Immediately after Israeli soldiers executed Al-Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu-Akleh and fired at a group of her colleagues, observers began asking how such a horrible thing could happen. Why would Israel murder a journalist well-known throughout the Arab World? A noncombatant wearing appropriate press gear? A high-profile Palestinian with U.S. citizenship? At best, it seemed like a terrible PR move. It didn’t make any sense.
Except it did make sense. In fact, from a certain point of view killing Abu-Akleh was painfully sensible.
It’s natural to seek rational explanations for what appear to be mindless acts of violence. Explanation is contingent on material conditions, though, and so we have to understand the situation in context of Zionist settler colonization. Using the humanistic logic prevalent in most civil societies, Israel’s conduct was baffling. Its soldiers murdered a civilian in full view of people whose job is to report news. Those soldiers had to know that they couldn’t keep their act a secret, that targeting journalists would result in worldwide outrage. And yet they did it anyway.
Why?
To arrive at an answer, we have to discern the colonizer’s psyche. We’re not dealing with normal civil society standards, first of all. The relevant context is military occupation. In such a context, gratuitous state violence is normal. Obviously, killing Abu-Akleh has the immediate benefit of silencing a prominent voice of Palestinian resistance, one that had long exposed Israeli crimes of aggression.
There is more to the story, however.
We also have to explore the assumptions underlying a desire for simple explanations. By asking for reasons over and over again, observers seek answers to incongruous questions. In so doing they’re apt to tacitly implicate the victims in their own suffering. The journalists must have done something. There had to be a provocation. Israeli soldiers don’t just shoot innocent people for the hell of it.
But that’s exactly what Israeli soldiers do. Israel has murdered around fifty journalists over the past two decades. One or two might be an aberration. Fifty is a policy.
We needn’t turn to the victim’s behavior for answers to the colonizer’s violence. He is violent because of colonization.
So there’s no need to seek legible reasons for Abu-Akleh’s murder according the rationale of civic decency. The settler doesn’t need a “reason” to kill the native. The settler kills because deracinating the native is a precondition of his social identity. It is a function of his legal status and class position. Israeli forces viciously attacked a crowd carrying Abu-Akleh’s coffin—abusing our beloved martyr even in death—which only affirms the fact that the settler kills precisely when confronted by the native’s vulnerability. There is a higher purpose to his violence. The settler doesn’t kill simply to produce death; he kills to negate the native’s existence.
Israeli forces attacked Abu-Akleh’s corpse because killing her wasn’t enough. They needed to expunge her from a land they claim by divine mandate. Her body impedes a mythological birthright underlying the settler’s entire sense of self. She has to be rendered nonexistent in order for the settler to survive. Such is the logic of desecrating ancient Muslim cemeteries and planting flora over the ruins of ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages.
The same forces attacked hundreds of mourners not because they were unruly, but because they weren’t also in the casket.
The settler’s violence, in short, is endless. It is the only way he knows how to be a good citizen. And it is the only way, in the end, he can imagine a meaningful existence.
Hard to read, but sooo accurate. Thank you. May she rest in peace & power. May we never forget.
Sooo powerful
Spot on…as always.
“UN special rapporteur Michael Lynk stated in the latest report on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, “With the eyes of the international community wide open, Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world.” The issue, however, extends further. Not only have the eyes of the international community been wide open, but its mouths forever sealed—that is, except to praise the apartheid regime, whitewash its crimes, and condemn its victims. One might have hoped that journalistic institutions would react with horror at the assassination of a fellow Journalist. Indeed, they did when Russia killed Ukrainian journalists. But for the non-European Shireen Abu Akleh, they utilized every possible concoction of words to avoid naming Israel as the killer. Headlines that should have read, “Israeli forces shoot and kill Al-Jazeera Journalist during raid on Jenin refugee camp” read instead, “Shireen Abu Akleh, Palestinian Journalist, Dies, Aged 51”. But Abu Akleh did not die of natural causes, nor was her death mysterious; Israeli snipers shot Abu Akleh in the face while she was clearly identified as press.”
Well said
“But the crime begins long before the shooting. The crime starts with the raiding of every town, refugee camp, village and bedroom in the West Bank every night, when necessary but mainly when not necessary. The military correspondents will always say that this was done for the sake of “arresting suspects,” without specifying which suspects and what they’re suspected of, and resistance to these incursions will always be seen as “a breach of order” – the order in which the military can do as it pleases and the Palestinians cannot do anything, certainly not show any resistance.
Abu Akleh died a hero, doing her job. She was a braver journalist than all Israeli journalists put together. She went to Jenin, and many other occupied places, where they have rarely if ever visited, and now they must bow their heads in respect and mourning. They also should have stopped spreading the propaganda spread by the military and government regarding the identity of her killers. Until proven otherwise, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the default conclusion must be: the Israeli military killed Shireen Abu Akleh.”
Taken from Gideon Levy article, ‘Is Blood of Iconic Journalist Redder Than Blood of Anonymous Palestinians? 11/05/22
You are right !
They want to do to Palestinians what America did to Native Indians 300 years ago but it’s never going to work for them this time for so many reasons .
You can’t keep killing innocent people and expect to have peace.
They are saying that they are defending themselves Arabs and Muslims always protected Jewish people in the past
They pretend to forget !
The Zionist killers of Shireen Abu Akleh were unable to recognize her nor give her any recognition – could not permit the casket that held her body, the casket draped in a Palestinian flag , supported on the backs of Christians and Muslims, surrounded by Palestinian mourners – the Zionist killers of Shireen Abu Akleh could not permit her body and all that embodied her existence – the existence of a Palestinian – to be paraded through East Jerusalem because to them East Jerusalem is Israel – and who she is, has been and will be snd who her people are and have been and will be would defile their ‘City of David’ and the lie on which they fervently base their lives. The Zionists killed Shireen Abu Akleh because they could not – not to themselves and not to others, not to the world – have the reality of their myths – on which they base their lives – disturbed, unveiled and despoiled.
The Zionist killers of Shireen Abu-Akleh were unable to recognize her nor give her any recognition – could not permit the casket that held her body, the casket draped in a Palestinian flag , supported on the backs of Christians and Muslims, surrounded by Palestinian mourners – the Zionist killers of Shireen Abu-Akleh could not permit her body and all that embodied her existence – the existence of a Palestinian – to be paraded through East Jerusalem because to them East Jerusalem is Israel and who she is and has been and who her people are and have been would defile their ‘City of David’ and the lie on which they fervently base their lives. The Zionists killed Shireen Abu-Akleh because they could not have the reality of their myths unveiled and despoiled.
Steve,
The other day in Buffalo NY, a young mass murderer claimed to be killing based on the white nationalist replacement canard where people of color will replace white people in America. In Israel there is Jewish supremacy, an all too similar version of racist white nationalism where Israeli Jews are prepared to tolerate just about any excess inside Israel or in the occupied areas to ensure Jewish domination and rule. Like the mass murdering punk in Buffalo, Israeli Jews sanction their security to murder and maim. After all some 50 or so Palestinians are dead at Israel’s hands so far this year.
Israeli Jews pay absolutely NO price for their toleration of this evil. Until they do, it will continue and many Israeli Jews will be happy to pull out their victim cards to support this racist conduct with little or no guilt.
I would cal those Israeli Jews – Zionists. They killed Shireen Abu Akleh and were brutal to her Palestinian Christian and Muslim mourners who were accompanying her casket to walk through East Jerusalem to the family’s Christian church. These Zionist Israeli Jews could not tolerate Palestinians ‘defiling’ what they claim as their ‘God-given’ land. – it would be ‘traif’ to allow them with their Palestinian flags and the casket of a noted Palestinian – to traverse East Jerusalem – that they have been ‘cleansing’ for the settlers to move in. As you say, they kill off those people (seen as ‘vermin’ infecting their purity- just as their ancestors had been treated .). They react violently because to them the ‘others’ are robbing them of their rightful places and they are committing ( what I would call) ‘genocide’of the Palestinian people so that’ never again’ will they and their people be obliterated. I am not defending them. I am trying to get into their headset. This is one idea. Why are they the way they are? Why?
Steve, this link will lead to a better understanding of the truth of the assassination of the Al Jazeera Journalist.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/al-jazeeras-iconic-voice-palestine-killed-during-israeli-raid
Steve, another piece on the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh.
“Oh, the lies. They pour freely forth from the mouths of Israeli leaders and army officers.
Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh murdered by IDF in Jenin
The IDF was in the midst of an operation to kidnap Palestinians suspected of militant activities in Jenin. Several Palestinian journalists were on the scene to cover the operation. Four of them were gathered together. They were nowhere near any firing or conflict. They stood by themselves and were clearly identified by the Press vests and helmets they wore. Shireen Abu-Akleh was shot in the head:
Another Al Jazeera journalist, Ali Samoudi, was also wounded after being shot in the back. He is now in a stable condition, and said that there were no Palestinian fighters present when the journalists were shot, directly disputing an Israeli statement that referenced the possibility.
“We were going to film the Israeli army operation and suddenly they shot us without asking us to leave or stop filming,” said Samoudi. “The first bullet hit me and the second bullet hit Shireen … there was no Palestinian military resistance at all at the scene.”
Shatha Hanaysha, a Palestinian journalist who was present next to Abu Akleh when she was shot, also told Al Jazeera that ‘there had been no confrontations between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli army, and said that the group of journalists had been targeted.’
“We were four journalists, we were all wearing vests, all wearing helmets,” Hanaysha said. “The [Israeli] occupation army did not stop firing even after she collapsed. I couldn’t even extend my arm to pull her because of the shots. The army was adamant on shooting to kill.”
This timeline offers a credible account of the scene at the time of the Israeli shooting:
• A group of journalists arrived at the edge of Jenin refugee camp, Shireen and colleagues, including Al-Smodi and Hanaysheh, they were wearing flak jackets and helmets, and kept themselves together as an obvious group;
• At that moment, there were neither clashes nor shooting from any side, even there were no protests or throwing stones, there were nothing;
• Three gunshots were shot by Israeli soldiers, the first missed Ali, the second one hit him in his shoulder, Shireen shouted “Ali has been wounded”;
• The third gunshot directly hit Shireen in the head (beneath her ear), fell to the ground under a tree;
• Journalists could not rescue her because shooting continued for more than three minutes from the same Israeli side.
• Shireen was evacuated to hospital with a private vehicle because the Israeli soldiers prevented ambulances from at arriving the scene.
Al Jazeera has said this was an execution:
Al Jazeera said in a statement that the Israeli military “assassinated Abu Akleh in cold blood,” and called on the international community to condemn her killing and hold Israel accountable.
“We commit to take legal action against those responsible and bring them to justice,” the news outlet said.
Good luck to them. The AP made the same vow after the IAF destroyed its offices in a Gaza residential tower felled by missile strikes. It’s still waiting for an answer to this indiscriminate attack on journalism.
In the past, the IDF has murdered journalists in Gaza. But it has never murdered any in the West Bank; certainly not a journalist for a foreign news outlet; and it has even more certainly never murdered an American citizen who is a practicing journalist. This is an IDF trifecta.
Let’s make something very clear. The bullet fired by the IDF sniper was a kill shot. It entered her neck and exited her face. Snipers don’t strike victims in the head unless intending to kill. Why would they murder her? Because she was the face of Palestine on the most popular Arab media outlet. In fact, Palestinian journalists tell how during the Second Intifada soldiers would take to bullhorns and use Shireen’s on air sign-off as if to taunt the Palestinians and her. So it’s not at all unlikely she was assassinated, or as Al Jazeera said above, “executed.” This is Israel’s way of getting rid of what an English king said of Thomas a Beckett: “will someone not rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Shireen was Israel’s meddlesome reporter, and now it is rid of her.
It’s difficult to tell whether this is more of the same from an army that doesn’t care to discriminate between civilians, militants and journalists, killing them all indiscriminately; or whether this is a military sinking into a new depth of depravity, deliberately targeting journalists for murder. Either way, this killing places it in the company of other authoritarian regimes which murder their citizen journalists with impunity: Putin’s Russia is right up there at the top of the list. Following closely behind are Sri Lanka, Mexico, and Syria. Next time you hear anyone talk of Israel’s freedom of the press, ask about Shireen. What sort of “freedom” does she enjoy? Freedom to die with her Press vest displayed across her chest?
Israeli officials have shamelessly claimed that Shireen was caught in a crossfire:
Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that, according to Israeli information, “it appears likely that armed Palestinians — who were indiscriminately firing at the time — were responsible.”
…Israeli military officials said at a briefing with reporters earlier that Abu Akleh’s death is “a very tragic incident” and claimed she was likely killed by “indiscriminate [gun]fire by Palestinian militants.”
He followed up with an equally mendacious statement quoted by the Washington Post:
In a statement, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the shooting occurred while the Israel Defense Forces were conducting counterterrorism operations in Jenin, after a spate of deadly attacks over the past few weeks in Israeli cities. During the operation, he said, “armed Palestinians shot in an inaccurate, indiscriminate and uncontrolled manner.”
“Our forces from the IDF returned fire as accurately, carefully and responsibly as possible. Sadly, Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in the exchange,” he said. “To uncover the truth, there must be a real investigation, and the Palestinians are currently preventing that. Without a serious investigation, we will not reach the truth.”
This is a tissue of lies. The IDF never does a “real investigation.” This meaningless rhetoric is fodder for foreign consumption, meant to mollify those who actually believe in the rule of law and accountability. Israel does a calculation of how much damage an incident will do to its interests. There are no humane or even legal considerations.
There is a concept common among Yiddish speakers called rochmonis (“mercy” or empathy). Israel does not have this capacity, though it does reserve it for Israeli Jews. It doesn’t even have it for Diaspora Jews, though they do merit slightly more consideration. Israel is a hard country. Mercy and empathy are in short supply. Of course, there are historic and psychological reasons for this. But history cannot justify the cold, hard calculating practices of the Israeli state and its representatives in this and many similar cases.
Here is another statement released by an anonymous Israeli source to the Post:
A senior Israeli official, in a statement sent to reporters, said that the Army’s assessment was based on evidence that included video footage in which a gunman is heard saying in Arabic, “We hit a soldier, he’s on the ground.” The Israeli military said that no Israeli soldiers were injured during clashes in Jenin on Wednesday and that the Palestinians in the video may have been referring to Abu Akleh.
This claim makes a laughingstock of whichever idiot released it. So an unsourced video, filmed in an unspecified location, at an unspecified time, featuring unspecified individuals (but not Shireen) offers definitive proof that she was killed either by Palestinian gunmen or in a crossfire? I’m sorry but this is more obfuscation designed to confuse the public. It shows desperation and a calculated attempt to offer so many conflicting narratives that everyone will forget the most credible one offered by multiple eyewitnesses. It’s a common tactic of crisis management, when you have nothing good to offer.
I suppose we’re lucky they didn’t accuse her of taking the soldier’s gun and killing herself. Justice minister Gideon Saar had the chutzpah to call the accusations of murder against the IDF a “blood libel.” I suppose the IDF soldiers weren’t firing bullets but flowers or candy; and somehow she died of a sugar overdose.
The IDF complained that the Palestinians had taken her body and were “refusing” its offer of “a joint investigation” of the incident:
Israeli military spokesperson Gen. Ran Kokhav told army radio that Palestinian officials had taken Abu Akleh’s body and refused to hold a joint pathological investigation into her death.
Palestinian officials have rightly refused. What does Israel want to investigate? It knows what happened. It knows who killed her. It knows why they killed her. They don’t need her body to figure that out. What Israel wants is a way to discredit the findings, seeking to offload guilt onto anyone but themselves.
Naftali Bennett has once again gotten himself into a fine mess. Just as things were cooling down and Abbas Mansour was about to announce at a press conference that his Islamist Ra’am Party would rejoin the coalition, someone comes along and puts a bullet into a Palestinian woman’s head. What a way to spoil the Party.
Another irony is that the West Bank military operation was designed to assuage those calling for the murder of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. The army offered Bennett an alternative: a sweep through the West Bank arresting hundreds of the usual suspects, just to show that the army was doing something to fight Palestinian terror. Now, instead of putting a security feather in his cap, Bennett is dripping in a journalist’s blood.
Of course, no one in Israel cares about this woman. She was a Palestinian first of all. She was a journalist second of all. And a journalist working for an Arab news outlet. She came up short on the empathy meter on all counts. But Israel must be seen to care. It has already announced a full-fledged investigation. That’s for the benefit of the Biden administration, since it too must be seen to care for a US citizen:
Tom Nides, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, confirmed Shireen Abu Akleh was a Palestinian American citizen and called for “a thorough investigation into the circumstances of her death,” as Palestinian and Israeli officials gave conflicting accounts of what happened to the veteran reporter.
But Biden could care less about Abu-Akleh, citizen or no citizen. She is an inconvenient distraction from other far more pressing matters like Ukraine or North Korean ballistic missile tests. Here’s how little we care. This is what the State Department said after the murder of another American citizen of Palestinian descent:
We are complicit. We don’t hold Israeli accountable. We literally let it get away with murder. Shireen’s murder is our shame as Americans.”
Steve, isn’t it time to say a final Au Revoir to the apologist for apartheid Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity. He has no shame, defends the indefensible, lies unashamedly, insults everyone.
I keep deleting his comments, he keeps returning. Standard Zionist, I suppose: can’t stop infringing on Palestinian space–Steve
Steve, another interesting piece on Shireen’s murder from Haaretz.
Opinion | It Wasn’t Us: How Israel Can Triumph Over a Hasbara Disaster Noa Landau. May. 15, 2022
As I watched the broadcasts of the funeral of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, I immediately realized that what seemed like an innocent funeral procession was no less than a PR disaster. And that’s just what I told my husband: This, Moshe, is a real Hasbara disaster, consciousness terror.
With our own eyes we saw how her coffin perpetrated an attack on the police batons at the scene, and that was without broadcasting what the coffin had done before that, and how despite Israeli restraint, Jewish sovereignty was undermined by the waving of flags and singing. And despite all the provocations – i.e., the way in which the Palestinians force us to kill them and then also to ruin their funerals – I said to Moshe: What Israel did there might have been right, but not smart! After all, the eyes of the world …
And so, as an expert in designing and shaping awareness, with experience in small-scale narrative combat, I decided to enlist in the battle for public opinion, and to offer some tips to win the state’s image war, which follow:
1. “Sow doubt.” If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the best of the propagandists, it’s the importance of sowing as much doubt as possible regarding the facts. After all, there’s no longer any importance to the truth. We killed, we didn’t kill. The narrative has already been determined. How did Channel 12’s Amit Segal put it? “In a certain sense it doesn’t matter at all who shot her.” Or, in a similar vein, as his colleague Dana Weiss said: “From the moment it happened, it didn’t matter who fired the shot and what took place.”
And so we agree: It’s not important what happened. Maybe a Palestinian who was hundreds of meters away shot her? Maybe. It’s important to sow doubt as quickly as possible (insert it into the news cycle asap!) – and not to forget to feed the social media. We might change our version later, because it turned out that there was actually an Israel Defense Forces soldier there who fired his weapon in her direction. But so what if that’s what happened? And after all that, Diaspora Affairs Minister Nachman Shai still dared to claim that “Israel’s credibility is not very high”? For shame.
2. “Fake empathy.” As the daily Israel Hayom wrote: “Israel must convey empathetic messages, especially when it’s about a journalist with U.S. citizenship.” As for Palestinians who are not Americans, by the way, no need to even bother.
3. “She chose to be in a dangerous place.” And if perish the thought, an armed Palestinian would have, say, killed Israeli investigative journalist Ilana Dayan in the field? Well, she certainly would not have been blamed for it.
4. “Everything comes back to you.” The Palestinians refuse to participate in a joint investigation into the incident – what are they hiding? Ah, Israel is also refusing joint international investigations? For us, that’s allowed.
5. “Framing.” If, perish the thought, it turns out that an Israeli soldier shot her? Well, that’s because they force us to kill them in the war on terror. It doesn’t matter who shoots during a battle, it matters who’s right in that war (what do you mean, the “occupied” side? Let them find another way to frame it.)
6. “What not to say.” Look, we did not say that it’s justified to kill her – we didn’t say that! But it is important to mention, just to mention, that in life and in death, Abu Akleh was an Hasbara PR terrorist. Hostile to Israel. Very one-sided.
7. “What not to do.” In conclusion, it’s important to remember that our problem is PR. Not reality, that’s no longer important. Possibilities that are not on the agenda: Don’t kill journalists, don’t hunt down flags at a funeral and don’t attack coffins.
The writer is (not) the director of ItWasn’tUs, which operates by means of young digital ambassadors to sow doubts about Israel around the world
Steve, our apoligist for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity, is losing the plot completely. He is ranting and raving, losing his marbles, attacking all and sundry. You were right to ban him from the blog as he has no principles, just a gutter snipe. Jewish identity, whether religious, spiritual or secular, is now permanently infected with atrocity.”
Steve, a few comments from an article in today’s Haaretz by Amira Hass, headlined:
Israel Fired Missile at House With Sleeping Kids, Used Girl as Human Shield, Family Claims
1. When will the International Criminal Court finally start hauling in Israelis and charging them with war crimes?
2. Just appalling. Israel is a really a very sick, criminal society with blood on its hands, and cowardly goons who shoot anti tank missiles at families and use girls as human shields. All in order to steal from and oppress the people they’ve colonized, when it comes down to it. And yet they preen themselves as “moral.” That is what really astounds. A pathological militaristic aggressive society wrapped in this thick cocoon of blaming others. And never held accountable because of an aggressive manipulation of others. Just a very sick state of affairs.
3. A morally corrupt nation.
Steve, this is a good read from today’s ‘Times of Israel’ blogs.
The futility of seizing a Palestinian flag
The nationalistic symbolism draped over Shireen Abu Akleh’s death doesn’t actually change the political situation, and that is what actually warrants attention
MAY 26, 2022, 2:55 PM
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-futility-of-seizing-a-palestinian-flag/?utm_source=The+Blogs+Weekly+Highlights&utm_campaign=blogs-weekly-highlights-2022-05-26&utm_medium=email
“I really detest nationalism in fact.”
In a Brzezinskian “National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept…people, governments and economies of all nations must serve the needs of multinational banks and corporations” sort of way, Jack?
I mean, Israel’s always out and out lied about its territorial ambitions. That’s certainly not novel behavior among states or nations. Nor are sadistic plans for world hegemony.
But it might be noted that the orgasmic fantasy of “Eretz Israel” is a fantasy that existed long before the discovery of oil. And this in turn should have cast doubt on the whole “war for oil” meme which prevented so many from seeing the group largely behind the Iraq War. “The Transparent Cabal” as Stephen Sniegoski titled his very informative book.
This also casts serious doubt on Noam Chomsky’s whole “Israel is just an outpost of the Pentagon” meme that SO many college kids and others were indoctrinated with for so many years in the US, and continue to be. This faulty thinking was then taken up by outlets such as “Democracy Now” and many others on the alleged “left” in this country, such that it was left to someone as relatively unknown as Jeffrey Blankfort to point out the absurdity of it all. From a “left” perspective, that is.
Of course, Noam Chomsky is a staunch Zionist, as made abundantly evident in his 4-part “debate” with Noah Cohen from a few years back. Cohen does a nice job exposing Chomsky’s utter hypocrisy when it comes to BDS, Palestinian right to return under international law and precedent, etc. Chomsky doesn’t even feign to apply any of the principles he so loudly evokes in the face of every other uneven power relation on earth.
Alas, if interested, you’ll have to find the fourth installment of this back-and-forth at Cohen’s own site or elsewhere online, as “Z” publications has always been run by Chomsky aficionados et al who conveniently didn’t publish Cohen’s final rejoinder. Par for the course.
Anyway, somebody should have told all the myriad organizations and characters that collectively make up what’s now known as “The Israel Lobby” (it used to be referred to simply as the “Jewish Lobby” by everyone, including Jews) – somebody should have told them that their ideological fervor for all things Israel was going to happen anyway because it was in the Pentagon and big oil’s interests! They could have saved a lot of time and money. Instead, they set up shady organizations with “USA-y” sounding names in order to financially bribe US politicians into working for Israel.
Interestingly, much of the now almost entirely deregulated environment that has come to fruition over the past few decades in the US was brought about by pressure from Israel-aligned writers and backers who got US politicians on board, often even in the face of fierce opposition from other powerful US industry groups.
Grant Smith at IRMEP has documented how the first bilateral “trade deal” the U.S. entered into was the US-Israel deal of 1985, where the entire agriculture industry of California was opposed, along with prominent US multinationals. The only group supporting the deal was the Jewish Lobby. They won.
The bilateral trade deals were the precursor to Billy Clinton’s NAFTA, which opened the floodgates. Look at the names surrounding the Clintons back then. Follow the money.
You can fast forward to more recent times, where, as I previously mentioned, Sheldon Adelson and Steven Roth were Trump’s biggest donors, yet Trump goes before AIPAC and tells them he doesn’t need their money. His admirers just don’t seem to get it. But then neither did Hillary Clinton’s, she the beneficiary of Haim Sabans largesse, among others. Saban proudly announced “I’m a one-issue guy, and that issue is Israel.” Obama had his Pritzkers and Crowns, and of course Michelle’s own family. I could go on.
The aforementioned Jeffrey Blankfort is the first person I read who recounted the story of the elder George Bush, the former CIA Director and vice president (of the US, I think) who refused to give Israel the “loans” it requested to further its colonization of Palestine. Here’s Blankfort:
“Now Bush, Sr., in 1991, decided that he wanted to force Israel to come to the peace table. It should be noted that when Bush was Vice President, when Israel bombed the Iraq nuclear reactor, Bush wanted Israel to be sanctioned. He was outvoted by President Reagan and Secretary of State Alexander Haig. When Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982, Bush also wanted Israel to be sanctioned. Again he was outvoted by Reagan and Haig. This is documented by Moshe Arens, Israel’s Foreign Minister at the time, in his book “Broken Covenant: The US Israel Relationship and the Bush Presidency.” – (The book title is Broken Covenant: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis Between the U.S. and Israel.)
In 1991, when Israel came to Bush and wanted ten billion dollars in loan guarantees from the U.S. government at a time when our economy was hurting, Bush saw this as Israel’s way of not engaging in peace talks, and he told Israel … He asked the Israeli Prime Minister Shamir to postpone his request for four months. Shamir decided he would not do it and he would go over his head to Congress. When Bush Sr. found out and realized that Congress would override his veto of the $10-billion loan guarantees, he went to the American people [on TV] on September 12, 1991, and [held] a press conference/statement, in which he said, “There are a thousand lobbyists up here on Capitol Hill against little old me.” And he told the American public the amount of money that each Israeli citizen — man, woman, and child — was getting in aid from the United States.
At this time there were a thousand — at least a thousand — Jewish lobbyists on Capitol Hill talking to members of Congress about passing the loan guarantee legislation. And so the very next day the polls showed that the American public was behind Bush by 85 percent. This really scared the lobby and members of Congress. And so they retreated. But the head of AIPAC at the time, a man named Thomas Dine, made a statement that September 12, 1991, would be a day that would live in infamy. And from that moment on, even Republicans such as William Safire in the New York Times began attacking Bush over the economy. They wouldn’t attack over this issue but over the economy.
And in February of ’92, when Bush again would not approve the loan guarantees, they went after him big time. This is all very well documented. The Congressional Record is filled with speeches attacking the President and supporting Israel. The only person who spoke against the loan guarantees was the late Senator Robert Byrd, but you did not read what he had to say in the American press because the American press by 1992 was parroting essentially the Israeli line.”
What you see in the US again and again and again is the same pattern of executive branch control whereby even our own heads of state and the directors of our own intel agencies are forced to pay fealty to Israel.*
Jeffrey Blankfort used to post at Phil Weiss’ website Mondoweiss, until he and some others were banned. He was too much for even Phil Weiss, who himself does a yeoman’s job documenting Jewish Zionist power and connections.
I first heard the term “ziocaine” used at Mondoweiss. It was coined, I believe, by a commenter named Dana, who was born and raised in Israel, and described herself as having spent a lifetime unpacking Zionism.
A mental illness indeed. Ziocaine.
Phil Weiss started his site after talking to a relative who essentially told Phil that, while he protested against the Vietnam war, he was going to support the Iraq war because he heard it would be “good for Israel.”
This is precisely what so many non-Zionists in the Jewish community at the time warned against. This is why Menachem Mendel Schneerson – among many others – made it their life mission to convince Jews of the world of the necessity of Zionism. Their descendants are now among us, and continue their work.
Hell, Einstein wrote an editorial in the NY Times warning of this. The entirety of the State Department was against the “creation” of Israel. So were most of the American people, until a propaganda campaign was devised to convince them otherwise. Sounds familiar.
And….oh yeah. The Palestinians.
Jack, have you ever visited the site “Palestine Remembered?
Please do.
*One may be reminded of CIA Director George Tenet’s March 2004 testimony before the House Armed Services Committee:
“A special intelligence unit at the Pentagon provided private prewar briefings to senior White House officials on alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda without the knowledge of the CIA Director … [and the] disclosure suggests that a controversial Pentagon office played a greater role than previously understood in shaping the administration’s views on Iraq’s alleged ties to the terrorist network behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and that it bypassed usual channels to make a case that conflicted with the conclusions of CIA analysts.”
The “special intelligence unit” or “controversial Pentagon office” of which Tenet speaks was a quasi-secret intelligence unit inside the Bush administration known as The Office of Special Plans, created by Jewish Zionist fellow travelers Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz. Feith had “worked for” the Reagan administration in the early years and was dismissed for his involvement with Jonathan Pollard and classified information being transferred to Israel. And, as Jewish Zionist Brett Stephens noted in penning an article on Wolfowitz being named The Jerusalem Post’s 2003 Man of the Year:
“Wolfowitz is the principal author of the doctrine of preemption, which framed the war in Iraq and which, when it comes to it, will underpin US action against other rogue states.”
Steve, After reading this article in today’s Haaretz Israeli Newspaper, by Amira Hass, I wonder is there any hope left for Palestinians under the boot of the rogue, apartheid Israeli State, supported by the hypocritical United States and the EU.
Who Will Stand Up to the Radicalization of Israel?
Amira Hass
May. 31, 2022 4:29 AM
The Arabs are raising their heads. They’re taking liberties,” complained Efrat Raz, a resident of the unauthorized, illegal outpost of Kida, to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Because he was killed, we know that her husband Noam Raz was a member of the Yamam police counterterrorism force that raided Jenin on May 13 and bombarded a house while its residents, including 11 children, slept inside. The armed men of the force also took a father and his daughter as human shields.
How many residents of the illegal settlements and illegal/unauthorized outposts serve enthusiastically, with devotion and high spirits in units that terrorize Palestinian children and induce trauma and fury in them for their entire lives? How many of their wives – and it’s reasonable to assume that they themselves – think “the Arabs are raising their heads?” How many of those wearing the white shirts that we saw in Sunday’s march of horrors in Jerusalem dream about joining the Yamam?
It would be important if they set the policy under which the role of the army and its policing branches is to protect and deepen the settlement enterprise. But the opposite is true: For over 50 years the messianic-nationalist stream has served as a convenient tool in the hands of secular Israeli governments, which worked diligently on advancing the Zionist project while grabbing the remnants of the Palestinian space, captured in 1967. A tool, let us repeat. A means.
The white shirts – since the dancing in Sebastia and the Purim celebrations in Hebron after the massacre carried out by Dr. Baruch Goldstein on Palestinian worshippers – would not have succeeded if they had not served so well the goals of all the Zionist governments and fitted into their plans. If not for the politicians (members of the Socialist International!) such as Shimon Peres and Yigal Allon who encouraged them, and planned very early the shattering of the West Bank as a Palestinian space; if the IDF had not demolished during the time of Levi Eshkol and Moshe Dayan three Palestinian villages at Latrun, and expelled their residents; if the police had not ignored, for decades, the violence of their “wild weeds”; if the army had not seized large areas for alleged military purposes and then passed them on to settlers; if the Israeli economists, architects and lawyers had not prevented Palestinian development – before and after the Oslo Accords.
The problem is that tools, like the Golem of the Maharal of Prague or of Walt Disney, tend to raise their heads. We saw this in the terrifying flag dance in Jerusalem on Sunday. Today, they are 50,000 wearing white shirts who marched in the heart of Palestinian Jerusalem. Yesterday they marched in Hebron and fulfilled there the vision of emptying it of Palestinians. Tomorrow they will be 100,000.
The violent outposts of the shepherds are also a registered patent of this holy white aesthetic. And as was confirmed by their patron, Ze’ev Hever from the colonizing movement Amana, these outposts have taken over a Palestinian space twice as large as the area of the lands the built-up settlements stole. How much will they succeed in stealing tomorrow? An area eight times the size, or only seven times? Today it is 2,600 dancing, pious Jews who went up on the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. They have managed to expropriate almost completely the Ibrahim Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs from the Palestinian public. Tomorrow they will be 7,000. How many of them will sign a petition to build the Third Temple? And when will they have a democratic majority in the Knesset?
Is there now in all the world’s countries a single responsible adult who will say openly: “The hell with it, this Jewish mutation that is developing there in the Middle East – in other words, the State of Israel – has lost it. Freaked out, lost its mind, gone crazy. Because of its military, nuclear and high-tech power, combined with all the religious fervor, because of its alliance with the United States, this needs to worry us. Very much so.”
In our cynical world, it is an unfounded expectation that any international body will appear, that such a responsible adult will stand up and act to stop this process, in whose creation Israel’s Jewish citizens are full partners.
Steve, an interesting article from Haaretz.
We Are All Herzogs, We Are All Occupiers
Michael Sfard
Jun. 8, 2022 10:59 PM
The baby who was born the day that Maj. Gen. Chaim Herzog signed a proclamation declaring pompously that “the Israel Defense Forces entered the region today and assumed control, security and public order” celebrated his 55th birthday this week.
As the newborn drew his first breaths and his mother gave him his first caressing human touch, the general was swaying, drunk on a dizzying power trip: “All authority of government, legislation, appointment and administration pertaining to the region or its residents will now be exclusively in my hands and will be exercised only by me or by any person appointed therefore by me or acting on my behalf,” he declared.
And lest there be any doubt about his omnipotence, about his being a sole ruler with no restrictions in the territory that his/our forces had just conquered, he established that any legal obligation to consult or receive authorization from others for appointments or legislation “hereby void.” Yitzhak Rabin’s famous “I will decide, I will navigate” – the occupation version.
The first Palestinian baby of the occupation was born into the dictatorship of Maj. Gen. Chaim Herzog, who went on to become Israel’s sixth president; his son Isaac now serves as the 11th.
From the very first day of this baby’s life – we’ll call him Abd, “servant” in Arabic – though not like Abdullah, meaning ‘servant of God’ in Arabic, and more like Abd-Israel – Herzog Sr. demonstrated his authority over him, his parents and the hundreds of thousands of his people living in the occupied territory: “I hereby declare,” he announced in the second part of the proclamation, which sent military jeeps to patrol the streets of Palestinian cities on June 7, 1967, “a curfew throughout the region.” And for those with poor reading comprehension, he added: “No one shall leave his home at any time during the day or the night.”
Our Abd was born into a tyrannical occupation and has lived in it his entire life. He has never experienced a single minute of freedom, one second of sovereignty.
In the years after his birth, his first ruler, Herzog, established his successful law firm with his partners Michael Fox and Yaakov Neeman, advanced a political career that culminated in the Knesset electing him president of the Jewish state, pardoned Shin Bet security service agents who had tortured Palestinian detainees and perjured themselves in court, and who three times commuted the life prison term of a member of the Jewish terrorist underground who had murdered Palestinian university students, and attempted to murder the mayors of West Bank Palestinian cities and Palestinian bus passengers.
In these years, the course of Abd’s life was dictated by an absence of civil rights as a result of living under the Israeli occupation and his subordination to Herzog and his successors.
It was they who decided what would happen to his family’s lands, whether he would get a permit to build a home, and if he could travel abroad for vacation or studies. And it was they who prohibited all political activity, defined any criticism of the government as incitement, jailed tens of thousands of Palestinians – some of them without trial – and even outlawed human rights organizations, classifying them as terrorist organizations.
In his teenage years, Abd saw how the landscape of his homeland changed completely. He saw how hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland were expropriated and new communities with alien, European architecture took over the space.
He watched the arrival of new residents, who brought with them a mentality of being lords of the land and who received from “the Herzogs” everything that had been taken from his family and his community: land, water, natural resources, participation in decision-making and, of course, dignity.
Half a million settlers and two intifadas later, Herzog Jr. began his presidency by visiting the Har Bracha settlement, where he inaugurated an ulpana – a religious girls’ high school – and lit Hanukkah candles at the site where a Jewish physician massacred Muslim worshipers, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. He did not visit Abd, and did not inaugurate anything in his village.
So don’t say Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, say Herzog. From Chaim Herzog to Isaac Herzog, it is the Israeli establishment, not its fringes, that expropriates land, builds settlements, re-engineers the demographics of the occupied territory, brutally throttles all opposition to its rule, including nonviolent resistance, and inflicts disaster on Abd and his people.
The Herzogs may not be deluded messianists, but even through the Cambridge-inflected Irish accent, they exude Jewish supremacy in their deeds. They (we) may not hang the picture of the Hebron murderer in our living rooms, but we are the effective occupiers and dispossessors, not they.
So while not all of us are Ben-Gvirs, we are all Herzogs. And besides, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are our legitimate children, fruit of the tree that we all poisoned. To focus on them is to blame the stone and absolve the person who threw it.
Abd is 55. He lives in a full apartheid state that all of us, we Israelis, created, including those who consider themselves very distant from the crazies in Hebron. The Israelis who work in high-tech, who march in Pride parades, and each and every lawyer at Herzog, Fox & Neeman – we all impose the curfew on Abd.
We all divert all of his land’s natural resources to his settler neighbors at his expense, merely because he is a Palestinian, and they are Jews. We are all signatories to a government whose institutions are designed to serve its Jewish neighbors and that subjugate him for this end, only because he is Palestinian, and they are Jewish.
We have all created a system with one separate and distinct law for settlers, who also help write it, only because he is a Palestinian, and they are Jews. Will he be forced to live out the rest of his days like this? That depends almost entirely on us.
Welcome to the 56th year.
Michael Sfard is a lawyer who represents one of the Palestinian human rights organizations that Israel outlawed as a terrorist organization, as mentioned above.
Still no proof about who killed the journalist, but antisemites blame the Jews anyway.
That is why the Palestinian Arabs will never escape their overwhelming humiliated lives.
Steve remains quite humiliated ever since he learned that having a Ph.D. means nothing when you are a proven antisemite.
A new article that antisemites like Steve refuse to read:
Who killed Abu Akleh is an important question for some, and not at all for others, but no matter how you feel about the question, the answer lies with the bullet the PA does not want you to see. Some of those who want the answer to the question of who killed Abu Akleh may be desperate to prove Israel’s innocence or guilt. Others don’t care to know the answer at all, as long as they can smear the Jews. A third, likely much smaller group includes Elder of Ziyon, host of this column, who cares only to find the definitive truth, no matter where it leads. For the rest of us, however, there is no question of who killed Abu Akleh. There’s a bullet. The PA won’t allow Israel to examine it. Case closed.
It’s really very simple: if they won’t show us the bullet, Israel’s not guilty. End of story. That works for me, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Some of us need to see what is, and not what isn’t. The truth is more important than a cynical surmise.
At one point convinced that IDF gunfire was responsible for the Al Jazeera reporter’s death, for example, Elder laid out his reasoning, concluding with these words: “I hope that I can also always be on the side of the truth tellers.”
This is an admirable goal for an honest blogger swimming against a tide of anti-Israel hate. The fact, however, is that for many of us, attempting to answer the question of who killed Abu Akleh is moot. We know who killed her, if not their names, their allegiance. Because if it were Israel who had killed Abu Akleh, you’re darned tooting that the PA would be showing everyone and his dog that bullet, the one that would point a definitive finger at Israel. The fact that they—the PA—won’t show us that bullet is proof positive that Israel is of a certainty not responsible for the death of Abu Akleh.
At one point we might have been persuaded to believe that the PA lacks the expertise to know for sure who killed Abu Akleh. This would have been reason enough not to show anyone the bullet or Shireen’s helmet, for that matter. The PA may not be able to tell whodunnit, but could be concerned at the possibility that an outside ballistics expert might yet exonerate Israel. But this is a case of trying too hard to be impartial.
The world is not on Israel’s side. No matter what proof there is, the world will continue to finger Israel for the deliberate murder of a journalist who willingly entered a combat zone. So there really is no reason to hide that bullet. The world doesn’t even care about the truth. They only care about demonizing the Jewish State.
Let’s look at what we do know. On the same day that Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed, May 11, the Jerusalem Post reported that “An initial autopsy of her body by Palestinian coroners said that she died after a bullet that was fired several meters away struck her head. Dr. Ryan al-Ali of the Pathological Institute at the a-Najah University in Nablus was quoted by al-Jarmak TV channel as saying that they could not determine who had shot her.”
The next day, according to Ynet, a top Palestinian official—Hussein a-Sheikh—the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) liaison to Israel, announced that “the Palestinian Authority will not transfer the bullet that killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh to a ballistic inspection in Israel, despite Jerusalem’s call for a joint investigation of the incident.”
Despite the fact that PA coroners could not determine responsibility for Abu Akleh’s death, and in spite of the fact that the PA refused to show Israel the bullet, the media et al., not only claims that Israel killed Abu Akleh, but that we did it intentionally and with malice. Wikipedia, in its entry on Abu Akleh, states that the “Palestinian Ministry of Health reported that the IDF killed her.” Only way, way down the page on this very long entry do we learn the truth: Israel asked to examine the bullet, and the PA refused:
“The Palestinian Authority refused an Israeli request to conduct a joint investigation, insisting on the results of its own investigation which found that the IDF had deliberately killed Abu Akleh. The Palestinian Authority also refused requests to hand the bullet over to Israel for ballistic testing. The Israeli government identified the gun of a soldier which may have killed her but insisted that it could not determine which side had fired the fatal shot without the bullet. A bipartisan group of United States Congress members urged the Biden administration to press the Palestinian Authority to release the bullet for tests.
“Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz said the IDF had requested that Palestinians let Israelis examine the bullet. Israel also suggested a joint probe into the death, which was rejected by the Palestinian Authority on the grounds that it wanted an independent investigation.”
Israel even admitted one of its soldiers may have been responsible, and still—STILL—the PA refuses to let anyone see the evidence. What conclusion can we draw other than that the bullet shows that in fact, Israel is not responsible for the death of Abu Akleh, an Al Jazeera journalist who, of her own free will, entered a conflict zone erupting with active gunfire to cover a story.
Those of us who are not military or ballistics expert may not be able to offer intelligent theories about the angle of the bullet or the distance of the gunshot from the unfortunate journalist, and we may not be able you a thing about muzzle speed. There is nothing we can add to the discussion of who was closer to Abu Akleh, the Jenin shooters, or the IDF soldiers. But we know that the PA won’t show us that bullet.
There is other evidence, of course. Elder of Ziyon has done a wonderful job of following leads, for example, uncovering eyewitness testimony suggesting there were no Israelis nearby and that Shireen was shot by snipers from a building (no IDF soldiers were shooting from buildings). EOZ also gave us a brilliant piece about bullet math, how the sheer number of bullets overwhelmingly suggest that it was not an Israeli gun that fired the shot that killed Abu Akleh.
Here in this blog, Elder also looked at errors of fact and omissions by online investigators like Bellingcat, and called them on it, too. Elder exposed the cherry-picking and outright lies of Time Magazine, CNN, the NY Times, the AP, and even Israeli fifth column Haaretz. This coverage is important. We can’t just let them lie and omit. We can’t let them smear us and not respond.
We can’t let reporters get away with it when they know there were Arab snipers in the vicinity of Abu Akleh, but hid that from the public. Elder didn’t. We can’t allow the coroner to retract his decision and tell the world that IDF soldiers shot Shireen with a gun they don’t use, a Ruger. Elder called them on it. And when members of Congress pressed the FBI to do an independent investigation of Abu Akleh’s death based on the fact that she was a US citizen, Elder was there to question whether the FBI would be in violation of its own long-standing policy should it do so (it would).
All of these issues were important to expose. And yet, in some ways, none of it matters. Because the PA is hiding that bullet, so we already know the truth. Susan Sarandon and Rashida Tlaib can spout all the hateful antisemitic lies about Israel they wish but we will still know the truth: Israel did not kill Abu Akleh, not intentionally, and certainly not by accident. Else the PA would be showing us that bullet, evidence of that literal smoking gun.
Elder has also remarked on the refusal to share the bullet and the bias of the PA “investigation” into who killed Abu Akleh. He is certainly not naïve, but looks for proof of what is, rather than what isn’t, for example, that bullet they won’t let us see. His work is important and good and I am content to sit back and let the cynic in me watch him do all the heavy lifting, because as far as I’m concerned, I already know the truth, and the world does too, and if they say they don’t, they’re lying.
We know it wasn’t Israel who killed Abu Akleh, because it all boils down to the bullet that they, the PA, will not show you. That the world looks away from this fact is not a surprise—their hate for Israel and the Jewish people is nothing new. This inappropriate use of a reporter’s death to demonize the Jews and their state is just one more salvo in thousands of years’ worth of the same damned thing. All the haters are happy to have the truth hidden from you as they spout their anti-Jewish hate from their various platforms.
It doesn’t matter because they will not win. However it looks to your naked eyes, the collective they—the anti-Israel media, the celebrities, and everyday haters—have already lost and we have won, even as their guts grind inside them. Because we will always know the truth—that they hid the bullet—and we will always know why. The world knows this, too. They know they’ve lost and the Jews have won.
They can’t get away from it. The evidence confronts these haters smack in the face. The Jews have been winning for thousands of years.
The proof is we’re still here.
Steve, I think Noa Landau got it exactly right when she wrote this piece. The full piece is in an earlier comment.
Opinion | It Wasn’t Us: How Israel Can Triumph Over a Hasbara Disaster Noa Landau. May. 15, 2022
“For its part, the Palestinian Authority lacks the resources and credibility for a full investigation of its own. (The PA did announce a summary of its autopsy findings, including an analysis of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, but it has refused to share details with the Israelis, citing a lack of trust; Israel has responded that without examining the bullet, it cannot determine who fired the shot.)”
The Palestinian Authority admits its incompetency!!!!! Yet, like Salaita, it makes judgments without facts!!!! Immorality at its best and further reason why real academics ignore Salaita.
Young Ghaith Rafiq Yamin, who was shot by the occupation and ascended to Heaven in Nablus in the early morning hours yesterday [May 25, 2022], knew in his heart for certain that after 16 springs, life was already over.
He began to deal with the details of his death and how it would be in the period of an occupation that spreads death with every Talmudic [i.e., Jewish] prayer of settlers who have invaded the site, and who have dispersed their evil and their bullets into [the young Palestinians].
Ghaith left behind his last will on social media and with his friends. He let them know that he cannot stand cold, and instructed them that when the time came, they were not to put the body in a refrigerator. The Martyr of dawn expressed hope that those participating in the funeral would choose the gravesite, and that he would be [buried] among children like himself. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 26, 2022]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous statements by PA and Fatah officials that endorse and encourage Palestinians to seek death in confrontations with Israel. And not just adults, but children and teens as well.
On the publication of results of matriculation exams right after the 2015-16 terror wave, the PA taught that Martyrdom-death is an ideal:
Death [of a teenager] as a Martyr is the path to excellence and greatness, and the path of those who know how to reach the great victory
[WAFA (official PA news agency), July 11, 2016]
This has been the PA’s ideology for decades and it continues. Recently, one Fatah official announced on behalf of all Palestinians that “we love Martyrdom-death as we love life.” And Palestinian teenagers buy into it.
Last month, another boy sought death as a Martyr by participating in violent riots. He told his mom beforehand: “My cousins and I … One of us needs to be a Martyr.”
The official PA daily admitted that the focus of Palestinian youth has been changed from planning their future to planning their Martyrdom-death:
The aspirations of the young people of Palestine change from planning the details of life and their futures to the circumstances of death…
[Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 26, 2022]
Despite the will left behind by Yamin that clearly indicates he was deliberately seeking death, the PA claims he was “executed” by Israel and robbed of his future.
The Palestinian political strategy is clear: Encourage children to kill themselves in Martyrdom-seeking attacks, and then complain to the international community that Palestinian children are being killed by Israel.
Nan Jacques Zilberdik and Itamar Marcus are respectively a contributor and Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch — where a version of this article first appeared.
Steve, the apologist for Israel’s war crimes and crimes against humanity is still posting Hasbara. As an Israeli minister reportedly said one time, “it’s time to cut off the head of the snake.”
Steve, your resident antisemite is still pissing all over herself. As an Israeli minister reportedly said one time, “it’s time to change her diaper.”
Steve, why do antisemites hate the truth?
This should get our resident antisemite’s panties wadded:
Israel on Friday reiterated its call to the Palestinian Authority to hand over the bullet that killed Shireen Abu Akleh to determine culpability amid publications of “biased investigations” into the death of Al Jazeera journalist in recent days.
“The Palestinian Authority cooperates with Israel on investigations from time to time,” the IDF said in a statement. “The Palestinians’ refusal to transfer the bullet and hold a joint investigation with American representation is telling of their motives.”
Notice how nobody cares about the other journalists who die – unless a Jew can be blamed?
We know Salaita won’t be writing about this (or will he come up with some amazing lie to cover up Hamas stealing from charity?):
Mohammad al-Halabi, the former head of Gaza operations for Christian aid group World Vision, was recently convicted on a number of charges, including being a member of a terrorist organization, giving information to terrorists and taking part in “militant training exercises.”
In addition, Halabi was found to have channeled millions of dollars from his charity employers to the US and EU-designated terror group Hamas, prior to his arrest in 2016.
The Beersheba District Court found him guilty on all bar one charge, which was assisting the enemy, on the grounds that, as a Gaza Strip resident, he is not a citizen of the State of Israel.
The judges, who revealed there was a significant amount of documentary evidence to support Halabi’s guilt, described him as repeatedly changing his testimony “in order to justify his lies” and making “contradictory and illogical statements in an attempt to explain away his detailed confession and the information he provided that indicate involvement in Hamas.”
The most significant facts of the case are:
Judges revealed that, while World Vision genuinely believes Halabi is innocent, the charity did not have strong enough financial checks and balances in place amid fears such provisions would damage its working relations with other Gaza-based groups;
Halabi was recruited by a Hamas operative in 2004 and initially began as a fighter for the terror group alongside his brother Diya before being assigned the mission of infiltrating World Vision, which operates in 100 countries, and hired him in 2005;
He met with Hamas operatives throughout his employment at World Vision and channeled money and physical materials to the group, which facilitated the maintenance and creation of its vast network of terror tunnels;
Halabi actually visited the terror tunnels at least twice in 2012, using one such occasion to hand over $20,000 to repair a damaged shaft;
The court rejected the defense’s claim that Halabi’s confession — described as “given in various ways” and “detailed, coherent, truthful [and with] many unique details” — was coerced.
Yet, in spite of these disturbing findings — not least Halabi’s confession — mainstream media outlets treated the verdict with much disbelief.
The BBC, for example, generously described Halabi as an “aid worker” in its report headline, totally ignoring the fact that he cannot have done much to “aid” the needy people of Gaza when he was busy sending cash that might have helped them to Hamas.
The story proceeds to invite disbelief, skeptically describing the charges for which Halabi has been convicted as the “original claims” which were “jaw-dropping,” while consistently describing the crimes as “alleged” despite his conviction.
The BBC then quotes lengthy defenses of Halabi, including by World Vision, which conspiratorially suggests there were “irregularities in the trial process,” and a former colleague who calls him a “good man.”
The report is even furnished with photos and quotes from Halabi’s family and a description of the “heavy toll” the trial has taken on his five children.
In The Guardian’s report of the verdict, doubt is also cast on the conviction from the get-go, with a subheading that mentions Halabi had been found guilty “despite UN concerns over lack of evidence in [the] six-year-long case.”
Indeed, the supposed “lack of evidence” is a recurring theme in media reports of the case (see, for example, here and here). What such news outlets failed to mention is that a lack of evidence is something altogether different from a lack of publicly available evidence. Israel — like other democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom — makes use of reporting restrictions in terrorism trials where such disclosure poses a risk to national security.
The New York Times’ version of Halabi’s conviction is penned by none other than Raja Abdulrahim, the Jerusalem Bureau correspondent who once wrote an op-ed in which she attempted to justify Palestinian suicide bombings.
Again, the piece is replete with denials from those in Halabi’s corner and light on any of the evidence from the prosecution.
The Irish Times reports the outlandish suggestion from Halabi’s defense that he was given no “serious explanation” of what he was accused of doing and gives extraordinary weight to quotes from individuals who have openly expressed their deep-seated hostility toward Israel, such as Human Rights Watch’s Omar Shakir, whose superficial assessment of the case is that Halabi “should long ago have been released.”
Halabi was convicted on what was reportedly a huge amount of evidence. It is a shame the aforementioned publications did not spend as much time finding out what happened to World Vision’s missing millions as they have casting doubt on the safety of his conviction.
Steve, Gideon Levy has written another article on the assassination of Shireen Abu Akleh.
Opinion | Between Jamal Khashoggi and Shireen Abu Akleh
Gideon Levy. June 19, 2022
Jamal Kashoggi and Shireen Abu Akleh were well-known journalists who were killed in the line of duty. There are many differences between the horrific, premeditated murder of the Saudi journalist and the killing of the Palestinian one, the circumstances of which have not yet been fully established. But more than a month after Abu Akleh’s death it can be said with near certainty that her killers knew that she was a journalist and killed her for it, just like the people who killed her Saudi colleague.
For this reason, we mustn’t allow her death to sink into oblivion, as is now happening, without finding the people responsible for it. The crime was less shocking in its circumstances than the murder of Khashoggi, but it was a serious crime nevertheless. It must not remain one devoid of guilty and responsible parties.
There is no chance that the person who knew to aim his weapon at the only exposed spot on Abu Akleh’s neck, between her helmet and her protective vest, did not see the prominent letters on her chest, and that of her colleagues, identifying them as journalists. He meant to kill a journalist, even if the IDF spokesperson tries to argue otherwise. Like the IDF, Saudi Arabia denied for a long time that it had murdered Khashoggi, claiming that he had died in a “brawl.”
Evidence that IDF soldiers are the ones who killed Abu Akleh is piling up, even without a smoking gun, with not a shred of evidence showing that she was killed by Palestinian fire. CNN, The Washington Post and Al Jazeera conducted intensive investigations that led to an almost unequivocal conclusion that IDF soldiers are the ones who shot her.
A desperate attempt by Israel to show a video describing the possibility that she was killed by indiscriminate Palestinian gunfire was dismissed in reports by Deiaa Haj Yahia in Haaretz and by the human rights organization B’Tselem. These proved that there was no line of sight between the armed Palestinians and the journalist. The CNN report showed three bullet marks on a tree beside the spot in which she was killed, too close together to suggest indiscriminate fire. The Washington Post revealed that there had been no shooting in the minutes before her death, and that she was killed by one gunshot fired by one person. The bullet, suggested the report, was fired from inside a vehicle in a military convoy that was about 180 meters from Abu Akleh. This type of bullet, according to Al Jazeera, is in use by the IDF.
Saudi Arabia and its leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, paid a heavy international price for Khashoggi’s murder. One may assume that as a result, Crown Prince Mohammed will never again order the murder of a journalist. Israel, which, in the absence of unambiguous proof, will enjoy the benefit of the doubt, will pay nothing. Thus, the IDF will not hesitate to hit other Palestinian journalists in the future, including by sharpshooters. There are people in the army who know the truth. There were soldiers and commanders there who saw and knew what happened, and they’re keeping it to themselves. This is not only a betrayal of their office, it’s a whitewashing of a crime and a call for committing similar crimes in the future.
Imagine a scenario in which a video is found, showing the Israeli sharpshooter firing at Abu Akleh. Will anyone be prosecuted? For what? For murder, for manslaughter? Will the system unanimously condemn the shooter? Will the media portray him as a criminal and a murderer? Will his colleagues and commanders, who knew about and concealed his actions, be sent to prison for withholding evidence? It’s laughable to even ask such questions. During Abu Akleh’s funeral, policeman went wild in their barbarity, striking the pallbearers with their batons and almost causing them to drop the coffin. Was anyone punished for this? A police investigation found some “faults.” These will not be made public and no policeman will be charged. Abu Akleh’s killer will be treated even more gently: Most Israelis will view him as a hero.
No one dismembered Abu Akleh’s body inside a consulate and no one shoved rags into her mouth so that her screams would not be heard. But on the morning of May 11, a journalist was shot to death from a distance, deliberately, almost certainly by IDF soldiers, who will take their crime and their secret with them to their graves. The world, and most Israelis, will forgive the IDF for this as well.
Gideon Levy is Israel’s gift to antisemites everywhere.
Almost certainly? That means the antisemitic Levy, like Salaita, does not know but is willing to accuse without proof.
Salaita and his evil acolytes will take their evil into the grave. Luckily, they are as powerless as if they were already there. Arafat is now known as the clown prince of Palestinian Arab antisemitism. most spit on his grave, when they are not pissing on it.
This is great!
Yesterday, the NYT published the findings of its investigation into the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh. They found that an Israeli soldier probably fired the shot that killed her. Last month I wrote an article about the rancid CNN investigation into the same incident which even disgracefully claimed Israel shot her deliberately. The Washington Post also ran an investigation into the killing. So did Bellingcat.
All of the basic truths remain the same. None of these reports have included a forensic analysis of the actual bullet that killed the journalist. Why? Because the Palestinians do not want this to take place.
For now, the Palestinians are milking a perfect scenario. Everyone is blaming Israel anyway, and the story is dragging out month after month. Eventually, if the Palestinians are confident an Israeli soldier did fire the shot, they may even produce the bullet for inspection – thus ‘proving’ Israel did it and creating a whole new round of ‘we were right’ stories in the international media. Of course, if the Palestinians have any doubt at all over what really happened, they wouldn’t dare risk the fall-out.
An Israeli soldier may have shot her. These things can and do happen in areas of conflict. That isn’t the point. The issue remains that Israel cannot know for sure, so is being held hostage by Palestinians who benefit from the very information void that they have created.
On the one side we have major media outlets scrambling to produce endless reports about the killing, on the other Jews are left able to do nothing but point to the weaknesses in all these investigations.
Jews are always left fighting a desperate corner, rather than pointing out the blatant discrimination that placed them there.
Because this is not an article about Shireen Abu Akleh. The real question is why are we seeing an endless stream of pointless dead-end investigations into this incident? This irrational obsession that surrounds her death is rooted in exceptionalism, discrimination, blatant bias and antisemitism. To highlight this I just want you to meet some people you probably have never – and will never – hear about:
Ricardo Alcides Avila
On May 26th the journalist Ricardo Alcides Avila was traveling from his home in Santa Cruz to his work in Choluteca in Honduras. He was shot in the head. The police put the shooting of the journalist down to a ‘common criminal assault‘. Yet whoever shot him did not touch his money, backpack, keys, phone or motorcycle. The killer, whoever it was, just wanted this journalist dead.
He is the fourth journalist killed in Honduras this year. UNESCO condemned the killing and called for an investigation.
Subhash Kumar Mahto
Six days earlier, on May 20th, the journalist Subhash Kumar Mahto was shot when he was returning from a community dinner at his friend’s house along with his father and other relatives. He was killed in the Begusarai district of Bihar in India. It is believed the journalist known for his reporting on local gangs may have been targeted by gunmen as a result of his work. The Committee to Protect Journalists, NUJ, Reporters without Borders and UNESCO have all called for an investigation.
Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff
The Journalist Frederic Leclerc-Imhoff was killed in Ukraine. His story is somewhat different because you may actually of seen his name mentioned – briefly. He was killed on May 30th. The Western press had every reason to obsess about this one (he was white, European and probably killed by the arch-enemy Russia). But they still didn’t. CNN mentioned it for a day and forgot. The NYT mentioned it once as part of their ‘European News’. Al-Jazeera also mentioned it for a day. The Washington Post ran the story for a day. Unsurprisingly, his name does not appear at all on the Bellingcat website. UNESCO called for an investigation into his death. France demanded a probe into his death. Not a single one of the outlets that have obsessed over the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh did anything more than yawn.
Francisca Sandoval
The Journalist Francisca Sandoval was shot on May1st. She lay in critical condition in hospital for 10 days before succumbing to her wounds. Sandoval was murdered. During a protest a group of men opened fire after a standoff with marchers and a bullet pierced Sandoval’s visor. The NYT do not even seem to have covered her killing. Nor do the Washington Post. CNN covered it in a single article on the violence, several weeks after her death. The rest of the English speaking press as a whole have long forgotten this killing. UNESCO called for an investigation.
Killing of journalist in the occupied Palestinian territory
24 June 2022
Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Ravina Shamdasani
More than six weeks after the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and injury of her colleague Ali Sammoudi in Jenin on 11 May 2022, it is deeply disturbing that Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation.
We at the UN Human Rights Office have concluded our independent monitoring into the incident. All information we have gathered – including official information from the Israeli military and the Palestinian Attorney-General – is consistent with the finding that the shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli Security Forces and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities. We have found no information suggesting that there was activity by armed Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the journalists.
In accordance with our global human rights monitoring methodology, our Office inspected photo, video and audio material, visited the scene, consulted experts, reviewed official communications and interviewed witnesses.
According to our findings, on 11 May 2022, soon after 06h00, seven journalists, including Shireen Abu Akleh, arrived at the western entrance of the Jenin refugee camp in the northern occupied West Bank to cover an ongoing arrest operation by Israeli Security Forces and the ensuing clashes. The journalists said they chose a side street for their approach to avoid the location of armed Palestinians inside the camp and that they proceeded slowly in order to make their presence visible to the Israeli forces deployed down the street. Our findings indicate that no warnings were issued and no shooting was taking place at that time and at that location.
At around 06h30, as four of the journalists turned into the street leading to the camp, wearing bulletproof helmets and flak jackets with “PRESS” markings, several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets were fired towards them from the direction of the Israeli Security Forces. One single bullet injured Ali Sammoudi in the shoulder, another single bullet hit Abu Akleh in the head and killed her instantly. Several further single bullets were fired as an unarmed man attempted to approach Abu Akleh’s body and another uninjured journalist sheltering behind a tree. Shots continued to be fired as this individual eventually managed to carry away Abu Akleh’s body.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet continues to urge Israeli authorities to open a criminal investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing and into all other killings and serious injuries by Israeli forces in the West Bank and in the context of law enforcement operations in Gaza. Since just the beginning of the year, our Office has verified that Israeli Security Forces have killed 58 Palestinians in the West Bank, including 13 children.
International human rights law requires prompt, thorough, transparent, independent and impartial investigation into all use of force resulting in death or serious injury. Perpetrators must be held to account.
International human rights law requires prompt, thorough, transparent, independent and impartial investigation into all use of force resulting in death or serious injury. Perpetrators must be held to account.
FOR THIS TO BE DONE, THE PALESTINIAN ARAB LEADERSHIP MUST TURN OVER ALL EVIDENCE. FAILURE TO DO IS A DIRECT VIOLATION OF ALL HUMAN RIGHTS LAWS, THE GENEVA CONVENTION, ALL UN RESOLUTIONS OF ANY KIND FROM ANY SOURCE, THE LAWS OF EVERY STATE ON EARTH, AND MAKES THE PALESTINIAN ARBS SUBJECT TO ALLAH’S WRATH.
Opps. It appears that Allah has already screwed the Palestinian Arabs. They live in misery, poverty, hunger, and the everlasting humiliation of being defeated by Jews (obviously a people favored by Allah).
Poor Palestinian Arabs. Destined to be worthless just because they wanted to commit genocide against the Jews. So sad.
Two universities got rid of Salaita for preaching hatred, Israel needs to do the same with its preachers of hatred:
Our Arab Research desk assisted journalist Yifat Erlich in exposing four teachers (pictured below) inciting terrorism at the Hilmi Shaf’ai Ort Educational Campus. These teachers taught impressionable Arab youth while at the same time encouraging violence at Temple Mount, promoting violence against Arabs serving in the police, and praising terrorists who are sitting in jail.
These “educators” teach in the city of Acre which was one Israel’s hotspots for rioting and violence during Operation “Guardian of the Walls”.
Instead of calming the tension that was boiling in the city these “educators” chose to further incite the violence while receiving their paycheck from the Department of Education.
The Mayor of Acre has already announced that due to our discovery he is involving the police.
Why are these people teaching children in Israel? Why is the government paying their paycheck? Our Arab Research Desk will continue to track down these ‘instigators’ and not allow them a platform for their hate.
Steve, Gideon Levy’s latest on the assassination of Shireen.
Opinion | Abu Akleh Affair Proves the U.S. Will Do Anything to Defend Israel Gideon Levy July 7, 2022 1:14 AM
Imagine the unimaginable: Ilana Dayan (or Yonit Levi) goes out of her comfort zone in order to report on the occupation. She is caught in an exchange of fire and a bullet hits her in the neck, in the area between her helmet and her ballistic vest. She dies. What happens then? Israel very quickly captures the Palestinian “cell.” It doesn’t matter who fired, it’s entirely insignificant, all of its members are killed or sentenced to life in prison. Israel mourns the loss of its veteran journalist.
No one even considers forensic tests: There’s no need for them. It’s clear to everyone who killed the journalist. The United States doesn’t think to interfere with the investigation, only to censure the Palestinians and participate in the grief of the Jewish nation, and perhaps also to impose sanctions on the Palestinian Authority over the journalist’s murder. It is obvious to all that the Israeli journalist was killed because she was Jewish and because she was a journalist. Her murderers – that’s what they’ll be called, of course – intended to murder her. Every Israeli child will understand this.
But Shireen Abu Akleh was a Palestinian war correspondent, infinitely more courageous and determined than Dayan and Levi put together, and she was killed in Jenin. Israel washed its hands of any responsibility, as usual. Washed its hands and obfuscated. All of the investigations that have been published so far into the circumstances of her killing led to a single conclusion: The Israel Defense Forces shot her. But Israel continued to obfuscate.
And then came the forensic analysis, carried out in the presence of a U.S. military officer. And this is the result: The U.S. Department of State, which is concerned about the safety of civilians and is particularly shocked by harm caused to journalists, as proved in the Jamal Khashoggi case, announced that while it is impossible to determine with certainty who killed Abu Akleh, the gunfire likely came from IDF positions. And the punch line: “The [U.S. Security Coordinator] found no reason to believe that [the gunfire] was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances.” The damaged bullet that was removed from Abu Akleh’s head whispered to the United States that the shooter didn’t mean to kill her. It was the most elaborate ballistic test in history: a test that examines innermost thoughts, that discerns intentions.
It’s difficult to imagine a more clumsy, unprofessional, ridiculous and even insulting mobilization in the service of Israeli propaganda. Once again it has been proven that America is willing to do anything, absolutely anything, to protect its precious darling; to conceal all its crimes, to make itself an object of ridicule, to disregard moral, legal and professional standards – all to cover up for Israel. America is telling Israel: Keep on killing journalists, as far as we’re concerned it’s fine. We will always say you didn’t mean to, that tragic circumstances killed Abu Akleh and not soldiers in the Duvdevan counterterrorism unit.
Americans also don’t watch CNN. The network’s investigation disclosed that three or four additional bullet holes can be seen on the tree Abu Akleh was standing against when she was hit – bullets that were fired individually, not in a burst. Does this also indicate that there was no intention to kill the journalist, who took cover under the tree?
Could it be that it’s possible to mute, obscure and deceive so much for the sole purpose of making President Joe Biden’s upcoming visit to Israel more pleasant? Does the U.S. consider covering up for a crime an expression of friendship toward its perpetrator?
“Who killed Norma Jean?” Pete Seeger asked in the wonderful song he composed of Norman Rosten’s poem. “Who saw her die / I, said the Night, and a bedroom light, we saw her die. … Who’ll bear the pall? / We, said the Press, in pain and distress, / We’ll bear the pall. / Who’ll soon forget? / I, said the Page, beginning to fade, / I’ll be the first to forget.”
Abu Akleh is dead, and with her the last remnants of trusting the United States to tell the truth about its ally. Thanks to it, Israel can continue to claim that we’ll never know who killed Shireen. But it seems that we know very well who killed her. He walks among us now.
America is telling Israel: Keep on killing journalists, as far as we’re concerned it’s fine. We will always say you didn’t mean to.
Some comments:
1. As an American with a Palestinian background, I visited Palestine many, many times including inside the green line where I met with Palestinian prominent figures, some of them were Knesset members. I’ve also seen the West bank many times which have been occupied by Israel in 1967. During those times, I’ve been interviewed by prominent figures who were reporters/journalists for Al Jazeera News Media. Among them was Shereen Abu Akleh, who was a great reporter. I only knew after her assassination, that she was an American citizen just like myself. Sadly, President Biden did not do very much to clarify this assassination by an Israeli. This demonstrates that the United States is a superpower when it comes to Russia/China etc, but is a banana republic while dealing with Israel.
2. Thanks for this excellent piece, Gideon.
The American government has proved yet again to what extent it cowardly serves Israeli interests. That Mahmoud Abbas obeyed the Americans and handed over the bullet to them rather than the ICC is absolutely shameful. No wonder that the Palestinian public at large have lost any confidence in him. Abbas is nothing but a quisling now. In stead of resigning/retiring he continues to cling on to power like a pathetic Palestinian Trump/Boris Johnson. Just like these two narcissists are damaging the interests of their respective nations Abbas is doing a great deal of damage to the cause of Palestine.
3. When Israel’s AIPAC lobby is allowed to successfully avoid registering as a agent representing a foreign country for 71 years, and Israel’s AIPAC lobby is allowed to interfere in U.S. elections & make financial contributions to American political candidates promising unconditional loyalty to Israel, why should anyone be surprised that the Abu Akleh Affair proves the U.S. will do anything to defend Israel?
4. The likelihood of Israel investigating itself is not slim; it’s nonexistent.”
The likelihood of the US criticising Israel is not slim; it’s nonexistent.
Why the PA ever wanted America to investigate this murder beats me.
Isn’t America complicit in Israel’s war crimes & crimes against humanity.
Doesn’t America always cover for Israel at the UN, doesn’t America give Israel 10 million a day in credits to buy armaments.
Then again, isn’t the PA Israel’s contractor in the West Bank.
While imagining Gidion Levy, Israel’s gift to world antisemitism, as the aforementioned journalist caught in the crossfire, as a more satisfying scenario, and Breathless as the Palestinian Arab terrorist, is apt, the issue is that the Arabs are waging an illegal war, not resistance. The military control of the territory deals with them being genocidaires, not freedom fighters. They are not fighting occupation; they are fighting the 1947 civil war they started with genocidal intent. The loss of that war fills them with such aching humiliation that can only be erased from their souls by killing Jews.
Steve, according to today’s article in the Irish Times, Ireland is one of the most tolerant countries in Europe.
Muslims celebrate festival at Croke Park
Ronan McGreeve
Eid al-Adha has been celebrated for the third year at Croke Park, with a message that the Republic is one of the most tolerant countries in Europe.
Several hundred Muslims assembled on the pitch at Croke Park in advance of what will be one of the busiest GAA weekends of the year, with four football matches scheduled for Saturday and yesterday.
Eid al-Adha is the second most important festival in Islam and marks Abraham’s offer of the sacrifice of his son to God. Eid al-Fitr, which occurred in April, marks the end of Ramadan.
This year the stadium welcomed the highest number of participants yet, as capacity was limited in 2020 and 2021 due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Organiser Shaykh Umar al-Qadri, the chairman of the Irish Muslim Council, spoke of the Republic as a welcoming place for Muslims, but he highlighted two attacks in the past year on the mosque in Belfast.
Phenomenal
“We have an experience that is the best in the whole of Europe. Our experience of being a Muslim in Ireland is phenomenal,” he said.
“As you can see, we can celebrate our Irish Muslim identity in the most iconic Irish venue of them all, Croke Park.
“This is our experience in the South. In the North our experience is very negative and very difficult. There are certain regressive elements within these communities that target minorities.”
Irish Muslim performance poet Bilal Mu’azzam read a poem called Home and one called The Pavement about the “black nod” which one black person gives in Ireland to another. “Know that your salute makes you worthy of the pavement/And know that community is what makes us a nation.”
Great article about how Palestinian Arab Muslims could not care less:
It’s no secret that I strongly disagreed with the way the Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, portrayed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After all, Al Jazeera is fully funded and owned by the State of Qatar – the same country that provides millions of dollars to Hamas annually.
Shireen Abu Akleh was tragically killed on May 11 while reporting about an armed clash between Palestinian terrorists and Israeli troops in Jenin, Samaria.
Videos from the scene showed Palestinian terrorists opening fire from civilian neighborhoods and civilian rooftops onto Israeli forces. Any respected media outlet would immediately ask why they were shooting from civilian streets, between homes. Likewise, they would at least raise the possibility that perhaps Abu Akleh was killed by those terrorists. But because Israel is involved, such questions don’t apply.
Before an investigation was even conducted, the UN, together with the BBC, CNN, Al Jazeera, and other mainstream media outlets, blamed Israel for her death and called for an investigation. Usually, one investigates first and only then attribute blame after considering all the facts. Yet, this is rarely the case when it comes to Israel, if ever. In fact, it’s almost always the opposite.
For two months, the Palestinian Authority refused to hand over the bullet that killed the journalist to investigators. This raises the question – if Palestinians have nothing to hide, and if it’s clear that she was killed by Israel – why did they refuse to give the bullet to a third party, only relenting after receiving significant American pressure? Because the longer they let the mystery of Abu Akleh’s death simmer, the longer they could exploit the tragedy.
The bullet was not the sole factor exploited by Palestinians for propaganda purposes, but Abu Akleh’s funeral was as well.
You may have witnessed the horrible videos and photos of Israeli police seemingly striking the innocent-looking Palestinians carrying Abu Akleh’s coffin.
But here is the unseen truth that you have likely never heard before.
The Israeli police and Abu Akleh’s family were in close contact prior to the funeral in order to arrange a proper ceremony with the protection of the Israeli police. This protection was not from potential Israeli protesters but from Palestinian radicals who would later attempt to steal the body and use it for political warfare against Israel.
According to Israeli police, on the day of the funeral, a member of Shireen’s family called to complain that a Palestinian crowd kidnapped her body from St. Louis French Hospital in Jerusalem without any permission from the family. These extremists took the body of the deceased journalist, disrespected the family’s will, and held a faux funeral procession because they knew that Israeli police would try to stop this unauthorized mockery. They would then have great videos and photos of supposed “brutal Israeli forces” that they could post on social media to further tarnish Israel’s image.
Unfortunately, they succeeded. The media never reported the truth about the videos. Israel was blamed, and the Palestinians celebrated another propaganda victory – at the cost of disrespecting Shireen Abu Akleh and her family. These Palestinians never cared about Shireen Abu Akleh, nor do they now. They will not shed a tear together with Shireen’s mourning family. They are more interested in shedding blood because they hate Israel more than they love their own people.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once famously said: “We will only have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us.” But in fact, Israel cares more about Palestinians than their own leaders and radicals do. Israel treats Palestinians in our hospitals and gives them the best medical treatment by Jewish and Arab Israeli doctors. When I visited Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, I saw children from Gaza smiling after getting medical treatment in Israel. The world doesn’t know the truth about Israel, but the Palestinians know it very well. Otherwise, they wouldn’t seek help from the Israelis when they need it. They know the truth – but are too afraid to speak it because of the radicals in their society.
Hananya Naftali is a leading Israeli Jewish influencer and human rights activist in the fight against antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and the BDS Movement.
Relations between Dublin and Jerusalem are not particularly good. Of all European Union member states, Ireland is probably one of the most critical/hostile toward Israel. And if this changes, it will probably do so only for the worse. Polls show that the adamantly anti-Israel Sinn Féin, currently in the opposition, is likely to increase its representation in the next parliament, boosting the chances of it being part of the government and determining Ireland’s foreign policy.
One might have expected there be a natural friendship between the Republic of Ireland and the State of Israel, both being Western democracies born in not dissimilar struggles for independence.
In the 1940s Yitzhak Shamir, who later became Israel’s seventh prime minister, was a leader of the underground Lehi (the Stern Group) and branded a terrorist by the British. Shamir, inspired by the armed insurrection after the First World War that led to the creation of the Irish Free State, famously chose the name Michael as his nom de guerre after the Irish Republic Army’s Michael Collins.
But it is not just Jews who felt affinity towards the Irish; the feeling was mutual. In March 1945 a writer for Dublin’s influential The Bell magazine wrote about events in Mandatory Palestine: “Never let it be forgotten that the Irish people… have experienced all that the Jewish people in Palestine are suffering from the trained ‘thugs’ ‘gunning tarzans’ and British ‘terrorists’ that the Mandatory power have imposed upon the country.”
In 1950, after Israel’s independence, Ireland’s minister for external affairs, Seán MacBride, wrote to his Israeli counterpart, Moshe Sharett, that “Ireland and Israel are both ancient nations and at the same time new states that have achieved freedom after a long and hard struggle.”
That same year, twentieth century Ireland’s preeminent republican figure, Eamon de Valera, then leader of the opposition, became one of the first international statesmen to visit the newborn Jewish state, dining in Jerusalem with Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion (at the home of President Herzog’s grandfather).
A cynic could argue that de Valera’s visit was designed to atone for past sins. Under his leadership Ireland remained neutral during the Second World War. Following Hitler’s May 1945 suicide, and after the Allied liberations of Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen in April that generated news stories worldwide about the Holocaust, de Valera nonetheless visited the German diplomatic mission in Dublin to offer condolences on the führer’s passing. Ireland’s neutrality did not oblige him to do so.
At the time of de Valera’s Jerusalem visit, Anglo-Israel relations still suffered from the harsh acrimony that characterized the end of the Mandate. Ben-Gurion worried about British military intervention against Israel on behalf of the Arabs, which had already occurred on a small-scale during Israel’s War Independence. De Valera was undoubtedly delighted to embrace a fellow victim of “perfidious Albion.”
Some see the roots of Ireland’s present-day anti-Israel antipathy in traditional Church antisemitism. Catholicism has been an integral part of Irish nationalist identity, and only in the 1960s did the Second Vatican Council formally absolve the Jews of culpability in the crucifixion and its accompanying theologian antisemitism.
OF COURSE, in today’s Ireland the Church has lost much of its previously held clout; referenda passed with large majorities enabling same-sex marriage (2015) and repealing the constitutional ban on abortion (2018). But European experience demonstrates that secularization doesn’t necessarily mean that antisemitism dissipates; this oldest of hatreds merely metamorphoses from a focus on deicide to its more modern manifestations.
A 2014 ADL survey of antisemitism in Ireland found that 52% of the population agreed with the statement that “Jews are more loyal to Israel than to this country,” 30% that “Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust,” 28% that “Jews have too much power in the business world,” 27% that “Jews think they are better than other people,” 25% that “Jews don’t care what happens to anyone but their own kind,” and 21% that “Jews have too much control over global affairs.”
In 2021, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and the Jewish Agency cosponsored a report on European antisemitism. The chapter on Ireland documented extreme anti-Israel remarks by Irish parliamentarians that reveal clear anti-Jewish bigotry, including using the pejorative “Nazi” when describing the Jewish state, calling for Israel’s destruction, and propagating conspiracy theories such as of the Mossad’s purported responsibility for Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat in the 2019 UK elections.
Ireland’s pugnacious anti-Israel boycott movement actively harasses any institution that has the temerity to host Israeli cultural figures. The result: Israel’s artists, actors, musicians and dancers are simply not welcome in the republic; the citizens of no other country facing such systematic open-ended discrimination. (Apparently Israelis are received more warmly in the Arab Gulf than they are on the Emerald Isle.)
Yet underlying antisemitism is only one part of an explanation of Irish hostility. Viewing the Arab-Israel conflict solely through a distorted lens is another.
All countries understand Israel through their own national prism. In the United States the idea of a free society founded by immigrants fleeing persecution strongly resonates. Such an ethos can create an instinctive empathy for the Jewish state.
By contrast, in much of Western Europe post-colonial guilt is ubiquitous. If Israel’s detractors successfully portray Israel as a colonialist implant, anti-Israel sentiment naturally follows.
In the Republic of Ireland, the Irish historic experience is often unthinkingly, and incorrectly, transposed on the Arab-Israel dispute: the Israelis seemingly doomed to play the part of the nefarious occupying British, the Palestinians the role of the virtuous Irish fighting for their independence. All evidence contradicting this simplistic narrative is deemed superfluous, clouded out by the all-powerful erroneous paradigm.
Once on holiday in Dublin, I joined the “1916 Rebellion Walking Tour.” Our group tread in the footsteps of the Easter Rising, the guide eager for us not just to master the facts, but to recognize the intrinsic justice of Ireland’s struggle for freedom. The tour seemed mostly comprised of Irish Americans, Irish Canadians and Irish Australians, all proud of their family roots and desiring to strengthen their connection with the homeland.
Hopefully Irish public opinion will eventually be capable of accepting that Jews too have the right to be justifiably proud of their heritage and national rebirth. If not, ending Ireland’s antipathy may necessitate the emergence of a Zionist underground that once again starts blowing up British police stations (thankfully, not about to happen any time soon).
Steve, this opinion piece by Kathy Sheridan in Wednesday’s September 14, 2022, Irish Times, is interesting reading.
Annexations are not confined to Ukraine
The question is often asked, accusingly, why Ireland worked itself into such a lather about Ukraine but not about other benighted parts of the world. The answer, if not entirely satisfying, is that we are human. We suddenly realised that Kyiv is on our doorstep, nearly as close to us as Malaga. The people looked like most of us. Many Irish families had reason to be grateful for their liberal surrogacy policies and we certainly knew some eastern Europeans who were weeping for Ukraine as kindred spirits while terrorised by the prospect of Putin’s next move.
Above all, it was a clear-cut case of right and wrong. Despite efforts by Putin’s useful idiots to muddy the waters, there was no moral ambiguity. When Putin, still persuaded that he commanded the second mightiest army in the world, invaded, most Irish people didn’t have to consider their response. If there was a sliver of mercy for Ukraine in its agony, it was that crystal clarity of Putin’s brutal, imperial ambitions and the potential cost to us all of failing to stop him.
When Simon Coveney performed the opening of the new Irish embassy in Kyiv a year ago, he mentioned “the long-standing issue of the illegal annexation of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol” , saying he was glad to be part of the international community which had convened to coordinate efforts to resolve it.
The illegal annexation had been ongoing for seven years. Russia’s ridiculous insistence that it was not a party to the conflict – claiming it had no forces in the disputed regions – had been a major blockage to international efforts to resolve it. But in all that time how many of us had even clocked the conflict on our doorstep , one that had already cost the deaths of more than 14,000 people and turned Ukraine into one of the most heavily landmined countries in the world.
Why didn’t we notice it then? What might we have done if we had? Would Stop The War demonstrations have stalled Putin’s ambitions ? Hardly. But they would have been a signal to Ukrainians that they were not alone.
We are human. How many of us listen intently to news about Afghanistan anymore or even look up when the news shows recurring images of youths hurling stones at heavily armed Israeli soldiers and missiles exploding on hyper-congested Palestinian apartment blocks?
Atrocities
On a good day a well-intentioned reader might try to Google some understanding and find themselves choosing between “Why Ireland’s pandering to Israel is treason” (Electronic Intifada) and “Why does Ireland hate Israel?”, ( Mark Regev, former senior diplomat and advisor to Binyamin Netanyahu, attributing the “hate” partly to anti-semitism ). It’s been going on for over 70 years. Diplomats regularly express horror at atrocities on either side with Simon Coveney among the most vocal in challenging Israeli activities.
In August Ireland was among nine EU states that protested at Israeli raids on several Palestinian NGO charities designated “terrorist organisations” without any supporting evidence. They included al-Haq, which has a long record of human rights advocacy and is partly funded by Irish Aid.
We look away again hoping there are enough supernaturally patient, gifted grown-ups on all sides sufficiently invested in the endless grind of diplomacy to keep us from the harm over there, as we did over Ukraine.
But we can absorb a couple of bite-sized facts. Illegal annexations are not confined to Ukraine. Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons remain the largest and longest-standing case of displaced persons in the world today. We could oblige ourselves by getting to know them a little.
This morning anyone around the GPO at 10 am can take in a show as the Lajee Dabke group of young Palestinian dancers and musicians perform outdoors to start a cultural tour that will play at Dublin’s Liberty Hall Theatre tonight and then around the country. Hosts will include the Lord Mayors of Dublin and Cork among others with visits to Áras an Uachtaráin and Tayto Park thrown in.
The teenagers were raised on the northern edge of Bethlehem in the Aida refugee camp, the most tear-gassed place on the planet according to a 2017 report, enclosed on two sides by the West Bank Barrier (the wall), overlooked by six Israeli military towers and close to several expanding Israeli settlements that are illegal under international law. The camp is subject to regular incursions by Israeli soldiers and a UNRWA report refers to clashes involving residents, many of them children, with “an increasing number of injuries as a result of excessive force by the ISF”.
That such children can find the joy, grace and creativity to dance and sing is a miracle of resilience and a tribute to Lajee. Maybe Ireland can help them to look away for a while.
The lesson for us, the lucky ones, is to look a little closer.
No matter how heinous the activities around the world – China’s genocide of the Uighurs with over 1 million in concentrations camps, the Taliban rape of Afghanistan, The Myanmar genocide of the Rohingya, Iran’s murdering woman over a head scarf, Ethiopia’s genocide of the Tigray, communal violence against Muslims in India – Some antisemitic nitwit will state that Israel’s attempt to end the genocidal Palestinian Arab “pay to slay” program, wherein ordinary Palestinian Arab civilians are put on the PA payroll if they are imprisoned for murdering Jews (The more Jews they murder, the higher the salary), as being worse.
Stephen, this is a powerful piece from Monday’s Haaretz newspaper.
Opinion/Those Who Paved the Way for Noam
Amira Hass Dec 5, 2022
Why did the rhinoceroses, the rabbits and the hyenas get all upset? The Netanyahu/Ben-Gvir/Smotrich government represents an inevitable continuation of decades in which many Israelis in key positions could have demonstrated decency and responsibility, and chose not to do so. They inculcated and expanded concepts of abusive, exploitative Jewish supremacy, even when resistance and refusal to collaborate with these concepts would pose no danger to them.
Climate change deniers – oil magnates, the Bolsonaros and Trumps of the world, and their troops in research institutes and parliaments – continue to deliberately use the future of the planet as collateral in order to attain superfluous wealth and status. That is exactly what was done by the Jewish citizens of Israel, headed by those same people “in key positions.” They sabotaged the possibility of a beneficial future for the two peoples living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea in order to benefit from ethnic segregation, calculated dispossession, the trade in weapons and science fiction-like means of surveillance, cheap villas, a career and a pension.
You don’t have to be an expert on the history of Ireland and Zimbabwe, or of Germany, Romania and Poland to realize that the oppression and exclusion of an entire people cannot end in quiet, security and prosperity. The People of the Book, and its elites in particular – those who enjoy social visibility and have political and economic influence – have been blessed with enough skills, years of study and family memories to know that. And still, there are far too many Jewish Israelis who deliberately participated, and continue to do so, in the dispossession of the Palestinians and attempts to subdue them.
The Moloch of security is a scarecrow that ceased long ago to serve as an excuse for policies of theft and expulsion. Those who provided the ideological justification for this protracted injustice were thus the experts at pagan, ultranationalist blather. The divine promises and specific verses from the Torah that they cited were served like a jar of Vaseline to all those who initiated and participated in the orgies of abuse against the Palestinians – secular, half-secular and religious Israelis. It is thus hypocritical to be now shocked by the fact that our victorious rulers are the leaders of Religious Zionism.
Their road was paved for them by architects who, for decades, shaped the apartheid, dystopian space that pushes Palestinians into suffocating enclaves (on both sides of the Green Line). Antisemitism researchers who have remained silent for the past 30 years in the face of increasing pogroms that were, and continue to be, perpetrated by Jews; senior legal scholars who have used Talmudic sophistry to avoid the directives of international law; and the judges of the district courts and the Supreme Court, which perused thousands of appeals against the built-in inequality experienced by Palestinians, and legitimized it through cowardly rulings; the heads of universities and school principals, who were scared by the threats of right-wing groups and silenced dissident voices; editors in media outlets who feed the lie that Israel is the party under attack, the victim.
It’s only natural the appetite for domineering possessed by the professional settlers from Noam, Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism has grown with each policeman and soldier who did not bother to stop or catch a Jewish rioter with tzitzit, with every violent and religiously observant shepherd’s settler outpost that expands and prospers despite demolition orders against it, and with every confiscation order signed by government officials and senior military officers so that the land of Nazareth and El Bireh, Yatta and Umm al Fahm can be settled by Jews. And it’s only logical that their Jewish supremacism was reinforced when the established Jewish communities, the bearers of historical memory in Cape Town and New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt, were alarmed by all the criticism of Israel’s policy of oppression and defined it as “antisemitism.”
Perhaps it’s not too late, and those shocked by Noam’s control of secular education will understand that there is a clear line stretched between this and the demolition of the villages of Masafer Yatta, for example; the unequal allocation of water; and widespread administrative detentions. Civil disobedience must not be limited to the schools.
Another example of how Ha’aretz is Israel’s greatest gift to antisemites around the world and the difference between Israel whose government is based on liberal democratic principles and the autocratic and despotic tyrants who rule over the Palestinian Arabs. As they continue the “Pay to Slay” program, the free people of Israel will vote for increasingly security minded governments.
Jan
“Amira Hass is the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who told her never to stand by as injustice is done. Amira knows all too well the many decades of Injustices the Israelis have heaped on the the Palestinians who bear no responsibility for European antisemitism that led to the creation of a Jewish supremacist state. Amira refuses to ignore injustice.”
Yet Amira has nothing to say about “pay to slay” wherein the Palestinian Authority pays a bonus for dead Jews. The Nazis did the same in Europe, especially in Holland.
Amira forgets that the reason for Israel’s existence is to be a place where any Jew may find refuge, a refuge that the world denied the 6 million Jews murdered by Germans, Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, Hungarians, Bosnians, Kosovars, Croats, and the Supreme spiritual leader of the Palestinian Arab people asked Hitler to do the Jews who had found shelter in British Mandate Palestine.
Amira is one of the “as a Jew” people that help make Ha’aretz Israel’s greatest gift to antisemites around the world.
Steve reading this article, in Haaretz.
‘The Artist Who Survived Auschwitz Thought Israel Was’ Worse Than the Concentration Camp’
I was struck by this story mentioned by a commenter.
“A Holocaust survivor who went on a hunger strike in front of the Knesset in protest of Israel’s vicious assault on Lebanon in 1982.
The Way It Looked in 1982. In my childhood I have suffered fear, hunger and humiliation when I passed from the Warsaw Ghetto, through labor camps, to Buchenwald. Today, as a citizen of Israel, I cannot accept the systematic destruction of cities, towns, and refugee camps. I cannot accept the technocratic cruelty of the bombing, destroying and killing of human beings. I hear too many familiar sounds today, sounds which are being amplified by the war. I hear ‘dirty Arabs’ and I remember ‘dirty Jews.’ I hear about ‘closed areas’ and I remember ghettos and camps. I hear ‘two-legged beasts’ and I remember ‘Untermenschen.’ I hear about tightening the siege, clearing the area, pounding the city into submission and I remember suffering, destruction, death, blood and murder. . . Too many things in Israel remind me of too many other things from my childhood.” Dr. Shlomo Schmelzman
Steve, a brief, unhappy history of Israeli massacres
“It would be nice to think that, as an Israeli officer once put it, “This time we went too far” — that the killings of 17 unarmed protesters in Gaza by Israeli riflers across a security fence on Friday would cause the world to sanction Israel for its conduct. But if you look over Israel’s history, you find that the massacre has been a ready tool in the Israeli war-chest; and Israelis have not been prosecuted for carrying them out. Indeed, a couple of those responsible later became prime minister!”
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/04/unhappy-history-massacres/