24 oct 2015
House of Representatives blocks State Department request for funds, citing ongoing incitement on social media and in schools.
The US House of Representatives took the rare step of blocking financial aid to the Palestinian Authority recently in light of the current string of violent attacks and incitement against Israel.
The vote froze some $370 million in yearly aid funds requested by the US State Department. Yearly payments normally stand at $450 million, but were set to be cut to the now frozen amount of $370 million in 2015 as a fine for Palestinian Authority behavior against Israel last year.
Head of the House Committee on Appropriations, Republican Kay Granger from Texas, and senior Democratic Representative Nita Lowey from New York, sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warning that a continuation of incitement on the Palestinian side would lead to a cessation of American financial aid.
Their letter insisted that Abbas cease what they called inflammatory speech and that he meet one on one with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The US Representatives cited that the yearly aid package established under the Oslo Accords was only given to the Palestinian Authority on the condition that its leaders "fight against terror and incitement to violence."
Granger and Lowey also warned that the House wouldn't be able to defend financial aid to the PA if Abbas decided to abandon direct negotiations with Israel and steps to achieve "security, prosperity and peace" for both Israelis and Palestinians.
They also stated in the letter that attacks against Israelis raise doubts that Palestinians are interested in living side by side with Israel in peace.
Head of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Republican Ed Royce from California, also contributed to the conversation saying that new ways would have to be found to stymie Palestinian incitement which he said continues to reach the public through social media, radio, television, and classrooms.
The US House of Representatives took the rare step of blocking financial aid to the Palestinian Authority recently in light of the current string of violent attacks and incitement against Israel.
The vote froze some $370 million in yearly aid funds requested by the US State Department. Yearly payments normally stand at $450 million, but were set to be cut to the now frozen amount of $370 million in 2015 as a fine for Palestinian Authority behavior against Israel last year.
Head of the House Committee on Appropriations, Republican Kay Granger from Texas, and senior Democratic Representative Nita Lowey from New York, sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warning that a continuation of incitement on the Palestinian side would lead to a cessation of American financial aid.
Their letter insisted that Abbas cease what they called inflammatory speech and that he meet one on one with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The US Representatives cited that the yearly aid package established under the Oslo Accords was only given to the Palestinian Authority on the condition that its leaders "fight against terror and incitement to violence."
Granger and Lowey also warned that the House wouldn't be able to defend financial aid to the PA if Abbas decided to abandon direct negotiations with Israel and steps to achieve "security, prosperity and peace" for both Israelis and Palestinians.
They also stated in the letter that attacks against Israelis raise doubts that Palestinians are interested in living side by side with Israel in peace.
Head of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Republican Ed Royce from California, also contributed to the conversation saying that new ways would have to be found to stymie Palestinian incitement which he said continues to reach the public through social media, radio, television, and classrooms.
Video cameras to be placed at Al-Aqsa
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Jordan, renewing his push to ease violence and tension between Israelis and Palestinians.
Kerry meets Saturday, in Amman, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II.
According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, they are exploring ideas first raised during a Thursday meeting in Berlin, between Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which aimed to defuse the situation.
Israeli sources said to Israeli radio that Netanyahu said to Kerry that both Abbas and King Abdullah had to publicly declare that no changes took place on Al-Aqsa mosque.
PNN reports, however, that Netanyahu has agreed to install video cameras at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, according to John Kerry.
Mr. Kerry said that Netanyahu will also announce more steps Israel intends to take in order to demonstrate that it is committed to maintaining the status quo.
He said that all of these steps have been accepted by the Jordanian government.
Mr. Kerry added that Netanyahu had told him Israel would continue to allow freedom of worship on the Temple Mount and would not deviate from the status quo.
In July, dozens of worshippers were injured after Israeli extremist settlers stormed the mosque compound, known as the "Temple Mount" to Jews.
It is thought the agreement is a compromise in Israel’s favor, after Netanyahu resisted calls for United Nations peacekeepers to be stationed at the site.
Last week, he spoke out against pressure from France for an international presence at the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Senior Israeli and Jordanian officials, said Kerry, will discuss steps to strengthen security arrangements on the holy site.
He has now left on a further diplomatic trip to Saudi Arabia.
UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, called on both Netanyahu and Abbas to take careful steps toward de-escalation.
Meanwhile, Israeli channel 10 reported that the coming week is a decisive and crucial to understand the course of Jerusalem uprising.
Military correspondent Orr Heller reported to the channel that if the political efforts do not make any progress, the Israeli army will deploy the reservists soldiers to quell the confrontations.
Since the beginning of confrontations, early in October, around 55 Palestinians were shot dead, 12 of them are children, as well as thousands of injuries documented according to Palestinian ministry of Health.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Jordan, renewing his push to ease violence and tension between Israelis and Palestinians.
Kerry meets Saturday, in Amman, with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II.
According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, they are exploring ideas first raised during a Thursday meeting in Berlin, between Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which aimed to defuse the situation.
Israeli sources said to Israeli radio that Netanyahu said to Kerry that both Abbas and King Abdullah had to publicly declare that no changes took place on Al-Aqsa mosque.
PNN reports, however, that Netanyahu has agreed to install video cameras at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, according to John Kerry.
Mr. Kerry said that Netanyahu will also announce more steps Israel intends to take in order to demonstrate that it is committed to maintaining the status quo.
He said that all of these steps have been accepted by the Jordanian government.
Mr. Kerry added that Netanyahu had told him Israel would continue to allow freedom of worship on the Temple Mount and would not deviate from the status quo.
In July, dozens of worshippers were injured after Israeli extremist settlers stormed the mosque compound, known as the "Temple Mount" to Jews.
It is thought the agreement is a compromise in Israel’s favor, after Netanyahu resisted calls for United Nations peacekeepers to be stationed at the site.
Last week, he spoke out against pressure from France for an international presence at the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Senior Israeli and Jordanian officials, said Kerry, will discuss steps to strengthen security arrangements on the holy site.
He has now left on a further diplomatic trip to Saudi Arabia.
UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, called on both Netanyahu and Abbas to take careful steps toward de-escalation.
Meanwhile, Israeli channel 10 reported that the coming week is a decisive and crucial to understand the course of Jerusalem uprising.
Military correspondent Orr Heller reported to the channel that if the political efforts do not make any progress, the Israeli army will deploy the reservists soldiers to quell the confrontations.
Since the beginning of confrontations, early in October, around 55 Palestinians were shot dead, 12 of them are children, as well as thousands of injuries documented according to Palestinian ministry of Health.
By Shlomo Sand
During the first half of the 20th century, my father abandoned Talmudic school, permanently stopped going to synagogue, and regularly expressed his aversion to rabbis.
At this point in my own life, in the early 21st century, I feel in turn a moral obligation to break definitively with tribal Judeocentrism. I am today fully conscious of having never been a genuinely secular Jew, understanding that such an imaginary characteristic lacks any specific basis or cultural perspective, and that its existence is based on a hollow and ethnocentric view of the world.
Earlier I mistakenly believed that the Yiddish culture of the family I grew up in was the embodiment of Jewish culture. A little later, inspired by Bernard Lazare, Mordechai Anielewicz, Marcel Rayman and Marek Edelman – who all fought antisemitism, nazism and Stalinism without adopting an ethnocentric view – I identified as part of an oppressed and rejected minority.
In the company, so to speak, of the socialist leader Léon Blum, the poet Julian Tuwim and many others, I stubbornly remained a Jew who had accepted this identity on account of persecutions and murderers, crimes and their victims.
Now, having painfully become aware that I have undergone an adherence to Israel, been assimilated by law into a fictitious ethnos of persecutors and their supporters, and have appeared in the world as one of the exclusive club of the elect and their acolytes, I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew.
Although the state of Israel is not disposed to transform my official nationality from “Jew” to “Israeli”, I dare to hope that kindly philosemites, committed Zionists and exalted anti-Zionists, all of them so often nourished on essentialist conceptions, will respect my desire and cease to catalogue me as a Jew. As a matter of fact, what they think matters little to me, and still less what the remaining antisemitic idiots think. In the light of the historic tragedies of the 20th century, I am determined no longer to be a small minority in an exclusive club that others have neither the possibility nor the qualifications to join.
By my refusal to be a Jew, I represent a species in the course of disappearing. I know that by insisting that only my historical past was Jewish, while my everyday present (for better or worse) is Israeli, and finally that my future and that of my children (at least the future I wish for) must be guided by universal, open and generous principles, I run counter to the dominant fashion, which is oriented towards ethnocentrism.
As a historian of the modern age, I put forward the hypothesis that the cultural distance between my great-grandson and me will be as great or greater than that separating me from my own great-grandfather. All the better! I have the misfortune of living now among too many people who believe their descendants will resemble them in all respects, because for them peoples are eternal – a fortiori a race-people such as the Jews.
I am aware of living in one of the most racist societies in the western world. Racism is present to some degree everywhere, but in Israel it exists deep within the spirit of the laws. It is taught in schools and colleges, spread in the media, and above all and most dreadful, in Israel the racists do not know what they are doing and, because of this, feel in no way obliged to apologise. This absence of a need for self-justification has made Israel a particularly prized reference point for many movements of the far right throughout the world, movements whose past history of antisemitism is only too well known.
To live in such a society has become increasingly intolerable to me, but I must also admit that it is no less difficult to make my home elsewhere. I am myself a part of the cultural, linguistic and even conceptual production of the Zionist enterprise, and I cannot undo this. By my everyday life and my basic culture I am an Israeli. I am not especially proud of this, just as I have no reason to take pride in being a man with brown eyes and of average height. I am often even ashamed of Israel, particularly when I witness evidence of its cruel military colonisation, with its weak and defenceless victims who are not part of the “chosen people”.
Earlier in my life I had a fleeting utopian dream that a Palestinian Israeli should feel as much at home in Tel Aviv as a Jewish American does in New York. I struggled and sought for the civil life of a Muslim Israeli in Jerusalem to be similar to that of the Jewish French person whose home is in Paris. I wanted Israeli children of Christian African immigrants to be treated as the British children of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are in London. I hoped with all my heart that all Israeli children would be educated together in the same schools. Today I know that my dream is outrageously demanding, that my demands are exaggerated and impertinent, that the very fact of formulating them is viewed by Zionists and their supporters as an attack on the Jewish character of the state of Israel, and thus as antisemitism.
However, strange as it may seem, and in contrast to the locked-in character of secular Jewish identity, treating Israeli identity as politico-cultural rather than “ethnic” does appear to offer the potential for achieving an open and inclusive identity. According to the law, in fact, it is possible to be an Israeli citizen without being a secular “ethnic” Jew, to participate in its “supra-culture” while preserving one’s “infra-culture”, to speak the hegemonic language and cultivate in parallel another language, to maintain varied ways of life and fuse different ones together. To consolidate this republican political potential, it would be necessary, of course, to have long abandoned tribal hermeticism, to learn to respect the Other and welcome him or her as an equal, and to change the constitutional laws of Israel to make them compatible with democratic principles.
Most important, if it has been momentarily forgotten: before we put forward ideas on changing Israel’s identity policy, we must first free ourselves from the accursed and interminable occupation that is leading us on the road to hell. In fact, our relation to those who are second-class citizens of Israel is inextricably bound up with our relation to those who live in immense distress at the bottom of the chain of the Zionist rescue operation. That oppressed population, which has lived under the occupation for close to 50 years, deprived of political and civil rights, on land that the “state of the Jews” considers its own, remains abandoned and ignored by international politics. I recognise today that my dream of an end to the occupation and the creation of a confederation between two republics, Israeli and Palestinian, was a chimera that underestimated the balance of forces between the two parties.
Increasingly it appears to be already too late; all seems already lost, and any serious approach to a political solution is deadlocked. Israel has grown used to this, and is unable to rid itself of its colonial domination over another people. The world outside, unfortunately, does not do what is needed either. Its remorse and bad conscience prevent it from convincing Israel to withdraw to the 1948 frontiers. Nor is Israel ready to annex the occupied territories officially, as it would then have to grant equal citizenship to the occupied population and, by that fact alone, transform itself into a binational state. It’s rather like the mythological serpent that swallowed too big a victim, but prefers to choke rather than to abandon it.
Does this mean I, too, must abandon hope? I inhabit a deep contradiction. I feel like an exile in the face of the growing Jewish ethnicisation that surrounds me, while at the same time the language in which I speak, write and dream is overwhelmingly Hebrew. When I find myself abroad, I feel nostalgia for this language, the vehicle of my emotions and thoughts. When I am far from Israel, I see my street corner in Tel Aviv and look forward to the moment I can return to it. I do not go to synagogues to dissipate this nostalgia, because they pray there in a language that is not mine, and the people I meet there have absolutely no interest in understanding what being Israeli means for me.
In London it is the universities and their students of both sexes, not the Talmudic schools (where there are no female students), that remind me of the campus where I work. In New York it is the Manhattan cafes, not the Brooklyn enclaves, that invite and attract me, like those of Tel Aviv. And when I visit the teeming Paris bookstores, what comes to my mind is the Hebrew book week organised each year in Israel, not the sacred literature of my ancestors.
My deep attachment to the place serves only to fuel the pessimism I feel towards it. And so I often plunge into despondency about the present and fear for the future. I am tired, and feel that the last leaves of reason are falling from our tree of political action, leaving us barren in the face of the caprices of the sleepwalking sorcerers of the tribe. But I cannot allow myself to be completely fatalistic. I dare to believe that if humanity succeeded in emerging from the 20th century without a nuclear war, everything is possible, even in the Middle East. We should remember the words of Theodor Herzl, the dreamer responsible for the fact that I am an Israeli: “If you will it, it is no legend.”
As a scion of the persecuted who emerged from the European hell of the 1940s without having abandoned the hope of a better life, I did not receive permission from the frightened archangel of history to abdicate and despair. Which is why, in order to hasten a different tomorrow, and whatever my detractors say, I shall continue to write.
During the first half of the 20th century, my father abandoned Talmudic school, permanently stopped going to synagogue, and regularly expressed his aversion to rabbis.
At this point in my own life, in the early 21st century, I feel in turn a moral obligation to break definitively with tribal Judeocentrism. I am today fully conscious of having never been a genuinely secular Jew, understanding that such an imaginary characteristic lacks any specific basis or cultural perspective, and that its existence is based on a hollow and ethnocentric view of the world.
Earlier I mistakenly believed that the Yiddish culture of the family I grew up in was the embodiment of Jewish culture. A little later, inspired by Bernard Lazare, Mordechai Anielewicz, Marcel Rayman and Marek Edelman – who all fought antisemitism, nazism and Stalinism without adopting an ethnocentric view – I identified as part of an oppressed and rejected minority.
In the company, so to speak, of the socialist leader Léon Blum, the poet Julian Tuwim and many others, I stubbornly remained a Jew who had accepted this identity on account of persecutions and murderers, crimes and their victims.
Now, having painfully become aware that I have undergone an adherence to Israel, been assimilated by law into a fictitious ethnos of persecutors and their supporters, and have appeared in the world as one of the exclusive club of the elect and their acolytes, I wish to resign and cease considering myself a Jew.
Although the state of Israel is not disposed to transform my official nationality from “Jew” to “Israeli”, I dare to hope that kindly philosemites, committed Zionists and exalted anti-Zionists, all of them so often nourished on essentialist conceptions, will respect my desire and cease to catalogue me as a Jew. As a matter of fact, what they think matters little to me, and still less what the remaining antisemitic idiots think. In the light of the historic tragedies of the 20th century, I am determined no longer to be a small minority in an exclusive club that others have neither the possibility nor the qualifications to join.
By my refusal to be a Jew, I represent a species in the course of disappearing. I know that by insisting that only my historical past was Jewish, while my everyday present (for better or worse) is Israeli, and finally that my future and that of my children (at least the future I wish for) must be guided by universal, open and generous principles, I run counter to the dominant fashion, which is oriented towards ethnocentrism.
As a historian of the modern age, I put forward the hypothesis that the cultural distance between my great-grandson and me will be as great or greater than that separating me from my own great-grandfather. All the better! I have the misfortune of living now among too many people who believe their descendants will resemble them in all respects, because for them peoples are eternal – a fortiori a race-people such as the Jews.
I am aware of living in one of the most racist societies in the western world. Racism is present to some degree everywhere, but in Israel it exists deep within the spirit of the laws. It is taught in schools and colleges, spread in the media, and above all and most dreadful, in Israel the racists do not know what they are doing and, because of this, feel in no way obliged to apologise. This absence of a need for self-justification has made Israel a particularly prized reference point for many movements of the far right throughout the world, movements whose past history of antisemitism is only too well known.
To live in such a society has become increasingly intolerable to me, but I must also admit that it is no less difficult to make my home elsewhere. I am myself a part of the cultural, linguistic and even conceptual production of the Zionist enterprise, and I cannot undo this. By my everyday life and my basic culture I am an Israeli. I am not especially proud of this, just as I have no reason to take pride in being a man with brown eyes and of average height. I am often even ashamed of Israel, particularly when I witness evidence of its cruel military colonisation, with its weak and defenceless victims who are not part of the “chosen people”.
Earlier in my life I had a fleeting utopian dream that a Palestinian Israeli should feel as much at home in Tel Aviv as a Jewish American does in New York. I struggled and sought for the civil life of a Muslim Israeli in Jerusalem to be similar to that of the Jewish French person whose home is in Paris. I wanted Israeli children of Christian African immigrants to be treated as the British children of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent are in London. I hoped with all my heart that all Israeli children would be educated together in the same schools. Today I know that my dream is outrageously demanding, that my demands are exaggerated and impertinent, that the very fact of formulating them is viewed by Zionists and their supporters as an attack on the Jewish character of the state of Israel, and thus as antisemitism.
However, strange as it may seem, and in contrast to the locked-in character of secular Jewish identity, treating Israeli identity as politico-cultural rather than “ethnic” does appear to offer the potential for achieving an open and inclusive identity. According to the law, in fact, it is possible to be an Israeli citizen without being a secular “ethnic” Jew, to participate in its “supra-culture” while preserving one’s “infra-culture”, to speak the hegemonic language and cultivate in parallel another language, to maintain varied ways of life and fuse different ones together. To consolidate this republican political potential, it would be necessary, of course, to have long abandoned tribal hermeticism, to learn to respect the Other and welcome him or her as an equal, and to change the constitutional laws of Israel to make them compatible with democratic principles.
Most important, if it has been momentarily forgotten: before we put forward ideas on changing Israel’s identity policy, we must first free ourselves from the accursed and interminable occupation that is leading us on the road to hell. In fact, our relation to those who are second-class citizens of Israel is inextricably bound up with our relation to those who live in immense distress at the bottom of the chain of the Zionist rescue operation. That oppressed population, which has lived under the occupation for close to 50 years, deprived of political and civil rights, on land that the “state of the Jews” considers its own, remains abandoned and ignored by international politics. I recognise today that my dream of an end to the occupation and the creation of a confederation between two republics, Israeli and Palestinian, was a chimera that underestimated the balance of forces between the two parties.
Increasingly it appears to be already too late; all seems already lost, and any serious approach to a political solution is deadlocked. Israel has grown used to this, and is unable to rid itself of its colonial domination over another people. The world outside, unfortunately, does not do what is needed either. Its remorse and bad conscience prevent it from convincing Israel to withdraw to the 1948 frontiers. Nor is Israel ready to annex the occupied territories officially, as it would then have to grant equal citizenship to the occupied population and, by that fact alone, transform itself into a binational state. It’s rather like the mythological serpent that swallowed too big a victim, but prefers to choke rather than to abandon it.
Does this mean I, too, must abandon hope? I inhabit a deep contradiction. I feel like an exile in the face of the growing Jewish ethnicisation that surrounds me, while at the same time the language in which I speak, write and dream is overwhelmingly Hebrew. When I find myself abroad, I feel nostalgia for this language, the vehicle of my emotions and thoughts. When I am far from Israel, I see my street corner in Tel Aviv and look forward to the moment I can return to it. I do not go to synagogues to dissipate this nostalgia, because they pray there in a language that is not mine, and the people I meet there have absolutely no interest in understanding what being Israeli means for me.
In London it is the universities and their students of both sexes, not the Talmudic schools (where there are no female students), that remind me of the campus where I work. In New York it is the Manhattan cafes, not the Brooklyn enclaves, that invite and attract me, like those of Tel Aviv. And when I visit the teeming Paris bookstores, what comes to my mind is the Hebrew book week organised each year in Israel, not the sacred literature of my ancestors.
My deep attachment to the place serves only to fuel the pessimism I feel towards it. And so I often plunge into despondency about the present and fear for the future. I am tired, and feel that the last leaves of reason are falling from our tree of political action, leaving us barren in the face of the caprices of the sleepwalking sorcerers of the tribe. But I cannot allow myself to be completely fatalistic. I dare to believe that if humanity succeeded in emerging from the 20th century without a nuclear war, everything is possible, even in the Middle East. We should remember the words of Theodor Herzl, the dreamer responsible for the fact that I am an Israeli: “If you will it, it is no legend.”
As a scion of the persecuted who emerged from the European hell of the 1940s without having abandoned the hope of a better life, I did not receive permission from the frightened archangel of history to abdicate and despair. Which is why, in order to hasten a different tomorrow, and whatever my detractors say, I shall continue to write.
Thousands of Palestinians responded to the call of Hamas and Islamic Jihad to march in Gaza on Friday afternoon.
Dr. Ismail Radwan, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said in a speech in the Nuseirat Camp march, “To the international and local decision makers, your initiatives and meetings to save the Israeli occupation from the Palestinian Intifada are doomed to failure. You have one last option: to convince the occupiers to leave Palestine.”
In efforts to put an end to the Jerusalem Intifada, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is meeting the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, in Amman. This comes after Kerry’s meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Berlin on Friday. Kerry is also meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan Saturday.
Radwan confirmed that the Jerusalem Intifada had united the Palestinians in support of resistance as the means to defend Palestine and its holy shrines. He stressed the need for a political unity between the Palestinian factions to highlight the armed resistance and “to refuse the security coordination [with Israel] in order to support the Intifada in confronting the occupation.”
Radwan demanded the Arab and Islamic people to support the Intifada “as the Israeli occupation only understands the language of war and fire.” He urged the youths in Jerusalem and the West Bank to keep on fighting, saying, “It is an honor for you to be the ones who started the Intifada.”
Open options
Ahmed al-Modallal, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad, affirmed that all options are available for the resistance as long as the occupation continues its crimes against the Palestinians everywhere.
Al-Modallal said, “Our people’s determination has stood the longest test of time, and no one would suppress their revolution against the occupation. The Palestinians will continue fighting until they free their land.”
“Our people can invent means to defend themselves, as the previous Palestinian Intifadas were motivated by the notion that duty is above capabilities, even if we will fight with stones and knives,” al-Modallal added.
He called upon Mahmoud Abbas “to support his people’s decision and to leave the shameful way of negotiations that has brought nothing but more loss and Judaization for Jerusalem.”
Al-Modallal stressed his movement’s refusal of attempts to abort the Intifada, “as the Palestinians will continue along the route that they know will defeat the occupation.”
Dr. Ismail Radwan, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said in a speech in the Nuseirat Camp march, “To the international and local decision makers, your initiatives and meetings to save the Israeli occupation from the Palestinian Intifada are doomed to failure. You have one last option: to convince the occupiers to leave Palestine.”
In efforts to put an end to the Jerusalem Intifada, US Secretary of State, John Kerry, is meeting the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, in Amman. This comes after Kerry’s meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in Berlin on Friday. Kerry is also meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan Saturday.
Radwan confirmed that the Jerusalem Intifada had united the Palestinians in support of resistance as the means to defend Palestine and its holy shrines. He stressed the need for a political unity between the Palestinian factions to highlight the armed resistance and “to refuse the security coordination [with Israel] in order to support the Intifada in confronting the occupation.”
Radwan demanded the Arab and Islamic people to support the Intifada “as the Israeli occupation only understands the language of war and fire.” He urged the youths in Jerusalem and the West Bank to keep on fighting, saying, “It is an honor for you to be the ones who started the Intifada.”
Open options
Ahmed al-Modallal, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad, affirmed that all options are available for the resistance as long as the occupation continues its crimes against the Palestinians everywhere.
Al-Modallal said, “Our people’s determination has stood the longest test of time, and no one would suppress their revolution against the occupation. The Palestinians will continue fighting until they free their land.”
“Our people can invent means to defend themselves, as the previous Palestinian Intifadas were motivated by the notion that duty is above capabilities, even if we will fight with stones and knives,” al-Modallal added.
He called upon Mahmoud Abbas “to support his people’s decision and to leave the shameful way of negotiations that has brought nothing but more loss and Judaization for Jerusalem.”
Al-Modallal stressed his movement’s refusal of attempts to abort the Intifada, “as the Palestinians will continue along the route that they know will defeat the occupation.”
Member of Hamas's political bureau Mousa Abu Marzouk has called on Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Arab leaders to leave the Palestinian people to continue their current intifada (uprising) against the Israeli occupation.
"This intifada is an uprising for Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque, for the injured dignity, for the stolen freedom and for the usurped land," Abu Marzouk stated in Facebook remarks on Friday.
The Hamas official said that the international moves that started recently, especially by the US, to stop the Palestinian intifada were so enormous that no one had seen such efforts being made to curb Israel's brutal war on the Palestinian civilians in Gaza in July 2014.
The Hamas official appealed to the Palestinian Authority and the Arab leaders not to work on ending the raging intifada in the occupied territories and leave the Palestinian people to extract their own rights and achieve their aspirations.
Abu Marzouk also called on the Palestinian factions to close ranks and align themselves with the Palestinian masses, who want to continue their struggle for freedom.
"This intifada is an uprising for Jerusalem and the Aqsa Mosque, for the injured dignity, for the stolen freedom and for the usurped land," Abu Marzouk stated in Facebook remarks on Friday.
The Hamas official said that the international moves that started recently, especially by the US, to stop the Palestinian intifada were so enormous that no one had seen such efforts being made to curb Israel's brutal war on the Palestinian civilians in Gaza in July 2014.
The Hamas official appealed to the Palestinian Authority and the Arab leaders not to work on ending the raging intifada in the occupied territories and leave the Palestinian people to extract their own rights and achieve their aspirations.
Abu Marzouk also called on the Palestinian factions to close ranks and align themselves with the Palestinian masses, who want to continue their struggle for freedom.
The Palestinian ministry of health condemned the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) for targeting Palestinian ambulance crews who provided medical assistance to the wounded during recent clashes east of the Gaza border.
A spokesman for the health ministry told Quds Press that the IOF deliberately targets Palestinian ambulances and paramedics during their presence at flashpoint areas on the Gaza border to help wounded protesters.
The spokesman said that three Palestinian paramedics suffered from inhaling tear gas fired directly at them by Israeli soldiers and another one was wounded by a rubber bullet during violent events near the Israeli perimeter fence east of Gaza.
He added that two Red Crescent ambulances also sustained damage during the Israeli gunfire attacks.
He appealed to international humanitarian groups to intervene to curb Israel's systematic attacks against the Palestinian ambulance crews and provide them with the protection stipulated by the international law.
A spokesman for the health ministry told Quds Press that the IOF deliberately targets Palestinian ambulances and paramedics during their presence at flashpoint areas on the Gaza border to help wounded protesters.
The spokesman said that three Palestinian paramedics suffered from inhaling tear gas fired directly at them by Israeli soldiers and another one was wounded by a rubber bullet during violent events near the Israeli perimeter fence east of Gaza.
He added that two Red Crescent ambulances also sustained damage during the Israeli gunfire attacks.
He appealed to international humanitarian groups to intervene to curb Israel's systematic attacks against the Palestinian ambulance crews and provide them with the protection stipulated by the international law.
The Middle East Quartet (United Nations, Russian Federation, United States, European Union) called Friday on Israel “to work together with Jordan to uphold the status quo at the holy sites in Jerusalem in both word and practice, recognizing the special role of Jordan as per its peace treaty with Israel.”
The Quartet’s statement followed a meeting in Vienna on 23 October.
The Quartet expresses grave concern over “the continuing escalation of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians," as it condemns “all acts of terror and violence against civilians.”
Underscoring the urgent need to restore calm, the Quartet reiterates its call for maximum restraint and avoidance of provocative rhetoric and actions, the statement said.
Recalling its previous statements and relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, the Quartet underlines that security measures alone cannot stop the cycle of violence, according to the statement.
“The Quartet calls for significant steps to be taken, consistent with the transition contemplated by prior agreements, in order to restore confidence and hope in the viability of a negotiated two-State solution that resolves the final status issues, including that of Jerusalem, and ends the occupation that began in 1967.”
The Quartet reaffirmed “its strong commitment to act in coordination with regional and international stakeholders in an effort to stabilize the situation and to assure and actively support a just, comprehensive and lasting settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
The meeting included representatives of the Quartet, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, United States Secretary of State John Kerry, European Union High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (represented by United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov).
The Quartet’s statement followed a meeting in Vienna on 23 October.
The Quartet expresses grave concern over “the continuing escalation of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians," as it condemns “all acts of terror and violence against civilians.”
Underscoring the urgent need to restore calm, the Quartet reiterates its call for maximum restraint and avoidance of provocative rhetoric and actions, the statement said.
Recalling its previous statements and relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions, the Quartet underlines that security measures alone cannot stop the cycle of violence, according to the statement.
“The Quartet calls for significant steps to be taken, consistent with the transition contemplated by prior agreements, in order to restore confidence and hope in the viability of a negotiated two-State solution that resolves the final status issues, including that of Jerusalem, and ends the occupation that began in 1967.”
The Quartet reaffirmed “its strong commitment to act in coordination with regional and international stakeholders in an effort to stabilize the situation and to assure and actively support a just, comprehensive and lasting settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
The meeting included representatives of the Quartet, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, United States Secretary of State John Kerry, European Union High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy Federica Mogherini, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (represented by United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Nickolay Mladenov).
23 oct 2015
Israeli 10 TV Channel said Friday evening that next week will be decisive in taking control over the intifada.
The Channel’s military correspondent Orr Heller said that next week will be fateful and decisive to understand where things are going.
If political efforts were not fruitful, a large force of reserve soldiers will be recruited to quell the disturbances, he said.
55 Palestinians have been killed while 2000 others were injured as Palestinian youths waged nearly a month ago an uprising in rejection of Israeli attempts to impose a temporal and spatial division of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The Channel’s military correspondent Orr Heller said that next week will be fateful and decisive to understand where things are going.
If political efforts were not fruitful, a large force of reserve soldiers will be recruited to quell the disturbances, he said.
55 Palestinians have been killed while 2000 others were injured as Palestinian youths waged nearly a month ago an uprising in rejection of Israeli attempts to impose a temporal and spatial division of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Violent clashes broke out across West Bank and the eastern borders of Gaza as Palestinians call for day of anger on the twenty-third day of Jerusalem Intifada.
The Palestinian Health Ministry declared that 195 Palestinians were injured on Friday including 159 Gazans and 36 West Bankers.
In Gaza Strip, 72 Palestinians were shot with live rounds, 22 others were injured with rubber bullets, while 65 suffered tear gas inhalation.
In West Bank, 27 youths were injured with live bullets, while eight others suffered rubber bullet injuries. One young man suffered different injuries and bruises after being brutally beaten at the hands of Israeli forces.
Since the morning hours, clashes have been going high across West Bank cities and towns. 31 injuries were reported during the confrontation.
Four Palestinians were injured during Nablus clashes, while eight others were reported in Ramallah.
In Bethlehem, five Palestinians were injured with live and rubber bullets as clashes broke out throughout the city.
In al-Khalil, eight Palestinians were shot and injured with live rounds while another suffered serious head injuries after being directly hit with a rubber-coated metal.
In Gaza Strip, 159 people were injured including four medics and dozens who suffered from tear gas inhalation and were treated on the scene.
Two Palestinians ambulances were targeted by Israeli gunfire while transferring injured to hospital, the ministry pointed out.
Two other journalists suffered tear gas inhalation while covering the clashes east of the Strip.
The Palestinian Health Ministry declared that 195 Palestinians were injured on Friday including 159 Gazans and 36 West Bankers.
In Gaza Strip, 72 Palestinians were shot with live rounds, 22 others were injured with rubber bullets, while 65 suffered tear gas inhalation.
In West Bank, 27 youths were injured with live bullets, while eight others suffered rubber bullet injuries. One young man suffered different injuries and bruises after being brutally beaten at the hands of Israeli forces.
Since the morning hours, clashes have been going high across West Bank cities and towns. 31 injuries were reported during the confrontation.
Four Palestinians were injured during Nablus clashes, while eight others were reported in Ramallah.
In Bethlehem, five Palestinians were injured with live and rubber bullets as clashes broke out throughout the city.
In al-Khalil, eight Palestinians were shot and injured with live rounds while another suffered serious head injuries after being directly hit with a rubber-coated metal.
In Gaza Strip, 159 people were injured including four medics and dozens who suffered from tear gas inhalation and were treated on the scene.
Two Palestinians ambulances were targeted by Israeli gunfire while transferring injured to hospital, the ministry pointed out.
Two other journalists suffered tear gas inhalation while covering the clashes east of the Strip.
One hundred senior rabbis have signed a declaration re-imposing a ban on the entry of Jews to the Aqsa Mosque.
According to the Hebrew media, the chief rabbinate reiterated its previous opposition of Jewish visits to the Aqsa Mosque, which the Jews call the temple mount.
The Hebrew media stated that the main reason behind this renewed religious opinion was the angry Palestinian reaction to the repeated break-ins at the Aqsa Mosque by Jewish settlers, which led to widespread deadly attacks against them.
According to the Hebrew media, the chief rabbinate reiterated its previous opposition of Jewish visits to the Aqsa Mosque, which the Jews call the temple mount.
The Hebrew media stated that the main reason behind this renewed religious opinion was the angry Palestinian reaction to the repeated break-ins at the Aqsa Mosque by Jewish settlers, which led to widespread deadly attacks against them.
The Israeli Occupation Authorities (IOA) declared since the early morning hours of Friday a state of high alert in occupied Jerusalem, West Bank, and along Gaza borders in anticipation of the outbreak of expected clashes as Palestinians call for day of anger.
Thousands of Israeli policemen and soldiers were deployed since the morning hours throughout occupied Jerusalem and West Bank and within the Green Line cities as huge marches are scheduled to be organized after Friday prayers in protest against Israeli crimes.
Over the past three weeks, more than 54 Palestinians have been killed, while almost 2000 others were injured by Israeli gunfire during the clashes that broke out in protest against Israeli attempts to take full control of al-Aqsa Mosque and occupied Jerusalem.
Earlier Thursday, Hamas called for a Friday of Anger across the occupied Palestinian territories in protest at Israel’s growing terrorism against Palestinian civilians and Islamic places of worship.
Hamas called on the Palestinian masses across the occupied West Bank to join the sweeping rallies set to be staged Friday following noon prayers.
Meanwhile, violent clashes broke out in al-Fawar refugee camp south of al-Khalil as Israeli forces stormed it today morning.
A Palestinian young man was arrested during the clashes; while another was shot and injured with a rubber bullet, eyewitnesses said.
Heavily armed settlers were also seen at the entrance to the camp accompanied with Israeli soldiers.
Thousands of Israeli policemen and soldiers were deployed since the morning hours throughout occupied Jerusalem and West Bank and within the Green Line cities as huge marches are scheduled to be organized after Friday prayers in protest against Israeli crimes.
Over the past three weeks, more than 54 Palestinians have been killed, while almost 2000 others were injured by Israeli gunfire during the clashes that broke out in protest against Israeli attempts to take full control of al-Aqsa Mosque and occupied Jerusalem.
Earlier Thursday, Hamas called for a Friday of Anger across the occupied Palestinian territories in protest at Israel’s growing terrorism against Palestinian civilians and Islamic places of worship.
Hamas called on the Palestinian masses across the occupied West Bank to join the sweeping rallies set to be staged Friday following noon prayers.
Meanwhile, violent clashes broke out in al-Fawar refugee camp south of al-Khalil as Israeli forces stormed it today morning.
A Palestinian young man was arrested during the clashes; while another was shot and injured with a rubber bullet, eyewitnesses said.
Heavily armed settlers were also seen at the entrance to the camp accompanied with Israeli soldiers.
Jordan’s Youth Movement on Friday called for mass-rallies Friday to mobilize mass-support for the ongoing Jerusalem Intifada.
The move comes as part of Jordanian intents to mobilize solidarity with and support for the Palestinian people in the face of Israel’s mounting terrorism.
The movement called on the Jordanian masses to join the rally and voice support for the Jerusalem uprising.
The movement said the rally aims at championing an end to the "humiliating peace agreements which have become useless both temporally and politically.”
The movement further called on the Jordanian government to assume its administrative and supervisory responsibilities in Occupied Jerusalem and to be up to its sovereignty over the holy al-Aqsa Mosque.
The rally is set to kick off at 12.30 a.m. outside of the Professional Associations Complex in Amman and head to the prime minister’s office.
The move comes as part of Jordanian intents to mobilize solidarity with and support for the Palestinian people in the face of Israel’s mounting terrorism.
The movement called on the Jordanian masses to join the rally and voice support for the Jerusalem uprising.
The movement said the rally aims at championing an end to the "humiliating peace agreements which have become useless both temporally and politically.”
The movement further called on the Jordanian government to assume its administrative and supervisory responsibilities in Occupied Jerusalem and to be up to its sovereignty over the holy al-Aqsa Mosque.
The rally is set to kick off at 12.30 a.m. outside of the Professional Associations Complex in Amman and head to the prime minister’s office.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Thursday with Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu in Berlin to discuss ways to stop the Palestinian ongoing Intifada (uprising).
Netanyahu renewed in the meeting his blame to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for “inciting violence in the area.”
Speaking to reporters after about four hours of talks with Netanyahu, Kerry said that “the conversation as one that gave me a cautious measure of optimism that there may be ... a way to defuse the situation and begin to find a way forward.”
"If parties want to try, and I believe they do, want to move to a de-escalation, there are a set of choices that are available," he told a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
It is scheduled that Kerry will meet with Abbas and the Jordanian monarch in the near future to discuss ways “to calm down the situation”.
Kerry declared that “there are steps that can reduce the violence" and said they needed to be discussed with Jordanian and Palestinian officials.
More than 54 Palestinians have been killed, while almost 2000 others were injured by Israeli gunfire during the clashes that broke out in protest against Israeli attempts to take full control of al-Aqsa Mosque and occupied Jerusalem.
Netanyahu renewed in the meeting his blame to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for “inciting violence in the area.”
Speaking to reporters after about four hours of talks with Netanyahu, Kerry said that “the conversation as one that gave me a cautious measure of optimism that there may be ... a way to defuse the situation and begin to find a way forward.”
"If parties want to try, and I believe they do, want to move to a de-escalation, there are a set of choices that are available," he told a joint news conference with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
It is scheduled that Kerry will meet with Abbas and the Jordanian monarch in the near future to discuss ways “to calm down the situation”.
Kerry declared that “there are steps that can reduce the violence" and said they needed to be discussed with Jordanian and Palestinian officials.
More than 54 Palestinians have been killed, while almost 2000 others were injured by Israeli gunfire during the clashes that broke out in protest against Israeli attempts to take full control of al-Aqsa Mosque and occupied Jerusalem.
Ezzat al-Resheq, member of Hamas political bureau, said Jerusalem intifada exposed the weakness of the Israeli occupation and its security system, stressing that it will continue.
In a statement on Thursday, Resheq underlined that the uprising broke out for the defense and protection of Muslims’ holy places from Israeli aggression.
The Hamas leader said the Israeli policy of field assassination against Palestinians under the claim of attempting to stab settlers is a crime in the full sense of the word. It cannot be denied by Israel and will not make Palestinians stop their uprising, he highlighted.
Resheq called on the Palestinian people to exert their efforts and get united for the sake of escalating the Jerusalem intifada against Israeli occupation.
In a statement on Thursday, Resheq underlined that the uprising broke out for the defense and protection of Muslims’ holy places from Israeli aggression.
The Hamas leader said the Israeli policy of field assassination against Palestinians under the claim of attempting to stab settlers is a crime in the full sense of the word. It cannot be denied by Israel and will not make Palestinians stop their uprising, he highlighted.
Resheq called on the Palestinian people to exert their efforts and get united for the sake of escalating the Jerusalem intifada against Israeli occupation.
European Parliamentarians expressed their concern over the continuation of Israeli aggressive practices against Palestinians and called for isolating Israel and oblige it to stop arbitrary killing.
This followed a symposium held on Wednesday by the Council of Palestinian-European Relations on the current events in the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem. Israeli violations of Palestinians’ human rights were brought to discussion in the symposium.
The session was attended by a number of European MPs, consultants, political analysts and other personalities concerned with the Palestinian Question.
British MP and chairman of the Friends of Palestine in the European Parliament Keith Taylor, chairman of the Committee on Relations with Palestine in the European Parliament, Martina Anderson, and director of the Council of the European-Palestinian relations Mazen Kaheil delivered speeches at the symposium.
They all stressed on putting pressure on Israel and on exposing its crimes against the Palestinian people.
This followed a symposium held on Wednesday by the Council of Palestinian-European Relations on the current events in the West Bank and Occupied Jerusalem. Israeli violations of Palestinians’ human rights were brought to discussion in the symposium.
The session was attended by a number of European MPs, consultants, political analysts and other personalities concerned with the Palestinian Question.
British MP and chairman of the Friends of Palestine in the European Parliament Keith Taylor, chairman of the Committee on Relations with Palestine in the European Parliament, Martina Anderson, and director of the Council of the European-Palestinian relations Mazen Kaheil delivered speeches at the symposium.
They all stressed on putting pressure on Israel and on exposing its crimes against the Palestinian people.
22 oct 2015
The annual military aid provided by America to Israel is expected to increase by nearly $1 billion by the end of this decade, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
According to the newspaper, the total amount of aid given to Israel by America since 1962 has reached approximately $100 billion; $3.1 billion during the past year.
The newspaper quoted informed sources as saying that during the renewal of the military aid agreements for the upcoming years, there will be an increase in the military aid budget, which will reach more than $4 billion a year starting from 2019.
The sources added that the talks regarding the increase in America’s annual military aid started recently, after a nuclear deal was sign between the P5+1 countries and Iran. The talks are ongoing.
According to the newspaper, the total amount of aid given to Israel by America since 1962 has reached approximately $100 billion; $3.1 billion during the past year.
The newspaper quoted informed sources as saying that during the renewal of the military aid agreements for the upcoming years, there will be an increase in the military aid budget, which will reach more than $4 billion a year starting from 2019.
The sources added that the talks regarding the increase in America’s annual military aid started recently, after a nuclear deal was sign between the P5+1 countries and Iran. The talks are ongoing.
Hamas Movement’s representative in Lebanon Ali Baraka has met Thursday with Bolivia's consul Walid Khuri in Beirut.
Both discussed Palestinian developments and Israeli attempts to impose a temporal and spatial division at al-Aqsa Mosque as a prelude to impose full control over the compound.
Baraka briefed the Bolivian consul on the difficult situation in Gaza Strip due to the continued Israeli unfair siege for almost nine years.
During the meeting, the Hamas representative thanked Bolivia’s president, government, and people for their continued support for the Palestinian people and Jerusalem Intifada.
For his part, Bolivia’s consul condemned the Israeli escalated crimes against the Palestinian children and women.
Khuri stressed his country’s total support for the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people’s right to resist the occupation till restoring their lands and holy sites.
Both discussed Palestinian developments and Israeli attempts to impose a temporal and spatial division at al-Aqsa Mosque as a prelude to impose full control over the compound.
Baraka briefed the Bolivian consul on the difficult situation in Gaza Strip due to the continued Israeli unfair siege for almost nine years.
During the meeting, the Hamas representative thanked Bolivia’s president, government, and people for their continued support for the Palestinian people and Jerusalem Intifada.
For his part, Bolivia’s consul condemned the Israeli escalated crimes against the Palestinian children and women.
Khuri stressed his country’s total support for the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people’s right to resist the occupation till restoring their lands and holy sites.
No media organization is more influential in shaping the way American policymakers and news outlets think about Israel and Palestine than the New York Times.
But with some notable exceptions, the Times has done a shamefully poor job of including the historical and political context readers need to understand the roots of the current uprising.
Over the last 2 weeks, over 2,000 Palestinians have been injured and over 41 killed, including at least 8 children. Eight Jewish Israelis have been killed, and one asylum seeker from Eritrea. Though it can be difficult to make sense of these difficult days, the message from Palestinians is clear: they want freedom, justice, and dignity.
Yet, the Times’ headlines consistently frame Israel as the victim, completely misrepresenting an uprising which is a response to decades of displacement, occupation and repression.
Unless we put pressure on the New York Times to accurately report what is happening, the story of Palestinians struggling for freedom will be obscured in the paper of record.
Over the past week I’ve asked a number of our Palestinian and Israeli colleagues what JVP can do during this difficult time and I’ve heard over and over again, “You need to change the media narrative, they’re not telling the whole story.”
And we can.
A year ago, the fair-minded NYT Public Editor Margaret Sullivan made a number of recommendations for more accurate coverage of Israel and Palestine.
If we can get Sullivan to insist that the NYT editors follow those recommendations — it could not only change NYT coverage, but other news outlets as well. And ultimately, U.S. policy.
Our analysis of over 30 New York Times stories over the last few weeks shows clearly that the New York Times still values Israeli lives more than Palestinian ones.
Even though the vast majority of those killed and injured are Palestinian, and Palestinians are facing extreme collective punishment, Israeli violence against Palestinians doesn’t make the news:
Over 50% of headlines depicted Palestinians as the instigators of violence, while no headlines depicted Israelis as aggressors.
No headlines referenced racist mobs that have roamed the streets of Jerusalem shouting “Death to Arabs.”
Palestinians were referred to as terrorists 41 times, while the term was used four times (including quotes from Palestinians) to refer to violent Israeli actions intended to terrorize Palestinians.
The terms “violent” or “violence” were used 36 times to refer to Palestinians, and 2 times to refer to Israelis.
The terms “attack(s)” or “attackers” were used 110 times to describe Palestinian actions and people, and 17 times to describe Israelis.
Here’s some of what the New York Times didn’t say:
The root causes of the current uprising are Israel's ongoing policies of occupation, displacement and oppression.
Over the last year, from the Negev to East Jerusalem, Israel has demolished an average of 1.7 homes each day and allowed increasing numbers of Jewish settlers to take over homes in Palestinian neighborhoods.
Settlers, the police, and racist mobs attacking Palestinians are a frequent occurrence in Palestinian neighborhoods.
Real journalism -- the kind we expect from the Times -- isn’t just reporting the views of whoever has the most power. Real journalism is giving context and background, and reporting on ALL the facts. The context to what’s happening is clear: Palestinians are rising up because the status quo is unsustainable, and it is now reaching its breaking point.
Jewish Voice for Peace members are inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, equality, human rights, respect for international law, and a U.S. foreign policy based on these ideals.
Original article with JVP petition at AIC.
But with some notable exceptions, the Times has done a shamefully poor job of including the historical and political context readers need to understand the roots of the current uprising.
Over the last 2 weeks, over 2,000 Palestinians have been injured and over 41 killed, including at least 8 children. Eight Jewish Israelis have been killed, and one asylum seeker from Eritrea. Though it can be difficult to make sense of these difficult days, the message from Palestinians is clear: they want freedom, justice, and dignity.
Yet, the Times’ headlines consistently frame Israel as the victim, completely misrepresenting an uprising which is a response to decades of displacement, occupation and repression.
Unless we put pressure on the New York Times to accurately report what is happening, the story of Palestinians struggling for freedom will be obscured in the paper of record.
Over the past week I’ve asked a number of our Palestinian and Israeli colleagues what JVP can do during this difficult time and I’ve heard over and over again, “You need to change the media narrative, they’re not telling the whole story.”
And we can.
A year ago, the fair-minded NYT Public Editor Margaret Sullivan made a number of recommendations for more accurate coverage of Israel and Palestine.
If we can get Sullivan to insist that the NYT editors follow those recommendations — it could not only change NYT coverage, but other news outlets as well. And ultimately, U.S. policy.
Our analysis of over 30 New York Times stories over the last few weeks shows clearly that the New York Times still values Israeli lives more than Palestinian ones.
Even though the vast majority of those killed and injured are Palestinian, and Palestinians are facing extreme collective punishment, Israeli violence against Palestinians doesn’t make the news:
Over 50% of headlines depicted Palestinians as the instigators of violence, while no headlines depicted Israelis as aggressors.
No headlines referenced racist mobs that have roamed the streets of Jerusalem shouting “Death to Arabs.”
Palestinians were referred to as terrorists 41 times, while the term was used four times (including quotes from Palestinians) to refer to violent Israeli actions intended to terrorize Palestinians.
The terms “violent” or “violence” were used 36 times to refer to Palestinians, and 2 times to refer to Israelis.
The terms “attack(s)” or “attackers” were used 110 times to describe Palestinian actions and people, and 17 times to describe Israelis.
Here’s some of what the New York Times didn’t say:
The root causes of the current uprising are Israel's ongoing policies of occupation, displacement and oppression.
Over the last year, from the Negev to East Jerusalem, Israel has demolished an average of 1.7 homes each day and allowed increasing numbers of Jewish settlers to take over homes in Palestinian neighborhoods.
Settlers, the police, and racist mobs attacking Palestinians are a frequent occurrence in Palestinian neighborhoods.
Real journalism -- the kind we expect from the Times -- isn’t just reporting the views of whoever has the most power. Real journalism is giving context and background, and reporting on ALL the facts. The context to what’s happening is clear: Palestinians are rising up because the status quo is unsustainable, and it is now reaching its breaking point.
Jewish Voice for Peace members are inspired by Jewish tradition to work together for peace, social justice, equality, human rights, respect for international law, and a U.S. foreign policy based on these ideals.
Original article with JVP petition at AIC.
Hamas Movement warned of international and regional attempts to abort the Jerusalem Intifada, stressing that these attempts will certainly fail.
Spokesman for the Movement Fawzi Barhoum said, “Those suspicious parties will not succeed this time in saving their criminal ally.”
"You don’t have any other option but pushing the occupation to leave", he said addressing the parties that work on aborting the Intifada.
“By declaring Intifada, the Palestinian people decided to end the Israeli occupation and to restore freedom.”
"Whenever Israel is in a trouble, we see Ban Ki-Moon and John Kerry rushing to the region to save their ally. All this came in coincidence with declared and undeclared contacts and pressures on the PA to stop the ongoing Intifada", he underlined.
He charged that the current international intervention came to save Israel and not to stop the Palestinian bloodshed.
Spokesman for the Movement Fawzi Barhoum said, “Those suspicious parties will not succeed this time in saving their criminal ally.”
"You don’t have any other option but pushing the occupation to leave", he said addressing the parties that work on aborting the Intifada.
“By declaring Intifada, the Palestinian people decided to end the Israeli occupation and to restore freedom.”
"Whenever Israel is in a trouble, we see Ban Ki-Moon and John Kerry rushing to the region to save their ally. All this came in coincidence with declared and undeclared contacts and pressures on the PA to stop the ongoing Intifada", he underlined.
He charged that the current international intervention came to save Israel and not to stop the Palestinian bloodshed.
Hamas has called for a Friday of Anger across the occupied Palestinian territories in protest at Israel’s simmering terrorism against Palestinian civilians and Islamic places of worship.
Hamas called on the Palestinian masses across the occupied West Bank to join the sweeping rallies set to be staged Friday following noon prayers.
The group further pushed for sparking clashes with the Israeli occupation troops across all flashpoints.
Hamas stressed the need to lift the Palestinian flag all the way through the rallies in a move aimed at boosting national union and confirming Palestinians’ unity in the face of the Israeli terrorism.
The Movement spoke out against the arbitrary mass-abduction campaigns launched by the Israeli occupation forces, vowing that none of Israel’s oppressive policies shall curtail the tide of the ongoing anti-occupation Jerusalem Intifada.
Hamas further hailed the heroic anti-occupation attacks carried out by Palestinian protesters and activists in an attempt to restore their legitimate rights and retrieve their motherland.
Hamas called on the Palestinian masses across the occupied West Bank to join the sweeping rallies set to be staged Friday following noon prayers.
The group further pushed for sparking clashes with the Israeli occupation troops across all flashpoints.
Hamas stressed the need to lift the Palestinian flag all the way through the rallies in a move aimed at boosting national union and confirming Palestinians’ unity in the face of the Israeli terrorism.
The Movement spoke out against the arbitrary mass-abduction campaigns launched by the Israeli occupation forces, vowing that none of Israel’s oppressive policies shall curtail the tide of the ongoing anti-occupation Jerusalem Intifada.
Hamas further hailed the heroic anti-occupation attacks carried out by Palestinian protesters and activists in an attempt to restore their legitimate rights and retrieve their motherland.
The Jerusalem Intifada will continue until Palestinians restore their rights and lands, political bureau head of Hamas, Khaled Mishaal, told masses in South Africa Tuesday afternoon.
Addressing pro-Palestine rally in South Africa, Mishaal compared the Palestinian cause to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
"South Africa, you have achieved your freedom, the people of Palestine are aspiring to attain their freedom," he said.
"The uprising shall continue until the freedom is achieved and the land is for Palestine and its people," Mishaal told the audience.
"Do not expect the Palestinians to stop the uprising, do not expect that they would stop the resistance," he said.
Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal popped in South Africa on a three-day visit aimed at mobilizing support for the Palestinian cause.
President Jacob Zuma signed a letter of intent with Mishaal, expressing support for Palestinians amid growing Israeli terrorism across the occupied Palestinian territories.
"It is state-sponsored crime on the part of Israel against the Palestinian people," said Marius Fransman, a provincial ANC chairman, drawing cheers from the crowd.
"People close their eyes, but we are taking a stand. We have to reaffirm the message of the unity of the oppressed masses."
Hamas supporters lined the streets near the venue, waving the organization’s white-and-green flag.
Addressing pro-Palestine rally in South Africa, Mishaal compared the Palestinian cause to the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa.
"South Africa, you have achieved your freedom, the people of Palestine are aspiring to attain their freedom," he said.
"The uprising shall continue until the freedom is achieved and the land is for Palestine and its people," Mishaal told the audience.
"Do not expect the Palestinians to stop the uprising, do not expect that they would stop the resistance," he said.
Hamas leader Khaled Mishaal popped in South Africa on a three-day visit aimed at mobilizing support for the Palestinian cause.
President Jacob Zuma signed a letter of intent with Mishaal, expressing support for Palestinians amid growing Israeli terrorism across the occupied Palestinian territories.
"It is state-sponsored crime on the part of Israel against the Palestinian people," said Marius Fransman, a provincial ANC chairman, drawing cheers from the crowd.
"People close their eyes, but we are taking a stand. We have to reaffirm the message of the unity of the oppressed masses."
Hamas supporters lined the streets near the venue, waving the organization’s white-and-green flag.
Jordanian official sources revealed that King Abdullah of Jordan refused to receive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Amman because of the failure of the latter to abide by his pledges concerning the Aqsa Mosque.
A few days ago, Hebrew sources leaked news on Netanyahu’s approval to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman in the presence of King Abdullah of Jordan and the American Secretary of State John Kerry.
The sources said that King Abdullah refused to receive Netanyahu because he did not abide by his promises in the last-minute summit hosted by King Abdullah in November, 2014 and attended by Netanyahu and Kerry while boycotted by Abbas.
The summit stressed on maintaining the current situation in the holy places in east Jerusalem and respecting the Jordanian role in maintaining and catering for the sacred sites in Jerusalem which has been violated by the Netanyahu government.
The Jordanian government underlined that it will confront any attempt to change the current situation at the Aqsa Mosque whether by temporal or spatial division of the holy site.
A few days ago, Hebrew sources leaked news on Netanyahu’s approval to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Amman in the presence of King Abdullah of Jordan and the American Secretary of State John Kerry.
The sources said that King Abdullah refused to receive Netanyahu because he did not abide by his promises in the last-minute summit hosted by King Abdullah in November, 2014 and attended by Netanyahu and Kerry while boycotted by Abbas.
The summit stressed on maintaining the current situation in the holy places in east Jerusalem and respecting the Jordanian role in maintaining and catering for the sacred sites in Jerusalem which has been violated by the Netanyahu government.
The Jordanian government underlined that it will confront any attempt to change the current situation at the Aqsa Mosque whether by temporal or spatial division of the holy site.