All Points Alert: Killer State at Large

Israeli forces shot dead Alaa Wahdan (28), near the Qalandiya checkpoint. (Photo: Video Grab)

By Jeremy Salt

The most important news coming out of occupied Palestine last week was not the blow delivered to Benyamin Netanyahu.  Netanyahu or Gantz, it will be business as usual, now that the elections are over: more attacks on Gaza, possibly a large-scale war on Gaza, possibly a war on Lebanon, or Iran, who would know, as Israel always has a profusion of targets.

No, the most important news was not the elections but the killing of a Palestinian woman in the West Bank, only a few days after a 10-year-old boy, Abd al Rahman Yasir Shtewi, had been shot in the head by a soldier near the northern West Bank village of Kafr Qaddum during a demonstration over the closure of an access road. He was taken to hospital in critical condition.   

The woman, Alaa Wahdan, was shot with an assault rifle as she walked towards a checkpoint near the Qalandiya refugee camp, built for refugees after the massacres and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Lydda and Ramle in 1948.

She was walking on the road, having missed the pedestrian lane allotted to the Palestinians. That was the crime for which she had to die. She was told to stop. According to the five heavily armed men who blocked her way, she pulled out a knife, a small yellow-handled thing photographed lying on the road. Alaa was five to seven meters away and the knife could have been knocked away with the butt of a gun but one of the armed men shot her instead, the bullet apparently severing an artery in her leg.   

Alaa fell to the road and was left there unattended for half an hour, bleeding to death. The Palestinian Red Crescent said it was prevented from attending to her. The soldiers watched her drag herself along the roadside on her front, the blood pouring out of her body, leaving a long, wide red stain behind her.  Not one of them made any attempt to comfort her or staunch the wound. They watched her bleed to death. They let her die, in line with unstated state policy.

Who Alaa was precisely, a mother, a sister, a daughter or an aunt, was of no interest to the occupiers. She was a down-page story in the media, not even worthy of being given a name, no more than the African ‘terrorists’ of the 1940s or 50s were worthy of being given a name by the British or French occupiers of their land who tortured and murdered them. In the words of Mickey Rosenfeld, the police gauleiter of occupied Jerusalem, she was no more than a “female terrorist” who was “injured moderately.” If this is so, Mr Rosenfeld, why did she die?   

In the background, while Alaa crawled along the road, her lifeblood draining away, the spivs, the thieves and the war criminals quarreled over who should be next to take over the occupation of Palestine. The choice was between Netanyahu and Gantz, the outcome of the elections so close that the ‘kingmaker’ will be Avigdor Lieberman, the Moldovan immigrant who arrived in Palestine when he was 20 and lives with his wife and children on Palestinian land in the settlement of Nokdim.

Like Menahim Begin in the 1970s, Lieberman was once regarded as a thug and fanatic who would never make it into the mainstream of Zionist politics but as the mainstream has shifted further right year by year it finally reached him.  He once advocated the bombing of the Aswan dam as a means of shutting up the Egyptians. He thinks the ‘Arab’ members of the Zionist ‘parliament’ are the allies of terrorists.  

He wants Muslim and Christian Palestinians to be required to swear an oath of loyalty to a state which has declared itself to be a Jewish, which has practically stripped them bare of all they possess and which plans to keep going until nothing is left.

His philosophy can be summed up in his own words: “Whoever is against us there’s nothing to do …. We have to lift up an axe and remove his head … otherwise we won’t be here.” The option of handing back part of what has been stolen as a means of making peace is not even within his realm of thinking.

As for Netanyahu, his campaigning was nakedly racist. He warned against an ‘Arab’ party ending up in government and his Likud party stationed cameras outside polling booths to intimidate Palestinians and prevent them from voting.  It didn’t work. They turned out in higher numbers than ever.  It is the measure of this individual’s vile nature that he wanted to attack Gaza either to win or postpone the elections, riding to eventual victory over the bodies of more dead Palestinian men, women and children.

Gantz got in his way, but only for the same electoral reason, because he also is a killer of Palestinians, and currently the subject of prosecution in the Netherlands for the bombing of an apartment building in Gaza in 2014 which killed six members of the same family.

As the Palestinians well know, it makes no difference which of the parties is in power because their policies – more war, more killing, more settlements, with annexation now only a few steps away – are all the same.

The pathology of the Zionists puts them beyond reason. They do not connect up with any laws or values except their own and trying to reason with them on the basis of international law and universal values is a waste of time, pebbles thrown against the side of a tank.

In 2013 Mehdi Hassan interviewed Dani Dayon as the centerpiece of an Oxford Union debate. Until recently Dayon was the head of the Yesha settler council.  Sitting in the front row, Ghada Karmi, born in Al Quds to a family that owns land on the West Bank taken over by foreign settlers like Dayon, had to endure the lies and delusions that flowed from this man’s mouth. Cutting through the arrogance and his smiling, self-assured attempts to deceive the audience, she told him what he actually was in her eyes and the eyes of the world –  a common thief.

There is no mystery about what has ‘happened’ in Palestine.  There is no ‘conflict of rights,’ ‘contested narratives’ or ‘disputed’ ownership. These are all propaganda phrases designed to conceal the indisputable reality.  From the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, Palestine has been stolen by people whose moral right to stay there can only be conferred on them by the people whose land they have stolen.  Had they ever accepted this principle, had they ever apologized for their crimes, had they agreed to share instead of wanting to take the lot, using all the brutal means at their disposal, this moral right could have been secured but they forfeited this possibility long ago, preferring endless war to the possibility of peace. There is no ‘two state’ solution in sight.  Add it to the list of myths still being purveyed. There is no solution in sight at all, at least not one based on rational discussion and the application of international.   

There is no statute of limitations here. The land was stolen and will remain stolen no matter how long the Zionists hold it.  There is no ‘land of Israel’.  There is no ‘Temple Mount’ and no ‘tomb of the patriarchs’ in Hebron.  These are all deceptions sitting atop a mountain of lies intended to bury the truth.  There is Palestine, there is the Haram al Sharif, the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron, where the settler state pogrom against the Palestinians continues without pause, and countless other sites on the map, all of them occupied and renamed.  Not a drop of water in the sea or a speck of sand on the beach belongs to the Zionists.  It has all been stolen.

As soon as the elections were over, ‘kingmaker’ Lieberman, leading the party of Russian ‘immigrants’ to an illegally occupied land, started stitching together a ‘national unity’ government. As excited or as preoccupied with the process as the Zionist population of Palestine might be, there is no prospect of change for the Palestinians except change for the worse.

Gantz is as much a warmonger as Netanyahu or Lieberman and as the Palestinians will continue to resist occupation of their land where and when they can, as is their natural right and their right under international law, more large-scale violence is only a matter of time. In their arrogance the Zionists are ignoring all the warning signs, the cries of ‘death to Israel’ from the Houthis, the tens of thousands of missiles in Hizbullah’s armory and the determination of Iran to defend itself and its allies. The Zionists can kick the Palestinians around, but not these powerful enemies, who have behind them the support for Palestine of Muslims everywhere, not to speak of the numerous defenders of Palestine and Palestinian rights in Europe, the US, Canada, Australia and many other countries.

The Zionists came to the Middle East as a ‘rampart’ of ‘western civilisation’ and that is where they have remained, on the ramparts, behind the palisades, the fences and the wall, fencing others out and fencing themselves in. They wanted to be in the Middle East but not of the Middle East. It was beneath them. They hijacked those aspects of its culture that suited them but looked down with contempt on the rest and they still do.   

In any case, western domination was the accurate phrase, not western civilization.  The ‘west’ has never been civilized, not in the Middle East or in any other lands against which it went to war and occupied. Rather, it has been utterly barbaric, as the word is generally understood, and Zionism has been part of that barbarism.   

Not wanting to be part of the Middle East except on its own unacceptable terms, Zionism has to rely on powerful outside backers, a role currently filled by one of them, the United States.  However, will it always be there to give the Zionist state the support it demands, will it always be capable of giving it the support it demands, will it ultimately be willing to put its own life on the line for a small state far away that is held in contempt by much of the world, not for bad reasons but for perfectly understandable ones, and one that is held in contempt as well by an increasing number of Americans?

Only arrogance could be the reason for the willingness of the Zionists to stake their future on such uncertainties, when for a small price, except in their own greedy eyes, they could have secured their place in the Middle East long ago. There is one other reason for their confidence, though, and that is their possession of nuclear weapons.  At the worst, backs finally against the wall, they can take everyone down with them.

Take a serial killer out of the psychiatric ward, hand him a machine-gun and wait to see what happens.  That is the prospect ahead of the Middle East as long as the Zionist state remains a killer at large.

– Jeremy Salt taught at the University of Melbourne, at Bosporus University in Istanbul and Bilkent University in Ankara for many years, specializing in the modern history of the Middle East. Among his recent publications is his 2008 book, The Unmaking of the Middle East. A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands (University of California Press). He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.

Israel’s Secret

by Dr Elias Akleh

It is an established, and a very well-known fact that Israel is a genocidal, terrorist, ethnic-cleansing colonial state. Backed by a genocidal blood-thirsty real estate elitist god (read the Old Testament/the Torah) with a racist enslaving anti-goyim supremacist and vengeful religion, similar to ISIS terrorists of today, Zionist Jewish terrorist gangs such as the Stern, the Irgun, the Palmach and the Hagana, since 1946 had bombed Palestinian food markets, police stations, hotels and many other civilian targets. They perpetrated numerous genocides; raiding Palestinian villages, raping women and children, murdering all inhabitants in cold blood, then razing the villages to the ground. More than 400 Palestinian villages were completely or mostly destroyed with their inhabitants raped, tortured, and murdered. The goal was to instill fear in the hearts of Palestinian inhabitants to drive them out of the country. A conservative estimate of 800,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homeland and became refugees in 1948.

The then self-proclaimed civilized global powers with their newly formed United Nations tool did not form a coalition to protect the civilian Palestinians, as they claim now-a-days of forming a coalition to fight terrorist ISIS. Instead the UN rewarded these Zionist Jewish terrorist gangs by giving them a state; Israel, on usurped Palestinian land.

The greedy expansionist Zionist Israeli leaders were not satisfied with what they usurped in 1948, but wanted more. They kept sporadically attacking neighboring Arab villages until in 1967 war they occupied the rest of Palestine, parts of Lebanon, Syria and Egypt after perpetrating more war crimes; ethnic cleansing in Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights, total destruction of many Syrian villages in Golan Heights, and the cold-blood murder of one thousand Egyptian prisoners. During this war Israel had extensively used illegal napalm bombs against Arab armies.

The “civilized” world did nothing to deter Israel other than issuing a couple of meaningless and toothless UN resolutions calling the Israeli occupation illegal and “politely” asking Israel to withdraw to previous borders.

Israeli leaders were not deterred. They kept attacking Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon in violation of all UN resolutions. They almost destroyed the whole Lebanese capital; Beirut, and had perpetrated many massacres there such as Sabra and Shatila massacre, Qana massacres (twice) among many others. Israel did not even hesitate to bomb United Nation observer post to prevent them from documenting their attacks using illegal weapons such as cluster bombs.

The UN did nothing about all these violations and massacres other than writing meaningless “investigative” reports.

In flagrant violation of all peace agreements with the Palestinians, Israeli oppression intensified against Palestinians with the goal of evacuating the country for more Zionist Jewish occupiers. This includes imprisonment and torture (many prisoners were children kidnapped from their homes by Israeli terrorist soldiers in the middle of the night), house demolition and or usurpation and handing them to extremist colonizers (settlers), land confiscation to build illegal colonies (settlements), murdering peaceful demonstrators in cold blood, and raiding Palestinian cities with tanks.

Organized Zionist Israeli Judaic extremists occupiers (settlers) routinely attack Palestinian neighborhoods, burning their crops, poisoning their water wells, cutting down their trees, murdering their children and destroying their properties among many other terrorist acts. Extremist religious colonizers (settlers) raid and violate Islamic holy places routinely. Their violations of the Islamic Al-Aqsa Mosque under the protection of soldiers are gradually intensified and will definitely lead to disastrous results.

Israel had created the largest ever concentration camp on the Gaza Strip making it and its inhabitants a living military experimental field for their newly developed chemical and biological weapons. Rivers of Israeli sewer waste are released onto Gaza cities every now and then to spread diseases. Israel’s terrorist army had attacked Gaza Strip several times indiscriminately murdering civilians and destroying homes. Official buildings, civilian homes, schools, hospitals, churches and mosques, all kinds of vehicles and fishing boats were targeted by Israeli terrorist army.

“Rain of Fire” was the term used by Human Rights Watch Organization describing Israel’s war crimes of indiscriminate repeated firing of white phosphorus bombs over Gaza’s densely populated areas. Israel did not even hesitate to bomb UNRWA’s schools used as shelters although given their exact GPS locations to avoid them. UNIFIL facilities were also targeted destroying stored food stuff in order to starve Palestinians.

Abandoned by global community and by Arab leaders and left alone to perish from hunger, thirst, disease, and by Israeli fire, Gaza Palestinians decided to implement themselves the 1948 UN resolution 194 affirming the legal right of Palestinian refugees to return to their original homes occupied by Israel. They organized the “Great March of Return” marching every Friday towards the Israeli imposed barrier imprisoning them within the small Gaza Strip. The March started on March 30th of 2018 and is still going on every Friday since then. Last Friday was the 70th Friday of the March. Although the marchers were unarmed they were met with Israeli deadly brutality with poison gas, rubber coated and live bullets from Israeli snipers. So far at least 310 Palestinians were murdered including children, women, medics, and reporters, and more than 17,000 injured with tens of thousands suffering severe amputations due to explosive bullets used by Israeli snipers.

Israel’s terror threats extend also globally beyond occupied Palestine and the neighboring Arab states. It is well known that Israel has developed nuclear bombs, whose technology and materials were stolen from France and the US. Declaring its nuclear “Sampson Option” threatening the capitals of many countries, Israel would not renounce nuclear weapons, would not sign NPT and would not allow IAEA inspections of its own nuclear facilities.

Instead, Israel had used its nuclear weapons against other nations making it the second nation after the US to use nuclear bombs. Israel has used nuclear bombs against its closest friend; the USA, in the false flag attacks of 911 to start the wars against the Arab World under the justification of the war against terror. Israel had also used nuclear bombs against Syria. Also, in collusion with Saudi Arabia, Israel had dropped two neutron bombs against Yemen (Here is a video).

Israeli terrorist attacks reached many countries around the world in the form of assassinations by Mossad agents, and false flag attacks to frighten Jews to immigrate to “safe” Israel. Prominent assassinations included multiple Kennedy’s assassinations; John, Robert and John Jr. (the Kennedy’s curse), assassinations of Arab and Palestinian activists, and the assassinations of Egyptian, Iraqi and Iranian nuclear scientists just to name a few. False flag attacks are numerous to mention including attacks against synagogues, yeshiva schools, Jewish cemeteries and other so-called Islamist attacks against western targets.

Israel is a global terrorist state, yet western countries; European, US and Canada, who routinely call for justice, democracy, freedom and peace, keep on protecting and supporting this terrorist state. We have not seen any economic sanctions, serious condemnations, or military strikes against Israel similar to what these states conduct against other countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran accused of terrorist acts, possession of weapons of mass destruction and use of prohibited illegal and chemical weapons.

On the contrary, we see successive American administrations using veto power to protect Israel at the UN. Israel’s terror is justified as self-defense. US borrows $38 billion at the beginning of each fiscal year to give it to Israel, besides all the free military technology and armament aids to the so-called the only democratic American ally in the Middle East. While Americans suffer an ever increasing homeless crisis, American administrations subsidize the illegally expanding Israeli colonies (settlements) on usurped Palestinian land. While American students are burdened for life with students loans the US subsidize free education to every Israeli citizen from kinder garden to university. While many Americans die and suffer for lack of medical insurance the US subsidizes complete medical coverage for life to every Israeli.

Israel is a protected terrorist state.

What is it that motivates the western world, particularly the US, to support this terrorist state no matter what crime it commits??? No … it is not AIPAC or any other pro-Israel PACs. These are the results, not the cause. What is Israel’s secret?

To understand Israel’s secret we need to go back in history to 1905 during the imperial age. At that time the Ottoman Empire, unlike European empires; Great Britain, France, Holland (todays Netherland), Belgium, Spain and Italy, was very strong covering all the Arab World extending from the Persian Gulf all the way along North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. Oil was discovered in Iran and in the Arab Peninsula at the same year.

Henry Campbell-Bannerman; the British Prime Minister at the time, called for the periodic Imperial Conference; also known as Colonial Conference, to discuss a political and economic strategy to weaken/dismantle the Ottoman Empire and to strengthen the Western Christian Colonial civilization. The conference was attended by officials from the before-mentioned empires along with prominent historians, sociologists, geographers, agricultural scientists, oil experts, and economists. Lasting two years the conference was culminated with a secret strategy called Campbell-Bannerman Document.

The Document acknowledges that the Mediterranean Sea, connecting the three major continents; Europe, Asia and Africa, is the vital natural bridge between West and East. It’s eastern and southern shores belong to one nation; the Arabs, who enjoy one common language, a common history and mainly one religion. With their geostrategic location; a hub for major trade routes overlooking the Mediterranean, the Red See, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, plus their vast natural resources including oil, and their huge man-power they could become the largest and most powerful empire on earth. The Document proposed specific strategies to disrupt such a possibility.

Divide in order to conquer has always been a successful strategy to destroy the fabric of any nation. The Document proposed dividing this Arab World through the creation and support of minorities with puppet leaderships based on smaller geographical areas, different ethnicities, and different religious sects, and inciting them against each other to get into a state of devastating perpetual wars.

Since science is a major factor in building the industry and the economy of any country, it was proposed first to offer great material inducements to those Arab scientists to attract them to the western countries, and second to disrupt, weaken, and impoverish the educational systems of the proposed divided Arab states through isolation, economical impoverishment and imposing mediocre educational curriculums through puppet regimes.

The most devastating proposition to the region was to create a hostile “buffer state” in the middle of the Arab World; particularly in Palestine, separating the Arabs of the Middle East from their brothers in North Africa, and controlling the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Support for Zionism to create Israel in Palestine was approved for this purpose.

At the time, due to their supremacist isolationist religion, their usury banking systems, and their hatred to all non-Jews (Goyims), anti-Jewish sentiment was rampant in Europe. Jews were persecuted and kicked out of many European countries. Zionism; a political ideology aims to create a Jewish-only state, was created to solve Europe’s Jewish problem. Supporting Zionism to create hostile Israel in the heart of the Arab World in Palestine on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean would serve two purposes; killing two birds with one stone.

First, Israel would be the hostile “buffer state” in the heart of the Arab World that would create a state of perpetual wars with its Arab neighbors feeding the western military industrial complex.

Second, Europe would get rid of its Jewish problem when Jews immigrate to Israel. European leaders, pretending to support Zionist Israel, were deep down actual anti-Jewish, who wanted to eject isolationist Jews from Europe. Arthur Balfour; the British Foreign Secretary, who authored the 1917 Balfour Declaration in support of creating Jewish Israel, had dismissed Jews as “alien and hostile people”. Balfour, like other British politicians at his time, had supported the British Aliens Act restricting immigration of Russian Jews to Great Britain. Supporting Zionism he saw this ideology benefitting Western society by ridding it of its troublesome Jewish minorities.

The West has no fear of Israel becoming a super power because its military strength depends on Western military support, and because Israel would never be able to conquer and subdue all its hostile Arab neighbors.

Israel is a terrorist state created to serve the Western power by dividing the Arab World and keeping it in a state of perpetual wars in demand of Western weapons. Israel will succeed in disrupting the unity of the Arab World for a while, yet similar to ISIS, it will definitely be defeated and will vanish.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab American from a Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine, after the 1948 Nakba when the Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after the Zionist, again, occupied the rest of Palestine.

With criticism crushed in the west, Israel can enjoy its impunity

 Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: Recent events have shone a spotlight not only on how Israel is intensifying its abuse of Palestinians under its rule, but the utterly depraved complicity of western governments in its actions.

The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House two-and-a-half years ago has emboldened Israel as never before, leaving it free to unleash new waves of brutality in the occupied territories.

Western states have not only turned a blind eye to these outrages, but are actively assisting in silencing anyone who dares to speak out.

It is rapidly creating a vicious spiral: the more Israel violates international law, the more the West represses criticism, the more Israel luxuriates in its impunity.

This shameless descent was starkly illustrated last week when hundreds of heavily armed Israeli soldiers, many of them masked, raided a neighbourhood of Sur Baher, on the edges of Jerusalem. Explosives and bulldozers destroyed dozens of homes, leaving many hundreds of Palestinians without a roof over their heads.

During the operation, extreme force was used against residents, as well as international volunteers there in the forlorn hope that their presence would deter violence. Videos showed the soldiers cheering and celebrating as they razed the neighbourhood.

House destructions have long been an ugly staple of Israel’s belligerent occupation, but there were grounds for extra alarm on this occasion.

Traditionally, demolitions occur on the two-thirds of the West Bank placed by the Oslo accords temporarily under Israeli control. That is bad enough: Israel should have handed over what is called “Area C” to the Palestinian Authority 20 years ago. Instead, it has hounded Palestinians off these areas to free them up for illegal Jewish settlement.

But the Sur Baher demolitions took place in “Area A”, land assigned by Oslo to the Palestinians’ government-in-waiting – as a prelude to Palestinian statehood. Israel is supposed to have zero planning or security jurisdiction there.

Palestinians rightly fear that Israel has established a dangerous precedent, further reversing the Oslo Accords, which can one day be used to justify driving many thousands more Palestinians off land under PA control.

Most western governments barely raised their voices. Even the United Nations offered a mealy-mouthed expression of “sadness” at what took place.

A few kilometres north, in Issawiya, another East Jerusalem suburb, Israeli soldiers have been terrorising 20,000 Palestinian residents for weeks. They have set up checkpoints, carried out dozens of random night-time arrests, imposed arbitrary fines and traffic tickets, and shot live ammunition and rubber-coated steel bullets into residential areas.

Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights group, calls Issawiya’s treatment a “perpetual state of collective punishment” – that is, a war crime.

Over in Gaza, not only are the 2 million inhabitants being slowly starved by Israel’s 12-year blockade, but a weekly shooting spree against Palestinians who protest at the fence imprisoning them has become so routine it barely attracts attention any more.

On Friday, Israeli snipers killed one protester and seriously injured 56, including 22 children.

That followed new revelations that Israeli’s policy of shooting unarmed protesters in the upper leg to injure them – another war crime – continued long after it became clear a significant proportion of Palestinians were dying from their wounds.

Belatedly – after more than 200 deaths and the severe disabling of many thousands of Palestinians – snipers have been advised to “ease up” by shooting protesters in the ankle.

B’Tselem, another Israeli rights organisation, called the army’s open-fire regulation a “criminal policy”, one that “consciously chose not to regard those standing on the other side of the fence as humans”.

Rather than end such criminal practices, Israel prefers to conceal them. It has effectively sealed Palestinian areas off to avoid scrutiny.

Omar Shakir, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, is facing imminent deportation, yet more evidence of Israel’s growing crackdown on the human rights community.

A report by the Palestinian Right to Enter campaign last week warned that Israel is systematically denying foreign nationals permits to live and work in the occupied territories, including areas supposedly under PA control.

That affects both foreign-born Palestinians, often those marrying local Palestinians, and internationals. According to recent reports, Israel is actively forcing out academics teaching at the West Bank’s leading university, Bir Zeit, in a severe blow to Palestinian academic freedom.

Palestinian journalists highlighting Israeli crimes are in Israel’s sights too. Last week, Israel stripped one – Mustafa Al Haruf – of his Jerusalem residency, tearing him from his wife and young child. Because it is illegal to leave someone stateless, Israel is now bullying Jordan to accept him.

Another exclusion policy – denying entry to Israel’s fiercest critics, those who back the international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement – is facing its first challenge.

Two US congresswomen who support BDS – Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who has family in the West Bank – have announced plans to visit.

Israeli officials have indicated they will exempt them both, apparently fearful of drawing wider attention to Israel’s draconian entry restrictions, which also cover the occupied territories.

Israel is probably being overly cautious. The BDS movement, which alone argues for the imposition of penalties on Israel until it halts its abuse of Palestinians, is being bludgeoned by western governments.

In the US and Europe, strong criticism of Israel, even from Jews – let alone demands for meaningful action – is being conflated with antisemitism. Much of this furore seems intended to ease the path towards silencing Israel’s critics.

More than two dozen US states, as well as the Senate, have passed laws – drafted by pro-Israel lobby groups – to limit the rights of the American public to support boycotts of Israel.

Anti-BDS legislation has also been passed by the German and French parliaments.

And last week the US House of Representatives joined them, overwhelmingly passing a resolution condemning the BDS movement. Only 17 legislators demurred.

It was a slap in the face to Omar, who has been promoting a bill designed to uphold the First Amendment rights of boycott supporters.

It seems absurd that these curbs on free speech have emerged just as Israel makes clear it has no interest in peace, will never concede Palestinian statehood and is entrenching a permanent system of apartheid in the occupied territories.

But there should be no surprise. The clampdown is further evidence that western support for Israel is indeed based on shared values – those that treat the Palestinians as lesser beings, whose rights can be trampled at will.

A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).

How Israel teaches its children to hate

Much like white South Africans, Jewish Israelis will never voluntarily give up their privileged position as settlers

Asa Winstanley

Dissident Israeli scholar Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s important academic study, “Palestine in Israeli School Books” is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand some important realities about the Israeli state and Israeli society.

As a settler-colonial entity, real change can never come from within Israeli society. It must be imposed from the outside. Much like white South Africans, Jewish Israelis will never voluntarily give up their privileged position as settlers.

South African apartheid was defeated by the masses of South Africa (with the support of some white dissidents), and their political leaders, in alliance with a global solidarity campaign.

In the same way, Israeli apartheid will be defeated by the Palestinian struggle. This struggle is supported by a minority of Israeli dissidents, and by the international solidarity movement – especially the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Peled-Elhanan’s book was a major study of 17 Israeli school textbooks on history, geography and civic studies. As you can see from what she says in the interview above, she came to some stark conclusions.

When they even mention Palestinians at all, Israel’s official schoolbooks teach a “racist discourse”, which quite literally wipes Palestine off the map. Maps in the schoolbooks only ever show “the Land of Israel”, from the river to the sea.

She explained that not a single one of the schoolbooks included “any positive cultural or social aspect of Palestinian life-world: neither literature nor poetry, neither history nor agriculture, neither art nor architecture, neither customs nor traditions are ever mentioned.”

Of the rare times that Palestinians are mentioned, it is in an overwhelmingly negative and stereotypical fashion: “all [the books] represent [Palestinians] in racist icons or demeaning classificatory images such as terrorists, refugees and primitive farmers — the three ‘problems’ they constitute for Israel.”

She concluded that the children’s schoolbooks “present Israeli-Jewish culture as superior to the Arab-Palestinian one, Israeli-Jewish concepts of progress as superior to the Palestinian-Arab way of life and Israeli-Jewish behaviour as aligning with universal values.”

All this is quite the opposite of the stereotypical and misleading story about children’s schoolbooks in Palestine. The books printed by the Palestinian Authority since the 1990s are frequently portrayed in anti-Palestinian demonology as putting forth the worst anti-Semitic calumnies about Jewish people.

Overall, this narrative is a crude fabrication instigated by anti-Palestinian propaganda groups, such as that run by Israeli settler Itamar Marcus and his “Palestinian Media Watch”.

Peled-Elhanan’s book comprehensively demolished a second, complementary, Israeli myth: that Israelis – by way of contrast to the dastardly Palestinians – instead “teach love thy neighbour”, to quote Israel’s war criminal ex-foreign minister Tzipi Livni.

Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Israel, Tzipi Livni 

Seven years ago, when Peled-Elhanan’s book was published, she warned that, in contrast to liberal hopes for change from within Israeli society, things were moving “backwards and backwards” and that the then-current textbooks were little more than “military manifests”.

“We have three generations of students who don’t even know where the borders,” between the West Bank and the rest of historic Palestine are, she despaired in the interview above, filmed back in 2011.

Seven years on from the book’s publication, things have only got progressively worse.

That can be seen in the video that circulated on social media this week of young Israeli soldiers celebrating and cheering after they dynamited Palestinian homes east of Jerusalem. Those same soldiers are a product of Israel’s education system.

As Israel’s violent oppression of an entire indigenous people become more and more blatant for the world to see, so public opinion is increasingly shifting against Israel – even among the previously supportive voter and activist base of the Democratic Party in the US.

As Israel can rely less and less on outside support, it becomes more important for the apartheid state to circle the wagons, and ensure the next generation of settlers and soldiers are inculcated into the Israeli state’s official ideology – Zionism.

Last month it emerged that Israel has begun requiring all high school students – including those Palestinians who are second-class “citizens” of Israel – to pass an online government propaganda course before they can participate in overseas trips.

According to the Palestinian human rights group Adalah, the course “promotes racist ideology”, brainwashing students with the myth that Palestinians are inherently violent savages.

Adalah says that one question asks: “How do Palestinian organizations use digital social networks?” The required answer is “encouraging violence.”

“Another question asks students to identify the origins of modern anti-Semitism,” Adalah explains. “The exam’s correct answer is ‘Muslim organizations’ and the BDS movement.”

In this way, Israel is teaching its children to hate: hate Palestinians, hate Muslims, hate the Arabs in general and hate anyone who supports or stands in solidarity with them against oppression.

Cutting Ties with Israel Might Be Impossible Due to International Complicity

UN special rapporteur for the situation in Palestine Michael Lynk. (Photo: File)

By Ramona Wadi

UN Special Rapporteur Michael Lynk has suggested that the international community should consider cutting ties with Israel if it goes ahead with further colonial settlement expansion and annexation, according to a report by Al Jazeera.

Non-binding requests or suggestions from the UN, however, are unlikely to go beyond rhetoric, given the international community’s political investment in Israel and complicity in the colonial occupation itself.

Had Israel been a country marked for foreign intervention, the international community would have no qualms about implementing Lynk’s suggestions. However, the persistent, non-binding nature of UN recommendations will only serve to create further ambiguous discourse when it comes to Israel and human rights violations.

“The international community has to look at the available menu of countermeasures that is commonly used to a wide range of countries involving gross human rights violations and has to decide what are the appropriate ones to consider to use with respect to Israel,” Lynk told Al Jazeera. Yet the UN is failing repeatedly to consider Israeli colonialism as a “gross human rights violation”.

Indeed, the international organization has served as a platform for Israeli ventures, especially since the state has started to market itself to African countries with regard to sustainable development and agriculture practices.

The UN has perpetually excused Israel’s massacres and adopted the colonial entity’s purported security and “self-defense” narrative. In fact, like other entities, the UN has singled out settlement expansion as the only violation worth speaking about.

This begs the question, is the UN seeking out safe measures when it decides to push forward, at least in the discourse, the need for punitive measures when it comes to Israel?

Settlement expansion in UN narratives is completely dissociated from the 1948 Nakba and the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land. It is a subject which enjoys international consensus and which focuses strictly on buildings rather than the ideology and political context behind their construction.

When the international community speaks about settlement expansion, it does not draw attention to the resultant Palestinian dispossession, nor does it bring into question the fate of Palestinians and how the right of return for the Palestinian people must be revised to cater for a perpetual, intentional, forced displacement.

Lynk’s argument that Israel’s military occupation will become further entrenched if there is no international economic pressure is not completely accurate. Having positioned and marketed itself to developing countries, Israel has sought to expand its economic possibilities globally.

t has prepared itself for possibilities which might see it fall out of favor by extending its reach to countries rich in natural resources. Meanwhile, diplomatically and politically, Israel has gained enough ground to assure itself of minimum repercussions if a hypothetical fallout does occur, which is, by the way, unlikely in any meaningful sense.

Lynk has also suggested the possibility of suspending Israel’s UN membership. This move would be instrumental in implementing the first divide between the international community and the self-styled “Jewish state”.

However, Israel is also the UN’s lasting colonial project. As a facilitator of colonialism, it is not in a position to set the rules that penalize Israel. Of course, the Israelis know this. They also know that the UN is much more likely to take measures which restrict Palestinians’ political demands in order to continue its two-state diplomacy. The global level of conspiracy, once again, provides Israel with its greatest level of impunity.

– Ramona Wadi is a staff writer for Middle East Monitor. She contributed this article to the Palestine Chronicle.

Former Israeli defense minister says: ‘Our conflict is with the Entire Muslim World’

by Abdus Sattar Ghazali

Former Israeli defense minister Avigdor Lieberman said Monday (July 9) ‘Our conflict is with the entire Muslim world, with the entire Arab world.’

Speaking at a campaign trail meeting in Kiryat Ono, the Yisrael Beiteinu party head described the “conflict” as “three-dimensional” – “with the Arab countries, with the Palestinians and Israeli Arabs.”

“We do not have a separate conflict with the Palestinians, and anyone who claims so, does not understand what he is talking about or is being deliberately misleading,” he said.

“Our conflict is with the entire Muslim world, with the entire Arab world,” Lieberman declared.

The comments were originally carried by Zman Yisrael, the Times of Israel’s Hebrew-language sister site, “and approved for publication by Liberman though the event was billed as closed to press,” according to the Middle East Monitor.

Lieberman told the attendees that “the arrangement must be three-dimensional and simultaneous with the Arab League, with Israeli Arabs and with the Palestinians”, adding: “Any attempt to reach a separate agreement with the Palestinians or the Arabs of Israel will fail.”

As noted by the report, Lieberman has long called for a permanent settlement to include redrawing Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries so as to remove major population centres of Palestinian citizens.

The former minister also routinely attacks the “loyalty” of Palestinian citizens of Israel. On Monday, Lieberman “lashed out” at Palestinian parliamentarians, saying it was “total madness” that Israel “tolerated elected representatives in the Knesset who sided with its enemies”.

Religion cannot be separated from state in Israel

Earlier this month, Avigdor Lieberman said that it was impossible to separate religion from the state in Israel.

On July 2, speaking at the Herzliya Conference, Lieberman said: “When we talk about relations between religion and state, I say that religion must be separated from politics in the State of Israel. However, it is impossible to separate religion from the state.”

In May, Lieberman opposed joining a government headed by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the ultra-Orthodox parties, which he called a “[Jewish law] government”, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.

Lieberman and the ultra-Orthodox parties have been in a dispute over the military conscription bill which would force ultra-Orthodox men studying the Torah, who are currently exempt from service, to join the military.

Lieberman has criticized the pre-military preparatory programs of the religious community, saying “they are developing into private religious militias”.

Lieberman called to separate the pre-military academies from the Ministry of Education and put them under the full supervision of the defense ministry.

Who is Lieberman?

Lieberman is a Soviet-born Israeli politician who served as the Defense Minister of Israel; on  November 14, 2018 Lieberman announced he was handing in his resignation due to a ceasefire versus Gaza which Lieberman said was “surrendering to terror.”

He served as Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2012, and again from 2013 to 2015. He has also served as member of the Knesset and as Deputy Prime Minister of Israel.

He is the founder and leader of the secular-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose electoral base are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking immigrants from the former Soviet Union. As a result of the arrival in Israel during the 1990s of more than one million Russian-speaking immigrants, Yisrael Beiteinu has regularly played the “king-maker” role in Israel’s coalition governments. [Wikipedia]

Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Chief Editor of the Journal of America (www.journalofamerica.net)