Search Results for: settlers

Christmas headlines from the Occupied Palestinian territories

The International Middle East Media Center reports on the ongoing acts of Israeli injustice and violence that most other media don’t bother with. Not a day goes by – including holidays – without abductions, settler brutality, shootings, and often even deaths. 

Ha’aretz: Why Some Jews Don’t Study Torah on Christmas Eve

Why do many Hasidic Jews abstain from studying the Torah at Christmas? The mythology is that back in the day, Christians liked to persecute Jews during the holiday But according to an authority on the subject, the practice was originally based on a superstition that on Christmas, Jesus had to spend the day “wander[ing] in all pits of excrement or latrines throughout the world” – and studying Torah gave him respite from this torture. 

Israeli settler violence: 6 incidents in 2 days

As Israel criticizes Palestinians for their legal resistance against an illegal occupation, illegal Israeli settlers attack Palestinians on a daily basis – often with protection from the Israeli military – and go unpunished. Sometimes they destroy crops, sometimes vehicles; sometimes it’s graffiti; this week a member of the Israeli parliament called for open violence, and settlers obeyed.

A history lesson on the legitimacy of resistance

Before the birth of modern Israel, Zionist groups – newly arrived in Palestine – engaged in armed struggle against the British military, whom they labelled as “occupiers.” But now that the tables have turned (and the UN has enshrined the right of armed struggle as a vehicle of indigenous liberation) the Israeli occupation refuses to recognize the Palestinian resistance as legitimate. 

Israeli military lives lost, while tragic, are sacrifices made willingly by the occupier who is fully aware that the resistance is ongoing.

Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination is a difficult, costly march; yet history teaches there is simply no other choice. Silence is surrender. To be silent is to betray all those who have come before and all those yet to follow.

Truth is stranger than fiction: 3 days in the West Bank

Elderly women, families, children, and of course young men in the occupied Palestinian territories are regularly treated with brutality by Israeli forces. International laws are in place to protect vulnerable populations, but Israel ignores such laws – and gets away with it. Simple, common decency ought to elicit restraint on the part of the occupier, but does not.

These very brief stories are snapshots of Israeli cruelty between December 15 and 17, 3 days out of the 50+ years of violent occupation which the United States endorses and supports to the tune of over $10 million a day.

Three Palestinians and three Israelis killed in spate of deadly incidents

The Israeli military has recently been conducting aggressive operations inside the occupied Palestinian West Bank, including in Area A, where the Palestinian Authority is supposed to be in full control. 
Israel continues to prolong and entrench the now 50+-year occupation, citing the need for security; in reality the occupation and its injustice are the cause of Palestinian resistance, not the result of Palestinian violence.

Attending school while Palestinian: brief (horror) stories from the last 6 weeks

Israeli forces prepare to demolish a school in Hebron, West Bank on 11 July 2018 [DonnaBaranski-Walker/Twitter] Children in occupied West Bank schools are attacked and traumatized on a regular basis, as a matter of official policy. These are stories from just November and ten days in December (subsidized by American tax dollars).  compiled by If…

Israel propaganda trips target ‘Pacific Progressive Leaders’ – no one will say who’s going

An $85 million Israel advocacy organization is taking local American officials identified as “progressive” on propaganda trips to Israel. While no one will divulge the rosters, we have a few names of California participants in these extravagant, influence peddling affairs… and ideas about what to do about them