By Philip Giraldi
June 13, 2021 "Information
Clearing House" - - "Strategic
Culture Foundation " -
Israel is undergoing a change of management,
with reliably hardline Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu being replaced by extreme nationalist
Naftali Bennett. Bennett has at intervals favored
the disenfranchisement of non-Jewish Israeli
citizens and the ethnic cleansing of all non-Jews
from historic Palestine, killing them if necessary.
He opposes the creation of any Palestinian state and
routinely describes Palestinian protesters as
terrorists while stating his belief that they should
be shot on sight. He has also boasted of his
shooting Palestinians during his military service, saying
at one point “I already killed lots of Arabs in
my life, and there is absolutely no problem with
that.” He was heavily involved in “Operation Grapes
of Wrath” in Lebanon in the 1980s, where his
commando unit killed
numerous civilians, and takes pleasure in
recounting his participation in Israel’s war crimes.
All of which means that there will be no respite
from the brutal Netanyahu reign of terror which has
been prevailing on the West Bank, in Gaza and also
in Jerusalem itself. If anything, the pressure on
Arabs forcing them to leave will intensify. Evidence
that the recently negotiated cease fire was little
more than a pause in the plan to mitigate
international pressure before continuing to make the
former Palestine Palestinian free is already
available. Israeli police and army units have
been arresting hundreds of Arabs, many of whom
are Israeli citizens, not because they have broken
any of the “rules” imposed by the Netanyahu
government, but as a preventive measure to have them
identified, allowing them to be safely locked away
when the next round of fighting begins. Eighteen
hundred arrests have been reported since unrest
began in April, but the figure is probably much
higher than that. An estimated 25% of those who are
detained are children and 85% of those children
arrested report that they
were physically abused. Also, at least 26
Palestinians have been killed while resisting. It
has been claimed that the police, embarrassed by
being ridiculed by protesting Palestinians, are
“settling scores” and “closing accounts,”
frequently using
savage beatings during arrests and as collective
punishment to break the Arab resistance.
Israeli police have also been active at and
around the al-Aqsa mosque, where they have been
denying Muslims access to the holy site while
promoting sightseeing visits by Israeli Jews. This
is a clear violation of the rules established for
access to the mosque and it sends a strong signal to
Palestinians that there is more to come and the
intention is clearly that they will eventually be
removed by whatever means necessary from Greater
Israel.
No Advertising - No Government Grants - This Is
Independent Media
The Director for the Legal Center for Arab
Minority Rights in Israel (ADALAH) Hassan Jabareen
observed recently how the violence over the past
month was deliberately provoked by Israel both to
shore up Netanyahu’s electoral prospects while “the
massive arrest campaign announced by Israeli
police…is a militarized war against Palestinian
citizens of Israel. This is a war against
Palestinian demonstrators, political activists, and
minors, employing massive Israeli police forces to
raid the homes of Palestinian citizens.”
The Israelis, who clearly have a sense of humor,
called the first phase of the mass arrests
“Operation Law and Order.” The raids themselves have
been carried out inside Israel itself and on the
West Bank. Those Palestinians who are citizens of
Israel have what has frequently been described as
“second class rights” in the country’s judicial
system. Although Israel claims its Arab
citizens—roughly 20% of the nation’s population—have
equality under the law, even the pro-Israel US State
Department has repeatedly accused Israel
of practicing “institutional
and societal discrimination” toward its Arab
citizens.
As a consequence, Palestinians who are arrested
are indicted, charged and in some cases detained
indefinitely under existing state of emergency and
anti-terror legislation. A common charge is
“incitement” which requires little or nothing in the
way of evidence. Many of the arrested Palestinians
have in fact been released after payment of
exorbitant bails, averaging about $1,000. One
Palestinian activist reportedly
paying $7,400 to be set free.
It should be noted that the armed Jewish settlers
who rioted in the lead up to last month’s fighting,
destroying Palestinian homes and other property,
have not been identified and detained by Israeli
authorities. Activist Remi Kanazi notes how
“Apartheid inside Israel is when Jewish Israeli mobs
chant ‘Death to Arabs’ and brutalize Palestinians in
their neighborhoods, while the cops do nothing, only
for those same cops to conduct mass arrests of
Palestinian citizens two weeks later.”
Outside of Israel proper, other Palestinians, who
are citizens of the Palestinian Authority or who
have United Nations documentation, have no rights at
all under Israeli law and are being detained at will
and, in many cases, indefinitely, without any access
to legal counsel or to family members. Most of them
were not doing anything illegal, even by Israeli
standards, when they were arrested. They were guilty
of being Palestinian.
In one example of how the process works,
well-known Palestinian activist Iyad Burnat, who had
previously been arrested at age 17 and imprisoned
for two years for having thrown stones at Israeli
soldiers has been targeted. He lives in Bil’in on
the West Bank and has had his two sons abducted from
their home in recent night invasions by Israeli
security forces. Abdul Khaliq, 21 years old, was
taken away on May 17th and Mohammed, 19
years old, was abducted on May 24th. They
are being held in the Almasqubia detention center in
Jerusalem and have been denied any contact either
with their parents or legal counsel. The Israeli
authorities have provided no explanation of why they
were arrested in the first place.
In another recent example of the brutality of the
Israeli police, al-Jazeera reports
in detail how thirteen-year-old Mohammed Saadi
was kidnapped, blindfolded, beaten and threatened
with a gun to his head by five policemen working
undercover in his hometown of Umm al-Fahem. Saadi
was among thousands who gathered for a funeral
procession held for Mohammed Kiwan, a 17-year-old
boy who had been shot and killed by Israeli police a
week earlier.
Activists among the Palestinians observe
that the Israeli repression has proven
counter-productive. Most Palestinians now understand
that the Israelis intend to exterminate them. One
observer notes that “The fear barrier has been
broken. Israeli forces are up against a people who
no longer have anything to lose. The young men in
Jerusalem don’t see they have a future to look
forward to, due to socioeconomic factors that is
either the result of or exacerbated by the
occupation policies towards them. These people are
defending their right to exist, their homes and
their homeland, and had it not been for their
resistance, Jewish settlers would have taken control
of many places in Jerusalem.”
Clearly, the Joe Biden administration will
do nothing even if the Israeli government were
to arrest and torture 100,000 Arabs, but there is
growing sentiment even in Congress and the Zionist
controlled media that “what is wrong is wrong.”
Congresswoman Betty McCollum’s has twice introduced
a bill, which is languishing in congressional
committee, that calls on the United States to block
aid to Israel that can be perceived as being used to
arrest, beat and imprison children. Her
legislation the Promoting Human Rights for
Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military
Occupation Act H.R. 2407 amends a
provision of the Foreign Assistance Act known as the
“Leahy Law” to prohibit funding for the military
detention of children in any country, including
Israel.
McCollum argues that an estimated 10,000
Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli
security forces and prosecuted in the Israeli
military court system since 2000. These children
between the ages of 11 and 15 have sometimes been
tortured using chokeholds, beatings, and coercive
interrogation. As of September 2020 there
were an estimated 157 children still detained in
Israeli prisons, a number that has certainly gone up
dramatically given the current crackdown by the
police and army. Even though Speaker of the House
Nancy Pelosi will surely block any attempt to let
the McCollum bill see light of day one can at least
honor the Congresswoman for what she is attempting
to do and hope that some day the United States
government will finally act honorably and help
deliver liberty and justice for the long suffering
Palestinians.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is
Executive Director of the Council for the National
Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S.
foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is
www.councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and
its email is
inform@cnionline.org.
Registration is necessary to post comments.
We ask only that you do not use obscene or offensive
language. Please be respectful of others.