The JNF was created in 1901 to acquire land and property rights in Palestine and beyond for exclusive Jewish settlement. While indigenous Palestinians are barred from leasing, building on, managing or working their own land, the JNF holds the land in trust for “those of Jewish race or descendency” living anywhere in the world to “promote the interests of Jews in the prescribed region.”
To ensure such racist control over the majority of confiscated Palestinian lands, Israel adopted the JNF model of discriminatory land management as official state policy. In 1953, the Israeli Knesset legislated special status for JNF, enabling it to carry out governmental functions as a Zionist institution (“for Jews only”). The JNF continues to operate as a state-chartered organization[6] under Israeli law with direct control over some thirteen percent of the land in pre-1967 Israel.
Further, the JNF appoints six out of thirteen members of the governing board of the Israel Lands Authority (ILA), which manages the JNF’s thirteen percent, in addition to another eighty percent of all land in Israel. It is through this relationship with the JNF that Israel, while portraying itself as the only democracy in the Middle East, in fact, outsources the land-management
functions of the state to this discriminatory state-chartered organization.
The Palestinian Freedom Riders recently highlighted Israel's unjust apartheid policy of separate but unequal.Will Amnesty International decide to ignore the Palestinian call for justice but to instead obey Arch Enemy’s call? Arch Enemy is making strong claims that Amnesty International accompany them to Israel, as they break through the Palestinian picket line known as BDS.[1]
The cultural boycott is Palestine’s non-violent form of resistance to the continued oppression and apartheid inflicted on them by Israel. Amnesty making a “show” with Arch Enemy would only serve to normalize apartheid and deflect from the need to hold Israel accountable to International Law.
Electronica musician Moby recently broke the boycott call and played for Israel’s Pic.Nic for apartheid. Moby did not have the audacity to demand that Amnesty International be present at his concert. Art For Amnesty lists Moby as one of their prominent supporters.[2] That Moby broke the boycott call is appalling, but it would have been worse had he removed all references to Palestine on his facebook (he never did), and insisted on Art For Amnesty to join him in Israel, all the while, thanking Israel lobby group “Stand With Us,” and recording vocals with a pro-settler band in Israel.
Can Amnesty International maintain credibility and appear in Tel Aviv with Arch Enemy?
Arch Enemy has repressed all mention of the Palestinian call on their facebook, aggressively banning human rights volunteers and deleting posts.[3]
In a disturbing disregard for the Palestinian plight today, Arch Enemy has not responded nor acknowledged the PACBI’s letter written directly to Arch Enemy.
Arch Enemy’s lead singer has publicly thanked “Stand With Us.” The “Stand With Us” twitter profile clearly shows exactly who they are. Until pressured to remove it, the lead singer kept her tweet of thanks to SWU visible.[4]
Arch Enemy’s lead singer did collaborate with the pro-Zionist band Amaseffer. She did the vocals for the band’s track “Midian” in 2008.
Amnesty set a precedent in 2009. They chose to withdraw from Leonard Cohen’s concert in Israel.[5] Depending on which way the pendulum swings, Amnesty will either choose to maintain the precendent they set in 2009, or they will choose to ignore the Palestinian call for boycott, creating a setback in the fight for human rights. Hopes are high that Amnesty will simply refrain.
Delightful to read at Christmas time – Chavez nails Obama, figurehead of the neolib US plutocracy behemoth, as a miserly fraud.
The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, replied to statements said by his counterpart from the United States, Barack Obama, who criticized the sovereign relationship between Venezuela and Cuba, among others.
Chavez asked Obama to take care of poor people in his own country, who since the arrival of winter have endured cuts in social assistance to pay for in home heating.
“Obama is a total fraud. He cut social assistance for home heating oil for the poor,” Chavez said during a cabinet meeting at the Miraflores Presidential Palace.
Given that situation, President Chavez said he had held a conversation with Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez so as to increase the support of Venezuela’s CITGO to poor people who endure temperatures below zero during the winter in the United States.
According to Chavez, Obama is just looking for votes by criticising others and Chavez called on him to work with “the good people” of the United States.
“Obama is just about to lose the elections and with these criticisms [of Venezuela] he just wants to win some votes. You are a fraud, a total fraud. If I could be a candidate in the United States, I would beat you. I would win 80-20, I would beat you with [the votes] of all the good people you have there,” Chavez said.
Referring way back to Trotsky, it may be worthwhile to consider the relevance of his thoughts to the Occupy movement, which has as yet not produced a revolutionary party capable of leading it to victory.
‘We must not identify war dictatorship — the dictatorship of the military machine, of the staff, of finance capital — with a fascist dictatorship. For the latter, there is first necessary a feeling of desperation of large masses of the people. When the revolutionary parties betray them, when the vanguard of workers shows it incapacity to lead the people to victory — then the farmers, the small business men, the unemployed, the soldiers, etc., become capable of supporting a fascist movement, but only then.
…
‘We may set it down as a historical law: fascism was able to conquer only in those countries where the conservative labor parties prevented the proletariat from utilizing the revolutionary situation and seizing power.”
from Leon Trotsky’s FASCISM What It Is and How To Fight It
Today Al Mezan releases ‘Children in the Gaza Strip’s Access to Medical Care’ a factsheet published under the Save the Children UK funded project ‘Child Rights at the Centre: Enhancing National Capacities to Monitor, Document, and Report on Child Rights Issues in the oPt.’ The factsheet documents Israel’s policies towards the Gaza Strip which result in children being denied the right to access proper medical care.
The ongoing siege on Gaza which stops essential medical equipment and drugs from entering and causes sporadic fuel and electricity cuts combined with the closure system which prevents medical professionals from travelling abroad to access advanced training outside Gaza. These policies have resulted in a medical system in Gaza which cannot provide care and procedures for many patients. Children requiring care that is unavailable have to go outside Gaza, usually to hospitals in Israel, Jerusalem or the West Bank (as well as to Egypt and Jordan). In order to access these hospitals children require a permit from the Israeli authorities. The process for acquiring a permit is long and complex and often results in denials. Since January 2008, 4 children have died because their application was denied or took too long to be approved.
Israel also denies children’s access to medical care when it prevents ambulances from accessing the Buffer Zone. Ambulances require prior coordination with the Israeli military authorities before they can access the sick or injured in the Buffer Zone. 173 children have died because ambulances have been denied access to reach them (throughout the Gaza Strip, not just in the Buffer Zone).
The policies outlined in this factsheet result in serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law which Israel, as the Occupying Power in the Gaza Strip, has an obligation to uphold.
“Children in the Gaza Strip are deprived from receiving quality medical treatment and access to procedures that can save their lives. The right to access medical treatment and to enjoy the highest attainable physical and psychological health is one of the Israeli systematic violations of children’s rights in the Gaza Strip,” Samir Zaqout, Al Mezan’s fieldwork coordinator, states. “This has particularly been the case in the last five years since Israel tightened its siege on the Gaza Strip.”
In addition to the polices outlined in this factsheet which directly affect access to medical care Samir Zaqout says that “the Israeli siege has caused a deterioration in the health of children due to increasing poverty levels and diseases among children such as anemia. Israeli military attacks have also injured thousands of children, hundreds of them sustaining permanent physical disabilities.”
the UN General Assembly has adopted a new Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) establishing a complaints procedure for violations of children’s rights.
The new treaty will enable children, or their representatives, claiming that their rights have been violated to bring a complaint to an international committee of children’s rights experts if they have not been able to get remedies for these violations in their countries. A coalition of over 80 international and national NGOs, coordinated by the NGO Group for the CRC, which has been actively campaigning for the treaty since 2006, welcomed the news.
‘Israeli children are educated to see the Palestinians as a problem that must be solved and as a threat that must be eliminated. They can go through life, as I did growing up in Jerusalem, without ever meeting a Palestinian child. They know nothing of the life or culture of Palestinians who quite often live only several hundred meters from them.’
The fact she was a MediaCentral employee is what I reported and focused on, mainly because the Jewish Chronicle failed to even mention this basic fact. The problem with Marcus Dysch’s story is that it failed to mention Bakovic works for what is essentially a PR agency that aims to improve Israel’s image in the world.
…
This also calls into question the professionalism of Jewish Chronicle journalist Marcus Dysch. He’s entitled to promote a pro-Israel viewpoint, but that’s no excuse for dishonesty or (at best) poor journalism. The omission of such a salient point means he either didn’t do the five minutes of research it took to find out who Bakovic works for, or that he knew and covered it up.
Today, I asked Dysch on Twitter why he didn’t mention it, but he hasn’t replied (he’s unlikely to have seen this question, however, because he’s preemptively blocked me, despite the fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never Tweeted at him before).
If I had written an analogous story about a Palestinian student who was an employee of, say, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, without mentioning who he or she worked for, that would have been sloppy at best and dishonest at worst.
If Bakovic’s campaign against Professor Pratt has “no connection whatsoever” to her employer, as Plosker claims, why not simply say as much in the Jewish Chronicle article? Why did they wait till after Abraham Greenhouse and myself wrote about the case on Electronic Intifada to admit the fact?
Dysch’s reporting has also been called into question after he claimed in a second article that the agency which reviews the performance of universities in the UK “would conduct a preliminary investigation” into Pratt’s behavior. The Quality Assurance Agency soon denied this to the Times Higher Education magazine. They reported that: “no official complaint has yet been made and the QAA will require more details over the allegations before it could proceed with any investigation”.
UPDATE 5th January, 2012 Dysch publishes in the JC a story full of dire innuendo, sinisterly entitled “Performers deny ‘dark art’ funding”.
Dysch insinuates misdoing with the frightening news that ‘At least 34 artists (out of 150) who supported it [the cultural boycott campaign] have received funding to help pay for tours, running costs or fund individual projects’ and refers to Raymond Deane.
Composer Raymond Deane, a founding member of the IPSC, has received around £76,000 from the council during the past five years.
He said: “Neither I, nor the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, receives a penny from the Irish government for our activities in defence of Palestinian rights.”
Well, I hope that clears up Dysch’s confusion.
UPDATE 28th December: Raymond Deane is contacted by a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle, Marcus Dysch.
“Mr Deane – I’d like to speak to you about reports in the Israeli media which name you and others involved in the IPSC and claim you are receiving Irish government funding for your pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activities. We are likely to run a story in our newspaper this week which includes Israeli officials suggesting you are knowingly using funds from the Arts Council for these activities. I’d like to speak to you about this and hear your reaction. Please let me know if we can speak in the next 24 hours.
Marcus Dysch
Reporter
Jewish Chronicle
Tel: 020 7415 1665
You can email them back at:
You can also tweet Marcus at @MarcusDysch
@MarcusDysch
Been in office 25 minutes and already had three emails accusing me of being an Israeli government agent. (I’m not, if you were wondering.) #
Ilan Pappe draws attention to the campaign of intimidation conducted by the zionist lobby in his article today in the Electronic Intifada, noting
“What you learn is that once you cower, you become prey to continued and relentless bashing until you sing the Israeli national anthem. If once you do not cave in, you discover that as time goes by, the ability of Zionist lobbies of intimidation around the world to affect you gradually diminishes.”
UPDATE 25th December: Recently, zionists made hacking threats against BDS activists. The Amnesty International UK site was compromised on or before December 16th. According to Paul Royal of Barracuda Labs,
So, if you have visited the website anytime between and has out-dated Java software, there’s a good chance that your computer is infected. In that case, run a complete system scan using your updated anti-virus. It is also a good idea to change the passwords of your online accounts.
…
This exploit will not affect you if you had already installed the latest Java updates or if you don’t have Java installed.
Paul also says:
The working theory for this anomaly relates to Amnesty International as a human rights non-governmental organization. To explain, certain countries use zero day exploits and other techniques to gain electronic information about the activities of human rights activists. Of course, a subset of these activists are too smart to click on links in even well-worded spearphishing emails. But what if you compromised a website frequented by these activists (e.g., Amnesty International)? Then your targets come to you. The context-specific damage potential is significant.
Amnesty International is currently being asked to disassociate itself with Arch Enemy lead singer Angela Gossow’s claim that they will accompany the band in Israel. Amnesty International withdrew its support from a boycott breaking Leonard Cohen concert in 2009.
UPDATE 23rd December: On Ynet, world-renowned Irish composer Raymond Deane is “price-tagged” at the mammoth sum of $119 million (now amended to $119,000) over the past 5 years, which he has, according to the shameless libeller Itamar Eichner, received from the Irish government (are oil companies involved here as well?) to ‘subject to verbal attacks and letters of incitement’ ‘Irish elements interested in sustaining ties with Israel’, and ‘in a bid to free him from the need to work for a living so that he could devote his time and energy to the creation of music.’ For zionist propagandists, music isn’t considered a “real job”, at least if the targeted musician has private activities which include solidarity in campaigns for Palestinian human rights. And here’s the zionist veiled threats against a musician’s livelihood for daring to exercise conscience to support boycotts, divestment and sanctions from apartheid, colonial Israel:
The Foreign Ministry report also reveals that although the Irish foreign minister has voiced his objection to any type of boycott against Israeli culture, Deane is still receiving government funding.
…
“The ongoing funding of a person who has been conducting a hostile, public and aggressive campaign against Israel from Irish taxpayers’ money raises very difficult questions,” says a source in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.
The propagandist ends on a softened tone which only serves to highlight the previous attempt at intimidation of an individual of conscience in a foreign country:
“Nonetheless, an artist’s breach of trust toward Ireland’s authorities is an internal Irish matter which we cannot and do not wish to intervene in, despite its harsh implications on us.”
In November, Palestinian Solidarity activists in Ireland protested the holding of an Israeli film event at Filmbase in Dublin which was sponsored and funded by the Israeli Embassy.
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) also issued an “Open Letter to Filmbase“, expressing its surprise
“that a prominent Irish cultural institution would allow the Israeli embassy to carry out this audacious ‘Brand Israel’ activity on its premises hardly two weeks after Irish peace activists were illegally apprehended by the Israeli navy in international waters, humiliated, and imprisoned in Israel…”
These approaches were rejected by Filmbase, despite much dissension among its employees, not all of whom supported the decision to host the event. The opening of the festival, a wet and miserable evening, saw Filmbase “defended” by a force of at least two dozen Gardaí. Members of the IPSC, the Irish Anti-War Movement, Act for Palestine and others demonstrated noisily and peacefully, displaying Palestinian flags and placards with such slogans as “End the Siege of Gaza” and “Boycott Israel”. The arrivals of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, and the Minister for Defence and Justice Alan Shatter were greeted with particularly vociferous cries of ”shame! shame!”
These state marketing events are mooted by Israeli propagandists (hasbarists) as effective tools to whitewash Israeli crimes of apartheid, colonialism and Occupation and to counter what they cast as “delegitimization”, although through its ongoing crimes against humanity, Israel accomplishes singlehanded its own delegitimization. Attempting to address “the BDS delegitimization network”, the Reut Institute which develops propaganda strategy for Israel crows that ‘it takes a network to fight a network’. What a tawdry network the hasbarist network is! Some elements supportive of Israel of late have taken to using dirty tricks, as evidenced below from Filmbase to the present, fabricating threats supposedly made by BDS activists against venues and performers that are unsubstantiated, despite repeated challenge.
Now the tactic of falsely accusing BDS people of threats has resurfaced on the facebook wall of Joker, who announced his decision not to play Israel a few days ago, following information about racism the last time he played there. Joker has said several times since he is not going to play Israel, while Israel’s hasbarists have continued to claim that he is not cancelling, on twitter and facebook. The Israeli media has also published a misleading and unsubstantiated story about the cancellation claiming Joker and his girlfriend had received threats on their lives. An email was also circulated from CLUTCH – Electronic, claiming that ‘Joker was very frustrated from the situation and said to tell everyone that the decision was very hard for him and was directly because of death threats and his girlfriend lives.’ They accuse BDS supporters, then admit they made massive efforts to convince Joker to play, including direct conversation with Joker and all those around him – euphemisms for bothering his girlfriend and libellous attacks against people who supported Joker’s decision to cancel.
‘Politically savvy and passionate, Noa Tishby is a Member of AIPAC (The American Israel Public Relations Committee) and has traveled to Washington DC to lobby on Capitol Hill. She is also a member of The Israeli Consulate Speakers Bureau, a member of “Summit Series” organization for young entrepreneurs, a member of the ILC (Israeli Leadership Council) and is a mentor for Women In Film.’
Israel Leadership Council (ILC) of Los Angeles partners with the taskforce – As part of its current strategic re-visioning effort, the ILC invited the taskforce to think about its potential leadership role. In this context, a report was written and presented to ILC board members in Israel. The report includes both a theoretical framework describing the fledgling phenomenon called the organized Israeli Diaspora, as well as guidelines for how the ILC can best fit into this emerging reality. The report aimed to address the following question: How can the ILC leverage the Israeli Diaspora in the US?
Act for Israel concocts lists of spurious ‘talking points’ for Israel’s hasbara borg hubs to proliferate, while spreading malicious interpretations of BDS activists’ tweets, misspelling Palestinian rights advocate Ali Abunimah’s name and labelling him an ‘antisemite’.
Below is the evidence of the malicious Israeli campaign against activists for Palestinian human rights which ironically attests to the effectiveness of the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement, otherwise these reprobate zionists would be otherwise occupied.
UPDATE 22/6/13
WhatIsrael board member Ido Daniel announces his intention to pricetag BDS supporters. WhatIsreal ‘dialogue’ whilst price-tagging would appear to be mutually contradictory, and such is the nature of propaganda.
On twitter, Daniel reiterates, lies and then insults South African anti-apartheidists.
@Jinjirrie because they're like you: ignorant. No one with common sense will accuse Israel in "apartheid". It's only in your head.
