I've been watching Palestinian news sources for dramatic video of today's "Day of Rage" and so far haven't seen much beyond some city marches, tire fires, slingshots and tear gas.
Here is some of what is being broadcast.
Hamas condemns the Israeli occupation’s deportation of the director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Palestine Omar Shaker as an act against humanitarian work and human rights. Indeed, the Israeli occupation is unable to see its crimes and violations being documented by such organisations.It's a two way street. Hamas supports HRW because HRW excuses Hamas war crimes.
This Israeli demeanor aims to block reality and hide its daily violations, including killing and targeting Palestinians, in order to evade accountability.
The Israeli practices should prompt the international community to defend the rights of the Palestinian people and hold the Israeli occupation accountable for the crimes committed against Palestinians.
Hamas spokesperson
Fawzi Barhoum
Forces deployed in populated areas must avoid locating military objectives – including fighters, ammunition and weapons -- in or near densely populated areas, and endeavor to remove civilians from the vicinity of military objectives. Belligerents are prohibited from using civilians to shield military objectives or operations from attack. "Shielding" refers to purposefully using the presence of civilians to render military forces or areas immune from attack.There is nothing here about coercion.
Bernie Sanders’ curious little manifesto on anti-Semitism in Jewish Currents on Nov. 11 reminds me why I could not possibly support the man—and why I sometimes feel a stab of regret about it. There is an impulsively decent quality in him that erupts now and then in rebellious outbursts of unexpected political principle, typically in ways that might offend his ideologically more cartoonish followers, but that render him pleasing, in my own eyes. And the mini-manifesto in Jewish Currents—the piece that Yair Rosenberg discussed in Tablet some days ago—offers an example.NGO Monitor: HRW’s Failed #WhoisNext Social Media Campaign
It comes halfway through when Bernie recalls that, back in 1963, he lived the kibbutznik life in Israel. He was able to see and experience what he describes as “many of the progressive values upon which Israel was founded.” And he says: “I think it is very important for everyone, but particularly for progressives, to acknowledge the enormous achievement of establishing a democratic homeland for the Jewish people after centuries of displacement and persecution.”
The striking phrase is, of course, “particularly for progressives.” Most Americans do acknowledge the enormous achievement. But, as everyone has noticed, a noisy percentage of the people who suppose themselves to be progressives believe, on the contrary, that Israel ought to be regarded as a white supremacist settler colonialist state, or an imperialist excrescence, or a center of world racism, and ought to be erased from the map—which are positions that sometimes award themselves the polite name of honest criticism.
But Bernie in Jewish Currents, with a knack for nuance, rightly says, “It is true that some criticism of Israel can cross the line into anti-Semitism, especially when it denies the right of self-determination to Jews, or when it plays into conspiracy theories about outsized Jewish power.” He declares: “I will always call out anti-Semitism when I see it. My ancestors would expect no less of me.” His statement is good, then. It is solid. It is non-Jeremy Corbyn-like.
But everything else in the mini-manifesto is a disaster. Oh, maybe not everything. It has been said that Bernie makes a mistake in calling for the United States to return to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, on the grounds that anti-Israel manias and sympathy for outrageous tyrants long ago rendered the council a lost cause. But wouldn’t it be better to debate than to sulk? Hillel Neuer’s independent committee, UN Watch, participates in the Human Rights Council events, and strikes many a blow for common sense, and there is reason to suppose that a sufficiently feisty United States delegate seated at the table would be able to do the same, except more virally.
On November 5, 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Human Rights Watch (HRW) “Israel and Palestine Country Director” Omar Shakir had 20 days to leave the country. Shakir and his employer had asked the court to overturn a decision of the Israeli Ministry of Interior, which had already been approved by the Jerusalem District Court, not to renew Shakir’s work visa due to his BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) activities.
In the ten days leading up to Shakir’s departure, HRW launched a social media campaign under the hashtag “#WhoIsNext.” The campaign attempted to make a slippery slope argument, that if Shakir is deported, many other activists would be at risk. In reality, Israel has a vibrant and diverse civil society made up of thousands of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As the Supreme Court found, Shakir, specifically, met the criteria in the Israeli law.
NGO Monitor analyzed the limited reach of HRW’s #WhoIsNext campaign, noting that it was primarily used in a self-promotional manner. The vast majority of Twitter users employing the hashtag were, in fact, employees of HRW; 71 of 100 (71%) uses of the hashtag originated with HRW-linked accounts. Tellingly, most of the non-HRW uses came from pro-BDS activists and NGOs.
Margaret Corvid is a Labour Party Councillor in Plymouth. She is extremely active and appears to play an important part of Luke Pollard’s re-election campaign. Margaret’s Facebook and Twitter are full of pro-Corbyn material and she is always on the street canvassing. She made over 400 tweets / retweets in just the last few weeks:
Corvid is a solid Corbynite, joining the party after Corbyn took control in 2015. She describes herself as a Marxist and ‘proud entryist‘. Corvid does a lot of writing. Her name appears in the Guardian, Independent, Metro, Novara Media and New Statesman. Much of her writing is about the sex trade. Corvid makes her living as a dominatrix.
Oddly, Corvid’s Facebook friends list includes high profile players in the antisemitism row such as Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker. Interestingly Mick Napier, the head of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign is in there too. Why would a local councillor in Plymouth be associated with a vile antisemitic group in Scotland?
It is because Margaret Corvid has not been using that name for long.
I could find no active record for Margaret Corvid before 2013. She admits in an article it is her ‘professional name‘. What I did find was a political activist in Scotland named Esther Sassaman. Here is one of her tweets:
Sassaman first appears in early 2003 with a blog about an upcoming visit to ‘Palestine’. She is American, defines herself as ‘ethnically Jewish but drawn to the black Baptist Christians’. She joined their Gospel Choir. It seems as if she was an anti-Israel ‘fanatic’ before she ever stepped foot there (she described herself as a ‘fanatic’ – Rachel Corrie was her inspiration).
Upon her return she continued with political activism. She even meets and interviews George Galloway during his visit to the States in 2005. Coincidence or not, within 7 months, Sassaman would surface as an activist in Galloway’s home town of Dundee.
Sassaman appears to have platformed with former Guantanamo Bay resident Moazzim Begg in 2006. At that point she was described as an ‘American’ resident in Scotland.
This afternoon Labour Party will be launching its Arts for All policy with Ken Loach.
— Jewish Labour Movement (@JewishLabour) November 24, 2019
According to him antisemitism in the Labour Party is ‘mischief’ and the Holocaust is up for discussion.
Why is Jeremy Corbyn sharing a stage with this man? pic.twitter.com/OZ3jicGCkq
Yesterday, another popular Lebanese singer Carole Samaha, who has over 4.8 million Twitter followers, tweeted part of the El Roumi interview and commented, "Very true Words !!! And I wish everyone is able to see the picture from afar, and the greatest danger that is coming, yes, the ship needs a captain !!"
.If you ask yourself what is going, and why we are subjected to all this worldwide, especially in the Arab world... What's going on? Personally – and I take full responsibility for what I am saying – I always believe that it is connected with something I read at my parents' home when I was little. My late father brought home The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and said to us: 'Read this book, and to the day you die, never forget what you've read.' So I read that global Zionism has a plan to fragment the Arab world in its entirety. They have in their heads a plan for a united government for the entire world, and they believe that we all exist on this planet to serve them.
🔴 كلام كتير صحيح !!!— CAROLE SAMAHA🔴 (@CAROLE_SAMAHA) November 24, 2019
و يا ريت الكل قادر يشوف الصورة من بعيد، والخطر الأكبر اللي جايي!
وإيه..نعم..السفينة بحاجة لقبطان!! @majidaelroumi pic.twitter.com/C1Z1CzdoET
In his statement about the legality of Israel's West Bank settlements, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made four main points.
- First, the settlements are not "inherently illegal."
- Second, the West Bank's fate should be determined through negotiations.
- Third, international law "does not compel a particular outcome" in favor of Israel or the Palestinians.
- Fourth, the issue is political in nature, not legal, and attacking the settlements' legality "hasn't advanced the cause of peace."
For 35 years U.S. administrations refrained from repeating President Carter's criticism of Israeli settlements as illegal, Pompeo recounted, but President Obama broke with this policy by taking the Carter position at the UN. President Reagan, who followed Carter, had rejected Carter's view.
President Carter had a strained relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and condemnation of Israeli settlements as illegal was supported by a five-page letter dated April 21, 1978, by State Department legal adviser Herbert Hansell.
That letter ignored entirely the rights of Jews under the 1922 Palestine Mandate, which called for "close settlement by Jews on the land." From ancient times until 1949, Jews could lawfully live in the West Bank. Hansell didn't explain when that right was terminated.
As a Middle East specialist on the National Security Council staff, I was asked for a short note on the subject for President Reagan. I said, "The issue is properly a political question, not a legal question." The sovereignty issue "is open and will not be closed until the actual parties to the conflict formally consent to a peace agreement." In the meantime, "there is no law that bars Jews from settling on the West Bank" and no one should be excluded from living there "simply on account of his nationality or religion."
What fuels the conflict is the notion that Israel is a vulnerable, alien presence that lacks roots, legitimacy, and moral confidence. Israel's enemies know that asserting that the Jews have no right to live in the West Bank - an important part of the Jewish homeland - calls into question the Jews' right to have created Israel in the first place.
Palestinian Authority policy is to routinely deny the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel. Jews were never here, the PA says, until they came and “occupied” Palestine in 1948. Palestinian Media Watch has documented that the PA habitually refutes the authenticity of the numerous archeological artifacts and non-Biblical sources that testify to the Jewish presence and nationhood thousands of years ago. The following are three recent examples of this Palestinian denial of Jewish presence and history, showing that the PA’s political message passed on by Palestinian leaders for decades has been successfully adopted and is being repeated even by Palestinian academics.
Riyad Al-Aileh, a Palestinian political science lecturer from Al-Azhar University, stated that Jews only came as ”invaders 70 years ago”:
"The Jews claim that they were in Palestine 2,000 years ago. If we look at the history we will see that they were not in Palestine in the past, but rather only as invaders less than 70 years ago. For these 70 years they have been invaders, like the Hyksos, the Byzantines, the Persians, and [British] colonialism. The Canaanite Palestinian people has since succeeded in defeating those invaders and continue [to live] in this land." [Official PA TV, The Supreme Authority, Nov. 6, 2019]
Echoing this claim, Abir Zayyad, an archaeologist and member of Fatah’s Jerusalem branch, wrongly asserted that “no archaeological evidence” of Jews in Palestine has been found:
“We have no archaeological evidence of the presence of the children of Israel in Palestine in this historical period 3,000 years ago, neither in Jerusalem, nor in all of Palestine.” [Official PA TV, Jerusalem: The Scent of History, Nov. 7, 2019]
PA policy is to routinely deny the entire Jewish history in the Land of Israel.
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) November 25, 2019
Palestinian university lecturer: The Jews were never in Palestine, but came as “invaders 70 years ago.”
Read more about this here: https://t.co/52crDAETKF pic.twitter.com/N0SjEu7kE2
Palestinian archeologist: No archaeological evidence of the presence of the children of Israel in Palestine 3,000 years ago. pic.twitter.com/cnBIhIt2UG
— Pal Media Watch (@palwatch) November 25, 2019
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!