It’s Time for Starmer to Go – Israel’s Use of the Knee-on-the-Neck is not an Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory – It’s a Fact

So now it’s official – the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign of the past 5 years was, after all, about Israel not hatred of Jews

Only yesterday I posted a blog ‘For 6 years Black Lives Matter Were Attacked as ‘anti-Semites’ by the Zionists – Today they suffer from amnesia’.

I described how Israel was training thousands of US Police in repression techniques, including the knee on the neck.

Today Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet for retweeting Maxine Peake who pointed out this elementary fact.

Please sign and share the Petition we have set up calling for Starmer to go.  He is unfit to be Leader of the Labour Party.  We cannot have a racist and imperialist at the head of a party that claims to be socialist.

We should be grateful to Starmer. He has clarified the situation. As we always said, the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign was always about Israel and never about genine anti-Semitism, i.e. hatred or hostility to Jews as Jews.

Corbyn stupidly accepted that the 'antisemitism' campaign to remove him was legitimate

It is unfortunate that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell gave legs to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, whose sole purpose was his removal as Leader by admitting that Labour ‘had a problem’ with anti-Semitism.

It enabled malicious Zionists like Margaret Hodge to then claim that if you denied Labour was anti-Semitic then you were ‘part of the problem’.

Naturally the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement welcomed Starmer’s actions because both these bodies are first and foremost Zionist groups, committed to defend the apartheid Israel.

Jon Lansman didn’t condemn Starmer’s actions. It was all ‘a big mistake’.  Lansman pleaded that

‘Sir Keir was elected to end factionalism...and I think he's made it harder for himself to unite the party."

Starmer was elected to root out the left in the party. Even more pathetically Lansman went on to explain that

‘Rebecca Long-Bailey is just as committed to ending anti-Semitism within the party "as he and I are."

Instead of defending her tweet RLB dissociated herself from Maxine Peake's comments on Israel

Lansman and Momentum have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. They still don’t get it.  This isn’t and never was about anti-Semitism. It was always about support for the world’s only Apartheid State.  It was about support for imperialism and bipartisanship in foreign policy with the Tories, which Israel symbolises.

Israel's finest use the knee-on-neck as a matter of routine

That is why all Momentum can do is to call for the reinstatement of RLB. We do not care about her.  She is a weak individual who signed up to the very ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign that has caused her sacking. She calls herself a Zionist. She supported the expulsion of Chris Williamson. She is a victim of her own stupidity. 

What matters is that a simple statement of fact that Israel trains thousands of US Police in the techniques of repression has been branded an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

By his action Starmer is now signed up, 100%, behind Israel’s military repression of the Palestinians. He is unfit to be Labour leader.

It is a fact that Israel trains the United States Police in repressive techniques to use against Black people. The major US Zionist group, the Anti-Defamation League boasted that

Over the past decade, we have trained 150,000 law enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers. This work is designed to protect people and communities from hate, extremism and terrorism.

Well we saw what ‘protection’ of people from terrorism meant when 5 days after George Floyd was murdered, Israel’s notorious Border Police gunned down Iyad Hallak, a 32 year old autistic Palestinian in East Jerusalem. They had ‘mistaken’ his mobile phone for a gun. A mistake they never make in the case of Jews.

The details of Iyad’s murder are gruesome. According to Ha’aretz, an already wounded Iyad took shelter in a garbage hut.  His carer screamed that he was autistic.  He cried 'I'm With Her,' ‘The Cop Opened Fire Anyway’ and pumped the final 3 of 7 bullets into his body. Unlike in Minneapolis no police have been arrested, still less charged.  The police killers are still employed. There is an investigation but like all such Israeli police investigations it will go nowhere.

This is what Sir Keir Starmer is defending, just as he defended the murder of Ian Tomlinson by the Metropolitan Police until public pressure forced him to back down.

Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey for supporting an ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theory’. By definition an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory such as the belief that Jews are controlling the world, is untrue and has no basis in fact.  If it is true they it can’t be anti-Semitic.

Unless Starmer is saying that anti-Semitism is based on fact. If so it is Starmer who is the anti-Semite. 

Historically Zionism has always justified anti-Semitism by saying that Jews in the diaspora brought their problems on themselves by not having their own country. As Israel’s first Justice Minister Pinhas Rosen said ‘Palestine is an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’.

You can find this quote and many similar ones in Joachim Doron’s Classic Zionism and modern anti-Semitism: parallels and influences’ (1883-1914), in Studies in Zionism 8, Autumn 1983 and the Journal of Israeli history No. 4.

Fundamental to Zionist anti-Semitism towards Jews outside Israel is the foundational principle called the Negation of the Diaspora. It is still common amongst Zionists. When Zionism first arose it was seen by most Jews as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism.  Both the anti-Semites and the Zionists said that Jews were a separate nation who shouldn’t live amongst non-Jews.

Do the  Israeli Police train Americas Police forces in the Knee on the Neck Hold?

According to Amnesty International, hundreds of US law enforcement officials have gone through training in Israel, while thousands more have been trained by Israeli forces in the United States. 

Middle East Eye has documented the similarities between the militarised tactics of US police forces and Israeli police against Palestinian protesters. The use of this form of restraint is very common to Israeli police as this video of its use against a Jewish American protesting at the march of the far-Right in Jerusalem demonstrates.

Neta Golan, of the International Solidarity Movement said:

“When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.

Israel pioneered the knee-on-neck hold that killed George Floyd. It is not an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say so. It is true.

Starmer is a Racist Hypocrite

Barely two weeks ago Starmer ‘took the knee’ in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. This was an empty and meaningless gesture. He issued a video statement quoting Martin Luther King that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ Starmer even expressed his support for BLM.

In 2016 BLM called Israel an Apartheid and genocidal state and supported BDS.  For this they were criticised as anti-Semitic by Zionist groups. Starmer is echoing this criticism of BLM.

Clearly injustice to the Palestinians does not feature on Starmer’s horizon. That is why this pompous starched-white representative of the British Establishment needs to go.  He is a racist supporter of Israeli settler colonialism.

Starmer and Rayner take the knee to BLM whilst supporting similar tactics by Israeli Police

In April 2018 Black Lives Matter forced Starbucks into excluding the Anti-Defamation League from training their staff following the arrest of 2 Black men for ‘loitering’ at a Philadelphia coffee house.

Starmer has just demonstrated that Labour is a pro-imperialist pro-Zionist party.  That is why he must go.

House Demolitions in Sur Bahir - 4 British Peace Activists were ‘“stamped on, dragged by the hair, strangled with a scarf and pepper sprayed by Israeli border police.”

This is what Zionism does Jeremy Corbyn and this is what a ‘Jewish’ state means – ethnic cleansing

 

 Last week the Labour Party issued a statement on ‘Zionism, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism’ in which it explained that

‘Since the State of Israel was founded in 1948, following the horrors of the Holocaust, Zionism means maintaining that state.’

This is what is usually called being economical with the truth, or in layman’s terms, lying. What the Labour Party statement omitted to say is what type of state it was that Zionism was‘maintaining’. Israel is of course a ‘Jewish’ state and being polite (or dishonest) the Labour Party and Corbyn chose to omit the small matter of a few thousand Palestinians massacred and ¾ million refugees displaced.

Zionism did not end in 1948. Today, in Jerusalem, Zionism is actively seeking to reduce the number of Palestinians living in the city and increase the number of Jews. The polite word for this is ethnic cleansing.

On Monday 900 Israeli Police and Soldiers invaded the Palestinian town of Sur Bahir on the outskirts of Jerusalem, using extreme violence to evict 30 solidarity activists. As the International Solidarity Movement reports two Palestinian families lost their homes in unprecedented mass demolitions in East Jerusalem. The evictions and demolitions were carried out in a ‘sadistic and brutal’ way.

During the invasion of the two occupied buildings Israeli border police shot Palestinians at close range with rubber-coated steel bullets and kicked them down flights of stairs. ISMers were stamped on, dragged across the floor by the hair, strangled with a scarf and pepper sprayed by Israeli border police.

But if you criticise this you will be called anti-Semitic by Labour Party racists such as Peter Kyle MP.

ISM activists, Bethany Rielly, 25, Beatrice-Lily Richardson, 27, Chris Lorigan, 30, and Gabriella Jones, 20, were carrying out a non-violent action by sitting in the house of Palestinian Ismail Obeide with 30 locals in the Wadi al-Hummus neighbourhood of Sur Baher, in an attempt to delay the demolition.

At around 3am 900 hundred Israeli soldiers were bussed to the area with trucks of demolition equipment to bulldoze three Palestinian apartment blocks, including an unfinished block which they spent 15 hours rigging with dynamite.

A Palestinian building demolished by Israeli forces in the village of Sur Baher [Abed al-Hashlamoun/EPA]

At around 5am they smashed down the door of Mr Obeide’s house. He was standing in the doorway holding his hands out in disbelief when dozens of soldiers invaded his home immediately pepper spraying him in the face.

The four British nationals were sitting in a small unventilated bathroom with the door closed when a soldier opened the door and threw in a tear gas canister. Chris Lorigan said:

“When the soldiers found us in the bathroom, they threw multiple tear gas canisters and shut the door. As we started to suffocate in the smallest room in the house, soldiers burst in and dragged us violently, pulling at every possible part, regardless of safety or policy.’

“I was dragged by my feet and lifted up, kicked in the stomach, then one soldier in particular stamped on my head four times, at full force, then standing on my head and pulling at my hair, he then stamped on my throat and others started punching my torso. It was a sadistic display of violence by the border police.”

Chris Lorigan, being attended in the hospital for a fractured rib (Photo:ISM

ISMer with severe tissue damage to right hand

Beatrice was also dragged out and her hands crushed so badly that she suffered severe tissue damage to her right hand which will be permanently misshapen unless she gets cosmetic surgery and a fractured knuckle on her left hand. She was bruised across her arms, hips and inner thighs.

Gaby was severely pepper sprayed in the face and hands and soldiers ripped her shirt revealing her bra, leaving large bruises on her right arm.

Bethany was dragged by her Keffiyeh around her neck out of the bathroom. Soldiers then pulled her out of the room by her hair. She said:

“A soldier dragged me by my keffiyeh across the floor strangling me until I screamed when he then crushed my neck under his knee. I couldn’t believe the pure aggression they were using against us. I was in such a state of shock the whole time that I couldn’t open my eyes. As they dragged me by my hair as I choked from being strangled and the tear gas I heard them laughing at me. We were unarmed civilians using peaceful means to try and delay them destroying Ismail and his family’s home that they worked so hard to build. Hundreds of soldiers were bussed in to do this. Is a house demolition a military operation anywhere else in the world? This is the reality of life for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.”

ISMer with bruising on arm and ripped shirt where soldiers pulled it apart

Nine Israeli and international activists were in the house of Ghaleb Abu Hadwan, with his 4 daughters, son and grandfather. Edmond Sichrovsky, an Austrian activist of Jewish origin, who was in the house said:

 “Border police broke into the house and dragged out the Palestinians, knocking the grandfather to the floor in front of his crying and screaming grandchildren. Everyone with a cellphone was forcibly removed from the house. Once there was no one filming present, they attacked me and 4 other activists. I was repeatedly kicked and kneed, which left a bloody nose and multiple cuts, as well breaking my glasses from a knee in the face. Once outside, they slammed me against a car while shouting verbal insults at me and women activists, calling them whores (Sharmuta).”

Gabriella Jones arm injuries, one of the hospitalized activists (Photo: ISM)

According to Sichrovsky Israeli forces broke into the home and first dragged out the Palestinians,

“knocking the grandfather to the floor in front of his crying and screaming grandchildren ... everyone with a cellphone was then forcibly removed before soldiers began attacking him and four other activists.

“I was repeatedly kicked and kneed, which left a bloody nose and multiple cuts, as well breaking my glasses from a knee in the face. Once outside, they slammed me against a car while shouting verbal insults at me and women activists, calling them whores,” he said.

A US activist was kicked in the stomach and Spanish activist Ivan Rivera was hit in the head with the butt of a gun.

The latest demolitions of Palestinian homes near the Apartheid Wall on the outskirts of Jerusalem were "shocking and heartbreaking" and should be probed as a war crime, Palestinian envoy Riyad Mansour said on Tuesday.

The Israeli military considers the homes, which are close to the Apartheid Wall that crisscrosses the occupied West Bank, a "security" risk.

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled in favour of the military in June, ending a seven-year legal battle, and set Monday as the deadline to knock down the homes.

Israel's UN Ambassador Danny Danon defended the action as being part of ‘the rule of law in Israel." Except of course that this ‘rule of law’ only applies to Palestinians. It is only Palestinians who are ethnically cleansed because Israel is a Jewish state.

Israel uses security as a pretext to force them out of the area as part of long-term efforts to expand settlements. All settlements on occupied Palestinian lands are illegal under international law.

At least 16 people, including 12 Palestinians and four British nationals, were hospitalized for injuries sustained during Israel’s massive demolition operation.

“He then stamped on my throat and others started punching my torso. It was a sadistic display of violence by the border police,” Lorigan said.

Beatrice-Lily Richardson’s arm injuries, one of the hospitalized activists (Photo:ISM)

Bethany Rielly’s neck injuries, one of the hospitalized activists (Photo: ISM)

According to testimonies from ISM activists stationed in other rooms of Obeidi’s house, Israeli soldiers continued their acts of aggression even after the Palestinians in the house held their hands up and agreed to leave voluntarily.

One unnamed American activist said that the soldiers were grabbing people’s fingers, “appearing as though they intended to break them.”

“Then we got to the stairs and they were kicking us down the stairs in the lower back and several of the Palestinian boys they kicked so hard that they tumbled down the stairs and this was when there was no resistance at all going on,”

ISM noted that it had activists from Spain, Britain, and Austria stationed in another house belonging to Ghaleb Abu Hadwan and his four daughters, son, and grandfather.

In its statement documenting the account of its activists, ISM said:

“Yesterday’s demolition of Wadi al-Hummus has made national news but due to the lack of media presence inside the family homes the extent of the violence and sadism perpetrated by IOF on Palestinian citizens and international activists has remained largely unreported.”

While sharing the personal stories of their activists, ISM noted the importance of recognizing the fact that it is “incomparable” to the daily treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli occupation

“17 people including Mr Obedi, his wife and their six children are now homeless as well as the family of Mr Hadwan,” ISM said.

“Evidence of the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine is more apparent than ever in efforts like the destruction of these three blocks in Wadi al-Hummus, and hundreds more demolition orders, by the Israeli government.”

Israeli Border Guards Stamp on the Head of a British Peace Activist

Wadi Hummus: Another Israeli celebration of ethnic cleansing

 ‘Sadistic display of violence’: 12 Palestinians, 4 British nationals hospitalized after being beaten by Israeli forces in Sur Bahir

Hebron - Israeli Military Attacks Palestinians and Western Observers

Israeli forces invade ISM apartment as part of a campaign of continual harassment against activists in Hebron

in Hebron, Reports, Video March 5, 2015

5th March 2015 | International Solidarity Movement, Khalil Team | Hebron, Occupied Palestine

To date, ISM volunteers in Al-Khalil (Hebron) have faced two attempted night raids, two invasions, and continual daily harassment from Israeli occupation forces. Other organizations in Hebron, including Youth Against Settlements and Christian Peacemaker Teams, have also faced harassment including raids, detentions, and arrests.

(photo by Christian Peacemaker Teams – Palestine https://www.facebook.com/cptpalestine)

On the night from the 18 to the 19 of February Israeli Military tried to raid the ISM apartment in Hebron. Four volunteers woke up to a loud banging on the front door at one a clock in the morning. Soldiers constantly banged on the front door, threatening to break it open, if the volunteers refused to open it. Repeated questions for whether they had a warrant to legally enter the apartment were negated and replied with comments such as “we don’t need a warrant” and “I am the law”. The soldiers also threatened the volunteers that if they don’t open the door “bad things will happen.” In order to stop internationals from documenting and getting an overview of the situation, the soldiers aimed green lasers mounted on their rifles through the apartment windows.

Soldiers in the morning on the stairs outside the ISM house

A few days before this incident the internationals were prevented from standing near a school were schoolchildren had to pass a group of soldiers. Israeli forces called the police, who detained ISM volunteers and took pictures of their passports. During the night raid volunteers recognized the voices of the soldiers who had detained them earlier. Soldiers also told them “we don’t need to see your passports, we already saw it.”

The following day ISMers were stopped in the street at every possibility and ID-checked. In the afternoon, on their way back to the apartment, Palestinians warned the ISMers that fifteen soldiers have been asking for them and were trying to arrest them. After about an hour the volunteers were able to come back to the apartment, as the soldiers went back to the military base.

ISM volunteers tried to document the break-in as soldiers searched the house; they were gathered into the kitchen and at one point  prohibited from making phone calls.

On the morning of the 25^th of February, about twenty minutes after two out of the three volunteers left the apartment, soldiers were banging on the door of the apartment another time, demanding that it be opened. The soldiers claimed they were searching for Issa, a prominent member of the Palestinian activist group Youth Against Settlements, whose house was raided the same on the night of that same day. Issa was not present in the apartment at the time. Soldiers threatened the volunteer inside the house, saying that if they were not allowed to come inside, they would “come back at night, break the door and throw grenades into the house.” They threatened that the ISM volunteers “won’t be able to close an eye during night-time.” After more than an hour the dozen soldiers, who had been threatening to enter the house while stopping the other volunteers from going inside finally left.

Soldiers after invading YAS house (photo by Youth Against Settlements https://www.facebook.com/media.yas)

A small number of soldiers came to the apartment three times that evening, knocking on the door but leaving after only a few minutes.

The following night around 1:00 AM, the volunteers woke up to loud noises at the door, as soldiers started to force it open. The soldiers did not answer when ISM activists asked whether they had a warrant. After about 30 minutes the soldiers broke the door open and came into the apartment, aiming their guns at volunteers.

Soldiers forced ISM volunteers to stay in the kitchen of the apartment while they searched

The soldiers took a map from the wall of the apartment, claiming it was sufficient evidence for having the volunteers deported. They left after 30 minutes, threatening that within 24 hours the volunteers will be arrested by the immigration police. As the activists had expected, the threats were groundless; over a week later they continue to work in Al-Khalil.

The following night, when volunteers came back late at night around quarter to one, seven soldiers were just collecting the tools they used to break down the newly repaired door. Another three soldiers stopped the ISM volunteers from going back inside the apartment. After a few minutes, ISMers managed to reach the apartment and found the door destroyed and their personal belongings ransacked.

On the same night, Israeli forces also raided the house of Youth Against Settlements (YAS), also searching the house and taking only one poster off the wall. Soldiers raided the house on the eve of the Open Shuhada Street demonstration; they also arrested Issa Amro, the coordinator of YAS, about a week before.

The harassment did not stop after the Open Shuhada Street demonstration – where around 20 were injured, several activists including a 17-year-old and a female German activist were shot with live ammunition, and three were arrested.

A couple of days later Israeli border police detained and arrested two volunteers from Christian Peacemaker Teams, stopping them after they had been walking Palestinian kindergarteners home from school.

Soldiers continue to harass, threaten, and detain international solidarity volunteers. Just this morning two ISM and two CPT volunteers were detained for over an hour at a checkpoint, after monitoring the border police aggression toward schoolchildren that morning.

The Murder of Kayla Mueller by ISIS Fascists

US Zionists Celebrate Death of Hostage who Supported the Palestinians

Some people may not realise it, given that her solidarity work with the Palestinians has been erased from coverage of her death, but Kayla Mueller, the most recent hostage killed by ISIS, had a history of Palestine solidarity work.  Kayla had accompanied children in Hebron to school and back to help protect them against the vicious thugs who constitute the Hebron settlers.  She was involved in the Sheik Jarrah protests.

But if the BBC has erased all mention of her Palestine solidarity work Zionist activists in the United States have actively celebrated her death and demonstrated vividly their own sickness.

Tony Greenstein

Kayla Jean Mueller
(International Solidarity Movement)

 Israel backers celebrate death of Islamic State hostage Kayla Mueller

Electronic Intifada, Rania Khalek on Wed, 02/11/2015 - 22:17

Hardline supporters of Israel are expressing joy over the death of 26-year-old humanitarian aid worker and sometime Palestine solidarity activist Kayla Mueller, who was killed while in captivity of Islamic State last week.

Islamic State (also variously abbreviated as IS, ISIS or ISIL) claimed that Mueller died in a Jordanian airstrike in Syria coordinated with the United States.

Although it has yet to verify the circumstances, the US government on Tuesday confirmed that Mueller was killed, prompting an outpouring of tributes from people around the world lauding her humanitarian activism.

Kayla Mueller sitting in a protest tent in Sheikh Jarrah. (Photo courtesy of ISM)

But for Israel’s most hawkish supporters, Mueller’s solidarity work with Palestinians resisting Israeli occupation made her unworthy of sympathy and even deserving of death. 

Joel Pollak, editor-in-chief at Breitbart, called Mueller an “anti-Israel activist” who admired the terrorists who killed her. 

In an opinion piece at the ultra-nationalist Israeli publication Arutz Sheva, anti-Palestinian activist Lee Kaplan called Kayla Mueller’s death “another Rachel Corrie propaganda story in the making, and the western media is falling for it again, or embracing it on purpose.” 

Rachel Corrie, an American human rights activist, was deliberately run over and killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in 2003 while defending a Palestinian home in Gaza from demolition.

Rightwing Zionists often refer to Corrie as a “terrorist” who deserved to die and characterize the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), the nonviolent solidarity organization she volunteered for in Palestine, as a supporter of terrorism. 

While in Palestine in 2010, Mueller, like Corrie, worked with ISM in solidarity with Palestinians resisting ethnic cleansing and dispossession in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including Jerusalem.

Mueller participated in nonviolent protests with Palestinians against Israeli home demolitions and walked Palestinian children to school to protect them from harassment by Jewish settlers — the kind of work ISM is known for. 

“As an ISM activist [Mueller] was a tool for the worldwide jihad,” wrote Kaplan, adding, “she paid the ultimate price for that choice.”

American-born Rabbi Ben Packer shared Kaplan’s op-ed on his Facebook page along with the comment, “All sympathy - GONE!!”

Packer, who served as the “Rabbi on Campus” at Duke University and the University of North Carolina (UNC) after a stint in the Israeli army, is currently “Supreme Commander” of “Heritage House,” a Jewish settlement in occupied East Jerusalem that provides lodging for Jewish tourists and “lone soldiers,” essentially foreign fighters recruited from abroad to participate in Israel’s military occupation in Palestine.

Packer went on to respond enthusiastically to a friend who remarked that Islamic State should have burned Mueller alive like it did the captured Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasassbeh. 

In a blog post titled, “Dead ISIS Hostage Was Jew-Hating, Anti-Israel Bitch,” conservative blogger Debbie Schlussel calls Mueller “a Jew-hating, anti-Israel piece of crap who worked with HAMAS and helped Palestinians harass Israeli soldiers and block them from doing their job of keeping Islamic terrorists out of Israel.”

Schlussel concludes her post with the following farewell: “Buh-bye, Kayla. Have fun with your 72 Yasser Arafats.”

Right-wing blogger Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit added his voice to the mix, accusing Mueller of “protesting Jews.” 

As right-wing Zionists and Islamophobes cheer Mueller’s death, mainstream media outlets are actively whitewashing her Palestine activism.

In a timeline of Mueller’s humanitarian work, USA Today completely erased her work in Palestine, saying only that between 2010 and 2011, she worked in “Tel Aviv, Israel, volunteering at the African Refugee Development Center.” 

Although a more in-depth USA Today article specified that Mueller worked with ISM for the Palestinian cause, the article claimed she did so in Israel, vaguely noting that Mueller “would walk to school with children in the morning and then make sure they returned home safely later in the day.” 

Mueller escorted Palestinian children to school in Hebron in the occupied West Bank, not “Israel,” to protect them from violent Jewish settlers. Leaving out such crucial details obscures the reality of Israeli violence. 

While some outlets shied away from emphasizing Mueller’s Palestine activism, others framed her death as a consequence of it.

The liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz implied that her involvement in Palestine led to her death with the headline, “US idealist Kayla Mueller’s road to ISIS captivity went through West Bank.” 

The Washington Post seemed to agree, with an article titled, “How Kayla Mueller’s pro-Palestinian activism led her to Syria.” 

Despite the gross displays of celebration from pro-Israel extremists, the vast majority of people have expressed sadness for Mueller’s death. However, it is difficult to take them all at face value. 

For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his condolences. “On behalf of the people of Israel, I wish to send condolences to President Obama, the American people and the family of Kayla Mueller. We stand with you,” he said. 

This is the same man whose army routinely targets and kills aid workers while obstructing desperately needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza ghetto. 

Equally disingenuous were the remarks by US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, who enables American and Israeli atrocities for a living by vetoing any and all attempts to hold either power accountable for human rights abuses and war crimes.  

Between the Zionist backlash against Mueller, the outlets erasing her Palestine activism and those using her death to advance their own agendas, there is one constant: Mueller’s support for Palestinians against Israeli oppression is a taboo that must be ignored, obscured or ridiculed.