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General Discussion >> Thinking Globally >> Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1489787469 Message started by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 7:51am |
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Title: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 7:51am
UN report: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime'
Report breaks new ground on the UN's examination of the situation in occupied Palestine by using the word 'apartheid'. A new United Nations report accuses Israel of having established "an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole". The publication comes amid renewed debate about whether, through its settlement policy and rejection of Palestinian self-determination, the Israeli government is creating - or even has already created - a de facto "one-state", which critics warn would constitute a form of apartheid. It urged governments to "support boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS] activities and respond positively to calls for such initiatives". The report - Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People and the Question of Apartheid - was commissioned and published by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) and launched in Beirut. John Reynolds, a lecturer in law at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, told Al Jazeera the report "breaks new ground in the context of the UN's analysis of the situation in Palestine". Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon issued a statement condemning the report late on Wednesday. "The attempt to smear and falsely label the only true democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy is despicable and constitutes a blatant lie," he said. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, when asked about the report, said it was published without any prior consultations with the UN Secretariat and its views do not reflect those of the secretary-general. The report was authored by two critics of Israeli state practice: Virginia Tilley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, and Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University. Noting how "the expert consensus [is] that the prohibition of apartheid is universally applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of apartheid in South Africa", the report argues that Israel is "guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid", a "crime against humanity under customary international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court". The report is a "detailed analysis of Israeli legislation, policies and practices" that highlights how Israel "operates an apartheid regime", including through "demographic engineering". Palestinian citizens of Israel are described as "subjected to oppression on the basis of not being Jewish", it said. Palestinians in East Jerusalem similarly experience "discrimination in access to education, healthcare, employment, residency and building rights", as well as "expulsions and home demolitions". Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are governed by "military law" alongside Jewish settlers "governed by Israeli civil law", the report said. Palestinian refugees and exiles are "prohibited from returning to their homes in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory" on the basis that they "constitute a 'demographic threat' and that their return would alter the demographic character of Israel". As well as urging governments to back BDS, the report recommends that the UN and its member states should "revive the Special Committee against Apartheid, and the United Nations Centre Against Apartheid (1976-1991)", which would then "report authoritatively on Israeli practices and policies relating to the crime of apartheid". The report also suggests an advisory opinion be sought from the International Court of Justice "as to whether the means used by Israel to maintain control over the Palestinian people amount to the crime of apartheid". David Keane, associate professor in law at Middlesex University, said the new report differs from previous ones on the subject because it "expressly attaches the apartheid label". The report could contribute to an already deteriorating relationship between the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the United Nations. "For Palestinians and their allies, the report will help to provide a solid basis for their work," Nadia Hijab, executive director of al-Shabaka - The Palestinian Policy Network - told Al Jazeera . Citing the reputation and credibility of the authors, Hijab described the report as "a clear, concise document" whose recommendations are "timely and much needed". http://www.aljazeera.com/amp/indepth/features/2017/03/report-israel-established-apartheid-regime-170315054053798.html |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Baronvonrort on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:32am Quote:
18 Arab states make a report accusing Israel of apartheid, of course anyone with more than half a functioning brain already knows muslims hate the jews and any report they make will be seriously biased. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by FRED. on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:38am Baronvonrort wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:32am:
;D ;D mothra ;D |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:50am Baronvonrort wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:32am:
"The report was authored by two critics of Israeli state practice: Virginia Tilley, professor of political science at Southern Illinois University, and Richard Falk, former UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, and professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University." Would you like to try again? |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by issuevoter on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:59am
They didn't have much of a choice. Get real.
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Baronvonrort on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:00am mothra wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:50am:
Try again, as I have said there is no cure for stupid people like you. Is this what the UN said about your article? Quote:
It certainly appears the UN are distancing themselves from that biased report supported by 18 Arab countries. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:07am Baronvonrort wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:00am:
It certainly appears the UN are distancing themselves from that biased report supported by 18 Arab countries. [/quote] Not "necessarily". Doesn't translate to "distancing themselves" at all. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Baronvonrort on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:17am mothra wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:07am:
Not "necessarily". Doesn't translate to "distancing themselves" at all.[/quote] Did you miss the highlighted part or are you just proving how stupid you are? |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:24am Baronvonrort wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:17am:
Did you miss the highlighted part or are you just proving how stupid you are? [/quote] No. I think you're simply evidencing what an Islamophobe you are. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Unforgiven on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:31am issuevoter wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:59am:
Every nation has choices. Israel is making the wrong choices in regard to Palestine and apartheid policy. Israel is extremely lucky Palestinian leadership is corrupt and cheaply and easily paid off. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Unforgiven on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:31am issuevoter wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:59am:
Every nation has choices. Israel is making the wrong choices in regard to Palestine and apartheid policy. Israel is extremely lucky Palestinian leadership is corrupt and cheaply and easily paid off. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Baronvonrort on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:34am mothra wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:24am:
No. I think you're simply evidencing what an Islamophobe you are. [/quote] We see plenty of evidence for your Judeophobia and Chrisianophobia in this forum. The ex muslim from Iran Ali Sina explains the idiocy of the ad hominem Islamophobia here- faithfreedom.org/oped/sina60526.htm Mothra will embrace what ex Christians/jews/hindus/etc say about their former religion yet reject anything from ex muslims who have decided Islam is just bullshit barfed up by a 7th century desert bandit. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Baronvonrort on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:35am Unforgiven wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:31am:
Get a job and pay some taxes ya dopey bum |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:38am Baronvonrort wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:34am:
We see plenty of evidence for your Judeophobia and Chrisianophobia in this forum. The ex muslim from Iran Ali Sina explains the idiocy of the ad hominem Islamophobia here- faithfreedom.org/oped/sina60526.htm Mothra will embrace what ex Christians/jews/hindus/etc say about their former religion yet reject anything from ex muslims who have decided Islam is just bullshit barfed up by a 7th century desert bandit. [/quote] Yep, just dismissed yourself as a raving loony. Here was me thinking you were only abusive. Tsk. That'll learn me. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by cods on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:46am Baronvonrort wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:35am:
it wont happen.... :( |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:25am
Why Don’t I Criticize Israel?
I was going to do a podcast on a series of questions, but I got so many questions on the same topic that I think I’m just going to do a single response here, and we’ll do an #AskMeAnything podcast next time. The question I’ve now received in many forms goes something like this: Why is it that you never criticize Israel? Why is it that you never criticize Judaism? Why is it that you always take the side of the Israelis over that of the Palestinians? Now, this is an incredibly boring and depressing question for a variety of reasons. The first, is that I have criticized both Israel and Judaism. What seems to have upset many people is that I’ve kept some sense of proportion. There are something like 15 million Jews on earth at this moment; there are a hundred times as many Muslims. I’ve debated rabbis who, when I have assumed that they believe in a God that can hear our prayers, they stop me mid-sentence and say, “Why would you think that I believe in a God who can hear prayers?” So there are rabbis—conservative rabbis—who believe in a God so elastic as to exclude every concrete claim about Him—and therefore, nearly every concrete demand upon human behavior. And there are millions of Jews, literally millions among the few million who exist, for whom Judaism is very important, and yet they are atheists. They don’t believe in God at all. This is actually a position you can hold in Judaism, but it’s a total non sequitur in Islam or Christianity. So, when we’re talking about the consequences of irrational beliefs based on scripture, the Jews are the least of the least offenders. But I have said many critical things about Judaism. Let me remind you that parts of Hebrew Bible—books like Leviticus and Exodus and Deuteronomy—are the most repellent, the most sickeningly unethical documents to be found in any religion. They’re worse than the Koran. They’re worse than any part of the New Testament. But the truth is, most Jews recognize this and don’t take these texts seriously. It’s simply a fact that most Jews and most Israelis are not guided by scripture—and that’s a very good thing. Of course, there are some who are. There are religious extremists among Jews. Now, I consider these people to be truly dangerous, and their religious beliefs are as divisive and as unwarranted as the beliefs of devout Muslims. But there are far fewer such people. For those of you who worry that I never say anything critical about Israel: My position on Israel is somewhat paradoxical. There are questions about which I’m genuinely undecided. And there’s something in my position, I think, to offend everyone. So, acknowledging how reckless it is to say anything on this topic, I’m nevertheless going to think out loud about it for a few minutes. I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I think it is obscene, irrational and unjustifiable to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there’s a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible. [Note: Read this paragraph again.] Though I just said that I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state, the justification for such a state is rather easy to find. We need look no further than the fact that the rest of the world has shown itself eager to murder the Jews at almost every opportunity. So, if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, it certainly should be a Jewish state. Now, friends of Israel might consider this a rather tepid defense, but it’s the strongest one I’ve got. I think the idea of a religious state is ultimately untenable. [Note: It is worth observing, however, that Israel isn’t “Jewish” in the sense that Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are “Muslim.” As my friend Jerry Coyne points out, Israel is actually less religious than the U.S., and it guarantees freedom of religion to its citizens. Israel is not a theocracy, and one could easily argue that its Jewish identity is more cultural than religious. However, if we ask why the Jews wouldn’t move to British Columbia if offered a home there, we can see the role that religion still plays in their thinking.] Needless to say, in defending its territory as a Jewish state, the Israeli government and Israelis themselves have had to do terrible things. They have, as they are now, fought wars against the Palestinians that have caused massive losses of innocent life. More civilians have been killed in Gaza in the last few weeks than militants. That’s not a surprise because Gaza is one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Occupying it, fighting wars in it, is guaranteed to get woman and children and other noncombatants killed. And there’s probably little question over the course of fighting multiple wars that the Israelis have done things that amount to war crimes. They have been brutalized by this process—that is, made brutal by it. But that is largely the due to the character of their enemies. [Note: I was not giving Israel a pass to commit war crimes. I was making a point about the realities of living under the continuous threat of terrorism and of fighting multiple wars in a confined space. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:26am
Whatever terrible things the Israelis have done, it is also true to say that they have used more restraint in their fighting against the Palestinians than we—the Americans, or Western Europeans—have used in any of our wars. They have endured more worldwide public scrutiny than any other society has ever had to while defending itself against aggressors. The Israelis simply are held to a different standard. And the condemnation leveled at them by the rest of the world is completely out of proportion to what they have actually done. [Note: I was not saying that because they are more careful than we have been at our most careless, the Israelis are above criticism. War crimes are war crimes.]
It is clear that Israel is losing the PR war and has been for years now. One of the most galling things for outside observers about the current war in Gaza is the disproportionate loss of life on the Palestinian side. This doesn’t make a lot of moral sense. Israel built bomb shelters to protect its citizens. The Palestinians built tunnels through which they could carry out terror attacks and kidnap Israelis. Should Israel be blamed for successfully protecting its population in a defensive war? I don’t think so. [Note: I was not suggesting that the deaths of Palestinian noncombatants are anything less than tragic. But if retaliating against Hamas is bound to get innocents killed, and the Israelis manage to protect their own civilians in the meantime, the loss of innocent life on the Palestinian side is guaranteed to be disproportionate.] But there is no way to look at the images coming out of Gaza—especially of infants and toddlers riddled by shrapnel—and think that this is anything other than a monstrous evil. Insofar as the Israelis are the agents of this evil, it seems impossible to support them. And there is no question that the Palestinians have suffered terribly for decades under the occupation. This is where most critics of Israel appear to be stuck. They see these images, and they blame Israel for killing and maiming babies. They see the occupation, and they blame Israel for making Gaza a prison camp. I would argue that this is a kind of moral illusion, borne of a failure to look at the actual causes of this conflict, as well as of a failure to understand the intentions of the people on either side of it. [Note: I was not saying that the horror of slain children is a moral illusion; nor was I minimizing the suffering of the Palestinians under the occupation. I was claiming that Israel is not primarily to blame for all this suffering.] The truth is that there is an obvious, undeniable, and hugely consequential moral difference between Israel and her enemies. The Israelis are surrounded by people who have explicitly genocidal intentions towards them. The charter of Hamas is explicitly genocidal. It looks forward to a time, based on Koranic prophesy, when the earth itself will cry out for Jewish blood, where the trees and the stones will say “O Muslim, there’s a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.” This is a political document. We are talking about a government that was voted into power by a majority of Palestinians. [Note: Yes, I know that not every Palestinian supports Hamas, but enough do to have brought them to power. Hamas is not a fringe group.] The discourse in the Muslim world about Jews is utterly shocking. Not only is there Holocaust denial—there’s Holocaust denial that then asserts that we will do it for real if given the chance. The only thing more obnoxious than denying the Holocaust is to say that it should have happened; it didn’t happen, but if we get the chance, we will accomplish it. There are children’s shows in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere that teach five-year-olds about the glories of martyrdom and about the necessity of killing Jews. And this gets to the heart of the moral difference between Israel and her enemies. And this is something I discussed in The End of Faith. To see this moral difference, you have to ask what each side would do if they had the power to do it. What would the Jews do to the Palestinians if they could do anything they wanted? Well, we know the answer to that question, because they can do more or less anything they want. The Israeli army could kill everyone in Gaza tomorrow. So what does that mean? Well, it means that, when they drop a bomb on a beach and kill four Palestinian children, as happened last week, this is almost certainly an accident. They’re not targeting children. They could target as many children as they want. Every time a Palestinian child dies, Israel edges ever closer to becoming an international pariah. So the Israelis take great pains not to kill children and other noncombatants. [Note: The word “so” in the previous sentence was regrettable and misleading. I didn’t mean to suggest that safeguarding its reputation abroad would be the only (or even primary) reason for Israel to avoid killing children. However, the point stands: Even if you want to attribute the basest motives to Israel, it is clearly in her self-interest not to kill Palestinian children.] |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:27am
Now, is it possible that some Israeli soldiers go berserk under pressure and wind up shooting into crowds of rock-throwing children? Of course. You will always find some soldiers acting this way in the middle of a war. But we know that this isn’t the general intent of Israel. We know the Israelis do not want to kill non-combatants, because they could kill as many as they want, and they’re not doing it.
What do we know of the Palestinians? What would the Palestinians do to the Jews in Israel if the power imbalance were reversed? Well, they have told us what they would do. For some reason, Israel’s critics just don’t want to believe the worst about a group like Hamas, even when it declares the worst of itself. We’ve already had a Holocaust and several other genocides in the 20th century. People are capable of committing genocide. When they tell us they intend to commit genocide, we should listen. There is every reason to believe that the Palestinians would kill all the Jews in Israel if they could. Would every Palestinian support genocide? Of course not. But vast numbers of them—and of Muslims throughout the world—would. Needless to say, the Palestinians in general, not just Hamas, have a history of targeting innocent noncombatants in the most shocking ways possible. They’ve blown themselves up on buses and in restaurants. They’ve massacred teenagers. They’ve murdered Olympic athletes. They now shoot rockets indiscriminately into civilian areas. And again, the charter of their government in Gaza explicitly tells us that they want to annihilate the Jews—not just in Israel but everywhere. [Note: Again, I realize that not all Palestinians support Hamas. Nor am I discounting the degree to which the occupation, along with collateral damage suffered in war, has fueled Palestinian rage. But Palestinian terrorism (and Muslim anti-Semitism) is what has made peaceful coexistence thus far impossible.] The truth is that everything you need to know about the moral imbalance between Israel and her enemies can be understood on the topic of human shields. Who uses human shields? Well, Hamas certainly does. They shoot their rockets from residential neighborhoods, from beside schools, and hospitals, and mosques. Muslims in other recent conflicts, in Iraq and elsewhere, have also used human shields. They have laid their rifles on the shoulders of their own children and shot from behind their bodies. Consider the moral difference between using human shields and being deterred by them. That is the difference we’re talking about. The Israelis and other Western powers are deterred, however imperfectly, by the Muslim use of human shields in these conflicts, as we should be. It is morally abhorrent to kill noncombatants if you can avoid it. It’s certainly abhorrent to shoot through the bodies of children to get at your adversary. But take a moment to reflect on how contemptible this behavior is. And understand how cynical it is. The Muslims are acting on the assumption—the knowledge, in fact—that the infidels with whom they fight, the very people whom their religion does nothing but vilify, will be deterred by their use of Muslim human shields. They consider the Jews the spawn of apes and pigs—and yet they rely on the fact that they don’t want to kill Muslim noncombatants. [Note: The term “Muslims” in this paragraph means “Muslim combatants” of the sort that Western forces have encountered in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. The term “jihadists” would have been too narrow, but I was not suggesting that all Muslims support the use of human shields or are anti-Semitic, at war with the West, etc.] Now imagine reversing the roles here. Imagine how fatuous—indeed comical it would be—for the Israelis to attempt to use human shields to deter the Palestinians. Some claim that they have already done this. There are reports that Israeli soldiers have occasionally put Palestinian civilians in front of them as they’ve advanced into dangerous areas. That’s not the use of human shields we’re talking about. It’s egregious behavior. No doubt it constitutes a war crime. But Imagine the Israelis holding up their own women and children as human shields. Of course, that would be ridiculous. The Palestinians are trying to kill everyone. Killing women and children is part of the plan. Reversing the roles here produces a grotesque Monty Python skit. If you’re going to talk about the conflict in the Middle East, you have to acknowledge this difference. I don’t think there’s any ethical disparity to be found anywhere that is more shocking or consequential than this. And the truth is, this isn’t even the worst that jihadists do. Hamas is practically a moderate organization, compared to other jihadist groups. There are Muslims who have blown themselves up in crowds of children—again, Muslim children—just to get at the American soldiers who were handing out candy to them. They have committed suicide bombings, only to send another bomber to the hospital to await the casualities—where they then blow up all the injured along with the doctors and nurses trying to save their lives. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:27am
Every day that you could read about an Israeli rocket gone astray or Israeli soldiers beating up an innocent teenager, you could have read about ISIS in Iraq crucifying people on the side of the road, Christians and Muslims. Where is the outrage in the Muslim world and on the Left over these crimes? Where are the demonstrations, 10,000 or 100,000 deep, in the capitals of Europe against ISIS? If Israel kills a dozen Palestinians by accident, the entire Muslim world is inflamed. God forbid you burn a Koran, or write a novel vaguely critical of the faith. And yet Muslims can destroy their own societies—and seek to destroy the West—and you don’t hear a peep. [Note: Of course, I’m aware that many Muslims condemn groups like ISIS. My point is that we don’t see massive protests against global jihadism—even though it targets Muslims more than anyone else—and we do see such protests over things like the Danish cartoons.]
So, it seems to me, that you have to side with Israel here. You have one side which if it really could accomplish its aims would simply live peacefully with its neighbors, and you have another side which is seeking to implement a seventh century theocracy in the Holy Land. There’s no peace to be found between those incompatible ideas. That doesn’t mean you can’t condemn specific actions on the part of the Israelis. And, of course, acknowledging the moral disparity between Israel and her enemies doesn’t give us any solution to the problem of Israel’s existence in the Middle East. [Note: I was not suggesting that Israel’s actions are above criticism or that their recent incursion into Gaza was necessarily justified. Nor was I saying that the status quo, wherein the Palestinians remain stateless, should be maintained. And I certainly wasn’t expressing support for the building of settlements on contested land (as I made clear below). By “siding with Israel,” I am simply recognizing that they are not the primary aggressors in this conflict. They are, rather, responding to aggression—and at a terrible cost.] Again, granted, there’s some percentage of Jews who are animated by their own religious hysteria and their own prophesies. Some are awaiting the Messiah on contested land. Yes, these people are willing to sacrifice the blood of their own children for the glory of God. But, for the most part, they are not representative of the current state of Judaism or the actions of the Israeli government. And it is how Israel deals with these people—their own religious lunatics—that will determine whether they can truly hold the moral high ground. And Israel can do a lot more than it has to disempower them. It can cease to subsidize the delusions of the Ultra-Orthodox, and it can stop building settlements on contested land. [Note: Read that again. And, yes, I understand that not all settlers are Ultra-Orthodox.] These incompatible religious attachments to this land have made it impossible for Muslims and Jews to negotiate like rational human beings, and they have made it impossible for them to live in peace. But the onus is still more on the side of the Muslims here. Even on their worst day, the Israelis act with greater care and compassion and self-criticism than Muslim combatants have anywhere, ever. And again, you have to ask yourself, what do these groups want? What would they accomplish if they could accomplish anything? What would the Israelis do if they could do what they want? They would live in peace with their neighbors, if they had neighbors who would live in peace with them. They would simply continue to build out their high tech sector and thrive. [Note: Some might argue that they would do more than this—e.g. steal more Palestinian land. But apart from the influence of Jewish extremism (which I condemn), Israel’s continued appropriation of land has more than a little to do with her security concerns. Absent Palestinian terrorism and Muslim anti-Semitism, we could be talking about a “one-state solution,” and the settlements would be moot.] What do groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda and even Hamas want? They want to impose their religious views on the rest of humanity. They want to stifle every freedom that decent, educated, secular people care about. This is not a trivial difference. And yet judging from the level of condemnation that Israel now receives, you would think the difference ran the other way. This kind of confusion puts all of us in danger. This is the great story of our time. For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet. https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/why-dont-i-criticize-israel |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:37am
Sam Harris ... LOL!
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by bogarde73 on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:43am
Israel swims in a sea of sharks. Most of those bloodseekers are all around her in the ME, but many, like mothra, are spread throughout the western world as well.
Israel does what it has to do to survive |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:52am mothra wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:37am:
How much do you know about Sam Harris? |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:52am
Here's one of the best quotes from Harris.
But Imagine the Israelis holding up their own women and children as human shields. Of course, that would be ridiculous. The Palestinians are trying to kill everyone. Killing women and children is part of the plan. Reversing the roles here produces a grotesque Monty Python skit. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 10:56am
Roll up, roll up.
I mentioned Palestine. Come forth all ye Islamophobes and make right royal tit of yourselves. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by bogarde73 on Mar 18th, 2017 at 11:02am
The small brain uses hackneyed labels like Islamophobe.
I am waiting for you to post proof - and discredit me - that you have ever unqualifiedly criticised Islamic atrocities. Are you able to do that? |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 18th, 2017 at 11:05am
Mothra, I'm against the aggressive expansion of Israeli settlements.
Is there anything you're critical of Palestine of? |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by freediver on Mar 18th, 2017 at 1:26pm
Arab Muslim Israeli's have more rights and freedoms than their brethren any other middle eastern country. Israel is a beacon of freedom and democracy in one of the most backward places on earth.
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by bogarde73 on Mar 18th, 2017 at 1:33pm bogarde73 wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 11:02am:
Still waiting. I will apologise unqualifiedly if you can provide the proof. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Unforgiven on Mar 18th, 2017 at 1:52pm freediver wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 1:26pm:
Israel is a source of death for many Palestinians. IDF kills Arabs without regard to human rights, justice, and democratic principles. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 18th, 2017 at 1:58pm bogarde73 wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 1:33pm:
Yes i have indeed. Many times. Here's two examples: http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1489716421/118#118 http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1489107506 |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Unforgiven on Mar 18th, 2017 at 2:07pm bogarde73 wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 1:33pm:
Hasbara shill, Bogarde73, is using a trick he's been taught to deflect, divert and obfuscate issues. The issue is that Israel is an apartheid state. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:14pm
Israel's slipping democracy
This beacon of freedom is becoming more like its authoritarian neighbors. Commentary Opinion Opinion Israel's slipping democracy This beacon of freedom is becoming more like its authoritarian neighbors. By Nir Eisikovits September 24, 2008 Boston — We Israelis like to think of ourselves as "the only democracy in the Middle East." The label has a variety of uses: We invoke it to explain our special relationship with the United States, to set ourselves apart from our authoritarian Arab neighbors, to account for our remarkable economic success, and to justify occasional requests for EU membership. There are, of course, well-known problems with this democratic self-understanding. Our basic constitutional documents speak of a "Jewish democratic state" while about 20 percent of our citizens are non-Jews. We have no separation of synagogue and state. We have, for over 40 years, maintained illegal settlements and a harsh military occupation in most of the Palestinian territories captured in 1967. And yet, Israel is certainly the most democratic nation in the Middle East. Iran reportedly executes homosexuals, Syria regularly detains human rights activists and dissenters, Egypt jails men essentially for being diagnosed with HIV/AIDS, Lebanon fails to exercise control over its territory, and Turkey considers banning its largest political party. We, on the other hand, have a vibrant free press, an independent judiciary, an active parliament, and, as attested by the recent legal troubles of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who announced his resignation this week, independent-minded prosecutors. But being the most democratic nation in a region marked by despotism is not the same as being democratic. And recently, indications have accumulated that Israel is becoming more rather than less like its neighbors. Earlier this summer, Israel's parliament, the Knesset, passed two troubling pieces of legislation: the first (which still awaits final ratification) exempts the state from compensating Palestinians harmed during Israel Defense Force (IDF) operations in the territories. The second, aimed at curtailing the travel of Arab members of the Kenesset (MK), states that any Israeli who has visited an "enemy country" shall be considered a supporter of armed struggle against the Jewish state (unless proven otherwise), and will be prevented from running for parliament in the seven years following the visit. That law's drafter, Zevulun Orlev, the head of the parliamentary faction of the National Religious Party, explained that the statute will prevent the election of "trojan horses" into the legislature. Arab MKs would now be forced "to decide between the Syrian parliament and the Israeli parliament." On the same day these votes took place, the Knesset's Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee extended the validity of a provision exempting police from videotaping interrogations touching on security matters. The extended immunity is good for four years. One does not need to be a constitutional scholar to worry about a democracy that eliminates access to its courts, curtails the right to be elected, and chooses to protect its police rather than detainees. Since all these measures were widely popular with Israelis, it is worthwhile reiterating an obvious point: Democracy is not only about the rule of the majority. Rather, its essence lies in empowering the majority without allowing it to tyrannize the minority. Such a balancing act is possible only if a robust set of political rights is in place. A state that jettisons these in favor of national security will probably stay safe, but it will rarely stay democratic. To be sure, there are circumstances where it is appropriate to practice what former Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak has called "defensive democracy." In extreme cases, constitutional protections can justifiably be curtailed. We have all heard of "ticking bomb" scenarios, and most agree that democracies have no special obligation to commit suicide. But, for such defensive action to be acceptable, the circumstances must, indeed, be extraordinary, the curtailments minimal, and the fact of curtailing considered a big deal. The Knesset's new laws pass none of these tests. The sponsors of the new legislation remind us that we are engaged in an epic battle against the rising tide of political Islam. Perhaps so. But if this characterization is true, the key to victory lies in becoming the best rather than worst example of ourselves. The US diplomat George Kennan saw this clearly in the early days of the cold war. Winning, he insisted, required that America "measure up to its own best tradition and prove itself worthy of preservation..." Though no one listened at the time, Kennan's lesson is well worth learning. Unless Israel does everything it can to preserve its political decency, it will not win because it will not be right. Failing to measure up to its best democratic traditions, failing to prove worthy of preservation, it might just not persevere. • Nir Eisikovits, an Israeli lawyer and philosopher, is the director of Suffolk University's Graduate Program in Ethics and Public Policy. His forthcoming book is titled, "Sympathizing With the Enemy: Reconciliation, Negotiation, and Transitional Justice." http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2008/0924/p09s03-coop.html |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:15pm
Nir Eisikovits explains why "Israel is in so much trouble and how it can dig out"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyHhdw2-w8s |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Unforgiven on Mar 19th, 2017 at 12:07pm
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/17/israel-and-the-a-word/
Quote:
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by bogarde73 on Mar 19th, 2017 at 12:31pm
Jmjcare, do you think the UK was a democracy during WW2?
I can assure you it wasn't. Countries facing extreme threats to the safety of its citizens, indeed to its very existence, cannot afford the luxury of all the fancy trappings of a 2017 Australia or such. Whistling in the wind or doing something in the wind. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Unforgiven on Mar 19th, 2017 at 3:49pm bogarde73 wrote on Mar 19th, 2017 at 12:31pm:
That doesn't give Israel the right to turn murder of Arabs into a sport. In fact Bogarde73 is wrong. There is no armed conflict faced by Israel currently. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 19th, 2017 at 4:51pm Unforgiven wrote on Mar 19th, 2017 at 3:49pm:
Whatever terrible things the Israelis have done, it is also true to say that they have used more restraint in their fighting against the Palestinians than we—the Americans, or Western Europeans—have used in any of our wars. They have endured more worldwide public scrutiny than any other society has ever had to while defending itself against aggressors. The Israelis simply are held to a different standard. And the condemnation leveled at them by the rest of the world is completely out of proportion to what they have actually done. [Note: I was not saying that because they are more careful than we have been at our most careless, the Israelis are above criticism. War crimes are war crimes.] |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Unforgiven on Mar 19th, 2017 at 5:17pm Gordon wrote on Mar 19th, 2017 at 4:51pm:
There is no war. Israel is murdering civilians. At times even shooting unarmed civilians across the Gaza border. The IDF kills Arabs for sport. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 19th, 2017 at 5:34pm Gordon wrote on Mar 19th, 2017 at 4:51pm:
Well if you believe that, you'll believe anything. The Israelis are above criticism ... LOL! |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Gordon on Mar 19th, 2017 at 5:55pm mothra wrote on Mar 19th, 2017 at 5:34pm:
Have you read Sam Harris on topics other than religion? |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 19th, 2017 at 6:18pm
Israeli-Palestinian Conflict in 2014: Is Sam Harris correct in his assessment of the current Gaza campaign by Israel?
Sam Harris makes a number of inferential mistakes in his assessment, one of which was already pointed out by Tracey Bryan, namely, that Harris does not give the Palestinian point of view even a paragraph's consideration, but judges them from the Israeli point of view. Essentially, their POV does not matter, but if anyone wants to understand why Hamas acts the way it does, it's pretty essential to at least try. It's not because they have different values, though; it's because their values are the same as everyone else's, in that once a society has been so thoroughly oppressed, humiliated, stripped of dignity and a way to sustain itself, there comes a true breaking point when people will collectively decide they have nothing left to lose. At this point even death becomes preferable than going back to the way things were. It was a great American, Patrick Henry, that said “Give me liberty or give me death,” and those words are alive today in Gaza. This is not hard to understand at all, in fact it's a very natural and human response to oppression. The other major point Harris gets wrong is his assessment that Israelis want to live in peace while, if the roles were reversed, the Palestinians would want to kill all Israelis. But let me quote Harris at length here: And again, you have to ask yourself, what do these groups want? What would they accomplish if they could accomplish anything? What would the Israelis do if they could do what they want? They would live in peace with their neighbors, if they had neighbors who would live in peace with them. They would simply continue to build out their high tech sector and thrive. [Note: Some might argue that they would do more than this—e.g. steal more Palestinian land. But apart from the influence of Jewish extremism (which I condemn), Israel’s continued appropriation of land has more than a little to do with her security concerns. Absent Palestinian terrorism and Muslim anti-Semitism, we could be talking about a “one-state solution,” and the settlements would be moot.] Harris’ claims are built on the aggressiveness of the Hamas charter. However he fails to mention the historical genesis of the document, the role Israeli policy played in the creation of the document, or that the Likud charter explicitly rejects the notion of a Palestinian state. So in effect, if Hamas were to disappear and nothing take its place, the status quo would continue indefinitely, ie Israel would probably continue its settlements in the occupied territories while confining Palestinians into smaller and smaller pieces of land. Maybe that can be called “peace,” but that is a weird thing to call peace. A better term would be “apartheid”. Harris’ claim that, if the roles were reversed, the Palestinians would murder all Israelis, is so ridiculous as to barely even deserve a rebuttal--the roles are not reversed, there is no way they will be reversed in a foreseeable future, and the situation Israel has gotten itself into is the product of a long string of bad choices stretching back almost a century. For the roles to be meaningfully reversed, we'd have to go back in time. So perhaps a more useful thought experiment is, what were Palestinian-Israeli or Palestinian-Jewish relationships like prior to WWI? There's no denying they were tense, and both sides were to blame for the escalation from stone throwing to war. Unlike other conflicts that began in the early 20th century, this one has never produced a clear outcome. At the same time, we can agree Israel is “winning” the military conflict. The way they are winning, with systematic oppression, has a lot to do with how the Palestinians react to Israel. Unfortunately, Harris doesn't address the role of Israeli embargo/trade policy, ghettoization, dual-track legal systems and citizenship, etc. towards the Palestinians in creating their current crisis. Finally, I reject Harris’ idea that “we all live in Israel”: For the rest of our lives, and the lives of our children, we are going to be confronted by people who don’t want to live peacefully in a secular, pluralistic world, because they are desperate to get to Paradise, and they are willing to destroy the very possibility of human happiness along the way. The truth is, we are all living in Israel. It’s just that some of us haven’t realized it yet. Harris is confusing here Muslim fundamentalism with a fight against oppression. The fact that Hamas uses Muslim fundamentalism to rally people to its cause is meaningless. In the US, radio hosts and Fox News personalities use Christian fundamentalism to rally people against enlightenment values all the time, as I'm sure Harris is aware, but that doesn't cause massive casualties. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by mothra on Mar 19th, 2017 at 6:19pm
To the point, though--we do not all live in Israel. In fact, there is no modern parallel for Israel's predicament; theirs is a highly idiosyncratic situation. The success of the Israeli project sets is apart from similar projects in the past that have failed. There will always be people who use religion for ulterior motives--namely, to gain power over others. Certainly this is the way it's used in the United States and in many other countries. But the conditions that create an Israel cannot be attained by religion alone. Yes, we will always be confronted by people who truly believe that to get into Paradise they must destroy others who do not believe as they do. The way to battle these people is not with more oppression, it's education. The Renaissance was not a product of men forcing enlightenment values on each other, it was the result of them realizing that acceptance of and education in those values benefited them and theirs more than fighting.
If Israel wants true peace, it need to be able to be humble enough to say that it has been fighting the wrong war. Israel needs to invest in the Gazans, not try to bully them into submission. It needs to make Israelis and Palestinians equal before its laws, not degrade them and deny them the chance to be heard. https://www.quora.com/Israeli-Palestinian-Conflict-in-2014-Is-Sam-Harris-correct-in-his-assessment-of-the-current-Gaza-campaign-by-Israel |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Fireball on Mar 19th, 2017 at 6:50pm
And I thought it was Germany 75 years ago........
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 19th, 2017 at 7:01pm mothra wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 8:50am:
The United Nations Exposed: Who Is In Control? We are told that the United Nations (UN) is an international organization that aims to facilitate co-operation through social progress, economic development, international security and international law. They promote themselves, and are outwardly promoted as a reputable body that deals with peace, security, development, human rights and humanitarian affairs. With this being the case it’s no surprise to see the UN at the forefront of all international conflict and instability, since these exact events give them the ideal atmosphere to promote themselves as bringers of all that I previously mentioned. Throughout history, authoritative figures have always tried to paint a perception of themselves in hopes of influencing and brainwashing the masses into a desired agenda. By promoting themselves, I am referring to the UN’s use of mainstream media networks, like CNN. CNN is owned by Time Warner (1), which is owned by JP Morgan Chase and Company and Dodge & Cox Inc, to name a few (2). It also has a select group of direct holders, like Jeffrey L. Bewkes. Mr. Bewkes sits in the head office of Time Warner’s two towers built in 2001 -buildings purposely built to resemble the once standing World Trade Centers of New York City. Bewkes is also a member of The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) (3),which is headed and funded by the Rothschild and Rockefeller families (4)(5). In fact a large majority of mainstream media network owners are all members of the CFR, as well as the trilateral commission. Another example of this is Richard D. Parsons. who served as Time Warner’s Chairman of the Board from May 2003 to January 2009. Currently Mr. Parsons is a member of the Board of Trustees and is a Senior Advisor to the Rockefeller Foundation(6). I could even go on to look at Frank J. Caufield, another major direct holder of Time Warner Corp, who is also a member of the CFR(7). Let me remind you again, that CNN is owned by Time Warner Corp, which is owned by a number of individuals and corporations that are run by a few families. These families hide behind the corporations they run, using the employees and politicians they hire to do their dirty work. Why we continue to hand our perception of what is happening on the planet to a select few who show no regard for the human race is beyond me. As a child, I did not understand how a human being could have such negative intentions, and create so much conflict through the use of trickery. To this day I still believe that a human being cannot do what these “governing bodies” and multinational corporations do. Whether or not it holds the same effect on you, I hope the connections above at least raise an eyebrow for you. There is no need for me to point out the JP Morgan (major institutional holder of Time Warner)/ Rockefeller connections, which also played a big role in the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1912. So what does all this have to do with the United Nations? Well, the same ones that own all of our mainstream media networks, also own, run and created the United Nations. The owners of the United Nations use their media networks to influence the perception of billions of people. Not many people know that our mainstream media networks are owned by less than 5 multinational corporations, and all of these corporations have ties to the Rothschild and Rockefeller families. If you dive in even further, all of the same corporations are directly related to suppressing clean energy technologies, like General Electric. You can find out more about free energy suppression here. More ties can be made in the food and medical industries as well. Our planet is owned by a small group of families and the corporations they run, this is no longer a secret, no longer a conspiracy theory. It’s becoming evident that these “people” do not have our best intentions at hand. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 19th, 2017 at 7:02pm
League of Nations/Treaty of Versailles
The forerunner to the United Nations, was the league of Nations. It was created under the treaty of versailles in 1919 (8)(14). Many believe the idea of the UN’s creation was due to the second world war, it wasn’t. A plan for global control through a well disguised body of peace started long before 1945. The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization created at the Paris peace conference that ended the First World War. Development of international organizations due to conflict is a way of trickery. The UN was created in 1945 as a result of World War 2. Anytime there is global conflict, something is created out of that conflict, to give the illusion that whatever is created out of that conflict is a direct solution to that conflict. Have you ever thought that the ones who created the conflict, are doing so in order to propose the solution? What a scam that would be, wouldn’t it? What a trick, using and controlling our will. Handing our will over to those who look to take advantage of us, to those that are not in service to others, but to themselves. The League of Nations was created by the Rockefeller Family, they were responsible for funding the entire operation(9). At the same time, the International Labour Organization was developed, which is and was heavily funded by the Rockefeller and Rothschild families(10). It is clear that the Rockefeller and Rothschild families both created the United Nations, without them the development of this global organization would not be possible. The Same Groups That Funded Nazi Germany Created The United Nations? Both Sides of the War Were Funded by the Same Group? A key question we must ask ourselves when it comes to international global governing bodies is, who is in charge? Who is making the decisions? What connections can be made between the United Nations and the other major governing bodies of planet Earth? How often do we ask these questions? And how often do we make the connections? If the United Nations was created for peace and stability in conflicting War time, why would the same parties fund both sides of the war? Was it just for profit, or did they want to create War, to create government bodies that would control our entire planet? The United Nations has branched off into the World Health Organization, which has other branched within it like Codex Alimentarius and the Food and Drug Administration. I’m talking about Paul M. Warburg, a German-born banker, who was an appointed member of the Federal Reserve System, on the board of governors(11). Isn’t the Federal Reserve a United States entity? He was heavily involved with the creation of the Federal Reserve, and his family was heavily involved with I.G Farben. I.G Farben was the largest chemical company in the world during its time, and one of the largest industrial booms next to the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, and General Motors. I.G Farben was responsible for numerous war crimes, supplying the Nazis with weapons and even funding the Nazi party(12)(13). Why would the federal reserve system and the Rockefeller’s be involved with I.G Farben? Isn’t the federal reserve an American entity? Did they not fund the United States as well? Paul Warburg and his family were involved with the creation of the Federal Reserve, the Warburg family headed I.G Farben, a company that supported the Nazi movement. So what is going on here? There is a lot of evidence to show that both sides of World War II were funded by the same people, so I think a “fast one” has been pulled over our eyes. The Federal Reserve is still in tight with the Warburg family, as they have transformed themselves into several multinational corporations and financial institutions, like Warburg Pincus(15)(16). It’s no secret that the Bush family also heavily profited from the war. Did you know that the Bush family also had members connected to the federal reserve, and that the Bush family is also very close to the Rockefeller family?(17). It’s not a secret that the presidency has always been connected to the Federal Reserve. Prescott Bush even worked for the Nazis, he worked with and profited from companies that were funding Hitler. With all of these connections, it is easy to see how the real founders of the United Nations (if you follow the money) were connected to many inhumane acts. So what makes you think it has stopped today? What if the United Nations give you the illusion of a peace making body, in order to drive chaos, fear, and to fulfill an agenda that started long before we were all born? How can the UN protect us against mining corporations for example, that commit atrocities all over the world, when the same ones who created the UN own all of the major mining corps, like the Rockefeller Hughes Corporation(18). I’ve provided sources for all of my claims, at the same time I like to leave a few out to inspire the readers to do some research. Feel free to look into the Bush connections yourself! Keep in mind, I’ve used only a few examples and connections in this article, there is a tremendous amount that you can make on your own if you are sparked to further your research. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 19th, 2017 at 7:04pm
One aspect of the current consciousness shift is waking up to new facts and possibilities of what really happened in our recent human history. Many people take different paths to awakening, but in the end it all leads to one thing: we have to be the change we want to see. We’ve seen a lot of turmoil throughout the years on this planet, and in turn it’s created a very dense energetic state for planet Earth. More people are starting to find peace, they are experiencing more joy and desire change for all on planet Earth. Through awakening, we are changing the vibrational frequency of the planet. We’ve been blind to many things for thousands of years. We are living in the age of transparency, everything has presented itself for us to see from the “darkest” experiences to the “lightest”. Either way you look at it, everything that has and is playing out on planet Earth is all an experience for the human race. Events happen, in order to jolt us into waking up to truth. 9/11 for example, woke many up. Whether it’s the truth about hemp, the federal reserve, the illuminati, extraterrestrials, spreading love, or anything else, the age of transparency is leading to a new truth within billions of people, and that truth is love. Love is required as a necessary building block for a new world. We are responsible for what is happening here, when we awaken from our sleep, I’m sure we won’t let continue what we’ve let continue for so long. No longer will we be used to uphold a system that does not resonate with us, instead we will create a new one that makes the old one obsolete.
There are multiple sources that go beyond mine, I could have used many more. Please feel free to do your own research to further verify some facts. Sources: (1) http://www.timewarner.com/our-content/turner-broadcasting-system/ (2) http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?s=TWX (3)http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=867387&ticker=TWX (4)http://www.cfr.org/world/council-foreign-relations-special-symposium-honor-david-rockefellers-90th-birthday/p8133 (5)http://www.cfr.org/experts/world/david-rockefeller/b987 (6) http://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/about-us/board-trustees/richard-d-parsons (7)http://www.usrf.ru/structure/board_caufield.html (8) http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/history/index.shtml (9)http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/sgsm14498.doc.htm (10) http://ebha-bhsj-paris.sciencesconf.org/6318/document (11)http://www.federalreserve.gov/bios/boardmembership.htm (12) http://www.houseofpaine.org/IGF.htm (13)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warburg_family (14) http://www.versailles3d.com/en/over-the-centuries/xxe/1924.html (15)http://search.newyorkfed.org/board_public/search?text=warburg&Search.x=0&Search.y=0 (16)http://www.warburgpincus.co (17)http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar (18)http://rockefellerhughes.com http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/02/26/the-united-nations-exposed-who-is-in-control/ |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 19th, 2017 at 7:05pm
The Rothschilds Own Israel – and Direct its Genocidal Policy
The Rothschilds own 80% of Israel, according to Simon Schama. They built the Israeli Supreme Court. They own Reuters and the Associated Press (AP), the two biggest media agencies in the world. They have a controlling share in the Royal Dutch oil company, the Bank of England and the LBMA (London Bullion Market Association). They foment wars, install presidents, dethrone kings and bankrupt nations, such is their power. The Rothschilds typically operate behind the scenes. In the case of Israel, the Rothschilds engineered WWI and waited until 1917 when Britain was in trouble. The Rothschilds then promised the British Government that they could get the US to enter WWI (on the side of Britain) and thus ensure Britain’s victory over Germany et al. However, they wanted something in return: Palestine. Thus the Balfour Declaration was created, which is an official letter from the British Government Foreign Secretary James Balfour to Baron Rothschild. It states that: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object.” There is a big problem with this. Palestine was never Britain’s to give away. It rightfully belongs to the Arab and Palestinian people living there. The Rothschild Zionist Jews came in, took over and forcibly evacuated and killed millions of Palestinians who lived there. They are still committing genocide to this day. The creation of the Zionist state Israel was massively unjust right from the start. Something conceived in iniquity breeds conflict down the road. It is no exaggeration to say that the founding of Israel itself may be the precursor to WWIII. Zionist Israel controls the governments of the US, Britain, Canada, France and more – and the Rothschilds control Israel. Israel belongs to the Rothschilds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8kTa9UkpXo Only 3 countries left w/o ROTHSCHILD Central Bank! http://fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/banking_and_taxation_irs_and_insurance/social_security/news.php?q=1320062234 |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 19th, 2017 at 8:47pm
Israel turned ‘local Amnesty branch into a foreign ministry front’ — report
19 Mar, 2017 Israel used a local Amnesty International branch as a front for the foreign ministry in the late 1960s and 1970s, according to an exclusive report by Haaretz, based on official documents authenticated and translated by the Israeli news outlet. The documents reveal how some heads of Amnesty International Israel were allegedly in regular contact with the Foreign Ministry from the late 1960s to the mid -1970s, reporting on their activity in real time, consulting with officials and taking instructions from them. Haaretz obtained the documents from the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research and say they show how Israel tried to influence Amnesty’s activity from within. The Amnesty office in Israel received regular funds transferred through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which reportedly included hundreds of Israeli pounds for flights abroad, per diem allowances, registration fees and dues payments to the organization's headquarters, according to the papers. The report claims that the strongest link between the Foreign Ministry and the Amnesty office was during the period between 1974 and 1976 when Professor Yoram Dinstein was at its helm. Dinstein previously worked in the Foreign Ministry and served as the Israeli consul in New York. Dinstein’s appointment meeting was attended by the Foreign Ministry officer who he was most regularly in contact with during his time as chairman, according to one document. Dinstein denied that Amnesty Israel received funds from the Foreign Ministry when contacted by Haaretz last week. He also disputed being in contact with the agency and said it had no involvement in the Amnesty International branch. He also made clear his present day opinions of the human rights organisation: “I resigned after a few years when I became aware that this is a populist organization very far from everything I believe in, which is research and knowledge.” “Today Amnesty International is dealing with an area about which it understands nothing – international humanitarian law,” he added. Lior Yavne, the executive director of Akevot told Haaretz that the “manipulative exploitation” deployed then is reminiscent of groups in recent years that “supposedly originate in the civil society but have murky sources of funding and operate to damage the legitimacy of human rights organizations critical of the policy of the Israeli government.” Amnesty's International Secretariat said in a statement that the files "present serious allegations suggesting that the leadership of our former Israel section acted in a manner that was blatantly at odds with Amnesty International’s principles." It noted that since 1975, the organisation formally agreed that it would accept no government funds for any of its research or campaigns. The Israeli branch of Amnesty International opened in 1964, three years after the organisation was founded in London. "During the period in question we were a movement that was still in its infancy. As we grew to become the truly global movement we are today, we have continued to develop robust governance policies and procedures to ensure stringent impartiality and accountability." Amnesty Israel said that the documents demonstrate that the government of Israel has never refrained from making use of any means to evade accountability for the violation of human rights it conducts, in the 1970s as well as today. Amnesty International Israel today runs a number of campaigns aimed at combating discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, confronting human rights abuses within the occupied Palestinian territories and gaining equal rights for asylum seekers and refugees. https://www.rt.com/news/381270-amnesty-israel-ministry-branch/ http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.777770 |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by freediver on Mar 20th, 2017 at 7:05pm
Does this mean we should oppose the two state solution as an apartheid agenda in which the Palestinians would miss out on all the benefits of Israeli citizenship?
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by freediver on Mar 21st, 2017 at 6:56pm
drip
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 24th, 2017 at 10:32pm freediver wrote on Mar 20th, 2017 at 7:05pm:
Do you think there will be any benefits accepting Israeli citizenship? Why should they, they are Palestinians and it is their land. This is 2 years old, will anything change? Old Palestinian lady arrives home finds Jewish settlers have stolen her house https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCZr4MLocuM [b]East Jerusalem: Israel’s Colonial Project Unravelled /b] Published on Dec 7, 2016 This video unravels Israel’s colonial policies and practices in occupied East Jerusalem, which aim to reduce the Palestinian presence in the city. At present, there are around 200,000 Israeli settlers and 300,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem. These include some 100,000 Palestinians who have already been isolated by the wall. On the other hand, if the wall is completed by Israel, some 100,00 additional Israeli settlers would be placed on the east Jerusalem side of the wall. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UuBVprlf5Q |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Frank on Mar 25th, 2017 at 8:38am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35eEljsSQfc
Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria - where are your Jews? Where is the REAL apartheid? |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by freediver on Mar 25th, 2017 at 8:54am Quote:
The Arab Muslims of Israel have more freedom and more say in their own governance than in any other Arab nation. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 25th, 2017 at 5:22pm freediver wrote on Mar 25th, 2017 at 8:54am:
Equal Rights for Palestinians APARTHEID AND OCCUPATION More than 5 million Palestinians are denied equal rights by the state of Israel under a system of apartheid, a deliberate policy of racial or ethnic segregation. Under Israeli military occupation, millions of Palestinians live in conditions which closely resemble the apartheid system that existed in South Africa: No right of free speech, assembly or movement Arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial Torture House searches without warrant Assassination, extra-judicial murder No right to vote for the Israeli government (even though it controls their lives) Israel controls all Palestinian borders, all imports and exports, and all movement between towns and cities. THE GAZA STRIP, still surrounded, besieged and controlled by Israel, has been sealed off and effectively turned into the world’s largest open-air prison. WHAT IS ISRAELI APARTHEID? Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was the first prominent figure in this country to apply the term apartheid to Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories—East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank. Israel’s apartheid system, however, also affects Palestinian Arabs who make up 20 percent of the population within Israel itself. Apartheid is a central feature of the Zionist state that proclaims it is exclusively for Jews. The word “apartheid” originated to describe the rigid system of legal segregation imposed by the white supremacist South African government against people of color in that country from 1948 to 1990. The word itself is from the Afrikaner language and means “separateness” or “apart.” Afrikaners were Dutch settlers who denied basic democratic and human rights to that nation’s black majority and other people of color. In 1948 they formalized racial segregation by making it the law of the land, a policy they called apartheid. Israeli apartheid is both like and unlike the system of segregation that existed in South Africa. It is also similar and dissimilar to the system of legal segregation that existed in the American South for many decades. The word apartheid could easily be used to describe the system of legal segregation that existed in nine U.S. Southern states from the end of the Reconstruction Period to the mid-1960s when the civil rights movement achieved some of its greatest victories. It could also describe the de facto segregation that existed outside the U.S. South and resulted in the creation of black ghettoes in nearly all U.S. cities. Three key features characterize Israeli apartheid: Four million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories lack the right to vote for the government that controls their lives through a military occupation. In addition to controlling the borders, air space, water, tax revenues, and other vital matters pertaining to the Occupied Territories, Israel alone issues the identity cards that determine the ability of Palestinians to work and their freedom of movement. About 1.2 million Palestinian Israelis, who make up 20 percent, or one-fifth, of Israel’s population, have second-class citizenship within Israel, which defines itself as a Jewish state rather than a state for all its citizens. More than 20 provisions of Israel’s principal laws discriminate, either directly or indirectly, against non-Jews, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Minority Rights in Israel. Millions of Palestinians remain refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and elsewhere, unable to return to their former homes and land in present-day Israel, even though the right of return for refugees is enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In 2008, the South African government commissioned a study by leading legal scholars and human rights experts to determine if Israel was practicing apartheid in the Occupied Palestinian Territories according to the parameters of international law. After a 15-month investigation, the study concluded that “Israel, since 1967, is the belligerent Occupying Power in occupied Palestinian territory, and that its occupation of these territories has become a colonial enterprise which implements a system of apartheid.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, said of Israeli government policies, “I've been very deeply distressed in my visit to the Holy Land; it reminded me so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa. I have seen the humiliation of the Palestinians at checkpoints and roadblocks, suffering like us when young white police officers prevented us from moving about.” |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 25th, 2017 at 5:24pm
Israeli apartheid is a two-tiered system of favoritism and privilege for Jews compared with deprivation and discrimination against Palestinian Arabs. It covers many facets of political, social, and economic life, including standard of living, education, housing and development, access to water and roads, an unequal system of justice, land ownership, and freedom of movement. In addition, it has many special features, such as the absolute control that the Israeli military ultimately exercises over all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the recent construction of a Separation Barrier or Apartheid Wall. This wall is meant not only to confiscate land from Palestinians to expand illegal settlements but also to make it impossible for Palestinians to have a contiguous and viable state of their own.
POVERTY In the Occupied Territories, 66 percent of Palestinians live in absolute poverty, defined as income of $2 or less per day. By contrast, Israelis enjoy an average per capita income of nearly $60 per day. Worse yet, 80 percent of Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on international food aid for day-to-day survival, and 33 percent of all Palestinians in the Occupied Territories are dependent on international food aid for survival. The unemployment rate in the West Bank hovers around 19 percent while the unemployment rate in Gaza is about 40 percent. Private-sector unemployment in Gaza is an incredible 85 percent. Within Israel, 48 percent of Palestinian Israelis live in poverty, compared with a poverty rate of 15 percent for Jewish Israelis. Of the 32 towns within Israel that have unemployment rates higher than 10 percent, 25 of those are Palestinian towns. Palestinian Israelis face discrimination in employment, wages, and working conditions. Although they make up 20 percent of the population, Palestinian Israelis represent only 6 percent of public employees in civil service jobs. EDUCATION Within Israel, Palestinian and Jewish children attend separate and unequal school systems from kindergarten through high school. The Israeli government invests more than 3 times as much in a Jewish student than it does a Palestinian student, according to government statistics released in 2004. Also within Israel the government designates certain communities for “high-priority status” for improving the local educational system. In recent years Israel has designated 553 Jewish communities for high-priority status, compared with 4 Palestinian communities. In East Jerusalem, Palestinian territory illegally annexed by Israel after the 1967 war, the Israeli government spends an average of 2,300 New Israeli Shekels (about U.S. $600) per Jewish student, compared with an average of 577 shekels (U.S. $150) per Palestinian student, according to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The discrepancies are especially apparent in higher education. Forty-five percent of Palestinian applicants are turned down for admission to Israeli universities, compared with 16 percent of Jewish applicants. Among Israeli undergraduates, only 10 percent are Palestinian, even though Palestinians make up 20 percent of the population. Palestinians make up only 3 percent of Israeli doctoral students and only 1 percent of university lecturers. Within the Occupied Territories, Palestinian schools are under funded compared with the generous subsidies given to Jewish schools in the illegal settlements. Israeli military authorities frequently close Palestinian schools or subject them to curfews. Many Palestinian students must pass through Israeli military checkpoints just to get to school, and the military uses these checkpoints to harass and delay students. In response to Palestinian uprisings, the Israeli military often takes reprisals against Palestinian schools and students in the Occupied Territories. From 2003 to 2005, there were more than 180 assaults on Palestinian schools, resulting in the deaths of 180 students and teachers. During that period more than 1,500 school days were lost due to Israeli closures. A study by the United Nations agency, UNESCO, found that the Israeli military caused $5 million in damages to Palestinian schools. HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT In the Occupied Territories, from 2000 to 2006 Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing “funded 53 percent of housing starts and 42 percent of all residential construction costs” in Israel’s illegal settlements, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. The report, titled “Separate and Unequal,” noted that Israel provided absolutely no funding for Palestinian housing in the occupied West Bank. In occupied East Jerusalem, only 13 percent of zoned land is available for Palestinian construction. Planning and building laws there prevent Palestinian residents from constructing new housing because 65 percent of the residents are impoverished and cannot pay for the infrastructure improvements required for a building permit. In 2009 the Israeli municipal government in Jerusalem outlined as “a main policy goal. . . maintaining a solid Jewish majority” in the city by explicitly discriminating in favor of Jews for services and affordable housing. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 25th, 2017 at 5:26pm
ACCESS TO WATER AND ROADS
Water Water is a scarce resource in Israel and the Occupied Territories. Israel has controlled water resources in the West Bank and Gaza since its occupation began in 1967. The World Bank estimates that Palestinians have lost more than 100,000 agricultural jobs because Israel has denied Palestinians access to water resources that were diverted to illegal Jewish settlements. The World Health Organization (WHO) found that Israelis consume 4 times more water than Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. In one area alone, the Jordan Valley, 9,000 Jewish settlers consume 25 percent of the water used by the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank, which totals 2.5 million people. According to the United Nations, 60,000 West Bank Palestinians lack access to running water and must pay one-sixth of their income to have water trucked into their communities. The WHO recommends a minimum of 100 liters of water consumption per day per person for adequate sanitation, food preparation, personal consumption, and other uses. The average Palestinian in the West Bank receives 50 liters of water per day, compared with 200 liters per day for the average Israeli, including settlers. The water situation in Gaza is especially critical. About 95 percent of the water pumped into the Gaza Strip is polluted and unfit for drinking, according to the United Nations. Israel’s Operation Cast Lead military offensive that worsened groundwater pollution in Gaza’s lone aquifer, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Furthermore, Israel’s blockade of Gaza prevents repair to wastewater treatment facilities. Within Israel, more than 170 Palestinian communities, mostly in small villages, are not recognized by the state. As a result, none are provided with running water, and the state does not subsidize the cost of water in those communities. Roads Of all the blatant features of Israeli apartheid, perhaps none is more apparent than the fact that roads have been built exclusively for Israelis and settlers in the Occupied West Bank. Palestinians living in the West Bank are denied the right to travel on these roads. The separate Palestinian road system is often unpaved and in some cases is little more than a trail, rather than an actual road. Vehicles with Palestinian licenses are completely prohibited from traveling on approximately 105 kilometers of West Bank roads, according to the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem. Palestinians can travel on the remaining 180 kilometers of Israeli-built roads in the West Bank only if they obtain a special permit or travel in an ambulance. The Israeli road system crisscrosses the West Bank in a way that would prevent the formation of a contiguous and viable Palestinian state. UNEQUAL JUSTICE Israel is the only country in the world that distinguishes between nationality and citizenship. Israeli nationality is guaranteed only to those determined to be of the Jewish religion. Only Jews have full rights in the state of Israel, which is defined as a Jewish state under the Basic Laws that substitute for a written constitution. Under the Basic Laws, more than 90 percent of the land is state-owned. Israel’s Basic Laws prohibit access or the lease of state land to non-Jews. The Law of Return of 1950, another of Israel’s Basic Laws, guarantees Israeli nationality to Jews everywhere and grants them automatic citizenship if they seek it in Israel. Palestinians, however, have Arab nationality and are denied the right of return. Palestinian Israelis who marry Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories cannot reside with their spouses in Israel, although Jewish Israelis can legally reside with their spouses in a settlement in the Occupied Territories. An amendment to one of Israel’s Basic Laws, passed in 1985, states: “A candidates' list shall not participate in elections to the Knesset if its objects or actions, expressly or by implication, include one of the following: (1) negation of the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people. . . .” This provision effectively rules out the participation of Palestinian Israeli political parties that believe Israel should be a state of all its citizens, including the 20 percent who are Palestinian. Any political party with this belief or program is not allowed to run candidates for election to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Altogether, according to Adalah: The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, more than 20 of Israel’s principal laws discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinians. Crimes of violence committed by Israeli Jews against Palestinians are rarely punished. The Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem examined 119 cases in which Israeli civilians killed Palestinians. The organization found that in only 13 cases were Israelis sentenced to prison. Only six were convicted of murder, and of those, only one received life imprisonment. The seven others were convicted of manslaughter, but most drew light sentences. Israeli soldiers convicted of killing Palestinian civilians are even more likely to receive either mild punishment or no prison time at all. In one notorious case an Israeli soldier convicted by a military court of killing a 95-year-old Palestinian woman received a 65-day prison sentence. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 25th, 2017 at 5:27pm
On the other hand, Palestinian crimes of violence against Jews are harshly punished, including by means of extrajudicial assassinations. In addition, the Israeli military often demolishes the house where a Palestinian accused of violence against Israelis resides, depriving an entire family of shelter. At the same time the Israeli military routinely “looks the other way” when Jewish settlers carry out acts of violence, harassment, and property damage against Palestinians and Palestinian-owned property. The Israeli organization, Yesh Din, found that from 2005 to 2009 Israeli police failed to indict a single settler for the destruction of Palestinian olive trees in nearly 70 separate incidents.
Even acts of nonviolent civil disobedience earn Palestinians long prison terms, compared with similar actions by Israeli activists opposed to the Occupation. In one recent case a Palestinian who led nonviolent protests against the Separation Wall in the village of Bilin received a 1.5 year prison sentence, compared with an Israeli Jewish activist with Anarchists Against the Wall who received a 3-month prison sentence. Palestinians in the Occupied Territories can be punished for what they read, what they write, and what organizations they belong to. During much of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians lived under Israeli military law and faced military tribunals, having no recourse to a civilian court system. Israeli settlers in the Occupied Territories are considered Israeli citizens and are brought before civilian courts if they are charged with a crime. Even after the 1993 Oslo peace accords granted the Palestinian Authority (PA) limited self-rule in the Occupied Territories, the Israeli military maintained police and judicial authority in much of the Occupied Territories. The Israeli military also reserves for itself the right to intervene even in areas where the PA was supposed to have full authority over police matters. In Israeli military courts: There is no presumption of innocence, and the military courts do not adhere to international standards of due process. Palestinian defendants are not informed of the charges against them until their first court hearing and their attorneys are not given time to study the indictment. Court decisions can be based on “secret evidence” not provided to the defendant or his attorney. Military judges are not required to have a legal background or education. Palestinian children can be prosecuted as adults at age 12, whereas children of Jewish settlers cannot be prosecuted as adults until age 18. Palestinians are heavily pressured to plea bargain and can face more severe penalties if they do not. As a result more than 95% of convictions are the result of plea bargains. In 2006 the acquittal rate for Palestinian defendants in military courts was 0.29 %. As a result of harsh sentences, more than 650,000 Palestinians have served time in prison since 1967 when the Occupation began. This figure represents about 40 percent of today’s male population. A large percentage of Palestinian prisoners have been tortured, according to several human rights organizations. LAND OWNERSHIP AND PROPERTY CONFISCATION Israel has granted illegal settlements control of 43 percent of occupied West Bank land. It has designated 18 to 20 percent of the West Bank as closed military zones and another 10 percent as park land. The total amount of private and public land thus removed from Palestinian control amounts to about 73 percent of the occupied West Bank, according to Human Rights Watch. Under international law, property can be confiscated only in cases of urgent military necessity. Furthermore, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring its civilian population to an occupied area. It reads in part, “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The settlements are thus illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and the confiscation of land to build the settlements is illegal. Under international humanitarian law it is also illegal to confiscate private property without compensation and in a way that discriminates. The Israeli organization Peace Now found that 40 percent of the West Bank settlements were built on privately-owned Palestinian land. Because the settlements are Jewish only and no compensation was paid to the Palestinian owners, the confiscation of Palestinian land for settlement construction is also illegal under international human rights law. Even under Israeli law the construction of settlements on privately-owned land is illegal. In East Jerusalem, Palestinians are confined to just 13 percent of the land area even though they make up 35 percent of Jerusalem’s population. Illegal settlements in East Jerusalem have access to 25 percent of the land area of East Jerusalem that is zoned for settlement construction. A Jewish settler has access to 3 times more land than a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem. Israel also illegally annexed land from more than 28 Palestinian towns and villages to make it part of Jerusalem’s municipal borders. In many cases, it confiscated only the farmland belonging to Palestinian farmers living in those villages, but excluded the Palestinian population. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 25th, 2017 at 5:29pm
Within Israel, more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages were either destroyed or depopulated of Palestinians in 1948 when the state of Israel was founded. Israel has never paid compensation to the 700,000 Palestinian refugees who were forced to abandon their land and homes under threat of massacre or due to military force. From 1948 to 1953, the Israeli government created 370 new Jewish towns. Of those, 350 were built on land taken from “absentee” Palestinian owners.
These owners were “absentees” because Israel refused to allow Palestinian refugees to return to their homes even though the right of return is established in one of the founding documents of the United Nations known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Instead, the Israeli government enacted the Law of Return as one of its Basic Laws, which guarantees the right of “return” only to Jews. Before 1948 Jews legally owned only about 7 percent of the land in what was then Palestine. After the founding of Israel in May 1948, the government claimed 93 percent of the land as state land. THE SEPARATION WALL AND FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT Following the 2nd intifada, or uprising, against Israeli oppression, the Israeli government announced that it would build a “security fence” or barrier between Israel and the Occupied Territories. The announced reason was to prevent suicide bombings within Israel. As construction of the “fence” began, however, it quickly became apparent that the Separation Wall had little to do with security. Instead, it had much to do with confiscating more land from the Palestinians, controlling their movements within the Occupied Territories, and making the creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible. The route of the wall did not follow the so-called Green Line, the armistice line that delineated the border of Israel from the West Bank and Gaza prior to the 1967 war. Instead, in numerous places, the wall sharply veered into the West Bank, cutting off Palestinian villages from adjacent farmland, land that Palestinian farmers had cultivated for generations. Israeli authorities proclaimed that farmers would be able to access their land only if they could prove land ownership. Otherwise, they would not receive a permit to cross the Separation barrier. But in many cases, traditional farming practices meant that land was owned by families rather than individuals and documented “proof of ownership” was not required as land was passed from one generation to the next. Israel has granted permits to only 18 percent of farmers who have been cut off from their land by the Separation Wall. In addition to separating Palestinians from their farmland, the Separation Wall also intersected Palestinian towns and cities. Instead of separating Palestinians from Israelis, it separated Palestinians from Palestinians. Merely to go to work, to school or to a hospital, Palestinians must pass through military checkpoints, where Israeli soldiers routinely harass and intimidate them or simply delay their passage, including people seeking emergency medical treatment. What was formerly a routine commute to work or school became an onerous trip requiring several hours of delays. The World Bank estimated that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), a measure of goods and services produced, in the Occupied Territories declined 60 percent on a per capita basis from 1999 to 2008 due to restrictions imposed on Palestinians’ freedom of movement. In 2004 the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion ruling that Israel was obligated to halt construction of the wall, to dismantle it where it interfered with Palestinians’ freedom of movement, and to compensate Palestinians for lost income. The Court found that the Separation wall interfered with Palestinian’s “right to work, to health, to education, and to an adequate standard of living as proclaimed by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child." The impact of the Wall on many Palestinian communities has been devastating. According to United Nations reports, about 15,000 Palestinians were forced to move elsewhere due to the Wall’s impact on their ability to work and live. A UN report on the West Bank village of Jubara found that the Wall’s impact on a once-thriving economy that featured 10 poultry plants had led to 90 percent unemployment and the impoverishment of 1,800 farming families cut off from their land. Even without the Separation Wall, Palestinians must still pass through myriad military checkpoints. According to a World Bank report, “on any given day the ability to reach work, school, shopping, healthcare facilities and agricultural land is highly uncertain and subject to arbitrary restriction and delay." Gaza also is enclosed by fences on both the Israeli and Egyptian borders. Israel maintains complete control of Gaza’s borders, making it the largest open-air prison in the world. Palestinians cannot travel outside Gaza without special permits from Israel. Israel restricts the movement of Gaza’s students to and from the West Bank. In 2000, about 350 Gaza students attended Birzeit University in the West Bank. After Israel imposed its blockade, fewer than 15 Gaza students were able to attend Birzeit. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 25th, 2017 at 5:31pm
CONCLUSION
These are just some of the many aspects of Palestinian life affected by the Israeli government’s apartheid policies. Fortunately, an international solidarity movement has formed around the world and is heeding the call of Palestinian civil society to boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) Israel for its flagrant violations of human rights. Just as in South Africa and the American South where whites joined with blacks to fight segregation and white supremacy, many Israeli Jews are also repudiating their government’s policies. They have actively joined with Palestinians to fight apartheid. In weekly protests in villages like Budrus and Bilin and in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, Palestinians, Israeli Jews, and international solidarity activists demonstrate nonviolently against home demolitions and the Separation Wall. Their actions speak louder than words and prove that Arabs and Jews can live together peacefully and in harmony on the basis of equal rights for all. Many Americans, including American Jews, also oppose Israel’s policies and the way the U.S. government helps prop up the apartheid system by giving Israel $3 billion in annual military aid. The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act prohibits U.S. aid to countries that deny human and democratic rights. The Arms Export Control Aid prohibits military aid to countries that habitually violate human rights. Write to your members of Congress and demand that the U.S. government cease providing aid to apartheid Israel. Sources: "Separate and Unequal" a report by Human Rights Watch. Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation by Saree Makdisi. Israel’s Occupation by Neve Gordon. “Institutionalized Arab Inequality in Israel,” by Stephen Lendman. “Inequality Report: The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel,” by the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights. “Education Under Attack 2010,” a report by UNESCO. http://www.seamac.org/equalrights.htm |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 25th, 2017 at 5:33pm
Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal
By YOUSEF MUNAYYERMAY 23, 2012 Quote:
read on http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/opinion/not-all-israeli-citizens-are-equal.html Don't Call Us 'Israeli Arabs': Palestinians in Israel Speak Out http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.744398 |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by freediver on Mar 25th, 2017 at 9:17pm jmjcare wrote on Mar 25th, 2017 at 5:22pm:
Does this mean you oppose the two state solution because it is essentially an apartheid regime? |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 26th, 2017 at 11:18pm
Israel\'s industrial zones polluting Palestinian territories
Jerusalem - Sona al-Deak The settlements\' chemical factories poison Palestinian lands with toxic Toxic inhalation, waste and pollutants emitted from Israeli industrial factories on settlements in the West Bank, has been causing concern amongst Palestinians, due to the serious harm to the environment and for people\'s health. Five Israeli industrial zones are built on Palestinian territories in the governorate of Silfit, containing 160 factories, which produce aluminum, leather, batteries, plastics, cement, food cans, fibre glass, chemical cleansers, Insecticides, marble, military equipment and other materials not suitable for populated areas. \"The residues from these factories are causing harm to health in addition to the environment and natural resources, especially drinking water and cultivated lands,\" Jamil al-Motawer, deputy director of the Palestinian Environment Administration, told Arabstoday. He added: \"The industrial drainage of these factories has reached Palestinian cultivated lands and the water wells from which the sheep and cows drink. This drainage is also leaking into the groundwater resources, Needless to say, these industrial zones prevent any chance for normal expansion of Palestinian villages and towns.\" The Palestinian governorate of Silfit, which includes 23 Israeli settlements, in which there are five industrial zones -- the most harmful being located in the settlement of Burkan. This zone contains factories producing some of the most harmful industrial residue for health and the environment. . The director of the Palestinian Water Institution, Saleh al-Rabi, told Arabstoday that the industrial zone of Burkan produces more than 800,000 m3 of harmful industrial drainage, which all finds its way to Palestinian land and water resources. \"The most affected villages of this drainage are Kafr el-Deak and Deir al-Ballout, \" Rabi said. Air pollution is another main threat which is emitting from Israeli factories, especially the plastics factories, which leaves solid chemical residues that are burnt and dissolved in the air, as well as the leather tanning factories, which leach heavy pollutants into the water. http://www.arabstoday.net/en/330/venus-to-pass-the-face-of-sun-in-rare-transit Quote:
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Mar 26th, 2017 at 11:21pm Quote:
References 1. Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA), Jerusalem, 1996. 2. Al-Quds newspaper, April 16, 1997 (Arabic). 3. Ministry of Civil Affairs, Environmental Damages in the West Bank Districts Resulting from Israeli Settlements and Industries, the Palestinian Authority, 1997 (Arabic). 4. Al-Nahar newspaper. "Starting from the North to the South to Build Israeli Quarries, Confiscation of 16,733 Dunums from the West Bank," September 1994 (Arabic). http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=427 |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Lisa Jones on Mar 27th, 2017 at 4:14am cods wrote on Mar 18th, 2017 at 9:46am:
Unforgreggory is too busy chatting to himself online to get a real job. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Lisa Jones on Mar 27th, 2017 at 4:16am From the Opening Post Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon issued a statement condemning the report late on Wednesday. "The attempt to smear and falsely label the only true democracy in the Middle East by creating a false analogy is despicable and constitutes a blatant lie," he said. UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric, when asked about the report, said it was published without any prior consultations with the UN Secretariat and its views do not reflect those of the secretary-general. :) |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Ye Grappler on Mar 27th, 2017 at 4:38am
Bit late to be discussing this, isn't it?
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Yadda on Mar 28th, 2017 at 7:59am "Israel has established an 'apartheid regime'" God is going to break the balls of those %$#@! Zionists ! Oh no, wait...... in the O.T. the bible, God declares that HE is a Zionist ! But in any case, lets have a little light relief shall we. ------- > Klavan's One-State Solution_ Give the Middle East to the Jews http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEeiDjdUuU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIEeiDjdUuU |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Apr 5th, 2017 at 10:58pm
Borderline Views: Ensuring religious freedom in Israel
It is high time the government also made it clear that those people who desecrate Muslim and Christian sites in Israel are the full equivalent of anti-Semitic hooligans, terrorists. A Friday morning tour of the Mount Zion area, just outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, organized by the impressive government- funded ICORE research project on Study of Conversion and Inter-Religious Encounters. We are introduced to the multiple complexities of this tiny piece of territory, encompassing within it the Dormition Church, the reputed Tomb of King David and place of the Last Supper, the Franciscan monastery and the separate Armenian, Greek, Protestant and other cemeteries, bordering on each other in a complex mosaic. Unlike most areas of religious tension and conflict in Israel, there is no significant Muslim presence here at the moment, although it is clear from their architecture that many of the buildings, especially the King David site, date back to Muslim periods – many hundreds of years after the death of King David or the events of the Last Supper. The small Muslim Dajani-Daoud cemetery is fenced in tightly and is no longer in use, while the neighboring buildings, which used to belong to the Dajani family, are now occupied by the Holocaust Cellar Museum and the Diaspora Yeshiva. The conflicts and tensions among the various Christian denominations and the active renewal of the Jewish presence, most notably through the takeover in recent years of David’s Tomb, are clear for all to see. The room of the Last Supper is now off limits to Christian prayer because of the Jewish argument that such prayer is idolatrous and full of impurity, and that this impurity should not be allowed to descend downward into David’s Tomb. This bizarre argument has been upheld by the courts and enforced by the police. The accounts of Jewish youth accosting priests on the street and spitting at them, of graffiti on the walls of monasteries and churches and the desecration of gravestones in the local cemeteries are hard to accept, but there are too many such documented accounts for it to be pushed aside as the work of a few deviant youth. The establishment of a new police station in the very heart of Mount Zion and the installation of CTV cameras at almost every corner and passageway are disturbing evidence of the renewed religio-political tensions. Strict rules have been introduced restricting prayer services and other religious practices and such events are limited to a few holy days in the year. Religious and sectarian tensions have developed in recent years as a new, young, radical group of extremist right-wing elements have sought to take control and bring about a “Judaization” of the mountain. All this takes place against the backdrop of the desecration of the Tabta Church overlooking the Sea of Galilee last week, also by groups of Jewish youth acting in the name of religion. Can there be a greater desecration of God’s name in the Holy Land than Jews doing to other religions what was done to their fathers and ancestors by other governments and religions throughout centuries of exile? They may wear the kippot, tzitzit, etc., but the last thing that they, or their teachers (who call themselves rabbis) can be labeled is “religious.” It is the ultimate “chilul hashem” (desecration of God’s name) which they have performed and it is high time that we, and our government, stopped pretending that this is just a small group of deviant youth which doesn’t reflect the wider sub-strata of society within which they are growing up and being educated. We should have been proud of the fact that the president and prime minister condemned the action, that Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein convened a group of rabbis and religious leaders to set up a fund to help repair the damage to the church. But we didn’t hear any major statements of denunciation from the Chief Rabbinate, the official state religious authority. Most of the right-wing government ministers have remained silent, where they would have been the first to shout out loud were it a Jewish cemetery or synagogue under attack elsewhere in the world (in Europe or North America), demanding that the respective governments and police forces immediately take action to arrest the culprits, to make good the damage and to put in place security measures aimed at ensuring that such activities are not repeated in the future. Instead, we have heard one of the country’s most extreme right-wing rabbis, Dov Lior, formerly of Kiryat Arba and recently relocated to Jerusalem, questioning the idea that Jews should donate money toward the restoration of the church, arguing instead that the same money should be used for restoring the desecrated graves on the Mount of Olives which have been damaged by loathsome people acting in the name of Palestinian nationalism and Islam. As though there is some symmetry in acts of desecration. If they can do it to us, then we have the right to do it to them. Reducing this bitter and endless conflict to tit for tat child’s game – what you can do I can do better. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Apr 5th, 2017 at 11:00pm
As though there is some symmetry in acts of desecration. If they can do it to us, then we have the right to do it to them. Reducing this bitter and endless conflict to tit for tat child’s game – what you can do I can do better.
Lior conveniently ignores one of the most important tenets of his own religious Zionist ideology – namely, that the Jewish people are sovereign in their own land after 2,000 years of exile and, as such, are ultimately responsible for the safety and freedom of everyone living under their control. Sovereignty comes with obligations, not just rights. Given the history of the Jewish people in exile, there can be no greater obligation than showing to the world that Jewish sovereignty really does honor and protect the rights of religious minorities and freedom of religious practice, in a way that was not always accorded to the Jews throughout the long history of persecution and oppression. Lior and like-minded rabbis also forget to acknowledge the fact that the religion in whose name they speak has very clear teachings concerning the rights of the “ger,” the stranger in our midst. If we are unable to live up to these standards, then we have failed to honor the independence and sovereignty for which we have fought so hard, and which still stands in the balance as our enemies (and we have plenty of these) would like nothing better than for the State of Israel to disappear back into the sea of the Diaspora. They would like nothing better than to show that the Jewish state has no more regard for holy Muslim and Christian sites than that displayed, for centuries past, for Jewish institutions and places of worship throughout the world. While Edelstein and prominent religious leaders such as former government minister Rabbi Michael Melchior, should be commended for the action that they have taken to partially reimburse the church for the damage, it should not have had to come to this. The government should have immediately, within hours of the church desecration occurring, offered to pay the full cost of restoration. They should not have had to rely on private contributions to make good the damage and, for that matter, for only a small part of the actual cost. It is high time the government also made it clear that those people who desecrate Muslim and Christian sites in Israel are the full equivalent of anti-Semitic hooligans, terrorists, not misguided youths, who should be arrested, charged and imprisoned for lengthy periods of time. The disgrace that they bring to Israel and the Jewish people is immeasurable and only helps to turn the few friends we still have in the world against us. This not turning the other cheek. Israel should be proud that it is expected to behave according to different, higher, principles. Just as we do not want to be judged by the standards of the barbaric behavior and terrorism of some of the neighboring regimes, so too we do not want to be judged in comparison with the anti-Jewish behavior of groups around the world. If that opens us to greater criticism when we fail to behave according to these principles, then that should be seen as a badge of merit, not as a weakness. Failing to do so means that we have betrayed the most important principle of being a sovereign nation in our own land, the responsibility of caring for all those who are subject to our control. Those who would spit on priests in the Old City of Jerusalem, write anti-Christian graffiti on the wall of a monastery or damage a church in the Galilee are directly responsible for weakening Israel’s own sovereignty and its justification for Jewish rule in the Land of Israel. http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Borderline-Views-Ensuring-religious-freedom-in-Israel-407522 |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Apr 5th, 2017 at 11:35pm freediver wrote on Mar 25th, 2017 at 9:17pm:
No I do not oppose the two state solution but the BIG question is HOW could this be achieved? We have allowed Israel to do as it pleases for far too long. Could Israel be forced to go back to the 1967 border allowing any Jews that wanted to stay in the occupied land if they so wished and given Palestinian citizenship and Palestinian in Israel’s territory given full Israeli rights and citizenship if they wish to stay there. Would Palestinians and Jews accept that? Could a buffer zone controlled by a peace keeping force be formed between the two? Will the Palestinians who were forced out of Palestine be allowed to return to their land? I really don’t know what can be done but sure know that something must be done as the Palestinians have been suffering for 70 years under the apartheid Israel rule. Jews and Arabs used to live peacefully in Palestine before the Zionists took over. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by freediver on Apr 8th, 2017 at 10:11am
The Palestinians rule themselves. It is not Israel's fault they dedicate all their spare efforts to throwing rocks at Israeli tanks. It does not take an international agreement for Palestine to become it's own state. They merely need to do it themselves. After all, that is exactly how Israel was formed.
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by Frank on Apr 8th, 2017 at 1:05pm Yadda wrote on Mar 28th, 2017 at 7:59am:
Klaven's right. |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by issuevoter on Apr 8th, 2017 at 2:11pm
Before Islam went Ape-sh*t in the 1980s, I had sympathy for the Palestinians as victims of a powerful enemy and treacherous friends. But then they showed their true colours.
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Apr 14th, 2017 at 11:11pm
Nearly 400 Israeli settlers storm Aqsa Mosque again
Nearly 400 Israeli settlers, guarded by regime forces, have once again stormed the al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Israeli-occupied Old City of East Jerusalem al-Quds. Firas al-Dibs, spokesperson of the Islamic Waqf, which manages the compound’s affairs, told the Palestinian Ma’an news agency that large groups of Israeli settlers, approximately 385 in total, “raided the mosque” on Thursday. The official also told Turkey’s Anadolu news agency that the intruding settlers tried to perform rituals and attempted to attack the mosque guards, while Israeli forces made two arrests in the mosque’s courtyard. The al-Aqsa Mosque compound is a flashpoint Islamic site, which is also holy to the Jews. Under a 1967 deal between Israel and Jordan, the compound’s custodian, non-Muslim worship is prohibited at the site. In defiance of the agreement, the regime in Tel Aviv regularly allows Israeli settlers and extremists to enter the site and carry out religious rituals -- often under armed guard. Thursday marked the third day of the Jewish holiday of Passover. In a similar move on Wednesday, nearly 300 settlers and extremists entered the compound by force, performing acts deemed provocative by Palestinians. In the lead-up to Passover, Israeli forces had detained at least 30 Palestinians during raids in occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds. Muslim bodies in Jerusalem al-Quds condemned the incursions, saying they are meant to change al-Aqsa’s historical character. “We cannot accept such arbitrary, barbaric … measures under the pretext of Jewish holidays,” the Department of Islamic Waqf and Islamic Higher Council, as well as Dar Al-Ifta and the Supreme Islamic Council, said in a joint statement. Last week, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) criticized the Israeli regime for stepping up its crackdown on Palestinians every year during Passover. “For (Palestinian) Jerusalemites, the Jewish holiday season means an escalation in arbitrary detentions, house raids, and searches -- measures that terrify families. The installation of additional security checkpoints, particularly at the al-Aqsa Mosque (compound)’s gates and in the Old City, only increase tensions in Jerusalem,” the PPS head in Jerusalem Nadi Qaws told Ma’an last week. In a war in 1967, Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds, where the Aqsa Mossque compound is located. Since then, Tel Aviv has continued to expand its illegal settlements there. http://presstv.com/Detail/2017/04/14/517974/Israel-Settlers-Aqsa |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Apr 14th, 2017 at 11:15pm
Israel orders demolition of Palestinian mosque in al-Quds
Apr 14, 2017 Israel has issued an order to demolish a mosque in the occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds claiming that the building has not obtained construction permit. The order for demolition of Abdullah l-Sanawi Mosque in Silwan neighborhood was issued on Thursday. According to Fakhri Abu Diab, a member of the Committee for the Defense of Silwan, the mosque was built several years ago on Waqf land using donations from the people to serve 4,000 residents of the area. Abdullah Al-Sanawi Mosque is among six Palestinian mosques threatened with demolition in the area, he added. In late December, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced that Israel’s demolition campaign against Palestinian homes and structures across the West Bank and East Jerusalem al-Quds had reached the most unprecedented level in the past seven years. Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and structures have raised alarm among diplomats and human rights groups over what they regard as the Tel Aviv regime’s continued violation of international law. On April 5, the Israeli parliament, known as the Knesset, approved a controversial law targeting what are said to be illegal constructions amid criticisms that the legislation will disproportionately affect Palestinians and Arab communities. The legislation increases the maximum imprisonment for those convicted of building without permits to three years from the current two-year term. The legislation, which further hikes fines and reduces the powers of courts to postpone the date of demolition orders, will also target 300,000 Palestinians living in the occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds. Tel Aviv has accelerated its land grab and settlement construction activities in the occupied Palestinian lands after pro-Israel US President Donald Trump took office earlier this year. Human rights groups say Israel’s sustained demolitions of Palestinian homes are aimed at uprooting Palestinians from their native territories and expropriating more land for the expansion of settlements. Israeli forces have demolished over 48,000 Palestinian homes and buildings since the 1967 occupation of the Palestinian lands, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. http://presstv.com/Detail/2017/04/14/517944/Israel-Palestine-alQuds-mosque |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by freediver on Apr 15th, 2017 at 8:58pm
Do you oppose the two state solution because it is essentially an apartheid regime?
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Apr 25th, 2017 at 11:46pm
The Great Palestinian Book Robbery (w/ Benny Brunner)
Filmmaker Benny Brunner, discussed his new film The Great Book Robbery, explained how the Palestinian rare books were lost during the formation of Israel, how his film undercuts the myths surrounding the founding of the state of Israel, why we need to acknowledge that the Palestinians had a thriving culture, why recognizing the real history will help everyone and what Benny hopes his film will accomplish... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28QXMytUsiM Witness - The Great Book Robbery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myvobIkwkNM&oref=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DmyvobIkwkNM&has_verified=1 |
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Title: Re: Israel has established an 'apartheid regime' Post by jmjcare on Apr 29th, 2017 at 7:56pm
World Bank warns of ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Gaza
Apr 27, 2017 The World Bank has expressed deep concern about the deteriorating life conditions in the Gaza Strip, saying that constant fuel shortages and frequent power cuts have brought the Israeli-besieged enclave to the brink of a “humanitarian crisis.” In a report released on Thursday, the international financial institution added that foreign assistance alone would not have significant impact on reviving the stagnant Palestinian economy unless practical and significant changes were made on the ground. “While in any healthy economy, energy underpins industrial process and economic growth, Gaza faces electricity blackouts every eight hours,” the report quoted the World Bank's West Bank and Gaza director Marina Wes as saying. “During summer and winter peaks, the scarce electricity supply is increasingly rationed to four hours during daytime,” she added. Wes further said that the situation had recently become the norm, and the enclave was plunging into darkness during most of the day. “This has created a humanitarian crisis for Gaza’s two million people,” she added. According to the report, Gaza Strip’s sole power plant frequently runs out of fuel for its generators and the resulted outages affect hospitals, clinics, water supplies, and other vital services. The power cuts have also a crippling effect on household chores. https://youtu.be/sxtTYO6TmtI Wes further touched on the impotent economy of Palestine, which is incapable of creating jobs and incomes. She said that one-third of Palestinians there were out of work and over half of the youths in Gaza were unemployed. “Gaza in on the verge of a human catastrophe,” she warned. Last November, the World Bank cautioned that only 10 percent of Palestinians in the blockaded enclave had access to drinking water, and two months earlier, it had announced that Israeli restrictions on the flow of building materials into Gaza had hampered reconstruction efforts in the coastal enclave. The report is due to be presented to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC), which has been scheduled to convene in Belgium’s capital of Brussels on May 4. The 15-member AHLC is a policy-oriented conference with a declared objective of coordinating mechanisms for developing assistance to the Palestinian people. The committee is chaired by Norway and co-sponsored by the United States and the European Union. The World Bank acts as the secretariat of the group. On December 27, 2008, Israel waged a war on Gaza and its warplanes pounded the enclave for the next five days, before ground troops, aided by tanks, launched a full-scale offensive on the enclave. Up to 1,400 Palestinians were killed in total during the war, which lasted for 22 days. Five years later, in early July 2014, Israel waged another war on Gaza. The 50-day military aggression, which ended on August 26, 2014, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including 577 children. Gaza has been blockaded since 2007, a situation that has caused a decline in the standards of living, unprecedented levels of unemployment, and unrelenting poverty. The apartheid regime of Israel denies about two million people in Gaza their basic rights, such as freedom of movement. http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2017/04/27/519646/Palestine-Gaza-World-Bank-electricity-outage-fuel |
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