17 apr 2018
Rabbi Ophir Wallas of the Bnei David Military Mechina was caught on video teaching young would-be soldiers that Israelis are, from the halachaic point of view, permitted to wipe out Palestinians, and that only fear of massive retaliation prevents that.
Rabbi Wallas’ words can be heard here. They are taken from a longer lecture he has given his students, which – for those who have too much time on their hands – can be seen here. Here is my translation, with essential footnotes:
“In conquering the Land [of Israel] according to Nachmanides and Rashi [*], who say that the wars of today are also mitzvah wars for conquering the Land, I am beholden to nothing. This isn’t the law of the persecutor [**], right? What law are we dealing with? The laws of a mitzvah war, a war of occupying the Land. Even if I don’t conquer Gaza right now, [conquering it] is part of my ability to settle the Land of Israel, so it is also a part of the mitzvah of conquering the Land.
And therefore it follows, there’s no other way; like, we’d have to kill them all. Because this is the difference between the Law of the Persecutor and mitzvah wars. […] A mitzvah war of conquering the Land, which is not limited to saving the people of Israel from their enemies, according to some of the Rishonim [***] I could, on the face of it and by the essential law, destroy, kill and cause to perish [****] all of them. I will not do so, because if I were to do so, and reject international treaties, then the State of Israel shall parish, unless we shall witness a miracle of miracles – and one must not trust in a miracle. And that’s the only reason I won’t do it.”
A few other notes are essential. First, and please bear with me, what is a mechina? Literally, it means a “preliminary school”, but in Israel it came to mean a school which prepares students who finished their high school studies for military service. While most Israeli Jews are drafted soon after finishing high school, a select few are allowed to study for one more year, and in this year they are supposed to be indoctrinated to become better soldiers. Most mechinas boast of a high percentage of graduates who go on to become officers and serve longer than draftees. With one exception, all mechinas are religious, and are in fact a form of yeshiva. Mechina teachers are public employees who get their salaries from both the Education Ministry and the Defense Ministry.
Mechina leaders often meet with senior officers, up to the Chief of Staff, and participate in high-level discussions about the level of religiosity of the army, particularly whether women may serve with men. The fact that the mechinas are producing a large number of motivated officers when most Israelis do not wish to become officers gives them unusual leverage with the high command – with the result that they are rarely, if ever, supervised.
This began to change over the last year. The Bnei David mechina, the first of them, has long been considered the flagship of the National Religious movement, and its leader, Rabbi Elli Saddan, even won the Israel Prize – the country’s highest civil honor – for his contribution to education. However, over the last year, several rabbis of the mechina – including Saddan himself – were caught on videos saying highly inflammatory things. The main targets of the mechina rabbis have been gays and women; the utterances were so inflammatory, as the rabbis exposed their misogyny and homophobia, that the Minister of Defense demanded at one point that one of the worst offenders, Saddan’s deputy Yigal Lewinstein, resign or the mechina will be sanctioned (Hebrew). Soon after, Lewinstein went on “vacation”, but the mechina insisted he was not fired (Hebrew).
As one scandal after another hit Bnei David, leftists have made it a habit to go over the mechina’s videoed lectures looking for bait. The Wallas quote is the latest prize. Most of the haul, however, dealt with misogyny and homophobia. This is one of the rare examples of what Bnei David rabbis think about Palestinians.
Now we need a crash course in Jewish [not Israeli] warfare law. It basically distinguishes between two sorts of wars: reshut (permitted) wars and mitzvah (ordained) wars. Kings are permitted to go on reshut wars if they so please, but such wars are handled under relatively humane laws. Mitzvah laws are a different concept entirely: they are holy wars, the enemy is considered to be the enemy of God, and, as Wallas says, “I am beholden to nothing.” The model is the extermination wars of the biblical Joshua. Most Halacha scholars are divided about what constitutes a mitzvah war, but they agree that wars to reconquer the Holy Land fit the bill – after all, they are modeled on Joshua’s.
There used to be a snag: Only a king could declare a mitzvah wars, and Judaism was not supposed to have a king until the messiah came. The National Religious movement made a leap of faith over this hurdle: it declared Israel to be “the beginning of the growth of our redemption” (a phrase recited every year in the Independence Day prayers), and treats the state as semi-holy, and one that may declare mitzvah wars.
And, at the end of the chain, we have a government-sponsored rabbi teaching children ardent for some desperate glory that legally they are permitted to order their soldiers to destroy, kill and cause to perish women, old men, and children. Yes, there is still a caveat: If Israel is to suffer because of international treaties, it shouldn’t be done.
But what if the time is right?
Technically, Rabbi Wallas is somewhat under military supervision. As his teachings – while essentially correct, alas – go directly against military law, one might expect he’d be removed, demoted or reprimanded. But, while Lewinstein was reprimanded for denigrating women soldiers, Wallas has less to fear.
No one in the military command cares about rabbis rhapsodizing about genocide.
Notes
* Two prominent medieval glossa writers, Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman and Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki
** A halachaic law permitting the harm, up to killing, of a person who is “persecuting” others and putting them in danger.
*** Jewish religious scholars of the High and Late Middle Ages period
**** Wallas is here quoting Haman’s order for the extermination of Jews, Esther 3:13.
Rabbi Wallas’ words can be heard here. They are taken from a longer lecture he has given his students, which – for those who have too much time on their hands – can be seen here. Here is my translation, with essential footnotes:
“In conquering the Land [of Israel] according to Nachmanides and Rashi [*], who say that the wars of today are also mitzvah wars for conquering the Land, I am beholden to nothing. This isn’t the law of the persecutor [**], right? What law are we dealing with? The laws of a mitzvah war, a war of occupying the Land. Even if I don’t conquer Gaza right now, [conquering it] is part of my ability to settle the Land of Israel, so it is also a part of the mitzvah of conquering the Land.
And therefore it follows, there’s no other way; like, we’d have to kill them all. Because this is the difference between the Law of the Persecutor and mitzvah wars. […] A mitzvah war of conquering the Land, which is not limited to saving the people of Israel from their enemies, according to some of the Rishonim [***] I could, on the face of it and by the essential law, destroy, kill and cause to perish [****] all of them. I will not do so, because if I were to do so, and reject international treaties, then the State of Israel shall parish, unless we shall witness a miracle of miracles – and one must not trust in a miracle. And that’s the only reason I won’t do it.”
A few other notes are essential. First, and please bear with me, what is a mechina? Literally, it means a “preliminary school”, but in Israel it came to mean a school which prepares students who finished their high school studies for military service. While most Israeli Jews are drafted soon after finishing high school, a select few are allowed to study for one more year, and in this year they are supposed to be indoctrinated to become better soldiers. Most mechinas boast of a high percentage of graduates who go on to become officers and serve longer than draftees. With one exception, all mechinas are religious, and are in fact a form of yeshiva. Mechina teachers are public employees who get their salaries from both the Education Ministry and the Defense Ministry.
Mechina leaders often meet with senior officers, up to the Chief of Staff, and participate in high-level discussions about the level of religiosity of the army, particularly whether women may serve with men. The fact that the mechinas are producing a large number of motivated officers when most Israelis do not wish to become officers gives them unusual leverage with the high command – with the result that they are rarely, if ever, supervised.
This began to change over the last year. The Bnei David mechina, the first of them, has long been considered the flagship of the National Religious movement, and its leader, Rabbi Elli Saddan, even won the Israel Prize – the country’s highest civil honor – for his contribution to education. However, over the last year, several rabbis of the mechina – including Saddan himself – were caught on videos saying highly inflammatory things. The main targets of the mechina rabbis have been gays and women; the utterances were so inflammatory, as the rabbis exposed their misogyny and homophobia, that the Minister of Defense demanded at one point that one of the worst offenders, Saddan’s deputy Yigal Lewinstein, resign or the mechina will be sanctioned (Hebrew). Soon after, Lewinstein went on “vacation”, but the mechina insisted he was not fired (Hebrew).
As one scandal after another hit Bnei David, leftists have made it a habit to go over the mechina’s videoed lectures looking for bait. The Wallas quote is the latest prize. Most of the haul, however, dealt with misogyny and homophobia. This is one of the rare examples of what Bnei David rabbis think about Palestinians.
Now we need a crash course in Jewish [not Israeli] warfare law. It basically distinguishes between two sorts of wars: reshut (permitted) wars and mitzvah (ordained) wars. Kings are permitted to go on reshut wars if they so please, but such wars are handled under relatively humane laws. Mitzvah laws are a different concept entirely: they are holy wars, the enemy is considered to be the enemy of God, and, as Wallas says, “I am beholden to nothing.” The model is the extermination wars of the biblical Joshua. Most Halacha scholars are divided about what constitutes a mitzvah war, but they agree that wars to reconquer the Holy Land fit the bill – after all, they are modeled on Joshua’s.
There used to be a snag: Only a king could declare a mitzvah wars, and Judaism was not supposed to have a king until the messiah came. The National Religious movement made a leap of faith over this hurdle: it declared Israel to be “the beginning of the growth of our redemption” (a phrase recited every year in the Independence Day prayers), and treats the state as semi-holy, and one that may declare mitzvah wars.
And, at the end of the chain, we have a government-sponsored rabbi teaching children ardent for some desperate glory that legally they are permitted to order their soldiers to destroy, kill and cause to perish women, old men, and children. Yes, there is still a caveat: If Israel is to suffer because of international treaties, it shouldn’t be done.
But what if the time is right?
Technically, Rabbi Wallas is somewhat under military supervision. As his teachings – while essentially correct, alas – go directly against military law, one might expect he’d be removed, demoted or reprimanded. But, while Lewinstein was reprimanded for denigrating women soldiers, Wallas has less to fear.
No one in the military command cares about rabbis rhapsodizing about genocide.
Notes
* Two prominent medieval glossa writers, Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman and Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki
** A halachaic law permitting the harm, up to killing, of a person who is “persecuting” others and putting them in danger.
*** Jewish religious scholars of the High and Late Middle Ages period
**** Wallas is here quoting Haman’s order for the extermination of Jews, Esther 3:13.
Pictures posted on social media networks show a group of Israeli settlers standing at military watchtowers overseeing Gaza borders, laughing and cheering as Israeli snipers gun down peaceful protesters.
In snapshots taken from Nahal Oz settlement, east of the blockaded Gaza Strip, and published on Twitter by Israel’s Channel 2 correspondent, Israeli settlers appear to bust into hysterical laughter as unarmed protesters on the Gaza border are fatally shot and injured by the Israeli military.
The correspondent commented on the pictures as follows: “The best show in the country ever. . . Nahal Oz settlers standing on the hillside”.
The photos sparked widespread condemnation on social media.
The Middle East Monitor newspaper said the pictures come at a time when the Palestinians have been striving to heal their wounds after 35 were killed and thousands wounded in Israeli aggressions on the Great March of Return protests.
The newspaper also said that Israeli occupation forces used strange and unknown gases against unarmed, peaceful protesters on Gaza borders.
Unmanned drones were used to drop the gas on the demonstrators. The gases caused protesters’ bodies to convulse and tremble. Many lost consciousness.
In snapshots taken from Nahal Oz settlement, east of the blockaded Gaza Strip, and published on Twitter by Israel’s Channel 2 correspondent, Israeli settlers appear to bust into hysterical laughter as unarmed protesters on the Gaza border are fatally shot and injured by the Israeli military.
The correspondent commented on the pictures as follows: “The best show in the country ever. . . Nahal Oz settlers standing on the hillside”.
The photos sparked widespread condemnation on social media.
The Middle East Monitor newspaper said the pictures come at a time when the Palestinians have been striving to heal their wounds after 35 were killed and thousands wounded in Israeli aggressions on the Great March of Return protests.
The newspaper also said that Israeli occupation forces used strange and unknown gases against unarmed, peaceful protesters on Gaza borders.
Unmanned drones were used to drop the gas on the demonstrators. The gases caused protesters’ bodies to convulse and tremble. Many lost consciousness.
15 apr 2018
The Israeli occupation army on Sunday claimed that it had destroyed in the weekend a Hamas tunnel that originated in the northern Gaza Strip and reached into the 1948 occupied Palestinian territories.
Hebrew media sources reported that the Israeli army had destroyed a "Hamas attack tunnel" which violated the Israeli sovereignty.
According to the information cleared for publication Sunday morning, the tunnel extended several kilometers inside the Gaza Strip.
According to Arab 48 website, Israel's Minister of War Avigdor Lieberman said that the newly-destroyed tunnel is the longest and deepest one ever discovered.
In an attempt to incite the public opinion in Gaza against Hamas, Lieberman said on Twitter, "Citizens of Gaza, Hamas is burning your money on tunnels going nowhere. We'll get our hands on all of them."
The Israeli army used its allegations published in a statement on Sunday about the tunnel to incite against the Palestinian resistance and divert attention from the crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against the peaceful protesters taking part in the Great March of Return.
The Israeli army held Hamas and other resistance movements responsible for what is happening the Gaza Strip, claiming that Hamas plans to carry out anti-Israel attacks under the guise of mass protests near the border.
Hebrew media sources reported that the Israeli army had destroyed a "Hamas attack tunnel" which violated the Israeli sovereignty.
According to the information cleared for publication Sunday morning, the tunnel extended several kilometers inside the Gaza Strip.
According to Arab 48 website, Israel's Minister of War Avigdor Lieberman said that the newly-destroyed tunnel is the longest and deepest one ever discovered.
In an attempt to incite the public opinion in Gaza against Hamas, Lieberman said on Twitter, "Citizens of Gaza, Hamas is burning your money on tunnels going nowhere. We'll get our hands on all of them."
The Israeli army used its allegations published in a statement on Sunday about the tunnel to incite against the Palestinian resistance and divert attention from the crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against the peaceful protesters taking part in the Great March of Return.
The Israeli army held Hamas and other resistance movements responsible for what is happening the Gaza Strip, claiming that Hamas plans to carry out anti-Israel attacks under the guise of mass protests near the border.
4 apr 2018
More than a dozen major Israeli websites were the target of an anti-Israel cyberattack on Tuesday evening, seemingly in response to Israeli crimes against Gazan protesters last weekend.
Homepages for the municipality websites for Kfar Saba, Eilat, Herzliya and Acre were changed to display the message: “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine” alongside an image of the deadly attack of Israeli forces against Palestinian unarmed protesters along the Gaza border over the weekend.
The pages also displayed the message “We will not forget our martyrs” in Arabic.
Websites for Israel’s national opera, a hospital in Hadera and the local council for the city of Gan Yavne were also targeted.
At least 18 Palestinian civilians have been deliberately killed and over 1,500 injured by Israeli gunfire while taking part in the peaceful Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip.
Homepages for the municipality websites for Kfar Saba, Eilat, Herzliya and Acre were changed to display the message: “Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine” alongside an image of the deadly attack of Israeli forces against Palestinian unarmed protesters along the Gaza border over the weekend.
The pages also displayed the message “We will not forget our martyrs” in Arabic.
Websites for Israel’s national opera, a hospital in Hadera and the local council for the city of Gan Yavne were also targeted.
At least 18 Palestinian civilians have been deliberately killed and over 1,500 injured by Israeli gunfire while taking part in the peaceful Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip.
24 mar 2018
By Motasem A Dalloul
An Israeli propaganda group has claimed that the call by Hamas for the Palestinians to take part in a “Friday of Rage” demonstration was incitement to terrorism that led to the killing of two Israeli soldiers near an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. In a video that opened with a screenshot of the Hamas Twitter account, the group called for an end to what it called the movement’s “violence and hatred”.
It is ironic for this group to speak about violence, hatred, racism, apartheid and many other terms that represent intolerance and hatred, given the level of state violence, war crimes and genocidal acts committed by Israel against the Palestinians. Such efforts to legitimise the state terrorism against Palestine and its people, who they actually describe as “terrorists”, are shameful.
Let us look at the last two car-ramming incidents as examples of Israeli incitement; they happened in Acre and Jenin within the past few weeks. The driver in Acre was an Israeli Arab, a Palestinian whose grandfather refused to leave his house despite the threats of the Zionist gangs who massacred Palestinians and forced 700,000 of them out of their homes to create the state of Israel. The driver in the second accident was a Palestinian refugee from Jenin.
The Israeli police must prove that both incidents were terrorist attacks in order to try to justify punitive countermeasures against Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians. However, eyewitnesses said that the driver in the accident in Acre only acted aggressively after he was fined NIS1,000 ($280) for parking in a disabled parking spot, but the police have insisted that “secret” investigations and “secret” findings prove that it was a terror attack.
Regarding the accident in Jenin, the Israeli Hebrew news website Walla reported that the Palestinian driver — described by the Israeli domestic spy agency Shin Bet as a “terrorist” and who the above-mentioned propaganda group claimed was affected by “Hamas incitement” — was abused and tortured into “confessing” that it was a terrorist act. Nevertheless, Shin Bet insist that it was a “terror attack” and say that, “The objective of the terrorist’s claims is to divert the discussion from the serious suspicions against him.”
Such incidents are just one example of the official Israeli attempts to brand Palestinians and Arabs as “terrorists”. Commenting on the accident in Jenin, before any investigations had been completed, the Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, “We will act to sentence the terrorist to death, to demolish his house and to punish anyone who cooperated.” This is the reality of Israeli officials; they do not incite violence, they actually practice violence. At the same time, they distort legitimate Palestinian resistance against the brutal Israeli military occupation in an attempt to lead the international community into turning a blind eye to their crimes and genocidal acts, most of which are even described by Israeli rights groups as flagrant violations of international law.
The two car-ramming incidents were accidents which have been exploited by Israel to incite terror against the Palestinians and distract the international community from raising humanitarian aid for the Palestinians besieged in Gaza and squalid refugee camps scattered around the region.
While the UN was holding an international donor conference in Rome with the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the European Union to raise funds for Palestinian refugees, Lieberman announced the destruction of two Palestinian tunnels in the besieged Gaza Strip. The right-wing extremist claimed that they were being prepared by “Hamas terrorists” in the coastal enclave to carry out “terror attacks” on Israel. He accused Hamas of investing billions of people’s money in the tunnels.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is defending himself in at least four corruption cases that threaten his political life, has also addressed the issue of the tunnels. Directing his comments at participants at the donor conference, he warned that the money to be raised and sent to the Gaza Strip would be used by “terror groups” to build their tunnels to attack Israel.
Ignoring the humanitarian crisis, which is the result of the strict siege imposed on Gaza by the Israeli occupation government and its friends in Cairo and the West, Netanyahu claimed that humanitarian aid is stolen by Hamas and “buried underground” by being used to build tunnels instead of helping people in need.
To prove that all of this was just a ruse by Israel to sabotage the donor conference, the military wing of Hamas announced that the two tunnels targeted by the Israelis were in fact old and unused, as they were discovered and destroyed by Israel during its 2014 military offensive against the Palestinian civilians of Gaza. This was nothing less than Israel inciting the world against the Palestinians and their lawful resistance.
Aside from such indirect incitement, Israel has a history of overt incitement of violence against the Palestinians. For example, Lieberman’s call in March 2015 to behead the Palestinians who did not leave their homes in 1948, in order to let the Jewish population prosper. This came just one month after pledging to introduce the death penalty for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. “The first law that Yisrael Beitenu [Lieberman’s party] will propose is a death penalty for terrorists [his euphemism for Palestinian prisoners],” he said. A bill to introduce the death penalty duly passed its first Knesset vote earlier this year. Lieberman is, apparently, quite serious about killing Palestinians.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu described the death penalty for Palestinians as “justice”. In 2015, he even absolved Adolf Hitler of the Holocaust and blamed the Palestinians instead. Is that not incitement of the worst, most deceitful kind?
In a 2017 report, Human Rights Watch accused the Israeli occupation of carrying out “unlawful killings; forced displacement; abusive detention; closure of the Gaza Strip and other unjustified restrictions on movement and development of settlements, along with the accompanying discriminatory policies that disadvantage Palestinians.” In this, the rights group was merely confirming what numerous other international and local organisations have demonstrated for many years; it is Israel which is the serial abuser of human rights, and it is Israel which not only incites violence against the Palestinians but also ensures that it is carried out. The facts speak for themselves.
- Motasem A Dalloul is MEMO’s correspondent in the Gaza Strip.
An Israeli propaganda group has claimed that the call by Hamas for the Palestinians to take part in a “Friday of Rage” demonstration was incitement to terrorism that led to the killing of two Israeli soldiers near an illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. In a video that opened with a screenshot of the Hamas Twitter account, the group called for an end to what it called the movement’s “violence and hatred”.
It is ironic for this group to speak about violence, hatred, racism, apartheid and many other terms that represent intolerance and hatred, given the level of state violence, war crimes and genocidal acts committed by Israel against the Palestinians. Such efforts to legitimise the state terrorism against Palestine and its people, who they actually describe as “terrorists”, are shameful.
Let us look at the last two car-ramming incidents as examples of Israeli incitement; they happened in Acre and Jenin within the past few weeks. The driver in Acre was an Israeli Arab, a Palestinian whose grandfather refused to leave his house despite the threats of the Zionist gangs who massacred Palestinians and forced 700,000 of them out of their homes to create the state of Israel. The driver in the second accident was a Palestinian refugee from Jenin.
The Israeli police must prove that both incidents were terrorist attacks in order to try to justify punitive countermeasures against Israeli Arabs and the Palestinians. However, eyewitnesses said that the driver in the accident in Acre only acted aggressively after he was fined NIS1,000 ($280) for parking in a disabled parking spot, but the police have insisted that “secret” investigations and “secret” findings prove that it was a terror attack.
Regarding the accident in Jenin, the Israeli Hebrew news website Walla reported that the Palestinian driver — described by the Israeli domestic spy agency Shin Bet as a “terrorist” and who the above-mentioned propaganda group claimed was affected by “Hamas incitement” — was abused and tortured into “confessing” that it was a terrorist act. Nevertheless, Shin Bet insist that it was a “terror attack” and say that, “The objective of the terrorist’s claims is to divert the discussion from the serious suspicions against him.”
Such incidents are just one example of the official Israeli attempts to brand Palestinians and Arabs as “terrorists”. Commenting on the accident in Jenin, before any investigations had been completed, the Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said, “We will act to sentence the terrorist to death, to demolish his house and to punish anyone who cooperated.” This is the reality of Israeli officials; they do not incite violence, they actually practice violence. At the same time, they distort legitimate Palestinian resistance against the brutal Israeli military occupation in an attempt to lead the international community into turning a blind eye to their crimes and genocidal acts, most of which are even described by Israeli rights groups as flagrant violations of international law.
The two car-ramming incidents were accidents which have been exploited by Israel to incite terror against the Palestinians and distract the international community from raising humanitarian aid for the Palestinians besieged in Gaza and squalid refugee camps scattered around the region.
While the UN was holding an international donor conference in Rome with the Arab League, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the European Union to raise funds for Palestinian refugees, Lieberman announced the destruction of two Palestinian tunnels in the besieged Gaza Strip. The right-wing extremist claimed that they were being prepared by “Hamas terrorists” in the coastal enclave to carry out “terror attacks” on Israel. He accused Hamas of investing billions of people’s money in the tunnels.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is defending himself in at least four corruption cases that threaten his political life, has also addressed the issue of the tunnels. Directing his comments at participants at the donor conference, he warned that the money to be raised and sent to the Gaza Strip would be used by “terror groups” to build their tunnels to attack Israel.
Ignoring the humanitarian crisis, which is the result of the strict siege imposed on Gaza by the Israeli occupation government and its friends in Cairo and the West, Netanyahu claimed that humanitarian aid is stolen by Hamas and “buried underground” by being used to build tunnels instead of helping people in need.
To prove that all of this was just a ruse by Israel to sabotage the donor conference, the military wing of Hamas announced that the two tunnels targeted by the Israelis were in fact old and unused, as they were discovered and destroyed by Israel during its 2014 military offensive against the Palestinian civilians of Gaza. This was nothing less than Israel inciting the world against the Palestinians and their lawful resistance.
Aside from such indirect incitement, Israel has a history of overt incitement of violence against the Palestinians. For example, Lieberman’s call in March 2015 to behead the Palestinians who did not leave their homes in 1948, in order to let the Jewish population prosper. This came just one month after pledging to introduce the death penalty for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. “The first law that Yisrael Beitenu [Lieberman’s party] will propose is a death penalty for terrorists [his euphemism for Palestinian prisoners],” he said. A bill to introduce the death penalty duly passed its first Knesset vote earlier this year. Lieberman is, apparently, quite serious about killing Palestinians.
According to the Jerusalem Post, Netanyahu described the death penalty for Palestinians as “justice”. In 2015, he even absolved Adolf Hitler of the Holocaust and blamed the Palestinians instead. Is that not incitement of the worst, most deceitful kind?
In a 2017 report, Human Rights Watch accused the Israeli occupation of carrying out “unlawful killings; forced displacement; abusive detention; closure of the Gaza Strip and other unjustified restrictions on movement and development of settlements, along with the accompanying discriminatory policies that disadvantage Palestinians.” In this, the rights group was merely confirming what numerous other international and local organisations have demonstrated for many years; it is Israel which is the serial abuser of human rights, and it is Israel which not only incites violence against the Palestinians but also ensures that it is carried out. The facts speak for themselves.
- Motasem A Dalloul is MEMO’s correspondent in the Gaza Strip.
23 mar 2018
Yasmin Abu Srour, 20
The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) on Thursday said that prisoner Omar al-Kiswani started an open hunger strike three days ago in protest at the difficult detention and interrogation conditions he is being subjected to at the Israeli al-Maskubiya detention center in Jerusalem.
The PPS said in a statement that al-Kiswani informed the court about his hunger strike which came in response to the ill treatment and 18-hour interrogation he is exposed to on a daily basis.
The PPS added that the Israeli court decided to extend al-Kiswani's detention for a week, noting that al-Kiswani has been prevented from meeting his lawyer since his arrest.
Al-Kiswani, the president of Birzeit University's student union, was kidnapped from the university campus by Israeli undercover soldiers on 7th March.
In a related context, Ofer military court issued different sentences against three Bethlehem residents including a 20-year-old girl.
The PPS reported that the court sentenced Mu'taz al-Amour and Ali Srour to 20 and 36 months in prison respectively and imposed a fine of 4,000 shekels ($1100) on them.
The same court sentenced Yasmin Abu Srour, 20, to seven months in Israeli jail on charges of Facebook incitement.
The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) on Thursday said that prisoner Omar al-Kiswani started an open hunger strike three days ago in protest at the difficult detention and interrogation conditions he is being subjected to at the Israeli al-Maskubiya detention center in Jerusalem.
The PPS said in a statement that al-Kiswani informed the court about his hunger strike which came in response to the ill treatment and 18-hour interrogation he is exposed to on a daily basis.
The PPS added that the Israeli court decided to extend al-Kiswani's detention for a week, noting that al-Kiswani has been prevented from meeting his lawyer since his arrest.
Al-Kiswani, the president of Birzeit University's student union, was kidnapped from the university campus by Israeli undercover soldiers on 7th March.
In a related context, Ofer military court issued different sentences against three Bethlehem residents including a 20-year-old girl.
The PPS reported that the court sentenced Mu'taz al-Amour and Ali Srour to 20 and 36 months in prison respectively and imposed a fine of 4,000 shekels ($1100) on them.
The same court sentenced Yasmin Abu Srour, 20, to seven months in Israeli jail on charges of Facebook incitement.
18 mar 2018
Facebook has expanded its ad map to reach Israeli settlements located beyond the 1967 borders, following a complaint by an Israeli official, according to media reports.
The social networking site has amended its policy to include Jewish neighborhoods located outside the 1967 borders in ads targeting residents of Occupied Jerusalem, according to Israel Hayom newspaper.
The newspaper said that Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely filed a complaint after learning that Facebook ads are limited only to Jerusalem neighborhoods within the 1967 borders.
The 1967 borders refer to the boundaries of the Palestinian state that existed before the war in which Israel occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem city, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Companies that advertised products or services to Israelis on Facebook were able to target only Israelis living inside the Green Line.
After learning of the issue from Israeli news site "Hottest Place in Hell," which allegedly encountered difficulties when trying to target locations in Israel on Facebook, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely reached out to Facebook to demand an explanation.
In a letter of complaint, Hotovely wrote, "It is unfathomable for Facebook to exclude neighborhoods in east Jerusalem from the map of Israel within the framework of its advertising tools. … According to the [location targeting] map Facebook presents, neighborhoods like Gilo, French Hill, Pisgat Ze'ev and others do not even appear on the map of Israel."
Facebook was quick to respond. In a letter to Hotovely, Jordana Cutler, a former adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now tasked with handling the tech giant's relations with the Israeli government, wrote that Facebook agreed that "a commercial business should not define the borders of any country" and announced the problematic map excluding the newer neighborhoods had been removed from the site.
Hotovely welcomed the move and thanked Facebook "for their swift response and professional handling of the issue."
The social networking site has amended its policy to include Jewish neighborhoods located outside the 1967 borders in ads targeting residents of Occupied Jerusalem, according to Israel Hayom newspaper.
The newspaper said that Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely filed a complaint after learning that Facebook ads are limited only to Jerusalem neighborhoods within the 1967 borders.
The 1967 borders refer to the boundaries of the Palestinian state that existed before the war in which Israel occupied the eastern part of Jerusalem city, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Companies that advertised products or services to Israelis on Facebook were able to target only Israelis living inside the Green Line.
After learning of the issue from Israeli news site "Hottest Place in Hell," which allegedly encountered difficulties when trying to target locations in Israel on Facebook, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely reached out to Facebook to demand an explanation.
In a letter of complaint, Hotovely wrote, "It is unfathomable for Facebook to exclude neighborhoods in east Jerusalem from the map of Israel within the framework of its advertising tools. … According to the [location targeting] map Facebook presents, neighborhoods like Gilo, French Hill, Pisgat Ze'ev and others do not even appear on the map of Israel."
Facebook was quick to respond. In a letter to Hotovely, Jordana Cutler, a former adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now tasked with handling the tech giant's relations with the Israeli government, wrote that Facebook agreed that "a commercial business should not define the borders of any country" and announced the problematic map excluding the newer neighborhoods had been removed from the site.
Hotovely welcomed the move and thanked Facebook "for their swift response and professional handling of the issue."
17 mar 2018
A major Israeli propaganda talking point is the concept of “Palestinian incitement”. The idea behind it is that Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation is so self-defeating, so irrational, that it can only be the work of outside agitators.
The Official Enemy of the past, supposedly responsible for such “incitement”, was the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Before that it was Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of Egypt, who allowed some Palestinian fighters to operate out of territory he controlled.
Today, the main “inciter” of Israeli mythology is probably Hamas, Palestine’s Islamic Resistance Movement. Nevertheless, the Palestinian Authority, despite its craven policy of “security coordination” with Israel, is still used as a scapegoat for the source of “incitement” of Palestinian youth to resist Israeli occupation by demonstrating, throwing stones or even attacking Israeli occupation soldiers and settlers.
Even the BDS movement – aiming to encourage boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it stops violating basic Palestinian human rights – is considered “incitement” by Israeli propagandists.egy
The reality, of course, is very different. In fact, Palestinians need no “incitement” by anyone as a motivation to resist Israel’s occupation. The only genuine source of incitement is Israel itself and its actions.
Every time Israeli occupation soldiers shoot and kill another unarmed Palestinian youth for daring to raise a voice in opposition to the brutal military regime, then that is a source of incitement.
Every time thuggish soldiers perpetuate Israel’s 70-year-long campaign of ethnic cleansing by bulldozing another Palestinian home, that is a source of incitement.
Every time fanatical Zionist settlers in Hebron attack another Palestinian child, and every time they steal yet another Palestinian home through direct force because the Israeli state gives them carte blanche to do so, that is a source of incitement.
In reality, Palestinians need no outside incitement for them to react to their daily reality. As long as Israel continues to deny Palestinians their basic rights, they will continue to resist by any means necessary.
A new report on Israeli incitement from a Palestinian human rights group based in Haifa shows that – as is so often the case – the reality is very different to Israel’s false claims. Everything that the Israelis falsely accuse their enemies of doing they themselves are, in reality, guilty of that much and more.
7amleh (also transliterated Hamleh) is a relatively-new centre for digital rights and free speech in the social media realm. Its new report analysed the Israeli social media sphere during 2017, and found some shockingly hateful results.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are typically very well educated in Hebrew as a second language, and so 7amleh was able to look comprehensively into the realm of Hebrew-language social media. The organisation found that, on average during 2017, there was a new Israeli social media posting containing incitement to violence or hate speech against Palestinians every 71 seconds. Some 445,000 Israeli social media postings contained calls for violence, hate speech or curses against Palestinians.
Such popular Israeli online incitement has in the past included a 2015 campaign for Palestinian “terrorists” to be executed – into which many Israelis sickeningly drafted their own children (many openly published their children’s photos, but the article to which I’ve linked has carefully pixelated out the faces of all minors).
According to 7amleh, this “exposes Facebook’s complicity in perpetuating the double standards of the Israeli government of silencing and shutting down Palestinian content whilst allowing for the spread of Israeli incitement. Furthermore, the Israeli government fails to hold any Israeli accountable for online violence while at the same time it jails hundreds of Palestinians based on this unfounded claim of incitement.”
Palestinians often face Israeli prison cells for daring to criticise Israel online. Perhaps the most notorious example of this in recent times has been the arrest and imprisonment of Dareen Tartour for daring to write a poem calling for Palestinians to “Resist them, my people, resist them.” She too was accused of “incitement”.
Facebook (on which 82 per cent of the incitement and hateful Israeli social media posts recorded in the 7amleh report took place) has been complicit in this censorship effort. The extent to which the social-media monolith helps Israel to remove and censor legitimate Palestinian political speech from the platform was revealed recently; it does this under the pretext of “incitement” or “terrorism”.
However, Facebook does nothing when official Israeli spokespeople, MPs and ministers openly incite violence, ethnic cleansing and even outright genocide against the entire Palestinian people, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure,” in the words of a text that the woman who is now Israel’s “justice” minister posted infamously on Facebook in 2014.
It is time for these unaccountable social media corporations to be forced to become more transparent.
- Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist living in London who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He writes for the award-winning Palestinian news site The Electronic Intifada where he is an associate editor and also a weekly column for the Middle East Monitor where this article appeared.
The Official Enemy of the past, supposedly responsible for such “incitement”, was the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Before that it was Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of Egypt, who allowed some Palestinian fighters to operate out of territory he controlled.
Today, the main “inciter” of Israeli mythology is probably Hamas, Palestine’s Islamic Resistance Movement. Nevertheless, the Palestinian Authority, despite its craven policy of “security coordination” with Israel, is still used as a scapegoat for the source of “incitement” of Palestinian youth to resist Israeli occupation by demonstrating, throwing stones or even attacking Israeli occupation soldiers and settlers.
Even the BDS movement – aiming to encourage boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel until it stops violating basic Palestinian human rights – is considered “incitement” by Israeli propagandists.egy
The reality, of course, is very different. In fact, Palestinians need no “incitement” by anyone as a motivation to resist Israel’s occupation. The only genuine source of incitement is Israel itself and its actions.
Every time Israeli occupation soldiers shoot and kill another unarmed Palestinian youth for daring to raise a voice in opposition to the brutal military regime, then that is a source of incitement.
Every time thuggish soldiers perpetuate Israel’s 70-year-long campaign of ethnic cleansing by bulldozing another Palestinian home, that is a source of incitement.
Every time fanatical Zionist settlers in Hebron attack another Palestinian child, and every time they steal yet another Palestinian home through direct force because the Israeli state gives them carte blanche to do so, that is a source of incitement.
In reality, Palestinians need no outside incitement for them to react to their daily reality. As long as Israel continues to deny Palestinians their basic rights, they will continue to resist by any means necessary.
A new report on Israeli incitement from a Palestinian human rights group based in Haifa shows that – as is so often the case – the reality is very different to Israel’s false claims. Everything that the Israelis falsely accuse their enemies of doing they themselves are, in reality, guilty of that much and more.
7amleh (also transliterated Hamleh) is a relatively-new centre for digital rights and free speech in the social media realm. Its new report analysed the Israeli social media sphere during 2017, and found some shockingly hateful results.
Palestinian citizens of Israel are typically very well educated in Hebrew as a second language, and so 7amleh was able to look comprehensively into the realm of Hebrew-language social media. The organisation found that, on average during 2017, there was a new Israeli social media posting containing incitement to violence or hate speech against Palestinians every 71 seconds. Some 445,000 Israeli social media postings contained calls for violence, hate speech or curses against Palestinians.
Such popular Israeli online incitement has in the past included a 2015 campaign for Palestinian “terrorists” to be executed – into which many Israelis sickeningly drafted their own children (many openly published their children’s photos, but the article to which I’ve linked has carefully pixelated out the faces of all minors).
According to 7amleh, this “exposes Facebook’s complicity in perpetuating the double standards of the Israeli government of silencing and shutting down Palestinian content whilst allowing for the spread of Israeli incitement. Furthermore, the Israeli government fails to hold any Israeli accountable for online violence while at the same time it jails hundreds of Palestinians based on this unfounded claim of incitement.”
Palestinians often face Israeli prison cells for daring to criticise Israel online. Perhaps the most notorious example of this in recent times has been the arrest and imprisonment of Dareen Tartour for daring to write a poem calling for Palestinians to “Resist them, my people, resist them.” She too was accused of “incitement”.
Facebook (on which 82 per cent of the incitement and hateful Israeli social media posts recorded in the 7amleh report took place) has been complicit in this censorship effort. The extent to which the social-media monolith helps Israel to remove and censor legitimate Palestinian political speech from the platform was revealed recently; it does this under the pretext of “incitement” or “terrorism”.
However, Facebook does nothing when official Israeli spokespeople, MPs and ministers openly incite violence, ethnic cleansing and even outright genocide against the entire Palestinian people, “including its elderly and its women, its cities and its villages, its property and its infrastructure,” in the words of a text that the woman who is now Israel’s “justice” minister posted infamously on Facebook in 2014.
It is time for these unaccountable social media corporations to be forced to become more transparent.
- Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist living in London who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He writes for the award-winning Palestinian news site The Electronic Intifada where he is an associate editor and also a weekly column for the Middle East Monitor where this article appeared.
