At the November 1st “Friends of the IDF” Hollywood gala, $60 million was raised in one night for Israel’s army. This is on top of $10 million a day in US military aid to Israel. Palestinians are outraged that American artists are supporting a regime that kills innocents and colonizes land.
Khalida Jarrar is a lawyer, politician, human rights activist – and administrative detainee. The harassment began when she led an effort to take Israel to the ICC. She has been relocated, imprisoned, released, and imprisoned again, where she remains. Her transgression? Being a strong, relentless, and articulate messenger of the injustices that Israel imposes on the Palestinian people. Khalida Jarrar exposes the truth.
As Israel considers adopting the death sentence for Palestinians, it is worth recalling that under occupation, Palestinians already face harsh injustice and that such a law would be illegal according to international law. The examples of Elor Azaria’s 9-month prison term for killing an unarmed, injured Palestinian at point-blank range, and Ahed Tamimi’s 8-month sentence for slapping an IDF soldier, indicate that the Israeli “justice” system is already severely lopsided.
According to Defense for Children International, Israel is the only country that automatically prosecutes children in military courts that lack basic fair trial guarantees; 3 out of 4 experience physical violence. The majority of Palestinian child prisoners are charged with throwing stones, an offense that can lead to a sentence of 10 to 20 years…
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.
The good news: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib are Israel-criticizing congressional newcomers. The bad news: other Dem midterm winners join the army of Israel supporters – having vowed to keep America’s commitment to Israel “as fixed and as permanent as the sky” and “make sure that we are supporting Israel into the next generation.” In addition, some key leadership positions will be filled by pro-Israel Jews. Norman Finkelstein sees this as a sign of “a growing divide between US Jews and Israeli Jews.”
Fugitive NSA leaker Edward Snowden, speaking via video link to a group in Tel Aviv, lambasted Israel’s cyber-surveillance industry for the creation of “digital burglary tools that are being actively currently used to violate the human rights of dissidents, opposition figures, and activists,” possibly including Jamal Khashoggi. Ram Ben-Barak, former deputy director of the Mossad who now works in the surveillance industry, then justified the development of such software because Israel uses it to thwart “40 terror attacks a month” in Palestine/Israel.
Clips from the suppressed Al Jazeera documentary about the Israel lobby in the US; additional footage of Congress people, both Democrats and Republicans, revealing how the lobby pressures candidates to do Israel’s bidding; information about a secret fundraiser for powerful Congress people, and how lobby officials bend the law… and sometimes, it appears, break it.
Israeli soldiers and settlers terrorize Palestinians every day. Stories from November 4-5 (that won’t appear in mainstream media) include 2 Palestinian deaths, at least 14 abductions – some of them children, a settler free-for-all in Hebron, and an injured infant.
Every few months local police officers travel to Israel for training in “how to make America more secure.” At the same time, Israeli “experts” are hired in the U.S. to make us “more secure.” The problem is that Israeli “security experts” have perpetrated policies of such cruelty that they’ve made Israelis so insecure that many are leaving Israel…
