Showing posts with label The Independent. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Independent. Show all posts

Monday, June 20, 2022

Anti-Israel activists have been screaming about Israel's demolition of the illegal structures on the "Masafer Yatta" area. Even this week, one resident published an op-ed in The Independent "The Israeli government is trying to destroy my village – we need your help." 

I showed last month that Masafer Yatta is a relatively recent set of illegal outposts, with no residents or structures outside ruins mentioned in the 19th century Survey of Western Palestine.

This 1935 map also shows nothing in that area:




Some recent aerial photos showing that the area was nearly empty as recently as 1997. Here are comparisons of areas as they looked then (at the beginning of the land grab) and in 2021:



 The residents showed their own evidence of residency in the area in recent decades, and the Israeli High Court said that their photos were only showing evidence that there weren't any permanent structures there.

For the sake of example, our focus will be on the aerial photographs of "Khirbet al-Fahit" presented by the respondents ("al-Fahit" according to the petitioners). In 1967 and 1981 the area was completely empty of buildings. Some development is evident during the years 1990 and 1991. In 2001 it is evident that a number of buildings were already built in Kharbit, and such were built more and more in 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2012. 
An identical picture is revealed from the aerial photographs attached by the petitioners and even more clearly. It can also be seen that in 1972 and 1981 there is no evidence of buildings in the area compared to 2011, when there is a lot of construction on the site. 
The same is true with regard to Khirbet Hilweh ("Al Hilweh" according to the petitioners). There is not much room to doubt that in the early years (1967, 1979, 1981 and even 1991) there is no evidence of construction on the site. However in the years 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2012 more and more buildings and houses were built.  There is a sharp and noticeable difference between the photos from the early period (in 1972, 1981 and even 1993) and the photo from 2011 in which  construction can be clearly identified.
The Regavim NGO gives the true origins of the illegal outposts:

This is how these "villages" were born: The shepherds of Yatta, who lived in brick and mortar homes, would sleep in the natural caves in the grazing areas during certain seasons, rather than trekking back to the village each night. After the IDF closed off the area, the shepherds were permitted to continue to graze their flocks there; the IDF gave them a few days' warning before live-fire exercises to insure that no one got hurt. But the give-them-an-inch-and they'll-demand-a-mile dynamic soon set in, and the Palestinian Authority jumped in and began to fund construction and provide materials for permanent structures. Foreign interests funded infrastructure projects for the "indigenous farmers" - laying the water and electricity lines that enabled more and more people to set themselves up on the "free" land and build additional homes - all funded by European donations. This pattern was repeated all through the area; this was proven in the High Court of Justice - by the plaintiffs themselves!    

But the IDF willingness to compromise meant that instead of dealing with the illegal construction early, they allowed it to become much more of a problem.

 The first petitions regarding Masafer Yatta were filed over 20 years ago - by leftist organizations that tried to wrest control of the area out of the State's hands. There were temporary injunctions issued, which were not only ignored, they were trampled. Rather than tear down the few structures that had popped up in the firing zone, the IDF kept pulling back, limiting the area it used for training in order to avoid harming the squatters who, for their part, pulled out all the stops and poured massive resources into more and more construction and development. What started off as a few structures in contained areas metastasized into hundreds of structures, many hundreds of residents, and a brand new fake-news international humanitarian crisis. A full two decades passed before the High Court finally admitted what had been clear from the start, and what Regavim has been saying all along: The Arab claims to this land are fake news, the claim that Israel is dispossessing indigenous people is a lie - and the State of Israel has allowed its own delusions that it can compromise on our national interest to cause massive local and international damage.   

The court decision also noted that the vast majority of petitioners still have homes in the places they moved from to grab this seemingly free land from the State of Israel. In other words, the claim that over 1000 Palestinians will be "homeless" is yet another lie. They have their original homes.

There are no indigenous residents of "Masafer Yatta." The land was always empty and the only reason anyone lives there today is because Palestinians are trying to steal all the previously empty lands they can and claim that they were always there. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Friday, June 17, 2022


Amnesty UK has an annual meeting where they vote on resolutions about various worldwide political issues. Nearly all of them pass with a huge majority, since they don't ask for funding - just vague commitments to "lobby" for the issue. 

In 2015, one seemingly routine resolution was put up for vote to condemn antisemitism in the UK and lobby the British government to do more to protect Jews from attacks, which had increased dramatically in the previous year. That was the only resolution that year that was defeated by the Amnesty-UK crowd. 

The excuse that Amnesty-UK used to justify not opposing antisemitism was "we can't campaign on everything." 

Compare that to a similar 2020 resolution saying "AIUK should campaign against practices which discriminate against Ahmadi Muslims." That one easily passed 748-116. 

Amnesty-UK has exhibited double standards against Jews on other occasions. They have a public space that they rent out to nearly all organizations who request it, and they have allowed virulent antisemites to use the space. But when a Jewish umbrella group representing many political opinions wanted to lease it, Amnesty refused to allow it.

In 2012, an Amnesty-UK leader tweeted a joke about Jewish MKs supporting bombing Gaza, even though plenty of non-Jewish MKs supported Israel's actions to stop rocket attacks. 

The antisemitism is endemic. Which is why this story from The Independent is not surprising:

Amnesty International UK is “institutionally racist”, “colonialist” and faces bullying problems within its own ranks, a damning inquiry has concluded.

Initial findings of Global HPO’s independent inquiry into the charity were published in April but now the scale of the organisation’s issues with race have been laid bare in their final report.

Released to Amnesty staff members on Thursday, the 106-page document explains that equality, inclusion and anti-racism are “not embedded into the DNA” of the organisation.

“White saviour”, “colonialist”, “middle class” and “privileged” were among the words most used during the testimony and focus groups to discuss Amnesty.

Examples of racist incidents that left black and Asian staff uncomfortable include:

- Being regularly mistaken for other colleagues with similar skin tone
- Negative comments about fasting during Ramadan
- Treating black skin, hair and appearance as matters of fascination and touching hair without consent
- Rude comments about minority celebrities, politicians or events
The same "white savior" complex that permeates the so-called "human rights community" is closely related to the left wing antisemitism we've seen from Amnesty and Amnesty-UK. The mostly white leadership of Amnesty pretends that Palestinians are "people of color" under attack from white "Jewish supremacists" and as such have no responsibility for their own actions - the same kind of infantilizing of non-white people that this report highlights under the pretense of being anti-racist itself. 

In short, groups like Amnesty are the pot that call the kettle black. 

Yesterday, the head of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard lashed out against accusations of antisemitism in its report accusing Israel, the most diverse state in the Middle East of "apartheid." She claimed that calling out the obvious double standards and antisemitism in Amnesty are "weaponizing antisemitism." 

Just as the previous probes finding that Amnesty-UK is systematically racist were dismissed by its leadership, so are the provable accusations of antisemitism. 

Their objections in both cases are the same: we are the leaders in human rights, we are against discrimination, we work hard to hold others accountable for their racism, how dare you accuse us!  

But accusations of racism and apartheid against Israel, falsely claiming that it deliberately targets Arab children, are the 21st century equivalent of accusations of Jews deliberately killing Christian children in medieval times. 

Accusing those who call out leftist antisemitism as "weaponizing antisemitism" is as offensive as saying that those who document Amnesty-UK's racism are "weaponizing racism." 

Groups like Amnesty hide behind the pretense that they fight some kinds of bigotry to justify their own. 

Antisemites are racists, and racists are antisemites.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

AddToAny

EoZ Book:"Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism"

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

subscribe via email

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Blog Archive