January 2019, Week 5
Life in Southeast Alaska vs , life in Occupied Palestine/Israel:
Southeast: Fishing fleet at rest for the winter.
Occupied Palestine/Israel:Israel shot up Palestinian fishing boats again. This time as the Palestinians were protesting Israel’s siege on Gaza. Story on January 29.
Tuesday
01.29.2019 Injuries reported as Israel represses weekly naval protests in Gaza Maan News Israeli siege troops in naval gunboats fired live ammunition, rubber coated steel bullets and tear gas grenades at a group of 20 Palestinian boats protesting against the 12-year-long siege. Report says 5 Palestinians injured, one in critical condition.
01.29.2019 Palestinian shot, injured in Khan Younis Maan News Another Palestinian youth protesting the siege was shot near the border and taken to hospital. Condition unknown.
01.29.2019 Palestinian succumbs to wounds sustained in Gaza protests Maan News This is not one of the kids shot today. Last Friday a Jewish occupation trooper shot 47-year-old Samir al-Nabbahim in the face with a tear gas grenade. al-Nabbahim died of his injuries today. Rest in Peace.
01.29.2019 Israeli forces detain 8 Palestinians, assault 3 in West Bank raids Maan News Night raids again in the West Bank. One of the assaulted Palestinians was taken to the hospital.
01.29.2019 Surveillance, political threats, daily discrimination: What it’s like to be a Palestinian citizen in Israel Haaretz by Anwar Mhajne.
01.29.2019 Senate bill against BDS advances after democrats split their vote Haaretz by Amir Tibon. AS U.S. Government reopens priority one for the Senate was to push punishments against Americans who support the boycott of Israel. Story is in all the Israeli papers. American papers not so much. The Jerusalem Post notes that the Israel Lobby’s AIPAC is a major supporter of this legislation. Today was the 4th time the Senate has pushed the bill since New Years.
01.29.2019 Netanyahu in talks for another India visit in two weeks, major arms deal on agenda Haaretz Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Indian Prime Minister Modi continue their bromance. Both are running for reelection. Israel peddling weapons systems technology provided by the American taxpayer.
01.29.2019 Palestinian government submits resignation to Abbas Maan News Article says West Bank Palestinians are protesting/rejecting articles of a new social security law which was halted by Palestinian President Hamdallah. On Tuesday his government resigned.
01.29.2019 The BBC should press for Eurovision to be moved from Israel The Guardian More than 50 British performers: including musicians, producers, actors, directors, comedians, etc, sent open letter to the BBC stating that the BBC’s charter requires it to “champion freedom of expression.” Therefore, the performers feel the BBC should press for Eurovision to hold the contest n another country where “crimes against that freedom are not being committed.” The letter calls Israel out as an apartheid venue.
01.29.2019 In Tel Aviv, Roseanne says Hollywood’s hatred of Trump and Zionism brought her down Haaretz in an interview Barr, ‘dismissed left-wing feminists as a bunch of Jew haters and called the leadership of the Women’s March disgusting.’ [Actually, Roseanne Barr’s show was cancelled because of a comment she made online about former President Obama’s advisor Valerie Jarret. Jarret is an African American. Barr wrote about her, if the “Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby.”]
Wednesday
01.30.2019 Update: Palestinian teen shot dead by Israeli forces for alleged stab attempt. Maan News 16-year-old girl, Samah Mubarak, gunned down this morning by Jewish occupation troops in body armor carrying machine guns. They claim she tried to stab one of them with a small steak knife. Photos and a video surreptitiously taken by a Palestinian from a nearby car, with a woman in the car sobbing as the driver records, shows over a dozen armed Israeli soldiers standing around the girls body. As almost always happens, they do nothing to help her. They leave her lying in the street. Rest in Peace.
01.30.2019 Israeli bulldozers demolish under construction house in Nablus. Maan News Again.
01.30.2019 Israel returns body of killed Palestinian to family Maan News This isn’t the little girl Israel killed this morning. This is the corpse of Riyad Shamasneh who Israel killed Saturday because they thought he looked suspicious.
01.30.2019 In video-Israel demolishes Palestinian owned building in Jerusalem Maan News 3 stores on first floor, 3 apartments on second floor, destroyed.
01.30.2019 Israel orders demolition of school, construction halt of homes in Hebron Maan News. Four months ago Jewish occupation troops demolished an elementary school in south Hebron Hill district called Masafer Yatta. The Palestinians rebuilt it. Now Israel has notified them that the Jewish state is about to destroy the school again. Israelis have been trying to get this parcel of land for Jewish colonists since the 1970’s
01.30.2019 Israel just admitted arming anti-Assad Syrian rebels. Big mistake. Haaretz by Daniel Levy. After Israel has been lying about it for years, outgoing Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Lt. General Gadi Eisenkot confirmed, on the record, that Israel has been arming Syrian terrorists to fight Syrian President Bashir Assad.
Article notes Israel’s history of arming anti-Israel Arabs who are fighting against other Arabs. Like arming Iran to fight Iraq in the 1980’s, and Israel arming Yemeni royalists (Houthis) to create a war of attrition against Egyptian troops in the 1960’s. Israel arming and training the South Lebanese Army. Over the past 5 years UN observers have documented Israel supplying and aiding anti-Assad terrorists in Syria.
To camouflage the shipments, in 2016 Israel fabricated ‘Operation Good Neighbor’ where they would show Israeli soldiers collecting toys for Syria. As Assad’s forces advanced, Israel allowed the anti-Assad ‘White Helmets’ to escape Syria by driving into Israel. ‘Good Neighbor’ was initiated shortly after Assad began his counter-offensive against the TR’s. Good Neighbor ended when Assad pushed TR’s out of Southern Syria in September, 2018. There were still million of need Syrians but on one to run guns to.
The author speculates that in the long-term Israel will have trouble finding proxies to fight in its interest since, “In both Lebanon and now Syria, Israel’s former partners have found themselves exposed to dangers of collaboration and seemingly abandoned.”
A lot of the material in the article about how much Israel is supplying to how many groups is covered (and duly cited by Levy) in two, 2018 articles by Elizabeth Tsurkov: 02.14.2018 Israel’s deepening involvement with Syria’s rebel’s War on the Rocks. and 09.06.2018 Inside Israel’s secret program to back Syrian Rebels, Foreign Policy.
In on article Tsurkov describes Israel supplying TR’s with weapons, munitions, and cash. Israel also supported its allies inside Syria with drone and missile strikes against enemies. In the other article Tsurkov wrote that Israel provided Syrian TR’s with “assault rifles, machine guns, mortar launchers, and troop transport vehicles” from the Israeli occupied Golan Heights into Syria. She dates such support back to 2013.
01.30.2019 U.S. rep calls police on supporters trying to organize delegation to West Bank Mint Press by Alexander Rubenstein. Washington, D.C. anti-war women’s group Code Pink showed up at the offices of Elliot Engle (D-NY) and Brian Babin (R-Tx) who are trying to block approval for Congress woman Rashida Tlaib to take a Congressional delegation to the occupied West Bank. Engle’s office staff called the police.
Thursday
01.31.2019 Two Palestinian students critically injured with Israeli live fire in Tuqu Maan News Israeli occupation troops stormed the high school, leading to clashes between Jews with machine guns and Arabs with rocks, again. The Israelis fired live ammunition and tear gas grenades at the kids. Dozens suffered tear gas inhalation. Three kids taken to hospital shot in the abdomen, pelvis, or leg. Two of the kids in critical condition.
01.31.2019 UN: Palestinian education deeply impacted by Israeli interference Maan News UNICEF and UNESCO made a joint statement on Israel: “…impacting children’s access to safe education… incidents of interferences in schools by Israeli forces, demolitions (of schools), threats of demolitions, clashes on the way to school between students and security forces, teachers stopped at checkpoints, and the violent actions of Israeli forces and settlers on some occasions, are impacting access to a safe learning environment and the right to quality education for thousands of Palestinian children.”
The UN noted there were more than two interferences per week in 2018 directly impacting over 19,000 children just in the West Bank. Half (!) of the verified incidents involved live ammunition, tear gas, and stun grenades fired into or near schools by Israeli forces, impacting the delivery of education or injuring students. Nearly 2/3 of the verified interference incidents in West Bank schools took place in the last four months of 2018.” Israel demolished 5 Palestinian schools in 2018 and another 50 schools in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are under threat of demolition. Oreif secondary school for boys was closed twice from Jewish colonist violence. “Children from that school have been hospitalized with multiple injuries including gunshots.” One school in Hebron was exposed to tear gas violence 20 times in 2018. In Gaza in November of 2018, Israel severely damaged a kindergarten, a learning center, and caused damage to 4 other schools.
01.31.2019 Palestinian teen hiking with friends was killed in Israeli ambush. He posed no danger Haaretz by Gideon Levy. Last Saturday, January 26, occupation troops murdered an unarmed 17-year-old Palestinian high school senior in the West Bank. Gideon Levy lays out the timeline of what happened and he attended the boy’s funeral.
6 high school kids were hiking up a valley north of Ramallah for a picnic. Without warning a shot rang out and Ayman Hamad fell with a bullet hole in his chest that exited near his hip. More shots fired as his friends went to help him. Another boy was shot in the arm. The kids took off running, leaving Ayman dying alone as Jewish occupation troops fired dozens of rounds at them. Levy says Israel killed the boy from a distance of 50 to 100 meters. He describes the grief of a family burying a first-born son.
01.31.2019 I was a settler. I know how settlers become killers Haaretz by Shabtay Bendert. The author helped found the illegal West Bank outpost, that housed the yeshiva, that schooled the Jewish terrorists, that killed Palestinian mother Ashida Rabi. The author has had a change of heart, left the settlement years ago, and says, “I’ve watched Israeli right-wing radicalize to the point of devaluing human life—for anyone who isn’t Jewish.”
01.31.2019 Top rabbis call for donations for Israeli charged with killing Palestinian woman Haaretz by Yotam Berger.
01.31.2019 Beat a detained Palestinian and made his son watch: Five Israeli soldiers indicted for abuse Haaretz by Yaniv Kubovich. Byline reads: “Soldiers punched detainees and hit them with sharp objects while they were handcuffed and blindfolded, then forced the son to watch his father severely beaten.” Indictment includes an Israeli commander as well as 5 occupation troops.
01.31.2019 Israeli forces detain 8 Palestinians across West Bank Maan News Night and fog raids in Bethlehem and Ramallah again.
01.31.2019 Two Palestinian families left homeless in East Jerusalem Maan News Fourteen more Palestinians, including 9 children, are out in the cold tonight after Israel’s military government, which Israelis call the ‘Civil Administration,’ ordered their homes demolished.
01.31.2019 Ilhan Omar says U.S. should call out Israel like Iran, ‘chuckles’ when Israel ‘upheld as a democracy.’ Haaretz Minnesota freshman Congresswoman speaking on Women’s news show, ‘through her eyes’ said about Israel’s Nation State Law, “I almost chuckle at a law that says only Jews have a right to national self-determination.”
01.31.2019 International Holocaust remembrance day was a mistake Haaretz daily dose of Nazi.
01.31.2019 Nokia revisited? The dark side of Israel having ‘Intel Inside’ Haaretz by David Rosenberg. Story about semi conductor giant Intel. Commenter mentions that the 1985 US-Israel Free Trade Agreement [aka the first and worst FTA] is the only FTA that doesn’t have provisions for intellectual property. “Considered by many to be yet another U.S. give away to Israel.”
01.31.2019 EU provides 2.37 million Euros to support Palestinian farmers Maan News Program to help West Bank farmers compromised by Israeli occupation.
01.31.2019 Japan funds four grassroots projects in Gaza Maan News Total of $341, 348 for projects including safe places for children, physical therapy for a hospital, a solar energy project, and a solid waste management project.
01.31.2019 B’Tselem investigation: al-Barghouti was shot point blank Maan News Israeli watchdog organization says 28-year-old Barghouti, who was a husband and father of a 5-year-old, was executed by Israeli occupation troops. Israel suspected him of being involved in a drive-by shooting last December. On December 13, Barghouti was driving his cab when cars blocked it front and back. A group of Jewish occupation troops wearing black uniforms and black ski masks got out of the rear car with machine guns and shot Barghouti multiple times at point blank range as he started to roll down the window.
01.31.2019 Report: Tourism companies contribute to Israeli settlement expansion Maan News. Amnesty International report called, ‘Destination: Occupation,’ details how Airbnb, Bookings Online, Trip Advisor, and Expedia, are funneling foreign tourists into Jewish colonies in the occupied territories.
01.31.2019 As Malaysia and Ireland find out, you stand up for Palestinian rights at your peril Mint Press by Mico Peled. Peled (aka the General’s son) talks about pressure the Israel Lobby is going to put on two countries standing up for Palestinian people in Israeli occupied territory. He gives Reykjavik, Iceland in 2015 as an example. When the capital voted to support BDS, Israel—ever mindful that if one European country supports the boycott other will also—used the full power of United States by threatening US sanctions against Iceland. That forced Iceland’s capital to back down—for the time being.
