racism

September 4, 2012December 11, 2020

Jerusalem Development Authority Implicated in Boycotted Film Funding

In the vein of its previous documentary project presenting a montage of 24 hours of life in Berlin, the German Zero One film production company has been planning a similar venture on Jerusalem.

Berlin-based Zero One Film will work alongside Palestinian producer Daoud Kuttab and newly founded Israeli prodco 24 Communications. The latter is a joint venture between Israeli prodcos Pie Films and Inosan, which worked on the original version of HBO hit In Treatment.

Medienboard Berlin Brandenburg and Jerusalem Film Fund are backing 24h Jerusalem and the producers hope to secure the remaining €400,000 (US$500,000) of its €2.4m budget at MipTV this week.

Palestinian directors have now pulled out of the project – they were unaware of the presence of the Israeli production company, nor of backing from the Jerusalem Film Fund, which is in turn funded by the Jerusalem Development Authority. Current activities of the JDA include expropriating Palestinian land in East Jerusalem for parks. The JDA received “40 million NIS in 2005 to develop green spaces around the Old City of Jerusalem”.

Designating urban space as a national park is not only easier but cheaper too, the state having no obligation to compensate owners.

The Jerusalem municipality leaves the creation of these parks to the National Planning Authority (in the Ministry of Interior), Bimkom noted, which deals more with the protection of nature and heritage than the rights of Jerusalem’s residents.
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The disparity between the management of space for West Jerusalemites compared to their counterparts in the east is stark, with national parks notably absent from the west.

“The Palestinian residents of Jerusalem are crowded and they suffer from extreme neglect and shortage of public infrastructure,” Bimkom architect, Efrat Bar-Cohen, said in a statement.

“The residents are in desperate need of space by which they can improve their quality of life, even if slightly.”

The building of the park will have ramifications beyond the strangling of Issawiya and A-Tur residents.

It will stretch into the E1 area of the West Bank, which represents an important reserve of space for Palestinian development, creating a string of Jewish Israeli-only settlement between the Old City and Ma’ale Adumim settlement.

Elad Kandl is director of the Old City projects at the Jerusalem Development Authority, whose website describes their work as rehabilitating and conserving the Old City.

He expressed succinctly Israel’s aim of curbing Palestinian development in Jerusalem. “When you make it a national park,” he told The Jerusalem Post in reference to open space, “you keep the status quo.”

The JDA, which operates under the 1988 Jerusalem Development Authority Law, was established to further entrench Israeli control over the city and is also involved in the Jerusalem light rail project.

Indeed, the Prime Minister’s Office and the mayor of Jerusalem sponsored a JDA program to work toward this goal. On its website the JDA is very clear about the role of the Jerusalem light rail project, stating that “The investment in the light railway project was one of the government’s key strategies to empower Jerusalem as a capital.”

The JDA is also an instrumental actor in the proposed construction of 1,400 new housing units in the Gilo Jewish settlement colony, located near Bethlehem in occupied East Jerusalem.

In this light, the involvement of the JDA in the 24h Jerusalem project clearly designates the film as unacceptable normalisation with the Israeli occupation.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) has defined normalization specifically in a Palestinian and Arab context “as the participation in any project, initiative or activity, in Palestine or internationally, that aims (implicitly or explicitly) to bring together Palestinians (and/or Arabs) and Israelis (people or institutions) without placing as its goal resistance to and exposure of the Israeli occupation and all forms of discrimination and oppression against the Palestinian people.” [2] This is the definition endorsed by the BDS National Committee (BNC).

One Palestinian participant in the 24h Jerusalem project, Enas aL-Muthaffar, made clear his objections to the film project in an open letter on August 25th. He reveals that he was not informed at all about the Israeli production partner. Nor were the Palestinian directors to be involved in the editing process.

To whom It May Concern,

When Kuttab Productions first contacted me early July, it failed to mention that Israel is part of this project, although I specifically inquired about this issue. And then again, you sent me an email on July 9th, which also failed to mention that Israel is in fact part of your film production. I only knew about Israel being a co-producer of Jerusalem 24 when I asked specific technical questions about the characters, crew and the editing phase. I was surprised to know that the selected filmmakers are only requested to film on September 6th and that we have no say in the editing phase. Then, you said: The editing phase will happen in Germany where the Palestinian and the Israeli films will be edited in one feature length documentary. This is not information that can simply be passed on in such a way!

I reject to be part of Jerusalem 24: a German/ Israeli/ Palestinian co-production for the following two main reasons:

· I respect and support Palestinian civil society campaign for Boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it complies with International law and respects Palestinian rights.

· I refuse to be part of a peace propaganda machine that continues to ignore Israel’s cruel colonization of Palestine.

There is a longer list of reasons related to the current steps undertaken by Israel that aim at changing the demographic, social and cultural composition of the city of Jerusalem – to name few:

· Advocating the largest act of de-population of East Jerusalem since 1967.

· Continuing expansion of illegal settlements.

· Renewal of closure of East Jerusalem Institutions.

· Building restrictions and home demolitions.

· Revoking residency rights and denying family reunification.

· Continued illegal diggings under al-Aqsa mosque compound.

There is no way in which I can separate my art from who I am, from my life, from my duty to resist everything and anything that doesn’t acknowledge my right to exist on my land in freedom and dignity.

Regards,

Enas I. aL-Muthaffar

Enas’ stance is confirmed in an Al Akhbar piece [Google translation]:

Yesterday, I sent a group of Palestinian institutions and individuals working in the field of culture and art message to «Book of production» declare the absolute rejection of various forms of normalization with the occupier and «standing in the face of attempts to penetrate the cultural front as the line of the clash with the basic occupation, and intellectuals were and will remain the spearhead in the clash of cultures and civilizations with brute occupation force.

Haidar Eid further affirms terms of the PACBI boycott relevant to the joint film project [Google translation]:

That all meetings and projects that combine between the Palestinians and the Israelis must be placed in the proper context against the occupation and other forms of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and most importantly that these meetings be pro-boycott by directives issued by the National Committee of the province.

According to Amira Hass, 20 directors, including Israelis, have now pulled out of the film project in support of the cultural boycott and filming, scheduled for September 6, has been halted.

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.

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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 23, 2012August 24, 2022

DPAI Support Ground-Breaking South African Policy Against Apartheid Israel

It is with much pleasure that Don’t Play Apartheid Israel applauds the ground-breaking policy of the South African government expressed by Deputy Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, Ebrahim Ebrahim, to discourage South Africans from visiting Israel.

As Ebrahim said, Israel is indeed “an occupying power and is doing all sorts of things in the Palestine occupied territory which has been condemned by the entire international community.”

The Russell Commission and South African Human Sciences Research Council have affirmed Israel perpetrates systematic apartheid and colonialism, both crimes against humanity, on the Palestinian people. Rather than meet its obligations under international law, Israel continues to expand its illegal settlements in the West Bank, torture Palestinian detainees held without charge or trial, deny Palestinian Israelis equal rights and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories even basic human rights, collectively punish through closure the entire population of Gaza and many other war crimes and human rights abuses.

Thus, we deplore the scurrilous attack by the South African Zionist Federation on the South African government for its principled policy. We encourage the South African government to remain firm and expand its support to embrace fully the principles of the Palestinian-led call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, in order that Palestinians gain justice and freedom, despite predictable international pressure brought to bear on Israel’s behalf.

The Israeli ambassador, Dov Segev-Steinberg, demonstrates a flawed understanding of history and the process of liberation when he refers to ‘the South African way of dialogue to promote peace’, as, without justice, there can be no reconciliation. The South African government is acting in a way that will facilitate justice.

DPAI

Don’t Play Apartheid Israel (DPAI) seeks to inform musicians of the Palestinian call to boycott Israel, and the extent to which their decision to play in the apartheid state will be instrumentalized – against their will – as propaganda for the maintenance of a horrifying status quo in Israel/Palestine: that there is a brutal, decades-long occupation, ongoing ethnic cleansing, continual land theft, passing of over 20 racist laws within Israel/’48, and the crackdown on human rights groups. We represent over 900 members from around the globe who believe that it is essential for musicians and other artists to heed the call of the PACBI, and join in the boycott of Israel.

Congratulations to the students at the Wit Uni, who have strengthened the boycott against apartheid Israel: ‘The resolution states that the University will “not participate in any form of cultural or academic collaboration or joint projects with Israeli institutions and will not provide support to Israeli cultural or academic institutions”.
South African ziolobby attempts lawfare against the SA government labelling of illegal settlement products
After the unanimous resolution in support of BDS of the Wits Students Representative Council, the Wits University deplorably distances itself from boycott of apartheid Israel

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.’