Police officers deliver pepper spray at, um, rather close range to an injured Palestinian protester in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem
Just to give my own native land equal exposure, here are police officers in the good ole USA delivering a healthy dose of pepper spray to totally peaceful sit-down protesters of the “Occupy” movement. The two-minute video by economist Robert Reich, the source of the image, is worth a look. For any further commentary, I defer to him…
click for video
With between 30,000 and 40,000 dead in Israel’s genocidal onslaught against the people of Gaza, with a 100% Israeli-made humanitarian disaster unfolding in real time, this is how some in Israel react to small gestures of mercy offered by the civilized world…
SOURCE: Democracy Now! / DEC 20, 2017
The U.N.’s top human rights official condemned the killing of 29-year-old Palestinian Ibrahim Abu Thuraya, who was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper last Friday during a protest in the Gaza Strip. Abu Thuraya was a double amputee who lost both legs and a kidney in 2008 during an Israeli airstrike and used a wheelchair. This is Rupert Colville, spokesperson for the U.N.’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Rupert Colville: “As far as we can see, there is nothing whatsoever to suggest that Ibrahim Abu Thuraya was posing an imminent threat of death or serious injury when he was killed. In the words of the high commissioner, given his severe disability, which must have been clearly visible to those who shot him, his killing is incomprehensible, and it is a truly shocking and wanton act.”
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MORE on this incident from Israeli commentator Uri Avnery, HERE.
In the occupied Palestinian territories, human rights groups are warning that Israeli forces are increasingly arresting and detaining children—sometimes holding them without trial—as protests continue to rage over President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
On Tuesday, Israeli soldiers and border police raided the home of prominent 16-year-old Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi, a day after video showing her confronting Israeli soldiers went viral. After Ahed Tamimi’s arrest, the girl’s mother, Nariman Tamimi, was detained at an Israeli police station as she inquired about the status of her daughter.
In another case, witnesses say 17-year-old Abdul-Khalik Burnat was arrested earlier this week when he went out for pizza with friends. Burnat’s father is Iyad Burnat, a leader of a nonviolent Palestinian resistance group whose work was highlighted in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Five Broken Cameras.”
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MORE on this incident from Israeli commentator Uri Avnery, HERE.
Dustin Pfundheller, 30, an American dentist living in Singapore, was set to become the youngest person to visit every country in the world while in a full-time job. His globetrotting has taken him to 192 of the 193 recognised states, bringing his medical skills to the world’s remotest places. But in January he was barred for the second time from Israel, the only country left on his list, having previously been refused entry last year.
Despite an invitation to a dental conference in Tel Aviv, and Israelis who vouched for him, border officials banned Pfundheller for 10 years. No reason was given, but lawyers suspect visits to Iran and the Arab states sealed his fate. There could hardly be starker evidence that Israel stubbornly refuses to become a normal country.
Paradoxically, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Singapore last month to promote Israel as a tolerant country, one “committed to a better world, a world of diversity.”
The reality could not be more different. Arabs and Muslims have always struggled to gain entry to Israel. Palestinians are routinely abused at the borders, and thousands, especially from Jerusalem, have been stripped of the right to return home after living abroad.
But new figures show Israel is excluding other groups too. Entry denials have increased nine-fold in the past five years, topping 16,000 people last year. Among those increasingly turned away are political activists. Israel controls all access to the occupied Palestinian territories, and now regularly denies entry to solidarity activists and those who support the boycott movement.
Legislation passed by the Israeli parliament on Monday night will only intensify the exclusionary trend. The new law forbids entry to anyone who supports a boycott, even if it is only of the settlements. As one legislator pointed out, that means Israel may quickly find itself bound to refuse entry to all officials from the United Nations and Europe.
In a sign of the new direction, Israel denied a tourist visa last week to Human Rights Watch’s new director for Israel and Palestine, Omar Shakir, having earlier refused him a work permit. One of the most prominent human rights organisations in the world was dismissed as an outlet for “Palestinian propaganda”.
Weeks earlier, Israel subjected Jennifer Gorovitz, an American Jewish vice-president of the New Israel Fund, to a humiliating interrogation at airport arrivals. NIF is one of the largest funders of Israeli organisations supporting human rights and social justice. That includes assistance to groups that monitor military abuses in the occupied territories.
This presumably explains why Gorovitz’s interrogators suggested she posed a “security threat”. She finally gained admittance only after Talia Sasson, the Israeli head of NIF and an adviser to former prime ministers, pulled strings.
Gorovitz wrote of her experience: “My privilege as a Jew means I never imagined that Israel could or would deny me entrance.”
Such an assumption was justified. Israel’s Law of Return is supposed to guarantee Jews around the world the right to almost instant citizenship in Israel.
For that reason, the law is grossly unjust. It privileges Jewish access to Israel at the expense of the native Palestinian population, most of whom were expelled in 1948.
Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that Israel, a state that invested itself with the historical mission of offering sanctuary to Jews worldwide, is increasingly applying a political test to those who arrive at its borders. Israel is denying entry not only to Arabs and would-be record breakers. And it is deporting not just those such as migrant workers and African asylum seekers who might pollute the Jewish state with non-Jewish genes. Now it is openly targeting Jews whose politics do not align with Netanyahu’s far-right government.
It should be noted that many of the solidarity and boycott activists turned away are Jewish. Famous Jewish critics of Israel such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein have been barred too.
On Monday, Rebecca Vilkomerson, the US executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, observed that, despite the fact her husband and children are Israeli citizens, and her grandparents buried there, under the new anti-boycott legislation she was now denied the right to visit.
In Israel’s eyes, it seems some Jews are more equal than others.
The pulling up of the drawbridge comes as Israel’s leadership has remained largely silent in the face of a rising tide of anti-semitism in the US, fuelled by Donald Trump’s election as president. Dozens of Jewish centres have received bomb threats, and Jewish cemeteries have been vandalised.
There are growing rumblings among American Jews that their interests are being overlooked by the Netanyahu government to avoid damaging relations with the new US administration. But another reason for the lack of response should be considered.
The principle of the “ingathering of the exiles”, according to Israel’s official state ideology, Zionism, assumes that Israel is the rightful home of Jews everywhere. And the largest Jewish population outside Israel resides in the US.
In November, Yaron London, a popular TV host, welcomed Trump’s election, pointing out that “a worldview which supports white supremacy matches our [Israeli] government’s interests.”
Last week opposition leader Isaac Herzog urged Israel to prepare for an influx of US Jews fleeing persecution.
But will Israel’s arms really be open to all Jews equally, or only to those willing to contribute enthusiastically to the tribal project?
And can Jews of conscience ignore the true cost of their migration? They can leave behind anti-Jewish bigotry in the US, but only if they bolster the Jewish bigots of Israel who lord it over the native Palestinian population.
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Published online at Mondoweiss – 7 March 2017. A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.
One Mean Little Country 