22 dec 2019
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the international tribunal in the Hague has become a 'weapon in the political war,' while Likud MK Ofir Akunis labeled the ICC prosecutor 'an anti-Semite'; Israel's UN ambassador claims the move won't help the Palestinians
Israeli officials on Sunday slammed the decision by the International Criminal Court to launch a probe into alleged Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians, calling it “diplomatic terrorism,” and a “weapon in the political war.”
The ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Friday signaled she is preparing to open a formal probe after asking judges exactly what territory a future investigation could cover. The announcement ended five years of preliminary investigations into alleged crimes by both Israeli forces and Palestinians.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked-off the criticism of the ICC’s decision by going into a lengthy speech at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.
“While we are moving forward in new areas of hope and peace with our Arab neighbors, the ICC in The Hague has taken a step backwards, it finally became a weapon in the political war against the State of Israel,” said the prime minister. “The prosecutor’s decision against Israel is absurd.”
“Who are they accusing here? Iran? Turkey? Syria? No - Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. This is terrible hypocrisy.”
The baton of disapproval had then been picked up by Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, whose tenure is set to expire at the end of this year.
"This is diplomatic terror that’s being used instead of negotiations,” said Danon in an interview with Ynet. “The Palestinians use all the tools available to them to push Israel out and this time it is the criminal court,” he said.
“We will be active in the coming weeks in an effort to apply pressure to prevent this issue from developing into an indictment,” he said. "The prosecutor said she did hand it over to the court to decide whether to continue with this case or not. It left us an opening that we intend to try and exploit.”
Danon went on to say that the moves taken by the Palestinians on the international arena are meant to create headlines but serve little purpose. “The situation of the Palestinians has not improved in recent years as a result the steps they have taken,” he said. ”Will accusing Israeli soldiers of war crimes help the Palestinians? No.”
Likud MK and Minister of Science, Technology and Space Ofir Akunis also chimed in on the matter, calling the ICC prosecutor “anti-Semitic.”
“Israel should not cooperate with this anti-Israel thing,” he said.
Saeb Erekat, a senior PLO official, welcomed the decision to launch a probe, saying the Palestinians have the right to use all the legal means “to protect ourselves.”
“According to the UN laws, the actions the IDF has carried out in the past are considered war crimes.”
Israeli officials on Sunday slammed the decision by the International Criminal Court to launch a probe into alleged Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians, calling it “diplomatic terrorism,” and a “weapon in the political war.”
The ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda on Friday signaled she is preparing to open a formal probe after asking judges exactly what territory a future investigation could cover. The announcement ended five years of preliminary investigations into alleged crimes by both Israeli forces and Palestinians.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu kicked-off the criticism of the ICC’s decision by going into a lengthy speech at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.
“While we are moving forward in new areas of hope and peace with our Arab neighbors, the ICC in The Hague has taken a step backwards, it finally became a weapon in the political war against the State of Israel,” said the prime minister. “The prosecutor’s decision against Israel is absurd.”
“Who are they accusing here? Iran? Turkey? Syria? No - Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. This is terrible hypocrisy.”
The baton of disapproval had then been picked up by Israel’s outgoing ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, whose tenure is set to expire at the end of this year.
"This is diplomatic terror that’s being used instead of negotiations,” said Danon in an interview with Ynet. “The Palestinians use all the tools available to them to push Israel out and this time it is the criminal court,” he said.
“We will be active in the coming weeks in an effort to apply pressure to prevent this issue from developing into an indictment,” he said. "The prosecutor said she did hand it over to the court to decide whether to continue with this case or not. It left us an opening that we intend to try and exploit.”
Danon went on to say that the moves taken by the Palestinians on the international arena are meant to create headlines but serve little purpose. “The situation of the Palestinians has not improved in recent years as a result the steps they have taken,” he said. ”Will accusing Israeli soldiers of war crimes help the Palestinians? No.”
Likud MK and Minister of Science, Technology and Space Ofir Akunis also chimed in on the matter, calling the ICC prosecutor “anti-Semitic.”
“Israel should not cooperate with this anti-Israel thing,” he said.
Saeb Erekat, a senior PLO official, welcomed the decision to launch a probe, saying the Palestinians have the right to use all the legal means “to protect ourselves.”
“According to the UN laws, the actions the IDF has carried out in the past are considered war crimes.”
21 dec 2019
You have to hand it to Donald Trump, he knows which side his bread is buttered.
Spewing out disgusting remarks that some of the commentariat deemed only “controversial” at worst, Trump attended the Israeli-American Council’s (AIC) national summit earlier this month.
A major pro-Israel lobby group, the IAC is bankrolled by anti-Palestinian casino billionaire, Sheldon Adelson.
By complete and utter coincidence, Adelson is also Trump’s top election donor.
Trump used his speech at the summit to back Israeli crimes and racism to the hilt, as per usual, for all American presidents from either party.
But those were not his “controversial” comments.
Those comments, in fact, were open and disgusting anti-Semitism. But the crowd of Israel lobbyists did not respond to Trump’s anti-Jewish racism with condemnation – instead they clapped and applauded.
Speaking to the largely Jewish audience, Trump announced “a lot of you are in the real estate business” and that “you’re brutal killers, not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice. You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax!”
Trump managed to combine some of the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes into a handful of sentences: that Jews love money and are all wealth hoarding, greedy landlords. He also managed to throw in a racial slur against Native Americans for good measure, in the course of deploying his usual attack on Elizabeth Warren and her wealth tax proposal.
But Trump’s open anti-Semitism was excused, justified and minimised by Israel’s supporters in the US.
The condoning of anti-Semitism by Israel’s propagandists, is a reminder that Zionism has a long history of collusion with anti-Semitism – one which goes right back to Zionism’s founder, Theodor Herzl.
This truth was raised when the infamous Balfour Declaration of support for the aims of the Zionist movement was being debated by the British cabinet at the time – by the only Jewish cabinet member, Edwin Montagu.
Montagu wrote in 1917 to his colleagues that: “Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed.”
He wrote: “I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country, beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion.”
He had a warning for the rest of the British government: “When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens … you will find a (Jewish) population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants.”
It is a tragedy that Montagu’s warnings were not heeded, and that the Balfour Declaration did indeed begin the process of submitting Palestine to the Zionist settlers, driving out the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants by force.
Trump’s recent actions to help the Israel lobby and attack the movement for justice in Palestine, as well as being wrong in themselves, are also anti-Semitic by implication.
His recent executive order attacking the Palestine solidarity movement on US campuses, was a case in point.
It was trailed in the media as, in effect, redefining Jewishness or Judaism as a nationality – a worryingly anti-Semitic move with frightening historical parallels. The actual text of the order is not quite that.
But there is no doubt that, in embracing and entrenching Israel’s favoured, bogus, “working definition” of anti-Semitism, the order makes it harder for any genuine anti-racist efforts against anti-Semitism.
Director of the civil rights group Palestine Legal, Dima Khalidi, called the executive order “a bald-faced attempt to silence the movement for Palestinian rights on college campuses.”
She continued that “rather than providing any new protections to Jewish students against the rampant and deadly anti-Semitism of a resurgent white nationalism,” the order “aims to define the contours of what we can say about Palestine and Israel.”
“We won’t abide, and it will be challenged,” Khalidi declared.
It is yet another reminder that anti-Palestinianism and anti-Semitism are closely related. A markedly large number of supporters of Zionism want Jews to leave Europe, so that they will no longer have to live in close proximity to them.
This is part of the reason why Joseph Massad, associate professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, has called the Palestinian people and anti-Zionist Jews “the last of the Semites, the heirs of the pre-WWII Jewish and Palestinian struggles against anti-Semitism and its Zionist colonial manifestation.”
Spewing out disgusting remarks that some of the commentariat deemed only “controversial” at worst, Trump attended the Israeli-American Council’s (AIC) national summit earlier this month.
A major pro-Israel lobby group, the IAC is bankrolled by anti-Palestinian casino billionaire, Sheldon Adelson.
By complete and utter coincidence, Adelson is also Trump’s top election donor.
Trump used his speech at the summit to back Israeli crimes and racism to the hilt, as per usual, for all American presidents from either party.
But those were not his “controversial” comments.
Those comments, in fact, were open and disgusting anti-Semitism. But the crowd of Israel lobbyists did not respond to Trump’s anti-Jewish racism with condemnation – instead they clapped and applauded.
Speaking to the largely Jewish audience, Trump announced “a lot of you are in the real estate business” and that “you’re brutal killers, not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice. You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax!”
Trump managed to combine some of the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes into a handful of sentences: that Jews love money and are all wealth hoarding, greedy landlords. He also managed to throw in a racial slur against Native Americans for good measure, in the course of deploying his usual attack on Elizabeth Warren and her wealth tax proposal.
But Trump’s open anti-Semitism was excused, justified and minimised by Israel’s supporters in the US.
The condoning of anti-Semitism by Israel’s propagandists, is a reminder that Zionism has a long history of collusion with anti-Semitism – one which goes right back to Zionism’s founder, Theodor Herzl.
This truth was raised when the infamous Balfour Declaration of support for the aims of the Zionist movement was being debated by the British cabinet at the time – by the only Jewish cabinet member, Edwin Montagu.
Montagu wrote in 1917 to his colleagues that: “Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed.”
He wrote: “I assert that there is not a Jewish nation. The members of my family, for instance, who have been in this country for generations, have no sort or kind of community of view or of desire with any Jewish family in any other country, beyond the fact that they profess to a greater or less degree the same religion.”
He had a warning for the rest of the British government: “When the Jews are told that Palestine is their national home, every country will immediately desire to get rid of its Jewish citizens … you will find a (Jewish) population in Palestine driving out its present inhabitants.”
It is a tragedy that Montagu’s warnings were not heeded, and that the Balfour Declaration did indeed begin the process of submitting Palestine to the Zionist settlers, driving out the indigenous Palestinian inhabitants by force.
Trump’s recent actions to help the Israel lobby and attack the movement for justice in Palestine, as well as being wrong in themselves, are also anti-Semitic by implication.
His recent executive order attacking the Palestine solidarity movement on US campuses, was a case in point.
It was trailed in the media as, in effect, redefining Jewishness or Judaism as a nationality – a worryingly anti-Semitic move with frightening historical parallels. The actual text of the order is not quite that.
But there is no doubt that, in embracing and entrenching Israel’s favoured, bogus, “working definition” of anti-Semitism, the order makes it harder for any genuine anti-racist efforts against anti-Semitism.
Director of the civil rights group Palestine Legal, Dima Khalidi, called the executive order “a bald-faced attempt to silence the movement for Palestinian rights on college campuses.”
She continued that “rather than providing any new protections to Jewish students against the rampant and deadly anti-Semitism of a resurgent white nationalism,” the order “aims to define the contours of what we can say about Palestine and Israel.”
“We won’t abide, and it will be challenged,” Khalidi declared.
It is yet another reminder that anti-Palestinianism and anti-Semitism are closely related. A markedly large number of supporters of Zionism want Jews to leave Europe, so that they will no longer have to live in close proximity to them.
This is part of the reason why Joseph Massad, associate professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, has called the Palestinian people and anti-Zionist Jews “the last of the Semites, the heirs of the pre-WWII Jewish and Palestinian struggles against anti-Semitism and its Zionist colonial manifestation.”
18 dec 2019
by Roddy Keenan/ Dublin/
‘A bad day for anti-semites’. These are the words of the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, referring to the Conservative Party’s UK general election victory, and accusing 10 million or more British Labour Party voters of being ‘anti-semitic’ in the process.
It is no coincidence that Javid, a key ally of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is himself a leading light in the Conservative Friends of Israel group and a loyal and unwavering supporter of the Israeli apartheid state. Consequently, his use of vile and disgusting rhetoric is no surprise. Indeed, many would argue, it is the very mark of the man.
To any sentient follower of UK politics however, it is clear that the election of a rabidly Islamophobic and Zionist Conservative Party will doubtless spell more injustice towards, and attacks on, the Palestinian cause. Within the party election manifesto, the Conservatives launched a blatant attack on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, stating the party’s intention to prevent local authorities around the country from engaging in any such actions.
‘We will ban public bodies from imposing their own or indirect boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries,’ the manifesto states.
Bizarrely, this policy was articulated in the ‘Make Our Country Safer’ section of the manifesto under a sub-heading, ‘Supporting All Victims of Crime’. It follows a sentence stating that the Conservative Party ‘will ensure that those countering extremism are protected from threats and intimidation.’
It would seem that the peaceful BDS campaign against an extremist, racist and apartheid regime, a regime that injures, maims and murders innocent Palestinians without compunction, is itself characterised as extremist, while the apartheid state is portrayed as the victim. Orwell meets Kafka in Wonderland, while Alice looks on.
After an election where the media hammered the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for his non-existent anti-semitism, the English and Welsh public (but not the Scottish) voted for a government led by Boris Johnson, a man, who in stark contrast with Corbyn, regularly demonstrates his innate racism publicly and shamelessly, such as when he described Muslim women wearing a niqab as looking like letter boxes.
The pro-Zionism of the newly-elected Conservative Party suggests that Israel will have an even greater influence within Whitehall than it already enjoys. Johnson himself has described the Balfour Declaration as ‘a great thing’ that ‘reflected a great tide of history’, and the Nakba as ‘one of the most stunning achievements’ of the 20th century.
Another influential member of the UK government expected to play a key role in the next administration will be Priti Patel, who was Home Secretary under Johnson prior to the election. Patel has long ties with Zionism and was forced to resign in disgrace from the government in 2017 after it emerged she had been having secret meetings with Israeli officials.
A government minister under then Prime Minister Theresa May, Patel had been holding meetings with members of the Israeli regime, lobbyists and business leaders while ostensibly on a ‘holiday’. When these meetings were revealed, it was clear that Patel had violated the ministerial code of conduct and was forced to resign. Interestingly, one of the people she met was Gilat Erdan, the Israeli minister responsible for the secret war against BDS involving Mossad under the guidance of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
However, Patel’s dishonesty and violation of codes of conduct meant little to Boris Johnson, and on becoming Prime Minister in July, he gave her the leading Cabinet position of Home Secretary. Birds of a feather……
Consequently, it seems apparent that the election of the Conservative Party in the UK will ensure Zionism’s influence increases over the next five years.There are also important issues such as upcoming trade discussions with the United States which could have ramifications for Palestine.
With the UK having to jump to Trump’s tune within these negotiations, Johnson’s government may come under pressure from the Trump administration in relation to moving the UK embassy to Jerusalem. Should this be the case, Johnson, the British poodle, will no doubt do as his master, US President Donald Trump, dictates.
But ultimately, one thing is certain. The victory of a Conservative Party imbued with Zionist, pro-apartheid Israel views and policies, will see a significant increase in efforts to shut down free speech, and to prevent the British public from demonstrating their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
However, as long as the people of Palestine face dispossession, injustice, and exploitation, as long as they are being injured, maimed and murdered by the occupying forces,and as long as Palestinian men, women and children refuse to accept the diktats of an apartheid regime, the clarion calls for justice will never be silenced, either within Palestine, or far beyond.
‘A bad day for anti-semites’. These are the words of the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, referring to the Conservative Party’s UK general election victory, and accusing 10 million or more British Labour Party voters of being ‘anti-semitic’ in the process.
It is no coincidence that Javid, a key ally of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is himself a leading light in the Conservative Friends of Israel group and a loyal and unwavering supporter of the Israeli apartheid state. Consequently, his use of vile and disgusting rhetoric is no surprise. Indeed, many would argue, it is the very mark of the man.
To any sentient follower of UK politics however, it is clear that the election of a rabidly Islamophobic and Zionist Conservative Party will doubtless spell more injustice towards, and attacks on, the Palestinian cause. Within the party election manifesto, the Conservatives launched a blatant attack on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, stating the party’s intention to prevent local authorities around the country from engaging in any such actions.
‘We will ban public bodies from imposing their own or indirect boycotts, disinvestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries,’ the manifesto states.
Bizarrely, this policy was articulated in the ‘Make Our Country Safer’ section of the manifesto under a sub-heading, ‘Supporting All Victims of Crime’. It follows a sentence stating that the Conservative Party ‘will ensure that those countering extremism are protected from threats and intimidation.’
It would seem that the peaceful BDS campaign against an extremist, racist and apartheid regime, a regime that injures, maims and murders innocent Palestinians without compunction, is itself characterised as extremist, while the apartheid state is portrayed as the victim. Orwell meets Kafka in Wonderland, while Alice looks on.
After an election where the media hammered the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn for his non-existent anti-semitism, the English and Welsh public (but not the Scottish) voted for a government led by Boris Johnson, a man, who in stark contrast with Corbyn, regularly demonstrates his innate racism publicly and shamelessly, such as when he described Muslim women wearing a niqab as looking like letter boxes.
The pro-Zionism of the newly-elected Conservative Party suggests that Israel will have an even greater influence within Whitehall than it already enjoys. Johnson himself has described the Balfour Declaration as ‘a great thing’ that ‘reflected a great tide of history’, and the Nakba as ‘one of the most stunning achievements’ of the 20th century.
Another influential member of the UK government expected to play a key role in the next administration will be Priti Patel, who was Home Secretary under Johnson prior to the election. Patel has long ties with Zionism and was forced to resign in disgrace from the government in 2017 after it emerged she had been having secret meetings with Israeli officials.
A government minister under then Prime Minister Theresa May, Patel had been holding meetings with members of the Israeli regime, lobbyists and business leaders while ostensibly on a ‘holiday’. When these meetings were revealed, it was clear that Patel had violated the ministerial code of conduct and was forced to resign. Interestingly, one of the people she met was Gilat Erdan, the Israeli minister responsible for the secret war against BDS involving Mossad under the guidance of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.
However, Patel’s dishonesty and violation of codes of conduct meant little to Boris Johnson, and on becoming Prime Minister in July, he gave her the leading Cabinet position of Home Secretary. Birds of a feather……
Consequently, it seems apparent that the election of the Conservative Party in the UK will ensure Zionism’s influence increases over the next five years.There are also important issues such as upcoming trade discussions with the United States which could have ramifications for Palestine.
With the UK having to jump to Trump’s tune within these negotiations, Johnson’s government may come under pressure from the Trump administration in relation to moving the UK embassy to Jerusalem. Should this be the case, Johnson, the British poodle, will no doubt do as his master, US President Donald Trump, dictates.
But ultimately, one thing is certain. The victory of a Conservative Party imbued with Zionist, pro-apartheid Israel views and policies, will see a significant increase in efforts to shut down free speech, and to prevent the British public from demonstrating their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
However, as long as the people of Palestine face dispossession, injustice, and exploitation, as long as they are being injured, maimed and murdered by the occupying forces,and as long as Palestinian men, women and children refuse to accept the diktats of an apartheid regime, the clarion calls for justice will never be silenced, either within Palestine, or far beyond.
