18 june 2019
A screenshot from the Immigration New Zealand website shows a map of the Middle East that only showed Palestine and did not recognize Israel.
An official website of New Zealand's government has published a map of the Middle East that only shows Palestine and doesn't recognize Israel.
The website Immigration New Zealand posted the map as part of a fact sheet that provided information about Palestinian immigrants to New Zealand.
The page referred to the “massive repression of Palestinians” caused by Israel during the Second Intifada (uprising). It also pointed out Israel’s “economic sanctions and a blockade on Hamas-controlled Gaza.”
The fact sheet even identified East Jerusalem al-Quds as “the designated capital of the State of Palestine.”
The web page was removed after it sparked some complaints on social media.
The Israel Institute of New Zealand urged the country's immigration minister to “immediately apologize for the offending image and confirm that it does not reflect Government policy.”
Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards. Israel has also launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
Gaza has also witnessed tensions since March 30, 2018 which marked the start of the Great March of Return protests, with participants demanding the right to return for those driven out of their homeland.
Israeli troops have killed at least 305 Palestinians since the beginning of the rallies and wounded more than 17,000 others, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
An official website of New Zealand's government has published a map of the Middle East that only shows Palestine and doesn't recognize Israel.
The website Immigration New Zealand posted the map as part of a fact sheet that provided information about Palestinian immigrants to New Zealand.
The page referred to the “massive repression of Palestinians” caused by Israel during the Second Intifada (uprising). It also pointed out Israel’s “economic sanctions and a blockade on Hamas-controlled Gaza.”
The fact sheet even identified East Jerusalem al-Quds as “the designated capital of the State of Palestine.”
The web page was removed after it sparked some complaints on social media.
The Israel Institute of New Zealand urged the country's immigration minister to “immediately apologize for the offending image and confirm that it does not reflect Government policy.”
Gaza has been under Israeli siege since June 2007, which has caused a decline in living standards. Israel has also launched three major wars against the enclave since 2008, killing thousands of Gazans each time and shattering the impoverished territory’s already poor infrastructure.
Gaza has also witnessed tensions since March 30, 2018 which marked the start of the Great March of Return protests, with participants demanding the right to return for those driven out of their homeland.
Israeli troops have killed at least 305 Palestinians since the beginning of the rallies and wounded more than 17,000 others, according to the Gazan Health Ministry.
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The Israeli international TV channel i24 News last week aired a call for the total ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
“There will never, ever be a two-state solution,” British far-right demagogue Katie Hopkins stated. “Israel will become the super force here. You will have to have a one-state solution.” video But she wasn’t talking about a single state with equal rights for all. video “There will not be peace in Israel until you remove the people who don’t belong there,” Hopkins asserted. Another guest, former Israeli diplomat Daniel Shek, objected that they – the Palestinians – “are indigenous people, not migrants.” |
But Hopkins added that “it will be a one-state solution, and in so far as you will have to remove certain individuals, you would just take more land.”
Shek asked: “You mean 50 percent of the population will have to go?”
“Yes, they will have to go,” Hopkins affirmed. “If some of their population still stab you with knives, then I would say yes, the rest have to go.”
Palestinians constitute half – and likely a slight majority – of the approximately 13 million people who live in what is today Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Hopkins’ call for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians may even meet the international legal definition of genocide.
The Genocide Convention defines numerous acts as genocide if they are committed “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
Indeed, prominent scholars of genocide argue that Israel’s policies towards the Palestinian people over decades constitute a form of genocide.
In recent years, Israeli political leaders have habitually advanced genocidal plans for the expulsion of the Palestinians and their destruction as a national collective.
“Natural home”
Hopkins is a notorious far-right racist who has caught the favorable attention of US President Donald Trump for her Islamophobic vitriol.
She has a well-documented record of using her high-profile media appearances to spread conspiracy theories and incite racial, ethnic and religious hatred. tweet
Hopkins also used her i24 News appearance to claim that Muslims are “forcing the Jews out of western Europe,” as well as her “own population.”
And in perhaps one of her only credible statements – politically speaking at least – she called Israel her “natural home.”
Hopkins embodies the increasingly warm embrace between Israel, on the one hand, and far-right Islamophobes, white supremacists, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis in Europe and North America, on the other.
She has previously referred to migrants in Europe as “cockroaches.”
Hopkins was perhaps channeling Rafael Eitan, the army chief who commanded Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and once notoriously called Palestinians “drugged cockroaches in a bottle.” tweet
That Shek challenged Hopkins’ call for the ethnic cleansing of millions of people in no way mitigates i24 News’ responsibility for airing dangerous racist incitement.
Would any channel defend as legitimate debate, say, a discussion on whether Jews should be expelled from Europe, or whether slavery should be reinstated in the United States? Even if free speech entitles people to hold such repugnant and abhorrent views, no media platform is obligated to give them space.
Some matters are beyond debate, and to provide their adherents with a platform in any format serves only to legitimize extremist viewpoints.
Yet i24 News is attempting to whitewash and downplay Hopkins’ comments as merely “controversial” – that is to say within the scope of acceptable debate.
EU embraces racist municipalities
The intense and arguably genocidal racism Hopkins expresses is all too common and normalized in Israel, an ethno-state where Palestinians are conceived first and foremost as a “demographic threat” to the violently gerrymandered Jewish majority. tweet
A fresh example of that came last Saturday when the mayor and city council members in the northern city of Afula took part in a demonstration against the sale of a home to an Arab family.
Council member Itai Cohen told media the municipality would continue to “ensure that Afula preserves its Jewish character.”
“Anyone looking for a mixed city – Afula is not the address,” Cohen told Israeli army radio on Sunday. “We are a right-wing place with Jewish characteristics.”
The demonstration was joined by members of Lehava, a Jewish extremist group that agitates against mixed marriages and whose members habitually participate in violent rampages calling for Palestinians to be “wiped out.”
With the blessing of state-financed official rabbis and legislation, Israeli municipalities regularly act to prevent integration and equal housing opportunities for Palestinian citizens in Israel. tweet
This systematic racism has done nothing to deter the self-declared human rights champions at the European Union from embracing Israeli municipalities.
Last month, Emanuele Giaufret, the EU ambassador in Tel Aviv, met the chair of the Federation of Local Authorities in Israel to “deepen cooperation between the EU and Israeli municipalities.”
There is no indication that the EU is requiring Israeli municipalities to end their racism against Palestinians and people from African states as a condition for such cooperation.
11 june 2019
Son of prime minister tells U.S. conservative TV network that U.S. president is best friend Israel, Jewish people ever had in White House, says 'wall' along border with Egypt 'completely stopped' illegal immigration
U.S. President Donald Trump is considered a "rock star" in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's younger son Yair told an American conservative television network on Monday night. video
Speaking to BlazeTV, the 27-year-old praised the president as "the best friend that Israel and the Jewish people ever had in the White House," citing Trump's decision to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to recognize the Golan Heights as Israeli sovereign territory, 52 years after the plateau was captured from Syria in the Six-Day War.
"He will be remembered in Jewish history forever for moving the embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Jerusalem [as the Israeli capital] and recognizing [Israeli sovereignty over] the Golan Heights," Netanyahu said.
"The Jewish people still remember King Cyrus the Great from Persia who recognized Jerusalem 2,500 years ago ... so we have a long term memory and the vast majority of Israelis adore America and adore President Trump. He's a real rock star in Israel."
Netanyahu senior has previously compared Trump to Cyrus, the king who is credited with allowing Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem from Babylon in circa 540 BCE.
Yair, who is described as a "social media activist," also compared the recently completed border fence between Israel and Egypt to the wall Trump wants to build between the U.S. and Mexico.
"We had a border with Egypt that [was] just open desert and we started having a... big flow of illegal immigrants crossing from Africa, because Egypt has a border with Sudan and then from there the rest of Africa and they would just walk from Sudan to Egypt and then right through the border with Israel and go all the way to Tel Aviv," he said.
"So they would just walk from third world countries into [a] first world country."
He added: "Israel is only eight million people, so tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants eventually would have (lead) to the destruction of Israel. So in 2011 we built a wall, coast to coast, on the border with Egypt and since the wall was completed the illegal immigration has completely stopped."
Israel's border with Egypt is primarily comprised of fence and electronic sensors, rather than solid concrete. It has been extremely successful in stopping African migrants crossing the border, of which there were some 38,000 in Israel in January 2018, according to government data (Hebrew).
U.S. President Donald Trump is considered a "rock star" in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's younger son Yair told an American conservative television network on Monday night. video
Speaking to BlazeTV, the 27-year-old praised the president as "the best friend that Israel and the Jewish people ever had in the White House," citing Trump's decision to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to recognize the Golan Heights as Israeli sovereign territory, 52 years after the plateau was captured from Syria in the Six-Day War.
"He will be remembered in Jewish history forever for moving the embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Jerusalem [as the Israeli capital] and recognizing [Israeli sovereignty over] the Golan Heights," Netanyahu said.
"The Jewish people still remember King Cyrus the Great from Persia who recognized Jerusalem 2,500 years ago ... so we have a long term memory and the vast majority of Israelis adore America and adore President Trump. He's a real rock star in Israel."
Netanyahu senior has previously compared Trump to Cyrus, the king who is credited with allowing Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem from Babylon in circa 540 BCE.
Yair, who is described as a "social media activist," also compared the recently completed border fence between Israel and Egypt to the wall Trump wants to build between the U.S. and Mexico.
"We had a border with Egypt that [was] just open desert and we started having a... big flow of illegal immigrants crossing from Africa, because Egypt has a border with Sudan and then from there the rest of Africa and they would just walk from Sudan to Egypt and then right through the border with Israel and go all the way to Tel Aviv," he said.
"So they would just walk from third world countries into [a] first world country."
He added: "Israel is only eight million people, so tens of thousands even hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants eventually would have (lead) to the destruction of Israel. So in 2011 we built a wall, coast to coast, on the border with Egypt and since the wall was completed the illegal immigration has completely stopped."
Israel's border with Egypt is primarily comprised of fence and electronic sensors, rather than solid concrete. It has been extremely successful in stopping African migrants crossing the border, of which there were some 38,000 in Israel in January 2018, according to government data (Hebrew).
9 june 2019
The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) says the Israeli military committed 84 violations against Palestinian journalists in the month of May as the Tel Aviv regime continues its repressive measures against members of the press both in the occupied West Bank and besieged Gaza Strip.
MADA, in a report published on Sunday, announced that the number marks a sharp increase compared to the preceding month of April, when 19 violations were documented.
The report then pointed to the recent closure of Facebook accounts of at least 65 Palestinian journalists and activists in a campaign carried out on May 23 and 24.
MADA further noted that Israeli military aircraft targeted and destroyed the office of Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency, besides the office of Palestine Liberation Organization-affiliated Abdullah al-Hourani Center for Studies and Documentation when they bombed the Gaza Strip on May 4.
The report went on to say that Palestinian photojournalist Mohammed Mahmoud Hassan suffered a gunshot wound as he was covering a weekly demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian lands by the Israeli regime in the village of Kfar Qaddum, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on May 10.
Two journalists, identified as 42-year-old Abdel Rahim Mohammed Khatib and Ramzi Hatem al-Shukrit, 35, were also separately injured during their coverage of the anti-occupation Great March of Return protests east of the border city of Rafah, located 30 kilometers south of Gaza City, on the same day.
One of them was struck by a rubber-coated metal bullet, while the other was directly hit by a tear gas canister.
On May 12, Israeli military forces arrested seven journalists and human rights activists in the northern Jordan Valley area, and prevented them from covering deportations being carried out by the military against Palestinian farmers and residents living there.
Furthermore, Israeli forces prevented Munther Mohammed Shehadeh al-Khatib, a photographer for al-Ghad satellite television network, from filming scenes of crowds of Palestinian worshippers flocking to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds to perform the last Friday prayers of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and threatened to destroy the camera, forcing him to leave the area.
According to the report, Ahmed Salah al-Najjar, who worked as a photographer with Noor media network, suffered an Israeli gunshot wound in the back while covering an anti-occupation protest east of Khan Yunis on May 31.
MADA, in a report published on Sunday, announced that the number marks a sharp increase compared to the preceding month of April, when 19 violations were documented.
The report then pointed to the recent closure of Facebook accounts of at least 65 Palestinian journalists and activists in a campaign carried out on May 23 and 24.
MADA further noted that Israeli military aircraft targeted and destroyed the office of Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency, besides the office of Palestine Liberation Organization-affiliated Abdullah al-Hourani Center for Studies and Documentation when they bombed the Gaza Strip on May 4.
The report went on to say that Palestinian photojournalist Mohammed Mahmoud Hassan suffered a gunshot wound as he was covering a weekly demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian lands by the Israeli regime in the village of Kfar Qaddum, near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, on May 10.
Two journalists, identified as 42-year-old Abdel Rahim Mohammed Khatib and Ramzi Hatem al-Shukrit, 35, were also separately injured during their coverage of the anti-occupation Great March of Return protests east of the border city of Rafah, located 30 kilometers south of Gaza City, on the same day.
One of them was struck by a rubber-coated metal bullet, while the other was directly hit by a tear gas canister.
On May 12, Israeli military forces arrested seven journalists and human rights activists in the northern Jordan Valley area, and prevented them from covering deportations being carried out by the military against Palestinian farmers and residents living there.
Furthermore, Israeli forces prevented Munther Mohammed Shehadeh al-Khatib, a photographer for al-Ghad satellite television network, from filming scenes of crowds of Palestinian worshippers flocking to the occupied Jerusalem al-Quds to perform the last Friday prayers of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and threatened to destroy the camera, forcing him to leave the area.
According to the report, Ahmed Salah al-Najjar, who worked as a photographer with Noor media network, suffered an Israeli gunshot wound in the back while covering an anti-occupation protest east of Khan Yunis on May 31.
4 june 2019
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Ex-politician George Galloway remains defiant, threatening to sue talkRADIO for terminating his contract, despite writing on social media 'No Israel flags on the Cup' after Liverpool beat the traditionally Jewish Tottenham Hotspur in Champions League final
Outspoken British critic of Israel and former MP George Galloway was fired from his show on Talk Radio on Tuesday after a tweet about Tottenham Hotspur soccer club that was broadly condemned as anti-Semitic. The tweet, ostensibly celebrating Liverpool's victory in the Champions League final against Spurs, said that the win by the northern club meant "No Israel flags on the Cup". Spurs is traditionally seen as a club with strong ties to the London Jewish community. |
Galloway later defended his tweet, the BBC reported, arguing that Spurs fans had been waving Israeli flags in the crowd, which showed support for what he called a "racist state."
Tottenham itself condemned the tweet, saying in a statement: "It's astounding in this day and age to read such blatant anti-Semitism published on a social platform by someone who is still afforded air time on a radio station on which he has previously broken broadcast impartiality rules."
Despite the criticism the former politician - from the Respect Party - remained defiant, implying that he intends to sue the talkRADIO station for terminating his contract. "See you in court guys," Galloway tweeted.
"As a fair and balanced news provider, talkRADIO does not tolerate anti-Semitic views,” talkRADIO said in a statement.
The 64-year-old’s tweet sparked the ire of many Twitter users and high-profile figures, including the former Tottenham owner - Jewish business magnet, Lord Sugar - who attended Saturday’s final.
“He’s taking a load of garbage as usual. I walked with fifteen hundred Tottenham fans and the Liverpool fans from where they dropped me off because we couldn’t get the car through.
“I did not see, and I have never seen, an Israeli flag flown. There were no Israeli flags with the fans,” Sugar said. “The fans had their blue and white stuff but I never saw an Israeli flag flown. He’s a bloody liar. A total liar.”
In the past Galloway breached regulations of state media watchdog Ofcom for suggetsing there was no problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, and in 2015 declared Bradford, the northern city in which he was MP at the time, as an “Israel-free zone.”
After losing his constituency, Galloway said in his defeat speech. "The venal, the vile, the racists and the Zionists will all be celebrating."
In 2010, Galloway went to Gaza as part of an aid delegation to the Palestinian enclave. He turned into a persona non grata in Egypt after he allegedly incited rioting in Arish on his way back from Gaza to London through the Sinai Peninsula.
In 2009, Canadian immigration authorities denied him entry to the country due to his support in terror organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.
Tottenham itself condemned the tweet, saying in a statement: "It's astounding in this day and age to read such blatant anti-Semitism published on a social platform by someone who is still afforded air time on a radio station on which he has previously broken broadcast impartiality rules."
Despite the criticism the former politician - from the Respect Party - remained defiant, implying that he intends to sue the talkRADIO station for terminating his contract. "See you in court guys," Galloway tweeted.
"As a fair and balanced news provider, talkRADIO does not tolerate anti-Semitic views,” talkRADIO said in a statement.
The 64-year-old’s tweet sparked the ire of many Twitter users and high-profile figures, including the former Tottenham owner - Jewish business magnet, Lord Sugar - who attended Saturday’s final.
“He’s taking a load of garbage as usual. I walked with fifteen hundred Tottenham fans and the Liverpool fans from where they dropped me off because we couldn’t get the car through.
“I did not see, and I have never seen, an Israeli flag flown. There were no Israeli flags with the fans,” Sugar said. “The fans had their blue and white stuff but I never saw an Israeli flag flown. He’s a bloody liar. A total liar.”
In the past Galloway breached regulations of state media watchdog Ofcom for suggetsing there was no problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, and in 2015 declared Bradford, the northern city in which he was MP at the time, as an “Israel-free zone.”
After losing his constituency, Galloway said in his defeat speech. "The venal, the vile, the racists and the Zionists will all be celebrating."
In 2010, Galloway went to Gaza as part of an aid delegation to the Palestinian enclave. He turned into a persona non grata in Egypt after he allegedly incited rioting in Arish on his way back from Gaza to London through the Sinai Peninsula.
In 2009, Canadian immigration authorities denied him entry to the country due to his support in terror organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah.