Israeli politicians all seem to share a platform plank of vitriol and threats toward Palestinians. Their campaign ads are full of mocking, insults, and accusations against Palestinians. It’s been like this for years, and it’s worse now than ever. And it’s not good for Israel.
Recently released Israeli documents show that Israel secretly funded an insurance company for settlers, in addition to planning for 20,000 new units in Ma’ale Adumim worth 3 billion shekels (over $800 million), an East Jerusalem settlement built on confiscated Palestinian land.
In addition, settlement activity in Hebron continues, and Israel is trying to have international human rights observers removed.
Other troubling new governmental actions and policies have also been adopted.
Jonathan Cook reports on Israeli soldiers breaking the silence on what they’ve done. “Whatever a soldier believes when they begin their military service, there is no way to behave ethically in the occupied territories,” Ido Even-Paz, a former Israeli soldier says. “It’s a system in which Palestinians are always treated as inferior… Every day the job is to inflict collective punishment…”
Israel’s Nation-State Law, celebrated by many Jewish Israelis, is deeply worrying to Palestinian Israelis. Already, after just one month, violence, threats of violence, and discriminatory policies are in high gear – this after decades of unrestrained injustice. And still the world remains silent.
Professor Jeremy Salt writes: “Israel is by far the worst settler-colonial experience in history,” a state that makes murderers into heroes, and “based not on morality, justice, and law but brute force.” Because, Zionism.
Killing of Palestinians is not new. It has been going on for decades, unabated, uncriticized, and bankrolled by the US. The Leahy Laws enable us to withhold aid to countries that commit human such rights abuses, but in spite of overwhelming proof of abuse by Israel, our politicians refuse to cut off military support.
Mainstream media under-report Israeli aggression, which will make the Palestinians’ eventual response appear to be unprovoked violence.
Israeli companies offer tourist training camps in which families, even with small children, practice shooting live ammunition at targets resembling Palestinians. Such courses are also being offered in the US.
An Israeli soldier who shot a Palestinian rebel dead after he was already incapacitated on the ground has been sentenced to 18 months in prison. The killing took place in the Palestinian city of Hebron in Israeli-occupied West Bank. The Independent reports: [The dead Palestinian’s] father Yusri told reporters … “The sentence he received is less than…
A former Israeli combat soldier describes how extremist Israeli settlers’ provoke Israeli soldiers to be violent with Palestinians. After a soldier shot a Palestinian in the knee, the settlers presented the soldier with an axe as a badge of recognition.