Israel: Ethnic Cleansing, Land Theft, Apartheid And Jim Crow

by Kevin Zeese 

Co-Written By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers

In recent weeks, racism against Palestinian people and the expansion of apartheid-Jim Crow policies have escalated. The Israeli lobby and its supporters attacked freedom of speech in the United States, showing how far they will go to prevent the US public from being aware of their behavior.

If more people in the US become aware of the truth about Israel’s genocidal policies, the economic lifeline and political protection of the United States will disappear. Israel could be forced to make significant changes that recognize the human rights and self-determination of Palestinians.

Israel knows that without the support of the United States, it could not continue these crimes against the Palestinian people. The lesson for US activists: keep telling the truth about Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine.

“The Israeli army has enough bullets for every Palestinian.”

That is what the Chair of the Defense Committee of the Israeli Parliament, Avi Dichter, threatened last week. He was commenting on the Great March of Return protests that took place along the eastern fence of the Gaza Strip. Saying Israel has enough bullets for every Palestinian is saying Israel could kill every Palestinian, the definition of ethnic cleansing.

Dichter is not a fringe backbencher but a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud Party. This former director of the Shin Bet internal security service and Minister of Internal Security said that the Israeli army is prepared to use all means to stop Palestinians.

And, the Strategic Affairs Minister, Gilad Erdan, repeatedly referred to Palestinians killed in Gaza as “Nazis.” Killing Palestinians was acceptable, because  “The number [of peaceful Palestinian protesters] killed does not mean anything because they are just Nazis anyhow.”

Israeli troops shot and killed 180 Palestinians and nearly 6,000 others were shot and injured during the Great March of Return. A staggering 24,000 Palestinians have been injured by Israel during the protests, aided by large corporations.

A video released last week showed Israeli soldiers shot dead a young disabled Palestinian from as far away as 80 meters.  The rights group, B’Tselem uploaded the video that debunks Israeli claims that he was killed during violent clashes. The video shows 22-year-old Mohammed Habali, being fatally shot by Israeli soldiers in early December in the West Bank.  It “clearly shows there were no clashes between residents and soldiers in the immediate vicinity of the spot where Habali was shot,” the group said.

Last week, a four-year-old Palestinian boy died after being injured by Israeli gunfire at a routine protest near Gaza‘s border. His father, Yasser Abu Abed, did not usually bring his son to the regular protests but the boy insisted. Within two minutes of arriving, snipers began shooting. They were a few hundred meters away from the fence. Yasser said, “We’re simply asking for basic rights…All we ever wanted was to see the blockade on Gaza come to an end.” The 11-year blockade has caused immense suffering and violations of human rights.

These are just two recent examples among many. Mondoweiss reports there are many indiscriminate killings including strikes on children playing football, a police officer’s family, a World Cup beach party, at least six hospitals including a geriatric hospital, multiple UN-run safe houses for civilians, journalists,  survivors looking for family members, ambulances, among others.

Apartheid-Land Theft: 700 Israeli Communities Ban Arabs

In 2006, when fmr. President Jimmy Carter wrote, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, he was attacked by Israel’s defenders for using the word apartheid. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz wrote that Carter’s “use of the loaded word ‘apartheid,’ suggesting an analogy to the hated policies of South Africa, is especially outrageous.”

In her book review, Karen DeYoung explained: Carter acknowledges that “the word ‘apartheid’ refers to the system of legal racial separation once used in South Africa… it is an appropriate term for Israeli policies devoted to ‘the acquisition of land’ in Palestinian territories through Jewish settlements and Israel’s incorporation of Palestinian land on its side of a separating wall it is erecting.” Carter also criticized Israelis who believe “they have the right to confiscate and colonize Palestinian land and try to justify the sustained subjugation and persecution of increasingly hopeless and aggravated Palestinians.”

All pretenses that Israel is not an apartheid state with policies sometimes worse than the Jim Crow south have been removed as Israel gets more overt in its racism. This week the Knesset approved 200 more communities where non-Jewish inhabitants can be banned. Now 700 communities have such Jim Crow-apartheid like laws. Banning Arabs from living in communities wipes away Palestinian history, steals land and makes Palestinians second-class citizens or worse.

The  Knesset also rejected a bill to ‘maintain equal rights amongst all its citizens.’ The Basic Law: Equality bill, was clear: “The State of Israel shall maintain equal political rights amongst all its citizens, without any difference between religions, race and sex.” This is a direct quote from Israel’s Declaration of Independence, rejected last week by Israel’s parliament.

Mondoweiss describes how this action unveiled the truth about Israel, writing, “Despite one of the greatest political cons in history – ‘Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East’ – Israeli law never recognized equality between citizens. An attempt to enter an equality clause to the Human Dignity and Freedom Basic Law, back in 1992, failed – mostly due to the opposition of the religious parties.”

Last July the Knesset, amid widespread protest in Israel and in the US, adopted a basic law defining Israel as “the nation-state of the Jewish people,” with more rights for Jews than other groups, codifying Israel as an apartheid state. The law made Arabic no longer an official language, “Jewish settlement” a national value, and the right of “national self-determination” “unique” to Jews.

Aida Touma-Sliman, a rare Palestinian member of the Knesset, explained the new nation-state law officially established apartheid as the law in the “land of Israel” from the river to sea. American Jews decried the clause as reminiscent of racist Jim Crow laws against black people in the United States.

Palestinian women cross through the Israeli military checkpoint of Qalandiya, the main crossing point between Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Israel Working to Undermine Free Speech in the United States

Israel and their US supporters fear people telling the truth about Israel. There have been attacks against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement,which had victories in 2018 and has transformed the debate on Israel. People are exercising their constitutional rights and political freedom to oppose Israel. There are efforts to ban BDS across the country, but courts have found BDS bans unconstitutional. Sen. Ben Cardin is leading the effort to ban BDS under federal law.

CNN fired Marc Lamont Hill for speaking truthfully about Palestine. Hill spoke at the November 29, 2018, UN  International Day of Solidarity with Palestinian People. This is the 70th year since the Nakba when 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their homes by the newly-declared state of Israel and hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were emptied and destroyed. Hill called for the human rights of the Palestinian people. Groups moved to remove him from CNN and from Temple University.

A suppressed film by Al Jazeera was finally made public. “The Lobby” showed hidden camera footage of a British Jew who infiltrated AIPAC conferences, programs, and one-on-one meetings. The film showed that the Israeli government spies on US citizens, smears BDS activists as well as others, including Black Lives Matter, and subverts the US democratic process. Read more about the movie and get links to view it here. AIPAC is alreadyworking on newly-elected members of Congress.

Last week, the pro-Israel lobby suffered a defeat in its efforts to weaponize support for Palestinian rights when Temple University refused to fire Hill for speaking in solidarity with basic human rights of Palestinians. Their goal is that no criticism of Israel should be allowed in the US.

Unfortunately, Hill was fired as a commentator on CNN. This highlighted the bias of CNN reporting. The network has had a pro-Israel bias for quite some time, as their star news anchor, Wolf Blitzer previously worked for the right wing, Jerusalem Post and the extreme Israeli lobby, AIPAC. Blitzer regularly relies on Israeli military spokesman-turned-CNN-contributor Michael Oren to give his “expert” opinion. Blitzer is among the most overtly biased reporters in the US media. Leaked documents from the archives of the American Zionist Council, the precursor to AIPAC, show that Israeli government representatives secretly – and illegally – financed the planting of propaganda articles and speakers in many major American media outlets. There is a campaign, the Khalas! Blitzer-Oren campaign, demanding CNN end its ties with Blitzer and Oren.

Hill explained what is becoming an obvious fact, that, “Justice will come through a single bi-national democratic state that encompasses Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.”  A two-state solution is no longer possible because Israel has seized so much of the land in the West Bank. The Israeli government, including Netanyahu, opposes the existence of an independent State of Palestine.

Even with the discussion of a one-state solution being suppressed in the United States, equal numbers of people in the US support a one-state solution as support a two-state solution and 64 percent support a one-state solution if a two-state solution is not possible. This has Israel, AIPAC and its supporters worried as one nation where everyone has equal rights are inconsistent with Jewish people having greater rights than others in Israel.

MintPress News reported, “Hill is not the first academic to be targeted by pro-Israel pressure groups. They regard university campuses as a battleground to target and attack all individuals and groups who show solidarity with Palestine and its people and criticize Israel, its apartheid policies and its contempt for international laws and conventions.”

Another decline in US support for Israel is young US Jews not signing up for free ten-day birthright tours of Israel. This week it was reported that there was an unprecedented sharp drop in youth, drops range from 20 percent to 50 percent. Other youths have walked off birthright tours because they were so biased.

Israel’s actions are building opposition against them. Debra Shushan, of Americans for Peace Now, said, growing support for a one-state solution is due to “the aggressive, annexationist policies of the current Israeli government and its failure to pursue a two-state solution. This has fostered a growing perception that an independent Palestinian state is moot or impossible, which prompts people to look for alternatives.”

NEW YORK, NY – DECEMBER 07: Moderator Marc Lamont Hill attends BET Presents “An Evening With ‘The Quad’” At The Paley Center on December 7, 2016 in New York City. Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for BET Networks/AFP

Time For Israel To Be Held Accountable

Israel constitutes “an open challenge to international law and the present concepts of human rights enshrined in it,” as Flisadam Pointer writes. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is conducting a pre-investigation of Israel.

On the same day that John Bolton threatened the court with economic sanctions if it investigated the US or Israeli war crimes, the Green Party of the United States completed the process of approving a letter to the ICC requesting a full investigation of Israel. We delivered that letter, and Margaret Flowers and Miko Peled met with a representative of the prosecutor’s office on November 19 in The Hague. Palestinians had previously requested an ICC investigation. Last week the ICC announced it has made progress on the pre-investigation. In October, ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said: “Extensive destruction of property without military necessity and population transfers in an occupied territory constitute war crimes.”

Holding the leaders of Israel accountable for their human rights violations will be the first step. Progress will continue if we continue to tell the truth, share videos of Israeli abuses, which occur almost daily, and participate in BDS and other movements in support of Palestine.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers are directors of Popular Resistance

How Great Britain Facilitated the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

By Jeremy R. Hammond

Lord Arthur Balfour in Tel Aviv, c. 1925 (from the G. Eric and
Edith Matson Photograph Collection at the Library of Congress)

The significance of the 1917 Balfour Declaration is that it determined a policy by which Great Britain would facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

On this day in 1917, the government of Great Britain issued its infamous “Balfour Declaration” promising to support the Zionists in their project to establish a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. While most people have heard of this document, what is never communicated in school textbooks or mainstream media reports is the Balfour Declaration’s true significance, which is that it set Great Britain on a policy course that ultimately facilitated the Zionists’ ethnic cleansing of most of the Arab population from their homes in Palestine in order to establish a demographically “Jewish state”.

In 1917, the First World War was raging, and Britain was seeking the help of both European Jews and Middle Eastern Arabs in the war effort against the Ottoman Empire, which controlled the territory of Palestine. To gain Arab support, in July 1915, the British promised to support “the independence of the Arab countries”. Understanding that this would mean freedom from oppressive foreign rule, Arab volunteers from Palestine were among the first to join a revolt against their Turkish rulers.

Great Britain, however, had no intention of honoring its pledge with respect to Palestine. Instead, as outlined in a then-secret pact between Britain and France known as the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement, Britain aimed to carve up the Middle East and force an occupation regime upon the Palestinians.

To that end, the leadership of the Zionist movement by early 1917 were engaged in negotiations with the British government over how they could form a partnership to satisfy Britain’s aim of securing Jewish support for the war effort and the Zionists’ aim of reconstituting Palestine into a “Jewish state”.

While early drafts of an agreement explicitly stated that aim, the finally agreed text omitted the verb “reconstituted” and replaced “Jewish state” with “national home for the Jewish people”, in order to avoid offending anti-Zionist Jews as well as the Arabs. The Balfour Declaration also contained the self-contradictory language that British support for the Zionist project would not prejudice “the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine”.

The agreement was relayed to Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, a prominent leader of Britain’s Jewish community and an ardent Zionist, by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in a letter dated November 2, 1917. As British Prime Minister Lloyd George later explained, the Balfour Declaration was issued for “propagandist reasons”. The Zionist leadership had promised Britain that if the Allies would commit to facilitating the Zionist project to reconstitute Palestine into a Jewish state, “they would do their best to rally Jewish sentiment and support throughout the world to the Allied cause.”

Just five weeks after issuing the Balfour Declaration, on December 9, 1917, British forces conquered Jerusalem with the help of Arabs who believed Britain’s promise that the outcome would be their independence from foreign rule.

This misplaced trust in the duplicitous British government was reinforced on November 7, 1918, when Britain and France issued a joint declaration again promising “the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by the Turks, and the establishment of National Governments and administrations deriving their authority from the initiatives and free choice of the indigenous populations.”

It was yet another promise to the Arabs that British policymakers had no intention of keeping. Far from helping the people of Palestine to develop self-governing institutions in the wake of the war, Britain conspired with the Zionists and other Allied powers to denyself-determination to the Palestinians in order to fulfill the promise to facilitate the Zionist project of reconstituting Palestine into a “Jewish state”.

To this end, the Allied powers sought vainly to legitimize Britain’s belligerent occupation of Palestine through the newly established League of Nations organization.

Article 22 of the League of Nations Covenant established the “Mandate” system with the express purpose of helping the people living in territories conquered by the Allies to establish self-governing institutions. The Covenant required member states to give “principle consideration” to the will of the inhabitants in selecting the “Mandatory”, which was just the League’s term for Occupying Power.

Of course, the Allied Powers had no authority to divvy up occupied territories according to their own whims and political interests. And when it came to Palestine, the Allies even violated their own Covenant by refusing to take the will of the Palestinians into consideration and establishing an occupation regime for the purpose of preventing them from exercising their right to self-determination.

The Arab leadership had rejected any kind of occupation regime altogether and insisted that Palestine’s independence be immediately recognized. Yet, recognizing that a belligerent occupation was going to be forced upon them against their will, they expressed their preference that it be administrated by the United States rather than Great Britain.

While the Arabs of Palestine were not consulted about the choice of the Mandatory Power, the European Zionists were, and so on April 25, 1920, in direct violation of the League of Nations Covenant, the Allied Powers adopted the “San Remo Resolution” appointing Britain as the Mandatory Power and stating that the extent of the territory in which Arab peoples would be permitted to exercise independence was yet to be determined. The text of the resolution incorporated the wording of the Balfour Declaration and charged Britain with “putting into effect” the promise to facilitate the Zionist project.

On August 10, 1920, the territory in which the Allied Powers intended to deny self-determination to the inhabitants became more clearly defined with the signing of the Treaty of Sèvres, which stated that the independence of Syria and Iraq was to be recognized, whereas for Palestine the Occupying Power would instead be “responsible for putting into effect” the Balfour policy of facilitating the Zionist project.

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The Arabs, naturally, were none too pleased by Britain rejecting their rights and acting to help the Zionists to “reconstitute” their homeland into a “Jewish state”, which remained the effective goal of the Balfour policy despite the change of wording of the final draft of the Declaration.

In June 1922, British Secretary of State for the Colonies (and later Prime Minister) Winston Churchill issued a policy statement affirming to the Zionists that Britain would continue to facilitate Jewish immigration into Palestine limited only by “the economic capacity of the country at the time to absorb new arrivals.”

To the upset Arabs, Churchill explained that their dashed hopes of independence were all just a big misunderstanding as the British had always intended to exclude Palestine from the areas in which the Allied Powers would permit Arab peoples to exercise self-determination.

Churchill further declared that the aim of British policy was to help establish self-governance in Palestine, but only after fulfilling the pledge made to the Zionists to facilitate their colonization project.

In other words, it was the effective policy of Great Britain to deny self-determination to the inhabitants of Palestine until the Jews had through mass immigration established a numerical majority—or at least until the Zionists had become powerful enough to carry on their project without the support of British guns.

With this policy already in place, it wasn’t until July 24, 1922, nearly five years after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration, that the League of Nations formally adopted the Mandate for Palestine, which was drafted by the Zionists to serve their interests at the expense of the majority Arab inhabitants of Palestine. Like the San Remo Resolution, the Mandate incorporated the text of the Balfour Declaration and charged Britain with facilitating the Zionists’ colonization project.

The Arabs, however, were not going to take this sitting down and in 1936 held a general strike as an act of mass civil disobedience. It evolved into an Arab revolt that lasted until 1939, when it was ultimately put down brutally by British armed forces.

The British were cognizant of how their policy was causing conflict and began seeking a way out. To that end, the British government appointed Lord William Peel to chair the Palestine Royal Commission, more popularly known as the Peel Commission. In 1937, the Peel Commission report was published, acknowledging that British policymakers had erred by mistakenly assuming that the Arabs would come to realize the supposed benefits of being subjected to Britain’s supposedly enlightened rule and would therefore consent to it.

“It must have been obvious from the outset,” the Commission remarked, “that a very awkward situation would arise if that basic assumption should prove false.”

As a solution to the problem, the Commission proposed partitioning Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states. But this in turn presented a demographic problem, which was that in the area of the proposed Arab state there were relatively few Jews, while in the area of the proposed Jewish state, there was a sizable Arab population. So, to solve that problem, the Commission proposed a “compulsory transfer” of populations.

In other words, the British proposed ethnically cleansing Arabs from their homes in Palestine in order to facilitate the Zionists’ aim of establishing a “Jewish state” there.

This was an idea with which the Zionist leadership was on board. “I am for compulsory transfer”, Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion told the Jewish Agency Executive in 1938. “I do not see anything immoral in it.”

After World War II, the League of Nations was dissolved and replaced with the United Nations organization, which took over responsibility for the Mandate system. Seeking to extract itself from the conflict situation it had created in Palestine, Great Britain requested the UN General Assembly to come up with a solution.

Consequently, the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) was established in 1947. Its report contained two recommendations. The minority recommendation, which was in accordance with the solution the Arabs had been insisting upon since the beginning, was for Palestine’s independence to be recognized and a democratic government established under a constitution that would guarantee representation and protect the rights of the Jewish minority.

The majority recommendation, however, was to reject the democratic solution and instead to partition Palestine against the will of the majority of its inhabitants, who also owned most of the land.

Despite their best efforts, by the time the Mandate was terminated in May 1948, the Jewish community had managed to acquire less than 7 percent of the land in Palestine. Arabs owned more land than Jews in every single district, including Jaffa, which included the main Jewish population center of Tel Aviv. Arabs owned more land than Jews and, when the Bedouin population was counted, also constituted a numerical majority even within the proposed “Jewish state”.

The Arabs naturally rejected the UN’s racist, colonialist partition plan.

The gross inequity of the partition plan is simply explained by the fact that the majority UNSCOP recommendation was premised upon the explicit rejection of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. The committee’s report stated that the principle of self-determination “was not applied to Palestine, obviously because of the intention to make possible the creation of the Jewish National Home there.”

Of course, this placed UNSCOP’s majority recommendation in direct violation of the principle of the UN Charter to uphold the universal right to self-determination. Yet this did not stop the General Assembly from recommending the partition plan on November 29, 1947, with the adoption of Resolution 181.

Contrary to popular myth, Resolution 181 neither created Israel nor conferred any legal authority to the Zionist leadership for their unilateral declaration of Israel’s existence on May 14, 1948. Rather, it merely referred the matter to the Security Council, where the partition plan was dead on arrival. As US representative Warren Austin observed, the only way the plan could be implemented would be through the use of force, and the UN had no authority to forcibly partition Palestine against the will of the majority of its inhabitants.

On the other hand, the UN did have authority, Warren argued, to intervene to prevent a breach of international peace. Instead, the UN sat by and watched as the Zionists, with an army built up under the protective cover of Britain’s occupation regime, ethnically cleansed Palestine.

The Mandate expired on May 14, 1948—the same day the Zionist leadership unilaterally and with no legal or moral authority declared the existence of the state of Israel. By that time, 300,000 Arabs had already been ethnically cleansed from their homeland in order for the “Jewish state” to be established.

By the time it was over, more than 700,000 Arabs had been ethnically cleansed, and the Zionist forces made sure they could never return to their homes by systematically wiping hundreds of Arab villages off the map.

That is the true legacy of the Balfour Declaration.

It was a propaganda document that had no legal authority or moral legitimacy, and which set the British government on a policy course that ultimately facilitated the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

It was this heinous violation of the rights of the Palestinians that is the root cause of the conflict that persists today, with the US having replaced Great Britain as chief facilitator of Israel’s ongoing crimes against the Palestinians.

For documentation and a more in depth look at the significance of the Balfour Declaration, see my 2017 Foreign Policy Journal essay written for the document’s 100th anniversary, “What Was the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and Why Was It Significant?”

Why Israel Demolishes: Khan Al-Ahmar as Representation of Greater Genocide

by Dr Ramzy Baroud

Like vultures, Israeli soldiers descended on Khan Al-Ahmar, on Sep. 14, recreating a menacing scene with which the residents of this small Palestinian village, located East of Jerusalem, are all-too familiar.

The strategic location of Khan Al-Ahmar makes the story behind the imminent Israeli demolition of the peaceful village unique amid the ongoing destruction of Palestinian homes and lives throughout besieged Gaza and Occupied West Bank.

Throughout the years, Khan Al-Ahmar, once part of an uninterrupted Palestinian physical landscape has grown increasingly isolated. Decades of Israeli colonization of East Jerusalem and the West Bank left Khan Al-Ahmar trapped between massive and vastly expanding Israeli colonial projects: Ma’aleAdumim, KfarAdumim among others.

The unfortunate village, its adjacent school and173 residents are the last obstacle facing the E1 Zone project, an Israeli plan that aims to link illegal Jewish colonies in Occupied East Jerusalem with West Jerusalem, thus cutting off East Jerusalem completely from its Palestinian environs in the West Bank.

Like the Neqab (Negev) village of Al-Araqib, whichhas been demolished by Israel and rebuilt by its residents 133 times, Khan Al-Ahmar residents are facing armed soldiers and military bulldozers with their bare chests and whatever local and international solidarity they are able to obtain.

Despite the particular circumstances and unique historical context of Khan Al-Ahmar, however, the story of this village is but a chapter in a protracted narrative of a tragedy that has extended over the course of seventy years.

It would be a mistake to discuss the destruction of Khan Al-Ahmar, or any other Palestinian village outside the larger context of demolition that has stood at the heart of Israel’s particular breed of settler colonialism.

It is true that other colonial powers used destruction of homes and properties, and the exile of whole communities as a tactic to subdue rebellious populations. The British Mandate government in Palestine used the demolition of homes as a ‘deterrence’ tactic against Palestinians who dared rebel against injustice throughout the 1920s, 30s and 40s, till Israel took over in 1948.

Yet the Israeli strategy is far more convoluted than a mere ‘deterrence’. It is now carved in the Israeli psyche that Palestine must be completely destroyed in order for Israel to exist. Therefore, Israel is engaging in a seemingly endless campaign of erasing everything Palestinian, because the latter, from an Israeli viewpoint represents an existential threat to the former.

This is precisely why Israel sees the natural demographic growth among Palestinians as an ‘existential threat’ to Israel’s ‘Jewish identity’.

This can only be justified with an irrational degree of hate and fear that has accumulated throughout generations to the point that it now forms a collective Israeli psychosis for which Palestinians continue to pay a heavy price.

The repeated destruction of Gaza is symptomatic of this Israeli psychosis.

Israel is a “country that when you fire on its citizens it responds by going wild – and this is a good thing,” was the official explanation offered by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister in January 2009 to justify its country’s war on the blockaded Gaza Strip. The Israel ‘going wild’ strategy has led to the destruction of22,000 homes, schools and other facilities during one of Israel’s deadliest wars on the Strip.

A few years later, in the summer of 2014, Israel went ‘wild’ again, leading to an even greater destruction and loss of lives.

Israel’s mass demolition of Palestinian homes in Gaza, and everywhere else, preceded Hamas by decades. In fact, it has nothing to do with the method of resistance that Palestinians utilize in their struggle against Israel. Israel’s demolishing of Palestine – whether the actual physical structures or the idea, history, narrative, and even street names – is an Israeli decision through and through.

A quick scan of historical facts demonstrates that Israel demolished Palestinian homes and communities in diverse political and historical contexts, where Israel’s ‘security’ was not in the least a factor.

Nearly 600 Palestinian towns, villages and localities were destroyed between 1947 and 1948, and nearly 800,000 Palestinians were exiled to make room for the establishment of Israel.

According to the Land Research Center(LRC), Israel had destroyed 5,000 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem alone since it occupied the city in 1967, leading to the permanent exile of nearly 70,000 people. Coupled with the fact that nearly 200,000 Jerusalemites were driven out during the Nakba, the Catastrophe’ of 1948, and the ongoing slow ethnic cleansing, the Holy City has been in a constant state of destruction since the establishment of Israel.

In fact, between 2000 and 2017, over 1,700 Palestinian homes were demolished, displacing nearly 10,000 people. This is not a policy of ‘deterrence’ but of erasure – the eradication of the very Palestinian culture.

Gaza and Jerusalem are not unique examples either. According to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD’s)report last December, since 1967 “nearly 50,000 Palestinian homes and structures have been demolished – displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and affecting the livelihoods of thousands of others.”

Combined with the destruction of Palestinian villages upon the establishment of Israel, and the demolition of Palestinian homes inside Israel itself, ICAHD puts the total number of homes destroyed since 1948 at more than 100,000.

In fact, as the group itself acknowledges, the figure above is quite conservative. Indeed, it is. In Gaza alone, and in the last 10 years which witnessed three major Israeli wars, nearly 50,000 homes and structures were reportedly destroyed.

So why does Israel destroy with consistency, impunity and no remorse?

It is for the same reason that it passed laws to change historic street names from Arabic to Hebrew. For the same reason it recently passed the racist Nation-state law, elevating everything Jewish and completely ignoring and downgrading the existence of the indigenous Palestinians, their language and their culture that goes back millennia.

Israel demolishes, destroys and pulverizes because in the racist mindset of Israeli rulers, there can be no room between the Sea and the River but for Jews; where the Palestinians – oppressed, colonized and dehumanized – don’t factor in the least in Israel’s ruthless calculations.

This is not just a question of Khan Al-Ahmar. It is a question of the very survival of the Palestinian people, threatened by a racist state that has been allowed to ‘go wild’ for 70 years, untamed and without repercussions.

– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His latest book is The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London, 2018). He earned a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, UCSB.

Trump to Netanyahu: Palestinians Must Be Completely Conquered

Eric ZUESSE

The Washington correspondent of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Amir Tibon, headlined on the night of Tuesday, August 14, “Trump Administration Wants to See a Gaza Cease-fire ‘With or Without the Palestinian Authority’,” and he reported that, “The Trump administration wants to see a long-term cease-fire in Gaza, with or without the support of the Palestinian Authority, a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council told Haaretz on Monday.”

In other words: U.S. President Donald Trump is not angling for Palestinians to become ruled by the more moderate of the two political entities that are contesting for control over Palestine — he’s not favoring The Palestinain Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, over Hamas, Ismail Haniya. He is, instead, aiming for Jews inside Israel to conquer completely the non-Jews, not only inside Israel, but also in the adjoining areas, Palestine.

Trump has now officially placed the United States on the side of Israel’s Jews, for them to conquer and subdue Palestine, for Jews to rule over Palestinians, and for the residents in Palestine not to be allowed to participate in Israel’s elections.

This will be very good for American firms such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics, which depend wholly or primarily upon sales to the U.S. Government and to its allied governments, including Israel, for their profits and their net worths, their stock-market valuations. More war is essential for these firms, which sell only to these governments — governments which seek to control more land, regardless of what the residents there want, and which need to buy more weapons in order to do it.

Trump’s foreign policies have been very effective.

Trump’s biggest success, thus far into his Presidency, has been his sale of $400 billion (originally $350 billion) of U.S.-made weapons to the Saudi Arabian Government, which is owned by its royal family, after whom that nation is named. This sale alone is big enough to be called Trump’s “jobs plan” for Americans. It is also the biggest weapons-sale in all of history. It’s 400 billion dollars, not 400 million dollars; it is gigantic, and, by far, unprecedented in world-history. Consequently, anyone who would allege that he has been anything other than an extraordinary success for his constituency, the people who will be funding his 2020 re-election campaign, would be wrong. America is controlled by dollars, not by people; everything is geared to maximizing the return on investment, for the people who have invested in Trump. Increasing their net worths is his goal, and he has been stunningly successful at achieving it.

The individuals who control those corporations are also in control of those governments, via political corruption, such as the “revolving doors” between ‘government service’ and the private sector. If they can’t control those governments, then they can’t control their own finances. But if they do control those governments — and especially their own Government, the U.S. Government — then they control the very source of their own wealth. They are totally dependent upon the U.S. Government. Trump has, regarding U.S. military and diplomatic policies — the Pentagon and the State Department, and the intelligence agencies — been just as effective as the neoconservatives, the people who actually run both Parties on behalf of those firms, for those firms’ owners, could have hoped. This does not mean that they won’t in 2020 back an opponent of Trump, but only that Trump is issuing as many IOUs to these people as he can, and as fast as he can, and that he has been remarkably successful (unprecedented, actually) at doing that. Whereas Democrats such as Joe Biden and Eric Swalwell might contest against him for their support, no one can reasonably say that Trump has been a disappointment to the proponents of American conquest and control over the entire world — the people commonly called “neoconservatives,” and all other agents of what Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.” While those people might criticize him in order to push him even farther to the right on foreign affairs than he has been, he has been very effective for them, and he clearly is hoping that, at least regarding military policies, in America’s militarized economy, those people will be satisfied for him to remain in power. That’s his hope. That’s his goal. It’s shown by his actions, not by his mere words.

America’s alliance with Israel is almost as important as America’s alliance with the owners of Saudi Arabia, the Saud family. Both of those allies want the Palestinians to be conquered. And so does Trump. And, of course, so too do the people who are rotating constantly through those revolving doors, the other agents for America’s rulers.

On August 9th, as reported by Amjad Jaghi of 972 Magazine, “the Israeli Air Force bombed Al-Meshal, one of the Gaza Strip’s most important cultural facilities. They claim that the building — which comprises two theaters, three large halls, and a department serving the Egyptian community living in the Strip — was being used by Hamas.”

On August 14th, Reuters headlined “Israeli minister confirms Netanyahu met Sisi over Gaza” and reported that “The two leaders discussed the easing of an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza, rehabilitation of its infrastructure and terms for a ceasefire.” Israel said that “everything that will happen in Gaza will be done with Egyptian mediation and involvement.” This means that the setting-up of Israel’s control over Gaza will “be done with Egyptian mediation and involvement,” but the operation of Israel’s control over Gaza won’t be — it’ll be 100% Israeli.

For example, Sisi might be able to get Netanyahu to agree to increase the current, 85 truckloads of food daily into Gaza so as to raise Gazans’ food-intake above its current “subsistence” level. Although he might try, Israel’s record of violating its international agreements is even stronger than America’s record for that is. But to serve PR purposes, Sisi might try. Ever since 2007, when Israel was allowing into Gaza 106 truckloads daily, that number was reduced down to this “subsistence” level.

On 1 January 2008, was secretly issued from Israel’s Ministry of Defense, a document “Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip – Red Lines”, in which the Ministry of Health informed them that the then-current 106 trucks daily was too much for “subsistence”:

“The Ministry of Health is conducting work for calculating the minimal subsistence basket based on the Arab sector in Israel. The ‘minimum basket’ allows nutrition that is sufficient for subsistence without the development of malnutrition.”

“The Ministry of Health estimates that the new basket will be 20% lower than the current basket [85 trucks instead of 106].”

And so it was, until 2010, when “Israel has not imposed any restrictions on the entrance of food to the Gaza Strip.” And, after that, as of at least 2012, “the current policy remains shrouded in secrecy.”However, (as shown at that link, where is printed a “Table 1. Entrance of trucks into Gaza”), the actual count of trucks, during the second half of 2010, was around 150 per day.

A U.N. publication “Gaza Ten Years Later”, issued in July 2017, reported that:

Import of goods to Gaza also dropped significantly with the imposition of the blockade in mid-2007. By 2008, the monthly average of truckloads entering Gaza had decreased by 75%17. The amount of imports slowly increased as import restrictions were gradually relaxed, with the number of trucks entering in 2015 and 2016 reaching levels similar to those prior to 2007. It is difficult to draw a parallel between 2015/2016 and 2007 however, given that due to the vast needs for post-hostilities reconstruction as well as recovery of Gaza’s deteriorating infrastructure, coupled with rapid population growth, demand for import into Gaza was much higher in 2015/16 than it was prior to 2007.

The needs today are even higher than that.

Sisi might be able to win some voters if he can brag to them that he has gotten Israel to increase that number above whatever it currently has been, but it will be only for show, anyway.

Egypt is heavily committed both to the Saudi regime and to the American regime. To say that the fate of the Gazans is in the hands of Israel and of Egypt, would be to say that it’s in the hands of the rulers of America and of the rulers of Saudi Arabia (the Saud family, who own that country). The rulers of Israel won’t have any international backing, at all, if they don’t have America’s rulers supporting them. For Donald Trump to tell Benjamin Netanyahu that not only will Israel be allowed to ignore Hamas but it will even be allowed to ignore the Palestinian Authority, means that Netanyahu now has America’s support no matter what Israel might do to the Gazans — and to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the West Bank.

This is excellent news for the holders of U.S. ‘Defense’ stocks. The more that America’s ‘enemies’ suffer, the better it is for America’s owners. This is how capitalism actually functions. Inequality is natural. That’s true not only between nations, but within nations. In the natural world, losers get eaten. Justice doesn’t naturally occur anywhere. To the extent that it exists anywhere, it is imposed, by the public, against the aristocracy. Within nations, justice is almost non-existent. Between nations, it is entirely non-existent. For examples: were George W. Bush and Tony Blair executed for invading and destroying Iraq in 2003? Of course not. Neither of them was even imprisoned. Nor were Obama and Sarkozy and Cameron executed for invading and destroying Libya in 2011. Those are only examples, of the basic reality.

This news-report is written so as to place a news-event into its actual context, not divorced from that, as is normal. In other words: it’s news instead of propaganda (the latter of which, avoids the relevant context behind the reported event).