Israel will not stop

Israel has approved the largest seizure of land in the occupied West Bank in over three decades, a settlement tracking group said Wednesday, a move that is likely to worsen already soaring tensions linked to the war in Gaza.

[...]

Settlement monitors said the land grab connects Israeli settlements along a key corridor bordering Jordan, a move they said undermines the prospect of a contiguous Palestinian state.

[...]

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a settler himself, has turbocharged the policy of expansion, seizing new authorities over settlement development and saying he aims to solidify Israel’s hold on the territory and prevent the creation of a Palestinian state.

  Politico

The US is Susan Collins now

The United States says it is “deeply troubled” by the Israeli government’s tabling of plans to approve thousands of building permits in the occupied West Bank and has called on Israel to return to dialogue aimed at de-escalation.

[...]

“We will continue to develop the settlement of and strengthen the Israeli hold on the territory,” said finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who also holds a defence portfolio that gives him a leading role in West Bank administration.

[...]

The US state department said it was “deeply troubled” by the latest move, which comes despite US pressure to halt the settlement expansion that Washington sees as an obstacle to peace.

  Guardian

What pressure? Continuing to say we're "deeply troubled"?

This is unmitigated bullshit. Like our "thoughts and prayers" after every mass killing.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

So the US government is now Susan Collins

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday criticized a decision by Israel’s government to recognize at least nine settlements in the West Bank as part of Israel, saying such a move worsens tensions with the Palestinians.

Blinken, in a statement, said the moves to legally authorize such settlements, which had previously been identified as illegal communities, “exacerbate tensions and undermine the prospects for a negotiated two-state solution.”

“We are deeply troubled by Israel’s decision yesterday to advance reportedly nearly 10,000 settlement units and to begin a process to retroactively legalize nine outposts in the West Bank that were previously illegal under Israeli law,” Blinken said in the statement.

  The Hill

And the Israeli government is quaking in its boots. We have let them get away with aggression toward Palestine to the verge of destroying that country altogether for decades. Being "deeply troubled" is fucking bullshit.

“As I have previously stated, anything that takes us away from the vision of two states for two peoples is detrimental to Israel’s long-term security, its identity as a Jewish and democratic state, and to our vision of equal measures of security, freedom, prosperity, and dignity for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” the statement continued. “We call on all parties to avoid additional actions that can further escalate tensions in the region and to take practical steps that can improve the well-being of the Palestinian people.”

Blah, blah, blah. The Middle East policy equivalent of thoughts and prayers for mass killing victims in the US. Total worthless bullshit. Fooling no one.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Until somebody makes him stop

And that won't be the U.S.

Benjamin Netanyahu's incoming hard-line Israeli government put West Bank settlement expansion at the top of its priority list on Wednesday, vowing to legalize dozens of illegally built outposts and annex the occupied territory as part of its coalition deal with ultranationalist allies.

The coalition agreements, released a day before the government is to be sworn into office, also included language endorsing discrimination against LGBTQ people on religious grounds, contentious judicial reforms, as well as generous stipends for ultra-Orthodox men who prefer to study instead of work.

The package laid the groundwork for what is expected to be a stormy beginning for the country's most religious and right-wing government in history, potentially putting it at odds with large parts of the Israeli public, rankling Israel's closest allies and escalating tensions with the Palestinians.

[...]

There was no immediate U.S. comment.

  NPR

The US could have quit supporting this asshole decades ago.

[US President Joe] Biden called Netanyahu his “friend for decades” in a statement on Thursday, saying that he will cooperate with the Israeli government to jointly address challenges in the Middle East, including “threats from Iran”.

[...]

On Thursday, Biden reasserted Washington’s verbal support for the two-state solution, although Netanyahu’s government had openly said that settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank is its top priority.

Palestinian rights advocates say the settlements, which are illegal under international law, have made it all but impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state.

  alJazeera

Democrats rightly claim Republican Congress people are cowards when it comes to Donald Trump, but they never address their own cowardice when it comes to Netanyahu.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Bibi agrees to suspend annexation

Israel and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to forge a path toward normal diplomatic relations, and Israel said as part of the agreement it will suspend its controversial plans to annex more territory in the West Bank.

The historic deal was brokered during a call between leaders of the two nations and President Trump.

The UAE's leader, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed, announced on Twitter that the deal calls for "setting a roadmap towards establishing a bilateral relationship."

[...]

The White House released a joint statement from the three countries, saying Israel and the UAE "will meet in the coming weeks to sign bilateral agreements regarding investment, tourism, direct flights, security, telecommunications, technology, energy, healthcare, culture, the environment, the establishment of reciprocal embassies and other areas of mutual benefit."

  NPR

What does Trump give in return for Bibi's agreement to suspend annexation? Suspend. Until Trump wins reelection, then it's back to business as usual.

Also, what happened to Jared? Wasn't the Middle East his baby?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

It's exactly like that

Princeton professor Eddie Glaude wasn't received very well by MSNBC hosts when he dared to speak the truth.



It's exactly like that, Professor Glaude.  And white America was pretty much okay with that, too.

America's complicity in the destruction of Palestine

“In our time,” wrote George Orwell in 1946, “political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.” British colonialism, the Soviet gulag and America’s dropping of an atomic bomb, he argued, “can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face.” So how do people defend the indefensible? Through “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” By obscuring the truth.

So it is, more than 70 years later, with Israeli policy toward the Gaza Strip. The truth is too brutal to honestly defend.

[...]

Gaza is becoming uninhabitable. That’s not hyperbole. The United Nations says that Gaza will be “unlivable” by 2020, maybe sooner.

[...]

[T]he actor with the greatest power over Gaza is Israel. Israeli policies are instrumental in denying Gaza’s people the water, electricity, education and food they need to live decent lives.

How do kind, respectable, well-meaning American Jews defend this? How do they endorse the strangulation of 2 million human beings? Orwell provided the answer. They do so because Jewish leaders, in both Israel and the United States, encase Israel’s actions in a fog of euphemism and lies.

  Peter Beinart

While it's true that the language of euphemism and lies exists, so does the obvious truth. It's not like there aren't reports and video footage constantly providing proof of the situation. If American Jews are defending Israel's treatment of Palestine, it's not because they don't know what's really going on.

Earlier this month, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, defended Israel’s shooting of mostly unarmed protesters by declaring that, “We withdrew entirely from the Gaza Strip in August 2005, removing every Israeli resident, home, factory and synagogue. We are not responsible for the well-being of the people of Gaza.” American Jewish leaders echo the claim. “Israel withdrew totally” from Gaza, wrote Kenneth Bandler, the American Jewish Committee’s director of media relations, last year.

[...]

These are anesthetizing fictions. Yes, Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers in 2005. But Israel still controls Gaza. It controls it in the way a prison guard might control a prison courtyard in which he never actually sets foot.

[...]

Israel declares parts of Gaza off-limits to the people who live there. Israel has established buffer zones — it calls them Access Restricted Areas — to keep Palestinians away from the fence that separates Gaza from Israel. According to the United Nations, this restricted area has ranged over the past decade from 100 to 500 meters, comprising as much as one-third of Gaza’s arable land. People who enter these zones can — and over the years have been — shot.

In addition to barring Palestinians from much of Gaza’s best land, Israel bars them from much of Gaza’s water. In 1993, the Oslo Accords promised Gazan fisherman the right to fish 20 nautical miles off the coast. But since then, Israel has generally restricted fishing to between three and six nautical miles.

Since sardines, which the United Nations calls Gaza’s “most important catch,” “flourish at the 6 NM boundary,” these limitations have been disastrous for Gazan fisherman.

[...]

The second way in which Israel still controls Gaza is by controlling its borders. Israel controls the airspace above Gaza, and has not permitted the reopening of Gaza’s airport, which it bombed in 2001. Neither does it allow travel to and from Gaza by sea.

Israel also controls most land access to Gaza. It’s true that — in addition to Gaza’s two active border-crossing points with Israel — it has a third, Rafah, with Egypt. But even here, Israel wields substantial influence.

But they "withdrew" from Gaza.

Finally, and perhaps most profoundly, Israel controls Gaza’s population registry. When a child is born in Gaza, her parents register the birth, via the Palestinian Authority, with the Israeli military.

[...]

Israel rarely adds adults to the Palestinian population registry. That means that if you’re, say, a Jordanian who marries someone from Gaza and wants to move there to live with her, you’re probably out of luck. Israel won’t let you in.

But Israel "withdrew".

Israel is even more zealous about limiting the number of Palestinians in the West Bank, where it still has settlers. So when Palestinians move from Gaza to the West Bank, Israel generally refuses to let them update their addresses, which means they can’t legally stay. Israel can even prevent children in Gaza from changing their address to the West Bank to live with a parent.

[...]

You won’t hear about this at the AIPAC Policy Conference. But in these and myriad other ways, Israel constrains the lives of virtually every person in Gaza.

Not "virtually". Literally.

As the indispensable Israeli human rights group Gisha has observed: “Gaza residents may not bring a crate of milk into the Gaza Strip without Israeli permission; A Gaza university cannot receive visits from a foreign lecturer unless Israel issues a visitor’s permit; A Gaza mother cannot register her child in the Palestinian population registry without Israeli approval; A Gaza fisherman cannot fish off the coast of Gaza without permission from Israel; A Gaza nonprofit organization cannot receive a tax-exempt donation of goods without Israeli approval; A Gaza teacher cannot receive her salary unless Israel agrees to transfer tax revenues to the Palestinian Ministry of Education; A Gaza farmer cannot get his carnations and cherry tomatoes to market unless Israel permits the goods to exit Gaza.” Claiming that Israel divested itself of responsibility for Gaza when it “withdrew totally” in 2005 may ease American Jewish consciences. But it’s a lie.

And American Jews who are still supporting the Israeli government know it.

In three wars — in 2008-2009, 2012 and 2014 — Israeli bombing damaged roughly 240,000 Gazan homes. According to The New York Times, Operation Cast Lead alone, in 2008-2009, cost Gaza’s economy $4 billion, almost three times the Strip’s annual GDP. Operation Protective Edge in 2014 damaged or destroyed more than 500 schools and preschools, affecting 350,000 students.

[...]

Israel’s buffer zones and partial blockade make it impossible for the Strip to effectively rebuild. Over the past three years, Israel has, to its credit, loosened restrictions on goods coming in and out of Gaza. Still, the United Nations reports that, in large measure because of “continued export restrictions” and “restrictions on import of material and equipment necessary for local production[B3],” Gaza exported less than one-fifth as much in 2016 as it had in the first half of 2007.

[...]

According to the United Nations, roughly half the people in Gaza are “moderately-to-severely food insecure,” up 30% from a decade ago. Hospitals lack essential drugs. A shortage of teachers and buildings has forced many schools to run double and even triple shifts, which means many children attend school for only four hours a day. (By withholding donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which runs many of Gaza’s schools, the Trump administration will likely make this worse). Most people in Gaza receive only a few hours of electricity per day.

[...]

[Allegedly for "security" purposes, Israel] restricts Gaza’s import of many “dual-use” products, from cement and steel to cranes, x-ray machines and smoke detectors to wood planks thicker than 5 centimeters to even the batteries and spare parts needed to power children’s hearings aids. The economic and humanitarian consequences of these restrictions are often grave. And Israel’s definition of “dual-use” is far broader than international standards.

[...]

Families in Gaza cannot travel to the West Bank or Israel proper to see their families unless a “first degree relative” (parent, child, sibling) gets married, dies or is about to die. Letting someone leave Gaza to visit his dying grandparent is an unacceptable security risk, evidently, while letting them leave to visit a dying parent is not.

Israel’s blockade on exports is similarly vast and arbitrary. Israel allows farmers in Gaza to sell tomatoes and eggplants to Israel but not potatoes, spinach and beans. It allows them to export 450 tons of eggplant and tomatoes per month but not more. Spinach, evidently, is more dangerous than eggplant. And 500 tons of eggplant and tomatoes are more dangerous than 450.

[...]

In 2009, Haaretz exposed the way Israeli agricultural interests lobby to loosen restrictions on imports into Gaza when Israeli farmers want to sell surplus goods. In 2011, Israel found itself with a shortage of lulavs, the palm fronds that observant Jews shake on the holiday of Sukkot. So Israel lifted its ban on Gaza’s export of palm fronds. Had the security risk suddenly changed? Of course not.

[...]

[T]errorism doesn’t only require opportunity; it also requires intent. And when you bankrupt a Gazan farmer by blocking his exports or crush a Gazan student’s dreams by denying her the chance to study abroad, you may breed the desperation and hatred that produces terrorism, and thus undermine the very Israeli security you’re trying to safeguard.

This is the same argument people make for US policy in the Middle East: we are creating terorists by interfering and destroying their homes and lives, and therefore making ourselves less safe. The problem with this "argument" is that it is so plainly obvious as to be rendered ridiculous. It shouldn't be necessary to make such an argument. In our case, it's even more ridiculous than it is for Israel since our country is so far separated from the Middle East by distance. It's plainly obvious, however, in both cases, that safety is not really the issue. It's a bugaboo. We - and both Israeli and American Jews - have to dispense with common sense and falsely claim fears for our safety to cover for what is purely prejudice and xenophobia.

American Jewish leaders insist that Israel no longer controls Gaza. But when confronted with the control Israel actually wields, their justifications generally boil down to: “security” and “Hamas.”

Hamas is indeed a brutal and destructive force, to both Israelis and Palestinians. It has a long and ugly record of terrorist attacks. It does not recognize Israel. Its Islamist ideology is deeply oppressive, especially to women, LGBTQ Palestinians and religious dissenters.

But Hamas did not force Israel to adopt the policies that have devastated Gaza. Those policies represent a choice — a choice that has not only failed to dislodge Hamas, but has also created the very conditions in which extremism thrives.

Nor did Hamas exist outside of the Israeli occupation. Hamas was formed in 1987 as a response and resistance to Israeli control of Palestine. Just as the US invasion of Iraq gave rise to al Qaeda (who want to kill us), Israeli policy gave rise to Hamas.

[After its electoral victory in 2006], Hamas proposed a unity government with Fatah “for the purpose of ending the occupation and settlements and achieving a complete withdrawal from the lands occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, so that the region enjoys calm and stability during this phase.”

[...]

Washington and Jerusalem pressured Abbas to reject a national unity government and govern without a democratically elected parliament. Then, in 2007, the Bush administration encouraged Abbas’s national security advisor, Mohammed Dahlan, to oust Hamas from Gaza by force, a gambit that backfired when Hamas won the battle on the ground. And with Hamas now ensconced in power, Israel dramatically tightened its blockade of Gaza, which it has maintained — with modifications — ever since.

[...]

For more than a decade, Israel’s answer to the problem of Gaza has been collective punishment and terrifying force. For stretches of time, this has kept Gaza quiet. And it may again. In the coming weeks, Israeli soldiers may kill and maim enough protesters to scare the rest back into their prison enclave. But sooner or later, Gaza will rise again. And the longer Israel suffocates its people, the more desperate and vengeful their uprisings will become. [...] According to the United Nations, three hundred thousand children in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress from the 2014 conflict alone. Do Israeli and American Jewish leaders really believe that brutalizing them even more by denying them adequate food, education, electricity and water will make them more likely to live in peace with Israel?

That question would be useful only if Israeli and American Jewish leaders were actually interested in peace.

The struggle for human decency, Orwell argued, is also a struggle for honest language. Our community’s complicity in the human nightmare in Gaza should fill every American Jew with shame. The first step toward ending that complicity is to stop lying to ourselves.

But lying to ourselves is all we have to protect our egos, maintain our prejudices and retain control.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jeremy Corbyn does the unthinkable

Labour is entangled in a fresh row over Israel after it emerged that Jeremy Corbyn has refused to attend an official dinner with the the country’s prime minister this week to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, which helped to pave the way for a Jewish nation state.

The Labour leader’s snub came as Israel’s ambassador to London told The Sunday Times that those who oppose the historic declaration are “extremists” who reject Israel’s right to exist and could be viewed on a par with terrorist groups such as Hamas.

  The Times

A terrorist because he won't go to dinner to kiss Netanyahu's ass.  Who said he opposed the declaration and Israel's right to exist?  He doesn't want to dine with a monster.  He's sending foreign secretary Emily Thornberry.  Oh, wait...a woman?!  Salt in the wound.  Go, Jeremy!

The ambassador, Mark Regev, also suggested a “vocal minority” of British students and academics are still intent upon the destruction of Israel, 70 years after the country came into being.

No they're not, you slimeball. They're intent upon freeing Palestine from the illegal settlements and harsh, cruel Israeli occupation.

Israel and Trump have a lot in common.  White supremacy tendencies, privileged and constantly whining.

I'm starting to like this guy.

Meanwhile, in Palestine

And next, when the violent backlash against the Israelis begins, we'll be hearing all about awful Palestinian terrorists and how they threaten Israel's very existence.

As If It Weren't Obvious

In private remarks to the leaders of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia that were accidentally broadcast to members of the Israeli media outside the room, Netanyahu was overheard calling it “crazy” for the E.U. to insist that Israel honor Article 2 of an association agreement signed in 1995 which makes trade with the bloc conditional on Israel’s “respect for human rights and democratic principles.”

[...]

“I think Europe has to decide if it wants to live and thrive or if it wants to shrivel and disappear,” Netanyahu said. “I am not very politically correct — I know that’s a shock to some of you. It’s a joke: but the truth is the truth.”

“We are part of the European culture,” Netanyahu added. “Europe ends in Israel. East of Israel, there is no more Europe.”

[...]

“The European Union is the only association of countries in the world that conditions the relations with Israel,” Netanyahu said, “on political conditions — the only one!”

“We have a special relationship with China, and they don’t care,” he added. “I mean, they don’t care about the political issues.”

“It’s absolutely — may I say — I think it’s crazy. I think it’s actually crazy,” Netanyahu said.

  The Intercept

I bet he didn't care. He'd say it out loud and for the record, wouldn't he?

After Netanyahu’s complaints were made public, the European Union’s delegation to Israel responded with a statement that it still expects his government to show “respect for international humanitarian law” and make progress towards a two-state solution.

Yeah, well THEY HAD TO. Wonder what they said in the meeting. Because look what he reminded them:

“Don’t undermine that one European, Western country that defends European values and European interests and prevents another mass migration to Europe,” Netanyahu told the leaders, who have resisted the resettlement of refugees in their countries on the grounds that Muslim migrants could dilute their national character.

Although I don't know how Israel is preventing any migrations. Unless it's by locking the Palestinians in the country.

[Historian] Tony Judt, in an interview published in The London Review of Books shortly after his death in 2010 [was] asked by Kristina Boži?, “Is there anything Europe can do to exert pressure on Israel?” Judt’s reply is worth quoting at length:

Israel wants two things more than anything else in the world. The first is American aid. This it has. As long as it continues to get American aid without conditions it can do stupid things for a very long time, damaging Palestinians and damaging Israel without running any risk.

However, the second thing Israel wants is an economic relationship with Europe as a way to escape from the Middle East. [...] They don’t want to be there economically, culturally or politically – they don’t feel part of it and don’t want to be part of it. They want to be part of Europe and therefore it is here that the EU has enormous leverage.

[...]

Why do Europeans not do it? Here, the problem of blackmail is significant. And it is not even active blackmail but self-blackmail. When I talk about these things in Holland or in Germany, people say to me: ‘We couldn’t do that. Don’t forget, we are in Europe. Think of what we did to the Jews. We can’t use economic leverage against Israel. We can’t be a critic of Israel, we can’t use our strength as a huge economic actor to pressure the Jewish state. Why? Because of Auschwitz.’ I understand this argument very well. Many of my family were killed in Auschwitz. However, this is ridiculous. Europe can’t live indefinitely on the credit of someone else’s crimes to justify a state that creates and commits its own crimes.

[...]

Israel should not be special because it is Jewish. Jews are to have a state just like everyone else has a state. It should have no more rights than Slovenia and no fewer. Therefore, it also has to behave like a state. It has to declare its frontiers, recognise international law, sign international treaties and agreements. Furthermore, other countries have to behave towards it the way they would towards any other state that broke those laws.

[...]

Otherwise we are acknowledging that a Jewish state is an unusual thing – a weird, different thing that is not to be treated like every other state. It is the European bad conscience that is part of the problem.

And Then There's Palestine

The routine, “factored-in” suffering of Palestinians—even when ramped up to hellish levels—is barely worth a mention by US media. It just is. And when it is touched on, it’s generally framed as Hamas or the Palestinian Authority’s fault, with the broader role played by Israel’s devastating, 50-year-occupation downplayed or omitted.

[...]

Israeli officials have cut off electricity to almost 2 million Gazans for all but three or four hours a day—in conjunction with nominal Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who has cut funding for Gaza’s electricity in an effort to punish his political rivals in Hamas. The Gaza Strip, which remains under effective Israeli control despite the 2005 withdrawal of Israeli troops, requires 450 megawatts daily, but since June has received only around 150 megawatts per day.

[...]

The vast majority of US media also ignored a devastating UN report published Tuesday, documenting the humanitarian conditions in Gaza over the past ten years.

[...]

The Washington Post (6/22/17) reported on the electricity cuts just over three weeks ago, but made sure to note in their headline “it’s not all Israel’s fault.” The Post (7/12/17) also mentioned the Gaza electricity cuts in a broader piece, told from Israel’s perspective, about that country’s fears that “Hamas will go to war.” NPR did not report on the electricity crisis, but unlike the Post, it did have a piece (7/11/17) on the UN report.

[...]

Neither the electrical crisis nor the UN report has been covered by the New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC or Fox News—though the Times and ABC did run AP reports on the former.

[...]

In stark contrast, an attack on two Israeli police officers in Jerusalem Thursday was reported by all the above outlets except MSNBC.

[...]

None of the above reports on the Jerusalem attack made any mention of the increasingly dire situation in Gaza. Nor, even more conspicuously, was there any mention of Israel’s killing of two Palestinians in a West Bank refugee camp less than a day before.

  FAIR

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Jesus Fitzgerald Christ

The Netherlands has lodged a complaint with the Israeli government after dozens of Dutch solar panels donated to a West Bank village were confiscated by Israeli authorities.

[...]

The panels were not built with proper permits and permissions, the authorities said, confiscating equipment belonging to the £307,000 humanitarian project last week.

[...]

The village mayor told Palestinian outlet Ma’an News that the panels were destroyed, although Comet-ME, the aid organisation which installed the panels, said that between 60 and 90 were taken away intact and other equipment at the site destroyed and left behind by Israeli forces.

[...]

Last year also saw the highest number of Israeli demolitions of Palestinian structures since rights groups began records.

  Independent

Words fail me.

Oh, Yes, Israel Really Wants Peace

Israel has greenlighted plans for over 8,000 new homes in the West Bank, with over a third for “immediate” construction, the defense minister revealed on Sunday, making it the largest expansion of Jewish settlements in the area in 25 years.

  RT

Disgusting. Contemptable. Heinous even.

“I respect the defense minister very much but unfortunately the numbers he mentioned aren’t correct,” Yossi Dagan, the head of the Samaria Regional Council, said, according to the newspaper. According to Dagan, most of the approved units “are counted five or six times,” essentially putting the “real number” under 2,000 housing units.

Doesn't make it better.

The construction of settlements in the region is considered illegal under international law. The international community has long voiced concerns over the controversial constructions while condemning the deteriorating security situation between Israelis and Palestinians.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Fifty Years of Six Days

Fifty years ago, between June 5 and June 10, 1967, Israel invaded and occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights. The Six Day War, as it would later be dubbed, saw the Jewish David inflict a humiliating defeat on the Arab Goliath.

[...]

The conflict itself may have lasted only six days but the occupation that followed is now entering its sixth decade — the longest military occupation in the world. Apologists for Israel often deny that it is an occupation and say the Occupied Territories are merely “disputed,” a disingenuous claim belied by Israel’s own Supreme Court which ruled in 2005 that the West Bank is “held by the State of Israel in belligerent occupation.”

Fifty long years of occupation; of dispossession and ethnic cleansing; of house demolitions and night curfews; of checkpoints, walls and permits.

Fifty years of bombings and blockades; of air raids and night raids; of “targeted killings” and “human shields”; of tortured Palestinian kids.

Fifty years of racial discrimination and ethnic prejudice; of a “separate but unequal” two-tier justice system for Palestinians and Israelis; of military courts and “administrative detention”.

Fifty years of humiliation and subjugation; of pregnant Palestinian women giving birth at checkpoints; of Palestinian cancer patients denied access to radiation therapy; of Palestinian footballers prevented from reaching their matches.

Fifty years of pointless negotiations and failed peace plans.

[...]

Why has the Jewish state spent the past five decades exploiting the charade of a “peace process” to gobble up more Palestinian land and build more illegal settlements?

[...]

[The Israeli] settlements [in Palestine] have rendered the much-discussed “two-state solution” almost impossible. The occupied West Bank has been carved up into a series of bantustans, cut off from each other and the wider world. The settlers are not going anywhere, anytime soon. They are Israel’s “facts on the ground.” To ignore them is to ignore perhaps the biggest obstacle to ending the occupation. “It’s like you and I are negotiating over a piece of pizza,” the Palestinian-American lawyer and former adviser to the PLO, Michael Tarazi, explained in 2004. “How much of the pizza do I get? And how much do you get? And while we are negotiating it, you are eating it.”

[...]

The legendary Israeli general and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who was one of the architects of Israel’s victory in 1967 and was adamant that the country should hold onto the territories it had seized, best summed up the cynical attitude of Israeli governments of both right and left over the past five decades. “The only peace negotiations,” pronounced Dayan, when asked about the possibility of a peace deal with the Palestinians in November 1970, “are those where we settle the land and we build, and we settle, and from time to time we go to war.”

  The Intercept

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A Rare Win for Palestine

A court ordered an illegal settlement evacuated.  And the Israeli border police are doing it.

Israeli border police have clashed with Jewish settlers resisting the eviction of a hardline Jewish settlement outpost in the occupied West Bank after a court ruled the homes were built on private Palestinian land.

Police said on Wednesday they were "attacked by anarchists with materials that made their eyes burn," adding that more than a dozen officers were "lightly wounded by stones and the liquids thrown at them".

[...]

The officers' evacuation of Amona marked the end of months of attempts by government hardliners to legalise the outpost.

[...]

As border police were inside Amona negotiating with the settlers to leave, Khan said that the settlers were threatening to return and "build on this land legally".

"There will likely be a court challenge from the settlers," Khan said.

The Israeli Supreme Court ruled three years ago that the Amona outpost was, by its standard, illegally built on stolen Palestinian land, and ordered it to be demolished.

  alJazeera

While, on the other hand...

Meanwhile, the Israeli government has announced, in just the last two weeks, a string of new projects that will add more than 6,000 illegal homes for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.

[...]

Dozens of other unauthorised outposts - distinguished from Israeli government-sanctioned settlements that are also considered illegal by the international community - have been constructed throughout the occupied West Bank by settlers.

[...]

"We are building and we will continue building," Netanyahu said last week.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Israel Really, Really Wants a Workable Solution with Palestine

That's why Netanyahu just approved more settlements and initiated collective punishment measures in retaliation for one Israeli killed by a Palestinian.

On Sunday, Netanyahu and his freshly-appointed defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, signed off on plans for putting up 560 new housing units in Ma’ale Adumim, a West Bank settlement right outside the capital, according to the Jerusalem Post. Around 140 homes more were approved for the Jewish East Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot and other 100 for the Har Homa neighborhood, in southeast Jerusalem.

The permit was also issued for 600 homes in the Arab neighborhood of Beit Safafa.

[...]

Ministers have been urging Netanyahu to ramp up West Bank construction as one of the retaliatory measures to a recent killing which occurred in the Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba in the occupied West Bank, Haaretz reported.

[...]

This comes in addition to the array of steps already taken up by the Israeli government in the wake of the brutal murder of 13-year old Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a US citizen, by a Palestinian assailant on Thursday.

[...]

Among the measures announced was blocking the Hebron governorate with over 700,000 residents, where the attacker`s native town of Bani Naim is located, and withdrawing work permits from all of its residents. In course of the raids Sunday, six Palestinians, including the sister of the attacker, were arrested by Israeli forces.

[...]

Furthermore, Israel banned the Palestinian governor of Hebron, Kamal Ahmad Hassan Hamid, from the country, accusing him of condoning terrorism. Ahmad visited the home of Mohammed Nasser Tra'ayra on Sunday to offer his condolences to the family.

  RT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Liberals vs the Neoliberal

Cornel West and James Zogby vs. Robert Wexler at the committee debate.



If it weren't for Bernie, this would not even be a question at the Dem Platform Committee.

Shhhh...You're Not Supposed to Say That

I know one Israeli politician who won't be receiving a visit from Hillary. Maybe from her henchmen. No, not even that. Israel's administration will take care of him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Boycott, Divest & Sanction

The United Church of Christ Palestine/Israel Network has voted to join the BDS movement, "calling for boycotts and divestment from companies that profit from Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands."

And good on them.

But, what companies do profit?  Also, check out the BDS movement website.  And a list of six things at Alternet, and 9 brands you can boycott.

Sadly, you cannot withhold your taxes that go to supporting the Israeli military.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Those Rotten Palestinians

The State Department has warned it intends to “review” all aid provided to the Palestinian Authority in the wake of their bid to join the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying the bid would have “implications.”

  AntiWar

Bad enough we veto their bid to UN recognition as a state and the end of Israeli occupation. We don’t even want them on the International Criminal Court. That’s pretty sad. Especially when you consider that we wil simply ignore the ICC’s opinions or rulings any time they don’t go our way.

Congress has already mandated that all aid to the Palestinians be cut off if they attempt to file a single claim against the Israeli occupation, though clearly the US often ignores its own law with respect to aid provision at any rate.

That, too.

And, with the help of our state sponsored media, we will make sure that Americans always see the Palestinians as aggressors. To wit, this Wall Street Journal headline:



Of course, the West Bank can't attack anyone, but the implication that it was the Palestinians is fully intentional. However, it was Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, not Palestinians, who did the attacking.  (And who had previously done this.)

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.