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Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Israel. Show all posts
Stanley Cohen ✏ Once again, the mindless Zionist cheer was in full-on truth pogrom this week over the purchased news that citizens of Israel, one of the most despotic repressive and hate-driven states in the world, would no longer be subject to a vetting process designed, in theory, to safeguard the United States and its residents from visitors from other lands who pose a threat not just to “national security” but the safety of those who call the US home.


Let me be clear, I have long opposed the United States visa program as an entirely ambiguous and discretionary process fueled by enormous bureaucratic abuse which uses security as but a palpable cheap talisman when in reality its unrestricted ambiguity is intended to minimize the domestic impact of the international diversity of thought, politics, race, faith and identity. All too often Black, brown, indigenous and Muslim passport holders have been denied admission to the US long before arriving at its shores when their applications for visas have been denied by US consulates and embassies in their native lands following interrogations by junior State Department staff. This is particularly true for the stateless and other refugees fleeing oppression at the hands of their own governments (often US proxies) or, in the case of Palestinians, by an occupier which seeks to eradicate them in their entirety and which, once again, has been amply rewarded for it.

Photograph Source: ctj71081 – CC BY 2.0

Zionists galore preached falsely yesterday there is little difference between a rote minute-long passport visa waiver admission onto an airplane or upon arrival at a US port of entry and a visa application process that for many can and does run into numerous visits and months of delay – and for most ultimate denial — at a local US government building … an abusive process often driven by sexual harassment and rude pejorative lecture.

In short, the beneficiary of a US visa waiver program is assumed to be of good stock, safe politics and proper faith. Of course, for almost all such political payees they pass the skin tone test with fleeting glance alone. How much easier and honest it would be for Homeland Security officers at checkpoints to simply say welcome to you white, Christian, and now Jew.

Yes, waiver benefactors must, along with dozens of others so privileged, spend a few minutes in a line being asked the standard questions by security before boarding a flight such as… are you carrying explosives, or kilos of cocaine, or severed body parts? To be repeated upon arrival at a US port of entry along with the additional query of why have you come here and where will you be staying? Yes… that’s it. You know . . . 


Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Against this tiresome time-consuming painful process (ha-ha), stands the visa chase typically built of multiple visits to a secure US military-like compound where applicants are not just finger-printed, but often subject to hours of highly intrusive personal interrogations which include targeted questions about associations and family, political beliefs and activities, gender identity, and “criminal” history. Interviews, often canceled at the last minute, and not to be rescheduled for weeks or longer, before a visa is, if at all, granted there are security checks drawn typically not just from unreliable databases filled with baseless innuendo, rumors and uncorroborated allegations, but compelling dispositive Google searches. And why not?

After all, unlike the waiver recipients who– absent an INTERPOL Red Notice popping up on a passport—are admitted with no additional screening or questioning of consequence, visa applicants must successfully navigate an entirely arbitrary intel/security system that can deny admission to one simply seeking to visit family or to go on holiday for literally of dozens of specious and irrelevant reasons.

Of course, unlike waver beneficiaries, visa admissions are routinely denied even for minor, decades-old criminal convictions that say absolutely nothing about any current threat level of the traveler. To be sure, it is not all that unusual for those visa holders who have spent thousands of dollars and weeks of travel to arrive at a US port of entry to be greeted by excited family members only to be turned back. They can be refused entry without any stated reason as, unlike a waiver recipient, a visa does not guarantee entry into the United States. It simply allows a foreign citizen to travel to a port-of-entry which upon arrival can be denied by the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection or a rookie immigration inspector, based on little more than a hunch … or is that a twitch.

Against that light, visas will not be issued by a US consulate or Embassy officer where any alien who, while serving as a foreign government official, was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom or …. to violate any law of the United States relating to espionage or to violate or evade any law prohibiting the export from the United States of goods, technology, or sensitive information… or who stands in opposition to the policies of the United States Government.

And then there is the bar to admission for anyone who has engaged in or incited “terrorist” activity or has, under circumstances indicating an intention to cause death or serious bodily harm, incited terrorist activity or who belongs to a ‘terrorist’ organization or a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.” In addition, “an alien whose entry or proposed activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is inadmissible.”

So, too, those who have “ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in genocide … is inadmissible as are those who have committed, ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the commission of any act of torture … or under color of law of any foreign nation, any extrajudicial killing. Likewise, any immigrant who is or has been a member of … any other totalitarian party (or subdivision or affiliate thereof), domestic or foreign, is inadmissible.”

Can anyone say Zionist “settler?”

How about Israeli soldier?

How about Shin Bet?

How about Mossad?

How about the Knesset?

Kahanist?

Welcome home to Brooklyn …Don’t forget to collect your El Al frequent flyer miles.

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
You can no longer follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Welcome To The US, Land of Unvetted Occupiers

Anthony McIntyre ✒ looks at sexual abuse and institutional cover up within the Jewish religious world.

Sex abuse offences in ultra-Orthodox Israeli cities are reported to have 
spiked in the past decade. The men of G-d have been on the rape and child molestation trail.  Haaretz reported that 'There Isn't One Boy Who Wasn't Sexually Abused' in Jerusalem’s Extreme Haredi Neighborhoods." 

Chaim Walder is a well know public figure both within Israel and inside the Orthodox religious faith. He is a rabbi and "children's book author, newspaper columnist and rock star across all strands of Orthodoxy." 

He also stands accused of paedophilia and the sexual abuse of numerous women in a case that has rocked Israeli society, and which saw him lose his weekly column in Yated Ne'eman, "the most ideologically rigid and doctrinaire newspaper in Israel" where he was its most celebrated writer. The rabbinate decided it was time for him to walk the plank. Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, the chief rabbi of Tzfat and a member of the Chief Rabbinate council said:

We did not draw a conclusion solely on the basis of what was written in the newspaper. We received very serious testimonies from the men and women who were harmed ... we also saw court rulings that referred to Chaim Walder's very terrible involvement in families. Let's put it bluntly - some families broke up because he did forbidden things with the woman and destroyed the family. These are things that came before a court and were clarified ... Things are very clear .. It's not based on an article in the Haaretz newspaper. It's based on a lot of testimonies, documents, transcripts, court records. Pictures, recordings. Unequivocal things.

Abroad,  Eichlers Judaica, a major Haredi bookseller in Brooklyn, undertook to no longer stock or sell works by the holder of the Prime Minister's Child Protection Award, 2003. Lehmanns in Gateshead did likewise. 

Rumours about Walder's paedophiliac predilections had been rife for years. He had been reported to Israeli police a decade ago but the allegations not pursued. It took the Haaretz investigation to kickstart a serious response from significant players and institutions in Israeli society who were jolted into sitting up and listening. One woman described in considerable detail to Haaretz how Walder repeatedly raped her while she was a child. Another victim was told by him how he had “a lot of credit with God” while he abused her.

Orthodox Jewish crimes against children while shocking to some are not news. Earlier this year Haaretz also exposed a  prominent orthodox serial abuser, Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, another high profile luminary in the Jewish Orthodox world. Elsewhere he was described as "the Haredi Jeffrey Esptein." The Orthodox equivalent of Islamic religious police, the Haredi modesty patrols whose job it was "to apparently enforce a code of modesty among the Haredi public through violence and intimidation" seemed to find nothing immodest about this thug's behaviour. 

In 2011 a Haredi Rabbi in Jerusalem Elior Chen:

was convicted of abusing and ordering the abuse of eight children, which included beatings with clubs and hammers, kicks to the head, severe shaking, burning, being handcuffed and stuffed in a suitcase, food and sleep deprivation. 


In 2013 A religious counselor in New York City’s ultra-orthodox Jewish community was slapped with 103 years jail time. He had abused a child who had approached him to discuss her faith.

The difficulty for people seeking to highlight and confront the rapacious rabbis and their ilk has been underscored by Sam Kellner whose experience at the hands of the Hasidic community was meant to deter victims and their families from coming forward. "Institutions like Agudath Israel of America still require as their stated policy that a rabbi be consulted before abuse is reported to secular authorities." A number of years ago in London it was reported that the leader of Britain’s Haredi community had "been caught on video advising an alleged victim of sexual abuse not to report the claim to police.”

Abuse victims and their families have been expelled from religious schools and synagogues, shunned by fellow ultra-Orthodox Jews and targeted for harassment intended to destroy their businesses. Some victims’ families have been offered money, ostensibly to help pay for therapy for the victims, but also to stop pursuing charges, victims and victims’ advocates said.

Cover up and blame the victim. As with the Catholic men of God, the Jewish men of G-d delight in what for them are the sordid pleasures that flow from being part of a child rape cartel operating on a global basis. With the fall of Walder, the Infallible Rabbis are being hauled to account.

⏩ Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Monstrous Men of G-d

US attorney Stanley Cohen speaking to Richard Medhurst about the African Union granting Israel Observer Status.

Stanley Cohen's writings have previously featured on TPQ.




Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
Follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Why Did the African Union Grant Israel Observer Status? ➖ Interview with Stanley Cohen

Stanley Cohen ✒ is disdainful of accommodationist strategies of some African states towards Israel.


 “I want people to remember me as someone whose life has been helpful to humanity.”

Though he tenaciously believed in African unity, the African liberation struggle and its social and economic freedom, with these words legendary Pan-Africanist, Thomas Sankara spoke of a world community, one that transcended the narrow confines of birth and gender, of class and color, of faith and futility. Sankara urged “nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future . . . a new society,” one built of freedom and equality. Were this iconic African leader alive today he surely would be stunned by the warm embrace by some in the African continent of a supremacist state that promotes all that Sankara soundly rejected and for which he gladly gave his life as sacrifice to principle and purpose.

Fashions come and go, cycling through the years—the cut of one’s suit narrows or widens; the hemline on a dress rises and falls, then rises again, to suit the changing tastes of the day. Yet every old fashion eventually comes around again. Just so, political accommodation with morally bankrupt regimes—like wide lapels or padded shoulders—never really goes away: rather, every few years we are treated to the same old rhetorical rags, pulled from the back of the closet, and paraded down the catwalk of international relations, generally for the benefit of unseen vested interests, all in the name of “pragmatism” and “reasonableness.”

Accommodation gets dressed up under many names, most of them harkening to a noble purpose: “engagement,” we are told, is constructive and seeks common ground; “compromise” allows that opposing interests can still find talking points, break bread together and sit at the same table, each party giving something to the other; “normalizing” relations simply admits the status quo and moves forward from the regrettable past. The basic idea is a simple one—by talking to the recalcitrant party, you may influence its behavior, and achieve the moral and political change you want, furthering justice from engagement.

Yet for the global movement in support of Palestine—and those who honor that movement—there can be no common ground with Israel: that nation’s existence is predicated on the suppression of Palestinian life, culture, rights, property, freedom and sovereignty, and always has been. As an attorney, I am currently involved in litigation before the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights in which we seek to revoke Israel’s observer status at the African Union on the grounds that it is an outlaw nation, one that has never accepted international law and has committed grave and on-going human rights abuses, including war crimes. Be it the occupation and illegal annexation of Palestinian lands, its “nation-state” laws which exalt Judaism over of all other faiths, or its apartheid system that denies millions of Palestinians their fundamental rights to equality, freedom and self-determination, Israel has forfeited any normalizing status among the world community. 

I argue now and always that Israel is a white supremacist project—a nation founded by and for white Europeans, by colonizing, subjugating, jailing dispossessing and murdering people of color—and that Africans especially must stand fast, stalwart in blocking Israel’s international “rehabilitation,” so long as it keeps Palestine under its boot, bombing its inhabitants, stealing their land, and maintaining a single political entity in which two peoples are by law governed unequally.

Israel’s most fervent collective hope is to put the past so utterly behind it that all the nations of the world forget what it has done in the name of its own national aspirations, and welcomes Israel as a brother nation, a sister country, unto the fold of nations. It pursues this agenda—sending its ministers to African capitals, spending money on diplomatic endeavors, spreading cash around African governments—even as it continues to subjugate the Palestinian people taking their land parcel by parcel, building apartheid in name and deed, and jailing its activists by the thousands. Israel looks upon the African continent and sees economic opportunity —she would like to see an Israeli rifle in the hands of every African soldier, Israeli armored vehicles in every army from the Sahel to the east African shores; she would like to cash in on the extraction-industrial-complex, in the race to exploit Africa’s riches and natural resources; and most of all, Israel wants to present itself to the world as a legitimate and democratic partner . . . and open for business.

Yet to engage the beast is to risk losing your human qualities, and thereby to accommodate bestial morality. We think of those statesmen who failed to understand this, and they don’t come out very well in the eyes of history: Montezuma the Aztec, making his fateful alliance with Cortes and the murderous Spaniards, only to lose his life and his people to colonial invasion; or the French revolutionaries of the Directoire who turned to Napoleon to restore order amid the chaos of 1799, and caved in to his demands for power, thus ending the Republican experiment; or Neville Chamberlain, returning in 1938 from meeting Herr Hitler, waving his paper agreement with the Nazi regime, and declaring that he had guaranteed “peace for our time.” These concessions of principle to political convenience echo down the ages as glaring symbols of the perils of compromise with those who do not bargain in good faith; rogue actors who see equality and justice as but impediments to their own master plan.

Now is not the time to make a devil’s bargain with an outlaw nation intent on increasing its power. “Normalizing” international relations with an apartheid regime like Israel is giving in to despotism—endorsing Israel’s brutal occupation, now essentially in its seventy-fourth year; validating its theft of land; approving its jailing and killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians since 1967; and shoring up its international reputation even as the world would forget about the Palestinians.

As African nations accede to Israel’s influence on the continent, we can predict what will happen: at the United Nations, Israel will count on “friendly” African states to remain silent, or vote against any General Assembly resolution which stands up for Palestinians. The next time violence flares up in Gaza—for surely there will be a next time —Israel will be even further emboldened to drop cluster bombs and incendiary munitions on apartment blocks, on schools and hospitals, secure in the knowledge that a dozen or more African states will stand by her in word, lending moral support to rank barbarism. When Israel sends warplanes against its neighbors in Syria or Lebanon or Iraq, friendly African states, perhaps on the receiving end of Israeli largesse, or Israeli military equipment, or Israeli billionaire gold- and diamond-mining deals will turn a blind eye to such aggression.

The Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement explicitly seeks to isolate a regime which has never followed international law, and won’t be held to account for it in any venue. It is a strategy that works, as any South African can tell you. Palestinians—West Bank or Gaza residents alike—live as captives under a political system in which they have no representation, can be treated as inferior, second-class non-entities, and have only one option: leave Palestine and further Zionism’s original project of population transfer and dispossession or die. It is up to those of us, people of conscience, to keep Israel from the table of legitimacy so long as she keeps Palestinians from their own land, their own national aspirations, and their own destiny as a people. It is a non-violent, internationalist strategy to which all peoples of conscience can and must lend their support. While there are those who preach the gospel of “engagement” regarding Israel, saying this is how to influence Israel’s behavior, they make a serious error in not understanding the explicit chronicle of Zionism, which has never in its history compromised with the original agenda of removing the Palestinians from their land, and continues that calculated, violent project today. “Engagement” is a fashion we have seen before, many times—Israel is all too happy to don again the bright, reasonable clothing of dialogue and negotiation. All the while it continues to treat Palestinians under its power as serfs, economic slaves and inconvenient bodies in the way of “Greater Israel”—all the land, emptied of Palestinians, from the Jordan Valley to the sea.

The temptation by African accommodationists here is to view Israel’s participation in pan-African diplomatic circles as “symbolic,” and simply a matter of formal politesse. It signifies nothing ideological, apologists would have us believe, and simply concedes the real pragmatic interests—commercial, market-based reality. Yet behind every sign is substance: if Israel’s accession to full diplomatic status at the African Union is a symbol of “realpolitik,” and what the influence game can achieve, then it is the duty of every African to stand up and decry the facts behind this formal surface: Israeli diplomacy rests upon a damning, nationalist foundation of land theft, jail cells, colonialism and white supremacy. This is the diversion Israel plays, all the while constructing the walls, the roads, the laws and the prisons of its permanent apartheid system, a supremacist construct not at all unfamiliar to the continent and history of Africa.

Long ago Patrice Lumumba wrote “the day will come when history will speak . . . Africa will write its own history . . . it will be a history of glory and dignity.” Such a manifest and compelling crossroad presents itself here and now. African states must not—cannot—reward Israel for its palpable disregard of humanity, and human rights and dignity. The African Union must use its collective political will and power to deny Israel the privilege of normalized relations before it.

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
Follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Israel Has Not Earned An African Welcome

Stanley L Cohen ✒ “We stand for justice, truth and the value of a single human being.” With these simple but powerfully inspiring words, a life-time ago, the world held-out hope that at long last international law and accountability would progress from abstract, esoteric principle to momentous binding application. 


The Nuremberg Tribunals spoke directly to the pain and suffering of tens of millions of civilians swept up into the geo-political chambers of supremacist hate and violence, victimized by an unprecedented rampage of the relative few who committed a calculated, gruesome violation of human rights. Yet, before the ink had even dried on exalted ideals and commanding words, Europe was at it, once again, with the forcible implant of a generation of surviving victims into age-old Palestine, indifferent to how many new victims were crushed by its latest colonial project, which continues brazen, unchecked and deadly all these decades later.

Photograph Source: Chris Yunker – CC BY 2.0

What is there about our shared journey that permits us, with ease, to consciously blind ourselves to the grief of others because it aches too much to see the obvious? That upends echoes of pain as screams come in unbearable waves that leave no doubt of its horrible source of crimes, in progress, of broken families and dreams never to be dreamt? What finds escape in crafted denial that accepts no combat from waves of reality… for to handle truth is, seemingly, well beyond our collective capacity? It is the story of our day. Star of David … land of myth.

We live in times where the yardstick of reality is a measure beyond the conscious, willing reach of many, while to others but a passing, indifferent glance too numbed by the spin of daily life to stop and feel the pain and suffer of those regarded as little more than a momentary snapshot of another distant world. It is within this discount that the Star of David has found comfort, indeed empowerment as it has upended a value system held out long-ago to be the universal pathway of international justice for all.

For generations, the world has been a largely silent witness to an unbridled Western enterprise erasing millions of Palestinians from their unbroken ancestral homeland in the name of a diabolical resettlement project built of tenants with enduring leaseholds elsewhere dating back for as long as the West has been settled. Yes, the Old Testament (and other historical religious narratives) as so much providential design, speaks of the Jewish people and the Holy Land as if not just inexorably intertwined, but apparently, it is claimed to the exclusion of all others. However, let us not forget like beauty resting in the eye of the proverbial holder, elsewhere in sacred text we learn the universe is just over 6000 years old; Joshua stopped the sun moving across the sky; Lot, the only righteous man in Sodom offered up his virgin daughters to be gang-raped by a mob; a human witnessed a conversation between God and Satan; that two of every animal fit on a boat for forty days while a flood destroyed the world; that humankind was formed of clay; that the Jewish God, YHYH, fought a monster named either Leviathan, or Rahab or Sir Sea; that the serpent in Eden talked to Eve; that David’s harp was played at night by the wind; and that Samson fell 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Star of David … land of myth.

This is not to say that Jews, like Muslims, Christians and non-believers alike, have no claim to live in the Holy Land, in peace, with equality and justice side by side … but simply to provide context to the land-grab preach of messianic Zionists willing and enabled to commit the most heinous of crimes because they speak to their God and, having heard back, reason they have received an age-old green light to abuse, to steal, to cripple, to murder in the name of their fanciful biblical “right of return.” If this is to be the divine decree of YHYH, I for one want no part of any such deadly theocratic temple of heresy. But what of others… those that keep eyes closed and heart icy cold, stripped of principle and voice, soundless while the palpable unspeakable orgy of history repeats itself day in and out, targeting Palestinians, in particular its very young and very frail. Age-old communities which seek nothing but the right to be left alone, with family and friends, to tend to their fields, to pursue their education, free to journey where they wish, with whom they want, to chase their dreams and hopes, not simply with the crafted, deflective talisman of “dignity and respect,” but in a state of their choice with values and aspirations of their choosing. Star of David … land of myth.

Tragically, it is far too easy to compartmentalize our world into victimizer and victim, giver and taker. It is define clearly road-marked, or should I say pockmarked, by a seeming endless trail of pillage and pain. Nowhere is that more flagrant than in the occupied Territories… nowhere more predictable and purposeless than it is in the killing fields of Gaza. I have written about Gaza for years. There is little I can say, now, about it that has not been said by me and countless others time and time again. It is a vision of extreme cruelty and criminality long memorialized by all the world to read of and see, if only one’s thirst for knowledge takes them beyond the empty, craven pretext of those who would target and murder civilians, leaving behind the constant wail of mourn and a trail of tattered essential infrastructure and broken hearts. Star of David … land of myth.

But what of Israel itself, the “Nation-State” that exalts the democratic ideal but holds near and dear a dark, supremacist theology that promotes Judaism and Jews to the exclusion of all others and divergent faiths? Twenty percent of Israel proper (if ever a misnomer) is, in the words of fundamental ethnic cleanse, “48” Arabs, not Palestinian, as if refusing to flee the grand Zionist pogrom of 1948, re-invented by political fiat an age-old culture and tradition to fit the new European imposed and packaged narrative. It continues unabated and unabashed today with largely European Ashkenazi’s promoting a political reality defied by unmistakable, glaring human truth. No … “48” Palestinians are not equal in any way of consequence at any time of meaning when weighed against the Jewish state and its Zionist agenda … one that reduces all others to but convenient ritualistic stage props for the dutiful … those unable, or willing to discern the disguise of rhetorical makeup which covers inequity at its worst. Star of David … land of myth.

Where is the Israel of today? In 2018, its parliament, the Knesset, passed a new foundational act referred to as the Nation State law that canonized Jewish supremacy over all of its Palestinian citizens. In unambiguous, seismic- like, terms the law removed any and all pretense about the nature of Israel, identifying the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people alone. The law, which promotes no allegiance to democratic norms or guarantees of equality, fails to mention, let alone outlaw, discrimination on the basis of race, nationality or ethnicity. Designating Hebrew as the sole official language of Israel, it stripped Arabic of its previous de jure state status. It recognizes only the Jewish people as having a national right of self-determination and calls for promotion of “Jewish settlement” within Israel to the exclusion of all other groups, ethnicities and faiths. Constructed of unmistakable apartheid features, the law celebrates overtly racist acts leaving no doubt about the second class status of Palestinians citizens, defining sovereignty and democratic self-rule as belonging solely to the Jewish people of the world no matter where they may reside. In relevant part, Act 1 of the law states that “the Land of Israel (“Eretz Israel”) is the historic national home of the Jewish people, in which the State of Israel was established, and in which the Jewish people exercise its natural, cultural, and historic right to self-determination … which is solely for the Jewish people.” Act 2 limits state symbols, holidays and recognized religious practices to solely those that are Jewish in history and character. Star of David… land of myth.

Under the law, hundreds of admission committees throughout Israel have the power to reject applications from Palestinian citizens to live in communities on the grounds of “cultural incompatibility” thus legitimizing communities across the country designated for Jews only. One recent challenge to state policies that seek to control and purify the landscape speaks volumes. Thus, not long ago, a magistrate’s court on the outskirts of Haifa denied a request for the establishment of an Arabic school or funding for Palestinians to be bused to nearby ones. In relying upon the specific legislative aim of the nation-state law, the court held the presence of Palestinian citizen/students would undermine the town’s “Jewish character.” In another successful effort by the Israeli to deny equal educational opportunity to all there is no Arabic-language school for a population of approximately 3,000 Palestinian students in Nof Hagalil (formerly Nazareth Ilit), a town where they constitute 26 percent of its residents. This is the rule and not the exception in Israel where Palestinian citizen/students largely attend segregated schools denied equal funding and resources routinely doled out to Jewish contemporaries… thus marginalizing and placing them at a systemic educational disadvantage. In Israel, economically disadvantaged Palestinian students do not receive the same level of financial support as do Jewish students with the same financial needs.

Elsewhere, Palestinians are typically denied apartments and homes or land leased for commercial use that is designated for Jews only… thereby consigning them to segregated poverty ridden neighborhoods due to a lack of educational and religious services or state sanctioned discriminatory housing practices. This reality is a direct and desired result of budgeting policies that divert public funds to Jewish councils, communities and individuals… and not Palestinian… for the purpose of ensuring exclusive Jewish enclaves. Indeed, regulatory practices have significantly reduced the areas designated for Palestinian local councils and communities which now have access to less than 3% of the Israeli land base. As a result, more than 90% of that land is under state control and, thus, subject to nation-state regulations which have succeeded in limiting new housing and business opportunities to Jews only. In a country where Palestinians comprise over 20% of the total population and live in some 139 towns and villages, they receive only 1.7% of the state budget for local councils. Not at all aberrant or inadvertent, according to the Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, Israel maintains over 65 laws that overtly discriminate against Palestinians.

For example, government funding is denied to Palestinian institutions that commemorate the Nakba or challenge, by speech alone, the existence of Israel as a “Jewish and democratic state” or commemorating “Israel’s Independence Day, or the day on which the State was established, as a day of mourning.” Likewise, an association or political party cannot be registered if among its goals is the denial of the existence of the State of Israel or of the democratic character of the state. Under the law, the candidacy of any party or individual that denies the existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish people or the democratic character of the state or one that incites racism is prohibited.

Needless to say by design these government practices have inflicted great and disproportionate injury to the health, safety and welfare of Palestinian citizens throughout Israel. Year in and out the Palestinian population has been found to be far behind Jewish contemporaries in life expectancy, infant mortality, morbidity, diabetes and obesity. There are significant gaps in the extent and quality of health-care services provided to the country’s Palestinian residents compared to those that are Jewish. Nowhere is the damage of the nation-state law more palpably visible than it is to Palestinian Bedouin citizens who live under constant siege by an Israeli military that routinely demolishes their homes and villages, as unrecognized by the state. Several hundred thousands of Bedouins have no access to government services including no support from the Israeli electricity grid or its water infrastructure system. Star of David … land of myth.

Israel, and its choir, take great pride in extolling and preaching its democratic ideals and opportunity to the rest of the world… no matter how plainly desperate its overreach and fraudulent its claim. Seldom does a day pass without a Zionist apologia for its crimes against humanity, its war crimes, its genocide … skillfully relying upon the cheap talisman that, as the only democracy in the Middle East, it is entitled to do whatever it must to protect its noble call for all its citizens. For the poor, for the oppressed, for the dissenter, for those of a different skin, faith or gender there is nothing unusual or unique about this, by now, timeless pretext. Israel is not alone in its shout to democratic equality that, historically, has meant little more to many than the tyranny of the majority.

What is democracy? Was it not a democratic ideal that ravaged indigenous communities throughout North America; that assaulted Africa to kidnap natives as commodities for sale in slave markets in the South; that denied women the right to vote and full equality throughout the United States… reducing them to mere chattel for centuries? Ask a Muslim in France about the democracy that strips her of her Hijab or the young German activist imprisoned because his speech crossed the line of acceptable. Yet, the democracy of Israel is very much an unmatched sinister blight on the contemporary body politic of the world and has been for more than 73 years. A world body that shares the complicity and blame as it has stood by in idle silence funding an unbroken pounding of millions whose only offense is to be the age-old landlords of the consecrated earth that the Star of David demands.

So just who is this David, this star cast for 73 years to buff up the blood-stained blue and white banner that has defiled the ancient air above Jaffa, Haifa, Ashdod and dozens of age-old Palestinian cities and villages extracting unbearable pain from so many for far too long? In the Book of Samuel, legend has it that David is a young shepherd who gains fame by slaying the giant Goliath, the titan of the Philistines who, as a foreboding harbinger of distant times to come, arrived in the Holy Land from Europe in the 12th century B.C., as an earlier colonial project of sorts, only to disappear from history some 600 years later. Today, David is that bruising, beastly giant and Palestinians the shepherds.

Stanley L. Cohen is lawyer and activist in New York City.
Follow Stanley Cohen on Twitter @StanleyCohenLaw

Star of David ➖ Land of Myth

ABC News ✒ Israel's ultra-Orthodox community has come under heavy criticism for holding large funerals and weddings in violation of coronavirus restrictions.

Ilan Ben Zion

Mendy Moskowits, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Belz Hassidic sect in Jerusalem, doesn’t understand the uproar toward believers like him.

In recent weeks, ultra-Orthodox Jews have defied coronavirus restrictions by holding big funerals for beloved rabbis who died of COVID-19, celebrating large weddings, and continuing to send their children to schools. The gatherings have led to clashes with police and an unprecedented wave of public anger toward the religious community.


On Tuesday night, hundreds of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators protested lockdown restrictions, set dumpsters on fire, and faced off with police officers in Jerusalem.

Moskowits, like many other ultra-Orthodox faithful, says Israeli society doesn't understand their way of life and has turned his community into a scapegoat.

“The media gives us, in my opinion, a very bad misrepresentation,” he said.

The ultra-Orthodox community makes up about 12% of Israel’s 9.3 million people. Gilad Malach, a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, says ultra-Orthodox believers accounted for over a third of the country’s COVID-19 cases in 2020.  

Continue reading @ ABC News.

Israel's Ultra-Orthodox Reject Criticism, Defy Virus Rules

Information Clearing House ✒ Neuberger will make our cyber secure?
  
Philip Giraldi
11-February-2021

It does not require any particularly perspicacity to realize that the President Joe Biden Administration has been loaded with Zionists who not only believe in their own vision for Greater Israel but also in some cases have strong and enduring ties to the Israeli government itself. 

The new Secretary of State Tony Blinken comes from an American Jewish family that has well established ties to Israel. Blinken’s paternal grandfather was one of the founders of an organization that eventually evolved into the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Blinken said at his Senate confirmation hearing that the new administration would “consult with Israel” before any possible return to the 2015 nuclear deal and he also made clear that there will be “additional conditions for Iran,” an odd position to take since it was the U.S. that withdrew from the agreement and introduced a harsh sanctions regime even though Iran was in compliance ...

Joe Biden himself proclaims proudly that he is a Zionist and Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken at AIPAC gatherings, pledging her unconditional support for the Jewish state.

Continue reading @ Information Clearing House. 

Another Zionist Joins The Biden Team

Information Clearing House ✒ The Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal produced one of the first comprehensive surveys of Israeli training of US local and federal law enforcement officials in the following article published by Al Akhbar English in 2011.)
Max Blumenthal
15-June-2020

In October, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department turned parts of the campus of the University of California in Berkeley into an urban battlefield. The occasion was Urban Shield 2011, an annual SWAT team exposition organized to promote “mutual response,” collaboration and competition between heavily militarized police strike forces representing law enforcement departments across the United States and foreign nations.

At the time, the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department was preparing for an imminent confrontation with the nascent “Occupy” movement that had set up camp in downtown Oakland, and would demonstrate the brunt of its repressive capacity against the demonstrators a month later when it attacked the encampment with teargas and rubber bullet rounds, leaving an Iraq war veteran in critical condition and dozens injured. According to Police Magazine, a law enforcement trade publication, “Law enforcement agencies responding to…Occupy protesters in northern California credit Urban Shield for their effective teamwork.”

Continue reading @ Information Clearing House.

The Israelification Of American Domestic Security

Information Clearing House ✒ Standing on line Friday in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Aviv Gimel to pick up the weekend edition of Israel Hayom, affluent residents discussed the likely defeat ...

Gideon Levy

It’s a dark day for Israel: Donald Trump has lost the election.

No other country in the world, with the possible exception of the Philippines or Nebraska, was as saddened by his fall. A poll by Israel’s Mitvim think tank found that 70 percent of Israelis support Trump. A survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center had similar findings. Whereas 75 percent of West Europeans are fed up with the U.S. president, in Israel a large majority – including centrists and some leftists – admires him.

It can be argued, of course, that this support is a way of saying thanks for moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights and withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal. But these events caused little excitement in Israel. No one jumped into a fountain in a city square to celebrate the recognition of Majdal Shams as an Israeli town, and only a few people were moved by Ambassador David Friedman’s change of address.

Continue reading @ Information Clearing House.

Look At Trump And You'll See The Israelis

International Clearing House ✒ Congress and White House work together to reward the Jewish state

Philip Giraldi

The U.S. election will end today, more or less, and we Americans will suffer another four years of putting up with serial nonsense out of a White House and Congress that could care less about us no matter who is elected. 

Whether the party where everything changes or the party where everything remains the same wins the inevitable result will be further aggrandizement of authoritarian power combined with increased distancing of government from the people who are ruled.

Amidst all the gloom, however, there is one great success story. That is the tale of how Israel and its friends in politics and financial circles have been able to screw every possible advantage out of both major parties simultaneously and apparently effortlessly. Israel might be the true undisputed winner in the 2020 election even though it was not on the ballot and was hardly mentioned at all during the campaign.

Jewish billionaires with close ties to Israel have been courted by the two major parties, both to come up with contributions and to urge their friends in the oligarch club and media to also respond favorably.

Continue reading @ International Clearing House.

Israel Wins U.S. Election

Haaretz ✒ At a Knesset pre-hearing, groups working to prevent the abuse suggested there may be a 'significantly higher proportion' of cases in the ultra-Orthodox community.


 Israel has become a safe haven for Jewish pedophiles from around the world, a leading advocate for child sexual abuse victims warned Monday at a Knesset committee pre-hearing on pedophilia in the ultra-Orthodox community.

Number of Israeli Children Sexually Abused by Their Brothers Doubles
Jewish Community Worker Is Charged With Child Rape in St. Louis
Fleeing Abuse in Israel, non-Jewish Women Fear Violence and Deportation
Israeli Man Accused of Raping Stepdaughter for 15 Years, Siring Boy

“Sex offenders tend to move from country to country to avoid jail, but what makes Israel unique is the Law of Return, which essentially grants unhindered access to anyone who is Jewish to come here without any real screening,” said Manny Waks, the chief executive officer of Kol v’Oz, a newly formed nonprofit that aims to prevent child sexual abuse in the global Jewish community.

Continue reading @ Haaretz.

Israel Becoming A 'Refuge For Pedophiles' ➖ Warns Advocate For Child Sex Abuse Victims

World News Platform @ The dark truth behind the Israeli army's reenactment of the Six-Day War.

By Adam Raz


Nearly 130,000 Syrians lived on the Golan Heights at the beginning of June 1967. Two months later, their number had dwindled to 6,396, nearly all of them Druze. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, the fate of these Syrians was of little concern to the Israeli public, and the rapid conquest of the land and subsequent Jewish settlement there helped erase their memories of them. Indeed, local history books rarely talk about what befell the native residents of the Golan Heights.

Historian Yigal Kipnis’ informative book The Golan Heights: Political History, Settlement and Geography since 1949 (Routledge, 2013), relates that “the number of Golan civilian inhabitants who left the area with the [advent of the] Israeli occupation was between 115,000 and 120,000.” The numbers are correct, but what does “left” mean? For various reasons, scholars have not addressed the fate of the tens of thousands of Arab residents of the Heights, whose ruined villages still mar the area’s landscape. The available archival documentation is also very meager, and as with other politically sensitive subjects, accessible documents have been partially redacted.

Continue reading @ World News Platform.

Dark Truth

From Youtube: Auschwitz Survivor - Israelis Are behaving Like 1930s Germans Behaved - Hajo Meyer

A Lesson From History

Tony Greenstein asks What happened when, as part of an experiment, Arab youth joined Kibbutzim?

When faced with the contradiction between Socialism and Zionism the dilemma was always resolved in favour of the latter

When I was young Israel was seen by many on the Left as a socialist oasis in the Middle East. Until 1977, Israel was ruled continuously by Israeli Labour/Mapai coalitions, sometimes in alliance with Mapam, the United Workers Party that was to the left of Mapai. Nearly all land in Israel was nationalised and the trade union Histadrut was the second major employer after the state itself. 

The Fabians waxed lyrical about Israeli ‘socialism’. Many were the times when I was told to go to Israel if I wanted to see socialism and join a Kibbutz. However there were also many things that we were not told such as the fact that Israel’s Arabs lived under military rule from 1948 to 1966. 

The Kibbutzim were collective settlements where members shared everything in common. Of course the Kibbutzim operated in the context of a market economy so they did not affect the society around them. But what we were not told was that they were Jewish only institutions of which Arabs could not be members, since the land they occupied was ‘national’ i.e. Jewish national land.

Continue reading @ Tony Greenstein's Blog.

When Arab Youth Joined Kibbutzim

The Uri Avnery Column takes a look at Israeli government stupidity in its attitude to Hamas.


The March Of Folly

The Uri Avnery Column looks at the Israeli state's manipulation of the Holocaust.

"Not Enough!"

The Uri Avnery Column reflects on David Ben Gurion's declaration of the state of Israel. 

The Great Day

The Uri Avnery Column discusses the concept of Separation 

Separation Is Beautiful

The Uri Avnery Column focuses on the death penalty debate now taking place in Israel. 

Wistful Eyes

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