While the mainstream media obsessed over comments made by comedian Michelle Wolf, North and South Korea sent stocks crashing and a city moved forward with clearing cannabis convictions.
The post 5 Stories You Missed While The Media Was Obsessing Over Michelle Wolf’s Speech appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
(FAIR) As Adam Johnson (FAIR.org, 4/9/18) writes, media have engaged in extraordinary mental gymnastics to describe the Israeli military’s deliberate killing of Palestinian protesters in the Great Return March, framing long-distance sniper shootings as “clashes” in order to misleadingly “give the reader the impression of two equal warring sides.” Equally torturous are the linguistic contortions news outlets […]
A video was released that shows multiple Israeli men celebrating after a sniper targets and shoots a man standing in a field on the other side of their border fence.
The post Leaked Video Shows Israelis Cheer as Sniper Kills Non-Threatening Man Standing in Field appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
(MEE) — Tributes were being paid on Wednesday to renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking – not only remembering him for the brilliance of his scientific mind but as an impassioned campaigner who lent his unique voice to causes including Palestinians’ right of resistance and to call for an end to the war in Syria. Hawking, who died […]
A deeply disturbing video has emerged showing the horrific environment faced by the Palestinian people as Israeli forces are seen throwing a grenade at a couple holding a baby.
The post SHOCK VIDEO: Israeli Officers Hurl Stun Grenade at Palestinian Couple Carrying a BABY appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
This week a number of stories have come out highlighting the general perspective of Palestinian Christians in the context of President Trump"s controversial recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Some of these headlines include, "Nazareth cancels some Christmas festivities over Trump recognizing Jerusalem as Israel"s capital" or "Mike Pence to face bitter reception from Palestinian Christians as he visits the Middle East" or further, "Palestinian Christians: Jerusalem is for the three religions". Many Western audiences might be scratching their heads at such news as the first question that is often asked is, "who are the Palestinian Christians?".
Palestinian Christians protest Trump"s Jerusalem decision. Image source: Daily Sabah
Anger at Pence"s Visit
But as Vice President Pence prepares for his visit to Jerusalem this upcoming week (expected to land in Jerusalem Wednesday), which will include a contested visit to the Western Wall (which administration officials have promised will remain under the sovereignty of the Israeli state in any future agreement), Pence will be seeking the blessing of church officials based in the holy land - at least through the positive optics of brief official meetings and accompanying photo ops.
Though an increasingly small minority in the region, the Palestinian Christian demographic and perspective has long been of huge symbolic importance when Western diplomats consider drastic steps or changes in policy related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially as they are seen as a kind of bridge between the culturally Christian West and the Islamic Middle East. But historically, they"ve often suffered persecution from both the Israeli and Muslim sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Thus far, the White House"s Jerusalem bombshell has met with condemnation and resistance from Palestinian and broader Middle East Christian leadership. Just prior to Trump"s December 6th announcement of the monumental shift in policy, Church leaders in Jerusalem wrote the president begging him not to go forward with a move they said would "increase hatred, conflict, violence and suffering", adding further that, "As the Christian leaders of Jerusalem, we invite you to walk with us in hope as we build a just, inclusive peace for all the peoples of this unique and Holy City."
Palestinian Christians speak out on Israeli occupation and Trump"s Jerusalem decision pic.twitter.com/f0KkNuBhCs
— TRT World (@trtworld) December 13, 2017
And with the arrival of Pence in Jerusalem and a scheduled tour of Bethlehem during the Christmas season, things are about to get more contentious as native Christians have promised to make their opposition visible through things like joining mass protests with their fellow Arab Palestinians and intentionally removing traditional public displays of Christmas.
As The Guardian reports, Pence has already essentially been banned from entering the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem, the place of Jesus" birth:
One person, however, who will not be entering the church, barring a last-minute diplomatic miracle, is the US vice-president, Mike Pence. A proposed visit to Bethlehem and the Nativity church – now cancelled – had been intended as the highlight of a tour of the Middle East next week.
That tour has been thrown into disarray by Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the consequent refusal of Palestinian and many Christian leaders to meet Pence.
Dwindling Numbers but Outsized Voice
Though throughout most of 20th century, Christians were still the majority in cities associated with the life of Jesus, their number in places like Bethlehem and Nazareth are down to about 15% and 30% respectively (and just 2% of the total Palestinian territories population). But their presence is immediately visible in such traditionally religious and touristic sites, as they inhabit the oldest quarters of the cities, and have maintained ownership of prime real estate which predates the modern era (going back to Byzantine times). For example, Israeli Parliament itself (the Knesset) sits on land owned by the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem.
So Christian Palestinians play out outsized role in the conflict given their dwindling numbers (most through mass emigration), and their reportedly widespread opposition to US policy will make things awkward during Pence"s visit. Current protests include the following according to The Washington Post:
And the Washington Post also highlights an interesting contradiction - the perception within the Palestinian Christian community that their American co-religionists are actually hurting and not helping them. The Washington Post explains:
While the news has been badly received among Christian communities in the Middle East, the move was in part a political gesture aimed at Christians: white evangelical voters, who backed Trump overwhelmingly in last year’s presidential election. American evangelical Christians — who believe that the right of the Jews to Jerusalem is enshrined in the Bible and that their presence there will usher in Judgment Day — were a powerful lobbying force behind the decision.
Palestinian Christians complain that Christian evangelicals’ support of Israel doesn’t take into consideration the rights and needs of Christians in the homeland of their religion.
“This is where it all started,” said the Rev. Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem. “The Bible originated in Palestine, not in the Bible Belt, but people in the Bible Belt read the Bible in a way that really makes our lives difficult.”
Persecution from the Israeli State
Palestinian Church leaders tend to complain that Israel can sell its expansionist policies to the Western public if it can maintain a simplistic black-and-white narrative of an Israeli Jewish fight against a sea of Arab Muslims. This ultimately serves to underscore the narrative that "Palestinian Arab" is the equivalent of being Muslim.
However, there are other large sectors within Palestinian society that lack affiliation with Islam: secularists, communists, Arab nationalist, and Druze among them. It is also an inconvenient fact which frustrates the "Muslim vs. Jewish" narrative that the oldest identity when it comes to the Palestinian Arab demographic is represented in the Christian segment of the population.
And as much of the reporting from this week has affirmed, Christian Palestinians as a demographic are overwhelmingly against the modern state of Israel and its expansionist policies. They point out that Israeli bulldozers level Christian villages just as they do Muslim villages. Christians also certainly suffer from occasional random acts of violence from West Bank and Gaza Islamic fundamentalist groups, but the consistent message of Palestinian Christians is that they are ultimately victims of multiple decades of Israeli persecution and land grabs.
Beit Sahour, a Christian village in the West Bank, just east of Bethlehem. An encroaching Israeli settlement sits atop the far hill. Image source: Sandbox Ruminations
Within the West Bank and Gaza, a Christian Palestinian resistance movement centered in places like Beit Sahour – the Christian village (outside of Bethlehem) which pioneered a nonviolent resistance movement during the First and Second Intifadas - has gained some international attention during both Intifiadas.
In 1989 for example (during the First Intifada), diplomats from Britain, France, Belgium, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden attempted to gain access to Beit Sahour during a complete Israeli siege and blockade of the Christian town. These diplomats were prevented from entering as the Israeli Defense Forces did house to house searches and seizures. During the Second Intifada, multiple Christian youths were killed and wounded as the IDF again attempted to bring the town into compliance.
Middle East Christians and American Misconceptions
More broadly, there are over 14 million Christians living in the Middle East (most are Eastern Orthodox, followed by Catholics), and these Christian communities, in their ancient origins, predate the existence of Islam. Further surprising for Western audiences to learn is that Arabic as a spoken language was used by Christians six centuries prior to the writing of the Koran, and Church history testifies to the presence of at least one Arab bishop at the Council of Nicaea, where the doctrine of the Trinity and the divine nature of Christ was formalized and promulgated.
The Church of Saint Porphyrius is the oldest active church in Gaza city (dating back to 425 A.D.). Located in the Zaytun Quarter of the Old City, it is named after the 5th century bishop of Gaza, Saint Porphyrius, whose tomb is situated in the northeastern corner of the church. Image source: Al Azhar University, Gaza.
When most American Christians read the Bible and see names of ancient cities like Antioch, Damascus, Tyre, Sidon, Nazareth etc… identified with the earliest foundational Christian communities, this is often for them a sort of distant, mythic reference to a mysterious and obscure moment in time when “Biblical figures” happened to briefly stroll these ancient Eastern streets prior to these regions being engulfed in Islam. But even the popular idea that a “sea of Islam” definitively and with finality took over the whole Middle East in the 7th and 8th centuries is a myth – many urban centers, especially in the Levant remained entirely Christian throughout the middle ages and into the modern period.
Many of the Middle Eastern cities named in the Book of Acts still have skylines dominated by crosses and Byzantine style church domes to this day. Holy Cross Orthodox Church in the Qassaa neighborhood of Damascus, for example, counts about 10,000 people as members. One can even visit large urban churches in the Gaza Strip like the one pictured above.
Concerning Pence"s imminent visit, it is unlikely that relations between Palestinian Christians and the US administration will improve even should church leaders decide to engage in formal dialogue. It will be interesting to see what develops.
While the MSM educates the public on Trump"s diet, the aftermath of his decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem has turned deadly.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya has said the United States decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is a “war declaration against Palestinians.” And Haniya has called for a new “Intifada”, or uprising because of it.
Haniya said in a speech in Gaza City on Thursday that President Donald Trump‘s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has “killed” the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”This decision has killed the peace process, has killed the Oslo [accord], has killed the settlement process,” he said. “The US decision is an aggression, a declaration of war on us, on the best Muslim and Christian shrines in the heart of Palestine, Jerusalem. We should work on launching an intifada in the face of the Zionist enemy,” Haniya said.
Hours after his speech, Palestinian protesters took to the streets of the occupied West Bank cities, including Ramallah, Hebron, and Nablus, as well as in the Gaza Strip, to violently vent their frustration at the decision. “Jerusalem, all of Jerusalem, is ours,” said Haniya. “We are here today at a critical point in the history of the Palestinian issue and the core of the issue is Jerusalem, a critical point in the history of the Arab and Muslim nations following the provocative decision, the unfair decision adopted by the US administration.”
Ignoring warnings from the international community Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that the US formally recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and will begin the process of moving its embassy to the city. On Thursday, in response to Trump’s announcement, Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, speaking to Al Jazeera from Ramallah, said that Trump was “joining Israel in the war crimes and in confirming the annexation of the occupied Palestinian Territories. I hope that the Palestinian Authority will not accept to meet with this American team anymore,” he said.
“Israel decided it wants everything. They want everything? Fine. We will also fight for everything,” he said. “We might be talking about a popular wide uprising but non-violent one, similar to the first intifada. That’s what we need. Israelis should see the Palestinian resistance everywhere.”
“I saw a fair number of corpses,” recalled former Knesset member and Israeli government minister, Yair Tsaban, on the massacre carried out on the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin, for director, Neta Shoshani. “I don’t remember encountering the corpse of a fighting man. Not at all. I remember mostly women and old men.”
“An old man and a woman, sitting in the corner of a room with their faces to the wall, and they are shot in the back,” he recounted. “That cannot have been in the heat of battle. No way.”
Yet, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, critics vituperatively insist no such assault occurred, as Deir Yassin villagers were the aggressors against several pre-state militias battling for an independent, demarcated Israel.
A few of the surviving smattering of eyewitnesses and participants in the atrocity relayed to Shoshani haunting memories of the decimation of the village — which began on the morning of April 9, 1948, as part of an operation meant to destroy a blockade on the road to Jerusalem in one of many incidents ultimately leading to what Israelis call the War of Independence — for a documentary entitled “Born in Deir Yassin.”
But, like any nation whose violent aggression leads to geostrategic or political victory over less-prepared defending forces, documentation, photographs, testimonies, and accounts from witnesses to the horrific Deir Yassin bloodbath have been cloistered away by the Israeli government. Seven decades after the fact, multiple records requests from Shoshani and Haaretz were not granted by Israel, under the premise the information would needlessly stir further controversy and possibly damage the country’s reputation.
A mere cursory glance at the information Shoshani compiled for the documentary proves Israeli misgivings more than warranted.
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“[O]ur movement carried out a tremendous operation to occupy the Arab village on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road — Deir Yassin. I participated in this operation in the most active way,” Yehuda Feder penned in a letter shortly after the massacre, of the operation undertaken by the Menachem Begin-led, pre-state National Military Organization, known by the acronym, Etzel; Lehi, the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel; and other militias.
“This was the first time in my life that at my hands and before my eyes Arabs fell. In the village I killed an armed Arab man and two Arab girls of 16 or 17 who were helping the Arab who was shooting. I stood them against a wall and blasted them with two rounds from the Tommy gun,” Feder blithely wrote of the spontaneous machine gun execution of teenage girls.
“We confiscated a lot of money and silver and gold jewelry fell into our hands,” he said of shameless looting by fighters after they had methodically lobbed grenades at houses, shot women, children, and the elderly, and generally unleashed chaotic bloody terror on the small village.
Unsettling thus aptly characterizes zealousness evident in Feder’s words — though he was far from alone in believing the Deir Yassin assault justified — bubbling unspoken but no less apparent from between the lines he composed 70 years ago. Indeed, the soldier deftly intimated the scope of bloodshed and unapologetic savagery in the concluding line of his letter, writing starkly,
“This was a really tremendous operation and it is with reason that the left is vilifying us again.”
READ MORE: While Both Sides Point Fingers, Here Are the Facts On Trump"s 100,000 Troop Plan
Even with the paucity of solid documentation, thanks to Tel Aviv’s tight lips, Shoshani managed to glean further appalling details from some who took part, including distressing recollections from the Jerusalem commander of Lehi, Yehoshua Zettler.
“They ran like cats,” Zettler chillingly mused to the filmmaker in 2009, shortly before his death, of terrified Palestinians fleeing their homes while pre-state forces lay siege to Deir Yassin. “I won’t tell you that we were there with kid gloves on. House after house … we’re putting in explosives and they are running away. An explosion and move on, an explosion and move on and within a few hours, half the village isn’t there any more.”
Zettler remained adamant until his death that the offensive against the Palestinian Arabs in Deir Yassin was not a massacre — somewhat contradicting his raw account of the aftermath:
“Our guys made a number of mistakes there that made me angry. Why did they do that? They took dead people, piled them up and burned them. There began to be a stink. This is not so simple.”
Professor Mordechai Gichon, a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces reserves and Haganah intelligence officer, sent to Deir Yassin after the assault, reports Haaretz, recounted the harrowing scene unfolding as he entered the village decades ago,
“There was a feeling of considerable slaughter and it was hard for me to explain it to myself as having been done in self-defense. My impression was more of a massacre than anything else. If it is a matter of killing innocent civilians, then it can be called a massacre.”
Tsaban, the former Israeli official, recalled deployment to Deir Yassin with fellow members of the Youth Brigades to bury the dead — or, rather, to cover up the enormity of the horror meted by pro-Independence forces in an effort to dodge inevitable brimstone from around the world were the truth made plain.
“The rationale was that the Red Cross was liable to show up at any moment and it was necessary to blur the traces [of the killings] because publication of pictures and testimonies about what had happened in the village would be very damaging to the image of our War of Independence,” Tsaban candidly asserted.
During a visit to the Haganah Archive, Shoshani told Haaretz in an interview in advance of the premier of her documentary at the Jerusalem Film Festival, a man quietly pulled her aside and conveyed he had taken photographs in Deir Yassin immediately after the massacre — but had not seen those images since.
“The man was Shraga Peled, 91, who at the time of the massacre was in the Haganah Information Service,” Haaretz explains. “He told Shoshani that after the battle he was sent to the village with a camera to document what he saw there. ‘When I got to Deir Yassin, the first thing I saw was a big tree to which a young Arab fellow was tied. And this tree was burnt in a fire. They had tied him to it and burned him. I photographed that,’ he related. He also claims he photographed from afar what looked like a few dozen other corpses collected in a quarry adjacent to the village. He handed the film over to his superiors, he says, and since then he has not seen the photos.
“Possibly this is because the photos are part of the visual material that is hidden to this day in the Archive of the IDF and the Defense Ministry, of which the state is prohibiting publication even 70 years after the fact. Shoshani petitioned the High Court of Justice about this a decade ago as part of her final project at Bezalel. Haaretz joined her in the petition.”
Years of persistent, dedicated research and interviews with witnesses and others revealed for Shoshani the true horrors of April 9, 1948, but there are many who take vociferous issue with the incident at Deir Yassin being termed a massacre — a few even assert it never happened.
Politicized selective descriptions aside, however, Deir Yassin represents a symbolic flashpoint in the acerbic battle for land simultaneously deemed Palestine and Israel, marking the onset oppression and apartheid conditions since endured by Palestinian Arabs under the Israeli occupation.
War exploded a few weeks after the massacre, on May 14, 1948, immediately after Israel declared its independence.
One of the most fundamental rights in a nation logically consistent in crying freedom is the ability to boycott — a company, entity, church, or, in the case of the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Movement against Israel, an entire nation — in protest of perceived transgressions to force through the wallet reforms which might not otherwise be accomplished.
Boycotts have indeed managed the seemingly impossible — SeaWorld, for example, ultimately had to shutter its orca captivity and breeding programs after the documentary, Blackfish, depicting horrendous, inhumane conditions, jerked heartstrings and ignited a backlash boycott, sending profits to the brink of an abyss.
Now, an alarmingly large group of politicians seek to strip American citizens of the right to this highly-effective method of protest — only when employed against the nation of Israel — with violators facing decades behind bars and stiff financial penalties.
New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand join 41 other members of Congress championing proposed legislation, which would make literal criminals of any Americans boycotting Israel — a brazen, if not explicit, attack on the BDS Movement, incidentally exploding in popularity worldwide as the belligerent nation continues its occupation of Palestinian lands.
Laying down the irrational, inflammatory gauntlet before the Senate this week, Schumer opined,
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“Anti-Zionism, unfortunately, continues to bubble up in many different forms. There is perhaps no greater example than the pernicious effort to delegitimize Israel through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. The BDS movement is a deeply biased campaign that I would say, in similar words to Mr. Macron, is a ‘reinvented form of anti-Semitism’ because it seeks to impose boycotts on Israel and not on any other nation.”
But critics of BDS should absolutely take heed — it is the First Amendment, not political views on Israel, at the crux of this dangerous legislation.
“Under the terms of the bill, a pair of U.S. laws that prohibit U.S. citizens from supporting a boycott request from a foreign government against an ally of the United States would be updated to specifically prohibit Americans from supporting international boycott efforts against Israel,” reports the Gothamist.
According to the American Civil Liberties Union — which immediately castigated the bill for further shredding the First Amendment — violators “would be subject to a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.”
Despite clarifying it “takes no position for or against the effort to boycott Israel or any foreign country,” the ACLU implored, “The impacts of the legislation would be antithetical to free speech protections enshrined in the First Amendment and we urged members to oppose the legislation in the absence of significant revisions.”
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Worse, “it would punish individuals for no reason other than their political beliefs” — a footnote critics of BDS would do well to heed in determining their own position on the proposed legislation or others similar. To enact law punitive of one’s political adversaries is to invite they do the same — or, more accurately, proves to the State rights can be erased if packaged appropriately.
Ire over Israel’s enactment of what has consistently been deemed by academia and analysis a brutal apartheid — mirroring human rights abuses, atrocities, and blatant injustices of the South African regime responsible for the political detainment of Nelson Mandela — bolsters the numbers of BDS adherents in the U.S. and elsewhere.
“The state of Israel maintains a military occupation of territories that were assigned to Palestinians by international law. Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank are subjected to the discriminatory rule of a foreign army, while their Israeli neighbors enjoy the full rights of citizenship,” writes Eric Levitz for the Daily Intelligencer.
Make no mistake, this bill came to the fruition as Israel’s appalling persecution of Palestinians on their land has increasingly become the subject of protest by activists and advocates — who turn to the successful BDS campaign as a legitimate, nonviolent means to convey the message.
Pro-Israel fervor in the United States Congress usually bears the hallmarks of AIPAC — the infamous lobbying group — and this bill is no exception.
Indeed, as The Intercept noted, it appears an embarrassing number of the bill’s signatories did so simply for its AIPAC seal-of-approval (making felons of Americans choosing to protest a foreign nation through refusing business serves who, exactly?), rather than taking time to actually read the draft.
However this monstrosity gained congressional popularity, it must be loudly quashed and relegated to the dustbin of rights-crushing, ill-conceived ideas — which is the snuggest-fitting definition of the Anti-Boycott Israel bill.
“[T]he bill would punish businesses and individuals based solely on their point of view,” the outraged ACLU admonished. “Such a penalty is in direct violation of the First Amendment.”
READ MORE: Library Worker Beaten and Arrested for Peacefully Defending Free Speech of Patron
Such a penalty sadly also seems a typical evisceration of freedom in this corrupt and encroaching authoritarian State.
A decade of Israeli blockade, compounded by PA complicity with its harshness, deteriorated conditions to the breaking point – the suffering of two million Gazans largely ignored by the world community.
Israel’s blockade was and continues to be for political, not security, reasons, encouraged and supported by Washington.
A report titled “Three Three Years After the 2014 Gaza Hostilities – Beyond Survival: Challenges to Economic Recovery and Long-Term Development” explains nightmarish conditions amounting to slow-motion genocide.
Gaza’s economy is in shambles. One-third of its arable land and over half of Oslo-agreed on fishing waters are off-limits. Palestinians venturing into them risk being shot and killed.
Electricity in Gaza is at an all-time low, at most one-fifth of demand. Power cuts last as long as 20 hours daily, sometimes longer. Lack of it endangers lives, damages the Strip’s fragile infrastructure, and prevents normal activities.
Three years after Operation Protective Edge, rebuilding is woefully slow. Most aid pledged wasn’t supplied. Most getting in hasn’t gone for reconstruction.
Blockade and Israeli aggression at its discretion makes economic recovery unattainable. Deep poverty, unemployment, underemployment, food insecurity, fractured infrastructure, limited public services (including healthcare and education), along with environmental degradation make daily life a struggle to survive.
Unemployment for youths and new labor force entrants is around 60%, overall unemployment over 40%, conditions worsening, not improving.
Gaza’s private sector is incapacitated by blockade, restricted movements, along with limited access to natural resources and markets.
Economic activity is little more than half its pre-2014 war level, while Gaza’s population steadily grows. Most households need humanitarian aid to survive.
The UN’s prediction about Gaza being unlivable by 2020 should have said it’s been this way for years, especially post-Operation Protective Edge.
On July 8, the Strip’s power crisis deepened. Two generators shut down. Production dropped to 20 megawatts daily because entry of Egyptian fuel stopped.
The PA is responsible for non-payment to Cairo. Israel cut its supply delivered to minimal amounts. Lack of power forced sharp cutbacks in all vital aspects of life – commercial, industrial, medical and residential.
Gaza’s health ministry instituted major cuts in vital services. Fuel used to run generators in hospitals is close to running out.
If things don’t improve quickly, most operating rooms, laboratories and blood banks will close.
The lives of patients needing vital surgery, in intensive care, and on dialysis will be endangered. Safe water and sanitation are gravely affected.
Gaza is occupied territory. Israel fails to fulfill even minimal obligations as an occupying power, international humanitarian law ignored.
The lives, health, safety and welfare of two million Gazans are endangered by its ruthlessness.
(AP Photo/ Khalil Hamra) (The Associated Press)(The Real Agenda News) Even in four-star hotels in Gaza, generators are blocked during prolonged power outages.
Since last April, the only power plant in the Gaza Strip has been shut down for lack of fuel, so the two million inhabitants of the Palestinian Mediterranean enclave have been provide only four hours of energy per day.
If the decision taken by the Israeli Government on Sunday at the behest of the Palestinian Authority is confirmed, the Gazans will remain in the dark.
When it comes to ten years of the seizure of power in Gaza by the Islamist Hamas movement – in which three wars have been waged against Israel – the Palestinian territory has been plunged into darkness.
The escalation of tension threatens to blow up the fuses of a new armed conflict.
The Palestinian Authority presiding over Mahmoud Abbas seems to have grown tired of waiting for the promised formation of a unity government with Hamas and has begun to exert intense economic pressure on the Gaza Strip.
After refusing to pay gas taxes for the Gaza power plant, which was affected by the Israeli bombing in the summer war of 2014, the Ramallah Government has cut the salaries of its officials by 30%.
In May it announced that it would only pay Israel 75% of the energy supplied to the territory controlled by the Islamists.
Israeli Minister of Construction and Housing, Yohav Galant, was 10 years ago the commanding general of the Army’s Southern Command, deployed to Gaza.
“For Israel, Hamas is the equivalent of ISIS in Western countries,” he said in Jerusalem before a group of foreign journalists, hours after the Cabinet had agreed to cut power supply to Gaza.
The Islamists won the 2006 legislative elections, the year after Israel withdrew completely from the Strip.
“In 2007 they surrounded the positions of Fatah (the nationalist party of President Abbas), evicted their political rivals and seized power,” Galant recounts. “Between 30,000 and 40,000 Hamas militiamen continue to hold Gaza’s two million inhabitants hostage.”
Like the rest of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Galant argues that the growing climate of tension has been due to the Palestinian fracture between Fatah, in power in the West Bank and Hamas, which rules over Gaza.
The minister declines to reveal when the works of the so-called underground wall, a barrier excavated in the subsoil around the border of the Strip to prevent the tunnels built by Hamas from penetrating the nearby kibbutz, are about to begin.
“The tunnels are their great strategic asset to attack Israel by surprise. If Hamas believes that it is going to lose it, it can trigger a new conflict “, says the former general.
The United Nations has warned Wednesday that the Strip faces an “absolute collapse” of its vital services to the population if the electricity supply is cut by 40%, as announced by the Government of Israel after the reduction of payments from the Palestinian Authority.
The UN humanitarian coordinator in the Palestinian territories, Robert Piper, told France Presse that “increasing the duration of power outages can have a devastating effect on health facilities, water supply and sanitation”.
With the civilian population in Gaza trapped by fighting between Palestinian factions, political analyst Talal Okal, one of the few who still maintains independence of opinion in the Strip, believes that “the situation is so bad that it can hardly get worse.”
It is not foreseeable to have a popular outburst, in spite of the protests of the past winter, when the blackouts began to become a common thing, he explained.
“People are not going to stand up to the Hamas militias with their bare chest. Everyone knows that Gaza is subject to a military regime, but they are aware that, directly (in the West Bank) or indirectly (in the Strip), the central problem is the Israeli occupation. Or there is an agreement between the Palestinian parties,” he warns “or the risk of a new conflict with Israel can skyrocket.”
The population also suffers the refusal of Egypt to increase its electrical connections with the Strip.
The embargo imposed on Qatar – one of the main donors of energy to Gaza – by the Gulf countries and Saudi Arabia’s break with Hamas, which until just a few weeks ago claimed its loyalty to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood enemies of Riyadh, have further aggravated the humanitarian situation.
The Israeli NGO Doctors for Human Rights has found that hospitals in the Gaza Strip lack one-third of the medicines considered basic.
No energy, with the water from the wells and beaches contaminated; in a territory subjected to a strict blockade by Israel, with the Egyptian border half-frozen, and frozen Gulf financial support, Hamas spokesmen predict a “catastrophe” and an “explosion” in the Strip.
The UN warned long ago that Gaza will cease to be habitable by 2020.
Palestinians walk on a road during a power cut in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.. (image: REUTERS)Last Saturday, the plant shut down for lack of fuel. Funds donated by Qatar and Turkey were exhausted.
Gaza’s Energy Authority said it won’t buy more unless hostile PA authorities exempt it from fuel excise taxes it can’t afford to pay.
Under less dire conditions, electricity is severely limited. It’s been reduced from eight to six hours, followed by 12-hour blackouts.
Maintenance problems on Monday reduced power intervals to every four hours on, 12 hours off.
Gaza Energy Authority’s deputy chairman Fathi al-Sheikh explained monthly operating costs for two plant generators are about $13.6 million. Lifting the fuel tax would reduce it to around $5.5 million, a major savings.
Gaza buys 80% of its electricity from Israel, the rest from Egypt. When plant generators are operating, they supply 60 megawatts of power – 400 megawatts required to supply Strip needs.
Blockading Gaza, Israeli wars, along with frequent air and ground attacks lie at the root of its problems. Inadequate funding prevents proper maintenance.
Israel has the power to change things. Another preemptive war is more likely. Gazan infrastructure already is in deplorable condition.
Israel wants it kept this way, enforcing harshness, holding two million Gazans hostage to its viciousness, denying them fundamental rights everyone deserves.
Palestinians walk on a road during a power cut in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip.. (image: REUTERS)Last Saturday, the plant shut down for lack of fuel. Funds donated by Qatar and Turkey were exhausted.
Gaza’s Energy Authority said it won’t buy more unless hostile PA authorities exempt it from fuel excise taxes it can’t afford to pay.
Under less dire conditions, electricity is severely limited. It’s been reduced from eight to six hours, followed by 12-hour blackouts.
Maintenance problems on Monday reduced power intervals to every four hours on, 12 hours off.
Gaza Energy Authority’s deputy chairman Fathi al-Sheikh explained monthly operating costs for two plant generators are about $13.6 million. Lifting the fuel tax would reduce it to around $5.5 million, a major savings.
Gaza buys 80% of its electricity from Israel, the rest from Egypt. When plant generators are operating, they supply 60 megawatts of power – 400 megawatts required to supply Strip needs.
Blockading Gaza, Israeli wars, along with frequent air and ground attacks lie at the root of its problems. Inadequate funding prevents proper maintenance.
Israel has the power to change things. Another preemptive war is more likely. Gazan infrastructure already is in deplorable condition.
Israel wants it kept this way, enforcing harshness, holding two million Gazans hostage to its viciousness, denying them fundamental rights everyone deserves.
(ANTIMEDIA) A U.N. report published this week accused Israel of imposing an “apartheid regime” of racial discrimination on the Palestinian people. Shortly after its release, the official who approved its publication resigned amid pressure to pull it, and the report has since been withdrawn.
The report, written by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA), concluded that “Israel [has] established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole” — a charge Israel vehemently denies.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman likened the report to Der Sturmer, a Nazi propaganda publication that was strongly anti-Semitic.
It is a unique and beneficial position to be in wherein every legitimate criticism of one’s policies is deemed to be racially or politically motivated. In that sense, Israel wants to be ultimately free of criticism, even when the nation commits serious violations of international law. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. has staunchly come to Israel’s defense.
“The United Nations secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether,” the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, said in a statement, as reported by the Independent.
The ESCWA comprises 18 Arab states in Western Asia and has a view of supporting economic and social development in member states, according to its website. The report was prepared at the request of its member states and notes it reflects the views of the authors only. It was also published without any prior consultation with the U.N. secretariat.
Is the report entirely without merit, as the U.S. and Israel would have us believe? According to the report’s abstract, which Anti-Media cited before the publication was pulled:
“A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles, living beyond. This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie at the heart of the apartheid regime. They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its very existence. This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it.”
South Africa, a country whose infamous history of an apartheid regime shows its people are adept enough to recognize apartheid when they see it, has been a staunch backer of the Palestinian movement for years. South Africa’s International Relations Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, once famously stated “the Palestinian struggle is our struggle.”
The U.N. report was authored by Richard Falk, a former U.N. human rights investigator for the Palestinian territories, and Virginia Tilley, a professor of political science at Southern Illinois University.
After its publication, U.N. Under-Secretary General and ESCWA Executive Secretary Rima Khalaf resigned amid pressure from Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to withdraw it, Reuters reports. She stood by the report, adding, “It was expected that Israel and its allies would put enormous pressure on the United Nations secretary-general to renounce the report.”
The report is no longer visible on UNESCWA’s website, but can be found in the Internet archive.
Minister of war Avigdor Lieberman is part of Israel’s lunatic fringe – ruthless, lawless, racist, militant, extremist and nightmarish for Palestinians.
A former nightclub bouncer in Moldova before moving to Israel in 1978, he heads the ultranationalist Israel Beiteinu party. Its agenda includes no concessions, no settlement freeze, no Palestinian self-determination (except maybe on worthless, isolated bantustans), no peace process whether or not he admits it.
On Monday, Lieberman said Israel’s next war on Gaza will be its last “because we will completely destroy them,” adding:
“As minister of defense (sic), I would like to clarify that we have no intention of starting a new war against our neighbors (sic) in the Gaza Strip or the West Bank, Lebanon or Syria.”
“But in Gaza, like the Iranians, they intend to eliminate the state of Israel…If they impose the next war on Israel, it will be their last. I would like to emphasize again: It will be their last confrontation because we will completely destroy them.”
Destroy means genocide. Two million Gazans are trapped by illegal siege and blockade, unable to seek safety next time Israel preemptively attacks them – virtually certain to be worse than last time based on Lieberman’s threat alone.
How much death and destruction is too much? How much suffering must Palestinians endure to be free from a gangster, Arab-hating Jewish state?
How long will Americans tolerate Washington funding its killing machine with their tax dollars – used for mass slaughter and ruthless persecution?
How long will Israelis put up with racist, fascist governance threatening their security and well-being?
Israel waged three wars of aggression on Gaza since December 2008/January 2009 – Cast Lead, Pillar of Cloud in 2012 and Protective Edge in 2014, each exponentially more destructive than the previous hostilities.
Further conflict is certain, likely far more severe than earlier, based on the trend of the last three, exacerbated by lunatics like Lieberman in charge of warmaking, along with leadership under Netanyahu just as bad.
