Zionism

February 18, 2012December 11, 2020

Netanyahu Called For Mass Expulsions of Palestinians in 1989

The Jerusalem Post of 19 November 1989 reported Netanyahu’s address to students at Bar-Ilan University in reference to the June 1989 Tiananmen Square crisis:

HIGHLIGHT: Deputy Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has called for Israel to exploit political opportunities in order to expel large numbers of Palestinians from the territories. Netanyahu made the remark in a speech to Bar-Ilan University students on Thursday. In a tape recording of a portion of Netanyahu’s address obtained by The Jerusalem Post last night, the deputy foreign minister clearly states that “five, 50 or 500” inciters should have been expelled at various times since the start of the intifada.

…

Netanyahu told the students that the government had failed to exploit politically favourable situations in order to carry out “large-scale” expulsions at times when “the damage would have been relatively small.

“I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people,” Netanyahu said.

Then on November 21, 1989, the Jerusalem Post reports Netanyahu attempting to mitigate his previous, unambiguous comments:

EVERYONE KNEW WHAT I MEANT,’ SAYS NETANYAHU ABOUT EXPULSIONS

HIGHLIGHT: Deputy Foreign Minister Binyamin Netanyahu yesterday denied that he had called for large-scale expulsions of Palestinians from the territories. Replying in the Knesset to a motion for the agenda by Tewfik Toubi, (Democratic Front for Peace and Equality) which was struck off by a large majority, Netanyahu said that in his speech to students at Bar-Ilan University last Thursday he had referred to inciters and not to the general population.

The Jerusalem Post documents cannot be reproduced without permission, but “are available on LexisNexis if you have access. They can also be purchased from the ProQuest Archiver (here and here).”

Is Netanyahu attempting to create and exploit favourable conditions by agitating for a war with Iran in order to begin mass expulsions of Palestinians now, “when the damage might be relatively small”?

Is Israel’s expulsion of thousands of Sudanese refugees a practice run?

Ethnic cleansing has notable political support in Israel – Tzipi Livni and Avigdor Lieberman have also raised the spectre of mass expulsions from Israel more recently.

Livni, often misrepresented as a “dovish” figure, has been consistent in her desire to get rid of Palestinian citizens of Israel in order to maintain Jewish ethnic purity, so much so, that even former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was shocked by Livni’s extreme views.

During Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in 2008, the Palestine Papers revealed, Livni was one of the foremost proponents of transferring areas populated by Palestinians from within Israel to the putative Palestinian state.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and other Israeli politicians openly advocate various kinds of “transfer” schemes.

Whether Netanyahu is contemplating a critical scenario enabling mass expulsions, he is already facilitating mass dispossession and displacement of Palestinians by inexorable stealth.

Professor Raquel Rolnik, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing said this month:

“From the Galilee and the Negev to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the Israeli authorities promote a territorial development model that excludes, discriminates against and displaces minorities, particularly affecting Palestinian communities.” The Rapporteur also added that “Throughout my visit I received repeated complaints regarding lack of housing, threats of demolitions and evictions, overcrowding, the disproportional number of demolitions affecting Palestinian communities side by side with the accelerated development of predominantly Jewish settlements”.

…

According to Prof. Rolnik, in East Jerusalem she witnessed the inadequate housing conditions and deficiencies in basic infrastructure faced by Palestinian neighbourhoods and villages. “The policies adopted by Israeli authorities severely restrict Palestinians from building legally through various means. Among others, Israel has not provided Palestinians with the necessary planning framework to ensure that their basic housing and infrastructure needs are met.” she said. Moreover, the number of permits issued is grossly inadequate to housing needs leading many Palestinians to build without obtaining a permit. As a result, numerous Palestinians homes or extensions to these are considered illegal so that the inhabitants are subjected to eviction orders and the demolition of their houses. “Currently tens of thousands of Palestinians are estimated to be at risk of their homes being demolished due to unregulated building. The mere threat of demolition has a profound impact on families and particularly on children, psychological and otherwise.” explained the Rapporteur.

In the West Bank the territorial fragmentation and the severe deterioration of Palestinian standards of living are furthered by decades of accelerated expansion of Israeli settlement units that expropriate land and natural resources. “To a certain extent, these territorial and demographic changes promoted in the West Bank, mirror changes occurred within the Israeli territory after 1948, where Palestinian presence was progressively limited in parallel to a disproportional support to the expansion of Jewish communities.” said Rolnik.Following a visit to the Arab al-Jahalin Bedouin community of Khan al-Ahmar, UN Special Rapporteur Rolink said: “This community, among others in the area of “Greater Jerusalem”, has been informed by the Civil Administration that a master plan has been approved which would lead to their expulsion from the area where they currently live for the expansion of the Ma’ale Adumin settlement. The only school in the area, which was built by the community, is under a demolition order. The community is in great uncertainty regarding its future.”

Prof. Rolnik concluded that after the Oslo agreements, Israel retained official temporary control over the vast majority of the occupied West Bank (Area C). At present, more than half a million Israeli-Jews, have settled in the occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. “Throughout my visit, I was able to witness a land development model that excludes, discriminates against and displaces minorities in Israel which is being replicated in the occupied territory, affecting Palestinian communities. The Bedouins in the Negev – inside Israel – as well as the new Jewish settlements in area C of the West Bank and inside Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem – are the new frontiers of dispossession of the traditional inhabitants, and the implementation of a strategy of Judaization and control of the territory.

Related Links

Bernard Avishai says in his book “The Hebrew Republic” a 2007 poll showed 60% of Israeli Palestinians feared mass expulsions, while 68% of Israeli Jews feared civil uprising by Israeli Palestinians.
Jewish settlements in the rulings of the European Court of Justice

Day 63 of Khader Adnan’s Hunger Strike For Palestinian Justice & Dignity

CNN picks up the story: Palestinian’s hunger strike puts spotlight on Israeli detentions
Khader Adnan: Hungry for dignity
The people of Bil’in, who continue to struggle for the return of their lands still sequestered behind Israel’s wall, marked seven years of resistance this Friday. The demonstration was devoted to express solidarity with Khader Adnan, the administrative detainee who has been on hunger strike for the past 62 days and is currently on the verge of death.
Addameer profile of KHADER ADNAN MOHAMMAD MUSA
Khader Adnan at Electronic Intifada
Khader Adnan at Risk of Death on 60th Day of Hunger Strike
“We are all Khader Adnan” : Thousands of Palestinian people demonstrate for #KhaderAdnan in West Bank & Gaza
Write a letter of support and solidarity to Khader Adnan and his family
More weasily words from Ashton: EU’s Ashton ‘concerned’ for Palestinian hunger striker

Palestine / Israel Links

Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (09 – 15 Feb. 2012)
The Seacret Debate: Conflict over the Conflict

Seacret is an Israeli company that sells cosmetics made from minerals extracted from the Dead Sea.

Its products are labelled, “Made In Israel”.

The Australian Friends of Palestine Association (AFOPA) is an Adelaide-based activist group formed in 2003, which campaigns against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people.

AFOPA accuses Seacret of stealing Palestinian resources to make its products.

Since October 2010, members of AFOPA having been regularly protesting on Friday nights outside the Seacret store in Rundle Mall.

They wear green shirts, carry Palestinian flags and hand out flyers.

“Firstly, we hope that the effects of the boycott will encourage the owners of Seacret to put pressure on the Israeli government to change their inhumane policies to the Palestinians,” AFOPA member Margaret Cassar says.

“Secondly, Seacret is an Israeli company that profits from the illegal military occupation of Palestine.

“Its use of Dead Sea minerals in its products is in direct contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention which forbids exploitation of resources in land held by an occupying power.”

Israeli Extremists On Facebook Celebrate Death of Palestinian Children Killed In Traffic Accident

Israel divestment campaign picks up steam among Presbyterians
Book identifies pressure points for boycott actions
Israel teaches American police how to treat Occupy Wall Street protesters like Palestinians

February 17, 2012December 11, 2020

Free Khader Adnan – Dignity and Justice for Palestinians

Respect to Khader Adnan and his family – let’s hope that the cruel apartheid Israeli regime delivers a rare display of mercy so the life of this heroic Palestinian is preserved. Khader is being held by Israel on no charge and without trial. The capricious Israeli military court has refused his appeal against arbitrary detention.

62 days into a hunger strike protest, Khader personifies the spirit of Indigenous Palestinian sumud, steadfastness in the face of overwhelming political malice – the collective punishment, colonialism and apartheid perpetrated by the ethnosupremacist zionist state.

According to Prisoners Rights organisation, Addameer, Israel currently holds 310 Palestinians under administration detention, including 18 Palestinian Legislative Council members. Free all Palestinian political prisoners now!

Related Links

If Khader Adnan was anything but Palestinian
The West Bank’s Bobby Sands : Khader Adnan’s two-month hunger strike has made him a hero among Palestinians outraged by Israel’s policy of arbitrary detention –

Physicians for Human Rights issued a medical report this week supporting a petition to the Supreme Court for his release. In it the group said that even though Mr Adnan had agreed to be treated with an infusion of liquids and salts, augmented by glucose and vitamins, he had refused to end his hunger strike and was in “immediate danger of death”. The report added that a fast “in excess of 70 days does not permit survival”.

The Supreme Court petition, for which no date has been set for a hearing, is the last judicial chance to save his life as Mr Adnan has said he will not end his fast until he is released from his four months of administrative detention. A military appeals court ruled this week that he must remain in detention until May.

The EU’s shameful silence on Khader Adnan :

‘Catherine Ashton, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, publicly sympathised with the family of Shalit at every conceivable opportunity, never acknowledging that the Israeli soldier belonged to an army of occupation and was taking part in acts of aggression against the Palestinian people when he was captured. Does she regard his life as more important than that of Adnan, a man in detention without being charged or convicted of an offence?

Is she more worried about the oppressor, than the oppressed? It would appear so.

Almost 12 hours ago, I contacted Ashton’s office, requesting an urgent explanation for her silence on Adnan’s hunger strike. I have still not received a response.’

Palestinian’s Hunger Strike Challenges Detention by Israel

Palestine / Israel Links

Some Israelis react with joy to deaths of Palestinian kids in bus crash, others revolted by racism
After Jerusalem crash, racist comments appear on Netanyahu’s Facebook page: Satisfaction that “only Palestinians” were the victims and slogans such as “Death to Arabs, why do we help them?” were posted on the Facebook pages of Netanyahu, Wallah and the Israel Police.
“I was not counting my todahs and shukrans” new Jerusalem NY Times bureau chief Jodi Rudoren becomes aware of zionist linguistic apartheid.
‘A level of racist violence I have never seen’: UCLA professor Robin D. G. Kelley on Palestine and the BDS movement

‘To me, that emphasis on normalization is one of the more dangerous things, because if they succeed in convincing the world that this is not a state of war or occupation but rather this is really the heart of the kind of Western democracy that’s like the rest of the world, the Western world at least–then in some ways that’s how they try and win. And part of what the boycott does is it delegitimizes the claim that this is a normal situation. It’s not a normal situation, it’s a settler-colonial situation, a situation of oppression.’

February 14, 2012December 11, 2020

“It’s very complicated” : Shit Zionists Say

Hilarious!

In response to the video, there’s rumours of an Academy award for Ali Abunimah feted as “highly convincing as a zionist”, from JF’s Dan Friedman.

And on a more serious note, from the Russell Tribunal on Palestine:

John Dugard gives a presentation on how “the apartheid regime operated in law and policy in South Africa, and provide an overview of Israeli law and policy with respect to the prohibition on apartheid.” for the 3rd International Session of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine in Cape Town in November 2011

Related Links

So much for ‘normalisation’ : A school set up to promote peace and understanding between Arab and Jewish communities in Jerusalem has been hit by vandals who have daubed racist threats on its playground walls, including “Death to Arabs”.

Michael Ladson reports on the racist opposition to the Penn BDS conference:

An historic national conference to promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement directed at ending Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people was held at the University of Pennsylvania Feb. 3-5.

Even before the conference began a wave of vicious racist attacks were directed against Palestine solidarity activists by the campus press, on-line blogs and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Penn students active in organizing the conference were verbally attacked by pro-Israeli forces.

Perhaps the most disgusting was the anti-Semitic slur of “kapos” aimed at Jewish pro-BDS students by Professor Ruben Gur in the campus paper The Daily Pennsylvanian. The term refers to Jews who collaborated with Nazis in concentration and extermination camps during World War II.

The night before the conference opened, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz — an apologist for Israeli and U.S. war crimes — addressed an event sponsored by several Penn academic departments and the college chapters of the Republicans and Democrats.

Dershowitz encouraged this audience to deny the brutal ethnic cleansing of Palestinians during the creation of the State of Israel, known as al-Nakba.

February 11, 2012December 11, 2020

Anonymous puts the Government of Israel on Notice

(Youtube video now unavailable)

To the government of the state of Israel.

We are Anonymous.

For too long we have tolerated your crimes against humanity and allowed your sins to go unpunished.

Through the use of media deception and political bribery, you have amassed the sympathies of many. You claim to be democratic, yet in reality this is far from the truth, in fact your only goal is to better the lives of a select few while carelessly trampling the liberties of the masses. We see through the propaganda that you circulate through the main stream media and lobby through the political establishment.

Your Zionist bigotry has displaced and killed a great many. As the world weeps, you laugh while planning your next attack. All of this is done under the veil of peace but so long as your regime exists peace shall be hindered.

You label all who refuse to comply with your superstitious demands as antisemetic. And have taken steps to ensure a nuclear holocaust. You are unworthy to exist in your current form and will therefore face the wrath of anonymous. Your empire lacks legitimacy and because of this you must govern behind a curtain of deceit. We will not allow you to attack a sovereign country based upon a campaign of lies. Your grip over humanity will weaken and man will be closer to freedom.

But before this is accomplished the people of this world will rise against you and renounce you in all your worth. Our crusade against your reign of terror shall commence in 3 steps.

Step one will be initiated after the release of this video and will be comprised of systematically removing you from the internet.

Step two will be later disclosed and is already in initiation. And as for step 3, well think of this one as a present from Anonymous to you. We will not stop until the police state becomes a free state.

We are anonymous.

We are legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Israeli government; Expect us.

Israel / Palestine Links

Interview: Ex-prisoner reflects on friendship with Khader Adnan and his hunger strike for justice

Britain helps Israeli water thieves

British Water has decided to cooperate with MATIMOP, an Israeli government agency that has been ordered to enter into international agreements and “aggressively expand opportunities for Israel’s industry”.

Al Jazeera English Doesn’t Care About Khader Adnan

Zionist belligerents don’t want Israel to attack Iran till after Madonna’s visit.

February 6, 2012August 24, 2022

“Justice is the essence of peace” – Ali Abunimah’s Address at Penn BDS

Some memorable quotes:

“If our demands, these rights, threaten the existence of Israel, what does that say about Israel?”

“The hysteria about this conference tells us soemthing about the moment we are in, we are in the endgame.”

“Israelis don’t have a right to superiority.”

“We’re here for the dozens of children born at military checkpoints because Israelis have not allowed ambulances through.”

“We are here in solidarity with the prisoners, including nearly 200 Palestinian children.”

“It’s the occupation forces who should be standing trial, not the children.”

“We stand together against all forms of bigotry: against racism, against Islamophobia, against anti-Semitism; we are one against sexism, against homophobia, against discrimination due to physical ability; we affirm and embrace the rights, dignity and equality of all human beings; and all are welcome here tonight.”

“Palestinians are told: ‘you must be nonviolent’. Why don’t we hear that said to Israel?”

“End the military occupation, end all forms of discriminationa against Palestinians in Israel, recognise Palestinians’ right of return. None of these goals contradict the rights of Israelis.”

“We are the 99%, we have to link this struggle to so many other struggles, here and round the world.”

“We have an abuse of the Civil Rights act, insteading of opening the campus, it’s designed to silence discussion.”

“The BDS movement grew out of the realisation that the US and UN were not upholding their responsibilities.

They don’t because of the power realities. We have to do it ourselves. We’d like to reach a state where states acted responsibly. US resisted sanctions against SAfrica to the very end – it’s often citizens’ movements that push governments to act responsibly from the bottom up, not the top down.

The amazing thing about the movemetn is that it is led by Palestinians, the BNC, but the implementation is done by local initiatives and creativity all over the world. The question is where do you think it will go over the next 5 yrs – I look forward to your creativity. We have to do that work as part of the broader solidarity movement … It’s true Palestine has been a taboo even on the left in this country for a very long time.

Palestine was always pushed to the side, but this is changing. The shift is that Palestine is part of a much larger global struggle.”

Irish Chief Rabbinate Links to Extremist Groups

The Irish Chief Rabbinate has some unsavoury associations, linking to extremist Jewish groups:

‘The JDO is a self-described “militant” organisation, though others have labelled it a “terrorist group”. It is a splinter group from the more infamous Jewish Defence League (JDL), and like the JDL subscribes to the extremist Zionist ideology of Kahanism, and boasts of physically attacking pro-Palestinian activists in the US.’

Gideon Levy tells it like it is on Iran

Israel should be afraid of its leaders, not Iran:

‘All Israeli wars since 1973 were flawed wars of choice. Israel initiated all of them. None of them was inevitable, none resulted in any benefit that could not have been achieved using different means. In fact all of them were disastrous for us, even if the disaster was even greater for the other side. The most megalomaniac of them all, the Second Lebanon War, was also the most disastrous of them all. This bears remembering when debating the even greater megalomania of an attack on Iran. ‘

Israel / Palestine Links

Israel before democratic protest: Zionist extremist member for Caulfield David Southwick @SouthwickMP slanders BDS
Boycott apartheid Israeli blood diamonds
The Australian Greens showed they were “joining the bastards” when they watered down their platform on BDS.
Human Rights Watch: ‘Israeli policies have arbitrarily denied thousands of Palestinians the right to live in or travel to and from the West Bank and Gaza’
Ben White debunks BICOM’s lies and looks at some of the laws privileging Jews at the expense of Palestinians in apartheid Israel.
‘A wide variety of youth organizations has organized the protests to oppose the French acquisition of $500 million worth of drones from Israeli Airspace Industries.’
Ethnic cleanser in waiting, Yair Lapid – “Jerusalem belongs only to the people of Israel”
Israel’s grab of West Bank heritage sites funded by ‘charitable’ tax-deductible donations through the United Israel Appeal and Keren Hayesod worldwide continues.
‘In cooperation with our allies internationally, PACBI members will be supporting various IAW 2012 activities wherever possible. We see IAW, which has spread dramatically over the past years to include events in over 100 cities, as a clear sign of the growing momentum of the BDS movement globally and on university campuses specifically.’
Bilal Hassan explains the obvious: Israeli preconditions kill talks before they begin.
Who made Netanyahu the leader of the Jewish people?

Growing up as a Jewish anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, I was often told by white racists to “go back to Israel”. The idea that Jews don’t belong among non-Jews is the traditional language of anti-Semitism – and also of the modern ideology of Zionism that emerged in the late 19th century. Zionism’s founder, Theodore Herzl, believed that anti-Semitism of the sort I encountered was inevitable and even “natural” whenever Jews lived among gentiles. He effectively concurred with the anti-Semites’ remedy: that I should “go back to Israel”.

Apartheid, by the way, denied black people the rights of citizenship on the basis that their “national homelands” were in Bantustans such as Transkei and Kwazulu – bogus “states” in which they supposedly would exercise their right to self-determination.

Jews have certainly suffered for the right to live in security and safety, but the majority have chosen to exercise that right not in a separate Jewish nation state, but instead as Americans, Argentines, British or French. When Mr Netanyahu proclaims himself not just the prime minister of Israel, but also the “leader of the Jewish people”, that’s an expression of an ideology that holds that we’re a separate nation. I don’t believe that the majority of diaspora Jews are comfortable with the idea that they’re not really Americans or other nationalities, but are instead part of a separate people whose “national home” is Israel. While their grandparents’ experience may have been one of Jewish persecution and impermanence, most young Jews in the West today are not assuming that their gentile neighbours are going to turn on them.

If the current distribution of the world’s Jewish population changes in the coming decades, Israel’s share is more likely to shrink than to grow. The Israeli government revealed in 2003 that some 750,000 Israeli Jews were living abroad. Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert addressed French Jews a couple of years later and implored them to send their children “home” to Israel. Ironically, his sons were living in Paris and New York at that time.

By insisting that the Palestinians declare Israel “the national home of the Jewish people”, Mr Netanyahu is, in effect, asking Mahmoud Abbas to recognise a claim against which more than half of the world’s Jews have voted with their feet.

Another ‘This Week in Palestine’, Israel attacks, thieves land, demolishes Palestinians’ homes, 56 incursions

‘Charging these “Me Firsters” with principled loyalty to Israel drastically overestimates them. The record suggests that they are, as a rule, in it squarely for themselves. This confusion is significant, for example because a more realistic appreciation of the interests driving the Israel lobby and its sympathisers would draw attention to the ways in which support for Israeli militarism benefits and speaks to elite interests in the US, rather than just in Israel.’ (I’d go further about how US militarism benefits and speaks to elite interests in Israel 🙂

The US is blackmailing the UN again. “Ban told Abbas that continued bids for UN membership would harm the organization, due to further cuts in American funding.”
How illegal Israeli settlers terrorise an Indigenous Palestinian family on their own land without reprimand from Israel, which rarely prosecutes its expansionist vanguard for their crimes. This policy is constitutes a war crime.
Israeli fascists harass elected Palestinian representatives in the Knesset, highlighting Israel’s rancid, thuggish ethnocracy.
13 Injured in Nabi Saleh During Weekly Non-Violent Protest
Israeli international law experts: the Supreme Court erred in permitting Israel to operate quarries in the occupied territories
Anti-Semitism And Israel’s Inherent Contradictions

Other Links

As’ad AbuKhalil critiques the imperialist charade at the UN re Syria
Solidarity with the Egyptian revolution against the US-backed junta.