7 july 2019
Israel’s ministry for military affairs has formed a secret unit tasked with concealing sensitive historical documents, with a special focus on censoring chilling revelations related to the expulsion of Palestine’s original inhabitants, according to a report.
Malmab, also known as the military affairs ministry’s department for “defense establishment security”, has been conducting the operation for two decades, placing historic documents in concealed vaults, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported, according to the PNN.
The now-concealed documents, which contain previously accessible files sometimes even cited by researchers, cover various aspects of Israel’s murky history, including its nuclear weapons program, foreign relations and the expulsion and genocide of the Palestinian people.
Yehiel Horev, who launched and headed the project until 2007, believes concealing the documents, specifically the ones related to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, remembered as “Nakba Day”, is essential in avoiding further upheaval among the region’s Palestinian residents.
Asked by Haaretz about the motive behind hiding previously published documents, Horev explained that the measure was taken to delegitimize studies done about the expulsion of Palestinians, denying researchers credible references to back up their claims.
“The question is whether it can do harm or not. It’s a very sensitive matter. Not everything has been published about the refugee issue, and there are all kinds of narratives. Some say there was no flight at all, only expulsion. Others say there was flight. It’s not black-and-white,” he said.
‘The Jewish Nazis’
Israel has asserted that the mass exodus of Palestinians, which paved the way for the formation of the regime in 1948, happened as a result of Arab politicians who had encouraged the population to leave the territory.
Concealed documents revealed by the report, however, present a different narrative, admitting that as much as 70 percent of displaced Palestinians were driven out of their lands as a direct result of “Jewish military operations.”
One such document from 1948 even describes the specific causes of the exodus from specific Arab localities, making references to the notorious Jewish Irgun and Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang) killing squads.
Ein Zeitun – “our destruction of the village”; Qeitiya – “harassment, threat of action”; Almaniya – “our action, many killed”; Tira – “friendly Jewish advice”; Al’Amarir – “after robbery and murder carried out by the breakaways”; Sumsum – “our ultimatum”; Bir Salim – “attack on the orphanage”; and Zarnuga – “conquest and expulsion.”
The Irgun and Lehi militias were most notorious for their role in the April 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, killing hundreds of villagers in a village populated by no less than 600 residents.
According to the report, among other chilling revelations describing systematic killings, looting and abuse that were later concealed by Israeli authorities, was a document describing the 1948 destruction of the Palestinian Safsaf village in 1948 where an Israeli settlement was later built upon.
“Safsaf [former Palestinian village near Safed] – 52 men were caught, tied them to one another, dug a pit and shot them. 10 were still twitching. Women came, begged for mercy. Found bodies of 6 elderly men. There were 61 bodies. 3 cases of rape, one east of from Safed, girl of 14, 4 men shot and killed. From one they cut off his fingers with a knife to take the ring,” read the document.
One concealed document detailing the Jewish expulsion operations described the raids as being comparable to “Nazi acts”.
The revelations come as Israel has been facing growing international scrutiny over its occupation and abuse of Palestinians in recent years, with the Tel Aviv regime finding itself struggling to assert its legitimacy in world public opinion.
Influential pro-Zionist historian Benny Morris has predicted that Israel may disintegrate in the near future, given that it can no longer subjugate Palestinians using the openly discriminatory practices it was founded upon, given increasingly sensitive global public opinion on the matter.
Malmab, also known as the military affairs ministry’s department for “defense establishment security”, has been conducting the operation for two decades, placing historic documents in concealed vaults, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported, according to the PNN.
The now-concealed documents, which contain previously accessible files sometimes even cited by researchers, cover various aspects of Israel’s murky history, including its nuclear weapons program, foreign relations and the expulsion and genocide of the Palestinian people.
Yehiel Horev, who launched and headed the project until 2007, believes concealing the documents, specifically the ones related to the expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, remembered as “Nakba Day”, is essential in avoiding further upheaval among the region’s Palestinian residents.
Asked by Haaretz about the motive behind hiding previously published documents, Horev explained that the measure was taken to delegitimize studies done about the expulsion of Palestinians, denying researchers credible references to back up their claims.
“The question is whether it can do harm or not. It’s a very sensitive matter. Not everything has been published about the refugee issue, and there are all kinds of narratives. Some say there was no flight at all, only expulsion. Others say there was flight. It’s not black-and-white,” he said.
‘The Jewish Nazis’
Israel has asserted that the mass exodus of Palestinians, which paved the way for the formation of the regime in 1948, happened as a result of Arab politicians who had encouraged the population to leave the territory.
Concealed documents revealed by the report, however, present a different narrative, admitting that as much as 70 percent of displaced Palestinians were driven out of their lands as a direct result of “Jewish military operations.”
One such document from 1948 even describes the specific causes of the exodus from specific Arab localities, making references to the notorious Jewish Irgun and Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang) killing squads.
Ein Zeitun – “our destruction of the village”; Qeitiya – “harassment, threat of action”; Almaniya – “our action, many killed”; Tira – “friendly Jewish advice”; Al’Amarir – “after robbery and murder carried out by the breakaways”; Sumsum – “our ultimatum”; Bir Salim – “attack on the orphanage”; and Zarnuga – “conquest and expulsion.”
The Irgun and Lehi militias were most notorious for their role in the April 1948 Deir Yassin massacre, killing hundreds of villagers in a village populated by no less than 600 residents.
According to the report, among other chilling revelations describing systematic killings, looting and abuse that were later concealed by Israeli authorities, was a document describing the 1948 destruction of the Palestinian Safsaf village in 1948 where an Israeli settlement was later built upon.
“Safsaf [former Palestinian village near Safed] – 52 men were caught, tied them to one another, dug a pit and shot them. 10 were still twitching. Women came, begged for mercy. Found bodies of 6 elderly men. There were 61 bodies. 3 cases of rape, one east of from Safed, girl of 14, 4 men shot and killed. From one they cut off his fingers with a knife to take the ring,” read the document.
One concealed document detailing the Jewish expulsion operations described the raids as being comparable to “Nazi acts”.
The revelations come as Israel has been facing growing international scrutiny over its occupation and abuse of Palestinians in recent years, with the Tel Aviv regime finding itself struggling to assert its legitimacy in world public opinion.
Influential pro-Zionist historian Benny Morris has predicted that Israel may disintegrate in the near future, given that it can no longer subjugate Palestinians using the openly discriminatory practices it was founded upon, given increasingly sensitive global public opinion on the matter.
30 june 2019
By Asa Winstanley
The Haifa-based Palestinian human rights group Adalah has done a lot of important work over the years. Its name is Arabic for “justice”. Much of Adalah’s work focuses on the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, or the “Palestinians of the 1948 territories” as they often describe themselves.
The group maintains an important database chronicling more than 65 laws in Israel which systematically discriminate against 20 per cent of its population. It is a fact that Israel has always been an apartheid state, not only since the Knesset passed the openly racist “Jewish Nation State Law” last summer.
That new measure did not really change much in terms of the letter of Israeli law. What it did do, though, was to explain clearly, in black and white, the motives behind much of Israel’s existing racist laws. It made things clearer, in other words, sending a signal to the Palestinian people that the historic land of Palestine – what the law terms the “Land of Israel” – belongs to the Jews alone, and no one else.
This clarity explains some of the tactical disagreements with the law that many pro-Zionist liberals had. Liberal Zionists do not disagree on the racist principle that “the right to national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” as the new law claims. Rather, they disagree with spelling this out in such brazen terms, leading to adverse international publicity, and the resultant decline in long term political support.
However, the naked racism of the Jewish Nation State Law is in reality only the latest such measure. As Adalah documents in detail in its database, the trail of these racist laws goes back to the very foundation of the state.
Take Israel’s 1950 “Law of Return,” for example. This law bestows upon any Jewish person in the world the right to migrate to the land of Palestine and automatically become a citizen of Israel. It applies to the children and grandchildren of Jews, as well as to their spouses, and the spouses of their children and grandchildren.
No comparable Israeli law exists guaranteeing the same rights for Palestinians, who are, after all, the indigenous people of the land. On the contrary, Palestinian refugees – expelled by force by Zionist militias over the course of several years starting in 1947 – are still excluded, despite having the right to return under international laws and conventions.
In Israel, though, laws were passed to ensure that the refugees never did or could return, starting with the 1950 “Absentees’ Property Law”. This essentially provided a legal fig leaf for the mass theft of land, homes, bank accounts and other Palestinian property on a grand scale.
The 800,000 or so Palestinian refugees – who were expelled by force, remember – were declared to be “absentees” under Israeli law, and their lands and properties were confiscated. Hundreds of Palestinian villages had in any case already been bulldozed and dynamited, wiping them off the map. Thus Israel always has been, and remains, an intrinsically racist, apartheid state.
Adalah also does lots of important work documenting Israel’s human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the parts of historic Palestine which Israel invaded and has occupied illegally since 1967. Some of this work is detailed in the racist laws database I referred to above, which also lists Israeli laws which discriminate against the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since the June 1967 Six Day War.
Recently, Adalah obtained official Israeli documents revealing the military’s “rules of engagement”, which it uses to justify its violence against Palestinian protesters, specifically in Gaza in this case. The rules show that the Israeli military has officially ordained to itself the right to shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in the back, people it smears and slanders as “rioters”.
Those organizing the Great March of Return protests since March last year can be targeted even when posing no threat to Israeli soldiers; even when walking away. As Adalah points out, “Israeli snipers… may open fire with live ammunition on ‘key instigators’ or ‘key rioters’ even when they are no longer participating in the protest or are resting.”
Many of the protesters in Gaza are children. Adalah says that since the marches began last year, Israel has killed 207 Palestinians during protests, including 44 children. A staggering 16,831 Palestinians have also been injured, 3,905 of them children.
The documents were presented during hearings at Israel’s high court. Disgustingly, the court ruled last year that the army was permitted to use live rounds against unarmed protesters. This is a measure that it would never sanction against Jewish protesters.
Adalah attorney Suhad Bishara explained that Israel’s fictional category of “key instigators” was “created retroactively in order to justify the shootings of people who posed no real and immediate danger to Israeli soldiers or civilians. The military’s document attempts to explain away the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed demonstrators which results from a total disregard for human life.”
The apartheid state of Israel should be held to account for such crimes against humanity.
- Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist living in London who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He has been visiting Palestine since 2004 and is originally from south Wales. 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.
The Haifa-based Palestinian human rights group Adalah has done a lot of important work over the years. Its name is Arabic for “justice”. Much of Adalah’s work focuses on the rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel, or the “Palestinians of the 1948 territories” as they often describe themselves.
The group maintains an important database chronicling more than 65 laws in Israel which systematically discriminate against 20 per cent of its population. It is a fact that Israel has always been an apartheid state, not only since the Knesset passed the openly racist “Jewish Nation State Law” last summer.
That new measure did not really change much in terms of the letter of Israeli law. What it did do, though, was to explain clearly, in black and white, the motives behind much of Israel’s existing racist laws. It made things clearer, in other words, sending a signal to the Palestinian people that the historic land of Palestine – what the law terms the “Land of Israel” – belongs to the Jews alone, and no one else.
This clarity explains some of the tactical disagreements with the law that many pro-Zionist liberals had. Liberal Zionists do not disagree on the racist principle that “the right to national self-determination in the state of Israel is unique to the Jewish people,” as the new law claims. Rather, they disagree with spelling this out in such brazen terms, leading to adverse international publicity, and the resultant decline in long term political support.
However, the naked racism of the Jewish Nation State Law is in reality only the latest such measure. As Adalah documents in detail in its database, the trail of these racist laws goes back to the very foundation of the state.
Take Israel’s 1950 “Law of Return,” for example. This law bestows upon any Jewish person in the world the right to migrate to the land of Palestine and automatically become a citizen of Israel. It applies to the children and grandchildren of Jews, as well as to their spouses, and the spouses of their children and grandchildren.
No comparable Israeli law exists guaranteeing the same rights for Palestinians, who are, after all, the indigenous people of the land. On the contrary, Palestinian refugees – expelled by force by Zionist militias over the course of several years starting in 1947 – are still excluded, despite having the right to return under international laws and conventions.
In Israel, though, laws were passed to ensure that the refugees never did or could return, starting with the 1950 “Absentees’ Property Law”. This essentially provided a legal fig leaf for the mass theft of land, homes, bank accounts and other Palestinian property on a grand scale.
The 800,000 or so Palestinian refugees – who were expelled by force, remember – were declared to be “absentees” under Israeli law, and their lands and properties were confiscated. Hundreds of Palestinian villages had in any case already been bulldozed and dynamited, wiping them off the map. Thus Israel always has been, and remains, an intrinsically racist, apartheid state.
Adalah also does lots of important work documenting Israel’s human rights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the parts of historic Palestine which Israel invaded and has occupied illegally since 1967. Some of this work is detailed in the racist laws database I referred to above, which also lists Israeli laws which discriminate against the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation since the June 1967 Six Day War.
Recently, Adalah obtained official Israeli documents revealing the military’s “rules of engagement”, which it uses to justify its violence against Palestinian protesters, specifically in Gaza in this case. The rules show that the Israeli military has officially ordained to itself the right to shoot unarmed Palestinian protesters in the back, people it smears and slanders as “rioters”.
Those organizing the Great March of Return protests since March last year can be targeted even when posing no threat to Israeli soldiers; even when walking away. As Adalah points out, “Israeli snipers… may open fire with live ammunition on ‘key instigators’ or ‘key rioters’ even when they are no longer participating in the protest or are resting.”
Many of the protesters in Gaza are children. Adalah says that since the marches began last year, Israel has killed 207 Palestinians during protests, including 44 children. A staggering 16,831 Palestinians have also been injured, 3,905 of them children.
The documents were presented during hearings at Israel’s high court. Disgustingly, the court ruled last year that the army was permitted to use live rounds against unarmed protesters. This is a measure that it would never sanction against Jewish protesters.
Adalah attorney Suhad Bishara explained that Israel’s fictional category of “key instigators” was “created retroactively in order to justify the shootings of people who posed no real and immediate danger to Israeli soldiers or civilians. The military’s document attempts to explain away the indiscriminate shooting of unarmed demonstrators which results from a total disregard for human life.”
The apartheid state of Israel should be held to account for such crimes against humanity.
- Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist living in London who writes about Palestine and the Middle East. He has been visiting Palestine since 2004 and is originally from south Wales. 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.
26 june 2019
More than $110 million was raised Tuesday at a pledging conference to support UNRWA, which has been struggling since the United States slashed funding.
UNRWA commissioner general Pierre Krahenbuhl said the funding would allow the agency, which provides education and health services to Palestinians, to cover costs for the coming months and avoid a budget crisis.
Around 35 countries took part in the conference, mostly European and Arab nations, with the biggest contributions coming from the European Union, Germany and Britain.
The conference was held on the same day as president Donald Trump's administration unveiled the economic component of a Middle East peace plan (the deal of the century) at a workshop in Bahrain boycotted by the Palestinian Authority.
Krahenbuhl told reporters that there was no clash between the UNRWA pledging event and the US-organized conference in Bahrain because "we deal with the realities of today."
UNRWA commissioner general Pierre Krahenbuhl said the funding would allow the agency, which provides education and health services to Palestinians, to cover costs for the coming months and avoid a budget crisis.
Around 35 countries took part in the conference, mostly European and Arab nations, with the biggest contributions coming from the European Union, Germany and Britain.
The conference was held on the same day as president Donald Trump's administration unveiled the economic component of a Middle East peace plan (the deal of the century) at a workshop in Bahrain boycotted by the Palestinian Authority.
Krahenbuhl told reporters that there was no clash between the UNRWA pledging event and the US-organized conference in Bahrain because "we deal with the realities of today."
24 june 2019
Lebanon will not be lured by a US plan to invest billions in the country, in return for settling Palestinian refugees, Lebanese parliament speaker, Nabih Berri said on Sunday (Jun 23).
“Those who think that waving billions of dollars can lure Lebanon, which is under the weight of a suffocating economic crisis, into succumbing or bartering over its principles are mistaken,” Berri said in a statement from his office.
“The rejection of settling Palestinian refugees who must have the right of return stands at the forefront of these principles,” he said, adding that “any investment at the expense of the Palestinian cause will not find fertile ground in Lebanon.”
US President Donald Trump’s “deal,” regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue, is set to be presented by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at a conference in Bahrain, on Jun 25 to 26, envisions a US$50 billion investment plan to lift the Palestinian and neighboring Arab state economies.
But, it has met broad rejection in the Arab world, even as some in the Gulf called for giving it a chance.
The US plan envisions spending more than half of the US$50 billion in the Palestinian territories over 10 years while the rest would be split between Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.
“Those who think that waving billions of dollars can lure Lebanon, which is under the weight of a suffocating economic crisis, into succumbing or bartering over its principles are mistaken,” Berri said in a statement from his office.
“The rejection of settling Palestinian refugees who must have the right of return stands at the forefront of these principles,” he said, adding that “any investment at the expense of the Palestinian cause will not find fertile ground in Lebanon.”
US President Donald Trump’s “deal,” regarding the Israeli-Palestinian issue, is set to be presented by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at a conference in Bahrain, on Jun 25 to 26, envisions a US$50 billion investment plan to lift the Palestinian and neighboring Arab state economies.
But, it has met broad rejection in the Arab world, even as some in the Gulf called for giving it a chance.
The US plan envisions spending more than half of the US$50 billion in the Palestinian territories over 10 years while the rest would be split between Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.
23 june 2019
Palestinian Finance Minister Shukri Bishara
Palestinian Finance Minister Shukri Bishara has rejected the recently-released details about the economic section of a US-devised plan on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an “illusion” that will fail to bring about peace.
Addressing an Arab League meeting in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo on Sunday, Bishara slammed a June 25-26 meeting Bahrain, during which Washington is set to unveil the economic aspect of US President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century.”
“We don’t need the Bahrain meeting to build our country, we need peace, and the sequence of (the plan) — economic revival followed by peace is unrealistic and an illusion,” he said.
The White House on Saturday unveiled the details of the economic portion of Trump’s deal, which would inject $50 billion into struggling economies in the Middle East over the next ten years.
Under the document, dubbed “Peace to Prosperity,” over half of the funds ($28 billion) would go toward the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the remaining to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, which have absorbed Palestinian refugees.
'Lebanon won't exchange Palestinian cause with US money'
Separately on Sunday, Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri emphasized that his country would not be lured by the American initiative to invest billions in the country in return for settling Palestinian refugees.
“Those who think that waving billions of dollars can lure Lebanon, which is under the weight of a suffocating economic crisis, into succumbing or bartering over its principles are mistaken,” he said in a statement.
At the forefront of Lebanon’s principles is the rejection of settling Palestinian refugees who must have the right of return to their homeland, he added.
Palestinian Finance Minister Shukri Bishara has rejected the recently-released details about the economic section of a US-devised plan on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an “illusion” that will fail to bring about peace.
Addressing an Arab League meeting in the Egyptian capital city of Cairo on Sunday, Bishara slammed a June 25-26 meeting Bahrain, during which Washington is set to unveil the economic aspect of US President Donald Trump’s so-called “deal of the century.”
“We don’t need the Bahrain meeting to build our country, we need peace, and the sequence of (the plan) — economic revival followed by peace is unrealistic and an illusion,” he said.
The White House on Saturday unveiled the details of the economic portion of Trump’s deal, which would inject $50 billion into struggling economies in the Middle East over the next ten years.
Under the document, dubbed “Peace to Prosperity,” over half of the funds ($28 billion) would go toward the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the remaining to Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt, which have absorbed Palestinian refugees.
'Lebanon won't exchange Palestinian cause with US money'
Separately on Sunday, Lebanon’s Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri emphasized that his country would not be lured by the American initiative to invest billions in the country in return for settling Palestinian refugees.
“Those who think that waving billions of dollars can lure Lebanon, which is under the weight of a suffocating economic crisis, into succumbing or bartering over its principles are mistaken,” he said in a statement.
At the forefront of Lebanon’s principles is the rejection of settling Palestinian refugees who must have the right of return to their homeland, he added.
UNRWA has said it aims to raise $1.2 billion this year to fund its operations for Palestinian refugee across the Middle East region.
Ahead of a pledging conference slated for next Tuesday at the UN headquarters, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl told journalists in New York the 1.2 billion dollars represent the same amount the agency was able to mobilize last year. "If every single donor were to preserve and maintain their level of contribution reached in 2018, we would be able to cover the financial needs of UNRWA."
He affirmed that part of that appeal has already been fulfilled as UNRWA managed to cover the first five months of 2019 "in a fairly stable way," thanks to the payments advanced by the donors and "their commitments and contributions."
However, in June, UNRWA started entering deficit figures, he said, appealing to donors to help the agency bridge efforts during the summer in order to ensure its schools would be able to open on time in September.
Currently, UNRWA runs an education system of some 700 schools for about half a million Palestinian boys and girls. It also operates around 140 health centers for about 8.5 million patient visits a year.
Particularly, Krahenbuhl pointed out that as UNRWA provides food assistance to about one million people in the Gaza Strip, which account for half of the entire population, "any disruption in that pipeline" would be problematic for the stability of the region.
Established in 1949, UNRWA is mandated to provide assistance and protection for some 5.4 million registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Its services include education, health care, relief, social services, infrastructure, camp improvement and microcredit.
Ahead of a pledging conference slated for next Tuesday at the UN headquarters, UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl told journalists in New York the 1.2 billion dollars represent the same amount the agency was able to mobilize last year. "If every single donor were to preserve and maintain their level of contribution reached in 2018, we would be able to cover the financial needs of UNRWA."
He affirmed that part of that appeal has already been fulfilled as UNRWA managed to cover the first five months of 2019 "in a fairly stable way," thanks to the payments advanced by the donors and "their commitments and contributions."
However, in June, UNRWA started entering deficit figures, he said, appealing to donors to help the agency bridge efforts during the summer in order to ensure its schools would be able to open on time in September.
Currently, UNRWA runs an education system of some 700 schools for about half a million Palestinian boys and girls. It also operates around 140 health centers for about 8.5 million patient visits a year.
Particularly, Krahenbuhl pointed out that as UNRWA provides food assistance to about one million people in the Gaza Strip, which account for half of the entire population, "any disruption in that pipeline" would be problematic for the stability of the region.
Established in 1949, UNRWA is mandated to provide assistance and protection for some 5.4 million registered Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Its services include education, health care, relief, social services, infrastructure, camp improvement and microcredit.