Ali Abunimah, Guardian’s Ian Black and Israeli settler debate EU settlement rule
Ali Abunimah:
“This decision is somewhat limited. For decades, the EU has been complicit with Israel’s violent occupation of the Occupied Territories.
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The settlements are war crimes and people who aid and abet the settlements should be regarded as war criminals.
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This move starts to send a message.”
Responding to Fleischer:
“Interesting to hear the settler adopting a progressive language when he has admitted he lives on occupied land in East Jerusalem. He refers not to Palestinians, but in a generic way, to Arabs.
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The EU … has said nothing as far as I know about ongoing ethnic cleansing of tens of thousands of Palestinians within the so-called Green Line.
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I’m reminded of the fact that at one point in humanity’s dark history, white slave owners used the bible to justify the ownership of other human beings, to justify slavery and we have these extremist settlers like Mr. Fleischer claiming that the bible gives them the right to bulldoze their way into other people’s land, other people’s olive groves, other people’s homes and living rooms and take them and to come on here and give us this sob story that they want to live in peace. And that’s why the whole world is against them.”
Ian Black:
“To some extent, the EU is responding to pressure from their own people.”
Fleischer duplicitously claims Indigenousness to the land. (Later he claims he ‘bought’ the land).
Ali Abunimah:
“Mr. Fleischer is a settler living on land illegally occupied by Israel in the war of 1967. It’s not his land. I could feel a connection to anything, it doesn’t give me the right to go and grab it and then say but I just want to live in peace. The whole world understands that, that Palestinians are being forced off their land so that settlers like Mr. Fleischer can enjoy it and have swimming pools and lovely houses. Right now as we speak tens of thousands of Palestinians Bedouins are being forced of their land in the Naqab in the south of present-day Israel in a process that has been going on for decades and the EU has been aiding and abetting this and dragging its feet. This step that we have been talking about … is a small step and if it’s a move toward tougher policies that Ian Black says, then good, but the reality is that Israel has been getting away with this for years and years.”
On the 17 July edition of Worldview on WBEZ radio, Ali Abunimah discussed the EU’s decision:
Pinkwash, Greenwash, Hogwash: A talk by Ali Abunimah from Albino Squirrel Channel on Vimeo.
Pinkwash, Greenwash, Hogwash: Ali Abunimah on Israel’s use of sex and marketing to distract from apartheid
All videos from the Homonationalism and Pinkwashing conference in New York
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The West Bank and Gaza are prisons and designated collective punishment zones for people of colour. They are the result of ethnosupremacists being permitted impunity to pursue people of colour, hunt them down, murder them, deprive them of rights, steal their land, property, culture and voice. In Australia there were missions, in the US and Canada, reservations, in South Africa, bantustans for Indigenous people seen as undeserving of their own homeland by settler invaders. Settler colonial Israel embodies and manifests apartheid, racism and genocide.
Israeli land thieves howl for implementation of the Levi Report to ‘legitimise’ settler outposts following EU affirmation of the illegality of Israel’s existing thefts in the West Bank.
Israel’s Response to EU Boycott: 1,000 Yesha Homes
Related Links
How Israel uses settlers to establish illegal beachheads on Palestinian land, which then provide an excuse for military fortification.
‘The settlers would not be able to terrorize their neighbors if they didn’t know they had the support of the strongest army in the Middle East, which can turn a village into a training site because it feels like it, or can turn into an armed gang at the drop of a hat. Without the army, the settlers could not exist.
And vice versa: without the settlers, the army would find it difficult to maintain its hold on the West Bank. Retreating from some godforsaken military camp is much easier than from a “settlement.” Throughout the settlement period, the army – allegedly a neutral body, taking its orders from the elected government – was a part of the land theft scheme. No settlement and no outpost were built without the army giving it, at the least, tacit quiet approval and often much more (not to mention sending its men to defend the new outpost).’
Non-violent resistance on the ground against Israel’s malignant expansionism in the West Bank through Festivals of Resistance.
Hafez Huraini, a member of the popular committee, explained what they hoped to achieve through the festival. ‘We want to send a strong message to everyone, Palestinians and Israelis, with our example: nonviolence is possible, is effective, and it is the only way to fight for justice, dignity and peace”.
One of the ways Nutanyahoo is executing his Bar Ilan plan is by declaring military firing zones on Palestinian land. Another is through lawfare. There’s a bill on the books to ‘legitimise’ even more outpost tentacles of Israeli expansionism in the West Bank. Why is Israel squealing hard about the EU moves against settlements? because the EU has directly assaulted Israel’s major strategy. What does Israel do? it immediately announces more settlement growth.
Delegitimisation of Israel’s ‘brand’, which is not just one of occupation, but also settler colonialism, racism, apartheid and neolib collaboration with imperialism is just one of the impacts of BDS. BDS attacks Israel’s prime strategy, tactic and goal – expansionism, but is still only a tactic, one part of a larger picture. This article seems to mistake BDS for a national liberation strategy. (FB)
This contemptible article highlights the essential bigoted nature of liberal zionism, with its anti-jewish stereotypes, even as it advocates boycott. Beware, folks, don’t buy Israeli bigotry, whether it comes from right or left, it discredits the human rights principles on which the boycott movement is based. (FB)
Why boycott can’t be limited only to Israeli occupation and settlements
Andrew Kadi:
‘It’s simply dishonest to perpetuate the myth that the settlements or the occupation are somehow disconnected from the Israeli state, the very government that funds, equips, and protects settlements, deploys its army to maintain its occupation of 1967, and that systematically discriminates against Palestinians who constitute 20 percent of its citizens.’
Nutanyahoo goes into supersonic whine mode
From IPSC: The EU stance doesn’t go far enough … the settlements are inseparable from the regime which administers and encourages them
Has the EU really caused an “earthquake” for Israel?
Israel’s social cohesion one of the lowest in the Western world
‘The main reason for Israel’s low standing is a lack of tolerance, lack of faith in political and social institutions, and a very low perception of fairness on the part of the Israeli public.’ (FB)
EU guidelines on Israeli settlements send out powerful message
‘This explicit restatement of the EU’s position is intended to force an end to the ambiguity that has helped Israel to maintain and expand its presence beyond the old “green line” border since the 1967 Middle East war – without incurring significant costs.
The EU’s “territorial applicability clause” spells out that there can be consequences for flouting UN resolutions and international legality. Not enormous ones, true, but they still include funding, co-operation, scholarships, research funds and prizes for institutions in Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, whose population now number about 520,000 people. Ariel University, near the Palestinian city of Nablus, is one obvious target.’
Why does the New York Times sanitise the news on Israel’s illegal settlements?
Zionists growing ever more desperate to counter BDS. ‘Pro-Israel advocacy group JCC Watch is holding protests on the second Thursday of each month until it sees new guidelines that prevent the UJA-Federation of New York’s funding of activities that give a platform to activists of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, the JNS news agency reports.’
Zionist hasbaroid claims recent expressed fears of BDS in Israel will stymy the illusion of a peace process
Israel’s main fear is that the guidelines will jeopardize Horizon 2020
EU guidelines: a point of no return
Israeli banks may lose access to large loans under new EU rule on occupied lands
Israeli banks, businesses and public bodies will lose access to hundreds of millions of euros in European Investment Bank loans, under new European Union guidelines on Israeli settlements, Palestinian campaigners said today.
This could be the most serious impact of the EU’s decision to ban future subsidies to Israel unless agreements explicitly exclude the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip and Syria’s Golan Heights, occupied by Israel in 1967.
Other Palestine/Israel and BDS Links
For Sydneyites – rally for Palestine on 17th August
For Melbournites this Friday – be there!
Honour to Madiba, on your 95th birthday.
“We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of Palestinians.”
Obama, while you support the Israeli apartheid regime you do not have any right to appropriate Nelson Mandela and his ‘the path to justice, equality, and freedom’ in any way.
Jewish South African paramilitary group CSO acts illegally and brutally.
Protest to Israel’s Prawer Plan land grab and expulsions has unified Palestinians in resistance.
Wits University appeasing zionists. ‘Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa, is becoming embroiled in controversy. This morning, in what is being described by students as a blow to the values of “transparency and administrative justice”, Advocate J.A. Woodward S.C, who is presiding over the trial of 11 Wits University students, “kicked-out” and prevented both representatives of the media as well as members of the public from attending the trial after a submission of “prejudice” was made by Wits University’s legal representative, Mr Mothibi on behalf of the University’s Management. ‘
Magda Haroun, head of the Egyptian Jewish community: “Zionism is a racist movement that discriminates between people on the basis of religion. The failure to draw a distinction between Judaism as a religion and the Israeli state is the result of ignorance, which is to blame on social science curricula and teachers.” Well, it’s also the fault of the zionist elite, who deliberately spread hasbara to conflate Israel with all Jews.
“Palestinians stand with those who mourn Trayvon Martin’s death. We know what it feels like to lose loved ones and to watch the murderers evade justice.”
From Israeli citizens to Skunk Anansie: A Concert in Israel is Fu%^& Political! Boycott Apartheid!
‘You being the band who once sang “everything is fucking political”, we’d like to point out that a concert in Israel is patently political, not least because Israel openly and expressly uses music concerts (among other cultural aspects) to create a semblance of normalcy and a glamorous image in order to divert attention from its discriminatory practices, human rights violations and war crimes against the Palestinian people.’
Fatah: Israeli refusal of 1967 borders nixed Kerry’s plan
Maqboul told Ma’an that Palestinian leaders had reached a consensus with Kerry that for talks to resume, Israel must agree to negotiate on 1967 lines, release an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners and stop settlement building.
The Palestinian negotiators asked Kerry to present the demands to Israel. Fatah’s Central Committee, which met on Thursday to discuss Kerry’s plan, said the Palestinian demands must be met in writing and not just verbally, Maqboul said.
