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.
Unlike in Syria, there is documented evidence of civilian murder, war crimes, and use of chemical weapons use in Israel, yet the US chooses to remain entirely silent and, in fact, voices their outspoken support for the regime.
The post As the US Starts a New War in Syria With No Evidence, Israel Is Murdering Civilians—On Video 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 […]
For the first time, Lebanon-based Al-Mayadeen TV released new dramatic footage showing Israeli forces using a weaponized drone against a Hamas rally in the Gaza Strip, according to the Times of Israel.
The post Horrifying Video Shows Israeli Military Target Civilians with Chemical Weapon Drone appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
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.
Israel is being accused of destroying Palestinian crops by spraying excessive toxic herbicides that damaged both their food and water supply.
The post Israel Caught Illegally Spraying Toxic Herbicides On Palestinian Farms, Destroying Their Food appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
As the US doubles down on its unwavering support of the Israeli establishment, multiple videos have surfaced showing rampant abuse by the IDF.
A cargo plane operated by an Israeli airline with full customs clearance, was the only plane to leave Atlanta during a massive airport blackout.
This week president Trump received the Friends of Zion Award at the White House, labeling him as the most Zionist-friendly president in US history.
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.”
According to official documents, Hurricane Harvey victims reportedly have to agree to not "boycott Israel," in order to receive aid to rebuild their homes.
Collective punishment Israel imposes is prohibited under international law, including actions violating religious rights, free expression, assembly and movement, the right to privacy and self-determination.
During the 15-day period, scores of Palestinians were arrested, including 30 children – most arrests occurring in Jerusalem’s Old City, at Al-Aqsa’s Lion’s Gate, as well as in East Jerusalem’s Al-Tur and Al-Issawiya areas.
Palestinian political leaders and activists were targeted, 15 individuals lawlessly arrested. Later released, they’re barred from entering Al-Aqsa, speaking publicly, demonstrating or giving media interviews – violations of their fundamental rights.
Children arrested were harshly treated. They were beaten or otherwise mistreated, some because of their Facebook posts.
Article 37 (b) of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states:
“No one is allowed to punish children in a cruel or harmful way. Children who break the law should not be treated cruelly.”
“They should not be put in prison with adults, should be able to keep in contact with their families, and should not be sentenced to death or life imprisonment without possibility of release.”
They should not be arbitrarily detained or denied their liberty. Detention should be a last resort and only for short duration.
During 15 days of defiling Al-Aqsa, Israeli security forces assaulted and arrested 30 journalists for doing their jobs, their equipment confiscated, according to the Palestinian Media Forum (PMF). Israel wants its high crimes suppressed.
On Saturday, regime security forces stormed PMF’s West Bank offices. They raided al-Quds satellite channel’s office and Pal Media headquarters, seizing equipment and documents, damaging the facilities.
Daily use of rubber-coated steel bullets, at times live fire, stun grenades, toxic tear gas, pepper spray, chemically-treated skunk water, and brutal beatings violated international and Israeli civil laws. So is use of lethal force against demonstrators.
Israeli forces stormed Al-Maqassed hospital, using tear gas and stun grenades. Intensive care and emergency area medical staff were assaulted.
Severely wounded Muhammad Abu Ghannam was abducted. He died for lack of treatment. The hospital became a virtual war zone, people screaming, blood on floors and walls.
Palestinians lawlessly arrested included women, children, students, the elderly and Palestinian Legislative Council members. Israeli forces brutalized and otherwise mistreated them.
Palestinians’ long nightmare continues, including daily Israeli raids, assaults, abductions and other forms of brutality.
On Sunday, dozens of heavily protected extremist settlers desecrated Al-Aqsa compound by their unwelcome presence.
Mosque guards and staff were abusively searched before allowed in, at least one lawless arrest made.
Extremist MK Yehuda Glick announced he and scores of others provocatively intended to visit the compound on Sunday, defiling it by their presence.
“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.
Advertisment
“[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.
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.
(ANTIMEDIA) While on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump disappointed many supporters of Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. At the time, the Republican nominee “placed the burden of a peace deal firmly with Israel” alone, Haaretz reported. “A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal – whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things,” Trump said.
Despite the faux pas, Trump continued to profess his commitment to Israel, promising to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and going as far as to claim he would be Israel’s “closest friend” if he won the presidency. But perhaps one of his most talked about comments regarding Israel involved settlements.
Asked during a Daily Mail interview last May whether he thought settlement building should be stopped, Trump answered:
“No, I don’t think it is, because I think Israel should have – they really have to keep going. They have to keep moving forward.”
Because of this statement, it was a surprise to many when the Trump White House issued a statement Thursday claiming the Israeli settlement construction was unhelpful to peace.
“The American desire for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians has remained unchanged for 50 years,” the statement reads, appearing to refer to the many instances in the past 50 years when U.S. presidents have objected to Israel’s settlement expansion.
“While we don’t believe the existence of settlements is an impediment to peace,” the statement continues, “the construction of new settlements or the expansion of existing settlements beyond their current borders may not be helpful in achieving that goal.”
Instead of positioning the administration in favor of more settlements, the White House simply closed the statement by asserting that “[t]he Trump administration has not taken an official position on settlement activity and looks forward to continuing discussions.”
Dubious in nature, the statement seems to suggest that the advancement of settlements might not be positive if the goal is peace; it also suggests that the settlements themselves do not represent an impediment to peace. Nevertheless, the statement also suggests that Trump believes the “ultimate deal” is a peace agreement, making it clear the current administration hopes the Israeli government won’t take steps “that could hurt the prospects of such a deal.”
Despite the statement’s contents, some believe the Trump White House seems to make a weaker case against the advancement of settlements when compared to former administrations.
In response to the comments, groups of Israeli settlers downplayed Trump’s comments, the Associated Press reported. Instead of worrying about Trump’s concerns, they look forward to the U.S. president’s upcoming meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Husam Zomlot, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, praised the statement for going “in the right direction.” Nevertheless, Zomlot said, “we need more than words to protect the two-state solution, otherwise we will find nothing to talk about when President Trump” finally discloses his policies on the conflict between the two nations.
This article (In Surprise Move, Trump Turns to Neutrality to Push Peace Between Israel, Palestine) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Alice Salles and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article to edits@theantimedia.org.
