Gazan Gandhis: Gaza Bleeds Alone as ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’ Go Mute

Does no State or Head of State have the intestinal fortitude to speak out?

Three more Palestinians were killed and 611 wounded last Friday, when tens of thousands of Gazans continued their largely non-violent protests at the Gaza-Israel border.

Yet as the casualty count keeps climbing – nearly 45 dead and over 5,500 wounded – the deafening silence also continues. Tellingly, many of those who long chastised Palestinians for using armed resistance against the Israeli occupation are nowhere to be found, while children, journalists, women and men are all targeted by hundreds of Israeli snipers who dot the Gaza border.

Israeli officials are adamant. The likes of Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, perceives his war against the unarmed protesters as a war on terrorists. He believes that “there are no innocents in Gaza.” While the Israeli mindset is not in the least surprising, it is emboldened by the lack of meaningful action, or outright international silence to the atrocities taking place at the border.

The International Criminal Court (ICC), aside from frequent statements laced with ambiguous legal jargon, has been quite useless thus far. Its Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, derided Israel’s killings in a recent statement, but also distorted facts in her attempt at ‘even-handed language’, to the delight of Israeli media.

(https://sabrangindia.in/article/gazan-gandhis-gaza-bleeds-alone-liberals-and-progressives-go-mute

Shades of the Third Reich

The shocking story of Israel's disappeared babies | Israel News | Al Jazeera

The first consequence is likely to be mounting pressure on the government to open the state's adoption files so that the true extent of the disappearances can be gauged and families reunited.

But Hanegbi's otherwise evasive comments will do little to end suspicions that officials are still actively trying to avoid confronting the most contentious questions: Why were the infants taken from their families? Did hospitals and welfare organisations traffic children in Israel's early years? And were state bodies complicit in the mass abductions?

When asked by Israeli TV programme Meet the Press whether government officials were involved, Hanegbi would say only: "We may never know." Read More

The Jewish National Fund’s list of projects in the settlements

On its website, The Jewish National Fund (JNF-KKL) presents itself as an environmental friendly non-governmental organization, with deep roots in Zionist history. The JNF often leads supporters and donors to believe that it does not fund projects in the occupied territories, which are highly controversial even among Zionists.

In the past, the JNF used sub-contractors for projects across the Green Line, including ones that demanded the evacuation of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem.

However, a 2012 document obtained by investigative journalist Raviv Druker reveals a list of projects in the settlements funded by the Jewish National Fund. In some cases, the JNF even insists on public credit for the projects.

Here is a link to the Hebrew document on Raviv Druker’s blog (PDF). These are the projects themselves (I added some of the locations of the settlements in brackets):

1. Amphitheatre in Shilo – 2 million NIS

2. Infrastructure projects in Ariel – 4.5 million NIS

3. Central Park in Avnei Hefetz [near Tulkarem] – 2.5 million NIS

4. Promenade in Gush Ezion [south of Jerusalem]: 250,000 NIS. Will be called “JNF Promenade”.

5. Promenade in Kfar Adumin [East of Jerusalem]: almost 1.5 million NIS.

6. Bike Lane in the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council: 1.7 million NIS.

7. Agriculture farm in Eitam: 2.5 million NIS

8. A park and observation point in Mitzpe Yericho [near Jericho]: 600,000 NIS

9. Historical site in Rosh Tzurim [near Bethlehem]: 400,000 NIS

10. Habanim Park in Hebron: 700,000 NIS

11. Infrastructure work in Alon Moreh’s Yeshiva [near Nablus]: 300,000 NIS

12. Public ground in Shavei Shomron: 350,000 NIS

13. Public ground in Har Bracha [near Nablus]: Almost 1 million NIS

14. Kikar Park in Beit El (near Ramallah]: 120,000 NIS.

This is, according to Druker, from 2012. Recently, he says, “the rate of investments has grown.”

The context for the publication is Tzipi Linvi’s attempt to extend the State’s Comptroller’s oversight to the JNF – claiming that the fund is an arm of the government (it is), so it must be audited like any other. Housing Minister Uri Ariel of the settlers’ Jewish Home party opposes the move, claiming that JNF is involved in important activities that should be kept out of the public’s eye. Now we know what he means.

Related

Despite denials, JNF to continue eviction effort of J’lem Palestinians

Lying by omission: The JNF’s role in setting Negev land policy

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Court nixes push for ‘Israeli nationality’

A court decision this month that rejected Israelis’ right to a shared nationality has highlighted serious problems caused by Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state, say lawyers and human rights activists.

A group of 21 Israelis had appealed to the Supreme Court to demand the state recognise their wish to be classified as “Israeli nationals”.

Since Israel’s founding in 1948, authorities have refused to recognise such a nationality, instead classifying Israelis according to the ethnic group to which each belongs. The overwhelming majority are registered as either “Jewish” or “Arab” nationals, though there are more than 130 such categories in total.

Critics say the system, while seemingly a technical matter, has far-reaching effects. The citizenship laws, they say, undergird a system of systematic discrimination against the one-fifth of Israel’s population who are non-Jews – most of them belonging to Israel’s Palestinian minority.

Some observers also fear that the court ruling, which effectively upheld Israel’s definition as a Jewish state, will strengthen the aversion of Israel’s right-wing government to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority recognise Israel as a Jewish state as a condition for reaching a peace agreement.

‘I am an Israeli’

The case was brought to court by the “I am an Israeli” movement, led by Uzi Ornan, a retired linguist from northern Israel. The group, which includes both Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel, argued that they should be allowed to change their nationality to “Israeli”.

“This ruling is very dangerous,” said Ornan. “It allows Israel to continue being a very peculiar country indeed, one that refuses to recognise the nationality of its own people. I don’t know of another country that does such a thing. It is entirely anti-democratic.”

The “I am an Israeli” movement objects to Israel’s system of laws that separate citizenship from nationality. While Israelis enjoy a common citizenship, they have separate nationalities based on their ethnic identity. Only the Jewish majority has been awarded national rights, meaning that Palestinian citizens face institutionalised discrimination, said Ornan.

He added: “It tells the country’s Arab citizens that they have no real recognition in their own country – that they will always be treated as foreigners and they will always face discrimination.”

Others view the ruling more positively. Anita Shapira, a professor emeritus of Jewish history at Tel Aviv University, said creating a new category of “Israeli national” would undermine the Jewish essence of the state and alienate Jews from other countries who felt a connection to Israel through a shared religion.

“The attempt to claim that there is a Jewish nationality in the state of Israel that is separate from the Jewish religion is something very revolutionary,” she said.

The “I am an Israeli” movement’s petition was originally heard and rejected in 2007 by a district court in Jerusalem. The group then appealed to the Supreme Court, the second time that Israel’s citizenship laws have been challenged in this venue.

In the first hearing, in 1971, Justice Shimon Agranat ruled that it was “illegitimate” so soon after Israel’s founding for the petitioners to “ask to separate themselves from the Jewish people and to achieve for themselves the status of a distinct Israeli nation”.

Though more than 40 years had passed, that position was largely upheld in the new ruling. Asher Grunis, the head of the Supreme Court, decided: “The existence of an Israeli ethnic nationality has not been proven.” Another judge who heard the case, Hanan Melcer, warned that conceding such a nationality would jeopardise “the Jewish and the democratic nature of the state”. More

 

Former President Jimmy Carter speaks about Israel

 

Israel's right targets textbooks

Nazareth, Israel - Israel's right-wing government and its supporters stand accused of stoking an atmosphere of increasing intimidation and intolerance in schools and among groups working for a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The latest efforts by the right to stifle dissent have included censoring schoolbooks and seeking to silence organisations that raise troubling questions about Israel and its past - in what appears to be an escalating war for the minds of Israelis.

Groups allied to the government tried to prevent the recent staging of an international conference in Tel Aviv that examined events surrounding Israel's creation in 1948 - known as the "War of Independence" to Israelis and the "Nakba", or catastrophe, to Palestinians.

At the same time, it emerged that one of the far-right groups involved, Im Tirtzu, had initiated a campaign to shut down the organisation behind the conference, Zochrot, accusing it of violating Israeli law by "rejecting Israel's existence".

Zochrot challenges Israel's greatest taboo: the right of millions of Palestinians to return the homes from which they and their ancestors were expelled in 1948. Many Israelis vehemently oppose such a move because they see it as entailing the end of their state's Jewishness.

Eitan Bronstein, Zochrot's founder, said the two-day conference had been particularly threatening to the right. "For the first time we considered more than just the theoretical right of return," he said.

"This time the emphasis was very much on considering how we can implement the return. Refugees even offered us computer-simulated models of how it could be affected on the ground."

The timing is embarrassing for Israel as long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians were recently revived under pressure from the United States. One of the key issues to resolve is whether the refugees should be allowed to return to more than 500 villages Israel subsequently destroyed.

More generally, far-right groups close to Benjamin Netanyahu's government have sought ways to shut down funding for organisations seen as either being too critical of Israel, or working to protect the human rights of Palestinians under occupation.

Politicised learning

Over the summer, one of the governing coalition parties introduced legislation to block such funding for what it terms "anti-Israel" activity.

A right-wing group that helped to draft the legislation, NGO Monitor, used the Zochrot conference to underline the illegitimacy of foreign funding.

Yitzhak Santis, an NGO Monitor official, said European backers of the conference hadconspired in an event that amounted to "a call for the elimination of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people".

The government has also come under fire for its growing efforts to police the school curriculum to remove references to the Nakba and play down the rights of Israel's Palestinian citizens, who comprise a fifth of the population.

Revisions to the civics programme, which all pupils must study to pass their matriculation exam, were criticised in a report that doubted the education ministry'sultra-nationalistic approach "is even consistent with a democratic regime".

The new textbook echoes legislation being drafted by members of the ruling coalition to define Israel's character as the exclusive homeland of the Jewish people, and to emphasise that only Jews have a right of self-determination in Israel.

Halleli Pinson, a professor of education at Ben Gurion University in Beersheva who conducted the study, said increasingly a "regime of fear" was emerging within Israel's schools.

"Democratic, liberal and human rights values are now seen as illegitimate among education officials," she said. "They are considered to undermine Israel's status as a Jewish state. Now the perspective being promoted in education is entirely right-wing."

At the recent right of return conference, local and international scholars discussed practical plans to bring Palestinian refugees back to Israel.

Entry restrictions to Israel meant few Palestinian refugees outside Israel could attend. But several internal refugees, Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, did participate. Despite their citizenship, they are barred like other refugees from returning to their villages. The conference was held at the Eretz Israel Museum, a prestigious archeological museum in Tel Aviv. More

 

Mass graves of Palestinians killed in 1948 Nakba discovered in Jaffa

Six mass grave sites dating back to the 1936 Palestinian uprising and the 1948 Nakba were discovered around the Jaffa cemetery, the al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage reported Wednesday, revealing hundreds of bodies of Palestinians killed by Zionist forces.

“During [the foundation’s] repair and maintenance work on the [Kazkhana] cemetery, we discovered nozzles to dig into the ground where we found the mass graves...including hundreds of skeletons and human remains of rebels, martyrs and civilians who perished during the Nakba,” head of the Islamic Movement in Jaffa, Sheikh Mohammed Najem, said in the report.

The foundation has proved the remains date back to the victims killed in the 1948 war, whether from bombings and shelling of residential neighborhoods or snipers located around the city, the report said.

“The Kazkhana cemetery has exposed the historical facts that Israel has tried to hide and erase for over 65 years relating to the massacres committed by Zionist gangs during the 1948 Palestinian Nakba,” it read.

“These mass graves have banished all doubts of the certainty of oral histories collected by historians of people who lived through the Nakba of 1948 and parts of the war documenting massacres in Jaffa and its suburbs,” the report added.

Some of the recorded histories document eyewitnesses witnessing piles of bodies scattered around in all of Jaffa’s neighborhoods, which were buried in mass graves due to the violent circumstances at the time.

The report shares an eyewitness account explaining how the residents of Jaffa were forced to move bodies to the cemetery and bury them in mass graves as the town was being heavily bombarded by Zionist forces.

“The foundation will continue to conduct research and scientifically test the remains...to send media messages to the whole world that Israel is built on the skulls of the Palestinian people,” Abed al-Majid Ighbariya, the head of the files on holy sites of the foundation, said.

The Nakba, or “Catastrophe,” refers to the expropriation and mass expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland by Zionists. More

 

Israeli Court rejects Israeli citizenship of non-Jews

Twenty percent of the population of Israel could be affected by a court ruling in Haifa on Tuesday in which a judge ordered that only Jews should be allowed to have Israeli citizenship, and non-Jews, even those born and raised in what is now Israel, should not be allowed to claim Israeli citizenship.

The ruling rejected an appeal by Uzzi Ornan, who claims no religious faith, but was born in what is now Israel. It is unclear what impact this will have on the Christian, Muslim and atheist citizens of Israel, which constitute around twenty percent of the population.

Tuesday's court decision also brings into question the Israeli government's claim that it is both a Jewish and democratic state. As the plaintiff in the case, Uzzi Ornan, told reporters Tuesday, “A judge appeals to Jewish law, and the ruling shows that Israel is a Jewish community and not a civilian state.” Orman and others say that this verifies that Israel is a Jewish state, and not a democratic one.

In his ruling, Judge Daniel Fisch appealed to Jewish religious law, and the 'Right of Return' which allows anyone born of a Jewish mother anyone in the world to claim Israeli citizenship. The displacement of the indigenous Palestinian population by this and other Israeli laws was not mentioned by the judge. More