Tag Archives: Palestinian

As Palestinians are released from Israeli prisons, we’re finally hearing their stories

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Israa Jaabis: her face was badly burnt when her car caught fire. Israel jailed her for attempting a car-bomb attack and refused to allow her to have reparatory surgery.

Remember those Israeli hostages who were released before the current Israel/Hamas ceasefire, and their stories of being well-treated by Hamas? Here’s the flipside.

It seems that of the 150 Palestinians we were told would be released during the truce, which ends tomorrow (November 27, 2023), 78 have so far been released – in exchange for 26 hostages who were taken from Israel on October 7.

But the numbers seem to vary, depending on who you ask.

The BBC has been publishing the stories of some of the freed Palestinians, but these seem to be in very short supply in comparison with those of the freed Israelis.

What we’re hearing stands in stark contrast to the claims of Israel’s apologists on the social media, who claimed they were all convicted hardened criminals and terrorists.

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Instead, the majority of those released so far had been held in administrative detention – some for many months. And those who have been convicted by Israeli courts seem to have been jailed for the most specious of reasons.

One such case is that of Israa Jaabis, imprisoned in Israel since 2015 because her car broke down.

Here‘s the BBC:

Her car broke down on a highway 1.5km (0.9 miles) from a checkpoint in the West Bank.

The reason for the breakdown is disputed. Israelis said back then it was an attempted car bombing but Arab media said the engine of her car failed causing a fire.

Jaabis sustained fire injuries in the accident and her face was badly burnt.

She was sentenced to 11 years in jail, of which she spent eight years before she was released.

Last year, Jaabis filed a request with the Israel Prisons Service for a nose job to repair the damage to her face, and was rejected.

Mohammad dar-Darwish, 17, was convicted by a military court of throwing Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers in April. He denies doing it. And how was he treated? Here‘s the BBC again:

After the 7 October attacks, Mohammad told me, guards took the blankets, cooking equipment, radios and televisions of Palestinian prisoners.

“They only gave us one portion of food between seven or eight people – we were always hungry. They couldn’t get to Gaza, so they punished us.”

Until his release, the only information about the war in Gaza came from new arrivals at the prison, he said.

He described people arriving in custody with fresh injuries: broken teeth, a badly bruised hand, and a large cut to the head that was left to heal untreated.

It’s a stark contrast to what we’ve been told by Israel’s spokespeople on the social media.

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Israel has now killed at least 3,195 children in Gaza – and taken 1,200 hostages

Words should not be necessary: this image of a grieving Palestinian mother is not following the massacre of October 7 but used for illustrative purposes. Any images following the actual events are likely to be too disturbing for publication.

The figures come from Save the Children:

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Here are the names of the murdered – yes, murdered – children, as gathered by a Jewish organisation. The list was of those known to have been killed by last Thursday (October 26). I await claims that the Gaza Ministry of Health is lying – probably from people who say every word that comes out of Tel Aviv is God’s truth:

Here’s a response to the deaths, by a doctor who was himself a child refugee:

And here’s the Israeli government line on murdering children:

Oh… and you know that line about Hamas taking more than 230 people hostage?

What about the 1,200 that Israel has taken from the West Bank since October 7?

More than 90 people have been killed, mostly in altercations with the IDF, and 1,200 Palestinians have been arrested by Israeli forces in the West Bank since the conflict broke out, according to Palestinian data.

In numbers alone, Israel has caused far more suffering to Palestine than the Palestinians have to Israel. When you hear the propaganda that is pushed on the mainstream media, just ask yourself: who are the victims here?

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Keir Starmer’s response to Israel/Gaza is against Labour values

Complicit in genocide: do you agree with this description of Keir Starmer.

A devastating open letter to Keir Starmer from a group of British Palestinians who are Labour Party members has slammed his response to the Israel/Gaza conflict for opposing their party’s values.

The letter calls on Starmer to “rediscover your humanity”.

It states [boldings mine]:

We are horrified by your refusal to condemn Israel’s current indiscriminate bombing, imposition of a complete siege and planned land invasion of Gaza as war crimes. You appear to be supporting, if not encouraging, Israel in its genocidal actions against Palestinians, especially those in Gaza.

Rather than calling for an immediate ceasefire and lifting of the siege, you keep parroting ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’, a conveniently non-specific phrase.

Is killing more than 1000 children (to date) Israel exercising its right to defend itself? Is cutting off electricity, water, food and fuel following a 16-year siege so that we are on the brink of mass starvation and a collapse of Gaza’s health system examples of Israel defending itself? Is telling 1.1 million people to move from north to south Gaza and then bombing them when they have moved, a legitimate example of self-defence?

Or are they war crimes?

None of these actions are justified by the killing of civilians by Hamas.  We teach our children that two wrongs don’t make a right but this simple message seems to be beyond you. Instead, you encourage Israel on an eye-for-an-eye revenge path which will only lead to more violence and deaths on both sides. This is not the way forward to peace.

You also have had nothing to say about the Palestinian villagers in the West Bank who are being harassed and driven from their homes by armed Israeli settlers with the Israeli army standing by to crush any Palestinian resistance. The number of Palestinian fatalities there this year had exceeded 250 before Hamas’s attack on 7th October. Since then, these attacks have increased with at least three villages having been cleared//near-cleared and demolished, and an increase in the body count of more than 50 in a week.

Your statements and actions on the current tragic situation in Palestine-Israel are dramatically opposed to the values of peace, justice, equality and humanity that the Labour Party is supposed to uphold. You have badly damaged the reputation, perhaps fatally, of a Party that claims to support people fighting for freedom from occupation and oppression.

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Even in terms of the base morals of what needs to be done electorally to win power, your actions are irrational. Even if you win the next general election, you will have alienated minority ethnic communities that identify with the Palestinian struggle for freedom.

To add insult to injury, you have now banned elected Labour representatives and branches from attending protests in solidarity with the Palestinian people and said no motions can be discussed which oppose the leadership’s position on the current situation in the Middle East. The leadership’s position is totally at odds with that adopted at Labour Party conference last year.

In effect, you are aiming to silence Palestinian voices, including the estimated 20,000 British Palestinians living in Britain. And you are telling us that we can’t explain to fellow Labour Party members or the wider public how Israel in 1948/9 denied our father the right of return from studying in Britain back to Nazareth, where he was born and grew up, because he was an Arab, not Jewish but a Christian. This was not  an isolated incident but the policy that was applied to around 750,000 Palestinian refugees in the same years, often using brutal force, and a policy that continues to this day despite UN resolutions calling for the right of return of refugees.

You are saying that we cannot explain how our Palestinian relatives are discriminated against and are facing threats of ethnic cleansing. You are saying that we cannot argue for support for the non-violent BDS campaign which argues for Boycotts, Disinvestment and Sanctions to be applied to Israel until it ends the occupation and dismantles the Apartheid Wall, gives Palestinian citizens of Israel equal rights and supports the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

We understand that your policies have created an internal Party crisis with many Labour Councillors resigning or threatening resignation. We, however, will not resign, adopting the Palestinian tradition of steadfastness (sumud), and will fightback for Labour to return to the principles of internationalism, anti-racism, equality for all humans, anti-colonialism and choosing peace over war. We will work to have you removed from the leadership of the Party unless you genuinely return to these principles. Even if you expel us, we will continue to fight for Palestinian rights, for the only sustainable peace – peace with justice and equal rights for all who live in Palestine-Israel – and against Israel’s policies of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Source: Open letter to Sir Keir Starmer from 4 British Palestinians | Jewish Voice for Labour

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An Israeli soldier has shot and killed a toddler. Let’s discuss ‘outdated’ notions

Muhammad Tamimi: his two-year-old life was ended after a member of the Israel Defence Forces raided his village and shot this defenceless toddler in the head.

Remember last week, when This Site commented on Jewish Chronicle reviewer Jonathan Sacerdoti’s critique of Maureen Lipman’s performance in the play Rose, in which he stated that it invests “dramatic capital in the outdated notion that Jews kill children”.

Outdated?

This happened last week:

I think it’s time we discussed some of these “notions” that certain people are constantly telling us are “outdated”.

Certainly the claim that armed Israelis shoot children is neither a notion, nor outdated. It is a terrifying fact.

Some have tried to justify the killing of a child by saying his parents put him in the line of fire. This is clearly false; the shooting happened during a raid on a Palestinian village by members of the Israel Defence Forces.

They claimed that they were responding to Palestinian aggression and I am not going to debate that. It might be true but that is irrelevant to what has happened, which is this:

Armed military aggressors attacked unarmed civilians in their homes and shot a toddler in the head, causing injuries from which he later died.

There is no explanation that can justify such an act.

It is unacceptable on any level at all – as all civilised observers must agree. Nobody can ever say they shot an unarmed toddler in the head as an act of self-defence.

And the very least the rest of us should expect is a little contrition from people like Mr Sacerdoti.

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Here’s some of the anti-Palestinian racism and terrorism that Keir Starmer’s Labour loves

Keir Starmer: like Priti Patel, he seems to support terrorism rather than condemn it.

It didn’t take long, after Priti Patel announced that the UK was to proscribe the political organisation that forms the government of Palestine, for the attacks on Jeremy Corbyn to start landing.

Here’s some ‘Mercan called Jackson Wolf Pincus demonstrating the kind of ignorance we have come to expect from people of – shall we say – a certain persuasion:

Rather than shut up, though, Jackson doubled down – prompting a well-deserved put-down as follows:

Yes indeed, it does seem the case that Jeremy Corbyn’s pacifist, anti-terror stance appeals both to supporters of Palestinian self-determination and to non-racist Jews (and you should bear in mind that many people are both).

The Hamas story also led to debate about whether Patel’s decision was justified, or if other organisations or governments might deserve similar treatment.

The government of Israel, perhaps?

It’s an accurate criticism. There’s a very clear paper trail that leads from MPs – on all sides of Parliament – to the Israeli Embassy and that nation’s government. Many of our MPs appear to be in that government’s pocket.

Among them is Keir Starmer, the Labour Party leader who persecutes both Muslims and left-wing Jews, sparing his sympathy only for those who echo his wholehearted support for apartheid Israel and its violence to the Palestinians it holds captive.

So it should be no surprise that Starmer has whipped Labour MPs to support Patel’s proscription of Hamas. He wants to make sure Palestinians know that the UK supports Israel against them, no matter which party is in power, never mind the fact that Labour is supposed to support self-determination for both Israel and Palestine, and never mind the fact that Labour’s sovereign decision-maker – the party conference – voted to condemn Israel in September.

Many people, it seems, believe Starmer is right to support Israeli atrocities. Perhaps they don’t understand what is really going on.

If you know such people, show them this:

Let’s focus down onto Palestinian children. Many of us have kids, right?

How would we feel if our children were treated in the same way as those in the thread below – bearing in mind that Keir Starmer supports, to the hilt, everything that has happened to them?

It’s a catalogue of terror – and one that is incomplete because I am sure there are many murders that are hushed up by the Israeli authorities.

Keir Starmer supports this terror, and so does Priti Patel. Remember that she was forced to resign from Theresa May’s cabinet after trying to run her own policy on Israel, using public money, during and after a visit to that country to meet top politicians there, while claiming to be on holiday.

Nobody should excuse deaths and other harm that Hamas or other Palestinians have caused. Blame for the Israel-Palestine conflict lies on both sides.

But when one starts bandying around words like “terrorist”, one should apply it fairly.

Looking at the way Israel forces Palestinian people to live, and the disproportionate number of deaths and injuries suffered by Palestinians in comparison to Israeli, it is clear that Palestine is not the only country run by terrorists.

What does that say about its supporters like Starmer and Patel – and all those UK politicians who have taken money in return for their support?

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Here’s the real reason Chief Rabbi Mirvis attacked Jeremy Corbyn and Labour: he’s a TORY (and a racist, it seems)

Considering the furore over Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’s attack on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, one would think that this was an open-and-shut case, and that all the evidence shows an honest and decent man, concerned about the safety of his people. Right?

WRONG!

Here’s the reason: Ephraim Mirvis is a dyed-in-the-wool Tory.

The text reads: “I am delighted to congratulate Boris Johnson, a longstanding friend and champion of the Jewish community, on becoming the next leader of the Conservative Party and our next Prime Minister. As he accepts upon himself the mantle of responsibility to lead our nation, may he be blessed with the wisdom to successfully navigate the political uncertainties we face and bring healing and prosperity to our great country.”

Considering the history of racism, sexism, Islamophobia and – yes – anti-Semitism that Mr Johnson and the Conservative Party trail behind them like a shroud, that is in the worst possible taste.

Not only that – he’s a firm supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, an apartheid state where Palestinians are persecuted:

For those who have trouble reading the text, it states: “The Rabbi, who used to live in Israel and is personal friend of both Boris Johnson as well as Netanyahu, has frequently defended Israel’s right to bomb Palestinians.” It is followed by a series of weblinks in support of the statement.

So it seems Mr Mirvis, happy to tar Labour with the anti-Semitism brush, is a racist himself.

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United States cut off funding for UN agency providing aid to Palestinians. Why?

Do we really believe the States’ claim that a United Nations agency is “irredeemably flawed”?

Isn’t it just the next step in Donald Trump’s campaign of support for the racist, apartheid goverment in Israel?

He has already given official recognition to that government’s decision to name Jerusalem as its capital, angering Palestinians who have claimed the eastern part of the same city as their own capital.

And he has cut $200 million in aid for Gaza and the West Bank.

Washington has said UNRWA can have the money back if it makes reforms – but it has not said what those reforms should be, so it is a meaningless gesture.

Meanwhile, the plight of the Palestinians worsens every day – while the States, and the rest of the international community, look the other way.

Palestinians have condemned the US decision to halt funding to a UN agency that helps educate, feed and provide healthcare for more than 5 million Palestinian refugees across several countries as a “flagrant assault” on their rights.

The US state department said… that it would no longer support the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which operates in the occupied territories as well as Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. It described the organisation as “irredeemably flawed”.

The announcement sparked anger and concern, even though it had been widely anticipated. Critics see the move as part of a concerted plan to undermine core Palestinian demands in peace negotiations and say it could further destabilise the Middle East.

Source: Palestinian anger over US decision to end funding for UN agency | World news | The Guardian

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Netanyahu’s Israel is victimising Jews who don’t support his apartheid regime

Victimised: Simone Zimmerman.

In the words of Jewdas: “The irony of Israel recently crowning itself as the ‘Jewish Nation-State’ at the same time as it is turning away increasing numbers of Jews due to their political views should not be lost on anyone.”

American Jews have good reason to be afraid. Recent interrogations, harassment, and deportation of left-wing Jewish American activists over their political beliefs and activities have ushered in a new political moment in the relationship between Israel and diaspora Jewish communities.

No longer is Jewish identity enough to protect American activists from the reach of the Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency. Jewish privilege is no longer enough to guarantee entry into the Jewish state should one’s ideology or political views contradict those of the Israeli government.

When Simone Zimmerman and Abby Kirschbaum were detained and interrogated on their way back from a weekend in Sinai, the Shin Bet and border authority interrogators were almost exclusively interested in why the two wanted to work with Palestinians. They wanted to know about their politics.

A week earlier, when Israeli-American author Moriel Zecher-Rothman was held by the Shin Bet at the airport, an agent warned him against going down a “slippery slope” of anti-occupation activism and demanded he provide intelligence on fellow left-wing activists.

Source: In Israel, American Jews can kiss their privilege goodbye | +972 Magazine

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Mail’s ‘Corbyn wreath’ front page is a desperate lie

This image is from the Skwawkbox article about the Mail‘s fairy story – and is absolutely right: This is fake news.

How desperate are the writers, editors and publisher of the Daily Mail to discredit Jeremy Corbyn?

Desperate enough to fabricate a story about him laying a wreath at the graves of terrorists, it seems.

The paper has resurrected a smear story from last year with new photos of the location, and is trying to say that the official version of events is a lie – and that Mr Corbyn was commemorating terrorists.

The fairy story runs as follows: “A memorial wreath in his hand, Jeremy Corbyn stands feet from the graves of terror leaders linked to the Munich Massacre.

“The picture was among a number taken during a service to honour Palestinian ‘martyrs’.

“Buried in the cemetery in Tunisa are members of Black September, the terror group which massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.

“One picture places Mr Corbyn close to the grave of another terrorist, Atef Bseiso, intelligence chief of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

“Bseiso has also been linked to the Munich atrocity. Another image shows the Labour leader apparently joining in an Islamic prayer while by the graves.

“Last night sources close to Mr Corbyn insisted he was at the service in 2014 to commemorate 47 Palestinians killed in an Israeli air strike on a Tunisian PLO base in 1985.

“But on a visit to the cemetery this week, the Daily Mail discovered that the monument to the air strike victims is 15 yards from where Mr Corbyn is pictured – and in a different part of the complex.

“Instead he was in front of a plaque that lies beside the graves of Black September members.”

This means nothing.

Mr Corbyn was in a cemetery. Lots of people are buried in cemeteries. Not all of them are likely to have led wonderful lives.

Being a member of the press, This Writer has attended many photocalls, and you know what?

Not all of them happened exactly on the spot of the events they were intended to depict.

There are all sorts of reasons for it. There might be more people than would fit in the space where the picture should be taken, so they move a little way along. Perhaps some people aren’t allowed in that space, for reasons particular to the place and culture. I’m sure you can think of a few possible reasons yourself.

So the Mail‘s circumstantial suggestions prove nothing.

Alternatively, we may consider the Labour leader’s own version of events – that he was laying a wreath to commemorate 47 Tunisians and Palestinians killed by Israel in an air attack on Tunisia in 1985,and that this was nothing whatsoever to do with Munich Olympics.

As this is a story from last year, we have Mr Corbyn’s own words on the subject: “I was in Tunisia at a Palestinian conference and I spoke at that Palestinian conference and I laid a wreath to all those that had died in the air attack that took place on Tunis, on the headquarters of the Palestinian organisations there.

“And I was accompanied by very many other people who were at a conference searching for peace.”

This should be easy to corroborate. I wonder why the Mail does not appear to have bothered. Is it perhaps because a desperate lie is more acceptable to that rag’s staff than an uncomfortable truth?

Next time someone defends Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, show them this [WARNING: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE]

Disgrace: Soldiers of the Israel Defence Force were responsible (although not, as far as we know, the soldiers in this image).

Israel’s army has been disgraced after video footage emerged of a sniper shooting an unarmed Palestinian in the head.

No reason is given for the execution, but the sniper’s commander can be heard giving orders on how it should be carried out.

Israel has offered up no response at the time of writing, apart from a claim that the footage is several months old. As if that makes a difference.

Here’s the original footage:

Perhaps it would be easier to understand with English subtitles. Try this:

Sickening.

Not only is the act abhorrent in itself; so are the words of the soldiers taking part:

There can be no claim that the person who was shot constituted any kind of threat:

https://twitter.com/bungarsargon/status/983385576916299777

Here’s an account of Israel’s response – and of the commander’s complicity in the killing:

The current situation is that the IDF has said it will “investigate”:

Here’s a response to that:

https://twitter.com/a_leesha1/status/983410418646507527

How do you feel about it?

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