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Tag: Zionism

  • Netanyahu Tosses Hamas Policy Paper On Israel Into Waste Bin

    Netanyahu Tosses Hamas Policy Paper On Israel Into Waste Bin

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday symbolically tossed into a bin a Hamas policy paper published last week that set out an apparent softening of the Palestinian Islamist group’s stance toward Israel.

    In a document issued last Monday, Hamas said it was dropping its longstanding call for Israel’s destruction, but said it still rejected the Jewish state’s right to exist and continued to back “armed struggle” against it.

    The Israeli government has said the document aimed to deceive the world that Hamas was becoming more moderate.

    Netanyahu, in a 97-second video clip aired on social media on Sunday, said that news outlets had been taken in by “fake news”. Sitting behind his desk with tense music playing in the background, he said that in its “hateful document”, Hamas “lies to the world”. He then pulled up a waste paper bin, crumpled the document into a ball and tossed it away.

    “The new Hamas document says that Israel has no right to exist, it says every inch of our land belongs to the Palestinians, it says there is no acceptable solution other than to remove Israel… they want to use their state to destroy our state,” Netanyahu said.

    Founded in 1987 as an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Egyptian Islamist movement, Hamas has fought three wars with Israel since 2007 and has carried out hundreds of armed attacks in Israel and in Israeli-occupied territories.

    Many Western countries classify Hamas as a terrorist group over its failure to renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist and accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements.

    Outgoing Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said Hamas’s fight was not against Judaism as a religion but against what he called “aggressor Zionists”. Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s leader in the Gaza Strip, was named on Saturday to succeed Meshaal.

    Netanyahu concluded his clip by saying that “Hamas murders women and children, it’s launched tens of thousands of missiles at our homes, it brainwashes Palestinian kids in suicide kindergarten camps,” before binning the document.

     

    Source: www.reuters.com

  • Petition: Protest Against Israeli Apartheid

    Petition: Protest Against Israeli Apartheid

    Under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, which prohibits countries from moving population into territories occupied in a war, Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories are considered illegal by the international community. The United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice and the High Contracting Parties to the Convention have all affirmed that the Fourth Geneva Convention does apply.

    Israel maintains that they are consistent with international law because it does not agree that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the territories occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War.

    Legal or Illegal, the ones who suffer the most are the Palestinians Arabs themselves. They live under conditions comparable to non-white people under an apartheid regime:

    ·       No right of free speech, assembly or movement

    ·       Arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial

    ·       Torture

    ·       House searches without warrant

    ·       Assassination, extra-judicial murder

    ·       No right to vote for the Israeli government (even though it controls their lives)

    ·       Israel controls all Palestinian borders, all imports and exports, and all movement between towns and cities.

    ·       The Gaza Strip, still surrounded, besieged and controlled by Israel, has been sealed off and effectively turned into the world’s largest open-air prison.

    With the recent Israel’s parliamentary approval of a controversial bill to retroactively “legalise” illegal Jewish outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land, things have gotten worse off for Palestinians.

    The so-called regulation bill paves the way for Israel to recognise thousands of illegally built Jewish settler homes constructed on privately owned Palestinian land in what opponents have dubbed a “theft” and “land grab”.

    The law retroactively legalises the construction, with the original landowners to be compensated either with money or alternative land – even if they do not agree to give up their property.

    We believe in justice and fairness for everyone, Palestinians,  Arabs, Muslims, Christians and Jews alike. If injustice is perpetuated in the lands, there will never be peace.

    We protest the injustice faced by the Palestinians who find day to day life difficult. Palestinian face continued severe poverty and chronic food insecurity. Due to restrictions, the economic situation of the Palestinians is dire.

    We demand that the Israeli government:

    ·       Recognise right of free speech, assembly and movement for Palestinians

    ·       Stop arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial for Palestinians

    ·       Halt house searches without warrants in the occupied territories

    ·       Stop assassination and extra-judicial murder of Palestinians

    ·       Give Palestinians the right to vote for the Israeli government

    ·       Recognise the rights of Palestinians and their legal status

    There will be no peace if people are not given their intrinsic rights to a normal life. Punitive and unilateral action by the Israeli Government has not and will not solve the issue, it will only exacerbate the situation for all parties involved.

    Every human deserves the basic right to survive. Yes, war is destructive, bombs can be blind, but the systematic denial of the right to survive on unarmed civilians, denial of aid to the populace in desperate need is unjustified.

    Support this petition, to show your support for Palestinians, to show your support for humanity. We sign this petition to show our solidarity against Israeli Apartheid, so that this humanitarian disaster and festering wound in the middle east shall heal and peace shall reign again.

    For more information, click here.

     

    This petition will be delivered to:

     

    Source: www.change.org

  • Benjamin Netanyahu ‘Told New Zealand Backing UN Vote Would Be Declaration Of War’

    Benjamin Netanyahu ‘Told New Zealand Backing UN Vote Would Be Declaration Of War’

    Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told New Zealand’s foreign minister that support for a UN resolution condemning Israeli settlement-building in the occupied territories would be viewed as a “declaration of war”.

    According to reports in Israeli media, the Israeli PM called Murray McCully, the foreign minister of New Zealand, before Friday’s resolution, which was co-sponsored by Wellington. Netanyahu told him: “This is a scandalous decision. I’m asking that you not support it and not promote it.

    “If you continue to promote this resolution, from our point of view it will be a declaration of war. It will rupture the relations and there will be consequences. We’ll recall our ambassador [from New Zealand] to Jerusalem.”

    McCully, however, refused to back down, telling Netanyahu: “This resolution conforms to our policy and we will move it forward.”

    A western diplomat confirmed that the call took place and described the conversation as “harsh”.

    The details of the call – disclosed in Haaretz – suggest a mounting sense of panic on the part of Netanyahu in the run-up to the UN security council resolution that passed on Friday demanding an end to settlement building.

    As well as the Netanyahu call, a senior official in Israel’s foreign ministry called New Zealand’s ambassador to Israel, Jonathan Curr, and warned that if the resolution came to a vote, Israel might close its embassy in Wellington in protest.

    Israel responded furiously to the vote, threatening diplomatic reprisals against the countries that voted in favour. Diplomatic ties with New Zealand were temporarily severed and ambassador Itzhak Gerberg was recalled.

    But in a sign that the international pressure may be being felt by the Netanyahu administration, scheduled plans to consider for approval 600 new settlement houses in occupied east Jerusalem were abruptly removed from the agenda of the city’s municipality on Wednesday.

    Netanyahu’s language and behaviour – which has resulted in ambassadors being reprimanded and consultations with foreign leaders, including the UK’s Theresa May, cancelled – has raised eyebrows among foreign diplomats, who point out that the UN resolution does no more than confirm the longstanding view of the international community on Jewish settlements.

    Later on Wednesday the US secretary of state, John Kerry, will make a speech outlining the parameters for how the Obama administration sees a settlement of the Middle East peace process.

    Kerry’s speech, less than a month before Barack Obama leaves office, is expected to be the current administration’s last word on a decades-old dispute that Kerry had hoped to resolve during his four years as America’s top diplomat.

    It could also be seen in Israel as another parting shot at Netanyahu, who has had an acrimonious relationship with Obama since they both took office in 2009. Israel’s public security minister, Gilad Erdan, told Israel Army Radio that the planned speech was a “pathetic move” and “anti-democratic”.

    The US on Friday broke with a longstanding approach of diplomatically shielding Israel and abstained on a United Nations security council resolution that passed with 14 countries in favour and none against.

    An Egyptian paper supportive of the country’s president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, reported what it said was a leaked memo allegedly confirming Israel’s allegations that the Obama administration and Palestinian officials had coordinated positions over the wording of the resolution to allow the US to abstain in the vote. The state department denied the report.

     

    Source: www.theguardian.com

  • Israel Delays Votes On Mosques, Palestinian Homes

    Israel Delays Votes On Mosques, Palestinian Homes

    JERUSALEM: Israel on Wednesday (Nov 30) delayed parliamentary votes on controversial bills that would limit the volume of calls to prayer at mosques and legalise several thousand Jewish settler homes in the West Bank.

    The votes were put off until next week following a decision by government ministers, a parliament spokesman told AFP.

    Deputies were to take a preliminary vote on a bill to prevent the use of loudspeakers for late night and early morning calls to prayer at mosques, a proposal that has angered Muslims.

    A first reading of a bill to legalise around 4,000 settler homes in the occupied West Bank was also planned, but both were delayed.

    The noise bill was put off until Dec 7, while the settlement bill was to come up on Monday.

    Israeli media reported that the votes were put off because a majority could not be assured. Discussions were continuing on both measures.

    The noise bill would prohibit the use of loudspeakers between 11pm and 7am. It would officially apply to all religions, but it is widely seen as targeting calls to prayer at mosques.

    The bill’s backers say it is needed because the loudspeakers are a nuisance and can also be used to broadcast inciting messages.

    Government watchdog groups say the measure is an unnecessary provocation that threatens freedom of religion. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin is among those against the bill.

    The settlement bill has tested Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, widely seen as the most right-wing in the country’s history.

    Netanyahu does not want the bill to pass, warning that it could violate international law and result in repercussions at the International Criminal Court.

    Countries including the United States have also strongly criticised the bill and Netanyahu is concerned over an international backlash.

    But he is also faced with holding together his coalition and not being seen as acting against the powerful settler movement.

    DEFYING NETANYAHU

    The international community considers all Israeli settlements in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem and the West Bank to be illegal, whether they are authorised by the government or not.

    The Israeli government differentiates between those it has approved and those it has not.

    The settlement bill has been pushed by hardline members of Netanyahu’s coalition, led by Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who defied his pleas not to move forward.

    The country’s attorney general says the legislation will never hold up in court.

    But those who support it say the move is urgently needed to protect a Jewish outpost in the occupied West Bank called Amona.

    The outpost, where some 40 families live, is under a high court order to be demolished by Dec 25 because it was built on private Palestinian land.

    The bill, however, goes far beyond legalising Amona and would allow an estimated 4,000 Jewish homes in the West Bank to be legalised, according to settlement watchdog Peace Now.

    Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, whose centre-right Kulanu party holds 10 seats, has been key and has said he will not support a measure that “harms” the country’s high court.

    The statement was a reference to Amona and the high court ruling against it – signalling he would oppose the bill if the outpost is not removed from it.

    There has been speculation that the bill could even cause the government to collapse – though a number of analysts caution that a compromise seems more likely for now.

    Peace Now called the legislation “a grand land robbery, which will lead not only to the expropriation of 8,000 dunams (nearly 2,000 acres, 800 hectares) of private Palestinian lands but might also rob Israelis and Palestinians of the possibility of arriving at a two state solution”.

     

    Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

  • Ang Swee Chai: The Christian In Me Brought Me Closer To Palestine

    Ang Swee Chai: The Christian In Me Brought Me Closer To Palestine

    KUALA LUMPUR: Until sometime in 1982, a Malaysian woman living in exile in London with her Singaporean husband was all but oblivious to the Palestinian plight.

    Penang-born Dr Ang Swee Chai, like many non-Muslims, could not relate to the suffering of the Palestinians owing to the highly charged religious sentiments of their supporters. She grew up supporting Israel.

    “My church celebrated when Israel won the Six Day War,” Ang told FMT, referring to the 1967 war that Israel won against Arab forces.

    The petite orthopaedic surgeon was in Kuala Lumpur to attend the launching of a new edition of her memoir of the events of September 1982 in Lebanon.

    From Beirut to Jerusalem is her eyewitness account as a young volunteer during the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in Lebanon. The killings, blamed on a pro-Israeli Lebanese Christian army, was condemned as an act of genocide by the United Nations General Assembly in December that year.

    Ang began to question her beliefs after watching news reports on British television of Israelis flushing out the Palestine Liberation Organisation from Lebanon, sparing neither civilians nor hospitals.

    “The Christian in me knew this was wrong,” she said. “God’s commandment to us is to love, not to kill.”

    Ang is now 67. Five years ago, she lost her husband, Francis Khoo, a devout Catholic whom she married in 1977 and whose political activism in Singapore made him a target of the Internal Security Act.

    Following their marriage, Ang was also sought by Singapore authorities, who hoped to use her to lure back her husband who by then had sought refuge in the United Kingdom.

    But Ang managed to reunite with him. For the next three decades, both lived in exile in London.

    To Lebanon

    In 1982, moved by the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East, Ang responded to appeals for international aid. She left for Beirut, thinking she would volunteer for only a few weeks.

    But the extent of the death and destruction she saw shocked her. She ended up in a refugee camp and soon learnt first-hand the plight of the Palestinians and how they had been driven from their homes by the Israeli army.

    “They have a country, and homes they cannot go back to. They are not terrorists. They are kind, loving and generous people,” she said of the Palestinians, with whom she maintains close ties until today.

    Her life changed when, three weeks into her volunteer work, the Sabra and Shatillah massacre took place.

    “Every dead body was found with a Palestinian refugee card,” she said. “That’s when it hit me that they were the victims of terror.

    “I realised that my church got it wrong, the press got it wrong and that justice had not been done and that the truth was not being told.

    “Some 3,000 people were killed in three days. I remember standing over dead bodies. I asked for God’s forgiveness for being prejudiced and blind, and for taking sides without understanding the side of the victims.”

    It was at this point, she said, that she sought repentance and vowed to offer herself to helping Palestinians for the rest of her life.

    When the British government wanted to repatriate British aid workers, she refused to go back.

    Ang founded Medical Aid for Palestinians with a committed group of friends. In 1987 she was awarded Palestine’s highest civilian award, the Star of Palestine, for her service to the people of Palestine.

    For all the inhumanity she witnessed, Ang said the indomitable spirit of the Palestinians was what gave her hope.

    “Bombs cannot destroy their spirit,” she said. “When they lose their homes, they build and rebuild time and again.

    “Their children see so much – death, mass graves, destruction. Yet, they are unafraid. This gives me hope to continue serving the people of Palestine.”

    —
    Article was first published in Free Malaysia Today. Republished with permission.

     

    Source: http://theindependent.sg