Website policy


We provide links to articles we think will be of interest to our supporters, informing them of issues, events, debates and the wider context of the conflict. We are sympathetic to much of the content of what we post, but not to everything. The fact that something has been linked to here does not necessarily mean that we endorse the views expressed in it.
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Leon Rosselson, letter to the Guardian, 28 July 2014

“Before the current round of violence, the West Bank had been relatively quiet for years,” writes Jonathan Freedland (Israel’s fears are real, but this war is utterly self-defeating, 26 July). According to B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights centre, 90 West Bank Palestinians were killed, 16 of them children, by the IDF or by settlers between January 2009 and May 2014. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there have been 2,100 settler attacks since 2006, involving beatings, shootings, vandalising schools, homes, mosques, churches and destroying olive groves. According to Amnesty International, between January 2011 and December 2013, Israeli violence resulted in injuries to 1,500 Palestinian children. “Relatively quiet” for whom?
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Posts

Largest land grab in 30 years as punishment for death of Israeli boys

Israel’s ‘Civil Administration’ – military control over the Palestinians in the West Bank – has appropriated a large block of land near Bethlehem as state land. Israel Radio said this was done in response to the killing of three Jewish teens. The invitation for bids for new settlements was issued last year.

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A Judaism that treasures Jewish lives and devalues Arab lives is no longer Judaism

“Confronting today’s Israel and demanding it change is not a rejection of Judaism but the most profound manifestation of it” writes Steve Koppman in a heartfelt plea for Jewish organisations and people to remember and reconnect with the Judaic values they have been flouting.

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International press coverage is a morality play about the familiar villain

This account of how news reporting about Israelis/Palestinians ignores the latter but attributes all agency, and fault, to the former is by former AP correspondent Matti Friedman, a Canadian domiciled in Jerusalem. Its mix of perceptive points and increasingly contentious argument provides an insight into the beleaguered feeling of Israeli Jews.

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Make Palestine a key issue for British MPs

The responsibility for reconstructing Gaza after the massive destruction it sustained in Operation Protective Edge clearly belongs to Israel. Georgina Reeves sets out a clear and concise action plan for how the UK government, which has a third state responsibility for securing reparations from the violator, should ensure Israel accepts its responsibility.

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On using Jews as a human shield for Zionist advocacy

Here are some antisemitic motifs – Jews are an exclusive club, Jews are disloyal aliens, the holocaust was not uniquely homicidal / as bad as the Jews say. All are said by pro-Israel advocates, often the first to accuse others of antisemitism. Elise Hendrick, witty tongue firmly in cheek, gives advice on how to advocate for Israel without falling into such traps.

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Anti-semitism rally draws a crowd

For what was intended as a mass public (Jews and non-Jews) display of ‘zero tolerance about antisemitism’ Sunday’s rally drew a paltry crowd. Despite being promoted by the Board of Deputies, their speakers were booed. It was organised by the ‘grassroots’ Campaign Against Antisemitism whose representative is Jonathan Sacerdoti who goes to great lengths to censor information about himself and his current work as Director of the Institute for Middle Eastern Democracy.

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The deaf and blind hawkers of the ‘anti-Israel is antisemitic’ myth

There seems to be an expectation that when Israel is on the warpath, hostility to all Jews will burst out. Of course it doesn’t help that the Jewish establishments in Europe and the USA identify with Israel – but in the Anglophone world at least there are scores of Jewish groups which shout loudly Not in My Name. This is heard by fellow demonstrators and the two writers here who insist opposing Israeli policy is not antisemitic.

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Board of Deputies promotes myth of rampant antisemitism

It is horrible that there are more manifestations of antisemitism in the UK, mostly by a small number of young men. The recent joint statement of the Muslim Council of Britain and the Board of Deputies was presumably directed against them and we applaud it. However the Campaign Against Antisemitism, origin and personnel undeclared, which is organising a rally on Sunday backed by the BoD, seems as intent on spreading fear and hostility to Islam as it does on soberly dealing with antisemitism. Who does this help?

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Visions of Israeli power and ill-will

Asmaa al-Ghoul reports that some Palestinian analysts think the highly symbolic destruction by the IDF of two tower blocks in Gaza had such an impact on public opinion that Palestinians believed Israel had the will and the ability to utterly destroy Gaza, hence the willingness to accept a ceasefire.

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British Jewish and Muslim bodies issue joint call for peace, wisdom, hope

Leading bodies in the Muslim and Jewish communities in Britain have taken the unprecedented step of issuing a joint statement calling on their communities to work together for peace at home and abroad. The Board of Deputies of British Jews and Muslim Council of Britain state their communities, claiming common descent from Abraham, should not import middle east conflict but export hope. Much hostile comment from pro-Israelis led by Melanie Phillips.

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830+ American historians demand US change direction on Israel

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History is the most disputed subject in the Israel/Palestine conflict, and the role of the US in supporting Israel the most contentious. So it is fitting that US historians took the intellectual lead in demanding of Obama “We urge you to suspend US military aid to Israel, until there is assurance that this aid will no longer be used for the commission of war crimes”. The list of signatories is still in formation – so British historians , sign up!

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Blame game 1: Netanyahu wrong to accept ceasefire

Ntanyahu’s security cabinet put on a bravura performance on Wednesday night, insisting that all Israel’s aims had been achieved. Most Israelis think that neither side won and the more right-wing members of his cabinet think the IDF gave up too soon and Netanyahu should not have secretly accepted the ceasefire. His coalition may be a casualty of war.

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Blame Game 2: it’s the left that lost it

Settlers are notoriously the most aggressive group in Israel and in the wake of the ceasefire they are turning on the kibbutzniks on the border with Gaza and assailing them for their 2006 support for the withdrawal from Gaza and now, like the settlers in the Negev, for their failure to be the militaristic pioneers of settler myth.

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Palestinians celebrate their victory over Israel

Palestinians are not at this moment counting their dead, wounded and disabled or their demolished buildings. They have come out into the streets of Gaza’s towns to declare the failure of Israel to destroy the resistance and their support for Hamas and the firing of rockets into Israel finds an opinion poll.

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The truth in numbers

A bloodstained man mourns his father in Khan Younis, 23 July, Reuters

The number of dead tells you nothing about the case of Israelis and Palestinians. It tells you everything about who has the power – which in fact does tell you everything about the case. Israel exercises almost complete power over Palestinians in Gaza and its cry of ‘self-defence’ is utterly specious. BBC infographic.

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Israel’s foreign ministry: there is no siege of Gaza

This is one of the more brazen bits of hasbara yet produced by the Israeli state. There is no blockade. Goods move freely in and out of the Gaza strip. What’s the problem? In the post below, Gisha responds, and here an uncommitted journalist from Vox-com looks at limits on freedom of movement and trade in Gaza.

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Locked-in syndrome

The claim by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs that there is no ‘siege of Gaza’ [above] is taken on by the NGO Gisha. It agrees there’s not a siege – because Israel has exercised total control over Gaza since 2007 and continues to exercise absolute state control over the economic and household life of people in Gaza.

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The crippling cost of war against Hamas

From the excitable (Al Arabiya) through the sober (FT) to denial (Globes, Israel) all report that the Israeli economy, especially its currency (the NIS) has taken a hard knock from the war against Gaza. Tourism, accounting for 7per cent of GDP has collapsed (an own goal for Israel’s insistence on the Hamas threat) and the general insecurity about Israel’s priorities have taken their toll.

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Holocaust survivors speak up for Gaza

The Holocaust, or Shoah, did not give Jews a badge of exemption from humanitarian laws. If anything, the reverse is true. Having experienced the worst that human beings can do to each other where law does not rule, many survivors and descendants feel the greatest obligation to ensure Jews, in particular, do not commit inhumane acts with impunity – such as Israel’s attack on the people of Gaza, and the oPt. Hajo Meyer, who has just died, was one such honourable man. Sign petition to support the letter he was the first to sign.

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Always connect with the good

After a life-time of working with those severely damaged by the cruelty of others it is astonishing that Helen Bamber remained a compassionate and uncensorious person. She helped traumatised children by getting them to connect with the good things in their past and all victims of cruelty to feel safe and learn to trust again . Though not religious, her Judaism was important to her and we are honoured, and not surprised, that she chose to become a signatory of JfJfP.

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