May 2021

6th July 2021 7:24 pm

Labour hands more power to Israel’s lobby

Asa Winstanley EI 5/05/2021

. . . In February Labour announced a new advisory board on anti-Semitism.

The list of names of those appointed to the new body reveals a major escalation: Most are affiliated with pro-Israel lobby groups, while none appear to be affiliated with Jewish organizations and communities that are critical of Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.

This means that Labour may have handed effective veto power over its membership to advocates for a violent, racist foreign state.

By outsourcing policy to the Israel lobby, Labour is formalizing what has been the practice under party leader Keir Starmer for more than a year.

Labour’s “Action Plan” on anti-Semitism published in December gives the new advisory board a significant oversight role. Labour will create a supposedly “independent process to handle and determine anti-Semitism complaints.” During the design of this process, according to the plan, officials will engage in “continuous update and consultation” with the advisory board. . .

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Sheikh Jarrah eviction orders Rina Bassist al Monitor 7/05/2021

Tensions in East Jerusalem have increased over the past few weeks. At the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, clashes broke out near the Damascus Gate, outside the Old City. Palestinian residents clashed with police and with Jewish extreme-right activists. Now demonstrations in Jerusalem are taking place mostly in Sheikh Jarrah, where Palestinian residents of the neighborhood are pitted against Jewish settlers who claim ownership of some of the older buildings there.

The Sheikh Jarrah dispute has been going on for 15 years, but it was only in recent days that a Palestinian campaign over the fate of the neighborhood has been gaining momentum. At the core of the dispute are several land plots located near the ancient tomb of Simeon the Righteous. Jewish settlers claim the lands were purchased by Jewish Ashkenazi and Sephardic communities in the 19th century, then abandoned in 1948

Read more: Sheikh Jarrah eviction orders

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Child killed with bullets in the back Tamara Nassar EI 6/05/2021

Israeli occupation forces shot and killed a Palestinian child on Wednesday.

Said Yousef Muhammad Odeh was from the village of Odala near Nablus in the occupied West Bank. The 16-year-old is the second Palestinian child Israel has killed this year.

Odeh was walking towards the village’s entrance on Wednesday night when occupation forces stationed in an olive grove shot him, according to an investigation by Defense for Children International Palestine.

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‘They ran barefoot in the streets’ Tareq Hajjaj Mondoweiss 17/05/21

At least 38,000 Palestinians have fled their homes and sought shelter in schools run by the United Nations as hundreds of houses were completely destroyed in airstrikes since last Monday, in the most serious escalation in Gaza between Israel and Hamas in the past seven years. Most were displaced beginning late last week when ceasefire negotiations failed, and Israeli forces carried on with an air campaign and Palestinians launching rockets into Israel.

In Shuja’iyya, a neighborhood of 100,000, Palestinians grabbed what they could and ran through the streets westward towards the coast early Friday evening, away from the border with Israel and the sounds of blasts from tanks.

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Shock and stress for Gaza’s children Hamza Abu Eltarabesh EI 20/05/2021

I kept looking toward my wife and our two children. Every minute we could hear at least three explosions nearby. Our house shook heavily. We felt like we could die at any moment.

We are now experiencing the fourth major Israeli attack on Gaza since December 2008. The explosions during this attack seem louder than during the previous three.

I am sure that our entire neighborhood is in shock. Israel is using very powerful weapons, many of them made in the US. They are likely to include the GBU-31 and GBU-39 bombs. Read more: Shock and stress for Gaza’s children | The Electronic Intifada

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Israeli radio incites killing, expulsion of citizens Asa Winstanley EI 20/05/21

An organized pogrom took place tonight against Arabs in Bat Yam,” one Israeli commenter wrote. In Lydd a few days earlier, Palestinian citizen Moussa Hassouna was shot dead by suspected Jewish Israeli residents. Mobs of Jewish Israelis have been organizing in WhatsApp and Telegram groups in recent days. One wrote they were “dying to kill Arabs.”

Armed Jewish extremists from Israeli settlements in the West Bank have also been taking part. “We are no longer Jews today,” one user wrote in a Telegram group. “Today we are Nazis. ”One of the WhatsApp groups includes the phrase “F****g the Arabs” in its title

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Entire families targeted in Gaza James North Mondoweiss 21/05/2021

. . . Parents and children, babies, grandparents, siblings and nephews and nieces died together when Israel bombed their homes which collapsed over them. Insofar as is known, no advance warning was given so they could evacuate the targeted houses . . . . . . once the “importance” of a Hamas member is considered high and its residence is defined as a legitimate target for bombing — the “allowable” collateral damage, in other words the number of uninvolved people killed, including women and children — is very broad.

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Why can’t Britain’s journalists call Israel an apartheid state? David Cronin EI 27/05/21

Expressing solidarity with an oppressed people is not complicated. The only really important rule is that you should listen to them. During its attack on Gaza earlier this month, Israel bombed a tower where staff from Al Jazeera and the Associated Press were based.

After that act of state terrorism, an appeal was made to media workers around the world.

Journalists were urged to name “Israel’s regime as apartheid” in their reporting and to refuse press trips financed by Israel and its lobbying network.

The appeal was issued by the BDS National Committee – which coordinates the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel – and the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate. Last week, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) for Britain and Ireland held its annual conference. Shamefully, the conference rejected the Palestinian call.

Jim Boumelha, a leading NUJ figure, opposed a request from five branches of the union – four Irish and one Scottish – to amend a motion he had drafted. The proposed amendment included the Palestinian demands. I contacted Boumelha asking why he would not accept the amendment. Boumelha replied by insulting his NUJ colleagues who had put forward the amendment as “pseudo-revolutionaries.”

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UN to probe Israeli repression against Palestinians as a whole Maureen Clare Murphy EI 28/05/21

On Thursday, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution establishing a permanent commission of inquiry into Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights in all the territory under its control.

The resolution was adopted during a special session of the human rights body held in response to escalated Israeli repression and rights abuses throughout historic Palestine.

The 24-9 vote with 14 abstentions came on the heels of 11 days of intensive Israeli bombing in Gaza that resulted in the deaths of more than 240 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians.

The commission of inquiry established Thursday is the highest level of examination that may be approved by the UN’s top human rights body.

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UK cracks down on BDS Robert Cohen Mondoweiss 19 /05/2021

At the very moment that the UK government has announced plans to ban boycotts, divestment and sanctions by public funded bodies, the very reasons for supporting non-violent strategies to achieve equality for the Palestinian people look more urgent and compelling than ever. BDS is about fairness, equality and justice, ideas that have been at the heart of Jewish ethics for thousands of years

. . . only support for Palestinians is “divisive”, while working towards trade and cultural links with Israel is to be encouraged and could not possibly cause any conflict, division or ethical dilemma. This despite the 200 pages of evidence from Human Rights Watch (HRW) that Israel is practicing Apartheid. The HRW report concludes by saying:

“Israeli authorities have deprived millions of people of their basic rights by virtue of their identity as Palestinians. These longstanding policies and systematic practices box in, dispossess, forcibly separate, marginalize, and otherwise inflict suffering on Palestinians.”

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Labour’s Lisa Nandy is an enemy of Palestinian rights Asa Winstanley EI 16/05/2021 Britain’s Labour Party was condemned for its hypocrisy on Israel’s violent onslaught against Palestinians this week. As of Sunday morning, more than 170 Palestinians had been killed since Israel started bombing Gaza last Monday, including nearly 50 children.

The massive escalation in violence began with Israel’s attacks on Palestinians in Jerusalem and its raids on the al-Aqsa mosque. But Labour’s shadow foreign affairs spokesperson Lisa Nandy is condemning “both sides.” She said she was “gravely concerned” by “violent scenes in Jerusalem.”

Nandy has stated that she is a Zionist – a supporter of Israel’s racist official ideology.

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Valuable Graphics

Mapping Israeli Occupation Aljazeera Mohammed Haddad May 2021
In the following series of graphics Al Jazeera describes why Israel’s military occupation of Palestine remains at the core of this decades-long conflict and how Israeli colonialism shapes every part of Palestinians’ lives. A second series of graphics summarises Israel’s military.
CLICK HERE
and
CLICK HERE
[Source: Bristol & West Palestine Bulletin]

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