Appeal for a Wheelchair for Rani Bornat - a non-violent activist and photographer from Bilin

Disabled by the Zionists - Rani is not Jewish - he is therefore not entitled to support

I don't usually broadcast appeals on my blog but I will make an exception in this case.  If you can afford to make a donation, however big or small, please go to.  This isn't charity, it is support of the struggle against the Zionist thieves who have taken the land and bodies of the villagers of B'ilin.

Tony Greenstein

https://www.generosity.com/medical-fundraising/new-wheelchair-for-rani--2

https://igg.me/at/KU0LmzxBx1I/emal/13929215



The video is a portrayal of a non-violent activist and photographer from Bilin, Rani Bornat. Rani was shot by Israeli snipers during the first days of the second Intifada during a peaceful protest in Ramallah. His injuries have left him confined to an electric wheelchair with only the use of his right hand. In 2004 Israel began to construct the apartheid wall in his village, Bilin, stealing 60% of the villages land. Since then, villagers have organized weekly, and sometimes daily, non-violent demonstrations against the wall and the settlements surrounding it, making Bilin a centre of non-violent resistance in the West Bank. Rani, one of the organizers of the villages popular resistance, has attended and photographed every single demonstration, and compiled a huge archive of photographs.

Rani was shot by Israeli snipers during the first days of the second Intifada during a peaceful protest in Ramallah. His injuries have left him confined to an electric wheelchair with only the use of his right hand. In 2004 Israel began to construct the apartheid wall in his village, Bilin, stealing 60% of the villages land. Since then, villagers have organized weekly, and sometimes daily, non-violent demonstrations against the wall and the settlements surrounding it, making Bilin a centre of non-violent resistance in the West Bank. Rani, one of the organizers of the villages popular resistance, has attended and photographed every single demonstration, and compiled a huge archive of photographs.

This is Rani's story in his own words
I was born in the village of Bil’in in 1981. Bil’in is a small, poor Palestinian village in the West Bank. In the past there were less than one thousand inhabitants in the village. Most of them make their living from agriculture. Some work in Israel, some in Palestine and a few in the civil service.

I began to go to school in 1987 and completed primary school in Bil’in. I then proceeded to go to a high school in the neighboring village. Upon my completion of 10th grade I moved to a vocational school, El Kouds in Elram junction. I completed my high school studies with honors, majoring in electronics, which was my favorite since childhood.

I began to work while waiting to hear from one of the universities or colleges to receive higher education in my profession, but the occupation put an end to that.

On September 30th 2000 I participated in a parade to protest Sharon’s entrance to the Al Aqsa Mosque. While we approached area B, a vast number of soldiers were waiting for us in the surrounding buildings and started to shoot live ammunition. They wounded and killed us, protestors whose only ammunition was their will.

I was badly wounded and was announced as a martyr after a bullet hit my neck and my back, damaging the third and forth spinal vertebra. I was paralyzed, lost my memory and could not speak. After a year of treatment and rehabilitation I was forced to remain in a wheelchair.

I live in a wheelchair, but it does not limit me from saying NO to the occupation, saying NO to oppression, and saying NO to injustice, slavery and bloodshed. I continue to say YES to peace, freedom, liberty and independence. I still participate in the protests we organize with Israeli and foreign activists who come to express solidarity with us. We protest against the racist wall, land confiscation and settlement construction. I am in front of the parade with my camera, with which I capture photographs. These photos are a tool in my struggle against injustice and those who responsible for it. I have been wounded numerous times from rubber bullets and shock grenades.
My injury has not stopped me from continuing my life like other people. I decided to get married and I had the good fortune to find a suitable girl who was able to understand my situation and agreed to become engaged to me. Our marriage happened on 10/25/2008, and after one year God has blessed us and given us triplets (a boy and two daughters) on 28/10/2009. despite the harsh conditions and the increasing burdens of life, I’m still a believer in justice and determined to continue resistance until we gain our freedom and independence.

Together we all continue to struggle, with our writing and photography, to secure ourselves and our children lives full of love, peace, and safety.

I need a new electric wheelchair, and because I can't work, I can't afford to bye a new one. Pleace help me, so my wife don't have to help me all the time.

Rani Bornat
raniab281@yahoo.com

Please go to:
https://www.generosity.com/medical-fundraising/new-wheelchair-for-rani--2

Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops Complains Again

Brighton’s most right-wing & racist councillor complains of ‘harassment’

Cllr. Caroline 'Poison' Penn of Brighton & Hove City Council

naturally I was overwhelmed with fear and guilt

Some of you may remember my post Racist Labour Councillor, Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn, Complains of ‘Harassment’ on @Cllorcaroline @thepennydrops - How Political Opportunists and Racist Misfits Use the Criminal Law to Deflect Criticism on Brighton and Hove’s most right-wing and racist councillor, Caroline Penn.

She happens to be a member of the Labour Party and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement but that is almost an accident.  She could equally be a member of the Tory Party and Conservative Friends of Israel.  She is a bitter foe of Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn and is an acolyte of the New Labour MP for Hove, Peter Kyle.

I hadn't actually accused her of being a fascist or a member of the BNP, not had I accused her flatmate of the latter either

A couple of months ago a couple of policemen came to the door to hand me a PIN – Police Information Notice.  It doesn’t mean anything, assumes no guilt but is just a way of delivering a warning that in case there is a prosecution for harassment then you can’t say you haven’t been warned.

Well Poison Penn has been at it again.  Apparently she wasn’t happy with my response to her last act of whinging and so she has begun another bout of whining.  Apparently she resented my audacity in daring to tweet about her last complaint and blogging on it!

I did try educating Poison Penn but to no avail

I’m not sure what her complaint this time is about.  I accurately reported that this non-Jewish member of the Zionist JLM had called me an ‘anti-Semite’.  Presumably since she supports the Apartheid State of Israel she considers herself an expert on racism –  most racists do consider themselves experts on racism.  The tweet accusing me of anti-Semitism has since been deleted.

Last week another member of HM Constabulary came to my door to tell me that Poison Penn, who shares a flat with BNP supporting Harris ‘fascist’ Fitch, was complaining of harassment again.  However the PC assured me that having read the complaint he couldn’t see what the fuss was.  It was legitimate free speech as far as he was concerned.  A very nice chap he was too!

I told him that if you stand for a political position of Councillor you can hardly complain if people criticise you politically!  In short, Harry Truman’s old adage of ‘if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’ applies.  Some of these right-wing Labour women, Joe Phillips is another, believe that any criticism of your politics is ‘sexism’ ‘harassment’ etc. etc.  In other words their sex privileges them.  Or their whiteness does in the case of Phillips.

As the PC confirmed I hadn’t made public any personal details of Ms Penn, other than who her flatmate was.  I hadn’t given away any phone numbers, addresses or any other identifying material, all of which can be obtained via Brighton Town Hall anyway.  Nor am I interested in the personal details of Poison Penn. 

Three of Brighton's Progress Councillors Join the Racist JLM

However I’m not going to be deterred by some racist Zionist into keeping quiet either.  Poison Penn announced to the world that she was joining the Apartheid supporting JLM and she expected some kind of applause not criticism.  Tough.

Please Retweet this as she has blocked me!

Tony Greenstein 

Some of my best friends are Zionists – The Case of the Sunday Times Kevin Myers

I

Zionists defend anti-Semitic journalist because he is a devoted supporter of Israel

It used to be the case that anti-Semites used to deny their anti-Semitism by protesting that ‘some of my best friends are Jews’ .  This attitude was best exemplified by Himmler.  In a speech to leaders of the SS in Posen, Poland in October 1943 he declared:

And then they all come along, the eighty million good Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are swine, but this one is a first-class Jew.’ (some laughter) 

Himmler went on to describe the trials and tribulations of the SS:

‘Of all those who talk like this, not one has watched, not one has stood up to it. Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet – apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness – to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard. This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written.’

This speech was recorded and used in evidence during the Nuremburg Trials.  

Zionist UK Media Watch forgives Murdoch's pro-Zionist Sunday Times

Today anti-Semites deny their anti-Semitism by proclaiming their devotion to Israel and Zionism. The Jewish Chronicle's editor, Stephen Pollard, exemplifies this practice.  

When speaking about Michal Kaminski, a prominent anti-Semitic politician and a leading member of Poland's far-Right Law and Justice Party, (as well as being Chair of the European Conservative and Reform Group in the European Parliament), Pollard exclaimed that: "Far from being an antisemite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israeli an MEP as exists."

In other words if you support the Israeli state then you cannot be anti-Semitic.  This does of course have a certain logic to it, at least for Zionists.  If you believe that anti-Semitism equals anti-Zionism, then it follows that supporters of Israel and Zionism cannot be anti-Semites.  It is, as Tony Lerman described, an 'Alice in Wonderland' conclusion.

However it does ignore the fact that most of the far-Right in Europe - from France's Le Pen to Austria's Herr Strache - not forgetting our own British National Party and the EDL, manage to combined anti-Semitism and Zionism without any problem at all.  The Trump administration in the person of Steve Bannon of Breitbart also manages to combined  Zionism and anti-Semitism without any problems.

Pollard's defence of Kaminski was even too much for some Zionists, such as The Guardian's Jonathan Freedland. [Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near people such as Kaminski]. Kaminski denied wearing the Chrobry sword, the symbol of the far-Right anti-Semitic National Radical Camp Falanga.  Kaminski issued a categorical denial: “No, I never wear it. I don’t even know which symbol you are referring to' before admitting that he had in fact worn it!  The Chrobry sword was banned from being worn in Poland in 1933 because of its association with attacks on Jews.  

Ms Bikont believes Mr Kaminski helped inspire anti-Semitism in Jedwabne

A BBC Newsnight Report Digging up the truth about Michal Kaminiski quotes Maria Mazurczyk, a member in 2001 of the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne, saying of Kaminski:

"I remember at the meeting he invited older people who remembered those times, those who had been driven out to Siberia, to say that they had not just been driven out because of the Russians, but above all because of their neighbours, the Jews."

Anna Bikont, a journalist with the leading Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza and author of 'The Crime and the Silence', described the atmosphere in Jedwabne where "there was such a lot of hate" against Jews.''  Although Kaminski was not there she believed he had helped inspire the deeply anti-Semitic atmosphere:

"Kaminski came to the place where an incredible crime was committed and he told not about the women, children, old people who died in this horrible manner, but he told about Jews who collaborated with Soviets and who killed Poles".

People gathered at Jedwabne memorial in 2001

Kaminski helped form in March 2001 the Committee to Defend the Good Name of Jedwabne. Most people would suggest that a good name was the last thing that Jedwabne possessed. In Jedwabne, a village in Western Poland, on July 10 1941 the inhabitants herded up to 1600 Jews, men, women and children, into a barn which was then set alight.  Not all inhabitants committed this atrocious crime but many did. 

Kaminski, whom Pollard defended as a 'good friend of the Jews' proclaimed in an interview with Martin Bright of the Jewish Chronicle (9.10.09. that '“If you are asking the Polish nation to apologise for the crime made in Jedwabne, you would require from the whole Jewish nation to apologise for what some Jewish Communists did in Eastern Poland.”  

Just this one quote alone demonstrates Kaminski's anti-Semitism.  Over 90% of Polish Jews died in the holocaust.  Thousands were massacred by their Polish neighbours, even after 1945, yet Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle has no problem defending an apologist for these pogromists.

The suggestion that the Jews collaborated with the Soviet troops is one of the standard justifications that Polish anti-Semites make for the pogroms and massacres of Jews.  After the Soviet troops had been driven out of Poland by the Nazis in June 1941, anti-Semites held that the Jews had collaborated with them and that they were responsible for the deportation of Polish non-Jews to Siberia. Kaminski not only led the opposition to the  national apology of Poland's President Kwasniewski but he also opposed the ceremony of remembrance in Jedwabne on July 10 2001, the 60th anniversary what happened in Jedwabne.
  
Kaminski's lies about Jewish involvement in deportations were a theme repeated by those who either denied or defended the massacre in Jedwabne (& similar massacres took place in surrounding villages like Radzilow).

But speaking of holocaust deniers, no one comes closer to this than the former Irish Sunday Times journalist Kevin Myers, who was sacked last weekend. As the Independent  and Jerusalem Post noted Myers had previously written that “There was no holocaust (or Holocaust, as my computer software insists) and six million Jews were not murdered by the Third Reich. These two statements of mine are irrefutable truths.”

It was therefore no surprise that in his column for the Irish edition of the Sunday Times, under the headline: “Sorry ladies, equal pay has to be earned,” Myers wrote: 

“I note that two of the best paid women presenters in the BBC – Claudia Winkleman and Vanessa Feltz, with whose, no doubt, sterling work I am tragically unacquainted – are Jewish. Good for them.

“Jews are not general noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which is the most useful measure there is of inveterate, lost-with-all-hands stupidity.”

You would think it obvious that Myers is a died-in-the-wool anti-Semite.  Surely our good friends the Zios are jumping up and down about this genuine, bona-fide, 24 carat anti-Semite?

The Zionist UKMedia Watch is hot on 'anti-Semitism' of the anti-Zionist variety

After all, there is no group which is as hot on ‘anti-Semitism’ as UK Media Watch, a division of the American McCarthyist group CAMERA.  When the Guardian published a letter of mine earlier this year praising the late Jewish MP Gerald Kaufman, they were outraged.  Their headline told it all:  ‘How the Guardian’s decision to publish extremist Tony Greenstein normalises antisemitism’.  They wrote that ‘Kaufman’s most insidious comments about Jews occured during a Commons debate on the war in Gaza in 2009, a speech alluded to by left-wing extremist Tony Greenstein in a letter published on March 3rd in the Guardian.’ 

Gerald Kaufman, Jewish MP and Father of the House of Commons was a wicked anti-Semite for comparing Israel to Nazi Germany

Even worse was Kaufman’s statement that the Israeli government uses non-Jewish guilt over the Holocaust  in order to justify their murder of Palestinians.  One would have thought this was a self-evident truth. Israel shamelessly exploits the Holocaust for political purposes. Indeed if it were not for the Holocaust then Israel would have been called to task for its racism years ago.

You would therefore assume that UKM would be down on Kevin Myers and the paper that printed his anti-Semitic comments like a ton of bricks.  Well I’m afraid you are wrong.  UKMedia Watch tweeted that it found the Times to be “generally good on issues of antisemitism.’  Naturally because Murdoch’s Times is also virulently pro-Zionist.

Zionism washes anti-Semitism whiter than white

The Zionist leaders of the Irish Jewish community were even worse.  The Jewish Chronicle reported that ‘Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, insisted Mr Myers was not antisemitic, and had “inadvertently stumbled into an antisemitic trope”.’  Zionists love ‘tropes’ possibly because it rhymes with ‘dopes’ which is as good a description of them as any.

I'm not sure how you 'stumble' into anti-Semitism or any form of racism.  You either are or you are not anti-Semitic.  Perhaps its permanently dark in the South of Ireland, such that columnists are forever stumbling into one error or another.  

Of course there is another explanation.  Besides being a rank anti-Semite, Kevin Myers is also a fervent Zionist.  His belief that Jews are grasping, money grubbing, never knowingly under-paid sits well with his support for Israel.  According to Cohen though, it is all down to Myers having ‘ a particular curmudgeonly, cranky, idiosyncratic style.’

Of course Myers is not the only non-Jewish Zionist who has stumbled into ‘anti-Semitic tropes’.  There is Arthur J Balfour, a passionate Zionist who in 1905 introduced, as Prime Minister, the Aliens Act whose aim was to keep Jews fleeing the Czarist pogroms out of Britain.  In the Introduction to the History of Zionism by Nahum Sokolow, who later became President of the Zionist Organisation, Balfour made his anti-Semitism clear when speaking about Zionism:

"For as I read its meaning it is, among other things, a serious endeavour to mitigate the age-long miseries created for Western civilisation by the presence in its midst of a body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile, but which it was equally unable to expel or to absorb. Surely, for this if for no other reason it should receive our support."

Balfour told Chaim Weizmann that he shared the “anti-Semitic postulates” of Cosima Wagner, who would become one of the first patrons of Adolf Hitler. Balfour did not believe that Jews could be assimilated into Gentile British society but he was happy to send them to Palestine.

Another strong supporter of Zionism, in whose Cabinet Balfour was Foreign Secretary, was Prime Minister David Lloyd George.  He described Herbert Samuel, who was Home Secretary and who went on to be the first British High Commissioner in Palestine as “a greedy, ambitious and grasping Jew with all the worst characteristics of his race.”

Indeed it is hard to think of a non-Jewish Zionist who wasn’t an anti-Semite.  From Edouard Drumont to Eichmann non-Jewish anti-Semites have nearly all been avid supporters of Zionism.   

It is no surprise that Frank Coughlan, a columnist in The Irish Independent should provide the answer to the mystery why UKMediaWatch,  Maurice Cohen of the Irish Jewish Representative Council and assorted Zionists believes that Kevin Myers has been much misunderstood.  Coughlan, who described the critics of Myers as ‘the haters’ ( a strange way to describe opponents of a myogynist and anti-Semite) explained thus:

It is ironic, for instance, that the anti-Semitic paragraphs that have surely finished his career came from the same pen that has defended Israeli foreign policy more consistently and eloquently than any other Irish journalist.

In November 2011, he wrote a waspish piece on the Irish left and its obsessive hatred of the Jewish homeland, a theme he has returned to again and again. The very same left that has now turned on him for being anti-Semitic.

'a year later, a headline had him stating emphatically that the only thing Africa had ever given the world was Aids.'- Frank Myers

After all, the poor misunderstood little Zionist was racist and abusive to everyone.  Coughlan writes that:  ‘‘More controversially again, a year later, a headline had him stating emphatically that the only thing Africa had ever given the world was Aids.’

Racist?  Perish the thought.  He was simply ‘Deliberately provocative’ even when ‘he picked at some tender scabs, particularly the treasured myths of romantic republicans.  Countess Markievicz, whom he thought mad, bad and dangerous to know, was caught in the crossfire a number of times.’

The Countess of Markievicz, for those who do not know, was a dissident member of the British aristocracy who supported Irish Republicanism.  She was ‘an Irish Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil politician, revolutionary nationalist, suffragette and socialist.’ who was the first woman elected to the House of Commons, though she did not take her seat and was also the second woman to hold a cabinet position in the world (Minister for Labour in the Irish Republic, 1919–1922)

Being a combination of Republican, socialist and suffragette the good Countess probably represented the trinity of evil as far as Myers was concerned!

In many ways Myers was an ideal journalist for the Murdoch press.  They will be hard pressed to find a replacement bigot.

This is why Netanyahu is proposing to ban Israeli human rights organisations receiving foreign funding

In the video above , Israeli soldiers fire at an unarmed Palestinian youth who is then beaten with a rifle about his head.  Clearly such incidents embarrass the Israeli government.  So what is its solution?  To prevent these violent armed thugs in uniform acting this way?  No, the Israeli government believes in attacking Israeli human rights groups like Btselem and Breaking the Silence who publicise such matters.

Hence why Ha’aretz reported that:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that the current law requiring some non-profit groups to disclose funding they receive from foreign governments is too weak, adding that he intends to push for legislation that would completely bar Israeli non-profit organizations from receiving foreign government funds.

Naturally the cruel and vicious occupation authorities then bar the parents from visiting their son and it would appear physically chain the boy to his bed, all with the co-operation of the Israeli hospital authorities.

Video: Israeli soldier shoots and beats fleeing teen

Ali Abunimah Rights and Accountability 1 August 2017

This video shows an Israeli soldier firing at Palestinian youths who are running away across a field. One of them, a 17-year-old boy, is hit and falls down. The Israeli soldier then strikes the boy on the head with the barrel of a gun as he lies on the ground, causing serious, potentially life-threatening injuries.

The youth, identified only as D.T. by the human rights group B’Tselem, suffered a fractured skull, bleeding inside his skull, a fractured rib and a bruised left lung. He required surgery and a prolonged stay in hospital where he was unconscious for five days.

B’Tselem said that the conduct of Israeli occupation forces in this incident “is particularly grave.”

The shooting took place on 10 March, in the occupied West Bank village of Silwad, where youths had earlier been responding to the incursions of Israeli occupation forces by throwing stones.

Shot while running away

A 17-year-old Palestinian suffered serious head injuries when he was shot and beaten as he ran away from Israeli soldiers.

Video of the incident, captured by the security cameras of a local gas station, was published this week by B’Tselem.

“A Border Police officer fired a sponge bullet at D.T., who was running away from him and posed no danger to anyone,” wrote B’Tselem. “Then, with D.T. lying on the ground, wounded and helpless, the officer hit him with the barrel of his gun, fracturing his skull and knocking him unconscious.”

Along with live rounds designed to kill, Israel employs a number of supposedly “less lethal” weapons to suppress protest against its military occupation, including, 22-caliber rifles, rubber-coated metal bullets and foam-tipped or sponge bullets, which are composed of an aluminum base and a dense foam nose.

But these weapons have nonetheless continued to claim children’s eyes and lives and to cause permanent disabilities.

Parents barred from visiting

B’Tselem said that it took another 15 minutes for the occupation forces to evacuate the boy to hospital “where he underwent head surgery” and was “treated as a dangerous prisoner, guarded round-the-clock by security personnel who prevented his parents from going near him.”

Israeli occupation authorities only gave his parents permits to go and see him for the first few days of his hospital stay and then cited “security” to ban his father altogether. During this traumatic period, the boy’s parents were not allowed to enter his room and could only look at him through a window.

Through all of this, according to B’Tselem, “D.T., a 17-year-old boy, remained in hospital completely alone, away from his home and family and restrained to the bed for part of the time.”

Routine violence and impunity

B’Tselem added: “While this account may be shocking, it is not all that uncommon: Firing unlawfully at a fleeing Palestinian youth, who posed no danger to anyone, and hitting him hard on the head – actions that could have resulted in disability or death; followed by disgraceful conduct during hospitalization in Israel, including placing restraints on an injured teenager and denying family visits are not a rare occurrence.”

In January this year, Israeli soldiers shot and killed Qusay al-Amour, 17, in Tuqu, a village near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Video from the scene shows Israeli soldiers violently dragging away the boy after he was shot.

In December 2016, Israeli occupation forces were filmed shooting and killing 17-year-old Ahmed Zeidani as he ran away, during a night raid on the West Bank village of Beit Rima.

And in April 2016, the Israeli army closed an investigation into Yisrael Shomer, a commander of its Binyamin Brigade, who in 2015 shot to death 17-year-old Muhammad al-Kasbeh while the Palestinian teenager was fleeing. The Israeli army decided that Shomer’s videotaped slaying of al-Kasbeh had been nothing more than “a professional mistake.”

B’Tselem described the closure of the case as “an integral part of the whitewash mechanism which is Israel’s military investigative system.”

The following month, B’Tselem announced it had stopped cooperating with the Israeli army unit that is supposed to investigate such abuses. The group said it no longer wanted to be a “fig leaf” for a system that guarantees impunity for perpetrators.

In the rare cases where an Israeli perpetrator is brought to trial, the penalty is normally a slap on the wrist.

B’Tselem reaffirmed in the case of D.T. that typically no one is held accountable, “guaranteeing that incidents of this sort will continue so long as the occupation does.”