29 feb 2016
The head of the Joint Arab List, Ayman Odeh, warned Monday that he and other Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset may resign their positions if a controversial bill allowing the Knesset to expel lawmakers was passed next week.
The draft bill, which was approved by the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Monday, could see lawmakers suspended from their duties if voted for by 90 MKs -- three quarters of Israel's lawmakers.
Palestinian MKs have slammed the bill, which they say is solely directed against them.
The bill was submitted to the constitutional committee after the Knesset's Ethics Committee suspended MKs Hanin Zoabi, Basel Ghattas and Jamal Zahalqa from their duties for several months after they visited the families of Palestinians who were killed while attacking Israelis.
During the Knesset's constitutional committee session on Monday, Odeh said the Knesset was "plotting" against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and if the bill was passed into law, Palestinian MKs would "quit the Knesset and leave it to the Jews alone."
He said Israel's politicians were in particular targeting members of his Balad party, despite their vocal opposition to the killing of Israeli civilians.
Odeh said Palestinian MKs had visited the families of slain Palestinian attackers for "official" purposes, and the visit should have been respected as such. He said Palestinian lawmakers were "elected by our people, not by the right wing in Israel."
Palestinian MK Ahmad Tibi reiterated Odeh's threat that the entire Joint List could "quit" if the Knesset passed the bill, which he said was a legislative equivalent of the right-wing slogan "death to Arabs."
Tibi added that "Arab MKs have not caused bloodshed," as opposed to “those whose hands are stained with blood and are openly proud of that fact," referring specifically to the right-wing Jewish Home's Naftali Bennet, who has in the past boasted about killing Palestinians.
The push against the Palestinian MKs has laid bare a deep rift in Israeli society, in which rights groups say Palestinians -- constituting a fifth of Israel's population -- have faced systematic exclusion for decades.
The Joint Arab List was formed last year when four Palestinian parties joined to fight for the rights of Israel's Palestinian minority, but they have faced staunch resistance from Israel's political establishment.
The latest efforts against Palestinian MKs have been personally led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in what critics have slammed as a "demagogic campaign."
The draft bill, which was approved by the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice Committee on Monday, could see lawmakers suspended from their duties if voted for by 90 MKs -- three quarters of Israel's lawmakers.
Palestinian MKs have slammed the bill, which they say is solely directed against them.
The bill was submitted to the constitutional committee after the Knesset's Ethics Committee suspended MKs Hanin Zoabi, Basel Ghattas and Jamal Zahalqa from their duties for several months after they visited the families of Palestinians who were killed while attacking Israelis.
During the Knesset's constitutional committee session on Monday, Odeh said the Knesset was "plotting" against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and if the bill was passed into law, Palestinian MKs would "quit the Knesset and leave it to the Jews alone."
He said Israel's politicians were in particular targeting members of his Balad party, despite their vocal opposition to the killing of Israeli civilians.
Odeh said Palestinian MKs had visited the families of slain Palestinian attackers for "official" purposes, and the visit should have been respected as such. He said Palestinian lawmakers were "elected by our people, not by the right wing in Israel."
Palestinian MK Ahmad Tibi reiterated Odeh's threat that the entire Joint List could "quit" if the Knesset passed the bill, which he said was a legislative equivalent of the right-wing slogan "death to Arabs."
Tibi added that "Arab MKs have not caused bloodshed," as opposed to “those whose hands are stained with blood and are openly proud of that fact," referring specifically to the right-wing Jewish Home's Naftali Bennet, who has in the past boasted about killing Palestinians.
The push against the Palestinian MKs has laid bare a deep rift in Israeli society, in which rights groups say Palestinians -- constituting a fifth of Israel's population -- have faced systematic exclusion for decades.
The Joint Arab List was formed last year when four Palestinian parties joined to fight for the rights of Israel's Palestinian minority, but they have faced staunch resistance from Israel's political establishment.
The latest efforts against Palestinian MKs have been personally led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in what critics have slammed as a "demagogic campaign."
23 feb 2016
Israeli film-director Udi Aloni, 56, who won the top audience at Berlin Film Festival on Saturday, has labelled the Israeli government “fascist” and urged Germany to cease its military support to Israel.
At a Q&A session about his award-winning film Junction 48 hours before being presented with the Panorama Audience Award for best fiction film, Mr Aloni said Germany should stop supporting the “fascist regime of Israel”:
“Merkel does not mention the occupation and sells submarines to Netanyahu to continue such things.”
The 56-year-old also called Israel a “democracy of white people” and added that “in contrast to the [Israeli] prime minister who spreads hatred, my movie spreads love and co-existence.”
By the end of the session, he mentioned the Palestinian hunger-striker Mohammed al-Qiq as an example “non-Jews’ lack of rights in Israel”, saying that Qiq was dying in administrative detention without being accused of committing a crime.
In a response to Aloni’s comments, according to the Israeli Media, the Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said that Israel should not fund films that slander it, refering to the financial support that Aloni’s film received from Israel’s Culture Ministry.
“Aloni’s statements were a clear proof that artists who subvert the state, defame it and hurt its legitimacy should not be funded by the tax payer. A sane country should not assist slanderers and denouncers who malign it, immediately after drinking from its coffers,” Regev stated.
The Israeli film director later clarified to Channel 10 that his comments “were directed against the Israeli government and not against the country, which I love. In contrast to the prime minister who spreads hatred, my movie spreads love and co-existence.”
Last year, more than 3,000 artists, including some of the country’s most prominent actors and directors, signed a petition against Ms Regev’s policies.
“Junction 48” – whose is a Arabic-language film that features mostly Palestinian actors – tells the story of a Palestinian rap star and his girlfriend who live near Tel Aviv in the mixed Jewish-Palestinian city of Lod, known until recently as one of the main drug-running centers of the Middle East.Actress Samar Qupty said it should be easy for Palestinians to identify with the movie, even though it depicts people living lives that are radically different from strict Muslim traditions.
Her character, for example, allows a picture of her face to be used on a poster advertising a hip-hop concert, prompting members of her family to say they plan to injure her if she performs.
“It’s still a revolutionary movie because it doesn’t talk about the way we Palestinians are usually represented in the world,” Qupty said.
“We are representing ourselves by the new generation without trying to prove anything to anyone, with our ‘goods’ and ‘bads’,” she told Reuters in an interview. “We are trying to present what is the real new generation trying to do without making the reality looking any better or any worse.”
At a Q&A session about his award-winning film Junction 48 hours before being presented with the Panorama Audience Award for best fiction film, Mr Aloni said Germany should stop supporting the “fascist regime of Israel”:
“Merkel does not mention the occupation and sells submarines to Netanyahu to continue such things.”
The 56-year-old also called Israel a “democracy of white people” and added that “in contrast to the [Israeli] prime minister who spreads hatred, my movie spreads love and co-existence.”
By the end of the session, he mentioned the Palestinian hunger-striker Mohammed al-Qiq as an example “non-Jews’ lack of rights in Israel”, saying that Qiq was dying in administrative detention without being accused of committing a crime.
In a response to Aloni’s comments, according to the Israeli Media, the Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev said that Israel should not fund films that slander it, refering to the financial support that Aloni’s film received from Israel’s Culture Ministry.
“Aloni’s statements were a clear proof that artists who subvert the state, defame it and hurt its legitimacy should not be funded by the tax payer. A sane country should not assist slanderers and denouncers who malign it, immediately after drinking from its coffers,” Regev stated.
The Israeli film director later clarified to Channel 10 that his comments “were directed against the Israeli government and not against the country, which I love. In contrast to the prime minister who spreads hatred, my movie spreads love and co-existence.”
Last year, more than 3,000 artists, including some of the country’s most prominent actors and directors, signed a petition against Ms Regev’s policies.
“Junction 48” – whose is a Arabic-language film that features mostly Palestinian actors – tells the story of a Palestinian rap star and his girlfriend who live near Tel Aviv in the mixed Jewish-Palestinian city of Lod, known until recently as one of the main drug-running centers of the Middle East.Actress Samar Qupty said it should be easy for Palestinians to identify with the movie, even though it depicts people living lives that are radically different from strict Muslim traditions.
Her character, for example, allows a picture of her face to be used on a poster advertising a hip-hop concert, prompting members of her family to say they plan to injure her if she performs.
“It’s still a revolutionary movie because it doesn’t talk about the way we Palestinians are usually represented in the world,” Qupty said.
“We are representing ourselves by the new generation without trying to prove anything to anyone, with our ‘goods’ and ‘bads’,” she told Reuters in an interview. “We are trying to present what is the real new generation trying to do without making the reality looking any better or any worse.”
22 feb 2016
Transporation Minister Yisrael Katz and PM Benjamin Netanyahu during rally in November
The Israeli Transportation minister, Yisrael Katz, on Sunday has called on Israeli authorities to displace the families of “Palestinian attackers” to Gaza or Syria.
According to the leading Hebrew newspaper Ynet, Katz said that this move of displacing the Palestinian families will deter the Palestinian minors from carrying any attempts to attack Israelis, since demolitions were not enough to stop them.
To his part, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his support to Katz, however said that the Judiciary system would not allow it, because it is considered as collective punishment, which is illegal in the international law.
However, Netanyahu promised Katz to run a discussion on the issue in the Cabinet.
And in another similar stand, the right-wing extremist minister of Education, Naftali Bennett, said on Sunday during the cabinet meeting that Palestinian parents “do not prevent their sons from “stabbing Israelis” since they “get financial compensation from the Palestinian Authority” when their child is killed.
According to Haaretz, these statements have shocked the ministers who were attending the meeting, making them “twist in their chairs.”
Back in November, Bennett had said that “[Israelis] should have killed more [Arabs],” in response to the Arab MK, Hanin Zoabi’s condemnations of Israel boasting about killing innocent civilians.
At that time, Bennett immediately accused Zoabi of lying, then said that “anyone who lifts a hand against Israel must die.”
The Israeli rhetoric against Palestinians has been lately growing on an alarming rate, starting with the complete denial of civil rights for Palestinians, then the denial of a Palestinian nation, to the denial of Israeli occupation; a rhetoric which has escalated illegal Israeli demolitions and settlement expansion on Palestinian land.
Katz statements come as a result of a violence that sparked last October, following numerous Israeli violations of this kind against Palestinians.
Since then, some 180 Palestinians and 30 Israelis have been killed.
The Israeli Transportation minister, Yisrael Katz, on Sunday has called on Israeli authorities to displace the families of “Palestinian attackers” to Gaza or Syria.
According to the leading Hebrew newspaper Ynet, Katz said that this move of displacing the Palestinian families will deter the Palestinian minors from carrying any attempts to attack Israelis, since demolitions were not enough to stop them.
To his part, the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his support to Katz, however said that the Judiciary system would not allow it, because it is considered as collective punishment, which is illegal in the international law.
However, Netanyahu promised Katz to run a discussion on the issue in the Cabinet.
And in another similar stand, the right-wing extremist minister of Education, Naftali Bennett, said on Sunday during the cabinet meeting that Palestinian parents “do not prevent their sons from “stabbing Israelis” since they “get financial compensation from the Palestinian Authority” when their child is killed.
According to Haaretz, these statements have shocked the ministers who were attending the meeting, making them “twist in their chairs.”
Back in November, Bennett had said that “[Israelis] should have killed more [Arabs],” in response to the Arab MK, Hanin Zoabi’s condemnations of Israel boasting about killing innocent civilians.
At that time, Bennett immediately accused Zoabi of lying, then said that “anyone who lifts a hand against Israel must die.”
The Israeli rhetoric against Palestinians has been lately growing on an alarming rate, starting with the complete denial of civil rights for Palestinians, then the denial of a Palestinian nation, to the denial of Israeli occupation; a rhetoric which has escalated illegal Israeli demolitions and settlement expansion on Palestinian land.
Katz statements come as a result of a violence that sparked last October, following numerous Israeli violations of this kind against Palestinians.
Since then, some 180 Palestinians and 30 Israelis have been killed.
21 feb 2016
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The Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, MK Tzipi Hotovely from the Likud party has recently made statements claiming that there is no Israeli occupation because “there is no Palestinian state.”
Hotovely, speaking at the Israeli parliament (Knesset) on Friday said that occupation means occupying a sovereign state and that “there was never a Palestinian state,” instead, “Jordan ruled over the territories against the law.” Hotovely continued her speech by saying that Israelis have been fighting for independence through “legal defensive wars” after they “returned to the |
land of [their] forefathers, adding that the “Palestinian narrative negates the existence of Israel.”
Hotovely concludes by saying that Israel “has the obligation to refute the industry of lies” and speak the historic truth.
This rhetoric came shortly after the extremist right wing lawmaker, Anat Berko, has said that there has never been a Palestinian state because the letter “P” does not exist in Arabic language.
These claims sparked sarcasm amongst local and international activists, since the word “Palestine” is pronounced with an “F” in both Arabic and Hebrew.
Israel, which has been established on Palestinian land in 1947, has maintained a brutal military occupation on the occupied West Bank, which included illegal settlement expansion, kidnappings, home demolitions, executions and controls the movement of Palestinians within the West Bank by placing hunderds of checkpoints between the West Bank cities and villages.
Hotovely concludes by saying that Israel “has the obligation to refute the industry of lies” and speak the historic truth.
This rhetoric came shortly after the extremist right wing lawmaker, Anat Berko, has said that there has never been a Palestinian state because the letter “P” does not exist in Arabic language.
These claims sparked sarcasm amongst local and international activists, since the word “Palestine” is pronounced with an “F” in both Arabic and Hebrew.
Israel, which has been established on Palestinian land in 1947, has maintained a brutal military occupation on the occupied West Bank, which included illegal settlement expansion, kidnappings, home demolitions, executions and controls the movement of Palestinians within the West Bank by placing hunderds of checkpoints between the West Bank cities and villages.
18 feb 2016
‘Good Labor – Bad Likud': Dispelling the Myth of ‘Democracy’ within Israel’s Political Establishment
By Ramzy Baroud
The Israeli ‘Right’, as demonstrated by a scary coalition of rightwing nationalists, ultranationalists and religious zealots, deserves all the bad press it has garnered since its formation last May.
But none of this should come as a shock, as the ‘Right’ in Israel has never been anything but a coalition of demagogues that catered to the lowest common denominator in society.
As unlikable as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is, he is, in fact, a fair representation of the worst that Israel has to offer, which, over the years, has morphed to represent mainstream thinking. But Israel has not always been ruled by the right-wingers, and the likes of current Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, who has made a habit of calls for extermination and genocide of Palestinians, are relatively newcomers to Israel’s political tussle.
In previous Knessets, the likes of her would have been assigned to a neglected seat in the back of the Knesset, along with other lunatics who often mouthed profanities and incessantly called for killing all Gentiles. Tellingly, she is now one of the main centerpieces in Netanyahu’s menacing coalition. Somehow, this may be of benefit to the wider world. At least now, many would get to see Israel as the country that it has always been, but which has cleverly hidden its real nature under a mask of liberal façade and ever-touted democratic ideals.
Few, with good conscience, can claim that Netanyahu and his partners – Moshe Yaalon, Naftali Bennet and Shaked, among others – are icons of democracy, any democracy, however lacking. In fact, a new draft in the Knesset, which is in the process of becoming a law, proposes to punish any Israeli organization that dares question Israel’s behavior and undemocratic practices.
Those who are anticipating the supposed liberal democratic forces in Israel to rise against the destructive rightwing machine should also reconsider. Isaac Herzog, the chairman of the Labor Party and head of the Zionist Union coalition is not markedly different than Netanyahu, at least when it comes to issues of substance.
At best, he is a true manifestation of Israel’s center-left, double-faced approach to politics. Oddly enough, it is the ‘Right’ that has learned the tricks of the trade from the ‘Left’ in Israel, not the other way around. In recent comments, Herzog shouted from the pits of his party’s political irrelevance that he does not “see a possibility at the moment of implementing the two-state solution.” He told Israeli Army Radio that if he is to become a Prime Minister, he would focus on implementing security measures instead of investing in a bilateral agreement with the Palestinians.
While he partly blamed Netanyahu for the failure to achieve the supposedly coveted goal of two states, he also assigned equal blame to the ever-hapless Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been watching for years as his make-believe world of ‘peace process’ has been collapsing around him, unable to even control his own exit from, or entry to the West Bank without a prior permit from the Israeli army.
However, the issue is far more important than blaming Israel’s hypocritical and cowardly ‘Left’: but, rather, to highlight a dominant myth about the ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ within Israel’s political establishment. For many years, much of the Western world’s understanding of Israel has been based on a cluster of myths, from the early fables of the Zionists making the desert bloom, to Palestine supposedly being a land without people for a people without land.
This intricately constructed and propagated mythology evolved over time, as Israeli hasbara labored to provide a perception of reality that was required to justify its wars, its military occupation, its constant violations of human rights and its many war crimes. One aspect of the Western perception of Israel is that the ‘Jewish-state’, which is also a ‘democracy’, has been experiencing a long-drawn-out battle between rightwing ideologues, and liberal forces that have labored to preserve Israel’s democratic ideals.
However, such misrepresentations are always grossly at odds with the reality. Take any aspect of Israeli history that many, even in the Western hemisphere, now see as immoral and inhumane – for example, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, the massacres of 1947-48, the racism against Palestinians who remain in today’s Israel after the Nakba, the illegal Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, the construction of the illegal settlements, the building of the Apartheid Wall, and, more recently, the wars on Gaza which killed over 4,000 people since 2008.
Much of these atrocities have the fingerprints of Labor and their allies. The fact is that it was the Mapai Party, which was later joined by other supposedly ‘progressive’ forces to form the Labor Party in the 1960s, that has been responsible for most of the bloodletting, ethnic cleansing and illegal practices that have pushed the situation to this degree of desperation.
The rightwing in Israel did not achieve prominence until the late 1970s. Prior to that, Israel was ruled exclusively by Labor governments. Netanyahu’s current rightwing government officials are by no means short of exacting utter cruelty in inhumaneness, and the reality is that this behavior is rooted in a political past. What largely differs between the ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ in Israel is the expression of their political discourses, certainly not the outcomes. The fundamental reason why some insist on maintaining that myth – of Israel’s ‘Peace Camp’ compared to the ominous ‘Right’ – is that they are frenziedly promoting the idea that Israel is still governed by democratic forces, an assumption that allows Western governments the time and space to ignore the plight of the Palestinians.
Rightwing leaders like Netanyahu and his coalition partners are an utter embarrassment to Europe – still a major supporter of Israel – and they make it very difficult for the United States to even sustain the charade of its peace process. The West longs for the days when Israel was governed by less belligerent sounding leaders, regardless of their violent agendas.
Labor governments in Israel, whether those that existed in the late 40s and 50s, or those that ruled under the leaderships of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, etc., never truly showed any genuine sign that ending the Occupation and granting Palestinians a form of real sovereignty was ever on their agendas.
Do not believe the hype. Rabin was given a Nobel Peace Prize after the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords, despite the fact that Oslo did not give Palestinians sovereignty or the right to self-determination. Instead, it sliced up the West Bank into various zones, ultimately controlled by the Israeli army, and bribed some within the Palestinian elites with phony titles, VIP cards and mounds of money to play along.
Rabin was killed by a Rightwing Jewish zealot because, as far as the religious and ultranationalist camps in Israel were concerned, even such ‘concessions’ as a Palestinian flag and a national anthem, among other symbolic ‘achievements’ offered to the Palestinians by Oslo, were still considered a taboo. So, when Herzog threw his hand in the air and postponed any discussion of a ‘two-state solution’ that has been dead and buried for years now, it was not a sign that Labor had given up or that the level-headed Herzog is officially fed-up with the shenanigans of Netanyahu and stubbornness of Abbas.
It is a mere contribution of the ‘good Labor-bad Likud’ routine that the Israeli ruling class have played for decades. The great irony, though, is that the destruction of the ‘two-state solution’ myth was the predictable outcome of the illegal Jewish colonies in the Occupied Territories, which were, interestingly enough, the backbone of the Labor Party policies following the illegal Occupation of what remained of historic Palestine after the war of 1967. At the time, rightwing forces were too insignificant to merit mention. Only the Labor reigned supreme, which single-handedly took over Palestine and precluded every chance for a lasting peace.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com.
The Israeli ‘Right’, as demonstrated by a scary coalition of rightwing nationalists, ultranationalists and religious zealots, deserves all the bad press it has garnered since its formation last May.
But none of this should come as a shock, as the ‘Right’ in Israel has never been anything but a coalition of demagogues that catered to the lowest common denominator in society.
As unlikable as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is, he is, in fact, a fair representation of the worst that Israel has to offer, which, over the years, has morphed to represent mainstream thinking. But Israel has not always been ruled by the right-wingers, and the likes of current Justice Minister, Ayelet Shaked, who has made a habit of calls for extermination and genocide of Palestinians, are relatively newcomers to Israel’s political tussle.
In previous Knessets, the likes of her would have been assigned to a neglected seat in the back of the Knesset, along with other lunatics who often mouthed profanities and incessantly called for killing all Gentiles. Tellingly, she is now one of the main centerpieces in Netanyahu’s menacing coalition. Somehow, this may be of benefit to the wider world. At least now, many would get to see Israel as the country that it has always been, but which has cleverly hidden its real nature under a mask of liberal façade and ever-touted democratic ideals.
Few, with good conscience, can claim that Netanyahu and his partners – Moshe Yaalon, Naftali Bennet and Shaked, among others – are icons of democracy, any democracy, however lacking. In fact, a new draft in the Knesset, which is in the process of becoming a law, proposes to punish any Israeli organization that dares question Israel’s behavior and undemocratic practices.
Those who are anticipating the supposed liberal democratic forces in Israel to rise against the destructive rightwing machine should also reconsider. Isaac Herzog, the chairman of the Labor Party and head of the Zionist Union coalition is not markedly different than Netanyahu, at least when it comes to issues of substance.
At best, he is a true manifestation of Israel’s center-left, double-faced approach to politics. Oddly enough, it is the ‘Right’ that has learned the tricks of the trade from the ‘Left’ in Israel, not the other way around. In recent comments, Herzog shouted from the pits of his party’s political irrelevance that he does not “see a possibility at the moment of implementing the two-state solution.” He told Israeli Army Radio that if he is to become a Prime Minister, he would focus on implementing security measures instead of investing in a bilateral agreement with the Palestinians.
While he partly blamed Netanyahu for the failure to achieve the supposedly coveted goal of two states, he also assigned equal blame to the ever-hapless Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, who has been watching for years as his make-believe world of ‘peace process’ has been collapsing around him, unable to even control his own exit from, or entry to the West Bank without a prior permit from the Israeli army.
However, the issue is far more important than blaming Israel’s hypocritical and cowardly ‘Left’: but, rather, to highlight a dominant myth about the ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ within Israel’s political establishment. For many years, much of the Western world’s understanding of Israel has been based on a cluster of myths, from the early fables of the Zionists making the desert bloom, to Palestine supposedly being a land without people for a people without land.
This intricately constructed and propagated mythology evolved over time, as Israeli hasbara labored to provide a perception of reality that was required to justify its wars, its military occupation, its constant violations of human rights and its many war crimes. One aspect of the Western perception of Israel is that the ‘Jewish-state’, which is also a ‘democracy’, has been experiencing a long-drawn-out battle between rightwing ideologues, and liberal forces that have labored to preserve Israel’s democratic ideals.
However, such misrepresentations are always grossly at odds with the reality. Take any aspect of Israeli history that many, even in the Western hemisphere, now see as immoral and inhumane – for example, the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, the massacres of 1947-48, the racism against Palestinians who remain in today’s Israel after the Nakba, the illegal Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, the construction of the illegal settlements, the building of the Apartheid Wall, and, more recently, the wars on Gaza which killed over 4,000 people since 2008.
Much of these atrocities have the fingerprints of Labor and their allies. The fact is that it was the Mapai Party, which was later joined by other supposedly ‘progressive’ forces to form the Labor Party in the 1960s, that has been responsible for most of the bloodletting, ethnic cleansing and illegal practices that have pushed the situation to this degree of desperation.
The rightwing in Israel did not achieve prominence until the late 1970s. Prior to that, Israel was ruled exclusively by Labor governments. Netanyahu’s current rightwing government officials are by no means short of exacting utter cruelty in inhumaneness, and the reality is that this behavior is rooted in a political past. What largely differs between the ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ in Israel is the expression of their political discourses, certainly not the outcomes. The fundamental reason why some insist on maintaining that myth – of Israel’s ‘Peace Camp’ compared to the ominous ‘Right’ – is that they are frenziedly promoting the idea that Israel is still governed by democratic forces, an assumption that allows Western governments the time and space to ignore the plight of the Palestinians.
Rightwing leaders like Netanyahu and his coalition partners are an utter embarrassment to Europe – still a major supporter of Israel – and they make it very difficult for the United States to even sustain the charade of its peace process. The West longs for the days when Israel was governed by less belligerent sounding leaders, regardless of their violent agendas.
Labor governments in Israel, whether those that existed in the late 40s and 50s, or those that ruled under the leaderships of Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, etc., never truly showed any genuine sign that ending the Occupation and granting Palestinians a form of real sovereignty was ever on their agendas.
Do not believe the hype. Rabin was given a Nobel Peace Prize after the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords, despite the fact that Oslo did not give Palestinians sovereignty or the right to self-determination. Instead, it sliced up the West Bank into various zones, ultimately controlled by the Israeli army, and bribed some within the Palestinian elites with phony titles, VIP cards and mounds of money to play along.
Rabin was killed by a Rightwing Jewish zealot because, as far as the religious and ultranationalist camps in Israel were concerned, even such ‘concessions’ as a Palestinian flag and a national anthem, among other symbolic ‘achievements’ offered to the Palestinians by Oslo, were still considered a taboo. So, when Herzog threw his hand in the air and postponed any discussion of a ‘two-state solution’ that has been dead and buried for years now, it was not a sign that Labor had given up or that the level-headed Herzog is officially fed-up with the shenanigans of Netanyahu and stubbornness of Abbas.
It is a mere contribution of the ‘good Labor-bad Likud’ routine that the Israeli ruling class have played for decades. The great irony, though, is that the destruction of the ‘two-state solution’ myth was the predictable outcome of the illegal Jewish colonies in the Occupied Territories, which were, interestingly enough, the backbone of the Labor Party policies following the illegal Occupation of what remained of historic Palestine after the war of 1967. At the time, rightwing forces were too insignificant to merit mention. Only the Labor reigned supreme, which single-handedly took over Palestine and precluded every chance for a lasting peace.
Dr. Ramzy Baroud has been writing about the Middle East for over 20 years. He is an internationally-syndicated columnist, a media consultant, an author of several books and the founder of PalestineChronicle.com.
17 feb 2016
On February 8th, the Knesset Ethics Committee suspended three Joint List Members of Knesset (MK) for several months. The committee suspended the MKs for visiting Palestinian families that were mourning a relative killed by Israeli forces but had yet to receive their bodies for burial from the Israeli authorities.
The MKs’ visit with the families of killed Palestinians prompted extremist, right-wing MKs, as well as prime minister Netanyahu himself, to push the Ethics Committee towards making the racist and provocative decision to suspend them – a decision that expresses a high degree of fascism.
Although the suspension of the three MKs will be appealed in the Israeli Supreme Court, it is unlikely to be overturned as the court rarely intervenes in Knesset decisions, particularly those concerning Arab deputies.
The Israeli occupation committed two crimes in regards to the grieving Palestinian families: killing their relatives and then withholding their bodies from them.
Now, on top of these two crimes is the suspension of the MKs. The Knesset members, Hanin Zoabi, Basel Ghattas and Jamal Zahalka, were defending the interests of their constituents. They are paying a price for acting on humanitarian, moral and national concerns.
Despite the suspension, the three MKs reiterated their determination to continue efforts to release the bodies that have been held in the Israeli occupation’s refrigerators for months now.
The Ethics Committee’s decision is reflective of political efforts to refashion the Knesset in ethnic terms. Recently drafted legislation, proposed by Netanyahu and the right-wing fascist parties, would allow the Knesset to expel any MK that “rejects Israel as a Jewish and democratic state or supports or incites to terrorism, armed conflict against Israel,” provided that a majority of MKs (90 out of 120) agree with the charge. If approved, the legislation could effectively exclude any Arab from being an MK, apart from those in right-wing parties.
The suspension and forthcoming legislation is evidence of the moral degeneration of the Israeli government and the right-wing, fascist parliament. Withholding the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces from their families is a crime and contradicts international public opinion. Moreover, legislating laws, the purpose of which is to disenfranchise the 21 percent of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians, is an effort to uproot Palestinians and render them strangers in their homeland.
Against the backdrop of the proposed “transparency” bill and the targeting of left-wing groups within Israeli society, Palestinian initiatives to network with these associations would send a strong message to the international community – especially as European politicians have spoken out against this proposed legislation. Global public opinion can support internal resistance.
The MKs’ visit with the families of killed Palestinians prompted extremist, right-wing MKs, as well as prime minister Netanyahu himself, to push the Ethics Committee towards making the racist and provocative decision to suspend them – a decision that expresses a high degree of fascism.
Although the suspension of the three MKs will be appealed in the Israeli Supreme Court, it is unlikely to be overturned as the court rarely intervenes in Knesset decisions, particularly those concerning Arab deputies.
The Israeli occupation committed two crimes in regards to the grieving Palestinian families: killing their relatives and then withholding their bodies from them.
Now, on top of these two crimes is the suspension of the MKs. The Knesset members, Hanin Zoabi, Basel Ghattas and Jamal Zahalka, were defending the interests of their constituents. They are paying a price for acting on humanitarian, moral and national concerns.
Despite the suspension, the three MKs reiterated their determination to continue efforts to release the bodies that have been held in the Israeli occupation’s refrigerators for months now.
The Ethics Committee’s decision is reflective of political efforts to refashion the Knesset in ethnic terms. Recently drafted legislation, proposed by Netanyahu and the right-wing fascist parties, would allow the Knesset to expel any MK that “rejects Israel as a Jewish and democratic state or supports or incites to terrorism, armed conflict against Israel,” provided that a majority of MKs (90 out of 120) agree with the charge. If approved, the legislation could effectively exclude any Arab from being an MK, apart from those in right-wing parties.
The suspension and forthcoming legislation is evidence of the moral degeneration of the Israeli government and the right-wing, fascist parliament. Withholding the bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli forces from their families is a crime and contradicts international public opinion. Moreover, legislating laws, the purpose of which is to disenfranchise the 21 percent of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians, is an effort to uproot Palestinians and render them strangers in their homeland.
Against the backdrop of the proposed “transparency” bill and the targeting of left-wing groups within Israeli society, Palestinian initiatives to network with these associations would send a strong message to the international community – especially as European politicians have spoken out against this proposed legislation. Global public opinion can support internal resistance.
14 feb 2016
A German tourist passed away on Friday inside of the settlement tunnels in Silwan.
Wadi Hilweh Information Center was informed that a group of settlers entered the tunnel underneath the neighborhood of Wadi Hilweh in Silwan (tunnel that starts in the middle of Wadi Hilweh towards the courtyard known by “Giv’ati”. Suddenly, the area was crowded with paramedics and firemen.
The center added that the process of saving the life of the German tourist took more than three hours. According to Magen David paramedics, the tourist suffered a heart attack inside one of the tunnels in Silwan.
The center explained that the rescue teams prevented the locals from approaching the scene and a group of settlers intervened to move the young Jerusalemite men.
Wadi Hilweh Information Center was informed that a group of settlers entered the tunnel underneath the neighborhood of Wadi Hilweh in Silwan (tunnel that starts in the middle of Wadi Hilweh towards the courtyard known by “Giv’ati”. Suddenly, the area was crowded with paramedics and firemen.
The center added that the process of saving the life of the German tourist took more than three hours. According to Magen David paramedics, the tourist suffered a heart attack inside one of the tunnels in Silwan.
The center explained that the rescue teams prevented the locals from approaching the scene and a group of settlers intervened to move the young Jerusalemite men.