September 2022
‘Operation Breaking Dawn’ killed 49 Palestinians Tareq Hajjaj Mondoweiss 01/09/2022 While Israeli airstrikes were still ongoing in Gaza, moving from place to place became a deadly mission, and even venturing outside of your home could expose you to deliberate and indiscriminate Israeli bombing. The Israeli military regarded anything that moved on the ground to be a legitimate target, and many of the deaths reported during this invasion were of people sitting in front of their homes — most of them non-combatants, according to Mondoweiss’s documentation.
This latest round has led many in Gaza to conclude that “there is no such thing as security when you’re living under occupation in Gaza,” according to Saleh Tahrawi, the father of a 30-year-old martyr killed in the recent airstrikes. “Whether you’re sheltering in your home hoping to survive the war, or fighting Israel on the front lines, you’re going to be killed either way. Homes in Gaza are more dangerous than battlefields.” Tahrawi lost his daughter while she was sheltering in place in her home.
EU double standards admitted Ali Abunimah EI 02/09/2022
“We have a positive agenda: we do not aim to criticize; we want to help,” he adds, as if talking to a stubborn teenager, and not the cold-hearted war-criminal leaders of a brutal settler-colonial regime. There is the very slightest hint that something is troubling the EU’s love affair with Tel Aviv: “Yet the Israeli-Arab conflict and the occupation of Palestinian land still limit our potential,” Koopmans admits. “The EU wants to help lift that burden. So we have to face some concrete questions.”The “burden” he wants to lift is not so much from the necks of Palestinians, but from Israel and the EU.
Zionist archaeology erases the Palestinians Salman Abu Sitta Mondoweiss 03/09/22
To the authors of “An Archaeological Survey of the Arab Village of Bureir: Perspectives on the Late Ottoman and British Mandate Period in Southern Israel”: Your paper described your work as an “Archaeological Survey,” implying it is about a search for the obscure and ancient history of Burayr. This is fraud. Burayr is very much present history and geography. Burayr is the site of a terrible massacre, in which about 125 farmers and their families were killed by hand grenades thrown at them in their homes
Settler archaeology displaces Palestinians from their land Jeff Wright Mondoweiss 04/09/2022
Emek Shaveh is an Israeli non-government agency working “to defend cultural heritage rights and to protect ancient sites as public assets that belong to members of all communities, faiths and peoples.” On its website, the NGO charges that “the ruins of the past have become a political tool in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict… [we] work to challenge those who use archaeological sites to dispossess disenfranchised communities.”
West Bank travel still require visitors to report relationships with Palestinians Yumna Patel Mondoweiss 05/09/2022
The new rules are set to take effect on October 20th, and, following reported pressure from US officials, will undergo a two year “pilot period” during which changes can still be made to the regulations. Hamoked, the Israeli group that’s been petitioning the rules in court, said the new revisions mostly amounted to “cosmetic changes.” “It removed some of the most outrageous elements of the Procedure, but the basic problem remains,” Hamoked said on Twitter. “Israel will prevent thousands of families from living together for blatantly political reasons; The Israeli military takes the prerogative of micromanaging Palestinian society – including interfering with academic freedom of Palestinian universities,” the group said, adding that it will continue its legal challenge the procedures.
Only “severe sanctions” will bring about change – Miko Peled RI & A 08/09/2022
With rampant racism characterising most Israelis’ attitudes towards the Palestinian people, he says Israeli recognition of the need for justice for the Palestinians can be brought about only “by bringing Israeli society to their knees, like was done with white South African society… through severe sanctions, closure of all diplomatic missions, ending all trade and all commerce”, and making sure that Israel does not participate in any international sports, academic or cultural events.
UN denounces Israel’s “illegal and unacceptable” war on Palestinian civil society David Kattenburg Mondoweiss 14/09/2022
Defending human rights and rights defenders in occupied Palestine is a challenging task. Israel doesn’t cooperate with UN Special Rapporteurs or other Independent Experts. It doesn’t answer their letters and it doesn’t let them enter the effectively annexed Palestinian territories. And the Israel government is currently refusing to renew the visas of international staff at the Palestine office of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights.
Israel deliberately targeted Shireen Abu Akleh David Kattenburg Mondoweiss 20/09/2022
The Israeli sniper assault involved “three distinct rounds of shooting, totaling sixteen individual shots at Shireen, her colleagues and a civilian trying to provide medical aid,” the Forensic Architecture-Al Haq Investigate Unit (FAI) revealed.
“All shots were fired above the shoulders and intended to kill.”
Forensic Architecture, based at Goldsmiths University of London, specializes in “spatial reconstruction of sites and scenes of state violence.” Their analysis of Abu Akleh’s death — described as a “targeted killing” — is based on multiple videos recorded by Palestinians, along with other evidence.
Protest at PA collaboration with Israel Tamara Nassar EI 20/09/2022
The PA seems determined to demonstrate its utility to Israel amid growing fears that its power is waning in key areas of the West Bank. Israeli leaders have expressed alarm that the Palestinian Authority is losing control over the pockets of the West Bank where Israel allows it to operate.The PA’s overnight attack may be an effort to reassert control in the northern West Bank amid a resurgence of Palestinian armed resistance in Nablus and Jenin. It is also notable that US and European Union funding for PA forces has generally been contingent on them helping Israel quell Palestinian resistance.
Proxy warfare in Nablus Mariam Barghouti Mondoweiss 28/09/2022
Al-Koni is among a rising number of resistance fighters being targeted and killed by Israel as part of its on-going large-scale military operation, “Break the Wave.” The military operation, in coordination with Israeli intelligence, has resulted in the killing of more than 153 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in the span of nine months. The Israeli military continues to escalate its targeting of Palestinian resistance fighters in the West Bank after its large-scale military aggression on Gaza dubbed, “Operation Breaking Dawn,” which resulted in the killing of more than 49 Palestinians, including the extra-judicial assassination of some Palestinian Islamic Jihad senior leaders.
The Palestinian population is largely a non-combatant population. However, the criminalization of Palestinian guerilla combatants is also in contradiction to their rights under international law. As an occupied people, Palestinians have the right to resist occupation in armed combat, and the civilian population is under no obligation to owe allegiance to its occupying power.
Israeli government discrimination in education Jack Dodson Mondoweiss 28/09/22 Systemic discrimination
In April, Adalah, a legal NGO in Haifa focused on Palestinian rights in the region, filed a petition in an Israeli court against a policy that banned schools and third-party contractors from acknowledging the Nakba. In early September, residents in Jaffa joined to protest the closure of kindergartens, while teachers last week in East Jerusalem observed a strike against the Israeli municipality’s attempts to censor their textbooks. The Israeli government has a history of undermining Palestinian education. Whether it’s refusing to provide buses for Bedouin children in the Naqab or failing to provide matriculation exams in Arabic until 2019 legal organizations have routinely had to fight for full rights within schools.
Israel kills four in Jenin raid Maureen Clare Murphy EI 28/09/2022
Citing the military, the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz reported that in addition to shooting at two people inside the home, “soldiers fired an anti-tank missile towards the house, causing a fire.” The newspaper later removed this from its report without explanation.
Israel’s use of a missile against the house suggests the Israeli attack may have been an application of the so-called “pressure cooker procedure,” a form of extrajudicial execution. As part of this procedure, occupation forces fire progressively more powerful weapons at the house in an effort to force those inside to surrender. If they refuse to do so, the occupation forces demolish the house, killing all those inside.
7-year-old Palestinian boy dies of fear Yumna Patel Mondoweiss 30/09/2022
Rayan Yasser Suleiman, 7, was pronounced dead on Thursday afternoon at the Beit Jala Governmental Hospital, shortly after he fell unconscious near his home in the town of Tuqu’ in the southern occupied West Bank. Rayan’s family says that his heart stopped and he collapsed to the ground after he ran in fear from Israeli army soldiers who were raiding his home in search of alleged “stone-throwers” in the town. . . . “Israeli forces know no bounds as they attempt to control an incredibly young occupied Palestinian population through intimidation, threats, nighttime incursions, collective punishment, and by instilling fear. International child rights norms and Israel’s own laws prohibit a seven-year-old child from being arrested and prosecuted, yet heavily-armed Israeli soldiers flagrantly ignore this reality, routinely chasing and detaining young Palestinian children, striking fear into them and ensuring they have no safe spaces to develop and thrive,”
UK related articles
Israel lobby fury Asa Winstanley EI 02/09/2022
Britain’s Israel lobby reacted with fury on Thursday night as left-wing Jewish activist Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi was elected to the Labour Party’s ruling body.A veteran Palestine solidarity activist, Wimborne-Idrissi won a seat on the National Executive Committee (NEC) which sets internal rules governing the UK opposition party, including disciplinary matters.
Exposure – Israel lobby role in UK Labour Party Asa Winstanley EI 22/09/2022
A new cache of leaked Labour documents shows how Israel lobby operatives worked against former leader Jeremy Corbyn from within the UK’s main opposition party.
Israel lobbyist Luke Akehurst intervened to help save suspended right-wing Labour activist Luke Stanger from expulsion – despite a series of complaints of harassment and intimidation.
The leaked files also detail how Palestine solidarity activists and left-wingers were investigated, suspended and expelled from the party, while right-wing pro-Israel members were protected by senior party figures. The documents were revealed on Thursday in the first episode of The Labour Files, a new three-part series by Al Jazeera’s investigative unit – the same team behind the 2017 series The Lobby and the censored 2018 series The Lobby – USA.
Read more Also by Asa Winstanley
British Quakers capitulate to Israel lobby Ali Abunimah EI 30/09/2022
The religious organization Quakers in Britain is standing by its cancellation of a booking for an event on Palestine at one of its meeting houses in Scotland earlier this week. The decision came after a smear campaign against the main speaker David Miller, falsely accusing him of anti-Jewish bigotry. This capitulation is a slap in the face to Palestinians and to the long tradition of Quaker solidarity and support for Palestinian rights. It is also being criticized by another major Quaker group.
Campaign Against Antisemitism, a right-wing Israel lobby group whose head of “political investigations” took credit for the political destruction of Jeremy Corbyn – boasting that the former Labour Party leader had been “slaughtered” – applauded the blatant act of censorship against Miller.
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