Author: KPSC

 

A request from Jewish Voice for Peace to sign a petition supporting those who are holding 24-hour vigils to protect their land from being seized by settlers and soldiers.

By Granate Kim | Jewish Voice for Peace | Mar 6, 2020

We can’t physically link arms and sit down with the Palestinians of Beita, but we can use our grassroots power to work against Trump’s “peace plan.”

Emboldened by Trump and Netanyahu, violent settlers are once again trying to seize Mount Al-Urma, one of the highest mountains in the occupied West Bank and a strategic position for Israelis.

But the people of nearby town Beita aren’t going anywhere. They’re holding 24-hour vigils to protect the mountain amidst threatening social media calls for its takeover.

We can’t physically link arms and sit down with the Palestinians of Beita, but we can use our grassroots power to work against Trump’s “peace plan.”

Continue reading “Stand with the Palestinians of Beita as they protect their land”

Large numbers of Palestinians are staging a sit-in atop Mount Al-Urma in the West Bank amid settlers’ attempts to seize it.

By Shatha Hammad | Middle East Eye | Mar 5, 2020

‘I am here 24 hours a day, I don’t get tired nor do I feel bored… I will stay here to protect our lands, whatever it costs.’
—19-year-old Adham Zuhair

Around the stove, about 30 Palestinians gather inside a big tent on top of Mount Al-Urma, east of the town of Beita in the occupied West Bank, taking a rest and preparing for the latest confrontation with Israeli soldiers and settlers.

Hours earlier on Monday, settlers had tried for a second time to reach the top of the mountain, but the residents of Beita, which lies south of Nablus, had quickly gathered to defend their lands.

Clashes erupted, during which the Israeli army opened fire, wounding two Palestinians with live ammunition and 10 others with rubber bullets.

Continue reading “‘This is our mountain’: Palestinians repel settlers emboldened by Netanyahu’s words”

Joint List alliance capitalizes on backlash against Netanyahu by taking 15 seats in Knesset.

By Oliver Holmes | The Guardian | Mar 4, 2020

In Monday’s vote, Arab turnout surged to 64.7%, according to estimates from the Israel Democracy Institute think tank.

Arab politicians are set to make historic gains in the Israeli election, taking more seats than ever before and solidifying their position as the third-largest force in the Knesset, the country’s parliament.

After 99% of the votes were counted, the Joint List alliance, a merger of politicians predominantly representing Palestinian citizens of Israel, had 15 out of 120 Knesset seats.

Boosted by a backlash to racist campaigning by Benjamin Netanyahu, Arab candidates also capitalised on anger towards the prime minister’s ally, Donald Trump. The US president’s recently-released “peace plan” included a highly-controversial clause that could strip some Arab-Israelis of their citizenship.

Continue reading “Israel’s Arab parties make historic gains as election support surges”

The choices in Israeli election sends a clear message that racism is politically correct and personal corruption is irrelevant.

By Gideon Levy | Information Clearing House | Mar 3, 2020

There is no left and no center in Israel, only an original right, and a right that is a cheap imitation.

You can be disgusted, you can be fearful, you can even be shocked, but you can’t deny his incredible talent: Benjamin Netanyahu the wizard struck again. Now he’s also an alchemist – take a serious indictment, scatter incitement, and win the admiration of the masses. You can be contemptuous, you can denounce it, you can even rise up against the nation that voted that way, but you have to respect its choice. To bow your head. It’s the will of the people. The people want Netanyahu.

The time has come to recognize that fact: Israel is right-wing, hard right. Racism is politically correct, personal corruption makes no difference, as long as you guarantee the continuation of Jewish supremacy, rule over another nation, arrogance and hatred. Peace, equality and justice are for the weak. Not for most Israelis. They said it loud and clear on Monday, more decisively than in the two previous election campaigns: Netanyahu is our king. Netanyahu is the king of most Israelis.

Continue reading “Israeli election results: The tribe has spoken”

A letter from the Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land, Diocese of Olympia, Western Washington calling for dignity and human rights for all who live in Israel and Palestine.

By Randolph Urmston and Mary Pneuman | Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land  |  Feb 29, 2020

On January 28, 2020, the White House rolled out a ‘peace plan’ that heralds an inglorious end to Palestinian hopes for a viable state with contiguous areas and a fair share of natural resources, including water.

A visiting Palestinian Episcopal clergyman recently made the prophetic statement that he believed that soon the only evidence of a Christian presence in Israel and Palestine would be found in museums or on gravestones. Christians have lived in historic Palestine since the 1st century, but the Arab Christian population is now estimated to be 220,000 or below two percent, falling rapidly from about 20 percent when Israel became a state in 1948.

The Episcopal Church is one of ten denominations in Israel and Palestine. (These include Greek, Armenian and other Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran and other protestant denominations.) in 2000, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia established the Bishop’s Committee for Justice and Peace in the Holy Land to support the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem and its 24 parishes and 30 schools, hospitals, clinics and rehab facilities hospitals in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon and to advocate for religious freedom and human rights for all peoples of the land. All 14 members have visited or volunteered in schools or medical facilities of the Diocese of Jerusalem, where services are available to all regardless of faith. We are compelled to speak up on their behalf.

Palestinian Christians cannot be regarded as a people apart from other non-Jewish people of the region. Today, the future for all Palestinians, be they Christian or Muslim, looks bleak. Israel is well on the way to becoming a state for Jews only. The new “nation-state” law (July, 2019) declares that Israel is the historic homeland of the Jews and that the “right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” This law implicitly excludes the 20% of the citizens of Israel who are Palestinian Arabs and invites discrimination against religious minorities. The estimated 660,000 Jewish residents of the settlements occupying nearly half of the West Bank and East Jerusalem are legal Israeli citizens with full rights and privileges. For Palestinians, at least 65 Israeli laws restrict freedom of movement, land ownership or residence, educational and economic opportunity, attendance at religious services, even the right for married couples to live together if one is an Israeli citizen and the other a Palestinian non-citizen.

Continue reading “The Christian Exodus: Why are Christians leaving their homeland?”

 

Palestinians, who had no role in the European pogroms or the Holocaust, were the ones to be sacrificed on the altar of hate.

By Chris Hedges | Information Clearing House | Feb 24, 2020

…among themselves the Zionists clearly understood that the use of armed force against the Arab majority was essential for the colonial project to succeed.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the product of ancient ethnic hatreds. It is the tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same land. It is a manufactured conflict, the outcome of a 100-year-old colonial occupation by Zionists and later Israel, backed by the British, the United States and other major imperial powers. This project is about the ongoing seizure of Palestinian land by the colonizers. It is about the rendering of the Palestinians as non-people, writing them out of the historical narrative as if they never existed and denying them basic human rights. Yet to state these incontrovertible facts of Jewish colonization — supported by innumerable official reports and public and private communiques and statements, along with historical records and events — sees Israel’s defenders level charges of anti-Semitism and racism.

Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, in his book “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonization and Resistance, 1917-2017” has meticulously documented this long project of colonization of Palestine. His exhaustive research, which includes internal, private communications between the early Zionists and Israeli leadership, leaves no doubt that the Jewish colonizers were acutely aware from the start that the Palestinian people had to be subjugated and removed to create the Jewish state. The Jewish leadership was also acutely aware that its intentions had to be masked behind euphemisms, the patina of biblical legitimacy by Jews to a land that had been Muslim since the seventh century, platitudes about human and democratic rights, the supposed benefits of colonization to the colonized and a mendacious call for democracy and peaceful co-existence with those targeted for destruction.

Continue reading “The Zionist colonization of Palestine”

 

Plan for 3,500 homes in West Bank is seen as barrier to any future Palestinian state.

By Oliver Holmes | The Guardian | Feb 25, 2020

‘I have given instructions to immediately publish … the plan to build 3,500 housing units in E1,’
— Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel Prime Minister

Benjamin Netanyahu has announced he will move ahead with a highly controversial plan to build settlements east of Jerusalem, in an apparent offering to hardline nationalist voters less than a week before a general election.

Israel’s prime minister said he would reopen the long-dormant project to build 3,500 homes for Jewish settlers in one of the most sensitive areas of the occupied West Bank.

The blueprint for the 12 sq km (4.6 sq mile) site, named E1, was drafted in 1995 but has been repeatedly frozen by successive Israeli governments after strong international condemnation. It would expand the large settlement of Maale Adumim to in effect connect it with Jerusalem.

Continue reading “Netanyahu announces new settlements days before Israeli election”

An interview with Brad Parker about how support for the rights of Palestinians has grown inside the halls of Congress.

By Michael Arria | Mondoweiss | Feb 18, 2020

We wanted to shift the burden away from the Palestinian rights movement and onto policymakers specifically.
— Brad Parker, senior policy advisor for Defense for Children International

After years of prodding members of Congress to act on their concerns over Palestinian human rights abuses, last year Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN) introduced legislation that would prohibit militaries from using American funds to detain and prosecute children.

The historic bill, H.R. 2407, targets Israel’s army for arresting children as young as 12. It currently has 23 Democratic cosponsors, as activists throughout the country continue to pressure more lawmakers. An earlier version of the bill introduced in 2017 also by McCollum, is the first piece of legislation to seek safeguards for Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.

Continue reading “‘There’s been a huge shift’: breaking down Betty McCollum’s historic bill on Palestinian children”

 

A  father/son navigating a conversation about Israel where opinions are divergent but respected.

By Philip Weiss  |  Mondoweiss |  Feb 21, 2020

About a month ago my 15-year-old son told me he was an anti-Zionist because he couldn’t support the notion that in Israel the Jews received preferential treatment over Palestinians in all aspects of life, such as education, housing, employment, and access to justice.
— Eric Flamm, writer

I keep telling friends that before long a prominent liberal Zionist is going to say, I’m sick of what the Jewish state is doing in my name so I’m going to become an anti-Zionist, just like an American pol leaving one party for another. But it hasn’t happened. Peter Beinart hasn’t been able to take the plunge. My college friend Dan Fleshler is still with J Street. David Rothkopf and David Remnick and Roger Cohen haven’t made the break. The only real exception is Henry Siegmann.

The shift is surely happening inside many Jewish families, though, and writer Eric Flamm has published an important piece documenting the change. Flamm himself is dedicated to Israel. He moved there in his 20’s in 1994 and became an Israeli citizen and was drafted into the Israel Defense Forces and served in a combat unit as a reservist. Then in 2001, he moved back to his college town, Portland, Oregon, and emerged as a leading liberal Zionist. He chaired the J Street chapter there from 2012-2018 and wrote a book of stories titled “Portland Zionists Unite!”

Continue reading “Liberal Zionist’s teen son is – an anti-Zionist”

The Trump-Kushner “Peace” Plan is slick and businesslike, with an aura of objectivity and balance – but it is exactly the opposite, and something about it stinks.

By Kathryn Shihadah | If American Knew  | Feb 21, 2020

The basic premise on which the Trump-Kushner Plan is based shows disdain for fundamental facts: Palestinian society is languishing because of Israel’s policies – not some deficiency in Palestinians or their leadership.

There is a giant herd of elephants circling the Trump-Kushner Peace Plan, and they’re not going away. The fragrance of pachyderms is unmistakable, but Trump administration, the Netanyahu government, and Israel partisans have decades of experience in ignoring whatever is inconvenient to their agendas.

That unmistakable throng of elephants is the disenfranchisement and subjugation of the Palestinian people that has gone for a hundred years, and is presently so flagrant that numerous human rights organizations and experts have called it apartheid.

And while the Trump administration claims it wants a future of peace, this Plan will not bring peace.

Because, elephants.

Continue reading “Trump-Kushner ‘Peace’ Plan ignores elephants in the room: Israel created this mess”