Comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany are NOT anti-Semitic – Israelis do it all the time!

What is the difference between Israelis who chant ‘Death to the Arabs’ and Nazis who shouted ‘Death to the Jews?’

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism states that ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis’ could be anti-Semitic. But the strange thing is that anti-racist Israelis are the first to draw such comparisons. Are they also anti-Semitic under this dumb definition of anti-Semitism?

Perhaps Professor Zeev Sternhell who is emeritus head of the department of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and one of the world’s leading experts on fascism is also anti-Semitic? Perhaps Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion or Daniel Yates, New Labour Head of Brighton and Hove Council, both of whom support the IHRA, can tell us?

But before they do I should tell them that Zeev Sternhell is a child survivor of the Holocaust. At the age of 7 he was smuggled out of the Przemyśl ghetto in Poland into Lwow. He was cared for by a Polish Catholic family and baptised.  He is one of the few Zionists who isn’t a racist which is perhaps why in September 2008 he was the victim of a pipe bomb attack by Zionist terrorists.

Sternhell poses a rhetorical question. How will future historians judge when it was that the Israeli state had devolved into a ‘true monstrosity for its non-Jewish inhabitants’. Sternhell is, as I said a Zionist who has illusions in a period when Israel was not a racist entity. Nonetheless it is to his credit that he now accepts that racism in Israel today is akin to that in pre-Holocaust Germany. I would go further.  All the evidence is that racism in Israel today is far higher than ever anti-Semitism was in Nazi Germany.

Ian Kershaw described how in Bavaria, the state-sponsored Kristallnacht pogrom on November 2^nd 1938 not only met with little sympathy but that it was ‘condemned deep into the ranks of the Party.’ Just 5% of the population approved as opposed to 63% who displayed disgust and anger.  It was in rural Catholic Bavaria that the most vociferous condemnation of the pogrom was heard.  Kershaw notes,

another, more appealing, side of the popular reaction to the pogrom was its rejection on grounds of Christian compassion and common humanity.  Jewish eye-witness accounts abound with references to the kindness of ‘Aryan’ and ‘Christian’ neighbours who are anxious to point out the overwhelming rejection of the pogrom by the vast majority of the population. 

Jews in Munich ‘were lavish in their praise of the sympathetic response they encountered among non-Jewish people.’[Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich, pp.257-277].   This despite living in a police state unprecedented in its viciousness. 

Isaac Herzog, Israeli Labour leader explains why he doesn't want a Palestinian Prime Minister of Israel

Compare this with the Israelis who set up armchairs and coffee machines on a hilltop in order that they could get a better view and cheer on the ongoing destruction taking place in Gaza. [‘Israelis gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza, People drink, snack and pose for selfies against a background of explosions as Palestinian death toll mounts in ongoing offensive.’ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/israelis-cheer-gaza-bombing Harriet Sharwood, The Guardian, 20.7.14].  

 The only effect of the holocaust has been to reinforce the self-righteousness and moral turpitude of Israel’s Jews and to enable them to justify their own vicious racism.

The Nazis had to try very hard to instil anti-Semitism in the German population. The Nazis came to power not because of but despite their anti-Semitism.

Sternhell speaks of ‘the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here, the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people.’ Anyone familiar with Israeli society will know that the levels of racism in it are far higher than any equivalent Western society.

When we have, in the Labour Party, group like the Jewish Labour Movement going on about anti-Semitism whilst saying nothing about the horrific levels of racism in Israeli society, then we can accuse them of complicity. The JLM describe themselves as the ‘sister’ party of the Israeli Labour Party yet not once have they called out the visceral racism of the ILP. Israel claims to be the nation state of Jews, all Jews, yet the JLM and  their supporters keep silent, apart from smearing their Jewish opponents.

As Sternhell quite correctly says, the Jewish Nation State Law which explicitly denies Israeli Palestinians any right to be considered part of the same nation as Israeli Jews, because there is no Israeli nationality, is no different in principle from the Nuremburg Laws which changed the status of German Jews from citizens and nationals into subjects.

Daniel Blatman whose book The Death Marches: The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide won the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research in 2011is a Holocaust researcher at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Blatman wrote an article earlier this year International Holocaust Remembrance Day: An Israeli Hypocrisy. Moshe Machover in Why Israel is a Racist State quotes Blatman as saying that “Deputy Speaker Bezalel Smotrich’s admiration for the biblical genocidaire Joshua bin Nun leads him to adopt values that resemble those of the German SS.”

According to Blatman, the blueprint of the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Bezalel Smotrich and Miki Zohar, a Likud MK, for the Palestinians, both inside and outside Israel, would be akin to Jews under the Nuremburg Laws.

As Sternhell observes, Smotrich and Zohar don’t wish to harm Palestinians, as long as they do what they are told of course, merely to ‘deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression’.

The late Professor Amos Funkenstein, Head of the Faculty of History at Tel Aviv University when referring to the controversy over the refusal of soldiers to serve in the Occupied Territories, compared them to soldiers in the German army who refused to serve in concentration or extermination camps. [HOLOCAUST ANALOGIES - Repaying the Mortgage Return 2 March 1990] To those who asked how it was possible to compare the actions of Nazi soldiers with Israelis, Funkenstein replied,

“As a historian I know that every comparison is limited. On the other hand, without comparisons, no historiography is possible. Understanding a historical event is a kind of translation into the language of our time. If we would leave every phenomenon in its peculiarity, we could not make this translation. Every translation is an interpretation and every interpretation is also a comparison.”

It is not only anti-Zionists and anti-racists who make the comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany.  The racists also make the comparison.

The liberal left are often reticent about comparing Zionism to Nazism. Gilbert Achcar for example found it a ‘terrible comparison’ [Arabs and the Holocaust, pp.228. 234] and Shami Chakrabarti, in her report on racism in the Labour Party, argued that ‘it is always incendiary to compare the actions of Jewish people or institutions anywhere in the world to those of Hitler or the Nazis or to the perpetration of the Holocaust.’[The Shami Chakrabarti Inquiry, http://www.labour.org.uk/page/-/party-documents/ChakrabartiInquiry.pdf ]  By this logic one should not compare the settlers of Hebron, who daub the walls of Palestinians with the slogan ‘Arabs to the gas chambers’ with the Nazis. [See for example Donald Macintyre, Breaking silence over the horrors of Hebron, 22.6.04. The Independent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/breaking-silence-over-the-horrors-of-hebron-5355569.html]  Only Zionists should be allowed to make such comparisons.

If the Holocaust is to serve any purpose it is as a warning against the repetition of such horrors. Even Israel’s Deputy Chief of Staff Yair Golan recognised this when he said, at the 2016 Holocaust Remembrance Day, that

"If there's something that frightens me about Holocaust remembrance it's the recognition of the revolting processes that occurred in Europe in general, and particularly in Germany, back then – 70, 80 and 90 years ago – and finding signs of them here among us today in 2016."

When Israeli rabbis talk about the justified murder of children and infants in war time, as Rabbis Yitzhak Shapiro and Josef Elitzur did in Torat HaMelech, a 2011 book which was a guide to how Jews could legally kill non Jews, they are laying the basis for a future genocide.  As American journalist Max Blumenthall observed, Torat HaMelech is:

a virtual manual for Jewish extremist terror designed to justify the mass slaughter of civilians. And in that respect, it is not entirely different from the Israeli military’s Dahiya Doctrine, or Asa Kasher and Amos Yadlin’s concept of “asymmetrical warfare.” The key difference seems to be the crude, almost childlike logic the book’s author, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, marshals to justify the killing of non-Jewish civilians.

Nazism didn’t come from nowhere.  In Mein Kampf Hitler cites, with approval, the American practice of eugenics. Nazism wasn’t an aberration. It was supported by many of the West’s leaders, Churchill included, when it first took power. The destruction of the German Labour Movement met with approval by these people. It was only when Nazi Germany turned against British interests that the British ruling class opposed Hitler.

However the racism of the British Empire was not altogether different from the racism of the Nazis which is why the Colonial Office vetoed propaganda aimed at Africans which condemned the racism of the Nazis. [see Smyth, Rosaleen; Britain's African Colonies and British Propaganda during the Second World War, Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History 14,1 October 1985]

Isaac Herzog, Israeli Labour Party leader denies the party is 'Arab loving'

There can be little doubt that the edict of the Chief Rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, endorsed by dozens of other rabbis, to ban the renting of rooms or apartments by Jews to Arabs, bore a distinct resemblance to similar measures in pre-Holocaust Germany.  Safed Rabbi Boasts That anti-Arab Edict Worked

Or the mobs who in ‘liberal’ Tel Aviv chanted, during the attack on Gaza in 2014 that ‘‘There is no school tomorrow; there are no children left in Gaza’ resembled similar mobs in Berlin.

Those who seek to deflect from these comparisons by raising the bogey of ‘anti-Semitism’ are actively colluding in Israel’s Nazi like racism. We only have to look at the Pew Research Centre’s Survey Israel’s Religiously Divided Society which found that a plurality of Israeli Jews want to physically deport Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

Nazi like? Well expulsion of the Jews was the programme of the Nazis until 1941.

Tony Greenstein

See also

Are there any limits to Corbyn’s ritual self-humiliation? Being a Leader means standing up to your opponents not appeasing them

Nazi Zionist Comparisons – Israel’s metaphor for a disturbed conscience

Professors Ofer Cassif & Daniel Blatman of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem Compare Israel to Nazi Germany

Israel’s Occupation Forces Have Learnt Well from the Nazis

In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism

Zeev Sternhell

19.01.2018 02:00

They don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression

Israeli border police arrest a Palestinian in the West Bank, December 22, 2017Nasser Shiyoukhi/AP

I frequently ask myself how a historian in 50 or 100 years will interpret our period. When, he will ask, did people in Israel start to realize that the state that was established in the War of Independence, on the ruins of European Jewry and at the cost of the blood of combatants some of whom were Holocaust survivors, had devolved into a true monstrosity for its non-Jewish inhabitants. When did some Israelis understand that their cruelty and ability to bully others, Palestinians or Africans, began eroding the moral legitimacy of their existence as a sovereign entity?

The answer, that historian might say, was embedded in the actions of Knesset members such as Miki Zohar and Bezalel Smotrich and the bills proposed by Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked. The nation-state law, which looks like it was formulated by the worst of Europe’s ultra-nationalists, was only the beginning. Since the left did not protest against it in its Rothschild Boulevard demonstrations, it served as a first nail in the coffin of the old Israel, the one whose Declaration of Independence will remain as a museum showpiece. This archaeological relic will teach people what Israel could have become if its society hadn’t disintegrated from the moral devastation brought on by the occupation and apartheid in the territories.

The left is no longer capable of overcoming the toxic ultra-nationalism that has evolved here, the kind whose European strain almost wiped out a majority of the Jewish people. The interviews Haaretz’s Ravit Hecht held with Smotrich and Zohar (December 3, 2016 and October 28, 2017) should be widely disseminated on all media outlets in Israel and throughout the Jewish world. In both of them we see not just a growing Israeli fascism but racism akin to Nazism in its early stages.

Israeli Labour Party leader Herzog welcomes Trump to power

Like every ideology, the Nazi race theory developed over the years. At first it only deprived Jews of their civil and human rights. It’s possible that without World War II the “Jewish problem” would have ended only with the “voluntary” expulsion of Jews from Reich lands. After all, most of Austria and Germany’s Jews made it out in time. It’s possible that this is the future facing Palestinians.

Indeed, Smotrich and Zohar don’t wish to physically harm Palestinians, on condition that they don’t rise against their Jewish masters. They only wish to deprive them of their basic human rights, such as self-rule in their own state and freedom from oppression, or equal rights in case the territories are officially annexed to Israel. For these two representatives of the Knesset majority, the Palestinians are doomed to remain under occupation forever. It’s likely that the Likud’s Central Committee also thinks this way. The reasoning is simple: The Arabs aren’t Jews, so they cannot demand ownership over any part of the land that was promised to the Jewish people.

According to the concepts of Smotrich, Zohar and Shaked, a Jew from Brooklyn who has never set foot in this country is the legitimate owner of this land, while a Palestinian whose family has lived here for generations is a stranger, living here only by the grace of the Jews. “A Palestinian,” Zohar tells Hecht, “has no right to national self-determination since he doesn’t own the land in this country. Out of decency I want him here as a resident, since he was born here and lives here – I won’t tell him to leave. I’m sorry to say this but they have one major disadvantage – they weren’t born as Jews.”

From this one may assume that even if they all converted, grew side-curls and studied Torah, it would not help. This is the situation with regard to Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers and their children, who are Israeli for all intents and purposes. This is how it was with the Nazis. Later comes apartheid, which could apply under certain circumstances to Arabs who are citizens of Israel. Most Israelis don’t seem worried.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day: An Israeli Hypocrisy

If a racism survey were held in Western countries like the one on anti-Semitism, Israel would be near the top of the list

Daniel Blatman

Ha’aretz, Jan 28, 2018 9:03 PM

As happens every year, a few days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27), the Diaspora Affairs Ministry releases a report on the state of anti-Semitism in the world. This is a fixed ritual.

The report details the number of cases in which gravestones in some remote Jewish cemetery in Ukraine or Germany were vandalized and how many hooligans spat in the faces of Jews wearing kippot in London or Munich, as if they were a threat to Jewish existence, almost like an SS unit operating in Lithuania in 1942.

On Sunday, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, wearing his other hat as diaspora affairs minister, presented the report, whose data – as Ofer Aderet showed in this paper – answer the accepted description of fake news, to say the very least. Worried, Bennett pointed out the rise in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain – 30 percent more than last year! – and stated, based on the figures from the French police, that one out of every three hate crimes in France targeted Jews. The other two out of three of course targeted Muslims and blacks, but that is less important.

"Anti-Semitism is the dangerous fuel that has inflamed our enemies forever," said Bennett. "We must ensure that every Jew everywhere in the world can live their lives in safety and pride. We must act in every way we can to fight modern anti-Semitism in order to guarantee the safety of the Jewish people, in Israel and in the Diaspora."

Since the UN General Assembly unanimously passed Resolution 60/7 in 2005, which designates January 27 – the date the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp was liberated – as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, it provides another opportunity for the chorus of hypocrites and the self-righteous in Israel, who get another day to spread their regular messages on anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and the security of the Jewish people.

The winter Holocaust Remembrance Day has been added to the one in the spring – Israel’s “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day” – as an occasion to blather on and cover up the injustice Israel is carrying out here and now. Israel opens its commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2018 with a breathtaking campaign of racist expulsion of African refugees.

It would be appropriate to go back to the wording of the resolution and examine how much of the General Assembly’s decision is upheld in Israel. In its very first section, Resolution 60/7 mentions the connection between the resolution and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, “which proclaims that everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth therein, without distinction of any kind, such as race, religion or other status.”

Resolution 60/7 continues: “Recalling article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person; Recalling also article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which state that everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.

“Bearing in mind that the founding principle of the Charter of the United Nations, ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,’ is testimony to the indelible link between the United Nations and the unique tragedy of the Second World War.”

The resolution mentions explicitly, in this context, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which was adopted in 1948 “in order to avoid repetition of genocides such as those committed by the Nazi regime.”

Later, Resolution 60/7 mentions the Jewish tragedy, but here too the distance is great between the resolution and Israel’s manipulation of what it says: “Reaffirming that the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities, will forever be a warning to all people of the dangers of hatred, bigotry, racism and prejudice.”

The resolution then calls on the UN member countries to “develop educational programs that will inculcate future generations with the lessons of the Holocaust in order to help to prevent future acts of genocide; rejects any denial of the Holocaust as an historical event, either in full or part; condemns without reserve all manifestations of religious intolerance, incitement, harassment or violence against persons or communities based on ethnic origin or religious belief, wherever they occur.”

Israel, which is about to send tens of thousands of African refugees on a long journey of wandering that will put their lives at risk, is the least appropriate country to speak in the name of the principles of UN General Assembly Resolution 60/7.

An endless number of examples prove that the debate in Israel is based on hypocrisy, ignorance and evil, and completely contradicts the principles set down in Resolution 60/7. Remember, Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev described the Sudanese refugees as “a cancer in the body of the nation.” This is explicit incitement on an ethnic basis, the type that the UN resolution explicitly comes out against.

Deputy Knesset Speaker MK Bezalel Smotrich (Habayit Hayehudi) presented his phased plan, according to which the Palestinians in the occupied territories (and possibly Israeli citizens, too) would become, in the best case, subjects without rights with a status that reminds us of German Jews after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. To the extent that they do not agree to the plan, they will simply be cleansed from here. If they refuse to leave, they will be uprooted violently, which would lead to genocide.

Another elected official from the ruling coalition, Likud's Miki Zohar, did not hesitate to state that the Arabs have a problem that has no solution – they are not Jews and therefore their fate in this land cannot be the same as that of the Jews. Where is Resolution 60/7 and where are Smotrich and Zohar? Prof. Zeev Sternhell wrote in this paper earlier this month that this racism is “akin to Nazism in its early stages.” I think it is Nazism in every way and fashion, even if comes from the school of the victims of historical Nazism.

But this is not just a dialogue between minor political figures. When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dehumanizes his own citizens and treats them as if they are the “huge quantities” flocking to the polls to bring down the right-wing government, he loses the right to speak in the name of Resolution 60/7. Of course, we must not forget the statements and comments of the religious leadership, which are a symbol and example for large parts of the national religious community in Israel.

This community has turned the Holocaust into one of the central components of its identity, but its treatment of its lessons is the most hypocritical and disgusting. There are hundreds of examples of this, if not thousands. One is Rabbi David Batzri, who in 2006 came out against the establishment of an Arab-Jewish school, saying the “establishment of such a school is an act of impurity and contamination. It is impossible to mix the impure with the pure. They are a blight, an evil Satan, a plague. The Arabs are donkeys so the question must be asked as to why God did not create them walking on four legs? So the answer is they must build and clean.”

Rabbi Dov Lior, one of the most important rabbis of religious Zionism, whose racist teachings are followed by thousands, said in 2013 that he did “not know how to get rid of [the Arabs]. We believe the day is not far off when we will achieve the cleaning of our entire land from the terrorists and their supporters, and they should go to Saudi Arabia.”

Books and pamphlets praising the murderers of Arabs or permitting the shedding of their blood, such as “Baruch Hagever” and “Torat Hamelech,” are legitimate literature among a number of those who wear knitted kippot. Many other Jews agree with the opinions appearing in these books, even if they have not read them or do not even know of their existence.

More than anything else, the thundering silence of the Yad Vashem World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem is disappointing and embarrassing. Precisely now, in the face of the beginning of the deportation campaign for asylum seekers, the institution entrusted with preserving the lessons of the Holocaust should have come out loudly in the name of the principles of Resolution 60/7.

It should stand at the head of the campaign being organized in various circles in an attempt to revoke the decree, which casts a great stain on Israel’s right to speak in the name of the victims of the terrible disaster that befell the Jewish people and the human race in general. But it seems this is not going to happen. Yad Vashem is known for its silence on moral questions, unless they touch on what happened during the Holocaust.

And this is how Israel has become the Western country in which the most extreme, racist discourse is being conducted against ethnic minorities, whether they are refugees from Africa or Arabs. If a racism survey was conducted in the West, similar to the report on anti-Semitism that the local chorus of hypocrites bandies about every January 27, Israel would find itself near the top of the list.

Daniel Blatman is a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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The Lie of Israel’s Claim to be the only Middle East state to respect freedom of religion

Despite its propaganda claims to the contrary, Israel is not a country that respects freedom of religion. The story below concerns the attack within the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, on a peaceful demonstration by its priests.

Zionist Propaganda Claim

Only a few days ago the heads of the Roman Catholic, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox churches in Jerusalem called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to block draft legislation, which is reportedly aimed at expropriating their property.

In recent days a cemetery at a Christian monastery near the central Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem, has been vandalized. The monks responsible for its upkeep, who visit the cemetery every few days, found some 30 smashed headstones on Wednesday.  A report Headstones Smashed in Christian Cemetery Near Jerusalem in Suspected Hate Crime told how: this was the second time that the cemetery of the Beit Jamal Monastery was defaced. 

In 2013, a firebomb was thrown at a door and hateful slogans scrawled on the monastery walls. It was also damaged in a hate crime in 2016, when unknown perpetrators entered the prayer house and smashed statues. ‘At the Beit Jamal Monastery for the fourth time in five years headstones and crosses have been smashed.’

Imagine the outcry if a Jewish synagogue in London was vandalised four times in 5 years.  The outcry about antisemitism would be heard from John O'Groats to Lands End yet in Israel attacks on Christian and Moslem places of worship are a regular occurrence, aided and abetted by the atmosphere of religious intolerance in a government which doesn't even respect liberal or reform strands of Judaism. See Israel Tells Reform Jews: You’re Not Really Jewish, but Your Money Is Just Jewish Enough

Among a large section of the National Religious sector in Israel, there is nothing but contempt and hatred for Christianity notwithstanding the support of Christian Zionism for Israel. When the leader of the fascist Lehava, a group which campaigns against miscegenation (mixed race sexual relations) Benzi Gopstein called a few years ago for arson at mosques and churches nothing was done to prosecute him despite a complaint from the Vatican. Burning of Christian churches in Israel justified, far-Right Jewish leader says

Unsurprisingly in the past few years there have been repeated attempts at arson at major churches such as the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fisheries. Unlike other arson attacks, the Police secured a conviction of Yinon Reuveni, who was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment, for an attack which almost destroyed one of the most ancient and important churches in Israel.

According to Ha’aretz since 2009 53 mosques and churches have been vandalised with only 9 prosecutions.

We have also seen direct attacks by the Israeli State with the advent of the Muezzin law which prevents the Muslim call to prayer in the morning by mosques via loudspeakers. No such inhibition or restriction is placed on Jewish use of amplified sound. Ramped-up muezzin bill allows police to confiscate mosques’ loudspeakers

The arrests and attack on priests at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem are not new. In recent months there seems to have been a constant war of attrition against one of the most holy sites in the Christian religion, where Christ was reputed to have been crucified and entombed. See Israel’s War on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre forces it to close

Tony Greenstein  

In video - Israeli forces assault priests, detain one in Jerusalem

Oct. 24, 2018 11:49 A.M. (Updated: Oct. 25, 2018 3:53 P.M.)

JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- Israeli forces and police assaulted several Coptic Orthodox priests in front of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem, and forcefully detained one of them on Wednesday morning.

Prior to the assault, the Coptic Orthodox Church organized a peaceful protest near Deir al-Sultan Monastery, located on the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, against an Israeli decision denying the church the right to conduct the needed renovation work inside the holy site.

It is noteworthy that the Israeli municipality of Jerusalem continues to conduct unauthorized renovation work for the Ethiopian Coptic Church section without the approval of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Eyewitnesses said that Israeli soldiers and police officers surrounded the priests who were protesting, before assaulting and pushing them with excessive use of force, causing them several injuries.

Witnesses added that the Israeli police forcibly removed the priests and detained one of them, before allowing the Israeli municipality workers into the holy site.

The Islamic Christian Committee to Defend Jerusalem and Holy Sites condemned the assault on the Coptic Orthodox priests and denounced the intervention of Israeli authorities in the renovation works of the holy site.

The committee pointed out that it is not within its jurisdiction to intervene in issues of occupied East Jerusalem, considering the area is subjected to the rules of international humanitarian law (IHL).

The committee called upon the Egyptian government and the Christian world to immediately intervene to stop Israeli authorities from these attacks and not to enter the holy site under the pretext of restoration, since the Coptic Orthodox Church is the only authorized body to do so.

The committee also called on the world to stand by the Palestinian right to sovereignty over its land in the holy city and the rest of its other occupied territories, and to stop the measures carried out by the Israeli occupation in violation of the resolutions of international law and international humanitarian law.

Abbas and Hamas Abuse and Torture of Palestinians is a Gift to the Israeli Government

Palestine: Authorities Crush Dissent

A new Report by Human Rights Watch Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent finds that both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority systematically use torture as an instrument of policy. The Report begins with an overview of what the situation in the Occupied Territories is:

In the 25 years since Palestinians gained a degree of self-rule over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, their authorities have established machineries of repression to crush dissent, including through the use of torture.

Both the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) in Gaza have in recent years carried out scores of arbitrary arrests for peaceful criticism of the authorities, particularly on social media, among independent journalists, on university campuses, and at demonstrations. As the Fatah-Hamas feud deepened despite attempts at reconciliation, PA security services have targeted supporters of Hamas and vice versa. Relying primarily on overly broad laws that criminalize activity such as causing “sectarian strife” or insulting “higher authorities,” the PA and Hamas use detention to punish critics and deter them and others from further activism. In detention, security forces routinely taunt, threaten, beat, and force detainees into painful stress positions for hours at a time.

It is no surprise that the PA, which is a sub-contractor for the Israeli State and military, should torture Palestinians. This group of thugs and misfits has no other reason to exist other than to prevent a new Palestinian uprising. As the Quisling-in-Chief, Mahmoud Abbas once said, co-operation with the Israeli security services is ‘sacrosanct’. Or as the Times of Israel put it:

Strange as this may sound, despite the ongoing political schism between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and the open hatred between Ramallah and Washington, the security coordination remains in place, at the direction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and both Israeli and Palestinian security forces have a share in preventing attacks on Israelis.

What will be of surprise to many is that Hamas, which purports to be a Palestinian resistance organisation, should also engage in the torture and abuse of Palestinians. It should not however be that surprising. As an Islamist organisation that was the Gaza branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas is a right-wing religious group. It has no social programme worthy of the name. Like all similar religious groups its politics are backward looking, socially and politically. Islam is a means of justifying repression. Hamas’s origins lie in the desire of the Israeli state to find a counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism. Hamas was virtually the creation of the Israeli state.

The actions of both Hamas and Fateh/PA are deeply shameful. The Times of Israel article below is headed ‘Calls by Palestinians to safeguard rights ring hollow’. After all how can Palestinians oppose Israel’s use of torture when the so-called Palestinian organisations do exactly the same? It is no surprise that the Zionist media will exploit this for all its worth.  Both Abbas and Haniyeh, the Hamas Prime Minister, should hang their heads in shame.

There is no point in either Hamas or the PA denying that torture is routinely used. The Report by Human Rights Watch is clearly a thorough and painstaking one. Neither Hamas or the PA are prepared to record all interrogations so their denials will cut no ice.

Those who have had illusions in Hamas should, as a result of this, think again. It would seem that their main goal is not to create a free and independent Palestine but a police state run according to their interpretation of Islam.

In using torture and other methods of silencing dissent Hamas is playing the Zionist game.

Palestine: Authorities Crush Dissent

Arbitrary Arrests, Torture Systematic

 (Ramallah) – The Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas authorities in Gaza routinely arrest and torture peaceful critics and opponents, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. As the Palestinian Authority-Hamas feud has deepened, each has targeted the other’s supporters.

The 149-page report, “‘Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent:’ Arbitrary Arrest and Torture Under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas,” evaluates patterns of arrest and detention conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 25 years after the Oslo Accords granted Palestinians a degree of self-rule over these areas and more than a decade after Hamas seized effective control over the Gaza Strip. Human Rights Watch detailed more than two dozen cases of people detained for no clear reason beyond writing a critical article or Facebook post or belonging to the wrong student group or political movement.

“Twenty-five years after Oslo, Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states,”

said Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch. “Calls by Palestinian officials to safeguard Palestinian rights ring hollow as they crush dissent.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed 147 witnesses, including former detainees and their relatives, lawyers, and representatives of nongovernmental groups, and reviewed photographic evidence, medical reports, and court documents. The report reflects substantive responses to the findings from the main security agencies implicated in the underlying abuses.

Systematic arbitrary arrests and torture violate major human rights treaties to which Palestine recently acceded. Few security officers have been prosecuted and none have been convicted for wrongful arrest or torture, as far as Human Rights Watch has been able to determine.

“The fact that Israel systematically violates Palestinians’ most basic rights is no reason to remain silent in the face of the systematic repression of dissent and the torture Palestinian security forces are perpetrating,”

Palestinian riot police confront demonstrators protesting security coordination between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Israel, in the West Bank city of Ramallah on June 23, 2014. © 2014 Mohamad Torokman/Reuters

said Shawan Jabarin, executive director of the Palestinian human rights organization al-Haq and a member of the Human Rights Watch Middle East and North Africa Advisory Committee.

Human Rights Watch met with the Palestinian Authority Intelligence Services in Ramallah, but was unable to accept an offer from Hamas authorities to meet in Gaza because Israel refused to grant permits for senior Human Rights Watch officials to enter the Gaza Strip for this purpose. Israeli authorities also rejected Human Rights Watch’s request for senior representatives to enter Gaza during October 2018 to present this report at a news conference.  

Both authorities deny that abuses amount to more than isolated cases that are investigated and for which wrongdoers are held to account. The evidence that Human Rights Watch collected contradicts these claims.

Palestinian authorities often rely on overly broad laws that criminalize insulting “higher authorities,” creating “sectarian strife,” or “harming the revolutionary unity” to detain dissidents for days or weeks, only to release most of them without referring them to trial, but often leaving charges outstanding. Palestinian Authority security forces also held 221 Palestinians for various periods between January 2017 and August 2018 in administrative detention without charge or trial under a regional governor’s order, according to the Palestinian statutory watchdog Independent Commission for Human Rights.  

A number of former Palestinian Authority detainees interviewed by Human Rights Watch had also been detained by Israel, which coordinates with Palestinian Authority forces on security issues. In Gaza, Hamas authorities sometimes condition release on the detainee signing a commitment to halt criticism or protests.

On September 27, the Independent Commission for Human Rights reported that Hamas security forces in Gaza had arrested more than 50 people affiliated with Fatah and that Palestinian Authority forces in the West Bank had detained more than 60 affiliated with Hamas, in the span of just a few days.

In the cases documented, Palestinian forces often threatened, beat, and forced detainees into painful stress positions for prolonged periods, including using cables or ropes to hoist up arms  behind the back. Police often used similar tactics to obtain confessions by people detained on drug or other criminal charges. Security forces also routinely coerced detainees into providing access to their cellphones and social media accounts. These measures appear aimed at punishing dissidents and deterring them and others from further activism.

While the authorities regularly receive citizen complaints and have systems to investigate them, only a minority have resulted in a finding of wrongdoing, according to data provided by the agencies. Even fewer led to an administrative sanction or referral for criminal prosecution.

Palestinian authorities should abide by the international human rights treaties they acceded to over the last five years. Hamas authorities said in a letter to Human Rights Watch that it considered itself committed to uphold all international treaties ratified by the State of Palestine. Compliance requires Palestinian authorities to ensure that an independent body inspects detention sites and that the authorities investigate complaints credibly and impose appropriate sanctions if warranted.

The systematic practice of torture by Palestinian authorities may amount to a crime against humanity prosecutable at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Human Rights Watch has long encouraged the ICC prosecutor to open a formal probe into Israeli and Palestinian conduct in Palestine, which is a party to the ICC.

The US and European states provide support to Palestinian Authority security forces. While the US in 2018 slashed funding for health and education services for Palestinians, including all its support for the United Nations Relief Works and Agency (UNRWA), it continued to set aside funding for security forces, including allocating US $60 million in International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) nonlethal assistance to Palestinian Authority security forces for the 2018 fiscal year and $35 million for the 2019 fiscal year. Qatar, Iran, and Turkey financially support Hamas authorities. All of these countries should suspend assistance to agencies that routinely torture dissidents – including, for the Palestinian Authority, the Intelligence Services, Preventive Security, and Joint Security Committee, and, for Hamas, Internal Security – as long as systematic torture and other serious abuses continue.

“The attacks by both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas on dissidents and demonstrators, reporters and bloggers, are both systematic and unpunished,”

Porteous said.

“Governments that want to help the Palestinian people develop the rule of law should not support security forces that actively undermine it.”

Accounts from Former Detainees

“I was heading home. At the Einab checkpoint, I happened to see the prime minister’s convoy being held up on the checkpoint. I filmed this scene. After the car I was in and the convoy was allowed to cross the checkpoint, we were stopped by one of his escorts. I was arrested and taken to the station of the Preventative Security Forces in Tulkarm. I was detained in Tulkarm and in Ramallah for four days.”

·         Jihad Barakat, 29, journalist on his arrest by Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in the West Bank in July 2017.

“I had written on a hot summer day, ‘Do your children [referring to Hamas leaders] sleep on the floor like ours do?’ I think the post bothered security forces and, as a result, I was summoned to appear before Internal Security and later was charged with the crime of ‘misuse of technology’… I was detained for 15 days... Later, I was released after an agreement with the Interior Ministry. The agreement pledged not to write or incite against the government.”

·         Amer Balousha, 26-year-old activist and journalist on his arrest in July 2017 by Hamas authorities in Gaza.

“A plainclothes officer met me at the door [of the Intelligence Services Prison in Jericho]. He blindfolded me, handcuffed my hands behind my back, and started hitting me and slamming me against the walls… this lasted for about 10 minutes. The officer took me to the warden’s office and took the blindfold off, telling me that this was my “welcome”... [an officer] then said hang him, as in take him to shabeh. I was transferred from the office to the toilets, there they blindfolded me again, handcuffed me behind my back, put a piece of cloth and rope at the center of my handcuffs and pulled it up to the side of the door. There was a hook between the door and the ceiling. They pulled the cloth up, raising my hands behind my back. My legs were not shackled, and the tip of my legs were touching the ground. I was held in this stress position for 45 minutes. An officer hit me with a big stick on my back, between my shoulders, more than once... After they put me down, I felt my hands were numb up to my shoulders and I could not hold myself up… [the next day] the Juicer (nickname for his interrogator in Jericho) told me that ‘I promise you that you will not leave this place except on a wheelchair.”

·         Alaa Zaqeq, 27, detained by PA security forces in April 2017 for three weeks based on his activism as a graduate student with a student group affiliated with Hamas.

“I was forced to stand blindfolded the entire day in a room called the bus. There were 5 or 10 people with me. On occasion they sat us down in small chairs, but we needed permission for everything we did, including sleeping or speaking. I spent 30 days there… After the first day, the beating started, they asked me to open my hands and started striking me with a cable and whipping my feet.”

·         Fouad Jarada, 34-year-old journalist with the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, arrested in June 2017 by Hamas forces three days after a Facebook post critical of a Hamas ally and a string of critical news reports. Authorities held him for more than two months on charges of “harming revolutionary unity,” releasing him only when the PA agreed to arrest journalists considered close to Hamas in the West Bank.

“I still have nightmares… [that] the cell is strangling me and I cannot breathe.”

·         Fares Jbour, 24, held for 24 days in January 2017 over his activities with a Hamas-affiliated student group at a university in Hebron in the West Bank

“The guys are afraid of writing. They don't try. They don't share. They don’t even put “like” to anyone who wrote anything criticizing the government. They are scared.”

·         Mohammad Lafi, 24-year-old rapper from the Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza, held for five days in January 2017 by Hamas authorities after he released a music video entitled “Your Right” that called for people to demonstrate and participated in protests around the electricity crisis.

“I feel I am being monitored, as if I’m under a microscope. I was released, but, until now, I feel I am not free. They broke our desire to defend citizens’ rights.”

·         Taghreed Abu Teer, 47-year-old journalist with the Palestinian Broading Corporation, detained for 11 days in April 2017 by Hamas authorities after attending conferences for rival Fatah in Ramallah.

“I live in a country where it is forbidden to express my opinion. This country is not the one we dream about, not at all. I don’t think that there is a Palestinian who would accept that all this struggle would go, and all the years of our lives, not just ours, but those before us, so that in the end we would have a system of government that has taken the shape of a dictatorship. It cannot be… it is very painful that we have a regime before ever having a state. Our problem with the PA is that they are building security forces and controlling people when we don’t even control the checkpoint.”

·         Hamza Zbeidat, 31-year-old who works for a development nongovernmental group, detained for two days by PA security forces in May 2016 for a Facebook post that called on Palestinians “to struggle against the PA like we struggle against Israel.”

Abbas and Hamas use systematic torture to crush dissent – Human Rights Watch

In major NGO report on Palestinian Authority and Gaza, dozens of ex-detainees — critics, activists, political opponents — describe brutality including beating, forced contortion

By TOI staff and AP 23 October 2018, 10:00 am 11

Illustrative: The hands of a young man tied with rope (nito100; iStock by Getty Images)

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday accused both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas of routinely engaging in “systematic” unwarranted arrests and torture of critics, suspected dissidents and political opponents, and of developing “parallel police states” in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, respectively. 

In a 149-page report based on interviews with 147 witnesses, Human Rights Watch detailed a common method of abuse and torture known as shabeh — used both by the PA and Hamas — in which detainees are placed in painful physical positions for lengthy periods of time. Such practices cause distress and trauma to detainees, while often leaving “little or no trace on the body,” the report said.

The widespread occurrence of such brutality indicates that “torture is governmental policy for both the PA and Hamas,” HRW stated.

Shabeh techniques include forcing detainees into squats, powerfully stretching their arms above or behind them, and leaving them standing or sitting in child-sized chairs for hours on end.

Palestinian security troops in Hebron, November 14, 2017. (Wisam Hashlamoun/Flash90)

In one example from Gaza, 

“a PA civil servant, arrested after a friend tagged him in a Facebook post calling for protests on the electricity crisis, spent most of his days in the Internal Security’s Gaza City detention center subjected to positional abuse… causing him to feel ‘severe pain in my kidneys and spine’ and as if his neck would ‘break’ and his ‘body is tearing up inside,'” the report said.

In the West Bank, a detained journalist had his hands tied by rope to the ceiling of a holding room while officers “slowly pulled the rope to apply pressure to his arms, which caused him to feel so much pain that he had to ask an officer to pull his pants up after he used the toilet because he could not do it himself.”

According to the report, “Palestinian forces in both the West Bank and Gaza regularly use threats of violence, taunts, solitary confinement, and beatings, including lashing and whipping of the feet of detainees, to elicit confessions, punish, and intimidate activists.”

 

 The report, titled “Two Authorities, One Way, Zero Dissent,” cited more than 20 cases in which activists were arrested for critical news articles or social media posts, as well as membership in certain groups or movements frowned upon by authorities. Hamas and the PA regularly abused each other’s activists in the territories they control, it added.

Saying the systematic use of torture could amount to a crime against humanity under the United Nations’ Convention against Torture, HRW called on the United States, the European Union and other international powers to halt all aid to the Palestinian agencies responsible for persecution and abuse — including the PA Preventative Security Forces, General Intelligence Services and Joint Security Committee, and the Hamas-run Internal Security — “until the authorities curb those practices and hold those responsible for abuse accountable.”

“Twenty five years after Oslo, Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states,” said Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch.

“Calls by Palestinian officials to safeguard Palestinian rights ring hollow as they crush dissent,” he said.

“Systematic arbitrary arrests and torture violate major human rights treaties to which Palestine recently acceded,” the rights group said, and warned that the “systematic practice of torture by Palestinian authorities may amount to a crime against humanity prosecutable at the International Criminal Court.”

Hamas security forces in Gaza City, April 4, 2013. (Wissam Nassar/FLASH90)

Both Hamas and the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority denied the accusations.

The two Palestinian factions split in 2007 after Hamas violently seized the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas. For more than a decade, Hamas has maintained an iron grip on power and suppressed any signs of public dissent, including street protests and on social media.

Despite having Western backing, Abbas has also silenced dissent in the areas of the West Bank he administers under past agreements with Israel. Last year, he clamped down on social media and news websites with a vaguely worded decree that critics say allows his government to jail anyone on charges of harming “national unity” or the “social fabric.”

Mohammed Khatib, a 20-year-old law student and activist with Hamas’ student branch in the West Bank, told The Associated Press he was arrested last month and held for 19 days at a Palestinian intelligence center in the West Bank city of Ramallah. He said he was forced to stand for hours at a time and hung by his handcuffed hands to a door for 15 minutes, a stress position meant to cause pain but leave no sign of injury.

“This is not only a violation of human rights, it is a violation of human dignity, a violation of basic morals,” he said, adding that he believed the aim was to intimidate him.

HRW’s report also highlights other tactics used to silence Palestinian dissent and punish activists, among them the seizing of phones, leaving investigations and charges open, and coercing detainees to promise to stop any further criticism.

In Gaza, Taghreed Abu Teer, a 47-year-old journalist, told the AP that she was held by Hamas authorities for 11 days and interrogated under “humiliating circumstances” for her activities with the rival Fatah movement.

Palestinian police take part in a training session in the West Bank city of Ramallah in 2014. (Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

She said she was kept in a dark cell for days at a time and forced to stand for lengthy periods. Although she was not physically beaten, she said she could hear the screams of men being tortured nearby, and that at one point, a man with a whip threatened to beat her as well. More than a year and a half later, she still cries when she recalls the “unforgettable experience.”

“As long as I was in the cell, I was wondering what had caused me to end up here,” she said. She spoke at a relative’s home so her six children would not hear about the ordeal.

Abu Teer said interrogators threatened to charge her with collaboration with Israel, widely feared as a stigma, and that most of the questions focused on a three-day trip she made to the West Bank, where she met senior Fatah officials and briefed them about the situation in Gaza. She said interrogators accused her of inciting the Palestinian Authority to make financial cuts and other punitive measures against Gaza, a tactic meant to squeeze Hamas.

She denied all the allegations, saying she had only led protests and lobbied for ending the Hamas-Fatah split.

While she was never charged, Hamas officers advised her “to be quiet” and focus on her home and family, “which I considered a veiled threat rather than advice,” she added.

alestinian security forces routinely torture critics, rights group says