ISRAEL, PALESTINE, GAZA. . . and the US

 

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Israeli  ‘callous indifference’ in attacks on family homes in Gaza

Israeli forces have killed scores of Palestinian civilians in attacks targeting houses full of families which in some cases have amounted to war crimes, Amnesty International has disclosed in a new report on the latest Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip. Families under the Rubble: Israeli attacks on inhabited homes details eight cases where residential family homes in Gaza were attacked by Israeli forces without warning during Operation Protective Edge in July and August 2014, causing the deaths of at least 104 civilians including 62 children. The report reveals a pattern of frequent Israeli attacks using large aerial bombs to level civilian homes, sometimes killing entire families. “Israeli forces have brazenly flouted the laws of war by carrying out a series of attacks on civilian homes, displaying callous indifference to the carnage caused,” said Philip Luther, Director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Amnesty International. More

 

Gaza Cut Off From All Sides As 'Collective Punishment' Deepens

Despite widespread calls for increased humanitarian aid and economic activity, the approximately 1.8 million people living in the Gaza Strip have been further isolated from the outside world following Israel's closure Sunday, and Egypt's closure last week, of border crossings into the Palestinian territory. The Israeli Defense Ministry stated Sunday it has closed its Erez and Kerem Shalom crossings to Gaza in response to a single rocket fire from Gaza, which resulted in no injuries, deaths, or damages. Gisha, a legal center that advocates for Palestinian freedom of movement, reported Monday that both passages remained closed for a second day, save for extremely limited transport of fuel in and medical patients.

The U.S.-backed Egyptian government last week shut the Rafah crossing into Gaza and commenced destroying Egyptian nearby homes to create a so-called "buffer zone" along the border.   More

 

Israeli Cease Fire Violations and Media Propaganda

After Israel assassinated 6 Hamas members in July, Hamas responded with rocket fire into Israel. U.S. officials unanimously proclaimed that Israel had a right to defend itself. The press uncritically repeated these assertions, despite no such self-defense justification existing in international law.  Israel went on to carry out the slaughter of 2,150 Palestinians, including 578 children. Civilians accounted for at least 70% of all Palestinian deaths. On August 26, 2014 after the conclusion of Protective Edge a new cease fire was reached that called for cessation of hostilities, opening all crossings to Gaza, and permitting fishing for a distance of six nautical miles, increasing up to 12 miles. Since then, Israeli cease fire violations have been an almost daily occurrence.  More

 

Rejectionism from a Minister in the Israeli Government. .

FOR ISRAEL, TWO-STATE IS NO SOLUTION

Israel cannot withdraw from more territory and cannot allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank. If we were to pull out of the West Bank, the entire country would become a target for terrorists who would be able to set up rocket launchers adjacent to the Old City of Jerusalem and on the hills above the runways of Ben-Gurion International Airport and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.  Take the Jordan Valley. The Palestinians demand that Israel withdraw from this narrow piece of land, which borders Jordan. But if we do so in today’s climate, we potentially open the door for the Islamic State and other extremists to flood into the new Palestinian state. We cannot take that risk.  More

 

The Peace Process Hustle

An intractable process, one that never seems to resolve itself, is either no process at all or a fraudulent one contrived to hide an ulterior motive. The so-called Israeli-Palestinian (at one time the Israeli-Arab) “peace process,” now in its sixth decade (counting from 1948) or fourth decade (counting from 1967) is, and probably always has been, just such a fraud.  More

 

Israel moves to outlaw Palestinian political parties in the Knesset

The Israeli parliament voted overwhelmingly last week to suspend Haneen Zoabi, a legislator representing the state’s large Palestinian minority, for six months as a campaign to silence political dissent intensified. The Israeli parliament, or Knesset, voted by 68 to 16 to endorse a decision in late July by its ethics committee to bar Zoabi from the chamber for what it termed “incitement.”  It is the longest suspension in the Knesset’s history and the maximum punishment allowed under Israeli law… But Zoabi is not the only Palestinian representative in the firing line. Earlier this year the Knesset raised the threshold for election to the parliament, in what has been widely interpreted as an attempt to exclude all three small parties representing the Palestinian minority. One in five citizens of Israel belong to the minority.  More

 

A Small Band of Activists Is Humiliating an Israeli Shipping Giant

Capping a series of victories by a modest band of pro-Palestinian activists, an Israel-based shipping company has re-routed a container ship from the Port of Oakland, where protestors had vowed to keep the ship from unloading, to an alternate destination in Russia. The company, Zim Integrated Shipping Services is one of the largest cargo shipping outfits in the world, but of late it has seen its operations seriously disrupted by a small group of activists motivated by the global Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement (BDS), which targets companies implicated in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories. Zim is an Israel-based company, and the “Block the Boat” movement – a combined effort of labor activists and Palestinian solidarity groups – has successfully stopped its ships from docking at Oakland ports several times since this summer.  More

 

Pentagon Praises, Aims to Copy Israel Tactics in Gaza

The United States sent a team of senior officers to Israel three months ago to learn from Israel's tactics in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza over the summer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said on Thursday. Dempsey praised the IDF for taking "extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties" in its war against Hamas. The militant organization, Dempsey said, "had become very nearly a subterranean society," burrowing underground and hiding amongst the civilian population.  More

 

WALT: Netanyahu's Not Chickenshit, the White House Is

News flash: Plenty of U.S. politicians -- including Bill Clinton -- have disliked Netanyahu intensely, and for pretty obvious reasons. He's smug, pretentious, bombastic, and plays fast and loose with facts (which hardly makes him unique among world leaders), and he sometimes treats U.S. officials with contempt. If you're Obama, Kerry, or one of their aides, and you've been working overtime trying to get a peace deal and save Israel from its suicidal settlements policy, and you get precisely zero help from Netanyahu and his lieutenants, a degree of irritation is to be expected… U.S. officials are prevented from taking this obvious step by the lingering political clout of AIPAC and other groups in the lobby. When they speak in public or on the record, they have to pretend that the "special relationship" is hunky-dory, even when it is obvious to even casual observers that it is not.  More

 

Tell Congress not to Reward Israel's Discrimination against U.S. Citizens

Having a U.S. passport doesn't protect you from Israel's brutality and discrimination, especially if you're a Palestinian-American.  Just ask Sandra Tamari, Nour Joudah, Tariq Abu Khdeir, or the family of Orwa Hammad.  Or ask journalist Rula Jebreal, who writes in The New York Times this week of her and her daughter being strip-searched at Ben-Gurion Airport.  For the past two years, in coordination with a nationwide network of organizations and activists, we helped stall AIPAC's top-priority legislation -- The United States-Israel Strategic Partnership Act.  The Senate version of the original bill would have rewarded Israel's discrimination against U.S. citizens, granting Israelis visa-free access to the United States while Israel continues to systemically mistreat and deny entry to Americans of Arab or Muslim heritage, or those who are critical of Israel's policies. 

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