facility:temple mount

  • Barak Ravid sur Twitter : “WATCH: U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman takes a 10 pounds hammer and breaks open a tunnel which runs under the Palestinian village of #Silwan to the old city of #Jerusalem. This happens at a settlers organisation event with Sara Netanyahu and Sheldon Adelson at his side” / Twitter
    https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1145362268022067200

    https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1145362068507430912/pu/vid/640x360/A_akO0XpJxkZ-Rl-.mp4?tag=10

    Des officiels américains à un évènement lié aux colons israéliens à Jérusalem-Est - L’Orient-Le Jour
    https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1176973/des-officiels-americains-a-un-evenement-lie-aux-colons-israeliens-a-j

    Deux responsables américains ont assisté dimanche à l’inauguration à Jérusalem-Est d’un site archéologique organisée par une association ultranationaliste israélienne, une présence qui rompt une nouvelle fois avec la pratique diplomatique s’agissant de la colonisation et du secteur palestinien de la ville occupé par Israël.

    Jason Greenblatt, conseiller du président américain Donald Trump, et David Friedman, ambassadeur en Israël, ont assisté en compagnie de responsables israéliens à une cérémonie dévoilant le résultat de travaux archéologiques à Silwan, quartier palestinien de Jérusalem-Est. Silwan, situé en contrebas des murailles de la Vieille ville, est le théâtre de tensions permanentes entre les résidents palestiniens et des colons juifs de plus en plus nombreux.

    Les travaux archéologiques, portant sur une route souterraine utilisée il y a environ 2.000 ans pour le pèlerinage vers le Second Temple juif, ont été entrepris par l’association Elad, dont le but avoué est de renforcer la présence juive à Jérusalem-Est.

    [...]

    Les Palestiniens accusent Israël et la fondation Elad de chercher à les chasser de Jérusalem.

    [...]

    L’ONG israélienne Emek Shaveh, qui lutte contre l’usage de l’archéologie au service de la colonisation, a également critiqué la présence d’officiels américains à la cérémonie. Elle dénonce un « acte politique qui se rapproche le plus d’une reconnaissance américaine de la souveraineté israélienne » sur toute la Vieille ville de Jérusalem.

    Israël considère Jérusalem comme sa capitale « unifiée et indivisible ». Mais la communauté internationale ne reconnaît pas l’annexion en 1967 de la partie orientale occupée de la ville, dont les Palestiniens veulent faire la capitale de l’Etat auquel ils aspirent.

    Le président Donald Trump a rompu en décembre 2017 avec des décennies de consensus diplomatique en reconnaissant Jérusalem comme la capitale d’Israël, poussant les Palestiniens à couper tout contact formel avec Washington.

    L’ambassadeur américain en Israël David Friedman est un fervent soutien des colonies israéliennes dans les Territoires palestiniens, considérées comme illégales par la communauté internationale.

    #sionisme #etats-unis

    • Editorial Settlers From the White House
      Haaretz Editorial
      Jun 30, 2019 11:20 PM
      https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/settlers-from-the-white-house-1.7424748

      The event held Sunday in a tunnel under the main street of the Silwan neighborhood in East Jerusalem, just outside the Old City walls, would have been impossible only a few years ago. Two of the U.S. administration’s most senior diplomats, Special Envoy to the Middle East Jason Greenblatt and U.S. Ambassador David Friedman, were there alongside Israeli ministers at the inauguration of the Path of the Pilgrims – a tunnel excavated by the right-wing Elad organization with generous help from the state.

      The tunnel, which according to Elad exposed a street from the Second Temple period that brought pilgrims from the Shiloah pool to the Temple Mount, is a central project in the organization’s efforts to Judaize Silwan and its environs by way of archaeology and tourism. When the tunnel opens to the public, presumably in a few months, it will become a major tourist attraction.

      The participation of American diplomats at an event sponsored by a right-wing group in East Jerusalem constitutes de facto recognition of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem’s historic basin. If anyone had any doubts about that, Friedman made clear in an interview with the Jerusalem Post that, “The City of David is an essential component of the national heritage of the State of Israel.” Giving it up, even in the context of a peace agreement, he said, “would be akin to America returning the Statue of Liberty.”

      This recognition doesn’t just put the American administration on the extreme right of the Israeli political map – thus undercutting the claim that American can be an unbiased broker between Israel and the Palestinians – but it also ignores the complicated reality in Silwan, East Jerusalem and the entire region. The tunnel, which was excavated using controversial methods from a scientific standpoint, harnesses archaeology to politics while ignoring the nuances of Jerusalem’s ancient past.

      But the main problem is that excavating under the street blatantly ignores what’s happening at street level. In Silwan alone there are 20,000 Palestinians without citizenship or civil rights, who justifiably feel that this archaeological project is aimed at forcing them out of their neighborhood. Surrounding Silwan are another 300,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, also without rights.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfbMcYhJY6Q


      Anyone having even a passing familiarity with the Palestinian people knows that there’s no chance of arriving at any kind of agreement that will end the occupation so long as Israel continues to control East Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. Thus, by mere words and an event dripping with sweetness and smiles, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has sentenced Israelis to a life of constant conflict, or to an apartheid state in which there are two types of residents, those with rights and those without them.

  • Cent des cent vingt députés élus mardi en Israël seront les partisans de l’apartheid. Une tribune de Gideon Levy

    Israel is voting apartheid - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-israel-is-voting-apartheid-1.7089338

    There will be one certain result from Tuesday’s election: Around 100 members of the next Knesset will be supporters of apartheid. This has no precedent in any democracy. A hundred out of 120 legislators, an absolute of absolute majorities, one that supports maintaining the current situation, which is apartheid.

    With such a majority, it will be possible in the next Knesset to officially declare Israel an apartheid state. With such support for apartheid and considering the durability of the occupation, no propaganda will be able to refute the simple truth: Nearly all Israelis want the apartheid to continue. In the height of chutzpah, they call this democracy, even though more than 4 million people who live alongside them and under their control have no right to vote in the election.

    Of course, no one is talking about this, but in no other regime around the world is there one community next to another where the residents of one, referred to as a West Bank settlement, have the right to vote, while the residents of the other, a Palestinian village, don’t. This is apartheid in all its splendor, whose existence nearly all the country’s Jewish citizens want to continue.

    >> Even for the wild West Bank, this is a shocking story

    A hundred Knesset members will be elected from slates referred to as either right-wing, left-wing or centrist, but what they have in common surpasses any difference: None intend to end the occupation. The right wing proudly says so, while the center-left resorts to futile illusions to obscure the picture, listing proposals for a “regional conference” or “secure separation.” The difference between the two groupings is negligible. In unison, the right and left are singing “say yes to apartheid.”

    As a result, this election is so unimportant, so far from crucial. So let’s cut the hysteria and the pathos over the outcome. Neither civil war nor even a rift is in the offing. The people are more united than ever, casting their vote for apartheid. Whatever Tuesday’s results may be, the country of the occupier will remain the country of the occupier. Nothing defines it better than all the other marginal issues, including the Zehut party’s campaign to legalize marijuana.

    So there’s no reason to hold our breath over Tuesday’s results. The election is lost in advance. For the country’s Jews, it will shape the tone, the level of democracy, the rule of law, the corruption in which they live, but it won’t do a thing to change Israel’s basic essence as a colonialist country.
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    The far right wants the annexation of the West Bank, a step that would make permanent in law a situation that has long been permanent in practice. Such a step would present a tempting advantage. It would finally rip off Israel’s mask of democracy and might finally generate opposition both in the country and abroad.

    But no person of conscience can vote for the fascist right wing, which includes people who advocate the expulsion of the Palestinians or the construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount, the destruction of the mosques there, or who even dream about extermination. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s allegedly more moderate Likud party wishes only to maintain the current situation, meaning undeclared apartheid.

    The center-left seeks to engage in deception, with not a word about an end to the occupation from either Kahol Lavan or Labor, or even about lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip. Benny Gantz’s party has ambitious plans for a regional conference, making history, and “deepening the process of separation from the Palestinians along with uncompromisingly maintaining … the Israeli army’s freedom of action everywhere.”

    It has been a long time since such a document whitewashing the occupation has been written in all its disgrace. And the Labor Party isn’t lagging behind. The most daring step it’s proposing is a referendum on the refugee camps around Jerusalem in which only Israel’s would vote, of course.

    And that comes on top of well-worn declarations about settlement blocs, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and a halt to settlement construction outside the blocs, meaning continuing settlement construction with full force. “Paths toward separation,” this party, the self-righteous founder of the settlement enterprise, calls it. Paths toward deception.

    Peace? Withdrawal? Dismantling settlements? Don’t make the Zionist left laugh. Not much is left, two and a half tickets, the fringe: Meretz and Hadash-Ta’al, which support a two-state solution — that faltering train that has already left the station — and Balad-United Arab List, which is closest to advocating a one-state solution, the only solution left.

    Vote apartheid.

  • Old Palestinian photos & films hidden in IDF archive show different history than Israeli claims

    Palestinian photos and films seized by Israeli troops have been gathering dust in the army and Defense Ministry archives until Dr. Rona Sela, a curator and art historian, exposed them. The material presents an alternative to the Zionist history that denied the Palestinians’ existence here, she says.

    The initial reaction is one of incredulity: Why is this material stored in the Israel Defense Forces and Defense Ministry Archive? The first item is labeled, in Hebrew, “The History of Palestine from 1919,” the second, “Paintings by Children Who Go to School and Live in a Refugee Camp and Aspire to Return to Palestine.” The third is, “Depiction of the IDF’s Treatment and Harsh Handling of Palestinians in the Territories.”

    Of all places, these three reels of 16-mm film are housed in the central archive that documents Israel’s military-security activities. It’s situated in Tel Hashomer, near the army’s National Induction Center, outside Tel Aviv.

    IDF archive contains 2.7 million photos, 38,000 films

    The three items are barely a drop in an ocean of some 38,000 films, 2.7 million photographs, 96,000 audio recordings and 46,000 maps and aerial photos that have been gathered into the IDF Archive since 1948, by order of Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, David Ben-Gurion. However, a closer perusal shows that this particular “drop in the ocean” is subversive, exceptional and highly significant.

    The footage in question is part of a collection – whose exact size and full details remain unknown – of “war booty films” seized by the IDF from Palestinian archives in raids over the years, though primarily in the 1982 Lebanon War.

    Recently, however, following a persistent, protracted legal battle, the films confiscated in Lebanon, which had been gathering dust for decades – instead of being screened in cinematheques or other venues in Israel – have been rescued from oblivion, along with numerous still photos. The individual responsible for this development is Dr. Rona Sela, a curator and researcher of visual history at Tel Aviv University.

    For nearly 20 years, Sela has been exploring Zionist and Palestinian visual memory. She has a number of important revelations and discoveries to her credit, which she has published in the form of books, catalogs and articles. Among the Hebrew-language titles are “Photography in Palestine/Eretz-Israel in the ‘30s and ‘40s” (2000) and “Made Public: Palestinian Photographs in Military Archives in Israel” (2009). In March, she published an article in the English-language periodical Social Semiotics on, “The Genealogy of Colonial Plunder and Erasure – Israel’s Control over Palestinian Archives.”

    Now Sela has made her first film, “Looted and Hidden: Palestinian Archives in Israel,” an English-language documentary that surveys the fate of Palestinian photographs and films that were “captured” and deposited in Israeli archives. It includes heretofore unseen segments from films seized by the IDF from Palestinian archives in Beirut. These documentary records, Sela says, “were erased from consciousness and history” for decades.

    Sela begins journey in 1998

    Getting access to the films was not easy, Sela explains. Her archival journey began in 1998, when she was researching Zionist propaganda films and photos that sought to portray the “new Jew” – muscular, proudly tilling the soil – in contradistinction, according to the Zionist perception, to the supposedly degenerate and loutish Palestinian Arab.

    “After spending a few years in the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem and in other Zionist archives, researching the history of Zionist photography and the construction of a visual propaganda apparatus supporting the Zionist idea, I started to look for Palestinian visual representation as well, in order to learn about the Palestinian narrative and trace its origins and influence,” she says.

    That task was far more complicated than anyone could have imagined. In some of the Zionist films and photos, Sela was able to discern, often incidentally, episodes from Palestinian history that had “infiltrated” them, as she puts it. For example, in Carmel Newsreels (weekly news footage screened at local cinemas) from 1951, showing the settlement of Jews in Jaffa, demolished and abandoned Arab homes are clearly visible.

    Subsequently, Sela spotted traces and remnants of a genuine Palestinian visual archive occasionally cropping up in Israeli archives. Those traces were not immediately apparent, more like an elusive treasure concealed here and there beneath layers of restrictions, erasures and revisions.

    Khalil Rassass, father of Palestinian photojournalism

    Thus, one day she noticed in the archive of the pre-state Haganah militia, stills bearing the stamp “Photo Rissas.” Digging deeper, she discovered the story of Chalil Rissas (Khalil Rassass, 1926-1974), one of the fathers of Palestinian photojournalism. He’s unknown to the general public, whether Palestinian or Israel, but according to Sela, he was a “daring, groundbreaking photographer” who, motivated by a sense of national consciousness, documented the pre-1948 Palestinian struggle.

    Subsequently she found hundreds of his photographs, accompanied by captions written by soldiers or Israeli archive staff who had tried to foist a Zionist narrative on them and disconnect them from their original context. The source of the photographs was a Jewish youth who received them from his father, an IDF officer who brought them back with him from the War of Independence as booty.

    The discovery was unprecedented. In contrast to the Zionist propaganda images that exalted the heroism of the Jewish troops and barely referred to the Palestinians, Rissas’ photographs were mainly of Palestinian fighters. Embodying a proud Palestinian stance, they focused on the national and military struggle and its outcome, including the Palestinians’ military training and deployment for battle.

    “I realized that I’d come across something significant, that I’d found a huge cache of works by one of the fathers of Palestinian photography, who had been the first to give visual expression to the Palestinian struggle,” Sela recalls. “But when I tried to learn more about Chalil Rissas, I understood that he was a forgotten photographer, that no one knew the first thing about him, either in Israel or elsewhere.”

    Sela thereupon decided to study the subject herself. In 1999, she tracked down Rissas’ brother, Wahib, who was working as a photographer of tourists on the Temple Mount / Haram a-Sharif in Jerusalem’s Old City. He told her the story of Chalil’s life. It turned out that he had accompanied Palestinian troops and leaders, visually documenting the battles fought by residents of the Jerusalem area during the 1948 War of Independence. “He was a young man who chose the camera as an instrument for changing people’s consciousness,” Sela says.

    Ali Za’arur, forgotten Palestinian photographer

    Around 2007, she discovered the archive of another forgotten Palestinian photographer, Ali Za’arur (1900-1972), from Azzariyeh, a village east of Jerusalem. About 400 of his photos were preserved in four albums. They also depicted scenes from the 1948 war, in which Za’arur accompanied the forces of Jordan’s Arab Legion and documented the battle for the Old City of Jerusalem. He photographed the dead, the ruins, the captives, the refugees and the events of the cease-fire.

    In the Six-Day War of 1967, Za’arur fled from his home for a short time. When he returned, he discovered that the photo albums had disappeared. A relative, it emerged, had given them to Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek as a gift. Afterward, the Jerusalem Foundation donated them to the IDF Archive. In 2008, in an unprecedented act, the archive returned the albums to Za’arur’s family. The reason, Sela surmises, is that the albums were captured by the army in battle. In any event, this was, as far as is known, a unique case.

    Sela took heart from the discoveries she’d made, realizing that “with systematic work, it would be possible to uncover more Palestinian archives that ended up in Israeli hands.”

    That work was three-pronged: doing archival research to locate Palestinian photographs and films that had been incorporated into Israeli archives; holding meetings with the Palestinian photographers themselves, or members of their families; and tracking down Israeli soldiers who had taken part in “seizing these visual spoils” and in bringing them to Israel.

    In the course of her research Sela met some fascinating individuals, among them Khadijeh Habashneh, a Jordan-based Palestinian filmmaker who headed the archive and cinematheque of the Palestinian Cinema Institute. That institution, which existed from the end of the 1960s until the early ‘80s, initially in Jordan and afterward in Lebanon, was founded by three pioneering Palestinian filmmakers – Sulafa Jadallah, Hani Jawhariyyeh and Mustafa Abu Ali (Habashneh’s husband) – who sought to document their people’s way of life and national struggle. Following the events of Black September in 1970, when the Jordanian army and the Palestine Liberation Organization fought a bloody internecine war, the filmmakers moved to Lebanon and reestablished the PCI in Beirut.

    Meeting with Habashneh in Amman in 2013, Sela heard the story of the Palestinian archives that disappeared, a story she included in her new documentary. “Where to begin, when so much material was destroyed, when a life project falls apart?” Habashneh said to Sela. “I can still see these young people, pioneers, bold, imbued with ideals, revolutionaries, who created pictures and films and documented the Palestinian revolution that the world doesn’t want to see. They refused to be faceless and to be without an identity.”

    The archive established by Habashneh contained forgotten works that documented the Palestinians’ suffering in refugee camps, the resistance to Israel and battles against the IDF, as well as everyday life. The archive contained the films and the raw materials of the PCI filmmakers, but also collected other early Palestinian films, from both before and after 1948.

    Spirit of liberation

    This activity reflects “a spirit of liberation and revolt and the days of the revolution,” Habashneh says in Sela’s film, referring to the early years of the Palestinian national movement. That spirit was captured in underground photographs and with a minimal budget, on film that was developed in people’s kitchens, screened in tents in refugee camps and distributed abroad. Women, children, fighters, intellectuals and cultural figures, and events of historic importance were documented, Habashneh related. “As far as is known, this was the first official Palestinian visual archive,” Sela notes.

    In her conversation with Sela, Habashneh nostalgically recalled other, better times, when the Palestinian films were screened in a Beirut cinematheque, alongside other works with a “revolutionary spirit,” from Cuba, Chile, Vietnam and elsewhere. “We were in contact with filmmakers from other countries, who saw the camera as an instrument in the hands of the revolution and the people’s struggle,” she recalled.

    “Interesting cultural cooperation developed there, centering around revolutionary cinema,” Sela points out, adding, “Beirut was alive with an unprecedented, groundbreaking cultural flowering that was absolutely astonishing in terms of its visual significance.”

    IDF confiscates film archive

    But in 1982, after the IDF entered Beirut, that archive disappeared and was never seen again. The same fate befell two films made by Habashneh herself, one about children, the other about women. In Sela’s documentary, Habashneh wonders aloud about the circumstances in which the amazing collection disappeared. “Is our fate to live a life without a past? Without a visual history?” she asks. Since then, she has managed to reconstruct a small part of the archive. Some of the films turned up in the United States, where they had been sent to be developed. Copies of a few others remained in movie theaters in various countries where they were screened. Now in her seventies, Habashneh continues to pursue her mission, even though, as she told Sela during an early conversation, “the fate of the archive remains a puzzle.”

    What Habashneh wasn’t able to accomplish beginning in 1982 as part of a worldwide quest, Sela managed to do over the course of a few years of research in Israel. She began by locating a former IDF soldier who told her about the day on which several trucks arrived at the building in Beirut that housed a number of Palestinian archives and began to empty it out. That testimony, supported by a photograph, was crucial for Sela, as it corroborated the rumors and stories about the Palestinian archives having been taken to Israel.

    The same soldier added that he had been gripped by fear when he saw, among the photos that were confiscated from the archive, some that documented Israeli soldiers in the territories. He himself appeared in one of them. “They marked us,” he said to Sela.

    Soldiers loot Nashashibi photos & possessions, take photo from corpse

    Another former soldier told Sela about an unusual photo album that was taken (or looted, depending on one’s point of view) from the home of the prominent Nashashibi family in Jerusalem, in 1948. The soldier added that his father, who had served as an IDF officer in the War of Independence, entered a photography studio and made off with its archive, while other soldiers were busy looting pianos and other expensive objects from the Nashashibis. Another ex-soldier testified to having taken a photo from the corpse of an Arab. Over time, all these images found their way to archives in Israel, in particular the IDF Archive.

    Sela discovers IDF archive

    In 2000, Sela, buoyed by her early finds, requested permission from that archive to examine the visual materials that had been seized by the army in the 1980s. The initial response was denial: The material was not in Israel’s hands, she was told.

    “But I knew what I was looking for, because I had soldiers’ testimonies,” she says now, adding that when she persisted in her request, she encountered “difficulties, various restrictions and the torpedoing of the possibility of perusing the material.”

    The breakthrough came when she enlisted the aid of attorneys Michael Sfard and Shlomi Zacharia, in 2008. To begin with, they received word, confirmed by the Defense Ministry’s legal adviser, that various spoils taken in Beirut were now part of the IDF Archive. However, Sela was subsequently informed that “the PLO’s photography archive,” as the Defense Ministry referred in general to photographic materials taken from the Palestinians, is “archival material on matters of foreign affairs and security, and as such is ‘restricted material’ as defined in Par. 7(a) of the Archives Regulations.”

    Then, one day in 2010, Sela received a fax informing her that Palestinian films had been found in the IDF Archive, without elaboration, and inviting her to view them. “There were a few dozen segments from films, and I was astonished by what I saw,” she says. “At first I was shown only a very limited amount of footage, but it was indicative of the whole. On the basis of my experience, I understood that there was more.”

    A few more years of what Sela terms “endless nagging, conversations and correspondence” passed, which resulted in her being permitted to view dozens of segments of additional films, including some that apparently came from Habashneh’s archive. Sela also discovered another Palestinian archive that had been seized by the IDF. Established under the aegis of the PLO’s Cultural Arts Section, its director in the 1970s was the Lod-born painter and historian Ismail Shammout (1930-2006).

    One of the works in that collection is Shammout’s own film “The Urgent Call,” whose theme song was written and performed by the Palestinian singer Zainab Shathat in English, accompanying herself on the guitar. “The film was thought to be lost until I found it in the IDF Archive,” says Sela, who describes “The Urgent Call” as “a cry about the condition of Palestine, its sons and its daughters.”

    Viewing it takes one back in time to the late 1960s and early ‘70s, when the cinema of the Palestinian struggle briefly connected with other international revolutionary film movements.

    Legendary French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard

    For example, in 1969 and 1970 Jean-Luc Godard, the legendary filmmaker of the French New Wave in cinema, visited Jordan and Lebanon several times with the Dziga Vertov Group of French filmmakers (named after the Soviet pioneer documentarian of the 1920s and ‘30s), who included filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin, who worked with Godard in his “radical” period. They came to shoot footage in refugee camps and in fedayeen bases for Godard’s film “Until Victory.” Habashneh told Sela that she and others had met Godard, assisted him and were of course influenced by his work. [Ed. note: Godard’s work on Palestine caused him to be accused of antisemitism by the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen and others. “In Hollywood there is no greater sin,” the Guardian reported.]

    Along with “The Urgent Call” – excerpts from which are included in her “Looted and Hidden” documentary – Sela also found another Shammout work in the IDF Archive. Titled “Memories and Fire,” it chronicles 20th-century Palestinian history, “from the days depicting the idyllic life in Palestine, via the documentation of refugeehood, to the documentation of the organizing and the resistance. To use the terms of the Palestinian cinema scholar and filmmaker George Khleifi, the aggressive fighter took the place of the ill-fated refugee,” she adds.

    Sela also found footage by the Iraqi director Kais al-Zubaidi, who worked for a time in the PLO’s Cultural Arts Section. His films from that period include “Away from Home” (1969) and “The Visit” (1970); in 2006 he published an anthology, “Palestine in the Cinema,” a history of the subject, which mentions some 800 films that deal with Palestine or the Palestinian people. [Ed. note: unfortunately it appears this book has never been translated into English.]

    IDF seals the archive for decades

    Some of the Palestinian movies in the IDF Archive bear their original titles. However, in many other cases this archival material was re-cataloged to suit the Israeli perspective, so that Palestinian “fighters” became “gangs” or “terrorists,” for example. In one case, a film of Palestinians undergoing arms training is listed as “Terrorist camp in Kuwait: Distribution of uniforms, girls crawling with weapons, terrorists marching with weapons in the hills, instruction in laying mines and in arms.”

    Sela: “These films and stills, though not made by Jewish/Israeli filmmakers or military units – which is the central criterion for depositing materials in the Israeli army archive – were transferred to the IDF Archive and subordinated to the rules of the State of Israel. The archive immediately sealed them for many decades and cataloged them according to its terminology – which is Zionist, Jewish and Israeli – and not according to the original Palestinian terminology. I saw places where the word ‘terrorists’ was written on photographs taken by Palestinians. But after all, they do not call themselves as such. It’s part of terminological camouflaging, which subordinated their creative work to the colonial process in which the occupier controls the material that’s captured.”

    Hidden Palestinian history

    Sela’s discoveries, which are of international importance, are not only a research, documentation and academic achievement: They also constitute a breakthrough in regard to the chronicling of Palestinian history. “Palestinian visual historiography lacks many chapters,” she observes. “Many photographs and archives were destroyed, were lost, taken as spoils or plundered in the various wars and in the course of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

    From her point of view, the systematic collecting of Palestinian visual materials in the IDF Archive “makes it possible to write an alternative history that counteracts the content created by the army and the military archive, which is impelled by ideological and political considerations.” In the material she found in the army archive, she sees “images that depict the history of the Palestinian people and its long-term ties to this soil and this place, which present an alternative to the Zionist history that denied the Palestinians’ existence here, as well as their culture and history and the protracted tragedy they endured and their national struggle of many years.”

    The result is an intriguing paradox, such as one often finds by digging deep into an archive. The extensive information that Sela found in the IDF Archive makes it possible to reconstruct elements of the pre-1948 existence of the Palestinians and to help fill in the holes of the Palestinian narrative up until the 1980s. In other words, even if Israel’s intention was to hide these items and to control the Palestinians’ historical treasures, its actions actually abet the process of preservation, and will go on doing so in the future.

    Earlier groundbreaking discovery – confiscated Palestinians books & libraries

    Sela’s research on visual archival materials was preceded by another groundbreaking study – dealing with the written word – conducted by Dr. Gish Amit, an expert on the cultural aspects of Zionism at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Amit chronicled the fate of Palestinian books and libraries that, like the photographs and films Sela found, ended up in Israeli archives – including in the National Library in Jerusalem.

    In his 2014 book, “Ex-Libris: Chronicles of Theft, Preservation, and Appropriating at the Jewish National Library” (Hebrew), Amit trenchantly analyzes the foredoomed failure of any attempt to conceal and control the history of others. According to him, “an archive remembers its forgettings and erasures,” “documents injustice, and thus makes it possible to trace its paths” and “paves a way for forgotten histories which may, one day, convict the owners” of the documents.

    However, Amit also sees the complexity of this story and presents another side of it. Describing the operation in which the Palestinian books were collected by Israeli soldiers and National Library personnel during the War of Independence, he raises the possibility that this was actually an act involving rescue, preservation and accessibility: “On the one hand, the books were collected and not burned or left in the abandoned houses in the Arab neighborhoods that had been emptied of their inhabitants. Had they not been collected their fate would have been sealed — not a trace of them would remain,” he writes, adding, that the National Library “protected the books from the war, the looting and the destruction, and from illegal trade in manuscripts.”

    According to the National Library, it is holding about 6,500 Palestinian books and manuscripts, which were taken from private homes whose owners left in 1948. The entire collection is cataloged and accessible to the general public, but is held under the responsibility of the Custodian of Absentees’ Property in the Finance Ministry. Accordingly, there is no intention, in the near future, of trying to locate the owners and returning the items.

    Israeli control over history

    Sela views the existence of these spoils of war in Israel as a direct expression of the occupation, which she defines, beyond Israel’s physical presence in the territories, as “the control of history, the writing of culture and the shaping of identity.” In her view, “Israel’s rule over the Palestinians is not only geographic but extends also to culture and consciousness. Israel wants to erase this history from the public consciousness, but it is not being successful, because the force of the resistance is stronger. Furthermore, its attempts to erase Palestinian history adversely affect Israel itself in the end.”

    At this point, Sela resorts to a charged comparison, to illustrate how visual materials contribute to the creation of personal and collective identity. “As the daughter of Holocaust survivors,” she says, “I grew up in a home without photographic historical memory. Nothing. My history starts only with the meeting of my parents, in 1953. It’s only from then that we have photos. Before that – nothing.

    “I know what it feels like when you have no idea what your grandmother or grandfather looked like, or your father’s childhood,” she continues. “This is all the more true of the history of a whole people. The construction of identity by means of visual materials is very meaningful. Many researchers have addressed this topic. The fact is that Zionist bodies made and are continuing to make extensive and rational use of [such materials too] over a period that spans decades.”

    Sela admits that there is still much to be done, but as far as she’s concerned, once a crack appeared in the wall, there was no turning back. “There is a great deal of material, including hundreds of films, that I haven’t yet got to,” she notes. “This is an amazing treasure, which contains information about the cultural, educational, rural and urban life of the Palestinian people throughout the 20th century – an erased narrative that needs to be restored to the history books,” she adds.

    Asked what she thinks should be done with the material, she asserts, “Of course it has to be returned. Just as Israel is constantly fighting to retrieve what the Nazis looted from Jews in the Holocaust. The historical story is different, but by the same criterion, practice what you preach. These are cultural and historical materials of the Palestinian people.”

    The fact that these items are being held by Israel “creates a large hole in Palestinian research and knowledge,” Sela avers. “It’s a hole for which Israel is responsible. This material does not belong to us. It has to be returned to its owners. Afterward, if we view it intelligently, we too can come to know and understand highly meaningful chapters in Palestinian history and in our own history. I think that the first and basic stage in the process of conciliation is to know the history of the Other and also your own history of controlling the Other.”

    Defense Ministry response

    A spokesperson for the Defense Ministry, which was asked to comment on the holdings in the IDF Archive, the archive contains 642 “war booty films,” most of which deal with refugees and were produced by the UNRWA (the United Nations refugee relief agency) in the 1960s and 1970s. The ministry also noted that 158 films that were seized by the IDF in the 1982 Lebanon War are listed in orderly fashion in the reading-room catalog and are available for perusal by the general public, including Arab citizens and Palestinians.

    As for the Palestinian photographs that were confiscated, the Defense Ministry stated that there is no orderly record of them. There are 127 files of photographs and negatives in the archive, each of which contains dozens of photographs, probably taken between the 1960s and the 1980s, on a variety of subjects, including visits of foreign delegations to PLO personnel, tours of PLO delegations abroad, Palestinian art and heritage, art objects, traditional attire and Palestinian folklore, factories and workshops, demonstrations, mass parades and rallies held by the PLO, portraits of Arab personalities and PLO symbols.

    The statement adds that a few months ago, crates were located that were stamped by their original owners, “PLO/Department of Information and National Guidance and Department of Information and Culture,” during the evacuation of the archive’s storerooms in the Tzrifin base.

    https://israelpalestinenews.org/old-palestinian-photos-films-hidden-idf-archive-show-different-
    #historicisation #Israël #Palestine #photographie #films #archive #histoire #Khalil_Rassass #Ali_Za’arur
    ping @reka @sinehebdo @albertocampiphoto

  • The Knesset candidate who says Zionism encourages anti-Semitism and calls Netanyahu ’arch-murderer’ - Israel Election 2019 - Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/elections/.premium.MAGAZINE-knesset-candidate-netanyahu-is-an-arch-murderer-zionism-e

    Few Israelis have heard of Dr. Ofer Cassif, the Jewish representative on the far-leftist Hadash party’s Knesset slate. On April 9, that will change
    By Ravit Hecht Feb 16, 2019

    Ofer Cassif is fire and brimstone. Not even the flu he’s suffering from today can contain his bursting energy. His words are blazing, and he bounds through his modest apartment, searching frenetically for books by Karl Marx and Primo Levi in order to find quotations to back up his ideas. Only occasional sips from a cup of maté bring his impassioned delivery to a momentary halt. The South American drink is meant to help fight his illness, he explains.

    Cassif is third on the slate of Knesset candidates in Hadash (the Hebrew acronym for the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality), the successor to Israel’s Communist Party. He holds the party’s “Jewish slot,” replacing MK Dov Khenin. Cassif is likely to draw fire from opponents and be a conspicuous figure in the next Knesset, following the April 9 election.

    Indeed, the assault on him began as soon as he was selected by the party’s convention. The media pursued him; a columnist in the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Ben-Dror Yemini, called for him to be disqualified from running for the Knesset. It would be naive to say that this was unexpected. Cassif, who was one of the first Israeli soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories, in 1987, gained fame thanks to a number of provocative statements. The best known is his branding of Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked as “neo-Nazi scum.” On another occasion, he characterized Jews who visit the Temple Mount as “cancer with metastases that have to be eradicated.”

    On his alternate Facebook page, launched after repeated blockages of his original account by a blitz of posts from right-wing activists, he asserted that Culture Minister Miri Regev is “repulsive gutter contamination,” that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an “arch-murderer” and that the new Israel Defense Forces chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, is a “war criminal.”

    Do you regret making those remarks?

    Cassif: “‘Regret’ is a word of emotion. Those statements were made against a background of particular events: the fence in Gaza, horrible legislation, and the wild antics of Im Tirtzu [an ultranationalist organization] on campus. That’s what I had to say at the time. I didn’t count on being in the Knesset. That wasn’t part of my plan. But it’s clear to me that as a public personality, I would not have made those comments.”

    Is Netanyahu an arch-murderer?

    “Yes. I wrote it in the specific context of a particular day in the Gaza Strip. A massacre of innocent people was perpetrated there, and no one’s going to persuade me that those people were endangering anyone. It’s a concentration camp. Not a ‘concentration camp’ in the sense of Bergen-Belsen; I am absolutely not comparing the Holocaust to what’s happening.”

    You term what Israel is doing to the Palestinians “genocide.”

    “I call it ‘creeping genocide.’ Genocide is not only a matter of taking people to gas chambers. When Yeshayahu Leibowitz used the term ‘Judeo-Nazis,’ people asked him, ‘How can you say that? Are we about to build gas chambers?’ To that, he had two things to say. First, if the whole difference between us and the Nazis boils down to the fact that we’re not building gas chambers, we’re already in trouble. And second, maybe we won’t use gas chambers, but the mentality that exists today in Israel – and he said this 40 years ago – would allow it. I’m afraid that today, after four years of such an extreme government, it possesses even greater legitimacy.

    “But you know what, put aside ‘genocide’ – ethnic cleansing is taking place there. And that ethnic cleansing is also being carried out by means of killing, although mainly by way of humiliation and of making life intolerable. The trampling of human dignity. It reminds me of Primo Levi’s ‘If This Is a Man.’”

    You say you’re not comparing, but you repeatedly come back to Holocaust references. On Facebook, you also uploaded the scene from “Schindler’s List” in which the SS commander Amon Goeth picks off Jews with his rifle from the balcony of his quarters in the camp. You compared that to what was taking place along the border fence in the Gaza Strip.

    “Today, I would find different comparisons. In the past I wrote an article titled, ‘On Holocaust and on Other Crimes.’ It’s online [in Hebrew]. I wrote there that anyone who compares Israel to the Holocaust is cheapening the Holocaust. My comparison between here and what happened in the early 1930s [in Germany] is a very different matter.”

    Clarity vs. crudity

    Given Cassif’s style, not everyone in Hadash was happy with his election, particularly when it comes to the Jewish members of the predominantly Arab party. Dov Khenin, for example, declined to be interviewed and say what he thinks of his parliamentary successor. According to a veteran party figure, “From the conversations I had, it turns out that almost none of the Jewish delegates – who make up about 100 of the party’s 940 delegates – supported his candidacy.

    “He is perceived, and rightly so,” the party veteran continues, “as someone who closes doors to Hadash activity within Israeli society. Each of the other Jewish candidates presented a record of action and of struggles they spearheaded. What does he do? Curses right-wing politicians on Facebook. Why did the party leadership throw the full force of its weight behind him? In a continuation of the [trend exemplified by] its becoming part of the Joint List, Ofer’s election reflects insularity and an ongoing retreat from the historical goal of implementing change in Israeli society.”

    At the same time, as his selection by a 60 percent majority shows, many in the party believe that it’s time to change course. “Israeli society is moving rightward, and what’s perceived as Dov’s [Khenin] more gentle style didn’t generate any great breakthrough on the Jewish street,” a senior source in Hadash notes.

    “It’s not a question of the tension between extremism and moderation, but of how to signpost an alternative that will develop over time. Clarity, which is sometimes called crudity, never interfered with cooperation between Arabs and Jews. On the contrary. Ofer says things that we all agreed with but didn’t so much say, and of course that’s going to rile the right wing. And a good thing, too.”

    Hadash chairman MK Ayman Odeh also says he’s pleased with the choice, though sources in the party claim that Odeh is apprehensive about Cassif’s style and that he actually supported a different candidate. “Dov went for the widest possible alliances in order to wield influence,” says Odeh. “Ofer will go for very sharp positions at the expense of the breadth of the alliance. But his sharp statements could have a large impact.”

    Khenin was deeply esteemed by everyone. When he ran for mayor of Tel Aviv in 2008, some 35 percent of the electorate voted for him, because he was able to touch people who weren’t only from his political milieu.

    Odeh: “No one has a higher regard for Dov than I do. But just to remind you, we are not a regular opposition, we are beyond the pale. And there are all kinds of styles. Influence can be wielded through comments that are vexatious the first time but which people get used to the second time. When an Arab speaks about the Nakba and about the massacre in Kafr Kassem [an Israeli Arab village, in 1956], it will be taken in a particular way, but when uttered by a Jew it takes on special importance.”

    He will be the cause of many attacks on the party.

    “Ahlan wa sahlan – welcome.”

    Cassif will be the first to tell you that, with all due respect for the approach pursued by Khenin and by his predecessor in the Jewish slot, Tamar Gozansky, he will be something completely different. “I totally admire what Tamar and Dov did – nothing less than that,” he says, while adding, “But my agenda will be different. The three immediate dangers to Israeli society are the occupation, racism and the diminishment of the democratic space to the point of liquidation. That’s the agenda that has to be the hub of the struggle, as long as Israel rules over millions of people who have no rights, enters [people’s houses] in the middle of the night, arrests minors on a daily basis and shoots people in the back.

    "Israel commits murder on a daily basis. When you murder one Palestinian, you’re called Elor Azaria [the IDF soldier convicted and jailed for killing an incapacitated Palestinian assailant]; when you murder and oppress thousands of Palestinians, you’re called the State of Israel.”

    So you plan to be the provocateur in the next Knesset?

    “It’s not my intention to be a provocateur, to stand there and scream and revile people. Even on Facebook I was compelled to stop that. But I definitely intend to challenge the dialogue in terms of the content, and mainly with a type of sarcasm.”

    ’Bags of blood’

    Cassif, 54, who holds a doctorate in political philosophy from the London School of Economics, teaches political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Sapir Academic College in Sderot and at the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo. He lives in Rehovot, is married and is the father of a 19-year-old son. He’s been active in Hadash for three decades and has held a number of posts in the party.

    As a lecturer, he stands out for his boldness and fierce rhetoric, which draws students of all stripes. He even hangs out with some of his Haredi students, one of whom wrote a post on the eve of the Hadash primary urging the delegates to choose him. After his election, a student from a settlement in the territories wrote to him, “You are a determined and industrious person, and for that I hold you in high regard. Hoping we will meet on the field of action and growth for the success of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state (I felt obliged to add a small touch of irony in conclusion).”

    Cassif grew up in a home that supported Mapai, forerunner of Labor, in Rishon Letzion. He was an only child; his father was an accountant, his mother held a variety of jobs. He was a news hound from an early age, and at 12 ran for the student council in school. He veered sharply to the left in his teens, becoming a keen follower of Marx and socialism.

    Following military service in the IDF’s Nahal brigade and a period in the airborne Nahal, Cassif entered the Hebrew University. There his political career moved one step forward, and there he also forsook the Zionist left permanently. His first position was as a parliamentary aide to the secretary general of the Communist Party, Meir Wilner.

    “At first I was closer to Mapam [the United Workers Party, which was Zionist], and then I refused to serve in the territories. I was the first refusenik in the first intifada to be jailed. I didn’t get support from Mapam, I got support from the people of Hadash, and I drew close to them. I was later jailed three more times for refusing to serve in the territories.”

    His rivals in the student organizations at the Hebrew University remember him as the epitome of the extreme left.

    “Even in the Arab-Jewish student association, Cassif was considered off-the-wall,” says Motti Ohana, who was chairman of Likud’s student association and active in the Student Union at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s. “One time I got into a brawl with him. It was during the first intifada, when he brought two bags of blood, emptied them out in the university’s corridors and declared, ‘There is no difference between Jewish and Arab blood,’ likening Israeli soldiers to terrorists. The custom on campus was that we would quarrel, left-right, Arabs-Jews, and after that we would sit together, have a coffee and talk. But not Cassif.”

    According to Ohana, today a member of the Likud central committee, the right-wing activists knew that, “You could count on Ofer to fall into every trap. There was one event at the Hebrew University that was a kind of political Hyde Park. The right wanted to boot the left out of there, so we hung up the flag. It was obvious that Ofer would react, and in fact he tore the flag, and in the wake of the ruckus that developed, political activity was stopped for good.”

    Replacing the anthem

    Cassif voices clearly and cogently positions that challenge the public discourse in Israel, and does so with ardor and charisma. Four candidates vied for Hadash’s Jewish slot, and they all delivered speeches at the convention. The three candidates who lost to him – Efraim Davidi, Yaela Raanan and the head of the party’s Tel Aviv branch, Noa Levy – described their activity and their guiding principles. When they spoke, there was the regular buzz of an audience that’s waiting for lunch. But when Cassif took the stage, the effect was magnetic.

    “Peace will not be established without a correction of the crimes of the Nakba and [recognition of] the right of return,” he shouted, and the crowd cheered him. As one senior party figure put it, “Efraim talked about workers’ rights, Yaela about the Negev, Noa about activity in Tel Aviv – and Ofer was Ofer.”

    What do you mean by “right of return”?

    Cassif: “The first thing is the actual recognition of the Nakba and of the wrong done by Israel. Compare it to the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa, if you like, or with the commissions in Chile after Pinochet. Israel must recognize the wrong it committed. Now, recognition of the wrong also includes recognition of the right of return. The question is how it’s implemented. It has to be done by agreement. I can’t say that tomorrow Tel Aviv University has to be dismantled and that Sheikh Munis [the Arab village on whose ruins the university stands] has to be rebuilt there. The possibility can be examined of giving compensation in place of return, for example.”

    But what is the just solution, in your opinion?

    “For the Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.”

    That means there will be Jews who will have to leave their home.

    “In some places, unequivocally, yes. People will have to be told: ‘You must evacuate your places.’ The classic example is Ikrit and Biram [Christian-Arab villages in Galilee whose residents were promised – untruly – by the Israeli authorities in 1948 that they would be able to return, and whose lands were turned over to Jewish communities]. But there are places where there is certainly greater difficulty. You don’t right one wrong with another.”

    What about the public space in Israel? What should it look like?

    “The public space has to change, to belong to all the state’s residents. I dispute the conception of ‘Jewish publicness.’”

    How should that be realized?

    “For example, by changing the national symbols, changing the national anthem. [Former Hadash MK] Mohammed Barakeh once suggested ‘I Believe’ [‘Sahki, Sahki’] by [Shaul] Tchernichovsky – a poem that is not exactly an expression of Palestinian nationalism. He chose it because of the line, ‘For in mankind I’ll believe.’ What does it mean to believe in mankind? It’s not a Jew, or a Palestinian, or a Frenchman, or I don’t know what.”

    What’s the difference between you and the [Arab] Balad party? Both parties overall want two states – a state “of all its citizens” and a Palestinian state.

    “In the big picture, yes. But Balad puts identity first on the agenda. We are not nationalists. We do not espouse nationalism as a supreme value. For us, self-determination is a means. We are engaged in class politics. By the way, Balad [the National Democratic Assembly] and Ta’al [MK Ahmad Tibi’s Arab Movement for Renewal] took the idea of a state of all its citizens from us, from Hadash. We’ve been talking about it for ages.”

    If you were a Palestinian, what would you do today?

    “In Israel, what my Palestinian friends are doing, and I with them – [wage] a parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle.”

    And what about the Palestinians in the territories?

    “We have always been against harming innocent civilians. Always. In all our demonstrations, one of our leading slogans was: ‘In Gaza and in Sderot, children want to live.’ With all my criticism of the settlers, to enter a house and slaughter children, as in the case of the Fogel family [who were murdered in their beds in the settlement of Itamar in 2011], is intolerable. You have to be a human being and reject that.”

    And attacks on soldiers?

    “An attack on soldiers is not terrorism. Even Netanyahu, in his book about terrorism, explicitly categorizes attacks on soldiers or on the security forces as guerrilla warfare. It’s perfectly legitimate, according to every moral criterion – and, by the way, in international law. At the same time, I am not saying it’s something wonderful, joyful or desirable. The party’s Haifa office is on Ben-Gurion Street, and suddenly, after years, I noticed a memorial plaque there for a fighter in Lehi [pre-state underground militia, also known as the Stern Gang] who assassinated a British officer. Wherever there has been a struggle for liberation from oppression, there are national heroes, who in 90 percent of the cases carried out some operations that were unlawful. Nelson Mandela is today considered a hero, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but according to the conventional definition, he was a terrorist. Most of the victims of the ANC [African National Congress] were civilians.”

    In other words, today’s Hamas commanders who are carrying out attacks on soldiers will be heroes of the future Palestinian state?

    “Of course.”

    Anti-Zionist identity

    Cassif terms himself an explicit anti-Zionist. “There are three reasons for that,” he says. “To begin with, Zionism is a colonialist movement, and as a socialist, I am against colonialism. Second, as far as I am concerned, Zionism is racist in ideology and in practice. I am not referring to the definition of race theory – even though there are also some who impute that to the Zionist movement – but to what I call Jewish supremacy. No socialist can accept that. My supreme value is equality, and I can’t abide any supremacy – Jewish or Arab. The third thing is that Zionism, like other ethno-nationalistic movements, splits the working class and all weakened groups. Instead of uniting them in a struggle for social justice, for equality, for democracy, it divides the exploited classes and the enfeebled groups, and by that means strengthens the rule of capital.”

    He continues, “Zionism also sustains anti-Semitism. I don’t say it does so deliberately – even though I have no doubt that there are some who do it deliberately, like Netanyahu, who is connected to people like the prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, and the leader of the far right in Austria, Hans Christian Strache.”

    Did Mapai-style Zionism also encourage anti-Semitism?

    “The phenomenon was very striking in Mapai. Think about it for a minute, not only historically, but logically. If the goal of political and practical Zionism is really the establishment of a Jewish state containing a Jewish majority, and for Diaspora Jewry to settle there, nothing serves them better than anti-Semitism.”

    What in their actions encouraged anti-Semitism?

    “The very appeal to Jews throughout the world – the very fact of treating them as belonging to the same nation, when they were living among other nations. The whole old ‘dual loyalty’ story – Zionism actually encouraged that. Therefore, I maintain that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same thing, but are precisely opposites. That doesn’t mean, of course, that there are no anti-Zionists who are also anti-Semites. Most of the BDS people are of course anti-Zionists, but they are in no way anti-Semites. But there are anti-Semites there, too.”

    Do you support BDS?

    “It’s too complex a subject for a yes or no answer; there are aspects I don’t support.”

    Do you think that the Jews deserve a national home in the Land of Israel?

    “I don’t know what you mean by ‘national home.’ It’s very amorphous. We in Hadash say explicitly that Israel has a right to exist as a sovereign state. Our struggle is not against the state’s existence, but over its character.”

    But that state is the product of the actions of the Zionist movement, which you say has been colonialist and criminal from day one.

    “That’s true, but the circumstances have changed. That’s the reason that the majority of the members of the Communist Party accepted the [1947] partition agreement at the time. They recognized that the circumstances had changed. I think that one of the traits that sets communist thought apart, and makes it more apt, is the understanding and the attempt to strike the proper balance between what should be, and reality. So it’s true that Zionism started as colonialism, but what do you do with the people who were already born here? What do you tell them? Because your grandparents committed a crime, you have to leave? The question is how you transform the situation that’s been created into one that’s just, democratic and equal.”

    So, a person who survived a death camp and came here is a criminal?

    “The individual person, of course not. I’m in favor of taking in refugees in distress, no matter who or what they are. I am against Zionism’s cynical use of Jews in distress, including the refugees from the Holocaust. I have a problem with the fact that the natives whose homeland this is cannot return, while people for whom it’s not their homeland, can, because they supposedly have some sort of blood tie and an ‘imaginary friend’ promised them the land.”

    I understand that you are in favor of the annulment of the Law of Return?

    “Yes. Definitely.”

    But you are in favor of the Palestinian right of return.

    “There’s no comparison. There’s no symmetry here at all. Jerry Seinfeld was by chance born to a Jewish family. What’s his connection to this place? Why should he have preference over a refugee from Sabra or Chatila, or Edward Said, who did well in the United States? They are the true refugees. This is their homeland. Not Seinfeld’s.”

    Are you critical of the Arabs, too?

    “Certainly. One criticism is of their cooperation with imperialism – take the case of today’s Saudi Arabia, Qatar and so on. Another, from the past, relates to the reactionary forces that did not accept that the Jews have a right to live here.”

    Hadash refrained from criticizing the Assad regime even as it was massacring civilians in Syria. The party even torpedoed a condemnation of Assad after the chemical attack. Do you identify with that approach?

    “Hadash was critical of the Assad regime – father and son – for years, so we can’t be accused in any way of supporting Assad or Hezbollah. We are not Ba’ath, we are not Islamists. We are communists. But as I said earlier, the struggle, unfortunately, is generally not between the ideal and what exists in practice, but many times between two evils. And then you have to ask yourself which is the lesser evil. The Syrian constellation is extremely complicated. On the one hand, there is the United States, which is intervening, and despite all the pretense of being against ISIS, supported ISIS and made it possible for ISIS to sprout.

    "I remind you that ISIS started from the occupation of Iraq. And ideologically and practically, ISIS is definitely a thousand times worse than the Assad regime, which is at base also a secular regime. Our position was and is against the countries that pose the greatest danger to regional peace, which above all are Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and the United States, which supports them. That doesn’t mean that we support Assad.”

    Wrong language

    Cassif’s economic views are almost as far from the consensus as his political ideas. He lives modestly in an apartment that’s furnished like a young couple’s first home. You won’t find an espresso maker or unnecessary products of convenience in his place. To his credit, it can be said that he extracts the maximum from Elite instant coffee.

    What is your utopian vision – to nationalize Israel’s conglomerates, such as Cellcom, the telecommunications company, or Osem, the food manufacturer and distributor?

    “The bottom line is yes. How exactly will it be done? That’s an excellent question, which I can’t answer. Perhaps by transferring ownership to the state or to the workers, with democratic tools. And there are other alternatives. But certainly, I would like it if a large part of the resources were not in private hands, as was the case before the big privatizations. It’s true that it won’t be socialism, because, again, there can be no such thing as Zionist socialism, but there won’t be privatization like we have today. What is the result of capitalism in Israel? The collapse of the health system, the absence of a social-welfare system, a high cost of living and of housing, the elderly and the disabled in a terrible situation.”

    Does any private sector have the right to exist?

    “Look, the question is what you mean by ‘private sector.’ If we’re talking about huge concerns that the owners of capital control completely through their wealth, then no.”

    What growth was there in the communist countries? How can anyone support communism, in light of the grim experience wherever it was tried?

    “It’s true, we know that in the absolute majority of societies where an attempt was made to implement socialism, there was no growth or prosperity, and we need to ask ourselves why, and how to avoid that. When I talk about communism, I’m not talking about Stalin and all the crimes that were committed in the name of the communist idea. Communism is not North Korea and it is not Pol Pot in Cambodia. Heaven forbid.”

    And what about Venezuela?

    “Venezuela is not communism. In fact, they didn’t go far enough in the direction of socialism.”

    Chavez was not enough of a socialist?

    “Chavez, but in particular Maduro. The Communist Party is critical of the regime. They support it because the main enemy is truly American imperialism and its handmaidens. Let’s look at what the U.S. did over the years. At how many times it invaded and employed bullying, fascist forces. Not only in Latin America, its backyard, but everywhere.”

    Venezuela is falling apart, people there don’t have anything to eat, there’s no medicine, everyone who can flees – and it’s the fault of the United States?

    “You can’t deny that the regime has made mistakes. It’s not ideal. But basically, it is the result of American imperialism and its lackeys. After all, the masses voted for Chavez and for Maduro not because things were good for them. But because American corporations stole the country’s resources and filled their own pockets. I wouldn’t make Chavez into an icon, but he did some excellent things.”

    Then how do you generate individual wealth within the method you’re proposing? I understand that I am now talking to you capitalistically, but the reality is that people see the accumulation of assets as an expression of progress in life.

    “Your question is indeed framed in capitalist language, which simply departs from what I believe in. Because you are actually asking me how the distribution of resources is supposed to occur within the capitalist framework. And I say no, I am not talking about resource distribution within a capitalist framework.”

    Gantz vs. Netanyahu

    Cassif was chosen as the polls showed Meretz and Labor, the representatives of the Zionist left, barely scraping through into the next Knesset and in fact facing a serious possibility of electoral extinction. The critique of both parties from the radical left is sometimes more acerbic than from the right.

    Would you like to see the Labor Party disappear?

    “No. I think that what’s happening at the moment with Labor and with Meretz is extremely dangerous. I speak about them as collectives, because they contain individuals with whom I see no possibility of engaging in a dialogue. But I think that they absolutely must be in the Knesset.”

    Is a left-winger who defines himself as a Zionist your partner in any way?

    “Yes. We need partners. We can’t be picky. Certainly we will cooperate with liberals and Zionists on such issues as combating violence against women or the battle to rescue the health system. Maybe even in putting an end to the occupation.”

    I’ll put a scenario to you: Benny Gantz does really well in the election and somehow overcomes Netanyahu. Do you support the person who led Operation Protective Edge in Gaza when he was chief of staff?

    “Heaven forbid. But we don’t reject people, we reject policy. I remind you that it was [then-defense minister] Yitzhak Rabin who led the most violent tendency in the first intifada, with his ‘Break their bones.’ But when he came to the Oslo Accords, it was Hadash and the Arab parties that gave him, from outside the coalition, an insurmountable bloc. I can’t speak for the party, but if there is ever a government whose policy is one that we agree with – eliminating the occupation, combating racism, abolishing the nation-state law – I believe we will give our support in one way or another.”

    And if Gantz doesn’t declare his intention to eliminate the occupation, he isn’t preferable to Netanyahu in any case?

    “If so, why should we recommend him [to the president to form the next government]? After the clips he posted boasting about how many people he killed and how he hurled Gaza back into the Stone Age, I’m far from certain that he’s better.”

    #Hadash

    • traduction d’un extrait [ d’actualité ]

      Le candidat à la Knesset dit que le sionisme encourage l’antisémitisme et qualifie Netanyahu de « meurtrier »
      Peu d’Israéliens ont entendu parler de M. Ofer Cassif, représentant juif de la liste de la Knesset du parti d’extrême gauche Hadash. Le 9 avril, cela changera.
      Par Ravit Hecht 16 février 2019 – Haaretz

      (…) Identité antisioniste
      Cassif se dit un antisioniste explicite. « Il y a trois raisons à cela », dit-il. « Pour commencer, le sionisme est un mouvement colonialiste et, en tant que socialiste, je suis contre le colonialisme. Deuxièmement, en ce qui me concerne, le sionisme est raciste d’idéologie et de pratique. Je ne fais pas référence à la définition de la théorie de la race - même si certains l’imputent également au mouvement sioniste - mais à ce que j’appelle la suprématie juive. Aucun socialiste ne peut accepter cela. Ma valeur suprême est l’égalité et je ne peux supporter aucune suprématie - juive ou arabe. La troisième chose est que le sionisme, comme d’autres mouvements ethno-nationalistes, divise la classe ouvrière et tous les groupes sont affaiblis. Au lieu de les unir dans une lutte pour la justice sociale, l’égalité, la démocratie, il divise les classes exploitées et affaiblit les groupes, renforçant ainsi le pouvoir du capital. "
      Il poursuit : « Le sionisme soutient également l’antisémitisme. Je ne dis pas qu’il le fait délibérément - même si je ne doute pas qu’il y en a qui le font délibérément, comme Netanyahu, qui est connecté à des gens comme le Premier ministre de la Hongrie, Viktor Orban, et le chef de l’extrême droite. en Autriche, Hans Christian Strache. ”

      Le sionisme type-Mapaï a-t-il également encouragé l’antisémitisme ?
      « Le phénomène était très frappant au Mapai. Pensez-y une minute, non seulement historiquement, mais logiquement. Si l’objectif du sionisme politique et pratique est en réalité de créer un État juif contenant une majorité juive et de permettre à la communauté juive de la diaspora de s’y installer, rien ne leur sert mieux que l’antisémitisme. "

      Qu’est-ce qui, dans leurs actions, a encouragé l’antisémitisme ?
      « L’appel même aux Juifs du monde entier - le fait même de les traiter comme appartenant à la même nation, alors qu’ils vivaient parmi d’autres nations. Toute la vieille histoire de « double loyauté » - le sionisme a en fait encouragé cela. Par conséquent, j’affirme que l’antisémitisme et l’antisionisme ne sont pas la même chose, mais sont précisément des contraires. Bien entendu, cela ne signifie pas qu’il n’y ait pas d’antisionistes qui soient aussi antisémites. La plupart des membres du BDS sont bien sûr antisionistes, mais ils ne sont en aucun cas antisémites. Mais il y a aussi des antisémites.

  • Battle brews between French and ultra-Orthodox over Jerusalem archaeology site

    Ultra-Orthodox demands to pray at the Tomb of the Kings – the grandest burial compound in Jerusalem – have kindled fears among the French of an Israeli land grab under their flag in East Jerusalem

    Nir Hasson SendSend me email alerts
    Dec 21, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-france-orthodox-jews-archaeologists-battle-over-e-j-lem-s-tomb-of-

    In recent weeks, a small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews has been gathering alongside a locked iron gate on Nablus Road in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. They pray and protest alongside the shuttered gate, periodically squabbling with the Palestinian guard, demanding to be allowed inside to pray. The guard refuses, and refers them to the body that owns and administers the site – the French Consulate of Jerusalem.
    These protests are yet another round in a long-standing historic struggle over control of one of the most beautiful archaeological sites in Jerusalem, which has been closed to the public for years. On the one side stands the government of France and on the other, Haredi and right-wing Israeli factions. Israel’s Antiquities Authority is in favor of opening the site to the public, but does share the French concerns that the site might befall the same fate of many other archaeological sites in the city, which were transformed from mere archaeology and tourism sites into holy sites and then appropriated from the public’s domain.
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    The Tomb of the Kings, situated between the Jerusalem District Court and the American Colony Hotel, is considered the grandest burial compound in Jerusalem. The site includes a sophisticated burial cave that has a mechanism for sealing the entrance by means of a stone that rotates on a hinge. It includes a mammoth courtyard carved into the bedrock, a staircase carved into the bedrock that is the second largest in Jerusalem – the only one larger is on the Temple Mount – stone-inscribed ornamentation, an ancient mikveh (Jewish ritual bath) and cisterns.
    The site has been dated to the Second Temple period, and there are various traditions and theories regarding who is actually buried there. According to one tradition, it was the place of burial of Kalba Savua, the father-in-law of Rabbi Akiva, or of Nicodemus ben Guryon – two of the wealthier residents of Jerusalem at the start of the 1st millennium CE.
    The historian Josephus Flavius wrote that this was the burial place of Queen Helena of Adiabene, who converted to Judaism around the year 30 C.E., and some of the site’s investigators say it is reasonable to believe that this is indeed her tomb. An ornamented sarcophagus found here was inscribed with the legend, “Tzadan Malkata,” which is believed to refer to Queen (Malka) Helena. This reinforces the notion that buried on this site were other members of her royal family. The site gained fame in the late 19th century, and among its visitors were the German Kaiser Wilhelm II and Theodore Herzl.

    The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman

    The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman

    The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman
    The Tomb of the Kings is interwoven into the history of archaeology in Israel. The excavation conducted by Félicien de Saulcy in 1863 is considered the first modern archaeological dig in the country. It is also the first excavation to receive a digging permit from the Turkish sultan.
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    Pressure worked

    The Tomb of Kings archaeological site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman
    But along with modern archaeology, the protest against it was also born here. “This was the first official archaeological excavation, and also the first time in which the Jews of Jerusalem rose up against the excavation of ancestral graves,” writes a scholar who has studied the site, Dr. Dotan Goren.
    In the wake of the Orthodox Jews’ public protests in the city and pressure from the Jews on the sultan, those excavations were suspended. To the dismay of the city’s Jews, de Saulcy managed to load the queen’s sarcophagus onto a ship anchored in Jaffa port, and it is to this day displayed at the Louvre Museum. Several years ago, it appeared as part of a temporary exhibition in the Israel Museum.
    The basis for the current demand by religious and Haredi circles that the Jews ought to be granted rights over the site has to do with events that occurred following the excavation. In 1878, a woman named Berta Amalia Bertrand, a French Jew who was related to the Pereire brothers, a famous Jewish banking family, purchased the burial compound from its Arab owners. At the time of the purchase, Bertrand dedicated the site in the presence of the chief rabbi of Paris, declaring that it “will become the land in perpetuity of the Jewish community, to be preserved from desecration and abomination, and will never again be damaged by foreigners..”

    The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman
    Eight years later, however, one of Bertrand’s heirs granted the site as a gift to the government of France. At the time of the conferral of the gift, an agreement was signed between the French government and the family, under which France committed to meet several conditions. One was to erect a sign in Hebrew, French and Arabic saying that these are the Tombs of the Kings of Judah. The large sign, made of copper, can still be found set into the wall of the building.
    A few testimonies describe how the site served for prayer and pilgrimage, although it is altogether clear that it was secondary in importance to the neighboring holy site, the cave of Shimon Hatzadik. But in any event, following the battles of 1948, the site was left behind the enemy lines, within the territory of the Jordanian kingdom. “This site was forgotten or made to be forgotten, and there was no one to tell about it,” says Goren.

    An inscription at the Tomb of Kings in Jerusalem, December, 2018. Emil Salman
    Following 1967’s Six-Day War, the site continued to be administered by the French consulate in Jerusalem. Most of the time, it was open to visitors, for a token entry fee. Ten years ago the consulate held a concert there, together with the Palestinian cultural organization Yabous, which advocates a boycott of Israel.
    Apparently that is what has sparked a renewed interest in the site. In 2014, the rabbinical court for “hekdesh” (sacred property) affairs appointed Yitzhak Mamo and Yaakov Saltzman as emissaries of the court in the matter of the Tomb of the Kings sacred property. Mamo is a well-known right-wing activist in East Jerusalem who for years has been engaged in the evacuation of Palestinian families and the resettlement of Jews in Sheikh Jarrah. In 2015, the two men filed a suit in the rabbinical court against the government of France, with a plea to gain possession of the site.
    The lawsuit sparked outrage in Paris and in the French consulate in Jerusalem, as well as in the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A letter sent to the court by David Goldfarb of the ministry’s legal department stated that according to the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, to which Israel is a signatory, consulate employees are not subject to the rulings of a rabbinical court. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also wishes to inform the honorable court that in response to bringing the lawsuit in this case, our office has received a sharply worded letter from the government of France,” Goldfarb wrote.
    The Israeli attorney general also sided with the French, and in a legal opinion submitted to the court, he argued that it was not at all clear that the site can be considered a hekdesh, since the hekdesh was created by the chief rabbi of Paris and not by the Sharia court in Jerusalem, which had been entrusted with the authority to rule on sacred property issues in the city during the period of Ottoman rule. In the wake of these developments, the religious court in Jerusalem rejected the suit.

    FILE Photo: The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem. American Colony

    FILE Photo: The Tomb of Kings site in Jerusalem. American Colony
    The French subsequently announced the closure of the site for renovations. In recent years, there has been practically no opportunity to visit the site. According to parties involved in the matter, the French consulate has invested about 900,000 euros (about $790,000) in a renovation that included construction of a steel apparatus to reinforce the central structure in the event of earthquake, construction of a new stairway, and preservation work.
    In September 2018, the consulate informed the Israeli Foreign Ministry that the work had been completed and that it was now possible to reopen the site. However, the French imposed two conditions: one, that Israel officially recognize French ownership of the site, and two, that they be assured no new lawsuits would be brought against them. Foreign Ministry officials have reported that discussions on the matter are now underway. In the meantime, the place remains closed and the protests have begun again.
    This time around, it was a group of Haredim led by Rabbi Zalman Grossman of Jerusalem that began to arrive on site twice a week and protest its closure by means of prayers and demonstrations. The protest has gained the support of the rabbi of the Western Wall and the holy sites, Shmuel Rabinovich, and of the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, Shlomo Amar, as well as the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
    The demonstrations and the demands to be able to pray on the site have kindled fears among the French that if the site is reopened, it will take on a religious nature and essentially become an Israeli land grab under the French flag in East Jerusalem. As far as France is concerned, this would engender serious political complications with the Palestinians.
    The concerns of the French in this matter are shared by the Antiquities Authority’s Jerusalem district archaeologist, Dr. Yuval Baruch. “There is a trend of archaeological sites taking on a status of holiness, and the problem is if and when that happens, archaeology always loses out,” says Baruch.
    He is concerned about other sites, mainly in the Old City, archaeological-tourism sites that have in the past few years been converted into religious sites, where visitors not coming for ritual purposes do not always feel welcome.
    The phenomenon, incidentally, is not exclusive to Orthodox Jews. This has happened, for instance, in a large section of the Jerusalem Archaeological Park-Davidson Center, south of the Western Wall, which has been turned into the “Ezrat Israel,” a prayer section earmarked for the non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. It is happening on the Hulda steps that ascend to the Temple Mount from the south, which have become a popular prayer site among evangelical Christians. The evangelicals have also adopted the Siloam Pool in Silwan. The plaza just outside Tanner’s Gate, not far from the Western Wall, has become the province of bar mitzvah organizers, and the archaeological site at Nebi Samuel in northern Jerusalem has become a site for prayer and pilgrimage.
    “When all is said and done, there is freedom of religion and the authorities have no ability to control it, but there has to be some regulation,” says Baruch. d”As excavations in Jerusalem continue to proliferate, the more assured it is that there will be continued attempts by religious bodies, and this can be Orthodox, Conservative or Reform rabbis, or evangelicals, it matters not who, to try and take them over. The appeal of sites whose character is becoming more emphatically religious will change. I appeal to the rabbinical establishment and to the leadership of the Christian communities to show more responsibility and greater recognition of the importance of the archaeological values, as well.”
    The official response from the office of the rabbi of the Western Wall in regard to the Tomb of the Kings: “In truth, the site is a holy place for Jews. To that end, the rabbi is acting with all due sensitivity in order that the site also provide free access for Jewish prayer and that its character and its holiness be preserved.”

    Nir Hasson
    Haaretz Correspondent

  • i24NEWS - Court rules Israeli visitors to Temple Mount may use patriotic slogan at site
    https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/172485-180417-court-rules-israeli-visitors-to-temple-mount-may-use-patriotic

    Court says ’Am Yisrael Chai’ not a religious phrase, therefore does not violate ban on Jewish prayer at site
    An Israeli court ruled Monday that Israeli visitors to Jerusalem’s flashpoint Temple Mount compound may proclaim “Am Yisrael Chai” ("The people of Israel live") at the site because it is a patriotic slogan and not a religious phrase and therefore does not violate the ban on Jewish prayer at the site.According to a longstanding arrangement which governs the fragile status quo at the Temple Mount — a holy site for both Jews and Muslims — Jewish visitors to the compound are prohibited from praying there.

    The ruling by the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court came in response to the case against right-wing activist and lawyer Itamar Ben Gvir who was in September 2015 removed from the site and detained by police for several hours after calling out the slogan.

  • What Are the Temple Movements and Why Should We Be Worried?
    http://www.ir-amim.org.il/en/node/2113

    Why Are We on High Alert as Rosh Hashanah Approaches?
    The Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif is one of the most complicated and sensitive issues on Israel’s agenda, activating friction points between Israel and the Palestinian population, the Arab nations surrounding Israel, the Muslim world and domestically, within the Israeli Jewish community itself.
    Over the last decade, the fragile status quo (see more below) at the holy site has been increasingly tested, driven by a revival of activity by Jews who are determined to overturn arrangements at the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and to marginalize the claims of Muslims to the holy site. In the last several years, thousands of national religious Jewish pilgrims have ascended the Mount, including groups of rabbis, women, Members of Knesset and recently, soldiers in uniform.
    These religious ideologues, known as Temple Movement activists, heighten their activities during festival – or High Holiday – periods and over the last year, they have progressively set new records for ascents. On Tisha B’Av, a high of more than 1,000 Temple Movement activists ascended. If the trend continues, this High Holiday period could exceed all previous numbers, just months after the major crisis in July.

  • Israel Palestine
    Music, children’s choirs and camels in the desert

    Three years ago in Gaza, between July 21 and July 28, Israel killed (it is forbidden say murdered) 37 Palestinian children under the age of 7
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.804201

    1. My friend B. lives in Kobar. Somehow, during the four years of her young son’s life she has managed to protect him from the not-for-children narrations about the army and death, the occupation, shooting and guns. She and her husband have created an island around him, with children’s books and games, and made sure that the television, with its horrible sights, wouldn’t be turned on in his vicinity.
    Last week reality forced itself on them. Every day the army bulldozers came, made the barriers at the entrance to the village higher and wider, and deepened the wound they dug in the asphalt. Every day the residents swept aside the earth at the edges of the barriers so that their cars could pass. And when my friend passed by there in her car, with her son next to her, he wondered and asked who had made those high piles of earth. Al jish, the army, she replied. He at first thought she had said the jag (the hen) and was very confused. And then she had to tell him what the army is, whose army it is, and why they’re against everyone large and small.
    Comment 1: If until now B. was able to protect her son from the violent lexicon created by the Settlements Defense Forces, that says something about the relative quiet in the village of Kobar (despite pinpoint raids to detain residents). But almost a week of nighttime raids, with dozens of soldiers deploying among the houses, beating residents, firing stun grenades and tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets, reminded them that the relative quiet is deceptive.
    Comment 2: The Shin Bet security services and the Israel Defense Forces were the subjects of exaggerated praise this week. Their stand concerning the metal detectors at the entrances to the Temple Mount did in fact prove that they understand the overall picture. In other words, the collective revenge campaign that they carried out last week in Kobar did not stem from a lack of understanding or knowledge that the harassment of the entire village and the persecution of all its residents would only give rise to more anger, even among those who are opposed to the attack in the West Bank settlement of Halamish or have reservations about it. This collective revenge is not a case of shooting from the hip. It’s part of the plan. Part of the logic of control. You escalate, you incite, you detain more young people, you scare more children to create more reasons for preventive activities and oppression, and to maintain the apparatus.
    2. T., a sweet boy of 11, joined me during my visits to several of the families in Kobar whose homes the army had invaded. In a short lull between their testimonies he said: “He proved himself a man, Omar al-Abed” (who killed three members of the Salomon family in Halamish). I asked T.: “So do you mean to say that all of you, all the rest of the Palestinians, aren’t men?” T. was somewhat confused. “No, of course that’s not what I mean,” he said.

    Israeli forces near the site of the attack in the West Bank settlement of Halamish and assailant Omar al-Abed, July 21, 2017.
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    Comment: The words expressing understanding of al-Abed’s motives shouldn’t allow us to forget two facts: Relative to the intensity and duration of the injustice in which they live, very few Palestinians have chosen or are choosing al-Abed’s path. On the other hand, tens of thousands of Israelis (correct me if necessary, maybe actually hundreds of thousands?) were and are directly involved in the killing (we are forbidden to call it murder) of Palestinians; not to mention all the other things we inflict on them.
    3. Noor, Malak, Miar and Dareen sing in the Amwaj choir. They’re about 12 years old. We met in the most unexpected place: the desert. A procession of camels was marching towards the sunset. The plucking of the strings in Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony and the strains of the piccolo from Ravel’s Bolero wafted above the row of plastic chairs placed on the sand.
    The Amwaj (Waves) choir in Bethlehem and the Ramallah Orchestra, founded by the Al Kamandjati Conservatory, are offering a series of concerts for the general public, conducted by Diego Masson. The concert, which was supposed to take place on Friday in Dar Al Tifl (The Child’s Home) in Jerusalem, was canceled because of the circumstances. Ramzi Abu Radwan, founder of Al Kamandjati and a native of the Al-Amari refugee camp, immediately phoned Abu Ismail.
    Abu Ismail heads the Bedouin Hospitality and Desert Excursions agency for those touring the desert, east of his village Arab al-Rashayida, south of Bethlehem. He immediately said, “Of course, play here.” The next day. The Kamandjati sound and lighting technicians worked all day on installing the systems and making sure they functioned. Girls from the Bedouin village, ages 3 to 12, sat fascinated on the plastic chairs and blended in with the aural and visual miracle taking place before their eyes. On Sunday the concert took place as planned in the Bethlehem Convention Palace. And on Monday, it will be held in the Ramallah Municipal Theater.

    The Amwaj (Waves) choir and the Ramallah Orchestra perform in the desert south of Bethlehem, July 29, 2017.Amira Hass
    4. The Amwaj choir includes 30 girls and boys from Hebron and 30 from the Bethlehem area, including villages and refugee camps. It began taking shape about three years ago. There are no auditions, all that’s required is a commitment to eight hours of study a week, and summer courses. At present there are 25 boys and 35 girls in the choir. The youngest singer is a 6-year-old girl.
    5. Three years ago, between July 21 and July 28, we killed (we are forbidden to call it murdered) 37 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip between the ages of several months and 6 years. Next to the name of each toddler we killed (and who are included in the B’Tselem list of 546 children we killed in the 2014 onslaught), there is a dry notation: “Did not participate in the fighting.”
    Comment. We no longer like to dirty our hands with blood. We’re experts at killing (we are forbidden to call it murdering) from a distance, with high-tech gadgets, at most with rifles and pistols. That way it’s not sickening. Not disgusting. Not horrifying.

  • Israeli police turn East Jerusalem hospital into battlefield amid hunt for dying Palestinian
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.803745


    A ’barbaric’ Israeli police raid on Makassed Hospital could have ended in a massacre, director says
    By Gideon Levy and Alex Levac | Jul. 28, 2017 | 6:19 PM

    Through the window of his office, Dr. Rafiq Husseini has a view of the courtyard of the hospital he directs, the stone wall that surrounds it and the pine grove on the other side. The wall is still speckled with bloodstains, now turned brown.

    This is the blood of Mohammed Abu Ghannam, 22, who was shot and killed by Israeli security forces during the rioting over the Temple Mount last Friday. Why is his blood smeared on the wall? Because friends of the dead young man rushed to smuggle his body out of the hospital, just minutes after he died in the corridor, to elude the unbelievable hunt for the cadaver conducted by the Border Police and the Jerusalem District’s men in blue.

    The body, wrapped in a bloodstained sheet, swayed from side to side as the group ran with it and passed it over the wall, which is several meters high. For a moment it seemed that the body was about to slide out from under the sheet, but in the end it reached the other side safely. From there it was carried to a nearby monastery and then, swiftly, was transported in a private car to the cemetery of the A-Tur neighborhood – “our village,” as residents call it – on the Mount of Olives. On the way, the car carrying the body was stopped by police at an intersection, but it was permitted to proceed on condition that no more than seven people be present at the burial.

    In the end, hundreds defied the police to accompany accompanied Abu Ghannam on his final journey, though the funeral was conducted hastily and not in accordance with the tradition of first going to the home of the deceased and then to the mosque – all because of the policy of pandering in human bodies that’s being pursued by Israel’s Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, hero of the Temple Mount disturbances.

    But that was not enough for the Jerusalem police. On Sunday, officers arrested Hassan Abu Ghannam, 47, the bereaved father, for reasons that remain unclear. The next day, the police returned to the mourning tent set up in the youth’s memory and tore down all the photographs of him. They threatened to levy a fine for each additional photo hung and also to dismantle the tent. Thus shall it be done.

    But in Dr. Husseini’s office in East Jerusalem’s Makassed Hospital, not far away, a semblance of tranquility prevails. At 65, he’s a man of snow-white hair and otherwise distinguished appearance, who studied microbiology and health-care management. He has on his computer footage taken by the security cameras last Friday, documenting minute by minute what transpired in the corridors of the hospital he runs.

    At 1:30 P.M., the hospital began readying to receive individuals injured in demonstrations in East Jerusalem. By the end of the day, 120 people with wounds of varying severity would pass through the Makassed ER. At midweek only five were still hospitalized, two of them in intensive care. Most of the injured wanted to get first aid and leave immediately, to avoid possible arrest by policemen, who they feared would arrive at any moment. For the most part, the wounds were caused by rubber-coated bullets fired from short range – possibly a new version of this type of ammunition, as the damage it caused was more severe than what Husseini says he has seen in the past.

    The police had already raided the hospital on Monday last week, to arrest Ala Abu Taya, a 17-year-old who’d been badly wounded in an incident in Silwan. He was in serious condition; three police officers were assigned to guard his room in the ICU. They left on Wednesday, but since then policemen have been coming occasionally to check his status. They just show up and enter the unit.

    But what happened on Friday is something else again. Husseini arrived at his office, on what should have been his day of rest, at about 3:30 P.M., when it was clear that dozens had already been wounded. Upon his arrival he was told that Border Police troops were present and making their way to the operating rooms. Three were in the one Husseini entered – their very presence a violation of the rules of operating-theater hygiene. They were looking for Mohammed Abu Ghannam. He wasn’t there, so the police ordered Husseini to take them to the morgue – without saying whom they were after, Husseini says now. Earlier, noticing a nurse wearing bloodstained surgical gloves, the policemen asked whose blood it was, but it turned out to belong to a different patient who had undergone surgery.

    As he left the operating suite, Husseini saw dozens more Border Police personnel in the corridors. He estimates their number at about 50, though the hospital security guards we spoke with later think there were even more. In any event, the force moved in the direction of the morgue. On the way they passed the blood bank, where they told the dozens of people who were waiting to give blood to leave the premises immediately. The video footage shows one donor departing with a needle still stuck on his arm. “It turned into a madhouse,” Hussein recalls.

    Fortunately, a force of regular members of the Israel Police, led by two senior officers, also arrived at the hospital. Thanks to them, a major disaster was averted, the hospital director says. In the atmosphere that prevailed, and with dozens of Border Police striding through the corridors like they owned the place, he said he saw disaster looming. After he spoke with the civilian officers, they ordered the Border Police to leave the hospital. On their way out, the latter threw stun grenades and tear-gas grenades at the crowd that had gathered in the courtyard. The metal covering of the wall at the entrance clearly shows the impact of two rubber-coated bullets that struck it. A male nurse was knocked to the ground by Border Policemen, suffering light injuries; the video shows the troops pushing him over.

    “It was a very grave situation – I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Husseini. In 2015, a police force invaded the hospital in an attempt to confiscate a detainee’s medical file, and also behaved liked lords and masters, but he says it was nothing like this.

    “They were vicious,” Husseini says of those who perpetrated last Friday’s raid. “I think they lost control and it could have led to a massacre. We never had a Border Police raid. They were always police in blue or in black. The Border Police have no respect for the civilian population. What were they looking for? Weapons? Armed terrorists? The police could have come to me and said that there was a wounded person [they were seeking], and asked me about his condition in a civilized way, and not entered the operating rooms with their contaminated boots. Something like this would never happen at Hadassah Hospital.”

    Mohammed Abu Ghannam, a computer science student at Bir Zeit University and the object of the search, was in the ER in critical condition at the time. He had been hit in the chest and neck by two live rounds at the entrance to A-Tur, where he was participating in the violent demonstration that took place there that day, after returning from prayers at the entrance to the Temple Mount.

    An attempt was made to take the patient to an operating room, but police stopped the staff and friends who were pushing his gurney there. Abu Ghannam can be seen in the video footage, hooked up to an I.V., his bed bloodied. Footage from the hospital’s security cameras also shows armed Border Police advancing in the corridors as a young female photographer in a helmet and jeans documents the events, apparently on behalf of the police. Every so often they throw people aside. A sea of helmets at the reception desk, a sea of helmets at the blood bank. Suddenly the bed on which Abu Ghannam is lying can be seen opposite the police – it’s not clear whether he was alive or dead at that point – and then there’s a huge melee and the bed disappears from the frame.

    After the force left, a large quantity of blood remained on the floor, where the bed of the living-dead Abu Ganem passed. There’s part of a green hospital uniform too, along with an employee badge.

    “It was a barbaric attack,” Husseini repeats. “Many people could have been wounded here.”

    The guard at the hospital’s entrance, Rabia Sayed, who photographed everything with his cellular phone, adds, “What were they looking for? A dead man. What were they going to do with him? They killed him and also wanted to take him? Why? Halas. He’s dead. A cadaver. This is a hospital.”

    Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Israel Police – which includes the Border Police – told Haaretz: “During violent disturbances in East Jerusalem last weekend, the police received a report that a person wounded by gunfire had been taken to Makassed Hospital. The police who went to the hospital to clarify the circumstances of the event and the truthfulness of the report encountered violent disturbances that included stone-throwing from the premises. The police entered the hospital in order to locate the person wounded by gunfire, and when the hospital director was asked, he misled the police and said the wounded person had left the place.

    “Mohammed Ghannam’s father was arrested by the police on suspicion of threatening to commit an act of terror. He was taken for questioning at the police [station] and the court afterward remanded him, emphasizing that these were serious statements.

    “The Israel Police will continue to act with determination, in all places and at all times, against everyone who disturbs the public order and tries to harm police officers or innocent civilians, all in the name of the security of the citizens of the State of Israel.”

    A few minutes’ drive from the hospital, in the heart of A-Tur, a group of men are mourning their dead son, relative and friend under tarpaulins stretched over the courtyard of the family home. The rage and frustration here are boundless; some of the remarks made against the police who tried to snatch the body and against those who tore the pictures off the wall in the mourning tent are unfit to print.

    An uncle of the deceased, Izhak Abu Ghannam, says he saw Mohammed not long before he was shot, as they young man was returning from Friday prayers outside the Temple Mount. He maintains that the Border Police, by invading the hospital as they did, prevented his nephew from receiving medical treatment, and may have been responsible for his death.

    Some of the young people in the tent are the same ones who rescued Mohammed’s body from the Border Police’s kidnapping attempt. They all speak Hebrew.

    Hassan, the bereaved father, is still under arrest and no one knows where he is. He was rousted from his bed at 4 A.M. on Sunday morning. He’d already been called a few times over the weekend by the police and the Shin Bet security service, who threatened that if he didn’t ensure that the village remained quiet, he would be arrested.

    “We have goats here in the village that know how to behave better with people than your policemen and soldiers,” says Uncle Izhak.

  • Jordan demands Israel turn over embassy guard over deadly shooting incident
    July 24, 2017 5:37 P.M. (Updated: July 24, 2017 5:43 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=778321

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Jordanian government has reportedly issued a judicial order banning the Israeli security guard who was involved in a deadly shooting at the Israeli embassy in Jordan on Saturday night from leaving Jordan.

    Government sources told Ma’an that Jordan was demanding that Israeli authorities hand over the guard, who shot and killed two Jordanian carpenters in unclear circumstances, to Jordanian authorities for interrogation and legal procedures.

    Sources stressed that Jordan will “escalate diplomatic steps” if the guard was not turned in to Jordanian authorities.

    Israel has been refusing to allow Jordanian authorities to question the injured Israeli security guard, citing his immunity under the Vienna Convention, while all security personnel and diplomatic employees were confined to the embassy compound, according to reports.

    On Sunday, Haaretz reported that Israel had decided to immediately evacuate all Amman embassy staff, fearing that the incident would lead to riots and attempts to attack the embassy.

    On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter that he had spoken twice with Israeli Ambassador to Jordan Eynat Schlein overnight Sunday, and with the security guard.

    “I gained the impression that she (Schlein) is managing matters there very well. I assured the security guard that we will bring him back to Israel,” Netanyahu said, adding that “I told them that we are holding ongoing contacts with security and government officials in Amman on all levels, to bring the incident to a close as soon as possible.”

    #Amman #Ambassade_israélienne
    https://seenthis.net/messages/617083
    #Jordanie #Ziv

    • Reports: Israeli, US officials travel to Jordan to discuss Al-Aqsa, embassy security guard
      July 24, 2017 10:15 P.M. (Updated: July 24, 2017 10:15 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778330

      BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli media reported on Monday evening that during a “dialogue” between Israeli and Jordanian authorities, Jordan “did not condition the release of an Israeli embassy security guard back to Israel on the removal of the metal detectors at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.”

      Israel’s Channel 10 reported that the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the dialogue went “well,” and that United States envoy Jason Greenblatt would be heading to Amman from Jerusalem, where he arrived earlier Monday, “to convince the King to end the crisis of the embassy guard.”

      Earlier Monday, Jordanian government sources told Ma’an that the Jordanian government issued a judicial order banning the Israeli security guard who was involved in a deadly shooting at the Israeli embassy in Jordan on Saturday night that left two Jordanians dead, from leaving Jordan.

      Government sources said that Jordan was demanding that Israeli authorities hand over the guard, who shot and killed two Jordanian carpenters in unclear circumstances, to Jordanian authorities for interrogation and legal procedures.

      Sources stressed that Jordan will “escalate diplomatic steps” if the guard was not turned in to Jordanian authorities.

      Israel has been refusing to allow Jordanian authorities to question the injured Israeli security guard, citing his immunity under the Vienna Convention, while all security personnel and diplomatic employees were confined to the embassy compound, according to reports.

      Prior to Channel 10’s report, Israeli media had reported that Netanyahu would be calling the Jordanian King to discuss the issue of the embassy security guard, as well as the ongoing crisis surrounding the Al-Aqsa Mosque, where tensions have continued to rise since Israel installed metal detectors and security cameras inside the compound following a deadly shoot out at the holy site on July 14.

      Israeli media had reported that chief of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal intelligence agency, Nadav Argaman was sent to Jordan, and that Israel would be removing all metal detectors and replacing them with thermal cameras, a report that could not be verified by Ma’an (...)

      .

    • Israel rules to replace contested Al-Aqsa metal detectors with ’smart’ surveillance
      July 25, 2017 11:03 A.M. (Updated: July 25, 2017 11:03 A.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778334

      BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Israeli security cabinet decided during a meeting late on Monday night to remove metal detectors, which had recently been installed at the entrances of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, only to replace them with more advanced surveillance technology in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem.

      Israeli authorities installed metal detectors, turnstiles, and additional security cameras in the compound following a deadly shooting attack at Al-Aqsa on July 14 — sparking protests from Palestinians, who said the move was the latest example of Israeli authorities using Israeli-Palestinian violence as a means of furthering control over important sites in the occupied Palestinian territory and normalizing repressive measures against Palestinians.

      In a statement, the security cabinet said it had “accepted the recommendation of all of the security bodies to incorporate security measures based on advanced technologies ("smart checks") and other measures instead of metal detectors in order to ensure the security of visitors and worshipers in the Old City and on the Temple Mount” — using the Israeli term for the Al-Aqsa compound.

      Religious leaders in Jerusalem were scheduled to hold a meeting Tuesday to discuss the new Israeli plan, as Islamic endowment (Waqf) official Sheikh Raed Daana told Ma’an that both religious leaders and the Palestinians wouldn’t accept any changes to the status quo.

      “We won’t accept cameras or (metal) posts,” Daana said on Monday evening.

      The plan will reportedly take up to six months to implement, and cost an estimated 100 million shekels ($28 million).
      (...)
      According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, at least 1,090 Palestinians had been injured since July 14 during demonstrations which were violently repressed by Israeli forces across the occupied Palestinian territory. According to Ma’an documentation, 11 Palestinians and five Israelis have been killed since July 14.

    • Israeli embassy staff, including guard who killed 2, leave Jordan amid investigation
      July 25, 2017 3:46 P.M. (Updated: July 25, 2017 7:54 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=778337

      BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Staff members of the Israeli embassy to Jordan, including a security guard who killed two Jordanians, returned to Israel on Monday night after a day of tensions between the two countries over the deadly shootout.

      A Jordanian investigation into the shooting, in which Muhammad Zakariya al-Jawawdeh, 17 , and Bashar Hamarneh were killed, revealed that the deadly incident started off as a professional dispute, official Jordanian news agency Petra reported on Monday.

      According to Jordanian police, al-Jawawdeh had accompanied a relative delivering furniture to the security guard’s apartment in the Israeli compound in Amman, when an argument over alleged delays turned physical.

      Witnesses said that al-Jawawdeh attacked the Israeli security guard — whom Israeli media have referred to as Ziv — with a screwdriver, after which the Israeli shot at him and Hamarneh, the apartment building owner.

      Petra reported that the case had been referred to a prosecutor for further legal steps, as Jordan and Israel have sparred over whether the security guard should be handed over to Jordanian custody.

      Israel, meanwhile, has refused to allow Jordanian authorities to question the injured Israeli security guard, citing his immunity under the Vienna Conventions — a body of international law which Israel has been accused of regularly violating.

      Nadav Argaman, the director of Israel’s intelligence service, the Shin Bet, traveled to Jordan in an attempt to resolve the situation, whereas Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a phone call with Jordan’s King Abdullah over the case.

      The Israeli security guard thanked Netanyahu for helping him leave Jordan without facing interrogation or criminal charges.

      "I know an entire country stands behind us. You told me yesterday I’d return home, and you calmed me down, and then it happened. I thank you wholeheartedly,” Israeli news outlet Ynet quoted him as saying.

      Despite reports that Israeli authorities would remove metal detectors at the entrance of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem in exchange for securing the return of the security guard, Netanyahu denied that such an agreement had taken place.

      #Ben_voyons

    • Tuesday, July 25, 2017
      http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2017/07/from-funeral-of-muhammad-jawawdeh-16.html

      From the funeral of Muhammad Jawawdeh, 16, who was shot by an Israeli embassy terrorist in Amman

      It says “death to Israel”.
      Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 8:38 AM

      ““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““
      Tuesday, July 25, 2017
      Netanyahu warmly welcomes the terrorist who shot a 16-year old Jordanian
      http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2017/07/netanyahu-warmly-welcomes-terrorist-who.html

      When will they stop teaching and practicing hate? Who will change their curricula?
      Posted by As’ad AbuKhalil at 11:17 AM

    • Investigation into Israeli embassy shooting completed
      http://petra.gov.jo/Public_News/Nws_NewsDetails.aspx?lang=2&site_id=1&NewsID=311051&CatID=13

      Amman, July 24 (Petra) — The Public Security Department (PSD), said Monday evening that the investigation launched into a shooting incident inside the Israeli embassy compound in Amman on Sunday was completed.

      A statement released by the PSD said the investigation was completed after collecting information from the crime scene and listening to a number of eyewitnesses, who were present at the scene.

      A PSD special investigation team has found that there was a prior agreement between people working in carpentry to supply bedroom furniture for an apartment rented by an Israeli embassy employee, the statement indicated, adding that two people came to furnish the bedroom of the Israeli employee’s apartment inside the compound.

      During the process, a dispute has erupted between one of the carpenters, who was the furniture shop owner’s son, and the Israeli diplomat. The two had a verbal argument as the Israeli diplomat claimed that there was a delay in completing the agreed upon work on time.

      The altercation escalated to physical confrontation where the carpenter attacked and injured the Israeli diplomat who in turn shot the carpenter and the apartment’s owner, who and the building’s doorman were present at the scene, the statement added, citing the testimony given by the other person who came with the carpenter.

      The team also listened to the doorman’s testimony, who corroborated the story as mentioned in the investigation.

      Then case has been referred to the competent prosecutor for further legal action.

      //Petra// AF

      25/7/2017 - 12:00:24 AM

  • This is why Arab states are conspicuously silent on Temple Mount crisis - Israel News - Haaretz.com

    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.802834

    The Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, like the Kaaba in Mecca and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, is an Islamic site that is inseparable from the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They are sites that, when harmed, spark public outrage that can put the regimes in Arab and other Muslim states on a collision course with Islamic movements in their countries.
    It also puts them in conflict with a sensitive Muslim public that can delegitimize closer ties between Israel and Arab countries, and places them in conflict with a secular Arab public that views the events as a deliberate attempt by Israel to take over Palestinian sites.
    The recognition of people power and the threat that Arab public opinion poses is one of the most important by-products of the Arab Spring, particularly when it concerns Israel and the holy sites. Such matters constitute a loose, but perhaps only, common denominator that these parts of public opinion share.
    Up to now, the Arab and Muslim rage in these countries has not been translated into public displays in the form of mass demonstrations or harshly critical articles. Events on the Temple Mount over the past week or so have indeed garnered headlines in most of the Arab world, but at this point – for possibly the first time – we haven’t seen the customary anti-Israel protests on the streets of Cairo, Amman and Morocco.

  • The Jerusalem obsession - Opinion -

    Of all of Israel’s whims, this is the craziest of all. A country trying look secular, Western and modern is going nuts over a wall

    Gideon Levy May 18, 2017
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.789919

    The sky has fallen. America is stuttering about the Western Wall. Where is it located? Whom does it belong to? It’s the end of the world, the Zionist enterprise is finished. It’s a good thing we have a Habayit Hayehudi representative in the United Nations (in the guise of the American ambassador), Nikki Haley. She hastened on Tuesday to prevent another emotional holocaust by stating that in her personal opinion, the Kotel is ours. What a relief! The Temple Mount is (again) in our hands.
    Of all of Israel’s whims, this is the craziest of all. A country trying look secular, Western and modern is going nuts over a wall. It’s a fetish. You can live with it, of course, but like any obsession it can drive you insane.
    But the obsession with the Kotel is part of a wider syndrome, the Jerusalem obsession. There’s no more divided city than united Jerusalem, and we’ve devised no greater self-deception than thinking there can be a solution without justice in Jerusalem. You can of course love Jerusalem, which was a lovely city until its last occupation, with an amazing history and holy places. You can pray toward it a dozen times a day, to a city that Jews lived in for generations and also longed for. It is truly an exciting and recommended tourist destination, just check out TripAdvisor.
    But a country that wakes up in terror because some American official avoided saying that the Kotel is part of Israel, proves not only that its discourse is delusional, but that it isn’t at all sure that the Kotel really belongs to it, and how uncertain it is about its borders, sovereignty and justness. When it comes to talking about Jerusalem, it loses its moorings; when it comes to the Kotel, it loses consciousness. In both instances we’re talking about detachment from reality.

    #Israël #Jérusalem

  • On his first visit to the Middle East, Trump’s envoy Jason Greenblatt surprises everyone

    Greenblatt leaped effortlessly from a Palestinian refugee camp to meeting settler leaders, making positive impressions on all, along with a clear message: Trump’s serious about peace, and Israel ought to be too.

    Barak Ravid Mar 17, 2017
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.777881

    Jason Greenblatt’s Twitter account was the best show in town this week. Anyone following his tweets might have thought he wasn’t the U.S. envoy for the peace process, but the Energizer bunny. 
    Greenblatt didn’t rest for a moment during his four days here. He bounced from Jerusalem, to Ramallah, to Jericho, to Bethlehem, to Amman and back to Jerusalem. After every meeting, he tweeted pictures and updates.
    On the eve of his visit, the New York Times published an article describing him scornfully as a man with no diplomatic experience who landed his job almost by chance. But Greenblatt proved this week that even if he lacks the experience of veterans of the peace industry in America, he is blessed with sharp instincts, seriousness, common sense and a great deal of personal charm and emotional intelligence. Everyone on the Israeli side who met with Greenblatt this week, on both the right and the left, as well as everyone on the Palestinian side, had a positive impression.
    “Greenblatt is a serious, honest envoy,” tweeted MK Tzipi Livni (Zionist Union) after meeting him. “There’s no doubt President Trump is committed to peace, and that’s good news. It won’t be easy – but there’s hope.”
    On his first visit to the region as Trump’s envoy, Greenblatt came mainly to listen and learn. Alongside his meetings with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, he held a great many meetings with segments of the population that until now most U.S. envoys had passed over. 
    He surprised many on the Palestinian side by meeting with residents of the Jalazun refugee camp near Ramallah, and surprised others on the Israeli side by meeting with two mayors of settlements, Oded Revivi and Yossi Dagan. He met with Palestinian and Israeli students, with residents of the Gaza Strip, with senior Jewish, Christian and Muslim clerics.
    skip - blattjalazone

    Wednesday night, Greenblatt took a tour of Jerusalem’s Old City. One stop on the tour was Yeshivat HaKotel, from which he tweeted a picture of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. Five minutes later, he visited the house of a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem and tweeted a picture of the same holy sites from a different angle.
    “Peace and coexistence are not just possible in this extraordinary city, they exist already and have for centuries,” he added in a follow-up tweet.
    The message Greenblatt reiterated against and again, to both Israelis and Palestinians, was that President Donald Trump is very serious when he talks about his desire to make “the ultimate deal” and that Israeli-Palestinian peace is very high on his priority list. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) said after meeting with Greenblatt that he got the impression Trump was very committed to this issue and plans to launch a serious diplomatic process. A senior minister in the ruling Likud party got the same impression.

  • Kerry offered Netanyahu regional peace plan in secret 2016 summit with al-Sissi, King Abdullah - Israel News - Haaretz.com

    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.772531

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took part in a secret summit in Aqaba a year ago where then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented a plan for a regional peace initiative including recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and a renewal of talks with the Palestinians with the support of the Arab countries.
    >> Get all updates on Israel and the U.S.: Download our free App, and Subscribe >>
    Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi were also present at the meeting in the Jordanian city.
    Netanyahu did not accept Kerry’s proposal and said he would have difficulty getting it approved by his governing coalition. Still, the Aqaba summit was the basis for the talks that began two weeks later between Netanyahu and opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) on establishing a unity government.
    Details about the summit and the plan emerged from conversations between Haaretz and former senior officials in the Obama administration who asked to remain anonymous. The Prime Minister’s Bureau refused to comment.
    It was Kerry who initiated the conference. In April 2014, the peace initiative he had led collapsed, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians entered a deep freeze and U.S. President Barack Obama declared a time-out in U.S. attempts to restart the peace process. Over the next 18 months Kerry focused on attaining an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program; an agreement was reached in July 2015 and ratified by Congress in mid-September.
    In October that year, Kerry renewed his work on the Israeli-Palestinian process following an escalation of tensions over the Temple Mount and a wave of violence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
    At the end of October, Kerry was able to achieve understandings confirming the status quo on the Temple Mount by Israel, the Palestinians and Jordan. As part of these understandings, Israel and Jordan launched talks over the placement of closed-circuit cameras on the Temple Mount, an idea that was never implemented.
    Two weeks later, Netanyahu came to Washington for his first meeting with Obama in more than a year – a period when the two leaders badly clashed over the nuclear deal with Iran.

  • Israelis raid Al-Aqsa amid Israeli MP demands to change status quo
    Nov. 9, 2016 4:42 P.M. (Updated: Nov. 9, 2016 4:54 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=773894

    JERUSALEM (Ma’an) — At least 100 Jewish Israelis, including students, escorted by Israeli police toured the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on Wednesday, while the Islamic Endowment (Waqf) condemned recent attempts by Israeli politicians to challenge the status quo at the holy site.

    The Israeli settlers entered through the Moroccans’ Gate and raided the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, known as the Temple Mount among Jews, in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem.

    Meanwhile, the Waqf, in charge of managing Al-Aqsa since Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967, released a statement holding the Israeli government fully responsible for attempts by Knesset members to change the international agreements around Al-Aqsa, which prevents Jewish worship at the site.

    The Waqf warned the Israeli government in the statement against any move to change the existing agreements, emphasizing that the site remained a holy site for more than 2.6 billion Muslims around the world.

    On Monday, Israeli Knesset members held a conference on the potential of challenging the status quo at Al-Aqsa in order to permit Israeli Knesset members visitations to the site. During the conference, Israeli parliament member Yuli Edelstein and three cabinet ministers initiated the “Temple Mount Lobby,” according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

  • Israel still outraged by new ’softened’ version of UNESCO resolution
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=773732
    Oct. 26, 2016 5:08 P.M. (Updated: Oct. 26, 2016 5:08 P.M.)

    BETHLEHEM — A new version of a UNESCO resolution that strongly condemned Israeli policies in the occupied Palestinians territory was approved on Wednesday after widespread uproar from Israel and its supporters claimed that the previous text denied Jewish ties to the location of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem’s Old City.

    The resolution was backed by ten World Heritage Committee members states, opposed by two, with eight abstaining.

    However, Israeli media sites reported that the revised version continued to “ignore Judaism’s connection” to the holy site, as the text still only referred to the compound by its Arabic and Muslim names — Al-Aqsa or al-Haram al-Sharif — and not as the Temple Mount as it is known to Jews.

    Amid the uproar, the issues raised in the resolution itself regarding several Israeli policies against Palestinians at the holy site have largely fallen to the wayside.

    As a Palestinian representative to UNESCO put it after the initial text was approved, the resolution was “about occupation, not about a name,” asserting that the Geneva Conventions required the site be referred to by the name that predated Israel’s illegal occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967.

    The wording of the new resolution was “softened,” according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, removing the term “occupying” force in regards to Israel, and now refers to the Western Wall by its Jewish name and not in quotations as it had been previously.

    However, Israel’s ambassador to UNESCO, Carmel Shama-Hacohen, reportedly said after the vote: “This is yet another absurd resolution against the State of Israel, the Jewish people and historical truth.”

    Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, also slammed the new resolution, saying, “UNESCO embarrassed itself by marching to the tune of the Palestinian pipers. All attempts to deny our heritage, distort history and disconnect the Jewish people from our capital and our homeland, are doomed to fail.”

    #UNESCO

    • Israël rappelle son ambassadeur à l’UNESCO en riposte au nouveau vote
      Par i24news | Publié : 26/10/2016
      http://www.i24news.tv/fr/actu/international/128593-161026-nouveau-vote-de-l-unesco-niant-les-liens-entre-judaisme-et-jer

      « Le théâtre de l’absurde continue » a lancé le Premier ministre israélien

      Israël a rappelé mercredi son ambassadeur à l’UNESCO pour protester contre l’adoption du Comité du patrimoine mondial d’une résolution niant à nouveau le lien millénaire entre les Juifs et leurs lieux saints à Jérusalem.

      « Le théâtre de l’absurde continue, j’ai décidé de rappeler notre ambassadeur à l’Unesco pour consultations et nous allons décider des mesures à prendre face à cette organisation », a indiqué un communiqué du bureau du Premier ministre.

      L’ambassadeur israélien, Carmel Shama-Cohen, a pour sa part affirmé à la radio publique qu’Israël étudiait « la possibilité de rompre tout contact avec l’Unesco ».

      Gil Taïeb, vice-président du CRIF (Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France) s’est exprimé mercredi soir sur i24news au sujet du nouveau vote de l’Unesco.

      M. Taïeb a exprimé « une fois de plus la colère devant un vote aussi détestable ».

      « Ce n’est pas un vote de l’Unesco contre Israël, là on est dans l’antisémitisme pur », s’est révolté le vice-président du CRIF.

      Il affirme que « nier les racines du peuple juif » revient à « également par voie d’extension nier les racines judéo-chrétiennes du monde » avant de décrier « un nettoyage ethnique auquel participe l’Unesco ».

      « Aujourd’hui on s’attaque aux Juifs, demain on s’attaquera aux Chrétiens, après-demain aux Bouddhistes et il ne restera plus sur cette planète qu’une seule religion, celle de l’islam intégriste qui nie aux autres le droit d’exister », a-t-il ajouté.

  • UNSECO resolution: A fight over the ownership of Jerusalem - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
    Where does Israel get the audacity to demand eternal ownership? One can understand the longing that Jerusalem no longer change hands, but to demand ownership is historic rudeness, which the world sees as arrogance, even hubris.

    Carolina Landsmann Oct 14, 2016 1:
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.747419

    Jerusalem’s history teaches that the aspiration for the city to be the Jewish nation’s eternal capital reflects a desire to effect a fundamental change in its status – from a city that changed hands many times over thousands of years to one that will remain forever in Jewish hands.
    Benjamin Netanyahu wants the world to understand the declaration “Jerusalem the eternal capital of the Jewish people” not only as a historic or religious-spiritual affiliation, and not only as a geopolitical description, but as a statement of real-estate ownership. Netanyahu wants Jerusalem to be registered in the world’s land registry bureau as property of the Jewish nation.
    In this respect, the UNESCO resolution that casts doubt on the ties between the Western Wall and the Jewish Temple is like a warning note in the registry in favor of the Muslims. By Netanyahu’s standards, this is a failure no less dramatic than having a foreign army conquer Jerusalem.
    The Six-Day War was a landmark event not only in Israel’s history, but in Jewish history. In 1967, after 2,000 years, the heart of Jerusalem – the Old City – returned to Jewish hands. At the same time, since it’s a city that is holy to Christianity and Islam as well, not only to Judaism, as the UNESCO resolution reaffirms yet again how it was also a landmark event in the history of Christianity and Islam. It sounds trivial – but the historic and religious weight of conquering Jerusalem is by no means trivial.
    Israel’s demand of eternal ownership of the city, the expectation that Islam will renounce the city only because it was conquered by military force, as just as the war was, even the expectation that Christianity will agree to the Jews’ eternal ownership of the city are anything but trivial.
    Israel acts like it’s another historic “real estate deal.” It may recognize that taking over property is not enough and that it must obtain international recognition for its ownership of Jerusalem. But on the other hand Israel is ignoring the fact that Jerusalem is not like any other piece of property.

    Where, then does Israel get the audacity to demand eternal ownership? One can understand the longing that Jerusalem no longer change hands, but to demand ownership of it is historic rudeness, which the world sees as arrogance, even hubris.
    In his speech at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, Netanyahu claimed that what “prepared the way for the Holocaust” was “the lie.” 
    “The slander preceded the annihilation,” he explained. Today, too, millions of people are hearing awful falsehoods about the Jews, he said.
    Then he focused his warnings on a specific lie – the demand that UNESCO determine that the Temple Mount has no affiliation with the Jewish people.
    The incitement today stems from radical Islam, he said, and wondered about the “strange pairings” that anti-Semitism creates. “Elites pretending to represent human progress join the darkest barbaric zealots, the decapitators, oppressors of women, gay persecutors, destroyers of cultural treasures.” 
    Translation: dear Christians, have you gone mad? Do you really want to entrust Christianity’s treasures in the hands of those treasure-destroying Muslims?
    “Many of our people are already doing so in Israel and the world and I call on you too, representatives of enlightened humanity, mobilize to thwart the lies,” shouted Netanyahu. That is to say, dear Christians, representatives of enlightened humanity, mobilize to the Jews’ side – have you lost your senses to let ISIS’ representatives get close to Jerusalem?
    Perhaps instead of blaming others for the historic-diplomatic blow to the Jewish people, Netanyahu should ask himself if perhaps something in the abusiveness with which Israel rules the holy city and its claim to eternal ownership have contributed to creating the climate in which the contemporary tendency of Islam to negate pre-Islamic history wins the sympathy of our enlightened western friends.
    Perhaps there’s a link connecting Israel’s rejectionist diplomacy, appalling discrimination against the city’s Arab residents, Jerusalem’s construction beneath the Western Wall, Silwan, Muslim quarter, and the warning note inscribed in history’s land registry.

  • The no-shows at Arafat’s funeral - Opinion - Israel News | Haaretz.com
    All those who don’t understand why it was so difficult for the Palestinian-Israelis’ political representatives to show their final respects to Shimon Peres, should recall Arafat’s funeral and the ’respect’ shown him by the Israelis.

    Shlomo Sand Oct 14, 2016
    read more: http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.747364

    On November 11, 2004, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat died under mysterious circumstances. The next day his body was brought to Cairo, where a official state funeral was held. Representatives of 50 countries participated in the event, both admirers and rivals.
    Behind his coffin marched Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Syrian President Bashar Assad, King Abdullah of Jordan, King Mohammed VI of Morocco, the presidents of Tunisia and Sudan, the leaders of Sweden, Brazil, Turkey, Malaysia and Pakistan, the deputy prime minister of China, the vice presidents of Austria, Bulgaria, Tanzania, Iraq and Afghanistan, the foreign ministers of Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Greece, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Canada, Indian and Slovenia, the parliamentary leaders of Italy, Russia, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates. It was an official farewell that was less impressive that Shimon Peres’ funeral, but still quite respectable for a president without a country.
    The United States, the well known neutral intermediary between Israel and Palestine, sent a low-ranking representative: William Burns, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. Israel, on the other hand, gave it the finger.
    No Israeli representative, either high- or low-ranking, or even very low-ranking, attended. None of the leaders of the opposition dreamed of showing his final respects to the leader of the Palestinian people, the first who recognized the State of Israel, and signed the Oslo Accords. Not Shimon Peres, not Ehud Barak, not Shlomo Ben-Ami and not even Uzi Baram bothered to participate in the Palestinians’ mourning.
    Some of them had courageously shaken his hand in the past, other had embraced him enthusiastically several years earlier. But with the outbreak of the second intifada he was once again categorized as a satanic terrorist. The pundits of the sane, moderate left repeatedly claimed in innumerable learned articles that he was not a partner and there was nobody to talk to. When the body of the rais was transferred to Ramallah, the funeral was attended by several “extremist,” marginal Israelis, the likes of Uri Avnery and Mohammed Barakeh.
    All the other peaceniks had to wait for the screening of the film “The Gatekeepers” in 2012; in other words, for the videos of all the chiefs of the Shin Bet security services, who declared that in real time they knew that Arafat did not encourage, organize or initiate the mass uprising in the second intifada, nor the acts of terror that accompanied it. For lack of choice the leader was forced to join the wave, otherwise he would have lost his prestige and his status. The disappointment at Barak’s unprepared and totally bizarre diplomatic step, and Ariel Sharon’s ascent to the Temple Mount, were among the main reasons for the eruption of the Palestinians’ unbridled opposition.

  • Activists: Israel State Archives Buries History to Save Government From Shame
    Documents that shed light on difficult events in the state’s history are still classified, years after the period of restriction expired, activist group that documents Israeli-Palestinian conflict says.

    Ofer Aderet May 22, 2016

    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.720588

    Earlier this year, for example, they say they tried to access files compiled by a committee examining the 1990 riots on the Temple Mount, when 17 Palestinians were killed by Israeli police officers. The archives allegedly refused to provide the documents, giving no reason, even though 25 years had passed since the incidents.
    They were also reportedly denied access after requesting documents from 1948-1949 relating to Israeli Arabs, even though restrictions had long been lifted on the files. After the activists insisted, the file was described as classified – although no reason was provided. This also happened when they activists tried to access files labeled “Occupied territories,” from 1967-1968. They were told the files were closed due to security considerations and will only be reopened in 2019.

  • Selon Benjamin Netanyahu, « Hitler ne voulait pas exterminer les Juifs » - SudOuest.fr
    http://www.sudouest.fr/2015/10/21/selon-benjamin-netanyahu-hitler-ne-voulait-pas-exterminer-les-juifs-2161237

    "Hitler ne voulait pas exterminer les Juifs à cette époque, il voulait expulser les Juifs. Et Haj Amin al-Husseini est allé voir Hitler et lui a dit : « Si vous les expulsez, il vont tous venir ici (en Palestine) ». « Alors que devrais-je faire d’eux ? », a demandé Hitler. « Brûlez-les », lui a-t-il répondu."

    via @JulienSalingue
    https://twitter.com/juliensalingue/status/656745798760316928

    • PM Netanyahu’s Speech at the 37th Zionist Congress
      20/10/2015 Photo by Amos Ben Gershom, GPO
      http://www.pmo.gov.il/English/MediaCenter/Speeches/Pages/speechcongress201015.aspx

      And this attack and other attacks on the Jewish community in 1920, 1921, 1929, were instigated by a call of the Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was later sought for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials because he had a central role in fomenting the final solution. He flew to Berlin. Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time, he wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, “If you expel them, they’ll all come here.” "So what should I do with them?" he asked. He said, “Burn them.” And he was sought in, during the Nuremberg trials for prosecution. He escaped it and later died of cancer, after the war, died of cancer in Cairo. But this is what Haj Amin al-Husseini said. He said, “:The Jews seek to destroy the Temple Mount.” My grandfather in 1920 seeks to destroy…? Sorry, the al-Aqsa Mosque.
      So this lie is about a hundred years old. It fomented many, many attacks. The Temple Mount stands. The al-Aqsa Mosque stands. But the lie stands too, persists.

      et sa conclusion :

      But I think the larger battle that we fight is the battle for the truth and I urge every one of you to be a soldier in that battle. We’ve withstood, in the last century, the many assaults on our people. We came back to our homeland. We built our state. We’ve overcome tremendous forces. Israel is a modern, democratic, progressive and powerful state. We’ve withstood the attacks of terror, Palestinian terror, over the decades and we’ll overcome this one too. But I believe that the biggest battle we have to fight is the battle for the facts. The facts win over the fiction if they’re repeated clearly, responsibly, firmly. This is what I ask all of you to do for the sake of the Jewish state and for the sake of the Jewish people.

    • Nétanyahou fait du grand mufti de Jérusalem l’inspirateur de la solution finale
      Le Monde | 21.10.2015 à 11h37 • Mis à jour le 21.10.2015 à 11h58 | Par Piotr Smolar (Jérusalem, correspondant)
      http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2015/10/21/netanyahou-fait-du-grand-mufti-de-jerusalem-l-inspirateur-d-hitler_4793848_3

      (...)Ce dialogue imaginaire qui aurait eu lieu le 28 novembre 1941 lors de la rencontre, tout à fait réelle, entre Hitler et le mufti, a déclenché un incendie sur les réseaux sociaux. Il a obligé les responsables politiques à intervenir dans le débat, tandis que les historiens étaient invités à se prononcer sur la validité de cette thèse. Le chef des travaillistes, Isaac Herzog, a réagi mercredi sur sa page Facebook en évoquant « une dangereuse distorsion historique ». « Je demande à Nétanyahou de la corriger immédiatement car elle minimise la Shoah, le nazisme et… le rôle d’Hitler dans le désastre terrible de notre peuple. »

      Mais la réaction la plus tranchante fut celle de la chef du parti de gauche Meretz, Zehava Galon. « Peut-être que les 33 771 juifs assassinés à Babi Yar en septembre 1941 – deux mois avant la rencontre entre le mufti et Hitler – devraient être exhumés et mis au courant que les nazis ne voulaient pas les détruire. » Quant à Saeeb Erekat, le secrétaire général de l’Organisation pour la libération de la Palestine (OLP), il a affirmé que « Nétanyahou déteste tant les Palestiniens qu’il est prêt à absoudre Hitler pour le meurtre de 6 millions de juifs ». M. Erekat a aussi souligné la participation de milliers de Palestiniens dans les rangs des Alliés.(...)

    • N’oublions pas aussi que Vichy a sauvé des juifs :

      Comme Zemmour, Le Pen estime que Vichy a sauvé des juifs
      La Dépêche, le 20 octobre 2014 (tiens c’était il y a tout juste un an)
      http://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2014/10/20/1975796-comme-zemmour-pen-estime-vichy-sauve-juifs.html

      C’est une nouvelle forme de Point Godwin, on devrait l’appeler le Point Zemmour...

      Bientôt c’est Faurisson qui écrira les discours de Netanyahou...

    • Netanyahou tient des propos négationnistes : « Hitler ne voulait pas exterminer les juifs »
      Le Premier ministre israélien a accusé mardi le Grand Mufti de Jérusalem, autorité religieuse musulmane, d’avoir poussé Hitler à « brûler » les Juifs.
      J.Cl. | 21 Oct. 2015, 11h41 | MAJ : 21 Oct. 2015, 12h18
      http://www.leparisien.fr/international/derapage-negationniste-de-netanyahou-hitler-ne-voulait-pas-exterminer-les

      Le grand Mufti voulait empêcher la création d’un « foyer juif » en Palestine

      (...) Fin 1941, après avoir fui en Italie, le grand Mufti de Jérusalem s’était bel et bien réfugié en Allemagne pour demander à Hitler de reconnaître l’indépendance de la Palestine vis-à-vis de la puissance coloniale britannique. Des historiens ont démontré qu’Haj Amin al-Husseini voulait obtenir le droit pour les autorités arabes palestiniennes d’empêcher la création d’un « foyer juif » en Palestine.

      La rencontre avec le Führer a lieu le 28 novembre 1941. Aucun historien ne rapporte le dialogue imaginé par Netanyahou hier. Il semble qu’Hitler ait été très impressionné par la personnalité et le sens tactique de son interlocuteur dont il dira : « Cheveux blonds et yeux bleus, le visage émacié, il semble qu’il ait plus d’un ancêtre aryen. Il n’est pas impossible que le meilleur sang romain soit à l’origine de sa lignée ». Al-Husseini obtiendra même le titre « d’aryen d’honneur ».

    • Erekat: Netanyahu speech blames Palestinians for Holocaust
      Oct. 21, 2015 1:20 P.M.
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=768397

      (...) The reference to the Mufti was made while attempting to deny that Israel has plans to change the status quo at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, referred to by Jews as the Temple Mount.

      Erekat said the comments by the Israeli PM deepen the divide “during a time when a just and lasting peace is needed most” and attempt to turn a political issue into a religious one.

      “Just a day after the Israeli occupying forces gunned down five Palestinians, raising up the number of Palestinians killed since October 1st to 50, Mr. Netanyahu blamed the Palestinians for the Holocaust and completely absolved Adolf Hitler’s heinous and reprehensible genocide of the Jewish people,” the PLO official said.

      “On behalf of the thousands of Palestinians that fought alongside the Allied Troops in defense of international justice, the State of Palestine denounces these morally indefensible and inflammatory statements.”

      Erekat added that it is a “sad day in history” when the leader of Israel hates his neighbor so much that he would absolve the most notorious war criminal in history, Adolf Hitler, of the murder of six million Jews.

    • Shoah : selon Netanyahou, le mufti de Jérusalem a inspiré Hitler
      21/10/2015
      http://www.france24.com/fr/20151021-benjamin-netanyahou-israel-mufti-jerusalem-holocauste-shoah-hitle

      (...) Du reste, au lendemain de son discours devant le congrès sioniste, le Premier ministre israélien a fait machine arrière. Avant de s’envoler pour Berlin, il a déclaré à la presse qu’il n’avait pas voulu diminuer le rôle d’Hitler dans la solution finale : « C’est lui le responsable. C’est lui qui a pris la décision. Mais il est absurde d’ignorer le rôle du mufti Al Husseini qui était un criminel de guerre et a encouragé Hitler à exterminer les juifs d’Europe. » Netanyahou a également expliqué qu’il entendait faire la démonstration qu’un antisémitisme arabe existait « sans l’occupation et sans les colonies. »

  • Barghouti: ’The Third Intifada has already begun’
    http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/third-intifada-looms-following-palestinian-deaths-1662631160

    The Palestinian Authority must cease all security cooperation with Israel and support the upsurge of Palestinian “people’s resistance” in Jerusalem and the West Bank in what is now being described by some as the “Third Intifada,” independent Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti has told Middle East Eye.

    Speaking to MEE, Barghouti said the Third Intifada “has already begun,” following deadly clashes and protests in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem over the past few weeks, including the fatal shooting of two Palestinian teenagers in recent days and the killing of several Israelis by Palestinians.

    The recent violence erupted after Palestinians clashed with Israeli security forces last month in the al-Aqsa compound, Islam’s third holiest site, that is also holy to Jews who call it the Temple Mount. Tensions had begun to mount following an increase in Jewish visitors during the Jewish New Year with relations already fraught due to ongoing settler violence and fears over the status quo at al-Aqsa.

    Barghouti’s comments follow Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s threat at the UN General Assembly last week to withdraw from all agreements signed between the PA and Israel over the past two decades.

    Barghouti, who is leader of the Palestinian National Initiative, said that the PA must end its controversial security co-ordination pact with Israel that sees it assuming a policing role against other Palestinian factions in the West Bank.
    – See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/third-intifada-looms-following-palestinian-deaths-1662631160#sthash.v

  • Jérusalem: la France réclame des observateurs sur l’esplanade des lieux saints
    Par Cyrille Louis Publié le 16/10/2015 à 19:18
    http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2015/10/16/01003-20151016ARTFIG00322-jerusalem-la-france-reclame-des-observateurs-sur-

    INFO LE FIGARO - Les membres du Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies devront se prononcer, à la demande de la France sur l’envoi par l’ONU d’observateurs internationaux sur l’esplanade des lieux saints à Jérusalem.

    L’ambassadeur francais auprès des Nations unies a déposé ce vendredi soir à New York un projet de texte réclamant l’envoi d’observateurs internationaux par l’ONU sur l’esplanade des lieux saints à Jérusalem.

    Ce document doit être débattu dans les prochaines heures par les membres du Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies. S’ils parviennent à un consensus, ce texte pourrait faire l’objet d’une déclaration endossée par le président du Conseil de sécurité.

    « Il s’agit de mettre en place des observateurs indépendants capables de recenser d’éventuelles violations du statu quo », précise une source informée de ces démarches. Mais un responsable israélien précise : « Un tel dispositif est à nos yeux inenvisageable. »

    Les tensions autour de l’esplanade des mosquées ont contribué à provoquer une vague de violences au cours de laquelle sept Israéliens et trente-cinq Palestiniens ont perdu la vie depuis le 1er octobre.

    ““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““
    Israel and U.S. Cooperating Against French Bid for Int’l Presence on Temple Mount

    ’The French proposal is completely absurd,’ senior Israeli official says of draft for UN Security Council presidential statement calling for observers to be deployed on Temple Mount.
    Barak Ravid Oct 17, 2015 6:19 PM
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.680872

    Israel, the United States and other countries are working together to remove from the agenda a French draft for a UN Security Council presidential statement calling for international observers to be deployed on the Temple Mount, senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office said Saturday.

    “The French proposal is completely absurd,” a senior Israeli official said, noting that it is only a declarative step.

    According to the official, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen and the Foreign Ministry to protest the biased and absurd phrasing of the draft to France.

    “We expect the French to condemn the Waqf’s incompetence on the Temple Mount,” the official said, referring to the Muslim religious trust. “Those who brought in bombs and fired firecrackers were the Palestinians, who turned the Temple Mount to a terrorist storeroom and it is they who tried by that to change the status quo.”

    The Israeli official stressed that Israel is safeguarding the status quo and is committed to it. According to him, Jews are allowed to visit the site only according the status quo. He added that according to the 1949 armistice agreement, Jewish access to the Temple Mount was internationally guaranteed. “This right wasn’t realized until 1967,” the official said. “Israel is the one keeping the visits to the Temple Mount free. The torching of Joseph’s Tomb shows what would have happened to the holy sites if they weren’t under Israel’s control. Exactly what is happening in Palmyra in Syria and in Iraq.”

    France is pushing for a presidential statement on behalf of the UN Security Council that calls for the deployment of international observers to Jerusalem’s holy sites, notably the Temple Mount, to ensure the status quo is maintained, “Le Figaro” reported on Saturday, citing French diplomats.

    The presidential statement does not constitute a binding Security Council resolution, only serving as a statement of intent. 15 members of the UN Security Council need to consent in order for a presidential statement to be published. It remains unclear if France has managed to achieve such consensus.

    On Wednesday, Palestinian ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour called on the Security Council to adopt a resolution guaranteeing the safety and protection of Palestinians and Islamic holy sites in Jerusalem, similar to Resolution 904 adopted after the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre in 1994, which saw international monitors deployed in Hebron.

    Israel’s new ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said on Friday that Israel objects to any international involvement or oversight on the Temple Mount since it would violate the status quo. In light of Israel’s position, it’s hard to see how the U.S. could support the call for deploying international observers on the Temple Mount, even if this is only a declarative step.

  • http://forward.com/news/322355/despite-threats-the-oslo-pact-is-still-intact/ixzz3oSffv5k8?can_id=c04bd6c1866a7591ea05420e1dd77aec&source=email-what-wer

    When a frightening spate of terror attacks targeted Israelis in early October, the violence seemed to arrive right on cue: amid rising tensions over the Temple Mount, after the Israeli army’s killing of a young female student at a checkpoint and on the heels of dueling speeches by leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority at the United Nations General Assembly.

    The speech by P.A. President Mahmoud Abbas in particular dropped a “bombshell,” as he himself described it in the days before the address. In it, Abbas all but renounced the Oslo Accords, the seminal 1993 peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

    #israël #palestine #intifada

  • Otherwise Occupied Make East Jerusalem the Capital of Palestine
    Twenty steps that will reverse the situation – and be far less painful than the alternative
    Amira Hass Oct 12, 2015 9:26 AM

    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.679909


    Israel is like the miser who gradually reduced the fodder he fed his horse. It has perfected the policy of divide, crumble and conquer that it implemented against the Palestinians and did even better when it cut off the capital – East Jerusalem – from its people. Like that miser, Israel thought this would work and earn it a place in the Guinness Book of colonial successes.
    But the horse died and Jerusalem’s Palestinians are rebelling. The miser is shocked. How did the horse die just as it was getting used to not eating? Many Israelis are reeling. Where did this violence come from?
    Official spokesmen have succeeded in confusing public opinion. “The Palestinians in East Jerusalem don’t want to live under the Palestinian Authority, a sign that our rule is good for them,” they said. “They want the National Insurance payments and health insurance,” those in the know boasted to journalists. Those in the know, of course, never add that Israel bears direct criminal responsibility for the impoverishment of the Palestinians in the annexed city and for turning them into welfare cases.
    “The Palestinians in Jerusalem want citizenship because Israel is terrific,” they said, as they released numbers of those applying, but avoided one simple fact: Jerusalem Palestinians seek citizenship to assure they won’t be expelled from their country and hometown.
    The miser thought that Jerusalem, out of sight and blocked to visitors, would be forgotten by the rest of the Palestinians. The miser is wrong. If Israeli Jews want to stop the disaster brewing in Jerusalem and elsewhere, they must demand that the Israeli government:
    Immediately launch an investigation into last week’s killing of Fadi Alun of Isawiyah, who was shot to death by an unidentified policeman when he was lying wounded on the ground.
    Stop the armed police raids of neighborhoods like Isawiyah and Jabal Mukkaber, and stop beating residents and spraying their homes with foul-smelling water.
    Cancel all the entrance restrictions for Palestinians to Jerusalem’s Old City and the Al-Aqsa compound.
    Order the police to stop giving traffic tickets to Palestinians for reasons they would never use to issue them to Jews.
    Cancel the ban on the Morabiton and Morabitat (Islamic Movement guards on the Temple Mount) and cancel the prohibition on Palestinians, including MKs, to shout and curse.
    Release Palestinian demonstrators arrested over the past year (who are not suspected of using deadly weapons, or murder or attempted murder).
    Cancel the policy of house demolitions as a collective punishment and immediately compensate those who have been its victims.
    Immediately initiate amendments to the entry residency laws that would make it clear that Jerusalemites can never have their residency revoked, even if they live outside the city.
    Immediately restore residency status to the some 14,000 Jerusalemites (and their descendants) who have had it revoked since 1967.
    Cancel all the demolition orders issued against Palestinian homes that were built in the city without permits.
    Restore to East Jerusalem all the lands expropriated from it or allocate comparable tracts of land to replace those allocated to settlements (i.e. “Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem”).
    Begin to plan Israeli-financed public housing projects for Palestinians under the guidance of Palestinian planners, sociologist and social activists.
    Expropriate “Sharon House” in the Old City’s Muslim Quarter and turn it into the headquarters for the planners of the above-mentioned housing program.
    Immediately begin repairing infrastructures and buildings in East Jerusalem, and improving municipal services there.
    Order the removal within a year of nationalist, zealous settlers and their institutions from the Old City and other East Jerusalem neighborhoods, because of the risk they pose to public safety and to law and order in the entire area.
    Open Orient House so it can serve as the city’s PLO headquarters.
    Apologize for 50 years of expulsions, discrimination, humiliation and impoverishment.
    Declare that all these steps are a prelude to demolishing the wall that separates the West Bank from East Jerusalem.
    Declare that the settlement enterprise is a national disaster that threatens the wellbeing of the land and its two peoples. Announce a five-year plan for bringing the West Bank settlers back home, or turning them into law-abiding citizens with no excessive rights in the Palestinian state, subject to that state’s consent and the criminal records of the settlers in question. This would include the settlers in Jerusalem’s Old City and in Hebron. Similarly, declare that all the communities where settlers live will be open at no cost to any Palestinian who chooses to live there, as part of a plan of compensation and reparations.
    Declare that all these steps are in preparation for turning East Jerusalem into the capital of the Palestinian state, following accelerated negotiations on a tight timetable of withdrawals.
    Delusional? Actually, all this would be far less painful than the destruction of this land and the two peoples who live in it

  • Netanyahu: At UN, I Will Stress Israel’s Desire for Peace With Palestinians - Diplomacy and Defense - Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.678032

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said before flying out to New York for the UN General Assembly that he intends to “highlight Israel’s desire for peace with the Palestinians” during his Thursday speech and his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday. Netanyahu also said he will urge the Palestinians to stop inciting unrest on Temple Mount.

    “I will stress that unfortunately, the Palestinians continue to spread blatant lies about our policy on Temple Mount, and I will demand an end to this wild incitement,” he said upon arriving at Ben-Gurion International Airport. “Israel is committed to the status quo, which it maintains. The Palestinian rioters who bring weapons to Temple Mount are the ones who harm the holy place and are the ones violating the status quo.”

    Netanyahu said that in his speech, he would discuss Israel’s policy in light of the situation in Syria and the threats on Israel’s northern border. He added that he intends to explain what Israeli citizens feel after the nuclear agreement with Iran, and what Israel expects from the international community in the wake of that agreement.

    avec une image ?