Here is another piece of relevance that I
came across. To claim that I wrote it - or the previous
piece- will amount to intellectual fraud.
Gloria
AL-FAKHEET, West Bank (AP) — After repeatedly rebuilding his home only to have it demolished by Israeli soldiers, Mohammed Abu Sabaha has a new plan to remain on the land — he is moving into a cave.
Abu Sabaha is among some 1,000 Palestinians at risk of expulsion from an arid region of the occupied West Bank that the Israeli military has designated as a live-fire training zone. Israel's Supreme Court upheld their expulsion in May after a two-decade legal battle.
Most residents of the area, known as Masafer Yatta, have remained in place since the ruling, even as Israeli security forces periodically roll in to demolish structures. But they could be forced out at any time, and rights groups fear Israel will do it gradually to evade international scrutiny.
The entrance to Abu Sabaha's cave is surrounded by the ruins of homes and animal pens that the soldiers demolished in earlier raids. The coo and cackle of chickens can be heard from inside a wrecked coop. A set of stone steps leads down into the cave, where he has strung up electrical lights, but it will take time to turn it into a home for his wife, parents and six children.
"We have suffered a lot because of this ruling. Especially the kids, who were born here," he said, standing in the dimly lit cave. "They fled demolitions, then went back when we rebuilt, so many times."
When the army isn't demolishing homes it is staging training exercises nearby. Tanks throw up dust clouds and heavy machine-gun fire and explosions echo across the desert hills. Abu Sabaha says his 3-year-old daughter Zeynab tenses up every time she sees them.
"She's always afraid they will come to destroy once again," he said.
The military declared this part of Masafer Yatta a firing and training zone in the early 1980s. Israeli authorities said the residents — Arab Bedouin who practice a traditional form of agriculture and animal herding — only used the area part of the year and had no permanent structures there at the time. In November 1999, security forces expelled some 700 villagers and destroyed homes and cisterns. The legal battle began the following year.
The families say they have been there for decades — from long before Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 Mideast war — and have nowhere else to live. Some residents have traditionally resided in caves part of the year, as they graze sheep and goats in different areas.
Israel's Supreme Court sided with the state in May, after the villagers rejected a compromise that would have allowed them to enter at certain times and practice agriculture for part of the year.
Since then, the army has demolished several structures and seized vehicles, setting up roadblocks and checkpoints to limit movement, according to Nidal Younes, head of the local council.
"All of this is within the framework of occupation, to frighten, to scare, to make people's lives extremely difficult to force them to leave," he said.
Masafer Yatta is in the 60% of the occupied West Bank known as Area C, where the Israeli military exercises full control under interim peace agreements reached with the Palestinians in the 1990s. Palestinian structures built without military permits — which residents say are nearly impossible to obtain — are at risk of demolition.
Area C is also home to several Jewish settlement outposts that are protected by the army despite being built without Israeli authorization. Nearly 500,000 settlers live in communities across the West Bank, most of which were planned and approved by the government. Many resemble small towns or suburbs, with apartment blocks, shopping malls and factories.
The Palestinians and the international community view the settlements as a major obstacle to resolving the century-old conflict because they absorb and divide up the land on which a future Palestinian state would be established alongside Israel.
Israel officially considers the West Bank disputed territory subject to negotiations, but every government since 1967 has expanded settlements, and the country's dominant right-wing parties are opposed to Palestinian statehood. One of the Supreme Court justices who issued the ruling on Masafer Yatta is a settler.
Eugene Kontorovich, a legal scholar at Israel's Kohelet Policy Forum, a right-wing think tank, said Israel could not allow "private squatters to determine the uses of state land" and was justified in barring people from entering a military firing range.
"The technical, legal justification is that it's not their land," he added.
Rights groups say several other Palestinian communities across the West Bank could face similar threats of expulsion if the international community does not pressure Israel over Masafer Yatta. Israel has declared firing zones in 20% of the West Bank, affecting some 5,000 Palestinians from 38 communities, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Dror Sadot, a spokeswoman for the Israeli rights group B'Tselem, said Israel would likely implement a "quiet transfer" in which it gradually makes life so difficult that families trickle out on their own.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has been waging a legal battle on behalf of the residents of Masafer Yatta for more than two decades, has filed another petition against the Supreme Court ruling.
Roni Pelli, an attorney with the group, said the "terrible ruling" goes against international law, which prohibits the transfer of civilians out of occupied territory.
"The legal consequence is that international humanitarian law is no longer relevant in the West Bank because the military commander can issue any order he wants," she said.
"You don't have to put people on trucks to force them from the land," she added. "I am really, really worried that it might become a humanitarian disaster."
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association
Sent: Saturday, August 6, 2022 9:14 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Biden and Israel (Mike Peled)
EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.
kenneth harrow
professor emeritus
dept of english
michigan state university
517 803-8839
harrow@msu.edu
Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2022 7:56 AM
To: usa <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Biden and Israel (Mike Peled)
BIDEN WHITEWASHES ISRAEL'S CRIMES
July 30, 2022, Miko Peled
Upon his arrival at Ben Gurion Airport, which sits on the lands of the occupied Palestinian city of El-Lyd, President Joe Biden repeated his age-old mantra, "You don't have to be a Jew to be a Zionist." Indeed you do not. To be a Zionist, you only need to be a racist, a supporter of the hate-filled, violent, intolerant apartheid regime that has been occupying Palestine since 1948. You need to believe that people who are not Palestinians have a right to Palestine and to its resources. To be a Zionist, you don't need to be Jewish, you just need to repeat the absurd claim that the Bible gives all Jewish people around the world the right to kill people because they are Palestinians who want to return to their homes and their land.
In a nauseating show of hypocrisy, President Biden, Israeli President Yitzhak Hertzog, and Prime Minister Lapid spoke of peace, justice, and human rights as the shared values of the United States and the State of Israel. This was less than twenty-four hours after John Bolton admitted to orchestrating coup d'états in countries around the world. This is also after Israeli military, and political figures openly talked about assassinating Iranian scientists and officials.
The values shared by Israel and the United States are clearly represented in the fact that President Biden is visiting a country that only recently assassinated the American-Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu-Akleh and is keeping silent about it. The president of the United States is in Israel, meeting with heads of the Israeli state, and yet rather than using the full force of his position – which is considerable – to demand accountability, he says and does nothing.
American journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The murders of Khashoggi and that of Shireen Abu Akleh are not the only crimes committed by the two regimes for which Biden is showing love, but these two were well publicized and involve U.S. nationals, so one would think he would act or at least speak out.
A BAD DEAL
U.S. support for Israel is a bad deal for the American taxpayers. $3.8 billion dollars of American taxpayers' money gets sent to Israel at the beginning of each year. And with the exception of the military-industrial complex, Americans get little out of this.
American citizens who wish to travel to Palestine, particularly if they have an Arab name or family there, are subjected to harassment by the Israeli authorities. This harassment takes place at Tel-Aviv airport, where the authorities are notoriously racist, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim. The harassment can last for many hours and often results in refusal of entry into the country. U.S. citizens are not protected from the inhumane interrogation process that takes place at the airport on the way in, and they are not protected by their U.S. citizenship when they leave the country.
A U.S. passport does not even protect Americans from being shot and killed by Israeli forces. Rachel Corrie and Shireen Abu-Akleh, both citizens of the United States, were killed in broad daylight. They were wearing safety equipment, they were well identified as non-combatant civilians, and they were both butchered in plain sight. Washington made no effort to bring the criminals to justice.
Another U.S. citizen who died at the hand of IDF soldiers is Omar Abdalmajeed As'ad. He died on January 12 after he was arrested by IDF troops. According to a report in The Jerusalem Post, the seventy-eight-year-old As'ad "was arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded and gagged," after which the soldiers left. Also, according to the Post report, "the soldiers did not call for medical assistance and left him there believing that he had fallen asleep." Although several members of congress did issue statements, no real action was taken to hold Israel accountable.
Where was the U.S. government to protect him? Where was the demand to investigate and bring the culprits to justice? and where are the sanctions against the State of Israel, which shows no regard for the lives of Palestinians?
The Israeli human-rights organization B'Tselem commented that: "The army's announcement regarding the death of Omar Assad is adorned with empty words about 'moral failure' – concluding, as expected, with the faintest of rebukes…In fact, the fundamental moral failure is that of Israel's senior echelons, leading a regime of Jewish supremacy, one in which the human life of Palestinians has no value."
NO DEMOCRACY, NO STABILITY
Contrary to what is said about Israel, it is neither a democracy nor an island of stability. It has been several years since Israel has been able to function as a state. This is due to the fact that there has not been a government with a stable majority in place. Elections are held over and over again, and even though the results are predictably the same, no stable government is formed. The election results have been consistent, clearly showing what Israeli voters want, namely, they are in favor of a strong, ultra-right-wing government led by racists like Benjamin Netanyahu, who was indicted for corruption, and war criminal generals like Benny Gantz.
Neither the corruption nor the war crimes seem to have any impact on the voters, and these people are elected over and over again. The only thing that changes are the partnerships between the politicians who rarely last very long and the new generals that join the political arena. The one thing that remains constant in Israeli politics is Benjamin Netanyahu. He and his loyal Likud Party followers are the only stable, consistent element in Israeli politics.
WHO IS JOE BIDEN WORKING FOR?
Judging by his performance, Joe Biden is working for AIPAC and not for the American people. He hit every note, shook every hand and repeated his mantras, clearly trying to please his donors back home. According to reports, he even made sure to tell Benjamin Netanyahu that he likes him. His interview on Israeli television included a commitment to keep the Iranian Revolutionary Guard on the list of terrorist organizations and even to attack Iran if that was what it took to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. That is not what his constituents in the U.S. want, but it is what Israel and AIPAC expect of him.
Feature photo | President Joe Biden, center, speaks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, and Israel's President Isaac Herzog at the Hall of Remembrance of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem, July 13, 2022. Debbie Hill | Pool via AP
Miko Peled is MintPress News contributing writer, published author and human rights activist born in Jerusalem. His latest books are"The General's Son. Journey of an Israeli in Palestine," and "Injustice, the Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five."
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
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