https://www.972mag.com

‘Sorry Mohammad’: What’s behind Ben Gvir’s apartheid honesty?
▻https://www.972mag.com/ben-gvir-sorry-mohammad-apartheid

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Ben Gvir is no outlier […]. He is the natural conclusion of the many decades throughout which the Zionist project has subjugated and dispossessed, ghettoized and divided — and after which Palestinians have still refused to bow their heads or leave.

#sionisme

Under settler terror, Palestinians tear down and flee their village
By Basel Adra. May 25, 2023
►https://www.972mag.com/ein-samia-settler-violence

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The 27 Palestinian families who lived in the small village of ‘Ein Samia, located northeast of Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, finally made the painful decision to leave their homes of more than 40 years after months of escalating Israeli settler violence. Some of the families said they were moving west to the village al-Majeer, while others told +972 they didn’t yet know where they were going.

On Tuesday, in the now depopulated village, I saw dozens of residents, most of them women, under the blazing sun, destroying their houses with their own hands. I had never witnessed anything like it, and I wasn’t sure what to say to them. (...)

#Nettoyage_ethnique #Ein_Samia

Where can we Palestinians mourn our catastrophe?
▻https://www.972mag.com/palestinians-nakba-day-germany

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For the second year in a row, the Berlin police preemptively banned all #Nakba commemorations and demonstrations, surpassing the upswing in violent policing tactics being reported elsewhere in Western Europe, including the U.K. The ban was implemented on the basis that the Nakba Day events posed an “immediate danger” of antisemitism and the glorification of violence.

“#nos_valeurs”

Germany’s anti-Palestinian censorship turns on Jews
▻https://www.972mag.com/german-jews-antizionism-censorship

En tant que militant d’une cause qui a besoin d’être portée à l’attention du grand public tu ne dois jamais mentionner Israël ou la cause palestinienne. En Allemagne toute affirmation publique sur ce sujet est jugée suivant le dogme qui fait de la défense de l"état juif la raison d’être de l’état et de la société allemande. Nous sommes proches d’une situation comme celle pendant l’époque du macarthysme dans le pays de notre grand frère et allié américain. Notre anticommunisme profond fait d’ailleurs bon ménage avec notre zèle zioniste.

Cet article décrit le sort de quelques dissidents victimes de notre philosemitisme fanatique.

April 4, 2023, by Hebh Jamal - Over the last few years, the space for Palestine advocacy in Germany has shrunk. Pro-Palestinian speech is reflexively labeled as antisemitic and, following the passage of the anti-BDS resolution in the German parliament in 2019, federal institutions have begun declaring all actions that support the boycott movement as antisemitic. This has allowed universities, state governments, and public institutions to deny Palestinians the right to free speech and assembly.

Moreover, the 2019 resolution also dramatically expanded the scope of what is deemed antisemitic — and, while it is not legally binding, many officials use it as the standard by which they determine what is and is not antisemitism. And while this policy was previously deployed almost exclusively against Palestinian Germans, Germany’s attempt to preserve its allegiance to the State of Israel has moved it to target a new and unexpected group: Jews in Germany who are critical of the apartheid state.

Wieland Hoban, a composer and academic translator who is also the chairman of Jüdische Stimme, an anti-Zionist Jewish organization, told +972 that he has seen a surge in the targeting of Jews who do not agree with Germany’s adamantly pro-Israel stance. “While Germans and state institutions are comfortable defaming and slandering Palestinians, we are getting to a point where even non-Jewish people will just flatly call Jews antisemites,” he said. “That’s a new level reached in the last couple of years.”

Anti-Zionist Jews are facing a torrent of attacks and various levels of censorship due to their solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Differences of political opinion on Israel-Palestine are discouraged, even threatened. The consequence is a twisted situation in which the state decides what is antisemitic and offensive to Jews — and Jews themselves are often the target.
‘If you don’t fall in line on Israel, you don’t belong’

In January of this year, Adam Broomberg, a Jewish South African artist who is now based in Berlin, faced a series of accusations and attacks by Hamburg’s commissioner on antisemitism, Stefan Hensel, due to Broomberg’s support for Palestine. Speaking with the right-wing German media outlet Jüdische Allgemeine, Hensel described Broomberg as someone who “repeatedly defames Israel as an apartheid state and advocates a boycott against Israel,” “seems to hate Israel,” and “does not shy away from legitimizing terror against Jews.”

Hensel attacked Broomberg in conjunction with members of the Indonesian art collective ruangrupa, Reza Afisina and Iswanto Hartono, who are now guest professors at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts, where Broomberg has also taught. The group had previously been denounced over its role in a prestigious German art festival that hosted Palestinian artists.

Broomberg told +972 that, having grown up as a Jew in apartheid South Africa, he has understood the impact of apartheid since he was a teenager. “In school I was told every day that if apartheid ended in South Africa, it would lead to the end of the existence of white people in South Africa,” he said. “Similarly, while attending a religious-Zionist school, I was told that Zionism would ensure the survival of the Jewish people. They both used the same strategies to justify their existence, and both of these myths started to fall apart for me at the same time. So my support for Palestine isn’t something that just occurred to me. I am 52, and this happened at the age of 15.

“I don’t feel safe [here],” Broomberg continued. “I really need to stress this. It’s a very strange, surreal experience to feel that level of insecurity in Germany as a Jew, given I just buried my mother who had such first-hand experience of the Holocaust.”

In addition to state pushback, Broomberg is facing cultural consequences for his political stance as well. Broomberg spoke with Berliner Zeitung, the major German publication, about the attacks by Hensel, but the story ended up not running, without any explanation. Broomberg explained to +972 that he felt that he was not even allowed to defend himself in the court of public opinion. “I found myself almost in a boxing ring alone, fighting my shadow — this is what it means to be gaslit,” he said.

Broomberg’s experience is not unique. Last summer, Jüdische Stimme, the Jewish anti-Zionist group, helped organize a vigil in Berlin for Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian-American journalist shot dead by Israeli forces; however, the event was prevented from going ahead due to the blanket ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations during the Nakba anniversary. Despite the ban, however, Jewish protestors found a way to join brief Palestinian flash mobs. Some were detained and fined.

“[This ban] was the most extreme position that the state has taken by far,” Hoban, the chair of Jüdische Stimme, said. “Even if it is against Jews themselves, the state and the right-wing press imply that if you don’t fall in line regarding the position on Israel, then you don’t belong in this country.”
Silencing tactics

The Jewish community in Germany is unusual: most are not originally German. The vast majority of ethnically German Jews escaped or were killed during the Holocaust, and a majority of Jews living in Germany today are displaced refugees from Eastern European countries and the former Soviet Union.

Many, however, are also coming from Israel and settling mostly in Berlin. Yossi Bartal, an Israeli journalist and activist now living in the German capital, told +972 that many of these Israeli immigrants are secular leftists who are not considered part of the Jewish community.

“There is a clash over who is ‘inside the Jewish community,’” Bartal explained. “Foreign Jews like myself, who are German citizens but migrated from Israel, are not official members of the Jewish community here, which is [largely] organized through religious bodies like synagogues. So there’s a very different concept of what constitutes ‘community’ here.” The particular definition of the Jewish “community” has a strange effect: according to Bartal, “there are more Israelis in Berlin than there are members of the ‘Jewish community.’”

While the institutional Jewish community is consulted on matters of antisemitism by state bodies, these left-wing secular Jews are not. Moreover, Israeli Jews who consider themselves anti-Zionist can even be branded as antisemitic if their politics do not align with the German state’s staunch pro-Israel stance.

The story of Shir Hever, an Israeli-born political economist now based in Germany, exemplifies this process and the censorship it inevitably leads to. Last December, Hever was invited to give a talk on child labor in Palestine at a local chapter of the Education and Science Workers’ Union (GEW).

A week before the event, however, the GEW chapter canceled Hever’s talk after the office of the state’s antisemitism commissioner, Michael Blume, sent a discreet letter to the chair of the nation-wide GEW, Monika Stein. GEW refused to show the letter to Hever, but it was later leaked; it noted that Hever “actively supports the BDS movement, which is represented in various lectures and statements,” and added that Blume, who “has been asked to look into BDS activities and raise public awareness of anti-Israel acts and to clarify antisemitic positions,” wanted to “discuss the mentioned lecture with the [GEW chair].”

Later, Stein removed a discussion of the decision to cancel Hever’s talk from a GEW staff meeting agenda, under the pretext that there was a “legal dispute.” In a statement to +972, a GEW spokesperson, Matthew Schneider, confirmed that although the local GEW chapter was ultimately responsible for canceling the event, the decision was nonetheless supported by Stein, the chair of the union as a whole. GEW has refused to give Hever his promised compensation.

“Dr. Blume [the state antisemitism commissioner] sends letters about German citizens whose opinions he does not like, and he wants to prevent them from being allowed to speak publicly on a lecture that has nothing to do with his responsibilities,” Hever told +972. “If a government official disagrees with our opinion, he can send secret letters to our business partners, to our employers, behind our back. I’m not the first, and probably won’t be the last, to be silenced by this tactic. Germany is generally a democratic country — but when it comes to Israel and when it comes to Palestine, this becomes increasingly unclear.”

Responding to +972’s request for comment, Blume justified his actions with recent anti-BDS legislation. “Our State Parliament — the Landtag of Baden-Württemberg — voted against the antisemitic BDS Movement and tasked me with preventing the spread of its messages,” he said.

Blume went on to make claims about the harmful effect of BDS on global politics. “As a democrat, a scholar and a Christian married to a Muslim, I think it is insane for Muslims, Christians, Jews, adherents of other and no religions in the Eurasian region [to support BDS]. In order to survive in times of global warming and water shortage, they should cooperate, as with the Abraham Accords, for their shared fate and survival. BDS is only strengthening extremists on all sides.”

As antisemitism commissioner, Blume has a long history of shutting down activities that might be sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, including targeting other pro-Palestinian speakers, and even canceling a Nakba exhibit under the premise that it promotes “hatred of Jews.”

Blume, who is not Jewish, is authorized as commissioner to determine what is and what is not antisemitic. The result of his appointment, and that of many other antisemitism commissioners in Germany, is that a German Christian is regularly accusing Israeli Jews of antisemitism for expressing their political beliefs.

Conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism

Bartal, the Israeli-born journalist and activist, believes this phenomenon is a necessary part of the German policy of unequivocal support for the Jewish state. “If you want to continue to support Israel, you have to take positions of the extreme right, because there is no other position,” he said. “The two-state solution is dead, and Israel is in clear violation of international law, but it doesn’t matter — any of us Jews who disagree and take a stand are sidelined.

“The beauty of Jewish culture, discourse, and politics is the fact that we don’t all have the same opinion,” Bartal said. “The fact that all of these things are offensive to Germans is inherently anti-Jewish. Jewish life is not necessarily going to be what you want it to be, and accepting that is a very important part of fighting antisemitism.”

The accusations made against Jews are rooted in Germany’s insistence on conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The Baden-Württemberg Public Prosecutor’s Office, for example, charged a man with hate speech and fined him 2,700 euros for chanting “Israel kills children!” at a demonstration in May 2022. In official court documents made available to +972, the public prosecutor justified the reasoning behind the decision by specifically conflating Jews with the State of Israel: “Your listeners are people who are ‘on the side of Palestine’ who incite hatred against Jews living in Germany.”

The document continues: “You were also aware that this slogan was particularly relevant in the prevailing heated mood and was likely to agitate the mental climate. The choice of words ‘kill children’ suggests that Jews would deliberately and purposefully kill children in a real conflict. In this context, ‘Israel’ was used as a targeted hate speech not only in Israel, but also, as a synonym, to mean the Jews living in Germany.”

Many of the Israeli Jews now facing legal and cultural repercussions for their criticism of Israel feel that Jewish identity is twisted so as to be weaponized against them. “The real Jews don’t matter,” Hoban said. “We’re just a signifier in their theoretical narrative, and they don’t believe that Jews hold different opinions and are autonomous actors who are not interested in appearing in this German film, where they have to play a part for the sake of the Germans. It’s narcissistic and ultimately all about the Germans.”

The self-serving nature of these accusations was on display in August of last year, when Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas made an insensitive comment about the Holocaust on his visit to Germany. The federal antisemitism commissioner, Felix Klein, condemned Abbas’s remarks — but not because it was offensive to Jews. “By relativizing the Holocaust, President Abbas lacked any sensitivity towards us German hosts,” Klein said.

“When [Klein] said ‘us,’ he meant Christian Germans,” Hever, the political economist, explained. “Their whole idea is capitalizing on their guilt and feelings, as if that Holocaust belongs only to Germans and nobody else.”

When Jewish identity isn’t ignored, it is flattened into support for the State of Israel — a stance that is rejected by a large number of Germany’s Jews. “I am a proud Jew and I am proud of the complexity of what a Jewish identity, or Yiddishkeit, is,” Broomberg, the artist, said. “I feel resentful that my identity has been narrowed down to the idea that if I’m a Jew, I need to pledge allegiance to the nation-state of Israel.”

#Israël #Allemagne #zionisme #BDS #censure #répression #antisemitisme

The Israeli Right’s historic ties to European fascism - +972 Magazine
▻https://www.972mag.com/an-alliance-of-hate-the-israeli-rights-ties-to-european-facism

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In the beginning of 1940, Avraham Stern, the head of Lehi — a far-right, pre-state Zionist militant group — believed that the Second World War was a historic, revolutionary opportunity to find an ally to replace Great Britain. Lehi’s newspaper wrote that “sacrificing victims on the altar of democracy on the one hand, while getting rid of the Nazi regime on the other — neither are part of the Jews’ war.” The organization then sent Naftali Lubintsky to Beirut to meet with a Nazi representative who proposed an alliance between the two groups.

The struggle brewing inside Israel’s anti-government movement
By Haggai Matar | January 12, 2023
▻https://www.972mag.com/israel-anti-government-struggle-palestine

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Almost two years ago, on the eve of the March 2021 election, Israel’s leading satirical television show “Eretz Nehederet” ran a sketch titled “Shauli’s Solution,” in which Shauli, a beloved character who represents the middle-class Israeli everyman sits down for an interview alongside his wife, Irena, to discuss the political deadlock that had sent the country to its (then) fourth election in two years. “We urgently need a civil war,” he says. “I say this with pain, but yes. There is simply no chemistry among the people. We cannot get along.”

Shauli details his plans for the war to come: “We all know how to fight. Everybody was in the army, everybody has the gear needed at home … Mizrahim should fight Ashkenazim, right-wingers against leftists, the rich against the poor, Haredim against secular Israelis — I don’t care … Except for the Arabs. We fought you guys for long enough and it brought us nothing. You sit this one out. If you want, you can fight the winner.”

The clip immediately went viral, with many feeling that, against the backdrop of a deeply polarized society and seemingly endless rounds of elections, “Eretz Nehederet” had tapped into something deeper that was coursing through Israeli society. Now, with the formation of the most far-right government in Israel’s history, the video is enjoying a revival.
(...)
This gap in attitudes toward the new government, and more broadly toward the entire nature of the regime, is deeply evident in the current protest movement. At Saturday night’s demonstration, several people carrying Palestinian flags or chanting anti-apartheid slogans were repeatedly reproached — and at times physically confronted — by other demonstrators for “diverting” the messaging from “defending Israeli democracy” to issues such as the occupation. When Odeh or Palestinian activists from Standing Together took to the stage, some yelled that they didn’t want Arabs in the demonstration, and that the occupation should play no part in the protest. The organizers doubled down on their commitment to a “home for all of us,” and clarified that the country they are fighting for is one without a military regime and racist discrimination. “This struggle is for all of us — against fascism,” Odeh told the crowd. “Arabs and democratic Jews together. There will be no democracy without solidarity.”

This coming weekend, a left-wing coalition led by Standing Together will demonstrate in the Bedouin city of Rahat, in an attempt to build shared Arab-Jewish resistance to the government around the country. Meanwhile, the “centrist” opposition parties will try to move the struggle away from any talk about apartheid, aiming to create a “broad common ground” for the fight ahead. Some in that bloc, such as the right-wing anti-Netanyahu politician Avigdor Liberman, announced they would not join the protest out of fear that some demonstrators will insist on anti-apartheid rhetoric, which will turn away these politicians’ base. Meanwhile, in the Knesset, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid admitted he was boycotting the Palestinian Hadash-Ta’al alliance and barring it from joining opposition meetings, accusing it of “working with Likud, not with the opposition.”

These divisions are the nascent movement’s Achilles’ heel — a struggle within the struggle to define where we go from here. So let’s be clear: a democracy for Jews only is no democracy at all, and a struggle to sustain the existing system of apartheid is both deeply immoral and will understandably continue to face resistance from Palestinians so long as it exists. Such a struggle is also self-defeating: in a deeply polarized society, where there is very little movement between the pro-Netanyahu and the anti-Netanyahu bloc, the only way to end the right’s rule — in simple mathematical terms, given the votes needed to form an alternative government — is through Jewish-Palestinian partnership. Since Palestinians cannot be expected to give up on their most basic rights, such a partnership will only arise if Jewish liberals are willing to abandon their privilege and supremacy, and join Palestinians in the demand for full equality, liberation, and democracy for everyone between the river and the sea. Without such an alliance, the Netanyahu-Ben Gvir camp could remain in power indefinitely.

Netanyahu rewrites history, again
By Natasha Roth-Rowland | December 24, 2022
▻https://www.972mag.com/edition/netanyahu-christmas-historical-revisionism

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Incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to advance his mission of retconning Jewish history, one century at a time. His latest efforts were, as usual, designed to paint Palestinians, and Arabs more generally, as responsible for the worst episodes of anti-Jewish oppression over the millennia, in an attempt to reframe Israeli abuses as acts of liberation.

In two recent interviews, one in Hebrew, one in English, Netanyahu proposes his own spin on a decolonial analysis of Israel-Palestine: rather than Palestinians being the victims of Israeli domination over the last 75 years, it has actually been the Jews who were historically the victims of Arab colonization. Speaking to the right-wing Israeli publishing house Sella Meir (which published Netanyahu’s new memoir), Netanyahu stresses that Jewish indigeneity in the land of Israel is akin to that of “the Indians… the Africans before the Belgians came… the Indonesians before the Dutch came.” This, by default, negates in perpetuity any Palestinian claims to the land, which Netanyahu insists belongs to Jews and Jews alone. “We were the natives,” he says, after having to ask his interviewer the Hebrew word for “natives.”

Netanyahu goes even further in his English-language interview with Jordan Peterson, the conservative Canadian psychologist, author, and self-appointed defender of Western masculinity. Not only, Netanyahu claims, did the Arabs conquer the Jews in their own homeland, but they actually outdid the Romans and the Byzantines, who had previously ruled the Holy Land. Sure, he concedes, the preceding empires “did a lot of bad things to us,” but they “didn’t really exile us, contrary to what people think.” Instead, Netanyahu continued, it was due to the Arab conquerors that “the Jews lost their homeland.”

Indeed, “the Arabs were the colonials, the Jews were the natives,” Bibi asserts, before deploying classic colonial tropes about the “barren” and “empty” land the Jews dreamed of coming home to, and where they “built farms, factories, and places of employment” upon their return. (Well-prepped as ever, Netanyahu also gives a shout-out to Christian Zionists for helping this dream become reality; no mention, however, is made of what European Crusaders did to Jews in the Holy Land and beyond.)

So far, so bullshit. Aside from the absurdity of presenting a fictionalized history of events 1,300 years ago in order to leverage grievances and justify present-day abuses, Netanyahu is effectively downplaying the ruination the Romans visited on Judea’s Jewish population. The destruction of the Second Temple, and the widespread death, displacement, and enslavement caused by the Roman siege and razing of Jerusalem, fundamentally and irrevocably altered Jewish identity and worship. The Roman destruction is considered one of the most formative and traumatic episodes in Jewish history that continues to be mourned today, and a watershed moment in the expansion of the diaspora.

Netanyahu also omits the inconvenient fact that it was in the wake of the Arab-Muslim conquest that Jews were, after centuries of exclusion under the Romans, finally permitted to live in Jerusalem once more. Meanwhile, even the most limited engagement with Palestinian history (imagine!) is sufficient to understand that there was farming and industry aplenty in Palestine, a land that was very much not empty before Zionism.

But possibly the most dangerous comment Netanyahu makes in the Peterson interview is about how, in the context of the alleged Arab expulsion, the Jews “were flung to the far corners of the earth, suffered the most unimaginable suffering, because we had no homeland.” In other words, Netanyahu is implying that Arabs bear overall responsibility for the devastations that primarily white Christians have visited on Jews in the diaspora over the centuries. If it weren’t for the Arabs, such logic goes, the Jews would have stayed in the Middle East — meaning that the Nazis, the Cossacks, the English, French, and Spanish royalty in the Middle Ages, and others would never have had the opportunity to become antisemites and act on their violent bigotry. (...)

#Sionisme #Falsification_historique

A l’intérieur du siège de Naplouse par les militaires et les colons - +972 magazine par Oren Ziv | mardi 25 octobre 2022 | Ahmad Al-Bazz, Meron Rapoport et Yuval Abraham ont contribué à la rédaction de cet article. | Traduction : AFPS

▻https://www.france-palestine.org/A-l-interieur-du-siege-de-Naplouse-par-les-militaires-et-les-colon

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Depuis trois semaines, la ville palestinienne et les villes voisines sont encerclées par les colons et les soldats israéliens, qui cible un groupe de résistance armée qui bénéficie d’un soutien massif malgré l’escalade de la violence et des privations quotidiennes.

source : ▻https://www.972mag.com/nablus-siege-lions-den-settlers-army

’Refusing is the minimum’: Why these Israeli teens are objecting to army service
By Oren Ziv | September 2, 2022
▻https://www.972mag.com/four-conscientious-objectors-israel-army

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On Sept. 4, four Israeli teenagers will arrive at the IDF Recruitment Center at Tel Hashomer in central Israel to announce their refusal to enlist in the army in protest of occupation and apartheid. Such a collective act by young conscientious objectors has become rare over the last decade.

One of the four, Shahar Schwartz, has already spent 10 days in military prison, after which he was released. The remaining three — Evyatar Moshe Rubin, 19, from Jerusalem; Einat Gerlitz, 19, from Tel Aviv; and Naveh Shabtay Levin, 18, from Hod Hasharon — will likely be sentenced on Sunday. (...)

Why are French Jews silent on the occupation?
▻https://www.972mag.com/french-jews-occupation-antisemitism

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Jewish institutional actors, official state discourse, and segments of the Jewish left all reproduce the narrative according to which French-Jewish safety and Palestinian liberation are fundamentally incompatible, undergirded by the idea that the very safety of Jews in France is predicated on Israel’s security.

According to this dominant mentality, naming and criticizing Israeli occupation and apartheid risks jeopardizing French Jews in a country whose political leadership still seeks forgiveness for its role in the Holocaust, and where institutional discourse shuts down any avenue for a simultaneous struggle for Jewish safety and Palestinian liberation.

The trip Biden should have taken, but didn’t | Rina Rosenberg
▻https://www.972mag.com/biden-israel-palestine-alternate-visit

What would the president’s itinerary look like if he decided to meet with Palestinians, including U.S. citizens, targeted by Israel’s policies? Source: En anglais

Palestinians in Germany fear new level of repression after Nakba Day crackdown
Claiming to fight antisemitism, Berlin police arrested 170 people for carrying flags and keffiyehs during a flash mob marking Palestinians’ mass expulsion.
+972 Mag | By Hebh Jamal May 21, 2022
▻https://www.972mag.com/berlin-palestinians-nakba-protest-police

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On May 12, days before Palestinians around the world marked the anniversary of the Nakba, Berlin police issued a blanket ban on all Palestinian protests and events slated to take place in the city over that coming weekend, deeming them “potentially antisemitic.”

Despite the ban, pro-Palestinian activists in Berlin, a city with a large Palestinian and Arab community, insisted on showing solidarity and commemorating the 1948 expulsion and ongoing denial of return to their homeland of over 700,000 Palestinians. By the end of the day, the city’s police had detained over 170 protestors and bystanders who came out to mark the Palestinian catastrophe.

The ban — which was appealed by two Palestinian groups, PalestineSpeaks and Samidoun, and upheld by the administrative court on the grounds they posed an “immediate risk” of antisemitic violence — came alongside the separate barring of a vigil in memory of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who eyewitnesses say was killed by Israeli snipers last week as she covered a military raid on Jenin Refugee Camp. The gathering was organized by Jüdische Stimme, a German-Jewish group that stands in solidarity with Palestine. (...)

Why is Israel’s antisemitism envoy sharing investigation files against a Palestinian child ?
By Oren Ziv - April 26, 2022 - +972 Magazine
▻https://www.972mag.com/tishby-palestinian-child-investigation

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Are Israeli security authorities handing over investigation materials to online hasbara stars in order to score points on social media? It certainly seems so.

Last Friday, Israeli actress Noa Tishby, who this month was appointed Israel’s first-ever special envoy for combating antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel, released a video on her personal Instagram account in response to a post by Palestinian-American supermodel Bella Hadid. Hadid had shared a story about Athal al-Azzeh, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy who was arrested two weeks ago by the Israeli army, who accused him of throwing stones — a charge Athal has adamantly denied. (...)

Who gets to speak out against their occupier on social media?
By Mona Shtaya March 22, 2022
▻https://www.972mag.com/social-media-ukraine-palestinians-meta

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(...) Censoring the occupied

Social media companies’ swift steps to protect Ukrainians’ free speech, especially in a time of war, was shocking to many Palestinians. Less than a year ago, during Israel’s attack on Gaza and the mass uprising in May, Palestinians turned to social media platforms to document human rights violations and disseminate their opinions with the aim of boosting and enriching the Palestinian narrative in the digital space, especially as that narrative rarely receives fair coverage in international mainstream media.

We Palestinians, however, never witnessed any of the measures taken by social media platforms for Ukraine. On the contrary, these platforms actively participated in a campaign of online repression last May that systematically targeted and censored Palestinian voices while taking down content that spoke out against Israeli oppression. This included removing on-the-ground documentation of police and settler assaults in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where families were being threatened with forced displacement, and in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli fighter jets were heavily bombarding two million besieged people. (...)

WATCH: The dark past and present of the Jewish National Fund - +972 Magazine
▻https://www.972mag.com/video-jnf-palestinians-israel

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Massive wildfires in the Jerusalem hills uncovered both the ecological dangers of the JNF’s afforestation project and the vestiges of Palestinian life from before 1948, which the organization deliberately buried under those forests after Israel’s founding.

#vol #vitrine_de_la_jungle #sionisme

Elderly Palestinian Man Dies From Serious Wounds
Jan 17, 2022 – – IMEMC News
▻https://imemc.org/article/elderly-palestinian-man-dies-from-serious-wounds

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The Palestinian Health Ministry has confirmed, on Monday morning, that an elderly man, who was seriously injured after an Israeli tow truck ran him over in the Um al-Khair area of Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron in the southern occupied West Bank, earlier this month, has succumbed to his injuries.

The ministry stated that Suleiman al-Hathalin, 75 , remained in the Intensive Care Unit at the al-Mezan Hospital in Hebron city until he succumbed to the serious wounds he suffered on January 5th, 2022.

Al-Hathalin, 75, a well-known activist from the Um al-Khair area was rammed with a military truck during nonviolent protests that took place after the soldiers invaded Masafer Yatta, causing him to suffer a critical skull fracture.

His injuries were extensive, largely to the head, chest, abdomen, and pelvis, medical sources at the al-Mezan hospital have confirmed.

Fuad l-Amour, the Coordinator of the Protection and Steadfastness Committees in Masafer Yatta, stated after the elderly man was rammed and seriously injured, the army invaded the area, accompanying a tow truck, and seized several Palestinian-owned vehicles, leading to protests.

He added that local Palestinians gathered in the area to stop the Israeli army from confiscating their privately-owned vehicles when the tow truck drove over Suleiman.

#Palestine_assassinée

Conscientious objector: ’I don’t want to wear a uniform that symbolizes violence and pain’
By Oren Ziv | September 1, 2021
▻https://www.972mag.com/conscientious-objector-shahar-peretz

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Shahar Perets, who was sentenced to prison for refusing to join the Israeli army, talks about meeting Palestinians for the first time, her visits to the West Bank, and how Israeli society represses the occupation.

Israeli conscientious objector Shahar Perets was sentenced to 10 days in military prison on Tuesday after announcing her refusal to join the Israeli army over its policies toward Palestinians.

Perets, 18, from the town of Kfar Yona, is one of the 120 teenagers who signed the “Shministim Letter” (an initiative with the Hebrew nickname given to high school seniors) in January, in which they declared their refusal to serve in the army in protest of its policies of occupation and apartheid. In June 2020, she was one of the 400 Israeli teenagers who signed a letter to the Israeli leadership demanding it halts its erstwhile plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank as part of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called peace plan.

On Tuesday morning, dozens of supporters, including Joint List MK Ofer Cassif, accompanied both Perets and conscientious objector Eran Aviv — who will enter his fourth stint behind bars — to the Tel Hashomer induction base in central Israel, where they both told the army they would not serve. Aviv has spent a total of 54 days in military prison for refusing to serve in the army, and was sentenced to an additional 10 days behind bars. After they are released, they will have to return to the induction base and repeat the process until the army decides to discharge them. Military conscription is mandatory for most Jewish Israelis. (...)

Inside Israel’s largest crackdown on Palestinian citizens in decades
By Suha Arraf and Baker Zoubi June 6, 2021
▻https://www.972mag.com/police-crackdown-palestinian-citizens-israel

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(...) Since the demonstrations began in Jerusalem and in so-called “mixed cities” last month, Israeli authorities have been waging a campaign of violence against Palestinian citizens of the state. After a ceasefire was reached with Hamas in Gaza, Israeli police launched a large-scale arrest operation dubbed “Law and Order.”

The police claim that the campaign’s goal is “to restore deterrence and increase governance in designated places in the State of Israel, along with maintaining the personal security of Israeli citizens.” But activists and lawyers say the operation is an attempt to suppress the current Palestinian uprising.

Since early May, Israeli police have arrested more than 1,900 people across the country, and another 348 since the ceasefire in Gaza. According to human rights groups, those who have been arrested are overwhelmingly Palestinian, with the number of Jewish detainees not exceeding 10 percent. Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai decided to extend the operation for another week.

Upon announcing the extension, Shabtai said the authorities have arrested hundreds of suspects and located dozens of weapons. “The purpose of the operation,” the police said in a statement, is to prosecute “those involved in the events, including for possession and trade in weapons, arson, property offenses, and belonging to criminal organizations.”

However, attorneys who are defending the detainees argue that there is no connection between the current operation and the fight against organized crime and the proliferation of illegal weapons in Arab society.

“From the beginning, it was clear that there was a policy of suppressing demonstrations,” says Janan Abdu, an attorney with the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, who is also part of a group of volunteer lawyers organized by the Palestinian legal center Adalah. Adalah had called on lawyers from all over the country to volunteer to track the arrests, and very quickly, a WhatsApp group was created for each Arab city and village. The initiative was joined by more than 150 attorneys, many of whom spent nearly a week with hardly any sleep. (...)

#Palestine48

Israel has a new ’good Arab’ in government
By Rami Younis - June 3, 2021
▻https://www.972mag.com/mansour-abbas-good-arab-israel

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After splitting from the Joint List ahead of the last Israeli election, the United Arab List (Ra’am), the Islamist party led by Mansour Abbas, ran a campaign that tried to market the party as “conservative” while concurrently offering a “new approach” to Arab politics in Israel. According to this “approach,” Ra’am could join any new Israeli government, regardless of whether it was left or right wing, even if it meant sitting with Kahanists in the same coalition. Ra’am’s break from the other three Arab parties in the Joint List, Abbas insisted, was set to be “historic.”

In exchange for said partnership and active support for this supposedly groundbreaking moment, the Islamist party promised its constituents several main outcomes. They included an unprecedented package of benefits in the form of large public budgets; a government plan to fight raging crime and murder rates within Palestinian communities in Israel; the recognition of unrecognized Palestinian Bedouin villages in the Naqab/Negev desert; and the abolition of the discriminatory Kaminitz Law, which threatens to demolish thousands of Arab homes for being built without permits that would never be granted in the first place. In other words, Abbas was willing to sell out the united Palestinian political front for the basic rights his community should already be entitled to.

As for Israel’s siege on Gaza, attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque, the expansion of West Bank settlements, or the Judaization of binational cities in Israel? According to Abbas’ approach, these are not issues he needs to solve. (...)

#Ra’am #Mansour_Abbas

Israeli Soldiers, Settlers, Killed Ten Palestinians In West Bank
May 14, 2021
►https://imemc.org/article/israeli-forces-kill-6-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-on-friday

Israeli soldiers killed, Friday, nine Palestinians and injured dozens, while paramilitary colonialist settlers also killed a young man, in several parts of the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry has reported and added that more than 500 Palestinians have been injured.

The soldiers invaded the northern West Bank city of Nablus, in addition to Sbeih Mountain, and the villages of Salem and Asira al-Qibliya, east of Nablus, and Orif village, south of the city, killed four Palestinians and injured dozens during ensuing protests.

Media sources said the soldiers killed Dr. Issa Barham , 40, a District Attorney with the Palestinian Public Prosecution Department, in Abu Sbeih Mountain in his town of Beita, southeast of Nablus.

In addition, medical sources said the soldiers shot, and seriously a young man, identified as Malek Hamdan , 22, with live rounds to the chest, before he succumbed to his wounds in a hospital in Nablus.

Malek, from Salem village near Nablus, was injured along with dozens of Palestinians during protests that took place after the soldiers invaded the village, and attacked protesters.

In addition, Israeli colonialist settlers from Yitzhar illegal colony, infiltrated into the eastern area of Nablus, leading to protests, before the soldiers invaded it and shot two young men with live rounds in the abdomen and legs; one of them suffered a serious injury.

The soldiers also killed Husam Asayra , 20, with a live round to the chest, during protests that took place after the soldiers invaded Asira al-Qibliya village and attacked protesters.

In Orif village, the soldiers killed a young man, identified as Nidal Sayel Safadi , 30, after shooting him with a live round, after several army jeeps invaded the village, and attacked protesters.

In Ramallah, in central West Bank, the soldiers killed Mohammad Rawhi Hammad , 30, after he reportedly attempted to ram soldiers with his car. The Palestinian is from Silwad town, northeast of Ramallah.

The soldiers also killed Yousef Mahdi Nawasra , 27, from Fahma village, southwest of the northern West Bank city of Jenin, during protests near the Dothan Israeli military roadblock.

In Salfit, in central West Bank, the soldiers invaded Marda village, north of the city, and killed a young man, identified as Sharif Khaled Salman , 37, during protest that took place when the soldiers invaded the village, in addition to killing Awad Ahmad Harb , 27, in Iskaka village, east of Salfit.

Sharif had not been participating in protests, but was standing outside his home when he was shot by invading Israeli forces. His mother told reporters with Ma’an News Agency, “I cannot believe that Sharif was killed. Just hours ago, he woke me up from sleep to have coffee together. He left behind a pregnant wife and three daughters.”

As tears streamed down her face, she told reporters, “I asked him to drink coffee with me, to drink it together, and to close the door for fear that his children, and his sister’s children might go out to the street, because the army was out in the street, and our home is located near the main street of the village. I fell asleep while I waited for him to drink his coffee. I was awakened by the sound of gunfire and screaming. I did not know that the bullets were fired at Sharif, to end his life. The occupation deprived me of my son for no reason, just as it has deprived so many mothers.”

Furthermore, paramilitary Israeli colonists invaded, on Friday evening, the ar-Reehiyya village, south of the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and attacked dozens of residents, in addition to firing many live rounds at them, killing Ismael Jamal at-Tubasi , 23, with a live round to the head.

In Jericho, in northeastern West Bank, the soldiers killed Mohammad Adel Abu Shqeir , 20, from the al-Qasab neighborhood, during protests that took place at the entrance of the city.

In Tubas, in northeastern West Bank, the soldiers fired a barrage of gas bombs and concussion grenades at Palestinian protesters, causing many injuries, in addition to burning farmlands.

Protests also took place at the Tayasir military roadblock, near Tubas, before the soldiers fired live rounds, rubber-coated steel bullets, and gas bombs.

The soldiers also invaded the Al-Khader town, south of Bethlehem, and attacked Palestinians who marched near the al-Bawwaba area by the main Jerusalem-Hebron Road.

It is worth mentioning that the Health Ministry in the West Bank has reported more than 500 injuries among the Palestinians, including nine who suffered life-threatening wounds.

Updated:
Israeli Forces Kill 6 Palestinians in the West Bank on Friday
May 14, 2021, at 19:47 – – IMEMC News
►https://imemc.org/article/israeli-forces-kill-6-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-on-friday

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli troops invading the West Bank Friday killed 6 Palestinians and wounded 91. The invading troops shot live ammunition at Palestinians protesting the ongoing Israeli bombing of Gaza and takeover of Jerusalem. The soldiers killed two Palestinians in Salfit, one in Jericho, one in Ramallah, one in Nablus and one in Jenin.

The Israeli troops invaded various areas with armored vehicles and fully loaded automatic rifles and other weaponry. Palestinian villagers (who have no army) confronted them with stones, shouting and marching with a determination to remain on their land and stop the Israeli invasion of their land. Many were shot by the invading army.

Medical staff in the various treatment centers have reported the following injuries:

Ramallah: 15 injuries (2 serious)
Jericho: 3 injuries.
Nablus: 27 (5 serious)
Bethlehem: 5 injuries
Hebron: 8 injuries
Jenin: 8 injuries
Salfit: 8 injuries
Tulkarm: 12 injuries (1 serious)
Qalqilya: 5 injuries, including a critical one with live bullets in the main artery.

Most of those injured were shot by live ammunition.

One of those killed was the younger brother of a journalist with Ma’an News Agency, identified as Issa Barham . Issa was shot by Israeli forces during an invasion of the “Jabal Sabih” area, south of the town of Beita, in the Nablus District. He was struck with four bullets in his body, and arrived at a hospital in Nablus, where he was pronounced dead soon after.

The head of Urif village council, Mazen Shehadeh, confirmed that the two Palestinians killed in the Salfit District were from the villages of Marda and Sakaka, respectively. The one from Sakaka has not yet been identified, but is believed to be in his twenties. According to Shehadeh, the two were shot by Israeli forces in separate incidents in the two villages. They were taken separately to the Salfit Governmental Hospital, where they were pronounced dead.

The man killed in Marda was a 37-year old father of three, identified as Sharif Suleiman, 37. He had not been participating in protests, but was standing outside his home when he was shot by invading Israeli forces. His mother told reporters with Ma’an News Agency, “I cannot believe that Sharif was killed. Just hours ago, he woke me up from sleep to have coffee together. He left behind a pregnant wife and three daughters.”

As tears streamed down her face, she told reporters, “I asked him to drink coffee with me, to drink it together, and to close the door for fear that his children and his sister’s children might go out to the street, because the army was out in the street, and our home is located near the main street of the village. I fell asleep while I waited for him to drink his coffee. I was awakened by the sound of gunfire and screaming. I did not know that the bullets were fired at Sharif, to end his life. The occupation deprived me of my son for no reason, just as it has deprived so many mothers.”

In Jenin, the Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the person killed in the protests as Yusef Atatreh , 25. He was killed by live ammunition fired by Israeli soldiers at the Dotan military checkpoint in the Jenin governorate.

Mahmoud Al-Saadi, the head of ambulance and emergency in the Palestinian Red Crescent in Jenin, reported that Atatreh, from the village of Al-Tarm, was pronounced dead shortly after his arrival at Jenin Governmental Hospital. He was killed by a bullet that penetrated the main artery in his leg.

In Hebron, 26-year-old, Ismail Jamal Al-Toubasi , was killed and 4 Palestinians were wounded when they tried to repel the invading Israeli army in the Al-Rayyah area and the Fur refugee camp, south of Hebron.

His body was transferred to Abu Al-Hassan Al-Qassem Hospital in Yatta. (...)

#Palestine_assassinée