In his excellent response to Daniel Levy, Yousef Munayyer sets the record straight and takes apart Levy’s liberal zionist apologetics, emphasising that Palestinians are not seeking a zionist-style national identity as Levy and others assume, but rather rights as a priority.
“The question of Palestine has always been one of rights — rights to vote, rights to return to and live on your land, rights to equality among others — and not simply one of identity. Palestinians are not in search of a national-state identity; we know who we are, and we are the people of Yaffa, Haifa, Nablus, Ramallah, Gaza, Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine.
This is perhaps why the ‘peace process’ was such a dismal failure. It attempted to Zionize the Palestinian cause, converting it from a cause of rights to a cause for an ethnically homogeneous state to address a Zionism-created problem of statelessness within the confines of 22% of Palestine. Palestinians do not want a state for the sake of having a state, a flag, an anthem, an army, or a president. Palestinians who supported a two-state outcome only sought a Palestinian state in so far as that state would be a vehicle toward realizing Palestinian rights.”
Disgracefully, the nationalist ethnosupremacist ziocolony, founded at the expense of Palestinians’ human and civil rights, advertises the achievement of these essential rights as a threat to its existence.
Munayyer goes on to explain:
“It is because Zionism holds that these two things, Palestinian human rights and “national Jewish interests” are mutually exclusive. It’s because Zionism was put into action at the expense of the rights of Palestinians and that the maintenance of Israeli Jewish monopolization of political control demands the continued violation of Palestinian rights.
The way forward requires us to challenge this false dichotomy, which means challenging Zionism. The human rights of Israeli Jews do not need to be violated in any way for the human rights of Palestinians to be realized.”
Daily, Israel abrogates Palestinian rights in the most appalling ways – like how Israeli soldiers trained this week:
‘Israeli soldiers shot an 18-year-old shepherd in the chest on Thursday evening during military training exercises in the northern West Bank.
Yasir Suleiman Nijad Kaabnah was shot while herding sheep and camels near Wadi al-Maleh in the northern Jordan Valley.’
And here’s how Israel torments and brutalises the Indigenous Palestinian people of the village of Al Aqaba.
Yet zionism doesn’t only abuse the rights of Palestinians, it exploits its Jewish citizens as well – Holocaust survivors are struggling to make ends meet. Political zionism is intrinsically antisemitic from the first as it’s predicated on the lie that Jews cannot be safe anywhere except in an ethnosupremacist entity, and yet in apartheid Israel, Jews who were persecuted in World War 2 are not safe. While Nutanyahoo exploits the Holocaust on Remembrance Day for political gain, drumming up fear of Iran, sloganising and extolling the fascist Jabotinsky, as Peres hypocritically preaches about antisemitism. the Kadish and ‘love thy neighbour’, some 2,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors are having their sustenance completely curtailed by the Israeli treasury.
Back in the Occupied Territories, it’s been just another week of monstrous Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity committed with impunity against Palestinians, brushed aside by the international elite since it collaborates with the zionist ruling class.
As the cycling Danish victim of Israeli military fascism who has received stellar international media coverage noted “What happened to me is nothing compared to the systematic violence carried out on Palestinians. This is not a single incident, it’s what we see every day. But it’s very difficult to move the focus from me to the issues of the Palestinian struggle in the West Bank.”
Out of sight, out of mind, 206 Palestinian children imprisoned by Israel languish in Israeli dungeons, often in solitary confinement.
Israel has increased its incarceration of Palestinian children by 53% since December 2011 according to Defence for Children International. In the full bulletin for March:
‘This month [March] saw a 10 percent increase
in the number of children prosecuted in
the Israeli military courts and
imprisoned. This is the third consecutive
month in which a rise in the number of
children in detention has been
recorded. There has been a 53 percent
increase in the number of children held
in military detention since December
2011. This month also saw a 29 percent
increase in the number of young
children (12-15 years) being detained.
On 26 March, DCI re-issued an Urgent
Appeal on behalf of children held in
solitary confinement. In spite of a
number of UN agencies calling for a
complete prohibition on the use of
solitary confinement for children, the
Israeli Security Agency (ISA) and the
Israeli Prison Service (APS) continue to
hold children in isolation. The reason the
UN has called for a total prohibition on
the use of solitary confinement for
children, is because the psychological
impact can be severe, and in some
cases catastrophic. Since 2008, DCI has
documented 50 cases in which children
report being held in solitary
confinement at the Al Jalame and
Petah Tikva interrogation centres.
On 31 March, DCI submitted a report to
the UN Committee Against Torture. The
purpose of the report is to assist the
Committee in its preparation of a List of
Issues prior to the review of Israel?s fifth
Periodic Report under the Convention
Against Torture in 2013. All states that
have ratified the Convention are
reviewed by the Committee every four
years to assess compliance.’
How can a state which systematically and flagrantly abuses children be permitted impunity? Kony must be envious. Human rights are for all – but prosecution and censure for human rights abuses are limited to those disfavoured by the cruel, biased hegemon and its cronies. Israel singles itself out by its crimes and impunity for them.
Raed Salah commented this week in the Guardian:
The Palestinian issue can only be resolved if Israel and its supporters in Britain abandon the dogmas of supremacy and truly adhere to the universal values of justice and fairness. Britain has a special responsibility in this, because it is uniquely responsible for our suffering: our national tragedy began with the Balfour Declaration.
While Britain enforced the first part of the declaration, which promised Palestine as a homeland for the Jewish people, but ignored the part that states: “It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.”
The US, UK and Israel are ruling class vehicles – Israel is the thorn in the side of the region to divide and rule on behalf of elites. Poisonous spells of conflict, racism and bigotry are woven and infused to disunite and attempt to make resistance futile. Resist anyway 🙂
Palestine / Israel Links
Habima’s cultural propaganda role exposed. Israeli Foreign Ministry will fund Habima’s Globe performance
Appeal to L. Subramaniam to boycott the Tel Aviv White City Music Festival 2012
Land thief Israel continues to thumb its nose at the Geneva Conventions … “the prefabricated permanent homes in the illegal outpost were built in lands officially recognized by Israel to be owned by Palestinians.”
Israeli soldiers and policemen expelled resident Khaled An-Natsha and his family from their home in Al-Ashqariyya area, in Beit Hanina, north of Israeli controlled East Jerusalem. The eviction came following a court order that granted Israeli settlers ownership over the property
A senior United Nations official has condemned the eviction today of two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem and called for an end to such violations of international law.
Israeli undercover unit’s murder of Palestinian civilian was part of “training exercise” :
‘Conducting the operation was the Duvdevan Unit, a division of the Israeli military that is characterized chiefly by impersonating Palestinians and carrying out undercover operations and trainings. It appears that the training on 27 March, which incorporated a grave breach of international law, is an integral and systematic element of training this elite group.’
Find out how to support the US Methodist church major divestment initiative
1200 racist rabbis think Israel is not responsible for human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Raed Salah: “Despite the Israeli policy of “transfer” – another term for ethnic cleansing – the Palestinians will not go away. The Israeli state can occupy our lands, demolish our homes, drill tunnels under the old city of Jerusalem – but we will not disappear. Instead, we now aspire to a directly elected leadership for Palestinians in Israel; one that would truly represent our interests. We seek only the legal rights guaranteed to us by international conventions and laws.”
Ilan Pappe writes about the hysteria manufactured and marketed in Israel and elsewhere by the malignant narcissist, sociopathic ruling class.
So biting – on the hasbara of dialogue between unequals bringing ‘peace’. : Freedom Funnies: ‘The Angel of Dialogue, the Gift of Censorship, and the Power of Boycott’
Why a cultural boycott of Israel is justified
One and a half thousand humanitarians