To demand that Palestinians – living under Israeli military rule – negotiate with their occupier and oppressor is akin to demanding that a hostage negotiate with their hostage taker. It is repugnant that the world demands that Palestinians negotiate their freedom, while Israel continues to steal Palestinian land. Instead, Israel should have faced sanctions for continuing to deny Palestinians their freedom while building illegal settlements.
Twenty-five years ago this month, on the White House lawn, the lives of a generation of Palestinians changed forever when the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, shook hands with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. That handshake marked the start of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, with promises of a new era of peace, freedom and prosperity.
25 years later, Palestinians are no closer to freedom, as Israel has further entrenched, rather than lessened, its now 51-year military occupation.
Like countless others at the time, I was optimistic that the negotiations would finally lead to Palestinian liberty as promised and based on this, I decided to move to the West Bank to work as a legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team. During that period, I met with countless diplomats, worked on scores of proposals and even began a house-to-house campaign to speak to Israelis about ending Israel’s military rule.
But while I and others worked to end occupation others worked to entrench it, including the Israeli government and its settlers: within the first seven years after the negotiations began, Israel used incentives to nearly double its settler population. Today, the settler population is more than three times the size it was in 1993, with nearly 700,000 settlers living in the West Bank.
Back in 1993, settlements were, for the most part, confined to hilltops, with Israeli settlers considered to be fringe. Far from being ostracized, today, some Israel’s largest cities are settlements, settlers have taken over homes in the heart of Palestinian towns and settlers command positions on the Israeli cabinet and on the Supreme Court. In short, settlers are the norm, not the exception. Today, Israeli settlers speak openly about annexing the West Bank or expelling Palestinians.
I am often asked why the negotiations process failed. It is easy to point to the rise of right-wing Israeli governments, poor leadership or weak or uninterested U.S. presidents. But the real reason for failure lie beyond these factors.
It is because the parties should not have started negotiating in the first place.
To demand that Palestinians – living under Israeli military rule – negotiate with their occupier and oppressor is akin to demanding that a hostage negotiate with their hostage taker. It is repugnant that the world demands that Palestinians negotiate their freedom, while Israel continues to steal Palestinian land. Instead, Israel should have faced sanctions for continuing to deny Palestinians their freedom while building illegal settlements.
Twenty-five years later, rather than living the joys of freedom, we mark each day, by thinking about how to maneuver the maze of Israel’s more than 500 checkpoints, put in place to accommodate Israeli settlements, just to be able to get to work or to school. A 25 year-old in the West Bank has likely never been able to visit the sea – a few miles away – while a 25 year-old in Gaza has never been able to leave the Gaza Strip, to visit friends and family in the West Bank and Jerusalem or even abroad.
It isn’t just movement of people that is affected. Palestinians have not been able to take advantage of technological progress for “security reasons” for example, as cancer treatment advances throughout the world, Palestinian hospitals are barred from acquiring radiation equipment. Even our postal system remains hostage to Israel’s whims.
But, rather than recognize the mistake of negotiations, the world continues to demand that we continue the facade even though negotiations irrevocably broke down more than a decade ago. The negotiations process has, in effect, served as cover for the world to do nothing – while giving Israel the cover to build and expand settlements.
If peace is to be achieved, it must entail costs – and this time, not shouldered by the Palestinians. Rather, Israel must receive the strong message, the first in its history, that settlements will no longer be tolerated but rather reversed, and that Palestinians must be free.
I am under no illusions that the Trump Administration will put into place such sanctions. While previous administrations tried to maintain a semblance that they were helping “both sides,” Trump has come decidedly in support of Israel’s right-wing pro-settler movement.
Whether by declaring Jerusalem as Israel’s capital or by attempting to extinguish the right of return, President Trump has shown that his “deal of the century” will undoubtedly accommodate Israeli settlements, take away Palestinian rights and reward Israeli wrongs. The closure of the PLO office in Washington D.C. this week is yet another check on Israel’s wish list.
For Israel and its supporters, the past 25 years have been a victory. With Trump at the helm, Israel’s settlers are at an all-time high, Palestinians are confined to bantustans and the U.S. is cracking down on Palestinians for demanding their freedom.
But this short-term fix has long-term implications. While Oslo changed the lives of a generation of Palestinians, this generation and the next have certainly learned its lessons: that negotiating is futile, and that our rights cannot be compromised. With this, it is only a matter of time before we begin struggling for equal rights in a single state, rather than press for statehood.
On the 31st of October 1917 the British took Beer Sheva and started to make their way towards Jerusalem.
In the upcoming days the raids and the fighting in the area intensified, and the residents decided to leave their homes until the situation quietened down .They rented rooms in the nearby Arab village. This did not help Yellin, who took his kettle with him. At nights, the soldiers appeared in the village, and forced the woman whose home he was staying at to give them his biggest cow. The frightened woman woke the whole village.
The fear of the soldiers united the Arab villagers and their Jewish guests and they decided to send a delegation of two Arab women and two Jewish women (the men were mostly army deserters), to the military governor in Dir Yassin, and ask for the Army’s protection. But this did not end their plight. On 12th December, the Turkish army issued an evacuation order from Motza and its nearby Arab villages.
The area was defined as a military zone and all residents were to leave in twelve hours in order to make way for the great battle between the Turks and the British planned for the 3rd of December. “You can imagine”, Yellin addresses his readers, “the great confusion and commotion among the residents. Neither of us slept a wink all night”.
To dispossess a people, steal their land, demolish their buildings and then complacently inhabit the confiscated space in reciprocal view of the victims requires a carefully cultivated myopia apparent at all levels of Israeli discourse.
“Israel’s” early leaders saw the Hashemite entity as both a buffer between Israel and the rest of the Arab world, and a state that could absorb those Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled during the Zionist invasion of 1948 and the Six Day war in 1967.
Amman (AFP) – Jordan’s King Abdullah II firmly rejects the idea of a confederation with the Palestinians in the place of a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict, the royal court said Wednesday.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas told activists Sunday that White House aides Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt had proposed the idea of a confederation with Jordan, one of the activists said.
Hagit Ofran of Israel’s Peace Now NGO reported Abbas as saying he had told the US officials, who are working on a peace plan, that he would only be interested if Israel was also part of such a confederation.
Abbas’s office confirmed the meeting with Israeli peace activists had taken place, but did not confirm his comments on the confederation.
Neighbouring Jordan, along with most of the international community, has long supported a two-state solution to the long-running conflict.
“Every year we hear about a confederation. My question is: a confederation with whom? This is a red line for Jordan,” King Abdullah said, according to a palace statement.
“Jordan’s position is firm and steadfast: there is no alternative to the two-state solution and the establishment of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital,” he said.
Israel is an imperial outpost, an extension of Wall Street and the City of London in the Middle East. That’s the origin of “Israel.”
“Any proposal outside this framework has no value.”
Palestinians see the idea of a confederation as destroying their long-held dream of a state.
But some on the Israeli right see the establishment of a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation as a way to avoid the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
They argue that it would also absolve Israel of any responsibility towards the 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank, currently under Israeli military occupation.
The Palestinian Authority severed contact with Washington after President Donald Trump recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December.
In response, Trump said in January he would cut aid to the Palestinians in order to push them back to the negotiating table.
The US said Friday it would cease all funding to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) which helps some three million needy refugees across the Middle East.
Palestinian leaders see these moves as part of an effort to “liquidate” their cause.
“Israel” doesn’t need interference with it’s genocidal occupation, interference from outside forces only serves to prolong it’s dealing with the outside looky loos and BDS while they systematically terrify and eliminate Palestine and the Palestinians.
Jerusalem, Palestine (AFP) – Israel’s “defense” minister said Monday that negotiations with Palestinians on the situation in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank were pointless and that the country should act unilaterally.
Avigdor Lieberman’s remarks came as Egypt and the United Nations were working to forge a lasting ceasefire between Gaza rulers Hamas and Israel after months of tensions and violence.
“I’m aware of all the negotiations and all the mediators and everything going on there,” he said at a Jerusalem conference, in remarks relayed by his office.
“The negotiations, regardless of whether they’re on Ramallah or Gaza, won’t lead us anywhere,” he said.
“All the negotiations have led us to a dead end, therefore we need to act on the Palestinian issue — regarding Ramallah and Gaza — unilaterally, and define the reality unilaterally, according to our understanding,” Lieberman said.
The outspoken minister reiterated the strategy of enabling more commerce and travel in and from the blockaded Gaza Strip in return for a decrease in militant activity from the Palestinian enclave and clashes along the border.
“The average Gazan concerned about his livelihood and how to feed his family must understand that whoever participates in terror activity harms his livelihood,” he said.
“Security quiet brings economic benefits.”
There have been months of tension along the border and several military-flare ups, but recent weeks have seen relative calm.
Palestinian militants in Gaza and Israel have fought three wars since 2008.
Israel was founded by debased and filthy people. It is maintained by debased and filthy people. These debased and filthy people run the lives of the Palestinian people who are normal folks, but the Western pubic is deceived into thinking it’s the other way around.
July 31, 2018
The ring is known to locals as “little Israel”.
The bust over the weekend followed months of surveillance. Authorities said that it was one of the biggest operations to combat child sex trafficking and forced prostitution in Cartagena. In a statement, the attorney general’s office described the victims as “real slaves of the 21st century”.
Colombia will ask the United States, Germany and Argentina to extradite alleged sex offenders, the South American country’s prosecution said Monday.
The two Americans, one German and one Argentine allegedly paid for sex with girls under 14 in Cartagena, a popular tourist destination where authorities claimed to have dismantled a child prostitution ring run by Israelis.
The four foreigners are accused of having sought sex with minors and were already put on Interpol’s Blue Notice list that seeks to establish the exact location of the suspected child molesters.
The extradition request, however, is a novelty; never before did Colombian authorities seek the extradition of alleged sex offenders. Alleged sex offenders have previously been expelled from the country.
Israelis Busted Running Massive Child Prostitution Ring In Colombia
Whether the US, Germany and Argentina will effectively extradite their citizens depends on local authorities that will examine each case individually.
The foreigners could face prison sentences of up to 37.5 years, the prosecution said.
The extradition requests followed a major operation in Cartagena, which has been plagued by sex predators from both Colombia and abroad that seek to exploit children from the Caribbean city’s impoverished neighborhoods.
The US State Department said in 2012 that Cartagena and Medellin had become popular destinations for sex predators.
Both cities have traditionally had lively sex industries that catered locals and have become popular among foreign “mongers” and pedophiles.
Local NGOs and church organizations have been calling for actions against the growing phenomenon of child prostitution for years.
Israel is an imperial outpost, an extension of Wall Street and the City of London in the Middle East. That’s the origin of “Israel.”
In effect, after having taken the Jerusalem question off the table, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty there, the (Zionist*) Trump White House is now going to remove from the table the other bone of contention between the two sides – namely the legal* right of return of Arab refugees to the homes their grandparents had fled in 1948 from the table.
In the coming days, the Trump administration is expected to announce a new policy that effectively cancels the Palestinian right of return, Israel’s Channel 2 News reported Saturday night. The new plan is expected to include a number of measures aimed primarily at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
The new plan is expected to be published at the beginning of September, when the White House will issue its policy regarding the refugee organization, in a few stages.
First, the US will issue a report contesting the official number of Palestinian refugees, claiming there were only about half a million of them (that might have been a mistake in the news report, adding an extra zero, as estimates are now that only 50,000 original refugees are left), compared with more than five million according to UNRWA.
Israeli regime has always been in the process of systemically eliminating refugees.
The Trump administration is also expected to announce that it rejects the definition of UNRWA, which is reserved only for Palestinian refugees, who inherit their refugee status from their parents.
Another phase will be to stop the budget for UNRWA in Judea and Samaria (occupied Palestine* ). In that context, the Americans are also expected to ask Israel to reconsider the mandate it awards UNRWA to operate in Judea and Samaria (occupied Palestine*), in order to prevent Arab countries from transferring the money the US will be withholding from the organization.
The news report comes just hours after a State Department official said the United States would redirect more than $200 million earmarked for economic aid to the PA and Gaza to projects elsewhere.
Channel 2 cited official in Jerusalem who see the reported move as yet another historic (illegal*) step by President Trump and his (Zionist*) team, who continue to recognize reality in the Middle East as it is. In effect, after having taken the Jerusalem question off the table, recognizing Israel’s sovereignty there, the (Zionist*) Trump White House is now going to remove from the table the other bone of contention between the two sides – namely the right of return of Arab refugees to the homes their grandparents had fled in 1948 from the table.
Consider those two main obstacle in every peace negotiation gone – now let’s talk.
The National Security Council on Saturday issued a statement saying “the administration will announce its policy regarding UNRWA at an appropriate time.”
During the operation ‘Cast Lead’ a Gaza individual made a video of the oncoming onslaught of Israeli attack at dawn. I viewed it a few times…then went back to it sometime after. The page was replaced with disgusting Israeli porn. Israeli porn is the worst! The “Israelis” are deranged and intrusive to the Palestinians in every way anyone can think of and then some. They are a disgusting people, scum of the earth.
I like what Katin has brought to the topic of The Israeli invasion of every aspect of Palestinian life. As an annual visitor to Palestine,(the occupied territories and Jerusalem and Jordan) I have never witnessed any such teachings or witnessed one of these ridiculous TV shows. It doesn’t exist.
Anyone believing in the existence of the Martyrs’ Brigades should have expected a wild showdown between these holy warriors and the IDF in the streets of Gaza during these two weeks of ground conflict. But the Al-Aqsa Brigades were totally absent from the fighting! The mysterious masked men made no appearances whatsoever and the IDF lost only 12 soldiers (several to friendly fire.) The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades are a false front staged by Israeli intelligence services, and anything connected with them–such as these bizarre children’s television shows–are hoaxed as well.
In the spring of 2002, the Israeli military had the Palestinian town of Ramallah under siege. The IDF had captured three of the four Palestinian television stations. While in control of these media outlets, the Israeli military implemented a very disturbing plan: they began broadcasting pornographic movies to the Palestinian households. For those who are familiar with the tactics frequently used by Israel against the Palestinian people, such a thing will come as no surprise. And they have done far worse. Yet, there’s something especially twisted about this event.
Predictably, a spokesman for the IDF flatly denied that the military was involved in this and went so far as to blame Arafat for the broadcasts. This was a blatantly ridiculous statement, as the television stations broadcasting the pornography were occupied by Israeli forces at the time. An Israeli spokesman for the Foreign Ministry admitted that this was “shameful,” and said, “I cannot believe Israeli soldiers would engage in such despicable behavior.” Perhaps he was partially correct and this wasn’t simply a random prank executed by a few “Israeli soldiers.”
In fact, I find this explanation difficult to believe. This was more likely part of a larger propaganda campaign involving media personnel acting on authorization which went beyond the basic ground troops. After this demonstration of media manipulation by the Israelis, it’s reasonable to suspect a great many things which supposedly appear on “Palestinian television” as being part of a larger disinformation campaign used against the Palestinian people. Here in the United States, many rely on YouTube as the premier source for viewing foreign media content.
As we also know, YouTube places few restrictions on what can be posted there. With the exception of copyrighted material and pornography, pretty much anything goes. This liberal policy was tested several years ago when Jewish groups protested the site’s hosting videos of Holocaust revisionists. Despite the strong objections to this material, YouTube allowed the videos to stay, citing that they do not censor videos for political appropriateness. With this in mind, let’s take a look at some of this video content.
One of the most viewed videos from “Palestinian television” is a children’s show featuring a giant rabbit called, “Assud.” When Assud the Rabbit isn’t encouraging children to become suicide bombers, he’s killing Jews… by eating them. In this clip, the show’s young host calmly chats with this bizarre character, agreeing that all Palestinian children should want to end their lives by strapping bombs to themselves.
This is an absurd premise for a children’s show and I’m not buying it. The concept is simply too preposterous and such broadcasting has no counterparts in any other Arab communities outside Israel’s occupied territories. Are the Syrians and Iranians producing and watching similar shows? I’m sure we would have heard about it. But, no. Only the Palestinians watch nonsense such as this. ALL of these video clips come courtesy of MEMRI, a media organ of Israel.
In an article entitled, Porn and Politics in Palestine, writer Charles Freund states, “The town’s remaining TV station was meanwhile running a crawl at the bottom of the screen explaining that the porn clips were the work of occupying forces. ‘We urge parents to take precautions,’ it read.” Not surprisingly, most of these YouTube clips also contain a crawl line running across the bottom of the screen.
In many cases, the MEMRI-provided translation obscures it. While I cannot read it, I have a guess as to what it says. It seems strange that such crawl lines (usually indicating NEWS) would be part of any children’s programming. In the following YT clip, the supposed Palestinian program appears on Glenn Beck’s show. Beck, an obnoxious apologist for Israeli excesses, takes the clip as simple truth and goes on with his breathless condemnation of insane Palestinians.
Beck’s initial response is, “Wow! I don’t even know where to start with this.” How about using some common fucking sense, you idiot! How realistic is it that Palestinian mothers are planning to use their children as suicide bombers? During the vast history of warfare, has anything even close to this ever taken place?
I’m expected to believe the Palestinians have all lost their minds and are plotting mass-suicide… after seeing some ridiculous clip which features a guy in a pink bunny outfit? Then Beck trots out some nitwit from the American Islamic Forum for Democracy who validates the clip’s authenticity. Did this guy research this supposed children’s program at all? Or did his investigation begin and end on YouTube?
Another clip of this same show, “The Pioneers of Tomorrow,” stars a Mickey Mouse character who instructs children to become suicide bombers so that Muslims can be “masters of the World.” Give me a break! This demented piece of propaganda is supposed to be evidence of a Palestinian plan for world conquest?
Here, the same Mickey Mouse character, named, “Farfour,” is confronted by the “evil Jew” who wants to buy his land for “lots of money.” When the giant mouse refuses to sell his land, the Jew attacks him. Eventually, the Palestinian mouse is thrown in prison and murdered by the Jewish swindler. The sad, young Palestinian girl hosting the show looks on in calm detachment.
At the beginning of many of these videos, MEMRI claims the program is produced by “Al-Aqsa TV.” These are the mysterious Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the supposed “military wing” of Hamas. One interesting thing about the Al-Aqsa suicide bombers is that their leadership resides somewhere outside of Israel (no one seems to know where.) For some unknown reason, Israel’s crack intelligence services have been unable to locate them.
They put posters around the West Bank towns, attack moderate Palestinian leaders, cause chaos among Palestinian citizens trying to organize protests, and claim responsibility for the so-called suicide bombings. They have killed numerous journalists and even attacked the offices of the Al-Arabiya TV station in the West Bank. They appear to be beyond anyone’s control and their masked members specialize in random violence. It’s interesting to note their activities during last year’s Operation Cast Lead.
After the Israeli military bombarded the Gaza Strip during the last part of December 2008, their ground troops began to enter the territory at the start of 2009. They moved into northern Gaza on January 3rd, clashing with Palestinians at Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya, and the Jabaliya refugee camp. By the 5th, they were in the eastern section of Gaza City. They entered the densely populated sections of the city with tanks on the 12th and continued fighting until the operation ended on the 17th.
Anyone believing in the existence of the Martyrs’ Brigades should have expected a wild showdown between these holy warriors and the IDF in the streets of Gaza during these two weeks of ground conflict. But the Al-Aqsa Brigades were totally absent from the fighting! The mysterious masked men made no appearances whatsoever and the IDF lost only 12 soldiers (several to friendly fire.) The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades are a false front staged by Israeli intelligence services, and anything connected with them–such as these bizarre children’s television shows–are hoaxed as well.
While these terrorist brigades seem to disappear whenever the IDF arrives, they enjoy a healthy existence on YouTube. Search under, “Qassam Rockets” and you’ll find many videos showing these masked men running around the desert conducting training exercises and firing off their rockets. This particular clip, which includes the group’s hit single, “The Qassam Rocket Song,” has been posted and reposted many times over the last few years:
The same people who quickly condemn any and all 9/11 Truth videos because “they’re on the Internet” are quick to accept this rubbish as fact. The suicide bombers have music videos? Really? The Gaza Strip is the most heavily surveilled piece of land in the world. Drones, planes, and satellites operated by Israel are constantly filming this area–especially the Northeastern section across from Sderot, where all the rockets are fired.
Yet, these masked guys appear in broad daylight, next to border fences and busy streets, firing their rockets at Israeli citizens! And not even ONCE are they caught! They conduct their “training exercises” in open territory, in the middle of the day, firing RPGs at concrete walls and setting off explosives. How does the IDF miss these operations? And just WHAT are they training FOR? The moment the Israeli military invades a Palestinian town, these “martyrs” vanish!
Videos of the nefarious “rocket makers” abound on YouTube and are posted around the Internet as evidence that these people do in fact exist. But, you don’t need to have any experience in a machine shop to see that all of these videos have been staged. These masked clowns are mixing what is supposed to be rocket propellant in Tupperware containers on the floor. The whole thing looks like it was put on by some high school kids who have barely finished their first semester of Metal Shop.
Of all the propaganda videos disseminated on YouTube, the most outrageous are those depicting Palestinian children as soldiers and “suiciders.” This show is titled, “The Gifted,” and is produced by Al-Aqsa TV as well. Supposedly, it was aired in 2007 and shows a TWO YEAR OLD Palestinian boy during “terrorist training.”
This is absolute NONSENSE and it is a sad testimony to the idiocy of the American people that we would so quickly and uncritically believe such things! When you read through the comments sections of these videos, NO ONE accuses them of being fake. Even supporters of the Palestinian cause reluctantly believe them.
Propagandistic music videos intending to vilify the Palestinians appear on YouTube in increasing numbers. Westerners seem especially susceptible to this particular format. Here we see a Palestinian mother deciding to abandon her daughter so she can blow herself up and kill some Israelis. The child then finds some C4 explosives hidden in Mom’s lingerie drawer and makes the (predictable) decision to kill herself as well.
Are we so easily led that we would fall for this? If Arab journalists posted clips from an “Israeli Children’s Show” where youngsters discussed “the Jewish plan for world domination”–who would believe it? If a giant “Jewish Rabbit” who “ate Arabs” appeared on YouTube–would it receive airplay on a prominent American TV talk show where “experts” validated it as being real?
Israeli bombs and Israeli soldiers have killed many Palestinian children. As professor Norman Finklestein said (after provided compelling statistical evidence,) “if the IDF isn’t specifically TARGETING children, they do a remarkably good job at it!” During Operation Cast Lead, UN “safe buildings” were bombed several times, as well as schools and refugee camps. The Israeli propaganda machine uses video content such as this to justify these actions to a dumbed-down American populace which can no longer discern reality from Internet fiction.
YouTube is flooded with videos and cartoons such as this, all designed to dehumanize Palestinians and depict them as blood-thirsty maniacs, eager to sacrifice their children in the most horrendous ways for the purpose of world domination! We are raising a generation of Americans who have completely lost all capabilities of critical thought.
American high school students today look back on the crude cartoons and propaganda clips of the Second World War and laugh at their vulgar simplicity; yet the modern propaganda offered up on YouTube is cruder and more unbelievable than the material used 70 years ago. And Americans believe it! 70 years from now, our grandchildren will look back on these YouTube videos we are watching today and wonder how the American public could have been so gullible as to have accepted them as truth. Maybe.
Killing people from preventable diseases as a result of the collapse of infrastructure, lack of food and health care, and displacement is also an element of genocide.
“There is scarcely a field, from Art and Literature, to Academics and Political Economy, from Politics and Media, to the most secret domains of sensuality and criminality, in which the Jewish spirit cannot be clearly traced and has not imparted a peculiar warp to the affairs of life.”
Water Works in Gaza Destroyed
What is left of the Water and Sanitation Works, al-Mughrraqa City, Gaza.
Overnight on August 8-9, Israeli warplanes bombed the Water and Sanitation system for al-Mughraqa City in Gaza.
There are several possible explanations for this heinous act:
Someone accidentally hit this site – multiple times
This site was targeted on purpose, with full knowledge that Gazans have almost zero access to clean water and are slowly dying – and this will cruelly speed up their death.
Not surprisingly, the destruction of water works is a breach of international law:
Attacks against Objects Indispensable to the Survival of the Civilian Population
Article 54(2) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides:
It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove, or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.
“My olives. My olives!!”
An elderly Palestinian man protests Israeli occupation forces destroying his olive trees, which represent his only source of income.
Since 1967, Israel has destroyed 800,000 Palestinian owned olive trees.
The Holocaust motivated large numbers of immigrants to move to Palestine, providing the necessary population. Many who tried to stay home were threatened with concentration camps until they changed their minds and were then ‘rescued’ by Zionist activists. The weak were not invited to immigrate at all and left behind to perished in the camps.
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, some Jewish intellectuals and humanists expressed the thought that ‘after Auschwitz Jews have to locate themselves at the forefront of the battle for humanity and against all forms of oppression.’
This is a principled and heroic ideal, but the reality on the ground has been somewhat different. Just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz, the Jewish state ethnically cleansed the vast majority of indigenous Palestinians.
Two years later, in 1950, Israel’s Knesset passed the Law of Return, a racist law that distinguishes between Jews who have the right to ‘return’ to someone else’s land and the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees that were expelled by force from their villages and cities.
In the seven decades since, the Jewish State has committed every possible human rights abuse. It made Gaza into the biggest open-air prison in human history and has repeatedly dropped bombs on the most overpopulated place on earth.
Recently the Jewish State deployed hundreds of snipers against unarmed Gazans who were protesting at the border. Israel killed dozens and wounded more than 13,000 Palestinians, the majority severely, with over 1,400 struck by three to five bullets.
If the Holocaust left Jews with a mission to fix the world, the Jewish State has done the opposite. Its crimes against humanity can be seen as a complete denial of the Holocaust’s message.
Some Jews who survived the Holocaust did dedicate their lives to a universal battle for a better world. Among these heroes was Hajo Meyer, a Dutch Auschwitz survivor who, for the obvious reasons, saw the similarities between his own suffering and the Palestinian plight.
In 2003 Meyer wrote The End of Judaism, accusing Israel of usurping the Holocaust to justify crimes against the Arabs. He participated in the 2011 “Never Again – For Anyone” tour. He correctly argued that Zionism predated fascism, and he also reiterated that Zionists and Fascists had a history of collaboration.
Meyer exemplified the Jewish post-Shoah humanist promise. After Auschwitz he located himself at the forefront of the fight against oppression. He fought Israel.
On Holocaust Memorial Day 2010, Meyer was invited to an event at the British Parliament which included MP Jeremy Corbyn. At the event Meyer compared Israeli racial policy to the Nuremberg laws.
At the same event, Haidar Eid, a Palestinian academic from Gaza, pointed out that “the world was absolutely wrong to think that Nazism was defeated in 1945. Nazism has won because it has finally managed to Nazify the consciousness of its own victims.”
Eid didn’t ‘compare’ Zionism with Nazism, he described an ideological continuum between Nazi ideology and Israeli policy. He maintained that the racial discriminatory ideology of the Nazis was picked up by the Jewish state and has been rife in the Jewish State since then.
Yesterday MP Jeremy Corbyn was attacked by the Jewish lobby for being present at that meeting that explored these universal ethical positions. Our Labour candidate for prime minister anemically recalled that at the event in question views were expressed which he did not “accept or condone.”
Corbyn even apologized “for the concerns and anxiety that this has caused.” I wonder why my preferred candidate has to express regret for being in the presence of a humanist exchange. I wonder why our next PM feels the need to disassociate himself from people who advocate ‘for the many, not the few.’
The message for the rest of us is devastating. The battle for a better world can’t be left to Corbyn alone. Needless to say, the Jewish State and its Lobby haven’t located themselves at the forefront of humanity. It is actually the Palestinians who have been pushed to the front of that frustrating struggle. Not to see that is to deny their holocaust.
Jewish terror free! In the coming months, Iraq has a match against Uzbekistan in September and South Korea in October.
I would call this a brave move indeed!
It’s been going on a long time…Israel targets ALL the young men and children in Palestine, to maim them if not kill them for the future.
Israeli forces attacked two teenage Palestinian cousins and soccer players, Jawhar Nasser Jawhar, 19, and Adam Abd al-Raouf Halabiya, 17, shooting them repeatedly in the feet and legs – ten bullets into Jawhar, two into Adam – before unleashing attack dogs and finally beating them in what critics call another egregious targeting of Palestinian athletes in a place where “soccer is politics.”
Dave Zirin, The Nation’s sports editor, has much more on “what’s left of Palestinian soccer”: four members of the Palestinian national team killed in their homes by Israeli forces, at least three jailed in Israeli prisons without trial, “real people, with real families, whose lives and deaths are testament to a story that needs to be told.”
Iraq national football team is set to travel Thursday on its first-ever visit to the Israeli occupied West Bank where it will face the Palestine national squad.
Iraq fought in wars against Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973 and has still technically yet (NEVER!) to make peace with the Jewish state, AFP reported.
Most teams in Arab countries refuse to visit the Palestinian territories because Israel controls the West Bank’s borders and blockades the Gaza Strip and SHOOTS ATHLETES.
But Palestinian leaders have for years called on Arab countries to send sporting and cultural delegations to help ease their isolation.
The friendly match with Iraq will be held Saturday in Ramallah, the West Bank’s administrative center.
