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.
The head of Hadash (and the Joint List) Ayman Odeh is visiting the US, and Haaretz columnist Ron Kampeas followed him around Washington. He will be speaking at the Haaretz conference on December 13, and meeting with White House officials and members of Congress, he will also be speaking at an event organized for him by the Daniel Abraham Center for Middle-East Peace. Odeh visited Atlanta and attended services at Ebenezer Baptist, MLK’s church. The trip has evoked mixed reactions in Israel/Palestine including high-pitched screeds from the right.
Israeli president Reuven Rivlin is also in the US and will be meeting with President Obama. He too will be speaking at the Haaretz conference.
A Haaretz investigation has found that donors in the US made at least $220 million in tax-exempt contributions to Israeli settlements in the West Bank over the past five years. The settlements are considered illegal under international law, and US policy. However, neither the tax exempt status of these donations nor the $3.1 billion (soon to be $4.1 billion) in annual aid that US taxpayers provide to Israel each year is contingent on dismantling or even stalling the growth of settlements.
Private U.S. donors are massively funding Israeli settlements by using a network of tax-exempt nonprofits, which funnelled more than $220 million (about 850 million shekels) to Jewish communities in the West Bank in 2009-2013 alone, a Haaretz investigation has found.
The funding is being used for anything from buying air conditioners to supporting the families of convicted Jewish terrorists, and comes from tax-deductible donations made to around 50 U.S.-based groups.
Thanks to their status as nonprofits, these organizations are not taxed on their income and donations made to them are tax deductible – meaning the U.S. government is incentivizing and indirectly supporting the Israeli settlement movement, even though it has been consistently opposed by every U.S. administration for the past 48 years.
Haaretz put together a guide listing the US charities they found have distributed funds in the settlements. Some of the contributions have gone to Honenu, an organization that provides legal aid to Jewish suspects accused of terrorism. They have in the past raised funds to support Yigal Amir, the man who assassinated Yitzhak Rabin.
Contributions from a Brooklyn-based charity, the Hebron Fund, have supported Menachem Livni, a former head of the terrorist organization, the Jewish Underground. Livni has also previously received funds from the Israeli government to compensate him for damage to a farm he operates in the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba. The farm is located on Palestinian land. Livni was convicted of murder for a 1983 shooting and grenade attack on the Islamic college of Hebron. Three students died in the attack and three other Palestinians were severely injured. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but released by Israeli authorities after six years.
A Manhattan based tax-exempt organization, The Central Fund for Israel has given millions to a controversial yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement. The extremist rabbis Yitzhak Shapira and Yosef Elitzur head the yeshiva and are co-authors of a Torah commentary that justifies the killing of non-Jewish babies if they could grow up to be a threat to Israel.
The investigation also revealed that deputy-defense minister Eli Ben-Dahan has given funds to the Temple Institute, which advocates for construction of the third temple on the Temple Mount/al-Aqsa complex. They recently organized a rally advocating for the demolition of structures in the Al-Aqsa complex. US tax-exempt donations have also made their way to other temple activists.
Though the Israeli government officially says it is committed to “preserving the status quo” on the temple mount, the government also makes grants to organizations advocating for building a Jewish temple alongside the mosque currently on the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa mosque complex. Much of the recent unrest seems to be driven by Palestinian fears that Israel seeks to change the status of the Temple Mount.
Adding fuel to the fire, PM Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this month:
If Israel “wanted to destroy Al-Aqsa, it would not require a great effort… but it goes against everything we stand for,” the prime minister told his party’s Knesset faction on Wednesday, in a recording played by Army Radio on Thursday afternoon.
Michael Omer-Man has a list of the Craziest Things Netanyahu said this Week. And B’Tselem sent Netanyahu an open letter accusing him of permitting extra-judicial executions. Yossi Sarid died this week, he had been a major figure in the Israeli peace movement for decades. Far-right activists (including former Knesset member Michael Ben Ari) celebrated his death.
In somewhat happier news, the Palestinian PM Rami Hamdallah lit the official Christmas tree in Bethlehem last week.
Palestinian MP Khalida Jarrar was sentenced by an Israeli military court to 15 months in prison for membership in an “illegal organization” and “incitement” (most Palestinian political parties are illegal under the rules of Israel’s occupation). Haaretz has a strident editorial calling the trial predictably unjust, the charges against her shifty, and concluding that Jarrar is a political prisoner.
Israeli police have disrupted two events organized by the rights group Breaking the Silence, which publishes testimonies from IDF veterans. The authorities claim they are acting to protect attendees from right-wing threats. The organizers aren’t buying it:
“Unfortunately that’s the situation we’re living in,” said Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence. “Law enforcement authorities, following the lead of the Netanyahu-Bennett-Shaked government, are capitulating to right-wing violence. This is happening in Hebron, when police and soldiers protect settlers attempting to take over Palestinian-owned homes, and it is happening in Be’er Sheva and Tel Aviv when police capitulate to the Right’s threats of violence, and attempt to shut down lectures and stop a discussion about what’s happening in the occupied territories.”
Natasha Roth in +972mag interviews the 17 year old settler arrested for assaulting Rabbi Arik Ascherman, president of Rabbis for Human Rights and threatening him with a knife. She questions the Israeli authorities decision to keep him under house arrest.
Israeli authorities revealed they have arrested a number of Jewish suspects in the Duma firebombing which led to the death of 18 month old Ali Dawabsheh and his parents. The family of the victims say Israeli authorities are responsible for the killings by allowing settlers to enter Palestinian villages at will.
The Jewish supremacist group Lehava posted a video of the shootings of two Palestinian women accused of carrying out a stabbing attack (which injured a Palestinian man) to Facebook. The video is dubbed with bouncy electronic music.
An officer who repeatedly beat 15 year old Palestinian-American Tariq Abu Khdeir was sentenced to six weeks of community service. Tariq’s beating was captured on video and occurred a day after his cousin Mohammed Abu Khdeir was burned to death. Two Jewish minors were convicted of Mohammed’s murder and a case against a third man is underway. Since Tariq is an American citizen, the US media covered the assault last year. The NY Times reported on the sentence:
An Israeli border police officer who was filmed beating a Palestinian-American teenager on the edges of a riot in East Jerusalem in July 2014 has been sentenced to 45 days of community service and a suspended prison term of four months, Israeli officials said. [...]
The Israeli Justice Ministry said that Tariq had not been resisting arrest and that the border police officer had beaten the boy in the head, face and upper body while he was on the ground.
IDF claims that 22 year old Palestinian Lady ‘Awad was shot to death when he tried to grab a soldier’s rifle were put into question by eyewitnesses and evidence that suggests the man was shot from some distance, in the back. The IDF is refusing to release video of the killing. A 16 year old Palestinian boy was killed in the same West Bank town two years ago and the soldiers were indicted.
Over 110 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or civilians in the past two months. This includes two men who were shot to death in a Palestinian refugee camp while soldiers attempted to demolish the family home of a Palestinian charged with murder. The homes of Jewish assailants accused of similar crimes are never been demolished. A number of Israeli and Palestinian civilians (including some Americans) have been killed or wounded in attacks by assailants. John Kerry recently defended Israeli actions during a visit:
In a sign that Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not see the situation in exactly the same way despite the former’s words of support, their offices’ brief accounts of the talks emphasized different aspects. The State Department said the two had discussed ways to stop the violence and “improve conditions on the ground.” Netanyahu’s office said the talks focused on steps “to end the wave of terror against Israeli citizens and return the quiet and stability.”
The Union of Israeli Journalists protested the government’s closure of two Arab media organizations. The International Solidarity Movement’s Palestinian unit reported on road closures, the shooting of a farmer in Gaza by the IDF and the arrest of French and Palestinian activists by Israeli forces in the West Bank.
The violence and ensuing crackdown have impacted Palestinians in ways both big and small. Detentions (for missing or incorrect permits) have separated nuclear families. Israeli forces have fired tear gas canisters into hospitals, and conducted undercover raids in hospitals to arrest suspects, killing a patient’s relative during one such raid. Demonstrations at universities have been suppressed by troops. Demolitions of Palestinian property have seen an uptick across the West Bank and Israel. The Bedouin village of al-Araqib within Israel was leveled again after dozens of similar demolitions. The cemetery was also bulldozed over.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump was supposed to travel to Israel over the holidays and meet with Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. The trip was to include a visit to the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa complex, with many wondering how Donald’s antics would play in Jerusalem. Trump has endorsed Netanyahu in the past two Israeli elections, and previously boasted his great deal-making skills would let him quickly determine whether a two-state solution is viable. After a severe backlash in Israel from virtually all quarters, and serious questions about injecting a dose of Trump into an already toxic situation, the visit has been delayed.
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:
- XXVIII) Nov 15, 2015: The Black Panthers on Palestine; Amos Oz boycotts Israeli embassies; 98 years of Balfour
- XXVII) Nov 1, 2015: On 20 anniversary of Rabin's killing, Haaretz says current vision is apartheid state.
- XXVI) Oct 18, 2015: The Intifada won't be televised, it's on Whatsapp
- XXV) Oct 4, 2015: Violent clashes across West Bank after terror attacks in Jerusalem/WB kill four Israelis
- XXIV) Sep 27, 2015: 17,641 nights into the occupation, 51% of West Bank opposes two-state solution
- XXIII) September 20, 2015: The best hope for change on the West Bank? Keep those cameras rolling
- XXII) August 23, 2015: Palestinian Christians and Priests clash with Israeli police over separation wall
- XXI) August 16, 2015: Jimmy Carter: "Zero chance of the two-state solution"
- XX) August 9, 2015: Father of toddler dies of injuries sustained in arson attack
- XIX) August 2, 2015: Palestinian infant dies in arson attack, nine prior attacks went unprosecuted by Israel.
- XVIII) July 26, 2015: Filastin: "Do you know what Obama coffee is?"
- XVII) July 19, 2015: Israeli military judge says a Palestinian can defend his home, too
- XVI) July 12, 2015: Citizen Odeh: The Arab leader who feels the Jews' pain