PALESTINE/ISRAEL: Destruction of al-Aqsa is no conspiracy theory

Destruction of al-Aqsa is no conspiracy theory

Posted by Editor on November 13, 2015 in Culture & Religion, News & Analysis, Palestine, Palestine/Israel | | 3 Responses

Groups calling for the destruction of the al-Aqsa mosque compound are part of Israel’s political establishment. Oren Ziv ActiveStills

by Ilan Pappe  

                                           

“It is useless,” asserts the colonizer in Albert Memmi’s classical tract, The Colonizer and the Colonized, “to try and forecast the colonized’s actions (‘they are unpredictable! ‘With them, you never know!).” It seems to the colonizer that “strange and disturbing impulsiveness controls the colonized.”

The only explanation official Israel and its supporters could give for why Palestinians have risen up lately is that they were influenced by Islamic propaganda. That propaganda so easily incited the “impulsive and unpredictable” Palestinians in recent weeks, according to Israeli spin.

Generally speaking, Western commentators have been more willing to place the resistance in the wider context of the oppression faced by Palestinians.

Yet this Western approach, articulated mainly by liberal academics and journalists, has something in common with the Israeli one: it regards as baseless and irrelevant the allegations that Israel plans to demolish al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem or build a “Third Temple” on the Haram al-Sharif, the surrounding compound. The allegations appear in the western media as a mere pretext which have only incidentally triggered Palestinians to rise up.

There is no denying that after nearly 50 years of brutal colonization one does not have to look too far to understand the depths of despair and levels of rage felt by Palestinians.

However, this understandable impulse to act against oppression should not lead us to ignore Israel’s plans towards Haram al-Sharif. Nor should we accept that Arab and Palestinian apprehensions about Israel are figments of the oriental imagination and not rooted in reality. In fact, they can be substantiated.

It is, therefore, crucial to ask, whether you are religious or secular: is al-Aqsa in danger? If it is, then its precarious future is not just an offense to Islam but also a further indication of how far Israel’s settler-colonial project could go.

Archaeological crime

Demolishing Arab and Islamic sites in Jerusalem is not unknown in Israeli policy and attitudes. In 1967, Israel razed the Moroccan Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem.

This was an architectural gem of Islamic civilization dating back to the late 12th century and had hosted some of the most important Islamic religious orders.

When Zionism appeared in Palestine, its leaders were not only trying to purchase land for settlement but also to buy what they considered to be Jewish Jerusalem.

Baron Edmond Rothschild attempted to buy the quarter at the end of the 19th century, as did the Zionist leadership under the British Mandate — to no avail. When purchasing did not work, it was taken by force during the 1967 War and demolished.

The demolition included the destruction of the Sheikh Eid mosque built by a son of Salah al-Din al-Ayubi, who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders. When learning about the destruction years later, Benjamin Kedar, a historian and vice president of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences, declared to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that “it was an archaeological crime.”

The destruction of mosques was not a new practice, or one limited to Jerusalem. Zionist forces left intact only very few mosques in the destroyed Palestinian villages and towns during the Nakba — the ethnic cleansing operation of 1948. The Israeli authorities then turned many of the remaining mosques into clubs, restaurants and animal enclosures.

Geography of destruction

Thus, neither historical monuments in Jerusalem nor mosques around Palestine were immune from the destructive policies of the colonizer. This ruination of the country’s Islamic heritage is deeply engraved in the Palestinian collective memory.

Palestinians also frequently witness Israel destroying buildings with armored D-9 bulldozers, supplied by the US firm Caterpillar.

However, it is not only this vivid memory of the Israeli geography of destruction that plants fears among many about the future of al-Aqsa. It is a realistic analysis of the ideology of some of the potent political forces today in Israel, who are represented in Benjamin Netanyahu’s current government.

The most important of them is the ever-growing religious nationalist movement. It used to be a marginal force, but today it is part of the establishment.

As Or Kashti of Haaretz revealed recently, part of the curriculum of that movement’s school system (Israel runs three systems: a secular Jewish one, a national religious one and the “Arab” system) is a program that advocates the building of the “Third Temple.”

Building the temple is the ambition of humanity as a whole, pupils are told. Kashti talked to experts who read the program and although he stresses that the program does not have a direct reference to blowing up al-Aqsa, the pupils are inoculated with the idea that they are on the verge of the Jewish redemption (Geula) of the mount.

This program is supported by Naftali Bennet, the education minister. Along with his colleague, Uri Ariel, Bennett is part of the Jewish Home party, which is committed to replacing al-Aqsa with a Jewish temple.

Following the election earlier this year, Ariel was appointed agriculture minister. In his previous role as housing minister, he called explicitly to build the new temple over al-Aqsa. He is not a marginal politician, and neither is his party.

The Israeli government supports with money and other means several organizations that call openly for a similar plan. The most important of them is The Temple Institute in Jerusalem, founded by Rabbi Yisrael Ariel. Its funding has been investigated by the Haaretz reporter Uri Blau.

The institute’s main goal, according to its website, is “to see Israel rebuild the Holy Temple on Mount Moriah in Jerusalem [al-Aqsa mosque compound], in accordance with the Biblical commandments.”

There is nothing ludicrous or unimaginable in assuming that a zealot Zionist will one day carry out such plans.

____________________________________

The author of numerous books, Ilan Pappe is professor of history and director of the European Centre for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. 

   Long live Palestine

PALESTINE/ISRAEL: Anger in Palestine...

The anger of Palestine’s ‘lost’ generation

Posted by Editor on October 17, 2015 in Activisim & BDS, News & Analysis, Palestine | | 1 Response

Palestinian protesters were neither terrorists nor heroes. “We are just normal people, living under every kind of oppression you can imagine.” “It is about being oppressed some 60, 70 years,” he said. “(The protests) are just the anger that has exploded.”
 

By  Killian Redden

     

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A few weeks before an Israeli soldier shot him through the stomach, Mutaz Zawahreh discovered a love of the sea.

On the coast of Brittany, Mutaz and two friends from Duheisha refugee camp, Murad Ouda and Issa al-Saifi, amazed the French by running into the frigid waters of the north Atlantic.

Even in the rain they went to the beach, Issa told Ma’an, sometimes just to sit and watch the ocean — “because we already knew we would not see it again.”

The three Palestinians spent two months in France as part of an educational program organized by a center in Duheisha.

But as their visit progressed, the first signs of unrest began to show in the occupied Palestinian territory, and the three grew anxious to return home.

Mutaz’s brother, Ghassan, had begun a hunger strike in an Israeli prison to protest his internment without charge, and his health was beginning to deteriorate.

The three returned, and several days later Ghassan ended his hunger strike when Israel agreed to release him in November. But the brothers never saw each other.

On Oct. 13, at a demonstration before Israel’s separation wall in northern Bethlehem, Mutaz was shot dead, the 30th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces in under two weeks.

Expression of anger

Mutaz was one of thousands of young Palestinians no longer able to contain their anger when he joined the protesters in throwing stones at Israeli soldiers.

Only before the wall, “facing their weapons with his body,” was Mutaz able to give expression to his feelings, his friend Murad said.

“He couldn’t take it anymore,” said Murad, especially after he had seen “how free life could be” in France.

For Murad, the protests that have swept the occupied Palestinian territory in recent days are only “the tip of the mountain,” the outward expression of what he called an “internal intifada” that has been raging within most people for years.

“It is about being oppressed some 60, 70 years,” he said. “(The protests) are just the anger that has exploded.”

Issa agreed that while outsiders “judged” Palestinians for throwing stones, “no one has asked us why we are doing it.”

The first time Issa threw a stone, he was only 13 or 14 years old. At that age, he understood nothing of politics, he said. “We were just angry.”

In Duheisha refugee camp, their childhood was marked by routine clashes and terrifying night raids by Israeli soldiers who would ransack their homes and take away their family members.

As they grew older, they faced a constrained economy lacking in opportunity and severely restricted freedom of movement.

Mutaz himself had been working two jobs when he was killed — as a hotel security guard and a taxi driver. Most of his male relatives had spent time in prison.

Murad said that young Palestinian protesters were neither terrorists nor heroes.

“We are just normal people, living under every kind of oppression you can imagine.”

Lack of leadership

While anger has driven the recent wave of protests, there have been few attempts to channel that anger. The protests have been been marked by a lack of leadership and organization.

 Factional leaders — at both a national and community level — have played almost no role in the protests, while the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority has committed itself to acting against them.

Murad said that the lack of leaders was the result of Israel and the PA having worked for years to remove anyone who might effectively challenge the status quo.

Growing up in Duheisha, Murad and Issa can recall regular community gatherings to discuss the camp’s issues — whether political or social — but in the absence of leaders, those meetings have largely stopped in recent years.

Murad pointed, for example, to Nidal Abu Aker, an outspoken journalist and community leader in Duheisha, who has spent nearly 15 years of his life in Israel’s prisons.

Abu Aker recently ended a 42-day hunger strike he undertook together with Zawahreh’s brother, Ghassan, and is set to be released in November, but Murad said he did not think it would be more than a few months before Abu Aker was re-arrested.

“Everyone who has tried to lead something is killed or arrested,” he said. “Either you be silent, or you work with them.”

‘No other option’

Devoid of leaders, there has been little sense of strategy to the protests, and some commentators have suggested that it is in both Israel and the PA’s interest to simply let the young Palestinians “vent” their rage.

Issa acknowledged that Palestinians risking their lives to throw stones at Israel’s separation wall were unlikely to cause Israel any material damage.

But at this stage, he said, no other options had been left, after decades of negotiations and attempts to apply international pressure had ended in failure.

Of the young Palestinians that have taken to Bethlehem’s streets in recent days, they do not expect to apply real pressure on Israel, he said. They simply sought to show that they “reject oppression.”

The protests are the cry of a Palestinian generation that has felt for too long that no one is listening to them.

Issa said that, ultimately, he believed it was not so much strategy as it was the mentality of his generation, their refusal to forego freedom, that Israel feared. While the recent wave of protests may calm, that mentality was not going away.

Issa said that during their trip to France, the three friends had not been able to understand how the French themselves did not run to the sea every day.

It were almost as though they did not understand the value of their own freedom, he said, and the three friends laughed that perhaps the French were somehow more “lost” than they were.

“At least here we had something to fight for,” he said.

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PALESTINE/ISRAEL: On the Israeli crime of burning to death the Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsheh

Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsheh 

burned alive at the hands of Israeli settlers

August 2, 2015: On the Israeli crime of burning to death the Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsheh

The Israeli crime of burning to death the Palestinian infant Ali Dawabshah and torching the home of Dawabshah family by gangs of Israeli settlers in Nablus village of Doma is a heinous cold-blooded crime, which comes as a result of the sinister hatred that is constantly fueled by Israeli religious and political authorities and encouraged by the collusion or silence over Israel’s atrocious crimes.

Burning the infant Ali Dawabshah is a new crime in the long-listed record of Israel’s crimes against Palestinian children such as the child Mohammed Abu Khudair and the hundreds of Gaza children whose bodies were blown up into pieces by Israeli weapons while the international community, Arab and Islamic leaders and the PA were silent and did nothing but suffocating and preventing the resistance from retaliation.

The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas condemns in the strongest possible terms this Israeli heinous crime, and emphasizes the following:

First: The Palestinian people in the West Bank have the right and duty to express their rejection and anger, and to retaliate to the murder of their children. They have full right to confront the Israeli settlers by any means, anytime and anywhere.

Second: It’s a shame on the PA and its security forces to pursue detain and torture the resistance fighters in order to prevent them from responding to the Israeli settlers’ crimes.

Third: It would have been better for the PA and Abbas in this difficult condition to hold a meeting of the PLO’s provisional leadership body so that a consensus on a comprehensive program can be reach to respond to the Israeli crimes instead of making unilateral modifications on the reconciliation government and indulging in security cooperation with the Israeli occupation.

Four: Hamas calls on the Palestinian people, Palestinian factions and national forces to work at all levels, expose, attack and internationally isolate the Israeli occupation in order to prosecute Israeli criminal leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Five: Hamas calls on human rights organizations to strongly condemn this crime and support a boycotting of Israel and work to drain political, military and financial backing of the Israeli occupation which is increasing in its criminality and violations against the Palestinian people.

Six: Hamas calls on the Arab and Islamic nations, peoples and leaderships to react to the spilling of the Palestinian blood lest the murder of the Arab and Muslim children becomes a habit familiarly practiced by the Israeli enemy under US cover.

Latest Gaza news

• HAMAS: On the Israeli crime of burning to death the Palestinian toddler Ali Dawabsheh
• PFLP mourns martyr Laith al-Khalidi, pledges resistance
• Abu Ahmad Fuad: Responsibility for killing of baby Ali Dawabsheh rests with the entire Zionist project
• PFLP: “Declaration of war” on settlements following burning of Palestinian baby
• Mishaal deplores settler’s killing of toddler, calls for response
• Al-Qassam holds Israel responsible for Nablus arson attack
• Barakat: Urgent call for solidarity actions with Sa’adat and all Palestinian prisoners
• UN experts urge Israel to halt legalization of force-feeding of hunger-strikers in detention
• Hamas calls on Palestinian factions to form national unity gov’t
• PFLP calls for urgent action to confront Zionist crimes against Palestinian people
• Hamas: Israeli storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque is a dangerous escalation
• Toman: security prosecutions of resistance fighters in the West Bank must end
• UN Economic and Social Council Adopts Resolution condemning Israeli Occupation
• Hamas and Islamic Jihad hold Israeli Occupation responsible for Abu Maria’s execution
• On first anniversary of Gaza attack, PFLP pledges to continue resistance until liberation

Israel atrocities

 

GAZZA: Accusations of the press...

Noam Chomsky and other representatives of the cultural write an appeal to the mainstream media: "The press does not inform about the atrocities in Gaza." And turn reporters: "Refuse to be an instrument of this policy.

"Noam Chomsky and others 

November 13, 2012 

While countries in Europe and North America commemorated on 11 November, victims of wars past and present, Israel was bombing civilians. On November 12, waking up ready for a new week, readers at breakfast were inundated with heartbreaking stories of the military victims of wars past and present.

Palestinian children

However, there was no mention, or there were very short, the fact that most of the victims of today's wars are civilians. It was really hard to find, on the morning of November 12, even any mention of the attacks on Gaza that have been going on all weekend.

Israeli messiles

A quick glance confirms for Canada's CBC, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and Montreal's Gazette. Same thing for Equally, the New York Times and the BBC. According to the report PCHR - Palestinian Center for Human Rights Sunday, November 11, 5 Palestinian civilians, including three children, were killed in the Gaza Strip in the previous 72 hours, as well as two members of the Palestinian security personnel. Four of the victims died as a result of Israeli artillery attack on a football field. 

In addition, 52 civilians were injured, of whom six were women and 12 were children. Since we started writing, the number of Palestinian casualties has increased and continues to increase. Items that do not bear the majority of the killings and focus mainly on the killing of Palestinian security personnel. For example, an article by the Associated Press, published on CBS - news from the world of Nov. 13, entitled "Israel is assumed to resume targeted killings of militants in Gaza," says absolutely nothing of civilians killed or wounded. Represents the killings as "targeted assassinations." The fact that the victims were mostly civilians indicates that Israel is not so much engaged in "targeted assassinations," murderers in the "collective", since, once again, is committing the crime of collective punishment.

Israeli rockets

Another report by the Associated Press news on CB on November 12, reports: "The launch of rockets from Gaza increases the pressure on the government of Israel." Attach a photo of an Israeli woman who looks at a hole in the ceiling of the house. Again, no pictures, no mention of casualties or bleeding corpses in Gaza.

Along the same lines, a title the BBC on November 12 reads: "Israel hit by new rocket attacks from Gaza." Similar trends can also be shown in the mainstream media in Europe. What is reported is focused primarily on rockets that have been fired from Gaza, none of which resulted in death. What is not clear is the bombing of Gaza, which in many cases have caused serious and fatal. It does not take an expert in the science of communication to understand that what we face is, at best, a way to bring poor and distorted the facts in the worst instead a voluntary and dishonest manipulation of the readers.

Palestinian victims

In addition, articles that do not mention the Palestinian victims in Gaza report that Israeli operations are thoroughly conducted in response to rockets from Gaza and the wounding of Israeli soldiers. 

However, the chronology of events (which led, ndt) attack began on November 5, when a man of 20 years, innocent and apparently mentally disabled, Ahmad al-Nabaheen, was killed by bullets while trying to approach the border. The doctors had to wait six hours to get permission to retrieve it and suspect that he might be dead because of the delay in rescue operations.Then, on November 8, a boy of 13 years who was playing ball in front of his home was killed by the bullets of the IOF, who had entered into Gaza with tanks and helicopters. The wounding of four Israeli soldiers at the border November 10 was then already a link in the chain of events in which civilians were killed in Gaza, and not the trigger.

We, the undersigned we have just returned from a visit to the Gaza Strip. Some of us now have contacts through social media with Palestinians living in Gaza. For two nights in a row Palestinians in Gaza were unable to sleep because of the continued presence of drones, F16 and indiscriminate bombing of several targets in the Gaza Strip so densely populated. 

The purpose of this is clearly to terrorize the population, failing that, just as we have been able to ascertain from the reports of our friends. If it were not for the post on Facebook, we would know nothing of the level of terror suffered daily by Palestinian civilians in Gaza. This contrasts sharply with the global awareness on Israeli citizens terrified and shocked. 

An extract from a report sent by a Canadian doctor who was in Gaza and has helped the hospital emergency room during the week Shifa says: "The wounded were all civilians with multiple bullet wounds: wounds to the brain, neck, emopneumotorace , heart block, ruptured spleen, intestinal perforations, fractures of limbs, traumatic amputations. All this without a monitor, a few stethoscopes, an ultrasound machine ... Many people with serious injuries but not life threatening are sent home to be riconvocate the next morning, due to the peak of victims. The bullet wounds were worrisome. Small injuries with serious internal injuries. There was very little morphine anesthesia." 

Apparently, such scenes are not news to the New York Times, the CBC, and the BBC.Prejudice and bad faith with respect to the oppression of the Palestinians are nothing new in the Western media and have been extensively documented.Nevertheless, Israel continues its crimes against humanity, with the tacit consent and full support financial, military and moral integrity of our governments: United States, Canada, European Union.Netanyahu is currently cultivating diplomatic support for other operations west of Gaza, which makes us fear that another Cast Lead may be on the horizon. 

In fact, recent events confirm that an escalation has already begun, as the death toll rises today. The lack of public outrage over these crimes is a direct consequence of the systematic way in which the facts are denied and/or unbalanced way in which they are painted. 

We would like to express our outrage at the despicable of the costs of such acts by the mainstream media. We appeal to journalists in the world, working for large media publications that refuse to be instruments of this systematic policy of concealment. We appeal to citizens to inform themselves through independent media, and why give voice to their conscience for them by any means possible.

Hagit Borer, UK; Antoine Bustros, Canada, Noam Chomsky, Usa, David Heap, Canada; Stephanie Kelly, Canada; Máire Noonan, Canada, Philippe Prévost, France; Verena Stresing, France; Laurie Tuller, France.

Media 

Hypocrisy

Wake up call

by Stuart Littlewood

 

Irrepressible Palestinian children… But smiles of happiness may turn to tears of frustration when they grow up to find their dreams dashed in a country ravaged by decades of military occupation… where lands and resources have been stolen, education curtailed, freedom cancelled and travel made almost impossible.

How will they build a career or raise a thriving family? Separated from friends and relatives, amenities and opportunities by encroaching barriers, roadblocks and checkpoints, excluded from their Holy City, and stripped of heritage, economic prosperity and even healthcare, they seem destined for a life of despair in what Chomsky calls “the dungeons that are left”.

This is not an academic book. It’s a wake-up call, a snapshot of the situation in Palestine through ordinary westerners’ eyes. Our reasons for writing it were fourfold…

This horror story needs to be told. The British and American public seem to know little about the Arab-Israeli conflict even though it is central to world peace. Palestinians hope visitors to their tortured land will speak to the outside world on their behalf. And the trampling of human justice in the Holy Land, of all places, is an affront to civilised people.

Having begun, a fifth reason soon made itself felt: the indifference of the West’s political élite and media. They avoid honest debate and suppress the truth, even to the extent of burying a critical Foreign Office report. Many seem to regard Israel as exempt from normal standards of behaviour. Worse, they turn the sanctions screw on an already abused and impoverished Palestinian people, pushing them to the edge of a humanitarian crisis and collapsing their fragile economy.

There’s no such thing as “Radio Free Palestine”, as far as we know, except on the other side of the world in California. But there ought to be. Somewhere in the Middle East or Europe a “Free Palestine” station should be broadcasting its heartrending message, its cry for justice… loud and clear… to the so-called civilized world.
Of course the Occupation – and resistance to it – has to be seen in historical context… how the real trouble started in 1897 when Theodore Herzle organised the first Zionist Congress with the express aim of establishing Eretz Israel, a Jewish homeland, in Palestine. And how Zionist leaders like Chaim Weizmann canvassed British politicians, who were persuaded to the idea.

How, after World War One, Britain the occupying power and the mandated government in Palestine, made free with Arab lands and paved the way for a Zionist takeover that has infuriated Arabs and blighted East-West relations ever since.

And how, in 59 years, the Israelis have become past-masters in the art of land theft, ethnic cleansing and subjugation, perversely earning the approval of western leaders in the process.

What I saw during my visits to the West Bank in 2005 and 2006 made me angry. What has happened back home is even more disturbing – US, British and EU politicians ganging up to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority and collectively punish the people, while still at pains to sidestep their responsibility to call Israel to account.

And the contemptible spectacle of Israel’s high-tech military machine venting its fury on the helpless citizens of the Gaza Strip, smashing their infrastructure and reducing their lives to an even deeper shade of hell… all because Israeli leaders cannot accept that hardline Hamas is now the Palestinians’ chosen government.

We are accustomed to the White House aiding and abetting Israel’s unlawful expansionism and shielding them from criticism. Now EU ministers inexplicably reward Israel with trading privileges while the Separation Wall steals another 10% of Palestinian territory, including the richest agricultural land and nearly all the water.

In short, Britain has joined the US and Israel in a conspiracy of injustice. No-one I have met, knowing the situation on the ground, agrees with the idea that “recognising” a brutal, armed occupier is a right or proper precondition for receiving aid. Israel exists; and one has to accept the fact. But recognition must be earned, usually by good conduct. And when has Israel ever “recognised” Palestine? The question on most people’s lips is, why won’t the civilised world put pressure on the Israeli regime to comply with UN resolutions and international court rulings and withdraw to its pre-1967 borders?

So far, the Israelis’ definition of the situation and their pretence that the Occupation is for security reasons have been allowed to prevail. Now, at last, there are calls for the situation to be re-framed in terms that reflect the truth.

Most people in the west, who readily identify with Bethlehem, would have been appalled to hear the organisation Open Bethlehem reporting that over 70% of its population now live below the poverty line and unemployment has soared to more than 60%.

“Once a prosperous middle class town, Bethlehem has been economically suffocated and the post-election sanctions have brought the local population to the brink of disaster.” And this chilling warning from The Economistonly added to the sense of foreboding: “After millennia of violent conquest and reconquest, Jerusalem, centre of pilgrimage, crucible of history and the world’s oldest international melting-pot, is changing hands once more, but with a slow and quiet finality.”

A girl who worked for the Palestinian National Authority in Ramallah emailed me: “Our daily life and work, believe me, is getting worse. We haven’t been paid for months… Some of my colleagues can’t come to work anymore because simply they don’t have money for the transportation. On Thursday we made a protest in front of the entrance of our ministry demanding the international community to end up this isolation and asking for our salaries. The mothers are bringing their babies and kids to work everyday because they can’t pay for the kinder-yards or the baby sitters. I don’t have kids but both my parents work also in the PNA….”

A few weeks later her emails stopped. A knock-out blow, then, for this family and heaven knows how many others. Her words, on top of all the other distress calls, were the spur to finishing the book as quickly as possible.