ALSO - A Roundup of Life in the ‘Only Democracy in the Middle East’ and the attack of 4 Border Police Thugs on a 16 Year Old Palestinian Boy
Readers of this blog may know that about 6 months ago I was forced to moderate comments, not because I want to prevent people who I disagree with posting but because a foul mouthed Zionist, who is clearly psychologically disturbed, who began posting a series of vile posts in which he carries on an imaginary conversation with me.
The latest comment of his takes pleasure in the murder of 5 Palestinian youth in Nablus this week by the Israeli Occupation Forces. I post a number of his comments to demonstrate the depths of sickness of some Zionist minds.
It is clear that this freak, lacking anyone to converse with, has taken refuge in an imaginary conversation with me. The chore of deleting his idiotic comments, in addition to having to sift out genuine comments from the abusive, mean that I would like, if possible to be able to block the nutter through his ISP.
It has been suggested that he might be Paul Besser, former Intelligence Officer (despite being anything but intelligent) for the neo-Nazi Britain First. Jonathan Hoffman, the former Zionist Federation Vice-President is a friend of him and he operates in the netherworld of Zionist supporters of the EDL and Tommy Robinson.
Nutter’s comments do though given an insight into the sickness that infects so many Zionist minds. He protests the killing of civilians in the Ukraine and Iran but rejoices over the murder of civilians by Israel or ‘the Jews’ as this racist would have it. He also adopts the persona of other activists like Asa Winstanley in an effort to fool me.
Not being technically minded I thought I’d make the problem public.
My apologies for not having posted a blog in the past week. There are two reasons for this. Firstly I am engaged in the final preparations for the issue of my book Zionism During the Holocaust and secondly I am working on a long blog on Al Jazeera’s Labour Files which has necessitated me watching all four episodes again and taking notes.
A Roundup of Life in the ‘Only Democracy in the Middle East’
Israeli and Palestinian flags waved at demonstrations at Ben-Gurion University in the southern city of Be'er Sheva, in May.Credit: Eliyahu Hershkovitz
There are so many stories about the iniquities of the world’s only apartheid state that it is sometimes hard to know where to start. A good place might be the contempt that Israeli universities have for freedom of speech when it comes to Palestinian students.
Watan Madi, a member of the Communist Party of Israel, Hadash, has been found guilty of the heinous crime of quoting the word ‘Martyr’from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, the Palestinian national poet. The idea that Palestinians have martyrs as opposed to being terrorists is something that Israeli universities have difficulties understanding.
So when someone complains about the Academic Boycott you can tell them that as long as Israeli universities are complicit in Israeli apartheid and its military occupation so long will they be the target of Boycott. The complaint against Watan was made by Im Tirzu, a group which even the Jerusalem District court foundto be fascist. See:
Student Convicted of Disobeying Campus Authorities Over Mahmoud Darwish Quote
The exterior of ruruHaus, one of the venues hosting documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany, June 16, 2022. (Baummapper/CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)
Uniting behind Palestinians, German art festival hits back at antisemitism charges
There is also a good article in Israel’s +972 Magazine about a pushback against attempts in Germany to ban Palestinian artists from an art festival documenta fifteen.
One of the ironies of politics in Germany today is that it is the neo-Nazis who are the most ardent supporters of Zionism. The German state itself, is eager to offload its guilt over the Holocaust onto the Palestinians by painting the victims of Israeli ethnic cleansing as no better than Nazis.
Perhaps someone can remind German politicians that when Hitler was in power the policy of the Nazis was to single out the Zionist movement, which represented no more than 2% of German Jews, for favourable treatment. So the present day demonisation of Palestinians by the German state and their support for Zionist attacks on Palestinians are really no different from the policy of Hitler!
Curators and artists at the renowned documenta fifteen exhibition faced a torrent of denunciations, including from German officials, for hosting Palestinian collectives and exhibits on Palestine solidarity.
By Hebh JamalOctober 24, 2022
For months prior to opening day, documenta fifteen— the 15th edition of one of the world’s largest art festivals — had been the subject of a major smear campaign by the German media. Held from June 18 until Sept. 25 in Kassel, Germany, the festival’s organizers were accused of antisemitism, primarily relating to issues around Palestine-Israel, leading many artists involved to believe the quinquennial exhibition was doomed from the very start.
Art on display at documenta fifteen, Kassel, Germany, June 17, 2022. (Birte Fritsch/CC BY 2.0)
While Palestine-Israel played a marginal role in the months-long exhibition, Ruangrupa faced a torrent of criticism, including from German political officials, for showcasing allegedly antisemitic collectives, as well as pressure to shut down an exhibit by Palestinian artists.
Protestor holding a sign against the far-right party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Berlin. June 9, 2018. (Hossam el-Hamalawy/Flickr)
Bloodstains and Destruction at This Palestinian Home Tell the Whole Story
I am also copying an article from Gideon Levy and Alex Levac in Ha’aretz. The home of a Palestinian living in East Jerusalem was raided by 4 thugs from the Border Police. They wanted to arrest a 16 year old boy, Shadi Khoury who was living with his parents.
The boy asked them to leave while he got dressed and this was the cue for a vicious assault on him by 4 grown adults equipped with batons etc.
The Police, when contacted by Ha’aretz of course had their lies already prepared:
The suspect was arrested on suspicion of his involvement in a serious violent event in which Jewish vehicles were attacked and stoned in Beit Hanina last week. During his arrest, [which was backed] by a court order, he attacked the police officers with his fists and by kicking, and he pushed, went wild and tried actively to prevent the execution of the arrest.
And if you believe that then I’m a Martian. Note the term ‘Jewish vehicles’. It’s the first time that vehicles have been know to adopt a religion!
The Jerusalem Magistrates Court, which regularly frees on bail Jewish terrorists accused of attacking Palestinians bought this Police story wholesale and continued to remand Shadi in custody.
Jeremy Corbyn, in one of his more idiotic statements, praised the separation of the judiciary from the legislature in Israel. The reality is that there is no separation. Israeli courts have always been a rubber stamp for Zionist land theft and the military repression of the Palestinians.
Israel’s thuggish Border Police raided the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina to arrest Shadi Khoury. When the 16-year-old refused to disrobe in their presence, he was beaten in front of his parents, then taken away. No one told the parents – who both run local cultural institutions – why their son was arrested
Shadi Khoury's mother, Raina. He began screaming as he was beaten. His mother tried intervening: "He’s a boy, give him two minutes to get dressed." Nothing helped. Credit: Alex Levac
Blotches of blood streak the spacious, elegant mansion. Wherever the police dragged their victim, he left behind a narrow trail of drops of blood, drop after drop, as though to mark the path of the arrest and the beatings. The boy screamed; the neighbors heard his shouts and were terrified.
Beit Hanina is an affluent and relatively quiet neighborhood, and it’s not every day that violent events like this occur there. The youth involved, Shadi Khoury, lives with his parents and older brother in a family compound on a street that bears the name of one of the family’s forebears, Yusuf Khoury, the engineer who founded the street and this handsome group of homes on the northern slopes of Jerusalem.
Everything is stained with blood. The rug in his room, the marble floor in the corridor, the stairs, the yard, the garden and the street, even a paper ticket on his table is bloodied.
When we arrived, a few hours after Shadi’s brutal arrest, this past Tuesday, the blood hadn’t yet dried and the family was distraught. Shadi Khoury, 16, an 11th-grader at the Quakers Friends School in Ramallah, was forcibly taken into custody, barefoot and in his pyjamas. When the police ordered him to get dressed, he refused to disrobe in front of them and requested them to leave him momentarily in his room, whose windows are barred. In response, the officers started to beat him savagely – four hooligans in black, hunched over a terrified youth and pounding him with their fists, on his head, his face, his chest. All while his parents watched, appalled, unable to come to the aid of their son. Imagine if it was your children.
Early Tuesday morning, I got a phone call from Lora Khoury, a 91-year-old woman who reads Haaretz and occasionally calls to comment, but who this time was overcome with emotion. Her neighbors’ son – they are her relatives – had been arrested before dawn, and she heard his screaming in her home, a luxurious structure a few houses away from theirs.
“They come to make an arrest, so why do they hit people? What kind of army and what kind of police did you create for yourselves?” she asked in her excellent English. When we arrived, this elegant woman was waiting for us at the entrance to her house and she led us to Shadi’s home. This is an attractive compound of several stone homes owned by the extended Khoury family and other families, amid well-tended gardens and paths, shaded by pine and olive trees. The wealth and the stylishness are apparent, but understated.
The way to Shadi’s room is dotted with his blood, and the room itself is in a state of chaos following the violent police search. Everything is scattered on the floor in this teenager’s room – clothes, books, among them textbooks about film, history and literature; the posters have been ripped from the walls. The raiders hurled the standing fan and mattress onto the floor, and then jumped on the wooden bed frame until it broke, according to the parents who were present.
In the living room is a large library, the furniture is European in design, refined. A framed, American-style wedding photo stands on a chest; it was taken at the wedding of Shadi’s sister, Zeina, in the Catholic church in Jericho, three years ago. Shadi is standing on the right, in a black suit and a bow tie. He’s the youngest child of Rania, the director of the Gideon Levy and Alex Levac in Ha’aretz Jerusalem Magistrates Court, Jeremy Corbyn, Beit Hanina Yusuf Khoury, Quakers Friends School in Ramallah Lora Khoury, Jericho, Yabous Cultural Center in East Jerusalem, and Suhail, a composer and musician and the general director of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music, also in East Jerusalem (it also has another four branches). The couple have three other children: another son, Yusuf, 18, who this year began architecture studies at Bir Zeit University; and two daughters – Rand, 21, a musician who is a veterinary student in Hungary; and Zeina, a musician who is the director of the Palestine Youth Orchestra and is holding her newborn baby when we visit.
On Monday this week, Shadi went to sleep around 11 P.M. “He has school,” his mother says. “Had school,” a relative corrects her. Everyone in this house, whether elderly or young, speaks fluent English.
At 5:45 A.M. on Tuesday the family awoke to pounding on the door and incessant ringing of the doorbell. Together with their German shepherd, the parents, in their pajamas and groggy with sleep, opened the door, with Shadi and Yusuf standing behind them. The callers were six black-clad, armed police officers, who ordered them to remove the dog. They had smashed the parking barrier on their way into the compound and had tried to get to the main entrance of the house, but it is accessible only with an entry code, so they came in from the back, entering the stairwell.
“Who is Shadi?” they asked. “You? Yalla, you’re under detention.”
They told the family to take them to Shadi’s room, into which the men in black now squeezed, along with the teenager and his parents. Suhail asked to see an arrest warrant; they showed him a document in Hebrew, which he can’t read. “And do you have a search warrant?” he asked. One of the officers in black replied, “We have a warrant for everything.” The parents tried to argue that the 16-year-old had the rights of a minor, to which the reply was, “We know the law. Don’t teach us.’
They demanded Shadi’s cell phone, he said he would give it to them but wouldn’t unlock it. They then ordered Shadi to get dressed in order to be taken into custody, but before putting on his underwear he had to take off his pajamas. He refused to undress in their presence. The officers began shouting, before knocking Shadi to the floor, at which point four of them began to pummel him. Four against one.
Shadi started to scream, they went on beating him. His mother tried to intervene: “He’s a boy, give him two minutes to get dressed.” Nothing helped.
He was dragged outside, in his bare feet. On the street were Border Police vehicles and other officers. Shadi hands were bound behind his back, and he was blindfolded with a rag – standard procedure. He went on screaming. His parents are certain the officers went on hitting him in the vehicle.
It’s not clear where he bled from, but later that morning the stains and drops remained everywhere. The force left with their booty. They told the parents that they were taking him to the detention facility in the Russian Compound, in downtown Jerusalem. Suhail left immediately in the wake of his son; Rania was afraid to go outside – she doesn’t have a residency permit in her city.
On July 22, 2020, units of the Israel Defense Forces had invaded the two cultural institutions that Suhail and Rania manage, confiscated equipment and shut them down. That was preceded by the arrest of the two parents in their home – the same house they raided this week to detain their son. The couple were released after being questioned about the cultural centers they run and their sources of financing, but Rania’s temporary-residency permit, which she received within the framework of a family unification request, was revoked, and since then she has been waging a legal struggle to remain in her home.
Rania was born in Bethlehem, and since 1998 she has been living in Jerusalem with her husband and children, on a temporary permit. She appealed the cancellation of the permit through the Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, and her expulsion was suspended until the conclusion of legal proceedings. Now she’s reluctant even to go into the street, fearing she will be expelled. She can’t visit her family in Bethlehem, because she might not be allowed back in, and they can’t visit her, because they don’t have entry permits for Jerusalem. After the interrogation and the shuttering of the institutions – they have since reopened – Suhail wrote an article and posted it in the social media with the headline, “We love Beethoven.”
Shadi Khoury.Credit: Courtesy of the family
A police spokesperson this week stated in response to a query from Haaretz:
“This is what a distorted description of reality looks like. The suspect was arrested on suspicion of his involvement in a serious violent event in which Jewish vehicles were attacked and stoned in Beit Hanina last week. During his arrest, [which was backed] by a court order, he attacked the police officers with his fists and by kicking, and he pushed, went wild and tried actively to prevent the execution of the arrest.
“The members of his family who were in the house at the time also tried to thwart execution of the arrest. As a result of the suspect’s grave and unacceptable behavior, the police officers were compelled to use force in order to subdue him, stop the attack on them and complete the execution of the arrest. Following his arrest he was taken for questioning by the police, and he will be brought to court for a remand and for the full course of the law to be taken against him.”
One’s heart goes out to the naïve and innocent guys in black from the Israel Police. A boy of 16 “attacked” them, they say – and his father, the composer, and his mother, who runs a cultural center, also joined in. And maybe Lora, the elderly neighbor and relative, also took part in the wild attack on the keepers of the law. A brief acquaintance with the occupants of this house is sufficient to grasp how ludicrous the claims of the police are.
Around dusk on Tuesday, Shadi was ordered remanded for 48 hours. All that day his father stood on the street, outside “Room No. 4,” the notorious interrogation facility in the Russian Compound in downtown Jerusalem, to which Shadi was taken.
When asked on Thursday for an update on her son’s situation, Raina Khoury reported that her husband and the other children had had been in court that day when Shadi’s detention was extended through Sunday, a decision his lawyer is appealing. “I’ll keep you posted,” she said.