A funeral is being held today in the occupied West Bank for Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi, who was shot dead Friday by Israeli forces while taking part in a weekly protest against illegal Israeli settlements in the town of Beita. The 26-year-old recent graduate of the University of Washington was a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement. Witnesses say she was fatally…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Israeli military carried out a series of airstrikes on central Syria late Sunday, reportedly killing more than a dozen people and prompting a furious response from Syrian ally Iran. “We strongly condemn this criminal attack,” Nasser Kanaani, a spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, said during a press conference in Tehran. Kanaani went on to urge Israel’s weapons suppliers…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Polio. Chickenpox. Hepatitis. The threat of epidemics is looming large in Gaza, thanks to Israel’s deliberate destruction of the Strip’s healthcare and sanitation infrastructure. Left without clean water, sewage, waste disposal, and adequate shelter, the health of Palestinians in Gaza is rapidly declining. Children and the elderly are among the most vulnerable, and time is running out. The Real News reports from the ground in Gaza, speaking directly with sanitation experts and local mothers about the conditions Israel has created through its total war on the Palestinian people.
Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Najwa Saleh:
This is my granddaughter. She is one and a half years old. She was displaced
when she was six months old. It’s a shame this is happening to her. Look at her back. Look!
She’s suffering from chickenpox and rashes.
Look, Look! This is shameful to happen to a child. She’s sleeping in a tent. She’s suffering
from the heat, the contaminated water.
Narrator:
Soaring temperatures, a decimated water and sewage system, extremely limited access to
water and cycles of displacement have all combined to create a public health catastrophe in
Gaza. Najwa Saleh and her family were displaced multiple times before setting up most
recently in Deir Al Balah. Here, as well as bombs, they face a more subtle creeping danger.
Najwa Saleh:
Displacement has been honestly very difficult,
very very difficult. We’re tired, our psychological state is bad. I have eight people in a small
tent. The sun has destroyed us, the heat is killing us. I mean, we’re being moved from place
to place and we’re tired. It’s really hard. Water is a problem, we buy
a gallon of water for 4 shekels (1.2 USD). We get water here at the college and it’s salty! It’s
sea water, and sea water burns the body. I have children and grandchildren, their skin is
completely covered in spots. We took them to the doctor and they don’t get better. I swear to god my granddaughter, we put something on her body but it’s not going away. Her body is scary. If you saw her body, it’s scary. I mean, we’re really really tired. We beg God to finish with this story. We’re very tired. Our lives have become hell. All the other countries are watching, while we’re being tortured.
Narrator:
It’s here in Deir El Balah, where Najwa is currently living, where samples taken from the
sewage water in July revealed the presence of the Polio virus. A highly infectious disease,
brought on by poor sanitation. Polio can cause myriad health problems for infected people,
and can lead to paralysis and in some cases even death. Rawiya Sultan Ayyad, is another
refugee recently displaced to Deir Al Balah.
Rawiya Sultan Said Ayyad:
The itching, we all got scabies here. Adults and children we all have scabies. From when we
came to Deir (al Balah). More than the other places, we were in Khan Yunis, then Rafah and
then we came here and here it was the worst. All my children have skin infections. All of
them, from my 5 year old and up, theyre all children. We also have someone with kidney
problems with us here and the contaminated water affects him. With regards to
contaminated water, it’s something difficult for us. We have all contracted Dermatitis. There’s also Hepatitis here from lack of sanitation and lack of cleaning products available. We’re going through a very hard situation. Harder than hard. There’s no work. My husband is imprisoned. My children don’t work. It’s an extremely difficult time. Treatment is difficult. Just the anti-histamines, but actually even that is not available. For around 3 months now there’snnothing available in any clinic or pharmacy or government dispensary.
Narrator:
Noor Al Huda is an Environmental specialist working for local authorities in Gaza. She
describes the current situation.
Noor Al Huda Abu Muaylik:
Here displaced people are relying on salty sea water and on drinking water that is literally
mixed with sewage water. As you can see here there are lakes of sewage, that authorities
can’t clean due to lack of fuel and lack of electricity and due to the security situation which
makes it hard to be taken care of.
Where we are currently the area of Al Bassa, which is low lying and therefore encourages
sewage to collect here this area is not connected to the sewage system in Gaza, even
before the war, it relied on septic pits. Since the war, everyone here without exception relies
on septic pits inside the tents. There are cess pits that are present within the camps where
people sleep, eat and drink due to a lack of sewage systems and lack of homes that people
lost in light of this war.
Narrator:
For Najwa and her family, the situation in Deir Al Balah has become unbearable.
Najwa Saleh:
We ran away because of our children, now we are living with contaminated water
and the hardships of living in tents. Our lives have become unbearable.
My grandson, Look at his back. Look. Look, look. Here, look.
There’s no soaps, no cleaning products at all. We’re washing with dish soap. We’re cleaning
with dish soap. Were wiping with dish soap. Washing our hands.
All these microbes and bacteria are not good. It’s all just salt and it doesn’t clean,
don’t tell me it’s good and it works. Their bodies are covered in spots. Us adults, we also
contracted it. From the contaminated water and the sewage. We adults contracted it.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Five questions, and a sixth:
1. At what point does it become irresponsible not to compare Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinian people with the genocide westerners know best: the Nazi Holocaust?
2. At what point does shielding Israel from the revulsion its actions naturally inspire not turn into complicity?
3. At what point should western publics be offered proper historical context to make sense of Israel’s genocide: one that lets them understand how the Zionist movement was ideologically shaped by its exposure to ugly, century-old European ethnic nationalisms that culminated in Nazism, and how the Zionists chose to mirror those supremacist ideologies rather than reject them?
4. At what point are we allowed to say that Israel cannot continue to exist in its current form, as a racist, settler-colonial state masquerading as the “state of the Jews”, and that it must be remade, as apartheid South Africa once was?
5. And at what point are we permitted to prize Palestinian life over the “sensitivities” of Zionist supremacists?
6. Is the answer: Never?
The post At what point are we permitted to…? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Not to do things by halves, Palestine Action started the week as it means to go on: by blockading an Elbit factory – Instro, in Kent – for the majority of the day; once again, disrupting Israel’s genocide supply chain in the process
Palestine Action have blocked all entrance roads to the ‘Instro Precision’ factory in Discovery Park, once again shutting down the Kent factory of Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems.
Activists have used vehicles to obstruct the entrances:
Actionists inside two vehicles blocking one entrance into Kent's Israeli weapons factory, whilst others have taken over all other ways in. pic.twitter.com/VhWXamWwlQ
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) September 9, 2024
They have climbed on top of security boxes and the ledge of Discovery Park House:
All ways in to Kent's Israeli weapons factory have been taken over by Palestine Action!
We're here to shut down British complicity with genocide – Join us at Discovery Park, Sandwich pic.twitter.com/4ySlhWaeHD
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) September 9, 2024
The premises has been covered in red paint, symbolising Palestinian bloodshed spilt by Elbit’s weaponry:
BREAKING: Palestine Action blockade all entrances into the Elbit's Instro Precision arms factory in Discovery Park, Kent.
We're more determined than ever to get Israel's biggest weapons manufacturer out of Britain. pic.twitter.com/DTcAimP8cZ
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) September 9, 2024
Meanwhile, as of 3pm cops did little but look on in a state of stupor:
Police out to try and remove Palestine Action's ongoing blockade of Kent's Israeli weapons factory pic.twitter.com/US0J6xyVxO
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) September 9, 2024
Whilst this action is taking place, there are 16 Palestine Action political prisoners detained for trying to stop a genocide.
Palestine Action’s ongoing blockade demonstrates the direct action group will not be deterred from it’s goal to shut Elbit down. The site, used to manufacture weapons sights and target acquisition products for the Israeli military was previously entered and dismantled by activists in June.
Palestine Action pledge to continue direct action against Elbit Systems, until the Israeli weapons manufacturer can no longer operate in Britain.
The premises, at Sandwich’s ‘Discovery Park’, regularly export ‘ML5’-category weapons sight and target acquisition products to Israel, with at least 50 export licenses for arms sold for ‘military end use’ in Israel approved within a five-year period.
Instro’s weapons products, including XACT th64 and XACT th65 weapons sights, have been delivered in their thousands to the Israeli military for use by “marksmen of both Infantry and Special Operation Forces”, including those conducting ground operations in Gaza. Instro furthermore manufactures target acquisition products fitted to Israeli Skylark drones and to ground vehicles with “hunter-killer capabilities”. All of these products can potentially comprise Instro’s dozens of ‘ML5’ category exports.
Last week’s announcement that the government will continue to permit 90% of Britain’s weapons exports to Israel, necessitates the continuation of action in response to British complicity in the genocide of Palestinians.
Furthermore, Elbit Systems continues to profit from genocide by selling weaponry globally which is marketed as “battle-tested” on the Palestinian people.
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
Despite the ongoing Gaza genocide, Britain has allowed 92% of arms export licenses to continue and given permission for Israeli weapons factories to keep operating across the country. Although our government have failed to take meaningful action, ordinary citizens refuse to be complicit in the mass murder of Palestinians and are stepping up to shut Elbit down.
Featured image via Palestine Action
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
For many years I lived just up the road from Megiddo prison in northern Israel, where new film of Israeli guards torturing Palestinians en masse has been published by Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. I drove past Megiddo prison on hundreds of occasions. Over time I came to barely notice the squat grey buildings, surrounded by watch towers and razor wire.
Footage uploaded to Israeli media depicts Israeli occupation forces collectively torturing Palestinians held in Megiddo prison.
The video shows prisoners lying face down on the ground, hands tied behind their backs, while being terrorized by dogs. pic.twitter.com/mZOIC1Glj8
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) September 6, 2024
There are several large prisons like Megiddo in Israel’s north. It is where Palestinians end up after they have been seized from their homes, often in the middle of the night. Israel, and the western media, say these Palestinians have been “arrested”, as though Israel is enforcing some kind of legitimate legal procedure over oppressed subjects – or rather objects – of its occupation. In truth, these Palestinians have been kidnapped.
The prisons are invariably located close to major roads in Israel, presumably because Israelis find it reassuring to know Palestinians are being locked up in such large numbers. (As an aside, I should mention that transferring prisoners out of occupied territory into the occupier’s territory is a war crime. But let that pass.)
Even before the mass round-ups of the past 11 months, the Palestinian Authority estimated that 800,000 Palestinians – or 40 per cent of the male population – had spent time in an Israeli prison. Many had never been charged with any crime and had never received a trial. Not that that would make any difference – the conviction rate of Palestinians in Israel’s military courts is near 100 per cent. There is no such thing as an innocent Palestinian, it seems.
Rather, imprisonment is a kind of terrifying rite of passage that has been endured by generations of Palestinians, one required of them by the bureaucracy managing Israel’s apartheid-occupation system.
Torture, even of children, has been routine in these prisons since the occupation began nearly 60 years ago, as Israeli human rights groups have been regularly documenting.
The imprisonment and torture of Palestinians serve several goals for Israel. It crushes the spirit of Palestinians individually and collectively. It traumatises generation after generation, creating fear and suspicion. And it helps to recruit a large class of Palestinian informants and collaborators who secretly work with Israel’s secret police, the Shin Bet, to foil Palestinian resistance operations against Israel’s illegal occupation forces.
This kind of Palestinian resistance, we should note, is specifically permitted in international law. In other words, what the West denounces as “terrorism” is actually legal under the principles the West established after the Second World War. Paradoxical, to put it mildly.
The humiliation and trauma systematically inflicted on these hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and the wider Palestinian society – and the complete lack of concern from the so-called “international community”, or, worse, its complicity – have inevitably fed into growing religious extremism among parts of a Palestinian society that was once largely secular.
If there is no justice, no redress to be offered by the international institutions created by a West that both trumpets its secularism while also flaunting its Christian values, then, Palestinians conclude, maybe they can find justice – or at least retribution – not through futile, rigged “negotiations” but through greater commitment to violent resistance carried out in the name of Islam.
That explains the emergence of the group Hamas in the late 1980s and its relentless growth in popularity. Hamas’ unapologetic Islamic militancy contrasted with the more accommodationist secular nationalism of Fatah, long led by Mahmoud Abbas. Support for Hamas was something Israel was only too happy to cultivate. It understood that Islamism would discredit the Palestinian cause in the eyes of westerners and further bond the West to Israel.
But Israel’s system of torture – whether in “normal” prisons like Megiddo or in the giant open-air prison that Israel made of Gaza – also led to an ever greater determination among groups like Hamas to liberate themselves through violence. If Israel could not be reasoned with, if it only understood the sword, then that was the language Palestinians would speak to Israel. This was precisely the rationale for the atrocities of October 7.
If you were horrified by October 7, but are not more horrified by what Israel has been doing to Palestinians for more than half a century in its prisons, then you are either in a state of deep ignorance – hardly surprising given the lack of media coverage of Israel’s despotic rule over Palestinians – or in deep denial.
If you cannot see the causal connection between the barbaric abuses of Palestinians generation after generation and the crimes committed on October 7, then you have no understanding of human nature. You have no inner awareness of how you would act had you, your father and your grandfather been tortured in an Israeli prison, a trauma passed down through families little differently than hair colour or build.
The scenes filmed at Megiddo. The images of emaciated men, broken from their beatings in prison. The disappearance of hundreds of doctors into Israel’s torture chambers. The video of a Palestinian man being raped by Israeli prison guards. The findings by Israeli and international organisations that this is going on systematically. The horrors are staring us in the face. But too many of us are looking away, reverting to the magical thinking of our babyhoods in which, when we cover our eyes, the world disappears.
The horrors of Israel’s prison system aren’t new. They have been going on for decades. What’s new is that Israel has intensified the abuse. It now relishes atrocities it previously hid away like a dark secret.
Israel is lost. It is deep in a black, genocidal hole. The question is, are you going to allow yourself to be sucked into the same void? Are you going to keep covering your eyes? Does the torture end just because you prefer not to see it?
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, including the Jenin refugee camp, early on Friday, after a 10-day military operation that resulted in the killing of dozens of Palestinians in Jenin and left significant destruction to the city and camp’s streets and infrastructure. The invasion on Jenin was part of ‘Operation Summer Camps’…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Guardian reported this week a source from within the Foreign Office confirming what anyone paying close attention already knew.
By last February, according to the source, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, had received official advice that Israel was using British arms components to commit war crimes in Gaza. Cameron sat on that information for many months, concealing it from the House of Commons and the British public, while Israel continued to butcher tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.
Several points need making about the information provided to the Guardian:
1. The source says that the advice to Cameron on Israeli war crimes was “so obvious” it could not have been misunderstood by him or anyone else in the previous government. Given that the new Labour government has been similarly advised, forcing it to partially suspend arms sales, one conclusion only is possible: Cameron is complicit in Israel’s war crimes. The International Criminal Court must immediately investigate him. Its British chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, needs to issue an arrest warrant for Cameron as soon as possible. No ifs or buts.
2. Now in government, Labour has a legal duty to make clear the timeline of the advice Cameron received – and who else received it – to help the ICC in its prosecution of the former Foreign Secretary and other British officials for complicity in Israel’s atrocities.
3. The current furore being kicked up over Labour’s suspension of a tiny fraction of arm sales to Israel needs to be put firmly in context. David Lammy, Cameron’s successor, is keen to evade any risk of complicity charges himself. Leaders of the previous government are denouncing his decision on arms sales only because it exposes their own complicity in war crimes. Their outrage is desperate arse-covering – something the media ought to be highlighting but isn’t.
4. Labour needs to explain why, according to the source, the advice it has published has apparently been watered down from the advice Cameron received. As a result, Lammy has suspended 30 of 350 arms contracts with Israel – or 8 per cent of the total. He has avoided suspending the British components most likely to be assisting Israel in its war crimes: those used in Israel’s F-35 jets, made in the US.
Why? Because that would incur the full wrath of the Biden administration. He and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, dare not take on Washington.
In other words, Lammy’s decision has not only exposed the complicity of Cameron and the previous Tory leadership in Israeli war crimes. It also exposes Lammy and Starmer’s complicity. Put bluntly, following this week’s announcement, they are now 8 per cent less complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity than Cameron and the Tories were.
5. There has been lots of fake indignation from Israel and its lobbyists, especially in Britain’s Jewish community, about how offensive it is that the government should announce its suspension of a small fraction of arms sales to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza the day six Israeli hostages were buried.
The chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, for example, is incensed that the UK is limiting its arming of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, saying it “beggars belief”. He is thereby calling for the UK to trash international law, and ignore its own officials’ advice that Israel risks using British weapons to commit war crimes. He is demanding that the UK facilitate genocide.
The British Board of Deputies, which claims to represent British Jews, has retweeted Mirvis’ comment. The Board’s president has been all over the airwaves similarly decryingLammy’s decision.
Israel would, of course, have always found some reason to be appalled at the timing. There is an obviously far more important consideration than the bogus “sensitivities” of Israel and genocide apologists like Rabbi Mirvis. Each day the UK government delays banning all arms to Israel – not just a small percentage – more Palestinians in Gaza die and the more Britain contributes to Israel’s crimes against humanity.
But equally to the point: according to the rules Starmer imposed on the Labour party – that Britain’s Jewish leaders get to define what offends Jews and what amounts to antisemitism, especially on issues concerning Israel – the Labour government is now, judged by those standards, antisemitic. You can’t have one set of rules for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left, and another for Starmer and the Labour right.
Or rather you can. That is precisely the game the entire British establishment has been playing for the past seven years. A game that has facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza even more than the sales of British weapons to Israel.
6. Many have dismissed the significance of recent rulings against Israel from the International Court of Justice – that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza and that its decades of occupation are illegal and a form of apartheid – as well as moves from the International Criminal Court to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal.
Here we see how mistaken that approach is. Those legal decisions have set the two wings of the British establishment – the Tories and the Starmerite Labour right – at loggerheads. Both are now desperate in their different ways to distance themselves from charges of complicity.
The rulings have also opened up a potential rift with Washington. The State Department spokesman has been shown having to frantically justify why the US is not banning its own arms sales.
Journalist Humeyra Pamuk questioned State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller on why the US has not followed the UK's decision to suspend arms sales to Israel over concerns about potential violations of international law. pic.twitter.com/mujwDyblgZ
— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) September 4, 2024
Admittedly, these are only small fissures in the western system of oligarchy. But those fissures are weaknesses – weaknesses that those who care about human rights, care about international law, care about stopping a genocide, and care about saving their own humanity can exploit. We have few opportunities. We need to grasp every single one of them.
The post Six takeaways from the UK’s decision on arms sales to Israel the media are hiding first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on Sep 5, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
The recent revocation of the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) charitable status may be the most important Palestine solidarity victory in Canadian history. The grassroots win is a boost to the global Stop the JNF campaign and efforts to disrupt Canadian charity assistance to Israel.
On August 10, the federal government officially revoked the charitable status of an organization that’s has hosted events attended by many prime ministers, ministers, and senators. Just days before the revocation, former prime minister Stephen Harper headlined JNF fundraisers in Windsor and London, Ontario. The organization’s galas, held across the country, draw thousands of well-healed and connected individuals each year. Since 2003, JNF Canada has partnered with provincial governments and raised over a quarter billion CAD.
After fifty-seven years of making all Canadians subsidize its controversial activities, including support for West Bank colonies and the Israeli military, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has finally revoked the JNF’s ability to issue tax receipts to its donors, which often cover half (or more) of all donations received. The organization now has one year to wind up its charitable operations and dispose of its $30 million in assets.
In its letter explaining the revocation, the CRA highlights a slew of issues with JNF’s operations. Alongside a multitude of accounting problems, the agency faults JNF Canada for assisting its discriminatory parent organization in Israel. The CRA letter notes:
Our review identified that the Organization’s resources appear to have been applied to JNF’s non-charitable projects in the Occupied Territories, and to supporting the Israeli armed forces, and not to activities furthering its charitable purposes. It is our position that the Organization has operated as a conduit for JNF [Israel], a non-qualified donee, in contravention of the Act.
The revocation is the culmination of decades of demonstrations at JNF galas, countless email campaigns, extensive educational efforts, and formal complaints to the CRA about the JNF. The campaign began in earnest in 1978 when Ismail Zayid discovered that Canada Park was built on the village from which he and his family were expelled. JNF Canada raised $15 million (equivalent to $120 million today) to build Canada Park on three West Bank villages — Beit Nuba, Imwas, and Yalu — that were demolished by Israel after the 1967 war. Despite repeated attempts to return home, the five thousand expelled Palestinians were not allowed back. A 1986 UN Special Committee reported to the secretary-general:
[We] consider it a matter of deep concern that these villagers have persistently been denied the right to return to their land on which Canada Park has been built by the JNF Canada and where the Israeli authorities are reportedly planning to plant a forest instead of allowing the reconstruction of the destroyed villages.
JNF Canada, which subsequently raised millions of dollars to refurbish the park, replaced most traces of Palestinian history with signs devoted to Canadian donors such as the Metropolitan Toronto Police Service, City of Ottawa, and former Ontario premier Bill Davis. The Diefenbaker Parkway, dedicated to former prime minister John Diefenbaker, opened in 1975, bisecting Canada Park.
The CRA cites Canada Park, which it labels the “organization’s flagship project,” as a key reason for revoking the JNF’s charitable status. The revocation letter also mentions seven other ventures that the charity funded on land deemed illegally occupied by the Canadian government. Additionally, the CRA details nine JNF Canada initiatives that support a foreign military, which violates the rules for registered charities.
Established in 1910, JNF Canada played a role in an important pre-state land conflict. In the late 1920s, JNF Canada helped raise $1 million (equivalent to $17 million today) to acquire the Wadi al-Hawarith area, a thirty thousand dunam (roughly seventy-five hundred acres) stretch of coastal territory located halfway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. This land was home to a Bedouin community of more than one thousand people. Without consulting the Palestinians living on the land, JNF acquired legal title to Wadi al-Hawarith from an absentee landlord in France.
For four years, the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith resisted British attempts to evict them. Historian Walid Khalidi explains:
The insistence of the people of Wadi al-Hawarith to remain on their land came from their conviction that the land belonged to them by virtue of their having lived on it for 350 years. For them, ownership of the land was an abstraction that at most signified the landlords’ right to a share of the crop.
The conflict at Wadi al-Hawarith became a lightning rod for the growing Palestinian nationalist movement. In 1933, a general strike was organized in Nablus to support the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith. Palestinians, especially those without title to their lands, resented the European influx into their homeland.
Founded in 1901 to acquire land in historic Palestine for exclusive Jewish settlement, JNF, along with the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency, is a key institution of Zionism. By the time of Israel’s creation, JNF had acquired nine hundred thousand dunams of Palestinian land and later “purchased” over two million additional dunams of absentee land from the state after over seven hundred thousand Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1947–48.
Today the JNF owns 13 percent of the country’s land and has significant influence over most of the rest. Due to its systematic exclusion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from leasing its property, a 1998 UN report concluded JNF lands are “chartered to benefit Jews exclusively,” which has led to an “institutionalized form of discrimination.” Similar conclusions were drawn by Israel’s high court in 2005 and a 2012 US State Department report noted “institutional and societal discrimination” in Israel due to JNF’s statutes, which “prohibit sale or lease of land to non-Jews.”
In the early 1980s, JNF Canada helped finance an Israeli government campaign to “Judaize” the Galilee, the largely Arab region in northern Israel. Khateeb Raja, mayor of Deir Hanna, a Palestinian-Israeli town in the Galilee, told the Globe and Mail in 1981 that “the government is building Jewish settlements on our land, surrounding us and turning our villages into ghettos.” A resident of the Galilee, Ishi Mimon, told the paper that he planned to move his family to the newly settled “Galil Canada” area because “the Galilee should have a Jewish majority.”
JNF Canada’s representative in Israel, Akiva Einis, described the political objective of Galil Canada: “The government decided to stop the wholesale plunder (by Israeli Arabs) of state lands [conquered in the 1947/48 war]. . . . The settlements are all on mountain tops and look out over large areas of land. If an Arab squatter takes a plow onto land that is not his, the settlers lodge a complaint with the police.”
JNF Canada spent tens of millions of dollars, aiming to raise $35 million, on fourteen Jewish settlements in Galil Canada. In the contested valley of Lotem, a stone wall and monument was erected, reported the Globe, with “hundreds of small plaques etched with names and home towns of Canadians who have contributed money to the Galilee settlements.” Most of the donors to Galil Canada were Jewish, “but a Pentecostal congregation in Vancouver, the Glad Tidings Temple, has given $1 million.”
Tawfiz Daggash, Deir Hanna’s deputy mayor, denounced Canadian financial support for the settlements to the Globe. “I want to say to the people of Canada that every dollar they contribute [to JNF] is helping the Israeli government in its attempt to destroy the Arab people here.”
The CRA’s decision to revoke the JNF’s charitable status has already energized the global Stop the JNF campaign. The UK-based legal advocacy group, the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians, cited Canada’s decision in a recent letter urging the UK attorney general to revoke the charitable status of the UK branch of the JNF. With chapters in some fifty countries, the JNF raises around a quarter billion dollars a year in subsidized donations. Losing charitable status in these countries would significantly reduce the parent organization’s resources to further its discriminatory, colonial policies.
While the JNF revocation marks a victory for those opposing Canada’s role in Palestinian dispossession, hundreds of other registered charities raise over a quarter billion dollars annually projects in Israel, with many violating existing CRA rules.
On the same day that JNF’s loss of charitable status was made official, the Canada Gazette also announced the revocation of the Ne’eman Foundation’s charitable status. Raising $7.3 million in 2022, the Ne’eman Foundation assists West Bank colonies and the Israeli military.
Formal complaints have also been submitted to the CRA regarding a dozen other Israel-focused charities, including the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association, Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, Mizrachi Canada, and HESEG Foundation.
In recent months, there has been significant activism surrounding Israel-focused charities. In June, public figures such as Gabor Maté, Yann Martel, Linda McQuaig, Roger Waters, Monia Mazigh, Desmond Cole, Libby Davies, and others signed the “Stop Subsidizing Genocide” public letter. The letter points out that “200+ registered Canadian charities funnel a quarter billion dollars a year to projects in Israel. Many of these groups finance projects that support the Israeli military, racist organizations and West Bank settlements in contravention of Canada Revenue Agency rules.”
New Democratic Party revenue critic Niki Ashton has also challenged the government on this issue. She hosted a press conference at the parliamentary press gallery on June 13, calling “on the Liberal government to investigate Canadian charities that allegedly funneled taxpayer money in support of Israeli military operations and illegal settlements in Palestine.” Ashton has also sponsored a parliamentary petition on the subject and sent a letter to Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, demanding an investigation into these charities’ funding. In a recent post on the matter, Ashton wrote, “Not one cent of Canadian tax-dollars should be funding genocide.”
On the International Day of Charity, September 5, Just Peace Advocates, Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, and others are organizing a day of action at CRA offices across the country, calling on the Canada Revenue Agency to stop subsidizing genocide.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on Sep 5, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
The recent revocation of the Jewish National Fund’s (JNF) charitable status may be the most important Palestine solidarity victory in Canadian history. The grassroots win is a boost to the global Stop the JNF campaign and efforts to disrupt Canadian charity assistance to Israel.
On August 10, the federal government officially revoked the charitable status of an organization that’s has hosted events attended by many prime ministers, ministers, and senators. Just days before the revocation, former prime minister Stephen Harper headlined JNF fundraisers in Windsor and London, Ontario. The organization’s galas, held across the country, draw thousands of well-healed and connected individuals each year. Since 2003, JNF Canada has partnered with provincial governments and raised over a quarter billion CAD.
After fifty-seven years of making all Canadians subsidize its controversial activities, including support for West Bank colonies and the Israeli military, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has finally revoked the JNF’s ability to issue tax receipts to its donors, which often cover half (or more) of all donations received. The organization now has one year to wind up its charitable operations and dispose of its $30 million in assets.
In its letter explaining the revocation, the CRA highlights a slew of issues with JNF’s operations. Alongside a multitude of accounting problems, the agency faults JNF Canada for assisting its discriminatory parent organization in Israel. The CRA letter notes:
Our review identified that the Organization’s resources appear to have been applied to JNF’s non-charitable projects in the Occupied Territories, and to supporting the Israeli armed forces, and not to activities furthering its charitable purposes. It is our position that the Organization has operated as a conduit for JNF [Israel], a non-qualified donee, in contravention of the Act.
The revocation is the culmination of decades of demonstrations at JNF galas, countless email campaigns, extensive educational efforts, and formal complaints to the CRA about the JNF. The campaign began in earnest in 1978 when Ismail Zayid discovered that Canada Park was built on the village from which he and his family were expelled. JNF Canada raised $15 million (equivalent to $120 million today) to build Canada Park on three West Bank villages — Beit Nuba, Imwas, and Yalu — that were demolished by Israel after the 1967 war. Despite repeated attempts to return home, the five thousand expelled Palestinians were not allowed back. A 1986 UN Special Committee reported to the secretary-general:
[We] consider it a matter of deep concern that these villagers have persistently been denied the right to return to their land on which Canada Park has been built by the JNF Canada and where the Israeli authorities are reportedly planning to plant a forest instead of allowing the reconstruction of the destroyed villages.
JNF Canada, which subsequently raised millions of dollars to refurbish the park, replaced most traces of Palestinian history with signs devoted to Canadian donors such as the Metropolitan Toronto Police Service, City of Ottawa, and former Ontario premier Bill Davis. The Diefenbaker Parkway, dedicated to former prime minister John Diefenbaker, opened in 1975, bisecting Canada Park.
The CRA cites Canada Park, which it labels the “organization’s flagship project,” as a key reason for revoking the JNF’s charitable status. The revocation letter also mentions seven other ventures that the charity funded on land deemed illegally occupied by the Canadian government. Additionally, the CRA details nine JNF Canada initiatives that support a foreign military, which violates the rules for registered charities.
Established in 1910, JNF Canada played a role in an important pre-state land conflict. In the late 1920s, JNF Canada helped raise $1 million (equivalent to $17 million today) to acquire the Wadi al-Hawarith area, a thirty thousand dunam (roughly seventy-five hundred acres) stretch of coastal territory located halfway between Haifa and Tel Aviv. This land was home to a Bedouin community of more than one thousand people. Without consulting the Palestinians living on the land, JNF acquired legal title to Wadi al-Hawarith from an absentee landlord in France.
For four years, the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith resisted British attempts to evict them. Historian Walid Khalidi explains:
The insistence of the people of Wadi al-Hawarith to remain on their land came from their conviction that the land belonged to them by virtue of their having lived on it for 350 years. For them, ownership of the land was an abstraction that at most signified the landlords’ right to a share of the crop.
The conflict at Wadi al-Hawarith became a lightning rod for the growing Palestinian nationalist movement. In 1933, a general strike was organized in Nablus to support the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith. Palestinians, especially those without title to their lands, resented the European influx into their homeland.
Founded in 1901 to acquire land in historic Palestine for exclusive Jewish settlement, JNF, along with the World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency, is a key institution of Zionism. By the time of Israel’s creation, JNF had acquired nine hundred thousand dunams of Palestinian land and later “purchased” over two million additional dunams of absentee land from the state after over seven hundred thousand Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1947–48.
Today the JNF owns 13 percent of the country’s land and has significant influence over most of the rest. Due to its systematic exclusion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from leasing its property, a 1998 UN report concluded JNF lands are “chartered to benefit Jews exclusively,” which has led to an “institutionalized form of discrimination.” Similar conclusions were drawn by Israel’s high court in 2005 and a 2012 US State Department report noted “institutional and societal discrimination” in Israel due to JNF’s statutes, which “prohibit sale or lease of land to non-Jews.”
In the early 1980s, JNF Canada helped finance an Israeli government campaign to “Judaize” the Galilee, the largely Arab region in northern Israel. Khateeb Raja, mayor of Deir Hanna, a Palestinian-Israeli town in the Galilee, told the Globe and Mail in 1981 that “the government is building Jewish settlements on our land, surrounding us and turning our villages into ghettos.” A resident of the Galilee, Ishi Mimon, told the paper that he planned to move his family to the newly settled “Galil Canada” area because “the Galilee should have a Jewish majority.”
JNF Canada’s representative in Israel, Akiva Einis, described the political objective of Galil Canada: “The government decided to stop the wholesale plunder (by Israeli Arabs) of state lands [conquered in the 1947/48 war]. . . . The settlements are all on mountain tops and look out over large areas of land. If an Arab squatter takes a plow onto land that is not his, the settlers lodge a complaint with the police.”
JNF Canada spent tens of millions of dollars, aiming to raise $35 million, on fourteen Jewish settlements in Galil Canada. In the contested valley of Lotem, a stone wall and monument was erected, reported the Globe, with “hundreds of small plaques etched with names and home towns of Canadians who have contributed money to the Galilee settlements.” Most of the donors to Galil Canada were Jewish, “but a Pentecostal congregation in Vancouver, the Glad Tidings Temple, has given $1 million.”
Tawfiz Daggash, Deir Hanna’s deputy mayor, denounced Canadian financial support for the settlements to the Globe. “I want to say to the people of Canada that every dollar they contribute [to JNF] is helping the Israeli government in its attempt to destroy the Arab people here.”
The CRA’s decision to revoke the JNF’s charitable status has already energized the global Stop the JNF campaign. The UK-based legal advocacy group, the International Centre for Justice for Palestinians, cited Canada’s decision in a recent letter urging the UK attorney general to revoke the charitable status of the UK branch of the JNF. With chapters in some fifty countries, the JNF raises around a quarter billion dollars a year in subsidized donations. Losing charitable status in these countries would significantly reduce the parent organization’s resources to further its discriminatory, colonial policies.
While the JNF revocation marks a victory for those opposing Canada’s role in Palestinian dispossession, hundreds of other registered charities raise over a quarter billion dollars annually projects in Israel, with many violating existing CRA rules.
On the same day that JNF’s loss of charitable status was made official, the Canada Gazette also announced the revocation of the Ne’eman Foundation’s charitable status. Raising $7.3 million in 2022, the Ne’eman Foundation assists West Bank colonies and the Israeli military.
Formal complaints have also been submitted to the CRA regarding a dozen other Israel-focused charities, including the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association, Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, Mizrachi Canada, and HESEG Foundation.
In recent months, there has been significant activism surrounding Israel-focused charities. In June, public figures such as Gabor Maté, Yann Martel, Linda McQuaig, Roger Waters, Monia Mazigh, Desmond Cole, Libby Davies, and others signed the “Stop Subsidizing Genocide” public letter. The letter points out that “200+ registered Canadian charities funnel a quarter billion dollars a year to projects in Israel. Many of these groups finance projects that support the Israeli military, racist organizations and West Bank settlements in contravention of Canada Revenue Agency rules.”
New Democratic Party revenue critic Niki Ashton has also challenged the government on this issue. She hosted a press conference at the parliamentary press gallery on June 13, calling “on the Liberal government to investigate Canadian charities that allegedly funneled taxpayer money in support of Israeli military operations and illegal settlements in Palestine.” Ashton has also sponsored a parliamentary petition on the subject and sent a letter to Revenue Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau, demanding an investigation into these charities’ funding. In a recent post on the matter, Ashton wrote, “Not one cent of Canadian tax-dollars should be funding genocide.”
On the International Day of Charity, September 5, Just Peace Advocates, Canadian Foreign Policy Institute, and others are organizing a day of action at CRA offices across the country, calling on the Canada Revenue Agency to stop subsidizing genocide.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Israel is on track to wipe out nearly the entire population of Gaza if global powers don’t intervene to stop its genocide, a UN expert has warned, based on estimates of the true death toll in Gaza from the first 11 months of the slaughter. “Reading the health experts, I am starting to think with horror that if it’s not stopped, Israel’s assault could end up exterminating almost the entire…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli forces shot and killed an American activist, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, during a protest against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank on Friday. Eygi, who was of Turkish origin, was 26 years old. She was reportedly shot in the head by Israeli forces as she was protesting in Beita, near Nablus, during the town’s weekly demonstration against settlements. A witness told CNN that…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Survey data published Thursday shows that U.S. voter support for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris would grow if she heeded calls to support an arms embargo against the Israeli military, whose Gaza assault has relied heavily on a steady supply of American weapons. Commissioned by the Arab American Institute (AAI), the online poll of 2,505 American voters conducted between July 31…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
In a great victory for the Palestine movement, the Met Police have withdrawn all the major restrictions on tomorrow’s march. The coalition that organise the national demonstrations for Palestine have released the following statement. Please share it on social media below and make sure you are there on Saturday. Bring your friends, family and neighbours. Free Palestine. Stop arming Israel.
With less than 24 hours to go, the Met Police has dropped its attempt to frustrate our national march for Palestine.
Tomorrow we will march to the Israeli Embassy as planned. Following a week of argument and attempts to bully and intimidate the demonstration organisers, the police have now agreed that protesters will assemble from 12pm, at Regent Street St James’s as we had originally intended.
Previous conditions that were imposed in a wholly unjustified attempt to prevent us from doing so have now been rescinded.
This debacle has caused serious disruption to our organising efforts. The constant imposition of conditions on our marches are an unacceptable curtailment of our right to demonstrate peacefully and we will continue to challenge them.
Nevertheless, this is a major victory in defence of the democratic right to protest. We are thankful to everyone in the movement who has stood firm in the face of these threats and to the MPs, members of the House of Lords, trade union leaders and many others who have made representations to the police.
We call on people to turn out in huge numbers in solidarity with Palestine tomorrow.
We are marching to bring an end to Israel’s ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the continuing complicity of the British government in those crimes. We will not allow repressive tactics to distract us.
We call on everyone to join us from 12pm, at Regent Street St James’s.
Full details of the march are here.
Featured image via PSC
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
The United Nations is warning the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains “beyond catastrophic” as more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza did not receive any food rations in August amid Israel’s relentless assault. Israel’s 11-month campaign has killed more than 15,000 children and enabled the besieged territory’s first polio outbreak in a quarter-century. INARA founder Arwa Damon just got back from spending two weeks in Gaza, where the nonprofit currently provides medical and mental healthcare to Palestinian children. “Israel has decimated every single aspect of any sort of infrastructure within the Gaza Strip, from sewage to water to electricity to you name it,” says Damon, who reports that humanitarian assistance has diminished significantly while displaced Palestinians play a “macabre, dark, twisted game” of trying to escape constant Israeli bombing.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) with US Vice President Kamala Harris IMAGE/Independent/MSN/Duck Duck Go
A quote, wrongly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, reads:
You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.
Well, that may be true but what is also true is that you can fool most of the people (followers of politicians, political parties, religions, celebrities, stars, social media influencers, businesspersons, and so on) most of the time because followers place blind trust in their heroes, heroines, religious leaders, influencers, etc.
This was visible during the quadrennial spectacles called Republican National Convention (July 15 to July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and Democratic National Convention (August 19 to August 22, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois).
Of course, there is a difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party: the Republicans are overtly hostile and will screw you unashamedly in broad day light without any kind of lubrication or apology.
The Democrats are, in that respect, a bit less rough. They’ll beg your pardon; would plead with you to understand the criticality of the situation; but will screw you, nonetheless — of course, in a dim light with a bit of lubricant.
Both the conventions took place during the ongoing Israeli slaughter, displacements, starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza since October 12, 2023. Both parties have supported the Israeli carnage. There is a division in the Democratic Party about supporting Israel, but the strong voices are few and many a times become victims of the Israel Lobby. One of the powerful group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has spent more than $100 million in the 2024 election campaign: $15 million was spent to defeat US House Representatives Jamal Bowman who was critical of Israeli genocide of Gazans and $9 million to oust Cori Bush, another critic of Israeli war.
Danaka Katovich, National Co-Director CodePink, describes how a woman outside the convention center calling out the names of the children killed in Gaza was ignored and laughed at.
“There was a young woman that sat outside the exit of the Democratic National Convention on its third night reading the names of the children Israel has killed in the last ten months. She did it for hours, until her speaker battery died. She did it alone, taking care to pronounce every child’s name correctly and to say their age at the time of their murder. Without her, many of the DNC guests wouldn’t necessarily be confronted with the carnage members of their party is carrying out.
“Outside the gates of the DNC I saw a young woman making sure the children of Palestine weren’t just numbers, and I saw people laughing at her for doing so. They laughed loudly and mocked her voice. They mocked the names of the dead babies. They yelled at her to leave them alone. They left the coronation ceremony livid that they had to even hear about Gaza.”
Things were not too different inside the convention center, either.
The DNC allowed the parents of one of the hostages held by Hamas to speak and highlight their plight but no Palestinian was permitted to talk about the killing of over 41,000 [1] Palestinians (33% of them children and 18.4% women) and about ceasefire. Even a speech which included support for Kamala Harris was disallowed.
The speakers who did talk about Gaza and Palestine knew very well that their speeches were not going to make any difference.
AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez):
“She [Vice President Kamala Harris] is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home.”
After five and a half years in the US Congress and as an active member of the Democratic Party, progressive AOC [2] knows damn well that no efforts on part of Kamala or Biden administration is needed to secure a ceasefire — the US just has to stop money and arms flow to Israel and that’s it.
On August 21, AOC posted on X:
“Just as we must honor the humanity of hostages, so too must we center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment. To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The @DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.
“We must end this horrific war in Gaza. Bring home the hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire.”
Two progressive members devoted a total of 31 words to the more than 10 month old continuing tragedy without mentioning the over 41,000 Palestinians killed!
Senator Raphael Warnock (Georgia) talked about children’s (including Gaza’s) safety.
“I need all of my neighbors’ children to be okay — poor inner-city children in Atlanta and poor children in Appalachia.” “I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza, I need Israelis and Palestinians, I need those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine. I need American children on both sides of the tracks to be OK. Because we are all God’s children.”
The speakers, including (Barack Obama), touched on various topics, but as Lorraine Ali in Los Angeles Times observed,
“But little was said about Gaza or Israel, and the silence spoke volumes. Let’s talk about everything but that war.”
When hawkish Harris opened her mouth she roared about defending the security of the most powerful and technologically advanced country, Israel, against the broken Palestinians.
“With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done.
“Let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organization Hamas caused on Oct. 7.
“Including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival. At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again.
“The scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war such that – Israel is secure – the hostages are released – the suffering in Gaza ends – and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity.”
Hamas of the Israeli occupied Gaza is a “terrorist organization” but there is no mention of who caused the loss of “so many innocent lives” or who is making “desperate, hungry people” flee for “safety, over and over again.”
No mention of Israel. This, from one who is the would-be next President of the US.
She said she and Biden are “working around the clock.” The clock must be out of order. The war will only stop when the US decides to halt its support.
Back in July, Netanyahu addressed the US Congress. Many Democrats abstained, Harris included. But then the very next day, she met Netanyahu in private. Her facial expressions didn’t show she was angry in any manner. Now look at Obama’s picture with Netanyahu where Obama’s displeasure is visible. Netanyahu was trying to undermine Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
The statement by Harris after her meeting with Netanyahu was the same diplomatic bullshit. [3]
The conventions are basically a feel good exercise to create excitement and hope among supporters and to denigrate and make fun of the opposition. The Democrats did exactly that; made fun of former president and the current Republican Party presidential candidate, Donald Trump and frightened, rightly so, their followers/die hard supporters with fascism replacing “democracy” if Trump gets reelected.
The Democrats, however, didn’t remind their supporters that they (the Democrats), when in power, do act in a fascist manner overseas with their wars, sanctions, embargoes, blockades, seizing money and gold belonging to countries they don’t like.
On domestic issues the Democrats and Republicans differ on certain issues but both support capitalism and get plenty of money from the corporations. The hands of both parties are drenched with blood of foreigners, including children and women. Even within the US, the Democrats are cruel with many segments of the society. Republicans are openly cruel.
Notes
[1] After every Israeli deadly crime, the usual statement, actually a warning, from its major supporter, the United States, is,
“We are engaged in intense diplomacy pretty much around the clock, with a very simple message: All parties must refrain from escalation.”
That is, Israel’s murderous act should remain unpunished or else we’ll jump in to defend Israel. The above warning was for Iran to refrain from any retaliation against Israel which had assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also ordered killing of Lebanese militia group Hezbollah’s commander Fuad Shukr.
[2] The Democratic leadership was using one of their presidents’ tactic by inviting AOC to speak and thus mainstreaming her but also blunting her voice. President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908 – 1973) said the following about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
“It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”
[3] A couple of paragraphs from Harris’ statement;
“I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians. And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over 2 million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity.
“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating — the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”
Lip service completed, let the one-sided hostilities continue …
The post DNC 2024 and Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Between October and May, Israeli forces worked to create a wide “buffer zone” along Gaza’s eastern border, where they damaged or destroyed nearly everything, ranging from schools to agricultural land — making an area of destruction encompassing 16 percent of Gaza’s land, a new report finds. According to an analysis by Amnesty International released Thursday, Israel has cleared a strip of land…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel is using a range of “lethal war-like tactics” amid its assault of the occupied West Bank, the UN has warned, as Israeli forces destroy crucial civilian infrastructure and carry out drone strikes in Jenin refugee camp and beyond. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Wednesday that Israeli forces have killed over two dozen people in the West Bank…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu killed a ceasefire deal in July that would have seen the release of three of the six captives whose bodies were recovered by the Israeli military last week, a new report reveals as experts and people familiar with the negotiations are saying Netanyahu has been purposely sabotaging ceasefire negotiations for months. According to Israeli paper Yedioth…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Amnesty International has urged a war crimes probe into Israel’s flattening of eastern Gaza. The genocidal army have been razing homes and farms in eastern Gaza to expand a so-called buffer zone between it and the Palestinian territory.
Amnesty said:
Using bulldozers and manually laid explosives, the Israeli military has unlawfully destroyed agricultural land and civilian buildings, razing entire neighbourhoods, including homes, schools and mosques.
They continued that they believed Israel’s actions since 7 October:
should be investigated as war crimes of wanton destruction and of collective punishment.
Israel has in several cases said it was destroying “terror” infrastructure to protect Israeli communities living on the other side of the fence. It did not reply to a request from Amnesty for comment. And, an Amnesty investigation which examined satellite imagery and videos posted by Israeli soldiers between October and May, showed:
newly cleared land along Gaza’s eastern boundary, ranging from approximately 1 to 1.8 km (0.6 to 1.1 miles) wide.
The expanded buffer zone covers around 58 square kilometres (22 square miles), or about 16% of the Gaza Strip, it said. More than 90% of buildings within that zone appeared to have been destroyed or severely damaged.
Amnesty also found that more than half of the agricultural land in the area showed:
a decline in health and intensity of crops due to the ongoing conflict.
Israel has been accused of manufacturing famine in Gaza. Israel have also repeatedly lied about both their actions and motivations. It has become commonplace for them to claim they’re dismantling Hamas even while bombing refugee camps, schools, hospitals, and aid convoys.
Even if Hamas were operating in all of these locations, Israel has clearly decided that killing civilians – including children – is an acceptable cost. As of August 2024, Israel had killed 16,456 children. With a death total of over 40,000 Palestinians, one in 50 of Gaza’s children have been killed.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said of the death toll:
This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the [Israeli military] to comply with the rules of war.
The past year or so has been rife with Israeli atrocities.
The decomposing bodies of babies were discovered in a Gaza hospital that was surrounded by Israeli tanks. Mass grave after mass grave have been uncovered, with unmarked bodies buried together. Hospitals have been routinely targeted and besieged, with medical professionals being targeted.
As of March 2024, 103 journalists were killed in 150 days in Gaza. Journalists, and their families, have been targeted in an effort to silence reporting of the genocide. This list is but a fraction of the barrage of death and destruction Israel has rained down onto Palestine.
The UN Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese, found from an investigation in March 2024 that:
There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the crime of genocide…has been met.
And yet, we’re still supposed to swallow the lie Israel so often trots out, that they’re doing all this in the name of stamping out Hamas? If targeting civilians did somehow stamp out Hamas, would that even be worth it? Of course it wouldn’t.
When even the likes of Amnesty International are calling for investigation of war crimes, then Israel have very clearly overstepped international standards. Amnesty’s Erika Guevara-Rosas said:
Our analysis reveals a pattern along the eastern perimeter of Gaza that is consistent with the systematic destruction of the entire area. The homes were not destroyed as the result of intense fighting. Rather, the Israeli military deliberately razed the land after they had taken control of the area.
She added:
Israeli measures to protect Israelis from attacks from Gaza must be carried out in conformity with its obligations under international law including the prohibition of wanton destruction and of collective punishment.
Amnesty believe they have found evidence that Israel has been using military procedures that target civilians and destroy infrastructure:
In four areas investigated by Amnesty International, the destruction was carried out after the Israeli military had operational control over the areas, meaning that it was not caused by direct combat between the Israeli military and Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. In these parts of the Gaza Strip, structures were deliberately and systematically demolished.
International humanitarian law often falls short when it comes to determining the destruction caused for people’s lives and lands. Even then, Amnesty’s report demonstrates that Israel has carried out collective punishment, and unnecessarily destroyed civilian objects. Their findings cannot be clearer:
Intentionally directing attacks against civilian objects is a war crime.
Is this new information? No. Will it halt the ongoing genocide against Palestinians? Unlikely.
And yet, we must not let Palestinians die in the dark. We must show up on the streets and refuse to let up until Palestine is free.
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Lawmakers in Portland, Maine voted unanimously on Wednesday to divest public funds from “all entities complicit” in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, making the city the first on the U.S. East Coast to take such a step. Sponsored by the Maine Coalition for Palestine and the Maine chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), the newly approved resolution contains a “divestment list” of more…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Students in Greece have taken a stand against a university’s complicity with Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Namely, they’ve called out the university’s ties to Lockheed Martin – the company that provides Israel with its F-35 war planes.
Lockheed Martin is the manufacturer of the F-35 bombers. As the Times of Israel reported:
Israel’s Defense Ministry on Tuesday officially signed a deal with the United States to procure a third F-35 fighter jet squadron.
The ministry said a delegation to the US signed a letter of agreement for the $3 billion deal that included 25 advanced stealth fighters built by Lockheed Martin.
The planes would begin to be delivered starting in 2028, in batches of three to five per year, the ministry said. The aircraft would bring the Israeli Air Force’s F-35I fleet to 75 in the coming years. Only 39 of Israel’s original order of 50 F-35s have so far been delivered.
Of course, the UK’s complicity in this is well-known. As the Canary previously reported, just this week the Labour government refused to block the the ‘Open General’ licence relating to the F-35 combat aircraft, 15% of which is produced in the UK.
It comes as the Lockheed Martin F-35 has been linked to a potential war crime by Israel. Danish news outlet Information, together with NGO Danwatch, revealed that, for the first time, it has been possible to definitively confirm the use by Israel of an F-35 stealth fighter to carry out a specific attack in Gaza.
The attack took place on 13 July, on an Israeli-designated ‘safe zone’ in Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, killing 90 people and injuring at least 300. The Israeli military claims that the target of the attack was Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’s military wing.
Over in Greece, and students have also been pushing back against Lockheed Martin.
On 2 September, students held a protest against the collaboration of the University of Athens with Lockheed Martin. It happened first outside the Dean’s Office of the School of Sciences of the University of Athens:
The students demanded to stop immediately the cooperation of the university with the company that arms NATO with weapons and plays a key role in supplying Israel with weapons and war systems, so that the genocide of the Palestinian people continues. Athens University works with Lockheed Martin under its ‘Aerospace Systems Management’ course.
The students said in a statement:
Students from all over Greece have made it clear through their mobilizations and decisions that they are on the side of Palestine and will not tolerate any cooperation of the Universities with any company whose weapons are bombing the people of Palestine.
Under the determined stance of the students’ unions, the Dean himself stated that he disagrees with this cooperation, and that he does not want the university to become a participant in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The students obtained a commitment that the issue will be discussed in the next meeting of the Dean’s Office of the Faculty so that it will take an official position. This will be held in the next few days, with the participation of the student unions.
To this end, the protests and pressure from students over Lockheed Martin continued during the week:
Featured image and additional images via PAME International
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.
President Joe Biden read the tea leaves, and, from the periphery of the political system, Vice President (VP) Kamala Harris abruptly emerged as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States of America. The American public knew that Kamala Harris was VP, was not sure of how to pronounce her first name, and was not familiar with her voyage to the top spot. By announcing that the convention theme “’For the People, For Our Future,”’ will further introduce Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz to the nation and lay out their bold vision for America, including how they will fight for people, our freedoms, and our future,” the Democratic Party convention unraveled as a solution to the mystery of “who is presidential candidate Kamala Harris?”
Grandnieces explained how to pronounce her first name and an assortment of previous well-respected Democrat luminaries detailed why they love and we should love candidate Harris. Finally, the real-life Kamala Harris took the stage, eloquently traced the course of her life and outlined her recommended policies, including the awaited “ticking bomb” that has divided the Democratic Party ─ handling of the Middle East crisis. Did the real Kamala Harris stand up?
To the eager Democrats, more from being influenced by the engineered media than what they saw, Kamala Harris was convincing, presenting herself as a patriotic and dedicated American, fighting for people’s rights, and demonstrating ability to handle the previously mentioned critical issue facing the Democratic Party ─ the Middle East crisis. Driven by the manipulated euphoria, the followers of the Democratic Party ruled that the real Kamala Harris stood up.
A surface phenomena!
Kamala Harris did not have to express herself with the narratives that she used. Her presentation reinforced the reasons that guide those who have been driven to the Trump candidacy — Democratic support for NATO and foreign wars, liberal hypocrisy, promotion of the military-industrial complex, interference in other nations, and claiming the moral high ground. Candidate Harris may have harmed her candidacy. Parse the words.
Before a delegation, chanting Trump rhetoric of “USA, USA, USA,” VP Harris said, “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”
U.S. foreign policy defends its global hegemony — economic, cultural, and militarist — against perceived opponents in China and Russia. Harris’ dialogue prompted many questions:
Why does Israel deserve unique attention? How does Israel fit in with U.S. objectives and U.S. worldwide conflicts any more than Egypt?
Why does a president seeker single out support for a nation, which, if it disappeared, would not change U.S. life, U.S. global strategy, or U.S. direction by one monkey tail?
Why defend apartheid Israel in its theft of Palestinian lands, dehumanizing the Palestinian people, and murdering their children?
Where are the adversaries that Israel must defend itself against? Are they Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, who have no offensive capabilities, and — no air force, no tanks, no navies and no desire to be vanquished? [Iran has an aged and minor air force, but it has a navy and hypersonic missiles; some military analysts consider that Hezbollah defeated Israel — DV ed]
By some weird (favored word these days) thinking, adopting Israel’s problems as America’s problems is an ordinary consideration. Israel’s adversaries are immediately America’s adversaries. Problems that the U.S. has with China and Russia receive no attention in Israel; hey, Russia and China are two of Israel’s favored partners.
If Kamala Harris does not want “the people of Israel to again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival,” shouldn’t she warn Israel that it is preferable that a terrorist organization called Zionism does not inflict upon the people of Palestine the horrors it has caused them for 75 years, including unspeakable violence against the population and massacres of infants? Unlike Israel, which has killed many American civilians and service people (USS Liberty), Hamas has not done any damage to Americans and, from an American perspective, cannot be designated a terrorist organization, no more that the U.S., who committed several atrocities in Vietnam and Iraq, can be labelled a terrorist organization.
Reading a document scripted by AIPAC, became evident by the additional Harris comment, “At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”
This is the usual and cunning Zionist practice of presenting everything with the “good guy” and “bad guy” balanced approach. Keep up the hopes. Don’t be concerned that Israel is favored, there are also elements who realize that “what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating.” Note that Harris delineates Hamas committing devastation upon Israelis, but makes no mention of who caused the devastation in Gaza and uses “many innocent lives lost,” rather than “innocent people murdered.” Who promoted “desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again, and who induced “the scale of suffering that is heartbreaking.” The culprit Israel is never mentioned.
For the umpteenth time, we hear, “With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done,” and “President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” Mention of Palestinians’ “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination” has been an annual ritual and Democrat’s doctrine for decades. The “time to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done” was nine months ago, before tens of thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered and almost all of them were several times displaced.
The heir to Anthony Blinken, the most incapable Secretary of State in all U.S. history, will probably be saying the same in year 2030, except for replacing the words “Palestinian people,” with the words, “the ten surviving Palestinians.”
By some weird (favored word these days) thinking, the convention invited the parents of a Zionist American, who was captured by Hamas, to plead for his release. The parents stated he had migrated to Israel to be with his people. Let’s place this in perspective.
This is a person who grew up in the United States, received his education and training in the United States, speaks English. and identifies with American culture. He has no identification with Israelis, who speak Hebrew, eat different foods, and have a different history and culture. Does he share much with a Moroccan or Tunisian Jew? Are these his people? Isn’t he American?
This person deserted the nation that nurtured him and, for no adequate reason, assisted a despotic nation in its genocide of the Palestinians. The Americans of Palestinian descent, murdered, harassed, and detained by Israel received no attention.
VP Harris continued her pandering to the military-industrial complex with the brilliant remarks, “And know this: I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists,” followed with, “Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies, he said Russia could “do whatever the hell they want… as President, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.”
In the 2016 election, a major part of the American electorate rejected the conventional wisdoms of using NATO for offensive purposes, enhancing the military-industrial complex, and waging constant wars. In 2024, eight years later, the Dems still do not realize why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.
All that Kamala Harris said could have been iterated in a more politically preferred manner — stopping wars rather than helping others in wars, ending the Middle East strife rather than assisting in genocide, finding ways to gain Iran and DPRK friendships rather than threatening them, striving to reduce conflict rather than strengthening NATO.
Moving voters away from the Democratic Party emerged from a hypocritical statement, “…to be clear, my entire career, I’ve only had one client: the people.” If so, why did Harris pander to one class, the middle class, by offering, “Well, instead of a Trump tax hike, we will pass a middle-class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million Americans.”
Tax cuts are controversial and usually occur during times of recessions. Is Harris saying that the present tax rates, which are the lowest since World War II, are still not sufficiently low, and that the Biden administration ignored the middle class and will make amends? Is it wise to cut taxes and increase consumer demand during an inflationary period? This suggested tax cut is a disaster for the American economy. Not wanting to drift this article too far from its central issue, I’ll defer discussion of the proposed tax cut for another article.
Number one issue
There are a multitude of reasons that the U.S. participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people is the number one issue in the U.S. today and, unless that issue is justly satisfied, it does not matter who gets elected. Supporting the genocide,
Conclusion
Political pundits predict Kamal Harris will lose the election if she shows a neutral attitude in the Middle East crisis and indicates a possibility of not favoring apartheid Israel. She might win the election if she allows Israel to exterminate the Palestinian people and cause massive upheavals that involve the American people, which could include future civil strife. Is this possible, a minor nation is able to give a major political Party in the world’s most powerful nation a sinister Faustian bargain that degrades the United States to a historical position below that of Attila the Hun? Can any American accept this bargain, especially when using American muscle to counter the genocide is a simple solution and the correct procedure? Are apartheid and genocide the norm and acceptable?
Many of us have become ashamed of being Jews. Must we now become ashamed of being Americans?
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
As U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller was telling reporters on Tuesday that assessments regarding whether Israel is abiding by international humanitarian law in Gaza are ongoing, more than two dozen rights groups were telling the Biden administration that it need look no further than its own memo released months ago to see that the U.S. must end its support for the Israeli military.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
We are deeply concerned by the Metropolitan Police’s decision to impose severe and unjustified restrictions on Saturday 7 September’s march for Palestine demonstration against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
These new conditions, including a delayed start time of two and a half hours after the advertised assembly, effectively hinder our fundamental right to peaceful assembly and protest.
For 18 consecutive marches since October, we have gathered at 12pm and commenced shortly thereafter—an arrangement that accommodates those travelling long distances, including thousands who have pre-booked coach travel.
The last-minute disruption of these plans, without any clear rationale, raises serious questions about the police’s respect for our democratic rights.
Since notifying the police of our intentions on 8 August, we have faced a series of delays, obstacles, and uncooperative behaviour. Meetings have been cancelled without notice, and our reasonable proposal for an alternative route to the Israeli Embassy was dismissed outright.
Now, with just four days’ notice, the police have imposed these new conditions without explanation, creating unnecessary obstacles for a demonstration expected to draw over one hundred thousand people.
The treatment of the Palestine movement by the police is unprecedented and deeply troubling. The consistent refusal to consider our proposed routes and the imposition of unreasonable conditions appear to be based on unfounded assumptions that our protests will lead to disruption or disorder, despite our long history of peaceful demonstrations.
Such actions risk undermining the right to protest, a cornerstone of democracy.
It is crucial that the police reconsider these actions in light of their responsibility to uphold democratic freedoms.
We will assemble at the advertised point, and, in exercising our right to peaceful protest, we will march to the Israeli Embassy. It is essential that the police recognise the importance of respecting the rights of citizens to gather and express their views peacefully.
We will not allow our peaceful movement for ending the genocide in Palestine and our government’s support for it to be suppressed.
Make sure you are there on Saturday. Bring your friends, family and neighbours. Free Palestine. Stop arming Israel.
Featured image supplied
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
The World Health Organization has completed the first phase of a critical polio vaccination campaign in central Gaza. After health officials confirmed Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years, the Israeli military agreed to calls for limited humanitarian pauses on its attacks in order for aid organizations to carry out vaccinations. But “there’s real practical, operational problems with this current…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli forces killed four people in an attack on a humanitarian aid convoy organized by a U.S.-based group on Thursday, the day after the World Food Programme announced that another Israeli attack earlier that week was forcing it to suspend movements for safety reasons. The aid convoy organized by U.S.-based nonprofit American Near East Refugee Aid (Anera) was carrying food and fuel to a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on his insistence that the Israeli military permanently occupy Gaza’s border with Egypt, further obstructing ceasefire negotiations as protests for a hostage release deal erupt in Israel. On Monday, Netanyahu hosted a long press conference in which he pledged not to “surrender to pressure” that he strike a ceasefire deal.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
