Now that criticism is crushed in the West, Israel can revel in impunity

Jonathan Cook
Counterpunch

Recent events have shone a spotlight not only on how Israel is intensifying its abuse of Palestinians under its rule, but the utterly depraved complicity of western governments in its actions.

The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House two-and-a-half years ago has emboldened Israel as never before, leaving it free to unleash new waves of brutality in the occupied territories. Western states have not only turned a blind eye to these outrages, but are actively assisting in silencing anyone who dares to speak out.

It is rapidly creating a vicious spiral: the more Israel violates international law, the more the West represses criticism, the more Israel luxuriates in its impunity.

This shameless descent was starkly illustrated last week when hundreds of heavily armed Israeli soldiers, many of them masked, raided a neighbourhood of Sur Baher, on the edges of Jerusalem. Explosives and bulldozers destroyed dozens of homes, leaving many hundreds of Palestinians without a roof over their heads.

During the operation, extreme force was used against residents, as well as international volunteers there in the forlorn hope that their presence would deter violence. Videos showed the soldiers cheering and celebrating as they razed the neighbourhood.

House destructions have long been an ugly staple of Israel's belligerent occupation, but there were grounds for extra alarm on this occasion.

Traditionally, demolitions occur on the two-thirds of the West Bank placed by the Oslo accords temporarily under Israeli control. That is bad enough: Israel should have handed over what is called "Area C" to the Palestinian Authority 20 years ago. Instead, it has hounded Palestinians off these areas to free them up for illegal Jewish settlement.
But the Sur Baher demolitions took place in "Area A", land assigned by Oslo to the Palestinians' government-in-waiting - as a prelude to Palestinian statehood. Israel is supposed to have zero planning or security jurisdiction there.

Palestinians rightly fear that Israel has established a dangerous precedent, further reversing the Oslo Accords, which can one day be used to justify driving many thousands more Palestinians off land under PA control.

Most western governments barely raised their voices. Even the United Nations offered a mealy-mouthed expression of "sadness" at what took place. 

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'Enough is Enough': UN Condemns Israel as Palestinians Bury Those Killed

ICH

Palestinians have been burying their dead after 59 protesters were killed at the Gaza fence by Israeli forces on Monday. The funerals fall on the anniversary of the Nakba, or 'catastrophe', marking the flight or exile of more than 700,00 Palestinians from their homes during the creation of Israel in 1948. UN officials have condemned the killing of protesters as an ‘outrageous human rights violation’

The Guardian

How are Palestinians reacting to the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem

The IDF vs The Teenage Girl: Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi Arrested For Slapping Soldiers Who Shot Boy

Andrés Perezalonso
Sott.net

Ahed Tamimi lives in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. She has literally been fighting tooth and nail against Israeli occupation soldiers since before she was a teenager. In the 2015 video above, we see her fighting off a soldier who was trying to take away her then 11 year-old brother Mohammed. Since the video, she became both a symbol of Palestinian resistance and an easily recognizable target for Israelis, both civilian and military.

She told Al Jazeera:

"Many Israelis threatened me on social media after the video was released, demanding that I be detained or even killed... The harassment handcuffed my life. I was scared to even go outside or visit my friends." [...]

The harassment began immediately following the video's release, as Israelis called her a "terrorist" on social media and threatened to kill her, the family says. Bassem, Ahed's father and a long-standing leader in the village, said that her 19-year-old brother, Waed, was detained after the release of the video. At the start of his 10-month stay in Israeli jail, Ahed's mother, Nariman, received permission to enter Israel to visit him, and Ahed tagged along.

"When we passed a checkpoint near Jerusalem, the Israeli soldiers got on the bus and immediately singled her out," Nariman told Al Jazeera. "While everyone else was permitted to pass, Ahed was pulled off the bus and told she wouldn't be allowed into Israel."

During the village's protests, Israeli forces would often scream Ahed's name and shout curses at her. "Look! It's Ahed Tamimi. Shoot her!" Bassem recalled one soldier as saying.

The family was often scared for their daughter, he added: "Whenever the soldiers recognise her, they do something to make her life difficult. Every time she left the house, we were scared something would happen to her." Ahed was even forced to stay at her cousin's home in Ramallah, where she attends school, to avoid the danger of passing through Israeli checkpoints on her way from Nabi Saleh.

She began attending protests at Nabi Saleh when she was nine. Here she is when she was young enough to be half the size of the armed soldiers she confronted: 

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The Trump Effect: 2 Palestinians killed, 700+ injured in clashes with Israeli forces - IDF launches airstrikes in response to failed "rocket" attack

Sott.net

It has been two days since Trump's Jerusalem decision. Immediately after the announcement, Palestinians took to the streets to protest. Protests are ongoing in Afghanistan, Jordan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Egypt. The decision was bound to result in violence. U.S. troops were put on "notice to move" alert in Afghanistan in anticipation of violence breaking out. The Iraqi PMU said U.S. troops themselves were at risk of attacks. But as usual, Palestinians were the first to suffer the effects.

Earlier today, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society announced that 104 Palestinian protesters had been wounded in clashes with Israeli occupation forces: 4 with regular bullets, 18 with rubber bullets, 70+ with tear gas. A producer for RT, Amzhad Shahin, was taken to the hospital after inhaling tear gas fired by Israeli military. Later, that number was raised to 245 injured, 11 from live fire. Thirty-year-old Mohammad al-Masri was killed east of Khan Younis. A second death was initially reported, but hasn't yet been confirmed. The Israelis confirmed they shot two people, accusing them of being the "main instigators" of "violent riots" (i.e., rock-throwing).  

[...]

The largely mythical Iron Dome allegedly took down a rocket fired from Gaza. Another landed in Sderot, damaging a parked car. Israel retaliated by launching missiles from their fighter jets at a "Hamas training compound" and an "ammo warehouse". Among the 25 injured as a result of the "precision" strikes were 6 children. In IDF-speak, "training compounds" and "ammo warehouses" are usually known by their more common names: houses, schools, hospitals, etc. 

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Trump recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital - makes it official, Israel controls USA

Moon of Alabama

U.S. President Trump announced today a change in the official U.S. view of the city of Jerusalem in Palestine:

President Trump on Wednesday formally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, reversing nearly seven decades of American foreign policy and setting in motion a plan to move the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to the fiercely contested Holy City.

"It is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel," said Mr. Trump.

This is not Trump's lone doing. The position has long had support of both parties in Congress:

The Senate's top Democrat, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, told THE WEEKLY STANDARD Tuesday that he had advised Trump to declare Jerusalem as Israel's "undivided" capital.
...
A 1995 law declares that Jerusalem should "remain an undivided city" and "be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel," but allows the president to issue waivers every six months delaying the move of the embassy for national security reasons. The Senate reaffirmed that law in June.
...
Maryland senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, reiterated his support for recognizing Jerusalem when asked Monday about the president's potential announcement.

"I believe that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, so to me, that's not news," he told TWS.

In 2008 then presidential candidate Obama pandered to the Zionist Lobby in the U.S.:

Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and it must remain undivided.

Obama though left it at that speech and never made it official policy. Officially declaring Jerusalem an "undivided city" and capital of the Zionist entity means that there is no room for a Palestinian capital in east-Jerusalem. It buries the (fairy-)tale of a sovereign Palestinian state.

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In defiance of UNSC resolution, Israel reportedly set to approve hundreds of new homes in East Jerusalem

RT

Jerusalem's zoning committee is expected to approve construction permits for hundreds of new homes in East Jerusalem, in a move which is illegal under international law. Settlement construction was slammed by the latest resolution adopted by the UN Security Council.

The Jerusalem Local Planning and Construction Committee is expected on Wednesday to approve permits to build 618 apartments in Jewish neighborhoods across the Green Line, Haaretz reported. Some 140 homes will be erected in Pisgat Ze'ev, 262 in Ramat Shlomo and 216 in Ramot, Haaretz reported, adding that even more permit requests for Pisgat Ze'ev and Ramot may be added before this week's meeting.

According to other Israeli media reports, the Committee might approve as many as 5,600 homes in response to the United Nations Security Council resolution which condemned Israeli settlement activities and called for a halt to illegal construction.

The planning committee will approve 2,600 new housing units in the neighborhood of Gilo, another 2,600 units in Givat Hamatos, and 400 units in Ramat Shlomo, for a grand total of 5,600 units in East Jerusalem, reported Israel Hayom.

"We remain unfazed by the UN vote, or by any other entity that tries to dictate what we do in Jerusalem. I hope the Israeli government and the new US administration will support us, so we can make up for the lack [of construction] during the eight years of the Obama administration," Deputy Jerusalem Mayor Meir Turgeman who heads the zoning committee told Israel Hayom.

Israel captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967. Israel subsequently annexed East Jerusalem and considers the entire city its capital. Palestine claims East Jerusalem as its future capital.

So far this year 1,506 housing units have been approved for construction in East Jerusalem, compared to 775 units in 2014 and only 395 units in 2015, Haaretz reported. But despite the UN resolution, construction is set to continue.

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Christian Zionists Woo U.S. Lawmakers

Al Jazeera 

At a reception celebrating Jerusalem Day last month on Capitol Hill, Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, recounted a recent trip to the holy city. While there, he said, “I had the privilege” of visiting the Temple Mount, where “the real discrimination occurring right now is not, as some have suggested, on the part of Israel,” but rather “on the part of the group that held Jerusalem before 1967 — you all know who I mean.” 

Tensions at the site have been escalating as some Israeli lawmakers have stepped up provocations to reverse the long-standing ban on Jewish prayer there, once considered a fringe position but now a growing rallying cry on the Israeli right. No Israeli prime minister since the war of June 1967, when the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem began — including stalwarts Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — has supported changing Israeli law to allow Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount, based on security concerns.

As right-wing fervor in Israel for Jewish prayer intensifies, Christian Zionist advocacy groups are making efforts to shape U.S. lawmakers’ understanding of Jerusalem and its holy sites, particularly the Temple Mount, through visits aimed at convincing them that Jews (and Christians) face religious persecution there.

The site is the location of the destroyed Second Temple and sacred to Jews. To Muslims it is known as Al-Haram al-Sharif, and is the location of the Muslim holy sites Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

Since 1967, when Israel captured the Old City from Jordanian control, the Temple Mount has continued to be administered by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, and Israeli law has barred Jewish prayer there. It has long been a flashpoint; in 2000, Ariel Sharon, then campaigning for prime minister, visited the site, igniting the second intifada.

The guide for Harris’ tour of the site was Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute, which aspires to rebuild a third Jewish temple there. Richman maintains it will be a precise replica of the ancient temple described in the Bible, with its priestly castes and religious rituals, including animal sacrifice. Richman believes the ashes of a perfect red heifer are “required by the Bible for purification” before the temple can be rebuilt, and he has been involved in efforts to breed one.

According to Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg’s 2000 book “The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount,” which recounts Richman’s quest for the red heifer, the Temple Institute envisions the elimination of the Muslim holy sites as “part of a self-imagined vanguard who will restore the Jews to their proper status in the world.”

In an interview, Harris said Richman is “one of the world’s experts on the Temple Mount and gave me a great tour.”

Richman was once considered an “eccentric” in Israel but is now considered mainstream, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney and founder of the NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem, which promotes agreement on the status of Jerusalem as part of a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians.

“If current trends continue, there will be a significant eruption of violence on the Temple Mount,” Seidemann said, “within a matter of weeks and months and not years.” 

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See also:  Religious Authoritarians VIII: Temple Mount …Temple Might

Israel under fire for new settler houses in East Jerusalem

xinhuanet

RAMALLAH, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said on Wednesday that Israel's approval of new settlement construction in East Jerusalem "sabotages" the peace process.

Erekat told Xinhua that Israel's persistence to resume settlement activity can only undermine U.S. efforts to make peace in the region.

Israeli radio reported on Wednesday that the Jerusalem municipal council has issued building permits for 500 settler housing units in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as their future capital.

Erekat said Israel has permitted the building of 10,000 settlement units since the resumption of the U.S-brokered Israeli- Palestinian direct peace negotiations last July.

"This proves that Israel prefers settlement over peace," Erekat added.

The current peace talks are set to end in April. However, Israeli and Palestinian officials have announced in various occasions that no tangible progress has been achieved in the process.