Tag Archives: Palestine

Beatings and Abuse Of Palestinians By Israeli Security Forces

“Do you know what it means to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories?” With these words, Breaking the Silence released stunning testimonies from former soldiers, six Israeli women.

Some of the ghastly headlines: “Slap,” “Collective Punishment,” “Flak Jackets with ‘Death to Arabs Written on Them’” “Throwing them into the sewage pit,” “Because I’m bored,” “Settler violence.”

Brutalization,  debasement, degradation! Israeli society has lost its soul.
In this video, a women describes the brutalization of the Palestinians, enforced by debasing peer pressure among the soldiers:
“You can’t think that they’re good hardworking people trying to survive in a closed, place.”
“Later I realized that in order to be there you have to break them, break their spirit. Breaking them means  making them wait, blindfolding them, treating them badly, writing ‘Death to Arabs’ on their vests.”
“Putting cigarettes out on them.”
Several describe routine thefts from Palestinians: of prayer beads, pottery, food. What is wrong with taking gifts? one said to herself.
One stated: “We could do whatever we wanted.” “People don’t know what’s going on there.”

To Our Countries – لبلادي

Video contains English subtitles. The singer has a really nice voice.

لبلادي عمل من إعداد وإنتاج وتنفيذ مجموعة شباب يقيمون في السويد وهم من سوريا و العراق و لبنان و فلسطين. على أمل السلام

To Our Countries is a project produced by a group of youths who live in Sweden and are originally from Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine.

“We Invented The Car Bomb”

Car bombing has become synonymous with the Middle East in recent years, so few people would be surprised to realise that this most destructive and indiscriminate form of terror became established in this part of the world.
However, less well known is the fact that this was originally a Jewish weapon used against the Arabs.
The method of killing and destruction was actually pioneered in 1920 in New York, and in a cart rather than a car. An Italian anarchist called Mario Buda packed a horse-drawn wagon with explosives and killed dozens of innocent bystanders on Wall Street in a protest against capitalism.
However, the first bomb to be transported to a target in a motorised vehicle was created by two fighters of the Lehi movement in pre-state Palestine.

These pioneers of a uniquely horrible form of warfare are still alive and were interviewed by the presenter, former CIA agent Bob Baer.

Yaakov Heruti and Eliezer Ben-Ami explained how they chose their target, the Soraya building in Jaffa, used as the headquarters of the armed Arab resistance. They parked their truck bomb outside the building and set it off, killing 28 people including innocent bystanders, and injuring hundreds more.

The two 83-years-old were unrepentant about the operation but regretted the non-combatant casualties. Said Heruti:
“We never wanted to kill innocent civilians and children, it happened by bad luck.”

Perhaps, but it must have crossed their minds that by exploding a truck packed with explosives in a crowded street without any warning, civilians and children were likely to be blown away along with enemy fighters.

This was not a film that set out to make any moral points – indeed most of those interviewed showed little remorse for their actions – but it did demonstrate that in every single case, the reverberations of the explosions had a negative impact on those who planted the bomb as much as on those who were attacked.
After the Lehi bomb, an Arab called Fawzi El Kuttub set about wreaking vengeance on the Jews. Trained by the Nazis in bomb-making, he aped the Jewish fighters by setting off car bombs which killed Jewish civilians in Jerusalem, and came close to assassinating future Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. When the smoke eventually cleared, eight car bombs had been set off – four Arab, four Jewish – claiming 120 lives.

The Irgun: Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?

On Sunday, the 9th of 2014, I posted an article with appeared in the Jerusalem Post (Israeli) and The Telegraph (UK), stating that Tzipi Livni stated that her father, considered her father Eitan – who was the Irgun Zva’i Leumi’s director of operations during the pre-state days and fought British rule – as as freedom fighter.

Tom Segev responded to  her claim in a 2006 article in Haaretz Newspaper (Israeli):

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni stated that there is a difference between Palestinian freedom fighters who act against soldiers and terrorists, who act against civilians.

The Livni test is interesting, of course, both because the foreign minister was basically talking about her father, Eitan Livni, who was the chief operations officer in the Irgun and later a Knesset member.

Naturally, Livni does not view the Irgun people as terrorists, but as freedom fighters. And so says the Irgun’s official history, too: It operated against military and government facilities, not against civilians.

Livni most likely was raised on this myth, on the lofty self-image nurtured by Menachem Begin even before his organization fell apart.

The Truth Was Different:

On July 6, 1938, Irgun people snuck a bomb into the produce market on Hamelachim Street in Haifa. Two Irgun veterans reported later, in a book that was printed with the aid of the Defense Ministry, that 18 Arabs were killed and 38 wounded in the operation.

Two days later, Irgun people carried out an attack in Jerusalem; four Arabs were killed. Ten days after that, the Irgun returned to the Haifa market: 27 Arabs were killed and 47 wounded.

In their book, “Divrei hayamim le’milhemet hashihrur” (“Chronicles of the War of Independence”), editors Yaakov Amrami and Arie Melitz described how the attacks were carried out:

Twice, the bombs were brought in inside baskets of vegetables. One bomb was placed inside a crate of shoe polish. Over the years, the organization also struck at buses, coffee shops and movie houses. People from the Haganah and Palmach also carried out actions against Arab civilians. Both were terrorists, also according to the criteria presented by Livni on “Nightline.”

Livni focused on the targets of the attacks, for a moment it seemed that she ruled out in principle any harming of civilians. This also makes for a nice historic lesson: Indeed, there is no justification for harming civilians. Never: Not in Dresden or Hiroshima or Hanoi or Beirut or Ramat Gan or Gaza.

But Livni also justified the artillery fire on Gaza, and then the definition game requires other participants: state-sponsored terror, harming civilians during wartime.

Neither Israelis nor Palestinians have ever forsworn terror. Both have used it and found on occasion that it advances their goals. Arab terror in the 1930s almost led to the expulsion of the British from Palestine, on the eve of World War II; Jewish terror gave a push to their expulsion in the late 1940s. There is a generation of Israelis that grew up not only admiring the terror used by the underground organizations prior to the state’s founding, but also on a whole ethos of wars against colonialist regimes everywhere.

Yitzhak Shamir called himself “Michael” after Michael Collins, the famed leader of the Irish underground.

Naturally, Israelis also grew up admiring the partisans who fought against the Nazis.

In the 1950s and ’60s, they identified with the liberation movements in Africa and South America. Along with their admiration for Che Guevara and Steve Biko – a leader of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.

Israelis also nurtured friendships with leaders who had sat in jail up to then as terrorists: Israel gave them weapons and money, invited them to Israel and showered them with great honor. Their books were translated into Hebrew and published by national publishing houses. Nothing offended Israelis more than the pejorative “imperialists.”

Moshe Dayan compared the Fatah to the Irgun; in this comparison, Israel took the role of the despised British.

Many years later, Ehud Barak said that if he were a Palestinian, he would have joined the terror organizations. 

Fatah hijacked planes and thereby put the Palestinian problem on the world map – Who knows if anyone would have heard about their distress if it weren’t for their terror?

It’s doubtful if Ariel Sharon would have initiated the dismantling of the settlements in the Gaza Strip if not for Palestinian terror.

This is the same Ariel Sharon who in the 1950s stood at the head of a renowned paratroop unit that committed acts of terror in Palestinian villages across the border.

By Tom Segev
Apr. 20, 2006
12:00 AM

Attacks On Israeli Soldiers Legitimate and Not Terrorism

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni came under fire for making a distinction between terrorists who attack civilians and enemy fighters who fight against IDF soldiers. 
 
“Somebody who is fighting against Israeli soldiers is an enemy and we will fight back, but I believe that this is not under the definition of terrorism, if the target is a soldier,” Livni said in an interview three weeks ago on US television network ABC’s Nightline that was broadcast on Israel Radio Tuesday. 
 
During the ABC interview, Livni was asked whether she considered her father, Eitan, who was the Irgun Zva’i Leumi’s director of operations during the pre-state days and fought British rule, a terrorist. 
 
She replied that her father fought against British soldiers, not civilians, and agreed that if Hamas used suicide bombings only against soldiers she would not call that “terrorism.”
Israel’s former Consul General Alon Pinkas, who was frequently interviewed on Nightline, said that groups that exclusively target soldiers can legitimately be called “guerrilla organizations.” 
 
Livni reiterated in an interview to Israel Radio Tuesday morning what she had said in the Nightline interview; namely, that attacks specifically against soldiers could be seen as “more legitimate” than attacks on Israeli civilians. 
 
 
Israel’s foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, has broken a taboo by declaring that Palestinians who kill Israeli soldiers are not terrorists.
 
The row began when Israeli radio broadcast an interview in which 48-year-old Mrs Livni said that attacks on Israeli soldiers were “more legitimate” than attacks on Israeli civilians.
 
“Somebody who is fighting against Israeli soldiers is an enemy and we will fight back,” she said. “But I believe that this is not under the definition of terrorism if the target is a soldier.”
Mrs Livni first made her comments during an interview recorded several weeks ago by the American ABC television network, where they went largely unnoticed.
But when they were broadcast in Israel this week they provoked an immediate angry reaction.
[Tzipi Livni’s defining and making a distinction between legitimate acts of resistance and terrorism, occurred back in 2006. It’s a significant statement and assessment by a major Israeli official which remains relevant and can’t be recanted]

The Rising Tide Of Anti-Semitism

To the Editor:

Deborah E. Lipstadt makes far too little of the relationship between Israel’s policies in the West Bank and Gaza and growing anti-Semitism in Europe and beyond.

The trend to which she alludes parallels the carnage in Gaza over the last five years, not to mention the perpetually stalled peace talks and the continuing occupation of the West Bank.

As hope for a two-state solution fades and Palestinian casualties continue to mount, the best antidote to anti-Semitism would be for Israel’s patrons abroad to press the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for final-status resolution to the Palestinian question.

(Rev.) BRUCE M. SHIPMAN
Groton, Conn., Aug. 21, 2014
The writer is the Episcopal chaplain at Yale.

Dutch Man Renounces “Righteous Among The Nations” Honor

Saved Jews During Nazi Holocaust, Now Returns His Medal To Israel

He saved Jews during the Nazi Holocaust, but now a 91-year-old Dutch man who was declared a Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Yad Vashem Holocaust museum has given his award back.

During the German occupation of his nation, Henk Zanoli had bravely risked his life for the sake of others. But on Thursday returned his medal and certificate to Yad Vashem because six of his relatives were killed by an Israeli Defense Forces bombing campaign in the Gaza Strip last month.
 
Back in 2011, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum awarded both Henk Zanoli and his late mother, Johana Zanoli-Smit, the Righteous Among the Nations award for having saved a Jewish child, Elhanan Pinto, when the Nazis occupied Holland. Zanoli’s own father was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1941 as a result of his politically outspoken opposition to the occupation.
 
He eventually would die at the Mauthausen concentration camp in the month of February 1945. Zanoli’s brother-in-law was executed as well, for resistance against the Nazi war machine. One of his brothers, as well, had a Jewish fiancée, and was killed by the Nazis.
 
But Zanoli’s great-niece, Angelique Eijpe, is a Dutch diplomat. She is the head of her nation’s diplomatic mission in the country of Oman. Her husband is the economist Isma’il Ziadah, who was born in the al-Bureij refugee camp located in central Gaza. Ziadah’s parents were born in now renamed town of Fallujah, which is now known as town of Kiryat Gat.
 

On Sunday, July 20, an Israeli jet bombed the Ziadah family’s home in al-Bureij. Zanoli’s relatives: Muftiyah, 70; three of her sons, Jamil, Omar and Youssef; Jamil’s wife, Bayan; and their 12-year-old son, Shaaban were all killed. None of them were terrorists. All of them were civilians.

Now, Zanoli has returned his award to the Israeli Embassy in The Hague – exactly where he received them in an official ceremony three years ago. He sent the following letter, addressed to Ambassador Haim Davon.
 
Zanoli opened by explaining the high price his family paid for fighting for the lives and rights of the Jewish people.
 
“Against this background it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel,” he explained.
 
Untitled-9
Read the full letter, embedded, below: 
 

Ambassador Haim Davon

Embassy of Israel

Buitenhof 472513 AH

The Hague

 August 11 2014

Subject: Return of medal of honour

Excellency,

It is with great sorrow that I am herewith returning the medal I received as an honour and a token of appreciation from the State of Israel for the efforts and risks taken by my mother and her family in saving the life of a Jewish boy during the German occupation of The Netherlands.

My mother and her nuclear family risked their lives fighting the German occupation. My mother lost her husband who was deported to Dachau as early as 1941 because of his open and outspoken opposition to the German occupation. He eventually perished in Mauthausen Concentration Camp. My sister lost her husband who was executed in the dunes of The Hague for his involvement in the resistance. In addition to this my brother lost his Jewish fiancée who was deported, never to return.

My steadfast and heroic mother nevertheless continued the struggle, amongst others, by taking in an 11 year old Jewish boy in her home risking both her own life and that of her children. This boy survived the war under the wings of my mother and eventually moved to Israel.

Against this background it is particularly shocking and tragic that today, four generations on, our family is faced with the murder of our kin in Gaza. Murder carried out by the State of Israel.

The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army. Their family apartment building in Bureij Refugee Camp in Gaza was bombed on July 20 from an Israeli F16, turning the four storey building to rubble, leaving every single family member inside it dead.

I understand that in your professional role, in which I am addressing you here, you may not be able to express understanding for my decision. However, I am convinced that at both a personal and human level you will have a profound understanding of the fact that for me to hold on to the honour granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on, who lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel.

On a more general note the following. After the horror of the holocaust my family strongly supported the Jewish people also with regard to their aspirations to build a national home. Over more than six decades I have however slowly come to realize that the Zionist project had from its beginning a racist element in it in aspiring to build a state exclusively for Jews. As a consequence, ethnic cleansing took place at the time of the establishment of your state and your state continues to suppress the Palestinian people on the West Bank and in Gaza who live under Israeli occupation since 1967.

The actions of your state in Gaza these days have already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a retired lawyer it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course. What happened to our kin in Gaza will no doubt be brought to the table at such a time as well.

The only way out of the quagmire the Jewish people of Israel have gotten themselves into is by granting all living under the control of the State of Israel the same political rights and social and economic rights and opportunities. Although this will result in a state no longer exclusively Jewish it will be a state with a level of righteousness on the basis of which I could accept the title of ‘Righteous among the Nations’ you awarded to my mother and me together with the medal.

Today I am a 91 year old man who does not expect radical change with regard to the current sad reality within my, most likely, still limited lifetime. If your state would be willing and able to transform itself along the lines set out above and there would still be an interest at that time in granting an honour to my family for the actions of my mother during the second world war, be sure to contact me or my descendants.

Sincerely,

H.A. Zanoli

“The great- great grandchildren of my mother have lost their [Palestinian] grandmother, three uncles, an aunt and a cousin at the hands of the Israeli army … For me to hold on to the honor granted by the State of Israel, under these circumstances, will be both an insult to the memory of my courageous mother who risked her life and that of her children fighting against suppression and for the preservation of human life as well as an insult to those in my family, four generations on, who lost no less than six of their relatives in Gaza at the hands of the State of Israel.”
 
Israel’s actions in Gaza, he said further, “have already resulted in serious accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. As a retired lawyer it would be no surprise to me that these accusations could lead to possible convictions if true and unpoliticized justice is able to have its course. What happened to our kin in Gaza will no doubt be brought to the table at such a time as well.”

Native American Indians Stand With Gaza

The parallels to the plight of the Palestinian people and Native Americans have been drawn by many. Speaking in San Francisco, Tony Gonzales of the American Indian Movement (AIM), ”with a common legacy of bantustans (homelands) – Indian reservations and encircled Palestinian territories – Native Americans understand well the situation of Palestinians.”
 
Gyasi Ross, writing “Why I, As A Native American, Support The Palestinian People,” explains the following:
 
As a Native person of this country, I’ve come to the conclusion that I must support the Palestinian people and the pursuit of an autonomous Palestinian state.
 
Although many view both Native Americans and Palestinians as “indigenous and displaced people,” this is not the reason that I feel a sense of kinship with Palestinians.
 
Instead, this fraternal feeling for my brothers and sisters in Gaza and on the West Bank is due to a much more basic and primal feeling of fear: the realization that what befalls one oppressed group inevitably befalls others.
 
Indigenous people, as well as other oppressed groups worldwide, regardless of race or religion, have a vested interest in learning from the genocidal atrocities that the U.S. government initiated on Native Americans. Every person who strives for humanity also has a strong interest in preventing those same atrocities from occurring in another place at another time to another group of people — in this particular situation, to the Palestinians.
 
Palestinians, like Natives, are captives in their own lands. They, too, have no place to go, no geographical recourse. Lebanon, Syria and Egypt have all shown their callousness to Palestinian people and have used them like human chess pieces against Israel.
 
Short on options, Palestinians, like Natives, have no choice but to continue to be a thorn in the side of the oftentimes apathetic and oppressive governments that have come to power by whatever means available.
 
Native American peace activists are becoming an increasingly visible presence at protests against the War in Gaza. For many, Ross’s words sum up the motivation and reasons for support.
 
(Article by Mike Ahnigilahi)