peretz, and that similar events have been held at the site for several years, particularly during the festivals of Sukkot and Passover.

Park renewal work. Photo courtesy of Yatta Municipality

According to testimonies collected by B'Tselem, when the settlers arrived at the pool there were almost 200 Palestinians there. Some were bathing in the pool, while others were relaxing in the park. Muhammad Mahaniyah, 20, a resident of Yatta, told B'Tselem field researcher Musa Abu Hashhash that when the settlers arrived, accompanied by the security forces, he was bathing in the pool with friends:

A Border Police officer ordered me to get out of the water quickly. At first I refused and told him that I wanted to be in the pool and had a right to be there. I said that I had no problem with the settlers swimming along with me. He threatened to use force if I didn’t get out of the water quickly, so my friends and I had no choice but to get out. The soldiers ordered the Palestinians who were around the pool to move back to the edge of the park, to stay there, and not to approach the settlers.

Ibrahim Abu Tabikh, 15, from the village of al-Karmil, told Abu Hashhash:

At about two o’clock I went to swim in the pool, which is about 500 meters from my home. When I got there, I saw groups of settlers moving towards the pool. There were dozens of soldiers and Border Police officers with them. The settlers began to undress and jump into the water. I also jumped in with my brother Muhammad, 16, and we began to swim. The settlers complained about our being in the pool and three young settlers started swimming towards us. Some soldiers intervened and asked them to move away from us. After they swam away, one of the soldiers ordered us to get out of the water. I refused and stood by the edge of the pool. Another soldier came up to me, pointed his gun at me, and shouted at me to get out of the water quickly. Muhammad and I got out of the water because I was afraid of the soldiers. As I got out, dozens of Palestinian residents around the pool shouted slogans against the settlers being there. The soldiers moved the residents away from the pool to the northern section of the park and prevented them from wandering around the park. In the meantime the settlers continued to swim while the soldiers guarded them. I stayed in the park until the settlers left at about half past five.

Settlers at Birket al-Karmel. Photo: Nasser Nawaj’ah, B’Tselem, 7 April 2015

During the incident, the mayor of Yatta came to the pool and protested to the CA representatives who were with the settlers. One representative informed him that the visit had been coordinated with the Palestinian DCO. B'Tselem contacted representatives of the Palestinian DCO, who denied any coordination and claimed they had submitted an official complaint to the Israeli DCO. In fact, whether the visit was coordinated is immaterial, as the Palestinian DCO is not free to refuse such requests by Israeli security forces.

This incident is yet another example of how Israeli authorities operate in the West Bank. Almost any desire expressed by settlers, however capricious, is automatically facilitated at the expense of the Palestinian population. In this case, the military used its force and authority solely in order to allow settlers the pleasure of bathing at that particular location. This purpose is unjustified in its own right, and certainly cannot justify the entry of soldiers into Area A or any disruption to Palestinians’ lives.

B'Tselem wrote to the IDF Spokesperson requesting a response to the incident, including a series of detailed questions. The IDF Spokesperson replied with a laconic responsethat offers no explanation for the authorities' conduct in the incident.

UN Special Representative Puts Israel on List of Serious Violators of Children's Rights - Ban Ki-moon takes them off

June 11, 2015, 4:11 pm

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UN’s Ban Ki-moon caves in, takes Israel off list of serious child abusers

The cowardice of the UN General Secretary, when his own officials place Israel on a list of child abusers, is breathtaking.  A concerted e-mail bombardment of the UN would be a start.  No doubt Israel and the USA put Banki Moon under pressure and once again he has taken the coward's way. This is why all those who believe that the UN has any serious role in ending the oppression of the Palestinians are living a lie.  The UN is a gang of thieves from top to bottom.

Tony Greenstein 

A Palestinian medic cares for a wounded child after a 19 August 2014 Israeli air strike on a house in Gaza City killed a young girl, a woman and injured 16 other people.Ashraf Amra APA images

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has caved in to pressure from Israel and the United States and taken the Israeli military off an official list of serious violators of children’s rights, in this year’s report on children in armed conflict.

In doing so, Ban rejected an official recommendation from his own Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict Leila Zerrougui and numerous human rights organizations and child rights defenders.

Ban’s act is particularly egregious since the report found that the number of children killed in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip in 2014, at 557, was the third highest only after Iraq and Afghanistan and ahead of Syria.

“The revelation that Israel’s armed forces were removed from the annex of the annual report by Ban Ki-moon is deplorable,” Brad Parker, attorney and international advocacy officer at Defence for Children International-Palestine (DCI-Palestine), told The Electronic Intifada.

“The annual report and its annex, or children’s ‘list of shame,’ has been a strong evidence-based accountability tool proven to help increase protections for children in armed conflict situations. There is ample evidence on persistent grave violations committed by Israeli forces since at least 2006 that should have triggered listing,” Parker added.

“The secretary-general’s decision to place politics above justice and accountability for Palestinian children has provided Israeli forces with tacit approval to continue committing grave violations against children with impunity,” Parker said. 

The top UN official’s decision will be greeted with relief by the Obama administration, Israel and others concerned with ensuring such Israeli impunity.

Obama pressure

“The draft 2015 report prepared by the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Leila Zerrougui, recommended adding Israel and Hamas to the annexed list of parties – the so-called ‘list of shame’ – due to their repeated violations against children,” Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement on 4 June.

Human Rights Watch called on Ban to “list all countries and armed groups that have repeatedly committed these violations, and resist reported pressure from Israel and the United States to remove Israel from the draft list.”

But that pressure proved irresistible to Ban. Foreign Policyreported last week that the Obama administration had made a concerted effort to pressure him to drop Israel from the list for cynical political reasons.

According to an unnamed UN official quoted by Foreign Policy, the Obama administration was concerned about false accusations that “the White House is anti-Israel,” as the US completes sensitive negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program.

False balance

Human Rights Watch supported calls on Ban to list Hamas as well as Israel, but this appears to have been a maneuver to look “balanced” and avoid baseless accusations of anti-Israel bias frequently leveled at the organization.

Sources familiar with the final report have told The Electronic Intifada that Hamas is not on the list either.

But the violations attributed to Palestinian armed groups, including the death of one Israeli child last summer due to a rocket fired from Gaza, can hardly be compared in scope to the systematic mass killings with impunity of Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip and West Bank by Israeli occupation forces.

Since Hamas and other Palestinian armed resistance groups are already under international sanctions and arms embargoes and listed by various countries as “terrorist organizations,” adding Hamas to the list would have meant little.

It is Israel whose violations continue not only with impunity but with assistance from the predominantly European and North American governments that arm it.

DCI-Palestine documented the killings of at least 547 Palestinian children during last summer’s Israeli assault on Gaza.

Human Rights Watch cites as part of Israel’s record the “unlawful killing of children” in the occupied West Bank, including Nadim Nuwara and Muhammad Abu al-Thahir, both 17, shot dead by snipers on 15 May 2014.

In April, a board of inquiry set up by Ban found that Israel killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians in seven attacks on United Nations-run schools in the Gaza Strip last summer.

Sabotage

In March, there was an outcry among Palestinian and international human rights advocates when it was revealed that UN officials appeared to be trying to sabotage the evidence-based process that leads to a recommendation of listing, after threats from Israel.

Palestinian organizations called on the mid-level UN officials accused of interfering with the process to resign.

This led to assurances from Special Representative Zerrougui that the decision-making process was still underway and indeed, after gathering all the evidence, Zerrougui did recommend that Israel be listed.

Such a recommendation comes after UN bodies collect evidence in collaboration with human rights organizations, according to specific criteria mandated in UN Security Council Resolution 1612.

But despite the months-long nonpolitical and evidence-based process, the final decision was always in Ban’s hands.

Partner in Israel’s crimes

There was much at stake for Israel and indeed for Ban if he had gone with the evidence instead of submitting to political pressure.

“Inclusion of a party on the secretary general’s list triggers increased response from the UN and potential Security Council sanctions, such as arms embargoes, travel bans, and asset freezes,” Human Rights Watch notes.

“For a country or armed group to be removed from the list, the UN must verify that the party has ended the abuses after carrying out an action plan negotiated with the UN.”

Ban has a long history of using his office to ensure that Israel escapes accountability except for the mildest verbal censures that are almost always “balanced” with criticism of those who live under Israeli occupation.

At the height of last summer’s Israeli attack on Gaza, 129 organizations and distinguished individuals wrote to the secretary-general, condemning him for “your biased statements, your failure to act, and the inappropriate justification of Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law, which amount to war crimes.”

Ban’s record, they said, made him a “partner” in Israel’s crimes. His latest craven decision will only cement that well-earned reputation.

While Israel will celebrate victory in the short-term, the long-term impact will likely be to further discredit the UN as a mechanism for accountability and convince more people of the need for direct popular pressure on Israel in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS).

1266 Palestinian children under 15 were detained in occupied territorieslast year

13-year-old detained by Israeli forces in East Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (Ma‘an) 10 June – Israeli forces detained a 13-year-old Palestinian from his home in the al-Issawiya neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem overnight Tuesday, lawyer says. Lawyer Muhammad Mahmoud of the Addameer prisoners’ rights group identified the youth as Tariq Mustafa, adding that he was detained along with Ahmad Jamal Atiyah, 19 … Mustafa’s detention comes as Israeli watchdog Military Court Watch (MCW) submitted a report to the UN Special Rapportuer regarding common mistreatment of children held in Israeli military detention … Israel detained 1,266 Palestinian children below the age of 15 in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 2014, according to a PLO report

See 

40% of Palestinian Children Detained by Israel Are Sexually Abused; Virtually All Are Tortured

Palestinian American Boy Beaten Up by Israeli Police Testifies at Congressional Meeting

June 12, 2015, 10:26 am

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Abukhdeir is the cousin of Muhammad  Abu Khudair, who was burnt alive by Israeli settlers last year in Jerusalem.  They poured petroleum down his throat and set him alight in an action whose barbarity recalls that of Isis and the Jordanian pilot.

So far Israel seems to have done nothing about his murderers, who will almost certainly receive a light sentence.  Israeli Police have already tried to suggest that Abu Khudair was killed by his own family as some kind of ‘honour’ killing.

Abukhdeir, who is an American citizen, was viciously beaten up by the Israeli Police and but for his US citizenship would still be languishing in an Israeli prison accused, no doubt, having attacked his attackers.

There are two videos below recording the meeting held at the US Congress.

Tony Greenstein

Israeli Police Thugs Beat Up a Child - noone has paid

 Palestinian American teen recounts Israeli assault to packed room on Capitol Hill

Nora Barrows-FriedmanThe Electronic Intifada Podcast 11 June 2015

“If there wasn’t a video of me, I would be in jail and no one would believe what they did to me,” Palestinian American Tariq Abukhdeir, 16, stated during a US congressional briefing in Washington, DC on 2 June.

In July 2014, Abukhdeir was beaten unconscious by Israeli police in Shufat, a neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem. The vicious assault was captured on video.

After attacking him, Israeli forces arrested and detained Abukhdeir and five other youths without charge. Police prevented Abukhdeir from receiving medical treatment for five hours. Abukhdeir’s cousin, Muhammad Abu Khudair, 16, was kidnapped and burned alive by Israeli extremists just days before.

“Where are these soldiers now? Are they doing this to another Palestinian child? I want to go back this summer and be with my family and put this behind me,” the teenager told a packed room in the US capitol nearly a year after he was beaten. ”But I know that for me to put this behind me, these soldiers have to be held accountable.”

Abukhdeir’s testimony at the congressional briefing was part of a three-day series of advocacy events in early June organized by Defence for Children International-Palestine(DCI-Palestine), the American Friends Service Committee and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation to raise awareness of Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian children in military detention. More than 100 people, including staff from 36 congressional offices, attended the briefing.

Visibly upset

Brad Parker, attorney and advocacy officer with DCI-Palestine, accompanied Abukhdeir and his family to the congressional briefing along with Jennifer Bing, director of the American Friends Service Committee’s Middle East Program in Chicago. The rights groups are part of the No Way to Treat a Child campaign, which includes a broad coalition of groups.

Abukhdeir’s highly visible case helped bring attention to the plight of countless other Palestinian children in Israeli military detention who aren’t afforded access to the US State Department, which helped procure the Florida teen’s release from Israeli detention last summer.

The campaign aims to “target our own members of Congress, raise the issue, make it local and get people involved in demanding respect for Palestinian children’s rights,” Parker said.

Many government staffers were shocked to hear the specifics of Israel’s violations of children’s rights.

“You could see them visibly becoming upset,” Bing said, “as Brad [Parker] in particular was able to share with them the process of what happens during night raids, the kind of interrogations, the impact that it has on families.”

Part of a video series of the briefing is below, featuring Brad Parker, Tariq Abukhdeir and his mother Suha Abukhdeir.

Thousands of children arrested

DCI-Palestine states that “Israel is the only country in the world that automatically prosecutes children in military courts that lack basic and fundamental fair trial guarantees. Since 2000, at least 8,000 Palestinian children have been arrested and prosecuted in an Israeli military detention system notorious for the systematic ill-treatment and torture of Palestinian children.”

Last summer, more than 550 children were killed during Israel’s 51-day attack on the Gaza Strip.

Yet, as The Electronic Intifada reported this week, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon caved in to pressure from Israel and the US and removed the Israeli military from its list of serious violators of children’s rights in an annual report on children in armed conflict.

DCI-Palestine’s Parker said that he sees opportunities for further discussions between Palestinian children’s advocates and Washington policymakers.

“We’re embarking on an incremental approach to engaging on an issue with specific policymakers who aren’t necessarily predisposed to being sympathetic to the issue, or regularly interested in actually pursuing anything related to the issue,” he said.

Following the congressional briefing, Representative Betty McCollum of Minnesota wrote a “dear colleague” letter to US Secretary of State John Kerry, calling on him to make the “human rights of Palestinian children a priority in our bilateral relationship with the State of Israel.”

The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has launched an online drive to urge other members of congress to sign McCollum’s letter.

Attacking NGOs Who Tell the Truth

June 12, 2015, 10:57 am

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One of the myths of Israel's right is that the Supreme Court is a liberal Arabist institution - whereas it has presided over waves of confiscations and expulsions

 Israel – the transition from ‘democracy’ to dictatorship

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Noone should be surprised that ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ is fast jetissoning even the pretensions of being a democratic state.  The dictatorship that is the Occupation is rapidly coming home as dissident NGO’s, even the pro-Zionist  Btselem find their funding under attack.

NGO’s will only be able to receive funding from outside Israel with the permission of the government.  Meanwhile Sheldon Adelson’s free paper Israel Hayom, which is subsidised to the tune of $5 million by an   American/Zionist billionaire will be protected, even though it is destroying the rest of Israel’s independent media.

Right-wing Israeli NGO

Israeli hasbara has been going into overtime this week against the group Breaking the Silence, which recorded and publicised the stories of soldiers detailing what really happened in Gaza, the free-fire zones where civilians could be shot without hesitation and the collapse of any semblance of moral values.  The reaction has been to accuse Breaking the Silence of lying, being anti-Semitic (of course!), self-hating Jews etc. etc.  Shoot the messenger rather than deal with the message is the order of the day.

Ayelet Shaked - the 'angel of death' genocidalist and spearheading attack on human rights NGO's as 'justice' minister

Ayelet Shaked, who is on record as advocating the genocide of Palestinian people (or ‘little snakes’ as she terms Palestinian infants) has been appointed ‘Justice’ Minister.  It’s on a par with the decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger at the time of the Vietnam War. 

Protest against Israeli apartheid outside new housing block within Arab East Jerusalem

She has Israel’s Supreme Court in her sights.  This is a favourite target of the far-Right.  The Supreme Court has an appalling enough record when it comes to Palestinian rights as it is.  It has ruled that Israeli law trumps International law.  It has given the go ahead for land confiscations, the demolition of villages and much else.  It has a grisly record of deferring to ‘security’ concerns and it is always cognisant of the need to uphold Zionist values (such as ruling that there can be no such thing as a common Israeli Nationality).  Nonetheless, the few liberal decisions it has made have proved irksome for the ‘democratic’ tyrants now ruling Israel.

Tony Greenstein

B'tselem visiting Arab farmer whose crops have been destroyed by settlers - Btselem, although a Zionist group, has been under consistent attack

Is Netanyahu waging ‘war’ on critics at home?

6 June 2015

The Israeli government has indicated it is preparing to take a hard line against human rights groups, the media and Supreme Court

Middle East Eye – 6 June 2015

The Israeli Right objects to foreign funding of NGOs - but not foreign aid for weaponry!

A month into resuming his premiership, Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of an increasingly autocratic rule, as critics warn that his new government is preparing to take a draconian line against Israeli institutions opposing its policies.

Despite its appalling record Israel's Supreme Court under Justice Miriam Naor is under attack from Shaked for not being even more right-wing

Israel’s new rightwing coalition has already indicated it will make a priority of tackling three fronts – human rights organisations, the media and the Supreme Court. All repeatedly clashed with Netanyahu during his previous terms in office.

The leader of the parliamentary opposition, Isaac Herzog, sounded the alarm last month, cautioning Netanyahu not to “raise a hand” against the judiciary, media or the country’s minorities, including its 1.5 million Palestinian citizens. Netanyahu, he added, appeared to have learnt “tricks” from the region’s dictators.

Long-time observers of Israeli politics also fear that the current narrow right-wing coalition will give the prime minister a much freer hand. In his two earlier governments, Netanyahu depended on the support of centrist parties, such as Labor and Yesh Atid. Now he faces no such constraints.

After Netanyahu awarded himself new powers to veto legislation this week, Dov Khenin, the only Jewish member of the Arab-led Joint List party in the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, wondered: “Are we for autocracy?”

Similarly, Uri Avnery, leader of the Gush Shalom peace movement and a former Knesset member, concluded in a recent column entitled “Who will save Israel?” that: “The extreme right has found its self-assurance, and is determined to use its power.”

Concerns mount

Causes for concern have quickly mounted.

They have included the announcement of a government bill to penalise human rights groups working to help Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as to protect the rights of the large Palestinian minority inside Israel and of African asylum seekers.

In addition, a diplomatic source told Middle East Eye that behind the scenes Israeli officials are trying to browbeat European governments into ending funding for the Israeli human rights community.

Eyebrows have also been raised by Netanyahu’s decision to reserve the communications ministry, which regulates the media, for himself. This is despite his having a shortage of ministerial posts with which to reward coalition partners.

Analysts have warned that Netanyahu is preparing to intimidate parts of the media critical of him and shore up the position of Israel Hayom, a free daily that has become the biggest-circulation national newspaper. Owned by US casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, the paper staunchly supports Netanyahu.

Meanwhile, there are fears that the Israeli Supreme Court, which repeatedly came to blows with Netanyahu’s last government over efforts to jail and deport asylum seekers, is in his sights as well.

The prime minister agreed to appoint Ayelet Shaked, of the pro-settler Jewish Home party, as justice minister. Shaked has been a fierce critic of the court, and has previously tried to introduce legislation to neuter it.

“Netanyahu has good as declared war on dissent, whether it’s from human rights organisations or the media,” said Jafar Farah, director of Mossawa, an advocacy group for Israel’s Palestinian minority.

Israel ‘not perfect’

Netanyahu has defended his record against such charges.

Following criticism from US President Barack Obama that his security worldview assumed only the “worst possibilities”, he said on Thursday: “Israel isn’t perfect, but it is on a level with the world’s great democracies and it faces challenges that are much more difficult.”

He added that his government had invested heavily in helping Israel’s Palestinian minority, and he promised to preserve the independence of the Supreme Court, while stressing that his intention was only to open up the media to greater competition, not to control it.

“I believe in competition in products, in goods and also in ideas,” he told a press conference.

But critics are not reassured.

A European diplomat in Jerusalem told MEE that Israel had been waging an aggressive campaign in capitals across Europe to persuade them to stop funding human rights groups in Israel.

“The pressure being exerted on us behind the scenes is intense,” said the source, who wished not to be named, given the issue’s sensitivity.

The diplomat added that Israel wanted in particular to silence Israeli groups whose work might encourage a growing international boycott campaign or assist investigations by the International Criminal Court, which the Palestinians officially joined in April.

The diplomat indicated that B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence – both of which highlight human rights abuses and are funded by European governments – were top of Israel’s hit-list.

Row over soldiers’ testimony

The tensions exploded into public view this week when Israel’s foreign ministry opened a rift with Switzerland over its support for an exhibition by Breaking the Silence.

Yigal Caspi, Israel’s ambassador to Switzerland, denounced the exhibition in Zurich as “slander” for featuring photographs and testimonies from Israeli soldiers alleging violations of Palestinian human rights.

Caspi demanded that the Swiss government immediately stop funding the exhibition. Israel has previously demanded that Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and Denmark also end their support for the group.

The row was immediately followed by a decision from the culture ministry to pull funding from a dance show due to open in Tel Aviv that incorporates video clips from the occupied territories taken by B’Tselem.

Tzipi Hotovely, Netanyahu’s deputy in the foreign ministry, warned on Tuesday that the government would “act against groups that operate against Israel from within the country and abroad”.

Breaking the Silence responded by criticising the government’s “anti-democratic campaign”.

NGO bill in pipeline

The clash with Switzerland looked like the opening round in a more comprehensive move to muzzle human rights groups, said Rina Rosenberg, the head of advocacy at Adalah, a legal centre for Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

“The direction this government appears to be heading in is a cause for great concern,” she told MEE. “It looks like we are in for a big fight.”

The coalition parties specified in their agreement last month that they would advance what is being dubbed an “NGO bill”, targeting groups seen as left-wing and pro-Palestinian. Shaked, the new justice minister, is the driving force behind the measure.

According to Israeli media, the bill is likely to require NGOs to seek the approval of the defence and foreign ministries over funding they receive from foreign governments – a move that is expected to apply to human rights and pro-Palestinian groups exclusively.

If such legislation passes, most of these groups would struggle to survive financially, said Rosenberg.

In the previous Knesset, Netanyahu’s government tried to pass legislation against human rights organisations but froze it following protests from western governments. One proposal was to classify leftist groups receiving overseas funding as “foreign agents”.

At the same time groups like Rabbis for Human Rights and Physicians for Human Rights were rejected for tax-exempt status, limiting their ability to fundraise, while right-wing groups were given the status.

Rosenberg said Netanyahu’s new government appeared to have learnt its lesson and was avoiding overtly politicised legislation.

“This time it looks like they are going to be much smarter – and that makes the situation more dangerous,” she said. “By conditioning funding on permission from the defence ministry or a Knesset committee, they can say they are following practices adopted in countries like Egypt, Jordan and India.”

She feared that Israel would be able to rebuff criticism by claiming it was being singled out.

Communications ‘czar’

Farah, of Mossawa, said Netanyahu was also seeking to “consolidate his power over the media”, as a further way to silence critics.

As well as becoming communications minister, he has placed himself in charge of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, and increased his control of the ministerial committee overseeing legislation.

As part of the coalition agreement, Netanyahu insisted that his partners commit to supporting any communications initiatives he introduces.

Amir Teig, a media analyst, warned that Netanyahu was determined to turn himself into a “communications czar”.

Yossi Verter, a political analyst for Haaretz, argued that this was “payback time” for Netanyahu. Netanyahu was reported to have been incensed by news coverage during the campaign that painted him in an unflattering light.

Threat to TV channels

Netanyahu’s main goal, according to analysts, is to end any threat of restrictions on the national daily newspaper Israel Hayom.

Netanyahu’s coalition partners in the last Knesset denounced the paper as Israel’s “Pravda”, after the official mouthpiece of the former Soviet regime.

Netanyahu called early elections last November shortly after the Knesset passed the first reading of legislation to bar national distribution of a free newspaper to limit Israel Hayom’s influence.

The paper, which loses Adelson an estimated $5m a year, has left the largest paid-for newspaper, Yedioth Aharonoth, which is critical of Netanyahu, struggling.

Netanyahu has also used his communications role to make life difficult for the country’s two loss-making commercial TV stations, Channels 2 and 10. He has offered no relief on their heavy debts, with Channel 10 in particular in danger of closure.

Farah said Netanyahu’s financial threats were an effective way to intimidate the broadcasters who rely on state advertising.

Judges ready for fight

Concerns for the Supreme Court, the final court of appeal for Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as for minorities inside Israel, are also mounting.

Netanyahu shocked many in the legal community last month by appointing Jewish Home’s Shaked as justice minister. She has been a fierce critic of the court for being too liberal.

A retired Supreme Court justice was quoted saying of her appointment: “They [the government] are inviting a fight.”

Shaked is known to want to deny the Supreme Court the right to overturn laws and to change the judicial appointments system so that right-wing judges dominate.

“The idea of the court as a liberal institution is a myth,” said Daphna Golan, a law professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem specialising in human rights. “It is actually very conservative and rarely protects the rights of Palestinians, whether in the occupied territories or in Israel.”

“But as far as Shaked and the right are concerned, it is too activist and they want to weaken it.”

This week Shaked introduced her first bill as justice minister, setting a 10-year jail tariff for those found guilty of throwing stones. Observers expect the law to be applied only to Palestinians.

Golan said the danger was that, faced with threats from the government, the Supreme Court was becoming ever more loath to uphold human rights, removing yet more democratic protections.

See more at: 

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Sanitising the Merchants of Death

June 12, 2015, 3:38 pm

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A glimpse into the world of Israeli terror.  Israel is one of the largest weapons exporters in the world and unlike most others it can claim that its products have been tested in the real world – against Palestinians.

The promotional video, with the snatches of beaches, Jerusalem and crowds – the subliminal message being that terrorism is ever present and these arms are all that stand between Israel’s civilians and carnage – doesn’t for some reason show where they are tested or provide any glimpses of the death and destruction that they have already brought in their wake.

This of course is western civilisation as we know it – suitably sanitised.  Read the humorous article by an activist who managed to gain entrance.

Tony Greenstein

Micro Drones and Skunk Trucks: A visit to an Israeli weapons expo

Displays at the ISDEFEXPO. (Photo: Sarah Levy)

 It was the perfect juxtaposition. Leaving Bethlehem through Checkpoint 300 in the morning and arriving two hours and four buses later at the ISDEF 2015 weapons expo in Tel Aviv.

At the West Bank checkpoint, I had to wait for nearly an hour, jammed into a mosh pit of more than 80 people, mostly Palestinian men, waiting for Israeli soldiers in cubicles behind tinted glass to decide to unlock the revolving metal door for a few seconds, so that maybe 10 people could rotate their way into the metal detector room. Then the soldiers would lock the gate again, forcing us all to wait, helplessly, needlessly, in nothing more than a theater of power and powerlessness. Again, again, ad nauseam.

Hours later, I’m walking into the Israel Trade Fairs and Convention Center from the back, having missed the main entrance. Without a badge, though dressed in my one fancy shirt in the hopes of fitting in as much as possible, I waltz through the cafeteria and down curtained halls, even into the expo itself, without being stopped or questioned by a soul.

A young man tries out various guns

I call Tal, whom I’d emailed the night before after finding an address on the event website and asking if I could attend the expo as a member of the press. She answers, and we meet, and she tells me that Johanna, a beautiful young French-Israeli woman who looks much more natural in her formal attire than I do, will be my personal guide through the expo.

According to Alex Kane writing for The Intercept:

The fair is put on with the active help and cooperation of the Israeli government, and the ISDEF expo board of advisers is composed of elite former Israeli military officers. The U.S. Department of Commerce is the only foreign governmental body to co-sponsor the event…The country’s weapons industry brought in about $5.6 billion last year, making Israel the eighth largest weapons exporter globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Before we can enter, I need to get a badge. Johanna looks at the long line of “Visitors” waiting to get their nametags and says, “It’ll be quicker over here.” We walk over to the deserted “VIP” table. The woman at the desk asks for my business card, and I fumble, muttering that I must have left it in my other bag. “No worries!” says Johanna to me, confidently. “It’s completely fine.”

I give the desk woman my passport and tell her I’m with Red Wedge magazine, from the U.S. “I just got in last night,” I tell Johanna, without thinking, when she asks if I came straight from the airport. The woman at the desk prints out my badge, sticks a little “VIP” sticker on it, hands it to me, and we’re good to go.

Johanna had been scheduled to accompany the French weapons delegates through the expo, “but they didn’t show up for some reason.” It turns out that a few days earlier, both France and the UK had announced they were boycotting the expo, but nobody had bothered to communicate this to Johanna.

So she was there and jobless, and then for some reason given to the VIP Sarah Levy, representing Red Wedge, an “arts and design magazine.”

Displays at the ISDEFEXPO. (Photo: Sarah Levy)

The first company we talk to is the Israeli ACS-Advanced Combat Solutions, LTD. Johanna introduces me at first, doing most of the talking. The man shows us their product–gun cages–and explains how they work. I’m nervous, but Johanna is into it. At the end, I ask if he thinks there is a benefit to being an Israeli company. “I mean, there’s the name,” he says. “Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad. But our weapons are combat-tested.” I wish I was recording, thank him, and we move on to the next booth.

A couple stations in, I’m confidently speaking for myself. “Shalom! I’m Sarah, and I’m with an arts and design magazine from the U.S.,” I tell each new vendor, propped at their individual booth. “We’re interested in the latest in military design. The ‘art’ of weapons. The latest in defense technology through an ‘arts’ lens…Whatchu got?”

Somehow this works.

Based in Orange County, California, Surefire makes watches, flashlights and magazines–the ones that, unlike Red Wedge, hold bullets. “Most magazines only fire 20 to 30 rounds,” the man boasts. “Ours holds 60. Usually in a shootout, the winner is determined in the first 10 to 15 seconds. With our magazine, while your opponent has to reload, you can keep shooting.”

“Huh,” Johanna and I say.

The man proceeds to show us some self-defense flashlights that he says make more sense for women to carry than pepper spray. “With pepper spray, you have to worry about which way the wind is blowing,” he says. The idea with the flashlight is that it’s so bright that you can blind your attacker for at least 10 seconds, giving you time to get away.

Johanna and I agree that the flashlight is actually kinda cool.

A presentation in “Micro Drones” by a professor at Ariel University. (Photo: Sarah Levy)

It helps to have Johanna. Two young women–fresh air in a sea of middle-aged white men giddy on their guns sales–asking for a rundown of weapons accessories. (The best kind of accessories!) Magazines, headsets, earplugs, flashlights, flashlight watches, drones. And where I might have exuded the slightest air of in-authenticity, Johanna made up for it with her love for Israel.

“I like how I feel safe here,” she tells the stern-looking bald man from OTTO based in Carpentersville, Illinois, which is a suburb of Chicago. “I know that the government and the army are watching out for me.”

The OTTO display at the ISDEFEXPO. (Photo: Sarah Levy)

Johanna’s interjection is a welcome distraction from the awkwardness a minute earlier, when I asked if the men had a new favorite gadget. “Well, yeah!” said the Stern Man’s super-friendly colleague, reaching for a device that looked like a skinny pager attached by a long cord to an iridescent set of ear buds. “It should probably be off the record, though.”

“That’s fine!!” I say. “Please go on!” “No–it has to be off the record,” Stern Man says, glaring at me. I try to make small talk to cover over the budding tension between the two. They look at each other, a brief interchange I can’t decipher. Super-Friendly Man is still holding the device in his hands.

“No, put it away,” says Stern Man. Super-Friendly Man looks a little ashamed. “Yeah, you’re probably right…”

To me: “Let’s just say that some of our clients need to be extremely covert,” says Stern Man.

This is when Johanna saves the moment, like a bus arriving in the nick of time during a torrential shower. “What do you think of Israel?” she asks them. As the Stern Man smiles on, happy to have a beautiful young woman talking to him, Johanna explains that she moved to Israel three years ago from France.

“It’s not safe there, especially for Jews,” she says. “I mean, they just let anyone in, even the Syrians. I tell you, France deserves whatever happens there.”

“I don’t think it’s just France,” Stern Man says, comfortingly.

“What do you both think of Israel?” Johanna asks. “Do you feel safe?”

“Definitely!” both men exclaim. They add that they love it here, even though they’ve only been in the country for about 48 hours, most of which has been spent inside the convention center.

Johanna is satisfied. “People say they don’t want to come here because it’s not safe, but I tell you it’s the safest place in the world–much safer than France,” she says.

We say goodbye, and Stern Man tells Johanna he likes her handshake.

Live demonstration of “urban warfare” with branding. (Photo: Sarah Levy)

We walk down the aisle and past the “VIP lounge” where expo attendees are lounging on cushy white sofas–across from AK-47s and IDF medic displays of fake severed legs–enjoying free booze and cookies.

After sitting through presentations about the latest in robotic warfare, thermo-vision technology, and “rooster” drones–complete with drone demos–I make my way to the live demo of “urban warfare.” This consists of three soldiers making their way through sand scattered on the convention floor and then bursting into a mock Palestinian house, while a man in a suit and tie narrates their escapades.

Now they’re making their way through the neighborhood…wearing gear from Regatta, Surefire, and TL5…They bust into the home! One is shooting out the window–with his Accelerator M16 from IMI Defense and weapons accessories from CAA–while his partner keeps an eye on the door, using his night-vision system from Ogara and laser from Steiner-Optik…Man down! It looks like he’s been shot! Badly! In the leg!…Now they’re carrying him away in a stretcher made by ACS.

Live demonstration of “urban warfare” with branding. (Photo: Sarah Levy)

Live demonstration of “urban warfare” with branding. (Photo: Sarah Levy)

As the crowd clears, one of the convention center’s janitors, an elderly man dressed in a rumpled button-up shirt, quietly sweeps sand scattered during the demonstration back toward the display.

At the end of the day, I sit down amidst a table and a few chairs in an empty display where I’ve found an outlet to charge my phone. On one side of me is an array of pistols, and behind me is a wall with posters of every kind of bullet you can imagine. On the other side of me is a hulking 12-foot-high “skunk truck,” hyped as “the latest in crowd dispersal!”

Palestinians call these massive vehicles “skunk trucks” because they have a water cannon mounted on them, which soldiers use to fire a putrid liquid so powerful that it makes it difficult to breathe and sticks to anything it touches, including human skin, for several days. Soldiers have even doused homes and schools with this nasty stuff.

The latest in “Riot Control Technology”: a skunk truck modeled from BAT is twice the size as the usually are. (Photo: Sarah Levy)

As my phone recharges, and I’m trying to compose an email, two men walk up to me. “Want to do some work, sweetie?” I’m slightly confused and assume they are trying to put away the chairs I’m sitting on.

I ask what they need help with, scrambling to gather my things, assuming I need to move.

They pause, look around and say, “You’re not with [whatever company makes the bullets]?”

I shake my head, and they walk away without apologizing. I think to myself that if I had a penis, they surely would have started with, “Excuse me, do you work here?” rather than “Toots, want to stop being lazy and pay attention to me?”

But this is the ISDEF weapons expo.

Married to a Palestinian - The Journey of an American Jewess Irish Keltz

June 13, 2015, 11:48 am

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48 Years Ago: Commemorating the ’67 War

 Iris Keltz on June 8, 2015

 

East Jerusalem, 1967 From left to right, Ibrahim Khatib, Iris and Faisal Khatib and friends. (Photographer unknown)

 The following includes excerpts from Iris Keltz’s forthcoming book. Unexpected Bride in the Promised Land:

This week marks the 48th year since the ‘67 War. Israeli General Yitzhak Rabin was given the honor of naming the war. Considered possibilities were: The War of the Daring, The War of Salvation, The War of the Sons of Light. Rabin chose The Six Day War evoking thoughts of Genesis, but Israel created a new world in less than six days. With the destruction of the Egyptian Air Force, the war had been won in the first few hours. Palestinians call it the Naksa. For them it turned out to be—another Catastrophe.

In the summer of 1967 I cast my fate to the wind and hitchhiked from Paris to Jerusalem hoping to live on an Israeli kibbutz, but a caprice of fate found me welcomed and married into a Palestinian family within weeks of my arrival in East Jerusalem, Jordan. The likelihood of a Jewish-American woman finding sanctuary with “the enemy of our people” during a war that changed the face of the Middle East was just about zero. My family stressed the Jewish narrative of suffering in a Diaspora that lasted thousands of years, culminating in the Holocaust. On my bat mitzvah, I chanted from the book of Exodus about the Hebrew slaves leaving Egypt with miracles and signs of wonder—ten plagues and the parting of a sea. I read Anne Frank’s diary and prayed the horrors of the Holocaust would pass over the Secret Annex where she hid with her family like the Angel of Death had passed over the homes of the Hebrew slaves.

A two-lane highway cut through the desert between Amman and Jerusalem like a sword. As the jeep I was riding in ascended from the Jordan River Valley, Jerusalem appeared in the distance like a floating fortress. Ancient saw-toothed walls, church steeples, minarets, and a golden dome slowly came into focus. Resting on a ridge of hills running north and south, a Canaanite city-state founded four thousand years ago as an oasis for caravans crossing the Arabian Desert had become a city sacred to the world. Jews have dreamed of returning to Jerusalem ever since the Babylonian exile, but for me it was simply a resting place on my way to an Israeli kibbutz where I expected to be welcomed.

I was ridiculously nonchalant about setting foot in the Old City–– and ignorant. I didn’t know that Jerusalem had been divided in 1948 when Israel was created by the United Nations. Jordanian officials informed me it would take three days to get a visa allowing me to pass through the Mandelbaum Gate into West Jerusalem, Israel, and once my passport had an Israeli stamp, I would never be allowed into an Arab country–– but I didn’t care. From the window of the East Jerusalem youth hostel, I could see the flicker of lights in Israel. A sign posted in English and Arabic read: CAUTION! BORDER AHEAD! DANGER! MINES!

The Damascus Gate in the northern wall of the Old City was a short walk from the hostel. An imperious stone archway ushered me into a world where men dressed in ankle-length white robes and headscarves that protected them from the harsh desert sun. Giddy with discovery, I walked for hours. Donkeys carried burdens along sinewy streets. Women surrounded by mounds of fresh fruits and vegetables gossiped and shouted to passersby while babies nursed at their breasts. Merchandise spilled out of stalls little more than windowless units with corrugated metal doors. Household goods, clothing, jewelry, and tourist trinkets were displayed near trays of fresh baklava, sesame rolls, fruit, nuts, herbs and spices my nose could not identify.

A golden dome crowned with the crescent moon of Islam rose like a second sun over the Ottoman-built walls of Jerusalem. Like a moth drawn to light, I tried to find the golden domed mosque but ended up on a broad cobblestone street in the Christian Quarter. Tourists searching for religious trinkets walked between monks in brown habits and priests in black robes. Shop windows displayed filigreed silver and gold jewelry, olive wood crosses, brass bowls, leather goods, intricate boxes inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and hand-blown glass of unimaginable beauty.  Upon entering one of the shops, a dapper young clerk, speaking the Queen’s English politely asked if I would like a cup of tea, and could he help me find something. I was determined not to be pressured into buying. He asked how long I would be staying in Jerusalem.

“Three days.  I’m waiting for a visa to cross into Israel,” I said, watching for any change in his expression. Not a twitch.

“That’s not enough time. There is so much to see here.” I finally bought a leather shoulder bag engraved with camel caravans and smelled of sheep The clerk whose name was Ahmed invited me to meet his cousins, Samira, Marwan and Faisal. That’s how it all began. When the Khatib family jokingly referred to themselves as the “fearful Palestinians” I had no idea who they were talking about. I had never heard that word before. Growing up, all Arabs were generically referred to as Arabs, meaning those people who want to push the tiny Jewish State into the sea. No context was ever offered. But there was nothing fearful about this family who welcomed me into their home and their life.

Faisal who became my husband three weeks later, was a world traveler, a poet and an inspired oud player. His nimble fingers slid up and down the fretless Middle eastern guitar, its atonal notes sounding like a journey with no end. He offered to be my guide in the city of his childhood. In spite of assuring him that I was not on a religious pilgrimage, Faisal insisted on taking me to the Wailing Wall. “You’re Jewish. You must go to see the Wall.”

I followed him through the streets and back alleys in a city saturated with religious, historical and cultural memories. In the middle of a poor overcrowded neighborhood we got to the Wailing Wall. It was unmarked and unnoticed. No one stopped me from leaning my forehead against the cool stones. With a few exceptions, between 1948 and 1967 Israelis and Jordanians had been forbidden to cross each other’s border because officially a state of war existed between those countries. American passports did not mention religious affiliations, and here I stood alongside a Palestinian who was encouraging me to pray at the sacred wall.

The Temple Mount, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary or Haram al Sharif, was a short walk from the Wailing Wall. Two mosques, built after the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem, have graced either end of the plateau for over 1300 years. The Dome of the Rock was the golden structure I had been drawn to on my first day in Jerusalem. Cobalt tiles imprinted with Quranic verses wrapped around the outside walls of the mosque like a blanket. Faisal secured permission for a non-Muslim to enter. The dome protected a massive sharp-edged black granite stone like a giant womb. Many believe this rock to be the site where Abraham (called Ibrahim by Muslims) almost sacrificed his son Isaac (Muslims believe it was Ishmael), where farmers threshed grain during the reign of King David, and where the Prophet Mohammed departed from earth when he rode his horse to heaven. At Zalatimo’s Sweet Shop, I became addicted to fresh squeezed carrot juice and knafeh, a cheese filled sweet pastry. We left the Old City and walked along Nablus Road to a walled-in garden. Let archeologists decide whether the Garden Tomb or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the true site of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. We didn’t care. I delayed my passage through the Mandelbaum Gate for a few days. 

One day an urgent telegram was waiting for me at the Jerusalem American Express. “War imminent. Stop. Take first boat or plane to Cyprus. Stop. Mom.” My Palestinian hosts believed none of this. We were blissfully ignorant. If I had bothered to read anewspaper, I would have understood the cause of my mother’s alarm. On May 14, 1967, Cairo announced their armed forces were on maximum alert. On May 18, Egypt demanded the recall of all UN troops stationed in the Gaza Strip and the United Arab Republic. Egyptian troops crossed the Suez Canal and took over UN positions in the Sinai. On May 22, the day Faisal and I got married, Egypt closed the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli ships and ships carrying goods to Israel. By the time Faisal and I awoke on June 5, Israeli pilots had effectively destroyed the Egyptian Air Force in a surprise attack lasting less than two hours. Long-range bombers, fighter jets, transport planes, and helicopters, exposed in open-air hangars were bombed like sitting ducks. Israeli pilots were ordered to “destroy and scatter the enemy throughout the desert so that Israel may live, secure in its land, for generations.” They succeeded beyond their dreams.

Radio Amman announced Jordan had been attacked and the “hour of revenge had come.” While Radio Cairo broadcast patriotic music between calls to cross the 1948 Armistice line and liberate Palestine, Israeli tanks were steadily moving through the Sinai. Official Egyptian communiqués falsely claimed their military had downed more than one hundred and fifty Israeli bombers, and Israeli towns were being heavily shelled. International phone lines had been cut and Israel did not contradict these lies.

Faisal and I found sanctuary in his aunt’s basement apartment in Ramallah. We listened to broadcasts from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Israel. If either of us had understood Hebrew, we would have heard an Israeli broadcaster warn, “All of Israel is the front line.” Believing another Holocaust was imminent, Jews from around the world were boarding planes bound for Tel Aviv, ready to defend their precious nineteen-year-old country. I, too, wanted Israel to survive but could not fathom how Faisal and his family posed an existential threat—to me or to Israel. Our greatest fear was a direct hit to the building that sheltered us. The bleating and braying of terrified sheep, goats, and donkeys was heartbreaking. Without their human caretakers, the animals were thirsty and starving. Time was measured by shades of darkness and light. During a period of uneasy silence Faisal described our future honeymoon to Petra. I wondered where I’d be if I had gone through the Mandelbaum Gate––perhaps living on a kibbutz or hiding in an Israeli bomb shelter? Maybe I would have flown to Cyprus or returned to New York? I held imaginary conversations with my mother. “I told you to take the first boat or plane out of there,” she’d say, to which I would humbly reply, “You were right, Mom, I should have left when I had the chance but I discovered that Palestinians are notour enemy. We can live together,” something I hoped to convince her of someday.

On the morning of June 7 we heard the sound of soldiers shouting in Hebrew. We understood Ramallah was being occupied. Fellow survivors implored me to run into the street, wave my American passport and shout, “I’m American. Jewish. These people are my friends. My friends are your friends.” Helmeted soldiers, guns poised, barged into the basement apartment. They searched every room, confirmed we were unarmed, confiscated watches and gold jewelry but didn’t notice the gold wedding band I was hiding with the palm of my right hand. I held my breath until they were gone. My silence at that moment has come to haunt me.

The war was over! We had survived, but the world was irrevocably changed. Instead of being swept into the sea, Israel completed the occupation of historic Palestine. They conquered 42,000 square miles, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula, and Gaza. The 1.3 million Palestinians living in these territories who suddenly came under Israeli military control became Israel’s responsibility. The battle for demographic domination was beginning. Just as Pharaoh had feared that the Israelites would become as numerous as the stars, the Israelis worried about being outnumbered by the Palestinians.

With youthful innocence, I shared life with the Palestinians moments before the curtain of occupation fell. I’m grateful to have seen the Wailing Wall when it was nestled in the heart of the ancient Moroccan Quarter, to have walked through the streets of Hebron with no soldiers in sight and to have experienced village life before the onset of modernization, pollution and occupation. I loved the pristine landscape between Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Ramallah before it was riddled with settlements and checkpoints. It was a borderless, seamless world that welcomed me. Renown Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish once wrote––unfortunately it was Paradise.

Solutions have been put forth––two states, one secular democratic state, a confederation, internationalizing Jerusalem, land exchanges––but solutions lie in a distant future paved with graves and broken families. Whatever compromises are reached, Israelis and Palestinians will remain entangled in each other’s lives. We must learn to empathize with “the other.” Change does not happen with arguable facts and conflicting narratives found in history books. Change starts with the human heart.

See more at:  

‘The Most Moral Army in the World’ Savagely Beats Palestinian Man

June 13, 2015, 1:30 pm

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You can imagine what the soldiers who carried out this beating will face when they meet their commander.  A Police probe with the threat of years imprisonment?   Don’t be silly, they’re not Palestinians.  A blight on their military careers?  Certainly not.  That would be far too harsh.

They will get a smack on the wrists.  And why?  Not because of what they did but because they allowed themselves to be filmed whilst doing it.  Imagine a group of Palestinians who had done this to a soldier.  They would be facing years of imprisonment, torture, beatings and be told that they had ‘blood on their hands.’

But rest assured.  These soldiers will be treated as tainted heroes and warned to ensure that in future, when beating Palestinians, that they take elementary precautions against being filmed.

What was that about ‘a light unto the nations’ Isaiah 49:6

Tony Greenstein

IDF probes beating of unarmed Palestinian man

Video shows man being hit repeatedly by troops during West Bank demonstration; army calls behavior ‘inconsistent with expectations of soldiers’

The Times of Israel Itamar Sharon June 13, 2015, 4:50 pm 17

A Palestinian man is beaten and restrained by IDF soldiers during a violent demonstration in the Jelazoun refugee camp, near Ramallah, on June 12, 2015. (screen capture: Palestine TV)

The Israeli military said Saturday it was investigating the beating of an unarmed Palestinian man by a group of soldiers during a confrontation a day earlier in the Jalazoun refugee camp, near the West Bank town of Ramallah.

In a video of Friday’s incident posted online by Palestine TV, the Palestinian man is seen being repeatedly hit by soldiers, including one soldier who strikes him near the back of the head with the butt of his rifle and another who punches him in the face as he lies helpless on the ground.

The man is initially seen arguing with soldiers, when one of them begins screaming obscenities at him and proceeds to attack and hit him. The man does not back down and scuffles with the troops, and the same soldier then threatens him while continuing to hit him: “One more word and I’ll f*** your mother! One word! Well, talk!”

The video then cuts to the man being surrounded and hit by a group of soldiers. While being restrained by three soldiers, he is hit by a fourth with the butt of a rifle, causing him to fall to the ground. It is unclear in the video whether he is struck in the upper back, the neck or the head. He is then punched in the face by another soldier while on the ground, before his face is pushed into the dirt while the troops appear to cuff him. Later the man is seen being led away by the soldiers.

According to Palestinian sources quoted by Ynet News, the man confronted the army forces due to his anger over his home being used by troops to take cover from stone-throwers, and his family being hit by tear gas.

The army said Saturday it was aware of the incident and was carrying out a thorough investigation of its circumstances, with military sources telling Walla News that soldiers had not reported the violence to their superiors before the video surfaced.

“Those involved will be brought before the brigade commander tomorrow for a continuing inquiry and investigation, and disciplinary action will be taken against them if need be,” the army said in a statement. “According to an initial investigation, it seems the (soldiers’) behavior was inconsistent with that which is expected of IDF soldiers.”

In the video, soldiers at the scene are seen being pelted with rocks by Palestinian demonstrators. It is unclear whether the rock-throwing began before or after the beating of the Palestinian man.

The military said soldiers were attacked by some 50-70 rock throwers in the demonstration at the camp and that one soldier was lightly wounded. The troops used crowd-dispersal means to break up the protest.

Meanwhile, Israel Defense Forces troops on the border of the Gaza Strip shot and wounded a Palestinian man who approached the border fence and did not stop despite warning shots fired in the air, the army said Saturday. The man was shot in the legs and was evacuated by the military to a hospital in Beersheba for medical treatment.

BRUTAL MURDER OF PALESTINIAN

June 16, 2015, 7:59 am

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Palestinian 'left for 3 hours' under Israeli jeep

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian man who was killed by Israeli forces on Sunday in Kufr Malik village near Ramallah was left under an Israeli military jeep for three hours before he died, an eyewitness said.

June 15, 2015 3:19 P.M.)

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- A Palestinian man who was killed by Israeli forces on Sunday in Kufr Malik village near Ramallah was left under an Israeli military jeep for three hours before he died, an eyewitness said.

Nabil Abd al-Karim recounted the details of the incident saying that Abdullah Iyad Ghuneimat, 22, was heading to his work in a poultry farm when Israeli forces shot him in the back and chased him down as he tried to return home.

The jeep then hit Ghuneimat pushing him into a wall that collapsed on him and caused the jeep to overturn on him as well, Abd al-Karim said.

Soldiers vacated the jeep and left Ghuneimat under it with his back crushed and his leg completely severed, he added.

He was left under the jeep for three hours screaming in pain while gas and oil from the jeep dripped over him and the vehicle crushed his body, the witness added.

After three hours of Israeli forces preventing any assistance or medics to come to his aid, residents of the village attacked Israeli soldiers with their bare hands and managed to lift the jeep from over him, but it was too late as Ghunaimat had already died.

His body was taken in an ambulance to the Palestine Medical Complex.

Thousands participated in his funeral which started from his village’s mosque to its graveyard where he was laid to rest.

Participants in the funeral chanted calls for revenge.

His mother, who broke down after hearing the news and received treatment, said her son was executed by Israeli forces in cold blood.

Earlier, an Israeli army spokeswoman said that during army "activities," a "suspicious man" attempted to throw a Molotov cocktail at Israeli forces.

One of the army vehicles swerved and lost control, hitting the Palestinian on the side of the road, she said, referring to the incident as an accident.

She said Israeli emergency services arrived on the scene to treat "everyone" harmed, although she added that she could not confirm Ghanayim's death as he had been attended to by Palestinian medics.

She said the incident was under investigation.

The Death of My Father Rabbi Solomon Greenstein

June 17, 2015, 3:05 pm

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The Death of a Father and a Generation of Working Class Jews

Thursday, 1 December 2011

In the past few weeks I’ve posted fewer articles than normal. That is because my father died in the Royal Liverpool Hospital at approximately 1.00 a.m. on Saturday 21st November.

I was rung up at about 12.30 a.m. by the hospital to tell me that he was dying and I immediately rang my mother, who got into a taxi. I drove up to Liverpool soon after to go straight to the hospital to be with my mother.

Dad was a travelling rabbi and most of the synagogues he ministered to in the provinces have now closed as their Jewish communities have dwindled to virtually nothing. Southport, Stoke-on-Trent, Coventry (which may still be going), Merthyr Tydfil and then Birkenhead, across the Mersey from Liverpool and Fairfield which was his last synagogue.

I had been up to Liverpool about 3 weeks previously when it was feared he might not last but my younger brother Jonathan managed to get him transferred from a care home to hospital where a drip could be put in. I won’t bother describing the attitude of these people to the elderly except that people go there essentially to die and the homes see their job as palliative – making people ‘comfortable’ rather than seeing whether they may be able to have a few extra years. I don’t want to be maudlin. Dad was 99 which is a good age by any measure and was in pretty good health until the mid-90’s.

With all this discussion about Jewish identity these days I thought maybe I should also chip in!I am fairly unusual among anti-Zionist Jews in that I come from an Orthodox Religious Zionist background. I had broken effectively with Zionism by the age 16, but maybe the formative break with my father was when I was 14 I declared I was an atheist, not something that goes down too well with the Orthodox, of whatever faith.

It would be pointless to say we were close, having seen each other relatively little over the past few years. We had argued ferociously when I was younger and I left home at 18. Nonetheless I shed some tears seeing what had been a strong, aggressive man lying so weak and helpless on his bed. I also couldn’t help but wonder why it was always impossible to pierce beneath the exterior.

I guess that I learnt something of how to be a good parent from my father, even if it was the opposite of how he would have behaved.But he was also in the tradition of the old bible belt preachers, with a gun in one hand and the bible in the other. I can remember in the Stoke shul my dad threatening to take one of the congregants outside, and not for a breath of fresh air either! I must confess I didn’t know about his boxing until I read the obituary below but it doesn’t surprise me. There were a few other, similar incidents, about which I shall not write about.

Needless to say dad fell out with most of the synagogues and move on after a while.Dad grew up in the East End and he described to me on a number of occasions what it was like living with the violence and thuggery of Moseley’s British Union of Fascists. He described one kid to me who had been put through a plate glass window by the fascists and he was proud of having been present at the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, when the fascists were prevented from marching through the East End. He hated anti-Semitism but he didn’t see that racism was wrong whoever was the target. Nonetheless he always voted Labour since he remembered Tory support for anti-Semitism in the East End, though he forgot that the small English Zionist Federation backed those Tories in the 1900 General Election.

I can remember visiting with him two of his sisters - Jessie and Lottie - in the East End. They both lived in poverty and squalor, the former in particular. It is often forgot now by Jews who live in Edgware or Golders Green that not so long ago most Jews lived in great poverty. Instead of being sub-Thatcherites they solidly voted for the Left and in Mile End in 1945 it was the Jewish voters primarily who put Phil Piratin, 1 of only 2 communist MP's elected as such in Britain, into parliament.We had many arguments as can be imagined. And also some good times on holiday. One or two things are too personal but I can remember dad always had a sticky wrapped sweet in his pocket!I can also remember dad bailing me out of Walton gaol in Liverpool back in 1972. I’d been done, hitching back from the Windsor pop festival, for possession of dope and received a fine of £30 or 28 days in prison from an austere London magistrate. When I said I didn’t have the money to pay he looked up from his glasses and said ‘Well get a job then’. Presumably members of his class didn’t understand that Liverpool then and now had high unemployment.

I was picked up in a raid on a squat and dad was quite content to let me serve out the sentence. Unfortunately the local rabbi was doing his rounds and on coming across me immediately informed my parents. It was one thing having me languish in a Victorian prison, but quite another letting anyone in the Jewish community find out! Dad was no intellectual nor did he have any pretensions to the contrary, unlike many of today’s rabbis. He did however have a good memory. He knew the whole of the Torah (Pentateuch) by heart. Dad had a good innings and fought to live to the end. And for all living creatures death is the end.

The funeral was held on Tuesday 24th November in the Jewish cemetry.
Tony Greenstein

Minister was a champion boxer
Jewish Telegraph– Liverpool Edition – 25.11.11.

REV Solomon Greenstein, who was minister of the old Fairfield synagogue at the time of its closure, died on Shabbat, aged 99.

He also taught at King David High School and worked as a shochet.
Born in Whitechapel in London's East End in 1912, he was the son of Polish immigrants Rabbi Alter Natan Greenstein and Fayge Rivka.

He studied at the prestigious Etz Chaim yeshiva for seven years and followed his father into the ministry, although in his schooldays he was a keen sportsman, being a champion swimmer and boxer.

He also loved chazanut and studied for a time with the acclaimed chazan Herman Bornstein, of Princes Road Synagogue.

In 1952 he married Esther (nee Mechulam), a primary school teacher from Wallasey who had been active in the local Bnei Akiva.

The couple settled in London, but moved to Merseyside in 1965 when Rev Greenstein was appointed minister to the now defunct Birkenhead Synagogue in Balls Road.
He served as a hospital chaplain and was introduced to the Queen at the opening of Arrowe Park hospital.

After retiring, Rev Greenstein was able to indulge in his passion for painting by attending night classes and he also enjoyed listening to music.

His son Jonny, who lives in Jerusalem, said: "Dad was scrupulously observant, putting on tallit and tephillin every morning even into his 90s when he needed help.
"A week before he died I asked him what he wanted and he replied 'kiddush' which shows how much Judaism meant to him."

Rabbi Malcolm Malits, Allerton Synagogue's emeritus minister, said: "Rev Greenstein was very knowledgeable and we were colleagues at King David.

"He must have been a good shochet because he once worked at Cardiff under the watchful eye of the renowned Rabbi Ber Rogosnitzky - if he was good enough for him, that was quite a compliment."

Dr Eric Toke, former chairman of Fairfield Hebrew Congregation, said: "Rev Greenstein was a charming man who did everything he could to help the congregation and I remember his interesting and illustrative sermons."

Rev Greenstein is survived by Esther, sons Anthony, who lives in Brighton, Jonny, David, who lives in Prestwich, 10 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

One of his grandchildren, 17-year-old Tamar Greenstein, recently performed in London with the Jerusalem Conservatory Orchestra.

While in the UK her piano trio was invited to perform at the Yehudi Menuhin school and at the home of renowned virtuoso Murray Perahia.

Posted by Tony Greenstein at 03:41