At 7.30am on 2 January, two missiles were launched by Palestinian Resistance fighters in Gaza, crashing into the sea off Tel Aviv and Palmachim. Israel held Hamas responsible for the launchings, according to The Times of Israel and responded quickly, with three air strikes on Northern Gaza. The Palestinian missiles had been fired following a year of massive Israeli ceasefire violations. Last month alone, Israel carried out more than 100 Gaza ceasefire violations, including six waste-laying incursions into the territory. Over the period, there had been little armed Resistance from Gaza, the most recent being the shooting and slight wounding of an Israeli civilian carrying out maintenance work on the border fence with Gaza. The Israeli response to that, left three Palestinians wounded. On 4 January, Palestinian Resistance fighters opened fire towards Israeli forces manning the border fence, east of Rafah.
This month appears to forebode an even grimmer outlook for Palestinians subjected to Zionist military dictatorship. By 9 January, Israel had already carried out 62 Gaza ceasefire violations that included, apart from the air strikes, five Gaza communities coming under Israeli fire, including shelling, as well as 17 attacks in which the Israeli Navy opened fire on, and pursued, Palestinian fishing boats. Gaza’s agricultural areas were subjected to Israeli gunfire 34 times.
In the first nine days of this month, the Israeli Army and Navy carried out a total of 69 attacks on Palestinian targets. Israeli military and settler violence, combined, resulted in two Palestinians killed and 59 wounded/injured. During those first nine days, the Israeli Army carried out raids on 141 towns, villages and UN refugee camps, including home invasions, 68 of which took place at night. In addition, Israeli forces inflicted 71 ruinous acts of agricultural/pastoral and economic sabotage in Occupied as well as blockaded areas.
In the West Bank and Jerusalem, from 1-9 January, inclusive, some examples of Israeli cruelty and inhumanity towards the Palestinian people may give just a glimpse of what they have to endure, day after day, year after year, decade upon decade:
Home invasions and forced personal demolitions
At 2:10am, the Israeli Army raided Nablus, firing live ammunition, rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters, while storming a number of homes and killing a resident, Bakir Mohammed Musa Hashash.
In Jerusalem, the Israeli Occupation forced a man, Rami Oweida, to destroy his own home in the Silwan neighbourhood – or otherwise be forced to pay an extortionate sum to the Israeli Occupation demolition squads, who would be sent in to do it. A woman, Shaima Dabash, and a man, Ibrahim Abu Kaf, both villagers in Sur Baher, were likewise made to destroy their own homes. Also in Jerusalem another person, Jamal Abu Najma, was forced to destroy his livelihood, a shop, under the same threat.
Israeli forces, near the village of Izbit Salman, seized possession of a bulldozer while the owner, Radwan Othman Qatani, was working on local farmland; they also forced the family of an Al-Aqsa Mosque security guard to demolish a barn on their farmland – or otherwise be made to pay an extortionate sum to the Israeli Occupation demolition squads, who would be sent in to do it.
Even tent-dwellings get destroyed – Israeli Occupation forces, in the village of Khirbet Ibziq, destroyed four tent-dwellings as well as nine more used for raising livestock, along with a water tank and a fodder store, other machinery and, further, more than ten tons of livestock feed.
Israeli Army armed robbery and population-control
Israeli Occupation forces, manning a checkpoint, seized possession of a taxi after taking prisoner the driver, Raafat Rasim Al-Barghouti. In Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers seized possession of a container for transporting goods, along with the property inside it – and in al-Isawiya village, they purloined a container for transporting goods, as well as two water-storage tanks. In Hebron, the Army took a bulldozer being used by a landowner, Nabil Al-Sharha, in the Ein al-Fares area of Dura town, to prevent him from reclaiming his land. Israel claims that the land is in an area classified as ‘under its control’. The Occupation plunder included a bulldozer in Madama village, also being used to reclaim village farmland, as well as taking privately-owned al-Isawiya land.
New Occupation settlement outposts and land-grabs
Israeli militants set up tent-dwellings with water supply tanks and surrounded an area, north-west of Jericho, with a barbed-wire fence so as to establish a new Occupation settlement outpost. In Jerusalem, the Israeli Occupation issued an order for the building of 3,557 new housing units between the settlements of Givat Hamatos and Har Homa, to join the two and cut off the Jerusalem and Bethlehem neighbourhoods from each other. The order also provided for another 2,092 housing units to be built on the outskirts of the French Hill in Jerusalem, on yet more Occupied Palestinian land.
Israeli Occupation settlers also invaded Deir Jarir village farmland, uprooting and chopping down olive trees before removing the surrounding protective fence. In Jericho – militants, from the Mevot Jericho Occupation settlement outpost, forced shepherds off pastoral land.
On 9 January, Israeli settlers attacked the family of Adel Al-Salameen, a shepherd in the Makasar area, south-east of Tammun, beating up his wife and children as well as robbing one of his sons of a mobile phone. They also stole a number of the family’s sheep.
Occupation settler agricultural sabotage, assisted by Israeli Army violence
Israeli settlers, supported by Occupation troops firing rubber-coated bullets, stun grenades and tear gas canisters, invaded Burqa village farmland. One person, Jamal Tawfiq Hajja, was wounded and there were several tear gas casualties. In another instance, Israeli Occupation forces fired stun grenades and tear gas canisters towards people who were trying to defend themselves from stone-throwing settlers on the main Jenin-Nablus road.
News media silence and governmental indifference
The world is awakening to this tragedy, whether our leaders and the mainstream media like it or not. In the past, the world’s most powerful leaders agreed to betray the Palestinian right to self-determination but international law now provides the moral reason, as well as means, to bring Israel to account. Individual voices speak out; one of the most recent is actress Emma Watson, who refuses to submit to the misleading, Zionist smear of ‘anti-Semitism’. On Instagram, she recently declared her solidarity with the ‘Free Palestine’ Movement. Miriam Margolyes, well known for her presentation of Charles Dickens‘ characters, and who appeared in the Harry Potter films that so enhanced Watson‘s career, also supported Emma. She said: “I totally support Emma Watson’s recent remarks on Palestine. All decent people should too.” Margolyes made two other crucial comments, which our leaders should consider with care: “What matters is opposing cruelty, speaking out for compassion” and “Criticising Israel is not in itself, an anti-Semitic stance. Conflating the two is a form of disguised censorship”, she concluded.
Very revealingly, The Jerusalem Post editorial board, realising the diminishing efficacy of the anti-Semitism insult, pretended to defend Emma Watson by saying: “If we shout ‘antisemitism’ too often about relatively tame criticism of Israel, and if many people become inured to the shouts, we lose the larger struggle against more serious forms of Jew-hatred.” That would appear to mean that the editors regard Watson’s support for Palestinian human rights as, to a degree, a ‘less serious’ form of ‘Jew hatred’. They want it both ways.
Unable to hide Zionism’s crimes against humanity, Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, commented that “fiction may work in Harry Potter but it does not work in reality.” His comment drew a response from 40 stars in the entertainment industry, Artists for Palestine, including Miriam Margolyes: “We join Emma Watson in support of the simple statement that ‘solidarity is a verb’, including meaningful solidarity with Palestinians struggling for their human rights under international law.” The statement also affirms: “We recognise the underlying power imbalance between Israel, the occupying power, and the Palestinians, the people under a system of military occupation and apartheid.”
Artists for Palestine recognise and condemn the undeniable reality, declaring: “We stand against ongoing Israeli attempts to forcibly displace Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighbourhoods of Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and elsewhere in the occupied Palestinian territory.”
International law and human rights
The international community has passed hundreds of resolutions in the UN Security Council, General Assembly and Human Rights Council, calling on Israel not to annex Palestinian land and not to impose any of the 300 illegal settlements it has in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Israel has similarly been called upon to end its blockade of Gaza. All to no avail.
In a recent interview, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Michael Lynk, reminded the world that there will be no end to Israel’s Palestinian human rights violations until it is held fully accountable for them. He observed “annexation has been illegal in international law, since the end of the Second World War. The international community recognised with the founding of the United Nations in 1945 that countries are not allowed to have acquisitive ambitions beyond their own borders, either in forms of colonialism or in forms of trying to expand their borders.” Bringing this even more up to date, Lynk drew attention to the 2010 amendments in the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court which holds annexation to be a crime of aggression.
The Zionist regime‘s leaders must be made to understand that if they fail to put an immediate end to their human rights violations they will be forced to face exclusion from international trade, cultural and investment associations and, especially, all arms sales. Sadly, world powers, such as the United States, continue to aid Israel. Ignoring a UN Security Council Resolution, the US has still not moved its embassy back to Tel Aviv and it has also failed to revoke the Trump Administration’s recognition of Israel’s annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights.
Boycotting Israel, as exemplified by BDS, is civil society’s way of supporting human rights and international law – setting an example to governments and world leaders. In the UK there is a move to boycott the Israeli pharmaceutical company, Teva, that profits from the Israeli Occupation. In general, the international pharmaceutical industry prices drugs sold to each country according to their standard of living. As a result, Palestinians pay the same prices as in most developed countries. However, Palestinians are not allowed to access drugs more cheaply from abroad and so Teva enjoys the advantage of monopoly to sell its own products to them at very high prices.
Where do our own country’s leaders and news media stand on all this? Are we with our ‘traditional allies’? Or do we unequivocally support human rights and international law? The silence is chilling.
Hmmm, so your saying Israel should just have shrugged shoulders and tilted head to the side with a worried expression because no harm done eh?, The missiles missed!
How dare Israel retaliate with more sophisticated hardware, how bloody unsportsmanlike of them!
“The Palestinian missiles had been fired following a year of massive Israeli ceasefire violations. Last month alone, Israel carried out more than 100 Gaza ceasefire violations, including six waste-laying incursions into the territory.”
The above quote was from the third line in the article so we can presume you only read the headline before blindly supporting the Israelis. I want to see the Jewish nation prosper but it is wrong to do so by depriving the Palestinians of their own right to exist in peace.
You’re right all right. So helpful with thoughts for stopping all this??
Zero comments. No one cares. I actually like this generation of Jews who have taken the lesson of their grandparents that walking quietly into the gas ovens isn’t the right idea. They have got their own country now and they are not going to let anyone fuck with them any more.
Understandably the Jews of Israel have come to realise that they have to ultimately ensure their own protection themselves and as such constant criticism from the Leslie’s of the world is a ridiculously small price to pay to ensure that security.
tell that to the hagana, irgun the stern gang or the mossad teams that got eichman and others not to mention entebbe. peter, facile historical big ups to a country controlled by fundamentalist hasidim is not any kind of progress
All you have proved is your total lack of knowledge regarding the history of the modern nation of Israel. Using the Holocaust as an excuse to justify everything the Jewish state does in Israel today sounds more like KKK logic than a reasoned compassionate response to real-world problems.
Very understandable in the 40s. But the reaction involved going from oppressed to oppressor. Also understandable. Female preying mantises chewing the heads off their mates is a thing. Nature is a bloody business. But don’t expect sympathy from anyone anymore.
Zero comments. No one cares. I actually like this generation of Jews who have taken the lesson of their grandparents that walking quietly into the gas ovens isn’t the right idea. They have got their own country now and they are not going to let anyone fuck with them any more.
Im right: a few tinpot missiles are a horror show while the slow genocide being inflicted by an apartheid state is to be celebrated. No wonder increasing numbers of the Jewish faith are turning their backs on Israel. Never mind, the US taxpayers will front up with billions to pay for the Iron Dome missiles that the IDF unleash.
peterhitch: It appears insulting a previous generation of Jews is your forte. No doubt, if someone else showed such disrespect the anti-semite button would be pressed immediately. It is most disturbing that your comment is in defense of the sort ideologies that gave rise to the ovens you refer to.
Ah, the old ‘genocide’ trope. Yet the Pals have increased their population 7 fold since 1948. Clearly Israel is crap at genocide…and apartheid and ethnic cleansing. Btw 90% of American Jews support Israel. Supporting terrorists though tends to brand one.
More bullshit – bullshit – bullshit. https://www.pewforum.org/2021/05/11/u-s-jews-connections-with-and-attitudes-toward-israel/.
Now think about what the results would have been if the question was asked, “Do you support the Israeli Government’s policies with regards Palestinians who live in Israel?” That one would spell out the views of the younger Jews who have no attachment to the racist state and don’t support its policies.
Apartheid Israel annex the Westbank from Jordan in 1967 foolishly (in their warped minds of ethnic cleansing) incorporating ova a million Palestinian into their demography and guess what?? The Palestinian like most love sex and the end result is more Palestinian babies, for fascist Jews to use as target practice to develop their latest weapons. Besides the Palestinian are indigenous to the levant so it difficult for them to be wiped out completely unlike the Jewish community that had to ship Jews in from Europe, Morocco, Yemen, along with the Egyptian & Iraqi Jews who had Mossad to thank for their exodus out of their respected countries.
Aom. I’m not sure what the anti-semite button is to be honest. I do know that i don’t in any way support ideologies that lead to gas ovens. I merely voiced two opinions. Only about 100 people in NZ care about the Palestinians and Israel is not going to be fucked around by any one. To be honest i think the whole middle east is a giant joke as a result of one of the stupidest gods ever invented by humans. One god; three major religions all hating each other and groups within those religions also hating each other. If you ever want evidence that intelligence is an evolutionary dead end there it is.
Is that the God who inspired? Mt 5:42 Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; who inspired
Religion is the biggest problem regarding people’s future however it takes a bit more effort to understand the reason why than it seems you are prepared to give.
I can assure you that I know far more than 100 people in NZ who care about the Palestinians so you need to get out more.
There are many state sanctioned cruel acts playing out across the globe.
But as you have eloquently and factually stated here Leslie, and on numerous other posts, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and the shocking treatment of all Palestinians continues to be one of the most outrageous abuses threatening humanity today.
How any fair minded and decent human being cannot be affected by the accumulation of wanton abuse meted out to all Palestinians is a travesty and a shame on all of those in power who remain silent.
In an environment of tragic inequality the endlessly disproportionate response from the IDF goes unchallenged year after year and the NZ government plays it’s part in this shameful silence.
All power to you LB and your ilk who tirelessly feel compelled to speak on behalf of the interminable suffering of all Palestinian people and help to hold those responsible accountable.
Still defending the terrorists Bravery? By the way where is ‘Palestine’ on the world map? Can’t find it. Keep trying to kill your neighbours and you keep paying the price.
Change the record won’t you? We are sick of your constant recycling of the same old drivel. It is noteworthy that these days you don’t even offer any cogent responses to the issues that are highlighted in Leslie’s much appreciated reports.
Yawn. Criticising Israel is easy. It requires no bravery.
Agree (my G button is sticking). I’d like to see more talking ‘for’ the people and the best ideas. Why America will be an autocracy soon, unless a bright soul steps in. With guns. See Jerry Rawlings of Ghana.
From The Economist: “And the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer seen as a priority in the region. “The Arab world has too many problems to still care about Palestine,” says Kamal Alam, an expert on Syria and its Jewish diaspora. “Instead they look at Israel and Jews as models for running a successful country that feeds itself without oil.”
If the Arab world no longer cares, then nor do I. The only people who seem concerned are the constantly attention-hungry ‘celebrities’, whose entire twitter feed is perpetual outrage at easy targets to garner more followers. They aren’t really concerned, they just want the ‘street cred’.
Right on, Sean. Bravery, Minto and Griffiths are the axis of evil, camouflaging their apologies for terrorism behind “human rights” and lobbying for the destruction of the world’s one tiny Jewish state. Do they seriously think they have us fooled as to their motivation? Even the Arab states revile them and distance themselves from their Nazi stench.
Yes I agree Sean and Gaby.
They are incredibly silent on racist policy being secretly introduced in New Zealand.
Why is that?
Jeremy, as one of the country’s most internationally famous Jews, Taika Waititi said, “New Zealand is as racist as fuck…” Your comment supports his point. However, ignorance of what racism is can be hardly surprising when you swim in the soup of Zionist propaganda cooked up by the racist fanatics you support here. Their distortions of reality are of course deliberately seeded by the Government and agents of the apartheid, racist state of Israel.
Thanks your comments aom but to be honest I’m not sure what you mean.
Proving the point again!
What point?
Still no insight!
Gosh why are you being so vague?
Not vague. You seem to be floundering over the meaning of racism.
Not floundering at all.
I’m trying to understand your view.
Well do a bit of reading instead of hiding beyond a not very charming ‘who me?’ naivety, or is it that you just indulge in endless denial. If you are truly lost, you could ask experts who contribute to this site for a NZ centric reading list.
Well do a bit of reading instead of hiding beyond a not very charming ‘who me?’ naivety, or is it that you just indulge in endless denial. If you are truly lost, you could ask experts who contribute to this site for a NZ centric reading list.
It would seem and I don’t like to say so that you are discriminatory in your views.
You seem to have an air of superiority.
I’m sure your not racist.
Anyway you are not going to answer my questions for reasons I don’t know so let’s end this silly exchange.
Putting it simply, as in Waititi’s parlance, are you a run of the mill “racist as fuck” New Zealander? Your initial-statements suggests so in that you showed support for the unashamedly arch-racist TDB troll Gaby, and you repeated the blatant dog whistle statement, “…. racist policy being secretly introduced in New Zealand.”
You were given the benefit of doubt and being challenged to exercise some introspection. Apologies if that was too subtle?
My participation in this pathetic exchange is finished.
That is one way of dodging to the question, “….are you a run of the mill “racist as fuck” New Zealander?” Seems the answer is unequivocally in the affirmative.
Temper, temper not good.
I wonder if wrapping Israelis and those recalcitrant Jews outside the homeland in sorrowful music and the acceptance of many in the general public across the world of he dreadful loss that the Holocaust brought, not only of Jewish people, family and friends, but also an innocence that humans could not bring themselves to do such a thing. The industrial efficiency and size of it, the coldness, I think made it worse than others.
I imagine on a particular Sunday, Christian and other churches presenting a Day of Sorrows special service.
I was looking at Stabat Mater and the piece from it ‘And the Mother Did Weep as a fine choral and instrumental piece suitable I thought..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on5iNUMFGnE
Here is a a fuller presentation of it. Accessed from link at the end of the page.
https://stabatmater.info/componist/karl-jenkins/
There could be up to five different musical pieces with some just being instrumental ie violin. And a number of choral pieces including those attending the service.. I wonder has this been done already? It would be good if it could be held once a year. The Holocaust was not a strike of evil against the Jewish people, gypsies and others, it brought a shame to Christianity from the country that had brought forward the protesting Martin Luther, calling for a better church. When we see the depths of depravity we can sink to as shown in WW2, we need to be forever shocked and aware of the path that led to this outcome.
I hope you see this Leslie Bravery. I have been thinking of this idea for a while but was a bit busy when the post was put up. I am not suggesting that you or I should take this further but I’m putting the idea up, And I think that an annual event like this should be on church calendars. I have not heard of it happening on this basis. It will never be forgotten, and we all bear the weight of it in our own humanity;s propensities, and the people we allow to gain prominence over us. I hope you feel like listening to the music. And I would be pleased to know what you feel about the idea.
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