July 30, 2018 at 14:38 (DesertPeace Exclusive, Israel's Shame, Occupation, Palestine)
Our dear heroine’s first taste of freedom …
A bittersweet moment in reality ….
After eight months in Israeli prison, 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi returned home on Sunday morning to a hero’s welcome in her village of Nabi Saleh, in the central occupied West Bank. Arm in arm with her father Bassem and mother Nariman, who was also released on Sunday along with her daughter, the teenager broke down in tears as she was embraced by her younger brothers, extended family, and fellow residents of Nabi Saleh.
July 29, 2018 at 11:41 (DesertPeace Exclusive, Israel's Shame, Palestine)
Jail bars won’t silence the truth! Ahed Tamimi is FREE
Images by Latuff
Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi has been released from Israeli custody following eight months of incarceration. The renowned teen became a significant figure of the Palestinian resistance after standing up to Israeli forces.
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From Yahoo ….
Palestinian teenager Ahed Tamimi left prison Sunday after an eight-month sentence for slapping two Israeli soldiers, an episode captured on video that made her a symbol of resistance for Palestinians, a prison service spokesman said.
Assaf Librati told AFP Tamimi, 17, and her mother, who was also jailed over the incident, were being driven by Israeli authorities from a prison inside Israel to a checkpoint leading to the occupied West Bank, where they live.
“They just left the prison,” Librati said.
Israeli authorities provided conflicting information on which checkpoint they were being taken to.
They were first expected to arrive at a checkpoint near the Palestinian city of Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, but there were later indications they would be taken to a crossing at Rantis.
Both Tamimi and her mother were sentenced to eight months in an Israeli military court following a plea deal over the December incident which the family said took place in their yard in Nabi Saleh in the West Bank.
Video of it went viral, leading Palestinians to view her as a hero standing up to Israel’s occupation.
Her now-familiar image has been painted on Israel’s separation wall cutting off the West Bank. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has praised her and social media has been flooded with support.
But for Israelis, Tamimi is being used by her activist family as a pawn in staged provocations.
They point to a series of previous such incidents involving her, with older pictures of her confronting soldiers widely shared online.
Many Israelis also praised the restraint of the soldiers, who remained calm throughout, though others said her actions merited a tougher response.
– Embassy protests –
Tamimi was arrested in the early hours of December 19, four days after the incident. She was 16 at the time.
Her mother Nariman was also arrested, as was her cousin Nour, who was freed in March.
Israel’s military said the soldiers were in the area on the day of the incident to prevent Palestinians from throwing stones at Israeli motorists.
The video shows the cousins approaching two soldiers and telling them to leave before shoving, kicking and slapping them.
Ahed Tamimi is the most aggressive of the two in the video.
The heavily armed soldiers do not respond in the face of what appears to be an attempt to provoke rather than seriously harm them.
They then move backwards after Nariman Tamimi becomes involved.
The scuffle took place amid clashes and protests against US President Donald Trump’s controversial recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Relatives say that a member of the Tamimi family was wounded in the head by a rubber bullet fired during those protests.
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Ahed’s first statement upon release …..
“My freedom is incomplete without the freedom of other detainees who stood beside me and supported me throughout my detention and I hope they will be freed soon.”
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Followed by a press conference
July 29, 2018 at 11:38 (Apartheid, Israel's Shame, Palestine, People's Art)
The irony continues …..
First read THIS post
Palestinian officials said Israeli border police arrested the two artists who crafted the large painting, now on display at a separation barrier in Bethlehem
Artists painting a mural depicting Palestinian teen Ahed Tamimi. AFP
Israeli border police on Saturday arrested two Italian graffiti artists who were painting a mural of a jailed Palestinian teenager, Ahed Tamimi, on the Israeli separation barrier in Bethlehem in the West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.
Tamimi, now 17, was sent to prison for assault after being filmed kicking and slapping an Israeli soldier late last year, when she was 16. She is due to be released on Sunday.
Tamimi became a heroine to Palestinians after the Dec. 15 incident outside her home in the village of Nabi Saleh was streamed live on Facebook by her mother and went viral.
An Israeli police spokesman did not return a call for comment.
The Palestine Liberation Organization said on Twitter that Israeli forces had arrested the two Italian artists and a Palestinian who was with them.
July 26, 2018 at 15:53 (International Solidarity, Palestine, People's Art)
The mural appeared on the separation wall in Bethlehem just days before the 17-year-old activist is due to be released.
Italian artist Jorit Agoch paints Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi on the Israeli separation wall, July 25, 2018. | Photo: Reuters
An unknown artist has painted a mural of Palestinian resistance icon Ahed Tamimi on the Israeli separation wall in Bethlehem, just as her father said she might be released on Sunday after almost eight months of unjust imprisonment.
Media outlets had speculated about the artist’s identity, some describing him as Palestinian, but he has since come out as Italian street artist Agostino Chirwin. Also known as ‘Jorit Agoch,’ he has a reputation for hyper realistic murals of activists, politicians and other campaigners.
While painting the 13-foot mural, Chirwin obscured his identity by keeping a black cloth wrapped around his head.
Ahed Tamimi’s portrait was painted next to a mural of dead Palestinian nurse Razan Al-Najar, in Bethlehem. July 25, 2018. Photo | Reuters
Ahmad Arabi, an activist from the Popular Resistance committee in Bethlehem, said the mural was part of the preparations to celebrate Tamimi’s release.
Tamimi, 17, recently told Egyptian news outlet Al-Ahram Gate she had completed her high-school diploma in prison and that she was getting ready to apply to the Law or Political Science faculty.
The streets of Bethlehem, Nabih Saleh, the West Bank and occupied Palestine in general are readying to welcome Tamimi, who was sentenced to eight months in prison after a video of her slapping and yelling at an Israeli soldier who had entered the family home went viral.
Agoch is known for his disctinctive, hyperrealistic murals. July 25, 2018. Photo | Reuters
Tamimi’s 15-year-old cousin, Mohammed Tamimi, had been shot in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet a day before. Tamimi was charged with aggravated assault, obstructing the work of soldiers, and incitement on January 2.
“The Israeli authorities usually do not inform the detainee or his family of the date of release, but I think she will get a decision” to reduce her detention by 21 days, said Bassem Tamimi, her father.
July 25, 2018 at 15:38 (Palestine, United Nations)
“They’re still denying we are a state, we walk like a state. We quack like a state. Therefore we are a state.”
The Palestinian flag is raised outside UN Headquarters in New York during the 70th session of the UN General Assembly on September 30, 2015 (Raphael Ahren)
The “State of Palestine” will reportedly preside next year over the largest bloc of developing nations at the United Nations.
Palestine — which is not a member state of the UN but has observer state status — was chosen to head the so-called Group of 77, a consortium now consisting of 134 nations that often speaks in one voice at the UN General Assembly, starting January 1, 2019, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
“We will be negotiating on behalf of 135 countries,” Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour told the paper, including his own delegation in the count.
The group was originally founded in 1964 with 77 countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Thailand and India. Over the years it has grown to include countries such as South Africa, Qatar, Cuba, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Singapore, and Angola. It represents some 80 percent of the world’s population.
Egypt currently holds the group’s presidency until December 31.
The Foreign Ministry in Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon expressed misgivings about the move.
“The goal of the Group of 77 originally was to facilitate the economic advancement of underdeveloped nations,” he told The Times of Israel. “It is unfortunate that it will now become a platform for spreading lies and incitement. This will not promote the G-77’s goals, and encourages the Palestinians to not engage in negotiations for peace.”
The UN General Assembly in 2012 voted overwhelmingly in favor of granting Palestine “non-state observer status.” Three years later, the GA also voted to allow the Palestinian flag to be raised outside the UN’s iconic building on New York’s East River.
Israel and the US were among the few countries opposing these moves, arguing that unilateral moves ostensibly advancing Palestinian statehood were counterproductive to efforts to reach a lasting peace agreement.
Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador, hailed the fact that his delegation will soon preside over one of the largest blocs as a diplomatic success.
July 25, 2018 at 13:43 (Cartoons, DesertPeace Exclusive, Humour)
All sad, but unfortunately true
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July 24, 2018 at 12:46 (Apartheid, Israel, zionism)
I have always maintained that there is no such thing as a ‘liberal zionist’ …. Here’s proof of that.
But the truth is, the Nation State bill is not overturning the applecart. In fact, it’s reaffirming some of the key ideas that always lay at the heart of the Zionist project, bringing about the correct balance of “Jewish” and “democratic” that has always been the secret sauce that makes Israel work.
Watch this short video prepared by Rabbi Brant Rosen
Israel’s new Nation State Law, which passed last week with the aim of affirming the country’s Jewish character, has come under considerable fire.
The new legislation is made up of mostly symbolic declarations that reaffirm the symbolism, calendar, and meaning of the “Jewish State.”
And it took about eleven seconds before critics went ballistic.
Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of Knesset and the former aide to PLO leader Yasser Arafat, declared “with shock and sorrow the death of democracy.” He was joined in his condemnation by other opposition members who shouted “Apartheid!” as they tore up the law defiantly. The chief legal counsel of ACRI, the Israeli equivalent of the ACLU, agreed. “This is a racist law,” he pronounced.
Nor was the umbrage limited to Israeli activists. The New York Times published no fewer than four different pieces, each more critical than the last.
While the Times stopped short of calling the bill racist, one of its pieces opened with an outright falsity, claiming that the law declared that “only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country”— when in fact the law explicitly says “national self-determination,” something entirely different from individual freedoms (more on that later).
In its main coverage of the new legislation, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief David Halbfinger gestured towards a different, widespread criticism of the bill, casting the bill as just another step in Israel’s inexorable march into darkness.
“Wrapping up its business before a long summer recess, the right-wing, religious coalition that rules Israel’s Parliament moved aggressively this week to push through its polarizing agenda, piling up points at the expense of its already weakened foes,” he wrote.
But the truth is, the Nation State bill is not overturning the applecart. In fact, it’s reaffirming some of the key ideas that always lay at the heart of the Zionist project, bringing about the correct balance of “Jewish” and “democratic” that has always been the secret sauce that makes Israel work.
And a closer look at the criticism the bill has engendered will reveal it to be nothing more than prefabricated outrage from Israeli opposition parties, American Jewish liberals, and the usual chorus of anti-Zionists and anti-Semites.
To be sure, each of these groups have different core interests and each believes different things. But all have become totally reflexive in their rejection of anything coming out of the current government. It is, in fact, hard to imagine that in the current political climate, there could have been any version of the Nation State bill coming from this government that would not have set off alarms.
Before diving in, a note about who this article is for, and who it’s not for. If you have been vociferously denouncing the law but have not read it yet (it’s a quick read); if you believe it doesn’t matter what’s in the law because its passage by a Right-Wing Israeli Government qualifies it for your fury; if you are receiving a salary or other compensation to criticize Israel; or if you simply despise Israel—this piece is not for you.
But if you’re a fair-minded person who’s troubled by the noise surrounding the law, or if you’ve read it but don’t understand why it needed to be passed, I have a lot to tell you.
o, what’s actually in the law? When you look more closely, it’s really not very controversial — or at least, it shouldn’t be.
Most mundanely, it ratifies the Hebrew calendar as the official holiday schedule of the State of Israel and it establishes Independence Day, Memorial Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day as holidays, too. It also reaffirms Israel’s special connection to diaspora Jewry. None of this is new.
Among its more talked-about provisions, however, was the clause about the Hebrew language, which for the first time was made into Israel’s sole official language, a status it has shared with Arabic up til now.
Critics have said that in the new bill, Arabic has been “demoted.” And at a highly abstract level, they are right.
And yet, the law is careful to clarify that the Arabic language will not only be granted “special status,” but also that “this clause does not harm the status given to the Arabic language before this law came into effect.”
Now, the primacy of Hebrew in the Jewish State is an obvious matter, and has been since Israel’s inception. It is the language of public discourse, of Knesset deliberations (including speeches of Arab members of Knesset), of the nightly news, of the culture, of the courts, of university classes, and of the laws themselves. Ratifying this is something quite ordinary, which democratic countries like Spain and France have done long ago.
Furthermore, the clarifying clause makes it impossible for the demotion of Arabic to be anything other than symbolic. To turn this into “the end of democracy” is nonsense.
Similarly offensive to critics was the clause according to which “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”
This, too, is almost synonymous with the very idea of a Jewish state. What could a right of “national” self-determination to non-Jewish communities inside Israel possibly mean other than ending the Jewish state as such?
More to the point, what democratic country on earth offers national self-determination to twenty percent of its citizens? With few and minor exceptions, the U.S. gives no minorities any such right. In Israel, such a right is something the Jewish majority has never granted and never promised, and never could have or should have, since day one.
This clause is not a violation of democratic principle, much less “racist” or “Apartheid,” so long as individual rights continue to be guaranteed. And they are, through the other Basic Laws that make up Israel’s constitutional reality.
Similarly baffling were objections to the law’s determination that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.” No doubt, in the context of today’s politics, anything about Jerusalem smells like jumping on the Trump-Bibi bandwagon.
Yet there is nothing at all new in it. The hope that some may have of internationalizing the Western Wall or dismantling the sprawling urban neighborhoods of Gilo and Pisgat Ze’ev has never been more than a fantasy.
At the same time—and this is crucial—the law does not define Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries, thereby leaving fully open the possibility that, when the geopolitical time is right, major Arab neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem like Isawiyyeh, Silwan, or Jabel Mukkaber could become part of a future Palestinian State by simply redefining the city’s map.
What many in the West fail to understand is the role that Jerusalem has played in Israel’s self-definition since well before the Six Day War that led to the city’s unification under Israeli rule. There’s a reason why the IDF risked a lot to take the strategically unimportant eastern Jerusalem in 1967, and why Jerusalem, but not the West Bank, was effectively annexed in 1980.
Naomi Shemer’s song “Jerusalem of Gold”—one of the most iconic songs in Israeli history—became popular before the city was reunified. Regardless of international recognition, and in the face of global disregard, Israel declared Jerusalem its capital within two years of its independence, and has insisted on it ever since.
Finally, critics were angered by the bill’s declaration that “Jewish settlement” be “a national value” that the state will continue to promote.
Once again, distilling reality from projected fear is crucial here. The word being translated as “settlement” is hityashvut, which to any Israeli ear refers more to the Galilee and the Negev and the history of building new Jewish communities a century ago across the country than it does to the West Bank.
Yes, it is true that a major coalition partner, The Jewish Home, would love to claim a victory for the settlers of Judea and Samaria; that’s politics. But it’s the courts, not the politicians, who will interpret the law; and there is nothing in the phrasing that even hints at the West Bank; historically charged terms such as “in the Land of Israel” are nowhere to be found.
Again, you can decide that Jews should never have been encouraged to settle in their historic homeland, and the idea of a place on earth that continues to encourage it—even offering them citizenship and financial benefits for doing so—is something you can’t live with.
But then you really shouldn’t call yourself a Zionist, or even a supporter of Israel, in any meaningful sense. Building a Jewish homeland—through sovereignty, through culture, and through settlement—has always been the core purpose of the country. Should it really not appear in its Basic Laws?
Nor does anything in the law make Israel unusual for a European-style democracy. France, a country that granted equal rights to all a century before America freed its slaves, nonetheless has a single national language. The United Kingdom has an established church, as well as a hereditary monarchy. Germany will put you in prison if you deny the Holocaust.
Limits on pristine and abstract rights, especially the right to feel equally central to the narrative of the democracy in which you live, are acceptable because they are limited, and because people are complicated and human, with a real history that inevitably influences the core principles of their social contract.
Even democracies have a right to enshrine in law the things that make them unique.
To suggest that Israel alone shouldn’t be allowed to is self-evidently absurd, and smells a lot more like political noise-making than honest criticism.
It’s true that Israel’s Nation State law was passed by a right-leaning national government. But a much more meaningful way to look at it is in its historical and constitutional context.
This law has been in the works at least since the early 2000s, a time when two major forces arose that threatened the Zionist project as it was historically understood. The first was the rise of “post-Zionism,” a small but passionate intellectual-political movement that explicitly repudiated the idea of a “Jewish state” and sought to transform the country into a “state of all its citizens” by stripping it of any connection to Jewish history, peoplehood, or symbolism.
The second, more important factor was the “constitutional revolution” led by then-Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, which recognized earlier Basic Laws as having constitutional status, and which culminated in the passing of two new Basic Laws (Basic Law Human Dignity and Liberty, and Basic Law: Freedom of Employment) that established the core rights of Israeli citizens, Jewish or not.
These basic laws were not at all a bad thing. The fact is, Israel is both a Jewish state and a liberal democracy, and basic freedoms must be protected for all.
But defenders of Zionism correctly noted that such laws would have to be balanced with similar protections of Israel’s flag and anthem and the original vision of the country as not just a refuge for oppressed Jews but also as the embodiment of the aspirations of the Jewish people.
Much of what we see in the law is the direct result of the big debates that happened back then—debates I was directly involved in.
The bottom line is that Israel is the Jewish State, and this law tells us what that means, just as other Basic Laws tell us what goes into its democratic foundations.
You can freely dislike the idea of an ethnically or historically based democracy for a specific people. But know that it’s not fascism, it’s not the rise of ethno-national-populist-alt-right-MAGA-Bannonism. That’s just a category error—one that a lot of people really want you to make right now.
Israel’s Nation state bill reflects rather, the constitutional reality of nearly every European democracy, and European democracy has always been a little different from American democracy.
If you have any interest in understanding what’s really a fascinating and historic development in a country far away, the one I actually live in, tune out the noise.
July 22, 2018 at 17:09 (Apartheid)
The ‘Only Democracy’ in the Middle East has changed its tune officially
Image by Latuff
July 22, 2018 at 15:58 (Apartheid, Associate Post, Collaboration, Collective Punishment, Israel's Shame, Oppression, Palestine)
In a Washington Post article on Thursday 19 July, President Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East advisor Jared Kushner, US Zionist Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and special Mideast adviser Jason Greenblatt, another ardent Zionist, sought to overlook Israel’s real crimes against humanity inflicted repeatedly on some two million helpless Palestinians languishing under a Nazi-like siege imposed and maintained by Israel.
Image by Marina Grechanik.
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Finally, the Israeli Knesset puts it into words/law and is now de jure as
well as de facto racist/apartheid "Jewish nation-state" . The new "law"
violates international treaties and norms (including the 1976 International
Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid).
But on the bright side no one can now defend Israel as a "democracy" since
it is now not by practice alone but by clearly worded "law" that it is an
apartheid racist state for and by the Jewish people (imagine if a similar
law about "whites" or "christians" was instituted in any other country).
See the following links
israel-adopts-racist-jewish-nation-state-law
israels-nation-state-law-apartheid-is-a-process/
israel-passes-controversial-nation-state-bill
Images by Latuff
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July 19, 2018 at 15:47 (Censorship, Civil Liberties, Corrupt Politics, Israel's Shame)
Israel can now ban critics of the occupation from giving presentations to school children, according to a law passed Monday night by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. Known as the“Breaking the Silence” law.
Image by Latuff
Israel can now ban critics of the occupation from giving presentations to school children, according to a law passed Monday night by Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. Known as the“Breaking the Silence” law, the bill passed with a majority of 43 votes in favor and 24 against.
The bill was submitted by the right-wing Education Minister Naftali Bennett’s party and states individuals and groups that seek to “inflict harm upon IDF soldiers” are barred from entering educational institutions “when this activity is of a nature that undermines state education goals, or is such that endeavors to inflict harm upon IDF soldiers who are a consensus in Israeli society.”
The legislation specifically targets the the left-wing Israeli group Breaking the Silence (the organization’s name was in the official working title of the bill) which collects and publishes testimony from former Israeli army soldiers about the military’s human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The group regularly conducts tours inside the West Bank city of Hebron as well as lectures in Israeli schools.
One of the law’s clauses expands the reach to prohibit persons or groups who “initiate legal proceedings outside Israel against IDF soldiers for an action carried out in the course of their military duty.”
Haaretz reported lawmakers added this section in an eleventh hour amendment. It impacts people like Hagai El-Ad, the director of the left-wing Israeli NGO B’Tselem, which was the subject of previous legislation to strip human rights groups of the tax-exempt status.
In 2016 El-Ad asked members of the UN Security Council to sanction Israel for its settlement activity. Because of that speech, El-Ad will likely be prohibited under the new law from giving lectures inside Israeli educational institutions.
B’Tselem spokesperson Amit Gilutz told Mondoweiss he plans on ignoring the law. Gilutz said he is “certain all of our outreach activities to the Israeli public will continue regardless of this or another law. It is our basic duty.”
In a joint statement released by B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence, El-Ad responded,
“Control over the Palestinians requires control over Israel’s perceptions. Controlling Palestinians involves incessant violence, and the attempts to address Israeli opposition to this violence requires oppressing those who oppose and labeling them ‘enemies from within’,” El-Ad said. “When the occupation will finally end, this piece of legislation will not be worthy even of a footnote.”
In protest of the law members of Breaking the Silence took to the Knesset on Tuesday where they held a lecture for Israeli students. Ynet reported from event, quoting from Ido Even-Paz, the Breaking the Silence activist who led the session, “[T]he Breaking the Silence Law is only the harbinger of the actions being taken to silence opposing voices,” adding that “similar laws that will pass in the future will only raise the barrier against anyone who dares to resist. Now it requires us to be brave and fight.”
July 18, 2018 at 10:57 (Activism, DesertPeace Exclusive, Gaza, Humanitarian Aid Flotilla)
No updates available yet on the fate of those ‘captured’ by the Israeli pirates
Gaza bound with cargo of medicine. Godspeed our hearts are with you.
You MUST join the protests to end the illegal siege on Gaza!
July 17, 2018 at 17:47 (Cover Up, Israel's Shame, Palestine)
Rarely seen archival footage accompanies memories and accounts of forgotten Palestinian cities – highlighting the catastrophic effect the creation of Israel in 1948 had on them.
Haifa, Nazareth, and Jaffa have all been overshadowed by Tel Aviv, but in their day each of the Palestinian cities had magnificent commercial and cultural ability.
“Palestinians born after 1948 don’t realise what they have missed,” says writer Raef Zreik.
“We only realise what we’ve lost when we hear people’s stories about Palestine before 1948. People who spent the night at to clubs and movies in Haifa, who spent the night there and the next day took taxis from Al-Hanateer Square to go back home at the American University in Beirut. You could do what you liked. We not only lost our cities in 1948, but also our open relationship with the Arab world.”
Made for Al Jazeera Arabic in 2011, Lost Cities of Palestine provides a rare opportunity to see Palestine as it was in the 30s and 40s and learn about the everyday life and culture of urban Palestine before 1948.
July 17, 2018 at 15:23 (Blogging, Censorship, Corrupt Politics, Turkey)
I received the following email this morning … (in part)
A Turkish authority has issued an order to block your WordPress.com site: https://desertpeace.wordpress.com/
As a result of this order, your site is now inaccessible for Internet visitors originating from Turkey. They will instead see a message explaining why the content was blocked.
Visitors from outside of Turkey are not affected.
The banning of DesertPeace follows the banning of Carlos Latuff’s Twitter account in Turkey…
Here are some reasons why Turkish officials deemed the ban necessary …
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There are many more examples, but the above will give you a good idea.
July 17, 2018 at 11:29 (Boycott Israel, International Solidarity, Ireland)
Thank you Ireland!
Ireland becomes the first country ever to pass a law boycotting goods from illegal Israel settlements in Palestine!
Image by Carlos Latuff
The Irish senate has voted in favor of a bill banning the importation of products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory, paving the way for the country to become the first EU nation to enforce a boycott of Israeli settlement goods.
The bill, which passed on Wednesday in the upper house of the Irish parliament, the Seanad, will need to make its way through more Seanad votes and then the lower house before becoming law.
The bill passed with 25 lawmakers voting in its favor, 20 against it and 14 abstaining.
Palestinian officials and activists supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement hailed the move as courageous.
Hanan Ashrawi of the PLO Executive Committee released a statement after the vote saying she was “truly honored to extend our sincere appreciation of and deep gratitude to the Seanad Éireann who took a courageous and principled stand in support of peace, justice, and morality.”
Ashrawi praised the “historical friendship and solidarity between both the Palestinian and Irish peoples,” adding that the legislation bears great significance for Palestine, particularly in the context of Ireland’s firm commitment to defending social justice, equality and freedom and the rights of the oppressed, including the Palestinians, a people in captivity and exile.”
She went on to implore other EU countries and the international community to follow in Ireland’s path “to hold Israel accountable and to act on their declared principles and policies by banning all settlement products and beginning a process of de-occupation in Palestine.”
While the bill calls only for the boycott of the importation of goods produced in Israeli settlements, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed it “gives a tailwind to those who seek to boycott Israel and is utterly contrary to the principles of free trade and justice”. The bill does not ban all Israeli products.
According to the Irish Times, the EU has estimated that settlement goods make up about one percent of the €50 million annual imports from Israel to the country, at €500,000.
The Irish government, however, estimated in 2012 that the figure stood closer to €1.5 million.
The Irish Times highlighted that many fruits and vegetables imported from Israel come from the settlements, specifically Medjool dates. The dates are farmed by settlers in Jericho, famous in Palestine for its dates, on occupied Palestinian land.
According to the newspaper, if enacted into law, regulating settlement goods may prove difficult for the country, given reports of Israeli settlement companies bypassing EU labeling regulations by bringing products from settlement farms to processing facilities inside Israel proper, from where they are labeled and shipped out.
“By using such tactics, exporters can present their goods as ‘made in Israel’, thereby enjoying preferential access to the EU’s markets,” the Irish Times reported.
The Israeli government, which slammed the bill as “populist, dangerous and extremist,” has increased its measures to combat the BDS movement, as it has expanded to include companies, universities, and religious institutions around the world divesting from organizations complicit in Israel’s violation of Palestinian rights.
Despite previous pressure from Israel on Ireland to kill the legislation, the Irish lawmaker behind the bill, Frances Black, said in a statement prior to the vote that “trade in settlement goods sustains injustice”.
“In the occupied territories, people are forcibly kicked out of their homes, fertile farming land is seized, and the fruit and vegetables produced are then sold on Irish shelves to pay for it all,” she said, adding that “settlements are war crimes, and it’s time for Ireland to show some leadership and refuse to support them.”
July 16, 2018 at 14:41 (Activism, DesertPeace Exclusive, International Solidarity, Occupation, Palestine)
Another group of young American Jews just walked off their Birthright trip, to meet with a Palestinian family and see the reality of the Occupation for themselves, a reality Birthright actively hides
Birthright has refused to show us the truth about the occupation’s impact on Palestinians, instead asking us to visit a site operated by a far-right settlement organization. We’ve decided instead to go meet with the Sumarin family, a family that has lived in East Jerusalem under threat of eviction for years to learn from them and hear their story.
More HERE on FacBook page
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And HERE on Twitter
July 15, 2018 at 13:36 (Corrupt Politics, Dump Trump!, Humour)
“I think they like me a lot in the UK.” – Donald Trump, before his London visit.
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July 15, 2018 at 13:15 (Activism, Associate Post, Collective Punishment, Corrupt Politics, DesertPeace Exclusive, Photography)
Waiting for global warming to melt I C E
New York City played host to the biggest ever gathering of homeland security officials and private security corporations. They will be coming from all over the country to plot how they can place even more of our hermanxs in cages and concentration camps — and how they can continue to profit at all of our expense.
Say it loud, and say it clear: ICE is not welcome here!
Photos © by Bud Korotzer
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July 12, 2018 at 15:53 (Corrupt Politics, Humour, Poetry)
Norman Finkelstein offers his support for Alan Dershowitz as he has become a social refugee in elite resorts across the Northeast due to his support for the Trump Administration.
Alan Dershowitz, on the run, on vacation, by Katie Miranda.
First they came for me in Martha’s Vineyard,
But I was in Nantucket.
Then they came for me in Nantucket,
But I was in Cape Cod.
Then they came for me in Cape Cod,
But I was in Bar Harbor.
Then they came for me in Bar Harbor,
But I was in the Hamptons.
Then they came for me in the Hamptons,
But I was in … Coney Island.
Coney Island!
I no longer cared what befell me.
Not quite the same ….
July 10, 2018 at 15:53 (Corrupt Politics, Genocide, Israel's Shame, Palestine)
You’re just not supposed to say it too overtly. The liberals, and especially the goyim, may start getting the wrong ideas.
A week ago, the Israeli Ministry of Education held a conference in Jerusalem for the state’s religious education sector (Ynet reports, Hebrew, English here). Education Minister Naftali Bennett was also present. The theme was “speaking about the values of the Jewish family in 2018, about education to healthy sexuality, modesty, feminism, values and Zionism.”
On the stage was an aging terrorist, Moshe Zar, a former founding member of the Jewish-terrorist movement “Jewish Underground” (in 1980’s), who said the following:
“I am known for saying ‘Build a house, it’s like you wiped out a hundred Arabs. Build a settlement, it’s like you wiped out tens of thousands of goyim [‘non-Jews’]’. That’s the truth”.
His words were applauded by a considerable number of the public, including the settler standing beside him, Yael Shevach, the widow of rabbi Raziel Shevach, who was murdered in January on a road in the occupied West Bank outside the settlement he lived in.
Israeli journalist David Sheen has provided the video with subtitles here.
The immediate context within the conference was about settlement in “Judea, Samaria and Gaza”. After a video was screened, Zar told about an attack that had occurred in a settlement and said that construction of the settlements is “our sweet revenge”.
“Our revenge, the revenge of all of us, will be only in the settlement of Eretz Israel” [the land of Israel].
Of course, when such genocidal euphemism comes out in mainstream press, you have to do some damage control. Thus, the Ministry of Education issued a statement distancing itself from Zar’s expressions:
“The Ministry of Education and head of the state-religious education condemn decisively Moshe Zar’s egregious words, which were said on his behalf alone. We are speaking of an unfitting expression which does not reflect the spirit and policy of the Ministry of Education, which acts a lot to promote all of the sectors in the Israeli society, including the Arab sector.”
Notice a few things here, which make this statement highly questionable:
First, state-religious education is exclusively Jewish. The claim of promoting other ‘sectors’ does not relate to the state-religious education sector itself. And this is the eighth consecutive year the education ministry held this conference. Second, how could the ministry not know of Zar’s ideology? He is known for it – he literally boasts of it (“I am known for saying”…). In the ’80s, he was part of “a terrorist group that planted bombs in the cars of Arab mayors and plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem,” per the NYT. After the killing of his son Gilad in 2001 (who was a security officer of the Israeli settler Samaria Regional Council) by Palestinian militants, Moshe Zar vowed that he would establish six settlements in his son’s memory (a settlement for each letter in his name in the Hebrew spelling). Rabbi Raziel Shevach was murdered outside a settlement that Zar established in 2002 – Havat Gilad. In 2015, Zar expressed some regret for his past terrorist activities and objected to the ‘tag price’ revenge terrorism attacks, but nonetheless remained an avid proponent of the settlement enterprise. Even if the Ministry viewed Zar as a kind of ‘moderate settler’ who was no longer an ‘active terrorist’, still, they could not claim to not have known about his ideology, in which he replaced the bomb with the settlement, as it were. (Let it nonetheless be noted that Zar was buying up private Palestinian land for settlement since 1979, that is, simultaneously with his terrorist activity).
Then Zar issued his own statement to Ynet, clarifying that he was merely ‘misunderstood’:
“Of course I referred with my words only to Arab terrorists who killed my son Gilad and the rabbi Raziel Shevach and many thousands of Jews. I live with Arabs in co-existence from my birth, out of the belief that in mutuality it is possible to live in peace.”
This one is disingenuous on several levels. First of all, Zar did not refer merely to Arab ‘terrorists’. To suggest that this is naturally to be understood (“of course”) is like suggesting that the category, Arabs, equals terrorists. Second, he did not merely say Arabs, he added to it “goyim” (non-Jews). This added notion, which appears very calculated and even meticulously self-cited, brings this way beyond the mere tit-for-tat supposed context. It is very clearly a Judeo-centric notion of ‘Judaization of the land’ with genocidal undertones.
And then there is of course Zar’s claim that since his birth (1938) he lives in ‘co-existence’ with ‘Arabs’. Zar was not only a member of the Jewish Underground, he was also a member of Ariel Sharon’s Unit 101 which committed the notiorious Qibya Massacre in 1953. Some ‘co-existence’ that is.
So this is, once again, one of those somewhat uncomfortable slips of the tongue, in which someone says something that is just a touch too overt, and you have to do damage control and tell people to move on. Like when Education Minister Bennett said that he “killed many Arabs and there’s no problem with that”.
But notice what Zar was really saying, even in the conservative, watered down interpretation: Israeli settler-colonization of what Zionists consider ‘Eretz Israel’, is a form of bureaucratic genocidal “sweet revenge”.
You’re just not supposed to say it too overtly. The liberals, and especially the goyim, may start getting the wrong ideas.
July 9, 2018 at 16:04 (Gaza, Israel's Shame, Palestine)
The siege is not irrelevant to a legal determination of Israel’s right to use force—be it proportionate or disproportionate, moderate or excessive, lethal or nonlethal—to prevent demonstrators from breaching Gaza’s perimeter fence.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) is among the leading guardians of human rights in the world. Sari Bashi is HRW’s Israel/Palestine Advocacy Director. She can lay claim to an impressive academic pedigree (BA, Yale; JD, Yale), and she co-founded the important Israeli human rights group Gisha. It thus cannot but depress that Bashi is so wanting in elementary moral and legal judgment when it comes to the people of Gaza.
Shortly after the Israeli massacre in Gaza on 14 May 2018, Bashi posted a commentary under the title, “Don’t Blame Hamas for the Gaza Bloodshed.”
The UN has pronounced Gaza unlivable, while Sara Roy of Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies has written, “Innocent people, most of them young, are slowly being poisoned by the water they drink.” Is it not a tad unseemly, not to say unsettling, for the representative of a respected human rights organization to coach Israel how to stay within the letter of the law—before resorting to bullets, you must first try “tear gas, skunk water, and rubber-coated steel pellets”—while it’s herding two million people, half of them children, in an unlivable space in which they are slowly being poisoned?
To be sure, Bashi is not oblivious to the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza caused by Israel’s blockade. But she makes out no legal nexus between the effects of the siege and Israel’s right to use force. Instead, she dwells on the apparently paradoxical outcome that whereas Israel imposed the blockade to weaken Hamas, it has in fact “helped Hamas grow in strength.”
But the siege is not irrelevant to a legal determination of Israel’s right to use force—be it proportionate or disproportionate, moderate or excessive, lethal or nonlethal—to prevent demonstrators from breaching Gaza’s perimeter fence. For brevity’s sake, I would want to touch here on one basic, uncontroversial point. (A forthcoming article by Jamie Stern-Weiner and this writer parses the more nuanced legal issues.)
It is a tenet of international law that no state can resort to forceful measures unless “peaceful means” have been exhausted (UN Charter, Article 2). This principle is as sacred to the rule of law as the analogous Hippocratic Oath, primum non nocere (first, do no harm), is to medicine. Now consider the situation in Gaza. Nearly all competent observers agree:
· Israel has imposed an illegal blockade on Gaza;
· The illegal blockade has created a humanitarian catastrophe;
· The impetus behind the protests at the perimeter fence is the illegal blockade, and their objective is to end it.
It is to be noted that even Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu concedes the last bullet point. “They’re suffocating economically,” he observed, “and therefore they decided to crash into the fence.”
If Israel wants to protect its border, then it need not resort to either lethal or nonlethal coercion. It merely has to lift the siege. Israel’s refusal to take this preliminary peaceful step puts it in double breach of international law: the imposition of an illegal blockade and the unlawful resort to armed force when peaceful means have not been exhausted.
It is cause for wonder why Bashi doesn’t see that Israel’s resort to any force against Gaza demonstrators cannot be legally justified. It is cause for dismay that she counsels Israel to use nonlethal repression in order to corral Gaza’s inhabitants in a hellhole, instead of counseling it, not just as a matter of political expedience but also as a matter of law, to end the siege. If, by way of comparison, police repeatedly enter a man’s premises in flagrant violation of the law, the homeowner finally resists, and the police try to subdue him, would a human rights representative be advising the officers to use graduated force?
Were the siege of Gaza lifted, it would put Israel on the right side of the law as it yielded the double dividend of enabling the people of Gaza to breathe and terminating the purported threat to Israel’s border. In other words, it would render all talk of force superfluous.
Desertpeace 