Category Archives:
Israel/Palestine

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Released from PA jail, Issa Amro warns online censorship law threatens last line of defense against Israel

Sheren Khalel on

Sheren Khalel reports: Released from prison a week ago, Issa Amro has jumped right back into work. At a small house atop a hill in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of Hebron he sat gathered in a circle with activists, NGO workers, a lawyer and friends sipping coffee under the shade of trees in the front courtyard of the home. The topic, as usual, was the Israeli occupation — however Amro was not released from Israeli custody last week, but rather the Palestinian Authority’s, and he was not arrested for his activism in Hebron, but rather a Facebook post defending a man who criticized the Palestinian leadership.

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Netanyahu, say hi from me to the penguins in Antarctica

Jonathan Ofir on

Jonathan Ofir responds to Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the UN where he said he wanted to visit Antartica because he heard penguins are enthusiastic supporters of Israel: “Those Penguins, they would completely know what’s what. Black and white. Obey – get a fish. Resist – no fish. Nowadays you are congratulating the far right ‘Decision Plan’ for annexing the West Bank, which is also black and white: Accept Apartheid, leave, or face the wrath of Israel. Palestinians might not like this, they might prove difficult. Penguins will be much easier. Fish will do the trick. They’ll stay, and you can become the Caesar of the Caesar penguins! It will be glorious!”

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Solidarity with Dareen Tatour now hot issue in Israel’s cultural wars

Yoav Haifawi on

Hundreds of Palestinians are arrested, interrogated, and sentenced to Israeli prisons for their pronouncements made on Facebook each year. But the most absurd case of them is that of poet Dareen Tatour. Yoav Haifawi reports from an solidarity event with Tatour in Jaffa: “the wall of silence and denial on the part of the Israeli government fell altogether when supporters of Dareen Tatour called for an artistic solidarity event in the Jaffa (Yaffa) Theatre on August 30, 2017. And when the walls fell, we faced a wave of threats and inciting language from top Israeli politicians printed in Israeli mainstream media.”

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How Netanyahu’s son became the poster boy for white supremacists

Jonathan Cook on

The eldest son of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has found himself an unlikely poster boy for David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader, and the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer. The affinity between Netanyahu’s Israel and the west’s far-right is understandable. Both detest a human rights discourse they have yet to crush. Both mobilise their supporters with dog-whistle Islamophobia. Both prefer militarised, fear-based societies. Guided by this cynical convergence of interests, Jewish and white supremacists are counting on a revival of anti-semitism that will benefit them both.

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Israeli government to celebrate 50 years of ‘return to Judea and Samaria for eternity’ at a settlement

Kate on

Israeli government to celebrate 50 years of occupation on Sept. 27. “To the different forces in the world and in Israel trying to undermine the Jewish people’s connection to its country, we say — you won’t succeed,” Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev said, per Ynet. “We returned home to our ancestral lands, and we are here to stay for all of eternity. Our belonging to these lands should be above political or diplomatic dispute.”

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Israeli rightist Smotrich lays out the vision for apartheid

Jonathan Ofir on

Israeli lawmaker Bezalel Smotrich delivered his plan for the annexation of Palestinian territories and for how to handle the Palestinian population. It’s called the ‘Decision Plan’, but its real name is Apartheid. Surrender or be transferred.

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Israeli settlers raid two Palestinian villages, destroying 70 olive trees

Kate on

A group of Israeli settlers from the infamously extremist Yitzhar settlement in the northern occupied West Bank district of Nablus uprooted 27 olive trees near the village of Burin on Wednesday. Last week settlers from Rechelim destroyed 43 olive trees in occupied al-Sawiya.

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In the backyard of the ‘White City’: Mya Guarnieri Jaradat reports on refugees and guest-workers

Max Ajl on

Southern Tel Aviv has long been the wealthy White City’s “backyard,” under serviced and neglected. It is the symbol of the Ashkenazi elite’s malign neglect of the country’s periphery, and thus is the perfect backdrop for Mya Guarnieri Jaradat’s careful, reflective and self-reflective book on guest-workers and refugees, “The Unchosen: the lives of Israel’s others.”

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Arab League and Palestinian Authority to block Israeli bid for UN Security Council seat

Sheren Khalel on

The Arab League on Sunday approved the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) request to create a committee aimed at stopping the State of Israel’s bid to become one of the ten non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UN SC) — a mere day before the Israel-Africa Summit in Togo was called off amid growing pressure.

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Ayelet Shaked and the fascist ideology

Jonathan Ofir on

Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy has opined that Israeli Justice Minister Shaked’s words about Zionism being in opposition to individual rights, are true. His colleague Rogel Alpher opines she is a fascist comparable to Mussolini. The combined logic of these two assertions is, Zionism is a fascist ideology.

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Israeli support for Myanmar is the natural alliance of regimes based on ethnic supremacy

David Lloyd on

In recent days, the mainstream press has been full of reports of the dire plight of the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar that is currently being ethnically cleansed by the Burmese military. What has not been reported in the mainstream news is the fact that, even during this ongoing genocidal campaign against its Muslim population, Myanmar has been supplied with weaponry by Israel.

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Marwan Barghouti’s wife is reportedly barred from visiting him in prison for two years

Kate on

Palestinian lawyer Fadwa Barghouthi, the wife of prominent imprisoned Palestinian leader and Fateh central committee member Marwan Barghouthi, said on Monday, 4 September that she had been banned from visiting her husband until 2019 in retaliation for her involvement in supporting the prisoners’ hunger strike in April-May 2017, per Samidoun, the Palestinian prisoners’ solidarity network.

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One magical night in Yaffa

Anonymous on

A professor visits two of her Palestinian students in Ramallah and together they sneak into Jerusalem for a joyride to Jaffa: “Our car never stopped but took a pause, then zoomed forth.  Malak announced, ‘I would like to notify you that we’re in Jerusalem right now.’  The two of them suddenly yelled with sheer elation, ‘We made it!  We’re going to Yaffa!.’  I had seen Malak on celebratory highs before, having seen him accomplish truly amazing things as an undergrad.  But I had never witnessed the degree of outpouring of elation I was seeing from him now.  I knew what Yaffa meant to him, as he had written about it and spoken about it on more than one occasion.  He loved the sea, and he loved Yafa.  It had been taken from him.  It was his home, his family’s home.  At 22 years old, he had only seen the sea from Yaffa a handful of times – he had never swum there.”

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Youtube sensations, the Khaldi twins, explain ‘why Eid is special’ from Gaza City

Allison Deger on

“Eid is special”– “and we will tell you why,” say 20-year old bloggers and twin sisters from Gaza City, Asmaa and Saja Khaldi, otherwise known as the “Khaldi twins.” The pair posted a video greeting on Sunday of how they and other Palestinians celebrate the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha which occurred over the weekend. 

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‘I will shoot you in front of your mother ‘– Israeli forces follow through on threat to Palestinian youth

Yumna Patel on

Almost one month after Israeli forces shot him seven times during a night raid in Deheisha refugee camp, 22-year-old Raed al-Salhi succumbed to his wounds on Sunday in Jerusalem’s Hadassah hospital. Israeli forces had warned Raed al-Salhi in late July that they were coming for him. “They called him and told him ‘we will shoot you in front of your mother’,” Khaled, 24, one of Raed’s four older brothers told Mondoweiss. Two weeks after the call, on August 9, 2017,  Israeli forces shot Raed in the courtyard behind his home at 4 a.m, as his mother sat inside the family’s living room just feet away.

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No free speech in Palestine: PA arrests journalist, internationally-renowned peace activist for Facebook posts

Sheren Khalel on

Palestinian forces on Monday evening arrested Palestinian peace activist Issa Amro for a Facebook post he published condemning the Palestinian Authority (PA) for detaining journalist and radio director Ayman Quwasmeh the day previously. “It is outrageous that a prominent human rights defender has been arrested simply for voicing his opinion online. Criticizing the authorities should not be a criminal offence. Issa Amro’s arrest is the latest evidence that the Palestinian authorities are determined to continue with their repressive campaign against free speech,” Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said.

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Young Palestinian photographer in Gaza shines a light on fishermen’s struggle

Charlotte Kates on

“I chose the situation of the fishermen as the subject of my first exhibition because the Palestinian fishermen are in a constant clash with the occupation authorities, who impose maritime borders that prevent the fishermen from crossing them to do their work”–Khalid Hashem Abu al-Jedian, Palestinian photojournalist, and artist.

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Israeli military order will violate 20-year-old peace treaty in Hebron

Sheren Khalel on

An Israeli military order granting official administrative status to Jewish settlers in Hebron violates the 20-year-old Hebron agreement struck between Yasser Arafat and Benjamin Netanyahu. “This order is against everything we’ve made here, it’s against all the agreements, all the treaties and older orders we have worked hard to slowly establish,” Bassam Shweiki, a Palestinian leader, says.

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Gideon Levy calls out Israel’s fundamental, racist religion: Zionism

Jonathan Ofir on

The discussion over the essential racism of Zionism is in the open. Israeli Justice minister Ayelet Shaked made it clear, and Israeli journalist Gideon Levy thanks her for her candidness. Levy published a column in Haaretz yesterday that all but says Zionism is racism. He calls it a movement that “contradicts human rights, and is thus indeed an ultranationalist, colonialist and perhaps even racist movement, as proponents of justice worldwide maintain”. 

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Israel seeks ‘Jewish’ non-Jews in numbers battle with Palestinians

Jonathan Cook on

At an event on Monday in the West Bank celebrating 50 years of Israeli occupation, Netanyahu reassured his settler audience, “We are here to stay forever. We will deepen our roots, build, strengthen and settle.” So where is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict heading if the two-state solution is dead? The answer: back to its origins. That will entail another desperate numbers battle against the Palestinians – with Israel preparing to create new categories of “Jews” so they can be recruited to the fray.