HolyLandJustice.org

Occupied Territories Bill and criticism of Israel’s colonization are not attacks on Jews

By Dr. Ronit Lentin | The Irish Times | Feb 4, 2019

Settlements, built on Palestinian (often privately owned) lands, impinge on Palestinian human rights

Israel’s response to the passing of the Occupied Territories Bill in the Dáil last week entailed, on the one hand, threatening to impose severe economic-political measures against Ireland, including taxing Irish imports and suspending bilateral economic and commercial agreements with Dublin. On the other hand, Israel accused Ireland of anti-Semitism, often weaponised against any criticism of the Israeli colonisation of Palestine and its ongoing infringements of international law.

There is no need for me to discuss the merits and effectiveness of the Bill here. It’s worth noting, however, that the settlements, from which products would be banned if the Bill becomes law, are considered illegal under international law. According to article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies”, making Israel’s building and transferring of its population to the occupied Palestinian territory illegal.

Continue reading “Deep empathy of Irish for Palestinians is in no way anti-Semitic”

Actor and playwright Ali Abu Yaseen, star of the film “Gaza,” was blocked from leaving the Gaza Strip.

By Associated Press Staff | Haaretz | Jan 30, 2019

‘I’m seething with indignation. The dream that I had for the past three months has all but collapsed.’
— Actor and playwright Ali Abu Yaseen

A new documentary called “Gaza” is hitting the screens at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival this week, providing a colorful glimpse of life in the blockaded Hamas-ruled territory. But one of its main subjects, Gaza actor and playwright Ali Abu Yaseen, won’t be attending the gathering due to the very circumstances depicted in the film.

Abu Yaseen had hoped to make his first-ever trip to the US to take part in the festival. But the continued closure of Gaza’s border with Egypt, and Hamas’ bureaucratic inefficiency, made it impossible for him to reach Cairo in time to receive a visa from the American Embassy needed to travel to Utah.

After missing Tuesday’s premiere, Abu Yaseen has all but given up hope of reaching Utah on time. The film’s final screening is on Saturday.

Continue reading “Trapped in Gaza, star misses Sundance Film Festival”

The American Jewish group IfNotNow calling this forced removal ethnic cleansing.

By Jonathan Ofir | Mondoweiss | Feb 2, 2019

In 1948, as Israeli Jews fought for and celebrated the formation of the new state, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were being forcibly displaced by Israeli military forces. From then to today, Israeli policies have frequently forced Arab residents off their ancestral lands, often for the benefit of the Jewish majority.

Last Monday, Israeli authorities announced a plan to “forcibly transfer 36,000 Arab Bedouin citizens of Israel living in unrecognized villages in the country’s southern Naqab (Negev) region in order to expand military training areas and implement what it called ‘economic development’ projects,” according to Adalah (The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel).

The American Jewish group IfNotNow noticed this, and posted the article with the heading:

This is ethnic cleansing.

IfNotNow are now making it clear that when they speak of opposition to “occupation,” they are not just speaking about the 1967 occupation, but also the 1948 occupation. Or as they formulate it:

And this is part of what, when we demand that the Occupation end, we are talking about.

This is a critical qualification. Opposition to the 1967 occupation, be it real or ostensible, has not really been that radical an issue as far as Zionism is concerned. Liberal Zionists could easily take that position and still call themselves proud Zionists. In fact, liberal Zionists have used this position to claim that they were protecting Zionism from a “demographic threat,” in that controlling a large Palestinian population without rights means Apartheid (which they have warned that people will ‘accuse Israel of’), whereas granting them rights means an end to Jewish State

Continue reading “As Israel steps up ‘Judaization’ policy, IfNotNow takes a step toward anti-Zionism”

Order must be maintained. If Palestinians start getting killed against the regulations, we’ll lose control.

By Zvi Bar’el | Haaretz | Jan 30, 2019

Because it’s allowed to commit the most terrible and despicable acts, to kill a disabled Palestinian when his back is turned to the shooter, to demolish a home inhabited by innocent civilians, to prevent entry to a wheat field or an olive grove, to keep 2 million people closed up in a pen, to cause the deaths of sick people unable to get to a hospital — on condition that everything is done according to the regulations, the instructions and the norms.

Someone killed a Palestinian, and suddenly the country is amazed and in an uproar. Who in the world could have killed this Palestinian? (And who even remembers his name? After all, it happened a long time ago, four days ago.) Settlers? The settlement’s volunteer armed security team? Maybe the army?

The undisputed fact is that the Palestinian “met” his death. That’s how it is with the Palestinians. They seek and meet their death. It’s the same custom that got Aisha al-Rabi killed by a stone thrown at her a few months ago.

But the pure Jewish souls can find no rest. We have to investigate, they say, we have to discover the truth, find the murderers, punish them; the same law applies to everyone, Jews and Palestinians.

Continue reading “Killing a Palestinian, according to the rules”

On Monday, the Democratic Majority for Israel was incorporated in Washington. On the same day it received a favorable write-up in the NY Times.

By Aiden Pink | Forward | Jan 30, 2019

AIPAC has been discussing credibility problems with progressives at the highest level. And they have been exploring the possibility of creating a Democratic group that would push AIPAC policy and fight the pro-Israel fight within the Democratic Party. That’s something they’ve been discussing for years.

For at least five years, pro-Israel groups who want Israel to enjoy bipartisan support in the United States have been worried about Democrats. While evangelical Republicans are some of Israel’s most passionate supporters, young Democrats are less likely to support Israel than in past generations.

The groups have tried to reverse this trend in lots of ways: free junkets to Israel for everyone from feminists to firefighters, increased educational programming on college campuses, and new organizations like Zioness. AIPAC, the major pro-Israel lobby, has particularly emphasized the growth (or stopping the decay) of liberal support for Israel, even naming a director of progressive outreach.

On Monday, a new group was incorporated in Washington, with a flashy website, a roster of diverse and distinguished board members and a write-up in The New York Times: the Democratic Majority for Israel. Continue reading “New “progressive” pro-Israel group has strong ties to AIPAC”

Some Democrats have suggested that the new group represents a Democratic arm of AIPAC.

By Jonathan Martin | The New York Times | Jan 28, 2019

‘My generation sees the occupation and what’s happening in Israel-Palestine as a crisis the same way we do climate change. Too many in the American Jewish establishment and the Democratic establishment have let [Israel] off the hook.’
— Simone Zimmerman, co-founder of IfNotNow

‘The idea that the Democratic Party should just support the Netanyahu government, right or wrong, is out of line with where American Jews are at and where Jewish Democrats are at.’
— Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street

Several prominent veteran Democrats, alarmed by the party’s drift from its longstanding alignment with Israel, are starting a new political group that will try to counter the rising skepticism on the left toward the Jewish state by supporting lawmakers and candidates in 2020 who stand unwaveringly with the country.

With polls showing that liberals and younger voters are increasingly less sympathetic to Israel, and a handful of vocal supporters of Palestinian rights arriving in Congress, the new group — the Democratic Majority for Israel — is planning to wage a campaign to remind elected officials about what they call the party’s shared values and interests with one of America’s strongest allies.

“Most Democrats are strongly pro-Israel and we want to keep it that way,” said Mark Mellman, the group’s president and a longtime Democratic pollster. “There are a few discordant voices, but we want to make sure that what’s a very small problem doesn’t metastasize into a bigger problem.”

Continue reading “Prominent Democrats form pro-Israel group to counter skepticism on the left”

Please join our brothers and sisters at the Mideast Focus Ministry for their First Friday Film series.

	Date:	Friday, Mar 1, 2019
	Time:	7:00 – 8:30 pm
	Location:	St. Mark’s Cathedral Bloedel Hall 1245 10th Ave E Seattle, WA 98102
	Information:	Event information here →
	Tickets:	Free Admission

Event Details

A compelling, ground-level immersion into the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time, Sky & Ground accompanies the Nabi clan, a large, extended Syrian-Kurdish family, as they painstakingly make their way from their home in Aleppo, bombed out by the war, to the Idomeni refugee camp on the border of Greece and Macedonia. Their goal is Berlin, where they will reunite with family members and seek asylum but first they must make the arduous and dangerous journey through Serbia, Hungary and Austria.

Continue reading “Film: Sky and Ground (Mar 1)”

There is a false equivalency between criticizing Israel and being anti-Semitic.

By Marjorie Cohn | Truthout | Jan 25, 2019

[We need] to honor our deepest values in times of crisis, even when silence would better serve our personal interests or the communities and causes we hold most dear. It’s what I think about when I go over the excuses and rationalizations that have kept me largely silent on one of the great moral challenges of our time: the crisis in Israel-Palestine.
— Michelle Alexander

As a progressive Jew, I find that many of my family members and friends are still what we call “PEP” — progressive except Palestine. Amid ever-worsening injustices created by the Israeli system of apartheid and Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, it is past time for this to change.

I am hopeful that the firestorm sparked by Michelle Alexander’s recent New York Times column, “Time to Break the Silence on Palestine,” will finally generate the heat necessary to force more people and groups on the left to overcome the fundamental hypocrisy of the “progressive except Palestine” approach.

I was deeply inspired by Alexander’s column and her decision to speak so honestly about the difficulty of overcoming the fear of backlash over taking a public stand against the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

Striking a comparison between the risk taken by prominent critics of Israel and the risk Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took by publicly criticizing the Vietnam War, Alexander observes, “Those who speak publicly in support of the liberation of the Palestinian people still risk condemnation and backlash.”

Continue reading “Michelle Alexander is right about Israel-Palestine”

For the most serious cases, the necessary treatment is very difficult to obtain in the Gaza Strip, which is isolated by a blockade.

By Staff | MSF Doctors Without Borders | Jan 25, 2019

MSF has increased its capacity in the Gaza Strip, performing 302 surgeries in December 2018 and caring for about 900 wounded patients. The needs of wounded patients, however, are overwhelming both MSF and other health care actors, and much more remains to be done to ensure adequate treatment of these serious and complex injuries.

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) medical teams in the Gaza Strip have the arduous task of treating bone injuries in patients who were shot by the Israeli military during protests. Limited resources make it impossible to provide adequate treatment in many cases, making it necessary to refer patients to hospitals outside the Gaza Strip. However, legal obstacles complicate referrals outside of the territory, and MSF was only able to make its first referral this month.

Treating gunshot wounds is complicated. At al-Awda hospital in Jabalia, northern Gaza, MSF surgeons operating on the shin of Yousri [name changed] who was shot in July 2018, found that the bullet had left a large gap in the bone just below his knee. They took bone from Yousri’s hip to fill the gap and help him walk again. “It will take at least two or three months for the bone to fuse, and could be longer,” said MSF surgeon Hiroko Murakami. “After that time we will see if everything is OK, and, if it is, then we can remove the external fixator and the patient can start physiotherapy. So it’s still going to take him a long time to recover.”

Continue reading “Gaza: Advanced care needed for complex gunshot wounds”

In contrast, other courts have held boycotts to be protected speech.

By Staff | i24 News | Jan 24, 2019

‘[The Times] may even call upon others to boycott Israel, write in support of such boycotts, and engage in picketing and pamphleteering to that effect. This does not mean, however, that its decision to refuse to deal, or to refrain from purchasing certain goods, is protected by the First Amendment.’
— US District Judge Brian Miller in his opinion

A US federal judge on Wednesday upheld legislation in the state of Arkansas forbidding state employees and contractors from participating in boycotts of Israel, such as the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

US District Judge Brian Miller dismissed a lawsuit brought forth by the Arkansas Times newspaper challenging the 2017 law — which requires state contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel — ruling that such a boycott is not protected by the First Amendment. The Arkansas Times is not engaged in a boycott against Israel, but filed the lawsuit after the University of Arkansas Pulaski Technical College refused to contract the paper because it declined to signed the anti-boycott pledge.

Miller wrote in his ruling that commercial boycotts, unlike actions such as writing in support of such boycotts, are not a protected form of speech and are therefore not protected by the First Amendment. . . .

Continue reading “Federal judge upholds Arkansas state anti-BDS law”