July 30, 2014

Mark Regev's English is good but the subtitles are a real help

This is by AN Other on YouTube:



It looks like Israel's supporters at the Beeb are losing ground largely, I suspect, because the facts are speaking for themselves with or without subtitles.

July 28, 2014

Comparisons between Gaza and the Warsaw Ghetto may not be precise but they are apt and obvious

The pain, confinement, fear and premature and violent deaths of those forced to live within the walls of any ghetto under bombardment are immediately comparable and yet Zionists are beside themselves that the obvious comparison is being made between the Warsaw and Gaza ghettos.

It's a funny thing that if an Irish republican said to me that the no-go area in the Derry Bogside was like the Warsaw Ghetto I'd simply say, "Don't be ridiculous" but when the comparison is made between Warsaw and Gaza zionists can enumerate the three or four differences.  So Gaza is nicer than Warsaw because Zionists, for now, are marginally nicer than the Nazis.

I just read one miserable Zionist hasbarist effort at debunking the comparison.  It doesn't matter what it said exactly because it elicited two responses that pretty much speak for themselves.

Here they are:

Blogger Richard Armbach said...
Why is Gaza and the Ghetto not comparable ?The above arguments are ludicrous. Can we not compare a strawberry and an apple, and note that while they are manifestly not the same they are both fruits. Of course Gaza and the Ghetto are not the same, but they are both the consequence of a very similar racist, supremacist and excepionalist mind set, and therefore have something significant in common.
27 July, 2014 16:34

Anonymous said...
I'm sorry, but a comparison between the Warsaw Ghetto and the siege and blockade of Gaza since 2007 can definitely be made. I was always a blind supporter of Israel, but in the last year, my eyes have been opened by the many articles I have read about the atrocities being committed every day by the Israeli military on the citizens of Gaza. Netanyahu's aim is to completely destroy Gaza rendering the area uninhabitable thereby taking Gaza as Israeli territory. I can no longer believe any statements by the Israeli government, or for that matter,the many one-sided reports coming from the US mainstream media. Israel has lost all credibility.
The post to which these were added was linked by a Huffington Post piece by someone or other from the Zionist Community Security Trust and tweeted as a "powerful piece" by Mehdi Hasan who really ought to have known better. I'll tweet this post in his general direction and hope that he has enough sense to see when Zionists are listing a mixture of antisemitic and innocuous notions in the hope of the anti-Zionist baby being thrown out with the antisemitic bathwater.

July 22, 2014

Did less than 750 Jews attend London Zionist Rally?

Here's an interesting report in The Times of Israel about the psychos London rally for Israel on Sunday just gone.

Oh, first up, let's see what The Jewish Chronicle had to say under its headline, Thousands turn out to support Israel in London rally:
An estimated 5,000 Israel supporters – many wearing blue and white outfits for the event – held up placards that called for an end to Hamas terrorism.
Now that's already not a great turnout but now let's see ToI:
1,500, the number that the police estimate attended the rally, needs to be placed in a communal context:
Actually there's another context, the police usually inflate the numbers for the rallies they like and divide the estimate by ten for the one's they don't.  So this rally may have only attracted hundreds but less than 2,000 doesn't quite deserve to be called "thousands" as per the JC.

Now, that communal context:
  • Around 200,000 Jews live in London, thus the figure that attended represents less than 1% of the London Jewish population.
  • Every summer, including this one, around 1,500 16-year-olds are visiting Israel on organised summer tours. Even if we assume that each family has only 2 children, and around 10% are single parent units, this would equate to approximately 4,350 close family members who currently have a child in Israel.
  • In 2008, over 26,000 Jewish children were attending Jewish schools, and with extra places opening in the subsequent half-decade, this will now be close to 30,000 students.
The point of these figures is to place into context just how small 1,500 people are within the Jewish community of the UK.

So questions need to be asked, and there are no easy answers.

All of the questions pre-suppose that Israel is a popular cause among London Jews and Jews elsewhere.  Now this may increasingly not be the case.  Also, it could be that even among Israel enthusiasts, Gaza has been an embarrassment.  And of course given the increasing frequency of Israel's war crimes against the Palestinians some supporters might just be blasé.  I mean a headline like, Israel kills civilians, is hardly shock news now, is it?

There is another point regarding the numbers.  There was a ragbag of Christian zionists at the rally so the number of Jews present was very possibly less than 750.  It would be nice to think that Jews of conscience are growing in number but statistics are fickle things.

July 21, 2014

Amira Hass on the failures of Abbas's leadership

This is from behind the Ha'aretz paywall:

Analysis || The failures of Abbas' leadership

Much of Hamas’ confidence comes from the Palestinian public, who see it standing up bravely for the national cause while Mahmoud Abbas plays the diplomatic supplicant.

By Amira Hass | 03:28 20.07.14
Shock and paralysis have taken hold of the political world in the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization, in light of the continued Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip and the enormous concern over the fate of 1.8 million people living in the small enclave.
Condemnations by spokesmen for the PLO and the PA, calls to donate blood to Gaza and the establishment of a government emergency fund are “expressions of solidarity” – as if the residents of the Gaza Strip are a different people. These are not the steps of a leadership whose people are in mortal danger.

People in Gaza and the West Bank are shocked that senior leaders in the PLO and the PA – first and foremost PA President Mahmoud Abbas, or at least those closest to him – did not take the first obvious step of going to the Gaza Strip when the bloody conflict first broke out. This failure, critics say, has helped turn the conflict, as far as the world is concerned, into a face-off between Hamas and Israel, and not part of the policy of occupation and oppression of the entire Palestinian people.

On the organizational level, the bloody conflict required an immediate meeting of the temporary unified leadership (consisting of members of the PLO executive committee and heads of the organizations that are not members of the PLO, first among them Hamas and Islamic Jihad). The forming of this body was agreed on as far back as the reconciliation accord in Cairo in 2005. In fact, the united leadership should have met right after the Shati agreement (the April accord regarding the establishment of a reconciliation government headed by Rami Hamdallah).

The fact that it did not meet is a failure or evidence that Abbas’ heart was not in the national consensus government to begin with. Abbas ascribes great importance to negotiations with Israel and his connections with the United States, while it is becoming clearer to ever-widening circles in the PLO and Fatah that the obligation to build a unified leadership trumps everything else.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s cease-fire conditions sound very logical and moderate to Palestinians, among them members of the PLO’s factions, including Fatah. The secretary of the PLO executive committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, has said as much. Hamas’ demand to lift the siege highlights the lack of interest the PLO and Fatah leadership have in raising the struggle over the closure and segregation of the Gaza Strip. Abbas’ involvement in the failed Egyptian cease-fire initiative based on “quiet for quiet” is now considered a dangerous missed opportunity, whose costly price was more human lives. Another high price was paid in presenting the Palestinian president as a “mediator” instead of the leader of a people, thus deepening the internal rift. Abbas’ talks over the past few days with Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders come too late and do not ameliorate the bitter impression.

On the other hand, members of the PLO do not want a full-on confrontation with Egypt or to seem like they are getting involved in its internal affairs – that is, taking a stand on the oppression of the Muslim Brotherhood. Traditionally, the PLO’s factions have been suspicious of the Muslim Brotherhood as a supranational political body that uses religion. Fatah, in particular, claimed for years that Hamas’ ideology and its politics of military confrontation are not motivated by a national agenda, but rather by that of the Brotherhood.

The small left wing eschews the kind of society to which Hamas aspires. But in recent weeks, it has become clear that Hamas has been able to present a challenge to Israel greater than any Israel has ever faced from a Palestinian organization – and, in the opinion of the Palestinian public, for justifiable reasons. This has also impressed those who despise Hamas’ political-religious path, as well as those who are not blinded by worship of the armed struggle.

The failures in the conduct of the PLO factions, including Fatah – particularly since the outbreak of this round of bloodshed – are not a local and temporary issue. Rather, they show ongoing failures, some of which are connected to the character of Abbas’ rule. In recent years he has managed to minimize any democratic process of consultation and joint decision making in Fatah, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. The secular political factions, among them Fatah, have been sidelined as irrelevant, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad are increasingly regarded as leading the struggle against the occupation in the name of the Palestinian people. According to key people in the political factions, there must be a real change in the quality, course of action and discourse of the PLO. Otherwise a vacuum will be created that, at best, will be filled by nationalist Islamic groups, and at worst will invite social, political and security chaos.

Compare and contrast: A tale of two demos

Here's a pic from Channel 4's report of Saturday's demo for Gaza:



C4 said that "Estimates of demonstrators ranged from 15,000 to 100,000"  and that, "It took them over 30 minutes to pass Nelson's column".

Now see the Zionist demo from a pic at Harry's Place:


Harry's Place claims vaguely that the crowd numbered "thousands" whilst The Jewish Chronicle claims 6,000.  Now I am guessing that if it was thousands then there would be some pics to show this.  The fact is there probably wasn't more than a few hundred.  Again, I'm guessing, at best 900.

How ever many child-killer supporting demonstrators came out for Israel on Sunday, even The Jewish Chronicle's lower estimate of the turnout, ie 15,000, for Gaza was more than twice the claimed "estimate" for the Zionist demonstration.  And I remember when the Zionists flexed their muscles at Trafalgar Square for the war on Jenin.  Then they must have had around 50k people in the square.  When Israel attacked Lebanon in 2006 Zionists in the UK got 4,000 to hear the then Chief Rabbi say, "Israel. you make us proud!"  Now their numbers are so small they won't even let pictures tell the story.  The HP one was the only one I could find showing a crowd.

But look at the Palestine solidarity crowd above.   Does it really look only two and half times the size of the Zionist one? 

As with morality so with the numbers, there is nothing to compare, only to contrast.  Israel's periodic culls of Palestinians just aren't as popular as they used to be and clearly more and more people are finding them utterly repugnant.


July 19, 2014

WaPo toon upsets loons

Here's the Washington Post cartoon:


And here are the unhappy loons as reported by Jerusalem Post

Total Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza proposed by Israeli Parliament's Deputy Speaker

This seems to have passed below the radar of the mainstream media but it has been reported on mostly zionist sites.  +972 mag reports on it thus:
If you still see daylight between Israel’s current bloodletting and its state-sanctioned policy toward the Palestinians, have a look at what the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin, posted on his official website Tuesday. It’s a seven-point tract named, without a hint of irony, “My Outline for a Solution for Gaza.”
And here's the statement in full:
  1. Ultimatum – One warning from the Prime Minister of Israel to the enemy population, in which he announces that Israel is about to attack military targets in their area and urges those who are not involved and do not wish to be harmed to leave immediately. Sinai is not far from Gaza and they can leave. This will be the limit of Israel’s humanitarian efforts. Hamas may unconditionally surrender and prevent the attack.
  2. Attack – Attack of the entire ‘target bank’ throughout the Gaza Strip with the IDF’s maximum force (and not a tiny fraction of it) with all the conventional means at its disposal. All the military and infrastructural targets will be attacked with no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage’. It is enough that we are hitting exact targets and that we gave them advance warning.
  3. Siege – Parallel to the above, a total siege on Gaza. Nothing will enter the Strip. Israel, however, will allow exit from Gaza. (Civilians may go to Sinai, fighters may surrender to IDF forces).
  4. Defense – Any place from which Israel or Israel’s forces were attacked will be immediately attacked with full force and no consideration for ‘human shields’ or ‘environmental damage’.
  5. Conquer – After the IDF will complete the softening of the targets with its aerial and long distance fire-power, it will send in infantry to conquer the entire Gaza Strip, using all the means necessary to minimize any harm to our soldiers, with no other considerations.
  6. Elimination- The GSS and IDF will thoroughly eliminate all armed enemies from Gaza. The enemy population that is innocent of wrong-doing and separated itself from the armed terrorists will be treated in accordance with international law and will be allowed to leave. Israel will generously aid those who wish to leave.
  7. Sovereignty – Gaza is part of our Land and we will remain there forever. Liberation of parts of our land       forever is the only thing that justifies endangering our soldiers in battle to capture land. Subsequent to the elimination of terror from Gaza, it will become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel. The coastal train line will be extended, as soon as possible, to reach the length of the Gaza Strip. According to polls, most of the Arabs in Gaza wish to leave. Those who were not involved in anti-Israel activity will be offered a generous international emigration package. Those who choose to remain will receive permanent resident status. After a number of years of living in Israel and becoming accustomed to it, contingent on appropriate legislation in the Knesset and the authorization of the Minister of Interior on a case by case basis, those who personally accept upon themselves Israel’s rule, substance and way of life of the Jewish State in its Land, will be offered Israeli citizenship.
Last I heard the UK prime minister, David Cameron, had phoned Netanyahu to offer his full support for Israel's attack on Gaza. Paradoxically this Feiglin guy is currently barred from entering the UK because apparently his racism is too much for even ardent supporters of the Likud like the UK government.

World turns upside down as it falls to The Daily Mail to report French ban on March for Gaza

Look at this in The Daily Mail:
France's Socialist government provoked outrage today by becoming the first in the world to ban protests against Israeli action in Palestine.

In what is viewed as an outrageous attack on democracy, Socialist Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said mass demonstrations planned for the weekend should be halted.

Mr Cazeneuve said there was a ‘threat to public order’, while opponents said he was ‘criminalising’ popular support of the Palestinian people.

Thousands were set to march against the ongoing slaughter in Gaza, calling for an immediate end to hostilities in which civilians including many children have been killed.
Cor! did you see that?  The Daily Mail condemning the "slaughter in Gaza" where "many children have been killed"?

Anyway, let's read on:

There were false claims made last week that synagogues in Paris had been targeted by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

In fact videos showed armed vigilantes from a group called the Jewish Defence League (LDJ) baiting demonstrators into fights.
I remember reading about synagogues being attacked and then something or other about the JDL attacking Palestine solidarity people.  I'm so used to zionists lying about such things I didn't take a whole lot of notice.  Again I'm amazed that The Daily Mail (home of Mad Melanie Phillips) is breaking the news on this.

But again let's read on:
There were no arrests among the LDJ, despite them fighting and smashing up property in full view of the police.

Six pro-Palestine protestors were arrested for a variety of public order offences, but none had been anywhere near Paris synagogues, which remained undamaged.

A judicial enquiry is set to be launched into the false allegations made about the synagogue attacks – ones which people claim were made up to demonise supporters of Palestine by associating them with anti-Semitism.

On Friday night lawyers for a number of groups hoping to campaign on behalf of Palestine on Saturday lodged an appeal against the ban in a Paris court.
I don't know where to begin with my thoughts on this but let's take it from the top.  France, a country that has seen more than a few violent demonstrations over many things from Algeria to the definition of lamb (or was it sheep meat?), has banned a demo for Palestine.  It has done so on the pretext that passed violence could happen again.  The violence of the previous demos was caused by the judeo-nazis of the Jewish Defence League but it was Palestine solidarity demonstrators that were arrested.

Well let's see how the judicial review turns out but I don't hold out much hope.

July 12, 2014

Letters for BDS and a slap on the wrist for Chomsky

These letters are in today's Guardian:

It is now 10 years since the international court of justice ruled that the wall built by Israel in the occupied West Bank contravenes international law and must be removed. Israel is marking this anniversary with renewed attacks on Gaza which continue to punish the Palestinians for resisting the illegal occupation of their land (Israel turns screw on Hamas as 300 targets are hit in a single night, 11 July). The apartheid wall is still there, making any kind of normal life for Palestinians an impossibility, as well as stealing their land. It is 47 years since Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, thus extending the process (begun in 1948) of ethnically cleansing the indigenous population and then installing settlers.

All this is illegal under international law, which has been flouted by Israel, aided by the complicity of western governments. The media too, especially the BBC, must bear some responsibility with its grotesquely biased reporting which, as Owen Jones notes (9 July), portrays Israel as an innocent victim, exempt from any norms of behaviour. Our government will not hold Israel accountable, so we have a responsibility to do so, especially through the civil society campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

Miriam Margolyes, Mike Marqusee, Alexei Sayle, Ahdaf Soueif, Prof Haim Bresheeth, Prof Jonathan Rosenhead, Prof Moshe Machover, Prof Nira Yuval-Davies, Seymour Alexander, Rica Bird, Elizabeth Carola, Mike Cushman, Judit Druks, Nancy Elan, Mark Elf, Deborah Fink, Sylvia Finzi, Kenneth Fryde, Claire Glasman, Tony Greenstein, Abe Hayeem, Rosamine Hayeem, Selma James, Riva Joffe, Michael Kalmanovitz, Adah Kay, Leah Levane, Les Levidow, Mica Nava, Diane Neslen, Susan Pashkoff, Roland Rance, Leon Rosselson, Maureen Rothstein, Michael Sackin, Ian Saville, Miriam Scharf, Sam Weinstein, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Devra Wiseman, Ben Young
Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG)

• Debate about strategy is vital for good politics. We welcome Noam Chomsky's admonitions as a stimulus to the debate and education which the Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement has enabled globally. Aside from the errors of fact in Chomsky's Nation article reported on by Ian Black (Israeli sanctions campaign: Chomsky's boycott warning, 2 July), the timing of his intervention is unfortunate since the BDS movement has now reached even American campuses, occasioned Israeli cabinet deliberations as to how to counter it, and caused reputational damage to corporations working with Israeli firms in occupied Palestine.

Chomsky also ignores that BDS is fully backed by Palestinian civil society and a growing number of Israelis. In this difficult period for progressive politics and international solidarity, the BDS movement builds across the globe. In its stead Chomsky proposes nothing.

Hilary Rose Professor emeritus of social policy, Bradford, Martha Mundy Professor emeritus in anthropology, LSE, Steven Rose Professor emeritus of neuroscience, Open University, Sami Ramadani London Metropolitan University
I ought to add that whilst the first letter was organised via Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG) not all of the signatories are members.

July 10, 2014

Leaflet drop at Neil Young Hyde Park Gig July 12, 2014

From International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network:

Neil Young -- Tell us Why You
Would Play for
Apartheid Israel
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSnxgtgUyFD24TuVfEq7tYzFIbT3e3_O48BLJu-GbxX7AKJgU8e
Leafleting protest, Marble Arch gig entrance, Hyde Park, Sat 12 July, 1-5pm
For YOU to play Israel is to abandon both your anti-war stance and the Palestinian "people of the earth".  They have appealed directly to you to honour the cultural boycott and cancel your 17 July concert in Tel Aviv.
See Neil's speech contrasted with film of indigenous Palestinian people under attack from Israeli soldiers and warplanes.
Gaza is burning and children are being incinerated by F16s of the Israeli military. Tell Neil Young not to side with the bombers!
Read the Gaza Union of Agricultural Work Committees letter to Neil Young; Nasser Abu Said, a Gaza farmer’s, heartbreaking letter to Neil Young; and the Open Letter from Gaza to Neil Young by Palestinian students and youth.
NEIL YOUNG - Cancel your date with apartheid!

July 06, 2014

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network: London Tuesday 8 July Protest & Film: Remembering the Hunger Strike

First Anniversary – Tuesday 8 July 2014
Remembering the Great Hunger & Work Strike
of California Prisoners
Against the torture of solitary confinement
London events highlight UK prison and detention struggles


Mon 7pm – Tues 7pm: 24-HOUR FAST in Support of Prisoners
Tues 5-6.30pm: PROTEST outside Holloway Prison. Parkhurst Road, N7 0NU
Tues 7-9pm: BREAKING the FAST with FILM of mothers and relatives of prisoners in struggle.
California Families Against Solitary Confinement, the Dallas 6 campaign, Donna Hill, mother of a woman in prison for 30 years for killing her attempted rapist.
Crossroads Women’s Centre, 25 Wolsey Mews, Kentish Town, NW5 2DX 
Soup & sandwiches

Background
On 8 July 2013, 30,000 prisoners in California, USA, began their 3rd hunger strike – the largest and longest in US history – to end the torture of solitary confinement for years and even decades, improve their inhuman living conditions, and as an “act of solidarity with oppressed people around the world”.  
One prisoner did not survive, and after 58 days the prisoners suspended their strike to avoid further deaths. But they had already won a lot: the release from solitary of over 500 people extended visits with loved ones public legislative hearings access to canteen food (a crucial alternative to food contaminated by guards who piss and even defecate in it) and more . . .

Prisoners came together across race and other divides
In August 2012, after a previous hunger strike, prisoners issued an extraordinary Agreement to End Hostilities. It said that: “All hostilities between our racial groups will officially cease.” This set a new standard for unity within movements for justice inside and outside prison walls.

Family members ensured prisoners’ voices were heard
Mothers, daughters, partners, wives have worked tirelessly to prevent a blackout of the strike, gathering support for their loved ones, explaining the conditions inside, and what their demands are.

In London we held two protests outside the US embassy. The strikers received messages of support from around the world, from Ireland to Palestine where Palestinian prisoners, including children, are routinely detained for years without charge or trial. The day after the California hunger strike began in 2013, Palestinian Sheikh Khader Adnan, who had been on hunger strike for 66 days in 2012, sent his support. Dozens of Palestinians ended their 63-day hunger strike on 25 June this year – the longest in the history of the Palestinian prisoners’ movement.

In London we will highlight:
·         The growing number of women in prison, mainly mothers who are inside for non-violent crimes of poverty, their children deprived of their care.
·         The 30 women a year who are sent to prison after reporting rape. Women Against Rape says that many are victims of a miscarriage of justice following negligent and biased police investigations, prosecuted with more zeal and resources than rapists.
·         The targeting of Black people so they are five times more likely to be imprisoned, while the number of Muslim people inside has doubled in the last decade, many of them teenagers.
·         The hunger strikes held by asylum seekers in detention centres in the UK (women in Yarl’s Wood, men in Harmondsworth), and the 56-day hunger strike by immigrant workers detained in Tacoma, Washington (US) and elsewhere.
·         The more than 1,000 African asylum seekers who went on hunger strike in Israel this week, to protest their illegal "inhuman and unlimited" detention in the Negev Desert.
·         The anti-war protest of Margaretta D’Arcy in Ireland, due to be imprisoned again on 9 July. She has refused for the second time to sign a bond to stay away from Shannon, a civilian airport used by the US military, breaking Ireland’s constitutional neutrality. She intends to “abstain from food during her two-week detention”.
Join us to work out how the California prisoners’ strike can be a lever against miscarriages of justice and inhuman conditions in prisons and detentions centres here in the UK. We want to spread information about prisoners organizing and the Cessation of Racial Hostilities in our communities.

Called by: Global Women’s Strike (GWS), Women of Colour GWS, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Legal Action for Women, Payday men’s network. For more information: 020 7482 2496

July 04, 2014

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network statement on Israel's escalation of violence

logo 3

 

 

 


Protest Israel's Escalation of Violence

The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network (IJAN) condemns Israel’s escalation of violence, as well as the revenge threats by the Israeli government and citizens and Zionist organizations and public figures. We denounce Western states and media claiming this brutality is somehow justified retribution for the deaths of three Jewish settlers from the racist, Jewish-only colony of Gush Etzion in the West Bank of Palestine.

In the space of just a few days, the Gaza Strip has been indiscriminately bombarded by warplanes; upwards of 600 Palestinians have been rounded up and imprisoned, and at least ten Palestinians have been killed—including several children, a pregnant mother, and a seventeen-year old boy whose burnt, mutilated body was found dumped in a forest outside East Jerusalem. These actions expose the terrorism of a racist settler-colonial state. IJAN stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people and defends their right to resist the violence of colonialism and apartheid.

IJAN mourns the loss of all human life. We also recognize that the deaths of these three Jewish settlers are being exploited to justify Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian lands and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Israel and its supporters, including Western media and politicians, have portrayed these Jewish settlers as innocent casualties—either of alleged Palestinian barbarism or of an intractably and inexplicably tragic conflict. In either case, Jewish Israeli lives are recognized and valued, while Palestinian lives are invisible and meaningless. Also erased is these settlers’ presence on the front lines of the Zionist terrorizing and dispossession of Palestine’s indigenous population. Further blotted out is the constant terrorism of the Zionist project and its irreducible responsibility for all deaths which occur in the course of its brutal expansion, be they Israeli or Palestinian.

IJAN also insists that any people whose lands, livelihood and dignity are being robbed from them by colonizers have a right to resist this violence. Prominent Zionist thinkers have often cynically recognized this fact. As the political predecessor of the present-day Israeli right, Vladimir Jabotinsky, famously wrote: “Every people will struggle against colonizers as long as there is a spark of hope of ridding itself of the danger of colonization. This too is what the Palestinian Arabs are doing and will go on doing as long as there is a spark of hope.” The brutality Israel is currently carrying out with the diplomatic and financial support of the US state is a futile attempt to extinguish that spark of hope, and to once again knowingly mislabel popular resistance against oppression as “terrorism.”

IJAN stands in solidarity with and honors the perseverance of Palestinian resistance, and calls on civil society everywhere to hold Israel accountable for its recurrent crimes, and end the occupation, colonization and apartheid in Palestine. We also call on Jewish people everywhere to recognize in this most recent bout of Israeli terror a larger and unmistakable pattern of unbridled violence and murder, collective punishment and hatred. We reject the suggestion that this is in the name of “the Jewish people.”

Propelled by the inescapable implications of its colonial logic, Zionism is not a revival of Jewish communal life, but a self-fulfilling prophecy of self-destruction. As Jewish people, we must act for the sake of Palestinian self-determination. It is urgent that we act: Over the next week, please organize rallies, protests, actions, demonstrations and vigils to protest this latest escalation of Israeli violence.

It is urgent that we act: Over the next week, please organize rallies, protests, actions, demonstrations and vigils to protest this latest escalation of Israeli violence.

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network
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