Islamic nations slam Israel — and each other’s ties to it
A league of Muslim nations on Sunday demanded that Israel halt attacks killing Palestinian civilians amid heavy fighting between it and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, even as fissures between countries over their recognition of Israel emerged.
A statement by the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation hewed closely to previous ones issued by the Saudi-based group, including backing the decades-old call for Palestinians to have their own nation with East Jerusalem as its capital.
However, recent normalization deals between Israel and some nations in the group — as well as their own concerns about Hamas — saw diplomats at points instead criticize each other.
“The massacre of Palestinian children today follows the purported normalization,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said. “This criminal and genocidal regime has once again proven that friendly gestures only aggravate its atrocities.”
Blinken signals no immediate US press for Mideast cease-fire
Source: Associated Press
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken signaled Monday the U.S. would not join growing calls for an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers as fighting entered its second week, with more than 200 people dead, most of them Palestinians in Gaza.
Blinken’s stand comes despite growing pressure from the United States’ U.N. Security Council partners, some Democrats and others for President Joe Biden’s administration and other international leaders to wade more deeply into diplomacy to end the worst Israel-Palestinian violence in years and revive long-collapsed mediation for a lasting peace there
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At least 200 Palestinians have been killed in the strikes as of Monday, including 59 children and 35 women, with 1,300 people wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Eight people in Israel have been killed in rocket attacks launched from Gaza, including a 5-year-old boy and a soldier.
Blinken also said he had asked Israel for any evidence for its claim that Hamas was operating in an Gaza office building housing The Associated Press and Al Jazeera news bureaus that was destroyed in an Israeli airstrike over the weekend. But he that he personally has “not seen any information provided.”
Palestinians go on strike in Israel as bombardment continues to pound Gaza
8 hours ago
Palestinians across Israel and the occupied territories went on strike on Tuesday as Israeli missiles toppled a building in Gaza and militants in the Hamas-ruled territory fired dozens of rockets that killed two people.
The general strike was a sign that the war could widen again after a spasm of communal violence in Israel and protests across the occupied West Bank last week.
Although the strike was peaceful in many places, with shops in Jerusalem’s usually bustling Old City markets shuttered, violence erupted in cities in the West Bank
Sirens have sounded in cities in Israel’s north, in the area of Haifa and its surroundings, including Shfaram, Acre and the Krayot region.
The Israeli military says four rockets were fired from Lebanon.
According to the IDF, one rocket was intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defense system, one landed in an open field and two landed in the Mediterranean Sea off Israel’s coast.
No direct injuries have been reported following the rocket attack, medics say.
Two people are lightly injured after they fell while running to bomb shelters, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
Netanyahu says Israel intercepted drone sent by Iran
Source: The Hill
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that Israel has intercepted a drone sent by Iran.
The drone was dispatched from either Iraq or Syria and intercepted at Israel's border with Jordan, Netanyahu said at a meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass in Tel Aviv, according to Bloomberg.
Netanyahu, however, did not provide evidence to bolster his claim, other than holding what he said was part of the unmanned aircraft, the outlet noted.
The prime minister accused Iran of backing and financing the Islamic Jihad in Gaza, in addition to providing weapons to the Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Bloomberg reported.
My guess is that this go-around will result in the first operational deployment of laser weaponry. Iron Dome is apparently good but expensive in terms of interceptor cost. Israel and the US seem to have already been working on a laser ADA system or laser subsystem for Iron Dome.
As for HAMAS, they have IMO proven again that they are corrupt murderous nutballs.
Israeli opposition parties reach agreement to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
Source: WaPo
By Shira Rubin
May 30, 2021 at 1:16 p.m. EDT
JERUSALEM — A diverse coalition of Israeli opposition parties said Sunday that they have the votes to form a unity government to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader and its dominant political figure for more than a decade.
Under the agreement, reached after weeks of negotiations spearheaded by centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, former Netanyahu defense minister and ally Naftali Bennett will lead a power-sharing government.
“We could go to fifth elections, sixth elections, until our home falls upon us, or we could stop the madness and take responsibility,” Bennett said in a televised statement Sunday evening. “Today, I would like to announce that I intend to join my friend Yair Lapid in forming a unity government.”
Netanyahu has been struggling to hold onto power after four inconclusive elections in the past two years while facing an ongoing corruption trial. Bennett is one of several former loyalists who have flirted with joining the so-called change coalition, a collection of parties that span the political spectrum but share a desire to end Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure.
Israel-Palestine: The EU does not lack leverage. It prefers not to use it
10 June 2021
Speaking about the recent escalation of violence in Gaza, Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, told a news conference that the EU had “no capacity to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict” because it “lost its leverage a long time ago and currently has limited influence”.
Upon hearing this, Europeans can only wonder: What has gone so wrong? Why has the foreign policy chief of the EU, a global economic powerhouse and Israel’s top trading partner, publicly declared the organisation incapable of influencing the Israeli government on human rights?
In fact, the EU has deliberately, gradually and steadily tied its own hands in all matters concerning Israel/Palestine. For years, the EU has taken great care to discourage, undermine or dismantle any initiative that would increase its institutional capacity to respond to Israel’s systematic human rights violations. It has failed to transform its economic, political and cultural leverage into human rights improvements.
Take, for instance, the planned upgrade of EU-Israel relations in 2009. In the wake of Israel’s 2008-09 military offensive in Gaza, the EU opted to freeze this much-anticipated deepening of bilateral relations, conditioning its revival on Israel’s respect for human rights and international law.
Yet, while this freeze technically remains in force to this date, the EU has since upgraded relations with Israel through enhanced trade deals, closer cultural and scientific ties, and transport cooperation, among other items.
Israel carries out Gaza Strip airstrike after militants release incendiary balloons
Wed 16 Jun 2021
Israel has launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, the first since a truce ended 11 days of conflict last month, in response to incendiary balloons launched from the Palestinian territory.
The flare-up in violence, a first test for Israel’s new government sworn in three days ago, followed a march in East Jerusalem on Tuesday by Jewish nationalists that had drawn threats of action by Hamas, the ruling militant group in Gaza.
The Israeli military said its aircraft attacked Hamas armed compounds in Gaza City and the southern town of Khan Younis in the early hours of Wednesday, and was “ready for all scenarios, including renewed fighting in the face of continued terrorist acts emanating from Gaza”.
The strikes, the military said, came in response to the launching of the balloons, which the Israeli fire brigade reported caused 20 blazes in open fields in communities near the Gaza border.
A Hamas spokesman, confirming the Israeli attacks, said Palestinians would continue to pursue their “brave resistance and defend their rights and sacred sites” in Jerusalem.
I am so tired of the lack of progress on the "Israel-Palestine" issue that I didn't even bother to finish reading the article linked and cited below. Still, for those still following this topic, it makes some important points in its opening paragraphs (including comments beyond those cited below) .
On ‘Conflict’, ‘Peace’ and ‘Genocide’: Time for New Language on Palestine and Israel
by Ramzy Baroud
June16, 2021
(Counterpunch) On May 25, famous American actor, Mark Ruffalo, tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza.
“I have reflected and wanted to apologize for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding, “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.”
But were Ruffalo’s earlier assessments, indeed, “not accurate, inflammatory and disrespectful”? And does equating Israel’s war on besieged, impoverished Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of ‘hyperbole’?
To avoid pointless social media spats, one only needs to reference the ‘United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’. According to Article 2 of the 1948 Convention, the legal definition of genocide is:
“Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part …
US Palestinian mission renamed and now reports directly to Washington
Thu 9 Jun 2022
The US diplomatic mission to the Palestinians in Jerusalem has been redesignated and will report directly to Washington “on substantive matters”, indicating an upgrade in ties before a planned visit by the US president, Joe Biden.
What had been called the Palestinian Affairs Unit (PAU) was renamed the US Office of Palestinian Affairs (OPA) under the move. Before becoming the PAU, it had been the US consulate in Jerusalem and a focus of Palestinian statehood goals in the city.
Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, outraged Palestinians – and delighted many Israelis – by formally closing the consulate and redesignating it as the PAU within the US embassy that was moved to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 2018.
“The OPA operates under the auspices of the US embassy in Jerusalem, and reports on substantive matters directly to the near eastern affairs bureau in the state department,” a spokesperson for the mission said. “The name change was done to better align with state department nomenclature. The new OPA operating structure is designed to strengthen our diplomatic reporting and public diplomacy engagement.“
Netanyahu and the Far Right Have Triumphed. Here’s What It Means for Israel. by Jonathan Guyer
November 2, 2022
Introduction:
(Vox) As votes are being tabulated in Israel’s fifth election since 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition has taken the lead, meaning he is likely the country’s next leader. He’s been prime minister several times before, but there’s something different this time — and it’s not only that he’s under investigation for serious corruption charges.
Bibi Netanyahu is poised to lead a coalition that is more ideologically unified and further to the extreme right than previous coalitions he’s led. His Likud party has become more radical, and so have the parties it’s willing to build a government with. Some members of his likely parliamentary majority believe in Jewish supremacy and support racist policies that may ultimately change the way the state of Israel protects the rights of its citizens, whether Palestinians who hold citizenship or leftists, activists, and critics who seek equal rights for Palestinians in the occupied territory.
The other big winner is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Strength Party, who is a keystone of Netanyahu’s parliamentary coalition and a radical lawyer who espouses a Kahanist worldview (Rabbi Meir Kahane was an American-born extremist ideologue who was an Israeli parliamentarian in the 1980s).
To understand the complexity of the Knesset — Israel’s parliamentary system — and its radical shift toward extremism, I spoke with Daniel Levy, a keen observer of Israeli politics and former negotiator for the Israeli government in its peace talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization. He’s currently the president of the US/Middle East Project.
Levy’s major takeaway: “It’s important to not fall into the trap of just seeing this as an aberration. It might be an ‘upgrade’ in extremism, but I think it’s correct to place this on a continuum of the absorption into Israeli politics of the most extreme.”
caltrek wrote: ↑Fri Nov 04, 2022 2:11 pm Netanyahu and the Far Right Have Triumphed. Here’s What It Means for Israel. by Jonathan Guyer
November 2, 2022
Introduction:
(Vox) As votes are being tabulated in Israel’s fifth election since 2019, Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition has taken the lead, meaning he is likely the country’s next leader. He’s been prime minister several times before, but there’s something different this time — and it’s not only that he’s under investigation for serious corruption charges.
Bibi Netanyahu is poised to lead a coalition that is more ideologically unified and further to the extreme right than previous coalitions he’s led. His Likud party has become more radical, and so have the parties it’s willing to build a government with. Some members of his likely parliamentary majority believe in Jewish supremacy and support racist policies that may ultimately change the way the state of Israel protects the rights of its citizens, whether Palestinians who hold citizenship or leftists, activists, and critics who seek equal rights for Palestinians in the occupied territory.
The other big winner is Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Strength Party, who is a keystone of Netanyahu’s parliamentary coalition and a radical lawyer who espouses a Kahanist worldview (Rabbi Meir Kahane was an American-born extremist ideologue who was an Israeli parliamentarian in the 1980s).
To understand the complexity of the Knesset — Israel’s parliamentary system — and its radical shift toward extremism, I spoke with Daniel Levy, a keen observer of Israeli politics and former negotiator for the Israeli government in its peace talks with the Palestine Liberation Organization. He’s currently the president of the US/Middle East Project.
Levy’s major takeaway: “It’s important to not fall into the trap of just seeing this as an aberration. It might be an ‘upgrade’ in extremism, but I think it’s correct to place this on a continuum of the absorption into Israeli politics of the most extreme.”
