PAMELA GELLER’s NEW ROUND OF HATRED ON THE WALLS

December 18, 2012 at 11:30 (Extremism, Hasbara, Islamophobia, Racism, zionist harassment)

Once again Pamela Geller takes her hatred to the walls of the New York subway system. Despite MTA’s disclaimer, the ads are scheduled to appear today ….
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Anti-Islam Subway Ads By Pamela Geller Feature Exploding World Trade Center, Quote From The Quran (PHOTO)

New York City’s resident Islamophobe is back with yet another anti-Islam subway ad. Pamela Geller‘s latest features a photo of the World Trade Center exploding in flames next to a quote from the Quran that reads, “Soon shall We cast terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers.”

When Geller last bought ad space in the NYC underground, New Yorkers didn’t react too kindly. Nearly all of the signs– which read “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad“– werevandalized.

As a result, The Observer reports Geller doubled her ad buy this time, and that “the new ads will be plastered across at least 50 different locations.”

“I refuse to abridge my free speech so as to appease savages,” she said.

Additionally, Geller’s latest bout of vitriol will come with a MTA disclaimer:

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“A cost of opening our ad space to a variety of viewpoints on matters of public concern is that we cannot readily close that space to certain advertisements on account of their expression of divisive or even venomous messages,” the MTA stated at the time of the “savages” ad. “The answer to distasteful and uncivil speech is more, and more civilized, speech.”

 

Source    

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A new group, Jews Against Islamophobia added the following;

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Jewish Groups Condemn (Yet Again) Ads

Promoting Hate and Anti-Muslim Bigotry:

Call for Unequivocal Repudiation of Islamophobia

 

Monday, Dec. 17, 2012 The Jews Against Islamophobia (JAI) Coalition condemns the latest hate-mongering ads, sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), that are scheduled to appear in New York City subway stations today. “New York residents have already demonstrated that we don’t want such ads in our city. In a month when many people gather with their loved ones for Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and other seasonal celebrations, Jews must recommit ourselves anew to standing up against these ads and all forms of Islamophobia,” pledged JAI Coalition member and director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), Marjorie Dove Kent.

 

The ad shows a picture of the World Trade Center in flames, next to a quote from the Koran, and reads: “Soon shall we cast terror into the heart of the unbelievers.”

 

“But, of course, a bigot can play this game of selective quotation with any religion. Find a picture of horrifying violence committed by some Jews or Christians — there are a depressingly large number — and juxtapose it with one of the following quotes from scripture: “I come not to bring peace, but a sword” [Matthew 10:34] or “Only in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall not leave alive anything that breathes” [Deuteronomy 20:16]),” notes JAI Coalition member Alan Levine.

 

The AFDI ad—which cost about $70,000—is part of a nationwide campaign to demonize Muslim and Arab Americans. In the past six months, AFDI has funded hate ads in Westchester, New York City, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. In each of these cases, a wide range of interfaith and civil rights groups came together to denounce the ads and to stand up for unity and solidarity. The AFDI’s Pamela Geller is co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America, identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.

 

“Geller’s ads contribute to creating an even more hostile climate than already exists for the Muslim community, many of whom are already living in fear of street harassment, bullying, and other forms of verbal and physical violence,” says JAI Coalition member Jon Moscow. “We all have a responsibility to make sure this does not continue. We call on New Yorkers to respond individually and collectively to repudiate this vicious attempt to divide our city and to strongly condemn these ads.”

 

This anti-Muslim ad campaign takes place in the context of a post-9/11 atmosphere of fear, hate, and bigotry in the United States that targets Muslims, Arabs, Middle Easterners, Sikhs and other South Asians.  “While we find shocking the blatant Islamophobia in the ads and strongly condemn this vicious hate speech, we also condemn ongoing governmental policies of racial and religious profiling,” emphasized director of Jewish Voice for Peace, Rebecca Vilkomerson, whose group is also a member of the JAI Coalition. “For example, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has been engaged in police surveillance of Muslims that has flagrantly violated the community’s civil and human rights. These Islamophobic acts help make possible the hate-filled atmosphere in which people like Geller thrive.” Despite the NYPD commitment of time, money, and personnel to its widespread surveillance and spying program in the Muslim community, it has not, according to the Commanding Officer of the NYPD Intelligence Division, generated a single lead or triggered a terrorism investigation.Communities have organized in response to NYPD surveillance and spying, including groups coming together to support City Council bills that would begin to hold the NYPD accountable for these actions.

 

People across New York City are once again joining the Muslim community to oppose these ads and to ensure that the rights of all our communities are fully protected and that no group is subjected to any form of harassment or racism. The JAI Coalition pledges to continue to be part of that movement for justice.

 

2 Comments

RACISM // ISRAEL’S DIRTY DOZEN

December 17, 2012 at 11:43 (Collective Punishment, Corrupt Politics, Ethnic Cleansing, Israel, Racism)

Although Israel is a regional superpower, it has the second-highest poverty rate among developed countries. After last year’s Arab uprisings, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets, demanding a higher standard of living. In response, public officials scapegoated the Africans for Israel’s economic problems and launched a racist campaign to expel them.
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The dirty dozen: Israel’s racist ringleaders

David Sheen 
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Israelis chant “Sudanese Back To Sudan” during a right-wing demonstration against African refugees in south Tel Aviv, 30 May 2012.

 (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

Does Israel refuse to grant equal rights to Palestinian citizens of the state because it is based on an ideology of racism towards people who are not Jewish? Or does Israel refuse to grant equal rights to Palestinian citizens because, since some of them are opposed to the Jewish sectarian nature of the state, it prioritizes state security over racial equality?

While this debate has raged for decades, new evidence has come to light which would seem to suggest that the former is more true. Because if Jewish Israelis are only antagonistic to Palestinian citizens because they supposedly represent security risks, then why do they also despise sub-Saharan Africans, with whom they have never had any conflict?

Approximately 60,000 people from sub-Saharan African countries have migrated to Israelin recent years, fleeing persecution and requesting asylum. Instead of providing them with aid or permitting them to support themselves, the Israeli government refuses to grant them any rights, forces them into abject poverty, and seeks to deport the lot of them.

Although Israel is a regional superpower, it has the second-highest poverty rate among developed countries. After last year’s Arab uprisings, hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets, demanding a higher standard of living. In response, public officials scapegoated the Africans for Israel’s economic problems and launched a racist campaign to expel them.

If there is to be justice, these leaders must be brought to trial to answer for their crimes. Maybe Israelis will come to their senses, cancel all the laws that discriminate against African asylum-seekers and call for a truth and reconciliation commission. Sadly, that is unlikely to happen in the near future, because the hatred of African asylum-seekers has become so widespread in Israel.

Perhaps the people of Eritrea and Sudan will eventually overthrow their repressive regimes, install democratic governments and charge these Israeli officials in an international court of law.

Until that day comes — if it ever does — it is important to document evidence of the wrongdoing. In fact, this is an easy task. Since these officials are not ashamed of theirracism, it is all a matter of public record. Of those most responsible, these are the top twelve, Israel’s dirty dozen, its axis of racism:

12. Chaim Avitan

In July 2007, there was only a smattering of African asylum-seekers in the country. At that time, a group of approximately 20 genocide survivors from Darfur in western Sudan were legally living and working in an orchard belonging to a moshav, a small agricultural settlement, near the city limits of Hadera.

A proposal to Hadera city council to open the city’s absorption center to these migrants was defeated by the mayor Chaim Avitan. Avitan then forged an eviction order and sent a security team in the middle of the night to rough up the Darfuris, destroy their documents, shove them onto buses and kick them out of town (“Complaint filed against Hadera mayor for expelling refugees,” Ynet, 7 August 2007).

Avitan announced that the city was not “the country’s garbage can,” called upon the government not to grant refugee status to anyone who is not Jewish and stressed that “Hadera will not permit a single Sudanese to enter.”

Hadera is twinned with Big Spring, Texas (5 percent African American), Saint Paul, Minnesota (14 percent African American) and Charlotte, North Carolina (35 percent African American).

11. Benjamin Babayof

In July 2010, dozens of rabbis in Tel Aviv issued a religious edict forbidding Jews from renting apartments to African asylum-seekers. The language of the letter included warnings against inter-racial marriages and references to Biblical passages calling for ethnic cleansing of all non-Jewish people from the “land of Israel.”

This initiative was such a hit that before the year was out, hundreds of leading rabbis from throughout Israel (who also draw their salaries from the public coffers) issued a similar edict applying to the entire country.

The brainchild behind the edict, the man who went from rabbi to rabbi collecting signatures, calling the African presence in Israel an “abomination,” was the Tel Aviv city councilor representing the Shas party, Benjamin Babayof (“South Tel Aviv realtors: we won’t rent to ‘infiltrators,’” The Jerusalem Post, 4 August 2010).

That same year, travel guide publishers Lonely Planet called Tel Aviv the third best city in the world.

Babayof continued his anti-African crusade in February 2012, calling upon the transportation ministry to run segregated bus lines for Africans, or at the very least to prevent them from riding the regular bus lines during rush hour, because “they smell bad.”

South Tel Aviv residents carrying signs reading “Return them now” during a protest calling on the government to deport African asylum-seekers back to their home countries.

 (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

10. Yaakov Asher

Weeks after the original rabbis’ edict was issued, the holy war against African asylum-seekers expanded from Tel Aviv to its environs.

In August 2010, Rabbi Yaakov Asher, the mayor of Tel Aviv satellite city Bnei Brak, met with the minister of public security and the police regional commander to discuss the expulsion of the African population.

When they explained to Asher that there was no legal basis for physically preventing African asylum-seekers from moving to Bnei Brak, Asher’s spokesperson announced that the municipality would use building code infractions by their landlords as an excuse to run the Africans out of town.

When winter came, the municipality followed through on its promise, informing asylum-seekers that they would have to vacate their apartments immediately. When an African man took his legal rental contract down to the city hall and asked to know on what basis he was being evicted, he was told that it was because he was not Jewish.

Many African asylum-seekers did not even receive the courtesy of an eviction notice before their water and electricity were summarily cut off. Without any way to stay warm, the asylum-seekers were frozen out of their flats and sent into the streets in the middle of the winter (“Eritreans say Bnei Brak waging campaign to run them out,” The Jerusalem Post, 1 December 2010).

While he still serves as Bnei Brak mayor, Asher also holds the number seven spot on the United Torah Judaism party list for upcoming elections to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. The party has five seats in the current Knesset.

9. Meir Yitzhak Halevy

In 2007, African asylum-seekers began to move to Eilat at the invitation of the local hospitality industry. They found work washing dishes and performing other menial tasks for low wages.

Since hoteliers expressed satisfaction with this new arrangement, and since tourism is the only significant industry in Eilat, many more African asylum-seekers have since moved to town. They now number about 10,000 residents, approximately 12 percent of the population of Eilat.

In January 2011, Meir Yitzhak Halevi, the mayor of Eilat, said that African asylum-seekers were coming to conquer Eilat and announced that the city was at war with them. The municipality paid for anti-African posters to be plastered across the city and for red flags to be hung throughout the town (“Eilat demands gov’t action against migrant workers,” The Jerusalem Post,” 13 January 2011). In April 2012, Halevi said that all the Africans will be gone within two years’ time.

For years, Halevi refused to allow the children of African asylum-seekers to attend local schools, so they languished in a makeshift activity center run by sympathetic volunteers. It was only after the Israeli high court intervened and declared Eilat’s segregation policy illegal that children of asylum-seekers were permitted to enroll in September 2012.

Eilat is twinned with Los Angeles, California (10 percent African American).

8. Amnon Yitzhak

An immensely popular preacher, Amnon Yitzhak travels all across Israel turning secular and traditional Jews on to fundamentalist Judaism. Eilat is considered to be a secular stronghold, but Yitzhak crossed its cultural divide by infusing his religious message with rabid anti-African racism.

In February 2012 he told an Eilat audience that the dark skin of Sudanese people is a punishment from Yahweh, the god of Judaism. He further compared them to monkeys, saying that if a Jewish woman goes out with a Sudanese man, she will end up in Africa, “climbing trees and eating bananas” (“‘Cancer in our body’: On racial incitement, discrimination and hate crimes against African asylum-seekers in Israel,” Hotline for Migrant Workers, January-June 2012 [PDF]).

Over the past few weeks, Yitzhak founded a new political party, Power To Influence, that is now running for the Knesset. It is too early to estimate how many seats he might garner, but whether from within the Knesset or without, he wields tremendous clout.

7. Ben-Dror Yemini

Instead of using a neutral lexicon to describe African asylum-seekers, most of the Israeli media have uncritically adopted the pejorative language that government officials who are hostile to their presence use to describe them.

But the mainstream journalist who has spread the most lies about African asylum-seekers in order to stoke fears and incite hatred of them is the opinion page editor of the popular daily paper Maariv, Ben-Dror Yemini.

Some Western countries grant refugee status to between 80 percent and 90 percent of East African asylum-seekers. But in December 2011, just before the right-wing-dominated Knesset voted to criminalize asylum-seekers, Yemini provided them with the ideological ammunition to do so by printing the vicious lie that none of them are refugees, only work migrants.

An official Knesset report from May 2012 stated that the proportion of asylum-seekers out of the entire population of Israel is low compared to Western countries. But only days later Yemini published a column saying that Israel would soon have the largest proportion of asylum-seekers of any country in the world.

Tzipi Livni, Israel’s former foreign minister, recently offered Yemini a prominent spot on her Movement Party list for the Knesset elections. Whether he accepts her offer or not, the mere fact that he was invited is a testament to his widespread influence.

Michael Ben-Ari rallies the crowd during a protest against African refugees and asylum seekers in Tel Aviv’s Hatikva neighborhood, 23 May 2012.

 (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

6. Michael Ben-Ari

Although he lives in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Michael Ben-Ari opened up a parliamentary office in south Tel Aviv, where more than half the Africans in Israel live, in order to mobilize residents opposed to their presence.

While other politicians draw complaints for only visiting the area and surrounding themselves with bodyguards when they finally arrive, the charismatic Ben-Ari confidently leads the community in anti-African street marches. He has also established an anti-African neighborhood watch posse there, earning the admiration of locals.

Ben-Ari has also called for Israeli soldiers to kill in cold blood any African person approaching the border to request political asylum. Ironically, when I interviewed him in the summer of 2010, he admitted that Israel was responsible for mass slaughter in Africa because it exported killing machines to Africa for profit.

Ben-Ari was refused admission to the United States in February 2012 because he was a member of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s now-defunct Kach organization, considered to be a Jewish terrorist group by the State Department.

In the current Knesset, he belongs to National Union, the only party that was too right-wing for the governing coalition. For the upcoming elections, he started a new party called Strength For Israel that is expected to pass the minimum threshold for Knesset representation. Ben-Ari may be an outlier, but he is pulling the entire political spectrum to the right.

5. Miri Regev

On 23 May 2012, a thousand Jewish Israelis ran rampant throughout Tel Aviv for hours, attacking any dark-skinned person — or property of dark-skinned people — they could find. They set off on their campaign of terror after being whipped into a frenzy by members of Knesset.

One of those parliamentarians whose comments were most incendiary was Miri Regev, a lawmaker with the main government party, Likud. She told the assembled crowd that African asylum-seekers were “a cancer in the body” of the nation.

After news of her racist comments and the pogrom that followed it was published the following day, she took to YouTube to make a public apology — but not to Africans for comparing them to cancer, but rather to Israeli cancer victims, for minimizing their suffering by comparing it to Africans (“Israeli MK: I didn’t mean to shame Holocaust by calling African migrants a ‘cancer,” Haaretz, 27 May 2012).

A professional survey conducted just days after the pogrom confirmed that 52 percent of Jewish Israelis identified with Regev’s contention that Africans are akin to cancer, and 33 percent of Jewish Israelis identified with the vigilante violence perpetrated against them.

Although Likud’s list for the forthcoming election must still be combined with that of its coalition partner Yisrael Beiteinu, Regev has already surged into its upper ranks, moving from number 26 to number 13 on the strength of these and other racist statements.

A section of the new detention camp for asylum seekers under construction in the Naqab/Negev Desert near the Egyptian border, 7 November 2012.

 (Oren Ziv / ActiveStills)

4. Ron Huldai

The day after the pogrom, Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai initiated an anti-African “mayors’ letter,” gathering their pledges of support — just as Babayof, the city councilor, had initiated the anti-African “rabbis’ letter” and collected rabbis’ signatures.

The letter, supported by the mayors of Ashdod, Bnei Brak, Ashkelon, Petach Tikvah and Eilat, called for African asylum-seekers to be either imprisoned or deported (“Day after violent anti-African protest, Likud MK calls to ‘distance infiltrators’ immediately,” Haaretz, 24 May 2012).

If there are approximately 25,000 to 30,000 African asylum-seekers in Tel Aviv, then Huldai’s call to round up and remove African asylum-seekers amounts to ethnic cleansing between 6 percent and 8 percent of the city’s population.

Huldai is surely not the only mayor in the world that has called for the ethnic cleansing of a portion of its residents. But he is probably the only mayor to do so the same year that a corporate-sponsored gay organization crowned his town the “best gay city” in the world.

Tel Aviv is twinned with New York City (25 percent African American).

3. Yossi Edelstein

Edelstein’s official title is director of the interior ministry’s Population Administration’s Foreign Workers’ Enforcement Unit, established in 2009. Simply put, he is directly in charge of the Oz unit, the security agents who are tasked with physically harassing and arresting African asylum-seekers.

One would hope that agents of the state given a monopoly on the use of violence would exercise that power very carefully and with as little prejudice as possible. Sadly, it would seem that Oz agents are not instructed to treat African people with the respect that they deserve, but rather, exactly the opposite.

Even when the African people in question are Jewish, they can be subjected to shocking levels of physical and emotional abuse. In October 2010, the Oz unit brutally beat an entire family of African Americans who had converted to Judaism and were living in the country legally, including a seven-months-pregnant woman, her mother and her one-year-old daughter.

While beating them, the Oz officers yelled, “niggers, we don’t need you here!” (“Interior ministry’s Oz police unit accused of beating US immigrants,” Haaretz, 21 October 2010).

Edelstein made clear his true feelings for African asylum-seekers at a briefing for security officers in July 2012. When asked what to do in the event that an African woman begins to disrobe in protest — a not uncommon form of political protest in Africa — Edelstein suggested that the woman should be engaged sexually. The officers charged with carrying out his orders laughed heartily at his response (hear Edelstein and his audience’s laughter in the video embedded in Israel Channel 10’s report on the briefing).

2. Eli Yishai

The highest-ranking government official to spew the most amount of anti-African invective is without doubt Edelstein’s boss, Eli Yishai. Yishai holds the portfolio of interior minister, an immensely powerful position in Israel. Yishai uses this power to implement the Jewish supremacist ideology of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party that he leads.

This attitude was summarized best by the party’s spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef in October 2010, when he said that the sole reason non-Jewish people exist is to serve Jewish people. Yishai does his level best to ensure that the non-Jewish people who come to Israel — to do the dirty work that Israelis aren’t willing to do — leave the country before they find love and start having kids.

If he wanted to, Yishai could grant work permits to African asylum-seekers, allowing them to be self-sustaining. This would quickly dissolve the homeless African population that is a burden to south Tel Aviv and greatly reduce tensions in those run-down neighborhoods that were economically impoverished to begin with.

But instead of giving work to the non-Jewish Africans already in the country, Yishai prefers to import tens of thousands of Southeast Asians every year, which he expels and exchanges for new ones every few years. This revolving door policy ensures that the non-Jewish population is always vulnerable to abuse. It is also very lucrative for Israeli human resource agencies — a laundered term for glorified slave traders.

Yishai does not mince his words. In June 2012, he lamented that African asylum-seekers didn’t understand that “this country belongs to us, to the white man,” and in August 2012, he said, “until I can deport them I’ll lock them up to make their lives miserable.” That month, he also branded African asylum-seekers a threat as severe as nuclear missiles and fabricated a baseless blood libel against them, accusing them of turning synagogues into toilets (“Israel enacts law allowing authorities to detain illegal migrants for up to 3 years,”Haaretz, 3 June 2012).

Benjamin Netanyahu at the Likud party convention in Tel Aviv, 6 May 2012.

 (Yin Dongxun /Xinhua/Zumapress)

1. Benjamin Netanyahu

Ultimately, the person primarily responsible for Israel’s racist war against non-Jewish African asylum-seekers is none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although he has issued tame condemnations of the most egregious examples of anti-African racism, he has also rubber-stamped every draconian measure taken against them.

When hundreds of Israeli rabbis issued a religious edict forbidding Jewish Israelis from renting flats to Africans, Netanyahu criticized the clerics at an insignificant photo-op — a teenage trivia contest — but took no measures against them. Just the opposite: within months, Netanyahu’s government doubled and tripled their salaries.

In December 2011, Netanyahu announced that he would seal Israel’s open border with Egypt — by which Africans cross into Israel — as soon as possible. I contacted his office then to ask if he would balance his efforts to prevent any more African asylum-seekers from reaching Israel with other measures that would improve the lives of those already in the country — like granting them work permits and health benefits, for example.

Netanyahu’s office responded in the negative. He soon followed these words with actions, demonstrating that he does not only want to reduce the amount of Africans entering Israel, but to completely reverse their migration and expel them from the country. Until such time as that is feasible, he has heartily backed all of Yishai’s plans to construct prison camps to hold the African asylum-seekers indefinitely (“Shas’ Deri eyes Arab vote,” Ynet, 6 November 2012).

Netanyahu is likely to win the upcoming national elections and remain prime minister of the country for at least a few more years. There is no hope on the horizon that any political leader capable of forming a majority in the Knesset could see African asylum-seekers as human beings and potential partners — not as existential threats.

 

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ISRAELI APARTHEID ON WHEELS

December 7, 2012 at 10:35 (Apartheid, Collective Punishment, Hasbara, Israel, Oppression, Palestine, Racism, zionist harassment)

Unlike Rosa Parks, Palestinian laborers in Israel are not even given the back of the bus. They can’t ride the bus at all. See post from yesterday…

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Apartheid Lines: Video shows Israeli public bus driver refusing to let Palestinians ride

Submitted by Ali Abunimah
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A video shows an Israeli public bus driver blatantly refusing to allow some passengers on her bus just because they are Palestinians.

A Palestinian laborer from the occupied West Bank, carrying an Israeli occupier permit to be in Tel Aviv, was trying to ride back home.

The driver refused to allow him to board, saying, “Palestinians don’t ride to the territories with me.”

According to the video, this worker and several others were detained and harassed for two hours before police finally let them board the bus.

The incident was filmed at the Tel Aviv central bus station in October by Eran Vered for the organization Kav LaOved (Worker’s Hotline) which describes itself as a group “committed to protecting the rights of disadvantaged workers employed in Israel and by Israelis in the Occupied Territories, including Palestinians, migrant workers, subcontracted workers and new immigrants,” and which is “committed to principles of democracy, equality and international law concerning human and social rights” (website).

The video opens with shots of clippings from recent Israeli media reports about popular pressure to ban Palestinians from public buses.

“Security” excuse for blatant racism

Last Week Haaretz reported that Israeli police were systematically removing Palestinians from buses and that Israel’s transport ministry planned to set up segregated bus lines for them:

Police have begun ordering Palestinian laborers with legal work permits off buses from the Tel Aviv area to the West Bank, following complaints from settlers that Palestinians pose a security risk by riding the same buses as them.

The Transportation Ministry says it is considering adding bus lines between West Bank roadblocks and central Israel; these would be geared toward Palestinian laborers. Still, such a plan would take at least a few months to go into effect.

Earlier this month a bus operated by Afikim, a company with a government tender to serve West Bank settlements, pulled up at a police roadblock near the settlement of Elkana. The police, who later cited security reasons, ordered all the Palestinian passengers off – leaving them to walk several kilometers to the nearest checkpoint and pay for a taxi home, said an Israeli army reservist who was posted at the checkpoint.

Apologists for such racist practices take comfort in the “security” excuse, citing past bombings of buses by Palestinians as a justification.

But this video shows how this is merely a pretext. If “security” were the actual concern, then searching all passengers boarding the bus (without discrimination) would be one solution and, however inconvenient, would be much more efficient than the hours of argument that occurred.

And if these particular passengers posed a risk, then why did the driver and others seem so unconcerned about their own safety during the hours the Palestinian men were on, and close to the bus while they argued for the right to ride it?

Violent attacks on Palestinians riding transport

The safety of Palestinians is also at stake. While violent Israeli attacks on Palestinians are far more frequent than Palestinian attacks on Israelis, they usually do not take place on public transport.

However this is not unheard of. Last August, six Palestinians, including two young childrenwere horribly burned, when a firebomb was hurled at the taxi they were riding near the Jewish settlement of “Bat Ayin” in the occupied West Bank. Israeli police arrested three settler teens in the attack.

In 2005, Israeli soldier and West Bank settler Eden Natan-Zada shot dead four Palestinian citizens of Israel aboard a bus in the northern city of Shefa Amr and injured 10 others.

In a prime example of its Jim Crow-style justice, Israel never bothered to properly investigate the murders by Natan-Zada, but eventually charged Palestinian survivors who stopped his murderous rampage by killing him, with “attempted murder.”

Given the frequency of settler attacks on Palestinians, it is the Palestinian workers who are at greatest risk riding buses with settlers.

Apartheid economy

While such blatant, unapologetic racism is disturbing, it is also important to step back and see how this fits into the larger apartheid economy. These bus lines are meant to serve Israeli colonial settlers living on occupied, stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank. These settlements are illegal under international law.

Palestinian laborers from the West Bank are members of an occupied population with virtually no rights or protection. They are exploited to do low-paid work in Israel’s apartheid economy, and then subjected to Jim Crow-like discrimination. Unlike Rosa Parks, they are not even given the back of the bus. They can’t ride the bus at all.

That, sadly, is a perfect metaphor for what life is like for Palestinians in their native land under the racist rule of the so-called “Jewish and democratic” state.

 

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YOU CAN BE THE CHANGE ….. JUST LIKE ROSA WAS

December 6, 2012 at 12:41 (Activism, Civil Rights, Guest Post, History, Human Rights, Racism)

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The Legacy of a Civil Rights Hero

By Peter Amsel
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You have heard the name, but do you know the story of Rosa Parks and the role she played in the Civil Rights Movement? What happened in Montgomery in 1955 was far more important than anyone imagined when the events were unfolding at the time. Rosa Louise McCauley did not begin her life dreaming of becoming the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement”, she was born in Tuskegee, Alabama, the granddaughter of former slaves and the daughter of a carpenter and rural schoolteacher. Rosa moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and attended Alabama State College, an all-black school. It was there, in 1932, that she married Raymond Parks, who worked as a barber. It was at this time that Rosa also became active in Montgomery’s chapter of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.

Her work with the NAACP was more than just passive membership; when she joined the organization in 1943 she worked with the state president, Edgar Daniel Nixon in mobilizing a voter registration drive in Montgomery. Rosa Parks was also elected Secretary of the Montgomery branch of the NAACP in 1943. There should be no doubt that the heart of a true activist beat within the chest of this future Civil Rights leader, even years before the most significant act of her career would take place; an act that was born out of a desire for nothing more than fairness.

In the 1950s Rosa Parks began working as a tailor’s assistant in a department store, Montgomery Fair, she also worked part-time for a white liberal couple who encouraged Parks in her Civil Rights work. Six months before the arrest that would change the history of the Civil Rights movement Rosa received a scholarship to attend a workshop on school integration held at the Highlander folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The workshop was aimed at community leaders, and Rosa Parks spent several weeks there.

In the segregated South public transportation allowed for anyone to use the service, but it was anything but “public” in the sense that if you were a “coloured” person you had to surrender your seat to a white person, and move to the back of the bus. African Americans were required to pay to ride the bus at the front of the bus and then re-board through the back door, they were not even good enough to take a seat through the front of the bus: that is how they were perceived at the time. The first ten seats on the buses in Montgomery were permanently reserved for the white passengers, and when the bus become crowded the drivers would instruct any black passengers to make room for white passengers. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks refused to move.

The ramifications of this action shook Montgomery to its core, changed America, and began an action that was watched by the world. It also launched the career of another Civil Rights activist, someone who would galvanise the movement, and transform it in ways no one could have foreseen before Rosa Parks’s actions that day.

After the arrest of Rosa Parks she was released on a $100 bond that was posted by her employers, the Durrs, and the president of the NAACP, Edgar Nixon. Rosa decided to allow the NAACP to take on the case and another organisation, the Women’s Political Council, which was led by JoAnn Robinson, came up with the idea of having a one day bus boycott coinciding with the date of Park’s trial. The WPC printed and distributed more than 52,000 fliers spreading the word about the boycott, on December 5, the day Rosa Parks would stand trial.

On that day the buses went through Montgomery almost empty and Rosa Parks was convicted by the local court and fined $14. With the assistance of her lawyer, Ed Gray, she immediately filed an appeal to the circuit court. While her appeal languished in red-tape, the U.S. District court was dealing with another case having to do with racial segregation and public buses, ruling that it was unconstitutional. That case, Browder v. Gayle, was ruled upon on June 4, 1956, by a three-judge panel that included Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. The decision was upheld by the United States Supreme Court in November 1956. Rosa Parks never paid her fine.

On the day of the boycott, December 5, 1955, there was a new minister in the town of Montgomery named Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. He became the president of the boycott committee, urging the residents of Montgomery to stay off the buses, fighting for justice by opposing those who denied them the same. The boycott ultimately lasted 381 days and propelled King into the spotlight of national prominence as a Civil Rights leader whose voice could not be ignored. The Montgomery bus Boycott remains as one of the seminal Civil Rights actions, a marking post in the history of the movement, and it all began with the actions of one woman named Rosa.
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HOMETOWN OF JESUS DECLARED A ‘HOSTILE CITY TO THE STATE OF ISRAEL’

November 21, 2012 at 07:33 (Collective Punishment, Corrupt Politics, Ethnic Cleansing, Hasbara, Israel, Palestine, Racism, zionist harassment)

Image by Mr. Fish
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I therefore call upon you, as one who is responsible for funding local municipalities, to show leadership and courage, loyalty to the nation and the state, and to freeze the state funding to Nazareth, in whose head stands a hostile rule, and which supports terrorism. I promise you the the residents of my city and me on their top, will salute you, and many many people in the nation will appreciate this important and committing step, a step which is all about national pride, love of the homeland, recognizing reality and forecasting the future, and declaring that Zionism still is alive and exists.
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Israeli mayor: expel Palestinian citizens of “hostile” Nazareth to Gaza for opposing war

Submitted by Ali Abunimah 

The Israeli mayor of Upper Nazareth, a town in the Galilee, has demanded that the adjacent city of Nazareth be declared “hostile” to the state of Israel, and its predominantlyPalestinian population, who are citizens of Israel, be expelled to Gaza.

“If it was in my hands, I would evacuate from this city its residents the haters of Israel whose rightful place is in Gaza and not here,” Mayor Shimon Gapso wrote in a letter to Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai.

Gapso was angered by protests in Nazareth against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza that has claimed more than 130 Palestinian lives since 15 November.

Calling Nazareth a “fifth column,” Gapso wrote that the city is “a danger in times of peace and a real danger in times of war.” He demanded that Yishai declare it a “hostile” city and cut off all state funding.

Gapso urged the interior minister to “show leadership and courage, loyalty to the nation and the state, and to freeze the state funding to Nazareth, in whose head stands a hostile rule, and which supports terrorism.”

For good measure Gapso also denounced Palestinian member of the Knesset, Haneen Zoabi, as a “terrorist.”

Nazareth, in the north of historic Palestine, remained a predominantly Palestinian city, even after the 1948 ethnic cleansing of much of the surrounding area by Zionist militias when Israel was founded during the Nakba.

“Upper Nazareth” was established by Israel in the 1950s as a specifically Jewish town to hem in Nazareth and prevent its growth, as part of Israel’s effort to “judaize” the newly conquered areas.

Shocking incitement even by Israeli standards

Even knowing the levels of incitement in Israel, I might have thought this letter could be a hoax, were it not reported on the Hebrew website of Haaretz.

Last year, Gapso was denounced by Palestinians in Israel for stating that “more Arabs would have been killed” had he been present when Israeli police shot dead 13 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel in October 2000.

Gapso’s most recent repulsive statements are only the latest in a festival of incitement to violence and hatred against Palestinians and Palestinian citizens of Israel in the context of the current violence.

In writing to Yishai, Gapso knew he would have a receptive audience. The Israeli minister has in recent days called for Israel to bomb Gaza back to “Middle Ages”.

When these are Israel’s leaders and role models, it’s no wonder students dance and chant “Death to the Arabs.”

Translation of Shimon Gapso’s letter

Municipality of Nazareth-Illit
Mayor’s Office
16.11.12
To: The Minister of Interior, Mr. Eli Yishai,

Subject: Declaring “Nazareth” as a hostile city to the State of Israel

In the last several days the State of Israel has commenced a military operation whose goal is to exterminate terror infrastructure which is disrupting the lives of over a million people, residents of the south of the country. It seems that the entire state is united behind the government, behind the IDF and the rest of the security bodies, and they all drafted themselves to the national necessity of protecting our security in the face of the war-hungry enemy with its evil plans.

But it seems that among the citizens of Israel, apparently, there are some who not only do not identify with this clear national necessity, but find it appropriate, while tens of thousands of IDF soldiers are being drafted to the national effort- to identify themselves openly and bluntly with our enemies and who attempt to hurt the national moral and the general unity behind the just war on terror.

In the city of Nazareth it was decided to establish a protest whose goal is resisting the operation of the IDF and supporting the continued unabated firing of missiles on the villages of the south. This protest is the clearest sign, of which no other sign can be clearer, that the current administration in that city is a “fifth column” in our midst, which is a danger in times of peace and a real danger in times of war. Of course, not all of the residents of Nazareth are like this, but those among them who are being raised up by popular waves of hatred to Israel are becoming multiplying in numbers and becoming stronger, and they are the ones who are setting the tone. It should be mentioned that also the terrorist Haneen Zouabi [a member of the Israeli parliament] is a resident of this city, which is becoming a nest of terror in the heart of the Galilee, a center for the spreading of hatred of Israel, which supports and backs every anti-Israel effort, and waits for the right moment to stab the state in the back.

If it was in my hands, I would evacuate from this city its residents the haters of Israel whose rightful place is in Gaza and not here and instead I would cultivate in their place those among its residents who are interested in sustaining a city which respects its past and its place in history, as a city of tourism, fraternity, peace, and loyalty to the state. But since this goal is impossible to accomplish, we can only do the minimum: stopping the flow of state money to this city, money which is being paid by, as it is well known, those decent hardworking Israelis, payers of taxes and lovers of the homeland, who would be shocked to discover that their money is being used as a salary to that inciter who is the mayor of the city, who uses the money of the municipal system to arrange subversive activities against the state, and to his people who are also being sponsored by the taxpayer’s money, whose primary goal is to incite to hatred and to the right of the Jewish People to live peacefully in its land.

I therefore call upon you, as one who is responsible for funding local municipalities, to show leadership and courage, loyalty to the nation and the state, and to freeze the state funding to Nazareth, in whose head stands a hostile rule, and which supports terrorism. I promise you the the residents of my city and me on their top, will salute you, and many many people in the nation will appreciate this important and committing step, a step which is all about national pride, love of the homeland, recognizing reality and forecasting the future, and declaring that Zionism still is alive and exists.

Sincerely,
Shimon Gapso,
Mayor of the city Nazareth Illit

Translation: Joshua Tartakovsky

 

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WHERE ARE THE ‘NORMAL’ KIDS IN ISRAEL TODAY?

November 11, 2012 at 07:23 (Activism, Civil Rights, DesertPeace Editorial, Israel, Nostalgia, Racism)

A LOOK AT THE PAST ON REMEMBRANCE DAY … WITH THE HOPES FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURE
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I was considered a ‘normal’ kid while growing up in New York …. BUT one day in 1960 everything changed….
I was walking on the main street in my neighbourhood when I spotted a picket line in front of the local Woolworths. They were handing out leaflets calling for a boycott of the chain. Reason being that Blacks in the Southern states were denied service at their lunch counters.
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Picketers protesting the F.W. Woolworth store’s policy on lunch counter segregation NY,NY 1960
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I joined the protesters and continued on with them for the next year or so …. we finally won as Woolworths reversed their policy. But, one thing led to another and it certainly was not the end of the struggle.
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Unlike the title of James Dean’ movie, we were rebels WITH a cause …
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Today in Israel, history is once again being repeated. As was our victory in the States, it will be so here as well …. somewhere there is a ‘normal’ kid that will get involved in changing this situation …. that’s how it starts.

‘Mahmoud’ can’t get table at an Israeli eatery, but ‘Tamir’ can

A popular restaurant in Rishon Letzion has been accused of racism after an Arab couple claimed they could only make a reservation using Jewish names.

Mahmoud Safouri and his wife, Sama
Mahmoud Safouri and his wife, Sama, who were refused dinner reservations by Rishon Letzion restuarant Soho, below. Photo by Tomer Appelbaum

A popular restaurant in Rishon Letzion has been accused of racism after an Arab couple claimed last week they had been denied reservations when using their real names, but were able to book after calling back and using Jewish names.

Mahmoud Safouri and his wife, Sama, said that on two different occasions, they had recorded calls made to the Soho restaurant in Rishon Letzion, where they had often eaten without making reservations first.

According to Mahmoud, from Jaffa, they first encountered suspicious behavior in May. Restaurant staff took down all of Sama’s particulars but then refused to accept her reservation because “the computer was down.” Suspecting that there might be discrimination involved, the couple decided to record subsequent conversations.

Sama called back and once again tried to make a reservation under her own name, but was refused. Mahmoud immediately called the restaurant and was able to make a reservation for “Tamir,” for the exact same time and date. Sama then called back and once again tried to make a reservation under her own name. She succeeded in doing so only after reprimanding the restaurant hostess and revealing the trick they had played.

The couple then tried again earlier this month. Mahmoud called Soho and asked to make a reservation for two under the name Walid. The restaurant took his name and phone number, and transferred him to another representative, who asked for his particulars again. “Walid” was told there was no room for the day and time he was requesting: “It’s all full, you can maybe try again later to see if something opens up.”

Sama called the restaurant minutes later, and succeeded in making a reservation for two, for “Michal,” at the same time and date. Sama says she later learned the same thing had happened to other acquaintances.

Maisa Grabali, a resident of Jaffa, said that after her sister, Manar, had tried to make a reservation at Soho for two under her own name and was told there was no room, she called back and succeeded in making reservations for two, at the same time, for “Anat.”

Safouri posted the story on his Facebook page Thursday and received numerous responses as friends shared his story across the social media network. “This is the first time we’ve reached a level of disappointment that forces us to share this with all of you,” he wrote. “It’s important for us to note that the food in the restaurant is terrific, but their racist attitude is shameful.”

Bar Cohen, a Holon resident who trained to be a hostess at the restaurant, told Haaretz there were specific instructions to politely refuse reservations from Arabs. “They said, ‘OK, when someone calls and you have to answer the phone, what do you say?’ And I answered, ‘Hi, you’ve reached Soho, this is Bar.’ And they said, ‘No. First you have to ask, ‘To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?’”

Cohen said her trainer made it clear what that question was for. “‘You’re asking because you want his name, to hear if he’s an Arab or not,’ she said. And I looked at her and asked, ‘Why is that relevant?’ And she said, ‘What do you mean, why is it relevant? You know we’re one of the most successful restaurants in the country, and we don’t want to ruin our good name. If people see Arabs here, they will leave the restaurant. It’s happened to us more than once.’

“At the end of the day, they called me to assign shifts and I told the shift manager that this was a racist restaurant, that they should be ashamed of themselves and I didn’t want to work there,” said Cohen.

Many users posted comments on Soho’s own Facebook page, where the page administrator wrote on Saturday, “Since the issue is indeed important to us, both as a company and in order to maintain the great relationship we have with our guests of all nationalities, we will respond later on and things will come to light. Meanwhile, we are enjoying the exposure and the interaction on our page.”

Despite two calls to Soho by Haaretz Saturday, there was no response from the restaurant’s management.

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SURVEY SAYS ~~ MOST ISRAELIS SUPPORT AN APARTHEID STATE

October 24, 2012 at 10:35 (Apartheid, Ethnic Cleansing, Extremism, fascism, Israel, Just Plain Disgusting, Racism)

 Meir Kahana would be proud, 22 years after his death his legacy of hatred lives on in the hearts of most Israeli Jews. Needless to say, the rest of us are not proud of this.
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Speaking in the streets of Jerusalem
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And in Germany a few years earlier

Same tone, same message
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The Russians register the highest rate of satisfaction with life in Israel (77 percent ) and the secular Israelis the lowest – only 63 percent. On average, 69 percent of Israelis are satisfied with life in Israel. 
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The ultra-Orthodox are also the most anti-Arab group – 70 percent of them support legally barring Israeli Arabs from voting, 82 percent support preferential treatment from the state toward Jews, and 95 percent are in favor of discrimination against Arabs in admission to workplaces. 
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Secular Israelis appear to be the least racist – 68 percent of them would not mind having Arab neighbors in their apartment building, 73 percent would not mind Arab students in their children’s class and 50 percent believe Arabs should not be discriminated against in admission to workplaces. 
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checkpoint - Nir Kafri - February 11 2011
Palestinians waiting to cross through the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus. Photo by Nir Kafri


Survey: Most Israeli Jews would support apartheid regime in Israel 

Survey, conducted by Dialog on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, exposes anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews. 

Gideon Levy 
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The survey, conducted by Dialog on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, exposes anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews. The survey was commissioned by the Yisraela Goldblum Fund and is based on a sample of 503 interviewees.  
The questions were written by a group of academia-based peace and civil rights activists. Dialog is headed by Tel Aviv University Prof. Camil Fuchs. 

The majority of the Jewish public, 59 percent, wants preference for Jews over Arabs in admission to jobs in government ministries. Almost half the Jews, 49 percent, want the state to treat Jewish citizens better than Arab ones; 42 percent don’t want to live in the same building with Arabs and 42 percent don’t want their children in the same class with Arab children. 
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A third of the Jewish public wants a law barring Israeli Arabs from voting for the Knesset and a large majority of 69 percent objects to giving 2.5 million Palestinians the right to vote if Israel annexes the West Bank. 
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A sweeping 74 percent majority is in favor of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. A quarter – 24 percent – believe separate roads are “a good situation” and 50 percent believe they are “a necessary situation.” 
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Almost half – 47 percent – want part of Israel’s Arab population to be transferred to the Palestinian Authority and 36 percent support transferring some of the Arab towns from Israel to the PA, in exchange for keeping some of the West Bank settlements. 
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Although the territories have not been annexed, most of the Jewish public (58 percent ) already believes Israel practices apartheid against Arabs. Only 31 percent think such a system is not in force here. Over a third (38 percent ) of the Jewish public wants Israel to annex the territories with settlements on them, while 48 percent object. 
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The survey distinguishes among the various communities in Israeli society – secular, observant, religious, ultra-Orthodox and former Soviet immigrants. The ultra-Orthodox, in contrast to those who described themselves as religious or observant, hold the most extreme positions against the Palestinians. An overwhelming majority (83 percent ) of Haredim are in favor of segregated roads and 71 percent are in favor of transfer. 
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The ultra-Orthodox are also the most anti-Arab group – 70 percent of them support legally barring Israeli Arabs from voting, 82 percent support preferential treatment from the state toward Jews, and 95 percent are in favor of discrimination against Arabs in admission to workplaces. 
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The group classifying itself as religious is the second most anti-Arab. New immigrants from former Soviet states are closer in their views of the Palestinians to secular Israelis, and are far less radical than the religious and Haredi groups. However, the number of people who answered “don’t know” in the “Russian” community was higher than in any other. 
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The Russians register the highest rate of satisfaction with life in Israel (77 percent ) and the secular Israelis the lowest – only 63 percent. On average, 69 percent of Israelis are satisfied with life in Israel. 
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Secular Israelis appear to be the least racist – 68 percent of them would not mind having Arab neighbors in their apartment building, 73 percent would not mind Arab students in their children’s class and 50 percent believe Arabs should not be discriminated against in admission to workplaces. 
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The survey indicates that a third to half of Jewish Israelis want to live in a state that practices formal, open discrimination against its Arab citizens. An even larger majority wants to live in an apartheid state if Israel annexes the territories. 
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The survey conductors say perhaps the term “apartheid” was not clear enough to some interviewees. However, the interviewees did not object strongly to describing Israel’s character as “apartheid” already today, without annexing the territories. Only 31 percent objected to calling Israel an “apartheid state” and said “there’s no apartheid at all.” 
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In contrast, 39 percent believe apartheid is practiced “in a few fields”; 19 percent believe “there’s apartheid in many fields” and 11 percent do not know. 
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The “Russians,” as the survey calls them, display the most objection to classifying their new country as an apartheid state. A third of them – 35 percent – believe Israel practices no apartheid at all, compared to 28 percent of the secular and ultra-Orthodox communities, 27 percent of the religious and 30 percent of the observant Jews who hold that view. Altogether, 58 percent of all the groups believe Israel practices apartheid “in a few fields” or “in many fields,” while 11 percent don’t know.

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FINALLY, A FINAL WORD ON GRETA BERLIN

October 19, 2012 at 10:14 (Israel, Palestine, Racism)

Image by Pete Pasho
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Many Zionists constantly claim that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism, while anti-Semites try to convince us that their hatred of Jews as Jews is actually anti-Zionism. So both Zionists and anti-Semites constantly collude to blur the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and between Zionism and Judaism. We should do nothing to help them.
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A final word on Greta Berlin and the Free Gaza controversy

Submitted by Ali Abunimah 

On 6 October I published a post casting doubt on Free Gaza movement co-founder Greta Berlin’s explanation of how she came to tweet a link to a video of an anti-Jewish diatribe by notorious anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist Eustace Mullins, from the @freegazaorg Twitter account.

Like others, I had at first accepted Berlin’s explanations that it had all been a mistake, just one single tweet posted in the wrong place, that was supposed to have been part of an anti-racist discussion in a private Facebook group.

But as the versions of the story began to vary, my doubts grew. Once I saw the content of the “Our Land” Facebook group that Berlin administers, I was certain we were dealing with a well-established pattern of exchanging, tolerating and indulging truly racist material that has no connection to Palestine solidarity work.

Today in an article on Mondoweiss, Bekah Wolf has published some of the racist material I saw in that group.

Even though I knew about this material, I did not elaborate on it in my 6 October post. Instead, other than the Mullins video, I restricted my comments to what was not in the group, rather than what was there:

This evening I had an opportunity to spend several hours with full access to a private Facebook group of which Berlin is an administrator, and where the video was first posted by another administrator on 28 September with the comment “This will be a real thought provoker for some.”

When the video was posted on 28 September it was neither preceded nor followed by any interactions that would fit the description that it “was shared with a group of people who were discussing propaganda and racism, and this link was an example of the terrible propaganda that could be spewed on websites.” This context does not exist.

Contrary to various claims I’ve seen, I never labeled Berlin an “anti-Semite.” Yet as Wolfwrites:

Greta is an active administrator of a Facebook group that is full of unabashedly anti-Semitic rhetoric and has been called out before by activists for it but has never done anything to challenge or stop it.

And as Wolf shows, Berlin often went beyond that.

Should I have been more explicit about what I saw? Perhaps, but I had my reasons to take a more restrained approach. I had hoped that by sounding the alarm, and signaling that Berlin’s explanations were not credible, Berlin herself would begin to take the issue seriously, and that the new Free Gaza board would do the same. Sadly that did not happen.

The most dispiriting spectacle over the past two weeks was seeing Berlin disseminating, and a small group of people embellishing, outlandish stories intended to distract and shift the blame on to those who were asking for accountability.

Almost every day, I’ve received emails alleging, among other things, that I am a “Zionist agent,” that I’ve been “conned” by Israel into attacking Berlin so that Israel can steal Gaza’s natural gas, that I am engaged in a “vendetta” because Berlin endorsed a book I didn’t like, and so on. A few of these messages came from people I had previously believed to be reasonable and sensible, which added to the disappointment.

Berlin herself has used Islamophobic epithets against me, accusing me of issuing “fatwas” and mocking me as “Ali Ayatollah.” But for me this is not and has never been about Greta Berlin. I knew that what I saw in the “Our Land” group could not be more damaging and discrediting to the Palestinian rights movement.

I also received tremendous encouragement and affirmation that was far louder. I am thankful to individuals including Élise Hendrick who understood what was at stake from the start, and has helped illuminate some of the disturbing connections that have come out of this.

As someone who is frequently accused by Zionists of being “anti-Semitic,” I do not take these matters lightly. But this episode also helped me gain some clarity about the symbiotic relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Many Zionists constantly claim that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism, while anti-Semites try to convince us that their hatred of Jews as Jews is actually anti-Zionism. So both Zionists and anti-Semites constantly collude to blur the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and between Zionism and Judaism. We should do nothing to help them.

The movement I am proud to be part of eschews racism and bigotry in all their forms, and doesn’t seek the support of those who trade in them.

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TEL AVIV’S NEW IMAGE; DOGS ARE WELCOME, AFRICANS AND PALESTINIANS AREN’T

October 3, 2012 at 09:47 (Israel, Racism, zionism)

The poster is part of a campaign called “Did you know?” that highlights different aspects of the city. Another ad boasts, “In Tel-Aviv-Jaffa there are approximately 50 dog parks, used by more than 20,000 dogs.”

There is, however, no poster saying thatSudanese refugees or native Palestinians are welcome in Tel Aviv. That’s just not part of the image the city is trying to project.

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“Cool” Tel Aviv proudly boasts of citizens’ role in brutal Israeli occupation army

Submitted by Ali Abunimah

 

A city-sponsored ad in Tel Aviv boasts of the high participation rate of city youth in the Israeli army.

 (The Electronic Intifada)

The city of Tel Aviv has become one of the main “products” Israel tries to sell internationally to soften its image as an apartheid state that brutally occupies millions of Palestinians.

 

A QR code on bus shelter ads leads to downloadable images of the posters.

Tel Aviv is marketed as a cool destination of culture, care-free fun and gay life, especially to counter the growing international boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.

But at home the Tel Aviv municipality is proud to trumpet the city’s contributions to the very same occupation and war crimes that its friendly image is used to obscure in international Brand Israel propaganda.

One ad sponsored by the municipality currently appears on bus shelters and boasts that the “IDF enlistment rate from Tel Aviv city schools is 91% for girls and 92% for boys.”

The photo at top was shot by an activist on Ibn-Gvirol street, between the City Hall and the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Sumail, which is now subsumed by Tel Aviv.

 

Another city-sponsored ad highlights Tel Aviv’s facilities for dogs

In effect, the poster expresses pride in the high participation of city youths in the brigades that blockade and shell Gaza, occupy the West Bank, hold up ambulances and pregnant women atcheckpoints, stand guard as bulldozersdestroy homes and confiscate land, and carry out night raids pulling Palestinian children from their beds, or just shooting them with impunity.

It can also be read as a dig at Jerusalem, which has a much higher religious population, and likely a lower enlistment rate.

The poster is part of a campaign called “Did you know?” that highlights different aspects of the city. Another ad boasts, “In Tel-Aviv-Jaffa there are approximately 50 dog parks, used by more than 20,000 dogs.”

There is, however, no poster saying thatSudanese refugees or native Palestinians are welcome in Tel Aviv. That’s just not part of the image the city is trying to project.

 

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HATRED GROWS IN JERUSALEM DURING HOLIDAY SEASON

October 3, 2012 at 09:23 (Extremism, Hasbara, Israel, Racism, Religious Coersion, zionist harassment)

Here’s another one for the ‘Christian’ zionists visiting Jerusalem this week….

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Another Israeli church defaced with ‘price tag’ graffiti

Graffiti reading ‘Jesus, son of a bitch, price tag,’ was found on the door of the Church of the Dormition on Mount Zion, just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.

By Oz Rosenberg and Nir Hasson
The graffiti outside the church in Jerusalem.
A hand-out picture released Tuesday by the Franciscan monastery showing anti-Christian graffiti denigrating Jesus. Photo by AP/HO 

Less than a month after a monastery at Latrun was vandalized with “price tag” graffiti, similar graffiti was found Tuesday morning on the door of the Church of the Dormition on Mount Zion, just outside the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.

The graffiti, which read “Jesus, son of a bitch, price tag,” had already been removed by midmorning Tuesday, Israel Police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said.

Jerusalem Police Chief Maj. Gen. Yossi Pariente yesterday ordered the formation of a special investigative team to locate the perpetrators. No one has yet been arrested for last month’s vandalism.

Jewish extremists are thought to have carried out similar vandalism on churches, mosques and army property in response to what they consider pro-Palestinian government policies. The Latrun vandalism occurred shortly after settlers were evicted from the illegal outpost of Migron.

The Dormition Church, built over a century ago near the site of the Last Supper, is one of the Franciscan order’s most important holdings in the Holy Land. Though Israel has only about 155,000 Christian citizens, less than 2 percent of its 7.9 million people, the repeated defacing of their sacred sites has shocked the country and drawn official condemnation.

“Price tag actions contradict the morals and values of Judaism and do great harm to the State of Israel,” said President Shimon Peres, speaking at a meeting with one of Israel’s chief rabbis at a Sukkot reception yesterday. “It is forbidden to harm the holy sites of [other] religions and faiths.”

Church officials have said mere condemnation is not enough. In an interview with Haaretz a few weeks ago, one of the Vatican’s top officials in the Holy Land, the Rev. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, sharply condemned what he termed Israelis’ derogatory attitude toward Christians.

“When you say ‘Christianity’ to Israelis they immediately think of the Holocaust and the [Spanish] Inquisition,” he said. “People don’t know that we are here and have roots here.”

He said this attitude seems to be prevalent in Israeli society, noting that priests are often spat on by yeshiva students, and that National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari had torn up a New Testament in the Knesset.

“If you as a Jew want people to respect you, you need to respect others,” Pizzaballa said.

Various rabbis condemned the vandalism.

“We only just finished with Yom Kippur … and now we have another sin for which we must atone – contempt for another religion,” said Rabbi Mauricio Balter, president of the Masorti (Conservative ) Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly.

Rabbi Gilad Kariv of the Reform Movement warned that “This price tag epidemic threatens to become a routine part of Israeli public life, causing moral, social and international damage. Law enforcement, which has failed to deal with the phenomenon, must make this a much higher priority than it has until now.”

The Reform Movement, in a statement, also urged the thousands of people who will be visiting Jerusalem’s Old City during the intermediate days of this week’s Sukkot holiday to “visit the desecrated site and express their disgust with this act.”

The Custodia Terrae Sanctae, the Franciscans’ representative in the Holy Land, said that Israel must do more to eliminate the price tag phenomenon.

“The attempts to damage monasteries and the spray-painting of inflammatory graffiti against Christianity, which have occurred repeatedly recently, are an insult to the hundreds of millions of Christian faithful throughout the world, and the State of Israel cannot allow such grave acts to occur,” the statement said.

 

Source

 

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PAMELA GELLER’S HATE ADS MOVE TO THE NEW YORK CITY SUBWAY SYSTEM

September 21, 2012 at 07:19 (Extremism, Hasbara, Islamophobia, Israel, Racism, zionist harassment)

 SUPPORT CIVILIZED ISRAEL!  MURDER AND OCCUPATION ARE CIVILIZED??
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Anti-jihad ‘savage’ ads going up in NYC subway

 A provocative ad that equates Muslim radicals with savages is set to go up in the city’s subway system as violent protests over an anti-Islamic film ridiculing the Prophet Muhammad sweep over much of the Muslim world.

A conservative blogger who once headed a campaign against an Islamic center near the Sept. 11 terror attack site won a court order to post the ad in 10 subway stations next Monday. The ad reads, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.”

 

Read the full report from AP HERE

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5 Comments

POSTER WAR OF HATE FOLLOWS LYNCHING IN JERUSALEM

August 24, 2012 at 10:59 (Collective Punishment, God Help Us All!, Hasbara, Israel, Palestine, Racism, zionist harassment)

 If you are thinking of visiting Jerusalem malls or the pedestrian street [Midrechov] with the intention of dating Jewish girls – this isn’t the place for you.
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Prior to the posters …..
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In the mall …
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In the streets …
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 The news of an attempted mob lynching in Jerusalem’s Zion Square is trickling into Western news sources. It has been translated from angst-filled Hebrew-language Facebook pages written by eyewitnesses, stunned and harassed first responders, and translations gleaned from Haaretz via Mondoweiss, IMEU and others. The lack of outrage, and coverage, is almost as disturbing as the street level racial violence that showed itself in the heart of Israel, rolling in from the Wild West/West Bank where this is more common.
Full report HERE
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Poster calls on Arab men to keep out of Jerusalem, away from Jewish girls
By Haggai Matar

Following the recent lynch-style attack on Palestinian youths in Jerusalem, racist extremists are starting a campaign calling on Arab men to keep out of popular Jerusalem hangouts and avoid dating Jewish girls – for their own good.

The new racist poster, written in both Hebrew and Arabic by the extremist Kahana-style NGO “Lehava,” has been circulating in Facebook in recent hours and is gaining hundreds of “likes” and “shares.” The poster, which is aimed at young Palestinian men, comes in the aftermath of the attempted lynch in central Jerusalem, and warns that visiting popular areas in the city, like big malls and the pedestrian area off of Zion Square could lead to more similar attacks.

The poster fits into a growing trend of narrating anti-Arab racism as a means to “protect our daughters” – a form of discourse promoted by politicians and ministersalso in relation to African asylum seekers.

The poster reads the following:

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Dear Arab guy:

 

We don’t want you to get hurt!

 

Our daughters are valuable to us,

 

and just as you would not want a Jew to date your sister

 

we unwilling are also unwilling for an Arab to date a girl from among our people.

Just as you would do anything to stop a Jew from dating your sister – so do we!

If you are thinking of visiting Jerusalem malls or the pedestrian street [Midrechov] with the intention of dating Jewish girls – this isn’t the place for you.

You may walk around in your own village freely and find girlfriends there, not here!

Last week an Arab who thought he might find Jewish girls got hurt.

We don’t wish for you to get hurt,

 

So respect our daughters’ honor

 

As we mind it dearly!

 

Lehava organization    o.leava@gmail.com

Many comments on the picture thread on Facebook show great enthusiasm for the text, and some people have already volunteered to help hang it up around Jerusalem.

However, other comments were much more critical, and some have compared its content to Nazi agendas. At least two mock posters have already been made in response, one translating the text into German and aiming it at Jewish men:

The other, by Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky, calling on Jewish men to mind their own business and not meddle in women’s decisions on whom to date.

Update: The Jerusalem based NGO Ir Amim has filed a complaint to police against Lehava, accusing it in incitement to racism and violence. In addition, according to the complaint the poster suggests that anyone not abiding to its terms is likely to be physically assaulted, and is thus to be considered an illegal threat.

Read also:
The holy war against Arab-Jewish relations and the Jerusalem lynch
What is the link between Eli Yishai and Jerusalem ‘lynch’?
Attacks on Palestinians highlight history of lax enforcement on Jewish extremists

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ZIONISTS TEACHING HATE TO BOTH THE YOUNG AND OLD …

August 21, 2012 at 11:05 (Hasbara, Humanitarian Aid Flotilla, Israel, J Street, Palestine, Racism, zionist harassment, zionist Media)

 … Both in the Guardian and in J Street

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Guardian’s Treviño: Only way Mavi Marmara killings could be “better” is if “IDF drew Muhammed on a bulkhead”
Submitted by Ali Abunimah 

New revelations of Joshua Treviño’s bigotry and lies, as Guardian insists he hasn’t been “demoted.”

In his “clarification” of his June 2011 tweet calling on Israel to murder American activists aboard boats to Gaza, the Guardian’s new columnist Joshua Treviño claimed it was all a big misunderstanding:

any reading of my tweet of 25 June 2011 that holds that I applauded, encouraged, or welcomed the death of fellow human beings, is wrong, and out of step with my life and record.

I already explained in my Al Jazeera article that this was disingenous and dishonest, but thanks to EI readers, even more of Treviño’s violent and bigoted tweets have come to light exposing him as a liar.

On 1 June 2010, the day after Israeli forces murdered 9 unarmed civilians aboard the Mavi Marmara in international waters, Treviño tweeted, “Only way the #flotilla story gets better is if it’s revealed the IDF drew Muhammed on a bulkhead.”

Only way the  story gets better is if it’s revealed the IDF drew Muhammed on a bulkhead.

In other words, after shooting dead the civilians, 8 Turks and one American, the student Furkan Doğan, Treviño wanted Israeli soldiers to carry out what he and others would have understood as an act of religious desecration.

In another tweet on 2 June 2010, Treviño wrote, “After examining the facts on #flotilla, I condemn Israel: for being too nice, too soft, too accommodating to the scum of the earth.”

After examining the facts on , I condemn Israel: for being too nice, too soft, too accommodating to the scum of the earth.

In answer to complaints about his hiring, The Guardian’s press office has been distributing Treviño’s piece in which he claimed never to have made such statements, thus making it directly accountable for his falsehoods.

Standing by their man

Yesterday, The Electronic Intifada revealed that The Guardian made surreptitious changes in a press release after it had been published, suggesting that the newspaper was demoting Treviño or distancing itself from him.

Today, the newspaper’s spokesperson denied that in a statement to The New Statesman:

I can confirm that there has been no change in Josh Trevino’s terms of employment – the contract has not been altered and he has most certainly not been “demoted” as some articles have suggested. In fact, a simple mistake was made in the press release and this was later corrected. It was clumsy but there is no change to Josh’s position.

Outrage at the hiring of someone who openly incites murder has grown: today the Guardian published a letter from academics, polticians and other public figures who support Palestinian rights expressing “shock and dismay” at the newspaper’s move.

Bigotry

What’s ironic is that while celebrating the murder of Muslims, and demanding religiously offensive acts as icing on the cake, Treviño, who identifies as an Orthodox Christian, is very sensitive himself.

Treviño said members of the group Pussy Riot had “desecrated” an Orthodox Church by singing a protest song in it, an act for which they were sentenced to two years in prison by a Russian court last week:

Well, @jstrevino, I wasn’t raised in a authoritarian state that was supported by the Russian Orthodox Church. Seems the ROC asked for it.

Of course, @markscrivens, one’s politics justifies desecration of an altar in a Christian church during Lent. That makes a lot of sense.

That desecrated a Church altar at Lent. Spare us this liberality. RT@markscrivens: …. This was clearly a “liberal” pro-freedom protest.

Anti-Muslim views

He has also expressed for years his hatred of Islam by demanding that the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul be turned back into a church. He claimed that a mosque was “sullying” the structure. Built as a church, it had later been used as a mosque, but is now a museum.

In exchange for the “Ground Zero mosque,” Cordoba/ASMA could advocate for the Hagia Sophia to be a Christian church again.

You know what’s also a desecration of a sacred object? The Hagia Sophia was made a mosque, then a museum. I’m just saying.

Also, remember that the Hagia Sophia is a Christian church first and always — and we ought to demand it back. That is all.

There is, of course, still a mosque sullying the Hagia Sophia: you just have to go to the right side of the complex to find it.

Remember this is the person who has an “important perspective” according to his new bosses at The Guardian.

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There’s still more …..
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American student shot dead by Israel “deserved” to die says Guardian’s Joshua Treviño

Submitted by Ali Abunimah 
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“There are some Americans we’re better off without. Furkan Dogan is one of them.” - The Guardian’s Joshua Treviño on 3 June 2010.

Today, despite the uproar over his incitement to murder Americans, Joshua Treviño was allowed to debut his new regular column at The Guardian.

The Guardian is sticking to the fiction that Treviño’s tweet of 25 June 2011 in which he wrote, “Dear IDF: If you end up shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla – well, most Americans are cool with that. Including me,” was a one-off and somehow not representative or typical.

Why won’t the Guardian correct these lies?

Guardian editors were as of today still directing readers to a so-called “clarification” Treviño wrote on 16 August in which he told the following bald-faced lie:

any reading of my tweet of 25 June 2011 that holds that I applauded, encouraged, or welcomed the death of fellow human beings, is wrong, and out of step with my life and record.

In fact Treviño regularly applauded, encouraged and welcomed the deaths of fellow human beings, specifically the 9 unarmed civilians killed aboard theMavi Marmara on 31 May 2010. A year later, in June 2011, he goaded Israel to kill passengers aboard a new flotilla. Some of the people aboard that later flotilla were American author Alice Walker and Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein.

Earlier today, I wrote to Guardian editors Alan Rusbridger, Janine Gibson, Matt Seaton, Nell Boase and PR rep Jennifer Lindenauer asking for a correction of Treviño’s blatantly false statement. So far I have had no response.

Not only has The Guardian been purveying false information about Treviño’s record, but on Saturday I caught them surreptitiously altering a press release after publication apparently to downgrade Treviño’s status. Are these really the kinds of dirty tricks The Guardian has sunk to?

A few of Treviño’s most vile statements

You can find many more examples at Topsy.

These are vile dehumanizing comments. I encourage everyone to read our interview with Dr. Ahmet Doğan who spoke of the moment he heard that the Mavi Marmara, with his idealistic young son aboard, had been attacked. Furkan’s father sat down, buried his head in his hands and “felt that boiling water was poured over me.” Dr. Doğan is struggling for justice for his son.

These comments also demonstrate that Treviño is a liar, and by extention The Guardian’s editors are liars for continuing to spread Treviño’s falsehoods.

The Guardian was likely aware of Treviño’s record

In a radio interview with conservative radio host Peter Ingemi on Saturday 18 August 2012, Treviño explained how he became a columnist at The Guardian(starting at approximately 20 minutes). “The origin is in my Twitter feed. I started to engage over the past few years with a couple of Guardian personnel there.” In March 2012, he was invited to speak at The Guardian Open Weekend in London, and then in May 2012 he spoke at the DC launch event forThe Guardian’s US edition. “Shortly thereafter,” he says, The Guardian began to discuss hiring him for a daily column.

If we are to believe Treviño – admittedly difficult given his record – The Guardian knew about his vile tweets all along.

Enough. It is time for The Guardian to stop the lies.

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J Street joins the hate bandwagon…
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Teaching young people to hate: the ugly face of J Street’s anti-Palestinian bigotry exposed

Submitted by Ali Abunimah 
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For years, J Street has posed as the kinder, gentler face of the Israel lobby, the alternative to hardline AIPAC.

Anyone who’s paid close attention knows that has never been the case, and behind the smiling exterior that J Street boss Jeremy Ben-Ami projects are similar hardcore anti-Palestinian views.

And it seems teaching anti-Palestinian bigotry to the young is part of J Street’s mission. Take a piece by Jeremy Zelinger, a J Street Summer 2012 Communications Intern, published on J Street’s website on 14 August which says (emphasis added):

I am not satisfied with a pro-Israel voice that shouts about military threats from Hezbollah but is silent about the demographic threat from a stateless Palestinian population. Just as Israel needs to prepare for war, it must also prepare for peace. A pro-Israel voice should express the importance of both.

This is bigotry and racism of the worst kind. As I’ve said and written many times before, we should have zero tolerance for talk of Palestinians as a “demographic threat” just because (a) they’re born and (b) they’re not Jews.

Widespread “liberal” Zionist bigotry

This bigotry is not restricted to the “right-wing” of Zionism. The Washington Post’s liberal columnist Ruth Marcus recently characterized Palestinians as a “demographic threat” and African refugees and migrants as a “deluge.”

Former State Department diplomat Aaron David Miller (who once described his role during his years of US government service as being “Israel’s attorney”), wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Israel last week that:

The country’s demographics look bad — too many ultra-Orthodox Jews, Palestinians and Israeli Arabs and not enough secular Jews.

What would you call someone who wrote, say, that, ‘Mississippi’s demographics look bad – too many African Americans, poor white people and Latinos and not enough White Evangelical Christians’?

Yousef Munayyer recently took this kind of widespread bigotry to task in a piece in The Daily Beast’s Open Zion:

An ideology that seeks to build a society around a certain type of people defined by ethnicity or religion is inevitably going to feature racism, supremacy and oppression—especially when the vast majority of native inhabitants where such an ideology is implemented are unwelcomed.

But this premise of too many Arabs, too many Palestinians, too many __________ (fill in the blank with people unlike you) is so common in the discourse on the Israeli/Palestinian question today that the racism inherent in it rarely ever questioned.

It’s not enough that Peter Beinart’s Open Zion publishes views by Munayyer. That does not get them off the hook. They ought to do much more, and come out clearly and explicitly against any talk of a “demographic threat.”

Don’t expect that any time soon, however, because the fear of Palestinian babies lies at the core of “liberal” Zionism.

From

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LYNCHINGS HAVE BECOME A SPECTATOR SPORT IN ISRAEL

August 20, 2012 at 09:02 (Hasbara, Hate crimes, Israel, Palestine, Racism, zionist harassment)

Israel Police: Hundreds watched attempt to lynch Palestinians in Jerusalem, did not interfere

Four minors, including one girl, arrested in connection with attack at Zion Square in which one victim was seriously injured and three others were slightly hurt.

By Oz Rosenberg
 
One of the suspects in the Jerusalem attack being brought to court on August 19, 2012.
One of the suspects in the Jerusalem attack being brought to court on August 19, 2012.Photo by Olivier Fittousi
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After initially treating the event as a brawl, police on Sunday for the first time referred to the attack on Palestinian youths by dozens of Jewish teens in Jerusalem early last Friday as a “lynching.”

A police representative told the Magistrate’s Court that hundreds of people watched the event without helping the victims.

Witnesses say the attack lasted a short while before police arrived and the attackers fled.

Four minors between the ages of 13-15, including one girl, were arrested on Sunday in connection with the attack at Zion Square, in which one victim was seriously injured and three others were slightly hurt.

Earlier, the court extended by four days the detention of the 19-year-old man arrested Friday. Police believe there will be further arrests.

Sergeant First Class Shmuel Shenhav defined the attack as a lynch, and said: “The victim lost his consciousness and was thought to be dead until a Magen David Adom [emergency paramedic] crew arrived and resuscitated him. He was anesthetized and on a respirator in the hospital for days. This was an extremely severe crime. Only a miracle saved him from death.”

A 13-year-old suspect brought into court yesterday did not deny he was present at the scene, but said he wasn’t involved in the beating. His mother, L., told Haaretz: “They came at noon while he was sleeping. The investigators woke him up and took him to the police car. How can they do such a thing to a young kid?”

The suspect’s brother, who was also present at the scene, said outside the court that it was the four Arab youths who had provoked passersby and “made passes at Jewish girls.” He added: “Why should an Arab make passes at my sister? They shouldn’t be here, it’s our area. For what other reason would they come here if not to make passes at Jewish girls?”

The 19-year-old suspect’s attorney, Ariel Attari, said that his client wasn’t present at the scene and said he had an alibi for the entire time.

Meanwhile, victim Jamal Julani remains in serious condition, according to the authorities. Julani, 17, from Jerusalem’s Ras al-Amud neighborhood, was admitted to the intensive care unit at Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem in critical condition. His mother told Haaretz that he had regained consciousness but is very confused, did not remember the assault and did not understand why he was in the hospital.

“There were four of us,” one of the victim’s cousins, Mohammed Mujahad, said Saturday, recalling what happened when he and his three cousins reached Zion Square after midnight Thursday. “Suddenly maybe 50 Jews came toward us shouting, ‘Arabs Arabs.’ I don’t understand what they said. They weren’t calling us. They were just generally shouting.”

According to an eyewitness, the group of teenagers appeared to be hunting for Arab victims, calling out “Death to Arabs” and other anti-Arab slurs.

“We walked slowly, so there wouldn’t be trouble,” related Nuaman Julani, another of Jamal’s cousins. “Suddenly one said to Jamal, ‘What are you doing, you son of a bitch?’ Jamal tried to flee, but [the attacker] whacked him in the chest and [Jamal] fell.”

The incident was brief, according to Mujahad and Nuaman Julani. One of the cousins says he saw a few attackers hitting and kicking Jamal as he lay on the ground. Both noted that police quickly arrived, after which all the perpetrators dispersed.

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Ali Abunimah adds…
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Lynching in Jerusalem: where impunity and Israel’s unchecked racial hatred lead

Submitted by Ali Abunimah

“Death to the Arabs”: Hebrew graffiti sprayed on a Palestinian home in the West Bank village of al-Jinya near Ramallah in February.

 (Issam Rimawi / APA images)

A horrifying report in Haaretz today:

Dozens of Jewish youths attacked three young Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Zion Square early on Friday morning, in what one witness described as “a lynch” on Facebook.

One of the Palestinians was seriously wounded and hospitalized in intensive care in Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem. Acting Jerusalem police chief General Menachem Yitzhaki has set up a special team to investigate the incident and detain the suspects.

The three were allegedly attacked by youths shouting “Death to the Arabs” at them, as well as other racial slurs. One of them fell on the floor, and his attackers continued to beat him until he lost consciousness. They subsequently fled from the scene.

Within a short period of time rescue volunteers and Magen David Adom rescue services arrived on the scene and found the victim with no pulse and not breathing. After a lengthy resuscitation attempt, he was transferred to the hospital.

A witness described what she saw on Facebook:

“But today I saw a lynch with my own eyes, in Zion Square, the center of the city of Jerusalem ….. and shouts of ‘A Jew is a soul and Arab is a son of a –,’ were shouted loudly and dozens (!!) of youths ran and gathered and started to really beat to death three Arab youths who were walking quietly in the Ben Yehuda street.”

Not isolated incidents

Much remains unknown at present, including the identities and condition of the victims. What we do know however is that such racist attacks by Israelis are not exceptional. They are frighteningly common and the incitement and permissive atmosphere that fosters them comes from the very top of Israeli society.

Yesterday, 6 Palestinians were injured in a firebombing by suspected “Jewish extremists” in the occupied West Bank.

In recent months there have been frequent reports of violent attacks and hate rallies against African migrants and refugees often led or incited by Israeli politicians.

In March there was the mob attack by Jewish youths shouting “Death to the Arabs” on Arab workers at Malha Mall in southern Jerusalem. That mob attack was caught on video (below).

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Israeli police did nothing in the wake of that incident. Instead, Israel’s hasbara machinery jumped into action, denying there was a pervasive problem with racism. The Jewish Agency’s online hasbara chief Avi Mayer even mounted a publicity stunt where he went to Malha Mall to distribute candy. That didn’t solve the problem, did it?

We do not know it, but it is now a fair question to ask if any of the youths who were allowed to get away with the violence at Malha Mall in March were in “Zion Square” last night.

Getting away with murder

While Palestinians are often held in Israeli jails for years without charge or trial, the Israeli “justice” system is notoriously easy on Israeli Jews who murder Palestinians whether in hate crimes or war crimes.

Just last week two Israeli soldiers were given sentences of 45 days in jail for killing Rayah and Majda Abu Hajaj, a mother and her daughter, who were waving white flags during Israel’s 2008-2009 attack on Gaza.

In July, an Israeli youth was given a short sentence of 8 years for the brutal, unprovoked racially motivated killing of Hussam Rawidi.

Then there is Ziad Jilani, who was shot and killed by Israeli border police officers on an East Jerusalem street in broad daylight two years ago without any reason. His American wife Moira, the mother of their two young children,spoke to The Electronic Intifada in May about her so far fruitless effort to bring Ziad’s killers to justice.

Such tolerance has a long history in Israel, symbolized by the notorious case of Colonel Issachar Shadmi who commanded the troops who murdered 48 Palestinian civilians in the unprovoked massacre at Kafr Qasim in 1956. Shadmi was fined just one penny.

These are just a few cases. There are thousands more cases of Palestinians killed or injured, where no investigation is ever opened, and no justice is available for the victims.

Is it any wonder that there is so much racist violence when Israeli leaders constantly spew hatred, racist crimes and war crimes go unpunished, and Israeli children are taught to view Palestinians and Arabs as less than human from the very earliest age?

 

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ISRAEL/PALESTINE PREPARING FOR A ONE STATE SOLUTION

August 17, 2012 at 10:40 (Crime, Ethnic Cleansing, Hate crimes, Israel, Racism, zionist harassment)

 Anyone that advocates a ‘One State Solution’ for Israel/Palestine should ask themselves one  question …. why should Palestinians have to live within the same borders as these beasts?
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Dozens of Jewish youths attack 3 Palestinians in suspected Jerusalem lynch

One of the Palestinians was seriously wounded and hospitalized in intensive care; eyewitness: Today I saw a lynch with my own eyes.

By Nir Hasson
Jerusalem's Zion Square.
Jerusalem’s Zion Square. Photo by Emil Salman

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Dozens of Jewish youths attacked three young Palestinians in Jerusalem’s Zion Square early on Friday morning, in what one witness described as “a lynch” on Facebook.

One of the Palestinians was seriously wounded and hospitalized in intensive care in Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem. Acting Jerusalem police chief, General Menachem Yitzhaki, gas set up a special team to investigate the incident and detain the suspects.

The three were allegedly attacked by youths shouting “Death to the Arabs” at them, as well as other racial slurs. One of them fell on the floor, and his attackers continued to beat him until he lost consciousness. They subsequently fled from the scene.

Within a short period of time rescue volunteers and Magen David Adom rescue services arrived on the scene, and found the victim with no pulse and not breathing. After a lengthy resuscitation attempt, he was transferred to hospital.

Writing on her Facebook page, one eye witness decribed the attack as a lynch: “Its late at night, and I can’t sleep. My eyes are full of tears for a good few hours now and my stomach is turning inside out with the question of the loss of humanity, the image of God in mankind, a loss that I am not willing to accept.”

“But today I saw a lynch with my own eyes, in Zion Square, the center of the city of Jerusalem ….. and shouts of ‘A Jew is a soul and Arab is a son of a –,’ were shouted loudly and dozens (!!) of youths ran and gathered and started to really beat to death three Arab youths who were walking quietly in the Ben Yehuda street,” the witness wrote.

Source

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THE HUMANITARIAN SIDE OF ZIONISM….

August 16, 2012 at 07:43 (Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Corrupt Politics, Hasbara, Israel, Just Plain Disgusting, Racism)

(Now you see it …. now you don’t)
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While Eritrean asylum seekers cannot be deported due to the risk they would face upon return, the new Prevention of Infiltration Law enables Israel to keep them in prison indefinitely. 
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Pretty pathetic reasoning, eh?
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A scorching desert jail for asylum seekers, with no way out

While Eritrean asylum seekers cannot be deported due to the risk they would face upon return, the new Prevention of Infiltration Law enables Israel to keep them in prison indefinitely. New arrivals, most having faced rape and torture en route to Israel, are presently being held in a prison in the desert, and nobody knows how long they’ll be kept there. A visit to Ketsiot prison.

By Yonatan Berman*

Almost three years ago, I wrote about how much I hate the journey to Ketsiot prison; how frustrating it is there, even for the fleeting visitor who knows that at the end of the day he’ll be free and safe in Tel Aviv. I wrote about the despair of the asylum seekers, who are locked up for days on end, not knowing until when. Although I know the right thing to do is to visit again and again, as often as possible, lately I have been doing so less and less, for my own peace of mind. Because even though in the three years since I poured out my bitterness most of the Prison Service staff was replaced, the situation in this desert prison has only deteriorated.

But sometimes there is no choice, like yesterday, when Mesi, Yuval and I were forced to return to that awful place. The thermometer in Yuval’s car read 39 degrees Celsius as we were getting out. We waited in the central courtyard of the growing prison. To the north (or so at least it seemed to me), they had already added two-story buildings to hold additional asylum seekers. The detainees are currently imprisoned under the new Prevention of Infiltration Law, which allows for the administrative detention of immigrants without legal status for an unlimited period of time (or for a minimum period of three years).

In the two months since the authorities began to use this draconian new instrument for detention, not one person has been released. The Detention Review Tribunal, which has judicial oversight over the detention of asylum seekers under the Prevention of Infiltration Law, has become the law’s rubber stamp. In practice, there are no circumstances under which the new law enables the release of detainees, so all that is left for the judges to do is to see detainee after detainee, to hear his or her story, and to inform him or her that they have no option but to approve the detention order.

The heat in the courtyard is unbearable, and one can only imagine what it feels like in the prison wings, and particularly for the women and children, who are held in tents during this scorching summer. Most of the detainees are Eritrean. “They’re not refugees,” we’re told by the interior minister and the prime minister, who in the same breath admit that we can’t deport them, because deportation would place their lives at risk. The camp, therefore, is not meant for the “illegal immigrants” awaiting deportation, but intended to exhaust and discourage the asylum seekers who can’t be deported.

The camp exhausts and discourages us, too. Most of the Eritreans here endured many months of severe torture at the hands of the smugglers in Sinai, in order to extort money from their families. Most of the Eritrean women were brutally raped, repeatedly, by the smugglers in Sinai. The first asylum seeker we interview recounts being cuffed at the hands and feet, electrocuted, having cigarettes extinguished on his arms, being hung by his arms and burned with white hot iron rods. These descriptions are familiar, from conversations with other asylum seekers, from aPhysicians for Human Rights – Israel report and from the Hotline for Migrant Workers’ report. Yet this firsthand account terrifies us. But when we get to the third interviewee who tells us the same horror story, I’m already whispering to Yuval, “Compassion fatigue.” Yuval nods. Our psychological defenses have kicked in.

The High Court of Justice recently recommended that the State set out guidelines addressing the rights of Eritreans, whom it is forbidden to deport. The State’s response, which finds its expression in Ketsiot prison, is: “They have no rights; eternal detention for all.” If once we could take comfort in the fact that the Eritreans we met in prison fell under the “temporary protection” policy, and would be released soon, today we have no words to comfort those we meet. All that is left for us to say to them is that we don’t know how long they will wait in this boiling hell, and that we know how hard it is for them to be there. (Although we don’t really know, and apparently never will know quite how hard.)

One can assume that in the interior and justice ministries, they will read these lines and smile with satisfaction, saying that this was their very intention – for people to know they won’t be released for years, and to send a message: “Don’t come.” Yet anyone with even the slightest experience and understanding of migration issues knows that’s not how it works – walls, prisons, starvation and degradation have never deterred immigrants, whether they’re refugees or economic migrants. These instruments are good for satisfying public opinion thirsty for a heavy hand, and for shaking off a sense of idleness, but they do not prevent migration. The Interior Ministry is already boasting about the drop in entries into Israel in the last month, but if you want to know the reason for this ebb, you had better turn your attention to what’s happening in the Sinai Peninsula and Libya. This ebb has nothing to do with Bibi and Yishai’s magic tricks.

Around the prison, a huge area is being prepared for construction of a new facility, which will be able to hold thousands more asylum seekers. Making the desert bloom, indeed – bloom that is entirely evil. When we leave after a depressing day, we photograph the construction going on around us for awhile and travel north, leaving the men and women we met behind, where they’ll be staying for quite a while longer.

Joseph Carens wrote, over two decades ago, that citizenship in the “West” today is comparable to feudal privileges – a hereditary status that improves one’s chances in life. For those not born with this status, it is almost impossible to acquire. Like hereditary feudal privileges, this is very difficult to justify.

When I return to my two-room apartment in Tel Aviv after the visit to Ketsiot, it really does feel like a palace.

 

*Yonatan Berman is the director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the Academic Center of Law and Business. This post originally appeared in Hebrew on the blog Laissez Passer, and was translated by Caroline Beck.

2 Comments

THE AFRICAN NAKBA*

August 14, 2012 at 10:28 (Civil Rights, Corrupt Politics, Hasbara, Israel, Nakba, Photography, Racism, zionist harassment)

*Nakba; For the Palestinians it is an annual day of commemoration of the displacement that followed the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948 …. details HERE
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Refugees uprooted again in bid to expel foreigners

Text by: Rami Gudovitch*
All photos by: Activestills.org

South Sudanese refugees board a bus taking them to Ben Gurion airport, where they will be deported to South Sudan. Arad, Israel, June 17, 2012. (Photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

“Do you know, Rami, that I was in ‘Mustafa Mahmoud?’” Regina, a 12-year-old South Sudanese girl, asked me after she and her family were released from 27 days in an Israeli prison. Her father, a tall man with noticeable facial scars from the torture he underwent in Khartoum, affirms her words, handing me an old newspaper clipping from Egypt, dated 2005. I cannot read Arabic, but I can see her mother, laying on the ground, surrounded by police officers in one photo, and the little body of a child covered by a white sheet in another. “This was my cousin. He was killed by the police there,” adds Regina.

“Mustafa Mahmoud” refers to a massacre committed by the Cairo police during a peaceful demonstration by South Sudanese refugees near the UNHCR offices. The massacre sparked the first wave of African refugees fleeing to Israel, crossing the Sinai desert and reaching the promised land.

For many of the members of the community, the years in Israel were the only calm years in their lives. For many of the children, these years were happy childhood years, spent living in multicultural neighborhoods, going to schools, learning a new language, meeting school teachers and staff who care for the well-being of any child regardless of gender, color, or nationality.

A representative of the Authority of Population and Immigration checks South Sudanese people boarding a bus for Ben-Gurion Airport. The refugees were gathered in a raid conducted by Oz Unit. Arad, Israel, June 17, 2012. (Photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

South Sudanese children board a bus taking them to Ben-Gurion Airport for deportation. Tel-Aviv, Israel, June 17, 2012. (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

In recent years, I found myself lucky enough to be part of a small multicultural community in south Tel Aviv, and some of my closest friends were members of the small South Sudanese community. I heard so many life stories that reminded me of tales often told to me as a child by old family members, who escaped Europe in the 30s—now told by children who fled to gain peaceful years in a country where they were beginning to feel at home in. Now, this little universe has been destroyed.

The government’s deportation order, following the referendum in South Sudan that led to the independence of the country, caught us all unprepared. It is not that the South Sudanese did not wish to return to their country. In fact, at the peak in 2009, there were around 1,900 members of community residing in Israel. By in July 2011, when the county’s independence was declared, only some 900 members remained in Israel. Most of the single young men returned to South Sudan, wishing to help build the new country.

The ones who remained in Israel were mostly families with children. News from South Sudan portrayed a harsh picture of a land unprepared to offer a future for children or for other weak groups in society. It has the highest mortality rate for newborn babies and nursing mothers in the world. A girl of 14 has a higher probability of dying while giving birth than of attending school. One million people suffer from food shortages, and the World Food Organization has warned that the country will continue to suffer major disasters in coming years.

A South Sudanese child in his home fills a bottle of water on the morning of his deportation. Tel Aviv, Israel, June 17, 2012. (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

South Sudanese refugees receive travel documents at Ben-Gurion Airport, Israel, June 17, 2012. (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

With this dreadful reality in mind, we—a small group of representatives from different human rights organizations—opened a public campaign against the deportation to South Sudan. We were successful in getting the facts to the media, and for awhile we were convinced that we could stop it. But after attorney Anat Ben-Dor’s appeal to the district court against the deportation order was rejected, nothing could stop it besides the good will of the government. And that was the last thing we could expect.

Indeed, the deportation order went into effect. On the very next day, after a public statement by Interior Minister Eli Yishai requiring all South Sudanese to register for a “voluntary return” within a week, the Oz Unit of immigration officers began arresting South Sudanese in the streets of major cities in Israel.

For us, the Israeli friends, teachers, and neighbors of the community, these days are beyond comprehension. The streets are being emptied out, racist Israelis commit daily attacks against refugees, more and more of our beloved friends are sent to a country with very low chances of survival.

Walking down the streets of the neighborhood these days I can see only voids—circles of missing people, people who were sent like animals, hunted by immigration police, forced to sign that they “want to leave” or else, then detained and pushed out.

South Sudanese refugees board a bus in Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station taking them to Ben-Gurion Airport, Israel, June 25, 2012. (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

South Sudanese refugees at Ben-Gurion Airport, Israel, June 25, 2012. (Photo: Yotam Ronen/Activestills.org)

Israeli activists support South Sudanese during the second deportation, Tel Aviv, Israel, June 25, 2012. (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

South Sudanese children board a bus for Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, Israel, July 2, 2012. (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.Org)

South Sudanese women board a bus for Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, Israel, July 11, 2012. (Photo: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)

In recent few weeks, I have experienced some of the most horrifying moments of my life. Among the refugees arrested was Regina’s family. Upon their release, while waiting for their deportation, Regina’s 7-year-old sister Mer described to me how “the guards were at first good, at least some of them. But as we asked more questions and they lacked answers, they become more and more evil.”

Local activists protest against the deportation and attempt to disrupt the departure of the bus, arguing that conditions in South Sudan are not safe enough for the refugees to be returned there. Tel Aviv, Israel, July 25, 2012. (Photo: JC/Activestills.org)

After failing at all fronts to stop the deportation, what we are left with are the voices of the recent deportees in South Sudan. Presently, dozens of children and adults from among the deportees suffer from malaria. Dozens of others suffer from typhoid. Many have been robbed—the property they gathered in Israel did not arrive. Many children are hungry, and every week we send, with the new deportees, pita bread, chocolate, and cereal to the families and children, at their request. The returnees have no water or electricity in their huts. The money they collected or received when they were deported is running out. There are no jobs, and schools are extremely expensive. In general, many just don’t see any future opportunities ahead of them.

The question many of us are left with is why did they—or rather we—have to do it? I witness the brutal pressure Israel is presently putting on the few families that still remain, mostly for serious humanitarian, medical or social needs involving many life threatening conditions. To me it seems like the State of Israel decided to carry out an ethnic cleansing campaign. Like a Passover house-cleaning, they decided not to allow a single South Sudanese to remain. The associations that this act brings to mind are dreadful. But that is the only explanation I can find for the systematic and obsessive persecution—carried out in seven well-planned deportations—of the South Sudanese community.

A woman holds a solidarity sign in Hebrew that reads: “The people demand to stop the deportations,” at the seventh deportation to South Sudan. Tel-Aviv, Israel, August 8, 2012. (Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

A representative of the Authority of Population and Immigration checks the names of South Sudanese people that are being deported. Tel-Aviv, Israel, August 8, 2012. (Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

woman trys to calm her child during the seventh deportation to South Sudan at Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station, Israel, August 8, 2012. (Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

A South Sudanese girl holds a sign she wrote in Hebrew to her classmates, who came to say goodbye. The note reads: “Axsosa you are my best friend in school.” Tel-Aviv, Israel, August 8, 2012. (Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

And if this is accurate, then I deeply feel that the people involved, actively, or by simply closing their eyes, will be punished. In fact, they are already being punished by not being able to look in the mirror and see a human figure. I cannot imagine a worse punishment than that.

Rami Gudovitch, an Israeli activist, says goodbye to a child who was under his care in recent years. Tel-Aviv, Israel, August 8, 2012. (Photo: Shiraz Grinbaum/Activestills.org)

*Dr. Rami Gudovitch is a social activist working with migrant communities in southern Tel Aviv and a philosophy instructor at the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya.

Source 

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RELATED….. (click on link to access report)

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Israel to provide ‘temporary housing’ in prison for migrant children

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OBAMA’S BIGOTED SYMPATHIES

August 8, 2012 at 13:33 (Islamophobia, Israel, Racism, Terrorism)

In 2010, when he traveled to India, Obama refused to visit the main shrine of Sikhism, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, because he did not want to be photographed wearing a Sikh headcovering and be confused for a Muslim by illiterate Americans back home.

Obama was pandering to racists then, as he is despicably doing now. The difference now is that blood has been spilled in Wisconsin, and the time for this kind of cowardice ought to have passed.

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Obama more sympathetic to Israelis killed in Bulgaria than to Sikh Americans murdered in Wisconsin

Submitted by Ali Abunimah 

President Barack Obama during a phone call from Air Force One on 1 August 2012.

 (White House Photo)

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As soon as news came of a bomb attack that killed Israeli tourists in Bulgaria on 18 July, US President Barack Obama condemned it in the most strident terms – even though, then, as now, the perpetrator and his motive remain unknown.

Obama’s statement left no room for ambiguity:

I strongly condemn today’s barbaric terrorist attack on Israelis in Bulgaria. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and injured, and with the people of Israel, Bulgaria, and any other nation whose citizens were harmed in this awful event. These attacks against innocent civilians, including children, are completely outrageous.The United States will stand with our allies, and provide whatever assistance is necessary to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators of this attack. As Israel has tragically once more been a target of terrorism, the United States reaffirms our unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security, and our deep friendship and solidarity with the Israeli people.

Such sentiments at the killing of innocent people are understandable. But why has Obama so far refused to condemn in equally strong terms Wade Michael Page’s murderous rampage that killed six people at the Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin yesterday?

Obama won’t call it “terrorism”

In one White House statement yesterday, Obama called the Wisconsin massacre “a senseless act of violence.” In another, he called it “a tragic shooting.”

It has since been confirmed that the FBI is treating the attack as “domestic terrorism” and it has now become clear that the killer has a long history of white supremacist views and activism.

Yet in further comments today, Obama treated the attack as just another (all too awful) mass shooting as happened in Aurora, Colorado on 20 July.

As ABC reports:

President Obama said today that he is “heartbroken” by the deadly shooting at the Sikh religious center in Wisconsin and renewed his call to reduce violence across the country.

“I think all of us recognize that these kinds of terrible tragic events are happening with too much regularity for us not to do some soul searching and to examine additional ways that we can reduce violence,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office when asked about the gunman who killed six people in Oak Creek Sunday.

The president made similar remarks after the deadly shooting in Aurora, Colo., last month, but is not proposing any additional gun controls. “What I want to do is bring together law enforcement, community leaders, faith leaders, elected officials at every level to see how we can make continued progress,” he said today.

Obama reluctant to point to racism

Obama continued, according to ABC:

“We don’t yet know fully what motivated this individual to carry out this terrible act. If it turns out, as some early reports indicated, that it may have been motivated in some way by the ethnicity of those who were attending the temple, I think the American people immediately recoilagainst those kinds of attitudes,” the president said. “It will be very important for us to reaffirm once again that in this country, regardless of what we look like, where we come from, who we worship, we are all one people and we look after one other and we respect one another.

The president’s comments came as he signed the “Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act” at the White House.

Page was a veteran of the United States Army.

Silence in the face of racist incitement

Obama’s shameful timidity in forthrightly condemning what happened in Wisconsin is hardly surprising. After all, this is a president with a “kill list” for Muslims including Americans.

But even for show, could he really not muster the kind of outrage he did for Israelis, for his own fellow citizens?

Is it appropriate that Obama condemned what happened to Israelis in Bulgaria as “barbaric terrorism” while he is merely “heartbroken” at the slaughter in Wisconsin, as if he is a mere bystander and not the president of the United States?

When Obama declares that “we are all one people” who must look after one another regardless of what we look like, it is he who needs to practice what he preaches.

Obama has been consistent in his refusal to confront the racism unleashed by his candidacy and subsequent election that came atop post-9/11 Muslim-bashing and dehumanization of people of color inherent in warmongering abroad.

His reponse to accusations that he’s Muslim is never ‘so what if I were?’ but always along the lines of ‘no, no I’m a Christian like you.’

Two summers ago, right-wing activists invented the fake “Ground Zero mosque” controversy to generate fear and hatred in the run-up to the 2010 mid-term elections. What I always found more frightening than the noise from Islamophobic clowns was the silence of elected officials, especially Democrats who purport to uphold liberal and inclusive values.

With their silence, they gave consent, and the crescendo of racist fearmongering – that targets more than just Muslims – has continued to rise.

Neither Sikhs nor Muslims are collectively guilty

Sikhs were among the first victims of the racist backlash after 9/11. It is common to say they are mistaken for Muslims who are the real targets of such attacks. This is wrong. Muslims are no more collectively guilty than Sikhs or any other group. But more importantly violent racists are not interested in distinctions.

In 2010, when he traveled to India, Obama refused to visit the main shrine of Sikhism, the Golden Temple in Amritsar, because he did not want to be photographed wearing a Sikh headcovering and be confused for a Muslim by illiterate Americans back home.

Obama was pandering to racists then, as he is despicably doing now. The difference now is that blood has been spilled in Wisconsin, and the time for this kind of cowardice ought to have passed.

Written FOR

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RACISM AND IGNORANCE ARE WITHOUT NATIONAL BOUNDARIES

July 28, 2012 at 11:18 (Corrupt Politics, Guest Post, Ignorance, Iran, Israel, Racism, zionist harassment)

Racism and ignorance know no nationality
By Nima Shirazi
Iranian government officials often make bigoted, ignorant statements – but so do many in Israel and the US
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Ehud Barak reportedly described the Shia concept of taqiyya as giving leaders ‘permission to lie’ [GALLO/GETTY]
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In late June, when Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi spouted anti-Semitic comments at a Tehran forum marking International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, his offensive rhetoric was rightfully ridiculed and condemned. Rahimi declared his belief that the Talmud, the central holy scripture of Judaism, “teaches [Jews] how to destroy non-Jews so as to protect an embryo in the womb of a Jewish mother”, and also to “destroy everyone who opposes the Jews”. Jews, according to Rahimi, “think God has created the world so that all other nations can serve them”.

Midway through his speech, Rahimi decided to distinguish between Jews who “honestly follow the prophet Moses” and the Zionists who are “the main elements of the international drugs trade”.

“While the Zionists utilise the narcotics to devastate other societies,” Rahimi stated, “they safeguard their own society against such drugs” – noting incorrectly that “you cannot find a single addict among the Zionists. They do not exist”.

Commentary such as this should be called out for what it is: racist, ignorant, and appalling. Yet, Rahimi’s tirade was also disingenuously elevated to the level of an Iranian government official statement, and used as “proof” that the Iranian government was not merely vehemently anti-Zionist, but venomously anti-Semitic.

So if the bigoted comments of government officials are evidence of a country’s inherent backwardness and barbarism, one must wonder what all those who were so offended by Rahimi’s comments about the holy scripture and belief system of the Jewish people have to say about the comments and actions on July 17 of Israeli Knesset Minister and Meir Kahane devotee Michael Ben Ari.

‘The King’s Torah’

After all Knesset members received a new edition of the New Testament, gifts from of a Christian Israeli publisher, Ben Ari (who is also leading thestaggeringly racist pogroms against Africans living in Israel) reacted bytearing the Bible to shreds and throwing it in the trash, making sure to have the episode photographed. He then proudly sent the pictures to the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv .

Ben Ari was quoted as declaring: “This abominable book [the New Testament] brought about the murder of millions of Jews in the Inquisition and autos-da-fé.” He added: “This is a provocation by church missionaries and there is no doubt that this book and those who sent it belong in the garbage can of history.”

The Jewish Daily Forward, in its report on the incident, appropriately asked: “Does one dare imagine what the reaction would be from Jews if a non-Jewish Knesset member, or perhaps a politician in another country, publicly destroyed and disposed of a volume of Talmud?”

For all the condemnations of Rahimi’s statement regarding Jewish doctrine, it seems that no one has attempted to trace the comment back to its possible (and, I stress, possible) origin in the much publicised writings of Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, an Israeli settler who lives in the illegal West Bank colony of Yitzhar near Nablus, whose ultra-fundamentalist Od Yosef Hai Yeshiva has received a massive amount of funding from the Israeli government.

In November 2009, Shapira published The King’s Torah, which - according to Ha’aretz - “describes how it is possible to kill non-Jews according to halakha (Jewish religious law)”. Ma’ariv reported that “the book contains no fewer than 230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guide for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew” and states that, as non-Jews are “uncompassionate by nature”, attacks against them curb “evil inclination”.

Shapira’s book lists hundreds of sources from the Bible and religious law, as well as quotes from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, one of the fathers of religious Zionism, and Rabbi Shaul Yisraeli, a dean of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva, the stronghold of national-religious Zionism located in Jerusalem.

According to Shapira and his co-author Rabbi Yossi Elitzur: “In any situation in which a non-Jew’s presence endangers Jewish lives, the non-Jew may be killed even if he is a righteous Gentile and not at all guilty for the situation that has been created … When a non-Jew assists a murderer of Jews and causes the death of one, he may be killed, and in any case where a non-Jew’s presence causes danger to Jews, the non-Jew may be killed…”

Even innocent civilians and children are determined to be legitimate targets for murder. “One must consider killing even babies,” the book says, “because of the future danger that will be caused if they are allowed to grow up to be as wicked as their parents.”

Recently, an investigation into allegations of racism, bigotry and calls to violence found within The King’s Torah was officially closed.

Islamophobia has also reached high levels within the US government.

Asleep to the danger

In October 2009, US congressmen Sue Myrick (Republican-North Carolina), Paul Broun (Republican-Georgia), John Shadegg (Republican-Arizona) and Trent Franks (Republican-Arizona) issued a call for a federal investigation into the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for placing interns in the Committees on the Judiciary, Intelligence and Homeland Security. The call was triggered by a book named Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamise America, by Dave Gaubatz, an anti-Islamic activist who posed as an intern for CAIR in an attempt to prove that the group is trying to infiltrate Congress.

Myrick also wrote the forward to Gaubatz’s book, in which she avers that radical Muslim terror agents live among us and are “carrying out their subversive plan”. She continues: “America is asleep to the danger that confronts us. Since the 1960s there has been a concerted effort on the part of radical Islamists to infiltrate our major institutions.”

Myrick writes of “their secret plot to take over the United States from within”, establish “an impressive infrastructure of support”, and “to infiltrate all areas of our society” in order to replace the constitution with “Sharia law”. She urges government officials “to stop hiding behind political correctness and keep the American people informed” about “the threat to our sovereignty and our way of life”, concluding: “We Americans must wake up before it is too late!”

When asked about potential “domestic security threats” back in 2003, Myrick replied: “Look at who runs all the convenience stores across the country.”

In 2011 in Yorba Linda, California, an US-Muslim group held a fundraising event for relief work in the US, attended by local families and their young children. Outside, an appalling anti-Muslim protest raged. Among the speakers addressing the crowd were California Congressmen Ed Royce and Gary Miller and Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly.

Pauly described the Muslim charity event as “pure, unadulterated evil” and after boasting that her son was serving in the Marine Corps, said: “As a matter of fact, I know quite a few Marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.”

Royce told the rabid, hateful crowd: “I’m gonna say this too, a big part of the problem that we face today, is that our children have been taught in schools that every idea is right, that no one should criticise others’ positions no matter how odious, and what do they call that? They call that ‘multiculturalism’. And it has paralysed too many of our fellow citizens to make the critical judgment we need to make to prosper as a society.” One need only think about where Anders Breivik’s views on “multiculturalism” led him to see how dangerous this sort of talk actually is.

Miller, who said he was there to support the protest and hand out American flags, told those gathered: “I am proud of you, I’m proud of what you’re doing, I’m proud of this country and what we believe in, and let’s not let people who disagree with us destroy it.”

Net of suspicion

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Inside Story Americas – The US military’s ‘anti-Islam classes’

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The country Miller is so proud of is the one in which Peter King holds congressional hearings encouraging racial profiling, inciting Islamophobia, and promoting vicious stereotypes of an already targeted, terrorised, and tormented minority community. It’s the nation that reacts to theperceived threat of Muslim-American terrorism “by casting a wide net of suspicion over entire communities based solely on their religious beliefs, race, or national origin” and conductssecret, illegal surveillance of those communities.

It’s where the “future leaders” of the most powerful and aggressive military on the planet have been taught ”that a ‘total war’ against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists” and that “using the lessons of ‘Hiroshima’ to wipe out whole cities at once” and “targeting the ‘civilian population wherever necessary’” may be required. It’s a country whose secretary of defence hand-delivered to the former president a daily report of critical, classified military intelligencewith cover sheets featuring Biblical quotes to emphasise the Crusades-like effort of US soldiers in the Middle East.

Iranian Vice-President Rahimi’s comments about the Talmud are unacceptable. So are Ben Ari and Shapira’s interpretations of both the Torah and New Testament. The same goes for Binyamin Netanyahu’s incessant repetition that the Iranian government is inherently “irrational” due to its faith, and Ehud Barak’s misunderstanding of the Shia concept of taqiyya, which he erroneously described to CNN‘s Christiane Amanpour in an April interview as “a kind of permission, from heaven, to the leader to lie [and] mislead partners as long as it’s needed in order to reach the objective, the political objectives of the movement, the group or the tribe or the clan or the nation”.

So next time the media overreacts to something blurted out by some Iranian official, let’s make sure to remember that Iranians certainly have no monopoly on ignorance. There’s plenty to go around.

Written at the request of AlJazeera …… Our Blogging Community has officially gone Global.

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RAMADAN PRAYERS FORBIDDEN IN ISRAEL

July 27, 2012 at 09:53 (Civil Liberties, Extremism, Hasbara, Israel, Just Plain Disgusting, Occupation, Oppression, Palestine, Racism, Settler Violence, zionist harassment)

 
Witnesses: Police raid Al-Aqsa, arrest Imam
Worshipers poured into al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s
Old City for the first Friday prayers of the holy month of Ramadan.
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BETHLEHEM  — Israeli police raided the Haram al-Sharif compound late Wednesday, forcing worshipers performing late night prayers to leave, official news agency Wafa reported.

Witnesses said the Imam leading the prayers was arrested, while the compound was closed until dawn. Young men faced restrictions on entering Al-Aqsa to pray on Thursday morning, they added.

Meanwhile, a Mosque guard told Ma’an that more than twenty settlers entered the grounds of the Haram al-Sharif overnight Wednesday, accompanied by Israeli forces.

Nearly 100,000 Muslim worshippers poured into al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City for the first Friday prayers of the holy month of Ramadan, an Israeli police spokesman said.

Jews revere the compound as the site of their Biblical Temple. Surviving foundations of its Western Wall are now a focus of prayer.
Reported AT

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