Israel’s Willing Executioners

MAY 14, 2024

Source

Chris Hedges

Hundreds of thousands of people are being forced to flee, once again, after more than half of Gaza’s population took sanctuary in the border town of Rafah. This is part of Israel’s sadistic playbook.

Run, the Israelis demand, run for your lives. Run from Rafah the way you ran from Gaza City, the way you ran from Jabalia, the way you ran from Deir al-Balah, the way you ran from Beit Hanoun, the way you ran from Bani Suheila, the way you ran from Khan Yunis. Run or we will kill you. We will drop 2,000-pound bunker buster bombs on your tent encampments. We will spray you with bullets from our machine-gun-equipped drones. We will pound you with artillery and tank shells. We will shoot you down with snipers. We will decimate your tents, your refugee camps, your cities and towns, your homes, your schools, your hospitals and your water purification plants. We will rain death from the sky.

Run for your lives. Again and again and again. Pack up the pathetic few belongings you have left. Blankets. A couple of pots. Some clothes. We don’t care how exhausted you are, how hungry you are, how terrified you are, how sick you are, how old, or how young you are. Run. Run. Run. And when you run in terror to one part of Gaza we will make you turn around and run to another. Trapped in a labyrinth of death. Back and forth. Up and down. Side to side. Six. Seven. Eight times. We toy with you like mice in a trap. Then we deport you so you can never return. Or we kill you.

Let the world denounce our genocide. What do we care? The billions in military aid flows unchecked from our American ally. The fighter jets. The artillery shells. The tanks. The bombs. An endless supply. We kill children by the thousands. We kill women and the elderly by the thousands. The sick and injured, without medicine and hospitals, die. We poison the water. We cut off the food. We make you starve. We created this hell. We are the masters. Law. Duty. A code of conduct. They do not exist for us.

But first we toy with you. We humiliate you. We terrorize you. We revel in your fear. We are amused by your pathetic attempts to survive. You are not human. You are creatures. Untermensch. We feed our libido dominandi – our lust for domination. Look at our posts on social media. They have gone viral. One shows soldiers grinning in a Palestinian home with the owners tied up and blindfolded in the background. We loot. Rugs. Cosmetics. Motorbikes. Jewelry. Watches. Cash. Gold. Antiquities. We laugh at your misery. We cheer your death. We celebrate our religion, our nation, our identity, our superiority, by negating and erasing yours.

Depravity is moral. Atrocity is heroism. Genocide is redemption.

Jean Améry, who was in the Belgian resistance during World War II and who was captured and tortured by the Gestapo in 1943, defines sadism “as the radical negation of the other, the simultaneous denial of both the social principle and the reality principle. In the sadist’s world, torture, destruction, and death are triumphant: and such a world clearly has no hope of survival. On the contrary, he desires to transcend the world, to achieve total sovereignty by negating fellow human beings – which he sees as representing a particular kind of ‘hell.’”

Back in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, Netanya, Ramat Gan, Petah Tikva who are we? Dish washers and mechanics. Factory workers, tax collectors and taxi drivers. Garbage collectors and office workers. But in Gaza we are demigods. We can kill a Palestinian who does not strip to his underwear, fall to his knees, beg for mercy with his hands bound behind his back. We can do this to children as young as 12 and men as old as 70.

There are no legal constraints. There is no moral code. There is only the intoxicating thrill of demanding greater and greater forms of submission and more and more abject forms of humiliation.

We may feel insignificant in Israel, but here, in Gaza, we are King Kong, a little tyrant on a little throne. We stride through the rubble of Gaza, surrounded by the might of industrial weapons, able to pulverize in an instant whole apartment blocks and neighborhoods, and say, like Vishnu, “now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

But we are not content simply with killing. We want the walking dead to pay homage to our divinity.

This is the game played in Gaza. It was the game played during the Dirty War in Argentina when the military junta “disappeared” 30,000 of its own citizens. The “disappeared” were subjected to torture – who cannot call what is happening to Palestinians in Gaza torture? – and humiliated before they were murdered. It was the game played in the clandestine torture centers and prisons in El Salvador and Iraq. It is what characterized the war in Bosnia in the Serbian concentration camps.

This soul crushing disease runs through us like an electric current. It infects every crime in Gaza. It infects every word that comes out of our mouths. We, the victors, are glorious. The Palestinians are nothing. Vermin. They will be forgotten.

Israeli journalist Yinon Magal on the show “Hapatriotim” on Israel’s Channel 14, joked that Joe Biden’s red line was the killing of 30,000 Palestinians. The singer Kobi Peretz asked if that was the number of dead for a day. The audience erupted in applause and laughter.

We place “booby-trapped” cans resembling food tins in the rubble. Starving Palestinians are injured or killed when they open them. We broadcast the sounds of women screaming and babies crying from quadcopters to lure Palestinians out so we can shoot them. We announce food distribution points and use artillery and snipers to carry out massacres.

We are the orchestra in this dance of death.

In Joseph Conrad’s short story “An Outpost of Progress,” he writes of two white, European traders, Carlier and Kayerts. They are posted to a remote trading station in the Congo. The mission will spread European “civilization” to Africa. But the boredom and lack of constraints swiftly turn the two men into beasts. They trade slaves for ivory. They get into a feud over dwindling food supplies. Kayerts shoots and kills his unarmed companion Carlier.

“They were two perfectly insignificant and incapable individuals,” Conrad writes of Kayerts and Carlier:

“…whose existence is only rendered possible through the high organization of civilized crowds. Few men realize that their life, the very essence of their character, their capabilities and their audacities, are only the expression of their belief in the safety of their surroundings. The courage, the composure, the confidence; the emotions and principles; every great and every insignificant thought belongs not to the individual but to the crowd; to the crowd that believes blindly in the irresistible force of its institutions and its morals, in the power of its police and of its opinion. But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart. To the sentiment of being alone of one’s kind, to the clear perception of the loneliness of one’s thoughts, of one’s sensations – to the negation of the habitual, which is safe, there is added the affirmation of the unusual, which is dangerous; a suggestion of things vague, uncontrollable, and repulsive, whose discomposing intrusion excites the imagination and tries the civilized nerves of the foolish and the wise alike.”

Rafah is the prize at the end of the road. Rafah is the great killing field where we will slaughter Palestinians on a scale unseen in this genocide. Watch us. It will be an orgy of blood and death. It will be of Biblical proportions. No one will stop us. We kill in paroxysms of excitement. We are gods.

Young Palestinian Man Buries His Murdered Fiancée a Month Before Wedding (VIDEO)

May 9, 2023

The fiancé of Dania Adas, stands at her body and recites the Holy Qur’an. (Photo: via Social Media)

By Palestine Chronicle Staff

A video clip showed touching scenes of a young Palestinian man’s farewell to his fiancée, who was killed in the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, a month before their wedding date.

A picture of the young man, the fiancé of Dania Adas, was spread across social media platforms as he stood at her body and recited the Holy Qur’an. 

#Gaza 🇵🇸💔
Dania 'Adas,a young Palestinian woman,was supposed to get married next month,but her life was tragically cut short by an Israeli airstrike last night.
The video shows Dania's fiancé bidding a tearful farewell to his beloved,overcome with grief at her sudden&tragic loss pic.twitter.com/BUJOACGXCM

— Islam Essa🇵🇸#Gaza🙋‍♀️👑 (@IslamEssa_Gaza) May 9, 2023

Other footage showed him crying in agony and looking at her body, which was wrapped in a white shroud instead of a wedding dress. 

Adas’s uncle published a picture of her fiancé as he bid her farewell on Facebook and wrote,

“He reads the Qur’an for the soul of his fiancée, the martyr Dania Adas, my sister’s daughter, who was supposed to give him the hand of his bride a month from now. May Allah grant you patience.”

Ensaf Habib wrote, 

“What did he mutter to her before her final resting place? Did he tell her about his wish to see her in a white dress in the hereafter? Did he tell her how much he longed for their life together in the marital nest and under one roof! Perhaps he admonished her for why she let go of his hand .. “ 

Wael Abu Omar commented, 

“The (Israeli) occupation planes and missiles turned the white dress of joy into a white shroud. God’s mercy.”

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The Boy of Qalandiya: He Is Not Idiot, and This Is Not ‘Security’

May 8, 2023

Mohammad Jaber, 14, was prevented from crossing the Qalandiya checkpoint for treatment. (Photo: Tamar Fleishman, The Palestine Chronicle)

– As a member of Machsomwatch, Tamar Fleishman documents events at Israeli military checkpoints between Jerusalem and Ramallah. Her reports, photos and videos can be found on the organization’s website: http://www.machsomwatch.org. She is also a member of the ‘Coalition of Women for Peace’ and a volunteer in ‘Breaking the Silence’. Tamar Fleishman is The Palestine Chronicle correspondent at the Qalandiya checkpoint.  

By Tamar Fleishman

As I was standing at the Palestinian side of the Israeli military checkpoint of Qalandiya, I saw a Palestinian teenager walking on crutches. 

His name is Mohammad Jaber. He is a 14-year-old boy who lives in the neighborhood of Shaja’iya, in the besieged Gaza Strip. 

Mohammad was at Qalandiya because he needed to cross the checkpoint to reach the Hadassah Hospital, which is located inside Israel, for treatment.

A Palestinian man, who had spoken with the teenage boy, drew my attention to the problem and asked me if I can be of help. 

The man told me that Mohammad was coming from a Ramallah hospital, to which he had been referred by Hadassah, so that they may run a few tests. Israeli soldiers, however, would not allow him to cross the checkpoint to complete his treatment at Hadassah.

The man thought that maybe there had been some miscommunication, so he asked me to go and talk to the soldiers on the boy’s behalf in Hebrew.

I walked slowly, along with Mohammad. It was clear, from his face, that every step caused him pain. We proceeded to the checkpoint’s ID inspection booth.

When the Israeli security guard saw us, he immediately yelled: “Who are you? If you are Israeli, you are not allowed to be here.”

He seized my ID and summoned the police. A policewoman checked me and said it was okay. Then, they checked Mohammad’s documents and insisted that he could not cross the checkpoint. 

I asked her to look at him: What danger could the boy pose as he could hardly even walk. 

“This is the law”, the guard said with a stern face. “He needs to come back tomorrow, with a special medical permit.”

At that point, there was nothing we could do. 

Then, the Israeli security guard turned towards Mohammad and he yelled in Hebrew: “Go on, git!” – meaning idiot. The boy did not understand, but I did.

I told the guard that no human being should be addressed this way. 

“Go on, you are git, too”, he yelled at me. 

I do not know if Mohammad could obtain the required medical permit to cross the checkpoint the following day. What I know is that clearly, Israel’s concern has nothing to do with ‘security’, as the boy clearly didn’t pose any threat. 

It was something else entirely. 

(Translated by Tal Haran, Edited by The Palestine Chronicle)

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The American Jewish war over Zionism can begin

 NOVEMBER 8, 2022 

Source

Zionism destroys everything in its path. It has corrupted every major American Jewish organization. And Netanyahu’s return allows American Jews to acknowledge this.

NETANYAHU BANNER IN JERUSALEM, OCTOBER 2022. PHOTO BY PHIL WEISS.

BY PHILIP WEISS

I last visited Israel in 2018 just before it passed the constitutional law declaring the country the nation state of the Jews, and in those four years it has become a narrower place. The signs of religious nationalism are everywhere today, even near Tel Aviv. The settlers have now taken over the army (Yossi Gurvitz tells me), and when activists visit hotspots in the South Hebron Hills settlers smash their car windows with rocks as soldiers do nothing. The young bartender at the King David Hotel tells me there is no occupation, those are Jewish places not the West Bank.

When I was young, my girlfriend came back from Israel and said, “It’s hard there, they are tougher than we are,” as a form of praise. American Jews admired those Jews for being tough. Now it’s different. The ugliness of Israel is inescapable. The guns everywhere. The hatred of Palestinians. The complete acceptance of apartheid.

The importance of Tom Friedman’s article saying the Israel we knew is gone is not about Palestinians. No, the Israel Palestinians know is the same. It is about American Jews. They are finally catching a clue. That is the importance of last week’s election, the Itamar Ben-Gvir election, in which his fascistic Religious Zionism party took 14 seats, and hard right wing parties took 74 (per Dahlia Scheindlin). The new ugly Israel will alienate American Jews, as Israel lobbyists Dennis Ross and David Makovsky openly fretted in an Op-Ed.

Tom Friedman is following in the footsteps of Peter Beinart and Jeffrey Goldberg: Zionist journalists who stood up for Israel again and again in the public square then had enough. Beinart is the bravest, he has come out for one state. Goldberg completely disappeared when he saw that the occupation was devouring Israel five years ago. Now Friedman is pivoting, and liberal Zionists are in complete meltdown; J Street wants to change the subject to AIPAC and the U.S. elections.

Zionism—the ideology Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu embody, one of Jewish supremacy in the Jewish land– is at last becoming problematic for American Jews.

The disarray is a good thing. Zionism—the ideology Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu embody, one of Jewish supremacy in the Jewish land– is at last becoming problematic for American Jews. They are up to their chins in a discriminatory ideology, and so we begin a war over Zionism that will bring down the Israel lobby in the next ten years. Because Zionism destroys everything in its path.

It took decades for Zionism to win in America. Herzl was an embarrassment to Jewish leadership till Brandeis converted to Zionism in 1916. It took the rise of Nazism in the 30s to swing the Jewish establishment over to Zionism as a program in 1942; and by 1967 of course, the ravishment was complete. Tom Friedman was giving chalktalks on the Israeli military movements to his high school classmates, and later saw his job at the New York Times as making Israel’s case in America. “Israel had me at hello,” he confessed at the 92d Street Y a couple of years ago.

Maybe the biggest lie the Israel lobby purveyed was that the United States had to hug Israel in order for it to make progress with the Palestinians. America hugging Israel and granting it impunity in international forums is what gave us the Jewish Nation State law in 2018, the shutdown of leading Palestinian human rights organizations in 2021, the murder of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in May, and the rise of Ben-Gvir. Hugging Israel has encouraged its mass psychosis: the belief that militant apartheid is the only response to the political problem of millions of Palestinians without any rights.

Hugging Israel is what kept Israel from responding in good faith to the one true miracle of its history—the fact that Palestinian leadership accepted its existence on the ’67 lines back in 1988.

No doubt Ben-Gvir, a convicted terrorist, is in the DNA of religious Zionism. Zionism’s first step toward sovereignty in 1948 was the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians so that there would be a “strong Jewish majority” on far more land than the U.N. had granted the Jewish state. The Nakba has never ended; it was lately affirmed by the Nation State law that gives Jews the “exclusive right of self determination” in the land– apartheid under law.

Palestinian resistance to this regime is what gave Ben-Gvir his 14 seats. He ran on the claim that Defense Minister Benny Gantz – who bragged of bombing Gaza into the Stone Age in 2014 – was too soft on Palestinians. So killing nearly 200 Palestinians so far this year is soft. Oh yes, those Israelis are tough. Tough like Nazis were tough.

Zionism has caused nightmares and heartache and misery for Palestinians for decades, but as the media consultant, and Mondoweiss contributor, Ghousoon Bisharat said to me in Haifa, Ben-Gvir is not our problem, he is the Jews’ problem.

Finally American Jews will see what Zionism has done to us, corrupted almost every Jewish institution with racism, turned Jewish leaders into apologists for persecution and massacres.

And now he is the American Jews’ problem. Finally American Jews will see what Zionism has done to us, corrupted almost every Jewish institution with racism, turned Jewish leaders into apologists for persecution and massacres. “You must explain to me how the most accomplished most highly educated most liberal group in America has embraced apartheid,” John Mearsheimer said to me years ago.

That accounting is finally upon us. It won’t be easy. Those Jewish groups are still committed to apartheid. The AJC and ADL have lately  doubled down with new hack CEOs to carry out the Zionist project in the U.S. David Makovsky rationalizes apartheid by praising Zionism’s “institutions” on a Democratic Majority for Israel briefing. I guess he meant Qalandiya checkpoint. Where Palestinians have their faces rubbed in humiliation.

Makovsky and Ross and DMFI and ADL and the liberal Zionists too are terrified of anti-Zionists. They are terrified of how Ben-Gvir will put the wind in our sails, terrified that groups they consider marginal, Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, will spring to the leadership of the young. They are right to be terrified. The war over Zionism inside American Jewish life has begun.

QALANDIYA CHECKPOINT. OCTOBER 2022. (PHOTO: PHILIP WEISS)

JUDAIC FANATICISM IS THE MOTIVATION BEHIND THE LATEST ‘ISRAELI’ ATTACK ON KATA’IB IMAM ALI

JANUARY 10, 2020

by Jonathan Azaziah

We told you the Jews are attempting to wipe out the Men of God who laid waste to ISIS. And now they’re at it again, bombing the border area between Syria and Iraq in yet another flagrant act of aggression targeting the Iraqi Islamic Resistance. At least 8 fighters have been martyred by the usurping Zionist entity’s criminal attack. It’s Kata’ib Imam Ali that is still on the Jews’ minds and in their crosshairs and while this may solely seem like part of the ongoing American-‘Israeli’ escalation against the Resistance Axis — an analytical observation that is rather elementary to make — there is something more sinister to this onslaught. Indeed, the motivations for these atrocities are rooted 100% in Judaism, both from the “spiritual” perspective and the historical one. The number 3 is of the utmost importance for the Jews, with abyssal Kabbalistic, Talmudic and Halakhic aspects to it. And Shaytan’s Chosen Warmongers haven’t completed their triple murder yet. They got Qassem Suleimani (R.A.) They got Abou Mahdi al-Mohandes (R.A.) But they missed Shibl al-Zaydi, Commander of the Kata’ib Imam Ali.

As elucidated by Rabbi Yossi Marcus, the Kabbalist who runs the ultra-Zionist Chabad of the North Peninsula and spent time as a colonizer in Palestine’s Safad (one of the major capitals of illicit Kabbalistic activity going back several hundred years), when something is done 3 times in Judaism, it becomes permanent. In Hebrew, it is called “chazakah”. Kabbalistically, the number 3 means “peace” and “integration”. And we know that there is no peace from the vantage point of Judaism, nor is there integration within “the tribe”, unless the sanctification of “Yahweh’s” name is being pursued through revenge, war and the eradication of the seed of Amalek.

Indeed, when applied geopolitically and militarily vis-a-vis Zion’s war on the Islamic Republic of Iran and its Mouqawamah Bloc partners, the “chazakah” sought by the Jews in this instance is the elimination of the Dauntless and Defiant trifecta of Suleimani (R.A.), Al-Mohandes (R.A.) and al-Zaydi, which will bring “peace” to the “house” of World Jewry because the most effective personalities in countering its intrigue, these “Viceroys of Amalek”, will be no more. And because the afterlife is barely an afterthought at best in Judaism, with Jewish scholars noting that “Judaism is focused on life and how to live it”, and with the “Torah” having ZERO – repeat, ZERO – mention of it at all, Jews can’t comprehend the Culture of Martyrdom present in Iran as well as Ansarullahi Yemen and elsewhere that keeps its adherents resisting no matter what calamities they face down. Keeping this in mind, al-Zaydi lives, alhamdulillah, and Jewish plots against him and Kata’ib Imam Ali persist as a result.

That was the “spiritual” angle. Now, the historical facets of the ramped up Zionist onslaught against Iraq and Syria are staring everyone right in the face via the name of Shibl al-Zaydi’s group of Righteous Renegades: Kata’ib IMAM ALI (A.S.) The brother, successor and son-in-law of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (S.A.W.W.) was a tour-de-force against the Jewish Power Configuration of his era and on the battlefield, he mopped the floor with the Yahoudlings. Because the Jews were impotent when confronting Haydar al-Karrar (A.S.) eye-to-eye, they collapsed into the shadows, their home, hatching a scheme of subterfuge to dispatch the Imam (A.S.) It was a Jew, Ibn Muljim (L.A.), who assassinated him in the most cowardly manner of cowardly manners, driving a poison sword into his head as he was in prayer in the masjid. Exactly like the cowardly fashion the US and ‘Israel’ murdered Suleimani (R.A.) and Al-Mohandes (R.A.), slaughtering them with a flying robot while they were unarmed on a peace mission. Verily, the similarities between Amir al-Mou2mineen (A.S.) and his modern-day acolytes, the Knight of Kerman (R.A.) and the Brightness of Basra (R.A.), are vast. Most especially in the identical enemy opposing them.

Understanding this struggle as an ideological one will give us better insights into how Dajjal and its lieutenants operate. It is Judaism driving the latest flare-up against Iran currently, along with the war on Islam historically. Not just Zionism, which is merely the political outgrowth of Judaism. The Jewish obsession with the number 3 and the Halakhic-Talmudic-Kabbalistic need to “make permanent” all things in line with the “mitzvot” of the “Torah” is demented. Simply demented. This Judaic fanaticism is dangerous to the umpteenth degree. For the Iraqi Islamic Resistance and the Mouqawamah Bloc of course, yes, but also the whole of the globe. We pray for ALLAH (SWT) to encase in armor all pure-souled opponents of Shlomo as the battle against Jewish supremacist evil rages.

And we sincerely pray for the Jews to hearken to the teachings of Rasoulallah (S.A.W.W.) and Christ (A.S.) before they take us and themselves into oblivion. To say they’re too far out in front of their skis and have been for quite some time is the understatement of… Well… the 40 some odd centuries they’ve been around, wandering about and tormenting Gentiledom along the way.

Waving a pistol, Israeli official urges settlers to kill Palestinians

Lately, there has been a surge in settler violence across both holy sites and Palestinian neighborhoods in the West Bank

October 14 2022

(Photo credit: Flash90)

ByNews Desk

Israeli Knesset member and leader of the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, Itamar Ben Gvir, was seen in a video on the evening of 13 October, wielding a pistol in the occupied east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah and urging settlers and police to shoot at Palestinians who throw stones at the occupation forces.

“We’re the landlords here, remember that, I am your landlord … If [Palestinians] throw stones, shoot them,” Ben Gvir said. The night before, during an earlier visit to Sheikh Jarrah, the extremist Knesset member (MK) reportedly threatened to “mow down” a group of Palestinians in the area.

The east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah became internationally known last year as one of the main sites of Israel’s indiscriminate land confiscation and expulsion policies and is regularly subject to raids by scores of settlers, including on 14 October.

Later trying to justify his behavior via Twitter, Ben Gvir said: “The politicians are tying the hands of our cops … It cannot be that Arabs throw stones next to cops and the cops don’t respond with fire.”

Ben Gvir, whose extremist far-right ideology is mainstreamed in Israel, is notorious for this type of extremist rhetoric, as well as his support for violent settler groups who regularly storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque and desecrate its grounds. This is something that the MK himself has taken part in.

Lately, there has been a surge in settler violence against Palestinians, as well as continued raids into the al-Aqsa Mosque and other holy sites. Several far-right Jewish settlers stormed Hebron in the occupied West Bank on 10 October and proceeded to tear up and set fire to copies of the Quran near the city’s Qaytoun Mosque.

On 30 September, Palestinian Minister of Endowments and Religious Affairs, Hatem al-Bakri, said in a statement that Israeli troops and extremist settlers have stormed and attacked 15 mosques since the start of the year.

This extremism, which is already prevalent on a daily basis, is likely to be amplified significantly in the event that Ben Gvir or others like him make their way into a coalition government with former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at its head – something that might materialize.

‘Avenging Sabra and Shatila’: On Israeli Massacres and Palestinian Resistance

September 14, 2022

On September 16, in 1982, several thousand Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon were brutally massacred. (Photo: File)

By Ramzy Baroud

September 16 marks the 40th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre, the killing of around 3,000 Palestinians at the hands of Lebanon’s Phalangist militias operating under the command of the Israeli army.

Four decades have passed, yet no measure of justice has been received by the survivors of the massacre. Many of them have died, and others are aging while they carry the scars of physical and psychological wounds, in the hope that, perhaps, within their lifetime they will see their executioners behind bars.

However, many of the Israeli and Phalange commanders who had ordered the invasion of Lebanon, orchestrated or carried out the heinous massacres in the two Palestinian refugee camps in 1982, have already died. Ariel Sharon, who was implicated by the official Israeli Kahan Commission a year later for his “indirect responsibility” for the grisly mass killing and rape, later rose in rank to become, in 2001, Israel’s Prime Minister.

Even prior to the Sabra and Shatila massacre, Sharon’s name was always affiliated with mass murders and large-scale destruction. It was in the so-called ‘Operation Shoshana’, in the Palestinian West Bank village of Qibya in 1953, that Sharon earned his infamous reputation. Following the Israeli occupation of Gaza in 1967, the Israeli general became known as ‘The Bulldozer’, and following Sabra and Shatila, ‘The Butcher’.

The Israeli Prime Minister at the time, Menachim Begin, also died, exhibiting no remorse for the killing of over 17,000 Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians in the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. His nonchalant response to the killings in the West Beirut refugee camps epitomizes Israel’s attitude toward all the mass killings and all the massacres carried out against Palestinians in the last 75 years. “Goyim kill Goyim, and they blame the Jews,” he said.

Testimonies from those who arrived at the refugee camps after the days of slaughter depict a reality that requires deep reflection, not only among Palestinians, Arabs and especially Israelis, but also humanity as a whole.

The late American journalist Janet Lee Stevens described what she had witnessed:

“I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an alley wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles.”

Dr. Swee Chai Ang had just arrived in Lebanon as a volunteer surgeon, stationed at the Red Crescent Society in the Gaza Hospital in Sabra and Shatila. Her book, ‘From Beirut to Jerusalem: A Woman Surgeon with the Palestinians’, remains one of the most critical readings on the subject.

In a recent article, Dr. Swee wrote that following the release of photographs of the “heaps of dead bodies in the camp alleys”, a worldwide outrage followed, but it was all short-lived: “The victims’ families and survivors were soon left alone to plod on with their lives and to relive the memory of that double tragedy of the massacre, and the preceding ten weeks of intensive land, air and sea bombardment and blockade of Beirut during the invasion.”

Lebanese and Palestinian losses in the Israeli war are devastating in terms of numbers. However, the war also changed Lebanon forever and, following the forced exile of thousands of Palestinian men along with the entire PLO leadership, Palestinian communities in Lebanon were left politically vulnerable, socially disadvantaged and economically isolated.

The story of Sabra and Shatila was not simply a dark chapter of a bygone era, but an ongoing moral crisis that continues to define Israel’s relationship with Palestinians, highlight the demographic and political trap in which numerous Palestinian communities in the Middle East live, and accentuate the hypocrisy of the West-dominated international community. The latter seems to only care for some kind of victims, and not others.

In the case of Palestinians, the victims are often depicted by western governments and media as the aggressors. Even during that horrific Israeli war on Lebanon 40 years ago, some western leaders repeated the tired mantra: “Israel has the right to defend itself.” It is this unwavering support of Israel that has made the Israeli occupation, apartheid and siege of the West Bank and Gaza politically possible and financially sustainable – in fact, profitable.

Would Israel have been able to invade and massacre at will if it were not for US-western military, financial and political backing? The answer is an affirmative ‘no.’ Those who are in doubt of such a conclusion need only to consider the attempt, in 2002, by the survivors of the Lebanon refugee camps massacre to hold Ariel Sharon accountable. They took their case to Belgium, taking advantage of a Belgian law which allowed for the prosecution of alleged international war criminals. After much haggling, delays and intense pressure from the US government, the Belgian court eventually dropped the case altogether. Ultimately, Brussels changed its own laws to ensure such diplomatic crises with Washington and Tel Aviv are not to be repeated.

For Palestinians, however, the case will never be dropped. In her essay, “Avenging Sabra and Shatila”, Kifah Sobhi Afifi’ described the joint Phalangist-Israeli attack on her refugee camp when she was only 12 years old.

“So we ran, trying to stay as close to the walls of the camp as possible,” she wrote. “That is when I saw the piles of the dead bodies all around. Children, women and men, mutilated or groaning in pain as they were dying. Bullets were flying everywhere. People were falling all around me. I saw a father using his body to protect his children but they were all shot and killed anyway.”

Kifah has lost several members of her family. Years later, she joined a Palestinian resistance group and, following a raid at the Lebanon-Israel border, was arrested and tortured in Israel.

Though Israeli massacres are meant to bring an end to Palestinian Resistance, unwittingly, they fuel it. While Israel continues to act with impunity, Palestinians also continue to resist. This is not just the lesson of Sabra and Shatila, but the bigger lesson of the Israeli occupation of Palestine as well.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

TO TIMES OF ISRAEL WRITER, APARTHEID IS OK, SYMPATHY FOR PALESTINIANS “LOATHSOME”

MAY 26TH, 2022

Source

By Miko Peled

JERUSALEM – Zionists like to admonish Palestinians by saying that they never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. But, according to Zionist talking points, Palestinians missed several opportunities when Israel was willing to graciously “give” them pieces of their own land. Moreover, it is alleged that Palestinians have missed so many of these great opportunities that they have no one to blame but themselves for their misfortunes.

BLAMING THE VICTIMS

A piece by Richard Cravatts published in the Times of Israel, and later republished in other publications, is a particularly asinine example of this admonition. In his piece, “An Open Letter to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Your Fellow Travelers,” Cravatts writes: “Millions of Palestinian refugees [have been] created by your people’s repeated rejection of offers of statehood – in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000, and other occasions….”

An Open Letter to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Her Fellow Travelers | FrontpageMag https://t.co/1pLj8hLCjk

— Richard Cravatts (@rcravatts) May 25, 2022

Blaming the Palestinians for the ongoing tragedy of the refugees is not only callous but as outrageous as blaming the victims of the Holocaust for the horrors of the Nazis. I can testify that I have heard more than one Zionist claim that the Jews whom the Nazis killed had it coming because they did not heed the call of the Zionists. Had the Jews of Europe come to Palestine to steal and live on other people’s land, the Nazis would have spared them, a theme found throughout Yoav Shamir’s 2009 documentary, “Defamation.”

The claim that Palestinians are prone to missing opportunities is one of the most common Zionist lines, and they still use it because it works – because unfortunately there exists such a lack of knowledge regarding the history of Palestine that Zionists can loudly proclaim that “The Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity!” and go unchallenged. Another iteration of this claim is, “If only the Palestinians had the foresight to accept Zionist offers, or at least offers that the Zionists were agreeable to, things would have been so much better for them.” “Them” being the Palestinians.

Anyone familiar with the Zionist talking points has heard the claim that the Palestinians “missed opportunities” so they have no one to blame for their lot but themselves. In a recent lecture I gave in southern California, a Palestinian student asked me how to reply to this argument. His question was specifically about the Zionist accusation that Palestinians rejected the Two-State Solution.

AN OUTRIGHT LIE

We will set aside the fact that this is an outright lie for a moment. We will not get into this issue in-depth, only to say that in fact, since the 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (the PLO) has been the only party striving to achieve a Two-State Solution and that their willingness to make this enormous sacrifice cost them a great deal and made things worse for Palestinians the world over.

This argument typically comes from Zionists who live in the United States or the U.K. and who think it is OK that Israel has taken all of Palestine. They never admonish Israel for annexing the Syrian Golan Heights or East Jerusalem. They have no issue with Israel’s building entire cities on Palestinian land. This accusation comes from Zionists who believe Israel has a right to colonize all of historic Palestine.

Israel has a right to do this because, so they tell us, Jewish people around the world may (or may not) be related to a tribe that resided in Palestine some two or three thousand years ago. They tell us that this tribe, called the Hebrews, which may or may not have any historical connection to modern-day Israel and the Jewish people, is the reason it is OK for the modern State of Israel to commit unspeakable crimes against an entire nation.

LEGITIMIZING THE OPPRESSOR

What is implied in the admonitions by Zionists is that Zionism and the colonization of Palestine by Zionist Jews are legitimate and that the Palestinians refuse to accept this legitimacy. However, these admonitions present us with opportunities to raise a larger question. The question that ought to be asked is: Why in the world would Palestinians accept any offer by their colonizers? Why would any colonized nation accept anything but the total defeat of their colonizers and oppressors, especially considering that these “offers” fail to include the liberation of all of historic Palestine?

The answer is that there is no reason. The attempts at partitioning and slicing Palestine have all been part of a strategy meant to legitimize the violent Zionist takeover of Palestine and delegitimize the Palestinian rejection of it.

The aforementioned senseless, mindless Zionist propaganda piece starts by addressing Rep. Tlaib as follows:

On May 16th, you and some other members of The Squad, including Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, McCollum, and others, introduced a loathsome resolution, H. RES. 1123, which had as its purpose “Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights” and to “commemorate the Nakba,” the catastrophe you assign to Israel’s creation, “through official recognition and remembrance.” According to your baleful resolution, the Nakba not only took place at Israel’s founding “but [refers] to an ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people that continues to this day.”

In this typical Zionist propaganda piece, Cravatts calls the proposed legislation to recognize the Nakba “loathsome.” Amnesty International recently published a report accusing Israel of committing the crime of apartheid — a crime so heinous it is designated as a “crime against humanity.” Interestingly, the writer does not find those who commit the crime of apartheid loathsome, only the legislation recognizing the victims of the crime.

What is loathsome, however, is that the United States is complicit in the crimes against the Palestinians. It is loathsome to live in the United States and to justify, explain and provide cover – thin as it may be – for the brutal regime that has been tearing Palestine apart for over seven decades. And it is loathsome to stand by and applaud as the state of Israel continues to brutalize an entire nation while the world, and Israeli society, look the other away.

With Symbolic Hebron Chanukah Visit, Israeli President Greenlights Al-Aqsa Destruction

December 03rd, 2021

By Miko Peled

Source

Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit to the Ibrahimi Mosque should be seen as nothing less than an invitation by the Zionist establishment to the Zionist radical elements to go ahead and burn the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

HEBRON, PALESTINE – “Should the Al-Aqsa Mosque be destroyed, the match will be lit by a fanatic settler, but it is decades of Zionist indoctrination and Israeli policies that will be responsible for the destruction.” I wrote these words in a piece in this publication in August of 2021. In December of this year the Israeli establishment has taken a huge step in this direction: the president of Israel, Yitzhak (Isaac) Herzog, decided to light the first candle of Chanukah at the Ibrahimi Mosque in the Palestinian city of Al-Khalil – Hebron.

This visit represents a “go ahead” by the so-called moderate Israeli establishment to the fanatic religious-Zionists to continue their unchecked, unhinged violent attacks against Palestinians in general and their pursuit of the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in particular.

The Ibrahimi Mosque

It is said that the Jerusalem geographer Muqqadasi, writing in 985 CE, described the town of Hebron as follows:

In Hebron is a public guest house continuously open, with a cook, a baker and servants in regular attendance. These offer a dish of lentils and olive oil to every poor person who arrives, and it is set before the rich, too, should they wish to partake. Most men express the opinion this is a continuation of the guest house of Abraham […] At present time I do not know in all the realm of al-Islam any house of hospitality and charity more excellent than this one.”

A UNESCO report declared the city of Hebron and the Ibrahimi Mosque that lies within it as Palestine Heritage sites. The report states, “The main monument of the town is the centrally sited Al Haram Al-Ibrahimi Mosque/The Tomb of the Patriarchs.” The mosque sits on what is believed to be the burial site of the biblical patriarch Abraham, his wife Sara, their son Isaac and his son Jacob, as well as Rebecca and Leah. This belief is based on a story from the Book of Genesis 23:1–20 that tells about the patriarch Abraham purchasing a cave in order to bury his wife.

An endangered shrine

Another UNESCO report regarding the city of Al-Khalil, now known as Hebron, states that it and the mosque are “endangered sites.”

According to the report, “The nominated property is considered […] of Outstanding Universal Value as a cultural property” for the following reasons:

The Al-Khalil/Hebron old town “is an outstanding, exceptionally complete and well preserved example of unique urban and architectural characteristics inspired by the human values of Hebron/Al-Khalil community” and “[r]eflects continuous fabric which dates back to the Mamluk and Ottoman Periods.” The report goes on to state that the old town “[w]as shaped by the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque/The Tomb of Patriarchs, an outstanding example of building that illustrates significant stages in human history,” which “[b]enefited from its location on the main commercial routes in the region.”

Israeli police occupy Shuhada before the arrival of Herzog to the Ibrahimi mosque in occupied Hebron, November 28, 2021. Photo | Activestills

Writing about Israel’s continuous threats to the sites, UNESCO reports:

What is clear is that threats and violations are systematic and long-standing. They have a significant impact on the lives of ordinary citizens, resulting in the gradual depopulation of the old town […] and also interfere with the conservation of cultural heritage assets.

The site of the mosque and the Old City of Hebron are under threat because of Israeli attempts to de-Arabize the old city, build Jewish-only settlements, rename the streets, and cover up the rich history of the city and the mosque, a history that spans thousands of years.

Isaac Herzog

Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president, is described in a piece in The Guardian as a “softly spoken veteran of centre-left.” When Herzog was an attorney, he represented large corporations like Coca-Cola Israel. A prominent Palestinian who knows Herzog and dealt with him when Herzog was a lawyer once said to me, “I don’t know what he was thinking, what would make him do such a thing.”

This “thing” that this Palestinian was referring to was the dangerous accommodation of the militant right-wing Religious-Zionists and legitimization of their desecration of an ancient and revered Muslim site – the Ibrahimi Mosque — with Herzog’s visits to the site.

However, as we look at the history of the State of Israel, we see that the so-called moderate Zionist establishment has always accommodated the radical right and legitimized the achievements the Zionist state has enjoyed through the brutality and violence perpetrated by Zionist fanatics.

From the earliest days of the Zionist colonization of Palestine, the radical violent elements pushed forward while the so-called moderates, while initially distancing themselves from the actions of “extremists,” gradually legitimized their actions.

This was true in the pre-1948 actions of Zionist terror squads that included the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem; the assassination of the United Nations mediator, the Swedish diplomat Folke Bernadot; and the brutal massacre of the people of Deir Yasin on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

In fact, the war of 1967 also was a push by Zionist radicals – who by that time were generals in army uniform and had a well-equipped and well-trained army at their disposal – to do what was left undone in 1948. While the more “moderate” Israeli politicians were hesitant, the generals demanded to start a war and take parts of Palestine that were left outside the state of Israel.

Post-1967

In post-1967 Israel, the face of the fundamentalist radical Zionists had slightly changed but the tactics remained the same. The 1967 occupation gave rise to a new form of radical Zionism called Religious Zionism. These were Zionists who had been indoctrinated in the hate-filled, violence-infused yeshiva, Yeshivat Mercaz Harav. Named “The Mother of Zionistic Yeshivot,” it was the very first Zionist yeshiva and the ‘flagship’ for the National Religious movement.

Originally the Labour-Left establishment, to which President Isaac Herzog belonged, had looked down on and even distanced itself from the National Religious movement. However, as early as 1968, when that movement initiated Jewish-only settlements in the heart of the West Bank, the army and the Labor-Left establishment supported them wholeheartedly. Today, Religious Zionists are credited with establishing a Jewish-Zionist presence throughout the entire West Bank.

What used to be the Zionist Labor-Left establishment is all but gone, and only a few relics like Herzog remain. Today the Israeli establishment consists of two factions of ultra-right fanatic blocks, fighting each other for power. Politically they are identical and their hate-filled anti-Palestinian rhetoric is equally appalling.

Hertzog’s visit to the Ibrahimi Mosque should be seen as nothing less than an invitation by the Zionist establishment to the Zionist radical elements to go ahead and burn the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

What is happening in the Jordan Valley?

Israel razes Palestinian Bedouin village

Hadara Oren's film. Translation: Yael Nussbaum Narration: Bobby Lax

 ماذا يحدث في وادي الاردن؟ الآن أيضًا باللغة الإنجليزية. فيلم حضرة أورين. ترجمة: يائيل نوسباوم السرد: بوبي لاكس

https://www.facebook.com/IsraelCrimeMinister/videos/581531689785515/?extid=WA-UNK-UNK-UNK-IOS_GK0T-GK1C&ref=sharing

Zionism’s Anthem: The Danger Lurking in “Jerusalem of Gold”

August 31st, 2021

By Miko Peled

Source

Should the Al-Aqsa Mosque be destroyed, the match will be lit by a fanatic settler, but it is decades of Zionist indoctrination and Israeli policies that will be responsible for the destruction.

JERUSALEM — The risk of Israel destroying the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock and replacing them with a so-called Jewish temple is real and present. Building a temple in place of the mosque and golden dome that grace Jerusalem today has been a long-time Zionist aspiration, expressed in songs, tales, and, over the last decade, provocations that could lead to the spark Zionists need to raze the Haram Al-Sharif.

One example of Zionist propaganda that lays claim to the Haram Al-Sharf is the iconic Hebrew song “Jerusalem of Gold.” Written by the Israeli national poet Neomi Shemer, it is often presented as a simple song that expresses the yearning of the Jewish people for their lost, historical capital. However, it isn’t hard to see that the song, its writer, and the people who commissioned the song had a very clear political agenda.

The song begins with the following lines:

Mountain air as clear as wine

And the fragrance of pines

Is carried in the evening wind 

With the sound of ringing bells

And in the slumber of tree and stone

Trapped in its dream 

The city that sits alone

And in its heart a Wall

Jerusalem of gold

And bronze and light

To all your songs

I am a violin…

The image of Jerusalem as a lone city sitting alone and secluded, a haunted city with nothing but a past, reflects a romanticized idea that protestant evangelicals and dreamy Zionists share, but it is not a true reflection of the Jerusalem of 1967. The song goes on with the following lines:

How the water wells dried up

The city square is empty

And no one ascends to the Temple Mount

In The Old City

And not a soul goes down the Dead Sea

By way of Jericho.

The city of Jerusalem was divided in 1948 between the newly formed states of Jordan and Israel, and both sides were populated. The Western side was subjected to an ethnic cleansing campaign that emptied it of its indigenous Palestinian population and settled by Zionist immigrants making it an Israeli-Jewish-only city. The Eastern side of Jerusalem, including the Old City, remained in Arab hands and came under Jordanian rule.

The markets in the Old City were filled with people; worshipers on the Haram Al-Sharif (The Temple Mount) prayed; and the water wells were not dried up. Only for Neomi Shemer, who at the time was Israel’s national poet and songwriter, East Jerusalem — and especially the Old City — was empty because, as she put it, “a world without Jews is empty.”

Reading the lines of her song one could almost forget that the Old City of Jerusalem, to which Neomi Shemer was referring, was in fact an Arab and predominantly Muslim city for over 1,500 years. The city also included, among several other minorities, a small, impoverished community of Jews.

Naomi Shemer pictured in July, 2004. Photo | Flash90

A family connection

To add a disclaimer, I must confess that Neomi Shemer was a close friend of my family. Her mother, Rivka Sapir, and my grandmother Sarah both came to Palestine as young Zionist pioneers in the early part of the twentieth century. Even though they settled in different parts of the country — Rivka in the northern settlement of “Kvutzat Kinneret,” a settlement on the banks of Lake Tabariya, and my grandmother Sarah in Jerusalem — they remained the closest of friends for over fifty years. Neomi Shemer and my father were friends growing up, though my father was her senior in age, and the two families were close for decades.

Neomi Shemer admittedly had a deep admiration for the young Zionist men of that generation — men who, like my father, had dedicated their lives to the military arm of the Zionist colonial project, and in fact created the military machine known as the Israeli Army, or IDF.

Determined to “complete the job”

By the 1960s, my father and his generation of officers were all generals and had become the subject of enormous national admiration within the young Zionist state. Their intention — indeed their ambition to “complete” the conquests of 1948 by taking the West Bank and East Jerusalem — was not a secret. Neomi Shemer, like so many other Israelis, shared that ambition, which was an Israel that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

It wasn’t until May of 1967 that the opportunity arrived to realize the ambition to take the rest of Palestine. Israeli intelligence made it clear that the Arab armies were no match for the Israeli Defense Forces and, with this knowledge, they began to campaign to get popular support to complete their ambition of conquest.

A brilliant campaign

The campaign had several parts. One had to do with perpetuating the lie that the Arab armies were poised to attack and that the “Jewish State” was under an existential threat. This argument was used to pressure the Israeli government, which was at that time hesitant about initiating yet another war, to give the green light to start a preemptive strike.

The other front was more visionary and included the song “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav,” or “Jerusalem of Gold.” Only Neomi Shemer could have written this song. She knew how to play on the chords of national sentiments more than any other songwriter, and indeed she was tasked with the job. The mayor of Jerusalem at the time was the ambitious Teddy Kolek, who no doubt could already taste having the magnificent Old City of Jerusalem under his control. He had the song commissioned just weeks before the war.

With her background, her ability to romanticize Zionism and the achievements of Zionism, and her deep and personal connections to the generals of the IDF, who were chomping at the bit to start a war, Neomi Shemer was sure to deliver the goods. And indeed she did.

Israel’s nineteenth Independence Day was held on the 9th of May that year. The military parade customary on Independence Day was a more modest version, as the military was already preparing for war. The song “Jerusalem of Gold” was performed for the first time by Shuli Natan, a young female singer who was until that moment unknown and was personally chosen by Shemer. It was an astounding success and, overnight, the song was heard throughout the entire country.

The Temple Mount

On June 4, after two stormy meetings between the IDF top brass and Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the green light was given to conduct a preemptive strike against Egypt. The mandate from the government was to attack Egypt only. However, there is evidence indicating that the popularity of the song had given impetus to the popular demand for Israel to take the Old City of Jerusalem. This meant opening the war to an eastern front and taking the entire West Bank from Jordan. The generals were only too happy to do this, and indeed they did it without waiting for government approval.

The conquest of the Old City was made all the more dramatic as the song had become popular to the point that it was being constantly played on Israeli radio and in every home. I myself remember the song playing before and during the war, as my father spent days and nights at IDF headquarters and my older brother, a young officer at the time, on the Egyptian front. Then came the famous announcement by Colonel Mordechai Gur, commander of the IDF paratrooper Brigade who took the Old City:

I am not a religious man, but I am touching the stones of the Kotel (the Western Wall), I am touching the stones of the Kotel with my bare hands!”

Later on, Colonel Gur called out what became the most iconic statement of the war: “Har Habayit Beydeynu!” or “The Temple Mount is in our hands!”

Immediately after the war, and once the eastern part of Jerusalem including the Old City was conquered by the Israeli army, Neomi Shemer went on tour to perform in front of the victorious troops who were still at the front. At that point she added the following lines to the song:

We have returned to the Water Wells

To the Market and the City Square

A Shofar calls on the Temple Mount

In The Old City

And once again we will go down to the Dead Sea

By way of Jericho.

Neomi Shemer performing her most famous song, “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav.”

Criticism

After the war there was some criticism of the song for its implication that there were no people in the Old City before Israel had occupied it. However, just as the Zionists did not see the Palestinains as people in 1948, Nemoni Shemer did not see them in 1967. In an interview she gave in response to the criticism, she said, “People criticize me because I say that no one was there when it was full of Arabs,” and then she added, “This made me extremely angry. For me a place without Jews is empty.”

A national symbol

It is said that when a conflict is political it is solvable, but if it becomes religious then it is far more dangerous because each side believes that God is on their side. In the case of Jerusalem, and especially the Haram Al-Sharif, the opposite is true. Zionists have been able to create a yearning among non-religious Israelis to see a “Jewish” temple built in place of the glorious Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, as a national aspiration.

It is as though Israel will not be complete until such a temple — the temple of King David — once again sits there instead of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. As I look back at my own childhood, I can recall countless folk songs in which the building of the temple is mentioned and repeated as a yearning, as a national aspiration of all Jews, religious and non-religious, including ones like myself who were raised completely secular.

Quiet can be a dangerous thing

In a video in Hebrew that came out in 2019, one of Israel’s beloved national public figures, Yehoram Ga’on, who made a career as a singer and actor, speaks to this yearning. He speaks about the “injustice” of denying Jewish people access to the Temple Mount, “the holiest place for the Jews.” In this video, he refers specifically to the fact that on “Jerusalem Day” that year the Temple Mount will be closed to Jewish people because it fell on the last day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Ga’on says that the government — or the “kingdom,” as he refers to it — prefers “quiet” over allowing Jewish people to access what is rightfully theirs. “This is a knockout victory [of] the Islamic calendar over the Jewish calendar,” he says, meaning that, because the dates of their holiday collided with ours, we capitulated for the sake of “quiet.” He explained:

The kingdom does not want to mobilize the army, police and border police to face off crowds who call out ‘With blood and spirit we will free Palestine,’ because the kingdom wants quiet.

All we asked is that we too are allowed to enter the Mount — is that too much to ask?”

Ga’on then went on to say that this desire for quiet means that the Jews have to give in and to forgo their own rights, their beliefs, their existence, and that this is a desecration of the memory of those who gave their lives in battle. The video is peppered with clips of Palestinian “violence,” which contradicts the presumption of “quiet,” and proposes that, even with this egregious injustice to the Jews, Israel does not have the quiet it desires because the Arabs are violently demanding more and more.

The innocence of his proposition could make one believe that indeed Jewish Israelis were the ones living under occupation; that Jewish Israelis are denied rights; that they are the ones who are struggling to survive in an oppressive, apartheid regime that wants to get rid of them. Listening to his reasoning — his quiet, reasonable voice — one could almost be convinced that a terrible wrong has been done to the Jews in Jerusalem.

The ability to exclude the context from every argument is a tactic that Zionist propagandists have used for many decades. They gloss over almost an entire century of ethnic cleansing, violence, racist policies, an apartheid regime, and a concerted effort to rid Palestine of its people and its landmarks.

Fifteen hundred years of history, fifteen hundred years of worship, and maintaining what is one of the most wonderful structures known to humanity are meaningless in the eyes of Zionists. As an example, Al-Aqsa and the structures that surround it are older and in many ways more beautiful and certainly more significant than the Taj Mahal. Now imagine someone coming to claim that the Taj Mahal is sitting on an ancient temple and must be destroyed.

Whether it is Neomi Shemer or Yehoram Ga’on, both of whom are Zionist cultural icons, the message is the same: Only Jews matter. As we look at the short history of Israel, we can see clearly that the role of Zionist zealots was always instrumental in achieving Zionist goals. If it weren’t for zealots, fanatic Zionist settlers, there would be no Zionist state, no settlements in the West Bank, and no State of Israel. The Zionist movement was always a step ahead, indoctrinating, supporting, and funding the zealot settlers who then took things into their own hands and created facts on the ground.

Should the Al-Aqsa Mosque be destroyed, the match will be lit by a fanatic settler, but it is decades of Zionist indoctrination and Israeli policies that will be responsible for the destruction. And all that will be left for the rest of the world to do is look at the ashes in shame.

Zionism Is Genocide

May 23, 2021

By Stephen Lendman

Source

In 2018, Hadassah Magazine called Brooklyn, NY “the most Jewish spot on earth.” 

In the 1940s, its Jewish population numbered around 900,000. Now it’s around 600,000.

On Nakba Day, May 15, at a pro-Palestinian rally in densely Jewish Brooklyn, signs read:

“This Jew will not stand by” silently

“Another Jew for a Free Palestine”

Most striking was the image of a diminutive woman with a determined look in her eyes, holding a sign saying:

“This 90 year old Jew says ZIONISM is GENOCIDE”

Zionism is also racist tyranny by another name.

“Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is guided by a vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people,” the organization states.

Zionism abhors these values. It’s why JVP “unequivocally” opposes its scourge.

It’s polar opposite what peace, equity, justice, and compliance the rule of law are all about.

In Israel, it’s a racist, violent, apartheid “settler-colonial movement…where Jews have more rights than others,” said JVP.

Repugnant in all respects, it dispossesses Palestinians from their homes, land, well-being and lives for not being Jewish.

There’s nothing remotely anti-Semitic about Zionist critics. Everyone everywhere should unite with them against apartheid Israel.

Its slow-motion genocide elimination of long-suffering Palestinians makes it a moral and ethical duty for everyone to oppose —Jews and non-Jews alike.

Law Professor Francis Boyle stressed time and again that “Palestinians have been victims of genocide as defined by the 1948 Genocide Convention since the founding of the State of Israel” 73 years ago.

It’s Article II states the following:

Genocide is all about the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: 

(a) killing members of the group;

(b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction its physical destruction in whole or in part…”

Boyle: The above “is exactly” how Israel operates against Palestinians — especially besieged Gazans.

They’re victims of four Israeli genocidal wars in the last 13 years.

Since illegally blockading the Strip in 2007, its ruling authorities have waged slow-motion genocide against its two million people daily — along with speeding up the process by four bloody wars of aggression.

According to political economist Shir Hever, Israel is militarily superior to Palestinian resistance while strategically “losing international legitimacy” — including among Jews worldwide.

Despite 11 days of mass slaughter and destruction in Gaza, the Netanyahu regime lost the war.

So did Gazans — at least for years needed to rebuild physically and emotionally for countless numbers harmed by Israeli aggression.

Longer-term remains to be seen.

The struggle to end illegal blockade and for Palestinian liberation overall hopefully will come one day, but for now it’s nowhere in sight.

Friday, interventionist Blinkin’s deputy spokesman Jalina Porter was asked what the Biden regime is doing to condemn “Israeli aggression against Palestinian civilians.”

She ducked the question as expected, instead repeating a usual unacceptable response, saying:

The US is “working tirelessly to bring an end to this (sic),” adding:

It’ll “continue to remain engaged with senior Israeli officials, Palestinian leadership, as well as partners in the region (in) calling for sustainable calm (sic).”

Ignored by Porter were four Security Council draft statements, expressing mild criticism of Israel — blocked by the Biden White House.

She said nothing about its approval of a $735 million supply of US arms to Israel, including precision-guided missiles for further smashing Gaza and aggression against Syria at its discretion.

And, of course, she ignored longstanding US/Western one-sided support for the highest of Israeli high crimes, along with disdain and indifference toward Palestinian rights.

Its people have no high-level friends in Washington or other Western capitals.

The US notably supplies the Israeli war machine with state-of-the-art weapons and generous funding for its perpetual war on long-suffering Palestinians.

In 1920, industrialist Henry Ford called the “International Jew the world’s foremost problem.”

His remark was blatantly racist. Today as it applies to Israel, its hardcore supporters and enablers, it’s reality.

On Thursday, the Addameer Human Rights Group accused the Netanyahu regime of escalating violence against Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories for the last month — in the run-up to and during its aggression against Gaza.

Hardline racist settlers are complicit, armed gangs attacking Palestinians viciously — while nearby security forces do nothing to intervene.

“Arbitrary arrests have been a key feature of the Israeli occupation’s attempts to repress the Palestinian people’s struggle for liberty all across the occupied Palestinian territory,” Addameer stressed.

Ceasefire on Friday changed nothing because the world community — especially the US-dominated West — does nothing to enforce the rule of law.

On Saturday, Al Jazeera reported that while days of devastating Israeli terror-bombing and shelling went on round-the-clock “terrified (Gazans) sa(id) their final goodbyes to family members and friends…fearing they would die in one of the heaviest Israeli attacks on the Palestinian enclave ever.”

In its aftermath, survivors face the daunting task of trying to rebuild and heal their emotional scars.

They’ll get little or no help from the US and West — their ruling regimes uncaring about their rights, well-being or lives.

The raw, genocidal racism of Israelis in West Jerusalem

Israeli Authorities to Demolish 13 Palestinians Houses in East Jerusalem

October 19, 2020

Israeli forces surround 3 houses in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, in preparation for demolition. (Photo: via Twitter)

The Israeli municipality in West Jerusalem has issued demolition notices against 13 inhabited Palestinian houses in Silwan, a neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported today.

Fakhri Abu Diab, a member of the Silwan Defense Committee, told WAFA that the municipality ordered the demolition of the houses under the pretext they were built without a permit, noting that there are also unauthorized houses taken over and illegally inhabited by Israeli settlers in the same area but did not receive demolition orders.

Silwan’s Sumarin family is just the tip of the iceberg. Exclusive documents reveal the depth and broad cooperation between #JNF and Elad settler organization. My expose via @972mag https://t.co/pxVZnKZJZb pic.twitter.com/tLa07LCopE

— Uri Blau (@uri_blau) October 19, 2020

Abu Diab said that the Palestinian houses were built over 10 years ago and are inhabited by 76 people, mostly children and women.

Israel considers Silwan as the City of David and is in a rush to turn it into an Israeli Jewish neighborhood after expelling its Palestinian residents.

The JNF is complicit in evicting families and demolishing homes for the sake of expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, including in Jerusalem. We demand the JNF cease its efforts to evict the Sumarin Family from their home in Silwan. #StandWithSumarin pic.twitter.com/pRAJlE25JS

— All That's Left: Anti-Occupation Collective (@ATLCol) June 22, 2020

According to Israeli rights group B’Tselem, the”destruction of the neighborhood denies its residents the right to housing, which is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living as it is defined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

“In addition, the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the occupying state to destroy the property of residents of occupied territory, who benefit from the status of protected persons,” B’tselem added.

(Palestine Chronicle, WAFA, Social Media)

What I saw in the West Bank

Palestinian Family in Cave Home Faces ‘Israeli’ Eviction

By Staff, Al-Jazeera

Ahmed Amarneh’s home, its wooden door leading into cushion-lined rooms, is not the first Palestinian residence in the occupied West Bank to receive a demolition notice from ‘Israel’.

But it may be the first built inside a cave that ‘Israel’ has threatened to destroy.

Amarneh, a 30-year-old civil engineer, lives with his family in the northern West Bank village of Farasin, where ‘Israel’ insists it must approve any new residential construction and can tear down homes built without permits.

“I tried twice to build [a house], but the occupation authorities told me it was forbidden to build in the area,” said Amarneh.

The Oslo accords of the 1990s gave the Palestinians self-rule in parts of the West Bank. However, about 60 percent of the territory dubbed Area C, where Farasin is located, remains under full ‘Israeli’ control.

The United Nations considers Area C as occupied Palestinian territory. But ‘Israel’ has increasingly taken land there for the construction of illegal Jewish settlements under international law.

‘Didn’t make the cave’

Convinced he would never get ‘Israeli’ approval to build a home in his village, Amarneh set his sights on a cave in the foothills overlooking Farasin.

Amarneh said he figured that because the cave is a natural formation, Israel could not possibly argue it was illegally built, while the Palestinian Authority agreed to register the land in his name.

Amarneh sealed the mouth of the cave with a stone wall and installed a wooden door at its center.

He fashioned a kitchen, a living room, and sleeping areas for himself, his pregnant wife, and their young daughter. There is even space for guests.

After living there for a year and a half, he received a demolition notice from the ‘Israeli’ authorities in July along with 20 other Palestinian families in Farasin.

The ‘Israeli’ military branch responsible for civilian affairs in the occupied West Bank, COGAT, said demolition notices were served to some Farasin residences because of “structures that were illegally built, without the necessary permits and approvals”.

Amarneh said he was “surprised” to learn that he had built anything illegally.

“I didn’t make the cave. It has existed since antiquity,” he said, holding his young daughter in his arms.

“I don’t understand how they can prevent me from living in a cave. Animals live in caves and are not thrown out. So let them treat me like an animal and let me live in the cave.”

‘Israeli’ bulldozers

Arab residents established the village of Farasin in 1920, said local council head, Mahmud Ahmad Nasser.

It was abandoned during the 1967 War, the year the ‘Israeli’ occupation of the West Bank began. But from the 1980s, former residents began to return to the area. Nasser put its current population at about 200.

Farasin looks less like a village than a small collection of houses spaced widely apart.

The PA officially recognized the community of Farasin in March, but the coronavirus crisis has prevented it from providing electricity to the area, the local council said.

COGAT indicated in April it might suspend some scheduled demolitions because of the pandemic.

But, according to the ‘Israeli’ anti-settlement campaign group B’Tselem, ‘Israel’ demolished 63 Palestinian structures in June.

Roughly 450,000 settlers live in the occupied West Bank, alongside some 2.7 million Palestinians.

Farasin residents have feared the arrival of ‘Israeli’ bulldozers for weeks, Amarneh said.

Recently soldiers came and told Palestinian people “they had one minute to collect all their things” and leave their house, he said.

“They told us, without any shame, to leave the village.”

Amarneh is fearful that his family’s cave home could be the next target, adding that his wife and daughter are “in shock”.

Israel: A utopian image or merely a mirage?

Source

May 13, 2020 – 21:53

TEHRAN – While the founders of Israel had envisioned a utopia for Israeli settlers, now after 72 years, it has brought no freedom or justice to anyone except for some Zionist Jews and been involved in genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians an Israeli-American activist and author tells the Tehran Times.

‘Genocide and ethnic cleansing is the practice of Israel’ 

On promises by the founders of Israel, including Ben Gurion, who had envisioned a utopia for settlers in Israel based on freedom, justice, and peace,  Miko Peled says “Israel is an apartheid regime” which “has been involved in genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

He says Israel is “providing Jewish citizens who are Zionist with all the rights of liberal democracy.” 

He also says it “is true” that some Israelis are returning to their original countries as they are fed with governance.

‘Corrupt Netanyahu main reason behind Israeli political crisis’

Israel has been in a political crisis after three inconclusive elections and it is facing the growing prospect of an unprecedented fourth election.

Peled says it is mainly because “Israeli politics is controlled by the corrupt Prime Minister Netanyahu and his racist, violent allies.”

The deadlock ended now that Netanyahu got an agreement that he accepted and protects him and allows him to continue to serve as prime minister, he says, adding there was even social disobedience “about the fact that the man they voted for, Benny Gantz, who promised to unseat Netanyahu, lied to his voters and is now sitting with Netanyahu.”

‘Israel not a democracy but an apartheid’

On claims by Tel Aviv and its allies in the West that Israel is the only democratic country in the West Asia region, Peled says, “Israel is not and has never been a democracy. It an apartheid regime.”
 
He goes on to note that “the problem with West perspective is that it is a Zionist perspective which recognizing the legitimacy of Zionism and does not recognize the rights of Palestinians.”
 
 Israel sees Trump’s reckless policies toward Iran ‘a great thing’ 

Actually, in over a year that Israel has been holding three elections, each time Donald Trump has taken a step to promote chances of Netanyahu in elections. His administration moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and recently Mike Pompeo claimed that annexation of lands in the West Bank does not violate international law. However, each time Netanyahu’s party failed to win enough seats in Knesset to form a government.

“Israelis are actually very happy with Trump. His support for the Israeli regime and his reckless policies regarding Iran and the Palestinians is seen as a great thing,” Peled points out.

‘Racism in Israel comes even at expenses of public health’

Despite the coronavirus epidemic, Israel is refusing to release Palestinians who are held in crowded prisons, he said, noting, “Israel never respected Palestinian rights, even now that the spread of the Coronavirus is dangerous to all people.” 
“Racism in Israel is so strong that it comes even at the expense of public health,” the activist regrets.

 ‘2 million people of Gaza are heroes’

Gaza Strip is considered the greatest open prison on the earth.

Peled calls two million residents of Gaza “heroes” who are victims of “Zionist racism and violence”.

He also notes that except Iran, no country in the world cares about the miseries of the Gazans.

“They are victims of Zionist racism and violence and of the fact that the rest of the world, with the exception of Iran, do not care about them.”

RELATED NEWS

• 72 years of misery: History and identity cannot be built like settlements

ماهر زعاترة..دمك قدسيّ

صابرين دياب

في الضحى، هذا اليوم (أمس)، داخل المسجد الأقصى، ناديت الخالة ام علي، ابنة مدينتي طمرة، حيث كنا معاً وبمعية مجموعة طيبة من مرابطي ومرابطات الأقصى من أبناء مدينتي الرائعة، نرابط في مهجة الفؤاد. ناديتها، كي تنتظر معنا قليلاً، في مدخل المكان المخصص للوضوء في المسجد، والمتوضأ، بجانب باب الاسباط، حتى لا تتبلل بالمطر، وكان قد اشتدّ عند الساعة الحادية عشرة، فقالت إن المطر بركة ونقاء، ولا بأس من بلل المطر..

المسافة بيني وبينها، أقل من عشرة أمتار. لاحظنا ان الخالة أم علي، وعدداً من المرابطين، توتروا، أسرعنا صوبهم. لنعرف ما الذي يحدث، وما إن تحرّكنا، حتى سمعنا إطلاق نار كثيف، وأغلق الباب فوراً، ومنع المرابطون من الخروج، ثم أغلقت كل أبواب الحرم !

وقالت الخالة ام علي، «شاهدت شاباً يمشي بسرعة – كان المطر شديداً، والطبيعي أن يمشي الناس بسرعة – ويضع يديه بداخل جيبي معطف أسود يرتديه، ثم ركضَت خلفه مجموعة من الجنود يتحدّثون بأجهزتهم الخاصة، فالتفت الشاب وتفاجأ، فركض هو الأخر، والتفّ واتجه صوب الباب، فكان إطلاق النار خلال ثوانٍ».

وكان صوت النار فظيعاً، كأن هؤلاء في معركة مع فيلق مسلح!!، لكن الحقيقة يا أيها الناس، ان المعركة كانت مع انسان فلسطيني أعزل !!

وبعد أقل من ربع ساعة، تمّ فتح كل أبواب المسجد، والمقبلون إليه، يدخلون من دون أي تدقيق او إجراءات متّبعة، مع حدوث عملية في القدس، فما بالكم بداخل الحرم!!!

السؤال الكبير: هل يعقل أن تتم عملية فدائية في باب الأسباط، ويتم فتحه بعد أقل من ربع ساعة، ثم يدخل المرابطون والمصلّون من دون أي تضييق !!

هل يعقل أن يأتي شاب، في نيته تنفيذ عملية فدائية، بسيارته، ويتركها في مطلع باب الأسباط «المكان الهدف»، والمسافة بين المكان الذي «ترك» سيارته فيه، وبين باب الأسباط، خمسون متراً بل وأكثر! هل يعقل أن الاحتلال سمح له بالمشي على قدميه، كل هذه المسافة «وهو يركن» سيارته بشكل غير قانوني، وفي منطقة مكشوفة للمحتل، بل إن تمركزاً عسكرياً كبيراً له فيه!!!!!

اما وضع السكين واقتحام بيته، فإنها مستلزمات «تثبيت» جريمتهم.

ومن الجدير ذكره في هذا السياق، عندما نفذ شابان عملية فدائية قبل شهرين في القدس، أُغلقت الابواب ست ساعات، وحين فتحوا الأبواب، منعوا من هم دون الخمسين عاماً – نساء ورجالاً – من دخول الحرم!! وكانت إجراءات مشددة جداً !

لكن، ما قام به الاحتلال اليوم هو جريمة نازية جديدة، تضاف الى سجله الإجرامي النذل والجبان، فقد ارتعبوا من سرعة مشي الشهيد ماهر!! او ان ضابطهم، نهض في الصباح وأعطى أمراً بقتل إنسان فلسطيني هذا اليوم! وفي الحالتين، احتلال عايب جبان وجبان وجباااان.

أيها المجرمون، أنتم ومن يعترف بوجودكم وباغتصابكم،

مهما قتلتم منّا، ومهما تجبّرتم، ومهما تفنّنتم بقتلكم ونذالتكم، ستبقى هذه الأرض عربية فلسطينية، وإن فُنينا، سيطاردكم التراب الذي لن يحمل ولا يحتمل الا ملحه، ولن تستطيعوا أن تتخلصوا من هذه الحقيقة، وهذا القدر المبرم !

المجد لعبق دمك الزكي يا ماهر زعاترة.

Israeli Soldier Breaks Palestinian Woman’s Skull

 Source

December 24, 2019

An Israeli occupation army soldier attacked a Palestinian woman in the town of Al-Essawiya, last month, causing her moderate wounds, which resulted in the breaking of her skull.

According to the Haaretz newspaper, doctors had to implant platinum in the skull of Mrs. Rina Derbas, 36, after the assault by a Border Guard soldier with the butt of his rifle on her head, while trying to prevent the arrest of her 14-year-old son.

Derbas said that when her son was arrested and put into the Zionist police car, she spoke to the policemen, and one of them raised his weapon and hit her with the heel of the gun on her face, so she lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital, as she suffers from several fractures of her skull and nose.

Doctors then performed a complex surgery to implant platinum, and her husband, Karim Derbas, said that “every time she looks in the mirror she starts crying.”

“My life has been destroyed; my head and face hurt me; my life has turned into a nightmare,” Derbas wrote, in the statement of her lawyer.

Derbas said that the investigators tried to persuade her that a stone hurt her, adding that she refused and insisted on her statements.

Source: Websites

IOF Launches Large-Scale Arrest Campaign in West Bank

Gilad Atzmon on Truth, Faith and Palestine – Chester Interfaith Palestine Conference

NOVEMBER 03, 2019 BY GILAD ATZMON

 The following is a talk given at Chester Interfaith Palestine Conference 2019 on  (2.1.2019).

https://youtu.be/pfxhicFBHSI

 In the last few days Zionist and Israeli advocacy groups were desperate to cancel the  gathering of many local peace enthusiasts, intellectuals and religious leaders. Every Hasbara trick was put into play: Social media abuse, intimidating phone calls, smears and lies. But none of it worked. The pro- Israeli bigoted efforts backfired – – interest in the conference grew immediately, the local community stood for Palestine, peace, harmony and free speech!

Roderick Heather MBE, Chairman of Hoole Community Centre was subjected to vitriolic abuse.  I learned yesterday that Mr Heather decided to attend the conference meetings and to judge for himself whether it was a ‘hateful’ gathering. Apparently he was  impressed and announced to the group at the end of the first day  that they will always be welcome at the Hoole Centre.  Here is the message Mr Heather sent to North West Friends of Israel, the advocacy pressure group that led the campaign.

One may wonder why Zionist operators are so desperate to cancel Palestinian meetings and are so fearful of my work in particular. As things stand, the law seems to be on their side. With the IHRA definition of antisemitsm  and current legislation designed to supress all criticism,  the Zionist advocacy groups could theoretically  seek to punish  everyone who even comes close to any disputes of the operation of  their community or their beloved state. You would expect Zionists to ignore Palestinian gatherings. If those gatherings were indeed ‘hateful’ they could have  locked many of us up behind bars a long time ago. Clearly, the friends of Israel know that the  reality is  different. Palestine solidarity is a peaceseeking mission. Despite my huge body of work, I have never been accused of making a single hate statement. Needless to mention, I do not need to mention that I have never been charged or even questioned by a any legal authority anywhere in the world about anything I have said or written. The same applies to Stephen Sizer. The Zionist Lobby groups accuse Palestinian solidarity gatherings of  being ‘hateful’  while knowing that this type of behaviour is something that Palestinian activism is free of.

Here are final words from Chester Interfaith Palestine Conference:

 Chester Palestine Conference November 2nd 2019

 The Chester Palestine Conference was even more successful on its second day.  We actually ran out of chairs!

 The theme for the day was “Grassroots for Palestine: making local links”.

 The day started with a brief interfaith service.

 Burnley Women’s Peace Group shared the experience of their Jerusalem Peace Pilgrimage this year. The images of Palestinian suffering were very moving. They are a Jewish, Christian and Muslim interfaith group.

 A Jewish Roma activist addressed the similarities between the Roma and Palestinian experience.

 Andrew Herbert from Chester’s Methodist Church spoke of his Palestinian house rebuilding experience with the Amos Trust.

 Gilad Atzmon the international jazz artist and author of best-selling books on Jewish identity politics flew in from Greece to give a wide-reaching presentation entitled “Zionism from Herzl to Bibi”.

Atzmon was born into a Jewish family in Tel Aviv, and conscripted into the Israeli regime army where he had a life-changing experience when he was shocked by the barbaric conditions imposed by the Israeli regime on the Palestinians during the Israeli invasion into Lebanon in 1982.

In his intellectual, philosophical and polemical style he engaged us to think deeply about the causes of the worsening trauma of the Palestinian people.

 Damien Short’s presentation on the Genocide of the Palestinians was unable to be shown due to technical problems. We will endeavour to distribute it to the conference attendees. Damien is a Reader in Human Rights at the University of London. His book “Redefining Genocide: Settler Colonialism, Social Death and Ecocide”, which includes a chapter on Genocide and Palestine, is highly recommended.

 The Israeli artist Zohar’s exhibition of Palestinian paintings is on show at Chester University Kingsway Arts Campus, Kingsway, Chester CH2 2LB for the month of November.

These accomplished and thought-provoking pictures are “witnessing the chaos and brutality inflicted on the Palestinian civilian population by an ever more confident and belligerent military power.”

(For insurance and practical reasons we were unable to show these at the conference).

 We look forward to the 3rd Annual Chester Palestine Conference in 2020 !

---

My battle for truth and freedom involves some expensive legal and security services. I hope that you will consider committing to a monthly donation in whatever amount you can give. Regular contributions will enable me to avoid being pushed against a wall and to stay on top of the endless harassment by Zionist operators attempting to silence me and others.

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