Tlaib’s resolution commemorates 75 years since Palestinians were violently expelled from their homes.
Source: Rep. Rashida Tlaib Asks Congress to Condemn “Israel’s Ongoing Nakba” Against Palestine
Tag: Palestine
As it now stands, there are two nations on the soil of geographic Palestine, an Israeli one and a Palestinian one. The Palestinian nation, however, is prevented from having a national government. Palestinians are stateless, they are a homeless nation. They are kept stateless, and therefore without basic human rights, by the much stronger Israelis, who get billions and sophisticated weaponry from the United States annually.
That disparity between a full Israeli nation and the stateless, rights-less Palestinians, has driven the conflict and ensured that Israel comes out on top.
The bottom line: Netanyahu may be out, but creeping annexation and oppression continue. For Palestinians, nothing has changed.
Source: Netanyahu Is Out But Nothing Has Changed for Palestinians | The Smirking Chimp
Joe Biden is still bombing Iraq in 2021, and Iraq is still supporting the Palestinians, and refused to join Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in recognizing Israel. Iraq is now so firmly an ally of Iran that its leaders have to do photo ops with Arab leaders to try to escape the perception that Baghdad is too tightly linked to Tehran. Neoconservative fail.
We should be absolutely clear about what’s going on in Jerusalem: one of the most militarized nations in the world, Israel, is carrying out its brutal occupation using racist violence and ethnic cleansing.
Source: There’s Nothing Complicated About What’s Happening in Palestine
Trump is Netanyahu’s Muppet (ODT)
Trump appears to have made the decision to cut $5.5 billion in US AID funds to the Palestinians in part on the basis of his rage about Abbas allegedly being a baby-killer, which was a Netanyahu lie. It seems likely that Netanyahu and Trump are responsible for the deaths of Palestinian children through this deprivation.
Gullible Trump was manipulated by Netanyahu’s Deep Fake Video of Mahmoud Abbas to Cut off Palestinians
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – CNN has fired contributor Marc Lamont Hill for a speech he gave on Palestinian rights at the UN. The speech can be found here.
You can protest this outrageous firing at this petition site.
And here is a link to his book, Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond, which everyone should buy and read.
CNN would have been under special pressure to fire Hill because he is a prominent African-American intellectual with a following in his own community, and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (the propaganda arm of the Likud government) is worried about the boycott and sanctions movement spreading among American minorities who might sympathize with the oppressed Palestinians.
1 The Bottomless Dishonesty of CNN on Palestine and Marc Lamont Hill Firing
2 Israeli Court Grants Palestinian Lands near Bethlehem to Israeli Squatters
3 MESA Slams new Version of Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720) for Criminalizing Criticism of Israel
The Palestinian Authority (PA) said that there are 139 countries that have recognized Palestine.
via Spain to Recognize Palestinian State, work for European Union Acceptance
But even the UNGA partition did not award Jerusalem to the 500,000 European Zionist settlers brought into Palestine by the British colonial authorities as part of their long-term plan to divide and rule the Middle East. (In 1799 General Bonaparte invaded Ottoman Palestine and only found about 3,000 Jews there. After the Crusades, there is no evidence for a significant Jewish presence there for some 800 years).
The 1948 war that broke out as the British began leaving ended with the Jewish forces in control of West Jerusalem. Jordan had the eastern part of the city, religiously significant for both Jews and Muslims. Israel launched the 1967 war of conquest in a bid to add the West Bank of the Jordan, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Syrian Golan Heights to Israeli territory (yes, Israel fired the first shot in that war, taking advantage of unrealistic bombast from Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, whose best troops were tied down in the Yemen War). The scheme succeeded wildly, giving the expansionist hawks more territory and all of Jerusalem but also making Israel an Apartheid binational state with a Palestinian Bantustan under the Israeli jackboot in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israelis illegally detached part of the West Bank and added it to their province of Jerusalem. They have ever since been using a combination of force, squatter settlement construction, and shyster legal ploys to kick Palestinians out of East Jerusalem.
via The Half-Millennium When Rome excluded Jews from Jerusalem and how Iran and Muslims Saved Them
Nearly 70 years after the founding of Israel, the past is still looming large.
Source: How Israel’s violent birth destroyed Palestine | Palestine | Al Jazeera
Public “may react adversely” to views of Bassem Tamimi, immigration department claims.
Source: Australia bars visit by Palestinian prisoner of conscience | The Electronic Intifada
Though it may have sparked debate in the Jewish-American community, the idea that Israel can be a cause célèbre for white nationalists is hardly news to Palestinians, whose very existence vies with a state steeped in European, colonial racism. Since his appointment last week as chief White House strategist, sensationalist media maven Steve Bannon—whose editorial sensibilities have spawned such haute headlines as “Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy”—has become something of a lightning rod in the mainstream Jewish-American community. The Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt said his group opposed Bannon on grounds that the alt-right hero is “so hostile to core American values” while…
Source: Pro-Israel and racist? Palestinians aren’t surprised in the slightest | +972 Magazine
By urging Israel’s Palestinians to take a more active role in civil society, Netanyahu erases an entire history that existed in this land before Zionism. It is not entirely clear what drove Prime Minister Netanyahu to use this moment and release a video directed at Israel’s Arab citizens. It clocks in at just over three minutes, and I must admit that I couldn’t get through the whole thing. Maybe if it were broadcasted on FaceTime. Maybe. [tmwinpost] But the minute and a half that I did watch were enough to see the depth of the man’s cynicism and deceptiveness, and even that…
Source: No Bibi, Palestinians succeed despite Israel — not because of it | +972 Magazine
New UK PM appears to understand fundamentals of conflict despite close ties to Israel lobby.
Source: Theresa May: Palestinians must have “full civil rights” | The Electronic Intifada
Israel’s justice minister announces a plan to apply Israeli law to parts of the West Bank, or in other words, annexation. By taking an incremental approach, she stands a pretty good chance of succeeding. Success,…
Source: The incremental annexation of Palestine | +972 Magazine
![A Palestinian man reads a local newspaper, which features the Israeli election on its front page, in the southern Gaza Strip [REUTERS]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2015/3/18/cb151debbb2d42d6996ec667baabddbc_18.jpg "Israel chose - will the Palestinians?")
More of the same rhetoric… This graphic is not satire, it is actually how “HonestReporting” just redefined “anti-Semitism” to include all criticism of Israeli policy. We won’t be using their definition thanks very much!
Demonstrators hold a large Palestinian flag during a rally in Rafah
Australian Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group says international recognition is the only way to end deadlock and bring peace to Middle East
Australia must recognise Palestine as a separate state to help facilitate international peace, a Labor MP said.
Maria Vamvakinou tabled a motion in parliament on Monday calling for the government to support Palestine, in response to the UN international day of solidarity with the Palestinian people, which was on Saturday.
“On this day, we need to acknowledge and understand that the prospects for a two-state solution are increasingly dissipating and we are left with very few options,” Vamvakinou said in tabling the report.
“We are, potentially, embarking on a road map that leads to nowhere. Such a prospect will have horrendous implications not only for the Palestinians and the Israelis, but for the international community. Essentially there will be no peace for any of us.”
Vamvakinou, who co-convenes the Australian Parliamentary Friends of Palestine group, said international recognition was the only way to end the deadlock.
“Australia and indeed this parliament must now recognise the state of Palestine and Australia must vote yes at the UN for Palestinian statehood,” she said.
The motion had bipartisan support, with Vamvakinou’s co-covenor the Liberal MP Craig Laundy, speaking for the motion.
“The people of Palestine, for the last almost 60 years, haven’t had a fair go,” he said. “Imagine if you will, coming home this afternoon to your home, going to put your key in the door and it didn’t fit.
“You knock on the door. Someone you don’t know opens the door and they’re in your home. That’s what happened here, that’s what happened all those years ago. And a people have been displaced and fighting for an identity ever since.”
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He accused lobbyists of hijacking the debate. “The things we discuss in this chamber should not be influenced by the lobby. They should be influenced by what’s right.”
Laundy told Guardian Australia that he is using his position as co-chair of the friendship group to “continue the discussion with my colleagues and try to progress the debate towards a meaningful, two-state solution”.
A number of countries – most recently, Sweden – have formally recognised the state of Palestine in a diplomatic push to get UN backing for a resolution on ending some Israeli settlements.
Three state branches of the Labor party – New South Wales, South Australia and Queensland – have adopted positions recognising Palestine, a move the head of the Palestinian delegation to Australia, Izzat Abdulhadi, calls encouraging. “We need international support … We’re not asking for the moon,” Abdulhadi told Guardian Australia.
He said he has regular dialogue with the government over the issue. “We’d like to have a Palestinian state based on negotiation [with Israel] … but it is impossible now,” he said.
Guardian Australia contacted the Israeli embassy for comment.
Relations between Australia and the Palestinian delegation have been strained for more than a year, since Australia softened its stance on Israeli settlements.
“This shift reflected the government’s concern that Middle East resolutions should be balanced,” the foreign minister, Julie Bishop, said in November 2013.
“The government will not support resolutions which are one-sided and which prejudge the outcome of final-status negotiations between the two sides.”
Supporters of Australia’s policy shift see it as vital for a more fair and frank discussion on the vexed Israeli-Palestinian issue within the UN, which they say is biased towards Palestinians.
olddogthoughts 