Showing posts with label Palestinian state. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Palestinian state. Show all posts

31 December 2020

If Naz Shah’s idea of moving Israel to the USA had been implemented not only would there be peace in the Middle East but Trump would still be President!!

70% of Israelis would, if they could, have voted for Trump and just 13% of Biden! This is Israel today 

Cast your mind back to 2016 and the ‘discovery’ that in 2014, at the height of Israel’s genocidal bombardment of Gaza, when 2,200 people, including 550 children were murdered, Naz Shah, not yet an MP, dreamed of transferring Israel to the United States realizing that Israel would finally be rid of the Palestinians and have no more excuse to engage in blood letting.

The two states get on so well, and the USA has land in abundance. It seemed an obvious solution. It would also save the USA a small fortune in military aid.

By 2016 we were in the middle of the fake Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ attack on Corbyn so Naz was forced to humiliate herself and apologise for ‘anti-Semitism’ to the ‘Jewish community’ (i.e. the Israel lobby) in order that she could stay in Parliament.  Ken Livingstone got suspended defending her and Corbyn went along with all this and ended up getting suspended himself.

However imagine what might have happened if Naz Shah’s fantasy had been acted out.  Is it a crime to fantasize? We all dream of a better world!

A brilliant idea

I have to confess I never understood this ‘anti-Semitism’ stuff.  All Naz Shah and others were suggesting was a change of scenery for Israeli Jews!  There was no hint of extermination or anything. Now today, just imagine what would have happened if that dream fantasy had been fulfilled. 

70% of Israelis supported Trump compared to just 13% for Biden.  Even Jeremy Corbyn got more Jewish voters than Biden got Israeli Jewish voters!!  Imagine what would have happened if we had put half Israel’s Jewish populace in Michigan and the other half in Pennsylvania?  Between them they had 38 electoral college votes and that would have enabled Trump to win by a slender 2 votes.

McDonnell and Owen Jones did more to destroy the Corbyn Project than Boris Johnson - this was the time to tell the Zionists the difference between satire and anti-Semitism

Anti-Semitic? Why?  There’s plenty of rustbelt land filled with abandoned factories and foreclosed land that Israel could colonise and call home. They could establish settlements galore on the ruins of rusting factories.  Indeed they could have rejuvenated them and put back life into America’s industrial economy.

Meanwhile the Palestinians could return to their own home.  Even better the Israeli settlements could be demolished, brick by brick and in that way the old Biblical scenery of the West Bank could be restored to what it was before these ugly concrete structures.

In other words everyone would benefit!

The fact that 70% of Israelis would have voted for the anti-Semitic Trump demonstrates once again that the best friend of Zionism is anti-Semitism. Trump has claimed that Henry Ford, the legendary anti-Semite who printed the Czarist forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in his Dearborn Independent, was his ‘inspiration’. The same Henry Ford that Hitler also claimed as his inspiration and who hung a life-sized portrait of him by his desk.

This is the man that Israeli Jews would have voted for by a factor of over 5-1. So when you see someone like Keir Starmer describe themselves as a ‘Zionist without qualification’ then you know that what they mean is that they are a racist ‘without qualification’.

So loved was  Trump that West Bank mayors and settlers held a religious ceremony, complete with the blowing of the shofar (a ram’s horn) to pray for the re-election of Trump.  Unfortunately god seems not to have been listening!  If this is god’s attitude then if I were a settler I would be very worried that the great bearded one might be angry again with his people! Exile to the United States would be a fitting punishment - again!!

Below are 3 articles, two  from the Times of Israel and one from Gideon Levy in Ha'aretz.

Tony Greenstein

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday, Oct. 30, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)


 By 70% to 13%, Israeli Jews say Trump is better candidate than Biden for Israel

Israel Democracy Institute poll also finds 42% of Israeli Jews believe the US-Israel bond will weaken if Biden is elected, with only seven percent saying it will strengthen

3 November 2020, 4:30 am  

Some 70 percent of Jewish Israelis believe a victory for Donald Trump over Joe Biden in the US presidential election would be preferable for the Jewish state, an opinion poll indicated on Monday.

The Israel Democracy Institute survey, released a day before the US election day, asked whether Republican incumbent Trump or his Democratic challenger Biden is the preferred candidate, “from the standpoint of Israel’s interests.”

Among Israeli Jews, 70% said Trump is the preferred candidate, 13% said Biden, and 17% don’t know.

Support for Trump was markedly lower among Arab Israelis, with 36% saying he was the preferred candidate, 31% saying Biden, and 33% saying they didn’t know.

Among all Israelis, 63% favor Trump, 17% Biden and 20% don’t know.

Broken down by political camp, 82% of right-wing poll respondents, 62% of centrists, and 40% percent of left-wingers said Trump is the better candidate for Israel. 

Foreign Affairs Minister of Bahrain Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu, and US President Donald Trump participate in the signing ceremony of the Abraham Accords on the South Lawn of the White House on September 15, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images/AFP)


 If Biden wins the race, 42% of Israeli Jews believe the US-Israel bond will weaken, with only 7% saying it will strengthen. Among Arab Israelis, those figures were 24% and 16%, respectively.

“Presumably this pronounced preference among the Jewish public for Trump to keep serving stems to a large extent from the assessment that Biden’s election would weaken US-Israeli relations, and strengthen the relationship between Washington and the Palestinians,” IDI said. 

The survey polled 611 men and women in Hebrew and 150 in Arabic, constituting a representative national sample of the population of Israel, with a margin of error of  +/- 3.7%.

Trump has been viewed by many as one of the most pro-Israel US presidents ever. 

Marc Zell - Chair Republicans for Israel Overseas

The Trump administration has used the final months of the campaign to further seek support from pro-Israel Jewish and Evangelical Republican voters. In just this past week, the State Department updated its policy to allow US citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their country of birth on passports and US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman signed an agreement with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extending US scientific cooperation to apply as well in the West Bank — a move viewed by many as a first step toward American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the settlements.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid-Telem is pictured during an interview with AFP at his office in the Knesset, Jerusalem, on September 14, 2020. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP)


But opposition leader Yair Lapid on Monday said that whoever wins, “the next president of the United States will be a friend of Israel.”

Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are friends of Israel, with a deep commitment to Israel and to Zionism,” Lapid said in a statement, while adding he had seen hostile “radical voices” growing stronger within the Democratic Party.

Several rabbis, including Haim Druckman, an influential former member of the National Religious Party, have urged US citizens in Israel to vote for Trump.

And on Monday evening around 150 Trump supporters waving US and Israeli flags rallied in the city of Beit Shemesh south of Jerusalem, where many Israeli-Americans live.

An Israeli supporter of the re-election of US President Donald Trump waves American and Israeli flags from a car at a rally outside of the US Embassy, in Jerusalem, Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

The Trump administration has also sought to expand the list of Arab and Muslim-majority countries to normalize relations with Israel in the final months of its current term. Last Friday, Sudan agreed to become the third country to do so in recent months. Sudan followed the lead of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain after weeks of pressure from Washington, which conditioned removing Khartoum from its blacklist of state terror sponsors on Sudan making peace with the Jewish state.

These moves follow decisions by the Trump administration to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, transfer the US embassy there, recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, scrap previous policy deeming settlements to be illegal, release a peace plan widely deemed to be the most favorable to Israel yet, take a far more combative approach toward the Palestinians than previous administrations and pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, which the Netanyahu government opposed aggressively.

On the other hand, Trump’s critics point out that he has turned the issue of Israel into a political football when for decades the bipartisan nature of support for the Jewish state had been touted as something that kept Israel more secure. Polls of Jewish voters in the US show that at least two-thirds prefer Biden over Trump, many of whom blame the president for the rise in white nationalism in the US, which has seen Jews targeted in record numbers of anti-Semitic attacks.

Moreover, these more dovish voters are less supportive of the Israeli settlement enterprise in the West Bank and tend to oppose moves the Trump administration has taken to solidify the Israeli presence there at the expense of efforts to reach a two-state solution.

Look at Trump and You'll See the Israelis

Gideon Levy

Published on 08.11.2020

Standing in line Friday in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Aviv Gimel to pick up the weekend edition of Israel Hayom, affluent residents discussed the likely defeat. “We’re screwed,” one man said sadly; his companions nodded in agreement. It’s a dark day for Israel: Donald Trump has lost the election.

No other country in the world, with the possible exception of the Philippines or Nebraska, was as saddened by his fall. A poll by Israel’s Mitvim think tank found that 70 percent of Israelis support Trump. A survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center had similar findings. Whereas 75 percent of West Europeans are fed up with the U.S. president, in Israel a large majority – including centrists and some leftists – admires him.

It can be argued, of course, that this support is a way of saying thanks for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights and withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal. But these events caused little excitement in Israel. No one jumped into a fountain in a city square to celebrate the recognition of Majdal Shams as an Israeli town, and only a few people were moved by Ambassador David Friedman’s change of address.

The explanation for Trump’s rising popularity in Israel goes much deeper; its roots are much more disturbing. Israel admires Trump not despite his many repellent shortcomings but because of them. Trump is the embodiment of everything that’s bad and ugly about Israel while normalizing and whitewashing them for us. Look at him and you’ll see ourselves. This is who we are, or who we’d like to be. Most of us, anyway.

Trump is the embodiment of Israel the unbeautiful; he could easily be elected prime minister. The vulgarity, coarseness, belligerence, ignorance, scheming and lies; the contempt for the weak, for the law, for justice, the media, science and the environment – all this fits us like a glove.

Who wouldn’t want a prime minister condescending to everyone, someone who always knows best, who will make Israel great again? Who wouldn’t want a prime minister who’s nobody’s fool, who made his fortune through guile and cunning, just the way we like it?

Who wouldn’t want a prime minister who scoffs at political correctness and will bring back the good old days of male chauvinism unhindered by feminism; who won’t bother us with all those threats to the planet and nature, who’ll also bring back racism?

Who wouldn’t want a real man like him? Who wouldn’t like someone who will scorn international institutions, human rights groups and international law, who will violate signed agreements and deride arrogant Europe and its universal liberal values, just as in the secret dreams of many Israelis? Even Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s as similar to Trump as he can be, can’t attain that level of making dreams come true.

Take the typical Israeli driver. He isn’t Trump? The Israeli road isn’t Trumplike? Cut somebody off, honk, curse, break the law, park anywhere, don’t think about anyone but yourself, yours is the biggest, strongest and fastest; look at me.

Take Israeli politics, especially politicians on the right. That isn’t Trump? They wouldn’t want to be like him?

Combine Avigdor Lieberman, Miri Regev, Osnat Mark, Miki Zohar and David Amsalem and you get Trump in Hebrew. Combine their bullying, ignorance, populism, superficiality, populism and vulgarity and you get Israeli Trumpism.

As an encore, add the way Trump humiliated the Palestinians, ignored their very existence. Their rights meant nothing to him, just as they mean nothing to most Israelis, simply because they’re weak. It’s a dream.

It’s an Israeli dream to stop aid to the weak and give it to the strong, as Trump did – from the UNRWA refugee agency to the Israeli army, from the refugees to the force that expelled them. And it’s an Israeli dream to deport asylum seekers, as Trump has, to keep hundreds of children separated from their parents and leave tens of thousands of frightened adults.

That’s Trumpian justice, and it’s Israeli justice. That’s why we’ve loved him so much. That’s why it’s such a pity that he’ll be leaving.

In shadow of patriarchs, settler leaders gather in Hebron to pray for Trump win

West Bank mayors recite psalms, hoping for four more years; cite incumbent’s recognition of Golan Heights and Jerusalem, support for Israel against threats like Iran and BDS

November 2020, 4:53 pm

Hebron spokesman Yishai Fleisher, right, and Marc Zell, the head of Republicans Overseas Israel, blow shofars to show their support for Trump November, 2, 2020. (Courtesy Har Hevron regional council spokesperson)

Settler leaders held a special prayer session Monday outside the Tomb of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron, at which they thanked US President Donald Trump for his support of the settlement movement and wished him success in Tuesday’s elections. 

Psalms and other prayers meant to aid the incumbent president to victory were recited at the Monday event, during which Har Hevron Regional Council chairman Yochai Damri and Marc Zell, the head of Republicans Overseas Israel, blew shofars to show their support for Trump.

At the event, Damri explained why the US president meant so much to the settler movement.

 “We came here today to say to President Trump thank you,” he said. 

“Thank you for your special relationship to the land of Israel, for the recognition of the Golan Heights and of the settlement enterprise. Thank you for your war against Iran and the BDS movement. Thank you for strengthening the settlement of the land of the Bible. We pray and hope that you will continue to another four years of strengthening the settlement enterprise.” 

Israeli Trump Supporter heads to Jerusalem

Marc Zell, the head of Republicans Overseas Israel at the Cave of the patriarchs, November 2, 2020. (Courtesy: Har hebron regional council spokesperson)

Kiryat Arba Local Council chairman Eliyahu Libman said, “Trump proved his friendship toward the people of Israel by moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, and recognizing our sovereignty in the Golan Heights and the right of Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria.”

Those moves on behalf of the settler enterprise were lauded as “tremendous and daring” by Binyamin Regional Council chairman Yisrael Gantz.

Also adding their voices to the reelect Trump prayer meeting were Gush Etzion Regional Council chairman Shlomo Ne’eman and the mayor of Hebron, Rabbi Hillel Horowitz.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs, where the prayer session took place, is sanctified by Jews and Muslims as the burial place of the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Leah.

Hebron is home to approximately 1,000 settlers, who live in a series of enclaves surrounded by some 215,000 Palestinians. Large numbers of Israeli security forces protect Jewish residents in the city, which is frequently the scene of violence.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1323218530427408385

 

While Jews in the United States — except for the Orthodox — are expected to vote overwhelmingly for Democrat Joe Biden, Trump is a popular figure in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described him as the “greatest friend” Israel has ever had in the White House.

Many in Israel view Trump as a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, especially in the wake of the Washington-brokered Abraham Accords, which led to normalization deals between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan.

A poll published by Channel 12 news Friday showed 54% percent of Israelis favor Trump, compared to 21% who favor Biden and 25% who were undecided or did not know. No methodology or margin of error was provided by Channel 12 for the survey.

Settlers in particular have been outspoken supporters of Trump for his policies that appear to support Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank. In addition, he has earned accolades for his administration’s decisions to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

US ambassador to Israel David Friedman (L) with Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi in Efrat on February 20, 2020. (Gershon Elinson/Flash90)

Still, many settler leaders, Damri included, rejected Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan over the fact that it included the possibility of the creation of a Palestinian state on parts of the West Bank not annexed by Israel. The reaction was reportedly met by anger in the White House.

Oded Revivi, the influential head of the Efrat settlement who was one of the settler leaders who embraced the Trump plan, said Sunday that he would not participate in the rally out of respect for the US political process.

“President Trump has proven over four years that he is a big friend of Israel and during his term ties between Israel and the US have grown stronger. However, just as we warn off foreign influences from internal debates and elections… so it is not correct for the leadership to express a stance on the US elections,”

he tweeted.

25 April 2016

A Wasted Opportunity - PSC's Guardian Advert

Why Israel is an Apartheid State -           the Arguments That Weren't Made





This Saturday April 23, Palestine Solidarity Campaign placed an advert in the Guardian.  It must have cost about £10,000.

At a time when there is an unprecedented attack on Palestine solidarity work in this country, this statement was a wasted opportunity.  The main theme, Palestine is being built out of existence, was that it a Palestinian state is becoming more difficult to achieve.  Anyone with eyes and ears should recognise that the 2 state solution is no longer achievable, assuming it ever was.  Zionism recorgnises the sovereignty of only one group of people, Jewish settlers.
What the statement should have said and led on was a firm rebuttal of the media frenzy in the past few months.  A clear and firm statement such as Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism’Supporting Palestinian rights is not anti-Semitic’.

Possibly a reference could have been made to the fact that the most racist and indeed anti-Semitic elements internationally, from the BNP to Marine Le Pen to Gert Wilders etc. etc. are the strongest supporters of Zionism.
Brighton & Hove PSC leaflet
Instead of reproducing 3 statements from Israeli ministers affirming their refusal to allow a Palestinian state, PSC could have done worse than take a leaf out of the leaflet from Brighton & Hove PSC ‘meet the Israeli Government’ which reproduced statements from various Israeli Government Ministers such as the Deputy Defence Minister, Eli Dahan, who compared higher Jewish souls, including those of homosexuals, to those of non-Jews.

It could have made the obvious point that since Israel refuses a separate Palestinian state then the refusal to grant Palestinians in the Occupied Territories the most basic of civil or political rights means Israel is an apartheid society.

It could have referred to Israeli racism in terms of ‘death to the Arabs’ marches, the banning of the Northern Islamic Movement even whilst the fascist Lehava group, whose leader Benzi Gopstein justifies the burning down of mosques and churches remains illegal.

The advert could have made some more sophisticated arguments such as calling anti-Zionism anti-Semitism is in itself anti-Semitic as it assumes all Jews are Zionists.  It could even have pointed to the fact that it was Jews who were historically the first opponents of Zionism.  They could even have quoted someone like Theodor Herzl on how the anti-Semitic countries would be the Zionists’ best allies and friends.

It could have pointed to the hypocrisy of people like Eric Pickles, Chair of the Conservative Friends of Israel, who defend the Conservatives’ good friend Michal Kaminski and an inveterate anti-Semite in the European Conservative and Reform group. 

Instead the statement was bland an innocuous.  So bland that, I am told, even Jews for Justice for Palestinians refused to sign it.

Tony Greenstein


April 22, 2016
This Saturday an advert will appear in the Guardian reaffirming our right – indeed our duty – to boycott Israel. The advert is based on the below statement:

Israel, judged by its actions, isn’t interested in peace. By erecting more and more settlements on Palestinian land, it is in the process of building Palestine out of existence.

It is not only our right to boycott those who aid and abet this occupation and, now, colonisation of Palestine – it is our duty.

Next year it will be 50 years since the occupation of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. 10 years since the siege of Gaza began, with 75,000 still displaced from their homes since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza in 2014.

This year, to 18th April, 63 people have been killed, 59 of these people are Palestinians killed by Israeli forces. Over 1,600 Palestinians have been injured[i].

The UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights make it the duty of states to uphold human rights. The British Government says principles of human rights should apply the world over and calls on businesses, trade unions and civil society to help them. Yet, they have continually failed to act over Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights.

Instead, in recent months the British Government and its Ministers have unleashed a series of attacks on supporters of Palestine who advocate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions of Israeli institutions and companies complicit with breaches of Palestinian human rights. These attacks have been accompanied by systematic efforts to suppress legitimate criticism of Israel by branding it extremist, divisive, and antisemitic.

Human rights are indivisible and global. It is not racist to criticise a state because of its laws and actions, it is not racist to campaign for those laws and actions to be changed.

It is antisemitic to promote hatred or discrimination of Jewish people because of their religion or ethnicity. As an anti-racist organisation, we abhor racism directed at any group – we challenge it wherever it is found.

The government’s attempt to promote fear and intimidation of legitimate protest and to smear human rights defenders will only assist the real racists.

We support the Palestinian-led call for a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign which uses effective-yet-peaceful means to pressure Israel to end the occupation and ensure Palestinians have the rights we take for granted. It is civil society holding countries and companies accountable for their actions.

Boycott is the tool human rights defenders have used throughout history. It is a non-violent, global and traditional form of protest used to oppose oppression. It is not racist to refuse to buy, decline to invest in or stop supplying goods, arms or services to companies and institutions that are knowingly supporting breaches of human rights and international law.

Rather than attack those defending human rights, the British Government should be challenging Israel for its actions that breach international law.

Trying to suppress the right to protest will not undermine the campaign for Palestinian human rights – it will strengthen it.

We proudly continue in the tradition of civil and human rights activists before us. If it was good enough for Gandhi, Luther King Jr, and Mandela; boycott is good enough for us.

PSC is part of a growing global movement in support of Palestine, proudly refusing to do business with Israel’s occupation, colonisation, and discrimination.



Whoever moves to establish a Palestinian state or intends to withdraw from territory is simply yielding territory for radical Islamic terrorist attacks”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu[ii]
“We are all against a Palestinian state; there is no question about it”
Israeli Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Silvan Shalom [iii]
“I will do everything in my power to make sure they [Palestinians] never get a state”
Israeli Minister of Education Naftali Bennett[iv]