Israel’s efforts to control and destroy the lives of Palestinians is visible in the thousands of big and small incidents that happen every day. Below are summaries of just a handful of shocking (but unsurprising) stories from the past few days that you may not have heard about.
Israeli gov’t plan could see settlement population increase by hundreds of thousands
Israel Hayom (Israel Today) reports (January 25, 2023):
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government is poised to take a series of steps that could result in a massive increase in the population of Jewish communities in Judea in Samaria [the West Bank, official name is Occupied Palestinian Territory] over the coming years, Israel Hayom has learned…
“If these proposals get finalized and pass the relevant hurdles, they could increase the number of settlers in the coming years by hundreds of thousands and streamline the approval process for such construction so that only two entities would have to sign off on civilian construction rather than five.
“This could create a political backlash, with some on the Left potentially calling this mini-annexation.”
[NOTE: Israeli settlements on Palestinian land are illegal under international law, and are condemned by nearly every country in the world – including the United States.]
Coalition set to push bill making it easier to ban Arab legislators
This article from the Times of Israel (January 24, 2023) reports that extremist members of the Israeli legislature are preparing a bill that would make it easier to ban Palestinian lawmakers from running for office “for isolated comments deemed supportive of terror…[including] visiting the family of an attack suspect.”
Heads of the groups working on this proposal “are afraid any such measure would be quashed by the [Israeli] High Court,” so are planning to wait until the Court’s powers are weakened – one of the goals of the new administration.
Probe finds group supporting Jewish extremists in Israel now also fundraising in US
The Associated Press reports (January 24, 2023): “An Israeli group raising funds for Jewish extremists convicted in some of the country’s most notorious hate crimes is collecting tax-exempt donations from Americans…Money raised by Shlom Asiraich as a nonprofit is going toward families and prisoners, including [former Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin’s assassin and two men convicted of murdering Palestinians.
“Israeli nonprofits have long sought funding abroad, with the US a major source. According to figures published by Noga Zivan, a consultant for nonprofits in Israel, from 2018 to 2020 Jewish-American organizations alone donated $2 billion to Israel each year. [This is tax exempt, removing even more money from the US economy. It is on top of the $3.8 billion of US tax money that Congress votes to Israel each year.]
“The records in the case suggest that Israel’s far-right is gaining a new foothold in the United States.”
A recent piece in the Times of Israel revealed that Shlom Asiraich (translated “The Wellbeing of Your Prisoners”) was set up by an aide to extremist politician and new Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben Gvir.
Despite Video Evidence, Police Close Case Against Cop Suspected of Shooting Israeli Arab
from Ha’aretz (January 23, 2023):
“Israel’s Justice Ministry’s police misconduct unit announced on Thursday that it was closing an investigation for lack of evidence into a 2021 shooting of an Arab resident of Jaffa, apparently with a sponged-tipped bullet fired by the police.
“The decision to close the case came despite video footage of the incident…
“[Ibrahim Suri suffered] serious wounds to his face and a fractured jaw, as well a broken teeth and cuts around his mouth.
“Suri said that he had expected that the police would not be charged and that the case would be closed. “Because harming Arabs in this country is allowed, no one would be punished for shooting [an Arab] citizen in his own house in the face,” he said.” [“Israeli Arab” means Palestinian.]
IDF opens probe after troops found to unnecessarily kill Palestinian at checkpoint
from Times of Israel, January 23, 2023
The story here is of a temporary checkpoint set up by Israeli police to inspect Palestinian vehicles. The process was slow, it was rush hour, and irate Palestinians began honking their horns. One soldier threw a stun grenade into the traffic jam in response.
45-year-old Ahmad Kahla tried to get out of his car, but “the commander of the squad on site blocked him from doing so and pepper sprayed the Palestinian, using mace he did not receive from the army. At this point, the soldiers decided to pull Kahla from his car.”
A witness said, “When they took him out of the car he was covered in pepper spray. He couldn’t see a thing. He started moving with his arms to and fro and one of the soldiers shot him.” [Mondoweiss adds that he was shot at point-blank range – an assertion that is backed up by video evidence.]
Initial police reports identified Kahla as a terrorist, and the incident as an attack, but the initial investigation negates this. The conclusion: the “45-year-old Palestinian man was unnecessarily shot dead in front of his son during an altercation with Israeli troops.”
Days after Jewish outpost is destroyed, Ben Gvir demands 6 Palestinian structures be razed
Times of Israel, January 22, 2023
Extremist Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir demanded, days after the destruction of an illegal Jewish outpost on Palestinian land, that Palestinian structures – also on Palestinian land – also be destroyed because they had been built without Israeli approval.
Ben Gvir declared, “The law is the law and there is one law for all. I will not accept racism against Jews on my watch. Just as the defense minister chose to destroy a Jewish outpost, we demand that illegal Arab construction in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] be destroyed.”
[NOTE: Israeli outposts, illegal even by Israeli standards, are often retroactively “legalized” by the Israeli government; meanwhile Israel demolishes Palestinian homes by the hundreds each year, claiming they were illegally built. Israel rejects over 98% of Palestinian applications for building permits.]
Jewish Law Above All: Recordings Reveal Far-right Knesset Member’s Plan to Turn Israel Into a Theocracy
from Ha’aretz, January 19, 2023: a lengthy article about a new deputy minister in the Netanyahu administration, Avi Moaz, and his extremist agenda.
As part of the deal Netanyahu made in the formation of his government, certain powers have been taken away from the Ministry of Education and given to Moaz. The article states, “The authority is already his. His dream has come true, all that remains is to take action.”
Examples of Moaz’s Jewish supremacist, anti-Muslim, anti-Christian ideology include, in his own words:
We must protect our people and our state from the infiltration of the alien bodies that arrive from foreign countries, foreign bodies, foreign foundations.
I would be very happy…to cleanse the entire education system of all foreign influences and to add Judaism, tradition, heritage and Zionism to the education system.
“Our children are being educated to blur identities, doubt is being instilled in the hearts of our children…What is our right to the Land? Do we have a right to the Land? Who said the Jewish narrative is correct? Maybe the Palestinian narrative too? This is being introduced into the education systems.
This is the battle of all of us, each in his own place…to pluck up courage, wherever you work, to say: ‘LGBTs go home, homos go home, evil, evil, evil and again evil.’
[The greatest contribution women can make to Israel] is for them to marry, with God’s help, and to raise a magnificent family…Does this mean they won’t be influential in politics?! Of course they will. Through the husband.The primary struggle [is] whether the State of Israel will continue to be a Jewish state or, heaven forbid, will become a state of all its citizens [meaning a state in which all Muslim and Christian Palestinians have equal rights with Jews].
[Note: Before Israel’s 1947-48 war of ethnic cleansing, 70 percent of the inhabitants were Muslim and Christian, and before Zionist colonization began in the late 1800s were 95 percent of the population.]
Elsewhere on Ha’aretz, Moaz’s predecessor, Yifat Shasha-Biton, is quoted as saying, “in a properly run country, a person whose faith is hatred would not receive control over the content that children learn. A personality as dark as Maoz should not be heading the unit that controls external programs in education.”
OTHER RECENT NEWS ON ISRAEL/PALESTINE:
- Israel killed 29 in 26 days, fighters fire 2 rockets, Israel shells Gaza
- Israeli forces kill a Palestinian as he protests deaths of 9 other Palestinians
- Sarah Margon can’t get confirmed for State Dept job because…Israel
- Israel advocates push ABA to adopt anti-Palestinian definition of antisemitism
- Major Israeli raid on Palestinian city kills 9, tear gas pediatric ward
- Latest meeting of America’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby
- Israel’s new radical government shows itself reckless and racist
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