Zionism’s Lost Shine

[backtoiam]

ISRAEL RESPONDS WITH ITS OWN VERSION OF BDS

March 14, 2016 at 10:08

Israel informed the companies on Wednesday that their products were banned from entering Jerusalem through the Beitunia commercial crossing.


Palestinian companies protest Israeli decision to ban their products

Israeli troops used tear gas to suppress a march held by five Palestinian food production companies on Sunday near the Israeli Ofer prison in the occupied West Bank.The companies protested by parking their trucks near the prison, after Israeli authorities banned their products from entering Jerusalem and Israel.

An Israeli army spokesman did not immediately respond for request for information about the protest.Israel informed the companies on Wednesday that their products were banned from entering Jerusalem through the Beitunia commercial crossing.The director of marketing for the Hamoda company, Fadi Abu Hilweh, told Ma’an on Saturday evening that Israeli troops at the crossing have been turning back trucks of the five companies since Wednesday.


Hamoda head Ameer Haddad told Ma’an that Hamoda — along with the companies al-Juneidi Dairy and Food products, al-Rayyan Dairies, Salwa Foods, and Siniora Food Industries — all parked their trucks near the prison to protest the ban and “the horrible consequences of this decision.”Haddad added that the companies export their products to Jerusalem under agreements with Israel and that there was no grounds for the ban.

He said the companies would continue protesting until Israeli authorities canceled the decision.Abu Hilweh said the companies were not officially notified of any decisions to ban their products in Israel and were “surprised” when Israeli soldiers at Beitunia commercial crossing denied their products entry to Israel on Wednesday.

He added that about 50 percent of the five companies’ production goes to Palestinian consumers in occupied East Jerusalem and Palestinian communities in Israel.

If this ban continues, he said, the companies could lose some 1.2 billion shekels ($309.5 million) a year.Hamoda has already notified its milk providers to halt supplies until the ban is resolved. Abu Hilweh said the five companies would have to discharge large numbers of workers if the ban continued.

He added that he was surprised when Israeli authorities informed the companies that the decision to ban products was a “political” decision and “the Palestinian Authority was notified of the decision six months ago.”

An official in the Palestinian Ministry of Economy, who requested anonymity, told Ma’an that the ministry was not notified of any such decision.“

The ministry is looking into the case, which is a flagrant breach of Paris Protocols,” the official said, referring to an agreement signed in 1995 between the PLO and Israel, that set procedures and regulations governing economic relations between the occupied West Bank and Israel.

Palestinian lawmaker and Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative Mustafa Barghouthi said the Palestinian Authority should respond to the Israeli decision by banning Israeli products from entering the Palestinian market.

According to the protocols, bilateral trade agreements between Israel and other parties are considered valid in the occupied West Bank, however Israel prevents the import of many Palestinian products to the Israeli market.

A poll by the the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted in June 2015 reported that the overwhelming majority of those interviewed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — 86 percent — said they supported the campaign to boycott Israeli products.
https://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2016/ ... on-of-bds/

[backtoiam]

THE EXISTENTSIAL DILEMMA FACING ISRAEL TODAY

March 14, 2016 at 09:49

By definition, a dilemma is a situation where one has to choose between two unattractive choices.


An activist puts a Palestinan flag on the Separation Wall facing the Modi’in Illit settlement (Photo: Anne Paq/ Activestills.org)


Zionism’s existential dilemma

By Khalid Amayreh



In 1895, the fledgling Zionist movement dispatched a number of rabbis to Palestine to explore the possibility of establishing a homeland for Jews in the predominantly Arab country, then under Ottoman rule.

After scouring the country, the rabbis sent back the following message: “The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man”

Today, 120 years later the legitimate husband and the rapist turned-master of the house continue the century-old fight for legitimacy and possession of the land.

At one point, the arrogant and self-absorbed rapist thought he achieved a final victory over the legitimate husband who obviously lacked the wherewithal to defend, let alone repulse, the powerful beast, the pugnacious settler and colonizer.

But the legitimate man of the house was not to be crushed. He survived despite his weakness, vulnerability and poverty.

In a certain sense, he survived in spite of logic and history.

Today, notwithstanding Israel’s incessant efforts to obliterate the Palestinian and his memory, there are as many Palestinians as there are Jews in the area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean, including Israel proper, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip.

This is more than just another problem facing the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. This is the ultimate nightmare haunting Israel, rendering its future precarious.

Indeed, the fact that Israel and the territories it occupied in 1967 are today populated by approximately 6 million Palestinians (in addition to 6 million Jews) should be viewed as the ultimate strategic failure of Zionism. Of course, this failure was never intended to be. In fact, it was inadvertent as it was inevitable.

The re-emergence of demographic realities in Palestine-Israel reminds us of Albert Camus’s iconic words, appearing in his famous play “Le Malentendu” or “In Cross purpose.”

“In a world where everything can be denied there are forces undeniable, and on Earth where nothing is sure we have our certainties.”

Thus it seems that Palestinians have survived “in spite of logic” and “in spite of history”, perhaps thanks to Camus’ “forces undeniable”

That is precisely the Palestinian odyssey in a nutshell.

I have no doubt that history will record that one of the main reasons for Israel’s ultimate demise is the intensive proliferation of Jewish settlements throughout the West Bank which rendered the establishment of a viable Palestinian state utterly impossible.

Yes, it is hard to thank someone for doing you a favor he never intended to do in the first place. But perhaps we Palestinians ought to thank Israel for building that many settlements in the West Bank.

I don’t know if Israel knew or not what she was doing.

But the net outcome is the same as the seemingly existential dilemma already facing the Zionist enterprise is irreconcilable, irreversible and inescapable.

By definition, a dilemma is a situation where one has to choose between two unattractive choices.

The dilemma facing Israel and Zionism today is having to choose between a bi-national state where at least half of the population is non-Jewish (and they are growing demographically at a faster rate in comparison to Jews) or adopting perpetual occupation, repression, and apartheid as outstanding policy pending the appearance of the Messiah, irrespective of his religious affiliations and political orientations!!

Israel might very well be entertaining a third Choice. After all, Israel is Israel and can be expected to embark on the unthinkable.

But the “unthinkable”, however ghoulish it might be could boomerang on Israel and be decidedly suicidal for Jews especially in the future.

This is because any foolish act against the Palestinians, such as mass expulsion, which would be tantamount to an actual genocide, would really open the gates of hell on Israel.

Because then every expelled man, woman and child would, almost spontaneously and automatically, transform themselves into bombs walking on two legs. And they would meet absolute approval and backing from the 1600 million followers of Islam and other supporters.

Such would be the ultimate triumph of the Isis.
https://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2016/ ... ael-today/

[AlicetheKurious]

This is because any foolish act against the Palestinians, such as mass expulsion, which would be tantamount to an actual genocide, would really open the gates of hell on Israel.

Because then every expelled man, woman and child would, almost spontaneously and automatically, transform themselves into bombs walking on two legs. And they would meet absolute approval and backing from the 1600 million followers of Islam and other supporters.

Such would be the ultimate triumph of the Isis.

I was with him until that part. First, because it's nonsense. He's trying to scare the Israelis with their own sick propaganda about every Palestinian man, woman and child being capable of "spontaneously and automatically" transforming themselves into a bomb walking on two legs, which even they know is utterly bonkers. And he's echoing the Zionist propaganda about 1.6 billion Muslims being monolithic and supporting people blowing themselves up, even if that were possible. It's a cartoon.

No. There are only two things stopping the Israelis from forcibly evicting millions of Palestinians. The first is fear of going too far and creating a global backlash similar to the one that led to the fatal isolation and collapse of Apartheid in South Africa. This fear is diminishing steadily.

The second is more compelling: where would they expel them to? In 1948, they drove them in trucks and forced them to march toward the Lebanese border and beyond, or into Syria or Jordan. All three of those borders are now sealed shut. In 1967, they pushed their victims into Gaza. With 1.8 million people already squeezed in, the tiny and overburdened Gaza Strip is already the most crowded place on Earth, but that wouldn't bother them. In fact, the remaining choice is either throwing them into Gaza or into the Sea. Gaza has the additional advantage of bordering Sinai, which the Israelis have already invaded and occupied three times, and it's no secret they covet it badly. If only the Palestinians can be pushed into it, to the point that they constitute a majority of its population, all sorts of fun and games can ensue. But it's part of Egypt, and Egypt has a big army, able and very willing to defend it. What to do? What to do?

That's the dilemma.

[AlicetheKurious]

The Truth is what we say it is. History is what we say it is.

McGraw-Hill destroys textbook to placate pro-Israel bloggers

Rania Khalek Lobby Watch 11 March 2016


An image published by Elder of Ziyon from the textbook Global Politics, as part of the anti-Palestinian blogger’s successful campaign to pressure McGraw Hill over maps depicting land loss in Palestine.

The publisher McGraw-Hill Education is destroying all copies of a political science textbook after receiving complaints from hardline supporters of Israel that it features a series of “anti-Israel” maps.

The college textbook, titled Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World, was published in 2012. But it wasn’t until early this month that the maps generated criticism from a pro-Israel blogger known as Elder of Ziyon.

Within a week of the initial outcry, McGraw-Hill began destroying all copies of the book, scrubbed the book from its website, promised to reimburse anyone who bought the book and apologized to the offended right-wing bigots behind the manufactured controversy.

According to the publisher’s summary, the book fosters “critical thinking and theory” about global events and “offers students a number of lenses through which to view the world around them.”

The maps, which appear in chronological succession on page 123, show Palestinian land loss from 1946, one year before Zionist militias initiated the displacement of more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians from historic Palestine, to the year 2000, by which point Palestinian land had been reduced to a handful of tiny non-contiguous enclaves in the occupied West Bank and a sliver of Gaza.

The caption reads, “A mix of diplomatic and military actions and expanded Jewish settlements since the founding of modern Israel has led to a gradual decline in Palestinian-held territory – which explains why the territory remains one of the central sticking points in the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The image is sourced to the Middle East Political Research Center.

Fear of maps

Such maps present an enormous threat to Zionist ideologues because they have the ability to cut through Israeli propaganda that portrays Palestinian anger and violence as rooted in religious intolerance and irrational hatred rather than a natural reaction to Israel’s colonial expansionism, land theft and ethnic cleansing, all of which continue today.

That is why any time an iteration of these maps breaks into the mainstream, Israel’s advocates rush to censor it.

Just last year, when MSNBC aired a similar series of maps to demonstrate the dramatic theft of Palestinian land since Israel’s foundation, pro-Israel groups pressured the cable news outlet to retract the segment.

MSNBC eventually capitulated, calling the maps “not factually accurate.”

The first criticisms of the textbook came from the virulently anti-Palestinian and pro-settlement blogger Elder of Ziyon.

Elder of Ziyon’s blog post on the textbook, published on 1 March, urged supporters of Israel to flood McGraw-Hill with emails against the maps, denying, against all available evidence, that Palestinians were ever forcibly expelled from their homes in pre-planned acts of dispossession.

Within hours, the post was republished by The Tower, a self-styled Israel and Middle East-focused magazine and website run by The Israel Project.

TIP is a right-wing pro-Israel lobbying outfit that specializes in crafting and supplying anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim propaganda to journalists and policy makers.

TIP receives funding from major bankrollers of the Islamophobia industry and is headed by Josh Block, former spokesperson for the powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC.

Block gained notoriety for secretly coordinating a smear campaign against bloggers who were writing critically about Israeli government policy.

Independent review?

The Blaze, another right-wing media outlet, soon picked up the story and brought it to the attention of McGraw-Hill, which responded by immediately suspending sales of the textbook pending a review.

Elder of Ziyon celebrated and took credit for the outcome, noting that “the book is being or has been used in courses at Northwestern Oklahoma State University, University of Indianapolis, Western Illinois University, George Washington University School of Business and Marshall University.”

Less than a week later, McGraw-Hill announced it would destroy all copies of the book.

“The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards,” McGraw-Hill spokesperson Catherine Mathis told Inside Higher Ed, adding, “We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.”

Inspired by anti-Muslim hate group leaders like Robert Spencer, Elder of Ziyon is dedicated to demonizing Palestinians and Muslims, and even argued that the paranoid manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik is “not all crazy sounding - it is scary how sane much of the document seems to be.”

“Some of [Breivik’s] political analysis is actually on target,” Elder of Ziyon stated after Breivik massacred 77 people in Norway, supposedly in an attempt to rescue Europe from what he viewed as the dark forces of Islam and Marxism.

Breivik drew inspiration for his violent ideology from the US Islamophobia industry of which Elder of Ziyon is a part.

Elder of Ziyon conceals his real identity, even when speaking in public.

The textbook’s authors – Mark Boyer, Natalie Hudson and Michael Butler – did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked who carried out the review of the book, Mathis told The Electronic Intifada that it “was conducted by independent academics who determined that the maps were not accurate.”

Mathis did not respond to a follow-up query seeking more details about who carried out the review and how they reached such a conclusion.

As for who pressured McGraw-Hill about the maps, Mathis would only say, “We heard about this from multiple sources.”

Given the highly politicized nature of all discussion related to Palestine in the United States, the definition of who is an “independent academic” would vary widely depending on the perspective of who is making the assessment. And if the “experts” are indeed independent, they should be willing to provide an explanation of how and why they deemed the maps to be inaccurate.

The only way that McGraw-Hill’s credibility can be assessed is with some transparency about the groups or “experts” who made this recommendation.

Otherwise, we are left to assume that McGraw-Hill is effectively burning books to placate the censorship demands of right-wing anti-Palestinian bigots. Link

[backtoiam]

March 9, 2016
How Most Aid to the Palestinians Ends up in Israel’s Coffers

by Jonathan Cook/counterpunch


Diplomats may have a reputation for greyness, obfuscation, even hypocrisy, but few have found themselves compared to a serial killer, let alone one who devours human flesh.

That honour befell Laars Faaborg-Andersen, the European Union’s ambassador to Israel, last week when Jewish settlers launched a social media campaign casting him as Hannibal Lecter, the terrifying character from the film Silence of the Lambs.

An image of the Danish diplomat wearing Lecter’s prison face-mask was supposed to suggest that Europe needs similar muzzling.

The settlers’ grievance relates to European aid, which has provided temporary shelter to Palestinian Bedouin families after the Israeli army demolished their homes in the occupied territories near Jerusalem. The emergency housing has helped them remain on land coveted by Israel and the settlers.

European officials, outraged by the Lecter comparison, have reminded Tel Aviv that, were it to abide by international law, Israel – not the EU – would be taking responsibility for these families’ welfare.

While Europe may think of itself as part of an enlightened West, using aid to defend Palestinians’ rights, the reality is less reassuring. The aid may actually be making things significantly worse.

Shir Hever, an Israeli economist who has spent years piecing together the murky economics of the occupation, recently published a report that makes shocking reading.

Like others, he believes international aid has allowed Israel to avoid footing the bill for its decades-old occuption. But he goes further.

His astonishing conclusion – one that may surprise Israel’s settlers – is that at least 78 per cent of humanitarian aid intended for Palestinians ends up in Israel’s coffers.

The sums involved are huge. The Palestinians under occupation are among the most aid-dependent in the world, receiving more than $2bn from the international community a year. According to Hever, donors could be directly subsidising up to a third of the occupation’s costs.

Other forms of Israeli profiteering have been identified in previous studies.

In 2013 the World Bank very conservatively estimated that the Palestinians lose at least $3.4bn a year in resources plundered by Israel.

Further, Israel’s refusal to make peace with the Palestinians, and as a consequence the rest of the region, is used to justify Washington’s annual $3bn in military aid.

Israel also uses the occupied territories as laboratories for testing weapons and surveillance systems on Palestinians – and then exports its expertise. Israel’s military and cyber industries are hugely profitable, generating many billions of dollars of income each year.

A survey published last week found tiny Israel to be the eighth most powerful country in the world.

But whereas these income streams are a recognisable, if troubling, windfall from Israel’s occupation, western humanitarian aid to the Palestinians is clearly intended for the victims, not the victors.

So how is Israel creaming off so much?

The problem, says Hever, is Israel’s self-imposed role as mediator. To reach the Palestinians, donors have no choice but to go through Israel. This provides ripe opportunities for what he terms “aid subversion” and “aid diversion”.

The first results from the Palestinians being a captive market. They have access to few goods and services that are not Israeli.

Who Profits?, an Israeli organisation monitoring the economic benefits for Israel in the occupation, assesses that dairy firm Tnuva enjoys a monopoly in the West Bank worth $60 million annually.

Aid diversion, meanwhile, occurs because Israel controls all movement of people and goods. Israeli restrictions mean it gets to charge for transportation and storage, and levy “security” fees.

Other studies have identified additional profits from “aid destruction”. When Israel wrecks foreign-funded aid projects, Palestinians lose – but Israel often benefits.

Cement-maker Nesher, for example, is reported to control 85 per cent of all construction by Israelis and Palestinians, including the supplies for rebuilding efforts in Gaza after Israel’s repeated rampages.

Significant segments of Israeli society, aside from those in the security industries, are lining their pockets from the occupation. Paradoxically, the label “the most aid-dependent people in the world” – usually affixed to the Palestinians – might be better used to describe Israelis.

What can be done? International law expert Richard Falk notes that Israel is exploiting an aid oversight vacuum: there are no requirements on donors to ensure their money reaches the intended recipients.

What the international community has done over the past 20 years of the Oslo process – inadvertently or otherwise – is offer Israel financial incentives to stabilise and entrench its rule over the Palestinians. It can do so relatively cost-free.

While Europe and Washington have tried to beat Israel with a small diplomatic stick to release its hold on the occupied territories, at the same time they dangle juicy financial carrots to encourage Israel to tighten its grip.

There is a small ray of hope. Western aid policy does not have to be self-sabotaging. Hever’s study indicates that Israel has grown as reliant on Palestinian aid as the Palestinians themselves.

The EU noted last week that Israel not Brussels should be caring for the Bedouin it has left homeless. Europe could take its own advice to heart and start shifting the true costs of the occupation back on to Israel.

That may happen soon enough whatever the west decides, if – as even Israel is predicting will occur soon – the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas collapses.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/09/ ... s-coffers/

[AlicetheKurious]

The EU noted last week that Israel not Brussels should be caring for the Bedouin it has left homeless. Europe could take its own advice to heart and start shifting the true costs of the occupation back on to Israel.

That may happen soon enough whatever the west decides, if – as even Israel is predicting will occur soon – the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas collapses.

Yes, that's the theory: that should the PA collapse, then that would remove the fig leaf from the Israeli occupation. Under international law, an occupying power is solely responsible -- and legally and financially accountable -- for ensuring the welfare of the people living in the occupied territories.

And indeed, President Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly threatened to resign, as Israel continues to ravage the Palestinian people and the land of Palestine.

But in practice, Israel is above the law anyway. Whether or not the PA is there, it will continue to steal everything from the Palestinians, including their property, their freedom and their lives, without worrying about being held accountable. The "international community" itself disregards international law, and continues to supply the criminal entity with arms and money, and even, in the case of some countries, passes laws criminalizing their own citizens' activism to educate or boycott or otherwise oppose the Zionist entity's continuous crimes.

Should President Abbas resign and the PA collapse, the Palestinians under Israel's criminal occupation will lose the only legitimate representative they have, for example capable of applying for (and being granted) the status of a state in international bodies such as the UN, and also with the legal status necessary to sue Israeli war criminals in international courts, sign treaties with other countries, and contracts, etc. These may not seem like much in the current environment, but circumstances change, and Palestine must be ready.

Israel is aware of this, and that's why it is sparing no effort to force Abbas to resign, and to collapse the PA, so that the ensuing vacuum will be filled by Hamas, which has no legal or internationally recognized status, and which is listed by many countries as a terrorist organization. This is precisely what Israel wants, and thus what Qatar, Turkey and many well-meaning dupes in the "Palestinian solidarity movement" want as well.

[seemslikeadream]

Palestinians sue billionaire Sheldon Adelson for Israeli war crimes

Charlotte Silver Rights and Accountability 10 March 2016


Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has been accused in a lawsuit of financing Israeli war crimes against Palestinians (via Facebook)

A group of Palestinians and Palestinian Americans are seeking $34.5 billion dollars in damages from wealthy individuals and companies they accuse of financing and profiting from Israel’s settlements in the occupied West Bank and other abuses of their rights.

The plaintiffs include Palestinians who have lost family members in Israeli attacks in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Their lawsuit is the latest effort to expose and curb the role of organizations that operate as tax-exempt US charities in fueling violence and settlement expansion on occupied Palestinian land.

It names as defendants US tycoons Sheldon Adelson, Haim Saban, Irving Moskowitz and Oracle founder Lawrence Ellison.

Adelson is renowned for using his huge casino fortune to advance his pro-Israel political agenda and is a major financial backer of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the US Republican Party.

Saban has donated millions of dollars to US Democratic Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.

Moskowitz is one of the main financiers of settler efforts to force Palestinians out of their homes in occupied East Jerusalem.

The lawsuit also names Israeli diamond magnate and settlement builder Lev Leviev and Christians United for Israel founder, the US Evangelical pastor John Hagee.

Twelve US-based charities and a number of Israeli and US corporations are also named as defendants. The charities include Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, The Hebron Fund and Christian Friends of Israeli Communities.

Follow the money

The plaintiffs, represented by the law firm Martin McMahon and Associates, allege that the defendants are directly responsible for violence and for the expansion of settlements.

The lawsuit, filed in a Washington, DC, federal court on Monday, alleges a wide range of crimes under US and international law, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, conspiracy, money laundering, racketeering, perjury and pillage.

It alleges that charitable donations are sent to the Israeli army, a violation of US laws against funding a foreign military.

Last December, some of the same plaintiffs using the same law firm sued the US Treasury for allowing billions of dollars of tax-exempt donations to flow to Israeli settlements.

This lawsuit targets those who are supplying the money.

Several are powerful billionaires who the lawsuit contends have defrauded the US tax authorities by funnelling huge sums of money meant for illegal purposes through tax-exempt organizations.

According to the lawsuit, approximately $1 billion is sent through these organizations each year, with $104 million going to the Israeli army in 2014.

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants donate money to tax-exempt organizations knowing that it will be used for criminal activity, such as funding the theft and destruction of private property and financing racially discriminatory practices such as Jewish-only towns and highways.

Victims of violence

The plaintiffs in the case are 20 individuals and five village councils who say they are victims of these crimes.

They include the Palestinian activist Bassem al-Tamimi who has been jailed for his nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation, the author Susan Abulhawa and Hiba Barghouti, whose Palestinian American brother Abdelrahman Barghouthi was killed by the Israeli army during a visit to the West Bank.

Plaintiff Doaa Abu Amar lost 14 family members when the Israeli army bombed a daycare center they had to take shelter in during Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2009, according to Martin McMahon and Associates. Plaintiff Ahmed al-Zeer is permanently disabled because of an attack by Israeli settlers.

Each one of the plaintiffs “can trace the cause of his damages from violent settlers…. to US 501(c)3 entities and wealthy US donors,” the filing states, using the formal legal name of this type of charitable organization.

Donations made to 501(c)3 organizations are tax-deductible for the donors and the organizations themselves do not pay income tax.

Corporate crimes

But this lawsuit reaches even more broadly than charities that fund political agendas abroad.

Seventeen international corporations are named as beneficiaries of the unlawful activities of the tax-exempt entities and donors.

The lawsuit calls this money loop a civil conspiracy to defraud the US government.

“The settlement enterprise is a very successful industry,” the law firm states in a press release.

The US-based real estate firm RE/MAX has grossed $9.5 billion for selling 26,000 new homes in the occupied West Bank, according to the lawsuit.

Other corporations named are G4S, Hewlett Packard, Motorola and Volvo.

Israeli banks that process international wire transfers for other defendants are also accused in the conspiracy.

By targeting both the funders and the profiteers, the lawsuit aims to capture the criminal economic cycle that has helped make Israel’s occupation sustainable for everyone but Palestinians.

Separate from the civil conspiracy charges, the lawsuit also accuses Ahava–Dead Sea Laboratories, Israel Chemicals and Nordstrom department stores of the war crime of pillage.

Nordstrom sells Ahava cosmetics made with Dead Sea minerals taken from the occupied West Bank.

One of the plaintiffs, the author Susan Abulhawa, said, “I want a court, somewhere, somehow, to hold accountable those who have financed my pain of dispossession and exile…to hold accountable the financiers of Israel’s wholesale theft of another people’s historic, material, spiritual and emotional presence in the world.”

The law firm representing her and the other plaintiffs told Al Jazeera English that it expects the defendants to put up a fight over the jurisdiction of an American court to hear the case.

[seemslikeadream]

This Accursed Place: Israel Moves to Deport Innocent Families to Its Most Ravaged Penal Colony - Gaza
byAbby Zimet, staff writer

In its 10th year under siege by Israel, Gaza today is the world's largest ghetto or open-air cage, and the ultimate "realization of Israel's vision of separation." Its almost two million Palestinians, almost half of them children, live trapped in its fearsome ruins, still victimized and traumatized by the 2014 Israeli assault on Gaza - Warning: graphic - and surviving without adequate housing, water, food, electricity or guarantee of safety. Officials estimate 70% of its residents are in need of humanitarian aid, 60% are either hungry or about to be, per capita income is $1,273, unemployment hovers near 45%, and the UN warns all of Gaza will be uninhabitable by 2020 unless the international community acts to end the Israeli blockade and its devastating effects.

Toward that end, Israelis living near the border recently asked the UN to intervene to end the crisis on behalf of both sides. And this week the international Freedom Flotilla announced the launch this fall of the Women's Boat to Gaza to "highlight the indomitable spirit of Palestinian women" in the diaspora, to honor Gaza women as "bastions of resistance and life," and to attempt to break the blockade in order to bring in humanitarian aid. Organizers concede this fourth flotilla, to be sailed by women only, will face the same challenges and risk as earlier attempts, but they stress, "For Palestinians living in Gaza, every day is a risky day."

Meanwhile, Gaza's conditions remain so bleak that even its estimated 1,200 Syrian Palestinian refugees, many from Yarmouk - which theUN has called "a death camp" - wantto get out, even if it means returning to their former devastation. Often second-or-third-time refugees descended from those families originally displaced by Israel in 1948, these new victims who dreamed of returning to Palestine now find themselves "breadless," jobless and beleaguered, often living crammed together in rooms with no furniture and no prospects of a decent life. One woman says her family remains under siege in Aleppo, "but their hell is better than Gaza's paradise."

It is to "this accursed place" that an increasingly nationalist, vengeful Israel now seeks to banish to Gaza the hapless families of the perpetrators of a new surge of spontaneous lone-wolf "terrorist" attacks - mostly what Gideon Levy calls "the teenage girl with scissors and the teenage boy with a kitchen knife," attached to no political or military infrastructure and driven only by blind fury at their oppressors. The desperate assailants are usually executed on the spot by Israeli soldiers, or occasionally just arrested. Now Israel, in what it calls "a first-rate act of deterrence," seeks to further punish their families, by not just razing their homes but utterly uprooting them, because, "With the imprimatur of Israel’s judicial system, there is a collective punishment for everything." The move has garnered broad support among Israeli lawmakers, despite the fact that it would defy both Israeli and international law - an issue the Israeli Attorney General has raised, but which a long-truth-twisting Netanyahu has dismissed by arguing it's a matter of "interpretation." In a final irony noted by Levy, who has long passionately written about Gaza as "a stricken enclave," Israel's expulsions of families of perpetrators, clearly framed as punishment, would for the first time be an admission that Gaza is in fact a prison, "a penal colony of Israel, its very own Devil’s Island." The very existence of that prison, he adds, is the final proof that, "There is no military solution to nearly 50 years of despair."

[backtoiam]

‘In every important way Israel has failed’– leading American Zionist says No mas
February 24, 2016



Israel is “a failure,” the Zionist dream has curdled into Jewish selfishness, a major Jewish leader writes in an important article published yesterday. “After a life and career devoted to Jewish community and Israel, I conclude that in every important way Israel has failed to realize its promise for me,” David Gordis states.

Gordis is a former executive at the American Jewish Committee, a central organization of the Israel lobby, and former president of the Hebrew College and a former vice president of the Jewish Theological Seminary. He published his article yesterday at Tikkun under the title, “Major American Jewish Leader Changes His Mind About Israel.”

Gordis, who is in his late 70s (and the uncle of rightwing Zionist Daniel Gordis), writes that he completely believed in Israel when it was founded and through his adult life, but that the spiral of that society into occupation and Jewish particularism has caused him to change his mind. It’s a political, spiritual and religious failure: Israel is “distorted by a fanatic, obscurantist and fundamentalist religion which encourages the worst behaviors rather than the best.”

His indictment includes American Jews. “The establishment leadership in the American Jewish community is silent in the face of this dismal situation, and there are no recognizable trends that can move Israel out of this quagmire.” Peter Beinart said this about the establishment four years ago while Max Blumenthal laid out the problem in Israel’s political culture in comprehensive detail in Goliath three years ago and was promptly censored by every mainstream organ, from NPR to the New Yorker to the New York Times to the cables and public television– yes; “Frontline” features Dennis Ross and Ari Shavit as its spokespeople on Israel, to make the funders happy.

Read Gordis’s article in full. Here are some excerpts:

The Israel of today is very far from anything I dreamed of and worked for throughout my career….

Jews had returned to the stage of history after the devastation of the Holocaust. Israel was to be the great laboratory for the rebirth of an ancient tradition in a new land and in a country committed to being a model of democracy and freedom for the world.

What happened? We can debate the reasons but the bottom line for me is that it has gone terribly wrong. On the positive side, Israel’s accomplishments have been remarkable. Israel has created a thriving economy, and has been a refuge for hundreds of thousands of the displaced and the needy. Israel has generated a rich and diverse cultural life and its scientific and educational achievements have been exemplary. In spite of these achievements, however, Israel in my view has gone astray. And it in in the area for which Israel was created, as a Jewish state, embodying and enhancing Jewish values that I see this failure..

The political culture is rotten.

Israel’s occupation of the West Bank is nearing a half century in duration. Netanyahu’s “facts on the ground” steps to make a two-state solution impossible are bearing fruit, and there still appears to be no significant opposition to these policies in Israel itself. A number of smaller organizations supporting a two-state solution have emerged, notably J-Street and Americans for Peace Now, but recent steps by the Israeli government to delegitimize these groups are proceeding. The bottom line as I see it: The right has triumphed; the left has been defeated.

The spiritual culture is rotten. The Jewish experience balanced particularism and universalism traditionally. Not in Israel. The emphasis below is Gordis’s.

Present day Israel has discarded the rational, the universal and the visionary. These values have been subordinated to a cruel and oppressive occupation, an emphatic materialism, severe inequalities rivaling the worst in the western world and distorted by a fanatic, obscurantist and fundamentalist religion which encourages the worst behaviors rather than the best.

And most depressing of all for me, is that I see no way out, no way forward which will reverse the current reality. Right wing control in Israel is stronger and more entrenched than ever. The establishment leadership in the American Jewish community is silent in the face of this dismal situation, and there are no recognizable trends that can move Israel out of this quagmire. So, sadly, after a life and career devoted to Jewish community and Israel, I conclude that in every important way Israel has failed to realize its promise for me. A noble experiment, but a failure.

This article is a huge blow. Michael Walzer has had similar misgivings lately published in a book; but he has not stated the matter as emphatically as this. But I predict apres Gordis, the deluge.

Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun says that he published the article as submitted by Gordis, who is today a senior scholar at SUNY Albany:

We publish it with the same sadness that Gordis expresses at the end of this article, because many of us at Tikkun magazine shared the same hopes he expresses below for an Israel that would make Jews proud by becoming an embodiment of what is best in Jewish tradition, history, and ethics, rather than a manifestation of all the psychological and spiritual damage that has been done to our people, which now acts as an oppressor to the Palestinian people.

One last point. From his American Jewish Committee days, Gordis reflects that that Israel lobbying organization had political tensions built in.

its lay leadership tending center-right and its professional staff clearly center left.

This is always the tension in these organizations. Right now I bet J Street staff is composed of people who understand the failure of Israel, while the leadership clings to HaTikvah Zionism so as to influence the Democratic Party an iota. Americans for Peace Now surely has young staff who believe in one state.
http://mondoweiss.net/2016/02/in-every- ... ys-no-mas/

[backtoiam]

I hate that some dummy scrawled "why the us and israel wants to ban this video" across the front because it detracts from what this amazingly intelligent woman has to say.

[Nordic]

Anna!

Sorry what are we talking about?

[seemslikeadream]

An Ugly Smear Campaign
March 20, 2016

Exclusive: A Zionist group bought a full-page New York Times ad to demonize Sidney and Max Blumenthal as “anti-Semites” and to demand that Hillary Clinton renounce them, a revival of a crude McCarthyism, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

An ugly feature of life in modern Washington is that anyone who dares criticize Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians can expect to be subjected to nasty accusations of “anti-Semitism” and other attacks that are meant to make the target politically untouchable.

For example, The New York Times published a full-page ad on Saturday paid for by a pro-Zionist group called The World Values Network featuring a grainy graphic of Sidney Blumenthal and his son Max Blumenthal along with a demand that “Hillary Clinton must disavow her anti-Israel advisors.”


The text accuses Sidney Blumenthal, Clinton’s longtime personal friend and adviser, of sending the Secretary of State emails in which “he was obsessed with painting the Jewish state in the most unflattering light.”

The ad cites Blumenthal writing on March 20, 2010, that “The policy of the present Israeli government is endangering the lives of American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Blumenthal is also attacked for noting Israeli “settlers’ theft of water from Palestinian towns” and, according to the ad, sending Clinton an article “claiming Israel was pursuing goals contrary to U.S. interests, while ‘starting a rebellion’ against the United States.”

Though such comments might seem like no-brainers to anyone who has followed Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians and how that behavior has inspired Islamic extremism, The World Values Network views the comments as evidence of anti-Semitism.

The ad then denounces Blumenthal’s son, Max, saying “Even more shocking still were Sid Blumenthal’s attempts to feed Hillary Clinton toxic analysis from his son Max, a self-declared ‘anti-Zionist’ and fanatical Israel-hater. This rotten apple did not fall far from the tree.”

The World Values Network is headed by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who likes to go by the nickname “America’s Rabbi.” The group is one of many that has sought to scar any political figure who won’t toe the line of Israel’s right-wing government as it rejects any reasonable peace agreement with the Palestinians and periodically “mows the grass” by launching bloody attacks on Gaza and the West Bank.

Typically, the way this Zionist political strategy works is to demonize individuals, like Blumenthal or his son, and then demand that an ally must disassociate from them or face political reprisals. The approach is a form of McCarthyism. In this case, The World Values Network makes clear what Clinton must do if she wishes to receive Jewish support in her presidential campaign. She must publicly renounce the Blumenthals.

The ad says: “Hillary Clinton is running for President. She’s asking friends of Israel to count on her support of the always-vulnerable Jewish State. If she won’t disassociate herself from her discredited advisor Sid Blumenthal and his rabid, Israel-hating son Max, how can we?”

Pressuring Branson

In a similar attack, the same group has sought to drive a wedge between businessman Richard Branson and both former President Jimmy Carter and South African Bishop Desmond Tutu for their offense of criticizing Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.

“But a little known and unfortunate fact about Branson is his strange, anti-Israel opinions and activities that are beneath a man known for having a good and kind heart,” The World Values Network states at its Web site. “In 2007, Branson founded an organization called ‘The Elders’ which was made up of a council of twelve elder statesmen who would serve as ‘independent global leaders working together for peace and human rights.’ …

“Unfortunately among the elders that Branson selected for his new group are a Who’s who of some of the most tenacious, anti-Israel public figures in the world today. The Elders’ anti-Israel statements and press releases condemning the Jewish state are a sad testament to this fact.

“Topping the Elders’ list is former President Jimmy Carter, a man dedicated to the disgustingly fraudulent and anti-Semitic proposition that Israel is an apartheid State. Carter’s defamatory fabrications about the Jewish State include the lie not only that Israel is like apartheid South Africa but that ‘voices from Jerusalem dominate our media.’ Last year he claimed [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu wasn’t interested in making peace…

“Other ‘elders’ in Branson’s organization include the notoriously anti-Israel, anti-Semitic Bishop Desmond Tutu, … Tutu is a supporter of the BDS movement, calling for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. His bigoted views have surfaced with statements such as, ‘The Jewish lobby is powerful — very powerful,’ while accusing Jews of ‘an arrogance — the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support.’

“Tutu has stated that Zionism has ‘very many parallels with racism,’ and has accused the Jewish state of subjecting the Palestinians to ‘Israeli Apartheid.’”

Again, you might say that little of what Carter and Tutu have said is controversial — at least in the sense of what is empirically true. After all, Netanyahu himself vowed during his last campaign that he would not to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians and there is no doubt that the Israelis treat the Palestinians as inferior beings who are sharply restricted in where they can and cannot go.

But the goal of attacks like the ones from The World Values Network is to use “guilt by association” to marginalize anyone who criticizes Israel by trying to scare a Clinton or a Branson into renouncing the Blumenthals or Carter or Tutu. If that wedge can be driven, then the repudiation itself can be waved about as an example of what happens to some public figure who dares fault the Israeli government.

As the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee holds its annual convention in Washington – and U.S. political leaders from all political persuasions troop across the stage to express their devotion and dedication to Israel – The New York Times ad is a reminder of what’s in store for anyone who deviates.

[MacCruiskeen]

How the NYT chose to report Israel`s murder of two small children:



The only word for that journalism is depraved.

[tapitsbo]

Holy shit yeah "bases" is rich.

Comparing the ongoing arch-Zionist tone policing to McCarthy is also rich. It has been MUCH more enduring and successful than his brief efforts.

[backtoiam]

Anna!

Sorry what are we talking about?

No shit. If we had a few thousand of her running this world we would all be on easy street.