Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

2010

The [Israeli] right … is well on its way to negating Israel’s earlier achievements in crushing the Palestinian people, and it will bring about their reunification. The Israeli left and center did quite a lot to split the Palestinian people and to transform them into distinct groups: Palestinians in Israel, Palestinians in the West Bank, Palestinians in Jerusalem, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and Palestinians in the diaspora.

Silent protest during a University of Michigan visit by two IDF soldiers on 20 October 2010.

Former US president Jimmy Carter and two other Elders visit the weekly Friday Sheikh Jarrah demonstration in Jerusalem.

Senior army officers are under investigation for authorizing an air strike in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead that killed 21 members of the same family despite possibly receiving warnings from subordinates that there could be civilians in the area.

Most of the 33 British passengers on May’s aid flotilla to Gaza have asked to give oral testimony to Turkel committee investigating the IDF raid on the ships, according to Daniel Machover, a lawyer acting on their behalf.

Former US President Jimmy Carter said on Friday that the eviction of Palestinians from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah is against international law. Carter spoke at a weekly demonstration held in the East Jerusalem neighborhood by Israeli and Palestinian left-wing activists, protesting a Jewish takeover of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.

My nearly 25 years of covering the Israeli occupation and expressing my controversial opinions have indeed stirred up wrath in some circles. But I have always taken pride in the fact that after hundreds of reports from the field – this entire modest documentation enterprise – none of the facts have ever been refuted despite the efforts of many.

Gisha Director Sari Bashi: “Instead of considering security concerns, on the one hand, and the rights and needs of civilians living in Gaza, on the other, Israel banned glucose for biscuits and the fuel needed for regular supply of electricity – paralyzing normal life in Gaza and impairing the moral character of the State of Israel. I am sorry to say that major elements of this policy are still in place.”

If Israel is the Jewish state, then what right do we Palestinian interlopers have to be here at all? None. And so it should be little surprise that Lieberman is simultaneously pushing a plan to trade Palestinian citizens of Israel into a rump state in the West Bank.

“My biggest struggle,” he says, “is to rehumanize the Palestinians. There’s a whole machinery of brainwashing in Israel which really accompanies each of us from early childhood, and I’m a product of this machinery as much as anyone else. [We are taught] a few narratives that it’s very hard to break. That we Israelis are the ultimate and only victims. That the Palestinians are born to kill, and their hatred is irrational. That the Palestinians are not human beings like us? So you get a society without any moral doubts, without any questions marks, with hardly public debate. To raise your voice against all this is very hard.”

“If a solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is to be found it has to be here in Jerusalem as well,” said delegation leader and former Irish president Mary Robinson.

On October 26th, Brooklyn For Peace, CODEPINK NYC, Adalah-NY, Jews Say No!, Jewish Voice for Peace, and other local groups will bring the Stolen Beauty Ahava boycott campaign to Brooklyn for a third time. Local activists, some dressed in spa attire, and others wearing monster masks to convey the message that Occupation is an Ugly business, will gather on Montague Street to tell Ricky’s NYC: No More Ahava Cosmetics.

Following the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the IDF established a special unit whose purpose was to prevent the leakage of classified information onto the internet via social networks. The unit scans a list of popular websites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace looking for breaches of security.

IOA Editor: Israel’s own violent Occupation actions are the best ‘gifts for Hamas,’ not the reporting of such actions.

Let us be clear: Palestinians long ago recognized Israel and its right to exist in peace and security. Twenty-two years ago, to be precise. The peace process that began 17 years ago has repeatedly reaffirmed Palestinian recognition of Israel and its right to exist over 78 percent of our historic homeland. The internationally recognized obstacle to peace is the ongoing Israeli occupation.

Director of Mossawa advocacy center for the Palestinian minority: “The police have already repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to Palestinian citizens, but this move proves that the authorities want to extend and deepen our oppression.”

In all likelihood, I will be one of the very first non-Jews expected to swear loyalty to Israel as an ideology rather than as a state. Until now, naturalising residents, like the country’s soldiers, pledged an oath to Israel and its laws. That is the situation in most countries. But soon, if the Israeli parliament passes a bill being advanced by the government, aspiring citizens will instead be required to uphold the Zionist majority’s presumption that Israel is a “Jewish and democratic state”.

British director Mike Leigh has canceled his scheduled visit to Israel after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet approved a controversial amendment to the Citizenship Law last week requiring non-Jews to pledge allegiance to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state.”

Underneath everything is hatred – hatred and contempt for Arabs … Manifestations of hatred are received with sympathy or indifference, even by those who should be standing in the breach: the opposition, the media and the education and judicial systems.

Israeli officials said they discussed the construction with the U.S. administration and cut the number of planned units to temper American displeasure. The Palestinian Authority has insisted that it will not return to peace talks unless Israel ceases construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

The extremist rabbi proposed every non-Jew wishing to become a naturalized Israeli would have to pledge to ‘the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.’

IOA Editor: Indeed, the differences between Kahane and Barak are far more of style than substance. Israel’s political spectrum, from the Labor “Left” to the “extreme” Right, wishes to do away with the Palestinians, whether via a massive transfer, a creeping process of ethnic cleansing, or when “the opportunity arises.”

ADL’s Foxman: “These groups are not promoting peace, they are spreading propaganda to assault Israel’s legitimacy. We want to Americans to know who these groups are and what it is they really stand for, which is to delegitimize the Jewish state.”

IOA Editor: From one of Israel’s propaganda chiefs, himself. We’d be honored to join the list.

Dov Chenin: “A few years ago, only the extreme right-wing parties talked about transferring Arab citizens, but now we see that even the security forces are preparing concrete plans for carrying out such a scenario.”

ACRI’s move follows an Israel Prisons Service drill last week that had wardens practicing dealing with numerous Israeli Arabs being detained after a wave of riots. According to Israel Radio, the “riots” supposedly broke out as a result of a peace agreement including a population transfer between Israel and the PA.

Carmiel Deputy Mayor: “Carmiel is a Jewish city, plain and simple. It was founded for the purpose of Judaizing the Galilee. In my opinion it is not proper for Arab families to live here. In recent years, there are attempts by our [Arab] neighbors in the Western Galilee villages to migrate into Carmiel, and we must not ignore this phenomenon.”

A ghost of the Camp David talks of summer 2000 haunted the meeting of the Arab League in Libya, as its foreign ministers decided to give a little more time to the peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians – not wanting to expose Mahmoud Abbas to the responsibility for the breakdown of the negotiations.

“Ramallah approved the project only after PA officials read the textbook, while in Israel the book was banned even though officials in Jerusalem did not even check its contents,” said one official. “From the Palestinian standpoint, this is a breakthrough because they are ready to teach the Israeli narrative. On the other hand, in Israel they are hunkering down in old positions.”

“This is clearly a serious criminal attack,” he said. “It is hijacking in international waters and there were quite brutal murders.” But, although this case is more extreme than others, he said, Israel’s “hijacking ships in international waters, kidnapping people, killing them sometimes, bringing them to Israel, keeping them hostages in prisons for long periods” have been going on for at least 30 years, and Israel can continue those actions because it is tolerated by the United States.

Over 100 people demonstrated against loyalty oath in Tel Aviv; warn ‘Israel is becoming a fascist state.’

From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country. Anyone who thinks it doesn’t affect him is mistaken. There is a silent majority that is accepting this with worrying apathy, as if to say: “I don’t care what country I live in.”

Israel committed to buying the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter … using a $3 billion defense grant from the United States.

IOA Editor: The US taxpayer giveth and Lockheed-Martin/Israel taketh.

[M]ost Israeli leaders genuinely wish for peace – peace on Israel’s terms: their cherished wish is that the Palestinian people, dispossessed and subjugated, should peacefully accept their lot and give up the struggle… The key to a proper understanding of the conflict is that it is an extremely asymmetric one: between settler-colonisers and the indigenous people. It is about dispossession and oppression.

A Haaretz investigation reveals that since the building freeze in the West Bank was lifted ten days ago, bulldozers have been working furiously on the construction of 350 new housing units in various settlements.

Livni: “Any international intervention in military operations carried out by Israel is unacceptable, just as it would be unacceptable to any other country fighting terrorism.”

IOA Editor: Israel’s “moderate,” “opposition” leader.

Celebrate the Freedom Theatre Jenin on October 16th, in the Church of St. Paul the Apostle
(Columbus Avenue at W 60th St., NYC) at 2pm! A symposium with Prof. Alain Badiou, Prof. Slavoj Zizek, and Filmmaker Udi Aloni, on the possibility of reading Antigone in the Jenin Refugee Camp, as well as for subsequent film screenings of Forgiveness and Arna’s Children.

What is delaying treatment of a 47-year-old Palestinian woman, if not punishment of someone who opposes her foreign rulers?

In fact, the terms of Obama’s letter were drafted in cooperation with Ehud Barak, Israel’s defence minister and leader of the supposedly leftwing Labor party. When he was prime minister a decade ago, he insisted on a similar military presence in the Valley during the failed Camp David talks…