This week's postings on JfJfP.com

This week, December 21-27, 2015, the actions of the Jewish far-right in Israel is still a dominant issue. Slowly, very slowly, their rebarbative behaviour, is being covered by  Israel’s mainstream news. An Orthodox Jewish wedding party chose to celebrate the conflagration of the Dawabsheh family – which apparently until now many had chosen to believe was the result of an electric malfunction in their house – and disgusted many, though presumably not the Orthodox/settler crowd.
Orthodox Israeli wedding party celebrates murder of Dawabsheh family

Last week we posted Shabak’s alert about the body of Jewish ‘extremists’ who are harming Israel. This week, a crowd of those so named were so affronted that Jews should be treated like Palestinians (torture, suspension of due process) that they besieged the home of Shin Bet’s chief, Yoram Cohen:
Right rallies for Jewish terror suspects

Over the years, Israel has named many ‘existential threats’. It has now put Iran, antisemitism, the EU, Palestinians in a drawer and named BDS as number one threat. That’s a turn up for the books. The government has set up a new, well-funded unit to deal with it (the IDF has let it be known it doesn’t agree).
Israel will welcome New Year with new anti-BDS campaign

BDS is always classified by the right as ‘anti-Israel’. JfJfP supports a ‘smart’ BDS policy which is certainly neither antisemitic nor-anti Israel (but is anti the Occupation and any racist policies of the Israeli state).
JfJfP statement on BDS

We haven’t posted the latest news on Yarmouk refugee camp – from which many Palestinians have fled. But there are one and half million Palestinians scattered round various refugee camps in the MidEast. Many camps are fraught by internal battles for control and thus badly administered – UNRWA has handed the management to one faction or another. Thus, the basics of life – shelter, sanitation, water, food, sewage – are neglected. A Norwegian student finds Burj Al-Barajne is one of the worst.
Enough of the Great Stink

This reminds us that managing sanitation and sewage is one of the first requirements of the modern state. And such amenities are also sorely lacking in Gaza.  Hamas could modernise Gaza’s sanitaition if it were less preoccupied with weapons and tunnels. What is assumed to be climate change has afflicted the impoverished Strip with drought, flooding and serious winter storms. In a place where almost 100,000 people were made homeless by the 2014 Israeli bombardment extremes of heat, rain and cold add to the hardship:
No shelter in war-damaged winter Gaza

Earlier this month the UN General Assembly (UNGA) returned to the question of Palestinian natural resources – which are many, but mainly purloined by Israelis. It again passed a resolution asserting Palestinian sovereignty over its natural resources – the UK voted for it (of course the USA and a small handful of its clients voted against).  There is natural gas off the Gaza coast, oil in the Golan heights, arable land in the Jordan Valley, water in the Jordan River and smaller streams. All this is, quite ilegally, taken by private companies contracted by Israel or by the Israeli state directly.
UN tells Israel to stop taking Palestinian resources

It’s a vital campaigning issue so here is the complete text for future reference:
Text of UN resolution on Palestinian natural resources

Israeli control over Palestinian resources and Palestinian people was cemented by the ’67 war. In Israel, this is portrayed as an entirely moral and heroic war. But that is not how soldiers remember it as The BBC revealed in its documentary ‘Censored Voices’. Signatory Michael Baron found the documentary moving and revealing – a must-see.
Are we doomed to bomb villages every decade for defence purposes?
[Any signatory is invited to send reviews or commentaries on, analyses of Israel/Palestine/Jews relation to,  to postings@jfjfp.org]

Perhaps all our postings induce sadness. Yet in many the sadness is mixed with an admirable spirit of defiance. The ‘Santa Claus’ protest demonstration in Bethlehem has been going on for several years. It has got more attention this year because the ‘knife intifada’ surprisingly started in Bethlehem and it has also put off many of the usual hundreds of thousands of visitors coming to Bethlehem.
O little town of Bethlehem, how unstill

If Pres. Abbas could, he would no doubt stop the knife intifada: it’s bad for business, bad for PNA authority, bad for the continuation of things as they are. Yet Abbas has to retire; he is 80 years old, he has effectively abolished democratic elections for President. For some his legacy will be that he kept the peace. For others it will be that he and his cohort blocked the development of Palestinian political life. Israel made it clear that it will allow absolutely no hope of an independent Palestinian state but Abbas continued his co-operation.

No-one knows whether the retirement of Abbas, if it happens, will spark a new sort of politics or confirm the hopelessness of the Palestinian cause:.
The sense of lost hope has now entered our politics

And that’s enough for this European holiday week.