Category: Gush Shalom

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

Protest vigil against the war – today (Tuesday) in Tel Aviv

05/12/23

No more silence – we cry out!

We will hold a protest vigil against the war, calling for an immediate ceasefire and the immediate release of the Israeli captives.

We will stand today, Tuesday, December 5, between 18.00-19.00, at the Government Building, 125 Menachem Begin Rd. Tel Aviv

We will hold signs with the following slogans:

Ceasefire now!

Bring the captives home – now!

Violence is not the answer to terrorism!

Yes to a political and diplomatic solution – no more war!

The vigil is organized by the Academia for Equality organization, active in all Israeli universities.

info@academia4equality.com

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

A brutal battle for southern Gaza beckons after the truce ends

27/11/23

A brutal battle for southern Gaza beckons after the truce ends The next stage of fighting will be harder and more controversial

The Economist, Nov 26th 2023 | DUBAI

THEY WERE rare moments of peace after weeks of agony. Dozens of Israelis, held in captivity for seven weeks, have been reunited with their families over the past few days. A brief halt in the Gaza war has allowed Palestinians to emerge from their shelters and search for food and fuel, for missing relatives, and for what remains of their homes.

Yet these moments were bittersweet: most of the hostages have not been freed, and most of the Palestinians who returned home found only rubble. They will also be short-lived. The truce is set to end on November 28th, after four days of quiet meant to facilitate the exchange of 50 Israeli hostages held in Gaza for 150 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. It could last a few more days—but it will end, and the fighting that comes next could be worse than what came before.

Israel’s cabinet approved the hostage deal on November 22nd after hours of debate and weeks of indirect negotiations with Hamas. The first day went according to plan. Both sides stopped fighting on the morning of November 24th. That afternoon Hamas released 13 Israeli hostages, ranging in age from a two-year-old girl to an 85-year-old woman, and another 11 foreigners from Thailand and the Philippines. Israel freed 39 Palestinian prisoners from its jails, also women and children.

If the first day was smooth, though, the second was anything but. Hamas delayed the hostage release by hours, claiming that Israel had failed to honour its end of the bargain. Israel was meant to permit 200 trucks of humanitarian aid a day to enter Gaza each day during the truce. Only 137 made it through on the first day: there are long security checks at the border, which is not set up to handle a large volume of aid. But after mediation by Qatar, which helped broker the deal, the exchange went ahead.

The truce could be extended. After the four-day agreement is up, each ten hostages freed by Hamas will buy another 24 hours of calm. Egyptian officials say they have received “positive signals” that might happen, though neither Israel nor Hamas has confirmed anything.

Hamas would have obvious interests in doing so. A longer truce would give the group’s military commanders time to regroup and prepare, both to attack Israeli troops stationed in the northern part of Gaza and to defend the south, where the Israeli army has yet to make a large incursion. It would also lead to more pressure on Israel not to resume fighting. Families of the hostages would like to see the deal extended. So would America’s president, Joe Biden, who says his goal is to “keep this pause going beyond tomorrow”.

At some point, though, Hamas will run out of hostages it is willing to release in this round of negotiations. It will probably keep both soldiers and Israeli men captive, in the unlikely hope of striking a bigger deal that includes a permanent ceasefire and the release of many more Palestinian prisoners.

When the truce comes to its inevitable end, Israel will resume its fight against Hamas. Speaking from Gaza on November 26th Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said: “We have three goals for this war: eliminating Hamas, returning all our hostages, and ensuring that Gaza does not become a threat to the State of Israel again,” adding, “we will continue until the end, until victory. Nothing will stop us.”

In the next round of fighting Israeli troops will continue to scour the rubble of northern Gaza for tunnel entrances, rocket launchers and other military assets. They have yet to enter a few parts of the region, including Shujaiya, to the east of Gaza city. They will also begin turning their attention elsewhere. Officials are coy about how they might proceed in the south. They cannot easily send armoured units to dominate the area, as they did in the north, because it is so densely packed with civilians displaced from the north.

Instead they might seek to do it piecemeal: pushing into one area at a time, probably starting with the central city of Khan Younis, and trying to force Gazans into a designated “humanitarian zone” near the coast. This is fraught with danger, though. Civilians would have to choose between huddling on a desolate strip of beach and hiding in their homes or makeshift shelters; both could have appalling results. Fighting in densely packed areas without heavy armour will also be more dangerous for Israeli troops.

It is hard to assess Hamas’s strength—most of its fighters are thought to be holed up in tunnels—but Israeli officers say that close to half of its units have suffered serious losses. On November 26th Hamas confirmed that Ahmed al-Ghandour, the head of its northern brigade, had been killed earlier in the war. A member of the group’s military council, and the head of one of its five regional commands, he is one of the highest-ranking militants known to have died since October 7th. There are reports of grumbling in the ranks, especially those deployed to the devastated north, where other Hamas commanders have been killed and conditions are grim. Still, Hamas is hardly close to surrender, and it will undoubtedly fight harder in the south, making what could be a last stand.

All of this makes America nervous. Mr Biden has yet to call for a ceasefire, but his team is worried about Israel’s plan for a major offensive in the south. “I’ve encouraged the prime minister to focus on trying to reduce the number of casualties while he is attempting to eliminate Hamas, which is a legitimate objective he has,” he said on the first day of the truce. “That’s a difficult task, and I don’t know how long it will take.”

America would like Israel to hold off on its southern campaign—especially since Mr Netanyahu has no plan for what happens in Gaza after the war. It may urge Israel to continue its offensive in the north and keep the south sealed off, for now, with an expanded flow of humanitarian aid via Egypt. Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, may visit the region again this week. So too will Emmanuel Macron, the French president, who has called for a lasting ceasefire.

If America pressures Israel to hold back, it could spare Gaza’s 2.2m people another round of fighting and displacement. But it would also leave them stuck in a crammed, desperate enclave even smaller than the one they lived in before, under a partially disintegrating Hamas regime: it is hard to know which outcome is more depressing. ■

‘We are overwhelmed’:

Southern Gaza’s exhausted doctors forced to leave children to die

A surgeon at one of the territory’s last functioning hospitals tells of desperate conditions amid an acute lack of medicine

Jason Burke in Jerusalem Fri 24 Nov 2023

In the crowded corridors of the European hospital in Khan Younis, exhausted doctors decide who among the huge influx of patients arriving from the north of Gaza should live or die.

Hundreds of casualties have moved south in recent days after the evacuation of hospitals in Gaza City, overwhelming medical staff already struggling with an acute lack of medicine, diminishing food rations and intermittent power and communications.

Injured people have joined thousands of displaced people seeking shelter and safety in medical facilities.

Paul Ley, an orthopaedic surgeon at the European hospital, said displaced people were sleeping in lifts, a small team was working round the clock in four operating theatres to amputate limbs infected after days without treatment, and there was an acute shortage of painkillers. Triage decisions had to be made instantly which, in one case, meant leaving a 12-year-old child to die with only palliative care in order to preserve dwindling resources.

Ley said the hospital had received 500 patients evacuated from hospitals in northern Gaza in recent days. Two female medics and a male doctor examining small child screaming in pain. A member of the Red Cross helps Palestinian doctors in Khan Younis to examine an injured child on Tuesday. Photograph: Mohammed Talatene/Avalon

“Many have not received treatment for nine or 10 days because hospitals there were non-functional even if they were open,” he said. “This is the situation that is happening here now. This is a functioning hospital but we are being overwhelmed. There is nowhere to evacuate to … There is no escape route. We are probably one of the last lines of defence.”

There was no independent confirmation of Ley’s account, but details match the accounts of other medical staff, as well as reporters in Gaza. Ley sent pictures of some of the injuries he described to the Guardian.

Israel launched its offensive on Gaza after Hamas, the extremist Islamist group which runs the territory, killed more than 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians in their homes or at a dance party, in an attack on 7 October.

Since then, more than 14,000 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them women or children, according to Palestinian officials.

In the burns unit of the European hospital are 78 patients, nearly two-fifths of them children under five.

“I have never seen anything like it,” said Ley a 60-year-old French citizen who arrived in Gaza with a team from the International Committee of the Red Cross almost four weeks ago. “I have been in many war contexts where the type of wounds are the same but the number is huge. We never leave the hospital. We work round the clock.”

Hospital staff hope the four- or five-day ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, due to begin on Friday, may lead to a durable end to hostilities – or at least the opportunity to receive supplies of humanitarian aid. However, they also fear the arrival of more patients as injured casualties are evacuated from northern Gaza during any pause.

Many of the casualties arriving at the hospital were injured days before, meaning wounds have become infected. Ley said some people’s dressings had not been changed for 10 days, so their wounds were full of worms. In other cases, surgeons were forced to amputate limbs that may otherwise have been saved.

Another problem is a lack of anaesthetics and painkillers.

“We do operations with minimal anaesthesia. If we run out, we can’t operate but there is no clear line. There are a lot of people crying, screaming with pain, but we don’t have enough analgesics. We keep them for the kids or very severe cases. [So] normally we would change dressings on patients with 40% burns with them under sedation and minimise the time by using more attendants … [Now] it has to be done with a lot of pain.” Bus and people outside hospital at night A screengrab of evacuated patients from the Indonesian hospital arriving at the European hospital in Khan Younis on Thursday. Photograph: European hospital/Reuters

In the grounds of the hospital compound, thousands of desperate families are packed into wooden or cardboard shelters. Israeli airstrikes have not targeted the hospital and respected the zone around the facility – though shrapnel has struck the building, and the blast from bombing has shattered windows.

Israeli military officials say they make every effort to avoid civilian casualties and observe international law. They say Hamas is using Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants as a human shield and claim to have found evidence of Hamas military facilities in or under hospitals, schools and homes.

On Thursday, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said: “The whole laws of war, humanitarian law, which we’re committed to completely, makes a simple distinction … They say on one line are combatants, and the other line are non-combatants. You can target the combatants … but don’t deliberately target the non-combatants. They can be hurt, unintentionally. That accompanies every legitimate war.

“[Hamas] deliberately implant themselves in hospitals, in schools, in residential areas, in UN facilities. They fire their rockets from there. Thousands of them. They deliberately target civilians and they deliberately hide behind civilians and use them as a human shield. That’s a war crime.” Young girl with bandaged leg on chair with others in background.

A screengrab of injured patients from the Indonesian hospital waiting for treatment at the European hospital on Thursday. Photograph: European hospital/Reuters

Elsewhere in Khan Younis, tens of thousands of people have crowded into shelters run by the UN. In one, a vocational training centre before the war, more than 35,000 people share 48 toilets and four showers, administrators there told the Guardian this week.

“Conditions are appalling. All the children are getting sick with coughs or stomach problems. There are fights over sleeping spaces and food,” said an administrator, who did not have authority to talk to the media.

Since the Hamas attacks on 7 October, Israel has imposed an almost total blockade of Gaza. Food supplies from the UN have dwindled to about a kg of flour and a single tin of tuna or beans each day, one administrator said, leaving families to survive on flat “bread cakes” made of flour and water cooked on scavenged metal sheets over open fires.

“There is no food in the shops and no fuel. Even wood is rare and expensive, so people are chopping down trees in the streets. Salt is really rare. No one has any and if you have a bit, you can trade it for a lot of food,” the administrator said. People on camp beds and chairs.

Ley said the hardest thing for doctors was to make triage decisions. “We do our triage … [asking] are we going to take this patient because they will have a good chance of surviving rather than doing desperate measures on a patient who will die in two or three days? That sounds nice on paper, but when you have to make the decision it is different. There’s a 12-year-old with 90% burns so we won’t treat him except for pain control that is not enough,” he said.

“We try to keep our heads cool and steady, but for local staff this is their families, friends, their people. They never want to amputate. They say: ‘I can’t do it any more’ and so I say: ‘OK I will do it, don’t worry,’ and you can feel the relief”.

Ley said he had been shocked at how passive many patients were, such as one 35-year-old woman whose husband and children had been killed when the family’s home was destroyed, and who appeared unmoved when told both her legs would need to be amputated. “So many just don’t care any more,” he said.

But amid the devastation, there were moments of slender hope. Recently, Ley treated a 32-year-old man with shrapnel injuries to his abdomen, left leg and a “fist-sized hole” in his right forearm. The patient’s young sister thanked Ley, saying she was proud of her brother and happy he was alive. She wanted to be a surgeon whens she was older, she said.

“So that was very poignant,” Ley said.

---

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

Belgian Human Rights defender summarily deported

27/11/23

For immediate release: Human Rights Defender Accused of Supporting Terror Deported

Alison Russell, a Scottish-born Belgian citizen and Human Rights Defender, was detained by the Israeli occupation authorities while documenting the demolition of a house in Masafer Yatta, in the South Hebron Hills of the occupied West Bank.

She was deported after very perfunctory proceedings at the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court. Israeli police alleged in a public statement that Alison “supported a terrorist organization”. Her attorney pointed out that this claim had no basis. Nevertheless, the presiding judge issued a verdict couched in fiery nationalist rhetoric, claiming that “There are many faces to Hamas terror. There are various kinds of terrorists. Some terrorists wield guns and bombs while others use a computer keyboard”.

The Human Rights Defender was taken to the Ben Gurion Airport, and deported, with a decree issued to bar her re-entry. Itamar Ben Gvir, the Kahane-linked Minister of Police in the Netanyhau government, issued a personal statement celebrating “The deportation of the Belgian terrorist supporter who had supported the Hamas Nazis” and “congratulating the Judea and Samaria Police for their good work”.

In the last month and a half, the charge of being a “supporter of a terrorist organization” has become an excuse for an extensive campaign of political persecution against anyone who dares to post any protest the unfolding genocide in Gaza. This is affected against Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship, and against Israeli Jews such as the teacher Meir Baruchin who was detained for almost a week on completely unfounded charges. In the Gaza Strip,a far more brutal procedure for the same allegations is implemented. A Gazan journalist or political activist accused of “supporting Hamas” may expect to be targeted and/or have their family targeted by a missile from an Israeli warplane. Such was, for example, the fate of Ahmed Abu Artema and countless other Palestinian activists and journalists.

Nowadays in Israel, all it takes to be charged with “supporting terrorism” is to express sorrow and pain over the killing of children in the bombing of the Gaza Strip. State Attorney Amit Isman strongly criticized these detentions, but Israel’s police, controlled by Ben-Gvir, persist in carrying out such detentions.

In the case of human rights defender Alison Russell, the far-fetched charges of “supporting terrorism” or “keyboard terrorism” cover up the real reason for her detention and deportation. In court, the state asserted that “she had many times disrupted the activities of the IDF troops, whenever she came in contact with them”. Indeed, it is highly disturbing for the troops to have outside observers and witnesses present where acts of oppression take place, which often constitute blatant violations of International Law.

Not in vain do the soldiers regularly confiscate the mobile phones of activists and even the footage of international TV crews. Alison, like the other human rights defenders who come from all over the world to express solidarity with the Palestinian people in their difficult time, together with Israeli people of conscience, are struggling to stem the wave of ethnic cleansing which is going on all over the West Bank, under cover of the war in Gaza.

The shepherd communities, the most vulnerable part of Palestinian society, have become the target of a brutal attack by the fanatic settler militias, and already sixteen such communities have been forced to leave their land under violent attacks and explicit threats of murder.

The tiny villages at Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills are attacked by settlers on one side and the army on the other: The settlers attack the villages, destroy whatever is at hand and threaten entire communities with murder, and in these criminal acts they enjoy complete immunity from the police and army. For its part, the army arrives to destroy the houses of the villagers, houses which were declared to be “illegal” by the Supreme Court. Alison was detained and deported when she tried to document the destruction of one of these houses..

The police had stated “a deportation order from Israel” was issued to Alison, as well as a decree to “prevent her from entering Israel” in the future. We would like to emphasize that Alison never wanted to “enter Israel”. She wanted to come to the West Bank, a Palestinian territory occupied by Israel, by the express invitation of Palestinian residents to document and intervene in human rights abuses and stop an ongoing nakba.

In the words of Alison herself, “The UN, created when the world was saying ‘nie wieder faschismus,’ has given up on Palestine. But right now, right here, in a tiny little corner of Palestine, there are a dozen villages that are under direct and immediate threat. When the handful of determined people that are here manage to organize a group to sleep in the hamlets, we delay their expulsion…I’m here ‘cos I really think our action is effective. Please make it more effective by getting involved too.”

Photo credit: Neta Golan Press contact: Email: palreports@gmail.com Phone: +972527551971 Allison Russell: WhatsApp at +33 60123 7650

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gT5UvrSMB5ix5Hd1jyAlUh6NkeuwJmCRqq6vok9R-Xs/edit

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

What Israelis won’t be asking about the released prisoners

The list of Palestinians slated to be exchanged for Israelis should provoke reflection over the role of mass imprisonment in the occupation. Earlier today, Israel and Hamas finalized the details of an agreement to pause hostilities in the Gaza Strip nearly seven weeks into the war. The deal includes a four-day ceasefire and an exchange of 50 Israeli hostages for 150 Palestinian “security prisoners,” with the possibility of further exchanges thereafter. These are terms that Hamas reportedly offered Israel weeks ago in the early phases of the war, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu preferred to wage an all-out assault on the besieged Strip, killing more than 14,000 Palestinians, before considering a deal — even at the detriment of the safety and wellbeing of the Israeli hostages.

Israel has published the names of 300 Palestinian prisoners that it is considering releasing as part of the deal or upon the freeing of more Israeli hostages, in order to allow for legal appeals in Israeli courts against the release of specific individuals. All of the hostages and prisoners to be exchanged at this stage are women and minors. Still, many among the Israeli right, and perhaps the wider public, believe that the government is making a significant concession by releasing dangerous “terrorists” for the sake of the few hostages.

Reading through the list of Palestinian prisoners slated for release, the first thing that strikes you is their ages. The vast majority of them — 287 — are aged 18 or under, including five as young as 14, which begs the question: how does a 14-year-old boy become a “security prisoner?”

The names on the list include alleged members of Palestinian political factions like Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), as well as many who are not affiliated with any group. None were convicted of murder. Some were convicted of attempted murder, while the majority were charged with less significant offenses, including a large number who were arrested for throwing stones. One of them, a 17-year-old, has been behind bars for two years for throwing stones at an Israeli police vehicle in Jerusalem — the same city where Jewish settlers can carry out riots against Palestinians that rarely end in investigations, let alone arrests.

Most of all, the list is a dizzying testament to just how central detention and imprisonment are to Israel’s occupation and control over Palestinians. According to data from the Israeli human rights group HaMoked, as of November 2023, Israel holds 6,809 “security prisoners.” Of these, 2,313 are serving a prison sentence; 2,321 have not yet been convicted in court; 2,070 are being held under administrative detention (indefinitely imprisoned without trial or due process); and 105 are “illegal combatants” who were arrested during Hamas’ October 7 attacks in southern Israel.

Almost all of the 300 Palestinians being considered for release are relatively new prisoners, arrested in the last year or two. The exceptions are 10 women from Jerusalem and the West Bank who have been imprisoned since 2015-17, most of them on charges of attempting or committing stabbing attacks against Israeli security forces — some of which ended without any harm, while others caused minor to moderate injuries.

All of this, it should be recalled, is overseen by the same judicial system that, among countless other examples, decided to close the case against an Israeli settler who stabbed a young Palestinian to death in May 2022 because “it was not possible to rule out [the suspect’s] version that he acted in self-defense.” It is the same system that, in July of this year, acquitted an Israeli police officer who shot dead Iyad al-Hallaq, an autistic Palestinian man, despite clear testimonies and video evidence proving he was unarmed and made no threat of any kind.

This is in addition to the fact that Palestinian “security prisoners” are judged in a separate military court system that boasts a conviction rate of between 95 to 99 percent. Lenience, in the eyes of the Israeli apartheid regime, is a right reserved for Jews only.

While Jews who riot, attack, and even kill Palestinians are immune from prosecution, the prisoners list reminds us that Palestinians can be arrested wholesale based solely on the “intention” to carry out a violent act. One of those on the list, a 45-year-old woman from Jerusalem, has been in prison for more than two years because “she was caught in the Old City with a knife in her hand,” and “said that she intended to carry out an attack.” Meanwhile, Israel’s Kahanist national security minister is urging Jews to arm themselves while handing out weapons like candy, and many right-wing Israelis are writing countless messages, in public and private, gleefully announcing their intention to “murder as many Arabs as possible.”

Sometimes “intent” doesn’t even appear on the list of charges. An 18-year-old from Jerusalem was “arrested along with others because he cried out ‘Allahu Akbar.’” An 18-year-old woman from the West Bank has been imprisoned for months for “incitement on Instagram.” Among the Israeli public in contrast, explicit calls for genocide are considered a legitimate way to raise the national morale, while Palestinians with Israeli citizenship may be arrested for posting something as simple as a photo of shakshuka next to the Palestinian flag.

Of the indictments listed, only a few are related to the use of weapons and opening fire on Israeli forces (and even in these cases, there were no fatalities). The vast majority of incidents involve throwing stones or Molotov cocktails, shooting fireworks, and causing “public disorder.” Was it worth letting Israeli hostages, women, and children, languish in Gaza for a few more weeks for the sake of continuing to imprison a young man who dared to cry “God is great?”

By Orly Noy November 23, 2023

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

International human rights monitor arrested during destruction of Palestinian home.

23/11/23

International human rights monitor arrested during destruction of Palestinian home.

Today, on November 22nd, 2023 early in the morning, Israeli occupation forces bulldozed a family home in Sha’ab Al-Butum in the Yatta region of the occupied West Bank which has seen soaring levels of extremist settler and IOF violence against Palestinians and human rights defenders.

As international human rights monitors were present to document the destruction of the residence, which, according to OCHA (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) is one of 916 structures demolished in 2023 up to Nov 21 with 1,555 people displaced, occupation authorities arrested a peaceful Belgian/British foreign national and currently have her detained in a central police station.

The volunteer, who was standing peacefully at the site of the demolition, is being held on outrageous allegations of “terrorism conspiracy” and “aggression against a soldier”.

Since October 7th, human rights defenders monitoring this campaign of escalating violence and terror against occupied Palestinians in the West Bank have been groped, verbally assaulted, held at gunpoint, had their phones smashed and confiscated, and the passwords to their devices demanded by occupation forces along with their proxies, the extremist ideological settlers working to ethnically cleanse the area in the South Hebron Hills.

Documenting the atrocities occurring in the occupied West Bank has included reporting on the ethnic cleansing of 15 Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills. The Palestinian families in these villages are enduring violent raids, the smashing of their vehicles, the destruction of their farming equipment, the slashing of their water tanks, invasion of their homes and threats that if they do not abandon their homes and villages to the settlers,they would all be murdered within 24 hours.

Press contact:

Email: palreports@gmail.com

Phone: +972527551971

International Solidarity Movement (ISM) https://palsolidarity.org/ – palreports@gmail.com +972 59-740-6401

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

Marking the anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht pogroms
at the time of the Gaza War

By Adam Keller

Not: A few days ago I corresponded with a German friend, who told me that every year on November 9 he is involved in a local memorial ceremony for the Nazi Kristallnacht pogroms. But, he said, this year he is full or trepidation as to how the memorial will proceed, because “the discussion at the moment is extremely difficult and complicated” and people in Germany are so polarized about the war in Gaza (and the wider issues involved in it). I have tried to help him by offering the following text. (I did not yet hear how it actually go at the ceremony yesterday)

What happened on November 9, 1938 (and the even worse things which happened between 1938 and 1945) is a lesson for all human beings – and for Germans in particular – on how terrible racism and prejudice can be. This lesson needs to be learned again and again, every year, every day, because the danger is never over. It is very important to go on commemorating Nov. 9 in Germany, to look openly and honestly at the horrors of the German past, and to apply the lessons to the events of the present and to the prospects for the future.

An important element of remembering and commemorating Nov. 9 should be that no one – no individual person, no ethnic or religious group – is immune to racism and prejudice. Racism is always present somewhere deep in the mind, always seeking an outlet. A religious person might say it’s Satan tempting us into evil, a secularist would look for psychological reasons. However you explain it, racism is there, it is never completely defeated, however much you strive against it and try to provide the best of Humanist and Universalist education.

A very important specific thing to remember is that having yourself suffered racism and oppression in no way makes you immune to becoming yourself a racist and oppressor – like a person who suffered abuse as a child might well grow up to abuse his own children. This is applicable especially to the situation in the Middle East, between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs – a wound which has been long festering and is now terribly bleeding.

We see that Jews, who had suffered from racism and oppression more terribly than any other people, are not immune to racism. Shamefully, it can be seen that racism is flourishing in the Jewish state of Israel, that there are organized Jewish racist parties which even gained representation in the government of Israel, parties led by demagogues who are busy spreading hatred and calling for the unrestrained killing of Palestinians, and actually – under this government – Israel is involved in bombing Gaza and killing thousands of civilians, including many children.

We see that Palestinians, who over decades suffered very much oppression and cruelty, are not themselves immune to oppression and cruelty. Shamefully, when some Palestinians for a single day this year found themselves in control of Israeli Jewish towns and villages, they perpetrated a series of terrible barbaric crimes, very shocking to anyone who sees the films which these Palestinians themselves made.

Of course, not everybody is caught up in terrible bloodlust. On both sides there are many decent people of good will. It is the duty of people of good will everywhere – and in particular, in Germany with its specific history – to do all they can to end the bloodshed and help create a better future for Israelis, Palestinians and everyone in the Middle East. This better future must be based on the principle that Israelis and Palestinians alike have rights which must be respected, including the right to sovereign statehood, and that neither one of them has a “right” to oppress or kill; no amount of suffering can confer such a “right”.
This year, when Nov. 9 falls on a time when passions from the Middle East are affecting German society, such should be the message and the lesson of the Nov. 9 commemoration

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

A terrible day

10/10/23

This is a terrible day. After waking up to air sirens under a barrage of hundreds of rockets fired on Israeli cities, we have been learning about the unprecedented assault by Palestinian militants from Gaza into Israeli towns bordering the strip.

News is flowing in of Israelis killed and wounded, as well as kidnapped into Gaza – and the numbers are terribly rising. Meanwhile, the Israeli army has already begun its own offensive on the blockaded strip, with troops mobilizing along the fence and air strikes killing and wounding Palestinians, and these numbers akso steadily rising. The absolute dread of people who are seeing armed militants in their streets and homes, or the sight of fighter jets and approaching tanks, is unimaginable. Attacks on civilians are war crimes, and my heart goes to the victims and their families.

Contrary to what many Israelis are saying, and while the army was clearly caught completely off guard by this invasion, this is not a “unilateral” or “unprovoked” attack. The dread Israelis are feeling right now, myself included, is a sliver of what Palestinians have been feeling on a daily basis under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, and under the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza. The responses we are hearing from many Israelis today — of people calling to “flatten Gaza,” that “these are savages, not people you can negotiate with,” “they are murdering whole families,” “there’s no room to talk with these people” — are exactly what I have heard occupied Palestinians say about Israelis countless times.

The attack this morning also has more recent contexts. One of them is the looming horizon of a normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been making the case that peace can be achieved without talking to Palestinians or making any concessions. The Abraham Accords have stripped Palestinians of one of their last bargaining chips and support bases: the solidarity of Arab governments, despite that solidarity having long been questionable. The high likelihood of losing perhaps the most important of those Arab states may well have helped push Hamas to the edge.

Meanwhile, commentators have been warning for weeks that recent escalations in the occupied West Bank are leading to dangerous paths. Throughout the past year, more Palestinians and Israelis have been killed than in any other year since the Second Intifada of the early 2000s. The Israeli army is routinely raiding into Palestinian cities and refugee camps. The far-right government is giving settlers an entirely free hand to set up new illegal outposts and launch pogroms on Palestinian towns and villages, with soldiers accompanying the settlers and killing or maiming Palestinians trying to defend their homes. Amid the high holidays, Jewish extremists are challenging the “status quo” around the Temple Mount/Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, backed by politicians who share their ideology.

In Gaza, meanwhile, the ongoing siege is continuously destroying the lives of over two million Palestinians, many of whom are living in extreme poverty, with little access to clean water and about four hours of electricity a day. This siege has no official endgame; even an Israeli State Comptroller report found that the government has never discussed long-term solutions to ending the blockade, nor seriously considered any alternatives to recurring rounds of war and death. It is literally the only option this government, and its predecessors, have on the table.

The only answers that consecutive Israeli governments have offered to the problem of Palestinian attacks from Gaza have been in the form of band aids: if they come from the ground, we will build a wall; if they come through tunnels, we will build an underground barrier; if they fire rockets, we’ll set up interceptors; if they are killing some of ours, we will kill many more of them. And so it goes on and on.

All this is not to justify the killing of civilians — that is absolutely wrong. Rather, it is meant to remind us that there is a reason to everything that is happening today, and that — as in all previous rounds — there is no military solution to Israel’s problem with Gaza, nor to the resistance that naturally emerges as a response to violent apartheid.

In recent months, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been marching for “democracy and equality” across the country, with many even saying they would refuse military service because of this government’s authoritarian trends. What those protestors and reserve soldiers need to understand — especially today, as many of them announced they will halt their protests and join the war with Gaza — is that Palestinians have been struggling for those same demands and more for decades, facing an Israel that to them is already, and has always been, completely authoritarian.

As I write these words, I am sitting at home in Tel Aviv, trying to figure out how to protect my family from missiles in a house with no shelter or safe room, following with growing panic the reports and rumors of horrible events taking place in the Israeli towns near Gaza which are under attack. I see people, some of them my friends, calling on social media to attack Gaza more fiercely than ever before. Some Israelis are saying that now is the time to eradicate Gaza entirely — essentially calling for genocide. Through all the explosions, the dread and the bloodshed, speaking about peaceful solutions seems like madness to them.

Yet I remember that everything that I am feeling now, which every Israeli must be sharing, has been the life experience of millions of Palestinians for far too long. The only solution, as it has always been, is to bring an end of apartheid, occupation, and siege, and promote a future based on justice and equality for all of us. It is not in spite of the horror that we have to change course — it is exactly because of it.

By Haggai Matar

October 7, 2023

https://www.972mag.com/gaza-attack-context-israelis/

Haggai Matar is an award-winning Israeli journalist and political activist, and is the executive director of +972 Magazine.

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

Is history repeating itself?

Is history repeating itself?

by Adam Keller

On October 6, 1973, the Egyptian army crossed the Suez Canal. This was a strategic surprise, Israeli intelligence did not foresee it and the IDF was not prepared for it. This was the beginning of a difficult and bitter war.

Fifty years and one day later, on October 7, 2023, Hamas crossed the border of the Gaza Strip. And once again it was a strategic surprise, which Israeli intelligence did not foresee and the IDF was not prepared for. And apparently this is again the beginning of a hard and bitter war.

The similarity between the two situations – fifty years ago and now – is not reduced to the strategic surprise that the State of Israel received. There is a great similarity between the background in the years preceding the 1973 war and the background in the last years preceding today’s outbreak.Is history repeating itself?

Fifty years and one day later, on October 7, 2023, Hamas crossed the border of the Gaza Strip. And once again it was a strategic surprise, which Israeli intelligence did not foresee and the IDF was not prepared for. And apparently this is again the beginning of a hard and bitter war.

The similarity between the two situations – fifty years ago and today – is not reduced to the strategic surprise that the State of Israel received. There is a great similarity between the background in the years preceding the 1973 war and the background in the last years preceding today’s outbreak.

For years before October 1973, the State of Israel was subject to the arrogance of power. The Israeli government of the time thought that the Sinai Peninsula would forever remain in Israel’s hands, dozens of settlements were established there, and the first of them was the city of Yamit, which was built on an area whose Bedouin inhabitants had been expelled and which was intended to be a large Israeli city with a deep-water port. The Israeli government outright rejected the peace proposals of Egyptian President Sadat and also completely disregarded Sadat’s warnings that in the absence of a political shift, war would break out. No one in the Israeli government cared about continuing to block the Suez Canal, one of the main anchors of the Egyptian economy (and also one of the main routes of the world economy). And in October 1973 the State of Israel paid dearly the price of arrogance and complacency.

And in recent years – once again arrogance of power. The State of Israel has decided that it has the ability to continue to pressure the Palestinians, to maintain and intensify its military rule over the Palestinians and to deny them any hope of ever being freed from the Israeli occupation, to give military and political backing to settler gangs that attack the weakest and most vulnerable Palestinian communities and to carry out real ethnic cleansing in them, and also to back up the The Messianic fanatics who go up to pray near the mosques in Jerusalem, with the stated intention of eventually destroying the mosques – the third most important place for the religion of Islam – and building a Jewish temple on their ruins.

In his speech at the UN Assembly, Prime Minister Netanyahu used the word “peace” 44 times – all 44 referred to peace with Saudi Arabia. The map he presented at the UN Assembly expressed Netanyahu’s vision of peace – the State of Israel that includes within its borders the occupied Palestinian territories, surrounded by a large and solid bloc of Arab countries that maintain peaceful and friendly relations with it. And what about the Palestinians? The government replied disdainfully: “What can they do?”. Well, now we have seen what the Palestinians can do.

And what will happen now? There is no doubt that the coming days will be difficult and bitter, and there will be a great deal of bloodshed. The number of dead is rising and rising in sharp leaps, another hundred and another hundred, Israeli dead and Palestinian dead, those who were killed today and those whose bodies were found today. And there is no doubt that the numbers will increase even more – Palestinians who are killed by the increasing bombings of the Israeli Air Force, Israeli soldiers who may enter the Strip and encounter deadly surprises prepared for them by Hamas… and exactly how all this will end, no one can say.

So, fifty years ago, in the end the end was good. A few years after the horrors of the Yom Kippur War, the same President Sadat who brought that strategic surprise on Israel came to address the Knesset of Israel in Jerusalem and signed a peace agreement with the State of Israel, an agreement that holds up to this day.

It is not at all certain that this part of history will repeat itself. Right now, the rivers of blood that have already been spilled and continue to be spilled give rise to a flood of blind hatred and calls for revenge – and revenge only begets more revenge, and more and more. Still, one can hope…

Source: Gush Shalom – Analysis:

I will not give up!

10/10/23

Knesset Member Ofer Kassif:

Nothing justifies crimes and massacres as committed in the south of Israel!

But the writing was on the wall as I warned for long: We will all pay a heavy price for the crimes of the occupation, the siege on Gaza and the arrogance of the Kahanist government.

There is no military solution, only a political one – the end of the occupation and Palestinian independence! For the future of all of people – No to war, yes to a just peace! No to violence, yes to equality!

“We’ve been at the shelter for over 4 hours. Fear doesn’t begin to describe the feeling. We heard them land right next to the house and then attacked the house, banging on the windows and doors and shooting in the yard. They entered many houses, moving from house to house. The regional council mayor was killed. Crazy. Crazy. I’ve never been as scared as I am now.”

The above was written to me on Saturday by an old and beloved friend, shortly before she and her husband were murdered in their home in one of the kibbutzim near Gaza along with.

From the beginning of the massacre in the south I came out against the heinous crime, but despite this I continue to receive threats and insults and accusations as if I was responsible for it and not the government of atrocities. Why?

Because I refuse to go with the mobs of instigators who seek revenge and not a solution, bloodshed and not security, humiliation and not peace. These bloodthirsty people are driven mad by my pain for all those who were killed, whoever they were or might still be, and not only for the Jewish ones. It is my insistence on a political solution of ending the occupation, reaching a peace that will end the violence , which drives them crazy.

I will not give up! I will continue to raise my voice and fight for the liberation of the Palestinian people from their enslavement, an enslavement which is not only a terrible injustice but is also killing us all.

One more thing. My friend who was murdered was a proud leftist, a supporter of my Hadash Party. I knew many of those who were massacred and murdered, they were my companions and fellow activists.

How often did I get nasty and threatening messages such as : “May you and your fellows be killed by your Arab friends!” So you got your wish, vile hypocrites!