This week’s postings at JfJfP.com

We were no wiser at the end of this last week, February 6th-12th, 2017 than we were at the beginning as to why PM Netanyahu had invited himself to tea with PM May. A press officer – Israeli embassy? – had briefed journalists that it was to do with Iran, one of the many things in which Mrs. May has expressed no interest. Her only interest was in getting another trade deal under her belt. Mr Netanyahu was happy to oblige. But she assured British journalists and Jeremy Corbyn she would raise the question of settlements:
How to make a Tory PM look progressive

As Mr Netanyahu later said, settlements were “not discussed in detail, to say the least”. We found from Barak Ravid’s articles in Haaretz that the Israeli PM had arrived with a list of his pressing concerns. On it were the names of all the human rights NGOs in Israel which he thought were being funded by the British state via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He said this should stop:
Now Bibi tries to shape policy of UK’s FCO

At the top of the list was the NGO that is most reviled by the Israeli government and right wing, Breaking the Silence. Co-founder Yehuda Shaul also said that PM Netanyahu’s main aim was to demand the FCO stop funding BtS. Bad briefing of the PM or his  short memory. The grant had been stopped five years ago. Having said this Shaul went on to do what BtS does best – give an account of what soldiers are actually instructed to do and what they actually do. In Hebron their job is to ‘create a sense of persecution’ amongst Palestinians and make the IDF’s presence felt:
Role of IDF: make its presence felt by Palestinians

The fact that those who live in Israel and those who live in ‘the territories’ are subject to two different systems of law – military law in the oPt – can be said to be more significant than settlements as such. But challenging this is more divisive; being critical of Israel does not mean sympathy for Palestinians or even being able to shake off the Israeli view that all Palestinians are terrorists. Haggai Matar explains how this military governance works:
Martial law enforces occupation

The dominant debate inside Israel is about the ‘regulation’ [or formalisation, or regularisation act – translations vary but are all inoffensive] – initiated and passed by the Knesset. It’s a means of declaring the theft of Palestinian land by Israelis perfectly legal. It is an act that would be wrong whoever took it. But the Knesset’s view that it can make law in the oPt has increased the opposition to this move:
The land-grabbers’ new clothes

Treating all Palestinians as terrorists, i.e. not fully human, is the fundamental criterion of all Israeli policy. It’s the determining principle for deciding whether or not someone may enter Israel. If they have any regard for anything or anyone Palestinian there are hours of interrogation at best before a person is permitted to enter the country. Richard Silverstein picks out the absurdity of the airport security police’s treatment of a staff member of the New Israel Fund – ‘A fund dedicated to religious pluralism and civil rights in Israel’. Because, despite NIF’s dismal record on defending civil rights, some contact with Palestinians might lurk in the small print:
Police probe foreigners for any lack of love for Israel

He also throws in a few remarks about Britain’s submission to Israeli demands.

A few days after PM Netanyahu’s visit and the British PM’s failure to stress the importance of ending settlement building, the House of Commons held its own debate on settlements. Unlike the MPs’ debate on the Balfour declaration last November,
Balfour and the missing second half,

this debate drew many more pro-Israeli MPs from both Conservative and Labour parties. [The parliamentary parties do not reflect the huge gulf between support for Israel and for Palestinians amongst the Conservatives, Conservative Friends of Israel being the largest of all parliamentary groups,
Conservative Friends of Israel biggest group in parliament]

So, unlike parliamentary debates on recognising Palestinian statehood as well as on the Balfour declaration, the one on settlements did not follow party lines and covered all the arguments against building settlements and arguments that settlements are not the cause of Palestine/Israel discord. In the words of Tory MP Crispin Blunt:
The world now sees Israel through the clouded prism of the settlements

After popping in on Mrs May Mr Netanyahu was off the USA for a meeting with the POTUS. No-one has any idea what Trump’s policy decision on matters MidEastern will be this week, pace David Friedman. But, says Asher Schechter, that’s not the point. The point is that the Israeli PM, enfeebled by current corruption investigations, needs to return to Israel with the reputation of being the USA’s irreplaceable friend and has some deal to flourish:
Bibi banking on bringing back a bargain

We at JfJfP postings had hoped we could get through a week without mentioning Donald Trump, but as one of our functions is to let you know what is in the Palestine/Israel media, this has not been possible. Perhaps his whacky, most disturbing tweets, are merely to get attention for himself, in which case we are feeding his need.

Who knows what, if anything, Pres. Trump policy towards the most divisive Palestine/Israel issues might turn out to be? As with everything the POTUS is relying on family to help him, in this case son-in-law Jared Kushner, no known liberal opinions. A man whose M.O. is to make a deal is lost when there’s no deal to make. The settlers who were delighted at Trump’s victory may be disappointed:
Trump’s too wobbly to build settlements

Palestinian healthcare is limited. The PNA lacks the funds to pay for its own specialist services. Instead it pays for the services Israel offers. What the PNA can’t do is get rid of Israel’s security barriers meaning any Palestinian seeking treatment for specialist services has to go to Israel, acquire a permit from Israel. The price the patient may have to pay is information. Start of a series of reports from MAP, Medical Aid for Palestinians:
Healthcare by security permit

See also, on those who can get through the security barriers:
The Israelis who come to the aid of Palestinians

The Great Rememberer, Uri Avnery, takes on one of the most contentious issues: the start of military conflict between the new Israeli state and its Arab neighbours. He is certain that the first military move (Phase 1) came from the Arab neighbours. But it then developed to the point when ethnic cleansing of Palestinians became official Israeli policy:
Who started it?

Perhaps David Planck honed his forensic skills in his years directing social services in local governments. This is entirely to our benefit as his thorough reading of reports elicits material that others have missed. Here he has looked at all the episodes of Al Jazeera’s revelations about the Israeli embassy’s determination to reshape British politics into a pro-Israel form. He demonstrates how the embassy promulgated, via Labour’s right wing, the notion that Jeremy Corbyn is antisemitic (because being for Palestinian rights is, by its nature, antisemitic, see above):
The fake ‘facts’ of the Labour right wing

Distortions of domestic politics in order to maintain the US/EU/Israel axis are too numerous to mention. The attempts of governments in that axis to prevent the campaigns for boycott, divestment, sanctions [BDS] are the most egregious state moves to prohibit free speech and free choice in many years. It’s particularly frenetic in the USA:
States’ move to make free speech on Israel a crime

Sadly, we have arrived at a point when the term ‘antisemitic’ has become virtually meaningless. This is because for the last decade Israel and its supporters have been fighting off criticism by asserting it is antisemitic. Thus the very untransparent ‘Campaign Against Antisemitism’, started in Britain in 2014 because of the popular hostility to Operation Protective Edge, builds itself as a campaign to educate British people in what antisemitism means. Thus they gained charity status from the Charity Commission. Is this the usual flight by establishment bodies when the word ‘antisemitism’ comes up?

Tony Greenstein has started a petition to get this charity status removed.
Campaign Against Antisemitism is not a charity