A recent Zoom event hosted from New York to discuss the International Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes was hacked by supporters of Israel, who did their best to shut down the public meeting.
“It was hacked to the extent that participants’ names were taken – I don’t know how they do it – and then they started yelling out obscenities, that we’re all antisemitic and so forth,” said French-American lawyer Frank Romano, who was the guest speaker at the meeting.
ICC rules it has jurisdiction to probe alleged war crimes by Israel and Hamas. Read More »
Romano, who brought a legal case against Israel to the ICC in late 2019, was there to discuss the impact of the court’s recent decision to investigate possible war crimes by Israel and Palestinian factions since 2014.
Family members of one of the four children from the Bakr family who were killed in an Israeli attack on a beach during the 2014 Israeli-Palestinian conflict visit their graves in Gaza on 7 February
As a veteran solidarity activist, Frank had been to Israel and Palestine many times, been arrested and detained, and was last deported from Israel in 2018. Verbal and physical abuse and online attacks are par the course.
“You get people spitting at you, throwing things at you, trying to get the police to arrest you. I’m talking about being in Hebron, and Qalandiya, at checkpoints, in those kind of central conflict areas.”
As a citizen of France and the US, as well as being a veteran of anti-occupation protests in the Israeli-controlled West Bank, Romano knows the risks he took aren’t comparable to those faced by Palestinians who try to resist occupation. Thousands are in prison. Many have been killed.
Romano, a member of the California and French bars, and a law professor at the University of Paris, never set out to use his training as an international lawyer to bring a case that could ultimately see Israeli leaders and military commanders potentially facing war crimes charges in the Hague.
On the run
Romano’s own submission to the case followed a period of research in Ramallah under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2018, where he began drafting a legal case of war crimes while himself a fugitive from the Israeli authorities.
Romano had been arrested in September 2018 after standing in front of an Israeli bulldozer that was about to demolish the homes of Bedouin Palestinians in the village of Khan al-Ahmar in the occupied West Bank.
Israel to deport French-US professor arrested at Khan al-Ahmar protest. Read More »
The community on the eastern slopes of Jerusalem in Israeli-controlled Area C has long been a site of protests against repeated demolitions of structures belonging to the Jahalin tribe, a Bedouin family expelled from the Naqab desert, also known as the Negev, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
“On 14 September 2018, I was taken to Moscovia,” said Romano, referring to the notorious Israeli police compound in West Jerusalem used mainly for interrogating Palestinians.
“Inside the prison was very tough. I was placed in a cell with a group of crazy prisoners.” He had asked to be placed with Palestinians, but he was refused by guards because, they said, he was a foreigner.
When the prisoners, whom the lawyer understood to be Jewish, asked why he was there, they grew angry. “They were saying: ‘You must work with al-Qaeda, you must hate Jews.’ Four of them attacked me, one of them stabbed me with a sharp object. I pushed away and yelled at the guards.”
Romano was placed in solitary confinement and eventually moved again. “I was supposed to go court [in Jerusalem]; instead I was taken to the airport, and they got me in a military facility, where I was presented with two charges from a military court.”
Military court
Israeli military courts are usually reserved for Palestinian prisoners, while others are tried in civilian courts.
At the airport, a fellow prisoner who had managed to smuggle in a phone let Romano call his lawyer. “My lawyer was standing in front of the judge in Jerusalem. They wanted to deport me.”
The police had told the judge that Romano had been released, and that he was on his way to court. In fact, he was still at the airport.
‘I knew they were never going to let me back into Palestine, so I decided to go underground’
– Frank Romano
“The judge was livid, and ordered the police to bring me to Jerusalem within one hour,” Romano said, adding that the judge was so upset about his beating that she acquitted him almost immediately.
Romano was told to leave the country within 10 days. But he had other plans.
“I had my plane ticket, I was supposed to return to France to start teaching. The police when they finally released me told me I could never go back to Khan al-Ahmar.
“I knew they were never going to let me back into Palestine, so I decided to go underground in Ramallah just to continue working with the Palestinians.”
Hired by the PA
After his release by the Israeli police, he fled to Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. With time on his hands, he offered his services to the PA to begin work on legal complaints over Israel’s rights violations in Khan al-Ahmar.
“Since I couldn’t do much for the very first time, I started working on the legal side. I’m an international lawyer, and I teach at the University of Paris, but first of all I’m an-in-the-streets, in-your-face activist.
Middle East Eye understands Romano was paid for his work at the PA public prosecutor’s office on the Khan al-Ahmar case, on recommendation from the PA’s attorney general.
He was also advised on the framework for a legal brief for an ICC war crimes case against Israel. However, the ICC brief was in the hands of the foreign ministry, which had its own team of lawyers working on war crimes complaints.
The PA had filed its initial complaint against Israel in 2015, a year after the Palestinian Authority had joined the ICC in the wake of the 2014 Gaza war that killed around 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children. Many other organisations were also filing complaints with the ICC against Israel.
Israeli forces scuffle with Frank Romano (white shirt, left) and other Palestinian protesters, with a Palestinian national flag in the background, on 14 September 2018 at Khan al-Ahmar (AFP)
The court’s prolonged initial investigation raised serious doubts that it would actually pursue the case against Israel. “The [ICC] investigations took a whole four years. That’s a long preliminary investigation. There were a lot of complaints that the prosecutor was delaying things,” said Romano.
Still, on his own initiative, he continued to write the petition, staying in Ramallah for four months. Then he received a phone call from someone claiming to be a well-known journalist.
Ambushed
“I get a WhatsApp call from a very famous French journalist, Olivier Peronnet from Le Monde, and this journalist has written a lot of articles about the occupation,” Romano recalled. “He said that he wanted to interview me in front of Khan al-Ahmar.
“I said I can’t return there, I’m underground. If I go there it’s the Israeli section, I will be arrested again… He convinced me to go from Ramallah back into Area C… I don’t know how he got my number,” Romano said.
“I spent the night with my Bedouin friends in Khan al-Ahmar and the next morning arrived at the rendezvous point. It looked legit – I saw his limousine on the other side of the highway, I walked over there.
Lo and behold it was a set up – he was not the famous Le Monde journalist, he was a member of Mossad or somebody. Within five minutes of this so-called interview, five police cars surrounded me.”
A pro-Israel group in France, Ligue Defense Juive (Jewish Defence League), later claimed it had carried out the sting on Romano. Following the set-up, Romano was arrested and deported to France.
There, he was able to finish the ICC legal brief for war crimes, naming certain Israeli officials, in particular Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli former defence minister.
ICC complaint
Romano sent the brief to the legal human rights NGO Al-Haq in Ramallah, the Palestinian affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva.
Al Haq confirmed to MEE that it had read the brief but “did not provide any input, commentary or materials for the communication”. It also “declined his offer of assistance”.Harris reaffirms US opposition to ICC probe of Israel in call to Netanyahu. Read More »
Al Haq head of legal research and advocacy, Susan Power, explained that the war crimes case was the result of the collective efforts of many organisations, academics and lawyers over several years.
“The decision of the prosecutor was made after almost five years of preliminary examination, and during this time the Office received over a hundred communications.
“The decision was the result of collective efforts by civil society, academics and lawyers who laboured intensively over the five years to submit comprehensive and detailed legal communications demonstrating a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, ie the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”
Romano’s legal brief was formally acknowledged by the ICC in January 2020. It formed part of the documentation of the ICC’s “Situation in Palestine” investigation in court papers released in March 2020.
A month earlier, Mark P Dillon, head of the information and evidence unit of the ICC, wrote to Romano, saying: “It appears that your communication relates to a situation already under preliminary examination by the Office of the Prosecutor. Accordingly, your communication will be analysed in this context, with the assistance of other related communications and other available information.”
ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced a preliminary finding in December 2019 that there was a reasonable case to bring prosecutions for Israeli crimes. Israel contested the court’s jurisdiction, with the full support of the Trump administration, which swiftly revoked Bensouda’s visa and, later, imposed sanctions on her and another ICC official.
Then, last month, the prosecutor announced that the court was proceeding with a probe into possible abuses committed in the Palestinian territories since 2014.
“The Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the situation in Palestine… extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” Bensouda said on 5 February.
Frank Romano, who was arrested by Israel while protesting against the demolition of a Palestinian village in the West Bank, appears at a Jerusalem court on 16 September 2018 (AFP)
The investigation will cover alleged war crimes both by Israeli forces and Palestinian factions such as Hamas during the conflict in Gaza and Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
For Romano, this is an important moment of accountability for Palestinians after decades of settlement building, ethnic cleansing, and attacks and killings by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
And Israel is not happy about it, with Netanyahu claiming that the investigation is “pure antisemitism”.
“This ‘antisemitism’ thing is getting old now,” said Romano, who has Jewish roots. “Come on, the gig is up. This is not about antisemitism.”
‘A combination of things are leading me to believe they [Israel] are taking this seriously’
– Frank Romano
He believes that sufficient evidence is already in the possession of the court to issue summons for suspects to appear before the court in The Hague. “A combination of things are leading me to believe they [Israel] are taking this seriously.”
But he admits it is hard to know if the court will get to the stage of issuing arrest warrants. “It’s gonna be a long struggle.”
Bensouda is stepping down in June, to be replaced by a British judge, Karim Khan, and he will not necessarily hold the same course. Several judges are also retiring from the ICC in June, which could change the way the Palestine case is dealt with.
Al Haq’s Power said the timing of Bensouda’s announcement was linked to her stepping down.
“Undoubtedly, a key factor in the timing of the prosecutor’s decision to move to close the preliminary examination was the ending of her term as prosecutor, and her public commitment, expressed at the 2019 Assembly of States Parties [prior to the closure of the Palestine preliminary examination], that she would make a final decision on every preliminary examination file before her office, before the end of her term. In this regard, we were very much some expecting news.”
Israeli pressure
Given the immense weight of the proceedings, political pressure will be brought to bear against the ICC, Romano predicted.
“The members of the court are going to be subject to attack. We’re going to have a new set of judges as well. Are they going to be strong enough to withstand the tremendous pressure they will be subjected to, like Goldstone?”
Richard Goldstone headed the UN investigation into alleged war crimes in Israel’s 2008-9 war on Gaza and concluded that “actions amounting to war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defence Forces”.
However, after coming under intense pressure from Israel and its allies, the South African judge retracted his findings two years later in 2011, although his fellow judges rejected his recantation, insisting the initial report was valid.
Still, if senior Israeli officials are eventually arrested for war crimes, it will be quite a turnaround, a moment of justice shared by thousands of Palestinians who have suffered at the occupation’s hands over the decades.
Note: It is the colonial powers that are the most afraid to be brought to the ICC. Even if the complaints fail, just being confronted with crimes they never contemplated will be held in court is traumatic for their faked claims of justice, liberty, human rights and democratic system superiority after WWII.
If you agree with the notion that input will eventually equal output, then when you do more than you are paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do. The universal law: we reap what we sow and we get what we give.
The Agro food industries add around 30 kinds of additives. most of them are poisonous in high doses. A few of them contains nanoparticles, which means they can cross the intestines and flow with the blood and degrade many organs ( cancers). Eventually, these nano-ingredients will be banned and the multinational will be unable to contest the electronic microscopes (the power of technology). For example, the dioxyde of Titanium or additive E71, just to “whiten” the product. Several ingredients are mainly used to retain water, thus adding half of the weight in the sold products
Most of these chemical additives in food are pure poisons and supposedly are just used to satisfy the idiosyncrasies of clients in the look, the color and consistency of the food. I doubt the multinational food industries experiment on the specific idiosyncrasies of clients around the globe, just imposing the “palate”/taste and smell of the colonial powers idiosyncrasies. Obesity, diabetes and cancer causing ingredients… are Not labeled “Can kill you” as in cigarette boxes.
Lately, pressured by “Green Food” campaigns and alternative food preparations, many agro-businesses substitute a few ingredients with “Auxiliary technology” ingredient/products, which are Not required to be listed as ingredients, because these ingredients disappear after the food is cooked. Many of these Auxiliary technology ingredients are enzymes types and proteins, even those extracted from cow bloods.
Lately, the best way that I “know” that I did fall asleep is that I could recall “I had a dream”. Most of the dreams I cannot stand: I am being humiliated and cannot react accordingly. I respond with a half-waking sleep to cope with my lethargy to react, and then I force myself to wake up. And I spend a few hours watching lousy movies, feeling in a wretched diminished state.
In a lengthy documentary on Agro industries. the business could eliminate 20 out of the 30 ingredients for a healthy product and substitute many with “natural” ingredients.
Don’t dwell on this irrational harang: “Resist to your famine in the name of Nationalism“. At least 3 billion people are degraded to accept the misery of their “destiny” in order to satisfy imperialistic economy.
Mammalian scientists claim that it is the females that start the process of mating season. I cannot buy these one-way cause and effects. I conjecture that the males vastly contribute to this process with their cry of “distress” to mate. And the female respond by increasing the level of their pheromone , a catalyst to entice the mating.
I think many would like to die in their sleep, preferable while dreaming of a hot Sexy story in order to go straight to heaven and compare with the Houris
After 53 years, the verdict from The Hague Friday: The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. How many Israelis are feeling the heat?
The U.S is the only advanced nation that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation time to workers, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The US has the highest number of hospitalizations from preventable causes of illnesses and the highest rate of avoidable deaths relative to other wealthy nations, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
It is Not worth it to give your opinions on social medias if you are Not ready to open up your deep emotions and personal experiences. Better make sure you are at least paid for your faked opinions
If paying attention to your breathing for a couple of minutes is so hard, how getting curious of the level of addiction to smoking and consuming alcohol is a simple task? How the tastes and feels of addictive substances is tagged as a simpler task?
Many people climbed the highest mountains in their profession, only to discover they were climbing the wrong mountain that didn’t deliver on the proper emotions and desires.
If the schooling system denies you to learn patience, focus and comprehension, you’ll have to learn on your own these hardest attitudes.
Any which way you think of it, Life has no meaning in the end. The best way to sustain this foolish reality is to learn to be confident in the passion of the talent you are endowed with.
Most financial bubbles are often engineered by governments, especially powerful Nations that has the right to print money at wish. With plenty of cash money in the market, the government increase the interest rate for stocks that are issued, until the economic reality blow the faked wealth.
Part 12. How Israel in 1948 committed Ethnic Cleansing of Palestinians, about 400,000 within days in first stage
The Fallacies of Morris’s Arguments
Israeli historian Benny Morris might deny the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, but Jeremy R. Hammond own research shows that this was indeed how Israel came into being.
The Israeli historian Benny Morris has been very vocal of late in denying that Palestine was ethnically cleansed of Arabs in order for the “Jewish state” of Israel to be established.
In a series of articles in the Israeli daily Haaretz, Morris has debated the question with several of his critics who contend that ethnic cleansing is precisely what occurred.
Not so, argues Morris. So who’s right?
It’s worth noting at the outset that, while such a debate exists in the Israeli media, the US media remains, as ever, absolutely silent on the matter.
The Fallacies of Morris’s Arguments
Now that the proper historical context has been established, let’s return to Morris’s arguments and address each in turn.
Morris denies that the Jewish leadership “carried out a policy of expelling the local Arabs”. This denial is untenable. Logically, the goal of establishing a demographically “Jewish state” would require the “compulsory transfer”—to borrow Ben-Gurion’s phrase for it, in turn borrowed from the Peel Commission—of a large number of Palestinians.
Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders had explicitly stated their desire to effect this “transfer”, and once war broke out there was a clear tacit understanding between the political leadership and the military commanders toward that end.
As Morris himself has pointed out, there was an “atmosphere of transfer”, and commanders who carried out such expulsions were not punished.
Moreover, from mid-March onward, commanders were given explicit instructions for how this “compulsory transfer” was to be carried out.
If the expulsion of Arab villagers prior to Plan D had received the tacit approval of the leadership, the expulsions thereafter received their explicit approval.
Commanders like Yigal Allon understood their orders very well: it was “imperative” to “cleanse” their areas of operation of their Palestinian inhabitants.
After Blatman cited Morris to support his assertion that Palestine was ethnically cleansed in 1948, Morris accused Blatman of attributing things to him that he had never claimed. Yet Morris himself had previously described what happened during the war as “ethnic cleansing”—and expressed his view that Ben-Gurion’s error was not doing a thorough enough job of it.
Morris argues that Blatman’s assertion “ignores the basic fact that the Palestinians were the ones who started the war”. Even if we accept his assumptions (and totally wrong) that the Arabs’ rejection of the UN partition plan was unreasonable and that they were responsible for starting the war, it does not follow that no ethnic cleansing occurred.
In keeping with his comments to Ari Shavit, what Morris really seems to be arguing here is not that it didn’t happen, but that it was justified;
It’s not that Palestine wasn’t actually ethnically cleansed—clearly, by his own account, it was—just that, in his view, this wasn’t a crime.
And while legal scholars may debate whether such actions were prohibited under the laws of war at the time, there isn’t any ambiguity about the fact that they are recognized today as war crimes—and, regardless of what any international treaties had to say about it, just as immoral then as they would be today.
Moreover, Morris’s assumptions that the UN partition plan was an equitable solution and that Resolution 181 lent legitimacy to the Zionists’ unilateral declaration of the existence of the state of Israel on May 14, 1948, are both categorically false.
He bases his arguments that the Jews were acting defensively on the grounds that the Arab states had threatened “to attack the Jewish state” and then carried out that threat by “invading” Israel.
But given the illegitimacy of the May 14 declaration and the inherent prejudice of the Zionist project toward the majority Arab population, this narrative crumbles. To characterize the Arabs as the “invaders” while Palestine’s Arab inhabitants were being systematically expelled or driven into flight and its Arab villages literally wiped off the map is simply to flip reality on its head.
Morris denies that there was ever a decision by the Jewish leadership “to ‘expel the Arabs’”. He repeats that Ben-Gurion “never gave [his officers] an order ‘to expel the Arabs.’”
It might be true that No known documents (so far), including Plan D, contained those exact words, but the leadership’s intent was clear. Indeed, in the very same sentence he says Ben-Gurion gave no such order, Morris notes that Ben-Gurion “let his officers understand that it was preferable for as few Arabs as possible to remain in the new country”.
His implied logic is that without such an explicit order, it wasn’t ethnic cleansing. This is a non sequitur. No explicit order need have been given; it was enough that Haganah commanders understood the leaderships’ intention to have “as few Arabs as possible”, to quote Morris’s own words, in the “Jewish state” they were seeking to establish.
Palestinian refugees fleeing their homes, October 30, 1948 (Source: PalestineRemembered.com)
Moreover, Plan D did make explicit the operational orders to expel Arabs from their villages.
Morris also suggests that since not all Arabs were expelled, therefore it wasn’t ethnic cleansing. But once again his logic is a non sequitur. It doesn’t follow that since there were Arabs who were allowed to remain in the territory that became Israel that therefore the expulsion of the majority of that territory’s Arab inhabitants didn’t constitute ethnic cleansing. Morris can opine that Ben-Gurion didn’t do a thorough enough job of it; but he can’t sustain the suggestion that the lack of thoroughness means it wasn’t ethnic cleansing.
The “atmosphere of transfer” is acknowledged by Morris; yet he asserts that Zionist leaders like Ben-Gurion and Weizmann, who “supported the transfer of Arabs” in the 1930s and early ‘40s, later “supported the UN decision, whose plan left more than 400,000 Arabs in place.” With this comment, he implies that Ben-Gurion and other leaders changed their minds and decided that a population of 400,000 Arabs within the area they desired for their “Jewish state” would be just fine.
Once again, his argument is a non sequitur; their acceptance of the partition plan did not constitute a repudiation of their desire to rid the land of Arabs. On the contrary, it was seen as a pragmatic step toward achieving the ultimate goal of establishing a Jewish state with “less Arabs” (Golda Meir).
Indeed, he further acknowledges that the “atmosphere of transfer” still prevailed in April 1948, but, he argues, this “was never translated into official policy—which is why there were officers who expelled Arabs and others who didn’t.” But, once again, the fact that some Arabs—about 160,000, according to Morris—were permitted to remain does not mean that the rest weren’t victims of ethnic cleansing.
Once again, explicit orders to expel Arabs needn’t have existed for us to recognize what occurred as ethnic cleansing; it was enough that a tacit understanding existed between the political leadership and the military commanders, which Morris acknowledges was in fact the case—including by pointing out that those commanders who expelled Arabs from their villages weren’t punished.
Again, the “atmosphere of transfer” was translated into official policy with Plan D.
On March 24, 1948, Morris argues in Haaretz, Israel Galili “ordered all the Haganah brigades not to uproot Arabs from the territory of the designated Jewish state.” In 1948, he specifies that “Galili instructed all Haganah units to abide by standing Zionist policy, which was to respect the ‘rights, needs and freedom,’ ‘without discrimination,’ of the Arabs living in the Jewish State areas.”[97]
How does Morris reconcile this with the explicit orders under Plan D to collectively punish the civilian population by expelling them from their homes and destroying their villages? How does he reconcile it with the fact that, by his own account, commanders who expelled Arabs and destroyed villages weren’t punished for defying what Morris characterizes as a direct order? Instructively, he makes no attempt to.
But he does note that “Things did change in early April”, meaning that this ostensible order to respect the rights of Palestinian civilians was rescinded. As he notes in 1948, the policy outlined in April was “generally, to evict the Arabs living in the brigade’s area.”[98]
So how does Morris, in light of this admission, maintain that “there was no overall expulsion policy”? He notes that “here they expelled people, there they didn’t, and for the most part the Arabs simply fled.” But, again, neither the fact that some Arabs were allowed to remain nor that many fled out of fear is inconsistent with the recognition of what happened as ethnic cleansing.
Finally, Morris acknowledges that the Zionist leadership as a matter of policy prevented the Palestinian refugees from returning to their homes.
Indeed, this was made largely impossible by the complete destruction of their villages. He makes no effort to reconcile this policy with his denial that ethnic cleansing occurred. Instead, he opines that this policy was “logical and just”. We see once again, thus, that Morris isn’t so much arguing that there was no ethnic cleansing as he is that the ethnic cleansing was justified.
He is attempting to argue that the ethnic cleansing that did occur—which he has explicitly acknowledged did occur, and which he documents extensively in his own writings—was not a crime.
Benny Morris is entitled to his opinions. But to deny that the “Jewish state” of Israel was established by ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Arabs from their homes in Palestine is simply a display of the very intellectual dishonesty he accuses his critics of.
The standard he applies is telling: he defends the ethnic cleansing on the grounds that all of the Arabs who were made refugees by the war and whom Israel refused to allow to return “had tried to destroy the state in the making.” Inasmuch as their very inhabitancy in the land the Zionist leadership desired for their “Jewish state” stood in the way of that project, he has a point.
Their very existence in the land constituted a destruction of the Zionists’ ideal. Hence they had to go. In Morris’s own words, “A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them.”
Beyond that, Morris’s hypocrisy is glaring. He knows perfectly well that most of those expelled were civilians who had taken no part in hostilities. Hence what he is really saying here is that it was “logical and just” for the civilian Arab population to have been collectively punished for the crime some among them committed of putting up resistance to the Zionists’ operations to seize control of the territory they wanted for their “Jewish state”—precisely the collective punishment that Haganah commanders were ordered to carry out under Plan D, the blueprint, by Morris’s own account, for the Zionists’ “war of conquest”.
That Benny Morris applies such a hypocritical standard should not be too surprising. He is, after all, himself a Zionist. As a historian, he has contributed greatly to the literature on the subject, and in so doing, has helped move the discussion forward. By helping us to understand the origins of the conflict, he has empowered us with knowledge that brings clarity on how to achieve a peaceful resolution.
It is unfortunate that he’s lately made such a concerted effort to move the discussion backward again. It is in the context of his own deeply held and scarcely concealed prejudice toward the Palestinians that his attempts now to deny the ethnic cleansing of Palestine must be understood.
Haganah men patrolling the streets of Haifa, April 1948 (Life Magazine. Source: PalestineRemembered.com)
Raising the financial cost of oppression can pave a path to peace: Boycott
As a new round of violence kicks off in Israel-Palestine and more children are killed, it’s not enough just to call for another ceasefire.
It’s time to take definitive non-violent action to end this decades long nightmare.
Our governments have failed — while they have talked peace and passed UN resolutions, they and companies have continued to aid, trade and invest in the violence.
The only way to stop this hellish cycle of Israel confiscating Palestinian lands, daily collective punishment of innocent Palestinian families, and Israel bombing Gaza is to make the economic cost of this conflict too high to bear.
We know it works — when EU countries issued guidelines not to fund the illegal Israeli settlements it caused an earthquake in the cabinet, and when citizens successfully persuaded a Dutch pension fund, PGGM, to withdraw, it created a political storm.
This may not feel like a direct way to stop the current killing, but history tells us that raising the financial cost of oppressioncan pave a path to peace.
Sign the petition on the right and call on 6 key banks, pension funds and businesses to pull out — If we all take smart action now and turn up the heat, they could withdraw, the Israeli economy will take a hit, and we can turn the calculation of the extremists politically profiting from this hell upside down.
In the last five weeks three Israeli teenagers were murdered in the West Bank, a Palestinian boy was burnt alive, an American kid was brutally beaten up by Israeli police, and now over 40 Gazan kids have died in Israeli air strikes.
This is not the “Middle East conflict”, it’s becoming a war on children. And we are becoming numb to this global shame.
The media makes out like this is an intractable conflict between two equal warring parties, but it is not.
The root of the conflict lies in the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
Israel currently occupies, colonises, bombs, raids, and controls the water, trade and the borders of a legally free nation that has been recognised by the United Nations.
In Gaza, Israel has created the largest open-air prison in the world, and then blockaded it. Now as bombs fall, the families, literally have no way to get out.
These are war crimes and we wouldn’t accept that anywhere else, why accept it in Palestine? Half a century ago Israel and its Arab neighbours went to war and Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza.
Occupying territory after war happens all the time. But no military occupation should turn into a decades long tyranny which only fuels and benefits extremists who use terror to target the innocent. And who suffers? The majority of loving families on both sides that just want freedom and peace.
To many, particularly in Europe and North America, calling for companies to withdraw investments from financing or taking part in Israel’s occupation of Palestine sounds completely biased. But it’s not —
this is the most potent non-violent strategy to end the ritual violence, ensure Israelis’ security and achieve Palestinian freedom.
Israel’s power and wealth dwarfs Palestine, and if it refuses to end its illegal occupation, the world must act to make the cost unbearable.
Dutch pension fund, ABP, invests in Israeli banks that help fund the colonisation of Palestine. Massive banks like Barclays invest in suppliers of Israeli arms and other occupation businesses.
British G4S provides extensive security equipment used by the Israeli Defence Force in the occupation.
France’s Veolia operates transport for Israeli settlers illegally living on Palestinian lands. Computer giant Hewlett-Packard supplies sophisticated surveillance to control the movement of Palestinians.
And Caterpillar provides bulldozers that are used to demolish Palestinian homes and farms.
If we can create the biggest global call ever to get these companies to pull out, we will show clearly that the world will no longer be complicit in this bloodshed.
The Palestinian people are calling on the world to support this path and progressive Israelis support it too. Let’s join them.
Our community has worked to bring peace, hope, and change to some of the world’s toughest conflicts, and often that means taking difficult positions to address the root cause.
For years our community has looked for a political solution to this nightmare, but with this new round of horror unfolding in Gaza, the time has come to turn to sanctions and disinvestment to finally help end the horror for Israelis and Palestinians.
To the CEOs of ABP, HP, Veolia, Barclays, Caterpillar, and G4S:
In the wake of the terrible violence unfolding in Israel-Palestine, we, citizens from around the world, are deeply concerned about your companies’ continued investment in companies and projects that finance illegal settlements and the oppressive occupation of the Palestinian people. 17 EU countries recently issued warnings to their citizens against doing business or investing in illegal Israeli settlements. Given those legal considerations, you now have the opportunity to withdraw investments and respect international law. This is a chance to be on the right side of history.
The French telecommunication multinational Orange joined the battle front with Israeli units bombing Gaza people
Orange, previously France Telecom, with its Israeli subsidiary Partner Communications Ltd, has been directly aiding Israeli military units for a decade now.
Orange participated in providing all the necessary advanced telecommunication equipment and subsidising Israeli soldiers under the adoption project “Ametz Lohem” for the tank division EZUZ since 2005 and the division for Shachar since 2008.
During Israel savage preemptive war on Gaza in the summer of 2014, Orange was on the battle front, particularly with the tank division Ezuz and commanded by Aryeh Berger, and provided all the facilities and communication batteries needed to resume the bombing of Gaza for an entire month. Free of charge.
Israel dropped what amounted to an atomic bomb during these 51 days of horror and total genocide tactics. Tanks were ordered to cross over gardens, cultivated lands and houses as training learning sessions.
Orange is an important mobile and internet supplier in Europe, Africa, the Middle-East, including Jordan and Egypt (Mobinil)
If the International Penal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity is serious in investigating and prosecuting the calamities in Gaza, all it has to do is subpoena Orange for all the direct videos and communication that were taken during the war.
The Israeli affiliate of Orange, the French multinational telecom company, provided direct material support to Israeli soldiers who participated in the deadly assault on Gaza last summer.
The firm has also sponsored two Israeli military units for several years, evidence of its deep complicity in Israeli military occupation and human rights abuses.
One of these units, the “Ezuz” tank company, took part in last summer’s attack on Gaza and was active in specific locations where hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed.
Orange, previously known as France Telecom, is a major provider of mobile phone, land line and Internet services in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, including in Jordan and Egypt (through its subsidiary Mobinil). In the UK, Orange operates as part of a joint venture called EE, and in Belgium it owns a big stake of Mobistar.
In Israel, Orange makes its profits by licensing its brand to an independently owned Israeli company called Partner Communications Ltd. and selling equipment and other services to it.
Helping the attack on Gaza
Israeli warplanes and artillery dropped the equivalent of an atomic bomb on Gaza during 51 days last July and August, killing more than 2,200 Palestinians, among them more than 500 children, and destroying vast areas.
Throughout this horror, which Israel dubbed “Operation Protective Edge,” Orange was on the front lines providing material support and boosting the morale of those carrying out the assault.
Every day during the assault, Orange sent “three mobile units to the soldiers’ gathering spots around Gaza,” the website Frumline reported in a 22 July 2014 article headlined “Orange in action on the border due to Operation Protective Edge.”
“The mobile units are equipped with generators, chargers for all types of devices, hundreds of fully charged batteries, and cellular devices, to allow soldiers to be in contact with their homes,” Frumline stated.
Orange’s support for the Israeli military long predates last summer’s attack on Gaza.
“Our ongoing association with the soldier population began with the establishment of the Adopt A Soldier project by the Association for the Wellbeing of Israel’s Soldiers,” Orange says on the “corporate responsibility” page of its Israel website.
As part of this project, the company has “adopted” two units: the “Ezuz” armored company, since 2005 and, since 2008, the “Shachar” search and rescue unit.
Dozens of firms, the vast majority Israeli, take part in the Adopt A Soldier project – “Ametz Lohem” in Hebrew. Among the more well-known internationally are the Israeli airline El Al and Strauss, the maker of Sabra brand hummus.
The participation of a multinational like Orange stands out – the only other readily recognizable international firm is the business services company Ernst & Young, which sponsors a drone unit.
According to the Orange website, the “adoption” consists of “joint activities of the soldiers with employees of the company, such as: sports, use of company facilities for training and conferences, support for lone soldiers, accompanying discharged soldiers on their pathway to civilian life and financing battalion-wide entertainment activities: hikes, athletics days, awards ceremonies for outstanding soldiers, and more.”
Ezuz in the attack on Gaza
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An article in Shiryon (Armor) glorifies the role of the Orange-sponsored “Ezuz” armored brigade in the summer 2014 assault on Gaza.
An article in the November 2014 edition of the Israeli military magazine Shiryon (Hebrew for “Armor”) reveals that the Ezuz unit directly participated in the attack on Gaza and was present at times and places where hundreds of civilians were killed and thousands of homes destroyed.
Unit commander Lt. Colonel Aryeh Berger tells Shiryon that Ezuz was part of a force that invaded Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. There, he says that his men “attacked homes of Hamas activists” and “purified” buildings.
Human Rights Watch condemned Israel’s deliberate targeting of homes, merely under the pretext that they allegedly belonged to the families of persons associated with Hamas or other armed resistance organizations, as “unlawful.”
Berger also reveals that his unit was active in the area of Khan Younis in southern Gaza at the same time that an Israeli soldier, Hadar Goldin of the Givati brigade, was reported captured near the city of Rafah, to the south. That capture occurred on 1 August 2014.
This places the Ezuz unit in two specific areas where mass killings took place.
In the Khan Younis area, Berger says his forces were tasked to “isolate” a village – which he does not name. Once the report of Goldin’s capture came, Berger says “we had to leave our task urgently and reinforce the Givati brigade, and we got there within three hours.”
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Palestinians search through rubble of their destroyed houses hit by Israeli strikes in Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip, 5 August 2014.
On 1 August, during a short-lived “humanitarian ceasefire,” medical crews, journalists and residents entered the village of Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis, which had been besieged by Israeli forces. They found the bodies of dozens of dead civilians.
Some had been killed while trying to leave, waving white flags. Others died as their homes were destroyed on top of them.
The UK’s Channel 4 documented scenes of destruction and carnage as people entered the village on 1 August:
The harrowing effects of the broken Gaza ceasefire | Channel 4 News
While in Gaza, Ezuz commander Berger says he ordered his men not to drive on roads or through intersections.
When tank commanders asked where they should drive, Berger replied “Everywhere else!”
He saw the assault on Gaza as a rare training opportunity:
“I assigned one of my company commanders to document some of this by video, so we can illustrate it in training, show them for example how a tank drives through a grove of trees, because they don’t believe this is possible, or how the tank shoots in different situations. Because in training we don’t have planted grove areas we can keep running over, or a variety of ‘live’ houses to shoot at.”
This is the unit Orange has sponsored for a decade.
The company claims that “our commitment to corporate citizenship means that everything we do is for a single purpose: using digital technologies to speed up progress for society.”
But by supporting the Israeli army through its Israeli affiliate, Orange has been helping to speed up the destruction of Palestinian society and to kill and injure thousands of people.
Although Orange does not own Partner Communications Ltd., it remains responsible and liable for Partner’s activities done in its name and with its brand.
Orange directly derives profits from Partner’s activities through its royalty agreement, supplies Partner with equipment and is responsible for the stewardship and reputation of the Orange brand worldwide.
Brand Israel
The parent company, moreover, appears to be fully complicit in helping Israel whitewash its reputation. In May 2014, its Orange Institute think-tank sponsored a conference in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem called “How Israel became a Tech Lab for the World.”
The promotional material says that in 2014 “the brand of ‘Israel as Startup Nation’ is shining even more brightly than when Orange Institute first visited in 2011.”
“From this small country of eight million people,” Orange Institute gushes, “we continue to see oversized returns.”
The conference promoted such topics as “civilian drone use” and “cyber-security innovations within the Israeli cyber ecosystem.”
Orange wants to claim credit for initiatives “supporting digital literacy” and promoting “eco-friendly solutions.”
It should also be held accountable for its complicity in Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Consumers might do that by refusing to be Orange customers.
A statement signed by dozens of French groups calls on Orange to end its deal with Partner Communications Ltd. over the latter’s operations on occupied lands.
Last year, the French government warned French businesses of the risks of doing business in Israeli settlements in occupied territories that are illegal under international law.
But there is also the possibility that Palestinian individuals or human rights groups could seek to hold Orange accountable for providing material support to war crimes – including in the form of equipment it supplies to Partner – under the emerging doctrine of corporate liability for gross human rights abuses.
Orange’s press office at its headquarters in Paris did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
With thanks to Dena Shunra for providing research and translation
Orange fournissant un service gratuit aux soldats israéliens déployés près de Gaza pendant l’attaque qui a tué plus de 2200 Palestiniens l’été dernier.
La filiale israélienne de la compagnie de télécommunications française a « adopté » une…
Investing in Israeli settlements continues “cycle of violence” — Desmond Tutu
First the good news: the Palestinian-led campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel has made considerable progress.
Earlier this year, the Dutch pension fund PGGM announced that it had excluded 5 Israeli banks from its investment portfolio because they were financing Jewish-only settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Soon afterwards, it was reported that the Copenhagen-based Danske Bank had taken similar action against Hapoalim, a leading Israeli bank.
Fierce apartheid critic Desmond Tutu has denounced businesses that aid repression. (Joshua Wanyama)
Other victories have received less publicity.
The Swedish fund KPA Pension, for example, has published an exclusion list on its website featuring a number of Israeli banks and telecommunications firms, the weapons manufacturer Elbit and Alstom, a French corporation that has been involved in building a light rail system linking up Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem.
KPA manages the pensions of more than a million people working in local government.
Sweden’s state pension fund AP7, meanwhile, has excluded the technology giant Hewlett-Packard because of its provision of surveillance technology to Israel, as well as Cemex, a Mexican company which has been quarrying in the West Bank in violation of international law.
Enabling war crimes
AP7 is not as clean as it would have us believe, however.
In August, the Stockholm daily Svenska Dagbladetcomplained that AP7 is continuing to invest in3 Israeli banks.
According to the paper, this was not compatible with the views of most Swedes, who wanted pension funds to respect ethical principles.
Similarly, the third largest Dutch pension fund ABP has a €51 million ($64 million) stake in 3 Israel banks: Leumi, Hapoalim and Mizrahi-Tefahot. All three of these banks finance settlements in the West Bank.
ABP is under pressure to ditch these enablers of war crimes. Around 1.8 million people have signed a petition calling on it to do so.
Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop, has written to ABP’s board contending that investing in Israeli institutions that lend to repressive and illegal projects “helps perpetuate the cycle of violence.”
“Respect the UN”
ABP could follow the example set by another Dutch pension fund, BPL.
A list published by BPL for 2013 states that it has excluded the three aforementioned Israeli banks, along with Alstom and Veolia (the major player in the East Jerusalem tramway).
Gerard Roest, BPL’s chairman, told me that the decisions to exclude these firms were taken because the fund is guided by international standards on human rights. “The UN is a kind of world government and we should respect its decisions,” he said.
A UN fact finding mission on the Israeli occupation stated last year:
“A number of banks provide mortgage loans for home buyers and special loans for building projects in settlements. They also provide financial services to businesses in settlements and, in some cases, are physically present there.”
Richard Falk, a former UN special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, has warned that “financial institutions and real estate companies may be held criminally accountable for their involvement with illegal settlements in occupied Palestine.”
Pension funds that keep on investing in Israel can be sure that they will come under pressure from people of conscience throughout the world. Support for war crimes will result in damage to their reputations.
62% of British public says Israel committing war crimes, as polls show sympathy for Palestinians
Wednesday, 30 July 2014 11:56
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Almost two thirds of the British public (62%) believe that the Israeli government is committing war crimes, a new YouGov poll has revealed.
The survey, conducted 27-28 July, comes days after a separate poll carried out on behalf of The Sunday Times showed that 52% of the British public sees Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip as “unjustified”. Questioned about their attitude to the conflict more generally, 27% said their sympathies lie more with the Palestinians, while 14% said their sympathies lay more with the Israelis.
Polling data from the U.S. indicates Israel’s growing image problem, even amongst the citizens of its closest ally.
A new Pew Research Center poll shows that among 18 to 29-year old Americans, 29% blame Israel more for the current violence, while 21% blame Hamas. Meanwhile, a Gallup poll last week showed that a majority of nonwhite Americans under-50 view Israel’s assault as “unjustified”.
In a CNN poll conducted July 18-20, only 57% of respondents said Israel’s actions in ‘Operation Protective Edge’ are justified.
Meanwhile, a survey of UK Christians commissioned by charity Embrace the Middle East has revealed that 35.4% sympathise more with the Palestinians, while 16.9% sympathise more with Israel. The research was conducted before Israel’s attack on Gaza, which charity head Jeremy Moodey said would likely only increase support for the Palestinians in UK churches
You’ve got to hand it to Israeli spinners like Mark Regev. They are masters of PR.
In fact, as the Independent‘s Patrick Cockburnrevealed over the weekend, “the playbook they are using is a professional, well-researched and confidential study on how to influence the media and public opinion in America and Europe”.
In recent days I’ve been debating supporters of Israel’s latest assault on Gaza on radio and on Twitter and I’ve been astonished not just by the sheer number of fact-free claims made by those supporters, but also by their confidence, slickness and sheer message discipline.
According to the pro-Israel, pro-IDF crowd, Hamas is to blame for everything.
This, of course, is utter nonsense. To quote the late US senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts.”
So, in a Moynihanian spirit, here are fact-filled, evidence-based rebuttals to the 11 main myths, half-truths and self-serving ‘talking points’ that are repeatedly pushed by various Israeli spokespersons, both on the airwaves and on social media:
“Israeli-imposed buffer zones.. now absorb nearly 14% of Gaza’s total land and at least 48% of total arable land. Similarly, the sea buffer zone covers 85% of the maritime area promised to Palestinians in the Oslo Accords, reducing 20 nautical miles to three.”
Human Rights Watch: “Israel also continues to control the population registry for residents of the Gaza Strip, years after it withdrew its ground forces and settlements there.”
B’Tselem, 2013: “Israel continues to maintain exclusive control of Gaza’s airspace and the territorial waters, just as it has since it occupied the Gaza Strip in 1967.”
“Meshaal said Hamas wants the ‘aggression to stop tomorrow, today, or even this minute. But [Israel must] lift the blockade with guarantees and not as a promise for future negotiations. We will not shut the door in the face of any humanitarian ceasefire backed by a real aid programme.”
Jerusalem Post: “One day after an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire accepted by Israel, but rejected by Hamas, fell through, the terrorist organization proposed a 10-year end to hostilities in return for its conditions being met by Israel, Channel 2 reported Wednesday…
Hamas’s conditions were the release of re-arrested Palestinian prisoners who were let go in the Schalit deal, the opening of Gaza-Israel border crossings in order to allow citizens and goods to pass through, and international supervision of the Gazan seaport in place of the current Israeli blockade.”
BBC: “Israel’s security cabinet has rejected a week-long Gaza ceasefire proposal put forward by US Secretary of State John Kerry ‘as it stands’.”
The Guardian: “It was there that the second [Israeli] shell hit the beach, those firing apparently adjusting their fire to target the fleeing survivors. As it exploded, journalists standing by the terrace wall shouted: ‘They are only children.’”
UN high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay: “A number of incidents, along with the high number of civilian deaths, belies the [Israeli] claim that all necessary precautions are being taken to protect civilian lives.”
A concept known as the Dahiya doctrine emerged then, involving the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations. The Mission concludes from a review of the facts on the ground that it.. appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.”
4) Only Hamas is guilty of war crimes, not Israel?
Human Rights Watch: “Israeli forces may also have knowingly or recklessly attacked people who were clearly civilians, such as young boys, and civilian structures, including a hospital – laws-of-war violations that are indicative of war crimes.”
Amnesty International: “Deliberately attacking a civilian home is a war crime, and the overwhelming scale of destruction of civilian homes, in some cases with entire families inside them, points to a distressing pattern of repeated violations of the laws of war.”
5) Hamas use the civilians of Gaza as ‘human shields’?
Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East editor: “I saw no evidence during my week in Gaza of Israel’s accusation that Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields.”
The Guardian: “In the past week, the Guardian has seen large numbers of people fleeing different neighbourhoods.. and no evidence that Hamas had compelled them to stay.”
The Independent: “Some Gazans have admitted that they were afraid of criticizing Hamas, but none have said they had been forced by the organisation to stay in places of danger and become unwilling human-shields.”
Reuters, 2013: “A United Nations human rights body accused Israeli forces on Thursday of mistreating Palestinian children, including by torturing those in custody and using others as human shields.”
6) This current Gaza conflict began with Hamas rocket fire on 30 June 2014?
Times of Israel: “Hamas operatives were behind a large volley of rockets which slammed into Israel Monday morning, the first time in years the Islamist group has directly challenged the Jewish state, according to Israeli defense officials.. The security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, assessed that Hamas had probably launched the barrage in revenge for an Israeli airstrike several hours earlier which killed one person and injured three more..
Hamas hasn’t fired rockets into Israel since Operation Pillar of Defense ended in November 2012.”
The Nation: “During 10 days of Operation Brother’s Keeper in the West Bank [before the start of the Gaza conflict], Israel arrested approximately 800 Palestinians without charge or trial, killed 9 civilians and raided nearly 1,300 residential, commercial and public buildings.
Its military operation targeted Hamas members released during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011.”
7) Hamas has never stopped firing rockets into Israel?
Jewish Daily Forward: “Hamas hadn’t fired a single rocket since [2012 Gaza conflict], and had largely suppressed fire by smaller jihadi groups. Rocket firings, averaging 240 per month in 2007, dropped to 5 per month in 2013.”
International Crisis Group: “Fewer rockets were fired from Gaza in 2013 than in any year since 2001, and nearly all those that were fired between the November 2012 ceasefire and the current crisis were launched by groups other than Hamas.
The Israeli security establishment testified to the aggressive anti-rocket efforts made by the new police force Hamas established specifically for that purpose.. As Israel (and Egypt) rolled back the 2012 understandings – some of which were implemented spottily at best – so too did Hamas roll back its anti rocket efforts.”
8) Hamas provoked Israel by kidnapping and killing three Israeli teenagers?
Jewish Daily Forward: “The [Israeli] government had known almost from the beginning that the boys were dead. It maintained the fiction that it hoped to find them alive as a pretext to dismantle Hamas’ West Bank operations.. Nor was that the only fib. It was clear from the beginning that the kidnappers weren’t acting on orders from Hamas leadership in Gaza or Damascus. Hamas’ Hebron branch — more a crime family than a clandestine organization — had a history of acting without the leaders’ knowledge, sometimes against their interests.”
(It was later revealed that A Jewish adolescent did the kidnapping and killing of the three, and the Shin Beth knew all about this murder from the start)
BBC correspondent Jon Donnison: “Israeli police MickeyRosenfeld tells me men who killed 3 Israeli teens def lone cell, hamas affiliated but not operating under leadership.. Seems to contradict the line from Netanyahu government.”
9) Hamas rule, not Israel’s blockade, is to blame for the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip?
US State Department cable: “Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.. Israeli officials have confirmed.. on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.”
The Guardian: “The Israeli military made precise calculations of Gaza’s daily calorie needs to avoid malnutrition during a blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory between 2007 and mid-2010, according to files the defence ministry released on Wednesday under a court order..
The Israeli advocacy group Gisha.. waged a long court battle to release the document. Its members say Israel calculated the calorie needs for Gaza’s population so as to restrict the quantity of food it allowed in.”
10) The Israeli government, unlike Hamas, wants a two-state solution?
Times of Israel: “[Netanyahu] made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a fully sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank.. Amid the current conflict, he elaborated, ‘I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.’”
11) All serious analysts agree it was Hamas, and not Israel, that started this current conflict?
“The current escalation in Gaza is a direct result of the choice by Israel and the West to obstruct the implementation of the April 2014 Palestinian reconciliation agreement.”
Henry Siegman, former national director, American Jewish Congress, writing for Politico: “Israel’s assault on Gaza.. was not triggered by Hamas’ rockets directed at Israel but by Israel’s determination to bring down the Palestinian unity government that was formed in early June, even though that government was committed to honoring all of the conditions imposed by the international community for recognition of its legitimacy.”
The image was quickly screen captured in case Ovadia came to his senses and realized that he could be prosecuted for his admission of war crimes.
It is unclear and perhaps unlikely that the Barrett was used in the commission of such crimes, as this weapon is usually reserved for the best of the best marksmen.
In any event, Ovadia is in active deployment and openly confesses to killing Gazan civilian children.
While not specifying what weapon he used, the posting of himself with the .50 caliber rifle was obviously meant to be visually intimidating to Palestinians.
In the mean time, while more information is gathered on Ovadia, the “hacktivist” group “Anonymous” took control of his Instagram account, deleting it entirely.
For “good measure” Anonymous sources said that they hacked the websites of the Mossad intelligence agency in Israel “for the brave IDF Sniper”, in reference to Ovadia.
By 11:30, they had taken down the Israeli Ministry of Defense as well, and similarly attributed it as a response to Ovadia’s confessions.
If you agree that Ovadia’s admission of war crimes against Gazan children needs to be FRONT PAGE NEWS, share this with someone you know who cares!
Opening bottles of champagne. Celebrating election victory of your occupier?
John Kerry mission after frequent shuffling trips between Netanahyu and Mahmoud Abbass is at a dead end.
What the US expected to offer the Palestinians?
They are pressuring the Palestinians to recognize the pure Jewishness of Israel, and the resident Palestinians to be de-facto second class by law.
Israel has already made Jerusalem a Jewish city
Israel refuses the UN declaration the Palestinians rights to return to their hometowns
Israel wants to maintain its settlements in the Jordan Valley, separating the West bank from Jordan
Israel is intent on keeping its hundreds of check points in the West Bank…
The Wall of Shame is still standing against the order of the La Hague International Court to dismantle it
What cards remain in the hands of the Palestinian Authority to negotiate with?
Mahmoud Abbas (current President of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank) and Ibrahim Souss (former Palestinian Fateh faction representative in Paris, and later assassinated by Israeli agents) used to celebrate the election victories of the Israeli Labor party by opening champagne bottles in most of its official offices around the world.
(Apparently, the Oslo agreement between Arafat and Rabin required these kinds of celebration? Apart from protecting Israel from Palestinian rights to resist?)
A few Palestinian leaders believed that it was adequate to differentiate among the Israeli political parties who all refuse the Palestinians their UN rights to return to their homeland.
These confused Palestinian leaders feel so impotent that they are relying on the Israeli voters to redress justice and offer potential solutions to the Palestinian indignities and sufferings.
It was no longer the legitimate fight against this occupying force and its apartheid system that was on the table, but the reliance on the Israeli voters.
And thus, the Palestinian Authority tried to distinguish between Ariel Sharon and the other Labor leaders. The terrorist activities of the Zionist movement started in 1929 and never abated.
The war crimes of Ariel Sharon are no less terrible than the crimes committed by Isaac Rabin, Shimon Peres and Golda Meir. (Asaad Bu Khalil angryarab.blogspot.com)
Menahim Begin boasted in his autobiography “Uprising” that their terrorists acts quickened the transfer of the Palestinians from their homes and villages.
The same idea and methods were adopted by Sharon and he executed them every time he led incursions into Palestinian villages. For example, he slaughtered the people in the village of Qabiyeh (under Jordanian authority) in reprisal of a supposed “terrorist attacks” in 1957.
أدرجت منظمة فتح، بشخص محمود عبّاس وإبراهيم الصّوص (مندوب المنظمة لسنوات طويلة في باريس) طقس الاحتفال بفوز حزب العمل في الانتخابات الإسرائيليّة. كانت بعض مكاتب المنظمة حول العالم تفتح زجاجات الشامبانيا عند فوز حزب العمل. صدّق البعض تقليد التمييز بين الأحزاب الصهيونيّة في الكيان الغاصب. أو أن العجز الثوري (السياسي والعسكري على حدّ سواء) في قيادة منظمة التحرير أدّى إلى التسليم بقدرة الناخب الإسرائيلي على تقديم الحلول الصغرى للقيادة الفلسطينيّة.
لم يعد النضال الفلسطيني هو العامل التحريري، بل كان الاتكال _ كل الاتكال _ على انتظار ما يقدّمه حزب العمل من فتات هو الحلّ. والتركيز على شرور شارون كان جزءاً (خطيراً) من التمييز السياسي الباطل الذي أصرّت عليه قيادة عرفات في منظمة التحرير. إنّ أرييل شارون لا يزيد في جرائم حربه وفي مجازره عن جرائم ومجازر إسحق رابين وشمعون بيريز وديفيد بن غورين وغولدا مائير وموشي شرتوك. كلهم سواء. إن المجازر والإرهاب الصهيوني لم تكن يوماً _ كما يُراد لنا في بعض الخطاب الفلسطيني السياسي الذي أدرجه عرفات ومحمود عبّاس _ عرضية أو تجاوزاً أو تطرّفاً أو خروجاً عن إجماع القيادة السياسية
. إن الإرهاب الصهيوني من 1929 حتى يومنا هذا مقصود ومدروس ومُخطّط له بعناية فائقة من قبل القيادة الصهيونيّة. وشخصنة العداء لإسرائيل من شأنها أن تضلّل الرأي العام العربي الذي يخضع لسنوات لدعاية (عربية نفطية وغربية صهيونية) تجعل من مجرمي حرب حزب العمل (من أمثال رابين وبيريز) أو من مجرمي كاديما (بسبب غرام القادة العرب بتسيبي ليفني) حمائم سلام وديعة
كما أن الدعاية العسكريّة للعدو تقصّدت أن ترمي أمام أعيننا فكرة «القائد العسكري الإسرائيلي المُتفلِّت من الضوابط»، وذلك من أجل التخويف والإرهاب النفسي والمعنوي. زها بيغن بمجزرة دير ياسين وقال في كتابه «التمرّد» إن المجزرة كانت مفيدة للتسريع في طرد الشعب الفلسطيني من أرضه، كما أن أرييل شارون زها في مذكراته («محارب») بمجزرة قبية، وقال إنها أخافت العرب وحسّنت من معنويات جيش العدوّ. لكن لشارون هذا إرث لبناني خاص، غائب كليّاً عن المناهج الدراسية اللبنانية وعن الخطاب السياسي اللبناني
. لقد حرصتُ أدناه لتعميم الفائدة ولترسيخ تاريخ مشين في الأذهان على ترجمة ما يتعلّق بالفصل اللبناني من جرائم حرب شاورن وعلاقاته اللبنانيّة، لعلّ جيلاً من اللبنانيّين يكون على علم بها، وذلك من أجل الحكم على فريق سياسي لبناني يتحدّر من حلفاء شارون في تلك الحقبة المظلمة من تاريخ لبنان (والترجمة هي من النص الإنكليزي لمذكّرات شارون وتبدأ بفترة التحضير للاجتياح الإسرائيلي في عام 1982):
«وأنا أيضاً كنتُ أريد أن أرى لبنان بنفسي كي آخذ شعوراً بالملموس عن الحالة على الأرض هناك، وخصوصاً من أجل فهم إذا كان هناك أي شيء ممكن توقّعه من القوّات اللبنانيّة المسيحيّة في حالة الحرب. وأنا كنتُ قد التقيتُ ببشير الجميّل للمرّة الأولى عندما كنتُ وزيراً للزراعة خلال واحدة من زياراته للقدس لبحث العون الذي كنّا نقدّمه (لهم). ولقد ترك عندي انطباعاً (إيجابيّاً) آنذاك على أنه رجل شاب مليء بالثقة بالنفس والعزم. تحدّث بإقناع وبسلطة، ولم يكن هناك شك بأنه كان قد أظهر قدرات قياديّة حقيقيّة. لكنني شعرتُ
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Adonis Diaries 
Tidbits #96
Posted by: adonis49 on: February 9, 2021
Tidbits #96
If you agree with the notion that input will eventually equal output, then when you do more than you are paid for, eventually you’ll be paid for more than you do. The universal law: we reap what we sow and we get what we give.
The Agro food industries add around 30 kinds of additives. most of them are poisonous in high doses. A few of them contains nanoparticles, which means they can cross the intestines and flow with the blood and degrade many organs ( cancers). Eventually, these nano-ingredients will be banned and the multinational will be unable to contest the electronic microscopes (the power of technology). For example, the dioxyde of Titanium or additive E71, just to “whiten” the product. Several ingredients are mainly used to retain water, thus adding half of the weight in the sold products
Most of these chemical additives in food are pure poisons and supposedly are just used to satisfy the idiosyncrasies of clients in the look, the color and consistency of the food. I doubt the multinational food industries experiment on the specific idiosyncrasies of clients around the globe, just imposing the “palate”/taste and smell of the colonial powers idiosyncrasies. Obesity, diabetes and cancer causing ingredients… are Not labeled “Can kill you” as in cigarette boxes.
Lately, pressured by “Green Food” campaigns and alternative food preparations, many agro-businesses substitute a few ingredients with “Auxiliary technology” ingredient/products, which are Not required to be listed as ingredients, because these ingredients disappear after the food is cooked. Many of these Auxiliary technology ingredients are enzymes types and proteins, even those extracted from cow bloods.
Lately, the best way that I “know” that I did fall asleep is that I could recall “I had a dream”. Most of the dreams I cannot stand: I am being humiliated and cannot react accordingly. I respond with a half-waking sleep to cope with my lethargy to react, and then I force myself to wake up. And I spend a few hours watching lousy movies, feeling in a wretched diminished state.
In a lengthy documentary on Agro industries. the business could eliminate 20 out of the 30 ingredients for a healthy product and substitute many with “natural” ingredients.
Don’t dwell on this irrational harang: “Resist to your famine in the name of Nationalism“. At least 3 billion people are degraded to accept the misery of their “destiny” in order to satisfy imperialistic economy.
Mammalian scientists claim that it is the females that start the process of mating season. I cannot buy these one-way cause and effects. I conjecture that the males vastly contribute to this process with their cry of “distress” to mate. And the female respond by increasing the level of their pheromone , a catalyst to entice the mating.
I think many would like to die in their sleep, preferable while dreaming of a hot Sexy story in order to go straight to heaven and compare with the Houris
After 53 years, the verdict from The Hague Friday: The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. How many Israelis are feeling the heat?
The U.S is the only advanced nation that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation time to workers, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
The US has the highest number of hospitalizations from preventable causes of illnesses and the highest rate of avoidable deaths relative to other wealthy nations, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
It is Not worth it to give your opinions on social medias if you are Not ready to open up your deep emotions and personal experiences. Better make sure you are at least paid for your faked opinions
If paying attention to your breathing for a couple of minutes is so hard, how getting curious of the level of addiction to smoking and consuming alcohol is a simple task? How the tastes and feels of addictive substances is tagged as a simpler task?
Many people climbed the highest mountains in their profession, only to discover they were climbing the wrong mountain that didn’t deliver on the proper emotions and desires.
If the schooling system denies you to learn patience, focus and comprehension, you’ll have to learn on your own these hardest attitudes.
Any which way you think of it, Life has no meaning in the end. The best way to sustain this foolish reality is to learn to be confident in the passion of the talent you are endowed with.
Most financial bubbles are often engineered by governments, especially powerful Nations that has the right to print money at wish. With plenty of cash money in the market, the government increase the interest rate for stocks that are issued, until the economic reality blow the faked wealth.
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