Wednesday, November 11, 2015

NEWS: News updates







Tempting as it is to close one’s eyes to the current bloodshed in Palestine-Israel, these events are peculiarly personal, usually initiated by a single young Palestinian who is immediately shot dead by anonymous Israeli armed forces. Here are the latest lists from PCHR and the Jewish Virtual Library.

An influential article in Foreign Affairs by Nathan Sachs argues that Netanyahu does have a strategy – it is to wait for an opportune moment for peace moves. Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now disagrees: Israeli politicians are not waiting but actively building blocks to prevent the possibility of peace with Palestinians.

Israel’s secret services, Shin Bet, Mossad, have been equally feared and admired. They have not, before, been ignored by Israel’s governments. They are today. Netanyahu has chosen to treat Palestinians as a permanent threat to which the only answer is military repression. JJ Goldberg’s very gloomy analysis.


In a sort of guerrilla warfare, Israeli soldiers shoot dead any Palestinian whom they think looks suspicious, and the small number of Palestinian fighters stab, or car-ram any Israeli Jews they can. Killers on both sides are glorified – the ‘terminator’ of the IDF – and the Palestinian ‘martyrs’, for the stabbers invariably die.


If PM Netanyahu had a reputation for negotiating one might sympathise: who would he negotiate with during the current unrest? But punishment and military force have always been his choice and he is now using them against the young stone-throwers. Laws passed this year against stone-throwers provide for a minimum of 3, and a maximum of 20, years in prison. Bassem Tamimi meanwhile explains why he has turned to non-violent action.


It’s an ancient debate; does change come when those in power act or when the powerless take things into their own hands (the two are related)? Ben Caspit reports this debate at a cabinet security briefing and pursues it in an interview about the baby boomers with right-wing immigration minister Ze’ev Elkin.


A UN official visits Hebron, the current centre of the violent hostility between young Palestinians and Israeli armed forces and settlers. He reports ‘a complete generation has lost hope in peace’. More than 25 of about 75 Palestinians shot dead have come from Hebron. Palestine’s biggest city has been flooded by Israel’s soldiers, weaponry and checkpoints. The residents live in a state of fear.

Child labour is common across Asia as it was in Britain until the raising of the school-leaving age. Settlements are different only in that if the settlers had stayed in Israel proper they would not be allowed to use child labour or the range of dangerous pesticides and sexual assault the Palestinian workers are exposed to. Reports from Human Rights Watch and DCI-P.
Posted in News Tagged child labour, settlements

According to Barak RAvid the EC is keeping its guidelines so secret that few people know what they are despite desperate efforts by Israel’s European embassies to find out. They are due to be published on November 11th. Israel’s opposition to them will range from likening them to Nazi actions to the harm they will do to Palestinian workers.


If there is evidence, rather than supposition, that a few Palestinians stab people because of incitement on Facebook the government did not put it forward before embarking on a new bill against incitement. And 20,000 Israelis have joined a class action against Facebook for allowing terrorist incitement. Anything rather than believe that those they rule hate them for their rule – and what would they think if a class action were brought for the many anti-Muslim and anti-Arab pages on social media?

The Al Aqsa/Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound has long been the centre of violent conflict, overtly between Israeli forces and Palestinians, more covertly between different Palestinian factions and Jordan. Akiva Eldar says that Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch, is now manoeuvring for it to become the dominant Palestinian faction in charge of the holy site. There are few rational voices in this dispute.


The violent attacks by individual Palestinians which began in Jerusalem continue, but in Hebron. By killing the attackers, armed forces create mass funerals for ‘martyrs’ which thus draw in more Palestinians.Wanting to associate himself with this resistance Pres. Abbas has moved this week’s cabinet meeting to Hebron where 25 young people so far have been shot dead.
Posted in News Tagged checkpoints, funerals, hebron

The commemoration of Rabin’s assassination has been a ceremony of regret, the last serious chance of peace wrought by a famously inarticulate ex-soldier who saw that military action could not deliver a settlement writes Avi Shlaim. Ian Black is less sure, quoting a Palestinian who says this regret is wishful thinking. Rabin only wanted to tame the PLO.


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