Google’s Blogspot Takes Down An Open Letter to Keir Starmer Which Called Him a ‘War Criminal Who Doubles as Britain’s Prime Minister’

 Google Once Proclaimed ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Now They Do Nothing But Evil

You can still read the blog here

https://tonygreenstein.com/an-open-letter-to-the-war-criminal-who-doubles-as-britains-prime-minister/

Israel's controversial computing contract | Digital Dilemma

Yesterday I published an Open Letter to Keir Starmer calling him a war criminal. Today it doesn’t exist as Google has taken it down from my Blogspot blog. When I went to see how many hits it had had I was greeted with a message

‘This post was deleted because it violates Blogger community guidelines. To republish, please update the content to adhere to the guidelines.

Of course there is no ‘Blogger community’ just faceless, amoral censors who responded no doubt to an offended genocide supporter. Someone had taken exception to Starmer being called what he is.

Fortunately I set up some years ago a shadow blog and that is what the donations that people send to my Blog Appeal  goes towards maintaining. The article that Google censored can be accessed here.

There can be no doubt that Starmer is a war criminal. Anyone who supplies weapons and military intelligence to an ongoing genocide is a war criminal whose place is in the Hague. What Google objected to was factually correct. If the IG Farben trial of August 1947 were repeated today, Starmer would have been in the dock facing the prospect of being hanged for willingly aiding the genocidaires.

IG Farben was the largest company in Europe and the world’s largest chemical and pharmaceutical company. It manufactured Zyklon B, the gas used to murder people in the gas chambers. It also used Auschwitz inmates as slave labour.

Starmer’s culpability for war crimes and crimes against humanity is no less than that of the Directors of IG Farben.

Although  politicians pretend that Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians, nearly half of whom are children, is just military warfare, every single human rights group from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch has said that what is taking place is genocide and extermination.

It’s not as if Israeli politicians hide their intentions. Never before have politicians of a state committing war crimes been so brazen. Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that

You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.

Amalek was the tribe that God commanded the Israelites to wipe out. He commanded:

Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

So why has Google been so sensitive. After all this was the company which once had a mission statement proudly proclaiming ‘Don’t Be Evil’.  Yet today Google does nothing but evil.

As we do these days, I asked Chat GP what had happened to Google’s slogan. It told me that officially it had not dropped ‘Don't be evil’. It had simply been relegated to obscurity.

Until the early 2010s ‘Don't be evil’ ‘was a central part of Google's corporate code of conduct and public image’. It was prominently featured at the top of Google's Code of Conduct. But in 2015: When Google reorganized under the new parent company Alphabet Inc., the phrase ‘Do the right thing’ replaced ‘Don't be evil’ as the main ethical guideline.

In May 2018: Google updated its Code of Conduct and moved ‘Don't be evil’ from the beginning to the very end of the document. The line reads:

And remember… don’t be evil, and if you see something that you think isn’t right – speak up!

Well employees of Google did speak up about its collaboration with Israel in perpetrating war crimes.  What happened? It was reported that ‘Google has sacked 28 workers who took part in protests against a deal the technology giant has with the Israeli government.’ It went on:

Google has a joint contract with Amazon worth $1.2bn (£960m) called Project Nimbus which provides Israel's government and military with cloud computing and AI infrastructure.

Employees affiliated with the protest group No Tech For Apartheid, staged sit-ins at the company’s New York and Sunnyvale, California offices.

Google said Project Nimbus "is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services”....

The dismissals, which Google confirmed to the BBC, escalated longstanding tensions between the company and employees opposed to supplying technology to Israel’s government.

Marches were held last year, following the start of the war in Gaza in October, with protesters holding banners that read “No More Genocide For Profit”.

In the most recent protests, staff entered offices and refused to leave prompting Google to call law enforcement. In a statement Google called the behaviour "completely unacceptable".

Googlers Against Genocide Gains Steam As Google Workers Fight AI, Cloud Contracts With Israel

An article in Al Jazeera in April 2024 reported that

Project Nimbus, the joint contract between Google and Amazon signed in 2021 aims to provide cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology services to the Israeli government and its military, which has faced condemnation for its war on Gaza, described by United Nations experts and several countries as a “genocide”.

Why are Google employees protesting against Project Nimbus?

Last week’s sit-ins in New York and California’s Sunnyvale were led by No Tech For Apartheid, which has been organising Google employees against Project Nimbus since 2021. Employees are opposing their employer’s ties with Israel.

Tech workers are demanding that they have the right to know how their labour is going to be used. With little clarity about the project, they fear the technology might be used for harm. Workers at Amazon and Facebook parent Meta have also clashed with their employers over war links.

“It is impossible to feel excited and energised to work when you know your company is providing the Israeli government products that are helping it commit atrocities in Palestine,” said, Tina Vachovsky, staff software engineer at Google, in a testimonial published on the No Tech Apartheid website.

According to a 2021 report by the US-based news outlet The Intercept, Google is offering advanced AI capabilities to Israel, which could harvest data for facial recognition and object tracking as part of Project Nimbus.

 “There’s actually a shocking lack of transparency around exactly what this project covers, outside of providing interoperable, comprehensive cloud computing, which is essentially systems of data storage, data management and sharing,” Ramesh Srinivasan, professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), told Al Jazeera.

“Data for the Israeli governments, of course, is likely to extend to the Israeli [army]. So it’s a project that marks and sort of highlights the direct connections that big technology companies in the United States have, not only to the so-called military-industrial complex, but to directly aiding and abetting the Israeli government.”

In a statement, the tech giant said that the Nimbus contract “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services”. The tech behemoth says it works with several governments around the world, including Israel.

The company fired at least 28 employees last week for “violating Google’s code of conduct” and “policy on harassment, discrimination and retaliation”. In addition, at least nine Google employees were arrested for the sit-ins at its offices in New York and Sunnyvale.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a veiled warning in a blog post last week.

“We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action. That’s important to preserve. But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics. This is too important a moment as a company for us to be distracted,” he wrote.

In other words, whatever our mission statement says ‘ultimately we are a workplace... this is a business’ and we cannot be ‘distracted’ from our main goal which is to make as much money as possible in support of the war machine of imperialism. This is the logic of capitalism. Google is as much an amoral company as any other. The article goes on:

But tech workers have not been fazed by the warning. Mohammad Khatami, a Google software engineer who was arrested for participating in the sit-in in New York, told US outlet Democracy Now that workers were arrested for “speaking out against the use of our technology to power the first AI-powered genocide”.

Google fired another 20 protesters this week, according to the No Tech For Apartheid group, bringing the total number of people sacked to about 50.

“Google’s aims are clear: the corporation is attempting to quash dissent, silence its workers, and reassert its power over them,” Jane Chung, a spokesperson for No Tech For Apartheid, said on Tuesday.

Google said it fired the additional workers after its investigation gathered details from coworkers who were “physically disrupted” and it identified employees who used masks and did not carry their staff badges to hide their identities. It did not specify how many were fired.

Google is very concerned over the workers who were ‘physically disrupted’. But the Palestinians whose lives were disrupted, if not terminated, are of no concern.

Is there a history of tech workers opposing collaborations with the military?

This is not the first time Amazon and Google employees have voiced their displeasure with Project Nimbus. Last October, Amazon and Google employees expressed their concerns anonymously in an open letter  published by British news outlet The Guardian:

“We are writing as Google and Amazon employees of conscience from diverse backgrounds. We believe that the technology we build should work to serve and uplift people everywhere, including all of our users. As workers who keep these companies running, we are morally obligated to speak out against violations of these core values. For this reason, we are compelled to call on the leaders of Amazon and Google to pull out of Project Nimbus and cut all ties with the Israeli military. So far, more than 90 workers at Google and more than 300 at Amazon have signed this letter internally. We are anonymous because we fear retaliation.”

On March 4, at the Mind the Tech conference in New York, Google employee Eddie Hatfield stood up in a conference room and shouted, “I am a Google Cloud software engineer, and I refuse to build technology that powers genocide, apartheid, or surveillance!”

Hatfield was fired days after interrupting the managing director of Google Israel, Barak Regev. This would eventually set the stage for the recent protests against Project Nimbus.

In December of last year, in response to Project Nimbus, 1,700 employees sent a petition to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stating that 

by providing a cloud ecosystem for the Israeli public sector, Amazon is bolstering the artificial intelligence and surveillance capabilities of the Israeli military used to repress Palestinian activists and impose a brutal siege on Gaza.

Which other tech companies have ties with the Israeli military?

It’s not just cloud computing tech companies providing contracts to the Israeli military. In a report published last week by Brown University,  Roberto J Gonzalez, professor of cultural anthropology at San Jose State University, describes how the US public company Palantir Technologies is involved with Israel.

“For years, Palantir has had multiple contracts with the Israeli [army], and it extended its support for Israel after its war against Hamas began in October 2023,” Gonzalez said in comments in published on April 17.

Palantir, the Denver-based data analysis firm that provides military institutions with artificial intelligence, was co-founded by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel. Palantir, which has worked with the US National Security Agency, has previously provided tech solutions for the Israeli military.

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international organisation that works to challenge injustices globally, has maintained a directory of “C­o­m­p­a­n­i­e­s P­r­o­f­i­t­i­n­g f­r­o­m I­s­r­a­e­l­’­s 2­0­2­3­-­2­0­2­4 a­t­t­a­c­k­s o­n G­a­z­a”. More than 50 companies hailing from the US, China, Germany and the United Kingdom have been listed.

“This is a form of corporate welfare not only for the largest weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, and General Dynamics, which have seen their stock prices skyrocket, but also for companies that are not typically seen as part of the weapons industry, such as Caterpillar, Ford, and Toyota,” the AFSC Action Center for Corporate Accountability states.

What do we know about collaborations between tech companies and armies around the world?

The US military and spy agencies signed contracts worth at least $53bn between 2019 and 2022, according to the report published by Brown University on April 17.

In December of 2022, the Pentagon awarded Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft a $9bn contract for a top-secret cloud environment.

US-based companies like Clearview AI, based out of New York City, provide facial recognition software to help Ukraine identify Russian soldiers and officials who have participated in the military invasion. Ukraine was given free access to Clearview AI software starting in 2022. The same report also shows an increasing role of big tech in the military-industrial complex.

“Although much of the Pentagon’s $886bn budget is spent on conventional weapon systems and goes to well-established defense giants such as Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Boeing, and BAE Systems, a new political economy is emerging, driven by the imperatives of big tech companies, venture capital (VC), and private equity firms,” the report says.

Often, the introduction of new technologies can come at a terrible human cost if not properly tested and vetted.

“Everybody knows these AI systems will make mistakes … so that there will be wrongful deaths and wrongful assassinations as we’ve seen with so many civilian people in Gaza,” Srinivasan, the UCLA professor, says.

So what we have is Google Blogspot’s ‘Community Guidelines’ being hauled out in order to defend the genocide of Gaza’s Palestinians. Whether that is evil I will leave to others to decide.

Tony Greenstein

Google’s Blogspot Censors have Taken Down a 3½ Year Old Post Calling Edward Isaacs, former President of UJS and Chair of Bristol’s J-Soc, a Liar

The Jewish Chronicle Has a New Editor, Daniel Schwammenthal, and it Seems They’ve Realised That a Propaganda Rag Cannot Be a Newspaper

Edward Isaacs was Chair of Bristol’s Jewish (in fact Israel) Society when the campaign began in earnest against a sociology professor, David Miller. McCarthyism came easily to this spoilt rich Zionist brat.

My original message to Edward Isaacs

My clash with Isaacs began when he and his deputy, AJ Solomon applied to join the Labour Against the Witchhunt Facebook Group. As the Admin of the group I asked them why they wanted to join and if they were Zionists i.e. racists. See EXCLUSIVE: Bristol University Hearing into David Miller’s Right To Freedom of Speech Will Take Place Next Week as the Zionist Campaign to Dismiss Him Intensifies.

My Response to Google

Solomon got into a debate with me which he badly lost, resulting in him deleting his comments.  Isaacs merely threatened to sue me with Daddy’s money if I called him a liar again. So that’s what I did.  I called him a liar but no libel writ arrived so I guess it is an established fact now that Edward Isaacs, Chair of UJS from 2023-4 is a liar.

Naturally I put up a blog which remained up until yesterday. Now there is simply a page that says that the blog does not exist though it still appears on a Google search.

This is what Google objected to - the truth

Fortunately, some years ago, I decided that the risks of Google taking down a blog that has existed for some 16+ years were too great and I therefore invested in a website and a domain which is based in the United States. All my posts on Blogspot have been copied onto it including all legacy posts, just in case.

This is all that remains of my deleted blog!! Except on my shadow blog

Although it costs me an arm and a leg, hence my occasional appeals to readers, it is worth it not to let the Zionists destroy what is also a history of the Palestine solidarity movement in this country. You can however access it here.

This is  Blogspot's Explanation for Deleting a 31/2 year old post

Twice in the last year Google has taken down posts. This never used to happen and so I am thinking of leaving blogspot altogether and simply posting to my own site.

I therefore invite people to go to the post Edward Isaacs is a Liar on my site to see what has been irking Isaac’s for the past 3+ years. He was clearly hoping to join LAW in order to  spy on people there but I always check people who apply to join in case they are Zionists.

Isn’t it strange how these young amoral Zionists, who are so ready to call people ‘anti-Semites’ become so touchy when they are accused of not telling the truth?

Is the Jewish Chronicle Changing Under Its New Editor Daniel Schwammenthal?

It was inevitable after the public relations fiasco in which the Jewish Chronicle was found to have been printing as ‘Exclusives’ lying disinformation from Netanyahu’s office via a pimp who called himself a journalist, I refer to  Elon Perry, that its obnoxious, racist Editor Jake Wallis Simons had to go. Although he took nearly 6 months to get the message.

Perry had claimed to have taken part in the Entebbe raid a mere 48 years ago, as well as having been a professor at Tel Aviv University for 15 years. Clearly he was a Walter Mitty character but then that fitted in well at the JC. The JC was was happy to have him write complete fabrications because printing lies is what it specialised in.

The fable that did him was about how Hamas leader, Yayha Sinwar was trying to escape to Iran with the hostages and that was why Israel needed to stay in the Philadelphia corridor in order to prevent such occurrences. There was no truth in this story and as we know, Sinwar died a martyr’s death throwing, with his last gasp of breath, a stick at the drone which located him. ‘Sinwar’s stick’ has since become famous as a symbol of Palestinian bravery and resistance.

However this time it was the Israeli end which did for editor Jake Wallis-Simons, whose other speciality was as a soft-porn novelist.  Netanyahu’s disinformation  had been part of a war against the army top brass and his political enemies. Hence why they were quick to rubbish the story.  As the Guardian commented

Despite being provided with a series of questions, Wallis Simons and the JC have so far declined to describe how Perry – an individual with no discernible journalistic track record, let alone as an investigative reporter – came to be writing for the paper or what due diligence had been exercised over an increasingly fantastic series of claims.

I mention all of this because Agnes Kory, a child survivor of the Nazi holocaust, sent me a copy of a letter she had sent to the Jewish Chronicle supporting the picket of Tzipi Hotoveli, the Israeli Ambassador, in Swiss Cottage where she lives.

I wished her good luck but I doubted very much that they would print it. Imagine my surprise when the Jewish Chronicle did just that! Under Pollard or Simons the chances are that Agnes’s letter would have ended up in the electronic equivalent of the waste paper basket.

At the same time I was contacted by a JC reporter, Jane Prinsley about a story they were doing about the demonstrations at Swiss Cottage. You may not think this is unusual but for the JC it is an innovation. Jane actually contacted me before writing the story!

It is of course good journalistic practice to contact people you intend to write about but it is not something that the JC have done since Pollard became Editor in 2008.

Imagine my surprise when I read Prinsley’s article. Even though it didn’t include all my points, it did accurately quote from the 3 out of 6 that they did use. I can’t imagine that Marcus Dysch or ‘Liar’ Lee even considering contacting their victims.

As I said in a letter to the JC (which I don’t expect to be published!) when ‘Liar’ Lee Harpin used to write articles involving me it was a pleasant past-time to see how many mistakes I could identify in each article. This is perhaps why the paper experienced so many adverse judgements of IPSOS, the so-called independent body that investigates complaints against newspapers and why it suffered so many libel defeats too.

As Jonathan Cook wrote ‘the Jewish Chronicle’s libel payouts were a small price to pay for smearing Corbyn and the left.’ The JC literally did not care if its stories were true or not.  The main objective was to damage Corbyn and the Left, which is why an unknown consortium was prepared to finance the paper despite knowing that it could only make losses as readers abandoned it. The BBC’s Director Robbie Gibb man fronted the take-over of the JC by anonymous billionaires.

My satirical letter to the Jewish Chronicle

The scandal involving Perry resulted in the JC's four principal columnists, headed by Jonathan Freedland and David Aaronovitch, resigning. The rats were abandoning ship.

Despite his attempts to cling on, Jake Wallis Simon’s days were numbered.  Whether this results in any substantive change in the JC is to be doubted. To date the JC has operated on the basis that 99.99% of British Jews are fully fledged Zionists. Jewish anti-Zionism has disappeared from its pages. The reality of what is happening to the Palestinians never even makes it into their pages thus reinforcing the belief that Palestinians (‘Arabs’) don’t like Israel because they are born anti-Semitic rather than that they might object to living in an apartheid state that steals their land.

However time will tell.

Tony Greenstein

Annual Pogrom in Jerusalem as Thousands of Settlers march chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’, ‘May Your Villages Burn’ and ‘A Jew is a Soul, an Arab is a Whore’

YouTube Collude with Zionism's Genocidal Racism By Deleting Videos of Their Crimes Under Hate Speech Policies

Pogrom against Palestinians by Jewish Settlers Jerusalem Day 29 May

Last Thursday 18 May the annual ritual of thousands of settlers being herded and protected by the Israeli Police through Damascus Gate in East Jerusalem took place. They chanted a variety of racist slogans, such as the delightful ‘Death to the Arabs’ whilst attacking any Palestinian they could lay their hands on.

It was an Israeli Labor government that instituted Jerusalem Day in 1968 as an assertion of Jewish Supremacy over Arab Jerusalem.

Last year it was Security Minister Omar Bar Lev, a member of the Israeli Labor Party, who gave authorisation to the Flag March and the inevitable pogrom through East Jerusalem.

You will remember that the Israeli Labor Party was part of the so-called Government of Change with Benny Gantz, who outlawed 6 Palestinian Human Rights groups at the stroke of a pen, including the highly dangerous Defence for Children International – Palestine. Whatever else it was the Change Government represented no change for Palestinians.

This year the march was led by Israel’s Police Minister, the neo-Nazi Police Minister Itamar Ben Gvir of Otzma Yehudit, Jewish Power. In the West the very term ‘Jewish Power’ is considered an anti-Semitic phrase but not in Israel where it is a reality.

Even Moshe Yalon, the right-wing former Likud Defence Minister has characterised Ben Gvir as ‘Mein Kampf in reverse’ but the yellow press and the craven BBC cannot bring themselves to describe in simple words the record of Gvir, who had on his living room wall until recently the picture of Baruch Goldstein, the man who massacred 29 Palestinian worshippers in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994. This is what Zionism has evolved into.

Bogi Yaalon, "Mein Kampf," reversed and Jewish Supremacy ideology infiltrated the government

Western Hypocrisy

Just imagine what the BBC and the British press would say if in Iran, which has the second largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel, some 25,000, thousands of  Muslims were to march through the Jewish parts of Tehran chanting ‘Death to the Jews’.

You would have every talking head in the media condemning this in no uncertain words and talking of a second holocaust yet when it comes to the equivalent behaviour by Israeli Jewish settlers and their government supporters, there is absolute silence – not just by the British media but the New York Times, Washington Post and the rest of the prostitute press in the West.

Indeed last year we had the spectacle of the BBC’s disgusting racist, their correspondent in Israel, Yolande Knell, reporting that the pogrom through East Jerusalem was a ‘festive’ event. ‘It feels like a party’ this creature twittered into a microphone.

there are just thousands upon thousands of young Israelis like this that I’ve seen around the city the mood of them is really jubilant, it’s festive, it feels like a party.

As I wrote at the time:

‘One wonders what Yolande would have made of the Nazi pogrom Kristallnacht in November 1938. Perhaps she would have been caught up in the enthusiasm of the Nazis’ Sturmabteilung (SA) as they burnt Jewish synagogues and smashed Jewish shop windows, declaring that

there are just thousands upon thousands of young Germans. The mood of them is really jubilant, it’s festive, it feels like a party.

BBC Reporter Yolande Knell reporting on the Zionist pogrom on Jerusalem Day May 2022

But it’s not just the BBC and the British press who ignore Israel’s pogromists. The social media companies do their bit to help keep people in ignorance.

At 1.02 in the morning of 13 May I received notice from Youtube that they were taking down the video below

Jerusalem Day Demonstration by Settlers - Shireen is a Whore because ‘ we think it violates our hate speech policy.’ They went on to justify their crass decision because ‘it's important to us that YouTube is a safe place for all.’

However I was informed that ‘If you think we've made a mistake, you can appeal and we’ll take another look.’

Now I have had experience of this kind of thing before. Not so long they took down a similar video. On that occasion it was a group of Israeli right-wingers shouting at Jewish demonstrators against house demolitions in Sheikh Jarrar in Jerusalem that ‘Hitler was right’ and telling them that they should have died in Auschwitz.

Despite me telling them that far from advocating what was in the video I was exposing the Zionists as the racists and fascists that they were Youtube turned down my appeal. I could have saved my breath because Youtube aren’t interested in exposing Zionist and Israeli racism. Their sole interest was in preventing the exposure of racism –all under the rubric of ‘hate speech’! 

In reality Youtube’s ‘hate speech’ policy is a policy to protect hate speech.  This is Youtube's commitment to anti-racism. We should not be surprised since Google is developing artificial intelligence software for use by Israel’s military for the purposes of surveillance. So I had no illusions in their ‘appeal procedure’ which is in reality a rubber stamping procedure.

In my appeal I said:

Are you stupid?  Do you deliberately conflate EXPOSING racism with ADVOCATING racism?

The video 'Jerusalem Day Demonstration by Settlers-Shireen is a Whore' doesn't support pogroms against the Palestinians by Jewish settlers but OPPOSES their racism.

Are you really that stupid?  Can you not tell the difference between exposing racism and supporting it?  

Let us assume you are not that stupid, which is possible. Then there is only one conclusion to be drawn from your removing this video and that is that you want to protect the very racists that I am exposing. In which case it is YOU not me who is guilty of breaching your 'hate speech guidelines'

In which case the disgusting hate mongers and racists are the morons who removed this video who do not even have the honesty to admit to their racism

Suffice to say this appeal did not succeed, thus proving that the Youtube Moderators are indeed racist scum.

Below is an excellent article on Mondoweiss by Mariam Barghouti about the political implications of Jerusalem’s annual flag march.

The Flag March is part of the Zionist war on Jerusalem

The Flag March represents the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the imposition of Israeli colonial dominance over Jerusalem. It is part of the Zionist forever war on Jerusalem.

By Mariam Barghouti May 22, 2023

On Thursday, May 18, Israeli settler groups held the annual “Flag March” in Jerusalem. The march, or the “dance of flags,” was first inaugurated in 1968, a year after Israeli forces occupied East Jerusalem and took over Palestinian, Syrian, and Egyptian lands in the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai. Israeli officials such as the National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich joined this year’s march, both members of the new far-right Israeli coalition.

In what the Israeli state calls “Jerusalem Day,” the Flag March signals a settler emphasis on the “reunification of Jerusalem.” However, as Palestinians insistent on remaining in their homes, from Sheikh Jarrah, to the Old City, and to neighboring towns in East Jerusalem, the Flag March has become an attempt to drive out the last remaining Palestinians from Jerusalem.

In a statement, the spokesperson for the Palestinian presidential office, Nabil Abu Rudeineh, warned that the Flag March could lead to an “explosion,” with tensions already high amidst Israel’s increased violence in Jerusalem. In a statement to the press, the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, condemned the march as an attempt to consolidate the Judaization and conquest of Jerusalem further, emphasizing that “the Palestinians will continue to confront the policies of the occupation, no matter how heavy the price.”

However, for Palestinians in Jerusalem, the Flag March is not only a political and military move meant to solidify Israel’s stranglehold over Jerusalem but is a day of guaranteed violence and settler abuse.

The backdrop

The ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem began in 1948 with the massacres committed in Deir Yassin, Ein Karem, Abu Ghosh, and other towns surrounding Jerusalem. The military annexation of East Jerusalem began in 1967, and the judicial solidification of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel took effect on July 30, 1980. That summer, the Jerusalem Law was added to the Israeli Basic Law (a set of Israeli laws adopted in lieu of a constitution). The law declared Jerusalem, including East Jerusalem, as the capital of Israel. This further allowed the Israeli government to expand its jurisdiction over Palestinian lives in the city. This also violated international law and the internationally recognized status of East Jerusalem as occupied Palestinian territory. It is what laid the foundation for sparking the First Intifada of 1987. In December 2000, less than a year after the eruption of the Second Intifada, the Israeli Knesset made another amendment to the Jerusalem Law affirming sole Israeli power and jurisdiction over the city.

“Since the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967,” the website of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reads,

 “the city has become a haven for coexistence and revitalized religious and cultural expression for all faiths. Freedom of worship at all holy sites is guaranteed for the faithful of all three monotheistic religions, the first time in modern history that this has been the case.”

For Palestinians, this so-called “coexistence” has meant surviving the draconian policies of Israeli authorities known for persecuting Palestinians, enforcing apartheid, and committing crimes against humanity. 

Recent Jerusalem escalations

The settler Flag March should be viewed within the context of an escalatory dynamic particular to Jerusalem, in which rightwing settler groups and the Israeli state have attempted to progressively shrink Palestinian rights to the city while expanding Israeli colonial encroachment into Palestinian spaces. This process of encirclement has not only included the takeover of homes in neighborhoods like Sheikh Jarrah or restrictions in areas like Silwan but has also extended to restricting religious and worshiping rights. This has led to chronic and repeated flare-ups in the Old City and local and regional tensions intensifying.

In the first three months of this year, more than a dozen settler attacks were recorded against churches in Jerusalem, while police violations against Muslim worshippers and the systemic targeting of youth in the Old City intensified compared to previous years

On April 15, Israeli forces denied Palestinian Christians from participating in Easter worship by banning them from entry into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and beating them. “The occupation, through such policies, claims that Jerusalem is theirs,” Archbishop Atallah Hanna told Mondoweiss following the police attack on the Church of Holy Sepulchre during Easter.

Just ten days before that, Israeli forces invaded the third holiest site in Islam, the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the heart of the Old City, attacking and assaulting peaceful worshippers while they prayed. Hundreds of worshippers were arrested during the month of Ramadan, as almost 47 worshippers from the West Bank were arrested and held in detention for days and exposed to mistreatment and abuse by Israeli police, according to eyewitnesses who spoke to Mondoweiss. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, settlers have carried out arson attacks against Palestinian towns and villages, described even by the Israeli military as pogroms.

The “reunification of Jerusalem” celebrated by the Flag March therefore represents the Zionist promise for the ethnic cleansing to which the Palestinians of Jerusalem have been subjected since 1967, what the Mondoweiss Palestine Bureau has called the “Zionist forever war on Jerusalem.” 

This war has taken on many forms and has passed through several iterations. In 2017, Israeli policymakers attempted to mute the call to prayer for Muslim worshippers in Jerusalem and to set up metal detectors outside the entrance to the Aqsa compound, which resulted in the Bab al-Asbat uprising; in 2020, Israeli police and authorities began targeting bread bakeries in Jerusalem, noting that Jerusalem’s ka’ak bread is an emblem of Palestinian presence and identification in Jerusalem; in May 2021, settlers invaded the Aqsa compound, and again in April 2022, resulting in the beating and arrests of hundreds in both years.

Every year since May 1968, Palestinians in Jerusalem have had to fight for their homes and the right to assembly and freedom of worship. For Palestinians, the Flag March means surviving the violence of the Israeli state and its settlers yearly and refusing to be ethnically cleansed.

Israeli Police prepare for the closure of Old City of Jerusalem for the Flag March near the Chain Gate entrance, May 18, 2023. (Photo: Alaa Dayeh/Mondoweiss)

Holding a city captive

“[The first time I remember the Flag March] was around ten years ago,” Israa Abu Ahmad, a 29-year-old mother of two, told Mondoweiss on the day of this year’s march on May 18. “My sister was young, maybe 12 or 13, and was filming during the Flag March,” Abu Ahmad continued. “The [Israeli armed forces] then began to beat her, beat her a lot. She was a child.”

Incidents of the kind suffered by Israa are the norm for Palestinians in the Old City during the annual march. While Israelis prepare for ease of movement through the alleyways of the Old City and the streets of larger Jerusalem, Palestinians are herded through metal pathways erected around the city to ensure every Palestinian step is controlled and directed. Like most Palestinian residents of the Old City and its surrounding areas, Israa had to remain home with her children, fearing the likely violence from settlers.

“It’s as though we keep the children in a prison.”

Israa Abu Ahmad

In anticipation of settler and police violence, medical personnel and journalists were present around the city throughout the day to respond to and document developments. At approximately 3:00 p.m., before the march began, Israeli border police began manhandling, assaulting, and impeding medical staff in the area, according to on-the-ground documentation by Mondoweiss. According to reporters on the ground, several journalists were also attacked throughout the day.

Israeli Police obstruct medical personnel from moving around the Old City, Damascus Gate entrance, May 18, 2023. (Photo: Alaa Dayeh/Mondoweiss)

For the majority of the day, Palestinians were forced to remain inside their homes. Even children were denied the space to play. “I have my children here inside. It’s so hard to keep children locked in the house for 24 hours,” Israa told Mondoweiss. “It’s as though we keep [the children] in a prison.”

“I can’t play outside today, because they will hit me,” Rafeef Abu Ahmad, Israa’s 6-year-old daughter, told Mondoweiss. 

At that moment, banging was heard outside the house. “Do you see how [settlers] are beating?” Rafeef said, referring to the Jewish-Israeli youth rampaging outside her home near the Aqba Khaldiyeh area of the Old City. 

Just moments earlier, the 6-year-old had witnessed a mob of at least 15 Jewish settlers gathered around a man in her neighborhood, kicking him in the abdomen and continuing to beat him in a circle in what can only be described as an attempted lynching. Three Israeli police officers were on the scene, refusing to arrest the Jewish youth that assaulted the man and instead allowing them to continue on their rampage through the city. 

“In a previous Flag March, my shoulder was broken and, at the time my son was asleep by the window near my aunt’s house,” Israa continued, narrating the different years and forms of violence she and her family witnessed. 

“Settlers started to come out with liquor bottles across the windows and I was afraid for my son, so I went to him and carried him,” she told Mondoweiss. “By carrying my son, the bones in my shoulder broke to pieces. I had to do surgery and get platinum implants.” Israa’s son was nearly two years old at the time.

The impact this has on Palestinian Jerusalemites is also economic. These restrictions, especially during the Flag March, have forced Palestinians to close their shops early to make way for the rampaging settlers. Israa is one of them. “We closed all our shops today. I sew, and I have work. Today I closed the shop because I’m afraid they’ll attack,” she told Mondoweiss.

The day before the march on Wednesday, May 17, the Israeli police sent text messages to Palestinian residents of the Old City and shop owners, signed by the captain of the Israeli public police in the Jerusalem area, Shadi Basis. 

“Tomorrow will be the Flag March for the reunification of Jerusalem, from Damascus Gate on Waad St. to the Wailing Wall. Please take out all your cars and vehicles until 3 p.m., and shop and grocery owners must close at 3:00 p.m. Please adhere in order to obstruct collision and harm,”

Fear to document

The impact of this constant assault on Palestinian existence goes beyond the economic. It becomes an instrument of silencing Palestinians and punishing those who resist.

“We are not as strong as them, so we’re afraid,” a shop-owner in the Old City, who requested to remain anonymous, told Mondoweiss. “If the police ask us for something and we don’t do it, we become targets,” he said. “We’re afraid to have our voices recorded because of the threat that [Israeli police] will carry out revenge acts in different ways.”

“We are living in terror inside the city.”

Um Abed, shop owner

The fear witnessed in individuals and families approached by Mondoweiss for recorded interviews highlights the ways in which Israel punishes exposure. At least a dozen shop owners and residents in the city explicitly informed Mondoweiss they were afraid of repercussions from the Police if they spoke out.

“We are living in terror inside the city,” Umm Abed, a resident of the Old City and small shop owner, explained to Mondoweiss on Thursday morning, as preparations for the march ensued. “But the residents of the city cannot take this on. The youth are being banned from Aqsa, and they are either arrested or denied entry.”

“All the years that have passed are a series of assaults,” Umm Abed continued. “People come and document but all we have to protect us is God.”

Umm Abed, a shop owner in the Old City of Jerusalem .(Photo: Alaa Dayeh/Mondoweiss)

“All these marches are provocations,” Nada Khader, 53, told Mondoweiss on Thursday morning as police moved to ensure the alleyways were empty of the visible presence of its Palestinian inhabitants. Khader has been living in the Old City ever since Israeli authorities demolished her home in Beit Hanina twice — the first time in December last year, and the second in January. A widow and a mother of seven, Khader continues to face slow expulsion from Jerusalem.

“They are provoking us Jerusalemites in order to create problems and for them to try and prove their presence to say that Jerusalem is theirs,” she said.

Alaa Dayeh contributed to this article.