Ken O' Keefe.

[seemslikeadream]

hysterical ---- two web sites about Atzmon ---- typical


can't have balance without a bit of bashing Atzmon on the side

[slimmouse]

Ive tried to stay out of this thread, quite simply because the abomination that is the state of Israel in its current form, is merely a symptom of a much broader disease that affects our entire civilisation.

Racism is indeed a factor. But it pales into comparison when we look at the scale of the elitism, and those who truly pull the strings.

And they aint fukn Jewish by any reasonable definition of the term.

[seemslikeadream]

Racist measures against Palestinians in Israel lead to strike call
Jonathan Cook
The Electronic Intifada
9 September 2009

The increasingly harsh political climate in Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government has prompted the leadership of the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens to call for the first general strike in several years.

The one-day stoppage is due to take place on 1 October, a date heavy with symbolism because it marks the anniversary of another general strike, in 2000 at the start of the second Palestinian intifada, when 13 Arab demonstrators were shot dead by Israeli police.

The Arab leadership said it was responding to a string of what it called “racist” government measures that cast the Arab minority, a fifth of the population, as enemies of the state.

“In recent months, there has been a parallel situation of racist policies in the parliament and greater condoning of violence towards Arab citizens by the police and courts,” said Jafar Farah, the head of Mossawa, an Arab advocacy group in Israel. “This attitude is feeding down to the streets.”

Confrontations between the country’s Arab minority and Netanyahu’s coalition, formed in the spring, surfaced almost immediately over a set of controversial legal measures.

The proposed bills outlawed the commemoration of the Nakba, or catastrophe, the word used by Palestinians for their dispossession in 1948; required citizens to swear loyalty to Israel as a Zionist state; and banned political demands for ending Israel’s status as a Jewish state. Following widespread outcries, the bills were either watered down or dropped.

But simmering tensions came to a boil again late last month when the education minister, Gideon Saar, presented educational reforms to mark the start of the new school year.

He confirmed plans to drop the word “Nakba” from Arabic textbooks and announced his intention to launch classes on Jewish heritage and Zionism. He also said he would tie future budgets for schools to their success in persuading pupils to perform military or national service.

Arab citizens are generally exempted from military service, although officials have recently been trying to push civilian national service in its place.

Mohammed Barakeh, an Arab member of the parliament, denounced the linking of budgets to national service, saying that Saar “must understand that he is the education minister, not the defense minister.”

The separate Arab education system is in need of thousands of more classrooms and is massively underfunded — up to nine times more is spent on a Jewish pupil than an Arab one, according to surveys. Research published by the Hebrew University in Jerusalem last month showed that Jewish schools received five times more than Arab schools for special education classes.

Netanyau, who accompanied Saar on a tour of schools last week, appeared to give his approval to the proposed reforms: “We advocate education that stresses values, Zionism and a love of the land.”

Barakeh also accused government ministers of competing to promote measures hostile to the Arab minority. “Anyone seeking fame finds it in racist whims against Arabs — the ministers of infrastructure, education, transportation, whoever.”

Barakeh was referring to a raft of recent proposals.

Avigdor Lieberman, the foreign minister and leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, announced last month that training for the diplomatic service would be open only to candidates who had completed national service.

Of the foreign ministry’s 980 employees only 15 are Arab, a pattern reflected across the civil service sector according to Sikkuy, a rights and coexistence organization.

The housing minister, Ariel Atias, has demanded communal segregation between Jewish and Arab citizens and instituted a drive to make the Galilee, where most Arab citizens live, “more Jewish.”

The interior minister, Eli Yishai, has approved a wave of house demolitions, most controversially in the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm in Wadi Ara, where a commercial district has been twice bulldozed in recent weeks.

The transport minister, Israel Katz, has insisted that road signs include place names only as they are spelt in Hebrew, thereby erasing the Arabic names of communities such as Jerusalem, Jaffa and Nazareth.

Arab legislators have come under repeated verbal attack from members of the government. Last month, the infrastructures minister, Uzi Landau, refused to meet Taleb al-Sana, the head of the United Arab List party, on parliamentary business, justifying the decision on the grounds that Arab MPs were “working constantly here and abroad to delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state.”

Shortly afterwards, al-Sana and his colleague Ahmed Tibi, the deputy speaker of parliament, attended Fatah’s congress in Bethlehem, prompting Lieberman to declare: “Our central problem is not the Palestinians, but Ahmed Tibi and his ilk — they are more dangerous than Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad combined.”

Tibi responded: “When Lieberman, the foreign minister, says that, ordinary Israelis understand that he is calling for me to be killed as a terrorist. It is the most dangerous incitement.”

Israel’s annual Democracy Index poll, published last month, showed that 53 percent of Israeli Jews supported moves to encourage Arab citizens to leave.

Farah said the strike date had been selected to coincide with the anniversary of the deaths of 13 Arab citizens in October 2000 to highlight both the failure to prosecute any of the policemen involved and the continuing official condoning of violence against Arab citizens by police and Jewish citizens.

Some 27 Arab citizens have been killed by the police in unexplained circumstances since the October deaths, Farah said, with only one conviction. Last week, Shahar Mizrahi, an undercover officer, was given a 15-month sentence for shooting Mahmoud Ghanaim in the head from point-blank range. The judge called Mizrahi’s actions “reckless.”

This week, in another controversial case, Shai Dromi, a Negev rancher, received six months community service after shooting dead a Bedouin intruder, Khaled al-Atrash, as the latter fled.

Farah said the regard in which Arab citizens were held by the government was illustrated by a comment from the public security minister, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, in June. During an inspection of police officers working undercover as drug addicts, the minister praised one for looking like a “real dirty Arab.”

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is http://www.jkcook.net.

HR report monitors escalation of Israeli racism against Palestinians

March 22, 2013 by occupiedpalestine 0 Comments

[ PIC 21/03/2013 - 01:16 PM ]

images_News_2013_03_21_settler-graffiti_300_0[1]NAZARETH, (PIC)– Coalition against Israeli Apartheid in the 1948-occupied Palestinian territories issued, on Wednesday, a report documenting all Israeli racist incidents that occurred over the year of 2013.

The report monitored racist incidents against different segments of society, documenting 114 violent incidents in 2013 compared to 53 incidents over the previous year, where Israeli violence increased against Palestinians three times compared with last year.

The report pointed out to the increase in racist statements of elected officials and religious Israeli leaders to 107 compared to 60 in the past year, including 45 against the Palestinians compared to 27 last year.

The report confirmed that racist incidents has increased in Israeli public and private institutions, where 213 racist cases have occurred in 2013 compared to 160 cases in the past year.

Israeli racist incidents against religious beliefs has doubled, where 24 racist cases took place over 2013 compared to 13 cases last year, including attacks on Islamic and Christian cemeteries, the report added



Jews for Justice for Palestinians | Adalah | March 20, 2013

New Discriminatory Laws and Bills in Israel

adalahBrief from Adalah to accompany publication of its database on the more than 50 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life, including their rights to political participation, access to land, education, state budget resources, and criminal procedures. Some of the laws also violate the rights of Palestinians living in the 1967 OPT and Palestinian refugees.

To access the full database, click here

Issued June 2011, updated October 2012

The elections in February 2009 brought in the current 18th Knesset and saw one of the most rightwing government coalitions in the history of Israel come to power. Members of Knesset (MKs) immediately introduced a flood of discriminatory legislation that directly or indirectly targets Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, as well as Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and the Palestinian refugees. These new laws and bills, which continue to be promulgated on a very frequent basis, seek, inter alia:
to dispossess Arab citizens of Israel and exclude them from the land;
turn their citizenship from a right into a conditional privilege;
limit the ability of Arab citizens and their parliamentary representatives to participate in the political life of the country;
criminalize political acts or speech that question the Jewish or Zionist nature of the state; and
privilege Jewish citizens in the allocation of state resources.

Some of the legislation is specifically designed to preempt, circumvent or overturn Supreme Court decisions that have provided some rights protections or redress to Arab citizens. Another new legislative trend is the state’s use of budget allocation to limit constitutional rights, e.g. by cutting state support to programs or organizations based on political or ideological views.

State practices and policies that discriminate against Arab citizens of Israel are not new but have been pursued since the establishment of the state; however, under the current government a large number of these policies are now being legislated into law.

This paper lists 31 main new laws and currently-tabled bills that discriminate against the Palestinian minority in Israel, threaten their rights as citizens of the state, and in some cases harm the rights of Palestinian residents of the OPT. It also documents a series of bills that have been introduced in order drastically to restrict the activities of and foreign governmental funding to human rights organizations, legislation that would cause particular harm to Arab human rights organizations in Israel. While this paper does not cover the entire body of discriminatory legislation currently pending in the Knesset, it lists major bills, including those that have been approved by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation.

This wave of legislation that stifles freedoms of association and expression and discriminates on the basis of national belonging is, unfortunately, an accurate reflection of an Israeli public and political discourse that views Palestinian citizens of the state and their political representatives as threats to the basic nature or existence of the state. The new legislation consequently accompanies a series of criminal indictments and punitive measures instigated by the Knesset against Arab MKs.

Adalah is closely following these troubling developments, and in several cases has filed petitions to the Israeli Supreme Court to challenge the constitutionality of discriminatory laws.

Land and Planning Rights
NEW LAWS

1. Amendment no. 7 (2009) to the Israel Land Administration (ILA) Law (1960)

The law, enacted by the Knesset on 10 August 2009, institutes broad land privatization. Much of the land owned by the Palestinian refugees and internally-displaced persons (currently held by the state as “absentees’ property”) can be sold off to private investors under the law and thus placed beyond future restitution claims, together with some of the land of destroyed and evacuated Arab villages, and land otherwise confiscated from Palestinian citizens. This land, which totals an estimated 133,333 dunams, includes refugees’ properties that are today located in the mixed ArabJewish cities and land that has been developed or is zoned for development in master plans. The new law also gives decisive weight (6 out of 13 members) to representatives of the Jewish National Fund (JNF) in the new Land Authority Council, to replace the Israel Land Administration (ILA), which manages 93% of the land in Israel.

2. Amendment no. 3 (2010) to The Land (Acquisition for Public Purposes) Ordinance (1943) This British Mandate-era law allows the Finance Minister to confiscate land for “public purposes”. The state has used this law extensively to confiscate Palestinian-owned land in Israel, in conjunction with other laws such as the Land Acquisition Law (9110) and the Absentees’ Property Law (1950). The new amendment, which passed on 15 February 2010, confirms state ownership of land confiscated under this law, even where it has not been used to serve the original confiscation purpose. It allows the state not to use the confiscated land for the original confiscation purpose for 17 years, and prevents landowners from demanding the return of confiscated land not used for the original confiscation purpose if it has been transferred to a third party or if more than 25 years have elapsed since the confiscation. The amendment expands the Finance Minister’s authority to confiscate land for “public purposes,” which under the law includes the establishment and development of towns, and allows the Minister to declare new such purposes.

The new law was designed to prevent Arab citizens of Israel from submitting lawsuits to reclaim confiscated land: over 25 years have passed since the confiscation of the vast majority of Palestinian land, and large tracts have been transferred to third parties, including Zionist institutions like the JNF. This law circumvents the Supreme Court’s decision in the Karsik case, which obliged the state authorities to return confiscated land that had not been used for the original purpose of its confiscation.

3. Amendment no. 4 (2010) to the Negev Development Authority Law (1991): Individual settlements.

“Individual settlements” are a tool used by the state to provide individual Jewish Israeli families with hundreds and sometimes thousands of dunams of land for their exclusive use, and thereby to keep it out of the reach of Arab citizens of Israel in the Naqab (Negev). There are around 60 individual settlements in the Naqab, stretching over a total of 81,000 dunams. Often, these settlements were established without permits and in violation of the planning laws. The amendment, which passed on 22 July 2010, provides legal mechanisms for the recognition of all individual settlements in the Naqab, and grants the Negev Development Authority the power to recommend that the Israel Land Administration allocate lands for individual settlements. The amendment followed an Israeli Supreme Court ruling in June 2010 that allowed for the recognition of individual settlements in the Naqab covered by the “Wine Path Plan”.

The court delivered the ruling on a petition filed against the Wine Path Plan by Adalah, Bimkom and the Negev Coexistence Forum in 2006. While the amendment affords official status to the individual settlements, which have been connected to all basic services from the moment of their establishment, neighboring unrecognized Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab are denied official status and their inhabitants, though all citizens of Israel, are denied the most basic of services, including clean drinking water. In its judgment, the court decided not to address the petitioners’ arguments concerning the unequal distribution of land in the Naqab or the discrimination against the unrecognized villages entailed by the plan.

4. The Law to Amend the Cooperative Societies Ordinance (no. (2011) (“The Admissions Committees Law”)

Enacted on 99 March 9399, the Admissions Committees Law legalizes “admission committees”, which operate in nearly 475 small community towns (up to 400 family units) built on state land in the Naqab and Galilee. The law gives admission committees full discretion to accept or reject applicants, thereby controlling who is eligible to live there. The committees are composed of five members, one of whom must be a representative of either the Jewish Agency or the World Zionist Organization. Both of these institutions are quasi-governmental entities which openly declare that they work exclusively for the benefit of Jewish people.

The law allows these committees to reject applicants deemed “unsuitable to the social life of the community… or the social and cultural fabric of the town,” thereby legitimizing the exclusion of entire groups, including Arab citizens of Israel. The ILA instituted the arbitrary and exclusionary criterion of “social suitability” in order to bypass the landmark Supreme Court decision in Qa’dan from 2000, in which the court ruled that the state’s use of the Jewish Agency to exclude Arab citizens from state land constituted discrimination against them on the basis of nationality. The law also authorizes admissions committees to adopt criteria determined by individual community towns based on their claimed “special characteristics”, for example, communities which have defined themselves as having a “Zionist vision”.

In March 2011, Adalah and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) filed petitions to the Supreme Court seeking the cancellation of the law. In his response to the petitions in January 2012, the Attorney General (AG) asked the court to dismiss the cases on the grounds that they were premature and theoretical, as the law itself had not so far been used to bar any applicant from these small communities. The AG added that the law permitted the towns to screen applicants based on their “suitability to the community” and whether they would fit into the social-cultural fabric of the towns (which are all Jewish communities). The state also argued that the law forbids exclusion based on race, religion, gender, or nationality. The AG’s position is extremely problematic as it justifies discrimination against people who wish to live in small community towns, which are extremely numerous and constitute 46% of all communities in Israel and 65% of all rural communities, and all stand on public land.

This law will inevitably lead to discrimination against Arab citizens, as well as to the exclusion of other marginalized groups such as gays, the disabled, single parents, and the Mizrahim. A Supreme Court hearing on the petition is scheduled for 4 December 2012.

5. Amendment no. 3 (2011) to the Israel Lands Law (1960)
The law, passed on 5 April 2011, prevents any person or party, public or private, from selling land or renting property for a period of more than five years or from bequeathing or transferring private ownership rights in Israel to persons designated as “foreigners”. Under the law, foreigners are any persons who are not residents or citizens of Israel, or not Jews, who have the automatic right to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return (1950). Under the law, Palestinian refugees – the original owners of the land, who are entitled to the return of and to their properties under international law – are classified as “foreigners”, along with all other persons who do not hold Israeli citizenship or residency, with the exception of Jewish people.

In the past, Israeli law had considered the Palestinian refugees as “absentees”, whose property and property rights Israel undertook before the international community as a “custodian” to preserve until the conclusion of a political solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

PENDING BILLS
6. The Memorandum of Law for Regulation of the Settlement of the Bedouin in the Negev
(2012) (“Prawer Plan Bill”)
This bill was issued on 3 January 2012 following the approval of the report issued by the government-appointed Prawer Committee. If passed, the bill will lead to the forced displacement of tens of thousands of Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel from their homes and land in the unrecognized villages in the Naqab (Negev). In some cases, Arab Bedouin have been living in these villages since before the State of Israel existed; in other cases the villages were established following the expulsion and relocation of the Arab Bedouin by the military government whose rule was imposed on them after Israel’s establishment. The Bedouin citizen affected by this latest bill will be concentrated in government-planned townships, which are unsuited to their traditional way of life, and offered meager compensation. The bill has three main components: it sets planning arrangements for permanent Arab Bedouin settlement within a clearly demarcated area in the Naqab; it sets forth a socio-economic development plan for existing recognized towns for the absorption of the displaced population; and it determines the eligibility requirements for submitting land ownership claims and receiving compensation, albeit minimal. After the bill was published, the government initiated a public hearing period, supervised by Minister Benny Begin.

Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
NEW LAWS

7. The Economic Efficiency Law (Legislative Amendments for Implementing the Economic
Plan for 2009-2010) (2009)
a. National Priority Areas
One chapter of this law concerns “National Priority Areas” (NPAs). The law continues to grant the government sweeping discretion to classify towns, villages and wider areas as NPAs and subsequently to allocate enormous state resources to them, even without the obligation to announce criteria for or against their inclusion. This section was passed in spite of a landmark Israeli Supreme Court decision delivered in 2006 in which the court ruled unconstitutional a government decision from 1998 which classified 553 Jewish towns and only four small Arab villages as NPAs with “A” status in the field of education.

In June 2010, after four years of noncompliance by the state and additional litigation, Adalah filed a new petition and a motion for contempt of court to the Supreme Court against the Prime Minister. In February 2011, the Supreme Court dismissed the petition after the Attorney General’s Office announced that the government was no longer using the prohibited governmental decision, and that the new law did not extend its validity.

b. Child Vaccinations and Child Allowances
A separate section of the law stipulates that children who do not receive the vaccinations recommended by the Ministry of Health will no longer be provided with state financial support in the form of child allowances. This provision mainly affects Arab Bedouin children living in the Naqab (Negev), since most of the children who do not receive the vaccinations belong to this community due to the inaccessibility of health care in their villages. The provision therefore discriminates against them on the basis of their national belonging. In 2010, the Ministry of Health closed down “mother and child” clinics, which administer these vaccinations, in three Arab Bedouin towns and only reopened them after Supreme Court litigation by Adalah. Adalah submitted a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court on 7 October 2010 demanding the annulment of the amendment, which came into effect on 15 December 2010.

8. Law to Strip Payments from a Current or Former Member of Knesset due to a Crime (2011)
Under this law, enacted on 17 February 2011, the Knesset may withhold salary payments and pensions from current or former MKs who are declared by the Attorney General to be suspects, defendants or persons convicted of a crime that is punishable by at least ten years’ imprisonment, and who do not appear at a criminal trial or investigation against them, including for reasons of being outside the country. The alleged crime should have been committed in full or in part during the period in which the person was an MK. The law was drafted in response to the exile of former Arab MK Dr. Azmi Bishara (the former head of the Balad/Tajammoa political party), who left Israel in March 2007 after police announced he was suspected of giving information to Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War. The state has never filed an indictment against Dr. Bishara or pointed to any clear evidence against him. These facts indicate the arbitrary nature of the law: even MKs against whom there is no clear evidence could be harmed and lose their pensions.

9. Amendment no. 12 (2010) to the Absorption of Discharged Soldiers Law (1994)
According to the law, enacted in July 2010, any registered university or college student who has completed his or her military service and is a resident of a designated “National Priority Area” such as the Naqab, the Galilee or the illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, will be granted a “compensation package”. This package includes tuition for the first year of higher academic education, a year of free preparatory academic education, and additional benefits in areas like student housing. This benefits package goes far beyond and adds to the already extensive educational benefits package that discharged soldiers in Israel enjoy. The overwhelming majority of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel are exempt from military service for historical and political reasons, and they are thereby excluded from these state-allocated benefits and discriminated against on the basis of their national belonging. This law follows an amendment (Amendment No. 7) made in 2008 to the same law, which anchors the use of the military service criterion in determining eligibility for student dormitories in all higher education institutions into law, and grants broad discretion to these institutions to grant additional economic benefits to discharged soldiers, notwithstanding the benefits provided to them under any other law.

PENDING BILLS
10. The Rights of Those who Performed Military or National Service Bill (2010)
This bill, which passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset on 5 July 2010, grants additional benefits to individuals who performed military or alternative national service. These benefits add yet more privileges to those already legislated in Amendments No. 7 and 12 to the Absorption of Discharged Soldiers Law, detailed above. The bill relates to a number of benefits, including the payment of tuition fees for higher education, the right to employment, and the right to purchase property or land. For example, under the bill a person who has served in the military would be entitled to financial support to help cover his or her study at an institute of higher education, and would be exempted from paying fees to the state for a year after completing his or her service.

Persons who performed military or alternative national service would also receive assistance in purchasing a first home. In addition, if passed, the bill would provide for plots of land and housing units to be allocated specifically to former soldiers. Under this legislation, the aforementioned benefits are provided on the premise that military service and alternative national service demonstrate a person’s loyalty to the state, which is rewarded through the additional benefits. Since the majority of Arab citizens of Israel are exempted from performing military or national service for historical and political reasons, discriminating against those who do not enlist is effectively a proxy for denying benefits to the Arab minority in Israel.

11. Civil Service Law (Appointments) – Amendment (Affirmative Action) Bill (2009)
Under this bill, which passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset on 26 January 2011, persons who have served in the Israeli army or performed alternative national service will be given preferential treatment in hiring for civil service positions. According to the proposed legislation, if two otherwise equally-qualified persons apply for a civil service position, one of whom performed military or alternative national service and one who did not, preference should be given to the former candidate, regardless of whether or not the service performed is relevant to the position in question. Thus the bill grants additional benefits to former soldiers, in contradiction to Article 15A(a) of the Civil Service Law (Appointments) – 1959 (as amended in 2000), which stipulates that every governmental ministry should ensure adequate representation for the Arab minority in Israel in its offices. The law discriminates against members of the Arab minority, the vast majority of whom do not perform military service. Arab citizens of Israel are already underrepresented in the civil service and are very seldom promoted to decision-making positions.

The Attorney General has announced his opposition to this bill.

Civil and Political Rights
NEW LAWS
12. The Regional Councils Law (Date of General Elections) (1994) Special Amendment No. 6 (2009)
The law, enacted on 16 November 2009, grants the Interior Minister absolute power to declare the postponement of the first elections to a regional council following its establishment, for an indefinite period of time. The law previously stipulated that elections must be held within four years of the establishment of a new regional council. The Knesset passed the law shortly before elections were due to take place to the Abu Basma Regional Council, which includes ten Arab Bedouin villages in the Naqab (combined pop: 25,000) and was established over eight years ago.

The result of the law is that no elections have been held and local people are being denied the right to elect their own representatives. The current government-appointed council, which is comprised of a majority of Jewish Israeli members and was appointed by the Interior Minister, remains in place. On 27 April 2010, Adalah and ACRI petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel to demand the cancellation of the amendment and to ask the court to order the Interior Minister to announce the holding of democratic elections in the regional council immediately. The organizations argued that the law represented a grave infringement of democratic values and a breach of the state’s duty to ensure regular, transparent and democratic elections. At a hearing on the case held in February 2011, the Supreme Court ordered that elections to the Abu Basma Regional Council should be held no later than 4 December 2012.

In October 2012, two months before expected elections, the Ministry of the Interior adopted a recommendation issued by its own Razin Boundary Committee to split the Abu Basma Regional Council into two separate councils. The split will delay elections for several more years.

13. Amendment no. 10 (2011) to the Citizenship Law (1952)
Enacted on 28 March 2011, the law allows courts to revoke the citizenship of persons convicted of treason, espionage, assisting the enemy in time of war, or acts of terrorism as defined under the Prohibition on Terrorist Financing Law (2005), if asked to do so by the Minister of the Interior, as part of a criminal sentence. Citizenship can only be revoked if the defendant has dual citizenship or resides outside Israel (in which case the law creates an assumption that such a person has dual citizenship). If a person does not have dual citizenship or reside abroad, then he or she will be granted residency status in Israel instead of citizenship, a downgrading that severely restricts his/her rights to political participation. On 90 October 9393, Adalah wrote to the Chair of the Knesset’s Internal Affairs and Environment Committee asking him not to support the law. Adalah argued that the legitimate path for dealing with such alleged crimes was the criminal law, and that the proposed law targeted Arab citizens of Israel and made their citizenship conditional, in keeping with the rightwing political rallying-cry of “no citizenship, no loyalty”. This new amendment follows a prior amendment made to the Citizenship Law in 2008, which provides that citizenship may be revoked for “breach of trust or disloyalty to the state”.

The revocation of citizenship is one of the most extreme punitive measures at the disposal of states, and may result in cruel and disproportionate punishment, particularly when pursued against a particular group of citizens.

14. Amendment no. 40 (2011) to the “Budgets Foundations Law (1985) – Reducing Budgetor Support due to Activity that is Contrary to the Principles of the State” (“The Nakba Law”)
The Nakba Law, enacted on 22 March 2011, authorizes the Finance Minister to reduce state funding or support to an institution if it holds an activity that is deemed to deny the existence of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state”, or commemorates “Israel’s Independence Day or the day on which the state was established as a day of mourning”. Palestinians traditionally mark Israel’s official Independence Day (15 May) as a national day of mourning and organize commemorative events on it. The law also violates the principle of equality and the rights of Arab citizens to freedom of expression and to preserve their history and culture. On 4 May 2011, Adalah, ACRI, the parents of school children and school alumni filed a petition against the law to the Supreme Court, requesting that it find the Nakba Law unconstitutional. The Supreme Court rejected the petition in January 2012, ruling that the case was premature as the law had not been used against any specific institution.

15. Law for Prevention of Damage to the State of Israel through Boycott (2011) (“AntiBoycott Law”)
The Anti-Boycott Law, passed on 11 July 2011, prohibits the public promotion of boycott by Israeli citizens and organizations against Israeli institutions or illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It enables the filing of civil lawsuits against anyone who calls for boycott, and creates a new “civil wrong” or tort. The law also provides for the revocation of tax exemptions and other legal rights and benefits from Israeli associations if they call for or engage in boycott, as well as academic, cultural and scientific institutions that receive state support. The court may also award compensation, including punitive damages, even if no actual damage is proven. Furthermore, the law provides that Israeli businesses which publicly declare that they will not buy supplies or goods manufactured in the OPT may have their state-sponsored benefits revoked. As such, the law severely restricts freedom of expression and targets non-violent political opposition to the Occupation. Adalah and ACRI submitted a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court in March 2012 on behalf of leading human rights organizations and Israeli and Palestinian groups affected by the law seeking its cancellation.

16. Termination of Proceedings and Deletion of Records in the Disengagement Plan Law (2010) (“Pardon Law”)
The Pardon Law, enacted by the Knesset on 25 January 2010, exempts anyone who was convicted in relation to their opposition to Israel’s 2005 Gaza disengagement plan from legal sanction, provided they have not received a prison sentence. It expanded the early amnesty granted by the Attorney General, in which he terminated proceedings against first-time offenders accused of minor offenses. Under the law, charges will be dropped and offenses will be deleted from any criminal records, at the offender’s request. This law establishes a separate legal process for people who were charged when demonstrating against the disengagement plan that is different from the legal process for people charged at other political demonstrations, and thus effectively
discriminates on ideological grounds. Palestinian Arab citizens in particular are subjected to severe physical and verbal abuse when they demonstrate, especially at events related to their political or ideological beliefs. On 23 February 2012, the Supreme Court rejected a petition calling for the cancellation of the law.

PENDING BILLS
17. Bill to Amend the Citizenship Law (1952): Loyalty Oath (2009)
This proposed amendment to the Citizenship Law would require all persons seeking citizenship in Israel via the naturalization process and all Israeli citizens applying for their first ID cards (which is obligatory at the age of 16) to declare an oath of loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish, Zionist, and democratic state, to its symbols and values, and to serve the state in any way demanded, through military service or alternative service, as defined by law.” It would replace the text of the current declaration, which states, “I declare that I will be a loyal citizen of the State of Israel.” Requiring such an oath undermines the status of Arab citizens of Israel by deeming Israel a state for Jews only. The enactment of the amendment may prove to be a slippery slope as, according to numerous other bills introduced in the Knesset, declarations of allegiance to a Jewish and democratic state could soon be required of all ministers, Knesset members, and civil service employees.

Adalah sent a letter to the Prime Minister, Attorney General, and Justice Minister on 7 October 2010, arguing that the bill specifically targeted Palestinian Arab citizens, whose “non-Jewish” spouses – Palestinians from the OPT and other Arab states – are those who would have to swear the oath. The bill received the government’s endorsement on 10 October 2010 on condition that certain changes be made to its provisions, but does not currently enjoy the support of a Knesset majority.

To access the full database, click here

Prisoners and Detainees’ Rights
NEW LAWS
18. Amendment No. 2 (2010) to the Criminal Procedure Law (Suspects of Security Offenses) (Temporary Order)
This law, enacted on 20 December 2010, is designed to extend the validity of harsh, special detention procedures for persons suspected of committing security offenses. While neutral on its face, in practice the law applies to and is used mainly against Palestinians from Gaza and Palestinian citizens of Israel. The special procedures allow the law enforcement authorities to delay bringing a security suspect before a judge for up to 96 hours after arrest (instead of 48 hours for other detainees). It also allows the courts to extend a security suspect’s detention for up to 93 days at a time (instead of 15 days) and to hold extension of detention hearings in his/her absence. In this last respect the law seeks to bypass a Supreme Court decision from February 2010 that struck down article 5 of the Criminal Procedure (Detainees Suspected of Security Offences) (Temporary Order) Law (2006), which stipulated that security suspects could have their pre-trial detention extended in their absence. The law removes a number of essential procedural safeguards from detainees, thus placing them at a greater risk of torture, and ill-treatment, and increasing the likelihood of false confessions.

19. Law to Amend the Israeli Prisons Ordinance (no. 40) (2011)
This new law, approved by the Knesset on 3 August 2011, contains an overly-broad and
unconstitutional article that allows the Israel Prison Service (IPS) to prohibit prisoners involved in “security crimes” from meeting their lawyers if the IPS merely “suspects” that such meetings may lead to the transfer of information relating to a terror organization. The law targets and discriminates against “security prisoners”, who are overwhelmingly Palestinians, as well as their lawyers, who are also generally Palestinians. As of August 2012, there were over 4,380 Palestinian political prisoners and detainees being held as “security” prisoners by Israel. Under the law, the IPS can prevent prisoners’ meetings with lawyers for 96 hours (previously 24 hours), a period that could be extended for up to as many as 14 days (previously 5 days) with the approval of the state prosecutor. A district court can extend this prohibition for six months (previously 21 days) and up to maximum period of one year (previously three months). The Supreme Court can extend the ban for unlimited periods after one year (Supreme Court supervision was required after three months under the previous law). These sweeping restrictions further increase prisoners’ isolation and prevent them from effectively accessing the courts and obtaining redress.

20. Law to Amend the Israeli Prisons Ordinance (no. 43) (Prisoner Meetings with an Attorney)(2012)
An additional law to amend the Israel Prisons Ordinance was passed on 14 May 2012, allowing for restrictions on security prisoners’ access to legal counsel. Under the new law, the IPS Director may restrict the number of lawyers able to visit a prisoner or group of prisoners for a period of three months, and to extend the period for an additional three months with the approval of the Attorney General. The law also allows a district court to extend the period of prohibition for up to six months at a time, without examination of any evidence against the prisoner or group of prisoners.

21. Amendment no. 6 to the Criminal Procedure Law (Interrogation of Suspects) (2012)
This amendment, passed by the Knesset on 4 July 2012, extends the period of an exemption made to the Criminal Procedure Law, which allows the interrogations of “security suspects” not to be recorded; almost all of “security detainees” are Palestinians from the OPT or Palestinian citizens of Israel. The law, passed in 2002, required the police to make audiovisual recordings of interrogations of suspects charged with crimes carrying a minimum sentence of at least ten years. The law established a schedule for its gradual implementation, with recordings of interrogations of “security suspects” to become mandatory from 2008, under Article 17. That year, however, the Knesset passed a temporary order extending the exemption until July 2012, ten years after the law was originally enacted. With the passing of amendment no. 6, the exemption is extended until July 2015. Notably, the requirement to make audiovisual recordings of interrogations applies to the police and the Israel Security Agency (ISA) (also known as the GSS or Shabak). On 21 December 2010, Adalah, together with Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Al Mezan and the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), filed a petition to the Supreme Court requesting that the exemption be cancelled.

PENDING BILLS
22. The “Shalit Laws”
Several proposed bills, collectively known as the “Shalit laws,” are currently pending before the Knesset and seek to impose further severe restrictions on Palestinian security prisoners held in Israeli prisons. The purpose of these restrictions was originally to bring pressure to bear on Hamas to release captured Israeli solider Gilad Shalit. Following the release of Shalit and the prisoner swap deal of October 2011, the fate of these bills remains unclear. They have all passed a preliminary vote in the Knesset plenum and enjoy strong, broad-based support among MKs.

• The Preventing Visits Bill – 2009 seeks to impose a blanket ban on prisoners who belong to an organization designated as a terror organization from receiving visits in prison.
• The Restriction of Visitation for a Security Prisoner Bill – 2010 proposes that any prisoner who belongs to an organization designated as a terror organization that holds an Israeli captive should be denied visits in prison and the right to meet a lawyer. The bill in Hebrew
• The Release of Captives and Kidnapped Persons Bill – 2009 states that if an organization designated as a terror organization holds an Israeli captive and demands the release of a specific prisoner held in an Israeli prison, then this prisoner should be placed in “absolute isolation and be prevented from contact with another human being”.
• The Imprisonment of Requested Prisoners – 2009 states that any prisoner whose release is conditioned on the release of an Israeli held captive by an Organization designated as a terror organization should be denied any right that could be restricted on security reasoning, held in isolation indefinitely and not be entitled to early release or parole. Once such prisoners have served their sentences, they should be declared a detainee and continue to be held.

23. Bill to Fight Terrorism (2011)
This expansive bill, spanning over 105 pages of provisions and explanatory notes, threatens to enact into law various existing procedures, and to authorize new ones, which are applied discriminatorily against Palestinians from the OPT and Palestinian citizens of Israel, allegedly in the name of fighting terror. The bill seeks to entrench many emergency regulations currently in effect in Israeli law, some of which date back to the British Mandatory period, in a move that will significantly undermine the rights of “security detainees”.

The bill includes additional draconian measures for investigating detainees accused of security offenses; provides for the extensive use of secret evidence in court; limits detainees’ access to judicial review; weakens the evidentiary requirements on the state in these cases; establishes new criminal offenses, including for any public expression of support or sympathy with a terrorist group; and sharply increases the maximum sentences people convicted of such offenses. Moreover, the bill uses the following, troublingly vague definition of terrorism and terrorist organizations: “a group of people who act to execute an act of terrorism or to enable or promote the execution of an act of terrorism.”

The bill was first published by the Ministry of Justice on 21 April 2010, and then it passed first reading in the Knesset plenary on 3 August 2011.

Freedom of Association
The following series of laws and bills seek to curtail the freedom of association and expression rights of NGOs in Israel. This legislation was introduced mainly in response to claims that the work of these NGOs in defense of the rights of Palestinians constituted a deliberate campaign to “delegitimize” Israel following the publication of the Goldstone Report in September 2009.

In addition to these laws and bills, two separate proposals to establish parliamentary committees of inquiry into the funding and activities of human rights organizations were also put forward in early 2011. Due to local and international criticism, Netanyahu announced that he no longer supported these inquiries, and in July 2011 the Knesset rejected both proposals.

NEW LAWS
24. Law on Disclosure Requirements for Recipients of Support from a Foreign State Entity (2011) (“Foreign Government Funding Law”)
The Knesset passed the law on 21 February 2011. It imposes invasive reporting requirements on NGOs, requiring them to submit and publish quarterly reports on any funding received from foreign governments or publicly-funded foreign donors, including information on any oral or written undertakings made to the funders. These details must also be published on the websites of the NGOs themselves, the Ministry of Justice, and the Registrar of Associations. While the law’s declared purpose is transparency, these provisions are superfluous since every NGO in Israel is already required under Israeli law to list its donors and other financial information on its website and to report annually to the government, specifying where foreign governments have donated money. Its purpose is rather to harm human rights NGOs, as these restrictions may discourage foreign government funding. By contrast, Jewish Israeli settler groups do not receive such funding but are privately funded, and are therefore unaffected by the legislation. Furthermore, the law specifically exempts The World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the United Israel Appeal, the Jewish National Fund and their subsidiary corporations from its provisions. Thus the bill is inherently discriminatory. Palestinian NGOs in Israel and all NGOs that promote Palestinian rights are particularly vulnerable since they do not seek funding from Israeli governmental sources and have more limited access to private funding.

PENDING BILLS
25. Bill on Income of Public Institutions Receiving Donations from Foreign State Entity (Legislative Amendments) (2011) (“Bill on Foreign Funding of NGOs“)
This new bill, presented on 30 November 2011, threatens NGOs with closure, especially human rights organizations, by severely restricting access to foreign government funds. It applies if the goals or actions of an NGO, “negate the existence of the State of Israel as a ‘Jewish and democratic State’”; incite racism; support armed struggle against the State of Israel; support the indictment of elected officials or Israeli soldiers in international courts; call for refusal to serve in the Israeli military; and/or support a boycott of the State of Israel or its citizens.

The bill divides NGOs registered in Israel into three categories:
(1) those that will be completely banned from receiving foreign government funding, namely NGOs deemed to be “political organizations”;
(2) those that are not “political organizations” but do not receive funding from the Israeli government, and which must pay a 45% tax on foreign funding under the Legislation; and
(3) those that do receive (or have received) funding from the government of Israel, which can continue to receive foreign funding.

The bill violates the rights of freedom of association and expression of human rights organizations in Israel which seek through democratic means to challenge discrimination, improve the political, legal, and social status of Palestinians in Israel, and/or promote the concept of Israel as a democratic state for all its citizens. The bill was frozen in December 2011 following strong international criticism.

26. The Associations (Amutot) Law (Amendment – Exceptions to the Registration and Activity of an Association) (2010) (“Universal Jurisdiction Bill”)
This bill, introduced in April 2010, seeks to outlaw associations that provide information to foreigners or are involved in litigation abroad against senior officials of the Israeli government and/or army chiefs for war crimes. The bill would prohibit the registration of any NGO if “there are reasonable grounds to conclude that the association is providing information to foreign entities or is involved in legal proceedings abroad against senior Israeli government officials or IDF officers, for war crimes.” An existing NGO would be shut down under the proposed law for engaging in such activity. The text of the bill refers directly to the Goldstone Report to justify its provisions. Because it essentially seeks to conceal information or suspicions of a crime, it contradicts the customary norms of international criminal law and international humanitarian law. It constitutes a dangerous attack on human rights organizations and anyone opposed to war crimes. It is a private member’s bill that has not yet been approved by the government.

27. Preserving the Values of the State of Israel Bill (Amendment Legislation) (2009) (“Jewish and Democratic State Bill”)
This private member’s bill would authorize the Registrar of Associations and the Registrar of Companies to close down associations or companies if their goals or actions are deemed to be against the state as a “Jewish and democratic” state. The bill, proposed in 2009, violates the rights of freedom of association and expression of all Arab organizations in Israel which seek through democratic means to challenge discrimination, improve the political, legal, and social status of Palestinians in Israel, and/or promote the concept of Israel as a democratic state for all its citizens. It asks them to express their loyalty to the Jewish state and thereby seeks to limit the rights of the Arab minority. The bill bears similarities to Section 7A of the Basic Law: The Knesset (1985), which asks that every Arab political party list not deny the existence of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state, an un-democratic provision that has been used in every recent general election to attempt to disqualify Arab political parties from running. The bill seeks to undermine the daily operation of Arab organizations and put them under ultra-nationalist, ideological investigation, and threatens their legitimate activities. The Ministerial Committee for Legislation decided in early November 2010 that the text should be modified, in coordination with the Minister of Justice.

Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT)

28. Amendment No. 8 (2012) to the Civil Wrongs (Liability of the State) Law (1952)
This law, passed in the Knesset on 16 July 2012, introduces near-insurmountable obstacles to justice, accountability and redress for civilian victims harmed by acts of the security forces carried out in the OPT, even acts that violate international law, and consolidates the immunity of the state from tort actions brought against it. The law widely exempts Israel from its liability for injuries and damages inflicted on Palestinians in or from the OPT by the Israeli military. First, the amendment redefines the term “act of war” by replacing a paragraph that required there to be imminent danger to the life and body of Israeli soldiers with the provision that an act of war should be considered such in “terms of its nature; including the purpose, location, or the danger on the security force as a result of conducting the operation”. Second, the amendment added a new rule that gives the state the ability to invoke the “no liability” for an act of war defense as a preliminary argument. If it does, the court must consider the argument and give its decision according to the argument (without hearing evidence of any kind). If the court decides that the act is indeed an act of war, the case will be dismissed without evidence being heard. Third, in the original law the state was exempted from its responsibility for injuries and damages inflicted on residents of enemy states, to which the amendment adds “persons who are not citizens or residents of Israel, and are residents of a territory outside Israel that has been declared an ‘enemy territory’ in a governmental decree.”

This provision would apply to the Gaza Strip, for example, which has been declared an “enemy entity” by Israel. Here, the new amendment contradicts the Supreme Court’s ruling from 9331, in which the court struck down an earlier provision that sweepingly exempted the state from liability from damages resulting from acts of war carried out in areas declared by the Defense Minister as “conflict zones”. Moreover, this new exemption applies retroactively to 12 September 2005, the date of Israel’s “Disengagement” from Gaza, allowing cases pending before the courts to be dismissed. Fourth, the amendment designates the courts in the Southern and Jerusalem Districts as the only courts with the authority to preside over relevant cases, even though it is significantly easier for large numbers of lawyers and Palestinian plaintiffs to access courts in other districts.

29. Law to Amend the Income Tax Ordinance (no. 191) (2012)
The law, which passed in July 2012, grants a 35% tax exemption on donations to institutions that promote “Zionist settlement”. The law differentiates between public institutions on political and ideological grounds, contradicting the intended purpose of tax benefits to serve social goals such as promoting education, culture and religion. This proposed distinction violates the principle of equality between public institutions, regardless of the basis of their work. Significantly, the benefit applies to institutions that promote the establishment or expansion of settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, which are considered illegal under international law.

PENDING BILLS
30. Bill Preserving the Rights of Builders in Judea and Samaria [the Occupied West Bank] (2011)
This bill seeks retroactively to legalize settlements constructed in the OPT on private Palestinian land. All settlements in the OPT are illegal under international law. The proposed bill comes in the wake of a number of judgments recently issued by the Israeli Supreme Court that ordered the dismantling of settlements built on private Palestinian land. The bills attempt to circumvent these Supreme Court decisions and undermine the rule of law. In the official explanatory notes, the bill openly criticizes the Supreme Court’s decisions. The bill,
which was initiated by MK Yaakov Katz and 14 other MKs, would legislate that any settlement construction which received state approval or state assistance – including developing infrastructure, providing financial incentives, or advertising the construction of new structures – would be considered to be on state land. It also
declares that if a person thought “in good faith” that he was the owner of the land when he built the structure, that he should be considered as such. The bill was scheduled to be voted on in the Knesset on 23 May 2012, but was postponed due to fears of international condemnation and pressure in case of its approval.

31. Bill to Amend the Prohibition of Discrimination in Products, Services and Entry into
Places of Entertainment and Public Places Law (Prohibition of discrimination on
grounds of place of residence) (2011)
This bill seeks to add “place of residence” to a list of prohibited considerations taken into consideration in establishing whether there is discrimination in supplying a product or public service. The bill provides a simple test in order to determine discrimination: the distance test. According to the test, discrimination on grounds of place of residence will be deemed to have taken place when a defendant refuses to supply a product or public service to someone who asked to receive them in his/her place of residence or business, while accepting to provide the same service to another person who lives somewhere else at similar distance, in the same circumstances and conditions. In this regard, “place of residence” can apply to any location in Israel and the OPT. This failure to distinguish between Israel and the OPT is invalid, however, since the bill ignores the fact that each of these areas has its own set of rules and laws. In addition, and more importantly, the law deliberately disregards the fact that a person may refuse to enter the OPT for ideological or security reasons or refuse to do business with and sell to the settlements for ideological reasons. The bill passed a preliminary vote in the Knesset in July 2012.

To access the full database, click here

[Searcher08]

AD,

Firstly, thank you for engaging.

Thank you for your honesty in saying that you dont read my stuff very often - I assumed it was because we have board interests that tend to be divergent (at least virtually) like mine in A.I. and yours in economics etc.

I think in some ways perhaps what you point to is R.I. being actually more like
parallel non-overlapping boards that just happen to be in the same virtual space...

I have really enjoyed your contributions on the TIDS thread, which I tend to dip into or graze and sometimes have spent hours there - I find it has been useful in extendng the post 9/11 shift I had (things are not what they seem) into history (things *were* not what they seemed). I even had a suggestion with it which is to create tumblr site in parallel with R.I. - I think you would get loads more people interested if you had them both ( and a younger demographic).

What you said about advertising about fundraising for Icke surprised me as I dont think anyone has used RI for fundraising anything - if he did, I dont think it was intended to be malicious, but it was certainly not a good idea. R.I. only fundraises for R.I. as far as I know.

I myself had not heard of Ken O'Keefe except in passing as a name on Mondoweiss; I felt sickened at the photo of how he had been beaten up and thought how frightening the Mavi Marmara experience must have been.

I think for slim the issue about Ken O'Keefe was that you pointed out he had either ties to or had been lied to by David Duke. Both of those are potentially good to know, yes?

For me personally, what I feel happens is that the type of post you just did - which lands with me as personal and authentic, is very different from what I am calling CopyPasta, where there is a one line comment from you, then pages and pages. There have been lots of times when you have said I dont respond to content, so I have then gone through something like that with a forensic toothcomb level of detail. I dont do this out of mean-spiritedness, but as a demonstration (in my world) of trying to rigorously engage, which is actually out of respect. So when a long reply is ignored by you, I feel pissed cos it was just a waste of time.

I think you have always seen the kickback from slad and slim and formerly C_W and myself and others as ultimately apologists for ugly tropes, while we have seen it not as uncritical support of these people but as an issue of thinking autonomy, and a reaction to how we are being communicated with - an experiential thing. I think both sides of this have not acknowledged what is underneath. Remember you can walk in sand dunes on the west coast of Ireland for miles and see the bones of familes who were left to starve to death out of sheer callousness - so 'holocaust denial' brings up extremely painful things for many Irish people.

The zionist implication is mirroring the anti-Semite implication in the other direction.
You actually posted the only sodding thread on RI about Norman Finklestein and were actually quite clear on being close to him in the scheme of things, which is deeply admirable IMHO - especially as you referring to his book The Holocaust Industry.

My own thing was you never seem to post anything critical of the specific zionist power structures in the US - like AIPAC, JINSA, ADL or within TIDS anything critical of the Jewish faith, when I think most others have been examined pretty intensely - which at times was very uncomfortable as TBH I had no idea of how much child abuse went on in Buddhist or Hindu contexts...

One difficulty that should be acknowledged between us is around the Rothschilds, because I see them as extremely important - along with the B.I.S. in Basel, but not because they are lizard people or even because they "own the world" or funded Hitler - which I consider far right disinfo, but because of the research into social network analysis into ownership concentrations of corporations. Although I do appreciate it may be an uncomfortable area.

I am sorry you think I am doing an intellectually dishonest reframe and I am sincerely unsure what you mean by that - unless it is putting Tony Greenstein articles through a
linguistic woodchipper? or similarly the MiB video??

Both Greenstein - who reminds me of the SWP types at Uni in the 70s - closed minded, apparatchiks of the worst kind - and MiB whose presence here was entirely manipulative (concerned only with his outcomes, no one elses) - when you post / invite them here - we probably felt similar to when you saw slim's Ken O'Keefe post?

Do you feel I do that to them but not to Icke?
I often feel that we veer really near to fruitful collaboration and then seem to zoom away at the last moment.

How would people feel about a trying peaceful resolution?

Please feel free to add to / re-word etc etc.

Everyone
1 Every one agrees that none of us are in any shape way or form or inclination or supporters of the far right like David Duke, racism like Shamir, zionism like Wolf Blitzer, AIPAC, JINSA, LIKUD
2 Some of us see Icke and Atzmon as varying degrees of unpleasent or misguided or wrong - the people who dont agree with this, honour and accept our fears, issues and concerns.
3 Some of us see Icke and Atzmon as positive and or provocative forces, the people who dont agree with this still honour and accept that we do.
Politeness
4 As a statement of politeness, in debate , we will not post cartoons, scrolling red texts, or loads of smilies.
5 That we will not argue by CopyPasta and avoid multiple repetition of quotes of self or others
6 That we will make an effort to be constructive and appreciative and seek value and assume good intent in the others.

In closing, I would like to thank you for writing it as I feel you did a lot of reflecting and it is probably the longest thing I have seen you post. This was the effort at empathy, that I talked about. I have tried to be honest and frank and sincerely build on it.

[seemslikeadream]

Suspicion and Hate: Racist Attacks On Arabs Increase in Israel

By Julia Amalia Heyer
Photo Gallery: Racist Attacks on the Rise in Israel Photos
DPA

Arabs are being beaten and insulted in Israel, where the number of racially motivated attacks has risen dramatically. The unresolved conflict, fueled by nationalist politicians, is shifting from Palestinian areas into the Israeli heartland.

The horror is etched on her face and caught on camera. Revital Wolkov is sitting in the driver's seat of her white Toyota, staring over her right shoulder, through the broken rear window, directly into the lens. The hole in the window is shaped like a large butterfly.

ANZEIGE
Wolkov, 53, teaches history in Ramat HaSharon, near Tel Aviv. She was attacked and her car was damaged, merely because an Arab colleague was sitting in the passenger seat. It happened in March, but it wasn't the only attack of its kind.

In the spring, several Jewish teenage girls asked a women standing at a bus stop in Jerusalem whether she was an Arab. The woman, wearing a headscarf, replied that she was. One of the girls pulled the hijab from the woman's head and spat in her face. The others kicked and beat the woman. A police officer stood nearby and watched. Hana Amtir, 38, three months' pregnant, locked herself into her house for three days before filing a complaint with the police.

In a beach bar in Tel Aviv, an Arab waiter was clearing away bottles of mayonnaise and ketchup, but the men sitting at one of the tables weren't finished yet. "Damn Arab," they cursed, and then proceeded to beat the man, who was later hospitalized. None of the other guests came to his aid.

Youths attacked an Arab cleaning man working for the city of Tel Aviv as he was emptying garbage cans. They broke a bottle over his head. The man, covered with blood, asked them why they were doing this to him. "Because you're an Arab," they shouted.

Such attacks have become commonplace in Israel, but it isn't Jewish soldiers beating Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The attacks have nothing to do with militant settlers or an autonomous Palestine, although these conflicts are always at the back of people's minds.

For decades, Jews and Palestinians have been fighting over the same piece of land. Some of them even share the same citizenship. Three quarters of Israel's 8 million people are Jews, and 1.8 million are Israeli Arabs. However, their paths rarely cross in everyday life. Israel's Arabs are not required to serve in the military, and many of them live in primarily Arab towns and neighborhoods, with their children attending Arab schools. They earn less on average and are not as well educated as Israeli Jews. Officially, they have the same rights as Jewish citizens, but in reality they are often the targets of discrimination.

'We Have a Racism Problem'

The Jewish majority, influenced by terror and the constant threat of attack, sees the Arab minority as a "fifth column" of its hostile neighbors in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the entire region.

Instead of fighting suspicion and hate, politicians have in fact fueled these sentiments in recent years, by enacting laws that foster unequal treatment. Because of these laws, Arab schools can be deprived of funding if they remind their students of the 1948 expulsion, a day of mourning for Arabs and a day of joy for Jewish Israelis, which they have celebrated since independence. Communities are even allowed to turn away Arabs wanted to move there -- so as to preserve their "Jewish identity."

The suspicions are nothing new, as they reflect the underlying conflict in this country and beyond its borders. Nevertheless, attacks by perfectly normal Jewish Israelis on their Arab countrymen have been so brutal in recent weeks that the commentary has been surprisingly unanimous. The media on both the left and the right, otherwise rarely of the same mind, have condemned the attacks.

The Israeli press can be hard on its country and unsparing in its criticism. "We have a racism problem," wrote the newspaper Ha'aretz. And Yediot Akharonot detects the process of dissolution of a "society that has never managed to establish a binding system of values for all of its components."

Of course, it's unfair to measure the severity of the problem against the highly charged atmosphere of the Israeli debate, because while anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are part of mainstream political thinking in the Arab world and often even encouraged by governments, Israel openly discusses racism at home. And, of course, the Israelis treat their minorities better than many Arab countries treat their Jews or Christians. But Israel has also set itself a high moral standard, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consistently describing his country as a beacon in the darkness.

Sharp Rise in Attacks

According to the Coalition Against Racism in Israel, a group consisting of several organizations, racially motivated incidents have almost quadrupled since 2008. There were 16 reported cases in that year, compared to 63 between March 2012 and February 2013.

One of those incidents was directed against Revital Wolkov and her colleague, Suhad Abu Samira, 25, a Muslim woman who was wearing a black hijab when the attack occurred. The two teachers were on their way to a funeral service when Wolkov parked her car in a Jewish section of Jerusalem, where many religious Jews live and the Arab translations on street signs are often painted over. When the women got out of the car, they heard people shouting.

"There was an entire group of children and young people standing there," Wolkov later said in her apartment. At first, the women didn't understand what they wanted. The youths spat, threw oranges and water bottles at them and shouted: "Arab whore." Samira began to cry and the women fled into a doorway.

Wolkov experienced the Six-Day War as a child and the Yom Kippur War as a teenager. She was also a soldier and fought in Lebanon. Nevertheless, the wars did not turn her into a cynic. Her face turns rigid when she talks about that afternoon. After working as a teacher for 26 years, her first instinct was to seek dialogue, so she left the doorway and returned to the youths in the parking lot.

Why are you doing this, she asked?

"You Jewish slut, you're friends with the Arab whore," they said. The words still echo in her mind today. Then they began throwing rocks and Wolkov fled. When she returned, her car windows had been smashed and the tires slit.

Israelis Feel Superior But Threatened

Wolkov's parents emigrated from Yemen. She has brown skin, and she knows what it feels like not to look like everyone else. Wolkov was a good student, and yet a teacher once said to her, in front of the entire class, that he wouldn't have thought that a Yemini could be so good at mathematics. Even though Israel is supposed to be a homeland for all Jews, its society, like societies elsewhere, is divided by skin color and ancestry. Ethiopians and Yemenis are at the bottom of the hierarchy, while Jews of European descent are at the top.

"This is the Middle East. Nothing is normal here. Everyone is traumatized," says Wolkov. Many Israelis feel superior, she explains -- militarily, morally and culturally -- and simultaneously threatened. "Those who are afraid begin to hate," she says.

People who live in Israel can easily feel like castaways on the high seas. There are the radicals of Hezbollah and Hamas, whose rockets are pointed at Tel Aviv, and there are the mad television preachers and politicians from Iran to Saudi Arabia, who want nothing more than to see Israel destroyed. Those who live there constantly see images on television of hate-filled people around the world burning Israeli flags and, even in the two Arab countries with which Israel considers itself to be at peace, angry mobs storming the Israeli embassy. And although Israel is the strongest military power far and wide, its citizens are filled with a deep-seated fear.

This leads to overwhelmingly anti-Arab sentiments. For instance, a survey by the University of Haifa found that more than half of Jewish Israelis don't want to live next to Arabs. In another study, 63 percent of respondents said they agreed with the statement "Arabs are a security risk and a demographic threat to the country," while 40 percent felt that the government should encourage Israeli Arabs to emigrate.

Arabs Seen as Enemies

Residents of Tel Aviv's affluent northern neighborhoods collect signatures to prevent Arabs from moving into the area. In other cities, homeowners are berated for selling or renting to Israeli Arabs. The mayor of Nazaret Illit in northern Israel wrote a newsletter to congratulate residents on keeping the city's Jewish population constant "at 82 percent." He also called upon citizens to "fight against the right of everyone in Israel to live where he or she pleases," and even to employ "methods we would rather not discuss."

"Arabs are being attacked just for being Arabs," says Mordechai Kremnitzer, a law professor at Hebrew University. He speaks slowly and sounds worried. "Given our experiences, it ought to be clear that this sort of thing cannot happen," he says.

Do Jews have to be better people, just because they are victims of anti-Semitism and racism, of persecution and genocide? Is this even possible, given the trauma and ongoing conflict they face?

The state of war is now part of everyday life, says Kremnitzer. The decades of being an occupying power showed the Israelis that they are stronger than the Arabs, he explains. And an Arab, whether he lives in Israel or in the Palestinian territories, is only one thing for many people, says Kremnitzer: the enemy. It's also oddly schizophrenic that someone can be a soldier serving with the occupying army in the West Bank by day, with almost unlimited power, and then, in the evening, return to being a fellow citizen with his Israeli Arab neighbors.

"Our soldiers are taught early on that the others are inferior to them," says Kremnitzer. Almost every Jewish Israeli, male or female, serves in the army today. In his capacity as vice-president of the Israel Democracy Institute, Kremnitzer wants to meet with the country's justice and education ministers. It is imperative that those in the government take action, he says. One in three children is now born into an ultra-Orthodox family, and most attend religious schools, which, rather than teaching students about universal values, drum into them the notion that the Jews have a biblical right to their land.

Instead of advocating peaceful coexistence, some politicians, especially nationalists and the ultra-religious, prefer to draw attention to themselves with anti-Arab statements. Former Interior Minister Eli Yishai referred to illegal African immigrants as "intruders who are contaminating the country with diseases."

Extreme Rhetoric

A lawmaker with the governing Likud Party referred to them as a "cancer in the nation's body." Africans are also increasingly the targets of attacks, in areas like south Tel Aviv, where adolescent gangs have it in for the immigrants. Their leader is a former member of parliament with an ultra-right party.

Knesset Speaker Juli Edelstein wrote on Facebook that the Arabs are "a deplorable nation." And Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister until recently, wants to transfer Israeli Arabs to Palestine in the context of an exchange of territory and to revoke the citizenship of those who are "disloyal." He even once called for the execution of Arab lawmakers who had met with Hamas politicians. But half of the Israelis feel that Lieberman has fascist tendencies.

Although there are also politicians who protest against such sentiments, the extreme rhetoric still percolates into the collective consciousness. And with the police often sympathizing with the attackers, it's no surprise that those responsible for racist attackers are not always punished. "There isn't enough punishment for these actions," says legal expert Kremnitzer, adding that many of the culprits have no sense that what they are doing is wrong. "They believe that politicians support what they do."

Football fan Asi, 23, says that he isn't a racist, just a nationalist. "I have no problem with Arabs, as long as they raise the Israeli flag and sing along when our national anthem is played." Lieberman used the same logic to justify a bill he introduced calling for new citizens to deliver an oath of allegiance.

Asi, who lives in a small village near Caesarea, supports the Beitar Jerusalem football club. On a Thursday evening, he and other Beitar fans are standing at an intersection in Herzliya. Asi has a friendly face and a neatly trimmed beard. Like his fellow fans, he is here to demonstrate against the club's owner.

When it was revealed in January that the Club planned to sign two Muslim Chechen players, the stands in the stadium became filled with hateful signs, with words like "Beitar -- Pure Forever." The fans chanted: "We are chosen, we are holy, but the Arabs are not."

Beitar Jerusalem, says Asi, that's the holy menorah on a yellow background. The team, he says, can only win as a Jewish team, which is why Muslims shouldn't be allowed to play in the club.

Beitar's management has since cancelled the contracts with the Chechens and sent the two men back home. There were simply too many problems, the club wrote in a statement.

[American Dream]

Ive tried to stay out of this thread, quite simply because the abomination that is the state of Israel in its current form, is merely a symptom of a much broader disease that affects our entire civilisation.

Racism is indeed a factor. But it pales into comparison when we look at the scale of the elitism, and those who truly pull the strings.

And they aint fukn Jewish by any reasonable definition of the term.

Do you deny fundraising for Icke here on Rigorous Intuition?

[seemslikeadream]

Do you deny fundraising for Mr. Build A. Burger here on Rigorous Intuition?

[JackRiddler]

I'm about 90 percent in harmony with what AD said.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=36839&start=135#p517298

(Closer to 100 percent on that post but picking a number that reflects I'm sometimes annoyed by what AD does.)

A valiant effort to build on that from Searcher08, on this page.
posting.php?mode=reply&f=8&t=36839#pr517341

Alas, look at what followed thereon. This will go on forever.

[American Dream]

AD,

Firstly, thank you for engaging.

Thank you for your honesty in saying that you dont read my stuff very often - I assumed it was because we have board interests that tend to be divergent (at least virtually) like mine in A.I. and yours in economics etc.

I think in some ways perhaps what you point to is R.I. being actually more like
parallel non-overlapping boards that just happen to be in the same virtual space...

I have really enjoyed your contributions on the TIDS thread, which I tend to dip into or graze and sometimes have spent hours there - I find it has been useful in extendng the post 9/11 shift I had (things are not what they seem) into history (things *were* not what they seemed). I even had a suggestion with it which is to create tumblr site in parallel with R.I. - I think you would get loads more people interested if you had them both ( and a younger demographic).

What you said about advertising about fundraising for Icke surprised me as I dont think anyone has used RI for fundraising anything - if he did, I dont think it was intended to be malicious, but it was certainly not a good idea. R.I. only fundraises for R.I. as far as I know.

I myself had not heard of Ken O'Keefe except in passing as a name on Mondoweiss; I felt sickened at the photo of how he had been beaten up and thought how frightening the Mavi Marmara experience must have been.

I think for slim the issue about Ken O'Keefe was that you pointed out he had either ties to or had been lied to by David Duke. Both of those are potentially good to know, yes?

For me personally, what I feel happens is that the type of post you just did - which lands with me as personal and authentic, is very different from what I am calling CopyPasta, where there is a one line comment from you, then pages and pages. There have been lots of times when you have said I dont respond to content, so I have then gone through something like that with a forensic toothcomb level of detail. I dont do this out of mean-spiritedness, but as a demonstration (in my world) of trying to rigorously engage, which is actually out of respect. So when a long reply is ignored by you, I feel pissed cos it was just a waste of time.

I think you have always seen the kickback from slad and slim and formerly C_W and myself and others as ultimately apologists for ugly tropes, while we have seen it not as uncritical support of these people but as an issue of thinking autonomy, and a reaction to how we are being communicated with - an experiential thing. I think both sides of this have not acknowledged what is underneath. Remember you can walk in sand dunes on the west coast of Ireland for miles and see the bones of familes who were left to starve to death out of sheer callousness - so 'holocaust denial' brings up extremely painful things for many Irish people.

The zionist implication is mirroring the anti-Semite implication in the other direction.
You actually posted the only sodding thread on RI about Norman Finklestein and were actually quite clear on being close to him in the scheme of things, which is deeply admirable IMHO - especially as you referring to his book The Holocaust Industry.

My own thing was you never seem to post anything critical of the specific zionist power structures in the US - like AIPAC, JINSA, ADL or within TIDS anything critical of the Jewish faith, when I think most others have been examined pretty intensely - which at times was very uncomfortable as TBH I had no idea of how much child abuse went on in Buddhist or Hindu contexts...

One difficulty that should be acknowledged between us is around the Rothschilds, because I see them as extremely important - along with the B.I.S. in Basel, but not because they are lizard people or even because they "own the world" or funded Hitler - which I consider far right disinfo, but because of the research into social network analysis into ownership concentrations of corporations. Although I do appreciate it may be an uncomfortable area.

I am sorry you think I am doing an intellectually dishonest reframe and I am sincerely unsure what you mean by that - unless it is putting Tony Greenstein articles through a
linguistic woodchipper? or similarly the MiB video??

Both Greenstein - who reminds me of the SWP types at Uni in the 70s - closed minded, apparatchiks of the worst kind - and MiB whose presence here was entirely manipulative (concerned only with his outcomes, no one elses) - when you post / invite them here - we probably felt similar to when you saw slim's Ken O'Keefe post?

Do you feel I do that to them but not to Icke?
I often feel that we veer really near to fruitful collaboration and then seem to zoom away at the last moment.

How would people feel about a trying peaceful resolution?

Please feel free to add to / re-word etc etc.

Everyone
1 Every one agrees that none of us are in any shape way or form or inclination or supporters of the far right like David Duke, racism like Shamir, zionism like Wolf Blitzer, AIPAC, JINSA, LIKUD
2 Some of us see Icke and Atzmon as varying degrees of unpleasent or misguided or wrong - the people who dont agree with this, honour and accept our fears, issues and concerns.
3 Some of us see Icke and Atzmon as positive and or provocative forces, the people who dont agree with this still honour and accept that we do.
Politeness
4 As a statement of politeness, in debate , we will not post cartoons, scrolling red texts, or loads of smilies.
5 That we will not argue by CopyPasta and avoid multiple repetition of quotes of self or others
6 That we will make an effort to be constructive and appreciative and seek value and assume good intent in the others.

In closing, I would like to thank you for writing it as I feel you did a lot of reflecting and it is probably the longest thing I have seen you post. This was the effort at empathy, that I talked about. I have tried to be honest and frank and sincerely build on it.

Searcher-

I wasn't going to respond to this at all- had put you on "ignore" and felt that was for the best. 98% of your Aloha is burned up with me but I have decided to go with the 2% that isn't.

Firstly, slim was indeed fundraising for Icke here at R.I.- I was rather shocked and horrified by this, to be quite honest.

Secondly, for O'Keefe to have linkages to Duke is a very clear sign that something is wrong but his message would be problematic even if he did not.

Thirdly, as to copying articles, often that is all I am inclined to do, as with the earlier Gilad Atzmon thread. No offense intended to anyone but quite honestly it's not worth it to me to expend huge amounts of energy educating myself on all the minutia of an issue I don't know thoroughly when the likelihood that the people I am responding to directly will have a change of heart is small. Especially because some of it is quite upsetting to me, the best I can do is post informative articles with little or no commentary added. I do this because I want more light than heat and do get emotionally triggered...

At least one time when I ignored a long piece from you it was because I was way too upset and my goodwill had sunk too low to respond fruitfully. I can understand why that might be upsetting to you but also that's the nature of these fora too- we are busy people and have not contracted to give all our time and energy to this.

Sorry, but David Icke has I think a pitifully bad position on the Protocols, Nazi mass murder and the like. That Irish people have suffered greatly does not change that.

As to domestic zionist organizations, do you think I am not outside their meetings getting documented by creepy Feds? Do you think the ADL's domestic intelligence operations never cast their eye towards my own life and organizations I worked with? If so, think again. Just because we can find pet issues that one one of us did not post on proves little when there are a gazillion issues to impugn each other over.

As to the Rothschilds, I certainly believe they were one rich clan who exercised power these last few centuries. I know they still exist and do things but if you are going to convince me that they are masters of the universe types today, I will need to see some really compelling evidence of that.

Regarding Greenstein- the critique of Atzmon should not be reduced to one personality caricature when there is lots of substantive critique to be engaged and the critique is not reducible to just one individual at all. Trying to reframe things in terms of branding the critique as one unsympathetic personality- I think we can and should do better than that.

As to your proposed peaceful resolution, I don't think think we are all agreed about Atzmon, Shamir, O'Keefe, Mullins, Bollyn, the Collins brothers, "Rothschild Zionism" etc. much at all. So I think what you are proposing is in danger of being so superficial as to not be "real".

I understand that plenty of people here at R.I, support right wing militias, world jewish/"zionist" conspiracy models, and other such things but it really does horrify me and I do think it's bad for the potential of a Movement- so there's the rub.

As to what we post, not posting ad hominems and not posting material with little or no meaningful content is something I would like us all to agree to.

Not arguing by cut and paste: when is it bad to post articles, when is it good? As indicated above I have sometimes felt it was the best thing to do and I think it differed profoundly from much of what slad has been doing here on this thread.

"That we will make an effort to be constructive and appreciative and seek value and assume good intent in the others."- yes, absolutely I do think this is a good idea. I think consistently avoiding ad hominems, false attributions, unfair/illogical arguments in general, and any and all negative jamming campaigns would really help make this more possible.

Thanks for your efforts on this.

[JackRiddler]

Here's what AD means by fundraising for Icke. slimmouse posted a celebratory treatment of an Icke campaign to raise 100,000 pounds for an Internet radio project called "The People's Voice" that ludicrously purports to be unique as an alternative to the corporate media. (Since this is peanuts, one may wonder what the money will really be for.)

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... p?p=506119

[American Dream]

Here's what AD means by fundraising for Icke. slimmouse posted a celebratory treatment of an Icke campaign to raise 100,000 pounds for an Internet radio project called "The People's Voice" that ludicrously purports to be unique as an alternative to the corporate media. (Since this is peanuts, one may wonder what the money will really be for.)

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... p?p=506119

And did directly and repeatedly urge people to give money, as I recall...

[seemslikeadream]

How many unarmed people did Icke kill today?

Israeli troops kill unarmed Palestinian crossing Gaza border
Sunday, 11 August 2013
An Israeli soldiers stands on his tank at an army staging area near the Israel-Gaza Strip border. (File photo: AFP)


Al Arabiya
A Palestinian who crossed the Israeli border from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip was killed by Israeli troops on Saturday, Reuters news agency reported military sources as saying.
According to an Israeli army spokeswoman, the troops had feared the Palestinian was a security threat though he proved to be unarmed.
The man was reportedly spotted by the troops digging into the ground on the Gazan side of the fortified border fence, where Palestinian gunmen have in the past mounted ambushes, the spokeswoman said.
He then clambered over the fence, carrying an item that the troops could not see clearly, she said. They shot him dead after he ignored their calls to turn back as well as warnings shots.
The man was not immediately identified and while the spokeswoman did not give further details on what the Palestinian was carrying, no weapons were found on him.
While the Gaza-Israel border has been a flashpoint of fighting, especially during flare-ups such as the November mini-war in the coastal enclave, such violence has abated recently, Reuters reports.
On occasion, Palestinians there have sought to cross into Israel for work.

[seemslikeadream]

When was the last time Icke displaced 1300 people?

This is fuckin going on and the most important thing in the world to AD is pissin and moanin about David Icke......AGAIN.......I wonder why that is?

11 August 2013 Last updated at 10:42 ET
New West Bank settlement homes anger Palestinians

The issue of building settlements in occupied Palestinian areas halted the last direct peace talks in September 2010

Palestinians have reacted angrily to Israel's approval of nearly 1,200 new Jewish settlement homes, just days before peace talks are set to resume.

Palestinian negotiators said the approval cast doubt on Israel's sincerity in the peace process.

Israel's housing minister said no country in the world would take orders on where it could build its homes.

The issue of building settlements in occupied Palestinian areas halted the last direct talks in September 2010.

About 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The Palestinians want to establish their state in those areas, as well as the Gaza Strip.

The settlements are considered illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

'Dangerous policy'
On Sunday, Israeli Housing Minister Uri Ariel confirmed that 793 apartments would be built in East Jerusalem and 394 in several large West Bank settlements.

Continue reading the main story
Analysis

Kevin Connolly
BBC News, Jerusalem
Palestinians see continued Israeli construction on the land where they aspire to create a new state as one of the biggest obstacles to peace.

The timing of this announcement may deepen the sense of pessimism that surrounds renewed peace talks even before they've really begun.

Housing Minister Uri Ariel comes from a party which opposes the very idea of a Palestinian state bordering Israel on the West Bank of the River Jordan. He 's now invited private firms to tender for the construction work.

More liberal members of Israel's broad coalition government will be uncomfortable with the tone and timing of the news. Palestinian leaders will be angered but may well have factored the possibility of this type of announcement into their overall political calculations.

Israel is also preparing to free 26 Palestinian prisoners on the eve of this week's scheduled peace talks. Announcing the settlement construction at the same time may be intended as a sop to right-wing supporters of the government who oppose those prisoner releases.

Palestinians said the plans brought into question Israel's commitment to the peace process.

Palestinian negotiator Mohammed Shtayeh said Israel aimed "to destroy the basis of the solution called for by the international community, which aims to establish a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders".

He accused Israel of trying to "determine the negotiations in whichever way suits it best".

Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Reuters: "If the Israeli government believes that every week they're going to cross a red line by settlement activity, if they go with this behaviour, what they're advertising is the unsustainability of the negotiations."

PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi told the BBC: "We believe that Israel is deliberately sending a message to the US, to the rest of the world that regardless of any attempt at launching negotiations, 'we are going to press ahead with stealing more land, building more settlements and destroying the two-state-solution'.

"This is an extremely dangerous policy, and if left unchecked it certainly would lead to greater conflict and the destruction of all chances of peace."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had previously insisted he would not resume talks without an Israeli settlement freeze, but relented during mediation by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem says Israel's announcement of the settlement construction may be intended as a sop to right-wing supporters of the government.

They had been angered by the government's approval of the release of more than 100 Palestinian prisoners - a condition set by the Palestinians for the talks to go ahead. The first group is due to be freed on 13 August.

The negotiations are scheduled to start in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

The latest Israeli settlement approval invites tenders for homes in Har Homa and Gilo, on East Jerusalem's southern outskirts, and in Pisgat Zeev, on the city's northern edge.

Tenders will also be invited for Ariel, in the northern West Bank, in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, and in Efrata and Beitar Ilit, around Bethlehem.

A housing ministry spokesman told the BBC that construction would begin in one to two years' time.

Mr Ariel said in a statement: "No country in the world takes orders from other countries [about] where it can build and where it can't.

"We will continue to market housing and build in the entire country... This is the right thing at the present time, for Zionism and for the economy.'

Israel: Ousting 1,300 Palestinians, Destroying Eight Villages Will Save Time, Money
by Jason Ditz, August 01, 2013
Print This | Share This
The Israeli military’s ongoing plans to destroy eight Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank and displace some 1,300 villagers from their homes is being challenged in the nation’s High Court of Justice today.

The government’s official stance on the ousters is that they are necessary because they will save the military time and money by allowing them to constantly use the area that was historically a grazing area for the villagers as a live fire zone for training exercises.

The IDF declared the area a “live fire zone” in 1976, and then said the villagers were illegally built too close to that zone in 1980. The evidence from the villagers however shows that those villages have been there since 1830.

The High Court previously blocked the villages demolition in 1999, and the military has mostly allowed the villagers access to the grazing area during Jewish holidays, when it’s not being pummelled with practice fire.

Even though nearly 40 years as a live fire zone hasn’t already ruined the villages, Israel’s military has insisted in the past that “terrorist” threats posed by the villagers being able to see them practising was the primary reason to destroy them.

[slimmouse]

Here's what AD means by fundraising for Icke. slimmouse posted a celebratory treatment of an Icke campaign to raise 100,000 pounds for an Internet radio project called "The People's Voice" that ludicrously purports to be unique as an alternative to the corporate media. (Since this is peanuts, one may wonder what the money will really be for.)

viewtopic.php?p=506119

Im glad you posted the link Jack, so that I could go back and see what I actually did, which was firstly infrom everyone that this was indeed an Icke inspired project, whereupon given the nature of how he goes down around here, people can make up their mind whether to even visit the link straight away.

( I originally considered posting the link from Ickes webpage, but thought ( hahahahaha) that might be even more endorsement.)

What I finally did, was throw three dried frogs, with some healing water and monatomic gold into a crucible, casting a traditional masai spell, whereupon one of the brightest crowds Ive ever met, would fall over themselves and their own individual judgement calls and persuasion to contribute regardless.

AD of course issued his counterspell meanwhile in the form of the deeply mysterious and sophisticated artistry of Mr Bilderberg. I only just escaped his own allure, I have to tell you.

I guess Icke would never have raised the 300k he did, without either the spell or the contributions that resulted from this board as a consequence.

But now Ive given my secret away. Apologies to all of you who succumbed to my wizardry. I'll just don my wizard hat emoticon in order to reveal my full outfit ( the previous emoticon was my spell inducing posture)

Pretty pathetic I know, but you know, when youre 'fundraising for Icke' ( hahafuknha) you can only do what you think is right

[seemslikeadream]

hey how aboooot that famous 75 page fundraiser/promotional material for Mr. Build A. Burger AD started? That was a pretty sweeeet deal