Video: “I killed for you, with these hands,” Israeli soldier tells lawmakers
Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 1 December 2015
“I killed for you, with these hands! You say, ‘Terrorists with blood on their hands?’ I killed more than 40 people for you! I murdered!”
This stark admission was made by Ido Gal Razon, a former Israeli soldier, seen in the video above speaking to a committee of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, on 11 November.
Razon wasn’t expressing remorse for the killings, but complaining that he has not been offered treatment for the severe psychiatric impact the butchery he committed in service of Israel has had on him.
“No one gives me therapy, and I complain! I shout,” he says. “I pee at night from post trauma. He comes to me and says: ‘Why did you kill me? Why did you kill me?’”
It’s not clear who is haunting Razon at night, but he could be referring to any of the people he says he killed.
Razon says he was injured while a member of the 51st battalion of the Israeli army’s Golani Brigade when he took part in Operation Clear as Wine – an attack on Palestinians in the central Gaza Strip on 20 December 2007.
Indiscriminate shelling
According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Israeli forces carried out a major assault on al-Musaddar village and the adjacent Maghazi refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip on that day.
The attack left eight Palestinian resistance fighters dead and injured 21 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including several children.
Amid indiscriminate shelling of the area, the Israelis destroyed at least 10 homes and razed dozens of acres of agricultural land.
Palestinian relatives mourn over the body of Jihad Jaber, 18, at the al-Aqsa hospital in the central Gaza Strip’s Maghazi refugee camp on 20 December 2007.
Ismael MohamadUPI Photo The incursion began, according to Al Mezan Center For Human Rights, around noon, when an Israeli “special unit sneaked into middle Gaza area from the eastern border fence and headed to the west.”
The unit, of which Razon was presumably a member, “entered for one-and-a-half kilometers and reached the village of al-Musaddar in central Gaza.
Soldiers stormed six tall buildings and held their inhabitants [in] one room in each building.”
According to PCHR, 23 Palestinians were killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza that week, 10 of them in extrajudicial executions.
It was also the week that Palestinians were celebrating Eid al-Adha, the holiday marking the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca.
Such Israeli assaults, with high tolls of death, injury and destruction, were routine events in Gaza well before the even more massive assaults in December 2008, November 2012 and during the summer of 2014, which together claimed 4,000 lives.
“Kill and kill and kill” There is no doubt from watching the video that Razon was traumatized by the violence he took part in as a member of an invading, occupying force.
But there’s also no doubt that the victims of Israel’s war crimes have it much worse.
Watching Razon angrily talk about his psychological trauma recalls the words of Arnon Soffer, the Israeli academic and government advisor who helped plan for Gaza’s isolation in the early 2000s.
Soffer infamously said in 2004 that to keep Palestinians subdued and caged in Gaza, and thus preserve Israel as a Zionist “Jewish state,” it would have to “kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.”
“The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings,” Soffer added.
Ido Gal Razon is living proof that Zionism not only destroys Palestinians, but also those who are supposed to be its beneficiaries.
In a country where the government tightly controls social media posts and people have been arrested for being too outspoken about certain issues, many Saudis took to the internet to praise Hamas’s actions and denounce Israel.
Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel — which has left at least 1,500 people dead on both sides — effectively rules out any agreement between Israel and the Palestinian authorities that would help achieve Saudi Arabia’s objectives. That means any normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia is probably on hold for the foreseeable future.
Hamas’s attack “stalls Saudi Arabia’s stabilization and development plans” for the region, said Lina Khatib, director of SOAS University of London’s Middle East Institute.
That might actually be a lesser worry for MBS than how events have been playing out among the Saudi population.
In a country where the government tightly controls social media posts and people have been arrested for being too outspoken about certain issues, many Saudis took to the internet to praise Hamas’s actions and denounce Israel.
Othman Al-Khuwaiter, a Saudi energy sector expert and columnist based in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran, reveled in what he characterized as the humiliation of Israelis.
“God willing, this will be seared in their memories forever,” Al-Khuwaiter wrote. “They are under siege just when they thought they were masters in full control.”
At the start of the attack over the weekend, Saad Al-Bazei, a professor of English at King Saud University in Riyadh, hailed “the unprecedented and glorious achievements of the Palestinian resistance deep within Israel.”
Social media accounts of individuals that normally post every utterance by MBS and praise his every move were quick to hit back.
‘Grand Project’
“This is an attack on Saudi Arabia’s grand project for the Middle East and we must be in solidarity with the state of Israel,” Badr Al-Saadoun, a Riyadh-based lawyer, wrote on social-media site X.
The Saudi Foreign Ministry called for an “immediate end to escalation by both sides” but added that “the exploding situation” was a result of Israel’s “occupation and deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights and the systematic provocations against their sanctities.”
The statement was widely shared by Saudis defending Hamas’s actions.
Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank that has been involved for years in efforts to forge Saudi-Israeli normalization, said the statement angered many of Israel’s allies in the U.S. and prompted calls to Saudi officials in Riyadh and Reema bint Bandar, the Saudi ambassador in the U.S.
A spokesperson for the embassy said he couldn’t immediately comment.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed massive retaliation for Hamas’s actions, it would be unthinkable for MBS to deliver an Israel normalization deal to his people during carnage in Palestinian territories, Dubowitz said.
“This is very much what” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei “intended,” he said.
Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of Chechnya, has extended support to Palestine in a video message released.
In the message, Kadyrov expressed solidarity with Palestine and urged leaders of Muslim nations to form a coalition while appealing to their Western allies to avoid civilian casualties.
Kadyrov also offered to deploy Chechen units as peacekeepers to help “restore order”.
Gaza-based Hamas Palestinian resistance movement launched on Saturday a surprise operation in which its fighters infiltrated and controlled several Israeli settlements in Gaza envelope and fired thousands of rockets at Al-Quds and several Israeli cities.
The current reports show that at least 900 Israelis have died while another 2,400 have been injured in the ongoing Al-Aqsa flood operation.
First we have to remember that Saudi Arabia was created by the West. They do not lead the Arabs or the Muslims.
The United States is putting pressure on Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. But the outcome of such a deal may not be as advertised.
1. NORMALIZATION WOULD NOT PROMOTE PEACE OR STABILITY IN THE MIDDLE EAST.
First, normalization would not produce peace.
Proponents of a pattern of Israeli-Gulf normalization argue it will bring regional peace to the “world’s least peaceful region.”
However, none of the recent normalization treaties, including a potential Saudi-Israeli one, would address the “fundamental weaknesses” that cause violence and instability in the region, including in Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Saudi Arabia.
Over the past decade, the majority of Arab countries (including Saudi Arabia) have witnessed protests against oppressive and corrupt governance.
The same has been true in Israel and Palestine.
Many of these protests have been followed by state violence, and in some cases civil wars and foreign interventions, but the deep-seated inequities that have driven the protests have never been addressed, with the relative exception of Tunisia.
Arab regimes need U.S. and Israeli support to contain, instead of end, instability across the region.
Despite the veneer of peace offered by the recent normalization treaties, Saudi Arabia is expecting both the United States and Israel to upgrade their defense and security cooperation and for Washington to pay less attention to the end use of U.S. arms.
To fend off Iranian aggression, Saudi Arabia could definitely benefit from this upgraded cooperation as well as from Israel’s expertise in irregular warfare involving nonstate actors.
However, both Israel and Saudi Arabia have highly problematic records regarding the treatment of civilians in this kind of warfare.
This kind of cooperation doesn’t promise peace.
2. NORMALIZATION WOULD NOT ALWAYS ADVANCE U.S. INTERESTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST.
Second, a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia may not work entirely in the United States’ favor, because both countries want Washington to intervene beyond its remit.
Israel and Saudi Arabia’s interests in the region are not identical to those of the United States; in fact, Israeli and Saudi interests overlap in ways that U.S. interests do not.
Both have an interest in keeping the United States an active regional military hegemon, and as a result, they want to avoid, or at least hedge against, a U.S. military drawdown in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia and Israel want to see the United States use its military might to defeat, not just contain, the threat from Iran.
They both actively push for an all-encompassing and hard-to-get U.S.-Iran deal that conflates the U.S. priorities of halting Iran’s nuclear program and attacks on U.S. interests with countering Iran’s broader geopolitical expansion across the region.
However, Israel’s cyber and intelligence cooperation with Saudi Arabia means that the definition of terrorism is expanded to encompass nonviolent political opponents of the Saudi regime, who often also oppose normalization with Israel.
This expansion of the war on terrorism complicates the U.S. policy of reallocating resources to focus on “inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism,” and other long-neglected foreign policy priorities.
Meanwhile, both Israel and Saudi Arabia are expanding their relations with U.S. strategic competitors like Russia and China.
So far, this cooperation is limited and overwhelmingly economic. However, such collaboration is not always transparent and has the potential to spill over into larger intelligence and military cooperation.
By encouraging regional partners to normalize relations, Washington hopes to redistribute its defense burden among a more integrated defense network of regional allies.
But neither Israel nor Saudi Arabia, even with support from the United Arab Emirates, can lead the kind of regional security framework that the United States has in mind.
In addition to deeply rooted intraregional mistrust and competition, most countries disagree with the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Israel on how to deal with Iran.
3. NORMALIZATION WOULD NOT BOOST MODERATION OR LIBERALIZATION WITHIN SAUDI ARABIA.
Third, there is no credible proof that Saudi citizens are on board.
A new Saudi narrative portrays normalization with Israel as part of a new, moderate Saudi Arabia that is taking shape.
Normalization now would fit into Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s approach of “shock therapy” to signal to his domestic opponents and to the West that he will pursue whatever he sees as modernizing the country.
However, Saudi social actors have not demanded a relationship with Israel in the same way they have demanded other recent reforms, such as the empowerment of women or even the fight against corruption.
What is more, Palestine is not just a subject of distant high politics.
Palestine is also a subject of public discussions, and previously mobilization, in schools, media circles, nongovernmental organizations, public lecture halls, and mosques, including the Two Holy Mosques.
Normalization à la Trump would, in the public view, take the “Saudi Arabia of tomorrow” too far—similar to when Nicki Minaj was invited to perform in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques.
Both events are alien, and even disturbing, to the overwhelming majority’s value system.
Such actions that run against the tide of popular support discredit other promising and much-needed socioeconomic and religious developments in the kingdom.
They feed into the extremist narrative that the crown prince’s reforms are politically motivated against Islam.
Rushing any normalization with Israel politicizes the absolutely indispensable new Saudi discourse on religious tolerance.
What is more, Saudi citizens can spot the media’s backpedaling and official clerics’ efforts to legitimize a public relationship with Israel amid a crackdown on credible pro-Palestinian voices.
Nor is the public blind to contradictions in the Saudi narrative itself. Until recently, Saudi media figures and royal family members were still lambasting Saudi Arabia’s foes, Turkey and Qatar, for their own relationships with Israel.
Similarly, not all voices that denounce Palestinian leaders and put them in the same anti-Saudi camp as Iran, Turkey, and Qatar accept the narrative that Israel is the enemy of my enemy and hence my friend.
Relations with Israel will always remain hostage to the Saudi monarchy’s calculations of the necessities of regime survival.
In the event of normalization, every time the Israeli army uses excessive force or political change takes place in Palestine, public sympathy in Saudi Arabia for the Palestinian cause might force the Saudi regime to react accordingly, even if only symbolically.
4. PEACE WILL NOT BE WARM.
Fourth, normalization will not mean the two nations become friends.
A wave of Saudi writers, clerics, and pro-government social media accounts argue that Israel doesn’t threaten Gulf countries.
To the contrary, Palestinians, whom some call “ungrateful Arabs of the North,” have been accused of blackmailing Saudi Arabia and preventing it from putting its national interests first.
This narrative comes amid a state-sponsored campaign on Saudi national identity that puts Saudi identity before Arab or even Islamic identity.
It also argues that young Saudis, or Western-influenced, educated, and open-minded “new Saudis,” want relations with Israel.
However, it is not clear that this identity discourse is popular across Saudi society.
There has been pushback against the entirety of this hypernationalist argument—an argument that has taken over the Saudi social media landscape for the past three years.
It is worth noting that Saudi authorities’ low tolerance for any kind of dissent casts doubts on any assessment of Saudi public opinion, including the views of young people.
Further, Israel’s cyber and intelligence cooperation with the Saudi regime gives Saudi citizens a direct political stake in opposing closer relations with Israel beyond sympathy for the Palestinians—because such cooperation is already enhancing Riyadh’s abilities to monitor and police its own citizens.
It is no coincidence that official clerics’ new narrative on normalization is systematically linked to a reminder to Saudi citizens that they have a religious duty to leave politics to the ruler to whom they owe absolute obedience.
Perhaps the Saudi government’s existing control over the free flow of information leads it to monitor people-to-people and people-to-government relations with foreign countries—making organic normalization impossible.
5. NORMALIZATION WILL NOT PAPER OVER ALL OF SAUDI ARABIA’S TROUBLES IN WASHINGTON.
Fifth, there is a belief in Riyadh that good relations with Israel will repair the recent damage to the U.S.-Saudi relationship.
Israel has historically been a major source of the U.S. Congress’s and public’s opposition to deeper relations with Saudi Arabia, despite the kingdom’s significant leverage in policy circles.
However, this belief stems partly from a current misperception that Riyadh’s problems in Washington are the result of the Democrats’ bias against the country.
Those include, for example, investing in domestic rather than foreign bases of U.S. power, restoring the United States’ global leadership while reconfiguring the use of the military, and better balancing the United States’ liberal democratic values with its overseas interests.
All those issues will have an impact on the U.S. relationships with both Saudi Arabia and Israel.
6. NORMALIZATION WILL NOT NECESSARILY HELP MATTERS FOR SAUDI DOMESTIC POLITICS.
Sixth, the Saudi leadership may want more than just the traditional “high price”—the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in exchange for normalization—that the pro-Palestinian camps in Riyadh are discussing. The young Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, could use U.S. support against the many enemies he made on his way to the top, not only in Saudi Arabia but also in the United States.
Such support has a historically proven efficiency in the Gulf. In 1995, Washington’s support of the new and contested Qatari emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, was “crucial” for securing his power against domestic and regional foes. Sheikh Hamad built upon this support by implementing an agenda of liberalization and enhanced relations with Israel.
While not impossible, many conditions would have to be met in order to replicate this scenario. First, Trump, not Democratic nominee Joe Biden, would have to win the upcoming elections.
Second, he would need to keep his promise to support the Saudi leadership against domestic foes despite expert warnings not to meddle in Saudi domestic affairs, his own aversion to the Middle East’s turmoil, and his reductionist perception of the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia as a whole.
Third, the new Saudi leadership would need this support to last, including under any future Democratic administration.
LOOKING AHEAD
It is understandable that the United States and Israel want to formalize Saudis’ recognition of Israelis’ “right to have their own land.”
Because of their religious monuments, you know, they have real power.”
However, the three countries’ current policies risk depriving Saudi Arabia of the exceptional leverage over the Islamic world that comes with such status.
Saudi Arabia’s regional power doesn’t only stem from its economy.
Most importantly, it stems from the transnational acceptance of its influence and its ability to set trends beyond its borders.
The kingdom has spent a lot of money sustaining this transnational base.
When Riyadh’s policies appeal to popular beliefs, its soft power is doubled and its ability to influence other governments goes beyond its physical capacity to coerce them.
It is not in the interests of Washington, Tel Aviv, or Riyadh to push Saudi Arabia toward policies that would further challenge this kind of Islamic and pan-Arab leadership as well as domestic legitimacy.
Not only do such policies risk ceding the kingdom’s exceptional universal outreach to more hostile state and nonstate actors.
They would also waste Saudi Arabia’s ability to lead other Arab- and Muslim-majority states to normalize relations with Israel—when the time for a just, negotiated peace with the Palestinians does come.
My American-Palestinian cousins, the Awad family, have a routine for whenever they come to visit us in Jerusalem.
They try to avoid flying into Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv because if the Israelis refuse them entry – as happens to many Americans because of their national origin, religion, or public criticism of Israel – they would have to fly back all the way to the US.
Instead, they usually enter Palestine from Jordan through the King Hussein Bridge Border Crossing.
As an occupying power, Israel still operates the Palestinian side of this crossing.
So when entering the occupied West Bank through that crossing, the Awads still face the Israeli discriminatory practices, but at least if they get denied, it would mean just a return to Jordan.
My cousins also choose to travel via Jordan because they can leave their phones with relatives in Amman and not have to hand them over to the Israelis at the border.
Electronics get searched for – among other things – any criticism of Israel or support for the boycott movement, which immediately results in refusal of entry.
The Awads always bring an extra book or two to read and a spare deck of cards.
Once they arrive at the Israeli passport control and flash their US passport, they are almost always asked to wait a long time.
So they take out the books and the cards and enjoy their time until a random Israeli security officer decides whether they can enter their homeland or not.
Once the Awads cross the border, they know they are still not safe.
Discrimination against American citizens continues inside Palestine, where the Israeli occupation runs a vast network of checkpoints.
They say Israel is the only place in the ME where Christians can freely practise their faith apparently: pic.twitter.com/LeAzeo7XO6
They know, for example, that as Americans visiting Palestinian family members or friends, they may not be allowed to drive across a checkpoint together in the same car, as some of them may be ordered to disembark and not allowed to proceed.
They also know they are lucky not to have Palestinian documents.
If Americans who hold Palestinian IDs attempt to go to occupied Jerusalem to visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, they are stopped at one of the many checkpoints along the way and turned away.
These Americans also do not have the option to fly into Tel Aviv, as Palestinian ID holders are not allowed to use it.
There are myriad ways in which Americans can be denied entry or restricted in their travel while in occupied Palestine.
And they don’t have to be of Palestinian descent to face such mistreatment at the hands of the Israeli authorities.
Because of all these restrictions, when the Awads do make it to Jerusalem to visit us, it is a special joy for us because we know what they have had to go through to reach us.
I and my children, who are American citizens, know all too well Israel’s discriminatory policies.
Meanwhile, illegal Israeli settlers – regardless of whether they are American or not – are allowed to live on occupied land in Palestine, in violation of international law. And, of course, they are free to go wherever they want in occupied Palestine.
Despite Israel’s egregious record in discriminating against Americans, the Biden administration is about to admit it into the US Visa Waiver Program, which would allow Israelis to travel to the US without applying for a visa at a US embassy or consulate.
The visa waiver programme is a privilege reserved only for countries meeting federal statutory requirements including one known as “reciprocity”.
Reciprocity means that a US national should be treated the same way an Israeli national is treated when travelling to the US.
How Israel can possibly meet the reciprocity requirement when the US Department of State has long advised American travellers that they can expect to be discriminated against when travelling to Israel is hard to understand.
However, the current US ambassador to Israel Tom Nides, who is leaving his post in August, seems eager to gift Israel admission into the Visa Waiver Program.
He is set to oversee a one-month “trial period” starting July 1 during which Israeli authorities are supposed to allow Palestinian Americans to enter Israel and allow them to use the Tel Aviv airport.
How compliance during this one month will ensure that Israel will stop its discrimination against all Americans is unclear.
The Israeli government can simply restrain the border authorities for 30 days, pretend that they are changing their ways and once the visa waiver is granted, resume its odious policies.
The Israelis are well aware that the US government would rarely take away a benefit it has given to Israel because of the political costs it may incur.
So, the return of discrimination against American citizens at border crossings controlled by Israel is unlikely to result in its suspension from the Visa Waiver Program.
Israel should not be given special treatment and granted an exception from full compliance with federal law.
The US ambassador to Israel should not have the authority to negotiate the rights of American citizens away with such ease.
It would not only allow Israel to solidify its discriminatory practices but may also encourage others to start mistreating Americans in the same way.
If the US government admits Israel to the Visa Waiver Program without its explicit formal agreement to end all discriminatory practices against all Americans (including Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs and defenders of the Palestinian cause), it would put its stamp of approval on the extension of Israeli apartheid-like policies onto American citizens.
Israel would never accept that its citizens be treated with anything less than equal dignity and neither should the United States.
Saudi Arabia is no friend of the Palestinians, despite recent claims by Riyadh’s foreign minister that an independent state of Palestine is essential for normalization to take place. Riyadh has been against the legitimate Palestinian resistance for more than two decades.
I’m going to add a few more things. #1. A 2 state solution is impossible anyway. Israel is literally in the way. It’s simply a lie. #2. The Palestinians do NOT owe half of their country to the foreign Zionists. They own NOTHING, not one square inch of Palestine. #3. The Arab world does not consider the Saudis their Islamic leader. Wahhabism belongs to the Saudis alone. The former Israelis can stay in Palestine as Palestine citizens. No more Israeli rulers.
The normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israeli is in the news again, in what has become a will they-won’t they situation.
Israel is eager to have formal ties with Saudi Arabia as it is the richest Arab country in the Middle East and has the weight and influence that makes it the main player in regional politics.
Saudi Arabia already has relations with Israel, of course, and Israeli companies operate in the Kingdom, including those responsible for security during the Hajj period in Makkah.
However, it is keen to have formal relations with the apartheid state in order to get US arms supplies and have its own uranium enrichment facility.
For the US, having a formal and smooth relationship between its two major allies in the Middle East will be good for its own foreign policy.
Washington’s interests in the region will be protected and it will be able to implement its policies with relative ease.
The losers in all of this are the Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia is no friend of the Palestinians, despite recent claims by Riyadh’s foreign minister that an independent state of Palestine is essential for normalization to take place.
Riyadh has been against the legitimate Palestinian resistance for more than two decades.
Moreover, it has imposed severe restrictions on charities operating in the occupied Palestinian territories and the transfer of donations from Saudi citizens for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Anyone showing any kind of support for the Palestinian cause can expect to be imprisoned or worse
During the 17-year-old crippling Israeli siege imposed on the Gaza Strip, Saudi Arabia has basically abandoned the Palestinians living there.
Saudi Imams are banned from praying for the Palestinians or mentioning them in their supplications in mosques across the Kingdom, especially in Makkah and Madinah.
Anyone showing any kind of support for the Palestinian cause can expect to be imprisoned or worse.
I have heard Muslim pilgrims complaining of being suppressed by security officers in the Grand Mosque in Makkah when they prayed for the Palestinians, Palestine and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Appeals to the Almighty to rid Palestine and Al-Aqsa of the Zionists are simply not allowed by the Saudi regime.
With the normalization of ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, the Palestinians will lose a fair-weather “friend” who used to be shy about dealing with the Israelis.
This shyness pushed Riyadh to throw some crumbs to the Palestinians out of shame and embarrassment.
Now it is all out in the open; Saud Arabia even has someone in Riyadh declaring that he is the “chief rabbi” of the Kingdom.
The PA… exists solely to protect Israel and the Israeli occupation
What about Saudi support for the Palestinian Authority, you may ask?
The PA is not working for the Palestinians; it exists solely to protect Israel and the Israeli occupation.
PA security officers are never there to protect Palestinians when they are attacked and abused by illegal Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.
Palestinians engaged in legitimate — under international law — resistance against the occupation are tracked down, tortured and imprisoned by the PA.
When the Israeli occupation forces killed five Palestinians the night before last in Jenin, the PA was busy detaining Palestinians in Nablus and other West Bank cities.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June that the regional normalization push with Israel has “limited benefits” without Palestinians being given a state of their own.
“We believe that normalization is in the interest of the region, that it would bring significant benefits to all,” he said.
As long as Saudi Arabia believes that benefits come from the Zionist entity killing your Palestinian brothers, occupying their land, demolishing their homes and desecrating religious sites, then you clearly do not care about them.
“Without finding a pathway to peace for the Palestinian people, without addressing that challenge, any normalization will have limited benefits,” added the minister.
What peace does Saudi Arabia want?
The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative proposed by the Saudi regime called for two states in Palestine, one for Jews in the lands occupied in 1948 and the other for the Palestinians in the land occupied in 1967, in return for normalized relations.
The Saudis were thus willing to abandon more than two-thirds of historic Palestine and essentially condone the ethnic cleansing of the land from pre-1948 to today; the Nakba is ongoing.
Have the Saudis not yet understood that Israel has never, ever, made any concessions on territorial or other issues?
And that Zionism demands the creation of Greater Israel?
The usurper state is expanding constantly, which is why Israel has never declared where its borders are.
They will be wherever Israel can push them to be.
All of this has happened even while the so-called “peace process” was going on; even as “normalization” and the “Abraham Accords” have been signed.
The Saudi foreign minister has repeatedly mentioned Saudi conditions for normalization, including the creation of a Palestinian state in the land occupied by Israel since 1967 alongside a Jewish state.
“There is no way to resolve the conflict other than by ensuring the establishment of an independent Palestinian state,” he said as recently as Monday.
Israeli Channel 12 TV has reported senior Saudi officials as saying that the Kingdom will not sign a “free” normalization deal as the UAE and Bahrain did.
This is all a smokescreen.
I am certain that the Saudis do not care about the Palestinians.
This is evident from the way that the regime keeps praising the Israelis and demonizing the Palestinians, to the extent that speaking about supporting the Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation has become a crime, while showing support for the Israeli occupation has become the norm.
Saudi media host Israelis, but not Palestinians who are against the Israeli occupation.
On Wednesday, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman told Fox News that, “every day we get closer” to normalizing ties with Israel.
“We don’t look at Israel as an enemy, we look to them as a potential ally with many interests that we can pursue together,” the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia told The Atlantic last year.
An announcement about a normalization deal with Israel that disregards legitimate Palestinian rights is just a matter of time.
I expect it to be made very soon, because the Kingdom does not care about Palestine or Jerusalem; it cares about Israel.
Long called the most special bilateral relationship, US-Israeli ties are in fact the world’s strangest.
The weirdness, as we have witnessed in the past few weeks, comes in different forms – ranging from the cynical to the surrealistic.
Take for example Friday’s tweet by the US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, containing a video of himself and Israeli soldiers at the Israeli-Lebanese border, wishing everyone “Shabbat Shalom”.
This bizarre display of support for the Israeli military, which is de facto still at war with Lebanon, came amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
Earlier in June, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant threatened to bomb Lebanon back into the “Stone Age” if the Lebanese group Hezbollah starts a war.
Likewise, Amir Baram, the head of Israel’s northern command, declared that in the event of a war, the Israeli army would “destroy all the infrastructure … to the last stone” in Southern Lebanon – which would amount to a war crime.
On Monday, three days after the “Shabbat Shalom” clip appeared on Twitter, the Israeli army sent 1,000 troops from its elite forces along with armored vehicles, helicopters and drones into the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing at least eight Palestinians, including children, within the first few hours.
Nides, a banker-turned-diplomat, engaged in his publicity stunt at a time when Israel is snubbing the US, its closest and most generous ally, with increasing frequency and intensity.
Apart from launching deadly assaults on the Palestinians, Israeli officials have also repeatedly challenged the official US position in support of Palestinian statehood.
Just last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset’s foreign policy committee that Israel must “crush” the idea of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli leader has also openly disregarded warnings from the US against fostering closer ties with China.
Most recently, he announced he will be travelling to Beijing, giving the cold shoulder to US President Joe Biden’s administration, which has not yet invited him to visit Washington.
Netanyahu and his ministers have not minced their words when expressing dissatisfaction with Biden’s policies.
In March, the prime minister accused the American leader of meddling in Israeli affairs over his comments about the controversial judicial reform his government has been trying to pass and which has sparked months-long protests across Israel.
In February, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli reprimanded Nides for “interfering” in Israel’s internal affairs, telling him to “mind [his] own business”.
The US ambassador is not the only US official to engage in bizarre diplomatic stunts amid growing disparagement from the Israeli government.
Then the US Congress announced that Israeli President Isaac Herzog will address both of its houses to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Israeli statehood, an honor extended previously to Netanyahu three times.
The last time Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress was in 2015 when he tried to mobilize, if not outright incite, US lawmakers against then-President Barak Obama’s administration over its decision to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.
This came after he publicly humiliated Obama at the White House in 2011, lecturing him about Palestine and the Middle East.
This did not deter the Obama administration from committing to send Israel $38bn in military aid over 10 years, subsidizing its purchase of F-35 jet fighters.
And if that wasn’t enough, this “single largest pledge of military assistance in US history”, a pricey gift from the American taxpayer, was met “not with big love, but with mostly meh”, according to The Washington Post.
Last year, the Biden administration reaffirmed and even expanded these military commitments in a new strategic memorandum, the Jerusalem US-Israel Joint Partnership Declaration, in return for, well, nothing. Nada.
It couldn’t even get the previous, presumably more moderate Israeli government to embrace the standard rhetoric on achieving peace in Palestine.
Meanwhile, Biden has decided not to reverse any of his predecessor’s major concessions to Israel concerning its illegal annexation of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights.
That’s not just strange, it is obscene. Even mad. And it begs the question, is there a method to this madness?
Otherwise, why would the US reward Israel despite its intransigence when such support boosts its militaristic and colonial tendencies and feeds its bellicosity? Several explanations come to mind.
First is the state of US domestic politics.
Biden is desperate not to alienate a single pro-Israel Democrat in the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the Senate, especially when the Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, are blindly following Netanyahu, come what may.
This is perhaps why Biden, the leader of the world’s foremost superpower, asked for Israeli approval to rejoin UNESCO six years after his predecessor abandoned it to appease Israel.
This was to make sure that the vote in Congress on the issue would pass.
Second is Washington’s political tactics. Biden wants to offset the temporary coolness towards the Israeli government by warming to its military, presidency and secular business elites to illustrate his bona fide “love for Israel”.
Such misplaced sentiment towards a colonial, apartheid regime has become more of an obsession in Washington, totally disconnected from the rest of the country, indeed the world.
In fact, when it comes to Israel-Palestine, Biden and many Democratic senators are not exactly aligned with the Democratic Party’s base, which has become ever more critical of the Zionist state. Dissatisfaction is growing even among the party’s Jewish members.
According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 49 percent of Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians, 38 percent sympathize more with the Israelis and 13 percent sympathize with neither.
Third is traditional US foreign policy. Conventional wisdom in Washington has long revolved around satisfying Israel’s needs and desires to encourage it to moderate its positions on peace with the Palestinians and make the necessary “compromises”, even “sacrifices”, for peace.
But in reality, unconditional US support has thus far hardened Israel’s stance, radicalized its society and driven its polity towards fascism.
Finally, there is also Washington’s strategic thinking. Historically, the US has maintained strong and consistent strategic cooperation with Israel, seeing it as its most reliable ally in the Middle East despite political and diplomatic ups and downs.
Just last year, Biden repeated this mantra, saying that if there was no Israel “we’d have to invent one.”
But treating it as a strategic asset has long proved of illusionary utility as the Zionist state has shown itself to be an utter liability, at least since the end of the Cold War.
In fact, Israel’s primary objective is to keep America stuck in the Middle East to clean up its messes.
Recently, Netanyahu was quite honest about it, telling Knesset members that China’s growing involvement in the region may not be so bad because it compels America to stay engaged. Well, on Israel’s side, of course.
But much of the Middle East’s hostility towards the US is driven by its decades-long support for what countries in the region see as a colonial warmongering state.
That’s why only by freeing itself from Israel’s paranoid influence could Washington begin to act as a responsible and respectable actor in the region.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But the shift in the Democratic Party in favor of justice in Palestine does provide some hope when it is needed most.
The greatest threat facing Israel is the democratic threat.
There is no greater danger to the regime in Israel than its turning into a democracy.
There is no society that opposes democracy like Israeli society.
There are plenty of regimes opposed to democracy, but not a free society.
In Israel the people, the sovereign, is opposed to democracy.
This is why the current struggle, which presumes to be about democracy, is a masquerade.
It is designed to maintain the pretense of democracy.
To most Israelis, real democracy is tantamount to “the destruction of Israel.”
They’re right. True democracy will bring an end to the Jewish supremacism they call Zionism, and an end to the state they call Jewish and democratic.
Therefore the threat of democracy is the existential threat, against which all Jewish Israelis unite: Should democracy be instituted for all the state’s residents, it will bring an end to the pretend democracy.
Therefore, the leaders of the protest make sure to steer clear of any true contact with democracy, lest the entire thing collapse like a house of cards.
It is not due to racism or hatred of Arabs that they don’t want Palestinian flags or protesters – they are good people, after all – but only due to the understanding that raising the question of apartheid will render their struggle ludicrous.
The mere mention of the idea of one democratic state, in which one person equals one vote and all are equal, evokes an instantaneous and hostile reaction among liberal and conservative Israelis alike: “What does that have to do with anything?” followed by “It’s never worked anywhere,” ending with “destruction of Israel.”
No less. There is no other country whose citizens view becoming a democracy as tantamount to destruction.
There is no other fight for democracy that utterly ignores the state’s tyranny in its own backyard.
As I write these words, early Wednesday morning, the protesters’ shouts in front of the Eretz Israel Museum thunder in the background, “Democracy, democracy.”
As legendary left-wing leader Moshe Sneh once famously put it, in notes for his own speech: “Raise your voice here, as the argument is weak.”
Raise your voices, comrades. Even if all your demands – as justified as any – are fully met, Israel will not become a democracy.
When democracy is shouted with pathos by hoarse throats, while a half hour drive away from the demonstration soldiers snatch civilians from their beds night after night with no judicial warrant; a town is under curfew because it fell victim to a pogrom; a thousand people are in prison without trial and rock-throwing teens are shot to death as a matter of course, the hypocrisy is impossible to stomach.
The most terrible articles of Justice Minister Yariv Levin’s plan are glorious monuments to democracy compared to the occupation regime.
Even if the Likud Central Committee were to choose all the Supreme Court Justices, one for each Likud voting district, that new court would be a beacon of world justice compared to the military tribunals.
And how can you ignore the military tribunals, when fighting for Israel’s justice system?
Are they not part of the justice system? Are they outsourcing? A foreign legion?
Are they not where many of Israel’s judges take their first steps?
Or shall we repeat the lies about an emergency situation and temporary state of things?
Keep protesting vigorously, do all you can to topple this bad government, but don’t utter the name of democracy in vain.
You aren’t fighting for democracy. You’re fighting for a better government in your view.
That’s important, it’s legitimate and it’s impressive. But had you been democrats, you would fight for a democratic state, which Israel isn’t – and which you aren’t.
You’re fighting against a horrible government, which must be fought because it is destroying the fabric of society with terrifying speed.
It is demolishing our good lives, our flourishing economy, science, culture, the justice system and also the most sophisticated military in the world.
Shame, shame, shame. It must be fought; and when you have time, fight for democracy.
The resolution voted for stated that, “The Israeli state operates an apartheid regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the internationally recognized state of Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.” It also pointed out that, “The 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court (ICC) define apartheid as a crime against humanity.”
July 24, 2023 — The American Anthropological Association (AAA), representing thousands of anthropologists and scholars, has passed a historic resolution in support of Palestinian rights and freedom, pledging to boycott Israeli academic institutions that are complicit in maintaining Israel’s oppressive apartheid system.
The vote passed with an overwhelming majority following a successful referendum held June 15-July 14, with 71% voting in favor.
Founded in 1902, the 12,000-member AAA is the largest and oldest scholarly body in the United States to endorse a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.
“This resolution is a meaningful demonstration of solidarity by thousands of scholars standing alongside their Palestinian colleagues, whose work and lives are impacted on a daily basis by Israel’s racist, discriminatory policies and brutal military rule,” said Jessica Winegar, an anthropology professor and member of the Anthroboycott collective, which campaigned for the boycott.
“As scholars with a long history of studying colonialism, anthropologists are all too familiar with the devastating harm of Israel’s oppression and theft of Palestinian land.
This vote is an important step in showing that support for Palestinian rights goes hand in hand with the AAA’s values of human rights for all.”
Theresolution precludes the AAA from engaging in any formal relationships with Israeli academic institutions.
The resolution does not prevent individual Israeli scholars from participating in AAA activities or collaborating with AAA members.
“As a US-based association, the AAA has a responsibility to speak up against the nearly $4 billion in military funding the United States provides to Israel each year, enabling Israel’s brutal military rule, illegal theft of Palestinian land, and oppressive apartheid system against Palestinians,” said Winegar.
“Just as scholars throughout the world came together to put pressure on South Africa to end its violent apartheid system, US academic organizations are following in their footsteps and joining the struggle for Palestinian freedom.”
The Palestinian Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (PACBI) celebrated this important win for the movement for Palestinian rights: “We thank those who took the time to learn from and listen to Indigenous Palestinian voices.
The AAA membership vote to boycott complicit Israeli universities is wholly consistent with the association’s stated commitment to anti-racism, equality, human rights and social justice and furthers the drive to decolonize anthropology and academia in general.”
The Executive Board of the AAA will now proceed with implementing the resolution, joining the ranks of other scholarly associations that have endorsed a boycott of Israeli academic institutions, including the American Studies Association, the Association for Asian American Studies, the Middle East Studies Association, the National Women’s Studies Association, and the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association.
In 2016, a similar boycott resolution narrowlymissed adoption by a mere 39 votes – less than 1% of ballots cast.
This breakthrough comes despite attempts to pressure, intimidate, and misinform anthropologists from outside pro-Israel organizations with no apparent link to the discipline.
These efforts included unsolicited and harassing emails sent to all AAA members; lobbying university presidents across the country to intervene in the vote; and frivolous threats of litigation.
Anthroboycott extends its deepest congratulations and heartfelt thanks to everyone who voted, as well as the numerous volunteers who dedicated their time and efforts to persuade and mobilize their colleagues.
We also thank the sections of the AAA that formally endorsed the boycott: the Association of Black Anthropologists and the Middle East Section.
We are grateful to the boards of the Association for Feminist Anthropology, Association of Latina/o and Latinx Anthropologists, and Critical Urban Anthropology Association for encouraging their members to support the boycott.
Anthroboycott (Anthropologists for the Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions) is a collective of AAA members, including faculty, contingent labor, and graduate students, working in support of Palestinian human rights.
The genie is out of the bottle, and the fanatics won’t stop until their apocalyptical, messianic redemption is complete, come what may.
23 Jul 2023 Israel’s decades-long colonial and religious war against the Palestinians has culminated in what appears to be Jewish civil strife bordering on civil war.
As hundreds of thousands continue to march in the street against the government, the president has warned of standing at the edge of an abyss, while leading commentators warn that a civil war has already started.
This heating conflict is mainly between two types of Zionism, the pre and post-1967 Zionism; in other words, between the more liberal and secular Zionism and more fanatic and fascistic Zionism.
While these types of Zionism had managed to reconcile their differences throughout the past five decades, Israel’s deepening occupation-cum-apartheid system of Jewish supremacy has provided huge momentum to the extreme elements within the Israeli society.
It has also culminated in the establishment of a new governing coalition of six parties, five of which are “religious” – either ultra-Orthodox, ultra-Zionist or both.
The government is one of the most extreme and racist elements of Israeli society; one that is determined to transform the Jewish communitarian democracy into a fanatical Jewish autocracy, by subjugating Israel’s judiciary to its parliamentary majority, which in turn paves the way to changing its system of government.
A bit of history may help clarify.
Since its inception in 1948 as a settler colonial state, Israel’s leaders have followed in the footsteps of other settler states like the United States, Canada and Australia, by managing the tensions among its different immigrant communities through legal democratic processes.
It was the only way to reconcile the differences between, say Iraqi and Polish, or Moroccan and Russian immigrant communities.
Needless to say, that has not applied to the Palestinian citizens of Israel, who suffered under direct military control through 1966.
Throughout that period, the secular Ashkenazi elites – concentrated in the Labour movement that created and led the earlier settlement of Palestine – had an advantage over the more conservative Sephardic immigrants and religious groups, and became the masters of the land.
But the 1967 war changed that.
The occupation and settlement of East Jerusalem, and the rest of the newly occupied territories, have given vigour and momentum to messianic, fanatical, and hyper-nationalist Israelis ever since.
Washington is going out of its way to accommodate Israel and is being publicly chided in return. Why is that?
Long called the most special bilateral relationship, US-Israeli ties are in fact the world’s strangest.
The weirdness, as we have witnessed in the past few weeks, comes in different forms – ranging from the cynical to the surrealistic.
Take for example Friday’s tweet by the US ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, containing a video of himself and Israeli soldiers at the Israeli-Lebanese border, wishing everyone “Shabbat Shalom”.
This bizarre display of support for the Israeli military, which is de facto still at war with Lebanon, came amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
Earlier in June, Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant threatened to bomb Lebanon back into the “Stone Age” if the Lebanese group Hezbollah starts a war.
Likewise, Amir Baram, the head of Israel’s northern command, declared that in the event of a war, the Israeli army would “destroy all the infrastructure … to the last stone” in Southern Lebanon – which would amount to a war crime.
On Monday, three days after the “Shabbat Shalom” clip appeared on Twitter, the Israeli army sent 1,000 troops from its elite forces along with armored vehicles, helicopters and drones into the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank, killing at least eight Palestinians, including children, within the first few hours.
Nides, a banker-turned-diplomat, engaged in his publicity stunt at a time when Israel is snubbing the US, its closest and most generous ally, with increasing frequency and intensity.
Apart from launching deadly assaults on the Palestinians, Israeli officials have also repeatedly challenged the official US position in support of Palestinian statehood.
Just last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset’s foreign policy committee that Israel must “crush” the idea of a Palestinian state.
The Israeli leader has also openly disregarded warnings from the US against fostering closer ties with China.
Most recently, he announced he will be travelling to Beijing, giving the cold shoulder to US President Joe Biden’s administration, which has not yet invited him to visit Washington.
Netanyahu and his ministers have not minced their words when expressing dissatisfaction with Biden’s policies.
In March, the prime minister accused the American leader of meddling in Israeli affairs over his comments about the controversial judicial reform his government has been trying to pass and which has sparked months-long protests across Israel.
In February, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli reprimanded Nides for “interfering” in Israel’s internal affairs, telling him to “mind [his] own business”.
The US ambassador is not the only US official to engage in bizarre diplomatic stunts amid growing disparagement from the Israeli government.
Then the US Congress announced that Israeli President Isaac Herzog will address both of its houses to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Israeli statehood, an honor extended previously to Netanyahu three times.
The last time Netanyahu spoke to a joint session of Congress was in 2015 when he tried to mobilize, if not outright incite, US lawmakers against then-President Barak Obama’s administration over its decision to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran.
This came after he publicly humiliated Obama at the White House in 2011, lecturing him about Palestine and the Middle East.
This did not deter the Obama administration from committing to send Israel $38bn in military aid over 10 years, subsidizing its purchase of F-35 jet fighters. And if that wasn’t enough, this “single largest pledge of military assistance in US history”, a pricey gift from the American taxpayer, was met “not with big love, but with mostly meh”, according to The Washington Post.
Last year, the Biden administration reaffirmed and even expanded these military commitments in a new strategic memorandum, the Jerusalem US-Israel Joint Partnership Declaration, in return for, well, nothing. Nada.
It couldn’t even get the previous, presumably more moderate Israeli government to embrace the standard rhetoric on achieving peace in Palestine.
Meanwhile, Biden has decided not to reverse any of his predecessor’s major concessions to Israel concerning its illegal annexation of Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights.
That’s not just strange, it is obscene. Even mad.
And it begs the question, is there a method to this madness?
Otherwise, why would the US reward Israel despite its intransigence when such support boosts its militaristic and colonial tendencies and feeds its bellicosity?
Several explanations come to mind.
First is the state of US domestic politics. Biden is desperate not to alienate a single pro-Israel Democrat in the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the Senate, especially when the Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, are blindly following Netanyahu, come what may.
This is perhaps why Biden, the leader of the world’s foremost superpower, asked for Israeli approval to rejoin UNESCO six years after his predecessor abandoned it to appease Israel. This was to make sure that the vote in Congress on the issue would pass.
Second is Washington’s political tactics. Biden wants to offset the temporary coolness towards the Israeli government by warming to its military, presidency and secular business elites to illustrate his bona fide “love for Israel”.
Such misplaced sentiment towards a colonial, apartheid regime has become more of an obsession in Washington, totally disconnected from the rest of the country, indeed the world.
In fact, when it comes to Israel-Palestine, Biden and many Democratic senators are not exactly aligned with the Democratic Party’s base, which has become ever more critical of the Zionist state. Dissatisfaction is growing even among the party’s Jewish members.
According to a 2023 Gallup poll, 49 percent of Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians, 38 percent sympathize more with the Israelis and 13 percent sympathize with neither.
Third is traditional US foreign policy. Conventional wisdom in Washington has long revolved around satisfying Israel’s needs and desires to encourage it to moderate its positions on peace with the Palestinians and make the necessary “compromises”, even “sacrifices”, for peace.
But in reality, unconditional US support has thus far hardened Israel’s stance, radicalized its society and driven its polity towards fascism.
Finally, there is also Washington’s strategic thinking.
Historically, the US has maintained strong and consistent strategic cooperation with Israel, seeing it as its most reliable ally in the Middle East despite political and diplomatic ups and downs.
Just last year, Biden repeated this mantra, saying that if there was no Israel “we’d have to invent one.”
But treating it as a strategic asset has long proved of illusionary utility as the Zionist state has shown itself to be an utter liability, at least since the end of the Cold War.
In fact, Israel’s primary objective is to keep America stuck in the Middle East to clean up its messes.
Recently, Netanyahu was quite honest about it, telling Knesset members that China’s growing involvement in the region may not be so bad because it compels America to stay engaged. Well, on Israel’s side, of course.
But much of the Middle East’s hostility towards the US is driven by its decades-long support for what countries in the region see as a colonial warmongering state.
That’s why only by freeing itself from Israel’s paranoid influence could Washington begin to act as a responsible and respectable actor in the region.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But the shift in the Democratic Party in favour of justice in Palestine does provide some hope when it is needed most.
Ali Akbar Ahmadian made the statement in a meeting with the head of the political bureau of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement, Ismail Haniyeh, and his accompanying delegation in Tehran on Monday as they exchanged views about the latest developments in the region and ways to strengthen unity among Palestinian resistance groups.
Pointing to the ongoing developments in the occupied territories and the internal chaos in the Israeli regime, Ahmadian said, “Resistance is the most efficient strategy to put an end to more than 75 years of the occupation of Palestine.”
The SNSC chief added, “Palestine is the prime issue of the Muslim world, and strengthening unity among Muslims, especially the regional players of resistance [front], will inflict the most severe damage on the Zionist enemy and its supporters.”
Touching upon the enemies’ attempts to sow division among the resistance groups, Ahmadian said, “The unity and support of the resistance groups for the Islamic Jihad movement in the recent war disappointed the Zionist enemy[‘s plans] to [realize] the plot.”
The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council praised the resistance of Hamas against the Israeli regime and said, “The Palestinian resistance, which once fought to defend itself in Gaza, has achieved a level of preparedness that is now consolidating its presence in the West Bank.”
The Tel Aviv regime launched a deadly bombing campaign on Gaza on May 9, sparking the firing of over 1,000 rockets by the Islamic Jihad toward the occupied territories. The two sides agreed after five days of fighting to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that took effect on May 13.
Israeli aerial assaults killed at least 33 Palestinians in Gaza, including six children, and wounded 147, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Several Islamic Jihad leaders were also among the Palestinian victims of the latest conflict, which marked the worst episode of fighting between Gaza’s resistance factions and Israel since a 10-day war in 2021.
Haniyeh, for his part, expressed his gratitude for the outstanding and effective role of Iran in strengthening unity and cooperation in the Muslim world and the Palestinian resistance groups.
The head of the political bureau of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement also briefed the Iranian official on political and field developments in Palestine as well as plans by the resistance to maintain and strengthen initiative measures in the face of the occupying regime.
Over the past months, the Israeli regime has intensified attacks against Palestinian towns and cities throughout the occupied territories. As a result of these attacks, dozens of Palestinians have lost their lives and many others have been arrested.
Most of the raids have targeted the cities of Nablus and Jenin in the occupied West Bank, where the regime’s forces have been trying to stifle a growing Palestinian resistance against the occupation.
One of the objectives of Israeli raids on various locations across the occupied West Bank has been to raze the structures that belong to the Palestinians, whom the regime accuses of killing Zionist settlers.
As a result of these attacks, over 160 Palestinians, including 28 children, have lost their lives and many others have been arrested in 2023.
Since its early days of colonizing Palestine, the Zionist movement has always aimed to establish a Greater Israel.
June 20, 1899
The international rejection of Israel’s plan to formally annex even more Palestinian land is based on two arguments: the annexation is a violation of international law and it defeats the prospects of a two-state solution.
The world view of this international consensus underscores as problematic the lack of a reciprocal dialogue between the sides, their inability to compromise and the unilateral actions that inhibit peace efforts.
At the same time, it foregrounds conventional peace-building processes that emphasize mutual recognition as well as economic and security cooperation.
There is basically a belief in the international community that universal international laws and norms can facilitate a just outcome to the conflict with two independent states living side by side.
Zionism = freedom: Judaism holocausted
This world view is operating in a diplomatic space that has lost all connection to the realities that ordinary Palestinians face.
The Palestinian losses are much more serious than is conventionally suggested in the “save the two-state solution before it is too late” type of thinking.
It is already a very late hour for the prospects of Palestinian freedom and sovereignty.
A different lens must, therefore, be adopted, which first and foremost underscores the logic that underlies the Israeli state – settler-colonialism.
A settler colony
Academics have debated for decades whether Israel constitutes a settler colony, and following the arguments of leading scholars such as Joseph Massad, Rashid Khalidi, Noura Erakat, Ilan Pappe, Hamid Dabashi and Robert Wolfe (among others), the answer is convincing: Israel is the product of a national settler-colonial project.
So, what makes a settler colony a settler colony?
The answer to this question cannot be reduced to specific characteristics but must instead be sought in a general principle.
Simply put: all settler colonies constitute a continuous process of land annexation, whereby native inhabitants are removed and settlers from elsewhere are brought to occupy the land.
To be sure, all modern nation-states have annexed land in certain respects, but the settler-colonial state’s distinguishing feature is that it does not come into being and cannot continue to exist without claiming sovereignty over land that is forcefully taken from its native inhabitants.
In short, the settler colony can only claim its sovereignty through the eradication and erasure of native sovereignty.
The methods of annexation certainly vary, but this variety should not detract us from naming and highlighting their underlying logic: the expulsion of native people from their lands.
This is the core problem of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle. And nowhere is this logic more visible than in the expansion of settlements on occupied Palestinian lands.
Settlements and the Israeli state
Not all, but the majority of arguments that emphasize international law and the peace process are based on the dubious assumption that Israel is interested in seeing a Palestinian state established along the 1967 borders.
But Israeli policies have clearly shown that is not their goal or aspiration.
It is important to take a moment and reflect on the last point.
For decades, settler movements and the settlers have been expelling and replacing native Palestinians from more and more Palestinian lands.
In much of what passes as intellectual diplomatic discourse in North America and Western Europe, these settlers are presented as divorced from the Israeli state and even painted as a burden on the Israeli state.
This occurs even when Israeli policy is directly tied to the expansion of settlements.
In 2016, for example, then-Secretary of State John Kerry claimed, “Let’s be clear.
Settlement expansion has nothing to do with Israel’s security.
Many settlements actually increase the security burden on the Israeli defence forces and leaders of the settler movement are motivated by ideological imperatives that entirely ignore legitimate Palestinian aspirations.”
And when he was not divorcing the ideology of the settlement leaders from the ideology of the state, Kerry made sure to present the settlements as a side issue, and not the core of the problem: “Let me emphasise, this is not to say that the settlements are the whole or even the primary cause of this conflict, of course they are not.
Nor can you say that if the settlements were suddenly removed, you’d have peace without a broader agreement. You would not.”
Versions of this discourse are repeated ad nauseam in the diplomatic arena, all of which misses (purposely or not) the crucial point that these settlers are not ideologically opposed to the state, but are rather a mirror for the foundation of the Israeli state revealed in its naked form.
The main difference is that these settlers act without the sophisticated rhetoric that hides and conceals the violence of the settler colony. They do not hide their intention to remove Palestinians and expand the state that is to come, the state of Greater Israel.
Since the early 20th century, the Zionist movement has longed for the creation of a Greater Israel, but it has been savvy enough to hide and conceal its intentions, especially in the international arena.
As Benny Morris put it in his famous book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, “[Zionist leader David] Ben-Gurion, a pragmatist, from 1937 on, was willing (at least outwardly) to accept partition and the establishment of a Jewish state in only part of the country.
In effect, he remained committed to a vision of Jewish sovereignty over all of Palestine as the ultimate goal of Zionism, to be attained by stages.”
The current relation between the state and the settlers is, thus, not one of opposition or nuisance, but one between a force that expands (the settlers) and a force that makes possible but hides the violence of the expansion (the state).
And at the opportune moment, provided in this case through the Trump administration’s unwavering support for Israel, the state becomes one with the settlers out in the open and officially expands.
The annexation plan is nothing more than the state’s turn to claim sovereignty over what the settlers have already annexed. And they are able to annex precisely because the state makes that possible through its occupation of Palestinian land.
And this cycle will not stop. The settlers will continue to expand and annex with the aid of the state, until such time that the state can officially announce the reality of their fusion with the settlers, taking even more land.
As far as the Israelis are concerned, time is on their side, and they can patiently proceed stage by stage.
Empty words
The latest round of international reactions will predictably change nothing for the Palestinian people.
International law will flag the violation against its rules, words of “condemnation” will fill the air, analysts and commentators will discuss the “strength” of these words in comparison to past statements, and Palestinian land will continue to be stolen.
Palestinian lives will continue to be threatened with death, injury, debilitation, occupation, oppression and expulsion while the world watches and pronounces empty words.
These words do not carry any consequence that can give them meaning, depth, and force.
They are part of the diplomatic routine, which gives the feeling that something is being done, that the world is watching closely and that the world is concerned for Palestine.
This chimera of an act ends up sustaining the status quo and ensures that nothing consequential is ever undertaken.
The very emptiness of these words thus becomes another weapon that enables annexation.
Many ordinary Palestinians have understood this situation for some time: the cavalry is not coming – not from the Arab world, not from the UN and not from international law.
And in their absence, those international institutions and states show themselves as part of the problem, not the solution.
Israeli settler colonialism will not rest until the majority of the Palestinians are removed and expelled, and all of the Palestinian lands are under Israeli sovereignty, just as Ben-Gurion envisioned.
Israel cannot tolerate the idea of Palestinian sovereignty, let alone its implementation because the erasure of Palestinian sovereignty is part and parcel of the underlying logic of the settler colony.
As a result, regardless of how much land Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his ally, Defence Minister Benny Gantz actually annex this year, this episode will be neither the first nor will it be the last.
The settler colony, secured in its power after the founding violence, often plays a long game.
But despite the scantest of hopes of ever gaining their freedom and sovereignty, the Palestinians will continue to stand, more or less, alone in their long and historic resistance.
[Admin disclaimer: I personally do not refer to Zionists as Jews but only as Zionists. According to Torah Jews they are not Jews but mongrel athiest antisemites]
Israeli forces launched what a military source said is its largest military operation in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in more than 20 years, killing at least nine people and injuring about 100 others, according to Palestinian officials.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement it launched the ongoing “extensive counterterrorism effort in the area of the city of Jenin and the Jenin Camp,” striking “terrorist infrastructure.”
The IDF carried out around 10 airstrikes using drones, and hundreds of soldiers targeted what it said was a militant “command and control” center as well as weapons and explosive manufacturing sites.
Videos obtained by CNN from Jenin show Israeli bulldozers tearing up streets to disarm potential explosives, as well as Israeli tanks outside the city limits.
Residents told CNN there were explosions and heavy gunfire in the area, while video from the scene showed wounded Palestinians being evacuated by ambulance to Jenin Government Hospital.
Hundreds of Palestinian families fled the area amid the destruction; Jenin deputy mayor Mohammed Jarrar said homes and infrastructure had been destroyed, cutting off electricity and water in the refugee camp.
Duha Turkman, a 16-year-old Jenin resident, said they were given two hours to evacuate.
“We ran out with people from the camp, so many children walked with their parents while terrified and crying, they didn’t understand what was happening to them and why,” she told CNN.
“Many were missing; families were looking for members that they couldn’t get in contact with due to the electricity cut.”
These Jews will bulldoze your homes, drive you into a camp, then bomb the camp.
And they want to whine about Hitler?
Hitler never destroyed the Jew houses and never bombed his own Jew camps.
Also: these Arabs used to control Palestine and live in peace. Hitler had a good reason to put Jews in camps.
It’s very obvious that the Jews are doing this during the French riots because white people will connect the two things, like “well, they’re winning in France, but at least the Jews are telling them what for over there in Palestine.”
Look:
As an anti-Semite, I have no trouble distinguishing between two situations.
They’re literally opposites, in terms of the Arabs – in one situation the Arabs were invaded, in another situation, the Arabs invaded.
In terms of the Jews – both situations were caused by the Jews. It was the Jews’ idea to make an Arab France.
But 100%, these Jews know that Fatmericans and others will see the situation and France and then think it justifies the Jews killing Palestinians.
The narrative should be: these Arabs fighting in France should go defend Palestinians.
On some level, you could try to say that the Arabs as a race are bringing this on themselves.
But even that I don’t really go along with.
The Arabs in France can say that the French are working with the Jews and therefore deserve this war they’ve brought, and that is more true than “the Arabs brought it on themselves.”
Overall, I view Arabs as a non-threat, and Jews as the source of a virtually infinite number of existential threats.
So obviously, I support whites, and I support whites rising up and fixing the problem in France.
But only if they’re going to be right-wing and Christian and throw off the Jew shackles.
Otherwise, France would be better off under Islamic occupation.
Jews are already pushing the narrative that this is the fault of Iran:
Imagine you’re invading and bulldozing a refugee camp, then saying “look at these weapons – can you believe this people were thinking of fighting back???”
The nerve of these Jews is like the stars in the sky.
Between 19 and 20 June 2023, Israeli settlers in the West Bank set fire to fields and houses, stoned cars and vandalized Palestinian shops along Route 60.
In retaliation, two Palestinians, members of Hamas, targeted Israeli settlers at a gas station, killing four and injuring four.
One of the assailants was killed by an Israeli, another was shot dead by the Israeli army a few hours later.
400 Israeli settlers responded by invading the Palestinian village of Turmus Aya on 21 June, torching approximately thirty houses and sixty cars.
On 26 February and in the presence of the Israeli army, other settlers destroyed the village of Huwara, also located on Route 60, injuring 400 and killing one.
This Arabophobic pogrom had been incited by the declarations of current Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, both supporters of Jewish supremacy.
A controversy had erupted between Washington and Tel Aviv, at the end of which the Israeli coalition government made a commitment that this would not happen again.
If one were to compare Palestine to the French mandate in Lebanon, the Zionists were the Maronites of British Palestine: a compact minority community that would openly advocate for a British mandate at the Paris Peace Conference and cooperate with the British in governing the territory.
In 1881, the Jews who faced the pogrom in Russia wanted to immigrate to Palestine en masse, and they wanted world-famous people of Jewish origin to finance it, like the Rothschild and Hirsch families. This is called aliyah in Zionist literature.
It allowed them to settle anywhere else in the empire, though no more than 150 families.
He then started to buy strategic lands in Palestine through his personal treasury called the Hazine-i Hassa.
From 1882, the Rothschilds began to buy land in Palestine on behalf of others.
The Rothschilds, who had international power as they lent money to all governments, wanted the refugee Russian Jews to be allowed to settle in these lands.
The embassies intervened. The Ottoman government was confused as to what to do.
The first Jewish colony was established in Jaffa that same year, despite not having been granted permission.
By 1918, one-twentieth of Palestine’s fertile lands belonged to the Rothschilds.
The dismissed grand vizier
In 1891, when Russia increased pressure on the Jews, refugees began to settle in Palestine using unofficial and illegal methods, aided by societies in Europe.
Bribing local officials and using fake passports, identity cards and title deeds were the main ways this was done.
For example, Tunisians in Tunis, occupied by France in 1881, were considered citizens by the Ottoman government.
Jews entered the Ottoman country using fake documents and settled in Palestine with the status of Tunisian citizens.
Some 440 Jews who applied for citizenship in an attempt to settle in the Palestinian town of Safed were turned down on the basis that the Ottoman state was not to be resided in by those deported by the Europeans.
Many edicts were issued one after another, drawing the attention of the provinces, and the negligent officials were ordered to be punished.
Ottoman archives are full of correspondence on this subject.
Red Permit
Despite this, Jewish immigration to Palestine could not be prevented.
Believing he could not prevent it, Grand Vizier Cevad Pasha came to an agreement with the Rothschilds and turned a blind eye to the settlements in exchange for a promise to not bring in more refugees.
Subsequently, the sultan dismissed the grand vizier in 1894 and exiled him to Damascus where he remained until his death.
In addition, two governors and some civil servants were dismissed and punished.
Jews at the Western Wall, Felix Bonfils, Albumen silver print, 1870s. (Wikimedia Photo)
In 1900, conditions for entry to the holy land were introduced.
Accordingly, every Jewish individual visiting Palestine was required to carry a letter or passport to show their occupation, nationality and reason for visiting.
This “Red Permit” carried by Jews was checked and recorded by the official authorities when they arrived in Palestine.
They were then deported after the 30-day period expired.
The Ottoman government also made an effort to prevent the local Jewish population from being influenced by the Zionists.
Not all Jewish people were Zionists.
It was important not to disturb the Jews who opted to live a more simple life and not engage in political issues.
This required a delicate balance.
The portrait of Zionist figure Theodor Herzl taken from old Israeli currency. (Shutterstock Photo)
Herzl and his attractive offer
Meanwhile, Theodor Herzl from Budapest, the leader of the Zionist movement, wanted to meet with Sultan Abdülhamid II.
When his request was declined, he made an offer in May 1901 through his Polish friend Phillip Newlinsky, who was also acquainted with the sultan.
In return for opening Palestine to Jewish immigration and the establishment of an autonomous Jewish homeland, Ottoman foreign debts would be paid and propaganda in the sultan’s favor would be circulated to sway European public opinion.
The sultan refused this offer. Herzl was unable to make the agreement, and he repeated the offer the following year.
Fearing what happened to the autonomous Ottoman province of Egypt due to debt, the sultan welcomes Herzl’s consolidation offer, viewing him as an intermediary in the matter.
However, Herzl’s idea was the acceptance of the colonization proposal. (Britain invaded Egypt in 1882 on the pretext of not paying the debts taken for the construction of the Suez Canal.)
Struggle for virtue
The claim that the government allowed the Rothschilds to borrow money and buy a place in Palestine in return is a complete fabrication.
The unpaid debts to foreign bankers, including the Rothschilds, for the financing of the 1854 Crimean War were restructured during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II.
There was no need for him to engage in such acts for the sake of borrowing anyway.
By establishing the Duyun-i Umumiye administration, he got the foreign debts under control and increased the credibility of the state.
The small-scale foreign borrowing during his reign was also spent on high-cost zoning activities.
The portrait of Abdulhamid II, Ottoman Sultan from 1876 to 1909. (Shutterstock Photo)
Ottoman government was unable to prevent the process because it at times acted incorrectly or was incapable.
But it is absurd to claim that the Ottoman government condoned it in return for a loan.
If it were true, he would have agreed with the Rothschilds or Herzl and retained his throne.
Moreover, the sultan prioritized preserving his throne over debt.
But the Ottoman sultans’ mission was a struggle for virtue.
In a letter written in 1913, he wrote to Mahmud Efendi, saying the main reason he lost his throne was for not agreeing to the demands.
Things getting out of control
The Young Turks, who dethroned Sultan Abdülhamid II and seized power, first nationalized the treasury lands belonging to the sultan.
To please the Zionists who supported them, they allowed Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Even though they realized the gravity of the incident immediately after and banned the sale of land to foreigners in Palestine, things were already out of control.
Between 1908 and 1914, the Jews bought 50,000 acres of land and established 10 colonies. In 1913, the Rothschilds bought the treasury lands.
According to the Ottoman censuses, the number of Jewish people living in Palestine was 9,500 in 1881, 12,500 in 1896, 14,200 in 1906 and 31,000 in 1914. In 1917, the Zionists came to an agreement with the British foreign minister, Arthur Balfour. Britain, which was greedy for Jewish capital, promised the Jews a homeland in Palestine with the Balfour Declaration.
When the Syrian front collapsed, Palestine was occupied by British forces.
A grave mistake!
During the British Mandate of Palestine, Jewish immigration increased steadily despite obstacles.
Nazi repression also fueled this migration.
The Jews in Palestine could now own land as they pleased, by restoring unclaimed land but also by purchasing it from the government or individuals.
The Arabs were forced to sell their lands after being put in a difficult situation economically.
For example, ships loaded with wheat that docked at the port at harvest time caused the price of wheat to fall.
When this incident happened again the following year, the peasant, who mortgaged his land the year before, was then forced to sell his land.
During the Ottoman period, the villagers used tactics in order to pay lower taxes, such as registering the land under another person’s name or providing an underestimation of the area.
These lands also passed into the hands of the Jews through purchase.
By 1948, more than half of the Palestinian population was Jewish and more than half of the land belonged to them.
Jewish gangs compelled the British to evacuate the district with their terrorist acts.
Deceived Britain declared in 1939 that the Balfour Declaration had been a grave mistake.
There have recently been a number of incidents that would be of interest if one has concerns about the sorry state of free speech in Europe and the United States, the so-called “democracies” who tend to boast about their freedoms and the rights of their citizens.
The chosen weapon in the US and elsewhere in the Anglo-sphere has been the designation “hate speech” which also covers “hate writing,” “possessing hate literature or films,” and even “hate thinking.”
In Europe, where “hate speech” is often referred to using the English words, the expression is often preceded by the word “illegal” to make sure that the point about consequences is made and the potential penalty is clearly understood.
Some Europeans have in fact been convicted and sent to prison when they have falsely believed they were exercising free speech.
Though the “hate” designation was originally coined to discourage racist language and other forms of expression it has increasingly been exploited by Israel and its associated Jewish support groups to criminalize any criticism of Israel or of Jewish group behavior.
It has extended its reach by moving into subsets, notably “holocaust denial” and “antisemitism” which are also regarded ipso facto as hate crimes in a context in which Jews are always regarded as victims, never as perpetrators of violence.
Much of what is going on might be described in fairly simple terms: Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and its unprovoked lethal attacks on its neighbors might reasonably be described as “deplorable” or even genocidal in the case of the Palestinians.
Beyond that, Israel, which pretends to be a democracy, operates a system of control over the Christian and Muslim minority within its own borders and also in the area it illegally occupies that is describable as “apartheid,” where the minority is compelled to accept limited resources and consistently harsh treatment from the dominant Jewish population.
Palestinian Christians have not just been an integral part of our nation but also our liberation movement. Israel knows that well: under Israeli colonial-settlement policies, racist legislation and daily attacks, Palestinians of all faiths are subjected to the same human rights violations.
A damaged statue of Jesus in the Church of the Flagellation in the Old City of Jerusalem. “Jewish ritual tassels that had been concealed under his clothes emerged”, the Franciscan friar said.
More to the point, the extremist government coalition headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made the situation even worse for those non-Jews that it controls, with talk of introducing mass expulsions and imprisonments.
The death toll of Palestinians at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces has also been going up, with more than 150 Palestinians killed this year, including 26 children.
To be sure, Israel has become a home for Jews that can no longer tolerate anyone else.
Some ministers in the new government are particularly vile in their views but it is to be assumed that Netanyahu and others in his administration are genuinely supportive of turning Israel into a truly and even exclusively Jewish state, which is in fact how it legally defines itself.
The one minister most cited for his cruelty and racism is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party.
Ben-Gvir has been charged with crimes 50 times, and convicted on eight occasions, including once for support of a Jewish terrorist group.
He is a former supporter of the now deceased right wing fanatic Meir Kahane, and, like Kahane, envisions an Israel that is as Palestinian free as possible and centered exclusively on Jewish interests.
He has called for deporting Arabs who aren’t loyal to a Jewish Israel, annexing all of the West Bank and exercising full Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, where the Muslim venerated Al-Aqsa mosque is located.
He supports legislation defying international agreements to “divide” the Al-Aqsa site to permit regular Jewish worshipers and there have even been suggestions that the Israeli government will seek to rebuild the so-called Biblical Second Temple, destroyed in the First Century by the Romans, in that location.
Ben-Gvir is notorious for his provocations directed against Palestinian Muslims and Christians.
He has led marches of armed settlers flaunting Israeli flags through Arab quarters of cities and towns and has even brought settlers and other extremists to the al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan and to interrupt Friday prayers.
To cap the irony, he has been since November 2022 the National Security Minister, which gives him authority over the police, to include the so-called Border Police as well as the police forces located on the illegally occupied West Bank.
Indeed, as a practical matter, Ben-Gvir is seeking to have the Knesset pass legislation explicitly conferring legal immunity on all Israeli soldiers for any and all killings of Palestinians.
He has also pressed the parliament to institute a formal, judicially administered death penalty for “terrorists”, which would mean any Palestinian who physically resists the Israeli occupation.
Another extremist who has obtained a major ministry in the Netanyahu government is Bezalel Yoel Smotrich who has served as the Minister of Finance since 2022.
He has recently completed a controversial trip to the United States where he met with American Zionist leaders.
Smotrich is the leader of the Religious Zionist Party, and lives in an illegal settlement in a house within the Israeli occupied West Bank that was also built doubly illegally outside the settlement proper.
Smotrich supports expanding Israeli settlements in the West Bank, opposes any form of Palestinian statehood, and even denies the existence of the Palestinian people.
NEVER FORGET where they came from!
He demands a state judiciary that relies only on Torah and Jewish traditional law.
Accused of inciting hatred against Arab Israelis, he told Arab Israeli lawmakers in October 2021, that “it’s a mistake that David Ben-Gurion didn’t finish the job and didn’t throw all of you out in 1948.”
The increasing brutality of the Israeli government and its security forces have produced a reaction among many observers worldwide, so the supporters of Israel have engaged in their own first strike frequently using the “hate crime” weapon.
They have basically turned the hate crime legislation to their advantage by convincing many nations to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of the “hate crime” antisemitism to automatically include criticism of Israel as being equivalent to hatred of Jews.
When that doesn’t work the powerful Israel lobby can also resort to much more brutal threats.
When Iceland sought to make illegal infant circumcision five years ago, regarding it as genital mutilation performed on an unconsenting child, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) threatened to unleash Jewish power to destroy their economy and international reputation as punishment for making their country “inhospitable to Jews.”
Now that the “hate crime” genie together with the associated links to holocaust denial and antisemitism have been released from the bottle, they are being used regularly to silence anyone who even indirectly criticizes prominent Jews like George Soros.
Conservatives including Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk have recently been on the receiving end of the antisemitism label after referring to Soros and his “Globalist” agenda.
It is my belief that Tucker was fired at least in part due to Jewish pressure on FOX as he had been very critical of groups like the hysterical ADL and its hideous director Jonathan Greenblatt.
Roger Waters, the former lead singer of Pink Floyd, has emerged as a powerful critic of Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.
As a consequence, he has been hounded by authorities in Europe, has had his concerts canceled, and has been threatened with legal action to make him shut up.
The Biden Administration’s antisemitism Czar Deborah Lipstadt has also attacked him, saying “I wholeheartedly concur with [an online] condemnation of Roger Waters and his despicable Holocaust distortion.”
She was referring to a tweet stating that “I am sick & disgusted by Roger Waters’ obsession to belittle and trivialize the Shoah & the sarcastic way in which he delights in trampling on the victims, systematically murdered by the Nazis.
In Germany. Enough is enough. Holocaust trivialization is criminalized across the EU.” The State Department, speaking for the White House, then piled on adding that Waters has “a long track record of using antisemitic tropes” and a concert he gave late last month in Germany “contained imagery that is deeply offensive to Jewish people and minimized the Holocaust…
The artist in question has a long track record of using antisemitic tropes to denigrate Jewish people.”
One might observe that the depiction of Waters is basically untrue – he is a critic of Israeli crimes against humanity but does not hate Jews.
One might also add how the fact that the United States State Department actually has a Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism speaks for itself and tells you exactly who is in charge in Washington.
I wonder how much it costs to run Lipstadt’s mouth from a no doubt well-appointed office in Foggy Bottom each year?
Maybe someone should do a cost/benefit analysis and give Debbie her walking papers.
Beyond that, several other recent stories show how it all often works in practice to confront and silence critics.
Swedish pop star Zara Larsson is facing what is obviously a coordinated backlash on social media after criticizing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
In an Instagram message to her 6.3 million followers, the 23-year-old declared the ongoing cross-border violence, which is killing mostly Arabs, was a “crime” against Palestinians.
Her effort to be somewhat even handed was ignored, in the message, which she later deleted, where she wrote “We have to stand up for Jewish people all over the world facing anti-Semitic violence and threats, but we must also call out a state upholding apartheid and KILLING civilians, funded by American dollars.”
She ended the message with the hashtag “#freepalestine.”
Larsson was hardly calling for targeting Jews or anything like that, but the reaction to her comment was symptomatic of the typical overkill response engaged in by Israel and its friends whenever anyone challenges the standard narrative of Israeli perpetual victimhood.
Two other instances of comments about Israel leading to an overwhelming response to punish the perpetrators took place during the past month in the United States at college commencement ceremonies.
The first was on May 12th, at a graduation ceremony for the law school of the City University of New York (CUNY), where Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Queens native who was selected by the graduating 2023 class to speak during the May 12 ceremony, praised CUNY for supporting student activism, citing in particular the acceptance of student groups protesting against Israel’s brutality towards the Palestinians.
She said “Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young and even attacking funerals and graveyards, as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinians homes and businesses.
As it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes. Silence is no longer acceptable.”
The response to Mohammed was immediate, including a scathing news report in the New York Post, a call by several Jewish groups to cut funding to CUNY and demands that the law school dean be fired.
And the controversy again made news when a second student spoke out at a commencement at El Camino community college in Torrance California.
Jana Abulaban, 18, strongly criticized Israeli government policies during her speech on June 9th.
Abulaban, who was born in Jordan in a family of Palestinian refugees, reportedly felt “inspired” by the speech of Fatima Mousa Mohammed and she told the audience “I gift my graduation to all Palestinians who have lost their life and those who continue to lose their lives every day due to the oppressive apartheid state of Israel killing and torturing Palestinians as we speak.’’
There was, of course an immediate reaction to the Abulaban speech coming from a variety of West Coast and New York pro-Israel sources.
Brooke Goldstein, a claimed human-rights lawyer founder of The Lawfare Project, said, “This is yet one more example of the systemic Jew-hatred we’re seeing on our college campuses.
When a student gives a commencement speech targeting Jews, trafficking in modern tropes of antisemitism, it’s clear that there has been a complete failure in that school to promote social justice for the Jewish people.
If any other minority group were targeted like this, there would be consequences for the bigot. The Jewish community deserves no less.”
Of course, both women only spoke the truth about what is happening in the Middle East.
Neither attacked the Jewish religion or Jews per se and only criticized Israel’s appalling behavior.
When I last checked, Israel was a foreign country with both foreign and domestic policies that are considered very questionable by most of the world, so why should it be protected from being challenged in the United States?
The two women were brave to speak up as they did, surely knowing that they would be targeted by the Jewish state’s many friends and supporters.
Those of us who continue to speak out on Israel’s genocidal policies can likewise expect no less, particularly as both the federal as well as many state governments and also the media are now on a witch hunt directed against those who seek to speak the truth.
But we must persevere. As Fatima Mousa Mohammed put it, “Silence is no longer acceptable.”
The Technology of Occupation Has Become One of Israel’s Main Exports
“So much of what I saw after 9/11 with the US and other countries, UK, Australia, my birth country, was copied from the Israeli playbook, mostly in Lebanon.”
The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. That’s the title of a new book by the Australian journalist Antony Loewenstein, who examines how Israel’s military-industrial complex has used the Occupied Palestinian Territories for decades, he says, as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world.
Antony Loewenstein is the author of a number of books, including Disaster Capitalism and My Israel Question. He was based in East Jerusalem between 2016 and 2020. His most recent article for The Sydney Morning Herald is “Being Jewish and critical of Israel can make you an outcast. I should know.” Antony is joining us from Sydney, Australia.
We welcome you to Democracy Now!, Antony. Your book has just come out. What do you mean by the term “the Palestine laboratory”?
ANTONYLOEWENSTEIN: Thanks so much for having me on, Amy.
What I mean by that is that the occupation of Palestine by Israel is now the longest occupation in modern times, 56 years and counting.
There’s obviously been an occupation of sorts since 1948, but particularly since 1967.
And during those years, what Israel has done, very successfully, from its perspective, is find various tools and technologies to maintain and control Palestinians.
And what they’ve done during that time, what Israel has done, is increasingly export those tools and technologies, but also those methods, those so-called counterinsurgency methods.
So, what I look at in the book, both being on the ground in Palestine for many years and also through declassified documents and various interviews across the world, is that you find in over 130 countries across the globe in the last decades, Israel has sold forms of anything from spyware, so-called smart walls, facial recognition tools — a range of tools of occupation and repression, that have initially been tested in Palestine on Palestinians.
So, in other words, what I’m saying is that the occupation of Palestine is not staying there.
It’s not a conflict that remains geographically based just in Palestine. It’s become so-called global Palestine.
AMYGOODMAN: How would you describe politicide, a term you use?
ANTONYLOEWENSTEIN: “Politicide,” I think, was a term that was coined by Baruch Kimmerling, who is now the late amazing academic.
And he was talking really about the concept of a desire within many in the Israeli elite to find ways to destroy Palestinians, not necessarily just through killing them, but also through extinguishing their political identity, their political self-determination.
And when looking from the outside, one could argue that in some ways Palestinian resistance lives on.
Your last segment talked about that very strongly. Palestinians mostly have not left Palestine. They remain there.
But certainly, from the current Israeli government, and, I would argue, for decades, there has been a sense that there’s a way to crush Palestinian aspirations, their views, their political reality, their future, their horizon.
And by doing so, Israel has increasingly marketed that to a global audience, including in its whole identity as an ethnonationalist state.
It’s arguably the most successful ethnonationalist state in the world, a Jewish supremacist state. And growing numbers of nations around the world, from India and others, look to Israel with admiration and inspiration.
AMYGOODMAN: We just covered Modi and the lavish reception he got by the president of the United States, Biden, with a state dinner last night, the joint session of Congress. Talk about — a little more about how India looks to Israel.
ANTONYLOEWENSTEIN: Look, what India is doing under Modi, of course, is not solely because of Israel.
But traditionally, Israel and India were not particularly good friends.
But in the last 10 years or so, since Modi took power in 2014, there’s been a real ideological alignment.
But the relationship is really twofold.
One, it’s a defense relationship.
So India buys huge amounts of technology, defense equipment, spyware.
I interview a number of people in my book, individuals in India, lawyers, others, who are spied on by Israeli spyware, particularly Pegasus by NSO Group.
But also, there’s an ideological alignment, a belief that many Indian officials in the Hindu fundamentalist government there are openly talking about admiration for what Israel is doing in the West Bank, and wanting to do something similar in Kashmir.
And what I mean by that is, they say that — two reasons. One, because Israel gets away with it.
No one’s stopping it.
There’s a complete state of impunity that Israel has globally, really.
But secondly, this idea of bringing in, according India’s view, huge numbers of Hindus to Muslim-majority Kashmir to settle that territory, to build so-called settlements akin to what Israel is doing in the West Bank.
And I think there’s a really disturbing ideological alignment.
I would actually make the comparison between Israel and India today to Israel and apartheid South Africa back in the day — nations that were very, very close ideologically and got inspiration from each other, in the belief, in Israel’s case, of course, being a Jewish supremacist state, in India’s case, being increasingly a Hindu fundamentalist state.
And that, to me, is something that should concern people, including the U.S. president.
AMYGOODMAN: So, Antony, you talk about a Jewish supremacist state.
I’m wondering if you could talk about your own background, something that you take on in this last piece you wrote, “Being Jewish and critical of Israel can make you an outcast.
I should know.” And talk about your family, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, those who died in Auschwitz, those who didn’t survive the Holocaust.
ANTONYLOEWENSTEIN: Most of my family, sadly, Amy, like most Jews who lived in Europe, perished in the Holocaust, including Auschwitz.
And the ones who got out and escaped Europe, particularly in 1939, just before the war started, escaped to wherever they were given a visa: Australia, Canada, the U.S., elsewhere.
And the ones who came to Australia, when I was growing up — I was born in the mid-’70s in Melbourne — Israel was not the center of their lives, but Israel was seen as a safe haven.
For those who don’t know, as a Jew, I can go to Israel tomorrow, and within a few months, I can almost certainly be a Jewish citizen, if I can prove that I’m Jewish.
And I think, for many Jews, including my family, there was a real reluctance, and, in fact, a hostility, to any kind of Palestinian reality, Palestinian story, even to meet Palestinians.
I mean, as a young Jew, I never met Palestinians.
And I think there is a change going on, but, certainly, when I started writing about this issue around 20 years ago — I wrote a book in 2006 called My Israel Question, where there were attempts by the Israel lobby in Australia to censor the book.
There was attempts to pulp the book.
There was condemnations of me in Parliament. I mean, it was ridiculous.
The book became a best-seller, thanks to all that ridiculous controversy.
But over that time, my parents, both of whom lost most of their Jewish friends, because it was the sins of the son — I was being critical of Israel. I was trying to humanize Palestinians.
Now, I’m not the only Jew, of course, who was saying this.
And I’m really encouraged in the last years, in Australia, the U.S. and other Western countries, a growing, almost like a Jewish insurgency against particularly an older generation of Jews who doesn’t want to humanize Palestinians and somehow believes that Jewish identity should be tied to Jewish supremacy.
And so, for me, personally, I don’t claim to be a victim.
That story that you referenced at the beginning sort of gives a bit of a pallid history of my life, but also explains that one does pay a price for it.
One does pay a price as a Jewish person. I’m a secular anti-Zionist Jew today. But I feel often that there is a real moral collapse in much of the Jewish diaspora in the last decade. It is changing, but not nearly fast enough.
AMYGOODMAN: Antony, we were talking about the horrific shipwreck last week of migrants, maybe up to 700 dead.
Can you talk about Israeli technology used by the European Union to surveil and target asylum seekers?
ANTONYLOEWENSTEIN: This really shocked me, you know, years ago, when I started doing some work on this issue.
The short version is that the European Union in the last years after 2015, when they were, in their view, overwhelmed by particularly Muslim refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere, didn’t want to ever repeat that.
And they put in place almost a fortress-type Europe, which has occurred in the last years, which is a range of tools and technologies to keep people out — mostly Muslim and Brown and Black bodies, of course.
And part of that arsenal is using Israeli drones.
They’re unarmed, but they are flying over the Mediterranean 24/7, and they’re used mostly by Frontex, which is the EU’s sort of border security arm.
And they’re the eyes in the sky, essentially.
So, they are sending back all these images 24/7 to Warsaw, which is where Frontex is based. And the EU has made a decision — of course, they don’t admit this, but this is the reality — of letting people drown.
This is the new policy.
There are very, very few rescue boats.
The EU barely rescues anyone.
There are some NGOs that are trying to do so, and I deeply admire what they’re doing.
So, the Israeli drone becomes a key arsenal in part of this infrastructure of essentially allowing people to drown.
And to me, it really goes to the heart of why Israeli drones are used by the EU, because they were battle-tested in Palestine over Gaza in a number of years in the last 15 years.
And you see this almost Israeli border-industrial complex exported across the U.S.-Mexico border, for example.
There are massive amounts of Israeli surveillance towers, made by Elbit, which is Israel’s leading defense company, dotted across the border.
It’s a key part of the U.S. arsenal across its border with Mexico. And why was that company chosen by the U.S.? Because, of course, it was tested first in Palestine.
So, to me, the real concern in the 21st century is, as the climate crisis worsens, as resource wars are worsening, as refugee numbers have never been higher since World War II, many Western nations are, sadly, making a choice to not welcome people in — as we saw with the recent awful shipwreck disaster in the Mediterranean — but, in fact, to build higher walls and more surveillance.
And Israeli surveillance and technology and repression is part of that arsenal that many nations are now buying, because it’s been used, in their view, successfully on Palestinians in Palestine.
AMYGOODMAN: And do you have evidence of the United States in particularly controversial situations working with Israel to perhaps have, for example, in Guatemala, Israel work there so that the United States won’t get — won’t be held responsible?
ANTONYLOEWENSTEIN: Absolutely. One of the things I document in the book really clearly is that over the last 50 years a lot of nations that the U.S. was close to, Israel almost became an American wingman, often supporting, arming, training nations the U.S. even couldn’t do officially because of some issue maybe in Congress.
And that did include nations like Guatemala, including at a point where they were committing genocide against their Indigenous populations.
And one of the reasons that many of those nations — Guatemala, Honduras, Chile under Pinochet, a range of other nations in Latin and South America, or, of course, it went far further, including in Africa and Asia — was that these nations were really attracted by the idea of learning the so-called skills that Israel was gaining through its occupation after 1967.
How is it managing the Palestinian population? How is it repressing them, essentially?
And a huge amount of evidence, through declassified documents and interviews, much of which is in the book, virtually goes to the heart of showing that the U.S. and Israel became almost like invaluable partners during that period, to the point where today — look, America remains the world’s biggest arms dealer.
Forty percent of the world’s arms is sold by the U.S. Israel is now 10th.
And just last week, in fact, Israel released its 2022 arms figures: $12.5 billion U.S., the biggest amount ever.
And 25% of that was going to Arab autocracies, after the so-called Abraham Accords, the Trump deal from a few years ago.
So we’re talking about Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and others. So, what are they selling?
They’re selling repressive technology, spyware, intelligence gathering, a range of other tools, to prop up U.S.- and Israeli-backed dictatorships in the Middle East.
So, this is what the Israeli arms industry is about.
Like, this, to me, is not just a moral failing, but a really dark stain on the Jewish legacy 75 years after the Holocaust.
Like, this is what we’ve become — “we” meaning the Jewish population of the world.
The legacy seems to be backing and supporting and arming the worst regimes in the world.
AMYGOODMAN: Let me ask you about something you mentioned earlier, and that’s NSO’s Pegasus.
Explain further how it’s used and how it is used to infect the phones, for example, of journalists, some, for example, who are in jail, like in Morocco, as you talk about the Abraham Accords, Omar Radi, who we interviewed before he was imprisoned, and has been now for several years.
ANTONYLOEWENSTEIN: Pegasus got a lot of attention in the last years, as viewers will know, as probably the most known or infamous Israeli spyware.
Essentially, it’s a tool that allows any government or military intelligence or police department to spy on someone’s phone, iPhone or Android, and get all the information from that phone.
And it’s popped up in dozens and dozens of countries around the world.
And I spend a lot of time in the book interviewing some of the victims of that surveillance, in Togo, for example, in Mexico, in India.
And Mexico, interestingly enough, is the biggest user of Pegasus by far.
There is an absolute addiction in Mexico, both under right-wing governments and the current nominally left-wing government.
Governments don’t want to give this tool up. And it’s not just Pegasus. Of course, there are many other Israeli companies doing the same thing.
But one of the things that I explore in the book is that so much of the media in the last years around Pegasus missed the key point.
It was almost framed as a rogue Israeli company doing terrible things around the world, when, in fact, companies like Pegasus actually are only private in name.
They are basically arms of the state.
Netanyahu and the Mossad, who have been going to various countries in the last 10 years — I document this in the book, and this has also been shown by Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper — often go to nations, like Saudi Arabia, Rwanda and others, and they hold Pegasus and other tools as a diplomatic carrot: “If you support us in the U.N. or elsewhere, we will sell you the most powerful spyware in the world.”
And it works, because it’s been sold in UAE, in Saudi, in Rwanda and many other repressive states.
So, unless there is a complete ban or massive regulation, which currently does not exist at all, these technologies will continue.
And even if NSO Group disappears tomorrow — and it’s currently in financial crisis — many other companies do exactly the same thing, and which is why Israel is now one of the leading spyware exporters in the world.
AMYGOODMAN: Well, Antony Loewenstein, I want to thank you so much for being with us, author of the new book, The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. If you want to see our interview with the now-imprisoned Moroccan journalist Omar Radi, as well as our other work talking to the University of Toronto lab and others about Pegasus, you can go to democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, as well, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Sonyi Lopez. Our executive director, Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira, Hugh Gran, Denis Moynihan, David Prude. I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now!
Palestinian resistance is the best way to overthrow Israel, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Akbar Ahmadian told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Monday, according to Iranian semi-official media outlet Fars.
The two men met in Tehran and discussed how best to “cause the greatest damage to the Zionist enemy and its supporters.”
Media blackout was imposed on the casualties as occupation military ordered tightened censorship on the nature of injuries the soldiers sustained during the operation in Jenin.
“The Palestinian resistance, which once fought to defend itself in Gaza, has reached a stage of preparation where it is now consolidating its presence in the West Bank,” said Ahmadian to Haniyeh.
Haniyeh, in turn, thanked the Islamic Republic for “strengthening unity and cooperation in the Islamic world and the Palestinian resistance groups.”
“The Palestinian resistance, which once fought to defend itself in Gaza, has reached a stage of preparation where it is now consolidating its presence in the West Bank.”
Ali Akbar Ahmadian
A recent poll showed that most Palestinians agree with Ahmadian with more than half of respondents saying that an armed struggle against Israel was the most effective way to end the Israeli “occupation.”
Iran targets Israel through “terrorism”
(defending Palestine)
in West Bank
In the last few months, Iran has been targeting Israel through Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad with the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) catching an Iranian recruitment program in the West Bank and arresting two people.
Recent internal unrest surrounding the judicial reform has led enemies of Israel like Iran and Hezbollah calling Israel weak and passive while Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei claimed that the 10-day Operation Shield and Arrow between the IDF and the Islamic Jihad was a major success.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, called the operation in May a perfect operation hours after it ended. During those 10 days, Israel struck dozens of Islamic Jihad command centers and rocket and missile stores and killed dozens of terrorists.
In a new wave of terror against the Palestinian people, Israeli settlers went on the rampage and destroyed more than a dozen Palestinian village stretching from Ramallah to Nablus.
The Israeli settlers injured more than 34 Palestinians and set fire to more than 140 cars belonging to the Palestinian people.
The arson included a Palestinian ambulance. 23 Palestinian houses were also set ablaze or partly destroyed by the settlers.
Israeli forces sat idly by during the rampage. They only started firing tear gas when the Palestinian people rose in defense of their villages.
The Israeli aggression comes on the heels of a military campaign against the Jenin camp which involved surprises for the Israeli regime.
During the campaign, many Israeli military vehicles were severely damages as a result of Palestinian resistance units using explosives.
The Israeli forces were forced to use Apache helicopters and missiles to take its damaged vehicles out of Jenin, something that surprised many Israeli analysts who said that the Palestinian resistance units apparently made remarkable progress in terms of building powerful bombs.
Some of the Israeli analysts even compared the bombs used in Jenin with those putatively employed in southern Lebanon.
The people of Jenin gathered the remnants of israel’s vehicles– wheels, tires, and chunks of twisted metal– and paraded them around town in a victory march. pic.twitter.com/mOfhiCFbH6
Israeli media said what happened in Jenin was exceptional in terms of the gravity of the situation as Israel resorted to air raids for the first time in decades in the West Bank to rescue its entangled forces.
Israel’s continued aggression against Jenin elicited strong reactions even from countries that have recognized Israel or are reportedly in the process of normalizing relations with Tel Aviv.
The Persian Gulf Cooperation Council condemned Israel’s aggression against Jenin while Saudi Arabia said Israel is conducting “dangerous violations” in the camp.
Facing Israeli aggression, the Palestinians of the West Bank are increasing moving toward proactive resistance.
A survey has revealed that the majority of Palestinians support the armed resistance to liberate their entire land and form one state over the Palestinian Authority and its “two-state” solution.
Israel is claiming it suffered only 7 injuries and no deaths. This is an astonishing claim, and very hard to believe, given the humiliation it suffered this morning– one comparable to that of the 2006 war in Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/FkZZ1UL3dq
According to the results of a survey carried out by the Palestinian Policy Research and Survey Center, most of the Palestinian respondents said they believe resistance movements in the besieged Gaza Strip, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad have outperformed the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its President Mahmoud Abbas, in thriving for a Palestinian state.
The Palestinian Policy Research and Survey Center is based in Ramallah, the occupied West Bank city that houses the headquarters of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority.
The results of the survey show that 80% of Palestinians want Mahmoud Abbas to step down from presidency of the Palestinian Authority.
Against this backdrop, two young Palestinians conducted an operation against Israeli settlers in the West Bank, killing four of them. Israel killed the two assailants.
The Palestinians are moving toward resistance in the West Bank after exhausting all other peaceful options as a result of Israel’s procrastination.
Some of the Palestinian leaders visited Iran in the last days, where they were encouraged to step up resistance against Israel in the West Bank as the only option to liberate Palestine.
Ali Akbar Ahmadian, The Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), told the Palestinian leaders that resistance is the best method to end the more than 75-year Zionist occupation of Palestine.
The Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, once described Israel as a “rabid dog” due it its hutzpah and brutality. Palestinians residing in the West Bank seem to have come to the conclusion that with such a colonial creature only resistance works.
The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has said resistance is the most effective strategy to end more than seven decades of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
Ali Akbar Ahmadian made the statement in a meeting with the head of the political bureau of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement, Ismail Haniyeh, and his accompanying delegation in Tehran on Monday as they exchanged views about the latest developments in the region and ways to strengthen unity among Palestinian resistance groups.
Pointing to the ongoing developments in the occupied territories and the internal chaos in the Israeli regime, Ahmadian said, “Resistance is the most efficient strategy to put an end to more than 75 years of the occupation of Palestine.”
The SNSC chief added, “Palestine is the prime issue of the Muslim world, and strengthening unity among Muslims, especially the regional players of resistance [front], will inflict the most severe damage on the Zionist enemy and its supporters.”
Touching upon the enemies’ attempts to sow division among the resistance groups, Ahmadian said, “The unity and support of the resistance groups for the Islamic Jihad movement in the recent war disappointed the Zionist enemy[‘s plans] to [realize] the plot.”
The chief of Iran’s general staff Mohammad Bagheri said Wednesday that Iran “will assist Palestine with all its power,” according to Tasnim news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC).
The secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council praised the resistance of Hamas against the Israeli regime and said, “The Palestinian resistance, which once fought to defend itself in Gaza, has achieved a level of preparedness that is now consolidating its presence in the West Bank.”
The Tel Aviv regime launched a deadly bombing campaign on Gaza on May 9, sparking the firing of over 1,000 rockets by the Islamic Jihad toward the occupied territories.
The two sides agreed after five days of fighting to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that took effect on May 13.
Israeli aerial assaults killed at least 33 Palestinians in Gaza, including six children, and wounded 147, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Several Islamic Jihad leaders were also among the Palestinian victims of the latest conflict, which marked the worst episode of fighting between Gaza’s resistance factions and Israel since a 10-day war in 2021.
Haniyeh, for his part, expressed his gratitude for the outstanding and effective role of Iran in strengthening unity and cooperation in the Muslim world and the Palestinian resistance groups.
The head of the political bureau of the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement also briefed the Iranian official on political and field developments in Palestine as well as plans by the resistance to maintain and strengthen initiative measures in the face of the occupying regime.
Over the past months, the Israeli regime has intensified attacks against Palestinian towns and cities throughout the occupied territories. As a result of these attacks, dozens of Palestinians have lost their lives and many others have been arrested.
Most of the raids have targeted the cities of Nablus and Jenin in the occupied West Bank, where the regime’s forces have been trying to stifle a growing Palestinian resistance against the occupation.
One of the objectives of Israeli raids on various locations across the occupied West Bank has been to raze the structures that belong to the Palestinians, whom the regime accuses of killing Zionist settlers.
As a result of these attacks, over 160 Palestinians, including 28 children, have lost their lives and many others have been arrested in 2023.
Is he playing 3D chess? Or suffering from Stockholm Syndrome?
“it’s conceivable that he actually is that stupid—or, to put it more accurately, that psychologically damaged.”
One topic we didn’t cover was RFK Jr.’s odious regurgitation of obscene hasbara lies. From Haaretz:
“Everything has a historical context in Israel.
If you look at why we aren’t at a two-state solution, which everyone now says they want, but both in 1947-1948, and again in 2001, it was the Palestinian leadership who walked away from a two-state solution and pledged itself to the destruction of the Jewish people,” Kennedy said.
“That’s a very, very clear history – and at a time when they had a very, very generous solution on the table.
Now, the other thing I say is, Israel is a democracy but a flawed democracy just like the United States.
But if I was a dissident Arab, Palestinian, would I rather be a dissident in Israel or in Saudi Arabia or Oman or Qatar or any other Arab nation?” he asked.
Kennedy stressed that “on all these issues … if you’re gay, for example, you can be killed for that.
Israel is the only place [in the Middle East] where you have freedom.
If you’re a transvestite or have any other kinds of dissident views, you’d much rather be in Israel.”
He added that Israel is also held to a double standard regarding whether it takes proper precautions in avoiding civilian casualties.
“Israel is going to the West Bank and killing children – it’s never doing that deliberately, never, and nobody has ever said it is,” he said.
Chris Hedges
He accused Israel’s Arab neighbors of having a deliberate policy “to attack and target civilians and to kill them.”
The Russiagate hoax was not just designed to hobble Trump, but also to cover up the Israelgate reality.)
RFK Jr. is not a stupid man.
He must know the Zionists are genocidal lunatics who have contributed enormously to the ongoing destruction of America, not least of all by murdering his father and uncle.
Assuming that to be the case, he would be uttering vapid Zionist platitudes as a cynical political ploy.
(So much for his self-professed commitment to tell the American people the truth.)
Maybe he thinks, like his father did, that once he’s in office he’ll be in a position to go after the bad guys.
But it’s also conceivable that he actually is that stupid—or, to put it more accurately, that psychologically damaged.
There is a psychological phenomenon known as identification with the aggressor, whose best-known example is Stockholm syndrome, that could explain such behavior.
Unconsciously, Kennedy may very well know or suspect that Zionists were behind the 1963 coup and the 1968 pre-coup.
You should have dispatched more Jewish rapists in 1948 because the main reason why 90% of the indigenous population fled was because the white European Jews were going around grabbing the young girls and raping them and they made sure to shoot the rape victims dead. Before I forget – the Jews removed all the jewelry that the young rape victims were wearing and they took it with them. ~Helen44Yemen
“The Zionist leaders are right to worry about fears that the Zionist entity may not reach its 80th year.”
The Secretary General of Islamic Jihad said on Wednesday that his movement and the other Palestinian resistance factions have identified Israel’s weakness.
“We know how to fight it,” added Ziyad Al-Nakhalah.
He made his comment during a visit to Tehran by the political leadership of Islamic Jihad, where they met with the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ali Khamenei.
Hailing Iran’s support for the Palestinian resistance, Al-Nakhalah expressed his appreciation of such “longstanding” backing.
Khamenei congratulated Islamic Jihad on “the latest battle” in Gaza.
“The conditions of the Zionist entity have changed compared to what they were 70 years ago,” said the former president.
“The Zionist leaders are right to worry about fears that the Zionist entity may not reach its 80th year.”
A large delegation from the Islamic Jihad leadership took part in the visit to Tehran.
They will meet with other Iranian officials during their stay as part of the regular communication between members of the Axis of Resistance.
Passengers on a Ryanair flight from Italy to Tel Aviv were shocked after a flight attendant repeatedly described their final destination as Palestine.
Israelis present on the flight told Channel 14 News that a flight attendant had said they were bound for Palestine multiple times, in both Italian and English.
About half an hour before the plane was slated to touch down at Ben Gurion Airport [Originally named Lod Airport, it was occupied and renamed in 1973 after David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime terrorist Minister.] in central Israel, the flight attendant announced over the intercom that the plane was “approaching Palestine.”
Some of the passengers on the flight spoke up about the announcement, they told Channel 14, and asked the attendant to either correct herself or apologize.
“We didn’t [buy tickets] on the airline to deal with anti-Zionist opinions [from flight staff],” a passenger said.
“All we wanted was [an announcement] that Tel Aviv is in Israel.”
Their requests were refused, and instead the cabin crew accused the passengers of creating a disturbance that endangered the safety of the flight, they recounted to the outlet.
An Italian-speaking passenger was surprised that the flight attendant doubled-down on their views during a conversation, insisting that Tel Aviv is located not in the State of Israel, but in Palestine.
The IDF took control of Lydda airport on 10 July 1948. Since is Ben Gurion occupied airport.
The flight attendant who made the announcement was not wearing a name tag, making it impossible to identify anyone by name in order to file a complaint at a later time.
EU ENVOY: ‘NO SUCH THING AS AREA A AND B, IT’S ALL PALESTINE’
One passenger, who tried to take a picture of the attendant, was told that she would be arrested upon landing if she left her seat in order to get a clear image of the speaker, according to the Channel 14 report.
Ryanair, which is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, refused to respond to multiple requests for comment from Channel 14 regarding the incident.
“It is wholly unacceptable that on a flight from Italy to Tel Aviv, a member of Ryanair staff would repeatedly broadcast their own political ideology over the facts by stating that the flight in question was landing in Palestine, rather than in Israel,” Jackie Goodall, executive director of the Ireland Israel Alliance, told World Israel News.
“The Ireland Israel Alliance believes that such a view is not Ryanair policy, and we will request that they make an unreserved apology statement to this effect and to address the employee in question,” Goodall said.
Channel 14 commentator Danny Newman called on Israelis to avoid using the airline in the future, should Ryanair refuse to apologize for the episode.
The occupation gave birth to the new, generic Israeli wheeler-dealer: a bully, accountable to no one.
Aggressive, usually ignorant.
Dismissive of law and order, of the world.
Everything is permitted, including lying, for the sake of the Land of Israel.
Corruption was also born there, between the Dotan Valley and the South Hebron Hills.
The illegal invading occupiers. Send them back on the boat they rode in on.
It’s not that there were no thieves and murderers before the Yesha Council of settlements, but judicial rot, deceit as a norm, theft as being politically correct and of course violence as a legitimate and even revered phenomenon – these all flourished in the occupation.
If it is permitted there, then why not here?
Those who were trained to burn and shoot in Hawaraas a first and preferred option will not easily let go of this a few kilometers to the west.
It’s very sad that the majority of the protest camp has not yet recognized this.
