This week’s postings@JfJfP.com

The hunger strike by Palestinian political prisoners continued last week, May 1st-7th, 2017 but it is no longer dominating discussion. Al Jazeera provides a horribly harsh account of the arrest and imprisonment and torture of Palestinians, many of whom are children (under 18), in which there is no semblance or even pretence of judicial process:
Mass arrests, instant imprisonment

The effects of Israeli rule on Palestinian children living near settlements is the subject of a report by LPHR (Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights). Settlements are often tense places, guarded by jumpy soldiers as well as private security guards. Again, the children are subject to peremptory arrest or detention. Fear is the air they breathe:
Where there are settlers there are soldiers

In a passionately angry piece, Ze’ev Sternhell reminds us that Israelis have been complicit in the Occupation. There is no opposition, no acceptance of responsibility for this apartheid. That means European critics will have to act on their vocal criticism and hit Israelis where it hurts – their desire to visit and buy what Europe has to offer. Countries like the UK should make getting a visa a time-consuming business – as getting a permit to travel anywhere is for Palestinians:
Against the Occupation? Act on it!

Under Netanyahu the budget for intelligence gathering has doubled reports Chaim Levinson. This means both that the proportion of defence staff engaged in the secret work of acquiring info about ‘enemies’ has doubled and that the number of people who are regarded as enemies has also increased. Richard Silverstein comments on Levinson’s findings:
Throwing money at spy agencies

Israel celebrated its Independence Day on May 2nd. This was not a matter of street festivals. More fittingly, it was a day for citizens to look in awe and gratitude at the might of the IDF – and not remember that the 1948 Declaration of Independence was tacitly a declaration of Palestinian dispossession:
Israelis celebrate their military power

It was a day that began the process of turning thousands of Palestinians into refugees. In an epistemological essay, Anaheed Al-Hardan of Al Shabaka writes a cutting critique of those who do research on Palestinians and the often distorted results:
How we know what we think we know about Palestinian refugees

This last year it has been clear to PM Netanyahu that Israel and the Gulf States should make common cause – against Iran, to find some placatory policy toward Palestinians. But says Chas W. Freeman, a senior American diplomat, the Israeli treatment is so notorious that no Arab state can be seen to do business with Israel:
Treatment of Palestinians prevents Israeli-Arab alliance

Our number 1 religious affairs correspondent, Robert Cohen, brings an analysis of the Church of Scotland’s report on 100 years since the Balfour Declaration. It’s a good, if conventional, report saying ‘justice, equality, dignity, equal access to natural resources and freedom of opportunity for all’ should be the basis of UK government policy on Palestine.

Shamefully, the Board of Deputies has slammed it as ‘unbalanced’ in criticising settlements. Eh? Even our Conservative government, even Donald Trump criticises settlements. What would, in the BoD’s eyes, a ‘balanced’ report say?
Blindness of BoD on Balfour

Trump is following through on his declaration that he could do a deal on Palestine/Israel. He invited Pres. Abbas to the White House which so delighted the old man that he burst out ‘we rely on God and Trump’. History suggests both are extremely unreliable especially as Trump was immediately and angrily lobbied by Republicans for treating this terrorist (the old man who can’t retire until he’s achieved something) as worthy of any respect:
Trump torn between The Deal and the GOP

Thank goodness for Amira Hass who, amongst other journalistic virtues, doesn’t treat all Palestinians, even Hamas, as mindless terrorists. Here she reads the new Hamas charter. It’s less open and forthright than the first draft but it’s more engaged with the rest of the world, junks its previous antisemitic remarks about ‘the Jews’ and shows that releasing Hamas from its isolation would make possible a turn away from violence toward diplomacy and discussions:
Opening the mind of Hamas

If one mind opens another one shuts. When Sigmar Gabriel, the foreign minister of  Germany, Israel’s most loyal European friend, visited Israel he said he also wanted to meet with Breaking the Silence and B’Tselem, to give him a full picture of the country. In response, the PM refused to see him. His inability to acknowledge that critical NGOs are a vital part of Israeli political life would have earned him more opprobrium had Gabriel not also said that Social Democrats and Jews were the first victims of Nazi rule (not in fact true). But the Israelis who draw identity from being uniquely victimised could not tolerate this:
German minister asking awkward questions unwelcome in Israel

Perhaps PM Netanyahu’s fear and loathing of NGOs, especially Breaking the Silence, is because they provide the only serious political opposition (apart from the far-right Zionists). The Independent reports on what it is about BtS that so gets under the PM’s skin:
NGOs the only opposition in Israel

The trajectory of silencing and excluding any critics continues. Professor Kamel Hawwash, Birmingham, and a member of PSC, travelled to Israel where he and his wife have family and friends. He was interrogated, strip-searched (to make him feel helpless) and put on a plane back to Britain:
Another PSC member denied entry to Israel

Where Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS movement, goes, there is an interesting political discussion and here he challenges the hegemonic American discourse – identity politics. He calls himself a feminist and thinks the fight against racism fundamental and universal. But he also thinks an effective opposition has to build a broad coalition in which no one cause is dominant:
Movement for justice v. identity politics

A petition of support has been created for the people of a small Palestinian village near Jerusalem. Israeli authorities want to demolish Jabal al Baba to expand into Palestinian spaces. The villagers are putting up a spirited ‘We shall remain’ fight:
Small village, big fight