"What’s “extremist” about Ben Gvir is that he says out loud what Israel’s mainstream political establishment prefers to do quietly under the false pretense of “fighting terrorism.” At the height of the genocide, Israel was murdering a far greater daily number of children " Omar Baddar

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Jewish Voice for Peace

@jvplive

Ben-Gvir has been making genocidal threats for years. And, as the Israeli National Security Minister and part of Netanyahu’s government, he’s been able to act on them. 

 

 The Israeli government has always worked towards the same goal—maximum land with minimum Palestinians. And now Israeli officials are saying all the quiet parts out loud. The question is, when will our elected officials actually do something?

https://x.com/jvplive/status/2089403921391349950

Omar Baddar عمر بدّار

@OmarBaddar

·

Aug 16

What’s “extremist” about Ben Gvir is that he says out loud what Israel’s mainstream political establishment prefers to do quietly under the false pretense of “fighting terrorism.” 

 

At the height of the genocide, Israel was murdering a far greater daily number of children 

 

https://x.com/OmarBaddar/status/2089085650410553584

 

https://x.com/jvplive/status/2089403921391349950 

 
 

*  Jewish Voice for Peace

@jvplive

·

Over the weekend, Itamar Ben-Gvir said the Israeli military should “kill 30 or 40” people in Gaza every night.”⁣ He also called for the targeted killing of Palestinians, declaring, “Not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who don’t deserve to live… They are not even people.” This is genocidal speech, dehumanizing hate speech. But for Ben-Gvir, it’s just another day advocating mass death and suffering.

 

Ben-Gvir isn’t a random individual—he’s a senior Israeli minister openly calling for the daily killing of Palestinians. He controls Israel’s police and prison services, giving him jurisdiction over Palestinian detainees in the occupied West Bank. He spearheaded legislation imposing the mandatory death penalty by hanging on Palestinians, which the Knesset approved earlier this year. Ben Gvir is also a follower of Kahanism, an extremist Jewish political ideology stemming from Zionism; Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Palestinians at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron in 1994, was also a Kahanist.

 

Ben-Gvir’s words are grounded in Jewish supremacy and Zionism, the intertwined ideologies that are the foundation for the Israeli state, and used to justify an apartheid regime run on land stolen from massacred and forcibly exiled Palestinians. 

 

Instead of being held to account for its countless war crimes, the US government continues to provide support, weapons and funds to the Israeli government. We demand a complete end to US backing to Israeli oppression of Palestinians. Join us: Call Congress today and tell them to stop arming Israel

 

Tell Congress: Vote NO to funding war.

https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/resource/tell-congress-vote-no-to-funding-war/

UNRWA commissioner: ‘Objective of Israel’s war to get rid of UNRWA’

 Middle East Monitor MEMO October 12, 2024 at 10:04 am

A visit to UNRWA Health Center in East Jerusalem old city, part of a diplomatic mission to Israel and the Palestinian territories, in Rammalah, Palestina, Thursday 16 May 2024. [DIRK WAEM/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images]

Commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, announced on Friday that eliminating the agency has almost been an objective of the Israeli war.

According to Reuters, he added that UNRWA will receive clarification regarding its US funding in early 2025.

The agency, its employees and its headquarters have been subjected to repeated Israeli attacks in the West Bank and Gaza. The latest Israeli measure against the agency was the bill passed by the Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee in the Knesset on Sunday banning UNRWA’s activities in Israel.

The Israeli Broadcasting Corporation reported that the committee referred the bill to the Knesset for a vote in the second and third readings. It stipulates the confiscation of all UNRWA funds, properties and real estate in Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the transfer of the funds to the compensation fund for those affected by the attacks.

The bill also prohibits the recognition of the diplomatic character, or the special status of UN workers, for anyone who holds a UNRWA worker card.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20241012-unrwa-commissioner-objective-of-israels-war-to-get-rid-of-unrwa/

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Israel-Gaza war Biden wants progressives to believe he’s reining in Israel. He isn’t. Biden will be remembered as a president who could have restrained Israel but instead made the US complicit in this war- Mohamad Bazzi

"The US is, by far, the biggest supplier of arms to Israel, providing $3.8bn in military aid per year – and it’s all paid for by American taxpayers. (Israel is also the largest aggregate recipient of US foreign aid in the world, having received about $300bn since the Jewish state was founded in 1948.) Last month, after intense lobbying by Biden, Congress approved $26bn in additional support to Israel, which includes $14bn in unconditional military aid. 

Biden and his top aides passed up another opportunity this month to restrict most arms shipments and end US complicity in Israel’s war. On 10 May, the state department sent a long-awaited report to Congress in which the administration must certify that recipients of US weapons are abiding by international law and allowing the transport of humanitarian aid during active conflicts. The administration said it found written assurances from Israeli officials that they would use US arms in accordance with international humanitarian law to be “credible and reliable”. 

The 46-page report was an exercise in bureaucratic double-speak, and it showed how far the Biden administration is willing to contort itself to avoid concluding that Israel violated any international laws, or had intentionally obstructed humanitarian aid into Gaza. Either of those findings would have shown that Israel had violated a new national security memo that Biden issued in February, and required the administration to suspend or restrict most arms shipments to Israel under existing US laws. 

The state department report, which contradicted itself in numerous places, argued that the US could not find hard proof that Israel had used US weapons in specific incidents that might have involved human rights violations. But for months, numerous rights groups and independent monitors have documented Israel’s violations of international law, including its use of starvation as a weapon of war and methodical campaign to obstruct the delivery of food and other aid into Gaza." READ MORE https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/20/biden-weapons-israel-gaza-war

The Colonna report, which was commissioned by the UN in the wake of Israeli allegations, found that Unrwa had regularly supplied Israel with lists of its employees for vetting, and that “the Israeli government has not informed Unrwa of any concerns relating to any Unrwa staff based on these staff lists since 2011”.

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/22/israel-unrwa-staff-terrorist-links-yet-to-provide-evidence-colonna-report

Israel has yet to provide evidence of Unrwa staff terrorist links, Colonna report says

 Exclusive: Review finds government has yet to substantiate claims UN relief agency staff have ties to Hamas or Islamic Jihad

• Middle East crisis – live updates

 ".... Israel led major donors in January to cut their funding to the agency, the main channel of humanitarian support not only to Palestinians in Gaza but to Palestinian refugee communities across the region.

The funding was cut despite the dire needs of 2.3 million people in Gaza, most of whom have been forced from their homes by the Israeli offensive since 7 October and have been struggling to find water, food, shelter or medical care.

Most of the donor nations have resumed their funding in recent weeks. UK ministers had said they would wait for the Colonna report to make a decision on resuming funding. US financial support of Unrwa has been permanently banned by Congress since the allegations were made...."

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Analysis: EU aid to Palestinians -- help or hindrance?

"EU member states are today much more aware than before that their aid has not made possible the creation of an independent Palestinian state," she [Caroline du Plessix, a French political scientist specializing on EU policy towards the two-state-solution] said, adding: "The EU is trying to figure out what the best strategy may be. Member states need to show that their policy is reaching its ends and is effective. But if the main solution still is the two-state-solution and we are not really going in that direction, this policy is not sustainable and cannot go on for ever."

A general view shows a section of Israel's controversial separation
barrier in the West Bank village of Al-Ram on the outskirts of
Jerusalem on December 7, 2012. (AFP/File Ahmad Gharabli)

"... One beneficiary of the EU's direct assistance to the PA is 49-year-old Said Samara, a teacher at the Secondary Boarding School in Ramallah.
"As a teacher, I hope that this aid will continue. But as a teacher, and for my students, I also need some hope for an independent Palestinian country""

 

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http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=674797

The UN Works and Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) faces similar challenges. This year it has a deficit of $65 million in its core budget and struggles with declining international funding.

My letter to the NYTimes RE What Palestinians Need

Memorial to 418 Palestinian Villages which were Destroyed, Depopulated and Occupied by Israel in 1948.” Refugee tent and embroidery thread, 2000... by Palestinian-American Artist Emily Jacir

RE What Palestinians Need letter by NADIA HIJAB
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/opinion/what-palestinians-need.html?ref=global&_r=0

Dear Editor,

Thank you for publishing the "What Palestinians Need" letter by Nadia Hijab. I totally agree that Palestinians " need American political clout to end the occupation as the first step to a just and lasting peace. "... but I think for now at least Palestinians also need more financial aid in addition to political support. 

Both Israel and Islamists have been taking advantage of the very real plight of the Palestinians, exasperating tragedy and extremism at every turn. That dangerous trend won't magically stop if funding for Palestine is cut or decreased.

Palestinian Statehood efforts as well as UNWRA have been generously funded by the United States. Arab states should step up to help too, in hopes of helping Palestinians- and Palestine survive. 

Sincerely,
Anne Selden Annab

NOTES

Arabs in Israel must vote

Songs and Pictures from Palestine

The Old Couple, 2000 painting by Palestinian Ismail Shammout: Detail from the mural (Life Prevails)

Keeping symbolism in perspective by Joharah Baker for MIFTAH

ELIAS KHOURY'S LETTER TO THE ACTIVISTS OF BAB AL SHAMS

Israelis Evict Palestinians

"We know the [Israeli] army follow us on Twitter and Facebook, so we made out we were holding a protest somewhere else."

State of Palestine

Bab al-Shams Village... We, the sons and daughters of Palestine

Palestinians Set Up Tents Where Israel Plans Homes

Israel continues to demolish Palestinian homes- and peace

Israel uses the crisis in Syria to try to coerce Abbas into relinquishing Palestinian refugee rights

 

Walls and winter rains afflict Palestinian towns

 
Excellent letter in the Guardian by Keith Lichman RE Israel's drift

AP Interview: Palestinian PM blasts Arab donors... In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty.

ATFP's Ziad Asali & Ghaith Al-Omari: Salam Fayyad's bold effort to build Palestinian institutions could soon collapse -- unless Israel and the United States spring to action.

A precarious existence in the Jordan Valley

A Serious Look at Fayyad.... (& Palestine)

CSM letter by James Martin: US Mideast policy should honor rights

********

The Office of International Religious Freedom ( http://www.state.gov/j/drl/irf/)   Given the U.S. commitment to religious freedom, and to the international covenants that guarantee it as the inalienable right of every human being, the United States seeks to:

Promote freedom of religion and conscience throughout the world as a fundamental human right and as a source of stability for all countries

Palestinian Refugees(1948-NOW) refused their right to return... and their right to live in peace free from religious bigotry and injustice.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917

".... it being clearly understood that nothing
          shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious
          rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine..."

The Golden Rule... Do unto others as you would have them do unto you

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world." Eleanor Roosevelt

Empowering Peace & Palestine

"The only way to honor our tragic histories is to create a future for our children free of man-made tragedy. This means making peace fully, completely and without reservation, between Israel and Palestine."

 

The Arab Peace Initiative

Refugees and the Right of Return

Palestinian refugees must be given the option to exercise their right of return (as well as receive compensation for their losses arising from their dispossession and displacement) though refugees may prefer other options such as: (i) resettlement in third countries, (ii) resettlement in a newly independent Palestine (even though they originate from that part of Palestine which became Israel) or (iii) normalization of their legal status in the host country where they currently reside.  What is important is that individual refugees decide for themselves which option they prefer – a decision must not be imposed upon them.

AP Interview: Palestinian PM blasts Arab donors... In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad gestures during an interview with The Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013. Fayyad is blaming Arab countries that haven’t delivered promised financial aid for an escalating financial crisis in the Palestinian territories. In an interview Sunday Fayyad said that the cash crunch is pushing an additional 25 percent of the Palestinian population, or 1 million people, into poverty. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-interview-palestinian-pm-blasts-arab-donors-154050442.html
by KARIN LAUB and MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH | Associated Press

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinian self-rule government is in "extreme jeopardy" because of an unprecedented financial crisis, largely because Arab countries have failed to send hundreds of millions of dollars in promised aid, the Palestinian prime minister said Sunday.

The cash crunch has gradually worsened in recent years, and the Palestinian Authority now has reached the point of not being able to pay the salaries of about 150,000 government employees, Salam Fayyad told The Associated Press. The number of Palestinian poor is bound to quickly double to 50 percent of the population of roughly 4 million if the crisis continues, he said.

"The status quo is not sustainable," Fayyad said in an interview at his West Bank office.

The Palestinian Authority, set up two decades ago as part of interim peace deals with Israel, is on the "verge of being completely incapacitated," Fayyad warned. Only a year ago, he said he expected to make great strides in weaning his people off foreign aid.

The self-rule government was meant to be temporary and replaced by a state of Palestine, which was to be established through negotiations with Israel. However, those talks repeatedly broke down, and for the past four years the two sides have been unable to agree on the terms of renewing the negotiations....READ MORE