Israel Empowered Hamas by Undermining the Palestinian Authority

Why Israel’s divide-and-rule approach towards Palestinians backfired so spectacularly
 

Opinion by Hussein Ibish (CNN)

Fri, November 17, 2023

Editor’s Note: Hussein Ibish is a Senior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. His most recent book is “What’s Wrong with the One-State Agenda? Why Ending the Occupation and Peace with Israel is Still the Palestinian National Goal.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

Lebanon Iznogood's Note: This opinion expresses wishful thinking or naiveté on the part of Mr. Ibish who assumes that Israel and the Israeli people are actually interested in peace. The reality is, however, that Israelis will not follow a path of peace as long as the Holocaust continues to inflict guilt on the West and the Zionist lobby has America's balls in a tight squeeze. Israel's ultimate plan - to which both the extremist right wing and the leftist Labor subscribe, the former openly and the latter insidiously - is to throw all the Palestinians out of Palestine to achieve the purely Jewish - from the river to the sea - state the Zionists have aimed for from the start of their colonial enterprise. Even when Labor was in power, illegal settlements were built, homes were demolished, Palestinians were deported, and land was stolen. Labor and the right-wing have been playing the good cop-bad cop game with a naive and reluctantly colluding international community. The late Edward Saiid rejected the Oslo and Madrid agreements for this specific reason.

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The most important factor in determining the political outcome of Israel’s current war will not take place in Gaza — but will instead unfold in the West Bank.

That’s because if Israel really wants to deliver a serious long-term blow to Hamas as a potent political movement among the Palestinian people, it’s going to be essential to seriously rethink its attitude towards the Islamist extremist group’s archrivals: the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) on the international stage.

Without strengthening these Palestinian groups, which still represent the mainstream of the national movement, Hamas and even more extreme groups will almost certainly continue to grow and thrive among the Palestinian people.

If Israel is now serious about decimating Hamas’s military and political power, that cannot be done only or even mainly by killing the group’s leaders and members and blowing up its equipment and infrastructure. New people can and will fill the void and insurgencies can successfully operate on a shoestring and under extremely onerous conditions.

Because the Palestinian people, their cause and their national movement are not going to disappear, the only way to really marginalize Hamas in the long run is to abandon the policy of simultaneously strengthening and weakening both Palestinian factions to keep them at odds with each other and therefore ineffective as a national movement.

In one of the most reckless and self-defeating policies in its young history, Israel, from the outset, sought to bolster and use Hamas to split and thereby cripple the Palestinian national movement.

Hamas was formed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza during the firmament of the first Palestinian intifada (uprising) against Israeli occupation in 1987. Israeli occupation authorities immediately believed they had stumbled upon a marvelous opportunity to divide Palestinians between secular nationalists and Islamists just as they began to rise up on the ground in the occupied territories.

Hamas was given considerable leeway to organize and form itself, with Israel turning a blind eye to the organization’s early efforts to structure and found itself — activities that would have been ruthlessly suppressed if pursued by either Fatah-dominated organizations or the local grassroots committees that led the first uprising in its initial months.

For a brief period during the Oslo negotiations and the initial implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian agreements that led to the formation of the small self-administered Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank and most of Gaza in the 1990s, this deeply misguided strategy of divide and rule was essentially set aside in favor of serious negotiations with the PLO and a significant degree of cooperation with the PA.

However, after the failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the subsequent outbreak of the far more violent second intifada in the fall of that year, the Israeli right resumed power. Under Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli right has dominated national politics for the vast majority of subsequent years, and it eagerly resumed a divide and rule approach.

This seemed to reach a successful crescendo in 2007, when a year of divided government among Palestinians — with a Fatah presidency under Mahmoud Abbas and a Hamas-dominated legislature — collapsed into open conflict and Hamas violently expelled Fatah and the PA from Gaza.

Israel’s ‘divide and rule’ approach

For Netanyahu and his colleagues, this split was ideal. Hamas’ unwavering commitment to armed struggle and violence allowed the Israeli right to paint the entire Palestinian national movement as hopelessly extreme.

And the split between Gaza and the West Bank provided Israelis who wanted no part in any additional negotiations with the Palestinians which could result in a two-state solution with a perfect excuse not to sit down with the PLO, by claiming that they do not represent the entirety of the Palestinian people.

For almost 20 years, Israel’s policy was to keep Hamas in power in Gaza, albeit besieged and contained, and periodically and literally cut down to size through wars cynically described as “mowing the grass,” while at the same time ensuring that the PA continued to control the self-administered enclaves in the West Bank, albeit with extreme institutional and political weakness.

Above all, the core goal appeared to be to ensure that the Palestinian division prevented any additional movement towards the creation of a Palestinian state or the development of any further restrictions on Israeli settlement activity and the now openly-declared national policy goal of eventual additional major annexation in the West Bank.

In March 2019, Netanyahu told a private meeting of Likud party Knesset members that “whoever is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring funds to Hamas in Gaza, according to the Jerusalem Post. He reportedly said that this was part of Israel’s strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank. This articulated policies that the Israeli right had been diligently following for many years. And it led, inexorably and predictably, to the October 7 massacres.

What Hamas did next

Israelis, including the national security establishment, were taken aback by the Hamas attack of October 7 because they had wrongly concluded that both Palestinian groups were content to rule their separate fiefdoms and persist in a relative stalemate for dominance of the national movement that played perfectly into Israel’s hands.

What the Israelis had not appreciated is that since Hamas’ founding in 1987, its prime directive has been to maneuver to take over the Palestinian national movement and, eventually, the PLO with its invaluable international diplomatic presence, including nonmember observer state status at the UN and over 100 embassies around the world.

It was instantly obvious after the October 7 killing spree that the increasingly unpopular Hamas was seeking to use violence and assert its dominance of the national movement. Indeed, it’s clear that Hamas expected an overwhelming military response from Israel on the ground in Gaza, and that it hopes to provoke a long-term Israeli security presence against which it can, sooner rather than later, organize a sustained and increasingly powerful insurgency.

The obvious goal is to contrast this armed resistance, not just now, but especially in coming years, with PA security cooperation with Israel and the PLO’s unwavering commitment to securing independence through a two-state agreement with Israel.

The only rational choice left for Israel in the wake of October 7 is to finally choose to deal seriously and constructively with the Palestinians who are committed to talking to Israelis, as opposed to bolstering those who want to kill Israelis.

It may go against all the instincts of many Israeli extremists in the current government, including Netanyahu, but if they do not begin to deal seriously, constructively and cooperatively with the PA and the PLO, Hamas and even more extreme groups will continue to thrive.

This means taking any number of obvious measures to strengthen the PA institutionally and politically, including by expanding its authority in the West Bank.

And it means reengaging with the PLO at the negotiating table to seriously discuss a viable accommodation that meets the needs of both peoples.

Beyond Mahmoud Abbas

Many Israelis may find it hard to imagine suddenly taking Mahmoud Abbas, who is both the PA president and the PLO chairman, seriously, both because they are used to thinking of him as a spent force and ineffective leader, and because he has lashed out in frustration with language that has been highly offensive, including regarding the Holocaust.

There is no doubt that Abbas is, in almost every imaginable way, long past his sell-by date. But the old, infirm and chain-smoking politician, who at least has time and again proven his unwavering rejection of violence as a Palestinian national strategy, represents exactly this trend among Palestinians. And when he passes, sooner rather than later, from the scene, he will be replaced by others from the same tendency.

Israelis cannot approach this decisive strategic and political inflection point by focusing on the personality, failures or foibles of Abbas. In many ways, Israel’s consistently hostile policies were the single biggest factor in shaping him into the highly flawed figure he has become.

This is the Palestinian leader who, after all, resigned as Yasser Arafat’s Prime Minister during the second intifada and voluntarily went into an open-ended sojourn in the political wilderness, precisely because he categorically rejected the use of violence.

Moreover, it’s not about Abbas or his inner circle as personalities. It must be about strengthening the hands of Palestinians who sincerely seek an accommodation with Jewish Israelis and represent the primary obstacle to Hamas finally achieving political dominance among Palestinians.

It’s a no-brainer, but Netanyahu and his government show no signs of understanding the necessity of such a radical policy shift. The Biden administration appears to understand the challenge in theory, but how much they can or will do to implement such a revised policy towards the Palestinian political scene is uncertain at best.

Given the profound governance, security and intelligence failures revealed by the October 7 attack — which was “successful” beyond Hamas’s wildest fantasies —Israelis should certainly be seeking new leadership. If and when they at last turn their backs on Netanyahu and the coterie of Jewish supremacists surrounding him, it’s essential that the next phase of Israeli strategic thinking reflects at least some understanding of the Palestinian political scene and what Israel’s real options are.

It’s not too late to choose to deal seriously, respectfully and constructively with Palestinians who are sincere about a negotiated agreement for peaceful coexistence. The alternative was on full display on October 7.

No amount of death and destruction in Gaza or elsewhere is going to provide Israel with lasting security. A negotiated agreement with the Palestinian factions who, despite everything, still want to reach a peace deal with Israel — for good or ill, currently led by Abbas — can bring that about. It’s the only thing that can bring Israelis peace and genuine security.

Who Were the "Human Animals" of Europe?

Zionists always claim that Palestinians are "Arabs" and therefore other Arab countries should take them. It's their way of asking Arab countries to partake in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Zionists refer to Palestinians as animals, savage Muslims, backward, prone to terror and violence, inferior, etc.

Now, has anyone wondered why the Jews of Europe and the West HAD TO FLEE EUROPE in the first place and build themselves an artificial country somewhere?

It was because the Zionists' best friends of today, namely the Europeans and the Americans, either massacred them and hunted them down (Europeans) or refused to take them as refugees (America). 

"Christian" westerners used to refer to Jews as inferior, vermin, animals, savages who turned down Jesus, backward people moved by greed and nothing else.

The Palestinians have become today's "Jews", and today's Israelis have become the Nazis who apply to the Palestinians the same labels that Hitler applied to the Jews. Today's Zionism is a reincarnation of Nazi ideology, except that it targets the Palestinian people. How come?  Zionism was born out of a racist colonial antisemitic European womb. The Jews of 18th-19th century Europe were absorbing and partaking in an environment of racism, colonialism, racial supremacism. As white Europeans, many Jewish individuals and businesses were participating in the slave trade and looting African, Asian and American colonies of their natural wealth and resources. As they began conquering Palestine in the late 19th century, what methods did you expect them to use in their conquest? Peaceful, non-violent, befriending, honest approach with the native Palestinians, lacking any threatening, blackmailing, violent, corrupt methods to swindle the naive indigenous Palestinians out of their lands, like all European colonialists had been doing around the globe? Has anyone ever wondered why it was those European Jews imbibed with colonialist ideologies, and not the Jews of Iran, Yemen and North Africa, who came up with the Zionist idea?

One HUGE difference though: The Jews of Europe are native to Europe; they did not arrive to Europe on migrant boats. They had been in Europe for millennia, the majority of them Christians newly converted to Judaism by fanatic proselytizing Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia. European antisemitism was against its own native Jewish community.

In contrast, today's Jewish Zionist Nazis are foreign invaders, conquerors, occupiers who arrived from overseas on migrant boats to Palestine, and began treating the native indigenous Palestinians as they themselves were treated by the Europeans and also as Europeans had been treating all their colonized peoples: Like subhuman vermin worthy only of being killed or deported to concentration camps known as refugee camps or put to work as slaves.

To the Zionists: You still can go back home to Europe (two-thirds of the Israeli population carry dual citizenships), leave the Palestinians alone, and live in a de-Nazified tolerant democratic no-longer-colonial Europe and West with loads of human values and very friendly to both Jews and Muslims. There is so much more to accomplish and live for in the West, rather toil constantly on the edge of moral and economic abyss. Europeans and Americans love you: See how they overlook and trespass their own laws for your sake? Your decision to move to Palestine was irrational, impulsive and reeking of colonialist biblical bullshit. On the other hand, Arabs who used to love you and live with you can no longer bear to hear your falsehoods and fabricated stories. They will never love you, nor will they ever forgive you for what you have done to Palestine. So why condemn yourselves to a life on a permanent war footing and hatred? Build yourselves other Jewish resorts or Disneylands right in the heart of Europe, instead of the dangerous shores of the Eastern Mediterranean.

Israel is Proof that Great Replacement Works

The Great Replacement is a conspiracy theory of white nationalists which says that the ethnic white populations in the West are being deliberately demographically and culturally replaced by non-white peoples through mass migration, demographic growth and a drop in the birth rate of white Europeans. 

As a conspiracy theory, the Great Replacement is rooted in a misunderstanding of demographic statistics and premised upon an unscientific, racist worldview, and has generally been ridiculed for its blatant absurdity.

I always immediately reject conspiracies when used to explain large-scale events that have a negative impact and over which ordinary people have no control. In Lebanon, conspiratorial thinking is endemic. Nothing that happens in the country, the region, or the world can be due to political uncertainty, serendipity, coincidence, chance and the vagaries of constant change. Every issue, as it evolves over time, is the result of a planned plot or conspiracy - المخطط or المؤامرة.

Worse yet, conspiracies in Lebanon are often laced with a sense of despair that reflects itself in absurd self-inflating claims. In short, Lebanon is a victim of these conspiracies because it is such a smart(ass) country and has so much potential that others fear a stable prosperous Lebanon. The ultimate victim. But the Lebanese are not alone to wallow in this sack of composting despair. Many others in the third world adopt conspiracies as an explanation of their downtrodden status or societal unrest or economic uncertainty.

Examples: 

- Why is Israel producing gas while Lebanon, right next door, is not? It's gotta be a plot. The operators of the world levers - understand the US, Israel, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, or ... take your pick.... - don't want any competition from a potential gas-producing Lebanon. The gas that Lebanon can produce is so abundant that it can overwhelm the world markets and destroy the economies of its competitors. Or

- Why has Lebanon been in eternal torment it seems, with successive wars, crises, invasions, occupations and political stalemates? It's gotta be a plot. The Lebanese, talking about themselves, say they are so smart that other nations around fear them. Israel in particular is held responsible because of its endless wars with armed groups operating from Lebanon: If Lebanon were to regain its stability, it would be such a dangerous competitor to Israel that the latter has been engaged in a long term war of attrition against stability and prosperity in Lebanon. 

Yet, as you look around you in Lebanon: unmarked poorly-lit streets and roads that are full of potholes, rationed electricity, rationed water, a crushed Lebanese Lira, garbage strewn everywhere, dysfunctional banks...Nothing works in Lebanon. There is not a single television channel that tries to educate its audience with objectivity and science: Channels are either:

- Religious. Dedicated television channels with round-the-clock prayers and harangues by Christian and Muslim clergymen who attack science as a plot against religions and dig deeper untested and imagined religious beliefs into people's minds, or

- Entertainement. With locally-made or Syrian or Turkish sitcoms of abysmal quality, all around the same old single theme of forbidden love and betrayal ... no one ever smiles in these sitcoms, everyone is sad, frowning and crying, and most women are fake blondes with botoxed lips and cheeks, or 

- Western-imitation shows (cooking, game, talk shows, etc.) with lots of shiny lights, rotating round tables, "stars" and an adoring audience, the whole thing being a copy-paste of some equally abysmal American production whose sole merit is that it is made by Americans for Americans. But when taken out of their American context and imported to a third world country like Lebanon, they become like a horrid immiscible disgusting mixture of tahini and ketchup.

It is so easy to attribute problems that have no clear answer or explanation to a plot. Why? Because the moment you accept that a bunch of people, corporations or governments sat down and planned what is happening to you, you stop thinking. The "plot" is the answer.

But I digress. Back to the "Great Replacement" theory.

Israel is the perfect example of a Great Replacement that worked. No need to theorize. This one is a huge and actual conspiracy: Millions of European Jews planned it: Theodore Herzel's Zionist Conference in Basel in 1897, the Balfour Declaration by England in 1917, and the English Mandate over Palestine. Then they executed it: massive illegal European Jewish migration into Palestine, coupled with decades of Jewish terrorism against the native Palestinian population between the 1920s and 1940s, including massacres, eradication of ancient villages from the map, rapes, forced displacement of millions of Palestinian into refugee camps, and the building of brand new Jewish settlements. 

And the conspiracy is not finished yet. It goes on to this day in occupied Palestine. The ongoing Gaza War is only one of the Great Jewish Replacement Program installements in Palestine. The outcome after about 100 years is that Arab Palestine has being slowly erased while a Jewish Israel has gradually replaced it.

The Arab-Muslim world, as it was awakening from the brutal colonialism of the late 19th-early 20th- centuries, discovered its demographic and economic potential. Initially, rather than direct that potential to productive improvements in their dictatorship-brutalized and religiously-obscured populations, the Arab-Muslim world began dispatching preachers and building mosques to the liberal West with the declared objective of Islamizing Europe. Islam is such a great religion, they thought, that it was a pity not try to seduce western populations into converting. It had tried a military conquest (Al-Fatah in Arabic) of Europe but failed: The Ottoman Turks rampaged through the Balkans until they were defeated in Vienna in 1683, and the Moorish Muslim Arabs ruled over Spain and southern France for close to 800 years before they were expelled back to North Africa in 1492.

Between the 1960s and the 1990s, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf emirates, Kuwait, Iran, Indonesia and other Muslim heavyweights "culturally retaliated" against their former colonizers by planning a program of Islamization of Europe and by extension the West at large. It was only after September 11, 2001 that the West woke up to the potential threat and the Islamic world had to revealuate its plans. As a secular non-religious West was not very receptive to adopting Islam (some idiots did but it didn't last), the Muslim-Arab world shifted to a campaign of marketing seduction: Turkey, the Emirates, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia .... present themselves today as beacons of modernity and openness. But is the conspiracy of the Great Replacement of whites by non-whites really dead? Or is it still simmering under the ashes?

Israel Says Goal is Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza

Israeli Minister Admits Military Is Carrying Out ‘Nakba’ Against Gaza’s Palestinian

An Israeli cabinet official has publicly admitted to the government’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, saying on television over the weekend that the country is “rolling out the Gaza Nakba.”

On Saturday, security cabinet member and Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter sat for a television interview with an Israeli news network. Dichter is part of the right-wing nationalist Likud party, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs.

“We are now rolling out the Gaza Nakba,” Dichter said when asked if the recent images of northern Gaza residents evacuating south are comparable to images of the 1948 Nakba.

“From an operational point of view, there is no way to wage a war ― as the IDF seeks to do in Gaza ― with masses between the tanks and the soldiers,” he continued, according to a translation of the interview by Haaretz.

"We are now actually rolling out the Gaza Nakba," says Avi Dichter, Israel's Minister for Agriculture and former head of Shin Bet.

pic.twitter.com/idUA5lnnmP

The Nakba, which in Arabic means “catastrophe,” refers to the mass displacement and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Palestine was initially an entirely Arab society, but as illegal Jewish migrants began invading Palestine by the boatload without the rulling British crooks doing anything to stop it, tensions between the native Palestinians and the illegal Jewish migrants rose. As Palestinians tried to defend their country with the meager means at their disposal, the European Zionist movement began implementing its objective of displacing and ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in order to establish a purely Jewish ethnostate in Palestine.

The Palestine Defense War against the barbarian invaders between the 1920s and 1940s reached a climax in 1947 when the British crooks fled the scene of their own crime and the UN General Assembly issued a resolution to partition Palestine into two states, a partition the Palestinians rejected. The ensuing 1948 war resulted in the permanent displacement, with much looting, massacring and raping of hundreds of thousands of powerless native indigenous Palestinians by the Jewish terrorist organizations Hanagah, Stern, Lehi and others that will later coalesce to form the Israeli army.

Despite the UN calling for Palestinian refugee return and property restitution, Israel has continued to deny the rights of Palestinians and establish an apartheid racist state for 75 years. The anniversary of the Nakba serves as a painful acknowledgment of the generational and ongoing trauma that Palestinians face both on their occupied land and outside the region.

“Gaza Nakba 2023,” Dichter said. “That’s how it’ll end.”

When later asked if labeling the current forced evacuation a Nakba means Palestinians won’t be able to return to Gaza City, Dichter said: “I don’t know how it’ll end up happening since Gaza City is one-third of the Strip ― half the land’s population but a third of the territory.”

Israel’s monthlong siege on Gaza has killed more than 11,000 people and displaced millions. In their habitual cruelty, Israeli forces tell Palestinians to evacuate northern Gaza to "safe zones" to avoid being killed, but then these safe zones are savagely targeted by the Israelis, clearly demonstrating that the war aims at killing and displacing as many Palestinians as possible.

 

African Slaves and Palestinian Refugees: Kinship Victims of Colonialism

Talking to Black Kids About Palestine Brings up Issues Closer to Home

Black families, familiar with their own fight for civil rights, have long felt kinship with Palestinians.

The Israel-Palestine conflict has been ongoing for decades. As Gaza continues to be attacked and violence that many are calling genocide rages on before everyone’s eyes, many parents will have to navigate hard conversations with their children about what is happening in the Middle East.

For Black people–who are typically in support of the people of Gaza–the conversation is particularly nuanced. Black American communities have found kinship with Palestinians, having been subjected to oppression and colonialism, too, still enduring the lasting trauma and impact.

Historically, organizations such as the Black Panthers–who openly advocated for “the right of the Arab refugees to return to their Palestine homeland”–were labeled as terrorists and outliers. This in itself can bring out a lot of powerful emotions for us and our children.

Black activist groups such as Black Lives Matter and Black Christians for Palestine are standing in solidarity with Palestinian causes. Even Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Berniece King, took to Twitter to correct Amy Schumer’s false and slanderous claims that Berniece's father, the late Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. would have supported Israel’s occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

In the last few years, Palestinians have advised Black protesters during the racial justice uprisings following the death of George Floyd. They also painted murals of him as a show of support for the Black cause.

With round-the-clock news broadcasts and social media posts covering the Israel-Palestine war, it’s easy for children to be exposed to unfiltered and uncensored content, much of which contains images, videos, and conversations about suffering and death.

“It is likely that your home has a political leaning which has shown up in their lives already, so talking about your family values and beliefs will be a part of the conversation,” notes Younge. “You can talk about valuing humanity and how people are hurting no matter where they live".

Importantly, especially for Black children, Palestinian support is visibly growing on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram among Gen Zs and Millennials. Younger generations are understanding the continuous interconnection between the fight for freedom by Black Africans and the Palestinian people. Sadly, there’s also a deep, dark parallel between the "insignificance" of Black American childrens' lives and that of the lives of Palestinian children, as demonstrated by the routine unconscionable killings of African American children by the racist culture of American police and the racist culture of Jewish society in Israel.

For decades, hypocrites in the Zionist movement in America have tried to make a false connection between the suffering of downtrodden African Americans at the hands of the racist white American culture on one hand, and the supposed suffering from antisemitism of the otherwise wealthy, well-to-do, and control-freak Jewish community in the US on the other hand. However, this connection has never existed. For one, many slave traders were Jewish. Second, the Jewish community has done nothing to assist the African American community in its fight against white racism; indeed, Jews consider themselves white and there are no neighborhoods anywhere in America where Blacks and Jews coexist, in a form of silent segregation.

 

Brahmin Jews Grant Plebeian Goyim the Right to Criticize USrael

Finally, the Jewish caste ruling over the rest of the universe has decided to grant the rest of us, the Not-Chosen People, the right to criticize Israel. From now on, anyone who criticizes Israel will not necessarily, but may still, be condemned to the metaphorical "antisemitic" gallows or burning at the stake.

We should thank Yahweh for further enlightening the already supercilious "Light onto Nations", and kneel in gratitude at the generosity of the Chosen Ones.

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Over 1,800 Jewish Writers, Artists, and Professors Sign Open Letter Saying Criticism of Israel Isn't Inherently Antisemitic

As war rages on in the Gaza Strip, a group of Jewish writers, artists, and activists are speaking out about words they believe are misused or mischaracterized.

An open letter, titled “A Dangerous Conflation,” published last Thursday by n+1 magazine specifically addresses what its writers see as people conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism —an issue, they say, that previously existed but has become especially prominent since the October 7 Hamas attack. 

After condeming multitudes of reasonable people and subjecting them to the Jewish equivalent of the Inquisition for daring to criticize Israel for its barbaric actions against the Palestinian people, these high-browsed rulers of the world have finally spoken out: “We find this rhetorical tactic antithetical to Jewish values, which teach us to repair the world, question authority, and champion the oppressed over the oppressor,” [Hahahahaha...it would be funny it if were not tragic] the letter states, which was originally signed by 100 people and now has over 1,800 signatories. Oh what magnanimity, what generous condescension on the part of the ruling caste to bestow this crumb of freedom of speech manna on the rest of us Plebeian riff-raff. We are now authorized to criticize the cancerous colony of Israel without being branded like cattle as antisemitic.

The organizers say they hope the letter will prompt people to question their conventional wisdom about the connection between some Jews and Israel and Zionism. By specifically pointing to "some" but not ALL Jews, these modern Jewish priests, however, are forgiving themselves for their previous amalgamation of being a Jew and being a Zionist. Now at least, we know that some Jews only, not all of them, are Zionists. What an intellectual achievement that will bestow many benefits to the rest of us plebeians.

“We are Jewish writers, artists, and activists who wish to disavow the widespread narrative that any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic,” the letter begins. “Israel and its defenders have long used this rhetorical tactic to shield Israel from accountability, dignify the US’s multibillion-dollar investment in Israel’s military, obscure the deadly reality of occupation, and deny Palestinian sovereignty. Now, this insidious gagging of free speech is being used to justify Israel’s ongoing military bombardment of Gaza and to silence criticism from the international community.”

Ok, fine. So now is Roger Waters still an antisemite worthy of being quartered and burned at the stake for criticizing the barbaric colony of Israel? We, the lowly pleibeans of this world need to be better guided and educated by the ruling Jewish caste about what to think, how to think, and when they are allowed to speak up or keep silent.

One signatory said, ".... anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and in fact has a place in Jewish life; and ... our identities should not be weaponized to perpetuate the ghastly things Israel does in our name.” Really? Now? Isn't it too late? After 75 years of brutality and colonialism?

Some students who have expressed pro-Palestinian views have been doxxed, lost jobs, and been threatened with suspension. 

“If the college coddles them, revoke their taxpayer funding,” the islamophobe and Palestinophobe African-American descendant of slaves, the Republican senator and presidential candidate Tim Scott said last week. “We must stand up against this evil anti-Semitism everywhere we see it — especially on elite college campuses.” Obviously Mr. Scott, who'd do better to change his name to Uncle Tom and drop his slave-owner's Scott last name, or perhaps whitewash his face, is after a few Jewish votes for his far-fetched reach for the presidency. He also has apparently reneged on his descent from slaves snatched from his colonized home country in Africa by none other than those he is now defending and who ran a profitable slave trade, like the Brown family of Providence, Rhode Island, that gave its name to Brown University, a hotbed of Jewish extremism.

Former president and current 2024 candidate, the moron Donald Trump endorsed the same idea at a recent event: “Revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities.” This idiot has to dig really deep into his desolate cerebrum to conclude that being anti-American and anti-semitic is the same thing. Notice, though, that he focuses on "foreign" students and faculty, because "real" Americans are still allowed to be anti-American and antisemitic, but not foreigners. He is thus defending his own white supremacist terrorists whom he led in his seditious attack against the US government.

Both houses of Congress have passed resolutions disavowing antisemitism, an action which some say conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism and attempts to silence dissent on college campuses. The letter’s organizers hope their words will make those who share similar views feel less alone.

“One thing we didn’t get to include before everyone signed but feel is important: For as long as Zionism has existed, there have been Jews who debate or outright oppose it,” the organizers say. “Just saying this can help clear up misconceptions about the relationships between Jews, Zionism, and Israel.” What a sneaky way to discharge themselves of any responsibility for having previously endorsed the crimes committed in their name; now that the tide is turning, these faint-hearted Jewish Patricians are jumping ship with their wigs. Not a bad sign for the rest of us Plebeians.

But let us be magnanimous: We say to these Jewish illuminati: Thank you, thank you... you have liberated us. Now please go write a letter to the UN demanding that the "Zionism is Racism" resolution adopted by the general assembly then abrogated under pressure from the racist Zionists, be reinstated. Please do not wait another century of burning at the stake and decapitation before recognizing and declaring that most Zionists are racists.

 

A Day in the Life of a Palestinian: Jewish Settler Terrorism

This as-told-to essay is an account from Nasser Nawaj’ah—a West Bank resident and field researcher for B’Tselem, a human rights organization in Israel—of the ongoing attacks by Israeli settlers amid the war in Gaza. It’s been transcribed, translated from Arabic, and edited by Aymann Ismail.

The settlers look like soldiers. They come at night, but sometimes during the day, wearing army uniforms. They execute operations against Palestinians, beating us, taking our phones and smashing them to prevent us from documenting their terror. The settlers steal things from our homes and take our money. And in the end, their message is always the same: “You have 24 hours to flee, or we will shoot you.”

The threat is terrifying. And they’ve already succeeded in forcing the expulsion of six Palestinian villages off their lands so far.

All my life, I’ve been a resident of the Susya village, a small Palestinian village. We’re in Area C in the West Bank, in the shadow of what is happening in Gaza. The settlers see this as an opportunity to take control and claim parts of Area C as their own through terrorism and violence. We know who these settlers are. They’re criminals, and they should be arrested. But at the moment, they have become the law. They administer the law. They are the army, and they do whatever they want.

Over the last three years, settler violence steadily increased day after day. Those of us who live in villages near the settlements know these settlers, especially the violent ones who assault and try to expel us. Four days ago, they came to my village at night. They forcibly entered my neighbor’s home and detained all the men and held them at gunpoint. Then they took them outside the house, and with an M16 gun pointed to the head of the house owner, they told him he had two options, and there wasn’t a third: “Leave or die.”

Things have never been scarier for us. We tried to call the Israeli police to tell them what their citizens are doing to us. They told us we are in a state of war, and that they are powerless to do anything. But even last year, my home was raided in the night by the IDF. They blindfolded and arrested me, terrifying my family, only to release me later without charge but with a stern warning: Stop “causing all the trouble in the area.” Since the beginning of the war to the south, settler violence has increased, but for us, it did not begin on Oct. 7.

Israeli authorities were here on Oct. 16 when a settler entered our village with a bulldozer. He used it to destroy and block the main road into Susya. In total, he blocked 16 roads, and since then, for three weeks now, my village has been under a complete siege. We don’t have water or medical services and supplies. People are unable to get medicine. There are people with chronic diseases, like diabetes and high blood pressure and such, who are now going without their life-dependent medicines. No children have been able to attend any of the schools in our area because of the settler terrorism and their closure of the roads.

The same day they destroyed our roads with the bulldozer, the settlers also destroyed an entire grove of olive trees, and they destroyed three water wells, the only source of drinking water for the Palestinians. They also destroyed our solar panels, knowing that our village isn’t connected to electrical services except by solar panel. Most Palestinian villages in Area C are like this. My people are living in poverty because of this very difficult siege imposed upon us by the occupation. They are waging a war on Palestinians in every aspect of our lives. And they do this, all of this, under the protection of the army and with the knowledge of the police.

None of us are able to so much as disagree with the settlers, let alone fight back, because killing a Palestinian today is very, very easy. If anyone so much as objects to the settlers, they will shoot them immediately. The settlers tell us there is no law because we are at war, and that our land is now forbidden to us, and that it now belongs to Israel. And if we stay, we will die.

And they mean it. A few days ago, they pillaged and burned down a house in a nearby Palestinian village. Settlers have already killed many Palestinians. And they do it knowing that no one will hold them accountable.

There is nowhere for us to go. We are living through constant Nakbas (catastrophes). The Palestinian government is very weak, and can’t do anything about the settlers, even on their own territory. According to the Oslo designations, 60 percent of the West Bank, practically, is under total Israeli control, and the Palestinian government cannot interfere in these areas. The ones responsible for the law here are the occupation authorities. They are supposed to provide protection to civilians and to ensure a peaceful life. But the occupation authorities act opposite to international law and are helping settlers to expel the Palestinians from these areas.

There is no solution for us. In light of war and what is going on, the future is very, very bleak for us Palestinians. I don’t see a future. But even so, we are living on the hope that the conscience of the free world will change this situation, and give us a small ray of hope for the future.

 

Jewish Zionist Love: Palestinian Home Turned into Concentration Camp

Meet the Palestinian family whose home is like a fenced kennel surrounded by barbarian Jewish settlers.

The Gharib family home once stood in rolling farmland but is now surrounded by an eight-metre metal fence with a gate controlled by Israeli soldiers, in a traditional display of Jewish decency towards non-Jewish humans.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=geZ0ZKo5VaM






Aug 01, 2022

An eight-metre fence surrounds the Gharib family home in the occupied West Bank. To reach it they must pass through a gate controlled remotely by Israeli security forces.

Since Israel seized the territory in the 1967 war, an Israeli settlement has sprung up on surrounding land claimed by the family, leaving them isolated in their single-storey house on the edge of the Palestinian village of Beit Ijza.

“I don't know when this will end,” Saadat Gharib said with a sigh. “No one knows the pain my children are suffering.”



For years the family home stood on farmland, but now it lies behind a yellow gate, controlled by Israeli soldiers, who also patrol a narrow bridge overlooking the towering fence.

“During these years we've had a tough life,” said Mr Gharib, 40, who works for the Palestinian Authority in nearby Ramallah.

When he was a child, the Jewish settlement of Givon Hahadasha was built partially on land he says belonged to his family.

Decades on, the high fence separates the Gharib house from the Israelis' red-roofed homes and gardens. A communal space for the settlers, with a children's slide, has been placed a few metres away.

Settlements are considered illegal by the international community, a judgment Israel rejects.

The Gharib family has fought numerous legal battles in Israeli courts, in 2012 winning the right to a small strip of the land they claim.



 

“The settlers built a car park and a park, and we've needed the security forces to implement [the decision] and retrieve it for 10 years,” Mr Gharib said.

The yellow gate leading to the house was installed in 2008, Mr Gharib said, and at one point the family had to hold up their IDs to security cameras to cross the threshold.

“[We] appealed to the high court … and the court permitted us to have the gate open all the time,” Mr Gharib said.

“Disputes have broken out between us and the settlers,” said Mr Gharib, who lives with his wife and four children, and his mother.

Avi Zipory, a resident of the settlement, said he would prefer it if the “unpleasant” fence around the house was not there.

“Two [Jewish, hence highly unbiased and trustworthy] courts unanimously decided that the area and his house are within Jewish land [stolen from Palestinians over the past several decades],” the 70-year-old said.

“We didn't want to destroy his house … [he is] not ready to accept any alternative plan, [even] other land and a lot of money, that's why we had to continue this separation fence,” he said.

Mr Gharib has hung blue tarpaulins to create a screen between his home and the Givon Hahadasha settlement. “So that the kids can play without being bothered by the settlers and fearing them,” he said.

Mr Gharib said the situation has affected his children, particularly when there are clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces nearby.

“My daughter couldn't sleep all night, for five hours, and she was afraid of the security forces that were stationed at the door of the house,” Mr Gharib said, recalling one incident.

Despite the difficulties, he still works to harvest the family's olive trees. But to do so, he said he has to co-ordinate with the Israeli security forces and take a circuitous route through the neighbouring Palestinian village of Bayt Duqu. Once there, Mr Gharib said he must wait “an hour or two” for soldiers to open another gate.

Mr Gharib is determined to stay on his land: “This is our land, which my father inherited from my grandfather. We will not sell it to anyone for all the money in the world.”

[These brutal methods, in all appearances procedural and within the confines of a law laid down by the Zionists, were imported from Nazi Germany by illegal Jewish migrants who invaded Palestine at the time of the fabrication of the British-American colony of Israel].

Israel's Deep but Silent Guilt over its Creation

 The Associated Press has an interesting article on how Israelis feel about the carnage in Gaza entitled,

Israelis overwhelmingly are confident in the justice of the Gaza war, even as world sentiment sours

https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-hamas-palestinians-war-mood-0cebcbcf0550ee08c0d757334f69851d

--------------------------------------

The fact that Israelis overwhelmingly approve of their army's genocide in Gaza stems, of course, from a need for revenge for the Oct 7 Hamas attacks.

But for those left-wing Israelis who had been calling for peace and understanding with the Palestinians to now revert back to becoming so hateful of the Palestinians to the point of accepting that their army is murdering children by the thousands, reveals something else.

These peaceniks of Israeli society assumed that the ethnic cleansing and rape of Palestine by their parents and grandparents in 1948 could somehow be buried and forgotten if only we gave the Palestinians a semblance of reparation, a semblance of dignity, and perhaps a semblance of a state of their own.

What the Hamas attack has done is to unravel the illusion of peace and bring back under question the entire construct of the state of Israel over the ashes of Palestine to its ground zero: The 1948 forceful and barbaric displacement and massacre of the native population in order to create a Jewish state. 

The Hamas attacks have resurrected the criminal and fundamentally unjust creation of Israel in the minds of the older generation of Israelis. But for the younger generation who did not live through the murderous terror campaign their elders prosecuted back in the 1940s, this is a new trauma. It not only exposes them to the lies and propaganda that tried to justify the rape of Palestine as a necessary evil to create Israel, but it makes them question why it has all been buried under a pile of silence. Older Israelis wanted to forget and move on and take the murderous birth of their country to the grave with them. But younger Israelis and American Jews do not understand the neceessity of such evil being inflicted on another people.

Israelis are hiding their confusion about their genesis and identity. For now. Some had begun to try and deal with the dirty secret, e.g. the Israeli doctoral student who studied the rape of the seacoast Palestinain village of Tantura by the Israeli terrorist "pioneers". I expect that the younger Israeli generation will go through a wrenching soul-searching once the dust settles. For now, they cannot fathom living like they have for decades under constant threat of war, which is something that is likely to continue for a long time. 

Clearly, the Israelis realize their very existence is based on a crime against another people whom they thought they could shove in a corner and forget about. But like Kurt Vonegut once said about a similar situation (I think it the second Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq): It's as if there is this party attended by snotty upper class people, and everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, yet there is this stench coming from somewhere that everybody notices by says nothing about. 

Palestine is this stench that will never go away from the nostrils of the Israelis.

 [See: https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/02/tantura-israels-independence-as.html]

Thou Shalt Never Know Peace

Israel has missed every opportunity to find peace. Taking land violently from its Palestinian owners, land that was granted to it by an irresponsible foreign ocupier (England) as a pathetic homeland for foreign settlers, it decided from the start not to make any friends in the region. 

Like a xenotransplant, it was - and still is - bound to be rejected in a natural process. Having decided to impose itself by the force of violence, by thinking it could coerce those it was raping into "liking" it, Israel thought it could be accepted by some kind of transnational Stockholm Syndrome. By holding Palestinians hostages in concentration camps to pressure others to recognize it, then waiting, and waiting some more, Israel thought the Palestinians and other nations in the region were bound to one day give up and start liking their oppressor.

Of course, you will hear the standard counter-argument that Israel is the real victim. But let me tell you: Jews and Shiite Muslims are so much alike: They both love to portray themselves as eternal victims of everyone else's hate. Pity, as someone once said, is a powerful underestimated tool to impose yourself. And there will always be idiots to fall for the trap and feel pity for the real culprit. 

Hanan Ashrawi once said that the Palestinians are the only people on Earth who are asked to guarantee the security of their occupier, while Israel is the only country that asks to be defended against its own victims.

What kind of fucked up upside-down logic is this, that is oblivious and blind to history?

No reasonable argument has ever been put forward to explain to an objective unbiased observer how is it acceptable that a foreign people can illegally invade another people's land, expel its inhabitants by violence, murder, plunder and rape, then build its own country on the ashes and ruins of that original native people. 

No one should be fooled by the justifications. No, the so-called "Jewish" people, a haphazard collection of various ethnicities who believe in a Bronze Age fictional bullshit tale, do not have the right to "return" after 3,000 years and claim someone else's land as their own. Neither are the justifications of the Islamist radicals that Mohamed's flight to heaven on a winged horse from Jerusalem give them the right to impose their own bullshit claims to the land. The only reasonable argument that Muslims in general, but not necessarily Arab Muslims, can put forward is that Palestine had been under Muslim non-Arab rule between roughly 1200 AD (after the demise of the Christian Crusaders) and 1918 AD (when the Ottoman Turkish empire collapsed). But none of these arguments can be used to explain anyone's claims to the land. The only claim that is reasonably justifiable is that of the long-time resident people - the Palestinian people. 

No one can argue the fact that there was a Palestinian people living in Palestine for millennia, and like many others of their neighbors, they suffered one invasion and occupation after another. About 100 years ago, there was an overwhelming majority of native Palestinians living on their land in the territory of Palestine, which was subjected to a League of Nations mandate under a jesuitic "civilized" British rule. Living among those native indigenous people, there were a few thousand Jewish visitors who were either refugees from the East European pogroms or western Jewish pilgrims. No problems were reported. The natives did not mind. 

The mandatory power, Britain, did not own the land, could not dispose of it at will, and was specifically tasked with assisting the Palestinians in building their institutions and state. No different from neighboring Jordan, also under British mandate, or neighboring Lebanon under a French mandate. But then, some Europeans decided to ruin the prospects of a Palestinian state by buying up the greedy British imperial crooks into letting them have their own exploitable colony, in a me-too type of colonialist impulsion inspired by the other European colonies in places like Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

European Jews wanted their own exotic colony somewhere where they could screw the native "savages", pilfer their resources and brag about it to their European friends. After considering Uganda and Argentina as potentially "colonizable" territories where they could establish their Jewish homeland, they finally decided that Palestine was a good place to fuck around because they could take pictures riding camels and hunting antelopes, and they eventually could exploit the nascent oil fields in the Arabian desert nearby. 

And so the Palestinian tragedy began. Thousands of foreigners claiming to be Jews descended on Palestine, most often on boats illegally entering the territory. Faced with resistance by the native population, they took up arms and, in the trendy Fascist ways of the Europe of the 1920s and 1930s, they began terrorizing the native Palestinians: Burn entire villages, rape the women, kill the men, uproot the olive trees, raze millennial villages to the ground... Everything these European Fascists had learned in Europe, they brought with them and unleashed on a largely rural, pacifist, unsophisticated population led by an untested urban elite. Palestine was emerging from 400 years of a brutal Turking Ottoman occupation. 

The end of WWI had instilled a deep sense of hope for the Palestinians that they could finally implement the "self-determination" promise made by President Wilson at the 1919 Paris Peace conference. The American King-Crane Commission visited the formerly Ottoman region encompassing Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Hatay and Cilicia. As you can see, Jews represented 3% (110,000 over a total of 3,247,500) of the overall population.

Muslims	2,365,000
Christians	587,500
Druses	140,000
Jews	110,000
Others	45,000
Total	3,247,500

The US mandated King-Crane commission opposed the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine because it conflicted with the Balfour Declaration (1917) in respect of the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities in Palestine. The commission found that "Zionists looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the present non-Jewish inhabitants of Palestine. Nearly 90% of the Palestinian population was emphatically against the entire Zionist program.

Given all the above, by what measure of reason do the present-day Israelis believe they can survive on land they stole from its rightful owners? Especially since Israel's conduct over the past decades has been to think it can impose itself by force rather by decency? 

I would not want to be in Israel's shoes. Despite occasional victories scored with generous American backing in money and weapons, and despite on and off "normalizations" often obtained by bribing the would-be normalizers, the long term perspective for Israel is pretty dismal. 

Israel will never know a genuine peace. The Hamas attack and Israeli conduct in Gaza are both very telling of the future that awaits Israel. And no amount of land theft, colonization and ethnic cleansing will give Israelis the peace of mind any human being seeks. The creation of a Jewish state out of nothing and over the ashes and ruin of another people will never stand the test of time. Yes, the Germans murdered their Jewish population, and now they are friends because the Germans have recognized their barbarity at ethnically cleansing their own fellow Germans. But does anyone genuinely believe that the Palestinians, who had nothing to do with the Holocaust and who were the direct victims of Jewish barbarism, will ever forgive the Israelis? 

O Israel, Thou Shalt Never Know Peace. Just as your predecessors the Christian Crusaders, who came with a similar argument that the Holy Land was theirs because Jesus was born there 1,000 years prior, and who lasted 200-300 years before they were politely asked to return whence they came, your Jewish Crusade, based on the argument that the land is yours because you lived there 3,000 years ago, will inevitably crumble under the weight of time, the hatred you disseminated, and the vagaries of alliances. 

O Israel, Thou Shalt Never Know Peace.

Tell Me Master: Why are there Refugee Camps in Gaza?

Gaza's and the West Bank's Refugee Camps: The result of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine by illegal Jewish migrants from Europe.

Hundreds of thousands of Gaza's people live in eight refugee camps that were set up following the violent mass expulsion by illegal Jewish immigrants of native indigenous Palestinians during the war that created the state of Israel in May 1948.

Over 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what is referred to by Palestinians as the "Nakba" (Catastrophe in Arabic). Around 180,000 fled to Gaza, with the rest scattered across the West Bank and neighbouring Arab countries, specifically Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.

In 1949, the United Nations set up a dedicated agency, UNRWA, to provide them and their descendants, who also have refugee status, with basic services, including health and education. More than two-thirds of the 2.4 million people living in Gaza are registered refugees.

Israel has persistently rejected their "right of return" in violation of a 1948 United Nations Security Council Resolution. Israel thus demonstrates that it is fully aware of the human tragedy its creation has caused the native people, and is determined not to allow these refugees to return to the 500 or so villages and towns in Palestine it ethnically cleansed with massacres, rapes, and forced explusions.

While the term refugee camp conjures up images of people living in tents, multi-storey cement-block buildings have long since replaced the tents in Gaza. This is on account of the time that has elapsed since 1948 because of Israel's renegade and rogue status as the top violator of international law. Israel is in effect a fake colonial entity created for the simple reason of giving Britain and the US a foothold in the Levant for close access to the oil fields. The armed (naval bases) presence of these two colonial countries in the Arabian Gulf is not sufficient to grant easy access to the Arab oil fields, primarily because the Gulf states are weak and could decompose and implode at any time. But Israel is proving that it too is a weak link in the colonial imperialist supply chain of oil.

Conditions in the eight camps around the Gaza Strip, like all the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan have always been grim. Millions of Palestinians languish in them with support of the UN agency UNRWA. The dilemma for their host countries is that if integrated into the host country's population, the refugees would lose their Right of Return and would be a gift to a brutal colonial invader. That explains why both Jordan and Egypt have refused to accept Gaza's 2.4 million population as refugees; they would be encouraging their ethnic cleansing by Israel, yet again.

Israel's relentless brutality against Gaza has so far killed over 10,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, women and children. For the past 15 years or so, Israel has imposed a tight air, sea and land blockade after Hamas scored a victory in democratic elections in 2007. Israel routinely uses "collective punishment" as a means to deter Palestinian resistance against occupation: It bombs innocent civilians to punish terrorist-resistance groups; it demolishes the parents' home of a teenager who throws a rock st Israeli occupation forces; it blockades an entire people for electing leaders Israel disavows.

Jabalia -- the biggest camp in Gaza, where the first intifada or uprising against Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories began in 1987 -- has been repeatedly bombed since the start of this latest offensive. The Israeli army uses the pretext of targeting Hamas members to strike with American-supplied weapons UN-run schools  and hospitals that host thousands of internally-displaced refugees.

UNRWA said that as of November 1, over 530,000 people were sheltering at its facilities in central Gaza, Khan Yunis and Rafah, adding that the shelters were full and that many people were sleeping in the street.

Imagine yourself a native citizen of a country emerging from a brutal 400-year-long Turkish Ottoman occupation at the end of WWI. You're full of hope that the League of Nations (forerunner of the UN) which has granted France and Britain a mandate over Palestine, Jordan and Iraq (Britain) and over Lebanon and Syria (France). In all these countries except Palestine, the two mandatory powers built institutions and helped these countries write their consitutions, and in a matter of 20 years between WWI and WWII, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Iraq emerged from the second world war as independent countries. Except Palestine.

Why? Because the crooked British imperial criminals promised a club of wealthy Jewish bankers from England and Central Europe to allow them to build themselves a colony in Palestine where they hoped to enslave the native population and use it to increase their wealth by investing in the nascent oil industry in the Arabian desert nearby. As the mandatory power, and in typical hypocritical fashion, the English began shipping boatloads of European Jews to Palestine. Between the 1920s and 1940s, the nativer Palestinians began resisting this rape of their country, but couldn't possibly win this war: They were rural villagers and townspeople with few means (emerging from 400 years of Turkish ocupation), compared to the wealthy and sophisticated Jews of Europe who created several terrorist organizations (Haganah, Stern, Lehi...) and proceeded to undertake a full-fledged ethnic cleansing of Palestine of its native people. 500 Palestinian villages were razed to the ground and their populations massacred or expelled, to make room for the Jewish invaders who built Israel out of the charred ruinsof historic Palestine.

How would you feel is this were to happen to you? Would you lay low and crawl under the sands of oblivion, or would you fight back? For the past 100 years, the Palestinians have been fightiung back against the tremendous odds stacked against them. And their cause hasn't disappeared, as their American and Jewish enemies had hoped for. The latest episode in this one of the longest wars of occupation, colonialism, dispossession and dehumanization is unfolding before our eyes in Gaza and the West Bank. 

Will the Palestinian people just disappear so that secular Jews can have a resort on the Mediterranean, while religious Jews can claim to have returned to a land that never belonged to them, unless you subscribe to the filth and barbaric garbage of the bible?

Voices of Integrity In the Face of Barbarity

Poet Rupi Kaur turned down an invitation from the Biden administration for a Diwali event due to the U.S. government continuing its support of Israel during its bombardment of Gaza.

“I implore my South Asian community to hold this administration accountable,” the poet wrote in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “As a Sikh woman, I will not allow my likeness to be used in whitewashing this administration’s actions. I refuse any invitation from an institution that supports the collective punishment of a trapped civilian population — 50% of whom are children.”

I received an invite from the Biden administration for a Diwali event being held by the VP on nov 8. I decline any invitation from an institution that supports the collective punishment of a trapped civilian population—50% of whom are children. 

— rupi kaur (@rupikaur_) November 6, 2023

Kaur said she was invited to a Diwali event, a south Asian heritage celebration, to be held on Nov. 8 and hosted by Vice President Kamala Harris. Diwali, Kaur wrote on X, is a celebration of “righteousness over falsehood and knowledge over ignorance.”

But Kaur said she could not attend the event at the White House knowing the administration is helping fund the “bombardment of Gaza” and continuing to “justify this genocide against Palestinians — regardless of how many refugee camps, health facilities, and places of worship are blown to bits.”

The death toll in Gaza from Israeli strikes has exceeded 10,000 people as of Monday, according to Palestinian health authorities. A United Nations official said that nearly 70% of the dead are women and children. The US and Israel, beacons of hatred, violence and racial supremacy hiding a veneer of democracy and values, are the only two countries still waging this barbaric war: The US provides money and weapons, and the Israelis fight on the ground. You'd think that after decades of saying they want peace, these two powerful entities could at least have reached a steady state in their colonialist theft of Palestine; yet here they are wanting for more at the cost of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

“As a community, we cannot remain silent or agreeable just to get a seat at the table. It comes at too high a cost to human life,” Kaur wrote on X. “Many of my contemporaries have told me in private that what’s happening in Gaza is awful, but they aren’t going to risk their livelihood or ‘a chance at creating change from the inside.’ There is no magical change that will happen from being on the inside. We must be brave. We must not be tokenized by their photo-ops. The privilege we lose from speaking up is nothing compared to what Palestinians lose each day because this administration rejects a ceasefire.”

Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Summer Lee (Pa.), André Carson (Ind.) and Delia Ramirez (Ill.) introduced a resolution in the House that “urges support for an end to violence in Israel and Occupied Palestine.” Last week, President Joe Biden called for a humanitarian “pause” in the fighting. But the barbaric Israelis are drooling at the sight of so much Palestinian blood spilled for a fault all of the Israelis and their on-the-leash American poodles.

Representative Tlaib has been the victim of a vicious campaign of intimidation and defamation mounted by Jewish-American lobbies. She too denounced the slaughter perpetrated by Jewish illegal immigrants (a.k.a. Israelis) against the native indigenous Palestinians who are herded and caged in this large concentration camp known as Gaza. And the dumb Americans, fearing for their careers, follow them as the Zionist leash tightens around their necks.

 

"Moderate" Jews vs. "Radical" Settler Terrorists: Really?

View the following video for background:

https://www.aljazeera.com/program/radicalised-youth/2018/11/13/thou-shalt-not-kill-israels-hilltop-youth

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For the decades past, official Muslimhood made the claim that it rejects violence and the killing of innocent people. "We are a religion of peace", the moderate more-or-less practicing Muslims whose holy book the Koran contains many contradictions. In some passages it urges the faithful to show mercy and compassion and condemns killing. But in other passages, it incites the faithful to kill the unfaithful.

All religious texts do this, but none more so that the Jewish bible and its associated teachings in the Talmud, and the Muslim Koran and its associated Hadith teachings.

While the Jewish Bible is a barbaric Bronze Age fictional account that was written over centuries and millennia by different people in different places and has no internal coherence, the Muslim Koran has suffered less from the vicissitudes of time and many imaginative authors. In fact, the Jewish Bible often tells us what God (whose name changed over time from El and Baal to Yahweh and God) did and said to His many prophets who talk back to him and argue with him, the Koran is claimed to be simply the very word of God (Allah in Arabic). In the Koran, it is God speaking throughout the text, though any reasonable person must admit that someone, a human being, must have written down the stuff.

Strict followers of both religions take the text literally, i.e. out of its Bronze and Stone Ages context, and generalize it and apply it to our time.

Muslim moderates circumvent the parts where violence is expressly urged by God against the enemies of Islam by saying that it is taken out of context. Yet the West has always criticized the so-called moderates for providing a safe environment for the extremists, a sort of incubator that shielded the extremists against criticism and condemnation. 

Same thing with Judaism, except that the West does not dare level that kind of criticism against the Chosen Ones lest it be accused of antisemitism. There are "moderate" Jews and Israelis, some might say they are secular and not praticing Jews, and they too provide a safe environment for the extremists to flourish and spew their hatred and violence. This is nowhere more obvious than how "moderate" Israelis of Tel Aviv deal with the "extremist" terrorist settlers in Palestine west of the Jordan River.

For decades, fanatic Jewish terrorists, followers of such racist Fascists as Meir Kahane and others, have had a free hand in stealing Palestinian land, terrorizing and killing Palestinian villagers, often under the protection of the Israeli army of occupation, the self-labeled "most moral army in the world". We've witnessed so many instances of these Jewish terrorists killing Palestinians, burning olive orchards, destroying property, forbidding Palestinian peasants from reaching their lands to cultivate them.... We've also witnessed radical terrorist Jews storming mosques and massacring dozens of people.

Yet, "moderate" and "democratic" Israel has a blatant double standard. A Palestinian youth who throws a rock on an Israeli occupation military patrol is sent to jail by "moderate" Israelis hiding behind a facade of a respectable judiciary for several years and his parents' home is demolished, even though under international law an occupation army has no right doing so. The right to resist and fight occupation is enshrined in every human rights charter.

But a Jewish settler youth who kills a Palestinian man for no reason other than an extremist interpretation of the bible may spend a night in jail - photos of them show them smiling in the loose custody of Israeli officials - and is released within days or at most weeks. So the "moderate" Israeli Jews are really not that moderate. They back the settler movement because, despite appearances of civilized conduct and legal bureaucracy including the Israeli court system, all Israelis - moderates or otherwise - share the objective of expelling all Palestinians from their ancestral lands to create a pure supremacist Jewish state. 

When the "secular moderates" of Israel were protesting for months against Benyamin Netanyahu, the war criminal prime minister of Israel, they never - not once - made the connection with the brutal occupation of Palestine. These Israelis, half of whom hail from the US and Europe and carry dual citizenship - and I've spoken to many of them in the US - see Israel as a secondary vacation place, a timeshare if you will, a Jewish resort by the Mediterranean, and couldn't care less for human rights and international law. Right now, many of them are considering moving for good out of the Jewish resort and back to New York and Florida.

In their not-so-innocent attitude vis-a-vis the Palestinians (whose parents and grandparents were ethnically cleansed by the parents and grandparents of today's Israelis), the "moderate" Israelis have deliberately infected themselves with an amnesia bug. The story of Tantura, as told by one of these apparently repentant moderate Israelis, is a tell-tale of how the founding of the state of Israel was a gigantic campaign of ethnic cleansing, with much raping, killing, looting and plunder by illegal european migrants to Palestine:

[See: https://lebanoniznogood.blogspot.com/2022/02/tantura-israels-independence-as.html]

And now after the Hamas attacks of October 7, they are beginning to make the connection between who they think they are (secular, moderate, modern) and who they really are (accomplices or pawns in the greatest barbaric religious tragedy of the 20th century, the rape of Palestine). Will they do something against the settlers before it is too late? Will they try to salvage their resort colony of Israel by accepting that the Palestinians have inherent rights that are higher than their own rights, simply because the Palestinians are the authentic and historic owners of the land? Can Israel show compassion, mercy, gratitude for what the Palestinians have reluctantly given them by losing part of their land so that European-persecuted Jews can live among their fellow Semites? Is there a speck of humanity left in these "secular and moderate" Jews that might prod them to act against the calamitous project of the extremist Jewish settler terrorists ?

South Africa Severs Ties with Israel Over Gaza Genocide

As a country that suffered for several decades from white supremacist Apartheid rule, and whose resistance movement (African National Congress, ANC) was deemed a "terrorist organization", South Africa is perhaps better positioned than anyone else to make a judgment on the ongoing Jewish barbarity in Gaza. Indeed, the Israeli government back then supported the white supremacist Apartheid regime with weapons and technology against the African resistance movement. It was not until the 1990s that the Boycott movement against the white regime managed to tilt the balance and force western countries like the US - who backed the racist white government - to abandon it. 

Should we expect less from the West with regard to Jewish supremacist Israel and its brutal Apartheid occupation of Palestine?

South Africa's government has recalled Monday its ambassador and diplomatic mission to Israel in condemnation of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip, calling it a “genocide.” The government also threatened action against the Israeli ambassador to South Africa over his recent remarks on the African country's stance on the Israel-Hamas war.

“The South African government has decided to withdraw all its diplomats in Tel Aviv for consultation," said minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni. She added the cabinet noted the “disparaging remarks of the Israeli ambassador to South Africa about those who are opposing the atrocities and genocide of the Israeli government” and that the department of international relations has been instructed to “take the necessary measures within the diplomatic channels and protocols to deal with (his) conduct." Ntshavheni also said the position of the Israeli ambassador in the country was “untenable.”

 Pro-Palestinian protesters — who have been staging demonstrations by the U.S. Consulate in Johannesburg and Israeli embassies in Pretoria and Cape Town — have called on the South African government to expel the Israeli ambassador.

International relations minister Naledi Pandor said the South African officials would be recalled from Tel Aviv to give the government a detailed briefing about the situation in the region. “We need to have this engagement with our officials because we are extremely concerned at the continued killing of children and innocent civilians in the Palestinian territory and we believe the nature of response by Israel has become one of collective punishment,” said Pandor.

The South African government, led by the ruling African National Congress party which has close ties to Palestine, has called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and for aid to be allowed into the bombarded enclave.

South Africa is among other countries to recall their ambassadors to Israel to protest the military operations in Gaza, including Chile, Colombia Honduras. Bolivia severed diplomatic ties with the country.

 

Medical Profession Views on Israel's Gaza Barbarity

Dated (October 18, 2023) but revealing.

British Medical Journal - Global Health
Editorial [Excerpts] – Published October 18, 2023

Violence in Palestine demands immediate resolution of its settler colonial root causes
James Smith, Edwin Jit Leung Kwong, Layth Hanbali, Sali Hafez, Amy Neilson, Rasha Khoury

Read Original on: https://gh.bmj.com/content/8/10/e014269

The latest escalation of more than 100 years of violence in occupied Palestine has caused phenomenal levels of yet more suffering. This violence must end.

As of 19 October, approximately one million Palestinians and people of other nationalities have been internally displaced, many of whom are seeking refuge in overstretched designated emergency shelters and hospitals, several of which have been hit by Israeli airstrikes. This represents an increase in the number of internally displaced people in Gaza of more than 2000% in just 12 days. Thirty percent of all housing units in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed or rendered uninhabitable. Additionally, Palestinian workers from Gaza who were [legally] working in Israel have been beaten, detained and forcibly transferred to overcrowded facilities in the West Bank. [by Nov. 02, all 4,000 of them were deported back to Gaza]

The WHO has reported that at least 12 Palestinian health workers have been killed on duty in Gaza between 7 and 15 October, while the Palestinian Minister of Health Dr Mai Al-Kaila released a statement on 14 October stating that a total of 28 health workers have been killed by Israeli airstrikes. Casualty lists made available to the authors suggest this number could be almost twice as high. Four of those killed were Palestinian Red Crescent Society paramedics, whose marked ambulances were targeted in east and north Gaza on 11 October despite advance coordination with the Israeli military. UNRWA has also reported violence against its staff, confirming that at least 14 essential humanitarian personnel have been killed, as of 18 October.

…..

With this in mind, it is impossible to divorce the violence of recent days from the long history of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. This history is marked notably by the 1948 Nakba that involved the violent displacement of more than 700 000 Palestinians from over 400 villages and towns by Israeli settlers, and the preceding British colonial occupation of Palestine. Since 2007, a complete blockade has been enforced by Israel around the Gaza Strip, while the West Bank has been under occupation by Israel for more than 55 years following the Six Day War in 1967. As Israel has maintained its occupation of the land and has continued to oppress and dispossess the Palestinian people, Israeli politicians have enabled the construction of hundreds of illegal settlements in the West Bank and provided military protection to settler-led pogroms, property destruction and violent—often deadly—attacks.

…..

The Al-Ahli Hospital missile strike represents one of the most horrific incidents at a healthcare facility in our collective history. While the origin of the missile strike remains to be determined [Israel issues threats to hospitals, then after it bombs them, it claims that the culprit is a misfired Hamas rocket. Israel takes people for fools] , its impact is of a magnitude greater than the heinous US military bombing of the Kunduz Trauma Centre in Afghanistan in 2015, which killed 42 patients, caretakers and MSF staff.

….

On the evening of 18 October, the United Nations Security Council could not even approve a resolution that sought to condemn all violence against civilians; call for the protection of medical and humanitarian personnel; and urge the continuous and unhindered provision of essential goods and services needed to sustain life—water, food, medical supplies, electricity, and fuel—among other urgently needed commitments. The resolution was vetoed by representatives of the United States government. While we acknowledge a long and enraging history of a lack of accountability following attacks on civilians, health and humanitarian workers and essential infrastructure, it is both morally and legally necessary to reaffirm the protection of health workers and health services in conflict.

It is of additional, grave concern that on the evening of 12 October, the Israeli military issued a 24-hour warning that more than 1 million Palestinians living in northern Gaza must leave, failing which they risked more of the indiscriminate violence caused by the ongoing Israeli siege and bombardment. This displacement order was extended to staff and patients in hospitals providing lifesaving health services in the northern Gaza Strip, with no recognition of their protected status under international humanitarian law. In addition, the Rafah border crossing in southern Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, remained closed as of 19 October following Israeli bombardments and the subsequent intensification of Egyptian military patrols, leaving Palestinians and people of other nationalities in the densely populated Gaza Strip with nowhere to seek safety, and no access to Gaza for essential humanitarian assistance. The threat of forced displacement without any guarantee of safety or return amounts to a war crime. These threats are comparable to calls for the expulsion—or ‘forced transfer’—of the Palestinian people from their land, which have been central to Zionist expansionism and advocated by several Zionists prior to and following the formation of the state of Israel in 1948.

…. the ongoing and longstanding violence against health workers and attacks against healthcare in this context [is] an extension of the systematic campaign of violence and oppression against the Palestinian people, and must interrogate its root causes accordingly.

The horrific escalation of violence over the course of the last two weeks must end. We join the calls of millions of people worldwide demanding an immediate end to all hostilities in occupied Palestine. Urgent and long overdue, principled regional and international engagement, a steadfast commitment to—and the meaningful application of—international law, along with newfound respect for fundamental human rights, are needed now to ensure the immediate de-escalation of the threat posed by Israel to the lives of millions of Palestinian people.

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