Digital Intifada
Category Archives: Israel-Palestinian conflict
Bernie Sanders outlines his Middle East policy
Netanyahu’s toxic embrace with Israel
Nicola Abé reports: Even though this new wave of violence has been underway since October, Netanyahu has been unable to do anything about it or bring peace to his country. Some would argue that his record is disastrous, and that the tense situation would harm his popularity, but the opposite has been true. Last year, Netanyahu expanded his power even further, simply claiming a number of ministries for himself. Now, in addition to being prime minister, he is also foreign minister, economy minister, communication minister and regional development minister. He has installed allies in the media, in the police force and in the judiciary. It’s as if Netanyahu is in a toxic embrace with his country.
During a state trip last fall, Netanyahu’s official plane flew through heavy, dark clouds, with the fasten seatbelt sign on. Just as the aircraft entered severe turbulence, Netanyahu appeared in the rear section of the aircraft, where the journalists sat. He wanted to give a background talk at that very moment. He had a full 12 hours to speak, but he only chose to do so a few minutes prior to landing.
As a hurricane-like storm brewed, the journalists clung to their seats. It was the middle of the night in Jerusalem and Netanyahu spoke with them about Syria and Iraq. He had dark circles under his eyes and unkempt hair. His words essentially amounted to nothing.
The plane swayed back and forth. His press spokesman then pulled at his sleeve, trying to get him to sit down. The aircraft hit an air pocket, but Netanyahu didn’t flinch. This was and is his message. He stages politics as a never-ending dance at the brink of an abyss — in which he constantly remains in control. This catastrophic backdrop allows Netanyahu to appear both as victim and savior. He turns everything into an existential question, because he derives his power from the existential.
“The survival mode is in the Israeli DNA,” says journalist Nahum Barnea of Yedioth Ahronoth, one of the country’s biggest daily newspapers. He has followed Netanyahu for years. “He plays the type who holds the dam together.” [Continue reading…]
American graduate student killed in stabbing rampage near Tel Aviv
The New York Times reports: A Palestinian on a stabbing rampage on Tuesday along a coastal promenade near Tel Aviv killed an American combat veteran who was a graduate student at Vanderbilt University.
The attacks occurred along a popular seaside boulevard in Jaffa, about a mile away from where Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was meeting with a former president of Israel, Shimon Peres.
The stabbing attacks, carried out over 20 minutes, came just after Mr. Biden arrived for a two-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories. He is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday.
The American was identified as Taylor Force, 28, a first-year M.B.A. student at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt, the university said in a statement. He was one of 29 students from the graduate school on a trip to Israel to learn about global entrepreneurship, according to a news release from Vanderbilt. The rest of the students, as well as the four faculty and staff members that accompanied them, were safe, it said. [Continue reading…]
Last October, following a knife attack on an Israeli policeman by a 19-year-old Palestinian, Mohammed Ali, Peter Beaumont wrote: How violence plays out in conflict –the weapons used, how attacks are executed and organised and who takes part and against what targets – are indicative of more than simply the act of killing or attempted killing. While the first Palestinian intifada was defined in the popular imagination as the “stone-throwing intifada” and the second as a conflict of suicide bombings and gun attacks, the new surge in violence has been so closely associated with knife attacks that on social media some have dubbed it the “knife intifada”.
At the entrance to the Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem where Ali lived, three burned-out, overturned cars – part of a recent barricade – lie facing the Israeli police at the checkpoint in the wall that seals off the camp. The house where Ali’s male relatives are sitting in mourning is deep within the camp’s narrow lanes. They have not yet received his body for burial. His uncles, Assad Mohammed Ali and Mahmoud, tell a story familiar to those who have done these rounds of questioning before. Their nephew, they say, was a popular and happy youth. He had no problems – except he was angry at the Israeli occupation, and in particular at Israeli actions around the flashpoint religious site of the al-Aqsa mosque. So far, so familiar.
“We have a new generation,” another relative standing on a stairs above the uncles interjects, unwilling to be identified. “They are smart and clever. They can’t sustain the humiliation. They think: if you are going to kill us in the end, we should attack first. You have to understand that this generation is well educated. It is well informed and globalised. They can’t be fooled, like we were fooled in the old days. They have their own way of finding out what is going on. Social media and the internet are educating them.”
Asked about why this episode is different from the first and second intifadas, in the weapons of choice and the organisation or lack of it, Assad Mohammed Ali says: “This is a pure intifada. It is pure because it is about individuals’ personal motivation. They are the ones who sparked it.” The other uncle adds: “The last ones were political. This is not political; it is spontaneous.”
Assad Mohammed Ali adds that, confronted with what has been happening at al-Aqsa – with the fatal shootings of Palestinian teenagers – “kids started carrying knives” and his nephew was among them. He suggests a widespread and fatalistic anticipation of death. “When a person thinks death may be imposed, then he wants to die in a heroic way.” He mentions two men from the camp who were killed last year. “The new generation wants to try and imitate them.” [Continue reading…]
Netanyahu demands Israeli apartheid posters be removed from London Underground
The Guardian reports: The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has asked the UK government to remove hundreds of flyposters on London Underground trains put up by pro-Palestinian activists which claim that his country’s policies amount to apartheid.
The posters, designed to look like genuine adverts, were pasted on tube trains by London Palestine Action as part of this year’s Israeli Apartheid Week. Political leaders in Jerusalem and Jewish organisations in the UK condemned the posters.
Netanyahu asked Israel’s foreign ministry director, Dore Gold, to raise the matter with British government officials while on a trip to London. “I asked him to demand from the British government that the posters be removed,” he told parliamentary colleagues, according to reports in the Israeli media. [Continue reading…]
Trump: I’ll be ‘neutral’ on Israel and Palestine
The Hill reports: GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Wednesday refused to pick sides in the conflict between Israel and Palestine.
“You know, I don’t want to get into it,” he told hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski during a MSNBC town hall in Charleston, S.C.
“If I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’m saying to you [my choice] and the other side now says, ‘We don’t want Trump involved,'” the real estyate mogul said of potentially winning the presidency and then brokering a lasting peace deal.
“Let me be sort of a neutral guy,” the billionaire added. “I have friends of mine that are tremendous businesspeople, that are really great negotiators, [and] they say it’s not doable.“You understand a lot of people have gone down in flames trying to make that deal. So I don’t want to say whose fault it is — I don’t think that helps.” [Continue reading…]
Boycotting Israeli goods to become criminal offence for public bodies and student unions in UK
The Independent reports: Local councils, public bodies and even some university student unions are to be banned by law from boycotting “unethical” companies, as part of a controversial crackdown being announced by the Government.
Under the plan all publicly funded institutions will lose the freedom to refuse to buy goods and services from companies involved in the arms trade, fossil fuels, tobacco products or Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Any public bodies that continue to pursue boycotts will face “severe penalties”, ministers said. [Continue reading…]
‘All the News We Didn’t Print’: Anonymous group distributes parody New York Times — updated
Update from Salon: Jewish Voice for Peace — New York and Jews Say No! informed Salon that they had organized the protest. The former is the local chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, or JVP, an American human rights and social justice organization that challenges the Israeli government’s continued violence against and oppression of the indigenous Palestinian people. Jews Say No! is a New York City-based peace group that, like JVP, protests Israel’s illegal 48-year occupation of the Palestinian territories and periodic heavy bombing of Gaza.
Haaretz reports: An unidentified group claiming that the New York Times is guilty of bias against the Palestinians and in favor of Israel distributed a fake version of the daily newspaper with parodied content more to the group’s liking in Manhattan on Tuesday.
The mock newspaper, which is also available online and has its own Twitter account, is represented as an effort at reconsidering the Times’ coverage of Israel and the Palestinians over the past year. Presented in a design strikingly similar to the Times itself, the online version of the “supplement” is labeled “Rethinking Our 2015 Coverage on Israel-Palestine.” [Continue reading…]
To call this a “fake” edition is to imply it was intended to deceive readers into thinking it was the real thing. I doubt that was the intention of the producers; neither is it likely that many recipients of a free copy of the print edition failed to notice that stories such as Hillary Clinton’s departure from the presidential race were fictitious — especially since they actually referred to her as “Hilarity Clifton.”
If this is a piece of activism, why the anonymity? And why spend this amount of money on a stunt that will garner public attention for less than 48 hours?
Since The Yes Men did something very similar in 2008, some observers suggest they might be behind the current undertaking. Just as likely, they merely provided a model for imitation.
If triggering editorial reform in the newspaper was actually the goal, I would have thought a steady stream of genuine letters to the paper’s public editor, Margaret Sullivan, might actually be more productive — even if they never yielded a news event.
Moreover, to characterize this stunt as “pro-Palestinian” sounds dubious. Among the range of issues confronting Palestinians, biased reporting in the New York Times probably doesn’t rank among their most pressing concerns.
Ban Ki-moon to Israel: Don’t shoot the messenger
Secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, writes: In Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, 2016 has begun much as 2015 ended — with unacceptable levels of violence and a polarized public discourse. That polarization showed itself in the halls of the United Nations last week when I pointed out a simple truth: History proves that people will always resist occupation.
Some sought to shoot the messenger — twisting my words into a misguided justification for violence. The stabbings, vehicle rammings and other attacks by Palestinians targeting Israeli civilians are reprehensible. So, too, are the incitement of violence and the glorification of killers.
Nothing excuses terrorism. I condemn it categorically.
It is inconceivable, though, that security measures alone will stop the violence. As I warned the Security Council last week, Palestinian frustration and grievances are growing under the weight of nearly a half-century of occupation. Ignoring this won’t make it disappear. No one can deny that the everyday reality of occupation provokes anger and despair, which are major drivers of violence and extremism and undermine any hope of a negotiated two-state solution. [Continue reading…]
Obama ridiculed for saying conflicts in the Middle East ‘date back millennia’
The Washington Post reports: In his seventh and final State of the Union address, President Obama played up the state of the economy, played down the threat of the Islamic State, and introduced a new effort to beat cancer. He also found time for several not-so-subtle swipes at the Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
But for those versed in international relations, there was one line in particular that jumped out from his hour-long speech.
“The Middle East is going through a transformation that will play out for a generation, rooted in conflicts that date back millennia,” Obama said.
Thousands of years? Many of the conflicts in the Middle East don’t even date back a decade.
The Twitterati spotted the gaffe, and pounced. Obama was accused of peddling convenient falsehoods while others said he was espousing concepts unworthy of an undergraduate university student. Many said that Obama was not only excusing the conflicts, but in effect was making them seem normal and intractable. [Continue reading…]
Israeli killings and raids make for a dark Christmas at Bethlehem refugee camp
The National reports: This Christmas season in Bethlehem, death, depression and anger are in the air at Aida refugee camp, three kilometres from Nativity Church.
Aida, wedged between Israel’s West Bank separation barrier and an army checkpoint, has been a major flashpoint of clashes during the two-and-a-half-month-old wave of violence known in the Palestinian media as the haba shaabiya or popular rising.
At least 126 Palestinians and 19 Israelis have been killed since the beginning of October, according to the Palestinian Maan news agency.
Five of the Palestinian dead were from the Bethlehem area and two from Aida camp, including Abdul Rahman Shadi Obeidallah, 13, who camp residents say was killed by a sniper on October 5 as he stood in the street with friends. [Continue reading…]
Israel’s identity crisis is at the heart of its conflicts
Joseph Dana writes: In remarks delivered at the Saban Forum in Washington last week, US secretary of state John Kerry warned that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is heading towards a one-state reality. For close observers of the conflict, Israel and Palestine have long been mired in a one-state situation. It is one in which Israel administers rights and privileges based solely on ethnicity and religion.
The pressing question now is not how the international community can avoid such a situation – it won’t – but how the conflict reached this stage and what can be done to reverse the current regime of inequality.
To address these issues requires an honest evaluation of Israel’s identity politics and the various manifestations of exclusionary policy that define Israeli governance. Since its founding in 1948, the country has been struggling to create a coherent identity for itself. How can a state remain democratic when it favours the rights of one ethnic or religious group over others? [Continue reading…]
Tony Blair’s blunder on Middle East peace
Ahmad Melhem writes: Tony Blair has kicked off his personal campaign of seeking peace between Israel and the Palestinians, but Palestinian Authority members and others have bluntly expressed their distrust of the former British prime minister and former envoy of the Middle East Quartet.
Palestinian leaders are clear about their resentment of Blair. During a Nov. 9 meeting with a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas attacked Blair and called him a “spy” for Israel because of his attempts to conclude an appeasement agreement between Hamas and Israel, while ignoring the PA.
“Abbas has been refusing to meet with Blair for two years because of his pro-Israeli negative role,” political sources in the PA told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. [Continue reading…]
Many Jews refuse to see what is patently obvious: Israel isn’t Jewish or democratic
Rogel Alpher writes: As of November 2015, Israel is not a Jewish state. I don’t understand how there can be any argument over this statement. In the areas under Israel’s control, which include of course East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria [the West Bank], Israel is a binational state, because two nations inhabit it. This is a simple fact. True, official Israeli sovereignty does not extend over Judea and Samaria, but Judea and Samaria are under Israeli occupation.
If the term occupation irritates you, for purposes of discussion we can replace it with “control” – freedom of action by the Israel Defense Forces throughout Judea and Samaria is the proof of Israeli control over these areas.
Not only is Israel for all intents and purposes a binational state, it is also for all intents and purposes an apartheid state, because it deprives the Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria of their basic rights. Jewish Israeli citizens live in complete blindness. They repress the simple fact that Israel is a binational state imposing an apartheid regime over the Palestinian people living in areas under its control. They continue to think of it as a Jewish and democratic state.
They are not the only ones to repress facts. Many Jews throughout the world do the same. They continue to treat Israel as the Jewish state, that is, their state. Most Jewish citizens of Israel, like most Jews in the Diaspora, deny the fact that Israeli control in the territories has extinguished Zionism. The goal of Zionism was to ensure the existence of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. However, Israel does not exist as a Jewish state, but rather as a binational state. And it is not democratic, because, as noted, an apartheid regime exists in it.
I apologize that this article is written in language that seems intended for people with comprehension difficulties. But we are dealing here with an attempt to explain simple facts to people who are blind to them.
This attempt is what social media posts call “provocation.” It isn’t. There is nothing provocative about it. The truth is that it is banal. Stating simple, obvious facts that everyone can see is a banal act. The only way to preserve Israeli control over Judea and Samaria and simultaneously maintain Israel’s standing as a Jewish and democratic country is to make the Palestinians disappear, to cause them to evaporate. If there are no Palestinians in Judea and Samaria, Israel will indeed be Jewish and democratic. But there are Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. They are not going to evaporate. That is also a simple fact.
And the Jews of Israel and the world are in denial of that fact, too. The attempt to have them face this fact is also called “provocation.” And thus, to the Jews of Israel and the world, reality itself is a kind of provocation. When life is an illusion, reality is a provocation. [Continue reading…]
U.S. State Dept: EU product labeling is not a boycott of Israel
The Jerusalem Post reports: The European Union’s guidelines on consumer labels for Israeli products produced over the pre-1967 lines is not tantamount to a boycott of Israel, Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman, told The Jerusalem Post.
“We do not believe that labeling the origin of products is equivalent to a boycott. And as you know, we do not consider settlements to be part of Israel. We do not view labeling the origin of products being from the settlements as a boycott of Israel,” Vasquez said.
The EU has also insisted that the measure is not a boycott of Israel and that their concern is the consumer’s right to know as well as compliance with EU legislation. [Continue reading…]
Israel: Link between EU labelling and Europe’s ‘dark past’ is tactical and confected
By Yoav Galai, University of St Andrews
The EU’s announcement of new guidelines regarding the labelling of settlement products, has been greeted by Israeli officials as well as members of the opposition with a campaign which presents a uniform position against the document that takes the line: it is a boycott, and it is anti-semitic.
The new EU guidelines require that goods from, say, the Golan Heights should be labelled: “product from the Golan Heights (Israeli settlement)”. For products from Palestine territories that are not from settlements, an indication of origin could be “product from Palestine” or “product from West Bank (Palestinian product)”.
The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, with trade worth about US$30 billion – but exports from settlements represent less than about 1% of overall trade.
The decision to label settlement products is in line with existing EU law since 2004 which requires the places of origin of fruits, vegetables and honey to be labelled, but the document has a strong symbolic meaning: it singles out products from settlements. It is this symbolic gesture that has caused alarm in Israel.
Israeli army unit storms hospital and kills Palestinian
Al Jazeera reports: An elite Israeli military force that operates undercover stormed the al-Ahli Hospital in Hebron and shot dead a 27-year-old Palestinian, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.
Abdullah al-Shalaldeh was killed by five rounds fired early Thursday after 21 members of the elite unit – known as Mustaarabin – barged into the hospital room of his cousin, Azzam al-Shalaldeh, a ministry statement said.
The commandos wanted to question Azzam – who required surgery after earlier being shot by Israeli security forces – and his cousin tried to prevent them from doing so when the Israelis opened fire. [Continue reading…]
The extremists who now speak for Israel
The Daily Beast reports: A West Bank settler who insults American and Israeli leaders might not seem a likely candidate for a job promoting Israel’s image to the world, but Ron Baratz is, indeed, tapped to be Israel’s next communications director.
The controversy over his appointment marks a new era of Israeli politics that has seen what used to be considered the fringe right take center stage while Israel’s international isolation intensifies.
“Allow me to be blunt,” wrote Baratz on his Facebook wall last Tuesday. “Obama’s reference to Netanyahu’s speech—this is what modern anti-Semitism looks like in liberal Western countries. It comes, of course, with much tolerance and understanding for Islamic anti-Semitism; so much tolerance and understanding that they’d be willing to give them a nuke.”
Baratz seemed to go out of his way to make this point. It refers to a remark by Obama way back in March when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the U.S. Congress in a bid to kill the Iran nuclear deal.
Obama called the speech “theater” which “didn’t offer any viable alternatives” for preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Last year, Baratz targeted Secretary of State John Kerry, comparing his mental age to that of a 12-year-old child and joking on Facebook that Kerry could have a “lucrative career as a stand-up comedian.”
As communications director, Baratz would lead public relations efforts to disseminate positive information about Israel and its actions. [Continue reading…]