New 'Master Race'? - Pt 2: Israeli City Routinely Rejects Ethiopian-Israelis Registering for Marriage

At least 30 Ethiopian-Israeli couples have been denied marriage licenses in Petah Tikva in the last nine months, Army Radio reports. 

Israeli PM Yitzhak Shamir greets new immigrants from Ethiopia, 1991.
(Photo by Government Press Office)

(

By JTA
read more: http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/1.704821
Ethiopian-Israelis registering for marriage licenses in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva reportedly are routinely rejected and forced to register elsewhere.

At least 30 Ethiopian-Israeli couples have been denied marriage licenses in Petah Tikva in the last nine months, Army Radio first reported Monday, when it interviewed an Ethiopian-Israeli woman identified as Shega, a Petah Tikva resident who is scheduled to be married in April.

In a conversation last week with the registrar that was secretly recorded, Shega said that despite presenting the paperwork proving she had converted to Judaism, the registrar asked her to provide a letter from a rabbi attesting to the fact that she was a practicing Orthodox Jew. He then suggested the couple register in her groom-to-be’s home community.

“I don’t understand,” the woman told The Jerusalem Post later on Monday. “I presented the forms and approvals from the rabbinate of Jerusalem, and that’s not enough for the rabbi of Petah Tikva, but approval from a rabbi of my ethnicity will satisfy him? They know that my wedding date is imminent, and in any event they are trying to make it difficult for me.

“Would a secular woman have received the same barrage of questions, or is it because of the color of my skin that I am subject to this embarrassing mask of questions?”

Platiel Eisenthal, the supervisor of the Petah Tikva religious council, told The Jerusalem Post when asked about the questions, “What is permitted and required in every other city is also permitted and required in Petah Tikva.” Eisenthal said the issue would be investigated.

Tzohar, an organization made up of religious Zionist rabbis who aim to bridge the gaps between religious and secular Jews in Israel, condemned the rejections.

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Before There Was Social Media The Israeli Government Could Control The Narrative — So Now It Wants Censorship of Social Media

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Israel Eyes World Coalition to Force Social Media Platforms to Block Incitement

By David Shamah
Israel is aiming to build an international coalition to force the world’s leading social media giants to prevent their platforms from being abused to peddle incitement to terrorism.

The move, which was unveiled by Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, aims at requiring Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and other social networks to take greater responsibility for such content.

While some experts consider the idea unworkable — arguing that the terms of service of such platforms protect them from any legal threat, and that the preventative measures Erdan wants to see introduced are not possible technologically, others say a coalition pushing for change could be effective, and certainly stands more of a chance than an effort led by Israel alone.

The social media giants “make millions but claim they are not responsible for content, and that they only provide a platform,” a spokesperson for Erdan told The Times of Israel. “That is not going to wash. We are planning to put a stop to this irresponsibility, and we are going to do it as part of an international coalition that has had enough of this behavior as well.”

On Sunday, Erdan introduced the idea of building an international legal coalition to take action against social media platforms if they do not proactively prevent the use of their systems to upload videos, songs, photos, and other content that inspire would-be terrorists to pick up knives, guns, rocks, and other weapons to attack Israelis.

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Israel Steals Land From Palestinians — Then Builds Homes On It and Uses Airbnb To Rent Them To Vacationers

The Stolen Homes campaign is calling on Airbnb to stop listing vacation rentals in Israeli settlements. (Ryan Rodrick Beiler ActiveStills)

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Airbnb Told to Cease Profiting from Israel’s War Crimes
By Ryan Rodrick Beiler
Airbnb, the popular travel website, is the target of a new campaign against its listings of accommodation in the settlements built by Israel in the occupied West Bank.

Five organizations launched a campaign called Stolen Homes on Wednesday calling on Airbnb “to immediately stop listing vacation rentals in Israeli settlements, all of which were built on stolen Palestinian land and deemed illegal under international law.”

A petition notes that “through earning fees from settlement vacation rentals, Airbnb is directly profiting from the continuing occupation and dispossession of Palestinians.”

The petition is supported by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, the US Palestinian Community Network and Codepink.

Earlier this month, +972 Magazine reported that not only does Airbnb list accommodation in Israeli settlements, but that without exception the listings do no mention that they are located on occupied land.

Settlement profiteering

The issue has since been covered in the Israeli and international media.

The California-based Airbnb has declined to comment, apart from releasing a short statement which read: “We follow laws and regulations on where we can do business and investigate concerns raised about specific listings.”

The Palestinian Boycott Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) has denounced Airbnb. Omar Barghouti, a founder of the BNC, said recently that “Airbnb can and should immediately exclude all Israeli settlements from its offerings as a significant first step towards complying with its human rights obligations under international law.”

Also this week, Human Rights Watch released a report calling on international businesses to cease all cooperation with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Airbnb earns a 3 percent fee from its hosts and a further fee — usually 6-12 percent — from guests. So the company profits every time someone makes a reservation using its settlement listings.

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5 Reasons Why Israel is an Apartheid State (Video)

From sterilizing tens of thousands of Ethiopian woman to stopping Palestinian men from living with their Israeli wives.

The New 'Master Race'?: Arab-Jewish Love Novel Banned From Schools—'Threatens Jewish Identity'

Move comes despite the fact that the official responsible for teaching of literature in secular state schools recommended the book for use in advanced literature classes, as did a professional committee of academics and educators.

Novelist Dorit Rabinyan authored “Gader Haya” ( “Borderlife”)

By Or Kashti
Israel’s Education Ministry has disqualified a novel that describes a love story between an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man from use by high schools around the country. The move comes even though the official responsible for literature instruction in secular state schools recommended the book for use in advanced literature classes, as did a professional committee of academics and educators, at the request of a number of teachers.

Among the reasons stated for the disqualification of Dorit Rabinyan’s “Gader Haya” (literally “Hedgerow,” but known in English as “Borderlife”) is the need to maintain what was referred to as “the identity and the heritage of students in every sector,” and the belief that “intimate relations between Jews and non-Jews threatens the separate identity.” The Education Ministry also expressed concern that “young people of adolescent age don’t have the systemic view that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation.”

The book, published in Hebrew by Am Oved about a year and a half ago, tells the story of Liat, an Israeli translator, and Hilmi, a Palestinian artist, who meet and fall in love in New York, until they part ways for her to return to Tel Aviv and he to the West Bank city of Ramallah. The book was among this year’s winners of the Bernstein Prize for young writers.

[...]

Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s office said: “The minister backs the decision made by the professionals.”

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Israeli Veterans’ Criticism of West Bank Occupation Incites Furor

Photo by Palestine Solidarity Project.

By ISABEL KERSHNER
A few years after Avihai Stollar had completed his obligatory army service — which coincided with the second intifada — he was approached by a member of Breaking the Silence, a leftist organization of combat veterans that says it aims to expose the grim reality of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.

RELATED STORY: Israel's 'Dahiya Doctrine' - State Terrorism and a Philosophy of War Crime

Mr. Stollar, who served as a platoon sergeant in an infantry unit south of Hebron, said he found himself recounting experiences that he said had seemed “logical” from the perspective of a soldier. As a civilian, he said, “Something opened up. I was in shock.”

These were not “Srebrenica moments,” he said, referring to the massacre of Muslims during the Bosnian war, but mostly the more mundane mechanics of Israel’s occupation, like banning Palestinian vehicles from certain roads to reduce the threat of drive-by shootings, and punishing violators, even though they might have had no other route.

RELATED STORY: Israel's Gaza Doctrine: The Worsening of Life for People in Gaza Is A Deliberate Goal of the Israeli Military — And That's A War Crime

Mr. Stollar, 32, is now the research director of Breaking the Silence, and at the center of a furor that is laying bare Israel’s divisions over its core values and the nature of its democracy.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the group from the podium of the Knesset, Israel’s Parliament, last week, accusing it of “slandering” Israeli soldiers before audiences around the world. The defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, described the group’s motives as “malicious” and banned it from activities involving soldiers. Naftali Bennett, the education minister in the government that is dominated by rightist and religious parties, barred it from entering state schools.

The condemnations bolstered a new campaign by an Israeli ultranationalist organization, Im Tirtzu, which released a provocative video criticizing leaders of four leftist groups, including Breaking the Silence, for receiving financing from foreign governments and labeling them as foreign agents. President Reuven Rivlin was vilified for appearing recently at an Israeli peace conference in New York where representatives of the group also appeared.

Now some retired generals are leading a counterattack.

“Breaking the Silence strengthens the I.D.F. and its morality,” Amiram Levin, a former commander of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, wrote in an advertisement that appeared on Friday in the liberal Haaretz newspaper, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. A former chief of the Shin Bet security service and a retired major general of the Israeli police then took out similar advertisements.

RELATED STORY: Israeli Army Whistle-Blower Arrested After Revealing Orders To Murder Gaza Civilians on Facebook

Breaking the Silence highlights what it views as the corrosive nature of the occupation of the West Bank on Israeli society by publishing the testimonies of soldiers, mostly anonymously. Abuses like looting and the destruction of Palestinian property, it argues, have become the norm.

Yet nearly half a century after Israel conquered that territory from Jordan in the 1967 war, the subject of the occupation is largely greeted with apathy in Israel. And the increasingly shrill debate about Breaking the Silence is less about the rights or wrongs of military rule in the West Bank and more about what kind of society Israelis want.

“Breaking the Silence is perceived as unfairly attacking the I.D.F. and its conduct,” said Yohanan Plesner, the president of the Israel Democracy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Jerusalem. “So they are putting themselves on a collision course with the most valued and respected institution in Israel and with the psyche of Israelis who feel they are in a struggle for survival.”

And at a time Israelis fear for their safety amid a wave of stabbings, shootings and attacks with vehicles by Palestinians, and in the absence of condemnation from the Palestinian leadership, Mr. Plesner added, “There is not much patience for the message that the I.D.F. is in the wrong.”

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Extrajudicial Executions of Palestinians by the Israeli Government Caught on Camera (Video & Report)

Hadeel Al-Hashlamoun: The 18-year-old teen was shot 13 times on September 22 in Hebron and left in the street for 40 minutes where she bled to death. The pretext was that she intended to stab a soldier.  She was unarmed and trying
to pass an Israeli checkpoint.

By Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor
While the Israeli government has to date escaped serious accountability for repeated human rights violations, “citizen journalism”—in which excessive acts of force are caught on camera—now is making it more difficult for the acts to be obscured or brushed aside, says the report.

“Thanks to the courageous acts of activists, family members and bystanders, Euro-Med has collected video footage and eyewitness testimonies documenting numerous, egregious abuses by Israeli soldiers during the last few weeks, which we believe is only the tip of the iceberg,” says Daniela Dönges. “In our report, we name eight of them, because they are not just numbers. They are human beings with stories that must be told.”

The eight cases called out in the report are:

• Thirteen-year-old Ahmed Manasra, who was run over by a car and beaten with sticks and metal pipes, then deprived of any medical care for 25 minutes. The Israelis claimed he tried to attack their soldiers, but video recordings show otherwise. Instead, he is seen lying on the ground, bleeding and calling for help.


• Sixteen-year-old Marah Bakri also was accused of trying to stab an Israeli soldier, but widely circulated photos calls that claim into serious question. In one, nine soldiers pointing guns surround the young girl, covered in blood on the ground. The authorities refused to produce its evidence of a crime.


• Israa Abed, 29, is another alleged knife-wielding attacker. Surveillance video footage shows only a terrified young woman who panicked when ordered to remove her hijab, a sign of her religion. She refused, but threw up her hands. Abed was shot by four bullets.


• Fadi Samir Mustafa Alloun, 19, another accused stabber, was actually chased by a group of enraged Israeli settlers. The police came to protect the settlers, not Fadi. Video recordings shared on Israeli websites show the settlers before the police shot him.


• Hadil Alhashlamoun, 18, was passing through a checkpoint when she set off a metal detector alarm. There are conflicting witness accounts regarding whether the girl had a knife, but photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony is clear that she posed no risk. While she was lying on the ground, two soldiers shot bullets into both knees, her right thigh, her pelvis, her abdomen, both forearms and her chest.


• Twenty-five-year-old Muhammed Bassam Amsha, also was passing through a checkpoint when he was killed. Soldiers claimed they had photos showing the young man had a knife, but refused to produce them.


• Tha’er Abughazaleh,19, did indeed stab a soldier in rage and frustration. But instead of then running away from police, leading them to shoot, photographic evidence suggest he was unnecessarily shot point blank in the head.


• Falah Hamdi Zamel Abumaria, 53, was shot and killed in his home when the Israeli military came to seize his son. Despite the official story that the Israelis were attaced by the older man, eyewitnesses tell the truth, that Abumaria was trying to defend his son—with a pottery vase. For that, he was shot three times in the chest.

“No thinking person with a heart can hear this list and not feel horrified and aghast,” says Dönges. “Yet up until now, Israel has escaped any kind of serious accounting beyond some talk. The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor calls on the Israeli authorities to conduct a transparent investigation into these thinly veiled outright murders. However, because we lack any confidence they will do so, we also call on the UN special rapporteurs for extra-judicial killings and the Palestinian territories to visit the region to do their own investigation.”

Israel Is An Apartheid Society — It's Time To Admit It, Says Israeli

I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. Not anymore.

A Palestinian woman is attacked by Israeli "settlers."

By Bradley Burston
What I'm about to write will not come easily for me.

I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country's settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.

I'm not one of those people any more.  Not after the last few weeks.

Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over 90 percent of her body - only to have Israel's government rule the family ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.

I can't pretend anymore. Not after Israel's Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, explicitly declaring stone-throwing to be terrorism, drove the passage of a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years in prison.

The law did not specify that it targeted only Palestinian stone-throwers. It didn't have to.

Just one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, and bottles of urine at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement, and in response, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement homes.

This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid.

We are what we have created. We are what we do, and the injury we do in a thousand ways to millions of others. We are what we turn a blind eye to. Our Israel is what it has become: Apartheid.

There was a time when I drew a distinction between Benjamin Netanyahu's policies and this country I have loved so long.

No more. Every single day we wake to yet another outrage.

I used to be a person who wanted to believe that there were moral and democratic limits – or, failing that, pragmatic constraints - to how low the prime minister was willing to go, how far he was willing to bend to the proud proponents of apartheid, in order to bolster his power.

Not any more. Not after Danny Danon.

Not when the prime minister's choice to represent all of us, all of Israel at the United Nations, is a man who proposed legislation to annex the West Bank, effectively creating Bantustans for Palestinians who would live there stateless, deprived of basic human rights.

The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations, the man who will speak to the Third World on our behalf, is the same man who called African asylum seekers in Israel "a national plague."

The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations is the same politician who proposed legislation aimed at crippling left-leaning NGOs which come to the aid of Palestinian civilians and oppose the institution of occupation, while giving the government a green light to keep financially supporting right-wing NGOs suspected of channeling funds to support violence by pro-settlement Jews.

What does apartheid mean, in Israeli terms?

Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation.

Apartheid means Likud lawmaker and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter calling Sunday for separate, segregated roads and highways for Israelis and Arabs in the West Bank.

Apartheid means hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives, without convictions, charges, or even suspects. Apartheid means uncounted Palestinians jailed without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing and without just cause.

Apartheid means Israeli officials using the army, police, military courts, and draconian administrative detentions, not only to head off terrorism, but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinians.


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Usless Hilllary: Says Iran Will Always Be A Threat Despite Nuclear Deal — Yet She's Silent On Israel's Hundreds of Nukes, Murder in Gaza

Hypocrisy 101: While the west cries crocodile tears over the possibility of Iran getting nuclear weapons, Israel already has hundreds of atomic weapons. The West has demanded—and achieved—inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities, and negotiations to limit Iran's ability to produce atomic weapons.  Meanwhile, Israel hasn't had a single inspection, is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (Iran is), and hasn't agreed to negotiate a damn thing with anybody regarding its nuclear arsenal.  In fact, Iran has signed treaties forsaking the possession of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.  Israel has not.

Illustration by DonkeyHotey

Nuclear deal won't solve 'major problems from Iran,' Hillary warns

By Jon Ward

Hillary Clinton warned voters here ahead of the Fourth of July weekend that even if President Obama reaches a deal with the Iranian government over its nuclear program, the regime in Tehran will still pose a major threat to the United States.

RELATED STORY: Israel's Worst-Kept Secret - US Government Employees Are Not Allowed To Mention Israel's Massive Nuclear Arsenal

“I so hope that we are able to get a deal in the next week that puts a lid on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, because that is going to be a singular step in the right direction,” Clinton, the former secretary of state who is now running for president as a Democrat, told about 850 spectators in an outdoor amphitheater on the Dartmouth University campus.

But Clinton, despite her words of encouragement for Obama’s efforts to reach a deal with Iran, did not wholeheartedly endorse the process.

“We don’t know yet. It’s too soon. These things always go down to the wire,” she said.

And she quickly positioned herself in a more neutral way toward the entire process, saying that even if a deal is reached, it will not reduce the need to be vigilant against Tehran.

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Lawmakers Are Using Trade Rules to Blacklist Critics of Israel — Sneaky TPP Fast Track Law Targets Israel's Critics

Legislation to fast track new trade pacts specifically targets supporters of the BDS movement against the Israeli occupation.

Photo by Kate Ausburn.

By Rachel Ida Buff
In 1952, Abner Green — leader of a civil rights group called the American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born — served six months in prison for refusing to cooperate with federal investigators who were spying on progressive civil rights organizations.

A longtime anti-racist activist and advocate for the rights of immigrants, Green was sentenced under the McCarran Act of 1950, which created a “Subversive Activities Control Board” to scrutinize the activities of organizations and individuals suspected of association with communism.

When Green was released from jail, he found the supporting membership of the ACPFB greatly reduced. Many other civil rights organizations were forced to close their doors amid the chilling effects of McCarthyism.

In her acclaimed book, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955, Carol Anderson traces the ways that anti-communists cast opponents of segregation as subversive. In order to survive in this climate, rights advocacy organizations were forced to adopt a civil rights, rather than human rights, framework. Anderson argues that the consequences of this shift ultimately undermined the impact of civil rights victories, allowing for the persistence of profound racial inequality long after the high water mark of the movement.

This Cold War shift finds many parallels in the contemporary debate over foreign policy and free trade. More than half a century after Green’s incarceration, public discussions about the relationship between the United States and Israel are impeded by allegations of bigotry and disloyalty. Supporters of the Israeli government in particular often equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, narrowing the possibilities for civil debate.

This narrowing particularly truncates progressive conversations around the global human rights activism represented by the movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) of Israel to protest its militaristic policies. Critics fume that the movement is anti-Semitic, much as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover worried that Martin Luther King Jr.’s critique of racial segregation made him “anti-American.”

Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire GOP super donor and staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, recently launched a “Campus Maccabee” initiative to combat increased activism around the BDS movement on college campuses in the United States. He says it’s to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism. But all students have the right to free speech, and advocacy and boycotting are constitutionally protected activities.

Legislative activism against BDS has a similarly chilling effect, both on civil liberties and on global movements for human rights. Hitching their political wagons to regressive “free trade” agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, uncritically pro-Israel lobbyists like AIPAC have taken aim against companies that comply with the global movement to boycott Israel and its illegal settlements in the West Bank by making trade contingent on opposition to BDS. This is a decidedly McCarthyist approach.

The “fast-track” Trade Promotion Authority bill recently debated in Congress contains provisions that would make discouraging BDS a central objective of U.S. trade policy. The bill includes language prohibiting “state-sponsored unsanctioned foreign boycotts against Israel or compliance with the Arab League Boycott of Israel by prospective trading partners.” Such proscriptions are likely to accompany any future version of the TPP and other pacts.

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Gaza Civilians Were Deliberately Targeted — Policy Sanctioned by Israeli Officials, Suggests Top Officials at UN

This Palestinian child was among three others who were playing on a
beach before they were blown up by an offshore Israeli naval ship.
(Photo screen captured from video)

By Lauren McCauley
A widely-anticipated United Nations inquiry into the 2014 attack on Gaza released Monday suggests that the Israeli government may have deliberately targeted Palestinian civilians during the assault, while the report concludes that both Israel and Hamas may be guilty of war crimes against humanity.

RELATED STORY: Israel - Deliberate Killer of Children: What Does an Attack On Palestinian Children Look Like? — What the Media Won't Show You (WARNING - Graphic Video)

"The extent of the devastation and human suffering in Gaza was unprecedented and will impact generations to come," the chair of the UN-appointed commission, former New York Supreme Court Justice Mary McGowan Davis, said during a Monday press briefing. Davis was joined on the commission by Dr. Doudou Diene of Senegal, who formerly served as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

______________

Israeli snipers kill two Palestinian
teens in cold blood
(May 15th, 2014)

Warning, Graphic: Viewer discretion advised.

______________

The report notes that during the 51-day war, 6,000 airstrikes and approximately 50,000 tank and artillery shells were fired by Israel into Gaza, killing 1,462 Palestinian civilians, one third of them children. In the West Bank including East Jerusalem, 27 Palestinians were killed and 3,020 injured between June and August 2014.

RELATED STORY: Israeli Soldiers Were Recorded Shooting A Palestinian Teen Playing On His Rooftop — And Then Celebrating Afterwards (Video)

RELATED STORY: Israel's 'Dahiya Doctrine' - State Terrorism and a Philosophy of War Crime

RELATED STORY: Israeli Army Whistle-Blower Arrested After Revealing Orders To Murder Gaza Civilians on Facebook

"Hundreds" of Palestinians—mostly women and children—were killed in their homes, the commission found. The report notes that during a single attack on a residential building, 742 people lost their lives, while "at least 142 families lost three or more members."

The commission explicitly reproached the Israeli government for the overwhelming loss of civilian life. "The fact that Israel did not revise its practice of air-strikes, even after their dire effects on civilians became apparent, raises the question of whether this was part of a broader policy which was at least tacitly approved at the highest level of government," it states.

The report adds that "Israel’s extensive use of weapons with a wide kill and injury radius" further raises concerns about the deliberate targeting of civilians.

"Though not illegal, their use in densely populated areas is highly likely to kill combatants and civilians indiscriminately. There appears also to be a pattern whereby the IDF issued warnings to people to leave a neighbourhood and then automatically considered anyone remaining to be a fighter. This practice makes attacks on civilians highly likely."

RELATED STORY: Palestinian Civilian Searching Rubble for Family Members is Murdered by Israeli Troops (Warning Graphic Video)

The UN commission also said that it is "disturbed by" the Israeli government's decision to close its investigation into the killing of four Palestinian children on a Gaza beach on July 16, 2014.

Meanwhile, during July and August 2014, the inquiry states that Palestinian armed groups fired 4,881 rockets and 1,753 mortars towards Israel, killing 6 civilians and injuring at least 1,600.

RELATED STORY: Murdering Palestinian Civilians Is the Unofficial Government Policy in Israel - Commander Recorded Ordering Attack On Gaza Clinic

This "indiscriminate firing" of weapons at Israel "appeared to have the intention of spreading terror among civilians there." Further, the discovery of 14 underground tunnels from Gaza into Israel, which were reportedly used to attack IDF soldiers, "traumatized Israeli civilians who feared they could be attacked at any moment by gunmen bursting out of the ground."

The commission notes that while it received "full cooperation" from the State of Palestine, "the Israeli authorities did not respond to repeated requests by the commission for information and direct access to Israel and to the Occupied Palestinian Territory." Investigators said they obtained the "harrowing first hand testimony" through more than 280 confidential Skype and telephone interviews and 500 written testimonies.

RELATED STORY: Israel Uses Gaza As A Laboratory To Test Their Weapons — It's A Highly Profitable 'Enterprise' (Video)

Ahead of the report's release, the governments of Israel and the United States accused the inquiry of anti-Israel bias, and both campaigned to discredit the findings.

The commission is advocating for governments to actively support a bid for the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation in occupied Palestinian territory. It is scheduled to formally present the findings to the UN Human Rights Council on June 29 in Geneva, Switzerland.

RELATED STORY: Deliberate Mass Murder In Gaza, Summer of 2014 — Testimony of Israeli Soldiers - Full Report

"We were deeply moved by the immense suffering and resilience of the victims," the commissioners stated, "we just hope our report contributes in some small way to ending the cycle of violence."

Reprinted with permission from Common Dreams.

Israel Uses Gaza As A Laboratory To Test Their Weapons — It's A Highly Profitable 'Enterprise' (Video)

In 2013, Yotam Feldman, an Israeli journalist and filmmaker, released The Lab, a documentary positing that war is beneficial for the Israeli economy. Feldman’s film argues that the Palestinian territories are the “lab” where Israel uses its weaponry. Israeli companies profit from war because their products are “tested” on Palestinians, Feldman argued — particularly the residents of Gaza. “After every campaign of the kind that is now taking place in Gaza, we see an increase in the number of customers from abroad,” Eli Gold, CEO of Israeli arms company Meprolight, told the Israeli daily Haaretz last year.

“Combat Proven”: The Booming Business of War in Israel

The Palestinians of Gaza are considered nothing but lab rats upon
whom Israel can try out its latest weapons which then can be
marketed to the world as "tested and proven." (Illustration adapted
from Steve Jurveston)

By Alex Kane
The Israel Trade Fairs and Convention Center was bustling with military personnel. Tall, broad-shouldered soldiers donning masks and sunglasses had their guns at the ready, and a mini-drone built at Ariel University, an Israeli school located in the occupied West Bank, went up in the air, flying high as the press snapped photos.

This was not war, but one of the many demos held at the ISDEF expo, an annual June event that attracts thousands of security officials and professionals interested in weapons. Arms fairs in Israel showcase the latest products the profitable Israeli weapons industry manufactures — and the demos are the perfect place to show those products off.

[...]

The featured arms companies, like the attendees interested in buying their products, came from around the world, but Israeli companies far outnumbered other nations. The fair is put on with the active help and cooperation of the Israeli government, and the ISDEF expo board of advisers is composed of elite former Israeli military officers. The U.S. Department of Commerce is the only foreign governmental body to co-sponsor the event.

_________________

The Lab: Weapons Testing on Palestinians - Excerpt

_________________

Israel has established itself as a leading hub for weapons makers, capitalizing on the constant state of conflict the country is in and the close coordination between the military and the weapons industry. At the ISDEF opening ceremony, Ziva Eger, the Israeli Ministry of Economy’s director of the division for foreign investment and industrial cooperation, boasted about how Israel takes “technology from the defense sector and just implements it to the civilian sector.”

In Israel, nearly 6,800 individuals deal in weapons exports at over 1,000 companies, according to Defense Ministry data from 2013. The country’s weapons industry brought in about $5.6 billion last year, making Israel the eighth largest weapons exporter globally, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Former Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said that 150,000 Israeli households rely on the weapons industry for income. While last year’s earnings were actually a drop from a high of $7.5 billion in revenue in 2012, a decrease attributed by Israel’s Defense Ministry to budget cuts in the U.S. and Europe, Israel is among the world’s top arms exporters per capita. In fact, the U.S. effectively provides a subsidy to the Israeli weapons business: While about 75 percent of the $3.1 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel must be spent on American weapons, 25 percent can be spent on domestic Israeli arms makers — a situation unique to Israel. Even when Israel buys U.S. arms, it sometimes requests that those weapons be built with Israeli components.

[...]

The wars on Gaza have had a devastating impact on the population there, leaving half of Palestinian adolescents with symptoms of full or partial post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a study published in Arab Journal of Psychiatry. But in Israel, the wars are good for business.

In 2013, Yotam Feldman, an Israeli journalist and filmmaker, released The Lab, a documentary positing that war is beneficial for the Israeli economy. Feldman’s film argues that the Palestinian territories are the “lab” where Israel uses its weaponry. Israeli companies profit from war because their products are “tested” on Palestinians, Feldman argued — particularly the residents of Gaza. “After every campaign of the kind that is now taking place in Gaza, we see an increase in the number of customers from abroad,” Eli Gold, CEO of Israeli arms company Meprolight, told the Israeli daily Haaretz last year.

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Israel's Top War Criminal Wants World To Get Upset Over Gaza's 'Bottle Rockets and Sizzlers'

During last summer's murder spree in Gaza, Gazans had to deal with Israel's heavy ordinance, while Israelis faced Hamas rockets that provided little more than a light show.  (Right Photo by philosophygeek)

Netanyahu Slams World for Failing to Condemn Gaza Rocket Fire

By ynetnews
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed the international community on Sunday morning for failing to condemn Gaza rocket fire at southern Israel.

"I did not hear a single member of the international community condemn the attack, and the UN did not say a word," Netanyahu said. "I'm interested to see if the silence will continue when we act in self defense."

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"It should be clear: the hypocrisy that is sweeping the world will not chain our hands from defending the citizens of Israel," he added.

Sporadic rocket fire has been ongoing over the past few weeks, with errant Palestinian factions, particularly one sympathizing with the Islamic State, breaking the ceasefire in a challenge to Hamas.

On Saturday night, a rocket was fired towards Ashkelon and landed in a field. The IAF attacked terror infrastructure at the northern Gaza Strip overnight in response for the rocket.

As many as six rocket have been fired at Israel since the end of Operation Protective Edge nearly a year ago. Two landed in Sdot Negev on Wednesday and the week before, a rocket fell in Gan Yavne.
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Israel's First Prime Minister's Letter Shows He Wanted No Arabs Returning To Israel After They Were Ethnically Cleansed

David Ben-Gurion: Primary founder and the first
Prime Minister of Israel.

By Jonathan Cook

Over many decades, Israel’s self-serving deceptions about the Nakba in 1948 have been exposed for the lies Palestinians already knew them to be.

It was long accepted in the west that, as Israel claimed, Palestinians left their homes because they had been ordered to do so by neighbouring Arab leaders. The lie usefully distracted diplomats and scholars from the much more pertinent question of why Israel had refused to allow 750,000 Palestinian refugees to return to their homes after the war finished, as international law demanded.

The myth about the Arab leaders’ order, which had been steadily undermined by the work of the “new historians” of the late 1980s, was decisively punctured two years ago by an Israeli scholar who was given the wrong file by Israeli army archivists. It showed the story of the Arab leaders’ order was concocted by Israeli officials.

The same files should also have ended an equally diverting and lengthy debate about how many Palestinian villages Israel ethnically cleansed in 1948. Most Palestinian scholars were agreed it was well over 500; Israeli experts variously claimed it was between 300 and 400. Not that hundreds of ethnically cleansed villages was not bad enough, but Israel was happy to engage in a debate designed to make Palestinians look like inveterate exaggerators. Again, Israel’s archives confirmed the Palestinian account, with 530 villages razed.

Now another, related deception has been exposed. For decades Israel’s supporters have been arguing that Haifa, one of Palestine’s most important cities, was not ethnically cleansed of its population. The tens of thousands of Palestinians who fled under Israeli attack in April 1948 were later urged to return, according to Israel’s supporters, but they chose not to. Further proof, it seemed, that the Palestinians had only themselves to blame for losing their homeland. They chose to stay away.

Strangely, none of Israel’s propagandists ever seriously tried to suggest that the other 700,00 or so Palestinian refugees had been invited back home. It seemed as if the welcome supposedly extended in Haifa was reason enough for all Palestinians in exile to put aside their fears of Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy at its new borders and make the journey home.

But now a letter signed by David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and the engineer of its ethnic cleansing policy in 1948, shows that, far from Haifa’s doors being thrown open, Ben Gurion ordered that the refugees be barred from returning.

Written on 2 June 1948, the letter was sent to Abba Khoushy, soon to become Haifa’s mayor. It states:

“I hear that Mr. Marriot [Cyril Marriot, the British consul in Haifa] is working to return the Arabs to Haifa. I don’t know how it is his business, but until the war is over we don’t want a return of the enemy. And all institutions should act accordingly.”

Of course, that policy was not reversed after the war, as Ben Gurion hinted it might be. And one can wonder how much more specific his orders were to his army commanders if this was what he was telling civilian administrators.

The myth about Haifa was encouraged by Golda Meir, who wrote in her autobiography that Ben Gurion told her:

“I want you to immediately go to Haifa and see to it that the Arabs who remain in Haifa are treated appropriately. I also want you to try and persuade the Arabs who are already on the beach to return home. You have to get it into their heads that they have nothing to fear.”

Meir added: “I went immediately. I sat on the beach there and begged them to return home… I pleaded with them until I was exhausted but it didn’t work.”

Heartbreaking – if only it were true.

How much longer must we wait to explode all the other myths associated with the Nakba, and much of Israel’s history ever since?

______________
Copyright © Jonathan Cook, Jonathan Cook's Blog, 2015

Reprinted with permission from Center for Research in Globalization.

Deliberate Mass Murder In Gaza, Summer of 2014: Testimony of Israeli Soldiers - Full Report

Palestinian Civilian Searching Rubble for Family Members is Murdered by Israeli Troops (WARNING: Graphic Video -
Photo screen captured from video)

Albert Einstein Had A Prophetic Vision of What Israel Would Become

When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsibility for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build up from our own ranks.  I am not willing to see anybody associated with these misled and criminal people. —Albert Einstein, Letter to American Friends of the Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, April 10, 1948

"Among the most disturbing politica phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the "Freedom Party" (Tnuat Hasherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties." —Albert Einstein, Letter to the New York Times, December 4, 1948

____________

EXCERPTS:

They were two young women walking in the orchard. The commander asked to conirm, “What do you see,” and whether they were incriminated or not. It was during daytime, around 11:00 AM, or noon. The lookouts couldn’t see well so the commander sent a drone up to look from above, and the drone implicated them. It saw them with phones, talking, walking. They directed ire there, on those girls, and they were killed. After they were implicated, I had a feeling it was bullshit.

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They check the bodies, and it was two women, over age 30. The bodies of two women, and they were unarmed. He came back and we moved on, and they were listed as terrorists. They were ired at - so of course, they must have been terrorists…

Sometimes movements identified in the window of a house hundreds of meters away from the forces led to a strike on that house, based on the suspicion that it was an enemy lookout.

RELATED STORY: 'Killing Civilians is a Permissible Strategy' — That's What Israel's Politicians, Military Commanders, and Legal System Tells Soldiers

We didn’t actually get an operational order stating that that was the objective – but ultimately, no house was supposed to be left standing. A 500-meter radius where not a single house is left standing.

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We asked him: "I see someone walking in the street, do I shoot him?" He said yes. "Why do I shoot him?" “Because he isn't supposed to be there. Nobody, no sane civilian who isn't a terrorist, has any business being within 200 meters of a tank. And if he places himself in such a situation, he’s apparently up to something."

RELATED STORY: Israeli Soldiers Were Recorded Shooting A Palestinian Teen Playing On His Rooftop — And Then Celebrating Afterwards (WARNING: Graphic Video)

Every place you took over, anything you ‘sterilized,’ anything within a range of zero to 200 meters, 300 meters – that’s supposed to be a ‘sterilized’ area, from our perspective.

The instructions are to shoot right away. Whoever you spot - be they armed or unarmed, no matter what. The instructions are very clear. Any person you run into, that you see with your eyes - shoot to kill. It’s an explicit instruction

____________

This Is How We Fought In Gaza

Israel-Affiliated Organization Launches Lawsuit in US Against Hamas for War Crimes — Lawsuit Says Nothing About Israel's Mass Murder in Gaza Last August

During Israel's massacre in Gaza last August, the Israeli military killed 2200 Gazans, the vast majority of whom were civilians including hundreds of children.  Hamas responded by killing 72 Israelis - 64 of whom were soldiers.

Photo by Elvert Barnes.

By MiddleEastEye
Twenty-six Americans filed a complaint on Tuesday to the US Attorney General requesting the justice ministry prosecute Hamas leaders for "war crimes," the Israeli legal group representing them said.

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The litigation, inspired and organised by Israeli legal group Shurat HaDin, was announced a day before the Palestinians officially became members of the International Crime Court, where they hope to see Israeli officials prosecuted for similar offences.

"We can't sit idly by. We need to fight back," said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the director of the non-governmental organisation.

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She alleged that "the Palestinians committed war crimes," and stressed that courts other than the ICC had "the authority to try them, including in the United States".

The 26 US citizens, some of whom also hold Israeli passports, asked that Hamas leaders be prosecuted for firing rockets at Israel's Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv during the 2014 war, when militants in Gaza fought Israeli forces.

RELATED STORY: Israel's Gaza Doctrine - The Worsening of Life for People in Gaza Is A Deliberate Goal of the Israeli Military — And That's A War Crime

Some of them were among people forced to run for shelter when rockets launched at the airport hit a short distance away, said Shurat Hadin.

Others were passengers on board a Delta flight from New York that was forced to land in Paris, after US flights were diverted from Israel as a result of the rocket fire.

The airport is located 60 kilometers north of the Gaza Strip. There were no direct hits on the terminal, but missiles fell in the nearby city of Yehud, destroying a residential building.

RELATED STORY: Israeli Army Whistle-Blower Arrested After Revealing Orders To Murder Gaza Civilians on Facebook

Over the course of last summer's 50-day conflict, approximately 2,200 Palestinians were killed — Israel contends that half were combatants, while the Palestinians say that most were civilians — and 72 people were killed on the Israeli side, including 64 soldiers.

According to US law, a person can be imprisoned for performing an "act of violence" at an international airport if the victim is a US citizen, said the NGO.

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College Organization Wouldn't Allow Jewish Civil Rights Activists To Come Speak Against Israel — So President of Chapter Resigns in Protest

Photo by Kate Ausburn.

By JTA
Caroline Dorn resigned as the student president of the Hillel chapter at Muhlenberg College to protest Hillel International’s restrictions against hosting anti-Israel speakers.

Dorn said she stepped down because the Hillel at the Allentown, Pa., college was barred by Hillel International rules from hosting four Jewish civil rights veterans currently on a speaking tour of U.S. colleges called “From Mississippi to Jerusalem: In Conversation with Jewish Civil Rights Veterans.”

Hillel International’s rules prohibit college Hillel chapters from partnering with or hosting groups or speakers who deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish or democratic state; delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard to Israel; or support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel.

The Jewish civil rights activists on the tour — Dorothy Zellner, Larry Rubin, Mark Levy and Ira Grupper – are supportive of BDS tactics against Israel. Their tour is being sponsored by Open Hillel, which aims to challenge Hillel International’s rules on Israel issues.

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Eight Urgent ‘Musts’ Needed for Palestinians to Defeat Israel's Apartheid: Dump Fake 'Peace Talks', Right of Return, One-State Solution, Boycott

Illustration adapted by Ronald David Jackson. *Bantustan

• Abbas, Oslo must go
• Factionalism must be defeated, crushed
• But the transition must be smooth
• Right of return must be brought back to centre of discourse
• Palestine 48 must be fully incorporated into national agenda
• Resistance must be respected
• BDS must continue to grow, bridge gaps
• One State must become the rally cry for equality and freedom

By Ramzy Baroud
Waiting on Israeli society to change from within is a colossal waste of time, during which the suffering of an entire nation - torn between an occupied home and a harsh diaspora - will not cease. But what are Palestinians and the supporters of a just peace in Palestine and Israel to do? Plenty.

RELATED : Israel's 'Two-State Solution' Myth - Nothing But Legalized Apartheid With South African-Style Bantustans

Those who counted on some sort of a miracle to emerge from the outcome of the recent Israeli elections have only themselves to blame. Neither logic nor numbers were on their side, nor the long history laden with disappointing experiences of “leftist” Israelis unleashing wars and cementing occupation. Despite a few differences between Israel’s right and the so-called left on internal matters, their positions are almost identical regarding all major issues related to Palestine. These include the Right of Return and the status of occupied Jerusalem to the illegal settlements.

Equally important, most sectors of Israel’s political classes that are dominated by Zionist Jews are also in concord regarding the status of Israel’s Palestinian Arab population (1948 Palestinians). Don’t let the racist fearmongering of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - terrifying Israeli Jews of Arabs voting in “droves” - blind you to the fact that the Zionist Labor bloc is equally racist, although, in a less vulgar fashion.

But Palestinians are not without options. Sure, the odds against them are great, but such is the fate of the oppressed as they are left between two options: either a perpetual fight for justice or unending humiliation and servitude.

1. Abbas, Oslo must go

First, the most difficult obstacle to overcome is the stronghold of Mahmoud Abbas and his corrupt circle on Palestine’s political discourse at home. This is not an outcome of Abbas’s particular savvy or the genius of his class. The post-Oslo circle only exists to maintain the status quo: US interests and involvement as a mediator in the conflict, Israel’s security - thus the constant crackdown on Palestinian opposition and resistance - and ensuring that the Palestinian Authority (PA) has a reason to exist for the sake of ensuring the many privileges that come with the job.

This whole apparatus must be overcome and eventually removed entirely from the Palestinian body politic if Palestinians are to have any chance at formulating an alternative strategy.

2. Factionalism must be defeated, crushed

But for that to take place, the very ailments that have afflicted Palestinian society for years, leading to the creation of the ineffectual PA in the first place, would have to be confronted heads on. One such condition is factionalism, which has to be overpowered by a collective that defines itself first and foremost as Palestinian.

Factionalism, in its current form, has destroyed much of the social fabric of Palestine. It has divided the already divided people into fragments making them easy to be controlled, manipulated, suppressed - and when necessary - besieged. 67 years are just too long a period for a nation that lives mostly in exile, trapped or confined behind walls, to sustain its political identity and remain unified around the same “constants” without proper leadership.

Yet somehow many Palestinians persisted, insisting on one Palestine, one people, one identity, one goal. For these energies to be streamlined into a meaningful push against Israeli colonial designs, factionalism would have to be put to rest. Additionally, the Palestinian flag must occupy every public place currently occupied by red, yellow, green or any other factional colour or symbol.

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Censoring History: The American Historical Association Censors Ad for Book on the US and the Creation of Israel

By Alison Weir
The American Historical Association (AHA) has refused to publish a paid advertisement for my book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel.

This type of action demonstrates how the history discussed in my book has, in fact, so often remained hidden. It follows an incident a few years ago in which the largest chain of history magazines in the U.S. refused any advertisement by the Council for the National Interest, based on the accusation that CNI is “anti-Israel.”* CNI is a 20-year-old organization that works for policies that represent American interests and principles.

The AHA was founded in 1884 and chartered by Congress in 1889 “to serve the interests of the entire discipline of history,” according to its website. It is the largest professional history organization in the U.S. and publishes two journals, American Historical Reviewand Perspectives on History. The organization says the latter is “the principal source for news and information about the historical discipline.”

According to AHA Executive Director Jim Grossman in a phone conversation with me, AHA would not publish the ad for several reasons: The book “does not fall within the scope of the mission of the AHA, the book is “advocacy not scholarship,” it “has not been peer reviewed,” and it “has not been reviewed by the mainstream press.”

None of these objections – even if they were accurate – seem relevant to a paid advertisement, and none violate AHA’s published advertising guidelines in any way. In fact, AHA guidelines particularly make clear that advertising in an AHA publication “does not necessarily constitute endorsement or approval of any product or service advertised.”

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