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Scottish Friends of Palestine
Briefing Paper
October 2023
Violence epidemic in Israel’s Palestinian communities the result of racist Israeli policy Yoav Haifawl M/Weiss 02/07/2023
Violent crime, and especially murder, has become a prevalent and rising threat to the Palestinian communities within the territories that have been held by Israel since 1948. . . . . . . . . . from 2019, people with first hand knowledge, including a retired police officer, described a situation where the all-powerful Israeli security services (Shabak) provided impunity to Arab criminal gangs in return for their cooperation against Palestinian national activities. Later, on June 30, 2021, Maariv reported that a senior officer in the Israeli police claimed, in a meeting of the Police national command, that most of the severe crimes in Arab society are performed by “Shabak collaborators,” which would corroborate this claim. The officer in the Maariv story said the Police simply could not touch these criminals, as the Shabak provided them with impunity. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/protesters-in-haifa-say-violence-epidemic-in-palestinian-communities-the-result-of-racist-israeli-policy/?ml_recipient=92679299031630886&ml_link=92679057671455974&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-07-27&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Jenin - ‘The gravity of the situation cannot be overstated’ Mustafa Sheta M/Weiss 03/07/2023 The Israeli military operation commenced with an aggressive assault on sites believed to be affiliated with the Palestinian resistance. They claimed these locations as their targets, launching three missiles that resulted in the loss of innocent lives and left many wounded. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/the-gravity-of-the-situation-cannot-be-understated-an-eyewitness-account-from-the-israeli-assault-on-jenin/?ml_recipient=92769877313455332&ml_link=92769650011538884&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-07-27&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
PA “does our job for us” Asa Winstanley EI 04/07/2023
“We need the Palestinian Authority,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says. “We cannot allow it to collapse.”Israeli press outlets reported last week that Netanyahu told a closed session of a parliamentary committee that everywhere the Palestinian Authority is “successfully operating, it does our job for us.”It is the most stark admission by Israel yet that the Palestinian Authority is a collaborationist entity, whose main purpose has been to help maintain the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/palestinian-authority-does-our-job-us-says-netanyahu
Eyad al-Hallaq’s killer acquitted. Mother branded a terrorist. Yumna Patel M/Weiss 07/07/2023 The indictment against the officer, which was filed in 2021, detailed how the accused officer shot al-Hallaq in the stomach as he was cornered with his back against the wall, hiding behind a dumpster. The officer shot al-Hallaq a second time in the chest as he lay on the ground wounded, killing him. The officer claimed that he “suspected that al-Hallaq was a terrorist” because he was wearing black gloves and a black face mask — which was not unusual given that it was just a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic — and “stopped several times and looked back as he was walking.”
Al-Hallaq was on his way to school in the early hours of the morning and was reportedly frightened . . . Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/israel-acquitted-eyad-al-hallaqs-killer-then-ben-gvir-called-his-mom-a-terrorist/?ml_recipient=93132287667865514&ml_link=93132050354144639&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-07-27&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Palestinian family expelled from Jerusalem home M C Murphy EI 12/07/2023
Ajith Sunghay, the head of the UN human rights office in the West Bank and Gaza, said that the eviction of the couple “may amount to forcible transfer … a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions and a war crime.” The human rights office added that “international humanitarian law prohibits Israel from imposing its own laws in occupied territory, including East Jerusalem, which includes the use of Israeli laws to evict Palestinians from their homes.”
The UN body noted that the expulsion of the Ghaith-Sub Laban family is part of a broader effort to force Palestinians out of the eastern sector of Jerusalem, which was occupied by Israel in 1967 and annexed in violation of international law. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-expels-palestinian-family-their-jerusalem-home
Palestine – ‘an open-air prison’ Jeff Wright M/Weiss 16/07/2023
In her June report to the UN Human Rights Council, Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, details how, through “a system of control composed of multiple and interrelated levels of confinement,” Israel “has turned Palestinian life into a carceral continuum”—amounting, as she writes, to a constantly surveilled open-air prison.
Her report documents the many physical, bureaucratic, military, and surveillance means which enable Israel’s “arbitrary seizure of land and Palestinians’ forcible displacement”—features, she writes, of settler colonialism.
In her presentation of the report to the UN Human Rights Council Monday, Albanese said, “These offenses appear to be part of a plan to de-Palestinianize the territory. They threaten the existence of the Palestinians as a people, as a national cohesive group. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/un-special-rapporteur-on-palestine-israel-has-turned-all-of-palestine-into-an-open-air-prison-to-further-annexation-plans/?ml_recipient=93947701422458668&ml_link=93947426530920081&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-08-02&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Israeli troops shoot medic’s feet Maureen Clare Murphy EI 25/07/2023
Troops shot a medic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society “with two bullets in both feet” while he was on duty in Askar camp near Nablus . . . In Nur Shams camp, in Tulkarm, occupation forces prevented the Red Crescent society’s ambulances from entering the camp.Troops also prevented an ambulance crew from transporting a woman in labor in Nur Shams camp and “detained the team for half an hour and ordered them to take off their bulletproof vests and clothes,” . . . . Just last week, medics with the Palestine Red Crescent Society were provided with bulletproof vests and helmets after nearly 200 violations against their teams were recorded in the first half of 2023. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-troops-shoot-medics-feet-during-raid
Hamas - a government and a resistance movement Tareq S. Hajjaj M/Weiss 25/07/2023 The Israeli attacks leave devastation in their wake wherever their bombs drop, but their impact on Gaza is all the more deeply felt given the cumulative effect of the 17-year-long blockade. These dire conditions serve to constrain the Palestinian resistance — specifically Hamas as the ruling power in Gaza, whose action or inaction can mean life or death for the people of Gaza. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/what-it-means-to-be-a-government-and-a-resistance-movement/?ml_recipient=94763077621254127&ml_link=94762788544579342&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-08-01&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Families forced apart Khuloud Rabah Sulaiman EI 28/07/2023
Raised in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus – where her mother still lives – Suhair moved to Gaza more than two decades ago. In 2021, the Israeli military informed Suhair that she had to sign a document after visiting her mother. The document was mostly in Hebrew, a language Suhair does not understand.When she asked what the document contained, soldiers at Erez, the military checkpoint separating Gaza and Israel, refused to say. The Israeli soldiers just told Suhair that if she did not sign, she would not be allowed to enter Gaza and see her husband Ibrahim and their children. . . . She was shocked when she heard what she had “consented” to by signing it. The document was effectively a declaration that Suhair was making Gaza her permanent residence. She would not be allowed to enter the West Bank again unless she submitted a relocation application. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/content/israeli-policies-keep-dad-away-daughters-wedding/38256
Gaza – a heat wave and no electricity Tareq S. Hajjaj M/Weiss 29/07/2023
It’s dark as usual at night in the Gaza Strip, as routine power cuts plunge Palestinian homes into darkness. But what has been different during the past few weeks is an unprecedentedly stifling summer heatwave. With no electricity, people are getting pushed to their limit.
Dina Ahmad, 33, holds her newborn baby. They both look sticky and sweaty. She puts her son’s head in her hand, and the other hand holds a piece of paper, using it as a makeshift fan. The toddler breastfeeds — intermittently due to the extreme heat — before letting out a wail and returning to his mother’s breast. Dina’s three older sons understand the situation a bit better. Each of them holds up their own makeshift fan and furiously tries to generate some air. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/a-heat-wave-and-no-electricity-has-turned-most-houses-in-gaza-into-furnaces/?ml_recipient=95125374037394830&ml_link=95125171553175133&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-08-02&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Introducing the most recent addition to Israel’s panoply of racist laws
Jonathan Ofir M/Weiss 31/07/2023 There has been a lot of noise from the Israeli protests concerning the judicial overhaul. The recent central law that was passed last week reduced the supreme court’s ability to overturn government policy, the so-called “reasonableness law.” But another law also passed just a day later — an amendment to a core apartheid law known as the “Village Committees Law” of 2010, more officially named the Cooperative Societies Ordinance. It passed without opposition, and was hardly noticed. Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, explained how “these committees, which to date exist in the Galilee and in the Naqab (Negev), have the power to approve or to deny applicants who wish to reside there, based on their perceived ‘social suitability’ to the ‘social and cultural fabric’ of a community. In practice, this power has led to the exclusion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from these communities, which are built on state-controlled land.” Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/israel-expanded-an-apartheid-law-last-week-no-one-is-talking-about-it/?ml_recipient=95306656999539898&ml_link=95306383865414822&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-08-02&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Gaza -Israel blocks effective medical treatment Hanin A. Elholy EI 31/07/2023
Staff at al-Rantisi – the only hospital in Gaza providing children with dialysis – do their best to take care of kidney patients such as Naseem. Yet the complete blockade to which Gaza has been subjected for 16 years now means that they cannot provide an adequate service.
Gaza’s health ministry warned recently that al-Rantisi hospital is in dire need of tubes for dialysis machines, as well as other essential equipment. The health ministry stated, too, that Israel had blocked camera technology used in tests on kidney patients from entering Gaza for most of the past two years. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/content/israel-blocks-tools-treating-gazas-kidney-patients/38261
Children murdered by Israel Tamara Nassar EI 6/08/2023
As the occupation forces were withdrawing, soldiers in an armored vehicle shot 17-year-old Mahmoud Husam Abu Saan from a distance of about 50 meters, according to an investigation by Defense for Children International - Palestine. “After Mahmoud was shot, he fell to the ground screaming,” the rights group said. “Israeli forces inside the same Israeli military vehicle approached and opened fire again, shooting him in the head from a distance of three meters (10 feet).”The teenager was taken to a hospital in a private car, where doctors pronounced him dead.
“To shoot him again in the head at point-blank range when he was incapacitated amounts to an extrajudicial killing and a flagrant display of the impunity enjoyed by Israeli forces,” DCIP’s Ayed Abu Eqtaish said. . . . Abu Saan is the second Palestinian child killed by Israeli occupation forces since the start of the month. . . . On 1 August, Israeli forces killed a 15-year-old Palestinian boy and took away his body. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/ben-gvir-praises-settlers-who-killed-teen-heroes
Settler murder suspects released from custody Tamara Nassar EI 09/08/2023
Two members of the Israeli Knesset from the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party visited Indore in hospital. But Israeli police barred Palestinian Knesset member Ahmad Tibi from visiting any of the five arrested Palestinians.
Ben-Gvir praised the settlers suspected of involvement in killing Mutan as “heroes.”
Days later, he was posing for photo-ops in his first meeting with an EU official, Anna Koukkides-Procopiou, his Cypriot counterpart, during a vacation to Limassol. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/settlers-suspected-involvement-killing-teen-remanded-house-arrest
The formalising of discrimination Deiaa Haj Yahia EI 11/08/2023
Early in the demonstrations, Palestinian flags were removed by police and other Jewish protesters. Speeches referencing Israel’s occupation were often silenced. Reem Hazan, of the Democratic Front in Haifa, also known as the Hadash party, decided against delivering a speech at the beginning of the protests after being asked to change its content by the organizers. Her speech touched on the occupation and racial discrimination, linking the judicial amendments to the occupation. Hazan later told Al-Ittihad newspaper that “the censorship of political opinion is intrinsic to fascism, and not part of the fight against it.” Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/content/why-defend-supreme-court-has-formalized-discrimination/38306
Religious nationalists ascendancy in the ‘Jewish state’ Ghada Karmi M/Weiss 12/08/2023 The anti-government protests in Israel may seem like a struggle between the Ashkenazi elite and ultra-orthodox for influence. But at a deeper level, the protests reflect the unresolved issue of Israel's identity. . . . Israel’s founders were secular members of East European (Ashkenazi) Jewish communities who knew they could not make their claim to Palestine stick without recourse to the Bible. For that reason, they were obliged to work with orthodox Jews, who were subsequently allowed the privileges of citizenship without its obligations — exempt from serving in the military or paying the same amount of taxes. They were granted generous state subsidies and could live outside mainstream political life altogether if they chose. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/it-should-be-no-surprise-religious-nationalists-are-ascendant-in-the-jewish-state/?ml_recipient=96393685754709443&ml_link=96393522014324209&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-08-20&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Settlers deliver the state’s final blow M C Murphy EI 14/08/2023
“I’m the government, I’m the state. I’m the police and the military,” an armed Jewish settler asserted while occupying the home of a Palestinian sheep herder earlier this month.
The settler’s claim, however repugnant, reflects the truth: The settlers and the state are one, working hand in hand to colonize Palestinian land.
The state cannot advance its goal of full control between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea without the settlers terrorizing Palestinians until they flee their land.
Days after the aforementioned armed settler walked into Muhammad Hassan Abu al-Kabash’s home, the herding community dismantled their encampment in al-Qabun, northeast of Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/settlers-deliver-states-final-blow
Why Israel targets Palestinian children Maren Mantovani M/Weiss 21/08/2023
This week, children are back to school in Palestine. Some will find their school in ruins, and some will be missing schoolmates they had only a few months ago. Since the beginning of 2023, Israel has killed at least 38 Palestinian children, injured almost 1000, while 160 are lingering in Israeli jails. 2280 Palestinian children have been killed since January 2000. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/targeting-palestinian-children-is-necessary-for-israeli-settler-colonialism/?ml_recipient=97209221714544484&ml_link=97208906032350910&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-08&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Video: shot in the back of the head MC Murphy EI 21/08/2023
Evyatar, which was evacuated in 2021, has become a symbolic site for the settlement movement emboldened by top political figures in Benjamin Netanyahu’s extreme-right government. Itamar Ben-Gvir, kingmaker in Netanyahu’s fragile coalition, urged settlers to “run for the hilltops” during a visit to Evyatar in June. He called for killing “thousands” of terrorists to “fulfill our great purpose: the land of Israel for the people of Israel” and assured settlers that “we’ve got your back.” Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/video-soldier-shoots-palestinian-man-back-head
Israeli state’s war on its Palestinian ‘citizens’ has reached new heights Miko Peled M/Weiss 23/08/2023
Since the State was established, the Palestinian citizens of Israel have faced huge economic disparities compared to Jewish Israelis. Poverty rates are higher among Palestinian citizens than Jewish Israeli citizens, and the poorest of the poor among Israeli citizens are Palestinians. Palestinian cities and Palestinian neighborhoods within mixed cities like Lyd, Ramleh, and others, suffer from overcrowding, a severe lack of infrastructure, housing shortages, and lack of funding for schools.
As the severe shortage in funding creates enormous problems within these communities, funding for Jewish Israeli communities is robust. Fida Shehada is a city council member and a central figure in the Palestinian struggle against systemic racism in the city of Lyd, occupied in 1948. In an interview she gave me at her home in Lyd she talked about the problems the city’s Palestinian population faces and the reasons she chose to study urban planning. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/under-finance-minister-smotrich-the-israeli-states-war-on-its-palestinian-citizens-has-reached-new-heights/?ml_recipient=97390400904365538&ml_link=97390093008897258&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-09&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Zionism and the ethnic cleansing of Iraq's Jews in 1950 Tom Suarez M/Weiss 26/08/2023 In 1951, an Iraqi court determined that the main perpetrators of a series of attacks on Baghdad’s Jews were Zionists — not, as it was intended to appear, their non-Jewish countrymen. But it was by then too late to stop the goal of the crime: the ethnic cleansing of the city’s ancient Jewish community, in order to ship as many of its people as possible to Israel — “as cannon and demographic fodder” for the state, in the words of ex-Hagana member Hanna Braun, who once had the task of receiving them.[1] As a bonus, the false-flag attacks reinforced the core construct upon which Zionism depends: that the world is an irredeemably dangerous place for Jews. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/iraqi-jews-in-1950-the-race-against-time-vs-near-east-air-transport/?ml_recipient=97662078159947283&ml_link=97661879516661672&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-09&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Fascist government support for apartheid Jonathan Ofir M/weiss 28/08/2023
First, it was National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — the same MK who idolized the perpetrator of the 1994 Hebron massacre, Baruch Goldstein — when he was on a Channel 12 panel last Wednesday. The subject of security in the occupied Palestinian territories came up during the panel, which provoked an outburst by Ben-Gvir: “My right, my wife’s right, my kids’ right to move around freely on the roads of Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] is more important than that of the Arabs,” . . . Palestinian-Israeli lawmaker Ahmad Tibi noted on X that “for the first time, an Israeli minister admits on air that Israel enforces an apartheid regime, based on Jewish supremacy.” Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/08/itamar-ben-gvir-and-his-fascist-ilk-inadvertently-advance-the-apartheid-discourse/?ml_recipient=97843345336829677&ml_link=97843078351554058&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-09&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Israel’s democracy paradox Amjad Alqasis EI 05/09/2023
The incongruity of the situation is the key to understanding the nature of the Israeli state’s Zionist ideology. Protesters fear losing their democratic rights, yet they maintain silence on the state’s continued suppression of Palestinians . . . The protesters do not acknowledge the paradox of their gathering: how they defend their own democratic principles as their state occupies and colonizes Palestine. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-democracy-protests-defend-apartheid-system/38421
Israel’s ‘slay-for-play’ practice must stop Sam Bahour M/Weiss 07/09/2023
This Israeli “Slay-for-Play” practice must be stopped. Killing Palestinians is not a sport. The practice is corrupting an entire generation of Jewish youth. Or should I say, has already corrupted an entire generation of Israelis? . . . In a recent newsletter (Keeping Israel Safe, August 2, 2023) AIPAC noted: Palestinian leaders continue to pay families of terrorists. . . The Palestinian Authority pays roughly $170 million annually to terrorists and their families through its horrific pay-for-slay program. There is no Palestinian “pay-for-slay” program. This is a figment of Israeli state propaganda. Here are the facts. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/israels-slay-for-play-practice-must-be-stopped/?ml_recipient=98749547638949200&ml_link=98749056705103446&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-17&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
15 year old shot in back MC Murphy EI 12/09/2023
From Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt
In my meetings with the children of Jenin, all @freedom_theatre's students, I was moved by their talent, hope, dreams & the enchantment of childhood. Yet, all voiced the "fear of being killed." How to deny their fear when they witness the tragedy of children being killed every day?
The Freedom Theatre
@freedom_theatre
·It's with shock we share the news of the murder of 16yr Milad AlRaee, shot in the back by the Israeli army Milad is the nephew of our former Artistic Director Nabil Alraee & Stagemanager Habeeb Alraee. Our love, solidarity & rage are with Nabil, Habeeb & their whole family. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israeli-troops-kill-palestinian-boy-near-hebron
Thirty years after the Oslo Accords Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi EI 13/09/2023
After thirty years, it became evident that the “dream” of establishing a Palestinian state through the Oslo agreement was merely a nightmare with continued Israeli military occupation. It has become evident that the Oslo Accords did no more than consolidate the Israeli occupation, as the Accords did not include the discontinuation of Israeli settlement activities in the occupied territories. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/thirty-years-after-the-oslo-accords-facing-a-reality-of-apartheid/?ml_recipient=99292865392281202&ml_link=99292632040081399&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-18&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Ben-Gvir tightens noose around prisoners Tamara Nassar EI 14/09/2023
Netanyahu postponed making a decision about whether to implement Ben-Gvir’s policy until after Jewish holidays. This will apparently block, at least temporarily, Ben-Gvir’s plans to reduce family visits. Although Netanyahu’s office said the decision is made by the prime minister and cabinet alone, Ben-Gvir’s office insists the decision will be implemented regardless of Netanyahu’s statement. Ben-Gvir said on Wednesday that his Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party will not be voting with the coalition until the policy is implemented. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/tamara-nassar/ben-gvir-seeks-tighten-noose-around-prisoners
Palestinians are not an ‘ancient people’ so . . . Philip Weiss M/weiss 14/09/2023
As awareness of Palestinian dispossession and persecution grows around the world, we keep waiting for a more sophisticated Israeli response to that record.
Now we’ve gotten an answer from the Israeli minister of hasbara, or public diplomacy, Galit Distel Atbaryan, and it’s a rehash of the most Jewish-supremacist tropes of Zionist ideology.
There is no occupation. Jews were here first by biblical “deed” and were thrown off their land. Then by a “miracle” Jewish sovereignty was restored. Palestinians have no right to this land because they’re not an “ancient people.” So anything we do to Palestinians on our land is justified. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/palestinians-are-not-an-ancient-people-so-their-land-belongs-to-jews-netanyahus-aide/?ml_recipient=99383720921793815&ml_link=99383230792205632&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-18&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Ein al-Hilweh - a prism of regional power struggles MC Murphy EI 19/09/2023
A tentative calm is holding in Ein al-Hilweh after a ceasefire was declared Thursday night, ending the latest episode of violence disrupting life in the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and the nearby city of Sidon. Intense battles between fighters with the Palestinian faction Fatah and Islamist militias based in the camp have repeatedly broken out since late July. The last days of that month witnessed the attempted killing of Mahmoud Khalil, an Islamist fighter (one of his companions was killed instead), and the apparent reprisal assassination of Abu Ashraf al-Armoushi, a Fatah military commander, and four of his bodyguards.Thirteen people were killed in the days that followed. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/violence-ein-al-hilweh-prism-regional-power-struggles
Jenin – deadly raids continue M C Murphy EI 20/09/2023
[15 year old] Raafat ran away while yelling “special forces!” “One Israeli soldier chased Raafat and shot him in the abdomen from a distance of 10 meters,” DCIP added.
A Palestinian man approached Raafat to offer aid when Israeli special forces fired another shot” towards the boy. “The Palestinian man threw himself on top of Raafat and rolled him toward his house,” where the boy was sheltered by the man’s family for around 90 minutes, during which time “the Israeli military prevented ambulances from accessing Jenin refugee camp,” DCIP said. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-kills-six-palestinians-west-bank-and-gaza
Netanyahu erases Palestine Michael F Brown EI 23/09/2023
Netanyahu’s map wiped away Palestinians’ right to the land and the historical geographic reality, both in early 1948 and later in the year after Israel seized territory the UN intended for an Arab state. Pre-state Zionist militias and later the Israeli army expelled some 800,000 Palestinians at the time. . . Then Netanyahu flipped the map to show what he termed “The New Middle East.” Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/michael-f-brown/netanyahu-erases-palestine-maps-new-and-old
UK related articles
UNITE cancels “Weaponising Anti-Semitism” book launch Ali Abunimah EI 23/07/2023 Senior union leaders have canceled the Bristol leg of author Asa Winstanley’s current UK tour due to what they say are the “inflammatory” contents of his new book Weaponising Anti-Semitism. In an email to organizers seen by The Electronic Intifada, Unite’s assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail justified the union’s decision, claiming that “Asa Winstanley’s publication has already caused deep hurt among Jews in Britain.” . . . Veteran socialist filmmaker Ken Loach criticized the decision, telling The Electronic Intifada that “Asa Winstanley’s book has been widely praised, including by noted Jewish commentators, for its rigorous and authoritative research.” Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/uk-union-cancels-weaponising-anti-semitism-book-launch
‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’ revealed Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt & Asa Winstanley EI 25/08/2023
The Campaign Against Antisemitism recently took credit for persuading UK trade union Unite to cancel the Bristol launch of Asa Winstanley’s book Weaponising Anti-Semitism, alongside an associated screening of the film Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie.
This was only the latest in a long series of attacks by the Israel lobby group targeting the Palestine solidarity movement and the wider left. But The Electronic Intifada can today reveal that the CAA has been given almost half a million dollars by the UK partner of the Jewish National Fund, Israel’s quasi-governmental settler-colonial agency.
The donations were hidden in obscure Charity Commission documents uncovered by our research. In an email to The Electronic Intifada, the CAA confirmed it had been in “past receipt of donations from JNF UK” but denied current JNF funding. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/content/revealed-israel-charity-funded-campaign-against-antisemitism/38351
A seditious project Jonathan Coulter M/Weiss 30/08/2023
Asa Winstanley's book shows how the Israel lobby facilitated the influence of a foreign government's interests in dictating who gets to lead the Labour Party, causing the downfall of Jeremy Corbyn . . . Former BBC Middle East correspondent Tim Llewellyn describes this extraordinary episode as “perhaps the only moment when agents of a foreign power cooperated with British politicians to alter the course of our history.”Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/a-seditious-project/?ml_recipient=98386941578315640&ml_link=98386660047193344&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-09-17&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Archbishop of Canterbury denies apartheid Ali Abunimah EI 09/09/2023
Welby was asked if Israel is an apartheid state . . . “It remains a risk if the constitution changes to an apartheid constitution, then it obviously would become an apartheid state. But until that happens, I won’t use that word about Israel,” Welby added.
So as long as it doesn’t say it’s an apartheid state, Welby is happy to take Israel’s word for it. Nonetheless, the cleric appears oblivious to the fact that Israel’s constitutional “basic law” was revised in 2018 to even more deeply entrench Jewish supremacy over indigenous Palestinians throughout historic Palestine – essentially confirming that it is an apartheid regime. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-archbishop-canterbury-denying-apartheid
“Every allegation of anti-Semitism was found to be false” Ali Abunimah EI 21/09/2023 A climate of fear is stifling free speech, academic research and student activism about Palestine at British universities. This is the direct result of the government-mandated adoption and use of the so-called IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to investigate and punish alleged incidents of anti-Jewish bias . . . An analysis of all the incidents recorded by the European Legal Support Center (ELSC) between January 2017 and May 2022 in which staff, students or outside speakers were targeted with accusations of anti-Semitism shows that the IHRA definition is being used not to combat bigotry against Jews but to silence and intimidate critics of Israel. Read more: https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/every-allegation-anti-semitism-was-found-be-false
Bad faith, duplicity and cynicism: Britain’s Palestine Mandate, 100 years ago David Kattenburg M/Weiss 29/09/2023
A hundred years ago today, on September 29, 1923, the League of Nations formally assigned Britain the role of Mandatory Power in Palestine. Its mission: to guide Palestine’s people out of colonialism, into independence. Instead, in one of modern history’s most egregious acts of bad faith, duplicity, and cynicism, the world’s preeminent colonial power handed Palestine over to European colonists, dispossessing Palestine’s native people and sowing the seeds for a hundred years of bloody conflict and grief. Read more: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/bad-faith-duplicity-and-cynicism-britains-palestine-mandate-100-years-ago/?ml_recipient=100742436524917976&ml_link=100742170489652546&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-10-05&utm_campaign=Daily+Headlines
Hugh Humphries
Secretary
Scottish Friends of Palestine 0141 637 8046 info@scottish-friends-of-palestine.org
