This week’s postings@JfJfP.com


April 23, 2017
Sarah Benton

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There has been one dominant issue this week, April 17th-23rd 2017: the hunger strike by Palestinian political prisoners. It is thought 1,500 prisoners are taking part in six different gaols. Only the IPS (Israeli Prison Service) knows and they aren’t telling. The government line is that the prisoners are not political but “loathsome murderers” and “dangerous terrorists”.

An unflinching condemnation of the conditions in which Israel keeps Palestinians, in and outside prison, comes from James Zogby, the founder and president of the sedate Arab American Institute:
Every Palestinian act is ‘terrorism’

His article is posted along with a more analytical piece by Amira Hass.  She says the strike prompts “Palestinians to shake off their fatalism and inaction in light of Israel’s ever more powerful malevolence and rouse their quarrelling leaders out of their complacency with the status quo and their delusion of sovereignty”.

Overviews from Ma’an and Reuters news agencies: the sheer number of Palestinians, especially young men, in prison means they are not seen as outcasts but as courageous martyrs who are held to close to the hearts of family and friends. The cells produce cadres who have all the more reason to hate Israel, especially as many are held on ‘administrative’ detention, i.e. with no judicial process:
Political prisoners, the hero-martyrs of Palestine

Excluding the far right, this hunger strike is getting more public and widespread support than previous ones perhaps because so many are involved instead of the usual handful. A range of opinions and good points here:
All drawn in by hunger strike

Another reason for the popularity of the hunger strike is that Marwan Barghouti, so often referred to as the person best-suited to be Palestinian president, issued the appeal to other prisoners as well as the Palestinian and wider public. He said “Palestinian prisoners and detainees have suffered from torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, and medical negligence. According to the latest count from the Palestinian Prisoners Club, about 200 Palestinian prisoners have died since 1967 because of such actions”:
Our hunger spreads our message

His article in the NY Times was published on April 16, the day before the hunger strike began on Palestinian Prisoners’ day, April 17th. It is no surprise that Israel regarded this as an act of war – the NYT had failed to make it clear that Barghouti was a loathsome terrorist. They put the squeeze on the paper which dutifully told its readers that Barghouti was a murderer. What hypocrisy says Lisa Goldman of +972. Israelis with blood on their hands have written pieces for the NYT:
NYT caves in to Israeli pressure

Al Jazeera put on a strong display in an infographic about the fate of prisoners in Israeli gaols: useful, and chilling, facts. Plus there’s another infographic on prisoner numbers from the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign:
Torture, rape, humiliation- a prisoner’s lot

Concern about prisoners’ conditions is not what Israel wanted for this year, the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and 50 years since the Israeli victory in the six-day war – which Israelis will celebrate in Kfar Etzion, a West Bank settlement. Gideon Levy thinks all should weep over the tragedy that has ensued for Jews and Arabs in Israel and the oPt. The Occupation has turned Israel into an ‘evil, violent, ultranationalist, religious, racist state’ whose leaders think they can do anything:
Damned by our victory

The Occupation was not a sudden and wholesale take-over of Palestinian land. That would have incurred international obloquy. Rather it was done by bits and pieces thus ‘hoodwinking’ concerned foreigners writes Jonathan Cook. This is exactly how Israel is now presenting itself to Pres. Trump – just reinforcing existing settlements:
Dunam after dunam, goat after goat

The demise of Israel’s Labour party as a strong force for peace and negotiation is another tragedy as was the assassination of Labour leader Yitzhak Rabin. Subsequent Labour leaders have decided that they must be irreproachably Zionist in order to stay electable. But new life is stirring in the failing party sparked by the coming election of a party leader, and contenders have argued for a more leftist path:
Labour urged not to chase the right-wing vote

Also retrieving left-wing history from the Zionist maw is David Rosenberg who takes a penetrating look at the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943, a year ahead of the wider Warsaw uprising. Polish Jews were fighting for freedom with a cadre of fighters whose background was in the bund or socialist parties – not in Zionism:
Warsaw Jews fight and die for freedom

What was OPE (Operation Protective Edge) for and why didn’t the IDF win it? The State Comptroller issued a damning report – those who knew about the Hamas tunnels did not pass on this information to the Security Cabinet. This report was discussed in a Knesset meeting at which bereaved parents railed at the needless loss of Israeli life. An unusual vox pop report from Ynet:
Tears and screams at discussion on Gaza attack

At the heart of Israel and Jewishness are the definitions of who is Jewish (and has an unquestioned right to emigrate to Israel) and, informally, who is the superior true Jew. In order to be the ‘home of all the Jewish people’ Israel has cast the net wide. But that doesn’t ensure equality. The cultural hegemony puts European Ashkenazim at the top and Ethiopians at the bottom with Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews somewhere in between. Two articles, one on the religiously skewed definition of a citizen and the other on the peculiar role for Palestinian citizens of Israel:
Blood trounces law in ruling who’s a citizen

Few British Jews were impressed by Ken Livingstone’s intervention in the conflict about Labour and antisemitism by citing the German Haavara (transfer) agreement in which German Jews were invited to facilitate their own emigration. Livingstone’s garbled account of this agreement (which was more to do with Adolf Eichmann than Hitler) has gained some support but more condemnation from Labour-voting Jews. Neither historical analysis nor the Labour party has come out well from this dispute:
Truth and Labour first casualties of Livingstone row

The Jewish Chronicle has done its own thing with the announcement of a general election in June. It has looked at how Israel might suffer:
Ten pro-Israel Labour MPs likely to lose seats

We note that Labour publishes the names of all their MPs who are in either friends of Israel or friends of Palestine groups. The Tories don’t have a Friends of Palestine group and don’t publish the names of those in that largest of parliamentary groups, Conservative Friends of Israel.

Everything to do with Syria is murky and horrible. The current world temperature is hotly hostile to Pres. Bashar Assad – though he’s also that world’s best hope for keeping ISIL at bay. Uri Avnery doesn’t think it likely that he released poison gas over Idlib province – what would he gain? Israel, various Syrian sects, Sunni Arab allies and Gulf sheikhs have all blamed him in yet another convulsion in MidEast politics:
Who gained from Idlib massacre? Not Assad

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