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Thirteen Palestinians Kidnapped In The West Bank

Israeli soldiers kidnapped at least thirteen Palestinians in numerous invasions targeting homes in different parts of the occupied West Bank, and took them to a number of military camps. The invasions started earlier at dawn, and lasted for several hours.

Local sources in Hebron, in the southern part of the West Bank have reported that several Israeli military vehicles invaded the town of Sa’ir, north of Hebron in the southern part of the West Bank, and kidnapped six Palestinians.

The kidnapped have been identified as Ezzat Mustafa Shalalda, 56, former political prisoner Jihad Mousa Shalalda, 34, Ahmad Shalalda, Islam Younis Shalalda, 30, Mahmoud Hakim Shalalda, and Bilal ‘Aref Shalalda.

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Anonymous asked:

You need a fact check on your post about the Israel/Hamas ceasefire. "Israel only respects force. As negotiating for 20 years has not accomplished a quarter of this." Ummm actually, Israel has always made it clear in negotiations that they'd be willing to give land to Palestine in exchange for peace. Israel has always been open to negotiations, it's Hamas that needs to come to the table.

pax-arabica-deactivated20150125 answered:

Oh, you want to play this game do you?

Ok, Mr./Mrs. Fact check, how about you fact check this:

Since negotiations began between the PLO and Israel (1993), the number of illegal Israeli settlements has exploded. The number of settlers has risen from 262,000 to a massive 550,000 settlers in occupied territories, including East Jerusalem. Please tell me how this is a sign of good faith on Israel’s part in negotiations? Please tell me how you are going to “split” the cake you’re already eating?

Israel has continued its practice of ethnically cleansing Palestinians from Jerusalem, it is estimated that between 1993 and today, over 1600 Palestinian houses in Jerusalem have been demolished. It is also estimated that around 90,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem alone are at risk of homelessness due to Israeli policies and laws of discrimination with housing and demographics. Please tell me how this is Israel’s willingness to negotiate.

The borders agreed to by Israel in the Oslo agreements has shrunk more and more every year, with Israel annexing more and more land every year and using it for its own needs. Please explain to me how this is helpful to the negotiations Israel so obviously wants (according to you).

As a matter of fact, did you know that Israel actually expands its settlements more rapidly during peace talks? It’s true. Because they feel like they have more wriggle room because the Palestinians don’t want to make a fuss and be blamed for failure of negotiations even though Israel is being a colonial cesspit about it.

For instance, during the last talks Israel approved a /record/ shattering 14,000 new settlement units. WHILE negotiations were going on.

How is that for good faith? How is that for Israel only wanting to negotiate for peace, and us savages being the ones refusing everything?

Hell, even Netanyahu himself said that there will never be a Palestinian state. This is the person we’re negotiating with. Where on earth do you get your news from?

We’ve been LITERALLY negotiating for 20 years. Literally. What have we gained. Please tell me? Less and less land, more and more settlers. More IDF, more occupation.

Hamas HAVE been on the table for the last 20 years. The PLO had the mandate to negotiate in the name of all Palestinians, including Hamas. Hamas has even said it agreed to the two state solution. Stop blaming everything on Hamas because it’s an easy target.

Never in history has an occupied population been held responsible for the safety of its occupiers. Never. As long as there is occupation, there will be a dozen Hamas’.

Israel does not want peace. The sooner you get that through your head the better off in life you will be. Next time you tell me to “ummm actually,” or tell me to fact check, how about you actually do some basic research that goes back longer than a year. I can drown you with facts, don’t patronize me.

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Israeli intelligence veterans refuse to serve in Palestinian territories

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Israeli intelligence veterans refuse to serve in Palestinian territories

Innocent people under military rule exposed to surveillance by Israel, say 43 ex-members of Unit 8200, including reservists

(Watch vid at link: Three Israeli intelligence veterans talk about their experience in the Palestinian territories)

Forty-three veterans of one of Israel’s most secretive military intelligence units – many of them still active reservists – have signed a public letter refusing to serve in operations involving the occupied Palestinian territories because of the widespread surveillance of innocent residents.

The signatories include officers, former instructors and senior NCOs from the country’s equivalent of America’s NSA or Britain’s GCHQ, known as Unit 8200 – or in Hebrew as Yehida Shmoneh-Matayim.

They allege that the “all-encompassing” intelligence the unit gathers on Palestinians – much of it concerning innocent people – is used for “political persecution” and to create divisions in Palestinian society.

The largest intelligence unit in the Israeli military, Unit 8200 intercepts electronic communications including email, phone calls and social media in addition to targeting military and diplomatic traffic.

The signatories say, however, that a large part of their work was unrelated to Israel’s security or defence, but appeared designed to perpetuate the occupation by “infiltrating” and “controlling” all aspects of Palestinian life.

Written in uncompromising language the letter states: “We, veterans of Unit 8200, reserve soldiers both past and present, declare that we refuse to take part in actions against Palestinians and refuse to continue serving as tools in deepening the military control over the Occupied Territories.”

They add: “The Palestinian population under military rule is completely exposed to espionage and surveillance by Israeli intelligence. It is used for political persecution and to create divisions within Palestinian society by recruiting collaborators and driving parts of Palestinian society against itself. In many cases, intelligence prevents defendants from receiving a fair trial in military courts, as the evidence against them is not revealed.”

Accompanying the letter – published in the Israeli media on Friday, and organised several months before the recent Gaza war – are a series of testimonies provided by the signatories to Yedioth Ahronoth and shared with the Guardian.

A common complaint, made in both the testimonies and in interviews given by some of the signatories, including to the Guardian this week, is that some of the activities the soldiers were asked to engage in had more in common with the intelligence services of oppressive regimes than of a democracy.

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Israel committed genocide in Gaza: EU delegation

An official European Parliament delegation that visited the besieged Gaza Strip after the recent Israeli onslaught on the blockaded area says Israel has committed “genocide” against the defenseless Palestinians, Press TV reports.

The delegation, which includes 13 members of the European Parliament, has called on the EU to break diplomatic ties with Israel and implement sanctions against Tel Aviv because of the war crimes it has committed against the Palestinian people.

“I don’t think it is too strong a word, not when you think of how genocide is described; it’s described as the partial or the whole destruction of people; and what we are seeing happen in Gaza, in Palestine, is the destruction of Palestinians,” Martina Anderson, an Irish member of the European Parliament, told Press TV.

The delegation, which has just returned to the Belgian capital, Brussels, from the Middle East, has also accused the West of turning  a blind eye to the Israeli crimes against Palestinians.

The politicians also accused Tel Aviv of continuing to break international law by engaging in land grabs to build settlements in Palestine.

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[lehaaz]

So the Zionists want us to stop singling out Israel, want us to stop exceptionalizing Palestine. And that is exactly what the Boycott Resolution does, by demanding that Israel be accountable to the political critiques that we routinely launch against the United States and though our anti-racist, anti-Islamophobic criticisms of the war on terror. In The Question of Palestine and also in Covering Islam, Said makes the links between the rise of Islamophobia during the decolonization era and the Israeli Occupation of Palestine, noting that the inability to complexly conceptualize Islam was due in part to the overlay of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict onto constructions of Islam. The entwinement, then, of the global rise in Islamophobia and Israel’s complicit role in the production of Islamophobia is reflected in the eerie prescience of Said’s work, as if he already knew that the events of September 11th and all it impelled would demand an interrogation of the role of the Israeli Occupation of Palestine in the attempts to make legible the convergence of historical forces at work. We have been singling out Israel from a broader culpability in relation to the war on terror; and exceptionalizing Palestine by allowing the ambivalence of the academic left towards Palestine to wax and wane, but never really resolve, for more than three decades now. It is time to stop. And to point out that ironically, the Zionist accusation that the state of Israel is being singled out is actually a projection of what they themselves are actually doing.

[…]

Academic freedom is a liberal fantasy available to very few in the US academy, one that is designed to protect the status quo. Most of us who are connected to anti-racist, anti-imperial political struggles—most especially that of Palestine—labor daily knowing that we might be denied tenure, investigated by Homeland Security, fired, pre-emptively, not considered for jobs, questioned about the legitimacy of our work and the topics we teach, forced to advise our graduate students that they risk professional ostracization when embarking on various projects, routinely receive hate mail from Zionists, and are otherwise subjected to forms of exclusion, bullying, and discrediting. While opponents of the boycott claim that endorsing the academic boycott will restrict academic freedom, the absolute fact is that no single issue has so damaged academic freedom in the United States as the suppression of debate on the state of Israel. No academic who speaks out against the state of Israel harbors the fantasy that “academic freedom” is about protecting them. Said’s history with the academic left in this regard is sobering and stands as an example of the difficulties encountered by one of the most established and well-respected intellectuals of our time despite the purported standards of academic freedom. This history also reminds us that we have to begin building towards academic freedom, which means standing in solidarity with the right to mobility for Palestinian academics among other rights, rather than insisting on protecting freedoms that do not actually exist for so many members of the academy. What accepting the Boycott Resolution will mean for the ASA, in effect, then, is the exact opposite of what the Zionists claim will happen: enlivened, rather than degraded possibilities for “actual” academic freedom and a more robust and inclusive public sphere of debate.

Jasbir Puar from Substantive Erasures: Essays on Academic Boycott and the American Studies Association

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How we grew up: an Israeli veteran on the dehumanising power of military control

Yehuda Shaul writes of how he and his friends learned to glorify power, and lost their ability to see Palestinians as people whose lives are no less valuable. Now, he and hundreds of others are working to end the occupation.

The current round of violence in Gaza has come to an official close. In Israel we have begun to summarise the events of the past few weeks and question the future. As summaries reenter the public discourse, I am reminded of past rounds of summarisation.  I try to grasp what has changed from one summary to the next.  From Operation “Defensive Shield” (2002) in the West Bank, to “Summer Rains” (2006) in the Gaza Strip – from “Cast Lead” (2009) to “Pillar of Defense” (2012) to the most recent operation in Gaza.

In 2002 a fighter jet dropped a one-ton bomb on the home of Salah Shehade, the former head of Hamas’ military wing, in a residential neighborhood. The bomb killed him in addition to 14 other innocent people, 11 of whom were children. The incident didn’t blow over quietly. Reservist pilots heavily criticised this type of operational activity in an open letter. The Supreme Court encouraged an independent inquiry into the situation, and as a result the government appointed a committee to investigate the operation. Throughout the last month we bombed dozens of houses inhabited by Palestinians – some targeted by the Air Force and others using artillery and mortar fire. These bombs killed hundreds of men, women and children. The bombing of the homes of Hamas members, who do not pose an immediate security threat to Israel, has become an explicit Israeli policy – even when it is known that innocent civilians are inside.

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alternativenews.org

Israel confirms confiscation of land in South Hebron Hills

[momo33me]

Israeli authorities confirmed confiscation of 2,000 dunams of Palestinian-owned land in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills area. PA: Confiscation constitutes “new stab” by Israel on efforts to achieve peace and the two-state solution.

 And they claim the problem is Hamas?

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socialistworker.org

Ugly threats against Palestine solidarity activist

[redplebeian]

The president of the Ohio University Student Senate is facing harassment, including death threats, from supporters of Israel.

TW for Sexist and Violent Threats: this is the real face of Zionism and Pro-Israel politics in America: sexist, racist and violent to its ugly core

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Jared Sacks on Zionism

I grew up being indoctrinated by Zionists throughout my entire life. I was told that the state of Israel is somehow necessary to prevent another Holocaust. That Palestine/Israel was empty and uninhabited when Jews began immigrating there in the late 1800s and even more so post-WWII. I learned all this propaganda. But then I started picking apart that ideology.

1) First of all, we have to see Zionism as a nationalist ideology. The belief that a certain people or nation comes first - ie “the chosen people”. Thats what Zionism is at its core. It is no different than any other types nationalisms except that its based on religion in addition to race/culture whereas many nationalisms are defined purely culturally and regarding the extent to which this nationalism is expressed at the state level. All nationalisms based on a dominant culture and that identifies a particular race as above all others is by definition racist. Afrikaner nationalism here in SA is an easy example. But so is Zionism.

2) Secondly, we must recognise that before the British took control of the area, it was under the Ottoman Empire. So yes there was no such country called “Palestine” (just like there was no country called South Africa before the Dutch arrived). But there were lots of people there - the area was highly populated. Who lived there at the time? There were a few Jews there who had lived there for thousands of years but for the most part it was almost entirely made up of Muslims and Christians whom today identify as Palestinians.

3) Zionism resulted in hundreds of thousands of European Jews and later millions of Eastern European and Middle Eastern Jews moving to “Palestine”. This was colonialism in the same way as the Dutch and British who moved to South Africa or other Europeans who moved to the rest of Africa or who colonised the Americas. If you don’t recognise this as colonialism - which Zionism doesn’t - then it is impossible to understand the rest of the conflict. The British encouraged Jews to colonise their protectorate to act as a buffer between the indigenous population there and the British political system. This was done in the same way as Indians were used as a political buffer in many countries like Kenya.

4) The two state solution is a nationalist solution. It is also racist and would be the equivalent of South Africa being divided into a white state and a black state - these the goals of South African apartheid and of most colonial states in general. See also what Frantz Fanon has written about the colonial state. It has been as solution constructed to ensure that Israelis maintain the land-gains of their colonialism. The ideal solution is of one multi-national state not based on religion and ethnicity that includes what is now Israel and all the occupied territories. It must also include the right of return for all Palestinians who used to live within those borders. That is the ONLY non-racist solution to the conflict even though it accepts Jews who emigrated/colonised Palestine as legitimate residents. This is the ANC solution to apartheid. It was the PAC solution as well - though they reserved the right to the land for blacks first and foremost. Some small elements of Fatah and much of Hamas favour this one state solution. But even more important, Palestinian civil society and progressive social movements especially during the 60s, 70s and 80s favored the one state solution (though less so nowadays). Israel as a racist Jewish state has no right to exist.

5) That said, while the one state solution is the better solution, the two state solution might be a legitimate compromise - and the only practical one at this point. Almost all of Palestinian society and both Hamas and Fatah are in favour of a a two state solution. But ultimately, the two state solution was the creation of Zionism as a way to entrench colonialism and the only reason that Hamas and Fatah might favour it is because they don’t see any other choice.

6) The Israeli state is very happy to prop up Fatah which is losing legitimacy more and more amongst Palestinians. Fatah is very corrupt and much of its leadership is very much co-opted by Israel. They only survive because Israel props it up financially, politically and militarily. Hamas may be problematic in many respects and certainly isn’t a progressive organisation, but they do have popular legitimacy.

7) This current war in Gaza needs this background. Some months before the current fighting started, Hamas and Fatah tried to put aside their differences and enter into a unity government. They know that the only way to negotiate a solution - even a two state solution - is to unite politically so that together they can represent all Palestinians in negotiations with the Israeli government.

8) The Israeli political establishment, particularly Netanyahu, went berserk. They threatened to withhold all aid to Fatah if it didn’t break off the pact with Hamas “terrorists”. Fatah refused especially because the pact favoured them and would essentially give them political control over Hamas in negotiaions with Israel which was a key point for them.

9) If the unity government was moving forward against the wishes of Israel, the only way to stop it was to manufacture a conflict. This is the recent Gaza fighting. It should be noted that each and every time there is progress in peace negotiations, a war breaks out and Israel usually bombs Gaza.