West Bank

The Real Reason Israel Annexed East Jerusalem IF AMERICANS KNEW Arab prisoners of war are led blindfolded to interrogation in the old city of Jerusalem, June 8, 1967. (Credit: GOREN / AP) Ha’aretz’s correspondent covered the story of the city’s unification after the Six-Day War. Fifty years later he revisits the dramatic decision that changed the face of the Middle East. He reports that this critical act, which for 50 years has prevented peace, was not a result of strategic planning or motivated by existential national need… By Uzi Benziman, reposted from Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper The office of Interior Minister Haim-Moshe Shapira was crammed to bursting. A buzz of emotion rose from the officials, public figures, and politicians who packed the room. Teddy Ko...

IF AMERICANS KNEW Nisreen Hassan’s son Ahmad knows his mother only through photographs. (Mohammed Al-Hajjar) The practice of arresting Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza and then imprisoning them inside Israel violates international law. The Fourth Geneva Convention stipulates that people living in an occupied territory may only be detained within that territory. By Ola Mousa, reposted from The Electronic Intifada Nisreen Hassan is nearing her release. After six years behind Israel’s prison bars, she is finally scheduled to be reunited with her family in Gaza during October. Some of her seven children have lived almost their entire lives without their mother. Her son Ahmad was still an infant when she was arrested in 2015. The task...

Sheikh Jarrah: How the US media is erasing Israel’s crimes IF AMERICANS KNEW Israeli security forces detain a Palestinian man as families face eviction in Sheikh Jarrah on 4 May 2021 The situation in Sheikh Jarrah, a Palestinian neighborhood of Jerusalem, continues to be unstable as Palestinians protest the imminent forced eviction of multiple families so that illegal Jewish settlers can take over their homes. The world barely notices. by Azad Essa, reposted from Middle East Eye, Over the past week, Jewish settlers with thick Brooklyn accents were caught on camera bullying their way into Palestinian homes in the occupied East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah. “If I don’t steal your home, someone else will steal it,” one settler said to Mona al-Kurd, a P...

Israel: They really do shoot children, don’t they. So would you really holiday in a country that repeatedly commits such crimes with impunity? By Stuart Littlewood The other evening ITV News included an item promoting Israel’s holiday industry. It was clearly aimed at Britons desperate to resume foreign travel abroad after the long COVID lockdown. ITV surely knew that several authorities, including the UN and Human Rights Watch, now regard Israel as a racist state and an apartheid regime, and that Israeli propagandists were angling for inclusion on the British government’s “green light” list of foreign holiday destinations about to be announced. Of course, next day Israel was among the top safe choices declared by the government. When did ITV last report on the 805 Pa...

IF AMERICANS KNEW Nazi police officers take a Palestinian into custody during a demonstration at Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood after Israeli government's plan to force some Palestinian families out of their homes in East Jerusalem on May 04, 2021. (Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf, Anadolu Images) Nazi might have the power now to suppress the Palestinians, shoot them in the eye, fabricate false claims about Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood but its intellectuals, unlike its politicians, know well that Israel can’t sustain the system of apartheid for long. By Yousef Aljamal, reposted from Politics Today The ongoing Israeli policies of mass expulsion of Palestinians from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem is a continuation of a more than seven-decade-long policy of ethnic c...

Photo by: Shoah Tear gas, bullets, bombs: Israel unleashes massive assault on Palestinians Saul Kanowitz Download PDF flyer Photo: Protestors march through Portsmouth, New Hampshire, July 10, 2020. Credit — Omar Taweh In response to the mobilization of tens of thousands of Palestinians to defend the right to live in the Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and worship at the Al-Aqsa mosque, Israel has unleashed murderous actions all across occupied Palestine. Al-Aqsa is an iconic national symbol of the Palestinian people and one of the holiest sites in Islam, and has been repeatedly targeted by Zionist extremists who want to take it over.  The latest escalation by Israel are air strikes today in the Gaza Strip that have so far killed over ...

By Jeremy Salt for Palestine Chronicle On May 10 this year the state of Israel … but wait a moment … before we go any further … in talking about this state, its ‘independence’ was announced in 1948 by a colonial settler minority, putting it in exactly the same category as the ‘unilateral declaration of independence’ made in 1965 by Ian Smith, representing the colonial settler minority of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The notion of independence being declared by a settler minority over the wishes of the indigenous majority was absurd and naturally rejected by the world when declared by Rhodesia’s colonial settlers. How odd that it could have been accepted when declared by Palestine’s colonial settlers, especially at a time when decolonization and self-determination were...

Early Monday morning, a group of Nazi Jewish paramilitary settlers and two right-wing Knesset (Parliament) members invaded the besieged Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, accompanied by a battalion of Israeli military troops. The Nazi soldiers assaulted Palestinian residents and solidarity activists who have been in the neighborhood for the past week attempting to protect it from being demolished by Israeli authorities. Eyewitnesses reported that Nazi forces and police accompanied the paramilitary Nazi Jewish settlers and Nazi right-wing Knesset members, who have repeatedly voiced their objective of cleansing the neighborhood of its Palestinian residents in order to move Nazi into the area. The Nazi Jewish settlers and troops then attacked the Palestinians...