This week's postings at JfJfP.com

In the week April 27th – May 3rd, 2015 there are more articles about Palestinian energy for changing their impossible lives. In order to change the status quo, Palestinians at all levels want outside intervention; unofficially they ask for BDS, officially they are hoping for results from the UNSC and International Criminal Court.

One signatory, Robert Cohen hopes to do his bit at the UK election: No-one gets my vote if they don’t talk of justice for Palestinians, which means, like another blog from a signatory, voting Green. An article on what the British establishment would do if the UK did adopt ‘justice for Palestinians’ as a priority would be interesting.  Any offers? postings@jfjfp.org

The Palestinian Football Association, with support from many other bodies and individuals including JfJfP, is appealing to the FIFA congress (May) to suspend the Israeli Football Association from FIFA for as long as they are complicit in the state restrictions which make it impossible for Palestinians to build a national team and to practise freely:
Israel refuses to play a beautiful game

Meanwhile JfJfP’s Arthur Goodman who has long worked at European diplomatic level, is quite clear of the single outside act which would make a difference:
What would most hurt Israel is the suspension of tariff concessions

Mahmoud Abbas sets out his case for Palestinian statehood and outside intervention and Gershon Baskin comments:
If not now, when?

Despite the propaganda there are apparently a number of international intermediaries all engaged in secret negotiations between Israel and Hamas in an effort to avert yet another assault on Gaza.
Multiple efforts to get Hamas-Israel talks

While Netanyahu rushes around squawking about security and existential threats, his government has seriously neglected the social and economic well-being of even the privileged Jewish citizens, let alone the Arabs. The State Comptroller has issued a ‘scathing’ report of the government’s neglect of housing (not mentioning that its exhorbitant price is an inducement to move to a settlement).
The human rights NGO Adalah has responded to this report with its own, elaborating the many ways in which the state bureaucracy makes it impossible for Arab citizens to benefit from any of the housing and town developent programmes that do exist. This is deliberate policy.
Gov’t engineers Arab housing crisis

Nazareth resident Jonathan Cook takes Upper Nazareth, a largely Jewish habitation, to demonstrate how one racist mayor, exploiting the racist fears of the Jewish citizens, can skew building programmes, and defy the law, to ensure that his patch has no signs of Palestinian life at all.
Mayor on mission to erase Arab life in Nazareth-on-the-hill

Having embedded racism into social structures from the start – while pumping up the ‘state for all the Jews’ rhetoric to paper over the cracks – Israel finds itself wounded by the many fissures of religion and national origin. Post-election analysis has found that most Israelis voted on ‘tribal’ lines with Labour being rejected as elitist Ashkenazi while Likud was seen as more accepting of the under-class voters.
Tribalism, Israel’s driving force

A new American group, Jews against Islamophobia Coalition, has taken on what a US District Judge refused to do (right to freedom of expression) and challenged an obnoxious campaign in New York City where the publicity-seeking Pamela Geller has had buses plastered with an ad saying “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah. That’s His Jihad. What’s yours?” It features an image of a young man in a checkered headscarf. Since Arafat adopted the keffiyeh, it is most often associated by Americans with Palestinians.
Jews against Islamophobia

As we know, right-wing Jews, dragging their sad tale of permanent, inexorable persecution, refuse to acknowledge the existence of Islamophobia as a greater threat to life and security than antisemitism, even the so-called new form (viz. criticism of Israel). This is the position of Robert Wistrich who put his case in the Oxford Union and was challenged by many including JfJfP’s Richard Kuper:
Antisemitism 2.0 is growing, Islamophobia is an invention

Most pro-Israeli Islamophobes choose Hamas to buttress their argument that Israelis are the victims of Palestinians. It is absurd and too easy. Young Palestinians see no future in Gaza under Hamas rule (and Israeli siege).
Hamas loses youth support

Tragically, those who have the initiative and resources to leave do – in the full knowledge they may very well lose their lives in the process, so desperate is life in Gaza.
Another great start-up – people smuggling

A major report from the UN, carried out by a special Board of Enquiry, does find Hamas guilty of war crimes (storing weapons in schools, endangering lives of civilians). But the weight of the report is the IDF’s indiscriminate shelling of UNRWA schools in Gaza which were being used as refugee centres. 44 civilians were killed, many more wounded, even more terrorised in what they thought was a place of safety. Despite the careful, measured language it is clear the UN is very angry at the refusal of the IDF to co-operate with them in exchanging information. The problem of weapons storage could have been solved by UN without any shelling. By needlessly endangering civilians the IDF again ignores a basic rule of war.
Talk, don’t bomb
UN confirms IDF breaks laws of war