THIS IS ZIONISM - Jewish lynch mobs roam Israeli cities hunting for Palestinians as planes bomb Gaza’s population murdering its children

Israeli Police invade Al-Aqsa mosque, ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrar and mobs chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’ - this is what Labour's fake 'antisemitism' campaign was designed to defend 

Another child victim of Elbit

Interview Mona al Kurd

Today we are seeing a repeat of the events of October 2000:

In early October 2000, Palestinian citizens of Israel staged mass demonstrations in towns and villages throughout the country to protest the government’s oppressive policies against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories at the beginning of the Second Intifada.

During these demonstrations in Israel, the police and special police sniper units killed 13 unarmed Palestinians (12 citizens of Israel, 1 resident of Gaza) and injured hundreds more using live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets (“rubber bullets”), and tear gas. Israeli Jewish citizens also attacked Palestinian citizens of Israel, their property and their holy sites in early October 2000. 

Despite the Or Commission finding no justification for these murders, not a single officer was ever charged with the killings. Just one Jewish demonstrator has been killed by Israeli security forces in the entire history of the Israeli state. This statistic in itself demonstrates the racist and apartheid nature of the Israeli state.

Israeli settlers and pogromists, to say nothing of Orthodox Jews, throw stones and engage in violence but Israeli Police always manage to contain them without using live fire which is reserved solely for Palestinians.

The attacks  on Palestinians in Bat Yam, Jaffa, Acre and other cities throughout Israel is not the first time that Israeli Jews have engaged in pogroms against the Palestinian minority in Israel.

As Israel resorts to the only thing it knows, the murder of Palestinians, bombing and mass destruction in Gaza, the background to what is happening can be summed up in a nutshell. It is Israel's colonial momentum towards ethnic cleansing and the racial purification of Jerusalem, symbolised by the attack on Al Aqsa mosque last Friday. 

Itamar Gvir MK and Aryeh King, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem taunt Palestinians

Just imagine that Iranian police had invaded a Jewish synagogue in Tehran and attacked worshippers. Iran has the largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel. There would have been no shortage of voices denouncing what had happened.

Despite the lies and false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ directed at supporters of the Palestinians over the past 5 years, the truth about Israel and what a ‘Jewish’ state means, is becoming more widely understood.

2021 began with Btselem, Israel’s principal and most respected human rights organisation, issuing a statement ‘THIS IS APARTHEID - A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea:’

Human Rights Watch, a conservative human rights organisation which is close to the State Department and whose agenda is subservient to US foreign policy, brought out a 231 page report A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution,” HRW found the Israeli state guilty of the crime of apartheid. Kenneth Roth, its Executive Director said in a press release:

“Prominent voices have warned for years that apartheid lurks just around the corner if the trajectory of Israel’s rule over Palestinians does not change,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “This detailed study shows that Israeli authorities have already turned that corner and today are committing the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

No matter how many times the Zionist lobby and its Starmer-like puppets cry ‘anti-Semitism’, the daily reality of land confiscations, ethnic cleansing, settler and police violence win out.

If I don’t steal your house someone else will steal it!

We even saw Emily Maitless on BBC Newsnight, usually the flagship of Israeli hasbara, giving the Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotoveli, a religious nut on the far-right of Likud, who had previously given her support to the fascist anti-miscegenation group Lehava, a grilling.

In March Israel held its fourth general election in two years and once again there was a political stalemate. Two-thirds of the Knesset, some 80 seats, belong to the far-Right. The two Labour Zionist parties – the Israeli Labour Party and Meretz gained just 13 seats between them. When you consider that in 1949 in Israel’s first General Election Mapai (ILP) and  Mapam (now Meretz) gained 65 out of 120 seats, you can see the extent of their decline. Indeed this was a marked improvement over the previous election in which these same two parties gained just 6 seats.

The first rule when forming a government coalition in Israel is that no Arab party can be included. Indeed no coalition can even rest on the support of Arab parties ‘from the outside.’ What probably led to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 was the fact that the coalition government rested on the support of the Communist Hadash, a largely Arab party, to get support for the Oslo Accords through the Knesset.

Israeli politics is seen through the prism of support or opposition to Netanyahu, its criminal and longest serving Prime Minister. Netanyahu is desperate to avoid being convicted for fraud but it is a mistake to reduce everything to Netanyahu’s individual fate. The crisis in Israeli politics goes deeper.

Likud is the largest party in the Knesset holding 30 seats, a quarter of all seats. His coalition can count on the 16 votes of two religious Zionist parties, Shas and United Torah Judaism. Thanks to Netanyahu acting as a midwife to the amalgamation of 3 far-Right parties, Tkuma/Religious Zionism and the Kahanist Oztma Yehudit, a Judeo-Nazi party and Noam, a virulently anti-gay party, he can count on a further 6 votes making 52 votes in all.

Israeli Police deliberately set out to provoke the disturbances by preventing Palestinians sitting down on the gates outside the Damascus Gate

The opposition is equally divided and disparate. It consists of the remnants of Labour Zionism with 13 seats, Yamina – a religious Zionist party led by Naftali Bennett with 7 seats, Yisrael Beteinu, a secular far-Right Russian party led by Avigdor Lieberman also with 7 seats, New Hope a far-Right party led by former Likud Minister Gideon Saar with 6 seats and the ‘centrist’ Yesh Atid led by Yair Lapid with 17 seats. Blue and White, led by former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, is currently part of Netanyahu’s coalition with a further 8 seats. The only thing that unites the opposition to Likud is a hatred of Netanyahu, so the ‘left wing’ Meretz is happy to sit in the same coalition with Avigdor Lieberman, who has previously talked of drowning thousands of Palestinian prisoners in the Dead Sea.

The problem for Netanyahu’s Zionist opponents is that the 3 far right parties are unwilling to rely on the support of an Arab party and Religious Zionism is likewise unwilling to rely on the support of the conservative Arab Ra’am party with 4 seats . This is why a fifth election in 2 years beckons. Zionism faces an impossible dilemma - just what does a Jewish state mean? Is it a religious or a secular state?

But if Israel lacks a functioning government there is a racist consensus among all Zionist parties which is that Israeli Palestinians need to be confined to as little land as possible. That is why in the 73 years of Israel’s existence not one Arab town or community has been created whereas hundreds of Jewish communities have been created. 93% of Israeli ‘national’ land is reserved for Jews via the Israeli Land Authority and the JNF. Palestinians, some 20% of Israel’s population, are confined to about 2% of the land.

Throughout Israel’s existence there has been a continuous process of confiscation of what is left of the Palestinian’s land. This has been achieved through the use of two laws – the 1950 Absentee Property Law which should have been called the Legalisation of Theft of Palestinian Land Law. It meant the creation of the Orwellian term, Present-Absentees. Palestinians could move just a mile down the road to avoid hostilities, as happened to the villagers in Kafr Birim and Ikrit, who moved out at the suggestion of the Zionist militias in 1948 after having been promised they could move back in after the hostilities. They ended up being classified as present-absentees and it was the  Mapam kibbutz of Baram which stole their land!

This law was supplemented by the 1970 Law on Legal and Administrative Affairs which was enacted in order that Jews who lost their property in East Jerusalem in 1948 can reclaim their property.

In 1948 as a result of the ethnic cleansing and war that accompanied Israel’s birth, Jews who lived in East Jerusalem relocated to West Jerusalem and took over the property of Palestinians who had fled. The 1970 law allowed them to reclaim their original property in East Jerusalem. However there was no equivalence. The 45,000 Palestinians who lost their property in West Jerusalem had no right to reclaim it. Why? Because Israel is a Jewish state. And that is why in a nutshell Israel, as a Jewish state, is inherently a racist state.

What sparked off the current crisis was the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in East Jerusalem by Jewish settlers. Through a variety of legal tricks  those who have been living for over 70 years in Sheikh Jarrar are facing eviction after the courts ruled against them. We have to remember that Israeli courts are Zionist colonial courts. Their rulings are based on acceptance of the idea that Israel is a Jewish state. They operate within a Zionist consensus which holds that Palestinians are there on sufferance. They do not recognise international law and in this they are backed up by the United States and the Biden Administration.

It is not even the original Jewish inhabitants of these properties who are attempting to return to them. They have already been compensated with ‘abandoned’ Palestinian property. Their title to the properties has been bought up by Zionist settler companies.

Although East Jerusalem has been annexed to Israel its Palestinians have not been granted Israeli citizenship. Instead they have been given ‘permanent residence’. Except that it’s not permanent and can be revoked at a stroke. For example if you leave Israel to study abroad and don’t return after 7 years you will effectively become stateless. If you are accused of ‘disloyalty’ then your residence status can be removed or if you want to marry a Palestinian from the West Bank then you have to move because you can’t bring your partner to live with you. You can vote in local but not national elections but your services are markedly inferior to those of Jewish citizens even though you are expected to pay the same taxes.

What lies behind the ethnic cleansing is Jerusalem’s 2020 Master Plan which aims to “maintain a solid Jewish majority in the city” by encouraging Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. There have been three such plans for Jerusalem; the Jerusalem 2020 Master Plan, the Marom Plan and the Jerusalem 5800 Plan. Each of these plans reinforces each other. Their common goal is to increase the number of Jewish residents and reduce the number of Palestinians living in Jerusalem. Details of each master plan can be read in the article Which Jerusalem? Israel’s Little-Known Master Plans. The aim is to achieve a 70/30 Jewish demographic majority.

Although the Israeli government pretends that the ‘eviction’ of Palestinians from Sheikh Jarrar is a ‘real estate problem’ the reality is clear. As Jerusalem’s far-Right Deputy Mayor, Aryeh King openly stated, seizing Sheikh Jarrah homes is part of a wider strategy. It is “the way to secure the future of Jerusalem as a Jewish capital for the Jewish people.” 

Israel unilaterally annexed occupied East Jerusalem in 1980. It has, to date, expropriated from Palestinians nearly one-third of the land in East Jerusalem, and built 11 Jewish-only neighborhoods in them. The permanent resident status of at least 14,701 Palestinians from East Jerusalem has been revoked. Israel has facilitated the settlement of more than 200,000 of its civilian population in East Jerusalem. It has also cut the city off from the occupied West Bank, to which it has been historically closely connected, by settlements and the apartheid wall.

This is the background to the attack by Israeli Police on worshippers at  Al Aqsa mosque injuring over 300 Palestinians on the holiest day of Ramadan. Israeli Police thugs invaded the mosque firing stun grenades and sound bombs and beating all around. This followed the Police provocation at the Damascus Gate when the steps that lead down from the entrance were sealed off by the Police preventing Palestinians sitting down and enjoying their meal after breaking their fast in Ramadan. Palestinians in Jerusalem of course are never consulted by a Police force that considers them lower than human. Israel is a democratic state for Jews and a Jewish state for Arabs.

The attacks on Haram al-Sharif which is the third holiest site in Islam cannot be separated from the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem. The goal of the Jewish settlers is to demolish Al Aqsa Mosque and the Golden Dome and replace them with the Third Temple at which Jewish Messianic madmen will be able to sacrifice live animals to their god. Messianism has been the handmaiden of the settlements in the attempt to restore the rule of Jewish law in Israel.

It is not well known but there are signs from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate at the entrance to the Temple Mount forbidding observant Jews from entering. Not out of any concern for Islam but because, as the site of the second Temple, it is forbidden for observant Jews to go there in case they trespass on the Holy of Holies which was the preserve of the High Priest who had access to god. The Jewish settlers see the Temple Mount as simply another stage in their desire to Judaise Jerusalem and evict the indigenous population.

Hamas in Gaza decided to offer solidarity by firing rockets into Israel. It seems that these rockets are no longer the  pea shooters of 2014. If Richard Silverstein’s Tikkun Olam is to be believed, Iranian cruise missiles have been imported into Gaza via the tunnels from Egypt. If true then we are entering a new ball game. The destruction of a bus in Tel Aviv and reports of deaths elsewhere suggests that deaths in future attacks on Gaza may not be so one-sided. In which case we may see a new invasion of Gaza with all that that portends being raised by the far-Right.

Tony Greenstein

Why Israel is an Apartheid State AND

Why Trump’s Honesty is Europe's Hypocrisy

There has been a massive reaction to Trump’s announcement that the United States recognises Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.  European leaders have been unanimous in their disapproval.  If one didn’t know better one might assume they had been in the forefront of the BDS movement, as a means to pressurise Israel into a 2 States Solution.

But of course Theresa May, Macron et al. have been vociferous in condemning the ‘anti-Semitic’ Boycott  movement.  They are resolutely opposed to putting any pressure on Israel, knowing full well that no Zionist party in Israel (bar the tiny Meretz) supports a 2 State Solution.  It is in this respect interesting that the Israeli Labour Party under its new leader Avi Gabbay has welcomed Trump’s announcement.  So much for the idea that the ILP represents something different in Zionist politics.

People may be surprised by my heading.  Why should I welcome Trump’s statement that Jerusalem in its entirety belongs to the Zionists? Why should I welcome the death of the 2 States Solution?  Because that has always been the real if unstated position of the West.

Of course I don’t believe that Jerusalem is the property of the Zionist state.  But what I also don’t 

support is the fictional support for 2 states that the West pays lip service to.  There has never ever been a chance of a 2 state solution.  Neither Oslo nor Ehud Barak, the last Israeli Labour Prime Minister ever supported 2 States.  At best they supported a cut down version of a Bantustan.  A ridiculous demilitarised version of Transkei and  Bophutswana.

All opponents of Apartheid opposed South Africa’s homelands policy.  The idea of shunting Black Africans into enclaves controlled by Black collaborators.  But in Palestine all sorts of progressive people have given lip-service to the idea of a Palestinian bantustan.

Unfortunately and tragically so have the representative organisations, the PLO, of the Palestinian people.  As I wrote in Labour Briefing regarding the Oslo Accords in October 1993, ‘this is an agreement built on shifting sands.  It represents a massive victory for imperialism.’

The New York Times agonises over whether Trump has killed off the 2 States solution but it decides he hasn't!

The pursuit of the 2 States illusion has cost the Palestinian movement dearly.  It has been the smokescreen behind which Zionism has effectively colonised the West Bank, laid siege to Gaza and weakened the Palestinians by arming a collaborationist police authority (the PA) to do Israel’s work for it.

The reason for opposing 2 States is not though merely practical.  Partition as a solution to settler colonialism, be it in Ireland or Palestine, is a cure worse than the original problem.  2 States means that the Israeli Jewish state survives.  The ‘conflict’ in Palestine, in actual fact the steady colonisation of Palestine, is a consequence of a political movement based on the ideology of Jewish supremacism. 

In this Israel is no different from any other settler colonial state.  In Ireland the rallying cry of the Unionists was Protestant Supremacy, in the words of the first Viscount James Craigavon, a former Prime Minister, Stormont was a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people.  Likewise in South Africa Apartheid was the means by which White Supremacy was maintained.  The only solution is the deZionisation of Israel. 

Demonstration in the Wadi Arab area of Israel

It is therefore interesting to see how the New York Times the American paper of record sees it.  In an article Did Trump Kill Off a Two-State Solution? He Says No, Palestinians Say Yes Saeb Erekat, the PLO’s main negotiator is quoted as saying that Trump and Netanyahu “have managed to destroy that hope.” Of a 2 States solution.  He is described as embracing ‘a radical shift in the P.L.O.’s goals — to a single state, but with Palestinians enjoying the same civil rights as Israelis, including the vote.’

Ererkat bemoans that “They’ve left us with no option. This is the reality. We live here. Our struggle should focus on one thing: equal rights.”  Of course no one should hold their breath that Erekat is doing anything other than letting off steam.  This is the same Erekat who was willing to hand Tsipi Livni, when she was negotiating with the PA, a ‘big Yerushalayim’ in exchange for just one small Palestinian suburb to call a capital.

Nonetheless Mark Landler of the NYT disapproves.  After having quoted a number of Israeli talking heads he states that ‘Mr. Erekat’s change of heart is unlikely to change Palestinian policy. The dream of a Palestinian state is too deeply ingrained in a generation of its leaders for the Palestinian Authority to abandon it now.’

Which is true in so far as one distinguishes between the PA’s quisling leaders and the Palestinians themselves.  But then Landler goes further and says, without any hesitation that:

‘Israel would be unlikely to accede to equal rights, because granting a vote to millions of Palestinians would eventually lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

And this is exactly what it is about.  A Jewish State cannot be a democratic state.  Israel cannot accede to equal rights.  Therefore, just as in Apartheid South Africa, the Palestinians must be shunted into their own homelands.  Except that the West Bank is nowhere near as big as South Africa so the Palestinians must be content with a few hemmed in urban conurbations as the settlements slowly eat into Palestinian patrimony.

If there is anyone who doesn’t quite get it, let us replace a few words in the above statement.

‘Israel South Africa would be unlikely to accede to equal rights, because granting a vote to millions of Palestinians Africans would eventually lead to the end of Israel South Africa as a Jewish White state.

This is what the supporters of two states are supporting.  And if anyone has doubts that Israel within the 1948 borders is also an apartheid state that considers its Palestinian citizens as guests to be discarded as soon as convenient, let us look at the reaction of its Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman to the riots in Arab areas in the wake of Trump’s announcement.

Lieberman, whose Deputy Eli Dahan, is of the opinion that Arabs are sub-human  has called for Israeli Jews to boycott the Wadi Ara area of Israel where many Arabs live.  They should ‘feel unwanted here’ and become part of Ramallah.  ‘Speaking in an interview Lieberman said that ‘the residents of Wadi Ara were not part of the State of Israel.’   And this is increasingly the view of Israelis, 48% of whom according to the Pew Research Report Israel’s Religiously Divided Society support the physical removal of Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

Wadi Ara not part of State of Israel, Lieberman says

Following Saturday's violent protest in northern Israeli Arab region against US recognition of Jerusalem, in which rioters hurled stones at police cars and buses, defense minister urges Israeli citizens to boycott area and make its residents 'feel unwanted here'; they should become part of Ramallah, he adds.

Attila Somfalvi|Published:  10.12.17 , 10:35

Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Sunday called for a boycott of the Israeli Arab region of Wadi Ara, following Saturday's violent protests in the area, in which rioters hurled at police cars and buses, as well as on Yedioth Ahronoth photographer Gil Nechushtan.

Speaking in an interview to the Ynet Studio, Lieberman said the residents of Wadi Ara were not part of the State of Israel.

"I call on all of Israel's residents to stop buying there," he said. "Simply impose a consumers' boycott and don't go in there—don't enter their restaurants or their businesses, don't get your cars fixed there. The residents of Wadi Ara must understand that they're unwanted and that they're not part of us. They’re working from within to harm the State of Israel.

Lieberman. 'I have never seen a protest in Wadi Ara with a single Israeli flag' (Photo: AFP)

"We've seen terrorists come out of there, we've seen funerals for the terrorists from Umm al-Fahm who murdered police officers at the Temple Mount, and we've seen a terrorist murder people at the terror attack on Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street, including an Arab taxi driver from Lod. They are not part of us," the defense minister said, reiterating his initiative to hand Wadi Ara over to the Palestinian Authority as part of a future agreement.

"They should become part of Ramallah," he said. "There, they will receive convalescence pay, an unemployment allowance and maternity benefits instead of the billions of shekels they are currently receiving from the National Security Institute. Let (Palestinian President Mahmoud) Abbas pay all their rights and payments the Palestinian democracy and the Palestinian society are certainly much better than the State of Israel." 

One of the buses pelted with stones in Wadi Ara, Saturday

Calling for a boycott of the area, Lieberman said: "I urge all citizens of the State of Israel to stop entering stores there, to stop buying and to stop receiving services. We should simply impose a boycott on them and let them feel unwanted here. I have never seen a protest in Wadi Ara with a single Israeli flag. I've seen many Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Authority flags there, and I've never seen a single State of Israel flag there."

Wadi Ara protest

"Wadi Ara is becoming an incitement center," the minister stated. "On Saturday, a journalist was nearly lynched, and there is wild incitement in the schools. The generation being raised there isn't learning anything apart from hatred toward the State of Israel. The residents of Wadi Ara enjoy the best living conditions in the Middle East."

Lieberman added that the residents had a right to protest, but that "terror, support for terror, solidarity with terror organizations and solidarity with Israel's enemies cannot be part of the rules of the game. That's what we see in Wadi Ara and it's the same line separating between them and others."

The defense minister said he hoped the tensions following US President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital were over. "On Saturday, I traveled across the Judea area and it was completely calm. According to reports from this morning, everything is calm and quiet. Even the Arab League conference settled for a verbal statement and nothing else. So when I look at the situation in Judea and Samaria today, and on the fence in the Gaza Strip, I believe it's behind us."

As for reports that Saudi Arabia had supported Trump's announcement, Lieberman said earlier in an interview to Army Radio: "The Saudis have personally experienced the meaning of Islamic terror and Iranian subversion, so I think they have a different outlook. We heard the crown prince call (Iranian supreme leader) Ali Khamenei the modern Hitler. Such declarations are not for the love of Israel."

Addressing the tensions on Israel's southern border following the barrage of rockets fired at Gaza vicinity communities from the Strip over the weekend, the defense minister said: "We have hit all of Hamas' critical sites, destroyed a rocket manufacturing facility and a storehouse with strategic Hamas weapons inside the Gaza Strip. I'm certain that everyone can send their children back to school and kindergarten, and I believe all these events are behind us. It's Hamas' responsibility."