My Favorite sign on the "Occupy the Landscape" march from Woodstock to Catskill May 26

Tel Aviv race riot: another product of the "onlydemocracyinthemiddleeast"

from +972 website
Wednesday, May 23 2012|Noam Sheizaf
Africans attacked in Tel Aviv protest; MKs: ‘infiltrators’ are cancer

Coalition MKs incited the crowd against the refugees and asylum seekers during a protest in south Tel Aviv, which was followed by attacks on African immigrants and confrontations with police. A Likud MK called for the prosecution of Israelis giving shelter to Africans.



More than 1,000 Israelis protested this evening (Wednesday) against the African refugees and asylum seekers who have settled in South Tel Aviv in recent years. According to eyewitnesses’ reports, the crowd grew angry and ultimately violent, following speeches from Knesset members, including members of the government coalition.

It was one of the most violent protests Tel Aviv has known in recent years. Confrontations were continuing between police and Jewish citizens at around 10:30 p.m. local time.

Dozens of protesters tried to move from the Hatikva neighborhood, where the rally was held, towards Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighborhood, where most African asylum seekers and migrants live. They were stopped by police. Protesters attacked a car passing by carrying African passengers, smashing its windows. Shops associated with the African community were vandalized. [UPDATE: As of midnight, activists in Hatikva are still reporting looting and occasional attacks on immigrants.]

In light of increasing violence and harassment in recent days, activists walked refugee children in Tel Aviv home from school on Wednesday in order to prevent them from potential attacks.

According to Maariv’s website, the mob chased a man from Eritrea, who took shelter in a storefront and was rescued by police. At least two journalists were attacked. One fled the area and the other, whose notepad was snatched by protesters, was sheltered by the cops.

Earlier, Knesset members spoke at the event. Some blamed government inaction for the “infiltration problem,” while others heaped accusations on human rights organizations helping the refugees. Knesset Member Miri Regev called the refugees “a cancer in our body.” Regev, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud party, said that “leftists” are preventing the state from deporting the refugees back to Africa. Knesset Member Danny Danon (Likud), who also spoke at the event, wrote in a Facebook status tonight that “Israel is at war. An enemy state of infiltrators was established in Israel, and its capital is south Tel Aviv.”

According to one of the eyewitnesses, the most inflammatory speaker was MK Michael Ben-Ari, a former member of Meir Kahane’s racist Kach party, who was a resident of south Tel Aviv himself before moving to a settlement. “The police commissioner wants to give the African jobs,” said Ben-Ari, referring to a statement by Chief of Police Yochanan Danino, who recently urged the government to allow the refugees to work in Israel, in order to prevent the crime rate from rising. “This will bring another 50,000 people here,” said Ben Ari.

Asylum seekers in Israel are given temporary residence permits but are not permitted to work in Israel. The government has stated before the High Court that will not enforce the ban on employment, but calls are regularly heard from the right to crack down on employers to prevent the refugees from working.


Several local residents also spoke at the rally. Most of them mentioned their fears of a “rising crime rate.” “We are afraid to walk the streets at nights,” said one of the speakers. “The infiltrators are taking over our neighborhood and over our jobs,” said another speaker.

According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there are presently some 60,000 African asylum seekers in Israel. Most entered the country by foot through its southern border. While they are termed “infiltrators” by the government, some 85 percent are from Eritrea and Sudan, to which Israel has agreed until now not to return them in light of the situations in those countries. They fall under a form of group protection from deportation, but their individual refugee claims are not processed.

A few recent crimes against Israelis that were linked to the African community have recently received considerable attention in the local media. They led to a wave of protest and declarations by politicians against the refugees and asylum seekers. MK Ofir Akunis, a member of Likud and a Netanyahu proxy, is set to promote a Knesset bill which will criminalize Israelis who employ, drive or give shelter to refugees.

UPDATE: The Israel Police tweeted that in the last week, 11 suspects, most of them minors, were arrested for attacking African refugees in Tel Aviv on several occasions. They used clubs and pepper spray against their victims.

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Haggai Matar contributed to this report.

Israel's Buffoon, the UN Nabka

From The Palestine Chronicle

By Vacy Vlazna

On May 15, 1948 the unilateral proclamation of the State of Israel which erupted into the brutal Palestinian Nakba or Catastrophe was also catastrophic for United Nations (UN) ringing the death knell for its stature and authority.

Like medieval kings, the US and Israel employed the UN to be its fool running around with a cap o' bells and sceptre (rendered useless by US veto) beginning with the 1947 Resolution 181, passed on 29 February by members (under coercion) recommending the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into Jewish and Palestinian states which was understandably rejected by Palestine but accepted by Israel as a step toward its Zionist expansionist goal for the full realisation of a Jewish Eretz Israel.

Ironically, on 30th February Menachem Begin, head of the terrorist gang, Irgun, brazenly announced the Zionist immutable dogma, "The partition of Palestine is illegal. It will never be recognised... Jerusalem was and forever will be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever."

Disregarding Begin's rant, apart from having no mandate to approve or enforce the partition, 'the United Nations had no business offering the nation of one people to the people of many nations. Its General Assembly had neither the legal nor the legislative powers to impose such a resolution or to convey title of a territory; Articles 10, 11 and 14 of the UN Charter bestows the right on the General Assembly merely to recommend resolutions.'

The Nakba marks the onset of Israel's systematic ethnic cleansing strategy with the destruction of over 500 Palestinian villages and the forced expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian civilians fleeing Haganah, Irgun and Lehi units that carried out the savage and systematic military offensives codenamed Plan Dalet:

These operations can be divided into the following categories:

Destruction of villages (setting fire to, blowing up, and planting mines in the debris), especially those population centers which are difficult to control continuously.

Mounting search and control operations according to the following guidelines: encirclement of the village and conducting a search inside it. In the event of resistance, the armed force must be destroyed and the population must be expelled outside the borders of the state.

Forced to leave their cherished lands, the Palestinian exodus dispersed to 58 squalid refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank as well as in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. All 4.9 million Palestinian refugees come under the authority of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA). Its provision of health, education and humanitarian aid is vastly inadequate to the needs of the camps' three generations of desperate people.

UNRWA is funded mainly by the USA, the EU Commission, UK and Germany. This cabal of collaborators which has ignored Palestinian human and political rights since 1948, are in fact, the camps' prison guards perpetuating the normalisation of the Israeli occupation thus relieving Israel of its obligation to honour the Palestinian right of return set down in Resolution 194 (December 1948 ) of which Article 11 reads;

(The General Assembly) Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.

Israel dismissed Resolution 194, then flagrantly legislated in 1950 The Law of Return that gives all Jews the right to emigrate to and settle in Israel (aliyah) and obtain citizenship. Billions of dollars are spent promoting aliyah, the zenith of Zionism, and spent establishing 200 illegal colonies for over 500,000 illegal, mainly thuggish, colonists on occupied Palestinian land protected by the nuclear might of the Israeli military.

Within days after Palestine's failed bid to have its right to membership of the UN passed in September 2011, Israel insolently announced a further 1100 units to be built in the Gilo colony, and weeks later announced the future expansion of 50,000 illegal Israeli houses in Palestinian East Jerusalem. In April 2012, another three colony outposts, Bruchin, Rechelim and Sansana were approved flying in the face of Palestine's prime condition for resuming the 'peace process' - that Israel stops colony expansion.

The end of November 2011, saw Israel's houseboy, the Leader of the Free World and Honest Peace Broker, spit out his dummy summarily withdrawing the US and funding from UNESCO because it approved Palestinian membership to its organisation thereby jeopardising thousands of UNESCO's humanitarian projects.

Since 1948, there have been over 105 General Assembly UN resolutions and over 224 Security Council resolutions passed against Israel in relation to Palestine, Lebanon and Syria condemning or deploring Israel for deportations of Palestinians, for refusal to cooperate with the UN, for assassinations, for killing Palestinian students, for denying human rights of Palestinians, for raids on Gaza, for Israel's use of resources from occupied territories, for failure to abide by the Geneva Conventions, for repeated military interventions in Lebanon and Syria, reiterating Israel's claim to Jerusalem is null and void, calling on Israel to cease building settlements in occupied territories, to comply with UN decisions, reaffirming the "inalienable rights of the Palestinian people", including the right to national sovereignty and the right of return...to name a few.

Most have have been ignored and /or vetoed by the USA.....

8 years ago, the UN's International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled on the matter of the Israeli Annexation/Apartheid Wall that 'Israel is under an obligation to terminate its breaches of international law; it is under an obligation to cease forthwith the works of construction of the wall being built in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, to dismantle forthwith the structure therein situated, and to repeal or render ineffective forthwith all legislative and regulatory acts relating thereto, in accordance with paragraph 151 of this Opinion".

To this day, brave Palestinians demonstrate and struggle against the relentless encroachment of the Annexation Wall on their lands.

In 2009, Resolution 1860 calling for the full cessation of war between Israel and Hamas was passed on the 9th January - TWO WEEKS after the war began with 200 Palestinians slaughtered on the first day. Ignoring the resolution Israel leisurely prolonged its Operation Cast Lead against unarmed and trapped Gazan families with another 9 days of hellish attacks. It ended the war a discreet two days before Obama's inauguration.

In March 2012, Michael Mandel, law professor at Canada's York University stridently criticised the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC) decision to refuse jurisdiction over Gaza war crimes:

"It's disgraceful but not surprising that the ICC has dismissed Palestine's complaint against Israel. It sat on the complaint for over three years, always proudly announcing that it was investigating it to give the appearance of impartiality. Meanwhile the ICC jumped to attention in less than three weeks when the US government, which is not a signatory to the treaty, wanted to go to war against Libya, justifying Western aggression with bogus charges against the Libyan regime...Ocampo [ICC prosecutor]and company have been busy putting Africa on trial for crimes aided, abetted and exploited by the rich countries, while the US government killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and tens of thousands of Afghans, and Israel has been committing Nuremberg's 'supreme international crime' of aggression against the Palestinians for 45 years."

Also on May 10, the Electronic Intifada reported that UNRWA's Commissioner General, Filippo Grandi's appeal "to the Israeli government to find an acceptable solution, noting that the [2000 Palestinian political prisoners] hunger strikers' demands are generally related to the basic rights of prisoners, as stipulated in the Geneva Conventions." was hastily removed from UNRWA's website.

Israel's impunity to commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, its 64 year defiance of UN resolutions amplify the UN's lethal incompetence. 187 member nations, (not including Israel's quislings and human rights hypocrites; USA, UK, Australia, Germany, France), are too gutless or subservient or self-serving to protect and enforce the international laws for which they are legally obligated;

International human rights law lays down obligations which States are bound to respect. By becoming parties to international treaties, States assume obligations and duties under international law to respect, to protect and to fulfil human rights. The obligation to respect means that States must refrain from interfering with or curtailing the enjoyment of human rights. The obligation to protect requires States to protect individuals and groups against human rights abuses. The obligation to fulfil means that States must take positive action to facilitate the enjoyment of basic human rights.

The 64 years of the uninterrupted Palestinian Nakba with its sweeping scale of tragic suffering challenges the UN's moral and political credibility and its very existence as Israel's buffoon.

- Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001. She contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com.

To believe this op-ed from the Jerusalem Post is to be functionally Psychotic

Here is the actual worldview, the reducto ad absurdum, of Zionism: the entire world is planning on killing off all the Jews. The proof is that the world won't give Jews a free pass to kill off the Palestinians. The central religious sacrament of Zionism is the Holocaust. Christians believe in original sin. Jewish Zionists believe in original chosenness for Jews to be valued above all other people. The closer is that all non-Jews are born with original guiltyness for the holocaust, which they can never live down.

BUT the main reality these day is that the Jewish State has been getting away with murder and theft and its protector, the USA, and NATO, let it happen.
RC

JPost.com
Opinion
Op-Ed Contributors


Yes, all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic!
By BENJAMIN KERSTEIN
05/20/2012 22:31
That is to say, the historical circumstances under which Israel and the Jews exist in the world today render any non anti-Semitic criticism of Israel impossible.

‘But surely you don’t believe,” they always ask you, “that all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic?” It is a noticeably patronizing question, of course, in that it is obviously an admonition that all civilized, thinking people must answer “no” or “of course not.” It is an important question, however, because of its real answer, which is unequivocally and unquestionably “yes.”

The idea that all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic horrifies some, offends and mortifies others, and terrifies still more. The usual reaction to it is something along the lines of “how can you say that?!” Nonetheless, it is exactly what I am saying in regard to Israel and its critics.

I do not speak, however, of intentional or conscious anti-Semitism (though it is a major factor), nor of inadvertent or ignorant anti-Semitism (though this also plays a mighty role). All criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic because of hate, or prejudice, or malice, or stupidity, or indeed any of those very human vices so often regarded as the devil’s work by upper-middle-class liberals.

All criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic because of the specific historical circumstances under which we currently live. That is to say, the historical circumstances under which Israel and the Jews exist in the world today render any non-anti-Semitic criticism of Israel impossible. And, ironically, these are circumstances that Israel’s opponents have themselves created.

To hold that this is not the case requires acting – and demanding that others act – as if these circumstances do not exist, even as they sit as patiently as a pachyderm in the parlor waiting for us to notice them and, sometimes, when our self-willed ignorance grows too infuriating, murder our children and set off bombs in our streets.

Nonetheless, these circumstances are not complex, nor are they numerous. They are simply these: A large portion of the world, West and East, has come to believe that Arabs and Muslims have earned the right to murder Jews.

Derived from this right, they have also come to believe that the destruction dismantling, and erasure of the State of Israel, and the slaughter, expulsion, and/or perpetual subjugation of its Jewish population are entirely legitimate and indeed desirable.

Derived from the preceding is the belief that the Jewish people in general, in Israel or the Diaspora, either do not exist as a people deserving the same rights as other peoples, or are an evil and debased people who must be slaughtered, expelled, and/or perpetually subjugated in order to prevent them from committing further debased evils.

UNDER SUCH circumstances, it is clear that: The existence, rights and dignity of Israel and the Jews are considered to be intertwined to the point that no differentiation between them is possible.

The existence, rights and dignity of Israel and the Jews are considered uniquely contingent upon their conduct and whether or not that conduct meets with the approval of the non-Jewish world.

Because of the beliefs outlined in the previous section, Israeli and Jewish conduct will never meet with the aforementioned approval.

As a result, Israel and the Jews are, in essence, held indistinguishable by a court whose proceedings are perpetual and whose verdict is known beforehand. Under such circumstances, there is no criticism, no evidence for the prosecution, which does not aid in the process of an unjust trial before a monstrous court. Which is not, put simply, anti-Semitic.

It is either subjectively anti-Semitic, in that it consciously and intentionally aids in this injustice; or it is objectively anti-Semitic, in that it unconsciously and unintentionally does the same thing. The distinction – if there ever was one – between the two is now meaningless. Either way, the result is the same.

It may be, of course, that some criticism of Israel will be deemed necessary in spite of the consequences, and the need for a public hearing will overwhelm the need to prevent a victory of sorts for anti-Semitism. If so, however, those doing the criticizing ought to be honest enough to acknowledge the objective consequences of doing so, whatever is said or left unsaid along the way.

So, it must be said again: Yes, all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. Yes, it is so because of specific historical circumstances. Yes, it is inescapable. Yes, it holds true however well-intentioned such criticism may be. Yes, it holds as true for Jewish as for non-Jewish critics of Israel.

The Middle East conflict, David Ben-Gurion said a long time ago – and he was right – is not about the Jews and the Arabs, it is about the Jews and the world, a world that is overwhelmingly not Jewish, and thus bears certain responsibilities toward its Jewish minority. If and when the world finally accepts these responsibilities, criticism of Israel that is not anti-Semitic will become possible.

Until then, however, there is at least a possible solution to the problem, should critics of Israel be willing to entertain it. It is a modest imperative: Work toward less anti-Semitism. This imperative does not demand silence, but it does require a measure of self-reflection that is (and I in no way exempt myself) a task of the most supreme difficulty for us all.

The writer is an author and editor living in Tel Aviv.