Israeli government: stories you may have missed

Israeli government: stories you may have missed

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 settlers invade the Palestinian village of Huwara, attacking residents and damaging property.
Israeli settlers invade the Palestinian village of Huwara, attacking residents and damaging property. (photo)

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.]

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.”


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