Israeli fm old founding & ruling family comments on fate and legacy of Israeli terror state

Apollonian

Guest Columnist

Collaborating With a Criminal Country,' Says Former PM’s Son​

Link: https://archive.ph/gkjrJ#selection-273.29-1383.206

Scion to an iconic Zionist family and former member of the Shin Bet, Yaakov Sharett, 95, has become an anti-Zionist who encourages people to leave Israel

At the end of a series of meetings with Yaakov “Kobi” Sharett, after a total of about ten hours of interviews, with some chutzpah I asked him the obvious question. I wanted to know if he was sure that what he was saying, was said with a clear, considered mind. Sharett, who recently entered his 95th year, smiled and nodded, yes.

Yaakov Sharett, the son of Israel’s first foreign minister and second prime minister, Moshe Sharett, feels no need to mince his words. He is sharp, incisive and precise – and wants to send the readers a message that is hard to digest.The son of the man who signed Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948 is ending his days as an anti-Zionist who opposes aliyah and encourages emigration from Israel, predicts dark days for the country. He even supports the Iranian nuclear program.

“The State of Israel and the Zionist enterprise were born in sin. That’s the way it is,” says the man, who served in the pre-state Palmach, volunteered for the Jewish Brigade in the British Army during World War II, cofounded a kibbutz in the Negev, and served in the Shin Bet security Service and Nativ, the government’s liaison bureau for immigration from Eastern Europe. “This original sin pursues and will pursue us and hang over us. We justify it, and it has become an existential fear, which expresses itself in all sorts of ways. There is a storm beneath the surface of the water,” he says.

'Israel was born in sin. I’m collaborating with a criminal country,' says former PM’s son - Israel News - Haaretz.com
“I'm 94 years old,” added Sharett (the interview took place before his 95th birthday). “I reached my age in peace. Financially, my situation is reasonable. But I fear for the future and fate of my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.”

Speaking from a penthouse in central Tel Aviv (prime real estate), you don’t appear to be suffering.“I describe myself as a collaborator against my will. I’m a forced collaborator with a criminal country. I’m here, I have nowhere to go. Because of my age I can’t go anywhere. And that bothers me. Every day. This recognition won’t leave me. The recognition that in the end Israel is a country occupying and abusing another people.”

Yaakov Sharett, with wife Rina in the background. 'Because of my age I can’t go anywhere.' Credit: Avihai Nitzan

The ‘Get thee out of thine country’ gene Some of Sharetts – the family consists of Yaakov and his wife Rina, with their three children, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren – already moved abroad, to New York.

His grandfather, Yaakov Shertok – for whom he was named, and whose surname was later Hebraicized to “Sharett” – was among the founders of the Bilu “Palestine pioneers” movement. He reached Israel in 1882, after a series of pogroms in Russia that came to be dubbed Sufot b’Negev: “Storms in the South.” But a few years later he went back, “yarad,” his grandson says, and had a family in the Diaspora. Moshe Sharett, Yaakov’s father was born in the city of Kherson on the Dnieper River, which is today in Russia, and back then was in Ukraine. Then, in 1906, in the wake of more pogroms, the grandfather and his family returned to Israel – this time permanently.Your father made aliyah at age 12. Did he consider himself a Zionist?

“My father made aliyah because his father made aliyah. Not because he wanted to himself. It’s one of the differences between Sharett and the Second Aliyah band, which founded Mapei and the country. They, and Ben-Gurion at their head, were older than him and made aliyah of their own will. But Sharett was not one of them. He did not undergo any internal upheaval that turned him into a Zionist.

”When they arrived, the family went to live in the Arab village of Ein Senya north of Ramallah. Over the next two years Moshe learned Arabic. In 1908 they moved to Tel Aviv, where he studied, along with his sister Rivka, in the first class of the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium high school.Later, one of his teachers at the school told about the young man who suddenly stood up and began speaking Arabic, so much so that “I didn’t believe he was a Jew.”

The Sharett siblings made friends at school who would became family, and would become known in the pre-state Jewish community, the “Yishuv,” as the “four in-laws.” These included Dov Hoz, one of the founders of the pre-state Haganah underground militia and one of the pioneers of flying in British Mandate Palestine; Eliyahu Golomb, the uncrowned commander of the Haganah; and Shaul Avigur – originally Meirov, a founder of the Haganah and the commander of the Mossad Le’aliyah Bet mission, to smuggle Jews into Palestine; later he would become the head of Nativ.Open gallery view

Eliyahu Golomb, a senior member of the Hagana, taken before 1945.Credit: Moshe married Tzipora Meirov, Avigur’s sister. Hoz married Rivka, Sharett’s sister. Golomb married Ada, the younger sister of Moshe and Rivka. The Shertok family home, on Rothschild Boulevard served as the headquarters of the Haganah and the meetings of the group’s leadership – led by the “in-laws” – were held there. A famous phrase from the period attributed the rebirth of Israel to the acts of “the miracles and the in-laws” (it rhymes in Hebrew). Tzipora, Moshe Sharett’s wife and Yaakov’s mother, born in Kvutzat Kinneret, studied agriculture in England, specializing in dairy. Back in Israel, she managed the workers moshav in Nahalat Yehuda near Rishon Letzion.

After high school, Moshe Sharett went to Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, which then controlled the land that would be Israel, to study law – as did both Ben-Gurion and the future president Yitzhak Ben Zvi – but World War I, which broke out in 1914, cut the plan short. He returned to Palestine and became active in the “Ottomanization” (or Turkification) Movement – which said that only if the Jews in Israel would take on Ottoman citizenship would it be possible to prevent their expulsion.

In the school where he had studied when he was young, he now taught Turkish, and later even enlisted in the Ottoman army. “My father said that they didn’t come to dispossess the Arabs, but to live with them. He believed there would be room for everyone,” said Yaakov. This approach, conciliatory, naïve or self-righteous – everyone can decide for themselves – pushed Sharett into being the eternal “number 2.” His son agrees that today they would be calling him scornfully a “leftist” and maybe even “hater of Israel.”

Over the next few decades, he worked his way into the heart of Zionist activity when he was chosen to be the head of the diplomatic department of the Jewish Agency. His resume includes the strategic planning of the “Tower and Stockade” enterprise; the building of the Tel Aviv port; the founding of the Jewish auxiliary police force (Notrim); and the jewel in the crown – the project for volunteering for the British army, peaking in the establishment of the Jewish Brigade during World War II.When Israel was founded, Sharett was appointed foreign minister; later he would replace Ben-Gurion as prime minister for a short time.

Moshe Sharett, center, during a press conference after returning from the U.S. to report to the national administration in Tel Aviv, in 1948.Credit: Frank Scherschel / GPO

It is hard to doubt your father’s Zionism and love of the land. Today he has great-grandchildren in New York. How would he feel if he knew about it?

“It’s impossible to discount yerida [leaving Israel] as a curse. There are almost no Israelis who don’t have relatives overseas. I’m happy that I have granddaughters, great-granddaughters and a great-grandson in New York."

"I’m not ashamed to say it. Sharett had a yored father too. My grandfather. If he hadn’t left Israel, I wouldn’t have been born, because after he made yerida he established a family. As opposed to the false mantra ‘I have no other country,’ the facts show that there are other countries. There is more than one land. Over a million Israelis live abroad. The ideological Zionist commitment evaporates the more the generations pass. People understand that there are better places where to raise children and live. Everywhere has problems, life itself is a problem, but Israel has existential problems.

Nonetheless, don’t you have a feeling of missing out? Your father signed the Declaration of Independence, and you no longer see Israel as the national home of the Jewish people.“The life of the Jewish people is a tragedy. Our people, at a very early stage, proved that it is not a dutiful people and doesn’t know how to sustain a state. So, for most of its time it did not have a national existence, but the existence of a persecuted and hated minority, that lives which lives without a higher organization and without its own government. It may be paying a price, but it withstood it.""One of the genes in our national DNA is the ‘Get thee out of thine country’ (Lekh Lekha) gene that began back in the days of our father Abraham. Since the days of the Second Temple, most of the Jews haven’t lived in Israel. They established a magnificent community on the Tigris River and after that moved to Spain, where they created a wonderful culture for a thousand years, and from there they dispersed all over …”And then came the pogroms and after that the Holocaust, and many realized that the “Jewish problem” was solvable only in a territorial way.

Suddenly people say, ‘We know what needs to be done,’ for everyone, and are prepared to force their ideas on the public. Who put you [in charge]? The moment Zionism called for the Jews to immigrate to Israel, in order to establish here one home for the Jewish people, which will be a sovereign state, a conflict was created. The Zionist idea was to come to a place where there were people, members of another people, members of another religion, completely different.

Altneuland house has passed away' by Yaakov SharettCredit: Moshe Sharett Heritage Publishing "Have you seen anywhere in the world where the majority would agree to give in to a foreign invader, who says, ‘our forefathers were here,’ and demands to enter the land and take control? The conflict was inherent and Zionism denied this, ignored it… as the proportion of Jews to Arabs changed in favor of the Jews, the Arabs realized that they were losing the majority. Who would agree to such a thing?

“So violent conflict began, the riots of 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936–1939, and war and another war and another war. Many say that we ‘deserve’ the land because the Arabs could have accepted us as we were and then everything would have been alright. But they started the war, so they shouldn’t complain. I see in this whole transformation of the majority [Arab] to a minority and the minority [Jewish] into a majority as immoral.”So you claim that your father was also immoral and so are you – your biography intertwined with that of the Zionist Movement and Israel in its seminal period.

If Israel is not OK, I’m not OK either, as someone who pays taxes here. For a certain period there was great hope here that something new had been created. I was a part of that. But now, Zionism, from my point of view, has disappeared. All the promises we made disappeared. I am not comfortable with this. Our national agenda is blood, death and violence. This flag files to this day in our country as a vision. Israel lives on the sword and sharpens it. I am completely alienated from this.”What went wrong on the way?

“The Jewish people had two great enemies, Hitler and Stalin, the hangmen of Jewish culture, who emptied and destroyed it – in Poland and the Soviet Union. Those who planned the state were directed first and foremost to the Jewish tribe. Hitler’s Holocaust and Stalin’s spiritual genocide completely changed the structure and the demographic makeup of Israel. Only after it turned out that those who were supposed to come no longer exist, other Jews came. I don’t discount them. From a Jewish perspective they are as Jewish as me and you, but their background is different. They were raised in Muslim countries and came from a background of religions, clans and admiration of the father. People like that then came into Israel, and that changed the situation and to this day is causing problems and upheavals.

Would you prefer to see Israel Ashkenazi, secular and liberal, like you are?

'I’m speaking frankly because I have nothing to hide. I’m 94 years old...' says Yaakov Sharett. Credit: Avihai Nitzan

“I’m speaking frankly because I have nothing to hide. I’m 94 years old... The more homogenous society is, the healthier it is. The less so, there are problems. I’m disappointed in the fate of the Jewish people, which divided us into tribes. I’m also disappointed in the character of the state. When I see the prime minister with a kipah on his head, I don’t feel good. This is not the Israel I want to see. How did it happen that this new place, that was to have brought innovations, became the blackest place, controlled by the nationalist ultra-Orthodox? How is it that here of all places, there’s reactionism and zealotry, messianism, the desire to expand and control another people?”

A trap for the emissary Yaakov Sharett was born in 1927 to a well-connected family of the cream of the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine. After him came Yael (the future author Yael Medini), in 1931, and Haim in 1933. He spent his first three years in Tel Aviv and after that, with his father’s career advancement, the family moved to Jerusalem. He studied in Jerusalem with the geographer David Benbenisti, the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz and the lexicographer Avraham Even Shoshan.

As a young man, Sharett went to study at Colombia University in the United States and Oxford in the U.K. His expertise was in what was called at the time “Sovietology,” for which he learned fluent Russian, his father’s mother tongue. His uncle, Shaul Avigur, enlisted him in 1960 in a secret unit he had established and led, called Nativ, whose members entered the Soviet Union under the cover of Israeli Embassy staff and helped Jews behind the Iron Curtain.

Sharett was appointed “first secretary” of the Israeli Embassy in Moscow, and crisscrossed the Soviet Union looking for Jews who showed an interest in Israel and Zionism. His stay there was stopped suddenly after a year, when he was expelled on charges of espionage. One day, while on a visit to Riga, he accepted a letter from a person who presented himself as Jewish and asked him to deliver it to relatives in Israel. This was apparently a trap, because later, as he describes it, “two hulks jumped me, picked me up off the ground, without considering that I had diplomatic immunity.” When he was questioned he was shown the letter that he had hidden in the pocket of his coat, and when they opened it, they found a picture of a missile.

“Yaakov Sharett expelled from the U.S.S.R.” the newspapers of the day reported. The Soviet news agency Tass reported that Sharett was “caught while spying, touring various parts of the Soviet Union to establish espionage ties and distributing Zionist anti-Soviet illegal literature.

After his return from Israel he worked for a time in the new Russian department that had been opened in Military Intelligence research. He later retired from intelligence work. “The Russian Aliyah disappointed me greatly,” he says today. “The people that I so much wanted to come here turned out to be right wing and nationalist – the result of years living half-assimilated and needing to hide their origin. Now they turned to the most fanatic and extreme side. I took part in bringing my enemies here. Avigdor Lieberman is a settler. Politically, he is my enemy,” he adds.

But it’s not the arrival of this or that individual that bothers Sharett. He opposes encouraging people to move to Israel. “Israel is the only country that works to increase its population. Whoever heard of such a thing. That emissaries persuade people to come and live in Israel? There aren’t enough people and traffic jams here?”

To compromise is not to capitulate The next station in Sharett’s life was journalism. He wrote and edited for the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv for two decades, between 1963 and 1983. In the early 1970s he wrote for Ma’ariv from Tehran, where he moved following his wife, a choreographer and dancer who taught dance there. In the early 1980s he also wrote a column called “Man from Mars” in the weekly anti-establishment magazine Haolam Hazeh, where he expressed his critical look at Israelis, as if he were from another planet.Sharett also wrote, edited and translated books. In 1988 his book “The State of Israel of the Altneuland house has passed away” the cover shows a death notice in Hebrew. Sharett wrote there that is was “a desperate cry of the moment after the last moment and warms of “an unprecedented existential crisis beyond the possibility of overcoming or preventing it.

”Other books he translated, “Silent Spring” and “The End of Nature” dealt with a crisis of another kind – the climate crisis, years before the issue appeared on the Israeli agenda.

Sharett celebrated his 94th birthday in July. “I’m an old man, aware of my age, and I know my years are numbered. I’m not afraid of death itself, but I am afraid of form death will take,” he says in conclusion, and reveals that he has made the decision to take his own life “if I reach the point where my life no longer justifies itself and that I’m a dead man walking, who has no meaning or contribution, but is only a burden on others and his family.” He has already informed his family of his decision. He will contribute his body to science. “I don’t need a grave. I don’t go to the graves of my family. I don’t think that a person’s memory, his soul, is associated with his bones or the place he is buried. I don’t want to take up space in a tiny country like ours. There’s no point at all. In any case, in one or two generations the headstones will be forgotten and abandoned. “But before all this happens, he still wants the time to write his autobiography, some of whose chapter headings he revealed in this article. He’s already chosen the name for the book: “Forced Collaborator.”
 
Last edited:

Watch: Chaos In Jerusalem As Israeli Police Attack Slain Al Jazeera Journalist’s Funeral Procession​

by ZeroHedge
May 13th 2022, 1:49 pm

Link: https://www.infowars.com/posts/watc...in-al-jazeera-journalists-funeral-procession/

The Israeli police claimed in a statement they were "forced to act" after rocks were thrown

Jerusalem’s old city erupted in chaos and violence on Friday as thousands of Palestinians descended on the Christian quarter to pay their final respects to slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

“Israeli police on Friday moved in on a crowd of mourners at the funeral of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, beating demonstrators with batons and causing pallbearers to briefly drop the casket,” The Associated Press describes.

The Qatar-based network has accused Israeli forces of shooting her in the face when two days ago she was covering a West Bank raid, and had a press flak jacket and helmet on. An Al Jazeera statement alleged that it was an intentional “assassination”.

Horrible scenes as Israeli security forces beat the funeral procession for slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the crowd momentarily lose control of her casket pic.twitter.com/DEJF5Ty9tZ
— Emir Nader (@EmirNader) May 13, 2022

Mourners of the 51-year-old Palestinian-American Christian had draped her casket in a Palestinian flag, and that’s reportedly what triggered the beefed up Israeli security presence from allowing her funeral procession to pass.

“The funeral procession began at the hospital in east Jerusalem, with last respects then to be paid at a church in the Old City before her body was laid to rest alongside her parents in a nearby cemetery,” CBS News reports. “But the violence began as soon as Abu Akleh’s casket was carried out of the hospital gates, where Israeli security forces had gathered.”

The report continues, “Video showed them surging toward the funeral procession before grabbing and roughing up some of the mourners, including those carrying the coffin.” Indeed the footage shows a brutal attack with batons and kicking, which even targets the pallbearers…

The closest video of the #Israeli police suppressing the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Aqleh as the coffin was leaving the French hospital towards the cemetery pic.twitter.com/TaOsvCUUCd
— Rushdi Abualouf (@Rushdibbc) May 13, 2022

The Israeli police claimed in a statement they were “forced to act” after rocks were thrown, as the procession began leaving the hospital.

An overhead view of the crowd as the funeral procession entered the walled old city…

هذه القدس .. وهذا شعبنا pic.twitter.com/09FNHYf915
— Hamza Aqrabawi (@Hamza_aqrabawi) May 13, 2022

The scenes went viral, even triggering rare protest against Israeli police action from some prominent Congressional leaders.

“This is awful to watch. I’m traveling in Connecticut today but I have my team working to get answers about what happened here,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy said in a tweet.

"The Israeli army is asking people if they are Christian or Muslim. If you’re Muslim you weren’t allowed in." – @ajimran

Israeli occupation forces are attacking Palestinians during the funeral of killed Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. pic.twitter.com/Xq3VkeOCqn
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 13, 2022

Al Jazeera, which has been devoting round-the-clock coverage to Abu Akleh’s killing, given she was their longtime star reporter in the region, cited an eyewitness who claimed Israeli security blocked the funeral in order to ensure only Christians were in attendance.

“The Israeli army is asking people if they are Christian or Muslim. If you’re Muslim you weren’t allowed in,” the source stated. Other reports said the Israelis wanted to clamp down on any Palestinian symbols and flags.

Below: initial memorial prayers by local church leaders on Wednesday after her death, prior to the burial on Friday.

FYI Shireen Abu Akleh was a Palestinian Christian and this photo is from her funeral today. pic.twitter.com/Y7bYvg9y4T
— Kevork Almassian???? (@KevorkAlmassian) May 11, 2022

CBS noted that “At one point her casket appeared to nearly topple to the ground amid the melee. Projectiles could be seen flying through the air as Palestinians chanted anti-Israeli slogans.”
 

UN Commission report is a declaration of war on the Jews​

It outrageously finds no Palestinian terrorist, no Palestinian terrorist organizations and no Palestinian terrorism.

Link: https://www.jns.org/opinion/un-commission-report-is-a-declaration-of-war-on-the-jews/

(June 8, 2022 / JNS) The United Nations has declared an existential war on the state of Israel. Last year, the U.N. Human Rights Council contrived a unique “Commission of Inquiry” after Israel responded to another round of Hamas rocket attacks. The Inquiry has just issued its first report. Now emanating from the U.N.’s top human-rights body is a brazen attempt to resurrect the old 1975 lie that a Jewish state is a racist state. The report’s allegation that discrimination by Jews against non-Jews lies at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict is actually at the core of modern anti-Semitism.

The “Commission of Inquiry” is chaired by Navi Pillay, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights. Zealously anti-Israel during her tenure, Pillay publicly slandered Israel with the apartheid label long before the so-called “inquiry” even began.

There are other telltale signs that the fix was in. Early on, the “inquiry” issued a call for submissions and the identification of victims. For the first time in U.N. history, such a call was answered by the delivery of more than 5 million unique submissions and individual names of Jewish victims of Arab incitement to Jew-hatred and violence. They emanated from a network of non-governmental organizations (which I facilitated), and their transmission was carefully logged. But the report says “the Commission has received several thousand written submissions” and featured a tiny subset of select Israel-bashing “stakeholders.”

Pillay’s report claims (1) the root cause of conflict is the “perpetual occupation”—that is, it’s Israel’s fault; (2) discrimination by Jews—as she defines Jewish self-determination from the start—drives the violence; and (3) the solution lies in prosecuting the criminals and eliciting third-party responses (economic boycotts) from states and private actors.

The misinformation operation is outrageous: The report finds no Palestinian terrorist, no Palestinian terrorist organizations and no Palestinian terrorism. The U.N. inquisitors merely speculated that the actions of Gaza’s “de facto authorities” and anonymous “Palestinian-armed groups” could “spread terror among the civilian population in Israel.” As for “Hamas,” they’re only named definitively as engaging in the “exercise of government-like functions.”

The submissions that the “inquiry” ignored, however, testify to a different story.

We itemized the Jew-hatred advocated and spread by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini. A Nazi collaborator and propagandist, he was also venerated as “Palestine’s national leader,” “our hero” and “the voice of the Palestinian people,” and remains a role model to the Palestinian terrorists and political leaders of today.

A real root cause? Under al-Husseini’s leadership, the strategy of equating the Jewish presence in the land of Israel with an existential threat to the Muslim faith became an Arab template for attempting to achieve the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Our submissions also documented the unrelenting violent attacks on Jews from before Israel’s independence in May 1948 until today. The goal: eliminating Jews from the river to the sea. Genocide—the ultimate violation of human rights.

The “inquiry” touted that it would “adopt a victim-centered approach in all of its work.” So we submitted the identities of 4,220 Israeli and other civilians remorselessly struck down in the various campaigns to eradicate the modern Jewish state. And we submitted the identities of 24,093 Israeli military and security forces who made the supreme sacrifice to protect their country from even greater harm, along with the more than 100,000 wounded.

The U.N. “inquiry” claimed it was looking for “systematic discrimination.” So we submitted the details of 598,000 Jewish refugees and victims of Arab persecution in Middle Eastern and North African nations over the past 75 years—a partial list of the more than 800,000 who constitute, together with their descendants, the majority of Israel’s current Jewish population.

But the U.N. report styles the return of Jewish refugees from the land of Israel—the longest-standing refugees in human history—as an infringement of Palestinian rights, instead of the reality of an arrival 2,000 years overdue.

The inquisitors claimed they were seeking “overall patterns, policies, historical legacies and structural inequalities that affect the enjoyment of human rights.” So we gave them another 46,862 submissions containing weekly situation reports, video and photographic evidence, legal documents and analysis.

They had rock-solid evidence that: the Palestinian Penal Code forbids Palestinians from selling land to Jews on pain of “life imprisonment with hard labor;” Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas refers to Jews as “filth” to be shunned; the Hamas Covenant openly commits those running Gaza to genocide; the P.A. pays bounties for the killing of Jews; the P.A. and Hamas maintain a system of anti-Semitic indoctrination in schools, training camps, official media and public affairs of all kinds; P.A. leaders publicly avow Jews will not be permitted to live in a Palestinian state.

But the report repeatedly claims Jews discriminate against non-Jews and could not muster a single example of the reverse. Nor does the report admit that Arabs have more rights and freedoms in the Jewish state than in any Arab state.

Throughout the report, the standard of “proof” is United Nations say-so, regurgitations of the same U.N. system of entrenched anti-Israel prejudice and unfairness. In fact, Pillay relies heavily on prior U.N. hatchet jobs that she herself had a key role in advancing as High Commissioner.
Although this charade is obviously tainted and flawed, indifference to it would be a grave mistake. The “inquiry” has no end date and is being financed in perpetuity. Now on the U.N. schedule are two reports every year, a perpetual drumbeat of modern anti-Semitism—the delegitimization of the Jewish state.

Report No. 1 is all the evidence that decent people and democratic states need to tear down this wall of hate and intolerance.
 

Amid outrage over journalist’s killing, US vows to put Israel first​

Maureen Clare Murphy Rights and Accountability 28 June 2022

Link: https://electronicintifada.net/blog...-journalists-killing-us-vows-put-israel-first

120522_gaza_yw_00_4.jpg

Palestinians in Gaza City hold posters in memory of Shireen Abu Akleh on 11 May, the day the reporter was killed.
Youssef Abu WatfaAPA images

Pressure is mounting on US President Joe Biden in the absence of an Israeli criminal investigation into the killing of prominent Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.
The Committee to Protect Journalists – a New York-based press freedoms watchdog – is calling on Biden to “lead a thorough, independent and transparent investigation” into Abu Akleh’s death.
Investigations undertaken by Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, the Palestinian Authority, CNN, The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the UN human rights office all point to Israeli responsibility for Abu Akleh’s death.
Abu Akleh, who held US citizenship, was shot on 11 May while covering an Israeli raid in the northern West Bank city of Jenin last month. She was wearing a helmet and a protective vest marked “PRESS” when she was shot and killed instantly.
Ali Samoudi, a producer, was shot in the shoulder and survived. Witnesses and survivors of the shooting said that the journalists came under Israeli fire and there were no armed Palestinians present or exchange of fire at the time – contrary to Israel’s claims.
“While your administration has called for an investigation, more than one month after Abu Akleh’s killing, only journalists have carried out serious probes of the incident,” the Committee to Protect Journalists stated.
The watchdog added that “Israel’s attacks on journalists and media facilities is a trend that [the Committee to Protect Journalists] has documented over decades,” with nearly 20 journalists killed while carrying out their work in the West Bank and Gaza since 1992.
The group noted that “exactly one year prior to Abu Akleh’s killing … Israeli warplanes began a bombing campaign targeting at least four buildings in Gaza housing the offices of 18 international and local media outlets.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists said it has not yet received a response from Israeli authorities to a letter asking them to “make public any evidence” that – as Israel claimed – Hamas was using “those buildings for military purposes.”
The watchdog noted that Israel has suggested that Abu Akleh’s killing was justified, with military spokesperson Ran Kochav proclaiming that the targeted journalists were “armed with cameras, if you’ll permit me to say so.”
The reluctance of Tel Aviv’s allies, including the US, “to seek accountability for these violations” has emboldened Israel’s attacks, the Committee to Protect Journalists added.
Nearly 60 members of US Congress, including half of all Democratic senators, have called on the Biden administration to investigate Abu Akleh’s death.

American bullet​

Al Jazeera, which obtained an image of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, said that she was struck by a US-designed and manufactured 5.56mm caliber armor-piercing bullet used in an M4 rifle.
Israel has declined to launch a criminal investigation into the soldiers involved in Abu Akleh’s death, with the military advocate general stating that “the incident had been a ‘combat event’ in which there was no suspicion of a criminal offense,” the Tel Aviv daily Haaretz reported.
Israel has used the same baseless interpretation of international law to justify the use of lethal force against unarmed protesters in Gaza during the Great March of Return protests between March 2018 and December 2019.
Israel argued that the mass protests were orchestrated by Hamas, the political party and resistance group that oversees Gaza’s internal affairs.
Israeli military directives require an immediate criminal investigation into the death of a Palestinian outside combat activity.
More than 215 Palestinians were killed during the Great March of Return protests. Only one Israeli soldier had been indicted over the use of live fire as of late 2020.
Israel’s killing and maiming of Gaza protesters is a main focus of the International Criminal Court’s investigation in Palestine that was opened in March last year.

Calls for ICC probe​

The Palestinian Authority and Al Jazeera have separately requested that the tribunal in The Hague investigate Abu Akleh’s killing, as has a filing to the ICC from the International Federation of Journalists, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate and the International Centre of Justice for Palestinians.
The Biden administration says that it does not support an ICC investigation into the killing of Abu Akleh and has repeatedly deferred to the Israel military’s self-investigation protocol.
Israel’s self-investigations into violations of Palestinians’ rights – long dismissed by human rights groups as a whitewashing mechanism to avoid international scrutiny – will likely become a point of contention for the ICC’s investigation in Palestine, should it move forward.
The Philippines attempted to defer an ICC investigation on the basis that its authorities were investigating or had completed investigations into alleged murders committed in the context of that country’s so-called “war on drugs.”
Under the principle of complementarity, the ICC privileges a country’s internal investigations where they exist.
Karim Khan, the ICC chief prosecutor, rejected the Philippines’ request, stating last week that the government’s procedures “do not seek to establish criminal responsibility, and therefore cannot warrant deferral of the ICC’s criminal investigation.”
Khan added that “the investigation should resume as quickly as possible.”
In addition to shielding soldiers from charge or trial for Abu Akleh’s death, Israeli authorities have said that no police officers will be punished for attacking the pallbearers carrying the slain journalist’s coffin, nearly causing them to drop it, during her funeral in Jerusalem.

“Put them first”​

US ambassador Tom Nides said on Tuesday that he had been “working around the clock” to help Tel Aviv meet all requirements to join the State Department’s visa waiver program before the Israeli government votes to dissolve later this week.
“Don’t lose momentum now. This will help Israeli citizens travel to the US – put them first!” he added.
Progressive US lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to keep Israel out of the visa waiver program due to the discrimination faced by Palestinian Americans seeking to visit Israel and the West Bank.
Biden will be traveling to the Middle East next month, first visiting Israel and the West Bank.
From there, Biden will make his way to Saudi Arabia, where he will meet Muhammad Bin Salman, the crown prince, who – according to the CIA – approved the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

 

Israeli obstruction of the Abu Akleh investigation should end the ‘special relationship’​

Although a US investigation into Shireen Abu Akleh’s murder will unlikely lead to accountability, Israel’s refusal to cooperate should raise questions about the US/Israeli relationship.

BY MITCHELL PLITNICK NOVEMBER 17, 2022 23

Link: https://mondoweiss.net/2022/11/isra...tigation-should-end-the-special-relationship/

Lina Abu Akleh, the niece of slain Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, speaks at the U.S. Capitol during a trip to Washington, Wednesday, July 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Nathan Ellgren)
LINA ABU AKLEH, THE NIECE OF SLAIN AL JAZEERA JOURNALIST SHIREEN ABU AKLEH, SPEAKS AT THE U.S. CAPITOL DURING A TRIP TO WASHINGTON, WEDNESDAY, JULY 27, 2022. (AP PHOTO/NATHAN ELLGREN)
In a surprising but welcome development, the United States’ Department of Justice has begun an investigation into Israel’s killing of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The announcement came six months after Abu Akleh was killed while covering an Israeli raid on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin.
As Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) tweeted, “This is an overdue but necessary and important step in the pursuit of justice and accountability in the shooting death of American citizen and journalist.” Van Hollen has been leading the call in the Senate for this investigation. It’s a rare instance of a mainstream Democrat applying consistent and ongoing pressure on the White House to take an action to which Israel objects.
And Israel has made its objections quite clear. The investigation was announced to the media by Israel, not the United States. And almost immediately, outgoing Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz railed against Israel’s financial and military patron.
Advertisement
Israeli soldiers confront Palestinian protestors in Masafer Yatta in the occupied West Bank.

Reactions from Israel and the White House

“The decision taken by the US Justice Department to conduct an investigation into the tragic passing of Shireen Abu Akleh, is a mistake,” Gantz tweeted. In the Hebrew version, he called it a “grave mistake.” He continued, “The IDF has conducted a professional, independent investigation, which was presented to American officials with whom the details were shared. I have delivered a message to US representatives that we stand by the IDF’s soldiers, that we will not cooperate with an external investigation, and will not enable intervention to internal investigations.”
Outgoing Prime Minister Yair Lapid echoed Gantz’s words, saying that “Israeli soldiers won’t be investigated by the FBI, nor by any other foreign authority or country, as friendly as they may be.” But both the announcement and the Israeli response raise significant questions.
The White House and State Department both sought to distance themselves from the Justice Department’s investigation, saying that the decision was an independent one made by DoJ. Both the Israelis and Americans told Axios that the decision to investigate was made on November 1, but that Israel was notified three days later, after the Israeli elections. It seems unlikely that Justice would hold on to that information for three days and not at least give the White House some warning of it.

What made the U.S. decide to launch this investigation now?

Nearly two decades ago, when an Israeli in a U.S.-made armored bulldozer ran over activist Rachel Corrie, Rep. Brian Baird introduced a bill that called on the FBI to conduct a full and impartial investigation into her death. The bill died a quick and quiet death in the House. Nearly a decade later, Barack Obama’s Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, told Rachel’s parents that Israel’s investigation was not “as thorough, credible, and transparent as it should have been,” but there was no suggestion of a U.S. investigation.
What changed this time? A few factors differentiate Abu Akleh from Corrie, none of them very fair. Abu Akleh was a major figure in global journalism while Corrie was a college student and activist. As such, Al Jazeera and groups devoted to free press and protecting journalists worked hard to keep the issue of Abu Akleh’s murder alive and to directly press U.S. officials. Rachel Corrie was part of the International Solidarity Movement, a Palestine solidarity group that was a favorite target for demonization by supporters of Israel. That made her a more controversial figure for people in Washington than Shireen Abu Akleh who had an unassailable journalistic record.
In Abu Akleh’s case, major political figures took up her cause, including Senator Van Hollen. They issued repeated calls for an investigation. In June, Van Hollen took the lead on a letter from 24 senators calling for full U.S. involvement in an investigation. In September, he explicitly questioned the veracity of Israel’s conclusion about Abu Akleh’s death and called for an independent U.S. investigation. Reps. Andre Carson (D-IN), Lou Correa (D-CA), and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) sent a letter also signed by 54 other House Democrats, nearly one-fourth of the Democratic caucus, calling for an independent FBI investigation.
That kind of pressure from within the president’s own party is difficult to ignore. It is standard for the FBI to investigate the death of any American citizen abroad, as even staunch AIPAC supporter Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) was forced to admit, although he also stated that he believed Israel had credibly investigated the incident.
But while that pressure was significant, it would not have existed without the relentless work of Shireen Abu Akleh’s family and the tireless activism from the Palestine advocacy community. That work came together with a political moment where Israel is less popular than ever among Democratic voters to open the door for this unprecedented move by the DoJ.

Implications of Israel’s response

The hostile response from Israel demonstrates a significant amount of frustration on their part over the fact that Shireen Abu Akleh’s murder has not gone away as other incidents of Israeli violence, including killings, against U.S. citizens have in the past. Israel’s claims about Abu Akleh’s death have gone from accusing Palestinians of the killing and refusing any sort of investigation to being forced to admit—after numerous investigations by human rights groups and media sources demonstrated they were lying—that their own soldier had fired the shot that killed her. They launched a grudging sham of a non-criminal investigation, the details of which have remained opaque, but somehow managed to conclude that the incident was accidental. The U.S. accepted that view uncritically, also without offering any evidence on which to base that conclusion.
Back in September, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price stated that “No one knows the IDF’s processes and procedures better than the IDF, and so it is not on us or any other country or entity to say precisely what the IDF or any military or security organization around the world should do.” He said that while U.S. diplomats had stressed the importance of “accountability,” they had not been “prescriptive.” The fact that even the State Department has continued to press for accountability implies that Israel’s various admissions have not satisfied them, yet they were not making specific demands around what accountability would look like. In other words, State knew, and even hinted publicly, that Israel was covering up the details of Abu Akleh’s death but was refusing to take any serious steps about it.
Based on the initial responses, it doesn’t appear that the White House and State are very comfortable with the DoJ investigation. Neither the White House nor State have indicated that they would press Israel to cooperate with the FBI. Indeed, it seems unlikely that they would be pleased with the prospect of adding this bit of friction to the already prickly situation of Kahanists playing prominent roles in the incoming Israeli government.
Yet Israel’s hysterical refusal to cooperate means that any FBI report is unlikely to be conclusive, and that Israel has a lot to hide.
Israel treats this as an internal matter. Gantz stated that “we will not allow interference in Israel’s internal affairs.” But this is not an internal matter. Shireen Abu Akleh was killed in Jenin, which Israel occupies but does not, even by its own, contra-legal definitions, claim as its sovereign territory. The assertion, therefore, that this killing of an American citizen is an internal matter holds no more weight than would a Russian claim that killing a journalist in areas of Eastern Ukraine that it occupies is an internal Russian matter.
The difference is that if this was Russia, the White House and State would fully back an FBI, or any other agency’s, investigation.

The future of this investigation

Israeli leaders believe this investigation will be “largely symbolic,” and if they won’t cooperate with it, they’re probably right. The facts of Abu Akleh’s murder have already been clearly established. Even Israel has admitted one of its soldiers killed her. The only aspect that remains unproven is whether the killing was intentional.
Without interviewing the soldier who shot Shireen Abu Akleh and her or his fellows, it is impossible to establish the intentionality of the killing. Israel’s steadfast refusal to cooperate certainly casts a skeptical light on the soldier’s intentions, but that isn’t proof, and it is far from accountability.
Indeed, as Prof. Stephen Zunes pointed out, “The Israeli government has declared that it will not cooperate with an FBI investigation in the murder of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Aklah by Israeli occupation forces earlier this year. Biden still insists unconditional taxpayer-funded military aid will continue.”
The attitude in the White House and State Department seems to be that they can’t legitimately oppose the FBI investigation, but it’s not their preferred course of action and they’ll do little to aid it. Without that support, it will be virtually impossible for the FBI to identify the soldier responsible and even more difficult to determine if anyone higher up the chain of command bore any responsibility for Abu Akleh’s murder.
But it’s Zunes’ point that really bears on what accountability can realistically be expected. Abu Akleh’s family has indicated that they are pleased with this first step but that they expect more. No doubt, activists who have been calling for accountability will also maintain their pressure.
This is important, because while it is unlikely that accountability for those directly involved in Shireen Abu Akleh’s murder will be attained, there can be consequences for Israel’s brazen refusal to allow its patron—without whom, lest we forget, Israel would not be able to act with the impunity it does—the answers it seeks regarding the killing of one of its citizens.
Reminding the media, Congress, the President, and our fellow citizens that despite the U.S.’ ongoing and unquestioning largesse, Israel feels it can kill an American citizen without explanation, justification, or sincere investigation can help reignite the discussion about Israel being the sole exception in the world to U.S. laws requiring that our military aid and arms sales be monitored by reports to Congress. We can ask why our ally feels it can not only use our support to brutalize Palestinians in the West Bank and to starve the people of Gaza, but also why they feel they can kill our citizens without fear of consequence.
 

American Anthropological Association endorses academic boycott of Israel​

Members of the American Anthropological Association overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions with 71% of members supporting the measure.

BY MICHAEL ARRIA JULY 24, 2023 4

Link: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/07/amer...ott-of-israel/?ml_recipient=94672580334584956

Logo of the American Anthropological Association (Image: Mondoweiss)
LOGO OF THE AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION (IMAGE: MONDOWEISS)
Members of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) have overwhelmingly endorsed a resolution to boycott Israeli academic institutions. 71% of the members who voted backed the measure while just 29% opposed it.
“This was indeed a contentious issue, and our differences may have sparked fierce debate, but we have made a collective decision and it is now our duty to forge ahead, united in our commitment to advancing scholarly knowledge, finding solutions to human and social problems, and serving as a guardian of human rights,” said AAA President Ramona Pérez in a statement. “AAA’s referendum policies and procedures have been followed closely and without exception, and the outcome will carry the full weight of authorization by AAA’s membership.”
A previous Israeli boycott measure was enthusiastically endorsed at an AAA business meeting 2015, but ended up being defeated in a close vote the following year. In March 2023, over 200 AAA members submitted a petition to the Executive Board requesting a full-membership vote on the issue. The voting took place between June 15 and July 14.

“The Israeli state operates an apartheid regime from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, including the internationally recognized state of Israel, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank and the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid and the 1998 Rome Statute to the International Criminal Court (ICC) define apartheid as a crime against humanity,” reads the resolution.
“Israeli academic institutions are complicit in the Israeli state’s regime of oppression against Palestinians…including by providing research and development of military and surveillance technologies used against Palestinians,” it continues. “..Israeli academic institutions do not provide protections for academic freedom, campus speech in support of Palestinian human and political rights, nor for the freedom of association of Palestinian students on their campuses.”
Under the resolution, Israeli academic institutions can’t be published in AAA’s published materials, advertise in AAA publications, use AAA conference facilities for job interviews, participate in AAA events, or reprint articles from AAA publications. The resolution only applies to the institutions, not the scholars and students connected to them.

“This resolution is a meaningful demonstration of solidarity by thousands of scholars standing alongside their Palestinian colleagues, whose work and lives are impacted on a daily basis by Israel’s racist, discriminatory policies and brutal military rule,” said Jessica Winegar, an anthropology professor and member of the Anthroboycott collective, a group that pushed for the measure. “As scholars with a long history of studying colonialism, anthropologists are all too familiar with the devastating harm of Israel’s oppression and theft of Palestinian land. This vote is an important step in showing that support for Palestinian rights goes hand in hand with the AAA’s values of human rights for all.”

Alisse Waterston, Professor of Anthropology at the John Jay College and former president of the AAA, detailed why she endorsed the measure in a piece at Mondoweiss earlier this year.
“I recognize that at times certain principles come into contradiction,” she wrote. “If the AAA boycott does any harm to academic freedom, this must be weighed against the dead bodies and ruined houses that are the Palestinian plight. If members drop their association membership and donors withdraw, those who support the boycott ought to pledge to bring in 1-2 members each and to provide financial support to the association above their membership dues. Any other threats or harm to the American Anthropological Association can be met with commitment to stand up on its behalf. If the boycott proves ineffectual, this must be weighed against complicity with the silencing of the condition of Palestinians under apartheid, leaving them isolated, lonely, and invisible.”
 
Back
Top