Showing posts with label open air prison. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open air prison. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 23, 2023

From Naharnet:

An explosion was heard at dawn inside the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Helweh in the southern city of Sidon, the state-run National News Agency said.

The explosion resulted from “a hand grenade that was hurled near a school belonging to the UNRWA agency in the camp’s al-Fawqani street,” NNA said, adding that the incident caused no casualties.

UNRWA had reported Saturday that another school compound was taken over by armed groups in the camp.

“This brings the total number of schools taken over by armed groups in the camp to eight, risking the start of the school year in time for 5,900 children,” UNRWA warned.

“We are getting credible reports of severe damage to the school buildings and looting of children’s education material and equipment from the schools,” it said.
The Lebanese camp of Ein el-Hilweh gets worse and worse, but since there is no actual shooting and Israel can't be blamed, no one cares too much.

Just like you almost never read about the concrete wall surrounding the camp since 2017.


Yes, Lebanon really keeps Palestinians in an open-air prison. Banksy doesn't seem to care too much




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Tuesday, June 27, 2023


JNS reports:

Residents of the Gaza Strip may soon be able to fly to Turkey via Israel’s Ramon Airport near Eilat.

The pilot program could start as early as July when two flights are anticipated, Channel 12 reported. The final decision is subject to approval by the security and political echelons.

Gaza sources say the flights will be available to residents ages 35 and older. They will be shuttled to the airport from the Erez crossing to the northern Gaza Strip.

At present, Gazans travel via the Erez crossing by land to Jordan and fly abroad from there.

The announcement follows a similar one from the Israel Airports Authority in August 2022 that Palestinians from Judea and Samaria would be able to take charter flights from Ramon Airport to Turkey.

The first flight from the airport with Palestinian Arabs on board departed on August 22. Its destination was not Turkey but rather Cyprus.
While the announcement is not official, Palestinian travel agencies are already advertising the trips.

Right now, for Gazans to travel anywhere, they need to get permission to enter Egypt, which is difficult to get to begin with, and then travel by bus directly to Cairo's airport - a six hour trip - and then wait hours more for their flights.

The trip from the Gaza crossings to Ramon is about three hours.

The Palestinian Authority announced that it opposes this and will do whatever it can to block Palestinians from traveling to Ramon Airport, saying that this will hurt relations with Jordan and Egypt, which would lose out on revenues from Palestinians traveling through those countries to get to Amman and Cairo, respectively. 

The leftist terror groups Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which are closely linked with many "human rights" NGOs, issued  condemnations for allowing Gazans to fly to Turkey through Ramon Airport. 

Their reasons are a perfect example of the blind hatred that Palestinian leaders have for Israel - so much so that they are eager to make their own people miserable for nebulous political gain.

They called on Palestinians to boycott Ramon airport, saying that Israel is using this as a means to reduce terror from Gaza.

PFLP political analyst Zulfiqar Swergo said in an interview with Al-Hadaf News Portal, "This step is meant to 'neutralize' the Gaza Strip through offering political bribes to [Hamas]  in order to ensure calm and not create a state of inconvenience to the occupying state."

He continued, "The Gaza government must carefully consider the strategic interests of the Palestinian people, and not forget that it is a government of resistance, and that this step will harm the idea of ​​resistance that our people are now strongly adopting in the West Bank, and it must be aware that the 'neutralization' of the Gaza Strip It is a major blow to the escalation of resistance in the West Bank."

That's the logic.  Terror is the top priority of the Palestinian people, and anything that makes their lives easier and reduces their continuous anger towards Jews is something that must be fought.

To the PFLP, it is better for Gaza to be what their NGO partners call an "open air prison" than to give travel options for residents of Gaza.

The DFLP had a different objection: using the Ramon Airport helps Israel economically, so therefore it must be boycotted, even if it costs Palestinians far more time and money. 

DFLP political analyst Mahmoud Mardawi complained that “there is an economic goal for the occupation behind this matter, especially since none of the Zionists went to use Ramon Airport when it opened."

He warned about "the political motives and the affirmation of the apartheid policy that the occupation practices day and night against our people" and called for all Palestinian institutions to "thwart this racist project."

So Israel helping Palestinians travel is an apartheid, racist project. 

Cutting through the doubletalk, it is clear that the Palestinian leaders want Palestinians to suffer for their own political gain - they cannot recruit more terrorists from people who aren't angry. 






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Thursday, February 23, 2023

From the UN's OCHA:

The number of exit permits for [Gaza] workers and traders issued by Israeli authorities increased from just over 10,000 in January 2022 to more than 18,000 in November 2022. This has allowed more exits of people compared with any time since the early 2000s. At the same time, the Egyptian authorities allowed more exits than any time since 2014.
This is an understatement. The number of Gazans allowed to cross into and Israel and back more than doubled between 2021 and 2022, and it was by far the most since Hamas took over Gaza.

Less authorized goods were brought in through Israel and more were imported through Egypt. Goods exiting through either border increased and, for the first time, exceeded the pre-blockade annual figures.
There are more Gaza exports than there were before the Hamas takeover of Gaza!

These are the exports (ignore the caption, this is for both Erez and Rafah crossings):


Israel is clearly trying to help the Gaza economy. 

When Israel acts the opposite of the narrative (which says they are starving Gazans in their open-air prison),  suddenly the news media loses all interest in reporting about movement and exports from Gaza.

Remember when the UN said Gaza was going to be uninhabitable by...2020?





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Sunday, December 18, 2022

Hamas issued this press release in English:

The planned mass incursions into the Al-Aqsa Mosque, orchestrated by Israeli settler groups under the cover and protection of the hardline right-wing Israeli occupation government to mark the so-called Hanukkah holiday, constitute a dangerous development aimed at provoking the feelings of the Palestinian people and of all Muslims. 

We hold the Israeli occupation government fully responsible for the repercussions of such raids and provocations. We emphasise that such policies and incursions threaten to explode the situation in the face of the Israeli occupation and colonial settlers. 

We call on the Palestinian citizens of Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1948 to defend the Al-Aqsa Mosque by intensifying their presence at the Muslim sacred compound in order to foil all schemes intended to impose a new fait accompli and divide the Al-Aqsa Mosque temporally and spatially. 

The Palestinian people will continue to defend the Al-Aqsa compound with all means possible and at any cost.

Note that even in English, the antisemitism shines through. Not only are they saying that Jews hve no rights to visit our most sacred site, and not only are they saying that the only reason Jews might want to visit the site is specifically to provoke Muslims, and not only are they saying that their own natural violence that might erupt in the anger of seeing Jews walking around peacefully would be the Jews' fault, but they imply that Chanukah itself is a fake holiday - "so-called Hanukkah holiday" - perhaps as an excuse to do these "provocations."

In Arabic, of course, they are even more strident in their threats.

Abu Obeida, the military spokesman for the Martyr Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military arm of the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, called on the masses of our people and our nation to mobilize to protect the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque in the face of the continuous crimes of the occupation, stressing that the battle with the occupation is long, extended, complex and has multiple fronts, mechanisms and means.

Today, Sunday, Abu Obeida stressed that the occupation's threats about the further storming of Al-Aqsa are serious, and indicate the nature of the criminal structure that came to power in the entity, adding, "This requires a state of alert for our people and our nation to protect the place of their Prophet from this miserable fragmentation."

He stressed that the battle of Saif al-Quds (2021 Gaza war) was the detonator that exploded latent energies and removed the ashes from blazing embers in the occupied West Bank, Jerusalem and occupied Palestine in the year 48, and was an inspiring model.

Abu Obeida called on our revolutionary youth in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian interior, to continue to escalate the resistance against the occupation and settlers, stressing that the extended and escalating resistance movement is the natural state to respond to aggression and establish the next liberation stage.

He added, "We are facing a battle of existence, right, history, and the future, but victory is an hour's patience, and if the martyrs are planted despite the pain, a revolution and a real victory will grow."

Leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad met in Lebanon, somehow escaping the Gaza "open air prison" whenever they want to, and they included threats to Israel for Jews visiting the Temple Mount:

Deputy Head of the Political Bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Sheikh Mujahid Saleh Al-Arouri, Secretary-General of the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, met with Brother Mujahid Ziyad Al-Nakhala, in the Lebanese capital, Beirut,  yesterday . 

 The two parties emphasized joint cooperation in strengthening and activating the resistance of our people in all of Palestine in the face of the Zionist occupation and criminality, especially in the West Bank, and to confront the Zionist plans that seek to undermine the resistance and liquidate the Palestinian cause, the aggressive threats targeting Jerusalem, and the repeated storming of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The inflammatory and inciteful rhetoric isn't only the domain of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups. Jordanian officials joined the anti-Chanukah, anti-Jewish party:

Secretary-General of the Royal Commission for Jerusalem Affairs, Abdullah Kanaan, confirmed that the concept of holidays is usually associated with peace, unlike what is happening in occupied Palestine, which activates and intensifies the Israeli attacks and incursions against the Islamic and Christian sanctities in the city of Jerusalem.

He said that the Jews perform alleged rituals related to their festivals in a way that threatens the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque directly,  and makes the idea of ​​​​demolishing the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and establishing the alleged temple in its place a sacred religious principle, as is the case in the doctrine of the holiday (Hanukkah), which provokes the feelings of Muslims and Christians whose sanctities are also exposed. It clearly shows the occupation's plans to Judaize Jerusalem, and efforts to change the existing historical situation, which endangers peace and security in the region and the world.

The Ammon News site then goes on a bizarre, antisemitic reading of history, not only denying Jewish history itself but then blaming Jews celebrating Jewish holidays for Arabs slaughtering Jews:

Today, Sunday, the Jews began their celebrations of the Hanukkah or Lights)festival, which is a celebration to commemorate the so-called alleged temple, and to restore freedom of worship to the Jewish people after the success of the popular revolution led by Judah Maccabee and his brothers, according to legends on which they built their fabricated beliefs, and at the same time they oppress Muslims and Christians in the occupied territories to prevent them from celebrating their festivals.

The Jewish holidays, including Hanukkah, are dominated by the nature of violations and assaults in alleged religious dress, which creates a difficult and even dangerous reality for Jerusalemites by preventing them from freedom of worship, and the exercise of economic and social activities, due to checkpoints, closures, holding Talmudic prayers, lighting candlesticks, and incursions by herds of settlers under protection and direct participation of the Israeli police and army.

It is noteworthy that the Zionist gangs carried out an attack during the Prophet Musa season on 4/4/1920 under the pretext of celebrating the Jewish Passover, and on 8/15/1929, which coincided with the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, they attacked the Palestinians under the pretext of celebrating the day of the alleged destruction of the Temple, so that occupied Palestine would witness the Buraq Revolution. 

This isn't "anti-Zionism." This is Jew-hatred, and anyone who denies this simple equation supports it.




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Thursday, November 24, 2022

Often, when Israel-haters accuse Israel of some crime, they use terminology that they have given a completely different definition than it has in any other context. 

This is quite deliberate. They first choose the crime they want to accuse Israel of, and then change the definition of the crime to fit (or pretend to fit) Israel.

Some examples include "apartheid," "racism,"  "colonialism" and "settler colonialism," "ethnic cleansing," "international law," and "occupation," which the haters have redefined at least twice.

Related is how the word "refugee" means something different for Palestinians than it does for everyone else.

These are all words with precise, legal meanings, whose very definitions are different when Israel is involved.

There are other, less precise words, that are also misused by the haters in ways that are not obvious unless one knows what to listen for. They include "justice" - no one is against justice, but only one side is allowed to seek it. Also "peace activists," "human rights activists" and "pro-Palestinian activists" that really mean "anti-Israel activists" (cf. the Mavi Marmara.)

These are the terms that have made it to the mainstream, despite their clear inaccuracies. 

Palestinians themselves have plenty more absurd words they use and are trying to spread to be as mainstream as the others. They are just waiting for these terms to be used by first the far Left and eventually "human rights" organizations and mainstream media. These include "cultural genocide," "legitimate resistance," "holocausts," "peace activists," "storming," "Talmudic rituals," "settlers" (referring to any Jew in Israel,) "civilian," "child," "open air prison," "concentration camp," "Judaization," "indigenous," "struggle," "defense," "surrounded,"  "martyrs..." the list is really endless, and Orwell himself couldn't have come up with some of these.



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

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Tuesday, October 04, 2022



There is a new art exhibit in Gaza.

Sherine Abdel Karim uses technology to simulate the reality of the suffering of the people of the Gaza Strip as a result of the Israeli siege that has continued for more than 16 years.

Abdel Karim believes that virtual reality is the easiest way to convey the image of Gaza and the suffering of its people as a result of the strict siege on the Strip.

Karim displayed her project in an art exhibition organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross in Gaza a few days ago.

Here's what the exhibit looked like:



Gazans are suffering so much, they need to use VR technology to show each other how bad their lives are. Perhaps they forget?

In other news, poor besieged Gazans have art museums - and VR.


Palestinian "suffering" is big business.





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Monday, September 19, 2022

Israel haters love to claim that Gaza is an Israeli open-air prison.

Gazans know better.

Sama News writes:

The crisis of stranded travelers in the Gaza Strip continues, with thousands of people wishing to leave the Strip still waiting.

Informed sources told Al-Ayyam newspaper that the crisis that started since last May is still continuing, especially in the departure route, as thousands are waiting for their turn to travel from the Gaza Strip.
The crisis continues despite the departure of more than 3,200 passengers per week, and the stranded people have appealed to the Egyptian authorities to speed up their exit from the Strip, by increasing the number of departures, and opening the crossing for an additional day per week, so that work will become six days instead of five.

Those stuck in the Gaza Strip are forced to purchase the express travel service through a specialized company, in order to expedite their departure from the Strip, despite its high financial cost....

With regard to the arrival route, the source confirmed that returning to the Strip is easier, but there is suffering in the journey to come, due to the turbulent conditions in the Sinai Peninsula and the long hours of travelers staying at the Egyptian army checkpoints, in order to allow them to reach the crossing.

The Rafah crossing operates five days a week from Sunday to Thursday.
Hamas publishes the list of people allowed to leave every day.  They are the ones who decide who can stay and who can go.

Egypt sometimes blocks specific people from coming for presumed security reasons, last week they blocked 86 out of 3200 people.

Israel has nothing to do with this. 

But it gets blamed.

(h/t Imshin)







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Tuesday, July 26, 2022



Gazans have been furiously downloading this video of the Bianco Resort which was originally uploaded to Facebook a year ago. Apparently it was re-uploaded to Instagram about a week ago.


Gazans were scandalized by video showing a family wearing swimming suits.

Palestinian media are eagerly reporting the story about how scandalous the video is - while publishing the video itself to allow everyone to see these pre-pubescent girls splashing in the pool and hot tub. (The shirtless father is receiving some attention, too.)

The hotel issued a statement explaining that the family shown were Christians, not Muslims, and that the video was publicizing that the resort offers private chalets and pools for families to be able to swim together.

That wasn't good enough.

Today, the Gaza Ministry of Tourism closed the Bianco Resort.

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in Gaza decided to close a chalet in the Bianco resort in the northern Gaza Strip until further notice; "For non-compliance with the conditions and procedures followed in implementing the events and activities, which violate the customs and traditions of our authentic conservative people."

The Bianco Resort has been in the news before.

Last summer, a man in one of the private chalets took a video of his wife who could be seen for a split second swimming nude. That man was arrested by Hamas. At that time, the resort thanked Hamas for the arrest and said it upheld the moral standards of Gaza.

Also last year, Islamists in Gaza bombed the resort because it was holding a mixed-gender concert. 

The media tends to stay away from stories like these for two reasons: they don't want to publicize how extreme Hamas is in regulating how regular Gazans, including Christians, may act.

And because they don't want people to realize that Gaza has many luxury resorts and it not the bombed-out shell that the media wants the world to believe it is.

UPDATE: According to some media, this is the video that upset Hamas - a party at that same resort with young men and women together. 


(h/t Ibn Boutros)



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Friday, July 22, 2022



Israel has proposed a plan for West Bank Palestinian Arabs to be able to travel overseas via the Ramon Airport in Eilat, planning test flights to Turkey from which they can go anywhere else in the world.

Up until now, if they want to fly anywhere they need to travel through the Allenby Bridge crossing to Jordan and from there go to Amman.

This plan would save them a great deal of time and headaches, especially with the huge delays at the Jordanian crossing point. 

So, naturally, they are opposing it.

Musa Rahhal, spokesperson for the Palestinian ministry of transportation, is saying "it comes within the framework of the policy of apartheid, pressure on our people, and the Israeli economic benefit."

The spokesman claimed that Israel was trying to force all Arabs – Palestinian citizens and Arab-Israelis alike – to travel through Ramon Airport. All citizens of Israel – Jews and non-Jews alike – are permitted to travel through Ben-Gurion Airport and other Israeli-controlled border crossings.

Rahhal also claimed that the current overcrowding at the Allenby Bridge between Israel and Jordan was part of an Israeli scheme to force Palestinians to use Ramon Airport. In the past few weeks, thousands of Palestinian travelers have been stranded on the Jordanian side of Allenby Bridge because of unprecedented overcrowding and the limited hours of work at the border crossing.
There is a very simple reason why the Palestinian leadership consistently opposes any plan to make the lives of Palestinians easier. 

Palestinians have a thriving export business. This export has created lots of jobs in the NGO industry. It has brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in aid from the EU and from Arab countries. It is a critical part of their economy. 

The export is Jew-hatred.

Anything that Israel does to help Palestinians live more normal lives threatens this critical export. Palestinian misery is the most important raw material for the profitable export of antisemitism, so the leaders must ensure that misery is generously spread to their people in as public a fashion as possible, s long as the misery is always blamed on Jews. 

The Palestinian export of Jew-hatred is the only reason why Palestinians remain the top recipients of humanitarian aid on a per capita basis in the world - a position they have held, unchallenged, for decades. If they couldn't blame their misery on Jews, they would lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

So of course they oppose allowing their people to travel more easily to the world. They want to say they live in an open-air prison.

Of course they oppose closing down "refugee" camps even in their own areas. Because they claim that people in the borders of British Mandate Palestine are "refugees" and need hundreds of millions from the international community.

Of course they oppose any peace plan that allows Israel to exist as a Jewish state. They need Jews to blame for everything.

Once you understand this simple fact about the Palestinian export industry, all of the things that seem inexplicable suddenly make sense.





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Friday, June 24, 2022



When Gaza suffers from environmental catastrophes, Israel is blamed because it supposedly blocks lifesaving infrastructure from being set up. 

Yet this year, Gaza's beaches have re-opened after being closed due to tons of sewage being dumped into the sea.

AFP reports:

Palestinians in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip are rediscovering the pleasures of the Mediterranean Sea, after authorities declared the end of a long period of hazardous marine pollution.

Marine pollution has worsened in recent years in Gaza, where insufficient wastewater solutions have turned the Mediterranean into a dump.

The problem has been further exacerbated by the dilapidated infrastructure of the impoverished and overcrowded enclave.

[S]ix months ago, a German-funded plant began operating in central Gaza, and now treats 60,000 cubic metres (more than 2 million cubic feet) of wastewater per day, which is half the enclave's sewage, according to Mohammed Masleh, an official at Gaza's environment ministry.

This is just the first phase of the project, and eventually, the plant could treat all wastewater in the territory.

The quality of marine water in Gaza has already improved significantly.

Now, according to samples collected by Gazan authorities, two-thirds of the enclave's beaches are suitable for swimming, said Masleh.
How can this be? Isn't there still a blockade where Israel is depriving Gaza of basic necessities needed for living? 

Could it be that Israel never blocked materials for treating wastewater to begin with, and the problems came because the PA and Hamas didn't prioritize the quality of life of the people they are responsible for?

According to Reliefweb, once Israel approved the project, it took only four years to build this sewage treatment plant. 

The media blames Israel for everything wrong in Gaza and remains strangely silent about Palestinian dysfunction and petty conflicts between the PA and Hamas that are the real root of the majority of Gaza's problems.




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Tuesday, June 14, 2022



It is the 15th anniversary of the Hamas terror group taking over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in a bloody mini-war. For 15 years, Gazans have lived under a dictatorial Islamist terror regime, that kills suspected "collaborators," gives perks to Hamas members, and steals international aid meant for the people.

So naturally, Human Rights Watch decided to use the occasion to issue yet another anti-Israel report, calling Gaza an "open-air prison." 
Israel’s closure policy blocks most Gaza residents from going to the West Bank, preventing professionals, artists, athletes, students, and others from pursuing opportunities within Palestine and from traveling abroad via Israel, restricting their rights to work and an education. Restrictive Egyptian policies at its Rafah crossing with Gaza, including unnecessary delays and mistreatment of travelers, have exacerbated the closure’s harm to human rights.  
To HRW, allowing terrorists to enter Israel freely so they can kill Israeli humans is the epitome of "human rights." 

The report adds nothing new to HRW's long list of anti-Israel reports. In fact, it could have been written five years ago with little change. Even though Israel has given thousands of work permits to Gazans to work in Israel in the past year, this little fact is not mentioned in a report that is almost entirely about the restrictions on Gazans' freedom of movement. 

That isn't the only omission. To HRW, Israel has no reason to treat Hamas as anything less thasn law-abiding moral citizens. 

The report does not mention the word "rockets" once.

It also doesn't mention the arson kites, the balloons with incendiary devices meant to start fires in Israel, or the regular arms fire that reaches Israeli communities. It doesn't mention the attacks from Gazans who have entered Israel for medical reasons. 

This is a report about Israeli restrictions on Gaza movement with barely a word as to why Israel might not want to allow Gazans to enter.

This is yet another reason why HRW cannot and should not be taken seriously.




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Friday, May 26, 2017


You know how "human rights" groups and "pro-Palestinian" groups love to say that Israel puts Palestinians in Gaza as well as the West Bank in an "open-air prison"?

You know how the media will exhaustively cover any defensive measures Israel does to protect itself from terrorists that live among the Palestinians as "collective punishment"?

You know how Israel's security fence that has saved hundreds or thousands of lives is routinely denounced because it inconveniences some Arabs?

You know how Palestinian leaders will send official complaints to the UN for everything Israel does, or allegedly does, that has the slightest impact on the slightest number of Palestinian Arabs?

Finally, a final  question: How much have you read or heard about a literal open-air prison, complete with watchtowers, being built around a Palestinian UNRWA camp in Lebanon that houses some 120,000 people?

From Daily Star Lebanon:
Construction of a controversial concrete wall barrier around the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp has resumed following a brief halt.

The past few weeks have seen a surge in concrete wall’s construction. A security source told The Daily Star that the wall is now “80 percent complete.”

Palestinian officials and popular committee members at the south Lebanon camp have reached tentative agreements following discussions with the army.

However, Palestinian refugees are dealing with various problems due to the wall’s construction. Omm Issam’s home had several of its rooms taken down due to its proximity to the wall.

A source told The Daily Star that the wall will run through “hundreds” of houses.

Abu Yassin, whose home and orange garden are dwarfed by the wall, mockingly says that the wall is now his neighbor.

In November 2016, it was announced that an agreement had been made between the Lebanese Army and the Palestinian factions to construct a wall and erect watchtowers around Ain al-Hilweh, and that the process was well underway.

The move was to maintain security in the camp, which has been rocked by clashes, most recently in April. The nearly six days of continuous clashes left at least 10 dead and over 50 wounded.

Despite an initial agreement between the Lebanese Army and Palestinian factions, opposition to the wall mounted during the construction process, forcing the army to temporarily halt construction.

“The Palestinian factions implicitly agree on it [despite vocal objection later on],” a source told The Daily Star in February.
The hypocrisy is stunning. Palestinian "leaders" agreed to build this prison, and the only ones who oppose it are the actual people affected, who have no voice.  (Terror groups like Hamas and PFLP are the only organized groups that opposed the wall. Hezbollah supports it completely as a decision by the Lebanese government to "prevent terrorists from infiltrating the country."

Mahmoud Abbas visited Lebanon in February and did not say a word against this wall.

To be sure, Ain el Hilweh is a violent mess, and a terror group associated with Al Qaeda, Bilal al Badr, has infiltrated the camp and clashes regularly with Palestinian forces (Fatah, PFLP, DFLP) an the Lebanese Army. Tens of thousands of Syrian refugees of Palestinian descent have crammed into the already crowded camp because they cannot be treated like normal refugees thanks to the existence of UNRWA. Lebanon does not allow Palestinians to become citizens even after 70 years of them living in these wretched conditions and has specifically anti-Palestinian laws on the books.

But the silence from NGOs, the UN, Palestinian leaders and world media over what can literally be called a prison, with concrete walls and watchtowers, being built by the Lebanese government, shows how sickeningly hypocritical the entire world is.

No one gives a damn about Palestinians unless Jews can be blamed.

(h/t EBoZ)




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Sunday, May 31, 2015





Screen ShotAnyone who reads my material knows that I often use the popular American pro-Democratic Party blog, Daily Kos, as one guide, among others, to progressive-left thinking.  Over years of observing prominent left-leaning venues I came to a conclusion that seems to irritate them.


My conclusion was not, as it is sometimes claimed, that the western-left is crawling with veiled anti-Semites who use the "Palestinians," and sometimes even the Holocaust, as a club with which to beat up on the Jews of the Middle East and their diaspora supporters.

On the contrary.  In my experience, a majority of left-leaning westerners are most certainly not anti-Semitic.  However, after decades of rolling around in the sour and ahistorical muck of the so-called "Palestinian Narrative" they have come to look upon the Palestinian-Arabs as the quintessential victims.  Having won the Grand Sweepstakes of Victimhood, the Palesinian-Arabs represent victimhood lifted skyward to an iconic status.  Look up the word "victim" in the proverbial dictionary and find the grinning visage of a keffiyeh-draped Yassir Arafat leering back at you.

{If the Jews were the twentieth-century recipient of this dubious prize, the Palestinian-Arabs have certainly taken the trophy from us within the progressive imagination.  Speaking strictly for myself, I am perfectly happy to be rid of it.}

What this has resulted in, though, is the infiltration of western-left venues by anti-Semitic anti-Zionists who do, in fact, veil their anti-Semitism behind a veneer of human rights concerns.

The truth is that "pro-Palestinian" activists are not pro-Palestinian at all, for if they were they would care about human rights abuses toward Palestinian-Arabs committed by non-Jews.  But they don't.  They only care about the Palestinian-Arabs to the extent that they can use them as grotesque props in a staged drama intended to defame the Jewish people and justify violence against us.

{See Pallywood.}

It is within this setting that the acceptance of anti-Semitic anti-Zionism within the progressive-left is currently taking place.  And this represents the heart of my argument.  It is not that the western-left is filled with anti-Jewish racists, it is that they have come to accept anti-Semitic anti-Zionism as just another normal part of the left-leaning coalition.  There are feminists and peace activists.  There are the various ethnic constituencies, including the Jews.  There are the environmentalists.  The anti-Zionists.  The anti-Capitalists.  The Gay community.

And so forth and so on.

Most people, of course, are not single-issue and, thereby, represent a patchwork of interests and concerns.

In order to demonstrate the tension within progressive-left circles around the Arab-Israel conflict lets take a look at the reception of a Daily Kos "diary" entitled, Amnesty International: Hamas tortured and killed Palestinians by someone writing under the Nom de Blog, unapologeticliberal777.

Now, to my mind, this is pretty straight-forward stuff.  He or she writes:
Amnesty International said in a report released today that the militant group Hamas tortured and killed Palestinians during the war against Israel in the Gaza Strip last year.

Hamas exploited the fighting against Israel in July and August to “ruthlessly settle scores,” including with members of Fatah, the rival political faction and political base of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which is led by Mahmoud Abbas, according to Amnesty.
Indeed.  And it is refreshing to see Amnesty go after someone aside from Jewish Israelis for a change.

If you observe the comments beneath the piece, which is what I am primarily interested in, you will see pro-Jewish / pro-Israel left-wingers endeavoring to engage with anti-Jewish / anti-Israel left-wingers.  Thus we get to enjoy the following exchange:

9 month old truce broken yesterday too (9+ / 0-)

Rockets were fired into Israel yesterday for the first time since the August truce. Won't be long now before the sympathizers come and tell us how Israel forced them to indiscriminately fire rockets, intentionally, into civilian areas. I can hear their collective yawns over these new war crimes.

by Angryallen on Wed May 27, 2015 at 06:49:17 AM PDT
Such a pro-Israel comment cannot be allowed to stand alone and so we get this response:
Won't be long now (8+ / 0-)
before the apologists come and tell us hundreds more Palestinian children need be to be killed and entire neighborhoods leveled because Defend Itself.

Oh wait, already here.

by nosleep4u on Wed May 27, 2015 at 07:31:55 AM PDT 
Note, of course, the anti-Semitic blood libel embedded in nosleep4u's comment.  He or she honestly thinks that Israeli Jews love to kill non-Jewish children.  This emphasis on the Jewish killing of non-Jewish children is directly out of the Middle Ages and finds ongoing prominent expression in all left-leaning western venues, today, including Daily Kos.

Notice, also, that both comments received almost the same number of recommendations.  The pro-Jewish / pro-Israel commenter received 9, while his anti-Jewish / anti-Israel interlocutor received 8.

Then we get this:
Yes, by all means. When all of Palestine has been (3+ / 0-)converted into a gigantic walled prison with all points of entry controlled by Israel, with access to food and water limited to somewhere between starvation and subsistence and with assassination via helicopter gunships or airstrikes by an occupying power a constant threat, let's shine a light on the bad behavior of some of the inmates of this massive prison. Because that's clearly the most important thing going on.



by Ralphdog on Wed May 27, 2015 at 11:35:15 AM PDT 
Wow.  That is some kind of serious indictment.

All of Palestine is a gigantic walled prison!

All points of entry are controlled by Israel!

They have limited access to food and water for the native population to somewhere between starvation and subsistence!

They assassinate Palestinian-Arabs via helicopter gunships or airstrikes for no reason whatsoever!

I embellished a bit, but the obvious implication of Ralphdog's dark fantasies about the Jews of Israel is that, much like every other generation of Jews for millennia, we deserve whatever beating anyone wishes to dish out.

Every generation we are told why it is that the Jews need a sound thrashing - if not the occasional helpful genocide - and Ralphdog is simply doing his bit to see to it that the current generation of Jews are no less maligned than the previous ones.

Ralphdog has rolled around in the poisonous muck of the "Palestinian Narrative" for so long that vomiting outrageous accusations against Jewish Israelis has become a gag reflex.  When anyone dares to criticize even the most vicious of Islamist dictatorships people like Ralphdog  (by the way, if you give it a moment's thought you will realize the appropriateness of his moniker)  inevitably spit poison at the Jews.  This despite the fact that the Hamas charter calls quite specifically for the murder of the Jewish people wherever we might be found.

According to the Hamas charter, anyone for any reason should have every right to walk into my house and chop my head off merely because I happen to be a Jew.

And, yet, western-leftists continue to believe that diaspora Jews have a moral imperative to support the progressive movement, despite the fact that the progressive movement, and the Democratic Party, have made homes of themselves for people like Ralphdog.

The American right-wing, of course, has its David Dukes, but it must be acknowledged that the American Right has done a very good job of purging the anti-Semites from their midst ever since William F. Buckley, as an editor for The American Mercury in 1951 and 1952, stood up against anti-Jewish racism before launching The National Review.

The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of the American Left.  Again, it is not that the Left is crawling with anti-Jewish racists, but that, given The Narrative, they have accepted a fundamentally anti-Semitic sub-movement - anti-Zionism and BDS - into left-leaning organizations throughout the West.

This represents a betrayal of its Jewish constituency, at least among those of us who care about the well-being of the Jewish people and thereby the well-being of the Jewish State of Israel.  The question is, what is to be done about this betrayal?

What I chose to do was conclude any association with the progressive-left and the Democratic Party.

I no longer march.  I no longer donate.  I no longer phone-bank.  None of it.  The day that I looked up during an anti-war rally in Civic Center, San Francisco, and saw a Nazi Swastika entwined within a Star of David at a "peace rally" was the day that I knew that the Left was dead.  For me that sign represented a worm, a leach, gnawing its way into the movement.

Perhaps if the person who held aloft that image had been confronted, I might have felt differently.  Of course, I did not confront him either.  My group, which was almost entirely non-Jewish, simply walked out of the rally.

Leaving the Left, however, is not the only reasonable response to such circumstances by western Jews.  One can also stand one's ground and fight.  Western-left Jews who confront the Ralphdog's of the world are needed and, if you follow the thread, you will see that Ralphdog was, in fact, confronted.

However, Jews who remain on the Left, who also wish to support Israel, need to do so from a position of strength, not weakness.  They need to be pro-active, not merely reactive.

When I was still mouthing-off in left-leaning venues it always seemed that the anti-Semitic anti-Zionists would attack and we would defend.  They attack, we defend.

It is long past time for this pattern to change and we are the ones who must change it, because sure as heck no one else is going to do it for us.

I recommend two tactics:

1)  Expand the terms of the discussion both historically and geographically.

This is not a fight that started in the twentieth century, but in the seventh.  That is, the struggle is not over land, but is, in fact, part of much longer Arab-Muslim effort to oppress the Jewish minority in the Middle East for Koranically-based religious reasons.

Nor is it a squabble between Israelis and Palestinian-Arabs, but between the Jews of that part of the world and the great Arab-Muslim nation that surrounds them and refuses to allow them normal status as human beings in the world.

Both of these assertions have the advantage of historical accuracy.

2)  Put the Left on notice.

Make for them to understand that the Jewish people are not going to accept the betrayal.

The western-left and the Democratic party have betrayed their Jewish constituencies through accepting anti-Semitic anti-Zionism as part of the general coalition.

That is what the well-meaning Left needs to understand.

Jewish progressives can stay and fight, but they cannot do so without acknowledging the obvious.

Unless you confront your non-Jewish left-leaning friends and colleagues directly on that score then, at best, you're trimming the hedge.

Michael Lumish is a blogger at the Israel Thrives blog as well as a regular contributor/blogger at Times of Israel and Jews Down Under.

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