Apartheid Israel and the Funeral of Brave Journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh (RIP)

Israeli police ​attack funeral procession for shot journalist Shireen Abu AqlehShow more

TV images show Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Aqleh’s coffin falling as police grab Palestinian flags from crowd
Israeli forces have attacked a funeral procession for a Palestinian American journalist shot dead this week, kicking and hitting
people with batons and causing mourners carrying her coffin to lose balance and drop it to the ground.

Palestinian flags – which are rarely seen – were openly waved by many of the thousands of people who circumvented roadblocks
in occupied East Jerusalem to join the funeral procession on Friday for Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Aqleh. Mourners
sang the Palestinian national anthem and chanted “Palestine! Palestine!”.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/13/israeli-forces-storm-jerusalem-hospital-as-coffin-of-slain-journalist-emerges

Chris Hedges: Alice Walker & the Price of Conscience
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/04/26/chris-hedges-alice-walker-the-price-of-conscience/

UN Special Rapporteur accuses Israel of apartheid in UNHRC report
'Israel has imposed upon Palestine an apartheid reality in a post-apartheid world,' says Michael Lynk, UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in occupied territories
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-apartheid-un-special-rapporteur-report-human-rights-council

Harvard Law School ‘apartheid’ report leaves Israel’s defenders speechless
Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic's recent report declaring that Israel is practicing apartheid is a victory for Palestinian human rights.
https://mondoweiss.net/2022/04/harvard-law-school-apartheid-report-leaves-israels-defenders-speechless/

The December 4, 1948 New York Times ran a letter by Albert Einstein and other Jews re Menachem Begin’s visit to the US, exposing his Herut Party which evolved into today’s Likud. Given that Achimeir and von Weisl wrote for Herut’s newspaper, Einstein’s evaluation of
Begin’s Revisionist commitment bears quotation:

“Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our time is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the ‘Freedom Party’
(Tnuat HaHerut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties….
They have preached an admixture of ultranationalism, religious mysticism and racial superiority… it is imperative that the truth
about Mr Begin and his movement be made known in this country.”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/24/zionism-in-the-age-of-the-dictators/

Israeli firm helped governments hack activists, journalists and politicians
Spyware was installed via fake advocacy group websites, including those masquerading as Amnesty and Black Lives Matter, reearchers found
An Israeli spyware firm sold tools to a variety of governments to spy on politicians, dissidents, human rights activists, embassy workers and journalists,
according to a Microsoft report.

Researchers from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who worked with Microsoft, issued a report on Thursday about
the potential targets of Candiru, a Tel Aviv-based firm selling "untraceable" spyware.
According to the report, the technology enabled clients to hack into Microsoft Windows, infecting and monitoring computers and phones
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-spyware-firm-sold-governments-tools-hack-activists-journalists-politicians

Scientific American Retracted Pro-Palestine Article Without Any Factual Errors
After right-wing outrage, the esteemed journal removed an opinion piece expressing solidarity with Palestinians under Israeli bombardment.
https://theintercept.com/2021/07/01/scientific-american-palestine-israel/

The Genocide of the Palestinian People: An International Law and Human Rights Perspective More often [genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong
https://ccrjustice.org/genocide-palestinian-people-international-law-and-human-rights-perspective

by Miko Peled

“I know first-hand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation.
The parallels to my own beloved South Africa are painfully stark indeed,”

“Those who turn a blind eye to injustice actually perpetuate injustice. If you are neutral in situations of injustice,
you have chosen the side of the oppressor,”

Desmond Tutu

a speech Tutu delivered in Boston in 2002. “He compared the power of the “Jewish lobby” to Hitler,
and Israeli policies to those of the South African apartheid regime.

What the archbishop actually said was:

People are scared in this country to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful.”

He went on to say:

"We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet,
Milosovic and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end, they bit the dust.”

According to Swiler, “those comments go beyond legitimate criticism of Israel.”

Israel begs world to keep paying its occupation bills
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-begs-world-keep-paying-its-occupation-bills

‘Settler violence is part of Israel’s official policy,’ experts say — but ‘Washington Post’ buries that angle
"Continuous, systemic violence meted out by settlers is part of Israel’s official policy, driving massive takeover of Palestinian" lands,
B'Tselem says in a groundbreaking report, but the Washington Post's recent article on settler violence suggests that the Israeli government is
taking it on vigorously.
https://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/settler-violence-is-part-of-israels-official-policy-experts-say-but-washington-post-buries-that-angle/

Note how the Israeli response to the continued success of the Palestinian boycott movement remains confined in terms of options and
language. Yet on the legal front, most attempts at indicting BDS activists have repeatedly failed, as the recent court rulings in
Washington demonstrate. On the other hand, the act of accusing an ice cream company of "terrorism" deserves some serious examination.

Historically, Israel has situated its anti-Palestinian propaganda war within a handful of redundant terminology, predicated on the
claim that Israel is a Jewish and democratic State, the security and very existence of which is constantly being threatened by
terrorists and undermined by anti-Semites.

The above mantra may have succeeded in shielding Israel from criticism and tarnishing Israel’s victims, the Palestinians. However,
it is no longer a guarantor of international sympathy and solidarity. Not only is the Palestinian struggle for freedom gaining global
traction, but the pro-Israeli discourse is finally discovering its limitations. By calling an ice cream company "terrorist" for simply
adhering to international law, Herzog has revealed the growing
lack of credibility and absurdity of the official Israeli language
https://original.antiwar.com/ramzy-baroud/2021/07/30/new-form-of-ice-cream-terrorism-how-ben-jerrys-has-exposed-israels-anti-bds-strategy/

Zionism in the Age of the Dictators by Lenni Brenner (1983).
Brenner, born in 1937, has spent his entire life as an unreconstructed hard-core leftist, with his enthusiasms ranging from Marxist revolution to the Black Panthers

he published a companion volume entitled 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, which simply provides English translations of all the raw evidence behind his analytical framework, allowing interested parties to read the material and draw their own conclusions.

Among other things, Brenner provides considerable evidence that the larger and somewhat more mainstream right-wing Zionist faction later led by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin was almost invariably regarded as a Fascist movement during the 1930s, even apart from its warm admiration for Mussolini’s Italian regime.
https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-jews-and-nazis/

It is well known that, sometime in the eighth to ninth centuries, the Khazars, a warlike Turkic people, converted to Judaism and ruled over a vast domain in what became southern Russia and Ukraine. What happened to them after the Russians destroyed that empire around the eleventh century has been a mystery.

Many have speculated that the Khazars became the ancestors of Ashkenazi Jews.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/leaked-report-israel-acknowledges-jews-in-fact-khazars-secret-plan-for-reverse-migration-to-ukraine/

Burying the Nakba: How Israel Systematically Hides Evidence of 1948 Expulsion of Arabs Since early last decade, Defense Ministry teams have scoured local archives and removed troves of historic documents to conceal proof of the Nakba
https://archive.is/hcqhV#selection-1431.0-1435.146

As Israel bombarded the besieged Gaza Strip for the fourth time in 12 years, the United States approved a
$735m arms sale to Israel. The approval was criticised by legislators in Congress, and several Democrats introduced resolutions
to block the sale of Boeing’s precision-guided missiles.

Israel’s 11-day military campaign killed at least 253 people, including 66 children, in Gaza. At least 12 people were
killed in Israel by rockets fired by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. The UN Human Rights Council has set up a panel
to investigate both sides for possible war crimes and human rights group Amnesty International
has renewed its call for a halt to US weapons sales to Israel.

Gaza has been described as the world’s largest open-air prison. Since 2006, Israel has imposed a land, sea and air
blockade on its 2.1 million inhabitants. Israeli forces continue to militarily occupy East Jerusalem and the
West Bank where they have built hundreds of illegal settlements.

Israel is a key global supplier of advanced weaponry, including drones, missiles, radar technology and other
weapons systems. In 2020, it was the 12th-biggest arms supplier with more than
$345m in weapons sales to 16 countries, according to the SIPRI database.

How much does the US spend on Israel’s military?

The US is by far the biggest supplier of military aid to Israel, providing the country with a total of $3.8bn in
2020 as part of a record $38bn deal across a 10-year period signed under former US President Barack Obama in 2016.
Previously, Israel also received substantial US economic aid along with military supplies. As Israel has grown richer,
economic aid, which began in 1951, has been phased out and was almost eliminated in 2007.

In comparison, the US allocated $19m in all forms of aid to the Palestinians in 2020, according to USAID, after the Trump
administration suspended most funding to the Palestinian Authority as his government promoted a so-called “peace plan” that
the Palestinians denounced as one-sided.

Since the PA was established in 1994, the US has provided $5bn in total assistance. Unlike aid to Israel, Palestinian aid
has many conditions. For instance, under the Taylor Force Act, economic aid can be cut off if the Palestinian Authority
makes any “payments that incentivize terror”. The Biden administration has indicated it will resume aid to the
Palestinians, although the totals will remain a fraction of those provided to Israel.

Israel imports weapons exclusively from Western countries, with 83 percent of its imports coming from the US between 1950
and 2020. In contrast, 23 percent of its exports went to India, and it has exported far and wide. Israel controversially
continued exports to South Africa’s apartheid government.

The two countries signed a secret defence agreement in 1975 to circumvent a global trade embargo imposed on South Africa
because of its apartheid policies.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/4/infographic-what-you-need-to-know-about-israels-military

Now it’s ‘antisemitic’ to say that Israel practices ‘apartheid’
The idea that it is antisemitic to say Israel practices apartheid is patently absurd. The apartheid accusation has
been made for years by Palestinian human rights groups who rightly object to Palestinian conditions. Lately other
groups have joined on: In January Israel’s leading human rights group B’Tselem said Israel is an “apartheid . . .
regime of Jewish supremacy from the river to the sea.” And a month ago Human Rights Watch issued a 213-page report
saying Israel commits the crime of “apartheid” — with a systematic oppression of Palestinians, inhumane acts,
and an intention to dominate Palestinians.
Both B’Tselem and HRW are headed by Jews, by the way.
https://mondoweiss.net/2021/05/now-its-antisemitic-to-say-that-israel-practices-apartheid/

Israel Charged with War Crimes and Genocide. Complete 2013 Judgment of the Kuala Lumpur Tribunal
The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (KLWCC) versus the State of Israel
https://web.archive.org/web/20210515031932/https://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-charged-with-war-crimes-and-genocide-complete-judgment-of-kl-tribunal/5359433#

Jewish Groups That Aid Israel’s War Crimes Can’t Deny All Responsibility for Those Crimes
One doesn’t need to be a Freudian analyst to wonder whether this reveals something troubling about their inner
emotional life: they identify so completely with Israel that even when someone calls for Palestinians to have equal rights with Israelis
they perceive it as a collective attack on Jews, as antisemitism.
https://original.antiwar.com/cook/2021/05/24/jewish-groups-that-aid-israels-war-crimes-cant-deny-all-responsibility-for-those-crimes/

NYT fails to disclose columnist’s side gig at pro-Israel advocacy group
Bret Stephens promised to disclose the affiliation if there was any ‘overlap’ with subjects he writes about for the Times.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/05/17/nyt-fails-to-disclose-columnists-side-gig-at-pro-israel-advocacy-group/

After I Declared That ‘Palestinian Lives Matter,’ Facebook Immediately Closed My Page
https://original.antiwar.com/sahimi/2021/05/18/after-declaring-that-palestinian-lives-matter-facebook-immediately-closed-my-page/

Ex-Israeli pilot: 'Our army is a terrorist organisation run by war criminals'
A former Israeli Air Force pilot, Yonatan Shapira, has described the Israeli government and army as "terrorist organisations" run by "war criminals."
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20210517-ex-israeli-pilot-our-army-is-a-terrorist-organisation-run-by-war-criminals/

#FreePalestine #BDS #RIPShireenAbuAqleh