HolyLandJustice.org

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 poster featuring Palestinian leaders defeated and humiliated is the epitome of Israel’s vision of absolute ‘victory’ over Palestinians.

By Hagai El-Ad  | +972 Magazine |  Mar 2, 2020

This victory image is the vulgar graphic representation of the political plan now being touted to fulfill the next phase of this very vision: U.S. President Donald Trump’s “peace” plan.

Both contenders for Israel’s premiership, Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, are hoping to give the victory speech after today’s vote. Yet regardless of who – if any – emerges the winner, Israelis have already been presented with this election’s victory image: the humiliating poster featuring Palestinian leaders kneeling, blindfolded and defeated, against the backdrop of a destroyed city.

The campaign, advertised on billboards by the far-right group Israel Victory Project and quickly taken down by order of Tel Aviv’s mayor, is the epitome of Israel’s current phase of control over the Palestinians. Though they were in the public eye only for a short time, these billboards are already etched in the collective consciousness. After all, that is where the idea came from: the minds of a growing number of Jews in Israel who are publicly expressing their vision of absolute “victory” over the Palestinians — not only in the depths of their subconscious, but most openly and practically.

Continue reading “No matter who wins elections, Israel’s victory image is clear”

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?”

The convergence of political repression and instability, public health needs, high unemployment, and a lack of resources is leading to a massive breakdown for Palestinians.

By Dr. Alice Rothchild | Mondoweiss | Feb 26, 2020

Refugee, as well as non-refugee patients in the occupied territories, face a mushrooming fragmentation of their health care “non-system” with care provided by UNRWA, the Ministry of Health, NGOs, and private clinicians with duplications, gaps, and chaos complicated by the priorities of international aid groups and donor agendas.

The Trump administration plan for Israel/Palestine, ironically titled “Peace to Prosperity: a vision to improve the lives of the Palestinian and Israeli people,” is a flawed, ahistorical document that is basically a gift to the Israeli government, affirming and giving international blessings to much of the status quo. The document is framed in classic Israeli hasbara: Israelis are peace loving, Palestinians are plagued by violence and terrorism. The struggle is described as intractable, a clash of religions and cultures, that can only be solved by ignoring history and international law and proposing technocratic solutions to political problems and issues of social justice.

The release of the plan coincided with snarky comments from its authors clearly involving attempts to belittle Palestinians – White House senior advisor Jared Kushner told CNN, if Palestinians reject the plan, “they’re going to screw up another opportunity like they’ve screwed up every other opportunity that they’ve ever had in their existence.” He also said on PBS, “Look, they played the victimhood card. Now, it’s like they want their rights. They want a state[…]Basically what we’re saying to the Palestinians is put up or shut up.”

Continue reading “Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ is a flawed, ahistorical plan with major health consequences”

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”

The advisers of the Democratic candidates offer a deeper look into what their policies on Israel-Palestine would be once they enter the White House.

By Alex Kane  | +972 Magazine | Feb 24, 2020

…there is a big difference between who is advising the progressives in the race — Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren — and who is advising the establishment candidates, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and former Vice President Joe Biden.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is doing something no American politician has done before: running as the Democratic front-runner for president while harshly criticizing Israel.

Just last Tuesday, Sanders slammed Israel’s “right-wing racist government” during a CNN town hall in Nevada, four days before he won a resounding victory in the state’s caucuses. On Sunday, he announced that he would not attend the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), stating he was “concerned about the platform AIPAC provides leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.”

When Sanders criticizes Israel in this way, he is not merely expressing his own personal beliefs. His remarks are also the outcome of the work of a foreign policy team that is helping to hone Sanders’ thinking on Israel – and which, in turn, is dramatically reshaping the national debate on what U.S. policy toward the Jewish state should be.

Continue reading “Meet the foreign policy teams shaping the Democratic Party’s views on Israel”

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”