January 18, 2023
As George Orwell said, “Those who control the present, control the past, and those who control the past control the future.” (1984). Below is from another powerful essay from Illan Pappe, detailing the way the Israeli media help maintain the Palestinian Occupation by controlling the narrative of past and present.
A letter from Palestine
By Ilan Pappe
A mini-intifada is taking place this 2022 autumn in Palestine, spreading over Jenin, Nablus and Jerusalem. What is incredible is not that these uprisings occur, but rather the way the Israeli media is trying to explain their occurrence. One ex general after the other, on ex secret service expert after the other, provide an analysis that is familiar for anyone studying the history of colonialism in Asia and Africa. European colonialist policy makers always attributed resistance to the colonisation as the outcome of “incitement” and never attributed the revolts against them to their own callous oppression.
The daily humiliation in the checkpoints, the collective punishmentsthat include closure and endless curfews, the mass arrests without trial including of children, tortures in the interrogations, confiscation of land, ethnic cleansing operations and settlers’ attacks are all not sufficient causes, in the view of this narrative, for an ongoing uprising. Unemployment among the youth, the absence of any vision for a different future and the international indifference also do not factor into the analysis not just of the securitization sector but also in that provided by very respected doyens of the Israeli academy. They appear constantly in TV studios and explain how the violent nature of “Arabs” and “Muslims” are the sole causes for this and previous uprisings.
Who are the inciters is never totally clear from the analysis. Usually, the “culprits” is the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip. However, the fingers are pointed to all kinds of organizations such as the Islamic Jihad, the Fatah and a new group called “the Lions’ Den” situated in Nablus. The contradictions have never bothered the analysts with their clear narrative which needed to have inciters and an easily incited crowd.
The depiction of the Palestinian liberation struggle as a series of senseless assaults by an incited mob is very familiar for those us exposed to the Israeli educational textbooks and public discourse. The Israeli academia provided scholarly scaffolding for this narrative and
articulated it in a more sophisticated discourse.
This analysis had been put forward already after the first significant Palestine uprising during the Mandatory period in 1929 (_thawrat al-Buraq_). While the British inquiry commission that was set up after the uprising, did attribute that particular uprising to the Zionist policy of land purchasing that pauperised rural Palestine, the Zionist assessment was that pro-Arab British officers and “fanatic” religious leaders incited the uprising which was carried out by “criminal gangs”. In 2022, the same Zionist discourse is employed for depicting the present Palestinian resistance (that already cost the life of more than 100 young Palestinians) as a mixture of criminal gangs and incited youth.
It is important to acknowledge the explanation official Israel, and by extension its civil society, provides for the present and past Palestinian uprisings. This discourse analysing Palestinian violence as the product of an “Arab culture” and “Islamic primitivism” is
widely shared within Israel.
These images and prejudices are deeply rooted, and are planted and replanted in every new generation of young Israelis passing through the educational system, the media, the political discourse and the socialisation processes, the most important taking place during the compulsory military,
read the full article here.
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine articles, israel and palestine conflict by on Jan 18th, 2023. Comment. 
January 7, 2023
The following article was published by my friend, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, on January 4th, 2023, after the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice over the ongoing occupation of Palestine and associated human-rights violations. It is unlikely that the Israeli government will pay any attention to the determination of the World Court. Even so, Dr Muzaffar believes that the UNGA decision is important.
with Dr Chandra Muzaffar in Kuala Lumper, Malaysia, in 2013
THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY DRAGS ISRAEL TO THE WORLD COURT
By Chandra Muzaffar
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted last week to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice (World Court) for its on-going violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza and for adopting measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem.
Before we analyse the significance of the vote, let us probe the actual voting pattern. 87 states voted to refer Israel to the World Court. This represents almost all the Muslim majority states including those that had recently established diplomatic relations with Israel. It shows that on this issue at least, the diplomatic manoeuvres of Israel and its backers have not helped the Zionist state. Other largely non-Muslim majority states in Latin America, Africa and Asia also endorsed the resolution. It is notable that both China and Russia supported the move to haul Israel before the World Court. 26 countries voted against the UNGA resolution. Among them were of course the US, Britain and a number of other Western states. A huge number — 53 — also abstained. India which at the time of the creation of Israel in 1948 was in the forefront of the struggle to defend the rights of the Palestinians was one of the abstentions. Its growing ties with Israel, especially in the military sphere have often been cited as the main reason for this change in attitude.
The Indian stance does not in any way nullify the significance of the vote for the resolution. The UNGA is asking the highest jurisdictional authority in the world to state its stand on Israel’s conduct as the Occupying Power over lands it has held in its grip for the last 55 years. Right from 1967, the UNGA has viewed Israel not only as an Occupying Power but has also demanded that Israel withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Needless to say, Israel has ignored this plea. It is worth observing that this time the UNGA’s request is being made when Israel is led by perhaps its most extreme right-wing government which has pledged to pursue policies that will undermine even further what little is left of the rights of the Palestinian people and demolish even more the Christian and Muslim features of Jerusalem.
By asking the World Court to examine Israeli behaviour in the Occupied Territories, the UNGA is telling Israel that it is under scrutiny. It is holding Israel accountable. It is forcing a rogue state to behave properly —a State that since 1948 has refused to abide by the norms and standards of conduct that all states are expected to uphold.
If the World Court concurs in essence with the UNGA resolution that Israel has violated the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and has attempted to alter the character of Jerusalem, how would the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu respond? Going on the basis of his past and present conduct, it is almost certain that he will ignore the World Court’s position and even rail against the body just as he has condemned the UNGA for its recent resolution. In other words, there will be no change in Israeli behaviour in the Occupied Territories or in Jerusalem. After all, in 2004 the World Court had already ruled that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories were in breach of international law but Israel continued to expand the settlements which today house about 700,000 Jewish settlers.
But this should not in any way diminish the usefulness of going to the World Court or working through the UNGA. These are important routes to take for at least two reasons. One, they reveal that Israel is the real problem and that it is this problem that has to be resolved in the interest of genuine peace. Two, by harnessing support from UN member states and UN agencies, the Palestinian cause is enhanced. It strengthens the Palestinian position as it confronts not just Israel but its principal backer, the US and a number of European states, sometimes joined by Japan and South Korea.
It is perhaps at this juncture that we should examine briefly Palestine’s relationship with the UN. It has been ambivalent at best. It was the UN under the influence of the US and other Western powers that presided over the unjust partition of historical Palestine in 1948 giving the less than 30% Jewish population two-thirds of the land while the 70% Palestinian majority comprising Muslims and Christians was awarded the remaining one-third. There was no plebiscite to determine how the people — the entire population — felt about the proposed partition. By ignoring the people’s feelings, the UN in effect transgressed its own Charter.
But after Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem in 1967, UN resolutions — as we have seen — clearly recognise Palestinians living in those territories as victims of Occupation. It should also be emphasised that through various resolutions the UN continues to recognise the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty. Besides, since November 2012, Palestine is a non-member observer state of the UN General Assembly.
The UN also looks after Palestinian refugees. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides education, health relief and social services for over 5 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. Gaza and West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Palestine’s relationship with the UN is one wrapped in obligations, responsibilities, rights and aspirations. It has had its ups and downs. But it should continue to be viewed as one of the many channels through which the Palestinian people seek to secure their justice, freedom and dignity.
Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST).
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine conflict by on Jan 7th, 2023. Comment.
May 21, 2021
‘Israel is not exercising the right to defend itself”, says Chris Hedges. “It is carrying out mass murder, aided and abetted by the U.S.”
Hedges, in my opinion, is one of the most insightful and honest commentators alive when it comes to Israel/Palestine. He spent seven years as Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times. He is also an ordained Presbyterian Minister! Read the full article here.
Father Dave
Nearly all the words and phrases used by the Democrats, Republicans and the talking heads on the media to describe the unrest inside Israel and the heaviest Israeli assault against the Palestinians since the 2014 attacks on Gaza, which lasted 51 days and killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 551 children, are a lie. Israel, by employing its military machine against an occupied population that does not have mechanized units, an air force, navy, missiles, heavy artillery and command-and-control, not to mention a U.S. commitment to provide a $38 billion defense aid package for Israel over the next decade, is not exercising “the right to defend itself.” It is carrying out mass murder. It is a war crime.
Israel has made it clear it is ready to destroy and kill as wantonly now as it was in 2014. Israel’s defense minister Benny Gantz, who was the chief of staff during the murderous assault on Gaza in 2014, has vowed that if Hamas “does not stop the violence, the strike of 2021 will be harder and more painful than that of 2014.” The current attacks have already targeted several residential high rises including buildings that housed over a dozen local and international press agencies, government buildings, roads, public facilities, agricultural lands, two schools and a mosque.
I spent seven years in the Middle East as a correspondent, four of them as The New York Times Middle East Bureau Chief. I am an Arabic speaker. I lived for weeks at a time in Gaza, the world’s largest open-air prison where over two million Palestinians exist on the edge of starvation, struggle to find clean water and endure constant Israeli terror. I have been in Gaza when it was pounded with Israeli artillery and air strikes. I have watched mothers and fathers, wailing in grief, cradling the bloodied bodies of their sons and daughters. I know the crimes of the occupation—the food shortages caused by the Israeli blockade, the stifling overcrowding, the contaminated water, the lack of health services, the near constant electrical outages due to the Israeli targeting of power plants, the crippling poverty, the endemic unemployment, the fear and the despair. I have witnessed the carnage.
I also have listened from Gaza to the lies emanating from Jerusalem and Washington. Israel’s indiscriminate use of modern, industrial weapons to kill thousands of innocents, wound thousands more and make tens of thousands of families homeless is not a war: It is state-sponsored terror. And, while I oppose the indiscriminate firing of rockets by Palestinians into Israel, as I oppose suicide bombings, seeing them also as war crimes, I am acutely aware of a huge disparity between the industrial violence carried out by Israel against innocent Palestinians and the minimal acts of violence capable of being waged by groups such as Hamas.
The false equivalency between Israeli and Palestinian violence was echoed during the war I covered in Bosnia. Those of us in the besieged city of Sarajevo were pounded daily with hundreds of heavy shells and rockets from the surrounding Serbs. We were targeted by sniper fire. The city suffered a few dozen dead and wounded each day. The government forces inside the city fired back with light mortars and small arms fire. Supporters of the Serbs seized on any casualties caused by Bosnian government forces to play the same dirty game, although well over 90 percent of the killings in Bosnia were the fault of the Serbs, as is also true regarding Israel.
The second and perhaps most important parallel is that the Serbs, like the Israelis, were the principal violators of international law. Israel is in breach of more than 30 U.N. Security Council resolutions. It is in breach of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that defines collective punishment of a civilian population as a war crime. It is in violation of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention for settling over half a million Jewish Israelis on occupied Palestinian land and for the ethnic cleansing of at least 750,000 Palestinians when the Israeli state was founded and another 300,000 after Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank were occupied following the 1967 war. Its annexation of East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights violates international law, as does its building of a security barrier in the West Bank that annexes Palestinian land into Israel. It is in violation of U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 that states that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.”
This is the truth. Any other starting point for the discussion of what is taking place between Israel and the Palestinians is a lie.
Israel’s once vibrant peace movement and political left, which condemned and protested against the Israeli occupation when I lived in Jerusalem, is moribund. The right-wing Netanyahu government, despite its rhetoric about fighting terrorism, has built an alliance with the repressive regime in Saudi Arabia, which also views Iran as an enemy. Saudi Arabia, a country that produced 15 of the 19 hijackers in the September 11 attacks, is reputed to be the most prolific sponsor of international Islamist terrorism, allegedly supporting Salafist jihadism, the basis of al-Qaeda, and groups such as the Afghanistan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Al-Nusra Front.
Saudi Arabia and Israel worked closely together to back the 2013 military coup in Egypt, led by General Adbul Fattah el Sisi. Sisi overthrew a democratically elected government. He has imprisoned tens of thousands of government critics, including journalists and human rights defenders, on politically motivated charges. The Sisi regime collaborates with Israel by keeping its common border with Gaza closed to Palestinians, trapping them in the Gaza strip, one of the most densely populated places on earth. Israel’s cynicism and hypocrisy, especially when it wraps itself in the mantle of protecting democracy and fighting terrorism, is of epic proportions.
read the rest of the article here.
Filed under Israel and Palestine by on May 21st, 2021. Comment.
January 26, 2021
I thought this was anti-Semitic fake news. Then I saw it confirmed on the Amnesty International website! Surely the world will not tolerate this sort of blatant race discrimination? Surely the people of Israel will not tolerate this?
The following details come from an article by Ramzy Baroud, first published on Countercurrents.
There is no legal or moral justification for Israel’s action. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 asserts that an Occupying Power has the “duty of ensuring and maintaining … the medical and hospital establishments and services” with “particular reference” on taking the “preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics.”
Even the Oslo Accords, despite their failure to address many crucial topics pertaining to the freedom of the Palestinian people, oblige both sides “to cooperate in combating epidemics and to assist each other in times of emergency,” the New York Times reported.
Not all Israeli officials deny that Israel is legally compelled to provide Palestinians with the help required to contain the rapid spread of the pandemic. This admission, however, comes with conditions. Former Israeli Ambassador, Alan Baker, told NYT that, while international law does “place an obligation on Israel” to help in the provision of vaccines to Palestinians, Palestinians must first release several Israeli soldiers who were captured in Gaza during and after the 2014 war.
The irony in Baker’s logic is that Israel holds over 5,000 Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, hundreds of whom are imprisoned without trial or due process.
The captured Israelis are held in Gaza as a bargaining chip, to be exchanged for the easing of Israel’s hermetic blockade on the densely populated Strip. One of the Palestinians’ main demands for the release of the soldiers is that Israel allows for the transfer of medical equipment and life-saving medication to the two million people of the Gaza Strip. International and Palestinian human rights groups have long reported on many unnecessary deaths among Palestinians in Gaza because Israel deliberately prevents Gazan hospitals from acquiring cancer medications.
Long before the onset of the coronavirus, Israel has weaponized medicine, and Gaza’s dilapidated health sector is a standing testimony to this injustice.
Perhaps, the overcrowded Israeli prisons remain the glaring testimony of Israel’s mishandling of the COVID-19 outbreak. Despite repeated calls by the United Nations and, particularly, the World Health Organization, that states should take immediate measures to help ease the crisis in their prison systems, Israel has done little for Palestinian prisoners. Al Haq reported that Israel “has taken no adequate measures to improve provision of healthcare and hygiene for Palestinian prisoners” in line with the WHO “guidance for preventing COVID-19 outbreak in prisons.” The consequences were dire, as the spread of COVID among Palestinian prisoners continues to claim new victims at a much higher ratio compared with Israeli prisoners.
Israel’s intentional hampering of Palestinian efforts to fight COVID is consistent with a trajectory of racism, where colonized Palestinians are exploited for their land, water and cheap labor, while never factoring as a priority on Israel’s checklist, even during the time of a deadly pandemic. Israel is an Occupying Power that refuses to acknowledge or respect any of its basic obligations as an Occupying Power under international law.
For the complete article, click here.
Filed under Israel and Palestine, israel and palestine articles by on Jan 26th, 2021. Comment.
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