ANNEXATION CANNOT LEAD TO PEACE

June 17, 2020 at 14:11 (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, DesertPeace Exclusive, Germany, Israeli Elections, Occupied West Bank, Palestine)

A one-sided Israeli foreign policy is a shame for Germany

Our responsibility includes (not!) The security of Israel

 

Maas-los overrated

By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

 

In view of the impending annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, the “Auschwitz Minister” in Israel is trying not to attack and not to go wrong with his tentative criticism of the announced breach of international law by the Netanyahu government, which could only be happy about this diligence. As a precaution, no photo ops and no press conferences were scheduled for which he would meet the “Auschwitz Minister” with his Germany Star of David friendship mask, although he could be sure that Germany would be reluctant to criticize, and neither in the case of annexation nor sanctions nor recognition of the State of Palestine would be expected.

Has the “Jewish apartheid regime” ever adhered to “international law”?

The “Auschwitz Minister” only ventured out of cover with the plea that an annexation was not compatible with international law. Has the Jewish apartheid regime ever adhered to “international law”? Even when he made his first visit to Netanyahu, the petty foreign minister had spoken to neither the Palestinians nor the illegal construction of Jewish settlements. What can you expect from a minister who went into politics “because of Auschwitz”? Instead of taking Auschwitz to heart as a warning and taking action against every injustice and protest, it actually inspired him to forgive the “Jewish occupier friends” and even to reinforce them in their course, which violated human and international law.

The “Auschwitz Minister” even let his “Jewish friends” show him

The “Auschwitz Minister” even let his “Jewish friends” show him and had more than pretended reasons prevented him from starting his planned visit to the Palestinian Prime Minister Muhammad Shtajeh. The Netanyahu regime had decreed that if Maas went to Ramallah, he would have to quarantine the corona pandemic before he was allowed to enter Ben-Gurion Airport again – hardly for “medical” reasons. After all, diplomatic colleagues, journalists and thousands of Palestinian workers travel freely back and forth. The corona cases and infected numbers in the occupied West Bank are also significantly lower than in the “Jewish state”, where numerous school closings have already occurred due to an increase in the numbers.

Once again, “German-Jewish” relations came at the expense of the Palestinians

It was a very bad sign that the “Auschwitz Minister” had his visit agenda dictated by the Netanyahu regime and did not personally visit the Palestinian Prime Minister. Did he also have a “Germany-Palestine” mask in his luggage? Once again, the “German-Jewish” relations came at the expense of the Palestinians. And that is a shame and proves the “Maas-los” one-sided and unreliable German foreign policy. A video conference call from Amman between the rightly disappointed Palestinian Prime Minister Shtajjeh – Maas with a “German-Jordanian” mask – and the Jordanian Foreign Minister Ajman Safadi was certainly not a substitute for the visit to Ramallah, but further proof.

As Israeli newspapers like Haaretz have just reported, Maas should have blushed in the face. He made “all honor” to German politics, as he acted as “Netanyahu’s poodle”.

It is no longer enough to be “concerned”

Instead, he should have told the Netanyahu regime unequivocally that if Germany takes over the EU Council Presidency on July 1, 2020, it will no longer be enough to be “concerned” about annexation, settlement construction and international law crimes, but to act unequivocally and also in front of them sanctions that were long overdue would not shy away. The EU is not particularly squeamish when it comes to threatening sanctions against Russia, Turkey, Iran or China. If the federal government announces full-bodiedly that one is aware of the fact that Germany “is aware of its responsibility for the European Union” and also in line with Trump (!) As a slogan “wants to make Europe strong again”, then it succeeds EU foreign policy chief Borell does not determine.

Freeing of wrong holocaust policy

The EU, including Germany, should finally free itself from wrong holocaust policies that tolerate the Zionist crimes of the “Jewish state” and support them with weapons, cooperation and, among other things, with 1.4 billion euros for the EU research program Horizon. It was precisely these “grants” that made this occupation policy possible. If the EU does not finally agree on sanctions, it will remain the toothless tiger forever, so “Maas-los” overestimates its alleged values.

A one-sided Israeli foreign policy is a shame for Germany

A German foreign policy, led by Merkel and Maas from the responsibility of the past to protect Jewish life, makes politics, but one-sidedly Israeli responsibility, is a shame for Germany.

Our responsibility includes (not!) The security of Israel

Chancellor Merkel acts as usual when, in her weekly podcast, in a greeting to the American Jewish Committee (AJC), whose annual Global Forum meeting takes place for the first time virtually in Berlin because of Corona, “in the knowledge of our responsibility” indicates that “We” do not want to and cannot be neutral and stand up for democracy and human rights in Germany as well as in the world. Our responsibility also includes standing up for the security of Israel, which commands “our” rationale. “Jews should feel free and safe” and “use us” for understanding between peoples, which can only be achieved through understanding and a negotiated two-state solution ”. So much for the Chancellor, in her greeting. Not a word about German responsibility towards Palestine.

Fits seamlessly into the “Maas-los” overrated visit

This fits seamlessly into the “Maas-los” overrated visit to the “Jewish state”, if he and government officials already say in advance that the “Jewish state” will not be sanctioned and that he will not pursue politics with threats, no ” Wanted to distribute price tags ”and only wanted to get information during his visit.

Annexation day will finally force a change of policy towards the “Jewish state”

It remains an unfulfilled hope that this July 1st, the announced annexation day and the beginning of the German presidency, the EU, will finally force a change in policy towards the “Jewish state”.

The EU and its helpless “lack of strategy”

This is also where the EU’s foreign minister, Josep Borell, comes in, who must finally implement a “more robust strategy” against Israel. When is there a better opportunity for this than now? Israel’s announcement of further annexations, the unhindered construction of settlements, the shameful move of the US embassy into illegal Jerusalem, which is contrary to international law. It is no longer enough to simply hear “extreme concern” from Brussels or the UN. This testifies to helpless lack of strategy. The Zionist apartheid regime can conclude that its ruthless occupation and international law crimes are paying off internationally because the reactions to these violations of the law and taboos have no major impact. You can deduce from it.

What still has to happen before sanctions are finally implemented?

Why is any sanction policy avoided in Germany and Brussels against the “Jewish state” and its decades of illegal occupation and land-grabbing policies? What still has to happen before sanctions are finally used as an effective instrument? The “Jewish state” is occupying Palestinian land with impunity and is expelling, robbing, arresting, murdering and harassing the Palestinian population. Israel violates international law, keeps more than 2 million incarcerated in a concentration camp in Gaza following a genocide during its attacks on the helplessly attacked Gaza. Thousands of Palestinians are imprisoned in illegal administrative detention, without rights or access to lawyers or families. While murderous Jewish perpetrators are quickly released, Palestinians cannot hope for leniency, but always remain the enemies and terrorists. They are tortured and detained in inhumane conditions, including women, children and the elderly, left alone by Europe and the world. The national law already created facts that alone gave Jews all rights and disenfranchised minorities. The EU was silent even then, although it would have been reason enough to react then.

This dangerous colonial state is spreading like an octopus

The influence of the “Jewish state”, which is the “only” democracy in the Middle East and a stable bulwark to the west, is being supported by the West, the EU and the USA. This dangerous colonial state spreads like an octopus – from Africa to China to Russia. It seems that the Holocaust is paralyzing the world to find the right answer to the “Jewish apartheid state”. This is a dangerous development that certainly does not promote the understanding of democracy. On the contrary. This policy promotes “Christian-Jewish hypocrisy”, which unites in hatred of Islam. The reservations and suspicions against Muslims should make us all deeply concerned and strengthen us in the fight against racism. It’s not anti-Semitism that’s the threat today,

Negotiations with these colonial occupiers impossible

So how can you get the EU to finally take decisive action against the “Jewish state”? The Meuse announcement seems to be unsuitable for using “new impulses” to revive the talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Negotiations are not possible with these colonial occupiers and robbers. It is well known that Israel rigorously rejects a state of Palestine. Then what should be negotiated? On the “final solution” to Palestinian ethnic cleansing?

The omens are bad with the “State Reason Chancellor” and the “Auschwitz Minister”

The signs are extremely bad when Berlin, the “Auschwitz Minister” and the “State Chancellor” take over the presidency. But isn’t Germany’s claim to “special” responsibility and adhering to the impossibility of a “two-state solution” helping to ensure that there can never be a just solution for Palestine?

With obedience ahead, there must finally be an end

The EU finally has a duty here! With obedience ahead, there must finally be an end. Neither the illegal claim to a “right to exist” for this “Jewish state” may be supported, nor a German reason for the “Jewish state” is compatible with “our values”. Jewish life in Germany should be protected as well as Muslim, Christian or atheistic, which our constitution unequivocally commands. But under no circumstances should a “Jewish occupying state” be guaranteed security by Germany.

 

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HATE AND RACISM WERE MAIN ISSUES IN ISRAELI ELECTION

March 4, 2020 at 13:41 (Associate Post, DesertPeace Exclusive, Israeli Elections)

By denying the legitimacy of the Israeli Palestinian Arabs, he sweetened his election campaign and made racism hopeful.

The prime minister has made it clear that Israel is not a state of all its citizens.

Hate campaigns and racism during election campaigns 

By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

 

The “Jewish State” experienced its third election in a year this Monday. A choice between right-wing, far-right and fascist. With targeted hate campaigns, Zionist politicians, with Netanyahu at the head under corruption charges, rely on this campaign aid.

Corruption is not unusual in the “Jewish state”

As it seems, after about 90% of the current vote count, “Bibi” seems to have hit the right tone for his “chosen” electorate with this “Palestinian Arab hatred”, since he is only two seats in front of a coalition majority for a government formation. This requires one or two defectors from another right-wing party. The accusations of corruption and the impending corruption process were not an issue for his voters, after all, corruption in the “Jewish state” is not a peculiarity but commonplace. However, it is the first time that an incumbent prime minister has voted, and is not thinking of resigning, because he cleverly tried to dismiss all blame and blamed everything on unfair campaigns. He is one of his populist friends, like Trump and Orban. If it is not enough and he no longer sees a country with a transitional government, then he will certainly not hesitate to force his weary but willing electorate into a fourth election until he unscrupulously pushes through his goals to the bitter end.

However, there is still a tiny glimmer of hope that the man who boasted of making sour lemonade from sweet lemonade still has to worry about whether he is entitled to form a government as a politician accused of corruption.

No resistance against the annexation policy and racist apartheid

While the blue and white camp will probably only get 55 votes, the new “left” block of the three parties, including Labor and Meretz, only achieved seven seats. The only electoral alliance for a more liberal and leftist policy was the Common List of Palestinian Parties, which this time had fifteen seats. The slogan “Common List for a Common Future” was also intended to attract a few Jewish voters. After all, there is no other resistance or opposition to the annexation policy and racist apartheid.

A license for political defamation that allows everything

In fact, Bibi campaigned not only against “Arabs and for Jews”, but above all against the judiciary and “hostile” media, following his friend and role model as US President Trump. He did everything right and, it seems, was successful. A license for political defamation that allows everything!

By denying the legitimacy of the Israeli Palestinian Arabs, he sweetened his election campaign and made racism hopeful. His sedition policy brought him the hoped-for success. But it will be very bad if after this dirtiest of all election campaigns pressure does not finally build up, which initiates the freedom of Palestine and no longer unconditionally and amicably supports this Zionist state terror regime. Germany and Europe must finally send this strong signal.

Even with his threat to wipe out Iran, he is on the same line as friend Trump, who sided with his side and who has finally proven with his “Middle East Deal” that the Palestinians can no longer expect anything from the United States to have. How did this symbiosis between Trump and Netanyahu come about? Both are under pressure; one because of allegations of corruption, the other because of a dismissal impeachment procedure that connects. Add to that the “Christian-Zionist” connections, which enabled the unconditional support for Netanyahu by Trump, only this “finalization of the judaism”, with the likely election win. If, as expected, Trump is re-elected in November, this ominous circle has closed.

With the announcement of the annexation of the occupied Palestinian Territories, the uninhibited settlement activity, the promise that no Jew has to give up a piece of land, as well as the sacred promise that Jerusalem will forever be the undivided capital of a “Jewish State” thanks him with a majority, which he can only achieve in an absolute majority, either with the help of the Blauweisse and Benny Gantz or with Avigdor Lieberman. While Gantz, almost identical to Netanyahu, spoke out in favor of annexation, while Gaza and Lieberman wanted to “flatten”, he was unable to convince the voters. Only Netanyahu believes the Jewish-Zionist majority can provide security with a tough hand, occupation, and aggressive war threats and bombing. What a deceptive security

In this ethnocracy, where it should only be possible for Jews to live freely and unoccupied, everyone who tries to communicate with Palestinians or who stands in the way of ethnic cleansing is marginalized or fought against.

Desired “final solution” of Judaization

This proves once again that since its foundation as a state without a constitution and no fixed borders, the “Jewish State” has only been looking for nationalistic expansion, Judaism, displacement of the Arab-Palestinian population and land grabbing. We owe that this goal is becoming more and more successful to the international community, led by the United States and especially Germany. An irreparable fact that made genocide in Gaza possible after the Holocaust and continues to help the “Jewish State” to reach the “final solution” to Judaism.

Submissive Jews inspired by the Hasbara

This security state, armed to the teeth thanks to Germany, knows only enemies and needs authoritarian leaders who defy all democratic norms, the main thing is that the Palestinians are “kept in check” and kept away from power, property and society. These revisionist Zionist citizens are exactly the “breeding” that was wanted. We also experience this phenomenon of such “breeding” in the Jewish diaspora. Submissive Jews, inspired by the Hasbara, support “Jewish democracy”, support racist, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, even murderous occupation discrimination and ethnic cleansing. It doesn’t matter how liberal or orthodox you are,

The “long arm” of the “Jewish state” extends to Germany

Every Jewish citizen who opposes this and takes a critical look at the “Jewish state” and perhaps still actively supports the BDS movement (boycott, divestment, sanctions) is expelled and disparaged, marginalized, defamed and deprived of his rights as an anti-Semite, we think only on account terminations, the restriction of freedom of expression through refusal to show space and the media negated it. The long arm of the “Jewish state” with its Israel lobby has now had a strong impact as far as Europe and especially Germany.

We, as freedom-loving citizens, must oppose this and oppose all forms of dehumanization and discrimination, both here and in the “Jewish state”, in order to enforce the principles of human rights, justice, equality and human dignity in order to achieve that To ensure the preservation of democracy. We must also remind all politicians of this who are (consciously) increasingly forgetting or no longer applying these principles.

No rationale for Israel’s security

This is also the surprising trip of NRW Prime Minister Armin Laschet, who is applying for the CDU chairmanship and candidate for chancellor, who traveled to Jerusalem with a large journalist crowd last weekend, shortly before the election in the “Jewish state” ostensibly to visit Yad Vashem again, to open a contact office of NRW in Tel-Aviv and to show his connection with Israel. However, it seemed to be even more about proving yourself as a “statesman” who “can chancellor” and thus outdoing your competitors. However, what Laschet then allowed himself to do “statesmanlike” when he met with the Israeli President Rivlin, almost exceeded the usual level of German pettiness. Laschet was ashamed that there is racism and anti-Semitism in Germany again 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz and he supported Merkel with her 2008 “Reason for the Security of Israel”. He assured Rivlin that Germany was a strong state that would fight racism, anti-Semitism and discrimination with a strong civil society. However, he made no mention of racism, the occupation and discrimination of the Palestinians, nor did he make a detour to the occupied territories. For him, the friendship with the “Jewish state” seems to be so formative and immense that he generously overlooks international law crimes and ethnic cleansing, which puts him in the best chancellor-Merkel company. Whether he quickly got a “political-Zionist” briefing Before he could become chancellor, he remained hidden from the public, but seems more than likely. After visiting Yad Vashem, Laschet said: “History gives us the responsibility to fight back new beginnings”. How true, Mr. Laschet, but that means that you do not close your eyes to the responsibility towards the Palestinians that arises from the Holocaust, but which you in no way do justice to. By doing so, Mr. Laschet, you have proven that you have learned nothing from history and have sent the wrong signal! that one does not close one’s eyes to the responsibility towards the Palestinians that arises from the Holocaust, which you in no way do justice to. By doing so, Mr. Laschet, you have proven that you have learned nothing from history and have sent the wrong signal! that one does not close one’s eyes to the responsibility towards the Palestinians that arises from the Holocaust, which you in no way do justice to. By doing so, Mr. Laschet, you have proven that you have learned nothing from history and have sent the wrong signal!

What actually differentiates us from states like the “Jewish State”?

In fact, we don’t have any concentration camps (anymore!), But racism and hate are also gaining more and more followers in Germany. We are already seeing that attacks on mosques are increasing and prejudices against both Muslims and migrants are increasing massively. It is the prejudices, the brutalization of the language and the “hacking” in parts of Germany that should force us to act.

It is the tones of politicians such as CDU-Merz and FDP-Lindner, the “Union of Values”, the young Union Chairman Kubane, that are more than questionable because they do exactly the opposite under the guise of preserving democracy, because they fuel hatred and lead Germany into dangerous fairways. It is the “media desk perpetrators” of certain right-wing extremist blogs and agitators who want nothing but to humiliate Muslims and discredit Islam. The fact that attacks against mosques in Germany are increasing massively and that Turks or Germans with Turkish roots and Muslims are preferred murder victims is also a result of the misunderstood “leading culture” and a racist policy that we should all fight together. Just as we finally need a racism officer, we also need politicians who are careful not to “show understanding for the AfD and its voters as EX Federal President Gauck did in his more than questionable book launch. In doing so, Mr Gauck, you have done poor service to integration and democracy.

We do not want “Israelization” in Germany, which is a bad example for a free society. The same applies to “US Trumpization”, which brings nothing but regime changes, murderous wars and thousands of refugees displaced from their homeland destroyed by bombs.

We don’t need hate campaigns and racism in campaign times

 

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AFTER OVER A MONTH ….. WE ARE STILL WAITING FOR ELECTION RESULTS IN ISRAEL

October 23, 2019 at 13:43 (Israeli Elections)

The September election was a re-run of the election on April 9, in which Likud narrowly won a plurality. A new upstart party, Blue and White, led by General Benny Gantz, came close to upsetting Bibi’s long-time tenure.

Adversaries now, allies then: Seen through a memorial wreath, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, sits next to his Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, left, at a ceremony in Jerusalem, April 15, 2013. The two are now in competition to see who can form the next Israeli government. | Jim Hollander / via AP

Netanyahu fails to form a government after Israeli election—What happens now?

 BY ERIC A. GORDON

 

As of July 20, 2019, Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu became the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history, edging out the founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion.

In the general election on Sept. 17, he narrowly failed to secure a majority for his Likud Party. It marked a sea change in Israeli politics and history, a visible blow to the right-wing hegemony that has not only prevented solutions to the ongoing crisis of the Occupation but deepened it. Yet in the end, for reasons we’ll explain, little may change in the short term. The concluding chapter of the election story has yet to be written.

It’s a complex story owing to Israel’s parliamentary system, whereby in a nation and a Knesset sharply divided over ideology, religion, and ethnicity, governments have ruled by fragile, shifting coalitions, often of parties not otherwise friendly, designed to distribute government spoils and satisfy competing constituencies.

The September election was a re-run of the election on April 9, in which Likud narrowly won a plurality. A new upstart party, Blue and White, led by General Benny Gantz, came close to upsetting Bibi’s long-time tenure. Gantz’s platform was not so different from Bibi’s, but he came close to defeating him in the wake of public disgust with Netanyahu’s corruption, for which he is under indictment for financial and political crimes.

Nevertheless, after Israel’s President Reuven Rivlin asked Netanyahu to form a governing coalition, he couldn’t do it. The Knesset has 120 seats, and Bibi could not cobble together 61 seats, even with all the concessions such deal-making entails. Therefore, a new election had to be called for September in the hope that some voters might rethink their strategy for moving forward out of the morass.

This time, Blue and White came out ahead with 57 seats committed to a governing coalition, and Likud with 55. The difference this time came from the open support of Benny Gantz from the Joint List, a coalition of small Arab parties that includes Hadash, a configuration of the Communist Party of Israel, and led by a Palestinian Israeli, Member of Knesset (MK) Ayman Odeh. The List also includes the exclusively Arab Ta’al, the Islamist Ra’am, and the nationalist Balad. The Joint List took 10.6% of the vote and 13 Knesset seats, becoming the third-largest party in Israel.

On the question of the Occupation, Benny Gantz does not appreciably separate himself from the hardline Likud position. Yet for years Netanyahu has run a fear-based politics of no rights for Israel’s Palestinian citizens, appealing to Jews to vote for him because “the Arabs are stealing the election” and “voting in droves” (as if as citizens of Israel it’s not their right to vote). In recent elections, Likud set up video cameras at Arab polling stations to intimidate voters.

What the Joint List found more to their liking about Gantz is that at least he did not engage in openly racist anti-Arab hate-mongering and seemed willing to talk with Palestinian leaders respectfully. More than that, Gantz invited Odeh to speak at a Blue and White-Labor-Meretz election rally in Tel Aviv, where he received a tumultuous ovation.

Even so, Gantz would not have allowed the Joint List to actually form part of the government: That would have ignited a firestorm of Zionist outrage. But for numerical purposes, in order to form a majority in the Knesset, Joint List votes would be counted.

With Gantz in office, existential questions of Zionism and Occupation would not be addressed, but perhaps other issues might be, such as Israeli child poverty, the highest rate of any OECD country, affecting nearly half of Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

A shared future?

Traditionally, the president offers the party with the plurality vote the right to try forming a governing coalition. That is what happened in April, and Netanyahu failed. Most observers expected that this time Rivlin would make the offer to Gantz. But he did not. Instead, on Sept. 25, he offered it again to Netanyahu. Because in the meantime, one of the Joint List partners, the Palestinian nationalist party Balad, withdrew its three seats in protest against Gantz, eliminating his lead, a move that upset Odeh over his Joint List partner’s apparent unwillingness to learn to work with Jews. As proof that life is more real than rhetoric, the numbers, now 54 for Gantz to Bibi’s 55, gave the nod to Likud. So Netanyahu was back in the hot seat, desperately trying to hold onto the prime ministership as his wall of protection against conviction on corruption charges.

Netanyahu floated the idea of a Unity government, with himself, naturally, continuing as prime minister, at least for two years, to be followed by two years for Gantz—though who knows what could happen in two years: Netanyahu has proved himself a master manipulator. An Israeli Unity government would cut out not only the Joint List, but the left-wing Labor and Democratic Union (Meretz) parties, both of which lost seats in the Knesset, and the right-wing nationalist and religious parties. The government would be right-wing and secular, and continue to do nothing about resolving Palestinian claims both within Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza.

Gantz was unwilling to come into unity with the very party and man he twice ran against with considerable success.

One rather intriguing feature of a Unity government would be that the Joint List would then become the official leader of the opposition, entitling Ayman Odeh to be brought into consultation on state and foreign affairs and national security. It is anticipated, however, that in such a case, some loophole in the law would be found to prevent Arab representation at that level.

As Odeh stated in a Sept. 22 New York Timesop-ed piece, “Our decision to recommend Mr. Gantz as the next prime minister without joining his expected national unity coalition government is a clear message that the only future for this country is a shared future, and there is no shared future without the full and equal participation of Arab Palestinian citizens.”

Significantly, Odeh is one of several confirmed Palestinian speakers for the “pro-Israel, pro-peace” J Street National Conference in late October in Washington, D.C., expected to attract some 2,000 people, including Democratic presidential candidates who will lay out their visions for Israel/Palestine and the Middle East.

As of Oct. 21, Netanyahu (on his 70th birthday) revealed that he had failed again to form a government, so now the charge goes to Gantz. Other parties might become more flexible now and agree to join a Gantz government. Israeli politics, as much as or more than anywhere, is classic horse-trading. He has 28 days to try putting together a government. Perhaps Balad can be persuaded to return to the coalition, but that will still not be enough. Gantz will have to secure the partnership of at least one other party.

An interesting topic is the estimated 4,900 Jews across the country, even some in right-wing settlement communities and all-Jewish towns, who voted for the Joint List. They could have voted for liberal Zionist parties such as Labor or Meretz but chose instead to throw their weight toward Arab-led parties as a sign of support for the principle that Israel’s problems can and will only be solved be strengthening the Arab-Jewish coalition. Whatever they may profess publicly, these Jews objectively are declaring themselves “non-Zionists” who envision a future for all of Israel’s citizens without discrimination. Of the five Knesset seats won by Hadash, which is mostly Arab but has Jewish members also, one of them will go to the Jewish Ofer Cassif.

Pragmatism over ideology

The importance of the Joint List vote, and of the plurality that voted for Gantz and against Netanyahu should not be underestimated. It can be seen as a sign that the left, however it is reconstituted, is not dead, but focused on pragmatic rather than ideological goals. The Israeli “Old Left”—the Labor Party and other leftist Zionists who founded and led the country for its first thirty-odd years—has been marginalized. It may be time finally to acknowledge that a successful reconciliation of Zionism and egalitarian democracy was always a highly problematic project, if not indeed impossible. It was bound one day to reach a critical crossroads.

The fact that Netanyahu was defeated at the polls, that once again he could not form a government, sent shivers down the spines of Reaction. Likud polled lower in September than in April, so this may open up space for other voices in the party calling for him to pass the baton to less abrasive—and less criminal—leaders. And once out of office, Netanyahu may well land in prison.

A Gantz government would be a relief to the American Jewish establishment, and to a plurality of voters in Israel, because it would offer some welcome stability to the country after all of Netanyahu’s chaos and offensively open racism. An Israel led by Gantz would be far more amenable to U.S. Democratic voters and politicians—and for better or worse, help to regain bipartisan American support. Notably, Netanyahu’s defeat elicited scant attention from the White House. A political corner may have been turned. Sixty percent of eligible Palestinian Israelis voted: An even larger turnout would make an even greater difference by shifting the balance of power.

If Gantz, too, is unable to form a government, the president has the right to call upon any MK to try and patch together a minimum of 61 votes. Or he could call for an unprecedented third election.

The Joint List platform

What does the Joint List stand for? Its platform contains these major points:

  • A just peace based on the June 4, 1967, borders, that includes end of the Occupation, dismantling of settlements and the separation wall, release of political prisoners, a fair resolution of the refugee problem, and an independent State of Palestine. [This position was misrepresented by Netanyahu as wanting to “destroy Israel.”]
  • “Full equality, both national and civil, for the Arab-Palestinian public in Israel, as a homeland minority with collective and personal rights…. The List works to inculcate the values of pluralism and tolerance, and fights against the effects of violence, crime and the anarchy of weapons.”
  • Elimination of “all manifestations of racism and fascism” and “the establishment of a democratic constitution that enshrines the values of equality, justice, and human rights, and basic social rights and democratic freedoms.” [Israel has never had a written constitution, an intentionally instituted flaw designed to allow interpretation of policy to evolve—or devolve—according to administration, practice, national emergency or military law, and judicial ruling.]
  • “Workers’ rights, social and environmental justice…raise the minimum wage…guarantee the basic rights to health, education, welfare, and housing for all citizens.”
  • “Equal rights for women in all spheres of life….”
  • “Support and empower culture and art without discrimination or exclusion…preserve the status of the Arabic language as an official language….”
  • “The Joint List rejects the imperialist involvement in the affairs of the countries of the region and the world, the policy of religious and ethnic divisions, and the dissolution of states and peoples. The List supports the right of peoples to independence, freedom, justice, and democracy.”
  • “The Joint List is struggling to demilitarize the Middle East, including Israel, nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction….”

The Joint List platform, which does not mention “Zionism,” is largely based on the Hadash program. Palestinian Israelis cannot afford the luxury of fighting “Zionism,” if by that is meant the existence of Israel as a nation-state in the world. They recognize that neither Israel nor its Jewish inhabitants are going anywhere. Their focus is instead on practical, achievable goals that can help bring Israeli citizens of all backgrounds together.

Aida Touma-Suleiman, for example, an MK representing the Joint List and Hadash, heads the Knesset’s Committee on the Status of Women and Gender Equality. In that capacity, she has traveled to Orthodox Jewish towns to join with women there protesting separate sidewalks for men and women.

Last October, Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, with a long-recognized Arab minority, elected Dr. Einat Kalisch Rotem as its first woman mayor. A member of the now beleaguered Labor Party, she won her five-year term by forming a coalition that included Hadash, Meretz (which votes with Hadash 90% of the time), and an Orthodox party. Immediately, she was criticized by Netanyahu for including in her municipal government “anti-Israel” people. At the same time, the nationalist Arab parties criticized Hadash for serving in a “Zionist” administration. She responded that the problems of Haifa, such as pollution, housing, education, and equality, had nothing to do with Zionism. For deputy mayor, she appointed someone from Meretz for the first half of her term and another from Hadash for the second half.

In other municipal elections, the city of Lod is also exemplary. Yair Revivo, the incumbent mayor from the Likud Party, won handily, but the 90% turnout of the Palestinian vote earned Arab representation on almost half of the city council. No angry phone call came from Netanyahu in protest.

Although Israel/Palestine activists in America, as well as some in nationalist Arab parties within Israel, are laser-focused on “Zionism,” practical politics demands solutions to real, on-the-ground issues that go far beyond ideology.

Past experience backs up this strategy. In 1992, the Labor Party’s Yitzhak Rabin won his election with support from an Arab party and Hadash. Both knew they would not form part of his government, but by offering him his winning votes, they secured his majority and gained better treatment in Palestinian towns—schools, sewage, construction. Rabin also made progress at Oslo on the two-state solution—for which the fanatical Jewish nationalist/religious right wing gunned him down in 1995.

If Gantz is able to form a government, Palestinians feel that even without tackling the two-state problem, he might address other issues, such as the infestation of illegal weapons in Arab towns which are killing hundreds of Arab victims every year. Most of those weapons come from the Israeli Defense Forces. Crime is overlooked, and perhaps even tacitly promoted, so long as Arabs are killing Arabs.

The future of Israel will not be determined by elections alone. Some of the other groups working toward justice in various areas of civic life include:

Standing Together, a grassroots organization of Jews and Arabs.

Peace Now, founded in 1978, supporting two states based in the 1967 borders.

Yesh Gvul (There is a Limit), founded to support refuseniks during the first Lebanon War in 1982.

B’Tselem (In the Image of), the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

Breaking the Silence, founded in 2005 to collect testimonies from Israeli soldiers.

Rabbis for Human Rights, working to legally prevent or reverse the takeover of Palestinian lands and homes.

Machsom (Checkpoint) Watch, a women’s organization monitoring occurrences on the borders between Israel and the Occupied Territories.

Physicians for Human Rights, founded in 1988 during the first Palestinian intifada.

Combatants for Peace, a volunteer organization of former Israeli and Palestinian fighters now committed to nonviolent means to promote peace.

The New Israel Fund, founded in 1979 and U.S.-based, supports a large number of democratic and civil rights organizations within Israel.

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NO PRIME MURDERER DECLARED YET IN ISRAEL

September 19, 2019 at 12:50 (Associate Post, Israeli Elections)

The only positive fact is that this time the Palestinian Israelis – according to Netanyahu – “Arab hordes,” who want to “destroy the Jewish state,” vote to eliminate him. The Palestinian parties and the anti-Zionist Communists, who joined the Alliance List alliance, achieved pleasing results with about 13 Knesset seats.

Image by Carlos Latuff

Israeli election is basically a contest to choose who has killed more Palestinians or who is willing to prove he can kill more Palestinians.

From The Frying Pan Into The Fire

 By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

 

What was this election of the approximately 6.4 million eligible voters who were again called to vote for the 120 Knesset members of the 22nd Knesset (Israeli Parliament)? Netanyahu’s challengers were unanimous in the standard sentence “Netanyahu Must Go” , An important and correct demand, which, however, has no really good prospects and offers no good prospects for the Palestinians. Netanyahu and Benny Gantz differ only in nuances. However, unlike Gantz, “Bibi” Netanyahu and his “terribly nice family” are plagued by allegations of corruption, and hopefully with one foot in jail – once he has lost his office and his immunity. Of course he will try again in his cunning to use all means to form a government with the right-wing extremist camp and past friends in order to bring “his” law through the Knesset, which assures him immunity, and as “icing on the cake”, another that prohibits the Supreme Court, this and others of to overrule legislation passed to Parliament. To what extent he and his followers are capable and willing, they have all too often proved. He is also a master of lies and illegal actions, in the style of his populist colleagues worldwide. If, like now, the water is up to his neck, we can once again prepare ourselves for increases that will hopefully ultimately bring him down.

Both goals: to get rid of the unloved Palestinians

If we compare, however, the positions of the two opponents, then they are very similar and in “security issues” belligerent aggressiveness Gantz seems to lie ahead. The Gantz, who actually finds it “no fun” to govern how he had to correct himself after an embarrassing slip-up during a campaign event that also has problems with rhetoric and names that he already confused but did not want to “curse or mob.” and wants to approach people on “eye level” is in terms of “security issues” a hardliner as well as his opponent “Mr. Security “, which means nothing more than getting rid of the unpopular Palestinians and liquidating the Gaza Strip and the hated Hamas. How he expressed his “new hope” for a liberal and secular Israel, without corruption and extremism, In contrast to the “savior”, who wants to show respect for the Arab-Palestinian Israelis, his secret remains. Finally, he boasted that the idea of ​​annexing the occupied Jordan Valley had come from him and that Netanyahu had stolen it from him.

As one wonders, what happens in this former army chief with enough “bloody” experiences when he boasted about having “defeated” Palestinians, so he has collected his own experiences in the Zionist murders, if he is the author of such a criminal idea outs? A man who considers Israel “the best place to be Arab in the Middle East” and “the second best place to live as an Arab, the West Bank” denies what it means under Jewish Zionist illegal occupation to live and can not be surpassed in scruples and empathy. As long as he refuses freedom for Palestinians, has no proposals for peace plans and threatens two million imprisoned people in Gaza, the worst is to be expected, a competition in cruelty and punishment against Palestinians.

What about his credibility? With such a Kahol Lavan (blue and white) color, the Jewish colors of the Star of David flag and its bloody history, nothing really good is to be expected for Palestine. This party is a kind of “rebirth” of the “Generals and Kibbutzim” Labor Party. According to the old model of the father of settlement construction, Shimon Peres, settlers are courted.

The only good news: 13 percent for the anti-Zionist “United List”

Currently, with about 92% of the vote counted, the Likud has 31 seats and Kahol-Lavan 32 seats. The right-wing Yamina Alliance of Shaked and Bennett gained 7 seats, but is completely divided, except in hatred for Palestinians. With 6 seats dismissed is the Labor Party, which has not managed to present itself as an alternative, as it is neither “fish nor meat” and in terms of Palestinians like the others on the hard line.

Already in April in the first parliamentary elections, we had an almost identical result, so that a “unity government” would have been possible. This time, however, we have a difference, the former Moldavian doormen and bouncers, ex-Israeli war ministers and today’s opponents of Netanyahu, Avigdor Lieberman and his Russian constituents, chairman of the ultra-right-wing secular Israel Beitenu (Our House of Israel), with their likely 9 Making clients kingmakers. The formation of a new government in April had already failed, and new elections had become necessary to them and their refusal and their demands for compulsory military service for Orthodox Jews. This time – after his massive gains in votes – his demands will become even more pronounced. And that of a man living in a settlement!

The only positive fact is that this time the Palestinian Israelis – according to Netanyahu – “Arab hordes,” who want to “destroy the Jewish state,” vote to eliminate him. The Palestinian parties and the anti-Zionist Communists, who joined the Alliance List alliance, achieved pleasing results with about 13 Knesset seats.

Sad certainties in this “Jewish occupier apartheid state”

A really official end result will be delayed for days. Whether and how Netanyahu is away from the window, whether it comes to new elections again: questions about questions. There are only sad certainties that will never change in this “Jewish occupier apartheid state”.

The “Jewish State” and its founders have always wanted a land without its people, Palestine without Palestinians. So what is now provided for further annexation, houses only a few Palestinians, since a large part of them have long since lost their land and their international legal and legal right of return is further denied them by the Zionist regimes. They, who have been living under this occupation for decades or rather vegetate more than hopelessly in the Gaza concentration camp, have as good as NOTHING to expect from these elections. Even so-called leftists demand a separation of Jews and Palestinians, in the spirit of apartheid.

So most of the Palestinians today believe in a one-state solution in a free Palestine that we are currently very far away from, but the only one remaining possible. Settlers are now treated as ordinary Israelis with all rights in violation of international law, and they receive perks such as cheap mortgages and tax breaks to promote housing in settlements. Palestinian citizens in the illegally occupied West Bank are denied the right to vote.

The time of truth has come, Mrs. Merkel!

When politicians like Chancellor Merkel repeatedly talk about the “two-state solution” and criticize Israel’s annexation plans that stand in the way of such a negotiated solution, one wonders what Merkel and her policies have helped to solve the problem. Is not it exactly the opposite of what drives you? She repeatedly reaffirmed the right to “self-defense,” even though it actually involved attacks against helpless occupied persons, as well as sovereign states. Also German arms deliveries, military relations, negation of the international and human rights crimes are however “German state reason for the security” of the “Jewish state”. The time of truth has come, Mrs. Merkel!

Further annexations, settlement building, house demolitions, reprisals against Palestinians, attacks against Gaza, aggression against neighboring states and warlike rhetoric and rebellion against Iran are to be expected. As long as there are no candidates and governments to stop the illegal occupation and make clear to the “chosen people” the need for such a policy, it will continue to be about the “preservation of the Jewish biblical homeland”. So they continue to walk with the Bible in their hands through the entire occupied land and declare “This land belongs to us because it was given to us by God”. Thus, politics is being exploited again by secular, unscrupulous politicians.

Thus, the freedom of movement within the occupied territories is increasingly limited, and travel to the sealed Gaza are impossible. For example, the decisions of the Oslo Accords are being increasingly eroded by the “C territories” under Israeli control, the “B territories” under joint Israeli-Palestinian control, and the smallest “Area A”, under Palestinian Authority administration, is increasingly becoming under Israeli occupation thanks to “Trumpscher US aid”. Thus, the collaboration of the “moderate” Abbas “Vichy Authority” has not paid off for the Palestinian people, only for their leaders. So how does this Palestinian Authority want to make it believable at all, which it announced flowery: “We will repeal the division into three sectors and take over the entire occupied West Bank. The imperial reality speaks a different language. Thus, this Palestinian Authority could not prevent the illegal destruction of dozens of homes and apartments in the annexed East Jerusalem. There is nothing to be expected from this Palestinian Authority, unless free elections are finally coming there, which have not existed since 2006. Thus, the Palestinians are already jealous because of the elections in the “Jewish state”, which they are denied. They want – as in any other free country in the world – a choice for an independent Palestine, by being able to vote for their own truly effective government. The imperial reality speaks a different language. Thus, this Palestinian Authority could not prevent the illegal destruction of dozens of homes and apartments in the annexed East Jerusalem. There is nothing to be expected from this Palestinian Authority, unless free elections are finally coming there, which have not existed since 2006. Thus, the Palestinians are already jealous because of the elections in the “Jewish state”, which they are denied. They want – as in any other free country in the world – a choice for an independent Palestine, by being able to vote for their own truly effective government. The imperial reality speaks a different language. Thus, this Palestinian Authority could not prevent the illegal destruction of dozens of homes and apartments in the annexed East Jerusalem. There is nothing to be expected from this Palestinian Authority, unless free elections are finally coming there, which have not existed since 2006. Thus, the Palestinians are already jealous because of the elections in the “Jewish state”, which they are denied. They want – as in any other free country in the world – a choice for an independent Palestine, by being able to vote for their own truly effective government. Thus, this Palestinian Authority could not prevent the illegal destruction of dozens of homes and apartments in the annexed East Jerusalem. There is nothing to be expected from this Palestinian Authority, unless free elections are finally coming there, which have not existed since 2006. Thus, the Palestinians are already jealous because of the elections in the “Jewish state”, which they are denied. They want – as in any other free country in the world – a choice for an independent Palestine, by being able to vote for their own truly effective government. Thus, this Palestinian Authority could not prevent the illegal destruction of dozens of homes and apartments in the annexed East Jerusalem. There is nothing to be expected from this Palestinian Authority, unless free elections are finally coming there, which have not existed since 2006. Thus, the Palestinians are already jealous because of the elections in the “Jewish state”, which they are denied. They want – as in any other free country in the world – a choice for an independent Palestine, by being able to vote for their own truly effective government. Thus, the Palestinians are already jealous because of the elections in the “Jewish state”, which they are denied. They want – as in any other free country in the world – a choice for an independent Palestine, by being able to vote for their own truly effective government. Thus, the Palestinians are already jealous because of the elections in the “Jewish state”, which they are denied. They want – as in any other free country in the world – a choice for an independent Palestine, by being able to vote for their own truly effective government.

Fight the freedom of Palestine with the BDS boycott movement!

As long as the West Bank pledged to the Palestinians as the heartland of their future state is an integral part of Israel for the Zionist regime in the “Jewish state,” the US embassy will be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in violation of international law, thus making Jerusalem the eternal capital of a “Jewish state.” As well as recognizing that the Syrian Golan Heights, which are illegally occupied by Syria, as belonging to Israel, we must continue to work for the freedom of Palestine, supported by the boycott movement (boycott, disinvestment and sanctions) against the Zionist intolerance of the “only” democracy in the Middle East , an ethnocracy only for Jews. It ultimately does not matter whether “stalemate” or “Pattaschon” rules. In these “differences” we come in any case from the rain in the eaves.

 

Originally posted AT

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NETANYAHU’S ELECTION PROMISES SPELL DISASTER FOR PEACE OR JUSTICE

September 12, 2019 at 15:03 (Blaming the victim, Israeli Elections)

“Netanyahu is a psychopath with no red lines and he wants to see blood.” 

Image by Latuff

Netanyahu tells voters: If you don’t vote Likud, Arabs will ‘annihilate us all’

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is coming under fire again for anti-Arab comments made by his campaign, this time for a message on his official Facebook page telling voters “Arabs want to annihilate us all – women, children and men.”

Israeli media reported that upon accessing Netanyahu’s official page, viewers are greeted with an automated popup message in Hebrew with a message to voters, imploring them to “make sure” their friends and family vote Likud.

The preset message is written from the perspective of a volunteer with Netanyahu’s campaign, who tells voters “I am donating my time because we cannot have a dangerous left-wing government… in a week’s time,” according to Haaretz’s translation of the message.

“A secular left-wing weak government that relies on Arabs who want to destroy us all – women, children and men, and will enable a nuclear Iran that will eliminate us,” the message continues, saying “we cannot allow this to happen!”

The message also boasts that Netanyahu “brings a right-wing policy of a Jewish state, security, and a strong Israel.”

According to Haaretz, following their report on the message, Likud claimed that the message “originated in a staffer’s mistake” and that Netanyahu had not seen it prior to publication.

Despite claims that the message was not approved by Netanyahu, anti-Palestinian sentiment has been a feature of his current and past campaigns for reelection in an effort to rile up support amongst his rightwing base.

The premiere has repeatedly characterized Palestinian citizens of Israel, who make up 20% of the population, as a “threat” to the right-wing government and the Jewish character of the state.

“Netanyahu’s most recent statement demonstrate a marked increase in his racial incitement against Arab citizens of Israel,” Palestinian rights group Adalah said in a statement on Wednesday.

The group compared the premiere’s statements to those of the ultra-nationalist Michael Ben Ari, who was disqualified by the Supreme Court from participating in the elections over racist remarks against Palestinians and Arabs.

“The Israeli Supreme Court has already ruled that Michael Ben Ari’s identical statements constituted grounds for disqualification of his candidacy for Knesset, so there is no disputing that this is unacceptable propaganda,” Adalah said.

The group added that they issued an incitement complaint on behalf of the Arab Joint List to the Central Elections Committee (CEC) chairman and to the Israeli attorney general.

“Netanyahu is a psychopath with no red lines and he wants to see blood,” Joint List Chairman Ayman Odeh tweeted on Wednesday.

Odeh added that he had reached out to Facebook to “immediately put an end to Netanyahu’s racist and dangerous incitement against the Arab population.”

Just hours after Odeh’s tweets, the Palestinian lawmaker came head to head with Netanyahu on the Knesset floor as the latter argued in favor of the widely condemned bill that seeks to allow representatives of Likud to bring cameras into polling stations during next’s week election.

Odeh confronted Netanyahu with his cell phone camera and began recording the Prime Minister before being kicked off the floor.

The “cameras bill,” which despite Netanyahu’s continued efforts, is expected to fail a parliamentary vote, and has been widely criticized as an attempt to intimidate Arab voters from participating in the election.

The messages on Netanyahu’s Facebook page come just one day after Netanyahu published a video on Twitter specifically targeting “Anglo” voters with campaign video in English.

Entitled “An important message to the Anglos,” the video published on Tuesday features Netanyahu saying “to all my English speaking friends, thank you for your warm support.”

“The question in this election is a simple one. Who is going to be the next Prime Minister of Israel?” Netanyahu tells the camera.

“Will it be me, at the head of the Likud? Or will it be Lapid and Gantz at the head of a leftist government that will include Ahmed Tibi and Ayman Odeh as minister in their government?” he continues, referencing two prominent Palestinian MKs.

Hours later, Netanyahu held a press conference where he announced his plans to annex almost one third of the occupied West Bank if reelected, drawing anger amongst Palestinians and accusations from his opponents of “spinning” Israeli voters.

Ironically, though Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party initially attempted to stop Netanyahu’s annexation announcement from broadcasting under the pretext that it constituted “illegal electioneering, Blue and White later responded saying Netanyahu had “copied” them.

“The residents of the Jordan Valley are not Netanyahu’s propaganda props. Blue and White has declared that the Jordan Valley will be part of Israel forever. It was Netanyahu who concocted a plan to surrender the Jordan Valley in [peace talks in] 2014,” the statement read. 

“We’re glad Netanyahu came to his senses and adopted Blue and White’s plan for recognition of the Jordan Valley.”

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DIRTY POLITICS IN A DIRTY LITTLE COUNTRY

September 11, 2019 at 15:32 (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, DesertPeace Exclusive, Israeli Elections)

The silence on the crimes of the Zionist regime must be ended!

Brothers in arms (and crimes)

Netanyahu’s election campaign only knows destruction and dirt

By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

When I wrote about Netanyahu’s election campaign, his regime and his methods in March, I did not know how recent this article would be, so I can use it again. The system Netanyahu and family can not be beaten for recklessness. So, if elected again on 17 September at his instigation, then his racist and undemocratic methods have again increased. Will attacks and wars against Syria, Lebanon and Iran soon be the icing on the cake in Netanyahu’s election campaign? Is there any other state besides the Jewish, where it is possible that in addition to oppression, Corruption and lawlessness deprives a people of their rights – and all this without consequences? For example, while Turkey and Russia and their favorite enemies Putin and Erdogan are constantly demonized in the German media, Netanyahu enjoys an unbearable fool’s freedom. This fictional “only democracy in the Middle East” finally enjoys German state rationale and is therefore under “protection of species” – occupation, settlements, violations of international and human rights or not. The German accomplices are doing their utmost to defend this state’s right to exist without defined borders, but with expansionist desires and “Jerusalem laws” and racist, by all means. This fictional “only democracy in the Middle East” finally enjoys German state rationale and is therefore under “protection of species” – occupation, settlements, violations of international and human rights or not. The German accomplices are doing their utmost to defend this state’s right to exist without defined borders, but with expansionist desires and “Jerusalem laws” and racist, by all means. This fictional “only democracy in the Middle East” finally enjoys German state rationale and is therefore under “protection of species” – occupation, settlements, violations of international and human rights or not. The German accomplices are doing their utmost to defend this state’s right to exist without defined borders, but with expansionist desires and “Jerusalem laws” and racist, by all means.

Now if Netanyahu further refines his racist methods for this second election campaign, he wants to spoil Israel’s Palestinian citizens completely by announcing the expansion of all illegal settlements under international law and finally legalizing filming in polling stations and banning critical TV channels and media outlets wants, then it is already five past twelve and the time is more than ripe to react to this fatal policy, which has mostly populists and racists from Trump to Bolsonaro and Orban to the AfD behind.

That the German government on 17 pages sets out their concerns and skeptical about the “two-state solution” is, one can only consider as a sad satire of a German foreign policy in pieces of a SPD “Auschwitz Minister” and his CDU “boss” Chancellor Merkel, deduct and draw your own conclusions. So today I bring back my mentioned last article on the Knesset election, because he unfortunately has lost nothing of topicality, but the reality has worsened, and all under the eyes of the sanctimonious world community. As always, the victims are the Palestinians and Israeli-critical Jews, activists of the BDS campaign and all those who work for a just peace. This is the Zionist and destructive filth that should force us all to ACT.

Fascist election campaign in times of Judaization

Currently one of the dirtiest election campaigns of all time is raging in the “Jewish state”. And when the elections take place on April 9, King Bibi will use all means to continue his “corrupt monarchy.” After all, he thinks he can form his own laws and override existing ones. (1) If all allegations of corruption finally lead to an indictment, that will not prevent him from remaining Prime Minister. He has repeatedly rejected the idea of ​​resigning and rather blasphemes against “upset left” media. He also defames an opposition that “pacts with Arabs” and thereby endangers the security of the “Jewish state”. He who pacted with entrepreneurs, media czars and gambling kings to gain advantages such as jubilee articles in far-right newspapers and Internet portals. The “royal couple” Bibi and Sara received luxury gifts, for which he was grateful to the generous donors and showed political relief. Everything was done with care, by suitcase-wise dirty laundry traveling, with a kind of recklessness that leaves one stunned.

Israel: the country where racism flourishes

The worst part is that neither his Likud party nor right-wing coalition partners turned away from him, but continue to support him. Just like “his” people, who continue to stand behind him and believe everything that comes out of his mouth. In fact, the “Jewish state” is the country where racism flourishes and where it is possible for a head of government standing in front of the indictment to stand for re-election. The more brutal he goes against the Palestinian population or air strikes against Gaza, the more popular he seems to be. And that should scare us all. (2)

His ruthlessness policy has not shied away from rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. And he can rely on Trump and Orban and plays the leader of all Jews worldwide.

The occupation of Palestine is no longer a fixed topic on the world stage. Instead, the Israeli Hasbara puts Iran and its alleged “planned Holocaust” against the “Jewish state” into focus. This aggressive focus on Iran, the threats against Lebanon, against Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza concentration camp, the strong rearmament, also thanks to Germany, is making the nuclear power “Jewish state” ever more threatening and powerful.

Naked and dirty truth: “Israel is NOT a state of all citizens”

The unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as the “eternal” capital of a “Jewish state” also shows the unwillingness of the Jewish rulers in Palestine to do so. Last Sunday Netanyahu finally showed his true face via an Instagram message, in which he made it very clear: “Israel is NOT a state of all citizens, but exclusively of the Jews.” “According to the national law passed by us, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people and only that! Thus, the “Jewish state” has definitively forfeited any claim to being a “democracy”. Netanyahu sees “no problem with Arab citizens”, they have the same rights, but in the “Jewish nation state” only Jews have the right to self-determination. In addition, Hebrew is declared the sole national language, while Arabic, which was also the official language in the “Jewish State”, will soon receive an undefined special status. For example, about 17.5 percent of Palestinian Israelis are marginalized, their minimum rights curtailed and Palestinian ethnic cleansing continued. This is the naked and dirty Zionist truth that makes it clear to the Palestinian citizens that they are unwanted second-class citizens. (3) which makes it clear to the Palestinian citizens that they are unwanted second-class citizens. (3) which makes it clear to the Palestinian citizens that they are unwanted second-class citizens. (3)

These racist-fascist measures of a Jewish Greater Israel should finally open the eyes of the last doubter about this state. In fact, there is no “Jewish people”, but there is a religion that seeks to rise “Judaically” over its minorities in the country. This marginalization policy in the Knesset parliament is virtually unchallenged with this National Law and Prime Minister. The Palestinians continue to be discriminated against as a “fifth column” and regarded as a threat threatening the “Jewish soul” of the country. (4)

Especially we Germans know this kind of politics of exclusion too well! Now we see how a similar policy “light” in the “Jewish state” is being tried.

The Holocaust does not sanctify all means!

How is that possible? Because Germany, the US, and other countries are doing their utmost to make amends for all that has been done to the Jews, but at the expense of the Palestinians. So is trying to repay old guilt with new. No, guilt remains guilty and one can not repeat it often enough: the Holocaust does not sanctify all means! If former victims and their descendants become perpetrators, then they must be held accountable.

Hannah Arendt recognized very early the “double” loyalty that Israel described by the example of US Jews, as they were forced to serve as a “lobby” for the “Jewish state”. Also, Hannah Arendt was very worried about the arrogance of the founders of Israel, which goes hand in hand with contempt and hostility towards the Arabs / Palestinians.

In fact, this Jewish-Zionist arrogance of the “chosen” from the beginning of the founding of the state and the resulting Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine was and is the driving moment of Zionist politics.

Even worse, the influence of the Israel lobby over the past 30 years has sharply escalated, with massive support from lobbying groups and government funds. It is a “support industry” that is second to none. So how could this lobby become so powerful? Thanks to all our help and thanks to the “Christian-Jewish values ​​lobby”, which basically knows only one goal: the fight against Muslims and Islam.

So when we talk about the common fight against terror that connects us, then we should finally ask ourselves why the German government is allied with terrorist states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia or even with the “Jewish state”.

The “Jewish state” must be stopped!

Here we are dealing with the same phenomenon of double standards, because what is terror and from whom it emanates is arbitrarily determined. We are dealing with the same kind of dangerous hypocritical mendacity when Jews are again being discriminated against in Germany, when they are asked to not rent out any rooms, to terminate their accounts, and to defame them as anti-Semitic and nefarious. Germany in particular should refuse to submit to the policies of the “Jewish state” and its lobby organizations, and even worse, to make common cause with these lobbyists. In fact, there are now two types of Jews, conscience and conscience. What we had to experience on the occasion of the awarding of the Göttingen Peace Prize to the “Jewish Voice for Just Peace” is embarrassing for Germany! Shame on all politicians and supporters of the policy of the “Jewish Besatzerstaats”, which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that knows only one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) is embarrassing for Germany can not be beat! Shame on all politicians and supporters of the policy of the “Jewish Besatzerstaats”, which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that knows only one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) is embarrassing for Germany can not be beat! Shame on all politicians and supporters of the policy of the “Jewish Besatzerstaats”, which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that knows only one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that only knows one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that only knows one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) which has for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights must be stopped and no longer supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) which has for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights must be stopped and no longer supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5)

The silence on the crimes of the Zionist regime must be ended!

Maas, who is acting with unbearable chutzpah against Maduro, the elected head of state of Venezuela, and actively supports a US puppet, calls for Russia sanctions and is always at the forefront with unbearable cynicism and raised index fingers, is silent on the crimes of the Zionist regime. If he had really gone into politics because of Auschwitz, he would not allow Jews to be marginalized and defamed again in Germany. To put it bluntly: it is certainly not anti-Semitism to criticize the “Jewish state” and its occupation policy, nor is it Muslim anti-Semitism if Muslim citizens are unwilling to remain silent when their siblings are persecuted in the “Jewish state” .

The recent riots on Haram al-Sharif also show how the Netanyahu regime is trying and making common cause with right-wing extremist Jews in these times of the fascist-Zionist election campaign. Regardless, Ariel Sharon, the “butcher” of the Lebanon war, trampled Haram al-Sharif in 2000, triggering the second intifada. Now the Israeli government is challenging Jordan, because for the eleventh time the Jordanian representative appointed by King Abdullah was arrested after he was forbidden to enter the Al Aqsa mosque for the 19th time. Once again, it puts the Netanyahu regime on a confrontation, jeopardizing the status quo. So the Jewish occupiers imagine “religious freedom,” and the community of states, which often lists the much-vaunted “values” in their mouths, is silent. King Abdullah, according to the 1994 peace agreement with Israel, has the legitimacy of exercising guardianship of the Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem. So much for the observance of contracts with the “Jewish state” and the USA. (6) (6a)

It is not for nothing that all right and fascist new leaders and parties adhere to the “Jewish state” and are their “natural allies” because they believe that this is the only way to win the fight against Islam. This role is tailor-made for Netanyahu and Trump, as they are so similar in their actions and thinking. (7)

Let’s fight against an Israelization of Germany!

It should be our aspiration to support Jewish citizens and activists who peacefully campaign for BDS (boycott, disinvestment, sanctions). Let us not leave it up to a Central Council, an anti-Semitism commissioner appointed by the Federal Government, as well as politicians across all parties, various Jewish and Zionist organizations and the whole of the Israel lobby, the sovereignty that is not afraid to demonize Jews as anti-Semites. Let us continue our fight against the Israeliization of Germany for freedom of opinion and for the freedom of Palestine in these times of the fascist election campaign of Judaization.

footnotes:

(1) https://www.fr.de/politik/aufbruch-oder-bloss-heilloses-chaos-11842758.html

(2) https://en.sputniknews.com/politik/20190310324267042-netanjahu-warnung-hamasvor-militaerschlag/

(3) https://www.dailysabah.com/deutsch/naher-osten/2019/03/11/netanjahu-israel-gehoert-nur-den-juden-nicht-arabischen-minderheit

(4) https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/israel-nationalstaatsgesetz-1.4061161

(5) https://deutsch.rt.com/newsticker/84785-israel-nehmen-nach-tempelberg-unruhen-muslimische-verwalter-fest/

(6) https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/goettinger-friedenspreis-antisemitismus-ist-mehr-als-ein-label/24063608.html

(6a) https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-police-break-into-temple-mount-after-firebomb-hurled-at-holy-site-1.7017542

(7) https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/israel-und-europas-rechtspopulisten-verbuende-gegen-islam-und-islamismus/23938578.html

 

Originally posted AT

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TERRORISM REPLACES DEMOCRACY IN THE HOLY LAND

April 17, 2019 at 15:09 (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, Israeli Elections)

That the majority of this country pursues a policy at the expense of democracy, human rights and the rule of law without guilt, is frightening!

Jewish Right-Wing Extremism and Bibi’s Election hit “Annexion” (annexation)

Evelyn Hecht Galinski

 

Those who still had doubts, should finally be better informed. “Jewish state”, Zionism and democracy are mutually exclusive. When the beginning of the Passover feast with the first Seder begins this Friday night, it would be time to liberate the country not from bread crumbs but from far-right political politicians who want nothing more than religious Zionism as the weapon of the eternal Judaization. This affects not only the oppressed and occupied Palestinians deprived of their liberty, but also the secular Jewish citizens of Israel.

Pious lie – far from equality

How can an allegedly modern and cosmopolitan state submit to Jewish laws and let itself be ruled by a rabbinate, which acts like a state authority, subjecting marriage and family law to these laws and thus justifying women in divorce or other problems? makes individuals delivered to these orthodox men.

Again and again, Islam is accused of suppressing women’s policies, but Judaism and Christianity are presented as modern and progressive towards women, which on closer inspection proves to be a pious lie. As long as women – even in Israel – can not freely decide about themselves in all respects, get exactly the same wage for equal work, ie a true equality exists, as long as we are still a long way from this equality. 

Religious Zionism, with its ultranationalist, civil law-contradictory nature, has become the powerhouse of the “Jewish state,” with the unstoppable rise of a Judaistic clique that has repeatedly made reference to the “God-chosen people.” Old Testament perspective and focused entirely on Jewish religious matters, this decades-long international law-contrary policy with increasingly ruthless annexations.

Easter and Passover as the central celebrations of the year should be a reminder to change this destructive policy. The Jewish Passover recalls that God led the Jews out of Egyptian slavery. What a scorn for the Palestinians living under decades of Israeli occupation! Although it was really time, if not by God, then at least by himself called “Christian” or “Jewish” politicians to lead the Palestinian people from the occupation. For if they were to act on the true “Judeo-Christian values,” they would never allow the criminal Israeli policy toward the Palestinian people.

Departure of the far-right camp

If there ever was a left in the “Jewish state”, then this illusion has long since dissolved. After this election and the upcoming fifth term of Netanyahu, we are witnessing a departure of the right-wing extremist camp, which can rejoice euphorically in the annexation and transfer frenzy. “Jewish state” and “Jewish people” combined in a Jewish hegemony are the ingredients that lead to a state poisoning that is second to none. Who speaks of the occupation, the occupation or the Palestinians? Educated in a Judaistic education system, which distributes Zionist brainwashing as the only truth from birth, young people are quickly becoming enthusiastic about this state policy. Therefore, it is not surprising that just so many young people have chosen the far-right parties and are enthusiastic about this ideology.A phenomenon that we are currently experiencing more and more.

Why did Netanyahu’s hate campaign attract so many young people?Because he masterfully mastered himself and his interests from the beginning. After various laws against non-Jewish citizens, the national state law was then the culmination of his perfidious one-sided policy of injustice.Palestinians became more and more lawless and withdrew more and more. It was also foreseeable that the Palestinians were boycotting the elections more and more, as they could foresee the outcome. Thanks to the liberal newspaper Haaretz, it became known that Likud had tried to use cameras to spy on Palestinian voters, prevent them from voting and intimidate them, and achieve the final delegitimization of Palestinian citizens. “Out-of-town election observers”, ie settlers and national religious.

No place in the “Jewish state” for non-Jewish citizens

However, the excitement about this blatant violation of law was limited. All this should have led to a cancellation of the election. The police department was silent and the chairman of the election commission wants to “examine” the case. Everything should get better at the next election.Nothing new in the “Jewish state”. No matter who had won, there is no place for the non-Jewish citizens in the “Jewish state”. The main thing about his electorate is the annexation of the occupied West Bank, announced by Netanyahu, as the annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights and the claim to the whole of Jerusalem as the “undivided capital” of a “Jewish state” – all in contravention of international law, but promising in that state and in this electorate, which does not respect international law.

The comparison of the blocs, from right-wing extremist to secular Zionist-secular, reveals that there are virtually no real differences, because neither of these camps stands for peace, for an end to the occupation or an end to settlements stolen Palestinian soil. All unites the “security” – same occupation policy “as a raison d’etre of this” Jewish state “armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.

That the majority of this country pursues a policy at the expense of democracy, human rights and the rule of law without guilt, is frightening!This fateful policy is strengthened by Trump, the USA, the lethargy of the EU and above all Germany, which has learned nothing from its history.

“Total War” against the enemies of Israel

Not only the Palestinians have to reckon with increasingly bad measures, no, even the Supreme Court must expect disabilities of his work. The last government has been trying to get a so-called “overruling clause” in Parliament, which would put an end to any democratic judicial review, which would allow the Knesset to revise Supreme Court rulings, as the Supreme Court had in the past tried to from time to time object to government decisions. The next step would be Netanyahu’s attempt to prevent a corruption charge and his conviction with a tailored immunity law. This could be done with the help of a new, willing Minister of Justice. In conversation is Bezalel Smotrich of the “Union of Right-wing Parties”, an alliance of right-wing extremist factions demanding a complete annexation of all areas conquered in 1967. One of their “leaders”, the proud racist and avowed homophobe Rafi Peretz, wants the office of Minister of Education!They announced during the election campaign that they wanted to build a new Jewish temple on the Haram al-Sharif, demolish the mosques there and wage a “total war” against the enemies of Israel.

Are we not too familiar with such sentences? Said by eventual members in a coming Cabinet of horror, led by the “eternal Netanyahu”. Anyway, I get goose bumps!

Greater Israel: the country where racism flourishes

Just as Netanyahu was against “Arabs,” “leftists,” the media, and justice, it brought him the much-desired success. Without a clear opposition, he will lead the “Jewish state” further into the Zionist-racist abyss, to the taste of his disciples. He is the right-wing populist messiah, the new king of the Jews, who wants to lead his great following in the long-awaited Greater Israel, the land where racism flourishes. His uncompromising path to a lawless apartheid state will accompany us for a very long time, his right-wing extremist annexation campaign was a hit and led Bibi to success!

 

Originally published AT

 

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IMAGE OF THE DAY ~~ ANNEXATION OR ANNIHILATION?

April 15, 2019 at 14:16 (Associate Post, Cartoons, Corrupt Politics, Israeli Elections, Occupied West Bank)

Israel annexation of occupied Palestine territories: will Netanyahu decide to act on his threat?

Image by Carlos Latuff

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ISRAELI ELECTIONS ~~ PREDICTIONS OF THE WORST KIND ARE NOW TRUE

April 10, 2019 at 15:31 (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, DesertPeace Exclusive, Israeli Elections)

We can assume that after the elections, one way or another, things will get worse than before.

Hopeless outlook on the elections on April 9 in the “Jewish state” – a nightmare

When murderous Zionist dreams come true

By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

 

When a new parliament in the “Jewish state” is elected on April 9, 2019, Palestine faces a new nightmare of unknown magnitude. Right, right, right – is the motto, because in alliance with European right-wing populists and right-wing allies Netanyahu kept his election campaign to further power and has good chances for a fifth term – since 2009 as head of government in office. It is an election campaign of fear – against Iran, Palestinians, Islamist terror, Hamas, Hezbollah, so-called “infiltrants”, leftist media. All this creates odds. It is bad enough that the majority of Jewish citizens are attracted to Bibi’s slogans and acts contrary to international law, which quite obviously correspond to their world view. Peace was and is not their goal and does not fit into the fabricated threat situation, which is only crowned with the slogan “security”. This means: Eternal occupation and settlement, as well as expulsion and transfer.

Terrifying legality

In the meantime, even the Avoda, the Labor Party under Avi Gabbay, no longer considers the evacuation of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestine indistinguishable from any other rightwing party. (1) A frightening legal burden between Moshe Feiglin’s Zehut Party, which seeks to legalize marijuana and seek to build the “third Jewish temple” on Haram al-Sharif, advocating Palestinian transfer. (2)

This “New Right”, which was not afraid to set up candidates who openly professed as followers of the racist rabbi Kahane. Its party was banned after murderous acts of terrorism. And only by the Supreme Court was a candidate prevented, who rushed with openly racist slogans and actually did not really set himself apart from other “new rights”. All in all, an illustrious company between ultra-orthodox Shas party, United Torah Judaism, Kulanu and Yisrael Beitenu by former Secretary of War Avigdor Lieberman.

Examine the right to exist on a robbed land

So when will the so-called right of existence of the “Jewish state” on stolen and occupied Palestinian land be finally questioned? After all, the EU and also the German Federal Government are aware of the international law-abiding policy, which was timidly criticized, but without drawing any necessary conclusions and thus has no consequences. You can not ask enough questions over and over again: Why?

The “Jewish state” and its global sayanim (Israel lobbyists) have managed to build an eternal status of victim that any other victim group can only dream of. No, even if the Holocaust was an inconceivable German Nazi hate crime, it does not sanctify all means. No state has the right not to occupy a “Jewish”, a country and a people in response to any injustice caused by others. Therefore, Germany should ask itself after the election the question, whether – and again with the reference to the “special” relationship – it is still reasonable to support a radical right-wing “Jewish state”. The “German value politics” must finally be implemented, also and especially for the “Jewish state” and our “special” relations. Whenever there is talk of “Christian-Jewish values”, these are based only on the support of a state that does not respect international law or human rights, but shamelessly breaks them, with the certainty of being rewarded with impunity. Here, a rethink is required, no matter which alliance will eventually win, because for the occupied for decades Palestine can only change a bit if the occupiers are threatened with serious consequences and then implemented quickly. Sanctions would be a helpful and long overdue step. Here, a rethink is required, no matter which alliance will eventually win, because for the occupied for decades Palestine can only change a bit if the occupiers are threatened with serious consequences and then implemented quickly. Sanctions would be a helpful and long overdue step. Here, a rethink is required, no matter which alliance will eventually win, because for the occupied for decades Palestine can only change a bit if the occupiers are threatened with serious consequences and then implemented quickly. Sanctions would be a helpful and long overdue step.

Election forecasts are like weather forecasts, more than incalculable. However, we can assume that after the elections, one way or another, things will get worse than before.

Stinging as an election strategy

The Netanjahu regime’s nightmare has frustrated Palestinian-Israeli citizens so much that their turnout in 2019, unlike 2015, is likely to decline.He makes his own media policy. He condemns the allegations of corruption against him, accuses sections of the press of participating in a witch hunt against him, broadcasts from his own Likud TV studio and uses social bots as an election worker. Stinging as an election strategy. (3) (4)

Thanks to Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist polemics of inflaming the Palestinian Arab parties into a dangerous and threatening measure of security for the “Jewish state,” Hasbara, scientifically supported, has created the so-called “Unified List,” the merger of Four different parties, from secular nationalist to strictly religious, broke apart a few weeks ago after disputes over claims to power. What could have been better for Israel, Haaretz wrote, than to build a deadly hostility after the enmity between the Abbas collaborating Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which is ruling in Gaza? This kind of creeping split policy is one of the main activities of the Netanyahu regime – masterfully operated.

So if 15 percent of the Palestinian citizens of the “Jewish state”, Muslims and Christians, as descendants of those displaced by the Nakba, stay away from the elections, the right-wing extremist parties are closer to one goal, namely the sole rule of eliminating the Palestinian voters. In the past few years there were still a large number of Palestinian-Israeli voters who voted in favor of the Palestinian parties, after all, the “Unified List” could still be the third largest fraction in 2015 – a terrific achievement. However, if this faction competes in two separate groups this time, thus weakened thanks to shared votes, then the intrigue has been successful. Bibi Netanyahu has managed to use the slogan “Bibi or Tibi” to create an image of the enemy against Ahmad Tibi.

Election campaign with ideological lies

Bibi accuses his opponent Gantz of seeking an alliance with Palestinian factions, which was categorically ruled out by Benny Gantz. After all, Gantz, the former Israeli chief of staff, is a Bibi light. All of Netanyahu’s warnings against the Gantz “Blue-and-White” coalition (in Hebrew, “Kachol Lavan”) and against leftists, who denounce him as anti-state, betray the nation’s interests, are ideological lies that he spreads. Not only that Gantz and his alliance rejects any coalition with Palestinian parties, even a so-called “two-state solution” is not mentioned in the election program, but he wants the expansion of illegal international settlement construction and the claim to the eternally undivided capital of the “Jewish State “actively promote. On the right patriotic-Zionist wave, which alone is a guarantor of Jewish votes.Finally, 62.5 percent of Israel’s Jewish citizens would favor a harsher approach by Netanyahu against Gaza, which has been grounded for years.So it is not surprising that this murderous Prime Minister Netanyahu in an interview with the right-wing struggling “Israel Hayom” battlefield of the US Jewish gambling king Adelson, has made a “wise decision” in the murder of 300 Palestinians. (5) That this murderous Prime Minister, Netanyahu, in an interview with US-Israeli gambler Adelson’s right-wing struggling Israel Hayom, claims to have made a “wise decision” in the murder of 300 Palestinians. (5) That this murderous Prime Minister, Netanyahu, in an interview with US-Israeli gambler Adelson’s right-wing struggling Israel Hayom, claims to have made a “wise decision” in the murder of 300 Palestinians. (5)

These were murdered by IDF’s “most moral” Jewish “defense soldiers” and snipers at the fence to the occupied Gaza concentration camp. His regime has only one goal: deterrence; By cutting off the link between Gaza and the occupied West Bank, which has been blocked in violation of international law, the “Jewish state” succeeded in destroying all unity and in strengthening the Jewish settlements. So is his campaign pledge to understand that he would not remove a settler from the illegally occupied settlements, “not to uproot a Jew”. No, uprooting has been practiced by the Zionist regime since its founding only against the Palestinians. Likewise, Netanyahu will ensure that “we control the area west of the Jordan.” The final annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, all a breach of international law. However, it seems as if all this has been agreed upon and in line with Trump’s and Kushner’s “ultimate” peace plan, which he provocatively intends to introduce just on the 71st anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe of the Palestinian people, and thus the “next phase “Announces Palestinian lawlessness.Trump, the “best friend” Netanyahu and the Zionists have ever had, will not let it rip and certainly have a nightmare of other half-baked surprises ready. on the occasion of the 71st anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe of the Palestinian people, announcing the “next phase” of Palestinian lawlessness. Trump, the “best friend” Netanyahu and the Zionists have ever had, will not let it rip and certainly have a nightmare of other half-baked surprises ready. on the occasion of the 71st anniversary of the Nakba, the catastrophe of the Palestinian people, announcing the “next phase” of Palestinian lawlessness. Trump, the “best friend” Netanyahu and the Zionists have ever had, will not let it rip and certainly have a nightmare of other half-baked surprises ready.

Apartheid state of the worst kind

However, I wonder why Russian President Putin Bibi also made a campaigning present and handed him the remains of an IDF soldier missing for 37 years. So Netanyahu could still boast of his contacts with important state leaders. There is the suspicion that Trump used Netanyahu, as a messenger of secret messages between him and Putin.

Netanyahu has succeeded, despite 18 percent higher poverty rate than in other industrialized countries, despite large impoverishment of old pensioners and Holocaust survivors and despite great unpopularity in large parts of the population to show a successful balance and to score with fascist right-wing slogans and allies, in line with the Zionist raison d’etat of the final solution of the Judaization of Palestine.

The “Jewish State” is an undemocratic state with its national law “only for Jews” – an apartheid state of the worst kind. (6) In this sense, my hopeless outlook on the elections on April 9 in the “Jewish State”, my nightmare – when murderous Zionist dreams come true. Until after the elections, just before the elections.

 

 

footnotes:

 

(1) https://www.jungewelt.de/artikel/352426.wahlen-in-israel-die-rechte-hegemonie.html

(2) http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/israel-zehut-partei-vor-der-knesset-wahl-kiffer-als-koenigsmacher-a-1261463.html

(3) https://www.br.de/nachrichten/deutschland-welt/direkte-ansprache-israels-wahlkampf-in-den-medien,RMm32Xr

(4) https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/israel-benjamin-netanjahu-fuehrt-einen-populistischen-wahlkampf-16129540.html

(5) https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190406-netanyahu-killing-300-gaza-protesters-what-wise-decision/

(6) https://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2019/04/08/the-silence-of-the-lambs-assures-a-victory-for-apartheid-in-isreal/

 

Originally posted AT

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THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS ASSURES A VICTORY FOR APARTHEID IN ISREAL

April 8, 2019 at 15:43 (Apartheid, Israeli Elections)

Around 100 members of the next Knesset will be supporters of apartheid. This has no precedent in any democracy. A hundred out of 120 legislators, an absolute of absolute majorities, one that supports maintaining the current situation, which is apartheid.

The Hadash-Balad-United Arab List is the closest to advocating a one-state solution, the only left solution

Elections 2019: Who will Israel choose?

Israel Is Voting Apartheid

There will be one certain result from Tuesday’s election: Around 100 members of the next Knesset will be supporters of apartheid. This has no precedent in any democracy. A hundred out of 120 legislators, an absolute of absolute majorities, one that supports maintaining the current situation, which is apartheid.

With such a majority, it will be possible in the next Knesset to officially declare Israel an apartheid state. With such support for apartheid and considering the durability of the occupation, no propaganda will be able to refute the simple truth: Nearly all Israelis want the apartheid to continue. In the height of chutzpah, they call this democracy, even though more than 4 million people who live alongside them and under their control have no right to vote in the election.

Of course, no one is talking about this, but in no other regime around the world is there one community next to another where the residents of one,  referred to as a West Bank settlement, have the right to vote, while the residents of the other, a Palestinian village, don’t. This is apartheid in all its splendor, whose existence nearly all the country’s Jewish citizens want to continue.

A hundred Knesset members will be elected from slates referred to as either right-wing, left-wing or centrist, but what they have in common surpasses any difference: None intend to end the occupation. The right wing proudly says so, while the center-left resorts to futile illusions to obscure the picture, listing proposals for a “regional conference” or “secure separation.” The difference between the two groupings is negligible. In unison, the right and left are singing “say yes to apartheid.”

As a result, this election is so unimportant, so far from crucial. So let’s cut the hysteria and the pathos over the outcome. Neither civil war nor even a rift is in the offing. The people are more united than ever, casting their vote for apartheid. Whatever Tuesday’s results may be, the country of the occupier will remain the country of the occupier. Nothing defines it better than all the other marginal issues, including the Zehut party’s campaign to legalize marijuana.

So there’s no reason to hold our breath over Tuesday’s results. The election is lost in advance. For the country’s Jews, it will shape the tone, the level of democracy, the rule of law, the corruption in which they live, but it won’t do a thing to change Israel’s basic essence as a colonialist country.

The far right wants the annexation of the West Bank, a step that would make permanent in law a situation that has long been permanent in practice. Such a step would present a tempting advantage. It would finally rip off Israel’s mask of democracy and might finally generate opposition both in the country and abroad.

But no person of conscience can vote for the fascist right wing, which includes people who advocate the expulsion of the Palestinians or the construction of a Third Temple on the Temple Mount, the destruction of the mosques there, or who even dream about extermination. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s allegedly more moderate Likud party wishes only to maintain the current situation, meaning undeclared apartheid.

The center-left seeks to engage in deception, with not a word about an end to the occupation from either Kahol Lavan or Labor, or even about lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip. Benny Gantz’s party has ambitious plans for a regional conference, making history, and “deepening the process of separation from the Palestinians along with uncompromisingly maintaining … the Israeli army’s freedom of action everywhere.”

It has been a long time since such a document whitewashing the occupation has been written in all its disgrace. And the Labor Party isn’t lagging behind. The most daring step it’s proposing is a referendum on the refugee camps around Jerusalem in which only Israel’s would vote, of course.

And that comes on top of well-worn declarations about settlement blocs, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and a halt to settlement construction outside the blocs, meaning continuing settlement construction with full force. “Paths toward separation,” this party, the self-righteous founder of the settlement enterprise, calls it. Paths toward deception.

Peace? Withdrawal? Dismantling settlements? Don’t make the Zionist left laugh. Not much is left, two and a half tickets, the fringe: Meretz and Hadash-Ta’al, which support a two-state solution — that faltering train that has already left the station — and Balad-United Arab List, which is closest to advocating a one-state solution, the only solution left.

Vote apartheid.

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THE LOSERS HAVE ALREADY BEEN DECLARED IN THE UPCOMING ISRAELI ELECTION

April 7, 2019 at 15:57 (Associate Post, Collective Punishment, DesertPeace Exclusive, Israeli Elections)

Benjamin Netanyahu said yesterday that he would annex illegal settlements in the occupied west bank if he wins another term in office

Image by Carlos Latuff


*

Meanwhile, here’s a message from the children of Gaza ….

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SHAMEFUL PHOTO AND VIDEO OF THE DAY

March 26, 2019 at 13:23 (Collaboration, DesertPeace Exclusive, Gaza, Israel, Israeli Elections)

Aside from what the photo represents, in the last few days Trump (YOUR TAX DOLLARS) paid for every bomb dropped on Gaza.

Could we call this meddling in the upcoming Israeli election?

President Donald Trump holds up an executive proclamation recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory at the White House in Washington DC, Monday, March 25, 2019. (Photo: Susan Walsh/AP)

Meanwhile in Gaza …..

Ongoing Israeli Aggression in Gaza.

Israeli occupation warplanes destroyed another building to the west of Gaza.

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‘DEMOCRATICALLY’ ELECTED FASCISM

March 13, 2019 at 13:07 (Associate Post, Corrupt Politics, DesertPeace Exclusive, Germany, Israeli Elections, Palestine)

Currently one of the dirtiest election campaigns of all time is raging in the “Jewish state”. And when the elections take place on April 9, King Bibi will use all means to continue his “corrupt monarchy.” 

Fascist election campaign in times of Judaization

By Evelyn Hecht-Galinski

Currently one of the dirtiest election campaigns of all time is raging in the “Jewish state”. And when the elections take place on April 9, King Bibi will use all means to continue his “corrupt monarchy.” After all, he thinks he can form his own laws and override existing ones. (1) If all allegations of corruption finally lead to an indictment, that will not prevent him from remaining Prime Minister. He has repeatedly rejected the idea of ​​resigning and rather blasphemes against “upset left” media. He also defames an opposition that “pacts with Arabs” and thereby endangers the security of the “Jewish state”. He who pacted with entrepreneurs, media czars and gambling kings to gain advantages such as jubilation articles in far-right newspapers and Internet portals. The “royal couple” Bibi and Sara received luxury gifts, for which he was grateful to the generous donors and showed political relief. Everything was done with care, by suitcase-wise dirty laundry traveling, with a kind of recklessness that leaves one stunned.

 

Israel: the country where racism flourishes

 

The worst part is that neither his Likud party nor right-wing coalition partners turned away from him, but continue to support him. Just like “his” people, who continue to stand behind him and believe everything that comes out of his mouth. In fact, the “Jewish state” is the country where racism flourishes and where it is possible for a head of government standing in front of the indictment to stand for re-election. The more brutal he goes against the Palestinian population or air raids against Gaza, the more popular he seems to be. And that should scare us all. (2)

 

His ruthlessness policy has not shied away from rapprochement with Saudi Arabia. And he can rely on Trump and Orban and plays the leader of all Jews worldwide.

 

The occupation of Palestine is no longer a fixed topic on the world stage. Instead, the Israeli Hasbara puts Iran and its alleged “planned Holocaust” against the “Jewish state” into focus. This aggressive focus on Iran, the threats against Lebanon, against Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza concentration camp, the strong rearmament, also thanks to Germany, makes the nuclear power “Jewish state” more and more threatening and powerful.

 

Naked and dirty truth: “Israel is NOT a state of all citizens”

 

The unilateral recognition of Jerusalem as the “eternal” capital of a “Jewish state” also shows the unwillingness of the Jewish rulers in Palestine to do so. Last Sunday Netanyahu finally showed his true face via an Instagram message, in which he made it very clear: “Israel is NOT a state of all citizens, but exclusively of Jews.” “According to the national law passed by us, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people and only that! Thus, the “Jewish state” has definitively forfeited any claim to being a “democracy”.Netanyahu sees “no problem with Arab citizens”, they have the same rights, but in the “Jewish nation state”, Jews alone have the right to self-determination. In addition, Hebrew is declared the sole national language, while Arabic, which was also the official language in the “Jewish State”, will soon receive an undefined special status. For example, about 17.5 percent of Palestinian Israelis are marginalized, their minimum rights curtailed and Palestinian ethnic cleansing continued. This is the naked and dirty Zionist truth that makes it clear to the Palestinian citizens that they are unwanted second-class citizens. (3) which makes it clear to the Palestinian citizens that they are unwanted second-class citizens. (3) which makes it clear to the Palestinian citizens that they are unwanted second-class citizens. (3)

 

These racist-fascist measures of a Jewish Greater Israel should finally open the eyes of the last doubter about this state. In fact, there is no “Jewish people”, but there is a religion that seeks to rise “Judaically” over its minorities in the country. This marginalization policy in the Knesset parliament is virtually unchallenged with this National Law and Prime Minister. The Palestinians continue to be discriminated against as a “fifth column” and regarded as a threat threatening the “Jewish soul” of the country. (4)

 

Especially we Germans know this kind of politics of exclusion too well! Now we see how a similar policy “light” in the “Jewish state” is being attempted.

 

The Holocaust does not sanctify all means!

 

How is that possible? Because Germany, the US, and other countries are doing their utmost to make amends for all that has been done to the Jews, but at the expense of the Palestinians. So is trying to repay old guilt with new. No, guilt remains guilty and one can not repeat it often enough: the Holocaust does not sanctify all means! If former victims and their descendants become perpetrators, then they must be held accountable.

 

Hannah Arendt recognized very early the “double” loyalty that Israel described by the example of US Jews, as they were forced to serve as a “lobby” for the “Jewish state”. Also, Hannah Arendt was very worried about the arrogance of the founders of Israel, which goes hand in hand with contempt and hostility towards the Arabs / Palestinians.

 

In fact, this Jewish-Zionist arrogance of the “chosen” from the beginning of the founding of the state and the resulting Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinian people from their land, and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine was and is the driving moment of Zionist politics.

 

Even worse, the impact of the Israel lobby over the past 30 years has sharply escalated, with massive support from lobbying groups and government funds. It is a “support industry” that is second to none. So how could this lobby become so powerful? Thanks to all our help and thanks to the “Christian-Jewish values ​​lobby”, which basically knows only one goal: the fight against Muslims and Islam.

 

So when we talk about the common fight against terror that connects us, we should finally ask ourselves why the German government is allied with terrorist states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia or even the “Jewish state”.

 

The “Jewish state” must be stopped!

 

Here we are dealing with the same phenomenon of double standards, because what is terror and from whom it emanates is arbitrarily determined. We are dealing with the same kind of dangerous hypocritical mendacity when Jews are again being discriminated against in Germany, when they are asked to not rent out any rooms, to terminate their accounts, and to defame them as anti-Semitic and nefarious. Germany in particular should refuse to submit to the policies of the “Jewish state” and its lobby organizations, and even worse, to make common cause with these lobbyists. In fact, there are now two types of Jews, conscience and conscience. What we had to experience on the occasion of the awarding of the Göttingen Peace Prize to the “Jewish Voice for Just Peace” is embarrassing for Germany! Shame on all politicians and supporters of the policy of the “Jewish Besatzerstaats”, which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that only knows one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported.Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) is embarrassing for Germany can not be beat! Shame on all politicians and supporters of the policy of the “Jewish Besatzerstaats”, which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that only knows one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) is embarrassing for Germany can not be beat! Shame on all politicians and supporters of the policy of the “Jewish Besatzerstaats”, which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that only knows one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5)which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that only knows one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5)which has forfeited any claim to recognition. Yes, I say it again: this state without defined borders, with racist laws and a pseudo-constitution that only knows one thing: the Judaization of all Palestine, and for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights, must be stopped and not continue to be supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5)which has for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights must be stopped and no longer supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5) which has for decades blatantly violated international law and human rights must be stopped and no longer supported. Especially this federal government under the Christian Zionist Merkel and Foreign Minister Maas, who went into politics because of Auschwitz, should remember what that means. (5)

 

The silence on the crimes of the Zionist regime to be ended!

 

Maas, who is acting with unbearable chutzpah against Maduro, the elected head of state of Venezuela, and actively supports a US puppet, calls for Russia sanctions and is always at the forefront with unbearable cynicism and raised index fingers, is silent on the crimes of the Zionist regime. If he had really gone into politics because of Auschwitz, he would not allow Jews to be marginalized and defamed again in Germany. To put it bluntly: it is certainly not anti-Semitism to criticize the “Jewish state” and its occupation policy, nor is it Muslim anti-Semitism if Muslim citizens are unwilling to remain silent when their siblings are persecuted in the “Jewish state” ,

 

The recent riots on Haram al-Sharif also show how the Netanyahu regime is trying and making common cause with right-wing extremist Jews in these times of the fascist-Zionist election campaign. Regardless, Ariel Sharon, the “butcher” of the Lebanon war, trampled Haram al-Sharif in 2000, triggering the second intifada. Now the Israeli government is challenging Jordan, because for the eleventh time the Jordanian representative appointed by King Abdullah was arrested after he was forbidden to enter the Al Aqsa mosque for the 19th time. Once again, it puts the Netanyahu regime on a confrontation, jeopardizing the status quo. So the Jewish occupiers imagine “religious freedom,” and the community of states, which often lists the much-vaunted “values” in their mouths, is silent. King Abdullah, according to the 1994 peace agreement with Israel, has the legitimacy of exercising guardianship of the Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem. So much for the observance of contracts with the “Jewish state” and the USA. (6) (6a)

 

It is not for nothing that all right and fascist new leaders and parties adhere to the “Jewish state” and are their “natural allies” because they believe that this is the only way to win the fight against Islam. This role is tailor-made for Netanyahu and Trump, as they are so similar in their actions and thinking. (7)

 

Let’s fight against an Israelization of Germany!

 

It should be our aspiration to support Jewish citizens and activists who peacefully campaign for BDS (boycott, disinvestment, sanctions). Let us not leave it up to a Central Council, an anti-Semitism commissioner appointed by the Federal Government, as well as politicians across all parties, various Jewish and Zionist organizations and the whole of the Israel lobby, the sovereignty that is not afraid to demonize Jews as anti-Semites. Let us continue fighting against the Israeliization of Germany for freedom of opinion and for the freedom of Palestine in these times of the fascist election campaign of Judaization.

 

 

footnotes:

 

(1) https://www.fr.de/politik/aufbruch-oder-bloss-heilloses-chaos-11842758.html

(2) https://en.sputniknews.com/politik/20190310324267042-netanjahu-warnung-hamasvor-militaerschlag/

(3) https://www.dailysabah.com/deutsch/naher-osten/2019/03/11/netanjahu-israel-gehoert-nur-den-juden-nicht-arabischen-minderheit

(4) https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/israel-nationalstaatsgesetz-1.4061161

(5) https://deutsch.rt.com/newsticker/84785-israel-nehmen-nach-tempelberg-unruhen-muslimische-verwalter-fest/

(6) https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/goettinger-friedenspreis-antisemitismus-ist-mehr-als-ein-label/24063608.html

(6a) https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-police-break-into-temple-mount-after-firebomb-hurled-at-holy-site-1.7017542

(7) https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/israel-und-europas-rechtspopulisten-verbuende-gegen-islam-und-islamismus/23938578.html

 

Originally posted AT

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‘THE ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST’??? … NOT QUITE

March 10, 2019 at 12:26 (Corrupt Politics, Democracy, Israeli Elections)

Hopefully the Supreme Court will reverse the decisions written about below …

A decision by Israel’s electoral committee to ban two Arab parties and a candidate from a third Arab-led slate from running in elections, while allowing a far-right-wing candidate despite recommendations from the attorney general to ban him, was sharply criticized Thursday by leaders of Israel’s Arab community.

The ruling was called unreasonable and racist, and it sparked fears among Israeli Arabs that the country’s 1.8 million Arab citizens could be further politically marginalized ahead of April 9 parliamentary elections.

The decision to ban the parties, which are running on a united ticket, and candidate, Ofer Cassif, followed petitions submitted by three right-wing factions, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party. 

Israeli demonstrators carry placards that read in Hebrew, “No to putting racism in the ballot box,” during a protest March 2 in Jerusalem against right-wing followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane. (Gali Tibbon/AFP/Getty Images)

Israeli electoral committee bans Arab candidates, allows extreme right to run

By Ruth Eglash and Loveday Morris

A decision by Israel’s electoral committee to ban two Arab parties and a candidate from a third Arab-led slate from running in elections, while allowing a far-right-wing candidate despite recommendations from the attorney general to ban him, was sharply criticized Thursday by leaders of Israel’s Arab community.

The ruling was called unreasonable and racist, and it sparked fears among Israeli Arabs that the country’s 1.8 million Arab citizens could be further politically marginalized ahead of April 9 parliamentary elections.

The decision to ban the parties, which are running on a united ticket, and candidate, Ofer Cassif, followed petitions submitted by three right-wing factions, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party.

The two parties and Cassif now plan to appeal to the Supreme Court next week, and a panel of nine judges will make a final ruling on whether they can run in elections for the parliament, called the Knesset.

In a hearing Wednesday of the Central Elections Committee, it was argued that the two parties, Balad and the United Arab List, as well as Cassif — a politics professor and the only Jewish candidate for the Arab-majority Hadash party — had either expressed views supporting terror or rejected Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.

“Those who support terrorism will not be in the Israeli Knesset!” Netanyahu said in a statement.

Parties and individuals can be disqualified if they reject Israel as a Jewish and democratic state, incite racism, or express support for an enemy state or for terrorist organizations.

Hanin Zoabi, an outgoing parliamentarian for Balad, faced such petitions in the past for expressing support for Hamas, the militant Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip, and for calling Israeli soldiers murderers.

But Adalah, a legal center advocating for Arab minority rights in Israel, said the bans were politically motivated, “reflecting the McCarthyist persecution of those whose views are not acceptable to Israel’s political right.”

Hassan Jabareen, the group’s general director, said that there have long been attempts to disqualify Arab candidates but that this was the first time a Jewish candidate was banned for holding left-wing views. He said this was due to a deal struck recently between Netanyahu and the far-right Otzma Yehudit party and because of a nationalistic nation-state law — which declared Israel a national homeland for Jews and prioritized Jewish-only communities — passed last year.

Arab citizens comprise roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population. Since the country was founded in 1948, Arabs have been encouraged to run for political office, and in the last election an amalgamation of four Arab-led parties known as the Joint List became the third-largest faction in the Knesset.

But that arrangement broke down, leading to two separate slates. The Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) joined with the Arab Movement for Renewal (Ta’al), and the National Democratic Assembly (Balad) joined with the United Arab List (Ra’am). Recent polls project Hadash-Ta’al to win nine seats in the 120-seat parliament and Balad-Ra’am around five.

The Central Elections Committee decision to ban Balad-Ra’am and Cassif came hours after it rejected a petition submitted by left-wing parties and a recommendation by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to stop Otzma Yehudit leader Michael Ben Ari from running.

Translated as “Jewish Power,” Otzma Yehudit includes followers of the extremist U.S.-born Rabbi Meir Kahane, whose original party, Kach, was outlawed in Israel and is designated as a terrorist organization in the United States.

To widespread criticism Netanyahu last month reached a deal with the group, paving the way for it to gain at least one seat in the Knesset.

Hadash party leader Ayman Odeh said it was ironic that “Kahanists, who believe Israel should be only for the Jews and that the Arab population should be forcibly transferred, are now seen as legitimate, while those who advocate for peace are not allowed to run for the Knesset.”

While the case for Balad-Ra’am and Cassif will be heard next week by the Supreme Court, some Arab politicians are worried that the electoral committee’s decision will further sideline Arab citizens and discourage them from going to the polls.

Balad candidate Heba Yazbak said that Arab voters already felt marginalized and that if the ban on her party is not reversed, calls to boycott from within her community would be magnified.

“What is happening in Israel today is very dangerous,” she said. “And we are worried that the coming government will make us feel even more excluded from this country.”

SOURCE

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Related Post from Mondoweiss (Click on link)

Kahane in, Arabs out: Israeli election panel disqualifies Palestinian party calling for equality, approves racist Jewish Power leader

Comments Off on ‘THE ONLY DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE EAST’??? … NOT QUITE

IMAGE OF THE DAY ~~ SEARCHING THE DEPTHS OF HELL TO FIND A RUNNING MATE

February 27, 2019 at 15:15 (Cartoons, Israeli Elections)

Image by Carlos Latuff

Read the following post from Mondoweiss…. (Click on link)

Netanyahu deal with Jewish supremacist party was ‘a long time coming’

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OUTLAWS OPENLY RUNNING IN ISRAEL’S ELECTION

February 26, 2019 at 17:06 (Corrupt Politics, Israeli Elections)

Former MK Michael Ben-Ari, who heads Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) and could return to Knesset thanks to a Netanyahu-blessed union with Jewish Home, has ties to non-governmental organizations linked to Meir Kahane’s Kach Movement, outlawed in Israel and on US Treasury and State Department blacklists; to make matters worse, some of these NGOs get their funding from US Jews.

The Otzma Yehudit Party, including (L-R): Itamar Ben-Gvir, Michael Ben-Ari, Benzi Gopstein and Baruch Marzel (Photo: Avi Mualem)

The tangled web of Israel’s extreme right, American Jewry and the US terror blacklist

Yehuda Shohat

There were quite a few smiles in the Jewish Home party, the most moderate of the right-wing religious-Zionist factions, after most of its members voted in favor of teaming up with Ozma Yehudit (Jewish Power) in the upcoming April 9 elections. And thus in an almost off-hand manner, these politicians de facto joined forces with former members of Kach—a racist movement outlawed in Israel and featured on the list of terror organizations at both the US State Department and the US Treasury.

US Jews were quick to express their shock and outrage over the union and the involvement of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who put a lot of pressure on both sides and even made concessions of his own to make it happen.

Over the weekend, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and American Jewish Committee (AJC) issued harsh condemnation of the move, perhaps unaware that some of the funding for the organizations that succeeded Kach — with former members now directly linked to Otzma Yehudit —comes from US Jews, seemingly in violation of American anti-terror laws.

The Kach Movement, which was established by Rabbi Meir Kahane, and its younger sister organization Kahane Chai (Kahane Lives), which was founded after Kahane’s murder, were both outlawed in Israel following a terror attack carried out by Kach member Baruch Goldstein exactly 25 years ago, when he murdered 29 Palestinians at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.

But since then, members of Kach have continued operating in different NGOs and organizations, in seemingly legitimate ways, and recently also returned to the political field in the form of Otzma Yehudit.

One of the key players in this story is Ben-Zion “Benzi” Gopstein, the head of the anti-assimilation Lehava organization (which is not a registered organization). Behind Lehava hides a network of other organizations, in which Gopstein allegedly has or had direct involvement.

Under Gopstein’s leadership, Lahava leads a racist and inciting line against Israeli minorities. Four years ago, when he was serving as defense minister, Moshe Ya’alon considered declaring Lehava a terror organization. In November 2017, the State Prosecutor’s Office recommended charging Gopstein with incitement, and the case is now awaiting a decision by Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit.

The first organization with which Gopstein’s name is linked is “Hemla” (Compassion)—an NGO that purports to aid young women from broken homes who are “at risk of assimilation,” a euphemism for marrying Arab men. Shortly after Gopstein became involved with the organization, it started receiving a regular budget of hundreds of thousands of shekels from the Welfare Ministry, which the NGO uses to operate a hostel in Jerusalem for “at-risk” women and teenage girls.

A 2014 investigative report already found many connections between Hemla and former Kahane activists. For example, Baruch Ben-Yosef, who founded an association seeking to remove Kach from the terror organizations list, received funding from Hemla. A member of Hemla’s committee, Elyakim Neiman, also serves as the chairman of Yeshiva HaRaayon HaYehudi, a Jerusalem seminary founded by Meir Kahane that is still considered a terror organization by the United States. Neiman is also among the founders of The Fund to Save the People of Israel, and when we sought to donate to Lehava, we were directed by Gopstein himself to The Fund to Save the People of Israel.

Gopstein was a paid employee of Hemla, working as a “lead PR in Israel”; he was also an authorized signatory at the NGO, alongside Elyakim Neiman. According to the NGO’s records, Gopstein was fired (although he says he quit), but it was nevertheless decided to “continue employing him for his assistance in raising funds for a probationary period,” which has since ended.

Who funds Hemla? Other than the Welfare Ministry, which in 2016 transferred over NIS 1 million to the NGO, we were able to uncover several other financers, such as the estate of the late Miriam Orin, the Love of Israel Fund, the “Your People’s Poor Fund,” and the Central Fund of Israel—an American fund headed by Jay Marcus.

The Central Fund of Israel, which doesn’t make its list of beneficiaries public, donated almost NIS 100,000 to Hemla in 2015, and tens of thousands of shekels in 2014. Many of the Americans who donated to the fund—both directly and indirectly—don’t know where the money eventually goes.

Another American organization that gives money to Hemla is the Traditional Fund, which also donates to a variety of right-wing organizations in Israel.

The Jewish idea

The second organization in the massive network is Yeshiva HaRaayon HaYehudi (the Jewish Idea Yeshiva), which is listed as an NGO and was founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1987 to spread his teachings. In addition to Kahane himself, other founders include Moshe Neiman, Michael Ben-Ari, Tiran Pollack, Gad Struman, Yekutiel (Mike) Ben-Yaakov and Baruch Marzel. The president of the yeshiva is Yehuda Kroizer and the CEO is Elyakim Neiman.

According to records from June 2018, Ben-Ari was a member of the audit committee of the NGO, which to this day remains on the US terror organizations list. In other words, it is illegal to donate to the organization, and Michael Ben-Ari, who could become a member of Israel’s parliament, is allegedly a member of an NGO on the US terror list.

From 2002 to 2005, the NGO reported the grants it gave out, with one of the main beneficiaries being Benzi Gopstein, whose wife Anat was a paid employee of the organization. In 2002, Gopstein got NIS 24,000 from the NGO, in 2004 the sum went up to NIS 26,000 and in 2005 it went back to NIS 24,000.

According to official records, Yeshiva HaRaayon HaYehudi is funded by different American donors, among them two US organizations. The first is Charity of Light, a tax-exempt NGO that was first registered in New Jersey in 2001. Five years later, it became the Charity of Light – Hemla Fund. At the time, the NGO’s chairman was Levi Hazan, a known Kahanist who was sentenced to prison for his part in a 1984 shooting of a bus north of Ramallah, which left six Palestinians wounded.

The very same Hazan also appeared in the Israeli NGO Hemla’s records as a PR employee working abroad. Among the donors who gave money to this charity over the years is the Charitable Foundation of the IDT Corporation, an American telecommunications company founded by known Likud and Netanyahu donor Howard Jonas.

The second US donor organization is the American Friends of Yeshivat HaRaayon, an NGO registered in 1991 in Skokie, Illinois, which raises funds for Yeshiva HaRaayon HaYehudi, despite the fact that the latter is on the US terror list. A possible loophole allowing donations is the NGO’s use of the yeshiva’s Hebrew name, rather than the English translation that appears in the US terror lists.

As of 2015, Levi Hazan was this NGO’s director as well. According to the NGO’s records, from 2011 the organization donated to Yeshiva HaRaayon HaYehudi sums ranging between $44,000 and $136,000 every year. This too is seemingly a criminal offense violating three different prohibitions on funding for terror organizations.

“There are different definitions within the State Department’s list of terror organizations,” says David Saperstein, a former senior State Department official. “The leaders of the organizations on the list are subject to all of the limitations of the law. Donors to these organizations are breaking the law and are subject to criminal sanctions, even if they don’t know where the money they donated went to.”

‘Price tag’ situation room

The next organization is Chasdei Meir, which is headed by Gopstein himself, according to different reports. Our investigation found no evidence the organization is registered in Israel, only in the United States. When we called the phone number the organization lists for donations, the woman who answered the phone gave us the bank account number and PO box belonging to the NGO “Hemla – Aid for the Needy.” Later, we learned we could also donate to the organization through Hemla’s donations center.

This isn’t a trivial matter. Unlike Hemla, which seemingly only aids needy women, Chasdei Meir is an organization that aids “residents of the hilltops.” According to past reports, Chasdei Meir was part of the “price tag” vandalism situation room, which was established in 2011 to avenge the demolition of structures in the illegal West Bank outpost of Havat Gilad. The organization’s activity includes fundraising for the Hilltop Youth organization of extremist settlers, as well as planting trees near settlements and hills in the West Bank.

In 2010, Gopstein himself was quoted by Haaretz, saying “We have a group called the Chasdei Meir Charity Fund, which helps the outposts.” In a video Gopstein posted online in the past, he called for donations for Chasdei Meir to benefit activities in the West Bank.

The Chasdei Meir website was registered by Levi Hazan, and an examination of the organization’s funding sources found it raises tax-exempt funds in the US through Charity of Light. Conversely, the PO box and fax number on Chasdei Meir’s website belong to the HaRaayon HaYehudi NGO. An older version of the site included an address in the US, which is the same as the address listed for HaRaayon HaYehudi and Charity of Light.

The next NGO, The Fund to Save the People of Israel, was registered in 2011. Its declared objectives include the “fight against the phenomenon of assimilation; activity to benefit the victims of infiltrators and illegal migrant workers; activity and humanitarian aid; strengthening the settlement enterprise and the hold on the Land of Israel; legal assistance.”

The NGO’s founders are Elyakim Neiman, Yaron Adler, Israel Diskind, Ayala Ben-Gvir (Itamar Ben-Gvir’s wife), Benzi Gopstein, Levi Hazan and Matilda Harutz. According to its general assembly’s records from May 2018, Gopstein is an authorized signatory in the organization and is defined as the “NGO’s operator,” grossing NIS 66,764 annually.

The NGO’s email address is the same one that appeared in Chasdei Meir’s website—Gopstein’s personal email. One of the fund’s audit committee members was Yitzhak Gabbai, who was convicted and imprisoned for three years for his part in the arson attack at the Jewish-Arab school in Jerusalem.

As of 2016, the NGO’s incoming donations stood at some NIS 260,000 a year; among its donors over the years we found the Eretz Yisrael Shelanu Party (a far-right religious party founded by Baruch Marzel and Shalom Dov Wolpo), as well as the Segal Foundation for Israel, which was criticized by Israel’s Registrar of Associations for failing to do anything to reach its objectives.

‘Our fight is legal’

“Since the Kach Movement was outlawed, Kahane’s ideological successors have developed new systems to operate and get funding,” says Ran Cohen, one of the founders of the Democratic Bloc organization. “If they previously relied on political mechanisms, today they are using a network of NGOs that pose as charity and social organizations. In reality, they raise funds—both in Israel and abroad—to continue to incite and undermine the foundations of democracy. Money transferred from the state to such organizations is only one example of the way the government whitewashes Kahanism. The biggest example recently was the fact Netanyahu worked to ensure Gopstein and Marzel’s (Otzma Yehudit) party, which has Kahanist characteristics, gets into the Knesset.”

Benzi Gopstein offered the following response to the report: “These are lies. The goal of this report is to once again try to bring down the right-wing rule and prevent Otzma Yehudit from getting into the next Knesset. This won’t help; I will continue with the legal fight against assimilation in the Holy Land.”

Michael Ben-Ari offered the following response: “This is a collection of fabrications that have already been published and disproven years ago. But when the goal is to bring down the right-wing rule, journalistic ethics are being trampled.”

In an interesting coincidence, when we turned to the Hemla NGO for a response, we were directed to the Yeshiva HaRaayon HaYehudi call center.

Later, Hemla offered the following response: “For nearly 20 years, the NGO has been operating a hostel for at-risk Haredi teenage girls, who went through serious abuse (and you should know all about this topic), and with God’s help we are able to rehabilitate them and reintegrate them into society. The NGO deals with the social and rehabilitative field and has no ties to any political body.

“Benzi Gopstein finished working for the NGO in October 2014, and since then there have been no ties between him and Hemla – Aid for the Needy. Anat Gopstein finished working for the NGO in April 2015, and since then there have been no ties between her and the NGO. Unfortunately, the media has already slammed the holy work our dedicated staff does at the hostel several times, and we demand an end to dealing with this matter, which has been behind us for many years.”

The Welfare Ministry offered the following response: “Hemla won a tender to operate a hostel for at-risk teenage girls from the Haredi sector, who are directed to social services in local authorities. The funding given to the NGO is for the operation of the hostel only.”

Mairav Zonszein contributed to this story.

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THE STRANGE BEDFELLOWS IN THE ISRAELI ELECTION CAMPAIGN

February 20, 2019 at 15:59 (Corrupt Politics, Israeli Elections)

The PM is pressing the religious Zionist Jewish Home party to partner with the Kahanists of Otzma Yehudit. It makes cynical political sense for his interests, but what of Israel’s?

Michael Ben Ari (left) speaks during a ceremony honoring the late Jewish extremist leader Rabbi Meir Kahane in a Jerusalem hall, October 26 2010. At right is Baruch Marzel (Yossi Zamir / Flash 90)

Netanyahu’s despicable push to bring racists into Israel’s political mainstream

DAVID HOROVITZ

The Jewish Home party, the current iteration of what used to be Israel’s National Religious Party, is Wednesday night set to vote on a pre-election alliance with Otzma Yehudit, a racist successor to the banned Kach party of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.

Kahane, who won a seat in the Knesset 35 years ago on a platform of revoking citizenship from Arab Israelis and a pledge to “transfer” out of the country those who would not accept this status, and who sought to outlaw sex and marriage between Jews and non-Jews, was banned as a racist from seeking re-election four years later.

Interviewed on Army Radio on Wednesday afternoon, the party’s leader, former MK Michael Ben Ari, was asked to disavow Kahane’s racist ideology. He ridiculed the notion. Kahane, he said, was his teacher, his rabbi.

Also at the party helm is lawyer Itamar Ben Gvir, who first made headlines in Israel in 1995 when he held up the stolen Cadillac symbol from prime minister Yitzhak Rabin’s car and crowed to a TV camera, “We got to his car and we’ll get to him too.”

So too is Baruch Marzel, a former top aide to Kahane known for organizing parties in celebration of Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Palestinians at prayer in Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs in 1994.

And Benzi Gopstein, an ex-Kahane student and Kach activist whose Lehava movement works to prevent relationships — romantic and otherwise — between Jews and Arabs.

Jewish Home’s leadership had been reluctant to join forces with the Kahanists, but, apparently for many at its helm, you gotta do what you gotta do — even when what you gotta do takes you beyond the pale. The original NRP was the emphatically mainstream representative of Israel’s religious Zionists, the Orthodox ally of Israel’s secular Zionist pioneers. Broadly centrist in political orientation, it gradually moved to the right in the decades after the 1967 war, dwindled away politically, and was subsumed into Jewish Home (itself a merger of various factions) a decade ago. When leader Naftali Bennett and his ministerial colleague Ayelet Shaked abandoned Jewish Home in late December and set up their New Right party, seeking to make their eventual way to the national leadership and feeling encumbered by the settler-rabbi imprint, Jewish Home was on the brink of disappearing altogether.

Though polling below the 3.25% Knesset threshold, its new leader, ex-IDF chief rabbi Rafi Peretz (who last week agreed to an alliance with the National Union faction) was still resisting pressure to merge with Otzma Yehudit… until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spearheaded a personal campaign of phone calls, meetings, promises of ministerial posts, and — at a Wednesday afternoon meeting with Peretz — all manner of other complex political deals, to change his mind. Netanyahu had been scheduled to fly to a vital meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday; it was postponed so that he could tend to this evidently more crucial imperative.

That a rival party to Netanyahu’s Likud would bow to his will, rather than stick to its own principles, would indicate that, if the alliance is approved, antipathy to the center-left outweighs abhorrence of racism for the Jewish Home leadership. The “technical” partnership was announced on Wednesday morning, and, backed by Peretz, was being put to Jewish Home members for a final decision later Wednesday. Parties have only until Thursday to submit their final slates for the April 9 Knesset elections.

Confronting Netanyahu in the wrong places

In a speech presenting his own Knesset slate on Tuesday evening, the only realistic anyone-but-Netanyahu hope, Benny Gantz, issued a spectacularly personal attack on the prime minister.

It was not spectacular by the standards of this election — Netanyahu and his supporters have been castigating Gantz as a weak leftist incapable of running the country; the prime minister on Monday accused Gantz of drawing up plans for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank while head of the army during 2013-2014 peace talks, when it was Netanyahu himself reportedly gave Gantz the orders to do so; an anonymous smear campaign against Gantz promoted on social media was traced back to Likud.

But it was out of character for Gantz, who was soft-spoken when in uniform, and who had promised to take the high road in his debut political speech last month.

Gantz intimated that Netanyahu was less than fully Israeli — given that he spent years in school and working in the US, during which he changed his name. In a lower blow, Gantz lambasted the prime minister for having also spent years perfecting his English at glamorous American cocktail parties — a charge that missed its mark, since Netanyahu was working as an Israeli diplomat at the time. And in the lowest blow of all, Gantz compared that swanky US lifestyle enjoyed by Netanyahu with his own decades of military service, training generations of commanders and troops, sleeping rough in the muddy trenches on innumerable freezing winter nights, risking his life behind enemy lines. Netanyahu hit back, saying that this critique was particularly outrageous given that he had risked his own life many times as a soldier and officer in Israel’s most elite special forces unit (Sayeret Matkal).

Where Gantz’s vituperative fire was more damaging was when he charged that Netanyahu has “ruled the country through incitement, deception and fear,” stirring up internal divisions, and when he lambasted the prime minister for seeking to weaken the pillars of Israeli democracy as he battles against indictment in the three graft investigations against him.

Said Gantz, referring to Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, who must decide on whether to press charges against the prime minister who appointed him: “A legal adviser appointed by the ruler became a traitor and a leftist when he did not do what the ruler expected him to do.” Said Gantz on ex-police chief Roni Alsheich, another Netanyahu appointee, who oversaw the investigations: “The police commissioner appointed by the ruler was called a leftist and traitor because he dared to be loyal to the laws of the state and not to the demands of the ruler.”

Gantz said nothing, however, of the then-looming Jewish Home-Otzma Yehudit merger that Netanyahu has been so energetically and appallingly pushing. On election day itself in 2015, dishonorably and inaccurately, Netanyahu sought to get out the Likud vote by claiming that Israel’s Arab citizens were streaming in droves to the polling stations. Now, ahead of the 2019 poll, he has been striving — apparently with success — to bring into the mainstream a group of racists who would deny Israel’s Arab citizens the right to vote at all.

It’s not Netanyahu the diplomat or the soldier that Gantz should be campaigning against. It’s not Netanyahu the leader who has tried to keep Israel safe from external threat. It’s the Netanyahu harming Israel from within.

It makes perfect cynical political sense for Netanyahu to encourage the return of Kahanists to the Knesset. A merged Jewish Home-Otzma Yehudit ticket could win at least four seats, surveys indicate, while separately, neither party would clear the electoral threshold, and all the votes they get would go to waste. Ben Ari is set for fifth place on the merged list, and Ben Gvir for eighth.

In terms of Israel’s values, its character, its essence, by contrast, the prime minister’s tactic is reprehensible.

Seen through to what would be its likely conclusion, the merger of the two parties would find their representatives, the Kahanists potentially included, taking their seats in Netanyahu’s next government coalition. At which point Israel — which boycotts far-right parliamentary parties in countries such as Austria, Germany and France, and which castigates the dangerous rise of racist politicians overseas — would itself have sunk, at Netanyahu’s insistent, self-serving instigation, to the very level it warns against elsewhere.

SOURCE

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THIS IS A PRETTY BAD POLISH JOKE …..

February 17, 2019 at 11:57 (Corrupt Politics, Irony, Israeli Elections)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Poland for the Warsaw summit was beset by a string of missteps.

Comments Off on THIS IS A PRETTY BAD POLISH JOKE …..

IMAGE OF THE DAY ~~ ELECTIONS IN ISRAEL

February 3, 2019 at 15:28 (Israeli Elections)

Whoever wins, we lose!

Image by Carlos Latuff

Netanyahu faces new challenges: Gantz surges in polls, Attorney General hints at indictment

The Israeli campaign trail is heating up as the April 9 elections draw closer. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing a fast-growing opposition, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit has said he plans to decide whether to indict the PM before the election, and Palestinian lawmakers are scrambling to finalize their slates ahead of their primaries.

Former Israeli military chief Benny Gantz, head of the new Hosen L’Yisrael party (Resilience for Israel), is making strides in his election campaign, with polls placing him at a near tie with Netanyahu — something no other candidate or party has managed to do in recent years.

Following Gantz’s first public speech in Tel Aviv earlier this week, Haaretz reported that if elections were held now, Gantz would receive 21 to 24 Knesset seats — eight seats up from the previous poll predictions.

In a poll conducted by Israel’s Channel 12 news station asking who voters wanted as Prime Minister,  36% of those polled said Netanyahu while 35% said Gantz.

Leaders of the centrist Yesh Atid party (There is a Future) are reportedly considering forming a joint center ticket with Gantz’s party following the ex-military chief’s spike in the polls.

If the two parties were to form a joint list with Gantz as their leader, polls predict they could win a plurality of  35 seats out of the 120-seat Knesset, compared to a predicted 30 to 31 seats for Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit said in a statement on Friday that he sees no legal reason to delay reaching a decision on recommending to indict Netanyahu on charges of bribery and corruption before the April 9 elections.

In a letter to Netanyahu’s legal team, which has been pressuring Mandelblit to delay his announcement until after the elections, Mandelblit said postponing his recommendations would “be a violation of the principle of equality before the law” and “is not in keeping with the public’s right to know,” Haaretz reported.

If Mandelblit were to announce his intention to indict Netanyahu before the election, polls suggest that Netanyahu could lose four Knesset seats.

Coupled with Gantz’s rising popularity, an announcement from Mandelblit could spell disaster for Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, which initially sought the snap election with hopes it would increase his chances of reelection.

Where exactly does Gantz stand?

In the wake of Gantz’s official campaign announcement earlier this week, Netanyahu’s Likud party released a statement calling him “weak left.”

Ultra-nationalist Education Minister and founder of the “New Right” party in Israel, Naftali Bennett, called Gantz a “clear leftist” and said it would be “a danger to make him responsible again for Israel’s security.”

But Gantz, who released a campaign video proudly featuring images of a post-2014 Gaza devastated by war boasting that as military chief he sent “parts of Gaza back to the stone age,” is a self-declared “centrist,” and is considered by analysts as center-right.

In addition to his campaign video bragging about the number of Palestinians he killed in Gaza, Gantz pledged to “thwart the plots” of Iran across the region, and work against Iran “in the international arena, in the economic arena and in the military arena.”

“And if you do not understand the message in words, you will understand it with painful and precise blows,” he said, directly addressing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during his speech earlier this week.

Gantz also threatened Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, saying “I suggest you not test me again,” insinuating that the assassination of Hamas leaders would not be off the table under his government.

While he pledged to “allow any humanitarian assistance” and promote economic development in Gaza, Gantz said he would not allow the entrance of millions of dollars of Qatari aid to Gaza, saying “I will not allow the payment of protection cash payments in suitcases to murderous gangs.”

He also promised to strengthen illegal settlement blocs in the occupied Palestinian territory and the occupied Golan Heights, “from which we will never retreat.”

“The Jordan Valley will remain our eastern security border. We will maintain security in the entire Land of Israel, but we will not allow the millions of Palestinians living beyond the separation fence to endanger our security and our identity as a Jewish state,” he said. “United Jerusalem will be built, will grow – and will remain forever the capital of the Jewish people and the capital of the State of Israel.”

Palestinian parties face new challenges

Following the sudden departure of the Ta’al party from the Joint List political bloc — representing parties led by Palestinian citizens of Israel in Israeli parliament — the coalition of Palestinian lawmakers will be seeing some major changes in coming weeks.

Ta’al’s leader Ahmad Tibi announced his party’s departure in January following accusations of insufficient Ta’al representation in the Joint List.

His departure has hurt the popularity of current Joint List chairman Ayman Odeh, with polls indicating that 47% of Palestinian citizens of Israel prefer Tibi as chair of the bloc over Odeh.

According to Haaretz, the poll also found that if elections were held now, Tibi’s Ta’al would receive 43 percent of Palestinian votes, compared with 38 percent who said they’d vote for an alliance of the other Palestinian parties.

Hadash and Balad, two of the four factions that make up the Joint List, will be holding primary elections and finalizing their slates this weekend.

Sixteen new candidates are expected to compete for five spots on Balad’s slate, after two of the party’s Knesset members, Haneen Zoabi and Jamal Zahalka, announced they would not be running for reelection.

Despite all the new faces expected to emerge from this year’s Joint List and the decreasing popularity of Odeh, polls have projected that the bloc, even without Ta’al, will win 12 seats in the upcoming election, maintaining its status as the third largest bloc in the Knesset.

Meanwhile, according to Haaretz, 64% of Palestinians in Israel who participated in a survey said they were in favor of Palestinian parties joining the governing coalition, while 80% said they were in favor of “supporting the government from the opposition benches in exchange for increased government funding for their communities.”

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PSYCHO GAL TO RUN FOR PSYCHO KNESSET

January 6, 2019 at 16:23 (Corrupt Politics, From The Media, Israeli Elections)

First an article from this Friday’s Jerusalem Post …..

American Jews move to Israel because they are too incompetent to get decent jobs otherwise, Yediot Aharonot columnist and Blazer magazine editor Ra’anan Shaked implied, after former The Jerusalem Postcolumnist Caroline Glick announced her entry to politics on the New Right Party (Hayamin Hehadash) list. He later clarified that he was only referring to “messianic extremists” like Glick.

Nice to know that I’m not the only one who thinks so ‘highly’ of her …

Glick’s ‘Final Solution’

In her own words, read her entry in Fridays’ Post

Or, How she became known as Psycho Gal

The Zionist journey I began in 1982 has taken me places I could never have dreamed of. It is my deepest hope and my intention that on my next stop, I will have the privilege of advancing the Zionist enterprise I fell in love with so many years ago.

CAROLINE GLICK SPEAKS OUT ABOUT HER DECISION TO JOIN SHAKED, BENNETT

It has been my conviction to use my pen, keyboard and voice to shape and expand Israel’s maneuver room.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK

When I was 12 years old, my family took our first trip outside the United States.

We came to Israel on a two-week family tour. It was July 1982. The Lebanon War had just begun. In retrospect, it was the first step on what has become my lifelong Zionist journey.

I was moved by everything I saw. The IDF soldiers hitchhiking home for leave from the battlefields in Lebanon looked like movie stars. Ma’aleh Adumim, now a major city, was a clutch of mobile homes in the desert but the gleam in the eyes of the settlers showed the promise of what was to come.

The markets of Jerusalem, the beaches in Tel Aviv, the shells of Syrian tanks on the Golan Heights and the fish in the Sea of Galilee captivated my imagination.

The Western Wall awoke me to the immutable fact that the Nation of Israel, the Land of Israel and the Law of Israel are indivisible.

Hearing Hebrew, the language of prayer shouted out from every corner filled me with awe. And seeing the multiethnic society of Jews from every corner of the world shook me to my core. After two thousand years, in an act of will with no parallel in human history, Jews of all races, backgrounds, and cultures; Jews with unique, fervently kept traditions came home and began patching together a people forcibly separated for 50 generations.

During that first trip to Israel, I understood that the future of the Jewish people was being forged in Israel, not in the Diaspora, not even in my warm community on the south side of Chicago.

I loved America. But I wanted to move to Israel.

Nine years later, in 1991, two weeks after I finished college, I fulfilled my wish. I boarded an El Al flight to Tel Aviv with a one-way ticket in my hand. A week later, I took my first step towards the second stop on my Zionist journey: the Israel Defense Force. Two months after dropping down, I started basic training.

I served in the IDF for five and a half years, leaving as a captain. Most of my service was spent in negotiations sessions with the PLO. As the coordinator of negotiations on civil affairs with the Palestinians in the Defense Ministry, I was a core – if junior – member of the Israeli negotiating team during the Oslo peace process years.

In the IDF, as in all the stations I passed in my professional life, I viewed my work as a calling. I always believed that I had the ability to impact the country and the people for the better, and that it was my duty to try to do so.

For the past 18 years, as a writer in Israeli and international media, it has been my conviction that my job is to use my pen, my keyboard and my voice to shape and expand Israel’s maneuver room whether in relation to the international arena, to military questions, to legal affairs or to political issues.

The job of a commentator is to interpret reality. The media’s habit of simplifying issues by treating everything as an either-or proposition is disastrous for formulating policy. Israel’s options are rarely binary. On almost all issues, Israel has a full spectrum of options. Yet, due to media pressure, our leaders often miss them.

To advance its interests in the international arena, for instance, Israel doesn’t need to bow before foreign powers. It needs to show foreign powers that they want what Israel has to offer and that it is in their interest to work with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the only prime minister Israel has had that fully understands and implements this basic truth.

The same is the case with the Palestinians. Israel has nothing to fear in its dealing with the Palestinians. The choice we were presented with for more than a generation – either peace with a Palestinian state or war without one – was a false and destructive conceit. It was based on a wide array of lies and delusions. I devoted hundreds of columns and my book, The Israeli Solution, to expose them.

So too, if we want to understand historic processes unfolding, we need to understand history. I saw it as my job as a columnist to explain the relevance of history to our current challenges and to expose the ignorance of much of what passes for historical wisdom in the popular discourse, whether in relation to German history, to Jewish history, to American history, or to Islamic history.

Over the past several years, I found myself returning over and over again to the study of basic issues of governance. This was no esoteric exploit.

Over the past several years, the term “rule of law” in Israel has been turned on its head. Rather than denote the dispassionate enforcement of duly promulgated laws, it has come to mean what President Reuven Rivlin once referred to as the tyranny of the “rule of law mafia,” that is, the rule of unchecked lawyers.

I was moved by everything I saw. The IDF soldiers hitchhiking home for leave from the battlefields in Lebanon looked like movie stars. Ma’aleh Adumim, now a major city, was a clutch of mobile homes in the desert but the gleam in the eyes of the settlers showed the promise of what was to come.

The markets of Jerusalem, the beaches in Tel Aviv, the shells of Syrian tanks on the Golan Heights and the fish in the Sea of Galilee captivated my imagination.

The Western Wall awoke me to the immutable fact that the Nation of Israel, the Land of Israel and the Law of Israel are indivisible.

Hearing Hebrew, the language of prayer shouted out from every corner filled me with awe. And seeing the multiethnic society of Jews from every corner of the world shook me to my core. After two thousand years, in an act of will with no parallel in human history, Jews of all races, backgrounds, and cultures; Jews with unique, fervently kept traditions came home and began patching together a people forcibly separated for 50 generations.

During that first trip to Israel, I understood that the future of the Jewish people was being forged in Israel, not in the Diaspora, not even in my warm community on the south side of Chicago.

I loved America. But I wanted to move to Israel.

Nine years later, in 1991, two weeks after I finished college, I fulfilled my wish. I boarded an El Al flight to Tel Aviv with a one-way ticket in my hand. A week later, I took my first step towards the second stop on my Zionist journey: the Israel Defense Force. Two months after dropping down, I started basic training.

I served in the IDF for five and a half years, leaving as a captain. Most of my service was spent in negotiations sessions with the PLO. As the coordinator of negotiations on civil affairs with the Palestinians in the Defense Ministry, I was a core – if junior – member of the Israeli negotiating team during the Oslo peace process years.

In the IDF, as in all the stations I passed in my professional life, I viewed my work as a calling. I always believed that I had the ability to impact the country and the people for the better, and that it was my duty to try to do so.

For the past 18 years, as a writer in Israeli and international media, it has been my conviction that my job is to use my pen, my keyboard and my voice to shape and expand Israel’s maneuver room whether in relation to the international arena, to military questions, to legal affairs or to political issues.

The job of a commentator is to interpret reality. The media’s habit of simplifying issues by treating everything as an either-or proposition is disastrous for formulating policy. Israel’s options are rarely binary. On almost all issues, Israel has a full spectrum of options. Yet, due to media pressure, our leaders often miss them.

To advance its interests in the international arena, for instance, Israel doesn’t need to bow before foreign powers. It needs to show foreign powers that they want what Israel has to offer and that it is in their interest to work with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the only prime minister Israel has had that fully understands and implements this basic truth.

The same is the case with the Palestinians. Israel has nothing to fear in its dealing with the Palestinians. The choice we were presented with for more than a generation – either peace with a Palestinian state or war without one – was a false and destructive conceit. It was based on a wide array of lies and delusions. I devoted hundreds of columns and my book, The Israeli Solution, to expose them.

So too, if we want to understand historic processes unfolding, we need to understand history. I saw it as my job as a columnist to explain the relevance of history to our current challenges and to expose the ignorance of much of what passes for historical wisdom in the popular discourse, whether in relation to German history, to Jewish history, to American history, or to Islamic history.

Over the past several years, I found myself returning over and over again to the study of basic issues of governance. This was no esoteric exploit.

Over the past several years, the term “rule of law” in Israel has been turned on its head. Rather than denote the dispassionate enforcement of duly promulgated laws, it has come to mean what President Reuven Rivlin once referred to as the tyranny of the “rule of law mafia,” that is, the rule of unchecked lawyers.

Israel’s Basic Law: Knesset defines the Knesset as the sovereign. That is because the public elects its members in national elections. Members of Knesset in turn, elect the government as the executive arm of the people’s will. That is how it works in democracies. The parliament legislates laws. The executive implements policies in accordance with the law and the mandate it receives from the public at the ballot box. The job of the judicial branch is to interpret laws.

Over the past several years, and with growing intensity in the past four years, the authority of the Knesset to promulgate laws has diminished. The combined forces of the attorney-general and the justices of the Supreme Court have seized not only the power to abrogate laws and interfere with the legislative process, but to dictate laws through legal opinions and judgments. The same goes for executive power. Not only have the justices and attorneys arrogated to themselves the power to cancel government decisions and policies, they have also asserted the power to dictate policies to the government.

Through these acts of the legal fraternity, the powers of Israel’s elected officials have been whittled down. This week we learned that Supreme Court president Esther Hayut has quietly empaneled a forum of 11 justices to determine the legality of Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People.

In Israel, Basic Laws are essentially the constitutional foundations of the state.

If Hayut goes through with adjudicating petitions against the law, even if the justices rule that the Basic Law is legal, by claiming the power to adjudicate a Basic Law, the justices will seize the power to undermine the foundations of the state.

The Law of Return, which is the anchor of Jewish peoplehood and the ingathering of exiles, has long been a red flag for post-Zionist radicals who reject Israel’s right to exist as a specifically Jewish state. There is every reason to believe that if the justices seize the power to undermine Basic Laws, they will not hesitate to go after the Law of Return.

Watching this dangerous trend of events, I have used my position as a columnist to warn the public about what is happening and to empower Israel’s politicians to fight for their powers. If Israel is to maintain its democracy, our elected officials must be empowered to challenge the legal fraternity and restore to the Knesset the sole power to legislate laws.

Given the gravity of the situation, the disputes over Israel’s borders, its energy policies, its immigration policies, its economic policies and its military policies become secondary concerns. The key question that hangs in the balance today is whether the Knesset will restore its power as the repository of the people’s will in accordance with law or will it become a mere debating society with the actual power to determine Israel’s future devolved entirely to bureaucrats ruled by a handful of unelected lawyers and judges? Because if the latter happens, the people will lose all ability to determine the outcome of every other aspect of national life.

Every once in a while, over the past year or two, I found myself wondering whether I should throw my hat into the ring and enter politics. Could I be effective in advancing the goal of restoring the powers of the Knesset from inside the Knesset or am I better off staying where I am? Since this was a purely hypothetical question, I left it open.

This brings me to my decision this week to move to a new stop on my Zionist journey.

This week I decided to respond positively to an offer from Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Education Minister Naftali Bennett to join their new party, the New Right (Hayamin Hehadash), and run on their Knesset slate.

True, there is more than one party that reflects my views in the Knesset, at least officially. But in recent years, the political leaders who have done the most to translate my positions into action have been Shaked and Bennett.

They share my concern for Israel’s future as a democracy. They dare to insist that to restore and strengthen Israeli democracy, the current power balance between bureaucrats on the one hand and elected officials on the other must be turned on its head. Whether they are discussing the vast expansion of the power of military lawyers over field commanders in the IDF, the necessity of enforcing the laws of Israel over its Arab citizens with the same alacrity as it is enforced over its Jewish citizens, or rejecting the notion that the Supreme Court has the power to overturn Basic Laws, Bennett and Shaked have consistently communicated and advanced positions I view as critical for the future of the country.

No less importantly for me as a proud Jew who never understood what I see as a largely artificial distinction between religious and secular Jews, their new party doesn’t seek to serve just one type of Israeli. It seeks to represent the full spectrum of the Israeli society that I saw and fell in love with, in all its rich diversity, in that pivotal first visit in the summer of 1982.

I am convinced that restoring Israel’s democratic institutions is the most urgent task we face today. And while I would have been happy to continue advocating for legal reform from my position in the media, when Bennett and Shaked asked me to join them in their efforts to advance this goal from the Knesset, I said yes with little hesitation.

The Zionist journey I began in 1982 has taken me places I could never have dreamed of. It is my deepest hope and my intention that on my next stop, I will have the privilege of advancing the Zionist enterprise I fell in love with so many years ago.

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