This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since that is the pronunciation preferred by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland.
Online database 'exposes' pro-Palestinian college students in bid to block future jobs
(
story at Haaretz)
A new website is publicizing the identities of pro-Palestinian student activists to prevent them from getting jobs after they graduate from college. But the website is keeping its own backers’ identity a secret.
“It is your duty to ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees,” a female narrator intones in a slick video posted to the website’s YouTube account.
Called Canary Mission, the site has posted profiles of dozens of students and recent graduates, alongside those of well-known activists like Omar Barghouti, founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. Some of the students are active in Students for Justice in Palestine; others were involved in recent pro-BDS resolutions at campuses in California. Many of them have relatively thin activist résumés.
Shadowy Web Site Creates Blacklist of Pro-Palestinian Activists
(
story at Forward)
Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, defended the tactic as a way of forcing people to understand the seriousness of their political stands.
“Factually documenting who one’s adversaries are and making this information available is a perfectly legitimate undertaking,” Pipes wrote in an email. “Collecting information on students has particular value because it signals them that attacking Israel is serious business, not some inconsequential game, and that their actions can damage both Israel and their future careers.”
Hamas Is Accused of Using Gaza War as Cover to Torture and Kill Palestinians
(
article in NY Times)
The militant group Hamas used last summer’s war with Israel in the Gaza Strip to carry out extrajudicial killings of at least 23 Palestinians accused of collaborating with Israel and to torture dozens of others, including political rivals, Amnesty International charged in a report issued early Wednesday.
[...]
“In the chaos of the conflict, the de facto Hamas administration granted its security forces free rein to carry out horrific abuses, including against people in its custody,” Philip Luther, the director of the Middle East and North Africa Program of Amnesty International, said in a statement. “These spine-chilling actions, some of which amount to war crimes, were designed to exact revenge and spread fear across the Gaza Strip.”
‘Strangling Necks’: Abduction, torture and summary killings of Palestinians by Hamas forces during the 2014 Gaza/Israel conflict
Amnesty released a statement to accompany the report.
Ibrahim Dabour, an insurance company employee and father of two children, was held at Katiba Prison in Gaza City standing trial before a military court on a charge of “communicating with hostile sides” when he was taken out and extrajudicially executed by firing squad on 22 August 2014.
“We were told about the execution by people around us at 1pm. There was no official notification. He was executed at 9:30am on Friday. My brother received a text message at 10:31pm that night saying ‘The judgement against Ibrahim Dabour has been carried out according to the Shari’a as per the ruling of the Revolutionary Court’,” his brother told Amnesty International.
Hamas executions in Gaza war designed to ‘punish, instill fear’
(
artice in Ma'an News)
The most notorious incident took place on August 22 – a day after Israeli military forces killed three senior Hamas commanders – when 18 suspected collaborators were shot dead.
Six of the men – who had bags over their heads -- were executed in front of the Al-Omari mosque by men in Hamas military uniforms after Friday prayers in front of hundreds of onlookers. The men were knelt against a wall and shot in the head before being sprayed with gunfire.
Eleven other men were said to have been killed in the Katiba prison after being sentenced to death by local courts, with two bodies dumped near the al-Azhar University in Gaza City.
Three men were also killed by Hamas authorities immediately following the deaths of Muhammad Abu Shammala, Raed al-Attar and Muhammad Barhoum in Rafah, senior commanders in the Al-Qassam Brigades who Israel says masterminded the kidnapping of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006.
In all the killings, Hamas said that the suspects had been sentenced for collaborating with Israel during the ongoing conflict following trials preceded over by security and legal experts in "revolutionary courts."
Women petition court to order ultra-Orthodox Israeli mayor to remove illegal 'modesty signs'
(
story in Haaretz)
The same group of women scored a key victory in a district court in January when the Beit Shemesh municipality was compelled to financially compensate the women for the threats and violence they had suffered from modesty-policing Haredi elements.
The municipality, led by Mayor Moshe Abutbul, subsequently paid the fines - 15,000 shekels (close to $4,000) in damages to each of the four women in that suit. But the signs have still remained on the streets of Beit Shemesh undisturbed, ignoring the strongly-worded court decision stating that such modesty signs, in addition to being illegal - created an atmosphere that threatens women. The signs include wording such as: “Dire Warning: It is forbidden to walk on our streets in immodest dress, including slutty clothing worn in a religious style.”
Israel’s education minister: ‘I don’t believe in giving up our land’
(
story in Washington Post)
Naftali Bennett, a former tech guru who co-founded Cyota, a cybersecurity software company in the United States, is not just Israel’s new education minister. Because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new right-wing coalition government wields such a slim majority in parliament, Bennett is also a kind of kingmaker — able to influence Netanyahu’s policies in exchange for the majority his party helps furnish. He told The Washington Post’s Lally Weymouth this past week that Israel should annex large parts of the West Bank.
[...]
In Judea and Samaria [Jewish names for the West Bank], there are two areas. There are the Palestinian-controlled areas that are called A and B, and the Israeli-controlled area, which is called C. My approach is for the Palestinians to have almost full self-governance in their area. . . . I have no desire to govern them. In Area C, we will apply Israeli law and Israeli sovereignty.
But that’s 60 percent of the West Bank.
Yes.
After capturing Haifa, Ben-Gurion gave order to stop fleeing Arabs from returning
(
story in Haaretz)
A letter going to auction reveals that Israel's first PM tried to thwart British attempts to resettle 'the enemy' in Haifa. The letter contradicts a testimony by Golda Meir.
[...]
The letter was sent by Ben-Gurion on June 2, 1948, a month and a half after Haifa was captured and a few weeks after Israel's independence was declared. It was addressed to Abba Khoushy, the secretary-general of the Haifa Workers' Council, and later the city’s mayor.
[...]
On May 1, after touring the area, Ben-Gurion wrote in his diary: “An amazing and terrible sight. a dead city… with barns, shops, small and large houses, old and new - with not a living soul except for some wandering cats… how did tens of thousands of people leave behind, in such panic, their houses and wealth?”
“What caused this flight? Was it just orders from above? It’s inconceivable that extremely wealthy people - and there were extremely wealthy people here, those with knowledge say, the richest in the whole land - would leave all their wealth behind just because someone commanded them to. Was it fear?”
[...]
Despite the shock felt by Ben-Gurion, the letter that surfaced and is now up for auction indicates that a month later he called for preventing Arab residents from returning to their homes. The letter contradicts the testimony of Golda Meir, who wrote in her book "My Life" that Ben-Gurion asked her to try and prevent the flight of Haifa’s Arabs.
Christian school students in Israel protest for more funding
(
story in Haaretz)
Hundreds of students and teachers from Christian schools demonstrated outside the Education Ministry on Wednesday, saying that Christian education in Israel could come to an end if discrimination in budgeting was not eradicated.
[...]
The vast majority of the students in this system are Arabs, some of them Muslims. In Israel, 47 schools are church-run; 3,000 teachers there teach 30,000 students.
[...]
“Unfortunately, the Education Ministry — and maybe the government too — sees a group that is politically weak and thinks it can impose its will,” a church official told Haaretz.
“Everyone understands that if you hurt a school system like Shas’ Hama’ayan Hatorani or the yeshivas the government will fall,” he said, referring to religious Jewish school systems. “In our case, no one thinks it’s a big deal.”
Israel Supreme Court: Bedouin have no indigenous rights
(
story at +972mag)
The court rejected a five-year old petition filed by the Al Uqbi family to recognize its ownership over a large plot of land in Israel’s Negev/Naqab Desert. The land also includes the unrecognized village Al Arakib, which is still in its own legal battle for recognition from the stae.
According to Attorney Michael Sfard, who represented the Ul Uqbi family, no one is arguing with the fact that the family has been living in this area for centuries. However, the ruling does not recognize the family’s ownership of the land since it defines it as consisting of stone houses and written deeds as proof of ownership. Bedouin have traditionally lived in tent structures and their ownership was passed down orally, such that they do not fit that definition. As Sfard points out, the judgement uses “cultural bias to uphold Western notions of what a ‘human settlement’ is.”
The petition called for recognition of ownership over the family’s historical lands, from which they were expelled in the 1950s. The ruling, which went largely un-reported in the Israeli media, effectively means the state does not recognize Bedouin rights to the land, clearing the path for it to continue to legalize the expropriation of Palestinian lands, whether inside Israel or in the West Bank.
The decision not only fails to acknowledge the distinct historical and cultural heritage of this Bedouin community, it is also a major contradiction: while Bedouin property rights are not recognized, the Zionist purchase of land from Bedouin before the state was established is.
[...]
“The bottom line: hundreds of thousands of Bedouin have lived for centuries in the Negev, but as the court astonishingly said, the Bedouin way of life does not create any legal rights in the lands they lived on and cultivated for generations,” Michael Sfard says.
Apartheid in Israel is about more than just segregated buses
(
article in Haaretz)
South Africa used to distinguish between two types of apartheid. The first, called “petty” apartheid, included the separation of public amenities like public benches, bathrooms and public transportation. The second, called “grand” apartheid, included the division of territory and political rights, under which separate areas were allocated in which blacks were forced to live. Residents of these areas were deprived of South African citizenship, with the government claiming that these territories, known as Bantustans, were essentially independent states. While it was easy to photograph petty apartheid, which had blatant expression in signs saying “For Whites Only,” the impact of grand apartheid was no less harsh.
The attempt to make the Palestinians in the territories travel on segregated buses drew such fire that the plan was criticized by the right as well as the left. Segregated buses have great symbolic power, as they remind everyone of the fight put up by Rosa Parks, the American black woman who refused to sit at the back of the bus in 1955. It’s an aspect of apartheid that photographs clearly, even though it is merely one aspect of petty apartheid; the most conspicuous aspect of the segregation that is the basis of the Israeli regime in the territories.
This regime contains components of grand apartheid as well; a regime which determines that Jews are allowed to live here, and Arabs are allowed to live there – and not on an equal footing. It’s a regime based on separation and dispossession of land and water resources, as well as the resources of the rule of law. The law is not enforced equitably in the territories; not only are there separate legal and judicial systems for the Jewish and Arab populations, but law enforcement breaks down when it comes to attacks by Israelis on Palestinians.
More stories below the fold:
- Perpetrator unknown: The systemic failure to investigate settler violence
- What Obama got wrong about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism
- Israeli forces continue near daily fire on Gaza fishermen, farmers
- Israel must not feel complacent after staving off Palestinian FIFA expulsion bid
- Surviving in Gaza’s caravan houses
- High court tosses law countering bad-faith lawsuits; reverses ruling against BDS opponents
- As Jewish settlement turns 40, a founder looks ahead in the West Bank
- Israeli forces break the arm of a Palestinian man at peaceful protest, Beit Ummar
- Hamas arrests Islamic Jihad activists for rocket fire
- To most Israelis, a colonial regime is preferable
- Bill would make Arabic lessons mandatory from first grade
- To salvage its democracy, Israel must be divided into cantons
- Another violent attack on Palestinian family
- African-American converts finally recognized as Jews in Israel
- Israeli settlers take over 10 dunums of land in Nablus
- Militants, Palestinians battle in Syria refugee camp
Perpetrator unknown: The systemic failure to investigate settler violence
(
story at +972mag)
At the center of a new Yesh Din report, Mock Enforcement, is a depressing piece of data: the Israel Police’s fail in 85.3 percent of investigations into Israelis who harm Palestinians in the West Bank. The report, which which deals with Israel’s continued failure to enforce the law on Israeli civilians in the West Bank, examined 996 cases closed by the police, and found that the main reason cited for closing them is “UP” – unknown perpetrator. Five-hundred-and-ninety-three of the cases examined were closed for that reason, which means the police did not find suspects who committed the crime.
[...]
On September 3, 2009, three Israeli civilians – two of them wearing hoods, one with his face visible, holding a stick and walking a dog – attacked Ibrahim Tawil, a Palestinian from the village of Faratha, on his own land. The three attackers were joined by three others, all of them wearing hoods, and together they removed Ibarhim’s belt and assaulted him with it. They then undressed him, stole his wallet and watch and left him in his underwear.
At the police station, Tawil identified the unmasked attacker in a photo lineup. However, an internal police memo claimed that according to intelligence, the person had no connection to the region or the incident. Had the police bothered to make the minimal effort and examine the identified man’s criminal record, they would have found that he had a rich past of violence against Palestinians, including a conviction for using firearms. But police didn’t do that. The suspect was not summoned for an interrogation and the case was closed under the UP clause.
What Obama got wrong about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism
(
Opinion in Haaretz -- Peter Beinart)
But Obama’s analysis is wrong. Yes, anti-Semitism is rising, in Europe and perhaps the United States as well. Yes, many anti-Semites are also anti-Zionists. But anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are not the same. And by implying that they are, Obama isn’t doing American Jews any favors. He’s helping them evade realities they must understand to help Israel survive.
Conceptually, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are clearly distinct. Virtually all Palestinians are anti-Zionists. After all, Zionism is a Jewish national liberation movement that, while a great blessing for the Jewish people, has caused Palestinians great suffering. But that doesn’t make all Palestinians anti-Semites.
[...]
There’s also a long history of anti-Zionism among Jews. The Orthodox movement was once largely anti-Zionist because Orthodox leaders believed it violated Jewish law to restore Jewish sovereignty before messianic times. The Bund, a Jewish movement that advocated socialism and Yiddish rather than a return to the Land of Israel, enjoyed widespread support in both Eastern Europe and the United States in the early 20th century.
[...]
Yes, Israel suffers from a double standard. Anti-Zionist activists are not equally outraged by the abuses committed by post-colonial regimes like Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Iran. But that’s because the activist left is always more outraged by Western abuses than non-Western ones. The same left-wing types who now protest Israel more than they protest Saudi Arabia also protested apartheid South Africa more than they protested Idi Amin, protested the Iraq War more than they protested Saddam Hussein, and protested the World Bank’s economic policies more than they protested North Korea’s.
Israeli forces continue near daily fire on Gaza fishermen, farmers
(
story at Ma'an News)
Israeli naval forces opened fire at Palestinian fishing boats while forces targeted farmers in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday.
Witnesses told Ma'an that the navel forces opened fire at the fishing boats off the coast of Al-Nuseirat and Al-Zawayda refugee camps located in the central Gaza Strip.
An Israeli army spokeswoman told Ma'an that several vessels deviated from the designated fishing zone Saturday morning, and retreated to shore after Israeli naval forces fired warning shots into the air, adding that no injuries were reported.
[...]
The Aug. 26 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Palestinian militant groups stipulated that Israel would immediately expand the fishing zone off Gaza's coast, allowing fishermen to sail as far as six nautical miles from shore, and would continue to expand the area gradually.
Since then, there have been widespread reports that Israeli forces have opened fire at fishermen within those new limits, and the zone has not yet been expanded.
2 Gaza fishermen shot, injured by Israeli navy
(
story at Ma'an News)
Two Palestinian fishermen were shot and injured by Israeli navy forces off the coast of Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, a local union said.
Nizar Ayyash, speaker of the fishermen's union in Gaza, told Ma'an that Muhammad Ziad Bakr, 26, was taken to hospital for treatment after he was shot by Israeli forces.
[...]
In March alone, there were a total of 35 incidents of shootings, incursions into the coastal enclave, and arrests, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
The shootings left 10 injured, including three minors.
Israel must not feel complacent after staving off Palestinian FIFA expulsion bid
(
story at Haaretz)
A sigh of relief was heard in Israel after a Palestinian bid to oust it from soccer’s world governing body, FIFA, was dropped on Friday. The fear that the country would be expelled from this important sporting federation has dissipated, but Israel must not think that this means it is no longer under threat, or at risk of suspension from the family of nations.
The Palestinians withdrew their proposal after it was decided that FIFA would form a committee that would monitor Israel’s approach to Palestinian soccer players from the West Bank and Gaza, and their freedom of movement, as well as claims of racism against Arabs in Israeli soccer and the participation of teams from West Bank settlements in the Israeli national league.
Anyone who thinks Israel can ignore this committee – and Palestinian demands for freedom to play and freedom of movement, to ban settler teams and to end racism in Israeli soccer – is mistaken. This kind of assumption could lead to Israel’s suspension from world soccer as early as next year.
Palestinian soccer chief blasted for dropping bid to ban Israel from FIFA
(
story at Haaretz)
Palestinian soccer chief Jibril Rajoub came under heavy criticism over the weekend for his decision to drop the bid to ban Israel from world soccer at the 65th FIFA Congress in Zurich, Switzerland.
The criticism was leveled by Palestinian civil society groups, expressed in social media sites and voiced on the Palestinian street, while the Palestinian Liberation Organization went as far as to call the decision a blatant violation of national principles.
Many Palestinians fear that dropping the bid will also set a precedent and lead to international pressure to withdraw other appeals to the international community.
Surviving in Gaza’s caravan houses
(
story at International Solidarity Movement)
The family El Najjar was expelled during the Nakba from the Palestinian village of Salamah. This village was the subject of a total ethnic cleansing by the Zionist colonizers.
Nowadays just ten houses remain from the almost 2000 that formed the village. In its place today we can find the Tel Aviv suburb known as Kfar Shalem.
Refugees since 1948, many of them established themselves in Khuza’a, a peasant village in the southern part of the Gaza Strip. For the last eight months a great part of the family has been living in caravans, as more than 45 homes belonging to the El Najjar family were bombed during the 2014 massacre.
High court tosses law countering bad-faith lawsuits
(
story at The Columbian)
In the case at hand, five members of the Olympia Food Cooperative, a nonprofit grocery store, sued the co-op's board members after the board protested Israel's human rights record by adopting a boycott of products from Israel-based companies. The lawsuit alleged that the action violated the store's boycott policy.
The board members successfully invoked the law in Thurston County Superior Court in an effort to have the case dismissed. The group that filed the lawsuit was ordered to pay more than $220,000 in penalties and legal fees, but appealed, arguing that the law itself is unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court agreed, reversing the lower court.
As Jewish settlement turns 40, a founder looks ahead in the West Bank
(
article in Washington Post)
Israel Harel drove a visitor around the Jewish settlement he founded, pointing out the old Jordanian military barracks where the first families lived, the new school and little vineyard, the rose bushes and snack shop.
Called “the mother of all settlements,” Ofra is now 40 years old, well into middle age, looking like a cross between a Southern California suburb and a rural backwater. It is an island of Jews in a sea of Palestinians, surrounded by wire fencing and protected by a military base.
The first settlement north of Jerusalem, created in 1975, Ofra is now a community of 740 families, which should make Harel happy. But at 76, he still dreams of more.
[...]
“I do not understand this obsession against the settlements,” Harel said. “If you are serious and you want this area to last forever as part of Israel, one way or another, you have to build, you have to add thousands of families, you have to assure it.”
[...]
“Let’s say tomorrow we have to divide the territories, God forbid. Nobody is going anywhere. Nobody is going to move us — 380,000 people into little Israel? Where would you put us?”
[...]
Alongside prominent members of Netanyahu’s new cabinet, Harel wants Israel to annex all of what is known as Area C, the 60 percent of the West Bank created by the 1993 Oslo Accords and under complete Israeli control, where all the settlements are.
Israeli forces break the arm of a Palestinian man at peaceful protest, Beit Ummar
(
story at International Solidarity Movement)
Today in Beit Ummar, just north of Al Khalil (Hebron), Israeli forces broke the arm of local activist Yousif Abu Maria, and then arrested him. Yousif was protesting with a group of around 30 local Palestinian activists outside an illegal Israeli settlement. While the police and military attempted to arrest Yousif he was subjected to excessive violence that resulted in his arm being broken. Israeli occupation forces continued to violently arrest him even though his cries of pain were obvious.
At 10.30 am the group drove to the gate of the Beit Al Baraka building. Roughly four years ago the old hospital and church complex was purchased by the right-wing Israeli Zionist group, Israeli Land Fund, under the guise of a Christian refurbishment organisation. Aryeh King, director and founder of Israeli Land Fund, had brought the property to support the illegal expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank.
American millionaire Irving Moskowitz behind purchase of West Bank church compound
(
story in Haaretz)
A non-profit organization controlled by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz is the owner of the church compound near the Aroub refugee camp between Hebron and Bethlehem on the West Bank, which the buyers intend to turn into a new Jewish settlement, Haaretz has discovered.
Last Friday, Haaretz reported that right-wing activist Aryeh King had purchased the abandoned church compound and is refurbishing it ahead of establishing a new settlement outpost at the site. King, who specializes in buying Arab-owned real estate, purchased the property three years ago from its church owners. The 38-dunam (9.5-acre) complex is located on the main road between Jerusalem and Hebron.
[...]
Moskowitz is the main funder behind King’s activities and the purchase of properties in East Jerusalem. The Everest Foundation owns a number of properties in East Jerusalem, valued at $12 million, and now it also owns the Swedish company that controls the church compound.
Hamas arrests Islamic Jihad activists for rocket fire
(
story in Haaretz)
Hamas security services arrested three Islamic Jihad activists on Wednesday on suspicion of involvement in the firing of a Grad rocket at Israel on Tuesday night, according to security sources in Gaza.
The Islamic Jihad security apparatus participated in the arrest, having been convinced that the three were involved in the firing, Al-Quds newspaper reported.
No armed faction has taken responsibility for the rocket firing, though Israel has blamed Islamic Jihad.
Hassidic rabbis see Gaza rocket as sign to observe Shabbat
(
article in Jerusalem Post)
A number of rabbis are musing about the possible spiritual meanings behind Tuesday night's rocket fired at Israel and have called upon residents in the area to strengthen their observance of Shabbat as a means of ensuring the area's safety.
According to a report from popular haredi news website Kikar Hashabbat , the Sadigora Rebbe, who heads that hassidic dynasty, said Wednesday that "we have merited to see miracles since the rocket did not injure anyone or cause damage to property," crediting this to the "thousands of Jews that observe Shabbat and the right to prayer [in Ashdod]."
The Sadigora Rebbe also took the location of where the rocket fell as a sign, since it fell close to the Big Fashion shopping mall, which is open on Shabbat.
To most Israelis, a colonial regime is preferable
(
Opinion in Haaretz --Zeev Sternhall)
Israeli society’s fundamental problem lies in the fact that the first phase of the War of Independence ended only in 1966 with the lifting of military rule in Arab areas. The second phase began immediately thereafter, in June 1967.
Israel transitioned smoothly from curfews on Taibeh to military rule over Nablus. The emergency regime under which Israelis lived for the first two decades after independence prevented the introduction of a constitution and created shameful habits of governance.
In retrospect, one can ask whether our leaders intended, perhaps unconsciously, to make inferiority seem second nature to the vanquished people. The transition from this to the occupation regime in the territories was completely natural.
[...]
The segregation of the buses was an interesting symbolic test that reflected reality. The average Israeli will rebel against apartheid only the day he’s barred from trading with Europe and has to wait three months for a visa to visit Paris.
Bill would make Arabic lessons mandatory from first grade
(
article in Jerusalem Post)
MK Oren Hazan (Likud) doesn't speak Arabic, but he would like to. A gap in his education inspired him to propose a bill requiring Israeli students to study Arabic from first grade. The legislation states that schools in all sectors of Israeli society must learn Hebrew and Arabic from first grade and onward.
"Just like it cannot be that Arab citizens complete 12 years of school without knowing Hebrew, the existing situation, in which Jewish citizens complete 12 years of school without knowing Arabic, cannot continue," Hazan wrote in the bill's explanatory portion.
To salvage its democracy, Israel must be divided into cantons
(
Opinion in Haaretz -- Carlo Strenger)
As a liberal I am entitled to despise the views of Ben-Dahan, Hotovely, Lieberman and Regev, but I am committed to safeguarding their right to hold them. Incidentally, I assume they despise my views, but they in turn are required to respect my freedom of thought and expression.
Still, differences in core values even among Israel’s Jews have become so vast as to make it nearly impossible to live in the same polity. To safeguard Israel’s democracy, we need to get a deeper understanding for the reasons the right attacks democratic institutions.
The right feels that these institutions have been used to impose the views of secular liberals, who judging from the composition of the Knesset, are a minority of about one-third of the country as reflected by Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni’s Zionist Union, Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid and Meretz.
The mainstream press, the judiciary and academia are overwhelmingly liberal, so they are perceived as representing what is called “the white tribe.” They therefore no longer see liberal democracy’s values and institutions as impartial tools, but as the tools of the liberal Ashkenazi elites to impose their views on the majority.
Another violent attack on Palestinian family
(
story at International Solidarity Movement)
On the 23rd May, settlers in Al Khalil (Hebron) blocked the entrance to Hashem Younes Azzeh’s house and attacked his family. Large rocks were thrown at them and his daughter was hit in the hand.
Hashem lives with his wife and four children in Tel Rumeida, part of the H2 area of Al Khalil. H2 is under Israeli military control and many settlers have constructed illegal homes within this part of the city. For the Palestinians, it has become an extremely tense place to live due to daily harassment from the settlers and the Israeli army alike.
Early in the morning, the settlers had parked their car right in front of the entrance to Hashem’s house, making it a tight squeeze for anyone to get by. Later on, as Hashem was walking an international group of Quakers back to the checkpoint, six settler boys, aged between 10 and 12, started throwing large amounts of stones at them. The internationals quickly escaped and when Hashem got home, he found five Israeli soldiers there. They were checking the IDs of his daughter, Raghad, and his wife, Nisreen. Raghad attempted to show the soldiers a video of the attack, but because she had filmed while trying to avoid big stones thrown at her, the footage was blurry. The soldiers called her a liar and were about to arrest her, blaming her for the stone throwing.
All of a sudden, under the eyes of the soldiers, the settlers started throwing stones at them again and injured Raghad’s hand. Unable to support their lie anymore, the soldiers said that they would go and check on the settlers and come back – hours later, they still have not returned.
African-American converts finally recognized as Jews in Israel
(
story in Haaretz)
Ending a drawn-out legal battle, the Interior Ministry has agreed to recognize a large African-American family of converts as citizens of Israel.
It is the first case in which the Interior Ministry had challenged the validity of a conversion performed abroad by a rabbi in a recognized Jewish community. Israeli law requires the government to recognize as Jewish, for the purpose of immigration, anyone converted abroad by a rabbi in a recognized congregation, regardless of its affiliation. But for the past several years, the ministry has cast doubts on the Jewish credentials of the Mosely family, which moved to Israel from Kansas.
[...]
In recent years, African-American converts have come under intense scrutiny by Interior Ministry officials over concerns about possible ties to the Black Hebrew Israelites – a community of African Americans in Dimona, most of them originally from Chicago, who maintain they are descendants of the Tribe of Judah but are not recognized as Jews by the state.
Israeli settlers take over 10 dunums of land in Nablus
(
story in Ma'an News)
Dozens of Israeli settlers from the Yitzhar settlement took over land in the Huwwara village in southern Nablus, official says.
Ghassan Daghlas, an official who monitors settlement activity in the northern West Bank, told Ma'an the settlers took over land belonging to Palestinian Yasser Mutie Hussein Ali, planting grapevines in the area.
Villages south of Nablus are a frequent site of settler violence and Palestinian clashes with Israeli forces, where locals often attack locals and prevent farmers from reaching their land, in addition to attacks on Palestinian harvest itself.
Militants, Palestinians battle in Syria refugee camp
(
story in Ma'an News)
Islamic State group militants in Syria are trying to retake positions they lost in previous fighting in the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus, a Palestinian official said on Tuesday.
"There is intermittent fighting between Palestinian factions and IS and Al-Nusra Front which are trying to retake positions in the center of Yarmouk," Khaled Abdel Majid, head of the Palestinian Popular Struggle Front which is close to Syria's regime, told AFP.
When militants from the two groups entered Yarmouk on April 1, they took 60 percent of the camp before pulling back into around 40 percent. They currently hold presence in the south near the Damascus district of Al-Hajar al-Aswad. Abdel Majid said Palestinian groups control 40 percent of the camp, in its north, and that some 20 percent makes up the front line,adding that Syrian regime aircraft have bombarded IS-held Al-Hajar al-Aswad.
This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper. The goal is to provide a bi-weekly update on the non-violent resistance movement.
Diplomatic negotiations and actions by armed resistance groups are covered quite widely by the mainstream press and in other diaries on DKos so they will rarely be included.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since this is the pronunciation used by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland. The more familiar Palestine is the Hellenic or Roman variant. Filasṭīn refers to the geographic entity roughly encompassing Israel and Palestine. It is a likely cognate of "Philistine", the name used in the Hebrew bible to describe a rival of the Jewish kingdom of that era.
Prior diaries:
May 24, 2015: Soldier pays the price for criticizing the Israel army
May 17, 2015: Despite literal "smoking gun", settlers cleared of charges for shooting
May 10, 2015: "Palestinians are beasts, they are not human" - new head of West Bank civil administration
May 3, 2015: 6 year old child arrested in Jerusalem; The Death of Compassion
April 26, 2015: No Arabs Allowed; Christian cemetery vandalized; Annual March of Return
April 19, 2015: Shooting kids in the back, segregating female soldiers, state-sanctioned theft
April 12, 2015: Yarmouk refugees, NYU divestment letter, Terrorizing Children
April 5, 2015: Segregated Streets in Hebron, Palestinians observe Land Day
March 29, 2015: A March for the Bedouin, A License to Kill & To Teach the Nakba