Palestine Update 584
Opinion
Israel’s relentless onslaughts have self-inflicted fallouts too
Political happenings in Palestine wrought upon the people by Israel, rank among the most excessive crimes committed in the history of the world. Whether that is slavery, militarism, war, cruelty to innocent children, jailing of individuals who have chosen to resist injustice and violations of human rights does not matter. Dimensions of cruelty cannot be placed hierarchically. Each is as bad as the other. Israel crimes, though, rank high on that pile.
So when Germany’s Chancellor is outraged that Mahmoud Abbas compared what happens in Palestine at the hand of the apartheid regime to the holocaust, it is hard to understand why Olaf Scholz cannot deal with it. Hard truths are bitter pills. Even before the Second World War, the expression ‘holocaust’ was sometimes used to describe the death of a large group of people. It has since come to be synonymous with the murder of the European Jews during the Second World War. Abbas accused Israel of committing “50 Holocausts” in response to a question about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the attack on the Israeli team at the Munich Olympics by Palestinian militants. Why do the Europeans refuse to face up to facts that pertain to Zionist atrocities of which far too many have been conducted?
An uprising against an illegal occupation is legitimate. It is not a counter-war as Israel is engaged in against Palestine. Palestinians do not have the wherewithal to fight at the same level. The absolute asymmetry in capacities simply won’t allow it. In their steadfastness, Palestinians resist unbearable forms of cruelties. In May Israel not only launched a mass arrest campaign to deter the uprising of Palestinians within the so-called Green Line. They punctuated it with the arrest of more than 2,150 people, 91 percent of whom were Palestinian citizens of Israel. Minors were in vicious and random arrests. Israeli law enforcement units invaded Arab towns to suppress Palestinian protesters. Janan Abdu, a lawyer and human rights activist reported how “many hundred hundreds of Palestinian lawyers residing within the 1948 occupied territories organised and volunteered alongside human rights groups and popular committees in a coordinated effort to defend detainees, provide them with legal assistance inside police stations, and monitor the flagrant human rights violations by Israeli security forces”.
Picking up the pieces from the recent war in Gaza and the bombardment of the beleaguered Gaza Strip, we also hear reports of Hamas’ shift in political tactic. Hamas did not exercise any role in countering the Israeli assault on Gaza. That does not mean they have turned their back on armed struggle. In a new political approach, Hamas is combining its merging its ethos of resistance with caring for the conditions of Gaza’s impoverished people. Hamas wants to shift gears through indirect negotiations that will result in lasting ceasefire with Israel. Hamas also seeks Gaza’s economic and political healing. Israel has also flirted with a policy of less confrontation with Hamas after its rare admissions that every war in Gaza means losses it cannot easily stomach. In this short war along, Israel incurred losses amounting to 300 million shekels. In every war in Gaza, has experienced political fall outs too with residents across the immediate border having to flee to less vulnerable spaces away from the Gaza border. Israelis obviously have distaste for life in shelters for prolonged periods.
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Ranjan Solomon
Israel’s judicial war on Palestinian citizens after May uprising
(Excerpts from an article by Janan Abdu)
On 24 May 2021, Israel launched a mass arrest campaign to deter the uprising of Palestinians within the so-called Green Line under the banner of “Order”. The police announced that within 48 hours 500 people would be arrested. By 10 June, Israel had arrested more than 2,150 people, 91 percent of whom were Palestinian citizens of Israel. Police forces, special units, border guards and secret police stormed the predominantly Arab towns cracking down on Palestinian protesters. They intentionally targeted minors in violent and arbitrary arrests, and subjected them to prolonged detention and interrogation by Shin Bet agents. In the face of these mass arrests, hundreds of Palestinian lawyers residing within the 1948 occupied territories organised and volunteered alongside human rights groups and popular committees in a coordinated effort to defend detainees, provide them with legal assistance inside police stations, and monitor the flagrant human rights violations by Israeli security forces.
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Abbas sparks outrage with Holocaust accusation against Israel
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sparked outrage on Tuesday when he accused Israel of committing a “Holocaust” against Palestinians during a Berlin press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. During the joint press conference, Abbas said that “Israel has committed 50 massacres in 50 Palestinian locations since 1947.” He then added “50 massacres, 50 Holocausts.” Abbas’ remarks were in response to a journalist who asked whether he would apologize to Israel on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the attack by Palestinian terrorists on the Israeli team during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, which resulted in the death of 10 Israeli athletes and coaches as well as one German police officer. Scholz listened to the statements with a look of alarm and annoyance, but did not offer an immediate reply.
Read more at Miami Herald
What was different about the latest Gaza fighting?
But there is some reason to hope that the latest flare-up of violence—now halted by a fragile ceasefire—will be different. Israel’s recent military campaign, Operation Breaking Dawn, targeted the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-largest militant group. For only the second time—the first being during Israel’s Operation Black Belt in 2019—Hamas did not join the fight. Instead, it merely condemned ‘Zionist aggression’ against Palestinians—44 of whom were killed, including 15 children and four women, some by Islamic Jihad’s own misfired rockets—and mourned the conflict’s ‘righteous [Palestinian] martyrs’.
This does not mean that Hamas has turned its back on armed struggle. But it does suggest that Hamas is seeking to strike a balance between its ethos of resistance and its responsibility to Gaza’s destitute population. It seems to be betting that, through indirect negotiations, it can achieve a more durable truce with Israel that could enable Gaza to achieve stability and economic rehabilitation.
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Israel incurred $92m in losses from latest war on Gaza
Israel has incurred 300 million shekels (about $92 million) in losses as a result of its recent aggression on the besieged Gaza Strip. The Knesset Finance Committee held a meeting on the damages resulting from the recent military aggression in Gaza and concluded that the value of damages to Israeli properties amounted to about 300 million Israeli shekels. Damages included 222 cases of direct damage, including 84 in Ashkelon, 66 in Sderot and 72 in other areas surrounding the besieged Gaza Strip. They also included 114 damages to buildings and 97 damaged vehicles. On 5 August, Israel launched a three-day assault on the Gaza Strip during which it killed 49 Palestinians including 17 children. The aggression ended with an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement concluded on the evening of 7 August.
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Ben & Jerry’s Unilever fight shows risks of ceding control
Ben & Jerry’s legal battle with Unilever sheds light on an issue affecting a growing number of purpose-led brands: how to maintain their identity after being bought by a major consumer company. Multinational consumer groups have raced to snap up socially conscious brands in recent years, seeking to tap into a surge in demand among customers for ethical products, usually sold at a premium.
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