Snake Oil

September 3, 2012December 11, 2020

Jesus and Mary Chain – Don’t Play Apartheid

Jesus & Mary Chain: Have You Heard About the Boycott?

Dear Jim Reid, William Reid, Phil King, Loz Colbert and Mark Crozer (The Jesus and Mary Chain),

We are a group of over 900 people from all over the world who are united in support of human rights, justice and freedom for the Palestinian people. Some of our members have been fans of The Jesus and Mary Chain since the 1980s. We are asking you to refrain from playing in Israel.

The recent findings of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine verify that Israel is an apartheid state. Here is an excerpt, from last November. Read the entire findings at http://bit.ly/svjpBT :

“The Tribunal finds that Israel subjects the Palestinian people to an institutionalised regime of domination amounting to apartheid as defined under international law. This discriminatory regime manifests in varying intensity and forms against different categories of Palestinians depending on their location. The Palestinians living under colonial military rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territory are subject to a particularly aggravated form of apartheid. Palestinian citizens of Israel, while entitled to vote, are not part of the Jewish nation as defined by Israeli law and are therefore excluded from the benefits of Jewish nationality and subject to systematic discrimination across the broad spectrum of recognised human rights. Irrespective of such differences, the Tribunal concludes that Israel’s rule over the Palestinian people, wherever they reside, collectively amounts to a single integrated regime of apartheid.”

Music plays a very political role in the case of Israel because of the global BDS movement. The PACBI, (Palestinian Call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel) has, since 2005, asked musicians to refrain from playing in Israel, and their call, representing Palestinian civil society, has become a global movement. Many people have already joined a new Facebook page titled: “Jesus and Mary Chain, No Reverence for Apartheid. Don’t Play Israel.”

When a band agrees to play in Israel and breaks the picket line, whether they intend to or not, they are making a political statement. In 2005 an Israeli spokesman asserted that: “We see culture as a propaganda tool of the first rank, and…do not differentiate between propaganda and culture.” [Ha’aretz, September 2005] Your performances on 18 and 19 October will place you on the side of injustice and oppression, we are asking you to stand with the oppressed instead .

Many other musicians have chosen to respect the boycott and equal rights for Palestinians, among them, Roger Waters. You might like to read Waters’ words in last year’s Guardian in “Tear down this Israeli wall”, where he says:
“This is, however, a plea to my colleagues in the music industry, and also to artists in other disciplines, to join this cultural boycott.” [1]

Please read about Israel’s apartheid in the letter that was written to French philosopher and prominent intellectual, Jacques Rancière, Professor emeritus, University Paris 8, by the PACBI. Jacques Rancière subsequently chose to cancel his planned lecture at the Minerva Humanities Center at Tel Aviv University earlier this year.[3]

This year artists Cassandra Wilson, tUnE-yArDs, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and Cat Power have chosen to cancel their planned gigs in respect of the boycott, and stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle for justice. Also among the growing list of artists that have cancelled concerts and events in Israel are the late Gil Scott-Heron, Elvis Costello, the Pixies, Mike Leigh, Klaxons, Gorillaz Sound System and many more.[4]

We hope that you will choose to respect the boycott.

Warm Regards,

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel (DPAI)

Notes
[1] Tear down this Israeli wall, I want the music industry to support Palestinians’ rights and oppose this inhumane barrier
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/11/cultural-boycott-west-bank-wall
[2] International Star Natacha Atlas announces Israel boycott http://electronicintifada.net/blog/ali-abunimah/international-star-natacha-atlas-announces-israel-boycott
[3] (See http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1793)
[4] 2011 Summary of the Cultural Boycott of Israel http://www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1788

SOURCE

August 27, 2012December 11, 2020

Israel Shoots Palestinian Children

Tomer Rot, former Israeli soldier: “I understood the reality we are creating … because there’s an entire population, that’s stepped on, pissed on, trampled on … and it’s sad.”

How the Israeli army treats Palestinian children

Israeli soldiers tell how they routinely harass Palestinian families and sometimes shoot children involved in protests. Their testimony was given to campaigning group Breaking the Silence. Video by Ruth Pollard.

…

The Israel Defence Forces’ arbitrary use of violence against Palestinian children, including forcing them to act as human shields in military operations, has been exposed by veteran soldiers in detailed statements chronicling dozens of brutal incidents.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/children-on-front-line-in-the-west-bank-20120826-24uhw.html

Breaking the Silence is limited in its discourse. As illustrated in the video below, Breaking the Silence’s activity is based on the ABSOLUTE REFUSAL TO BREAK THE SILENCE as well as PROTECT those who perpetrated crimes, sometimes as serious as war-crimes.

we are here to call on people to take responsibility

you and the people around you in the city

on the actions that the army is doing today, now, tonight

tonight, forces will enter Hebron into houses

and will perform activities

to quote the language of the military order:

“disrupting of daily life in the neighborhood”

in order to create that feeling of the oppressed, that Nadav referred to earlier

if we seek to resolve this within the army

by making people feel uneasy so they won’t come, or will be punished at the lower ranks

it’s really not…

human history shows that things do not change in this manner

and that this is not what’s going to end the military control

even if Daniel would have gone all the way and said no

the military control over Hebron would not have ended

and i think that the question we ought to ask ourselves is

for each one of us, what is their own responsibility?

so I return the question back to you

following on the previous couple of questions

I’d like to ask the organization and specifically those

who took testimonies from the massacre that took place in Gaza

and I’d also like to ask whether you are taking responsibility?

those people who are active in the organization

from reading of the testimonies

or more precisely, those stories

removed of facts, removed of names

dates, places, chain of command,

names of Palestinians

from reading these stories

it seems as though crimes clearly took place

and a considerable number of which may be regarded as war crimes

I would like to know why do you choose

to conceal the facts

to cover up the crimes

and even to tamper with evidence

and why don’t you go to the authorities?

sorry, I will only add that if you say that

if you will not participate in protecting these criminals

you will not receive any more testimonies

then this is not a valid argument

since you yourselves are participating in such a crime

ok, just in order to explain the position of Breaking the Silence

and also so that it won’t be a back and forth discussion

about Gaza and in general, also Hebron

first of all a crime of war

and the whole discussion is a legal discourse

thanks. this is a legal discourse

meaning a crime of war is not something a civilian can decide on

but something that the authorities decide on

Breaking the Silence chose to take a stand

that we know is a controversial one and aware of its problems

that we act as a journalistic organization

also on the technical level

we have a journalistic status

it means, for example, that soldiers are not allowed to talk to us

since they’re not allowed to talk to journalists

so they make another offence when approaching us

and when they expose themselves they also make this offence

sorry..

along with that we decided that our political activity

and we certainly see Breaking the Silence as having a political activity

our political activity of diseminating information is a journalistic activity

and as much as it is possible to ask every journalist

whether they are not complicit in crime

when they receive a testimony from a senior political source

or from a senior military source

every journalist speaking to someone who remains anonoymous

is actually complicit in crime

we took a decision that this is the best way to get the information outside

but there is also a second part to this answer

since we have to explain why we took this decision

we, and again, coming from our political perspective

that we understand others may disagree with

we don’t know which authority concerns us

when such a thing is mentioned

for example, there are people sitting on stage here

testifying for themsleves

if the military investigation uniit would have liked to sit here they would have

if the state wanted to be sitting here it would have

it doesn’t want to sit here

since they understand that actually judging us is judging themselves and the system

so this is for the Israeli authorities

as for the international authorities

first of all we don’t see it as something that’s necessarily positive

neither positive nor negative

it’s simply stepping out of the country

but also there, there is no technical place that one could go to

it’s not that the court in Hague sits there

and says: “if we only had these Breaking the Silence testimonies, we would have been able to wrap up the whole case”

so technically there’s nothing really to be done with that

it sounds like a very practical claim

until you start disintegrating it and technically

there isn’t much to be done in the legal arena

furthermore, we know that in the legal arena

there have been many attempts and from our political perspective they have failed

and this is why

we are aware of these issues

i’d also like to say about things that have been said

which is universally true, that rookie soldiers have

less of a criminal responsibility than commanders

we carry a criminal liability

these specific persons expose it

and for exposing it they know it and understand it

we understand it daily

all the Breaking the Silence people who speak in public

we understand that we have criminal liability

and some of us, I can say for myself, will be happy if they come and try me

I think it’s important to be said

so in a nutshell, when you build the authority that will try me

I will also come with Michael

seriously, I say it in jest but according to international law

according to my moral values

I committed crimes and would be happy that the political situation will allow me to pay the price

it is irrelevant today

August 18, 2012December 11, 2020

Beyond the Red Lines

This week, the @IsraelinIreland twitter from the Israeli Consulate in Ireland, was served a public dressing down by the Israeli Foreign Minister (@IsraelMFA) for savage attacks on Palestinian Israeli MK Haneen Zoabi while she visited Ireland. As well, the Deputy Ambassador at the Israeli Irish Consulate, Nurit Tinari-Modai, had published a lengthy attack on Haneen in the Irish Times. In Haaretz, the Israeli FM ordained:

Over the last few weeks, there have been a few embarrassing moments caused by tweets and Facebook posts made by Israeli diplomats. For example, the Israeli embassy in Dublin used its twitter account to attack MK Hanin Zoabi, during a recent visit to Ireland.

Zoabi gave a few lectures, and granted interviews to Irish media outlets, in which she claimed that Israel is a racist, undemocratic state. Following publication of her comments, the Israeli Embassy in Dublin responded with three tweets, that criticized MK Zoabi, despite the fact that she is an elected official.

“This particular MK consorted on #MaviMarmara with IHH jihadists who sang of killing Jews, who are sworn to destroy #Israel #Zoabi,” read one of the tweets.

A second tweet included a link to a YouTube in which Zoabi spoke about the Mavi Marmara raid alongside armed Turkish activists, “And she’s still in Parliament! MK Haneen #Zoabi with armed #IHH jihadists on #MaviMarmara 2010 youtube.com/watch?v=S0-d9v”

The third called for inquiries into Zoabi’s relatives in various positions of government. “If you hear MK #Zoabi tonight #Dublin: ask her re her 2 uncles, 1 a Supreme Court judge, 1 a dep Min of Health + Nazareth mayor!”

@IsraelinIreland has also displayed racism toward Irish citizens:

Aug 2, 2012

Cantankerous and bullying, @IsraelinIsrael strayed over the vaunted red lines into self-delegitimisation of Israel.

Earlier this week, Yoram Murad, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Digitial Diplomacy Department sent a message to Israeli diplomats both in the country and abroad, entitled, “What is the difference between a press briefing and a tweet?” The answer was made clear in first line of the message “As far as you’re concerned, there is no difference,” wrote Murad.

The Haaretz story by Barak Ravid, yet with a shrill tenor which seems to ululate as direct channelling from the Israeli FM itself, broadly exaggerates Israel’s inexperience with social media:

‘Contrary to the United States’ State Department, where Twitter and Facebook use is already highly institutionalized, the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s use of social media is still in its infancy.’

In late 2008, David Saranga (@DavidSaranga), then at the Israeli Consulate in New York, conducted the first government to world twitter conference.

Saranga, with a web presence at www.israelfm.org, was described in the Jewish Chronicle in May 2008 as “The man whose campaigns are rebranding Israel.”

In July 2007, Professor John H. Brown of Georgetown University in his article Public Diplomacy Goes ‘Pubic’ of the launch of Saranga’s rebranding strategy in May that year:

But until recently modern-world governments — unlike advertising agencies peddling their goods — were reluctant to sell openly their main product (themselves and the nations they represent) through images of the human flesh exposed at various levels of nudity. Now, however, the body beautiful of their citizens is being openly celebrated by states seeking to foster a more positive image of themselves.

True, twentieth-century totalitarian films and photographs glorified, in their absolutist and absurdist ways, the strength and muscularity of (particularly male) athletes and soldiers, but the intended effect of these images, I would suggest, was not erotic arousal aimed at improving a government’s image overseas, but rather domination and intimidation, some would say of a sado-masochistic nature, directed at obtaining total control of society in the homeland. Orwell’s Oceania did not welcome the erotic.

Israel and the Birth of Pubic Diplomacy

It would not do violence to history to suggest that this new branch of public diplomacy — allow me to call it pubic diplomacy, a term I hope will offend no one — began on Tuesday, May 19, 2007 at 9:00 pm, with a three-hour reception, hosted by Maxim, a men’s magazine, and Gal Gadot, Miss Israel 2004 — together with the Consulate General of Israel in New York — that took place at the Marquee at 289 Tenth Avenue, NYC.

The purpose of the event was to “celebrate the Maxim Magazine July 2007 feature, ‘women of the Israeli Defense Forces.'” The invitation was adorned by a color photograph of the luscious, dark-haired Ms. Gadot herself (a former army fitness instructor) in a bikini and high heels, lying on her back on the ledge of a terrace overlooking Tel Aviv, with the Mediterranean, dimly lit by sunlight, over the horizon. This eye-catching photo was published by the New York Post; and Ms. Gadot, who, according to Wikipedia, is in a relationship with Hebrew rapper Mike Blitz, subsequently appeared on major American television channels, gently and sympathetically interviewed by U.S. newscasters.

Israeli diplomats, representatives of a country that has witnessed extensive debate on how to improve its public diplomacy (the word is now used repeatedly in the Israeli press) in the wake of the Second Lebanon War, justified the photo spread of young Israeli women warriors in Maxim’s (“a beer and babes” magazine with 2.5 million readers appealing to young males) amidst accusations back in the Holy Land (but not, significantly, among the American mainstream media) that the pics of the scantily-clad military ladies were pornographic, treated women as objects, and promoted sex tourism. Arye Mekel, Consul-General of Israel in New York, quoted in the Israel News Agency (June 24), retorted that:

the pictures aren’t anything you wouldn’t see at a pool or a beach. Israel is always mentioned in the context of wars and violence. We want to show there is a normal life. Among the beautiful things [sic] we have are our women. We came there from 120 countries. Anytime you have a mix from any continents, you get very beautiful people. We don’t see having beautiful women as a problem.

Joel Leyden of the Israel News Agency (June 24) quotes David Saranga, Israel’s Consul For Media And Public Affairs at its New York Consulate, as saying that “[w]e found that Israel’s image among men aged 18-38 is lacking … so we thought we’d approach them with an image they’d find appealing.” Leydeen adds that, according to Saranga, “the beautiful models in Israel were a ‘Trojan horse’ to present Israel as a modern country with nice beaches and pretty women. ‘Many Americans don’t even know we have beaches,’ he said.”

Aljazeera.com, quoted by Prof. Brown, commented:

One interesting fact is that all the outrage in Israel is focused on the idea of using women as sex objects to promote tourism. But what’s more shocking is that sex here is not just being used to “improve” Israel’s image, but also to promote Zionism and gloss over the bitter realities of Israel’s occupation and apartheid.

Brand Israel, however, was envisaged and compiled back in 2005.

According to the Jewish Daily Forward, in 2005 The Israeli Foreign Ministry, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Finance Ministry concluded three years of consultation with American marketing executives and launched “Brand Israel,” a campaign to “re-brand” the country’s image to appear “relevant and modern” instead of militaristic and religious.

Israeli government social media integration was progressive. The GIYUS Megaphone software became operational during Israel’s war on South Lebanon in 2006, operating through RSS and enabling instant action alerts to be transmitted to users. GIYUS was discontinued in 2011.

In March 2009, Saranga was debriefed by the Diva Marketing Blog after his ground-breaking December 2008 twitter conference:

David Saranga: We have been involved in online work for some time, through our blogs (isRraelli and IsraelPolitik) and our presence on MySpace and Facebook. After reading about Twitter, we felt that the tool held a lot of potential for communicating with people online.

Firstly, we can “focus” on one person, but many people can tune in as well. This way, even when we are answering one person, other people are still taking part.

Secondly, Twitter is a site where people are increasingly going to talk, so we wanted to join the conversation where it was happening.

Toby/Diva Marketing: How did you achieve buy-in from the consulate and other stake holders?

David Saranga: The diplomatic staff here has really come to understand the value of web-based content and of social media. We told them how important a presence on Twitter could be, and they were hooked.

Also in May 2008, the Jewish Chronicle recorded:

Saranga believes the real results of his campaign will not be seen for years. “Rebranding a country can take 20 years or more. It involves more than just generating more positive stories about Israel. The process has to be internalised and integrated, too. Israelis must share in and believe in what we promote, and all consulates must ultimately communicate one unified message.”

To this end, international focus groups co-ordinated by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tzipi Livni, are now being undertaken in 13 countries. Three potential messages, brainstormed by an elite group of international branding experts, Israeli diplomats and PR agencies, are being tested to determine one global message for Israel. The results of the research will focus hasbara efforts in countries considered of greatest strategic importance, and where negative views of Israel are most severe, in particular in Europe. Research is being undertaken on how it can be applied in the UK.

In 2009, the Israeli Government officially expanded its hasbara operations in the blogosphere, enlisting volunteers:

The Immigrant Absorption Ministry announced on Sunday it was setting up an “army of bloggers,” to be made up of Israelis who speak a second language, to represent Israel in “anti-Zionist blogs” in English, French, Spanish and German.

Saranga has attended several Reut events and his social media strategy dovetails neatly with the Reut Institute plan to establish network hubs throughout the globe, to be linked up and coordinated ultimately from and for Israel with the aim of fighting ‘delegitimization’ perceived as damage from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign and based on the premise ‘It takes a network to fight a network’.

From Reut’s over-optimistically-titled 2011: The Year We Punched Back on the Assault on Israel’s Legitimacy:

Cultivating a network requires Israel and its allies to share a ‘common consciousness,’which can take the form of a shared goal, cause, or threat, and to mobilize around this shared understanding. Indeed, the GOI and Israeli and Jewish world organizations coalesced in identifying this assault on Israel as a top priority issue, tangibly manifested in structural changes and budget increases:

Hubs have been developed most fully now in Los Angeles, Orange County, London, the San Francisco Bay Area, South Africa and most recently, Toronto (a report is due from Reut on the Toronto hub soon). Reut also is targeting of late Spanish speaking communities. A tripartite syncretised identity and networking model for integration and mobilisation of Israeli expats in the Jewish diaspora with one of the aims strengthening and directing support back toward Israel is underway. The Israel Action Network(IAN) has been formed to facilitate and network hubs in North America.

Strengthening our network’s ‘hubs’ and ‘catalysts’ require systematically creating ‘meeting points.’Such meetings enhance the capabilities of pro-Israel activists in various global hubs by providing opportunities for them to exchange information, coordinate efforts, and generate a sense ofurgency about the need to fight Israel’s delegitimization. In addition, ‘meeting points’ enhance the connectivity of the network, facilitating its integration, helping shape a common language and shared guidelines, and enabling the creation of a flat and flexible structure.

Early this year, the National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS) became a full-time partner in “the Israeli government’s efforts to spread its propaganda online and on college campuses around the world”.

NUIS has launched a program to pay Israeli university students $2,000 to spread pro-Israel propaganda online for 5 hours per week from the “comfort of home.”

The union is also partnering with Israel’s Jewish Agency to send Israeli students as missionaries to spread propaganda in other countries, for which they will also receive a stipend.

This active recruitment of Israeli students is part of Israel’s orchestrated effort to suppress the Palestinian solidarity movement under the guise of combating “delegitimization” of Israel and anti-Semitism.

The involvement of the official Israeli student union as well as Haifa University, Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University and Sapir College in these state propaganda programs will likely bolster Palestinian calls for the international boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

The flaws and vulnerabilities of the overall labyrinthine structure are manifold, and I shall not deal with them here, except to note that people move toward and commit to justice as a useful common goal – justice for all benefits us all. A lack of justice for all conversely harms us all. When an artificial structure within ‘red lines’ is developed to subvert justice for all, it generally has a limited expiry date and collapses in a mathematically catastrophical way under the weight of its own contradictions. In view of 7 years development from 2005 to a sophisticated, networked array today, Israel’s multi-pronged social media strategy cannot be described as ‘in its infancy’.

Through singling itself out through daily human rights abuses, war crimes, ultra-racism, violence and brutal oppression, Israel continues to delegitimise itself and poison its brand.

The greatest enemy of injustice is a mirror.

Related Links

Half-naked soldiers: Israel’s latest propaganda campaign
Tell us, how many Arabs are too many? “How many human souls of an ethnicity inconvenient to your ideology are intolerable for you? Please put a number on it, I demand you do, so that we can better define the extent of your racism.”
Lies and Hysteria in the Campaign Against BDS – BDS is biting
Plastic, oestrogen, or the land kicking back?
THE PLACE OF PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN THE ASYMMETRIC MEDIA CONFLICT: THE “HASBARA EXAMPLE” IN THE HEZBOLLAH –ISRAEL MEDIA WAR

August 15, 2012December 11, 2020

Haneen Zoabi Responds to the Hasbara Bile of Nurit Tinari-Modai

Is this normal behaviour for other countries? Last week in the Irish media, the Deputy Ambassador of Israel in Ireland, Nurit Tinari-Modai, perniciously attacked with racist prevarications and insults Palestinian Israeli MK Haneen Zoabi during her visit to Ireland.

Haneen has responded to Modai, and her reply is worth reprinting in full:

‘Sir, – Deputy Israeli ambassador to Ireland Nurit Modai (August 10th) is correct that it is unusual to for an embassy to comment on the activities of an MP. Alas, it is all too usual when Israel is involved. Indeed, when it comes to Israel, the unusual routinely becomes the norm: laws that discriminate against the 18 per cent of its citizens who are Palestinian; state-instigated incitement against these citizens; prioritising one demographic group over another in the name of religion; all are “normal” in Israel.

Of course, she simply ignored the facts contained in the article about me, preferring to avoid such unwinnable arguments. She has nothing to say regarding the 30-plus laws which discriminate against Palestinian citizens in all areas: confiscation of land, land use, housing licenses, areas of residency, education laws which make it impossible to learn our Palestinian history and literature, publicly funded institutions being prohibited from commemorating Al Nakba (the Zionist expulsion of 85 per cent of the indigenous Palestinians from their homeland to forcibly create the Israeli state), etc.

There is even a classical apartheid law (the 2011 Admission Committees Law) which makes it de facto legal for 578 community villages to refuse Palestinian citizens residency on the basis of unsuitability for the “social fabric of the community”.

More generally, the average income of a Jewish family is three times more than for a Palestinian family in Israel, 50 per cent of us live under the poverty line, and we only make up 7.9 per cent of university students.

In Israel we Palestinians must deny our national identity; otherwise we will become “disloyal” citizens, “traitors”. We are “betraying” the state by struggling against racism and discrimination, because we must accept the fact that this is a “Jewish state”, created to privilege its Jewish citizens.

My uncle, whom deputy ambassador felt the need to drag into the debate, didn’t challenge any of this; thus, he became one of the “good Arabs” which Israel uses as propaganda cover. But it is worth pointing out that he is only one of two Palestinian citizens to have served on the Supreme Court since 1948, while more than 80 Jewish citizens have served in that time. My family’s participation in the political life of Israel proves nothing other than that we have used what limited democratic outlets are available to us to advance the cause of our people.

Indeed, Israel could afford a veneer of “democracy” towards previous generations of Palestinian citizens because, like my uncle, they never challenged their position in society. Generally speaking, a whole generation acted as such, out of fear and sense of weakness and defeat. These fears were well founded; until 1966 Palestinian citizens lived under military rule, similar to what our people in the Occupied Territories now experience. Things have changed, however, as the majority of my generation, (the fourth generation after Al Nakba), decided to reject the inherent racism and discrimination of the state towards them and organise to defeat these deficits of democracy.

The embassy also attempted to portray the “Jewish” nature of the state as akin to the “Irish” nature of Ireland. This false comparison, however, merely proves the points I make; they refuse to recognise that definition is entirely exclusivist in nature – it is based on a specific ethno-religious grouping, and thus excludes the entirety of the Palestinian and other non-Jewish citizens from the definition of the state, making the full realisation of their rights an impossibility.

The deputy ambassador has no answer for this, so she attempts to play the “religious card” by presenting false statistics regarding Christians – once again denying our Palestinian identity by dividing us into religions. We are not merely Christians or Muslims, nor are we “Israeli Arabs”, we are Palestinian citizens of Israel and we are struggling for our full national and equal rights, which means to have a democratic state for all its citizens. – Yours, etc,

HANEEN ZOABI, MK,

Knesset,

Kiryat Ben Gurion,

Jerusalem, Israel.’

Below, Haneen challenges the apartheid Israeli entity’s practices during her visit to Dublin.

And in the following vid, Haneen presents the case of Palestinian people in debate with representatives of racist settlers, liberal zionists and a member of the J14 movement.

Zoe Lawlor has kindly permitted her comment on Nurit Tinai-Modai’s chastisement of Haneen Zoabi, which was submitted and not published in the Irish Times, to be published here:

The very fact that the Deputy Ambassador of Israel wrote to the Irish Times to castigate Palestinian parliamentarian Haneen Zoabi underscores Ms Zoabi’s assertion that she is treated not as “a second class citizen” but as “an enemy, a strategic threat” by that state.

I don’t recall letters from the Deputy Ambassador condemning other Knesset members such as those who recently described African migrants as a “cancer” or indeed visitor to Ireland MK Rivlin who had previously stated, contrary to international law, “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel”.

That Ms. Modai describes the illegal, immoral siege of Gaza as “necessary” is telling and perfectly encapsulates Israel’s brutal oppression of the Palestinian people. Israel a democracy? Not for all its citizens.

Palestine / Israel Links

Other Links

Leader Of Anti-Semitic Party In Hungary Discovers He’s Jewish

Australia Links

Love letter from Australia’s reptilian politicians to asylum seekers largely created through US dirty wars in which Australia is complicit: “Don’t even think about taking a boat to escape the consequences of our grovelling warmongering partnership with the US, because we’ll lock you up offshore for the term of your natural lives”.

August 4, 2012December 11, 2020

Plan Bibi C – Plan Dalet Is Still Being Implemented

Plan Bibi C, a refinement of Nutanyahoo’s Bar Ilan speech, highlights the moral and political bankrupty of two state idealism:

‘Israel has already de facto annexed Area C. The route of the separation barrier is no longer relevant. Creeping annexation is taking place deep within the West Bank, coming right up against Palestinian population centers in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron. Israel is investing billions of shekels in land in Area C and deliberately preventing the development of Palestinian infrastructure there. At the same time, a sophisticated campaign is under way to change the way the public regards Area C, and the Levy report is part of that. Also, in light of proposals to apply Israeli sovereignty to “all the communities in Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu will be able to portray his plan as relatively moderate.’

Plan Dalet is still being implemented in the West Bank – expansionism – settler colonialism – remains Israel’s strategy, tactic and aim; apartheid, strangulation and dispossession of Indigenous Palestinian people the desired outcome.

The limp protestations of the new NIF director, Brian Lurie display the hollow contradictions of ‘Jewish and democratic state’ hasbara and the racism underlying the liberal zionist response to the voracious Likud vision.

‘To me, the occupation is like a cancer. It’s eating us. Forget about them [the Palestinians]: It’s about what it’s doing to us.’

As long as the cry of Indigenous Palestinians for basic human rights, justice and freedom is ignored, there can be no claim of democracy or morality. Israel continues to delegitimise itself.

Related Links

Time to expose the duplicitous morally bankrupt hasbara behind this malicious attempt to submerge the rights of Palestinian people behind the impact of ziocolonialism had throughout the ME region after zionists invaded Palestine where emigrants were often enticed to emigrate in order to boost cheap Jewish labour and numbers to colonise Palestinian land. Palestinians are not to blame for their own invasion and their rights as invaded, dispossessed people are not secondary to the claims Jewish people in the ME might make against Mossad for its false flag ops and the zionist elite who encouraged and often bribed them to emigrate to the ziocolony. Jewish folks who have legitimate claims can pursue their cause through the appropriate bodies, but Palestinian rights are not contingent upon fulfillment of these claims, despite what the US congress might think.

Do not criticise Australia! it is a personal attack on my aussiehood!
That zionists feel the need to project this submergence of the self into the nation is probably symptomatic of the end phase of Israel. On National identity

When, as I shall eventually argue, the idea of the individual as “inherently limited and sovereign” collapses, the nation is doomed to follow suit, since its very conceptualisation feeds on the concept of the individual. If the individual can be shown to have several histories, so can the nation — and the two concepts collapse simultaneously when the consequences are fully worked out.’