Uprooted Palestinians are at the heart of the conflict in the M.E Palestinians uprooted by force of arms. Yet faced immense difficulties have survived, kept alive their history and culture, passed keys of family homes in occupied Palestine from one generation to the next.
For eleven days, Hamas tried to paralyze central and southern ‘Israeli’-occupied territories by firing thousands of rockets from Gaza, says Chris Mitchell in CBN News. Now, strategists are looking for other potential threats and an ‘Israeli’ expert points to the north as a much bigger threat.
Prof. Boaz Ganor, the executive director of the International Institute for Counter Terrorism, told CBN News his main concern after the recent ‘Israeli’ war on Gaza.
“I have to admit that as an ‘Israeli,’ this is not the only front that I’m concerned of. I look north and I see Lebanon and I see Hezbollah,” he explained.
Ganor estimates Hezbollah could have as many as 200,000 missiles – an amount that represents a far greater threat than Hamas.
“If you ask me what concerns with Hezbollah? Everything that concerns me with the Hamas, but big-time, much more than what we had. So, everything we have seen in the last two weeks, we should multiply that in 10 and that’s going to be the challenge that we would face from Hezbollah.”
After studying the recent war, Ganor believes Hezbollah would try to overwhelm the Zionist entity’s number one ‘defense,’ the Iron Dome. Ganor also points out Hezbollah possesses not just rockets but missiles.
What’s the difference a missile and a rocket? A missile is a guided rocket. You can guide it. You can direct it to the targets, so they have guided missiles with much, much bigger warheads… and they cover all the ‘Israeli’-occupied territory. They can launch rockets from Lebanon and hit Eilat, which is the most southern part of the ‘Israeli’ entity.
Ganor, like most ‘Israelis,’ takes Iran at its word regarding the desire to eradicate the ‘Israeli’ occupation entity.
Ganor adds that Hezbollah represents an unprecedented challenge to ‘Israel’ and that any war against it would dwarf the recent conflict with Hamas.
“I believe that Hezbollah would cause much more damage and much more casualties in ‘Israel’ in the numbers of hundreds, not thousands, of casualties in ‘Israel.’ In that case, no doubt in my mind, that the ‘Israeli’ government and the ‘Israeli’ military and the ‘Israeli’ public would expect the ‘Israeli’ government to do whatever they can in order to prevent those ‘atrocities’ against ‘Israel’ in a much lesser restrictive manner than ‘Israel’ in Gaza.”
Brief conversation I had last night with geopolitical analyst Laith Marouf about yesterday’s Syrian presidential elections. I visited eastern Ghouta towns yesterday and saw jubilation among Syrians on the streets, including in Douma, singing and dancing.
No matter what the lame corporate media is saying about the elections, Syrians wanted them and are still celebrating today. Hell, in 2014, a week after the elections, I saw a party raging in Homs, what the pro-“revolution” crowd used to call the “capitol of the revolution”.
Laith:
“Syrians in the US went to the embassy at the UN and voted. That was a direct challenged to American hegemony, since the Americans closed the Syrian embassy in DC. But there is still a Syrian embassy at the UN, and that they can’t touch, the Americans. So many people showed up at the UN headquarters, waiving flags, and so on. The other two countries that host the majority of Syrian refugees or immigrant populations, Germany and Turkey, again the blocked the Syrian votes from happening.
At the same time, countries that were responsible for the war in Syria, like the UAE, opened the embassy, allowed Syrians to vote.
Last week in Lebanon, tens of thousands of Syrian residents of Lebanon went to Syrian embassy in Beirut. The fact on the ground is that Syrian people are out in the millions voting in these elections.”
In an opinion piece published by the Foreign Policy, Stephen M. Walt said the United States should no longer give ‘Israel’ unconditional economic, military, and diplomatic support due to the “zero” benefits of such policy and its rising costs.
“Instead of a special relationship, the United States and ‘Israel’ need a normal one,” Walt wrote in the publication.
Consistent with Zionism’s core objectives, it said, ‘Israel’ privileged Jews over others by conscious design, expanded illegal settlements, denied Palestinians legitimate political rights, treated them as second-class citizens, and used its superior military power to kill and terrorize residents of the Gaza Strip, the occupied West Bank, and Lebanon with near impunity.
“Given all this, it is not surprising Human Rights Watch [HRW] and the human rights organization B’Tselem have recently issued well-documented and convincing reports describing these various policies as a system of apartheid,” it said.
In the aftermath of the latest ‘Israeli’ aggression on Gaza, which began on May 10 and lasted 11 days, the Zionist entity has been increasingly described as an “apartheid” regime, including by HRW, B’Tselem, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions [BDS] movement, and last but not least, by the French government.
However, the United States has continued to back the Zionist regime’s so-called “right to self-defense” which amounted to heavy bombardment of civilians in Gaza, killing at least 254 Palestinians, including 66 children, and displacing over 72,000 people in the besieged enclave.
According to FP, in the past, it was “possible to argue ‘Israel’ was a valuable strategic asset for the United States, though its value was often overstated,” but that argument holds no water any more.
“During the Cold War, for example, backing ‘Israel’ was an effective way to check Soviet influence in the Middle East because ‘Israel’s’ military was a far superior fighting force than the armed forces of Soviet clients like Egypt or Syria. ‘Israel’ also provided useful intelligence on occasion,” according to the author.
“The Cold War has been over for 30 years, however, and unconditional support for Israel today creates more problems for Washington than it solves. ‘Israel’ could do nothing to help the United States in its two wars against Iraq; indeed, the United States had to send Patriot missiles to ‘Israel’ during the first Persian Gulf War to protect it from Iraqi Scud attacks,” he added.
According to the publication, the real costs of the special relationship between the US and ‘Israel’ are political, saying that as demonstrated this month, unconditional support for ‘Israel’ makes it much harder for the United States to claim the moral high ground on the world stage.
FP also made a reference to the United States’ unilateral vetoing of UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions as well as its authorization of sending ‘Israel’ an additional $735 million worth of weapons, saying Washington’s claim to moral superiority stands exposed as “hollow” and “hypocritical.”
“With a normal relationship, the United States would back ‘Israel’ when it did things that are consistent with the United States’ interests and values and distance itself when ‘Israel’ acted otherwise,” FP added.
The Western leadership and establishment media have once again derided the Syrian presidential vote, but the people don’t care. They’re too busy celebrating the outcome of the election and the defeat of terrorism in their country.
The irony of media outlets and pundits from America tweeting about what they view as the failure to hold free and fair elections in Syria was not lost on some.
I wrote yesterday of the jubilation I saw in eastern Ghouta, where Syrians were celebrating the arrival of election day and proudly voting. I also noted that people “in eastern Ghouta were put through a hell that most of us, living safely far from war, cannot begin to fathom.” Back in 2018, I had seen their tortured faces shortly after their liberation. That made seeing them this week smiling incredibly moving.
Just ahead of the vote, I predicted there would be Western cynicism if President Assad won again, which would mean the West had failed in its regime-change project. I was right.
Syrian analyst Kevork Almassian, of Syriana Analysis, tweeted a thread about the mass celebrations around Syria, including in Homs, once dubbed the “capital of the revolution” by the delusional crowd, and Aleppo, the city the Western media said “fell” when it was liberated of the terrorists who reportedly murdered up to 11,000 civilians via their bombings and snipings.
He also noted that the media’s claims of Sunni Muslims hating Assad had no basis in reality (never mind the fact that the First Lady is Sunni, as are many in top leadership positions), tweeting photos of masses of Sunnis voting.
The Guardian, guilty of some of the filthiest war propaganda against Syrians, and usually reporting from Istanbul, deemed the 2021 elections “fake” and a “sham”. But the Guardian has never liked to give voice to the vast majority of Syrians in Syria, preferring instead to quote al-Qaeda-linked “media activists” and “unnamed sources”. So, it’s hardly surprising it would denigrate the event that Syrians are currently celebrating around the country.
Likewise, the BBC, another contender for the most outstanding war propaganda on Syria, unsurprisingly cited the “opposition” as calling the elections a “farce”.
The Western media likewise bleated “farce” when Syria provided 17 witnesses to testify at the Hague against the claims that Syria had used a chemical agent in Douma – a narrative that has been thoroughly debunked. And they’re still lying after all these years.
This outstanding report from Syria by Eva Bartlett penetrates the ‘iron dome’ of Western propaganda, also known as news. It is about a chemical attack that never happened in a country attacked, subverted and blockaded in your name.https://t.co/AX1Zwbg0g0— John Pilger (@johnpilger) May 27, 2021
Speaking to Syrian media yesterday in Douma, Assad said of the West’s derision of the elections: “The best response to colonialist countries with histories of genocide and occupations was the mass turnout of the people for the vote.”
And, regarding what the West thinks of the legitimacy of those elections, he concluded: “Your opinions are worth zero, and you are worth 10 zeros.”
Amen to that.
On Wednesday, the government extended the time in which people could vote by an additional five hours, as they did back in 2014, due to the high turnout. It even had to provide more voting boxes. In fact, in 2014, in Lebanon, which hosts the largest per capita population of Syrian refugees in the world, voting was extended not merely by five hours, but by an entire day.
As I wrote recently, Western nations have closed Syrian embassies globally to prevent those eligible from voting. But interestingly, as I learned from political analyst Laith Marouf in our discussion this week, “Syrians in the US went to the embassy at the UN and voted. That was a direct challenge to American hegemony, since the Americans closed the Syrian embassy in DC. But there is still a Syrian embassy at the UN, and that they can’t touch, the Americans. So many people showed up at the UN headquarters, waving flags, and so on.”
According to Marouf, in Beirut, tens of thousands Syrians went to the Syrian embassy last week, but “members of the Lebanese Forces party cut the roads towards the embassy and attacked cars and buses carrying Syrian citizens,” allegedly killing one in front of his children and on national live television.
“The other two countries that host the majority of Syrian refugees or immigrant populations, Germany and Turkey, again blocked the Syrian votes from happening,” he said.
Marouf spoke of the candidates, noting there were three: a leader of the opposition, a former minister, and President Assad.
“They have been vetted through security, making sure that they stand for the sovereignty of Syria, given that Syria has been living under a global war of terrorism, led by the US.”
On the ground on election day
I wrote on election day of the vibrance and peace I witnessed in Douma, and tweeted about the celebrations, about the Syrians singing and dancing.
One woman in Irbeen, a village in eastern Ghouta, told me, “Today is historic. He is writing victory, a renewed victory for Syria, the general and protector of Syria, Bashar al Assad. The people you see coming, do so by their free will.”
A side note: from the cross necklace she wore, I knew the woman was a Christian. The “rebel” terrorists the West supports and whose sadistic death cult they would have installed to govern Syria would have persecuted, even killed, women like her.
And that’s the crux of it: Syrians aren’t just celebrating the leader they overwhelmingly love and respect, they’re celebrating the defeat of this terrorism in their country and of the imperialists’ regime-change project in Syria.
A Syrian-American friend, Johnny Achi, flew to Syria expressly to vote in the elections. He told me: “I’m a Syrian citizen and have lived in the United States for about 30 years. I’m here in Damascus to exercise my rights and duties as a Syrian citizen, since the US chose to close our embassies. As long as the embassies are closed, we’re going to keep making the trip here, to exercise our duty and our democratic right.”
“I chose Douma, in eastern Ghouta, under the ‘rebels’ until 2018, to show that there is a big turnout here, that people are happy to be back in a government-controlled area. Everyone I talked to is so jubilant that they got rid of all of Jaysh al-Islam, Faylaq al-Rahman, and all those brigades that were making their lives miserable,” he said.
In Achi’s view, the US would not have accepted any of the candidates, no matter who won.
The pundits will opine, the media will screech, but aside from addressing that, I don’t care, and Syrians don’t care because they’re too busy celebrating.
On Thursday, while the votes were still being counted, I passed through Umayyad Square, a massive roundabout in central Damascus, where a party was beginning. Later in the evening, I returned, staying until after the votes had been counted and Assad had been declared the winner. Electric doesn’t even begin to describe the mood of triumphant Syrians celebrating their victory.
I’ve been coming to Syria since 2014, making 15 visits in all, gathering many heartbreaking testimonies, being caught up in many dangerous encounters with mortars and terrorist sniper fire. I, too, celebrate the return of peace to Syria. But, moreover, I celebrate the Syrians’ shunning of Western diktats and for continuing to live their lives as they choose.
As I stood filming cheering Syrians, the results were announced. The crowd went wild and the party continued. Of course, Western media outlets won’t accept Assad’s 95.1% result, but those Syrians simply do not care. They know the West has lost the plot.
تسعى إسرائيل إلى منع ربط سلاح غزة وإرادة تفعيله بقضايا القدس والحرم القدسي (أ ف ب )
في وقت يتواصل فيه الشدّ والجذب في الماراتون التفاوضي الدائر بين العواصم المعنيّة بالملفّ الفلسطيني، يعكف كلّ من العدو الإسرائيلي والمقاومة الفلسطينية على تقييم نتائج «معركة القدس» والبناء عليها، على اختلاف المحقَّق بين الطرفين، من هزيمة للأوّل ونصر للثاني. من جهة إسرائيل، ثمّة قناعة بضرورة تعديل جدول الأولويات الذي كانت غزّة دائماً في أسفله، بعدما لمس الاحتلال نيّة لدى المقاومة والمحور الداعم لها في التأسيس على ما أفرزته المعركة من أجل تعظيم حالة الربط بين ساحات المحور وجبهاته. على خطّ موازِ، تتعمّق الانقسامات داخل محور التطبيع بقديمه وجديده، وآخر مظاهرها حرد الإمارات من تطنيش مصر لها في الملفّ الفلسطيني، الذي تجد أبو ظبي أن كلّ ما حاولت زرعه فيه عن طريق «اتفاق أبراهام» يضيع هباءً منثوراً
لعلّ واحدة من أهمّ نتائج معركة «سيف القدس»، بين العدو الإسرائيلي وفصائل المقاومة الفلسطينية، أنها رفعت مستوى تهديد غزة في سلّم التهديدات التي تواجه الأمن الإسرائيلي، بما لم يَعُد معه دقيقاً توصيف القطاع بالتوصيف التقليدي: الأقلّ تهديداً والأكثر قابلية للانفجار. ومن شأن تغيير التوصيف، تبعاً لمحدّدات الواقع ونتائج المواجهة، أن يفرض على إسرائيل مواجهة واقعٍ من نوع آخر مع غزة، التي لم يَعُد تهديدها متعلّقاً بها فحسب، بل بات ممتدّاً ومتّصلاً بخارجها، بما يتعدّى مناطق فلسطين وقضاياها على اختلاف تقسيماتها ومسمّياتها. المعنى العملي لذلك، من ناحية إسرائيل وأمنها واستراتيجياتها في مواجهة التهديدات، أن احتواء تهديد غزة عبر فرض أو قبول الهدوء معها، وإن في ظلّ خطورة تفجير دائمة (مقدور عليها)، مع رفع مستوى الردع إلى حدود تمنع القطاع من المبادرة العسكرية، لم يَعُد استراتيجية ناجعة ومقبولة، بل أضحى مرفوضاً، علماً بأن سبب الاحتواء، في أساسه، مرتبط بساحات التهديد الأخرى، التي لا مجال للمقارنة بينها وبين غزة.
حتى الأمس، كانت غزة، بالمعنى المشار إليه، «مقدوراً عليها». كان يمكن ربط هدوئها بحوافز تمنع تفعيل تهديدها، بعدما اعتقدت إسرائيل طويلاً أنها نجحت في ريط التهديد الغزّي بتنازلات متبادلة: تهدئة مقابل تليين جزئي للحصار وتقديمات اقتصادية ومالية، جنّدت لها دولاً عربية ترى في امتثالها للإرادة الإسرائيلية موضع رضى السيد الأميركي. لكن اليوم تغيّرت المعادلة؛ بات سلاح غزة وإمكان تفعيله متّصلَين بالقدس وقضاياها. وهي معادلة لم تترسّخ بعد، ولأنها لم تترسّخ، ستستهلك من إسرائيل جزءاً كبيراً من انشغالها الأمني والعسكري والسياسي، للحؤول دونها. كذلك، مطلب إرجاع غزة إلى حدودها، يتعلّق من ناحية إسرائيل باتجاهَين رئيسيَن اثنين: منع تفعيل سلاح غزة ربطاً بغيرها هو هدف في ذاته، إن لم يتحقّق سيؤثّر سلباً على مجمل التموضع الإسرائيلي في داخل فلسطين المحتلة، ويُعقّد من استراتيجيات الكيان المُفعَّلة ضدّ الفلسطينيين والقضية الفلسطينية، التي تراءى له، وإن بشكل مغلوط، أنها في المرحلة الأخيرة من إسقاطها.
من بين الأهداف الإسرائيلية إعادة الاعتبار إلى معادلة الحصار مقابل الغذاء، كما كانت عليه الأمور قبل المواجهة
أمّا الاتجاه الثاني فيرتبط بتهديدات الساحات الأخرى. والمقصود هنا تحديداً الجبهة الشمالية بمركّباتها المتعدّدة، واتّساعها الجغرافي الممتدّ، وإمكاناتها التي تتطلّب من إسرائيل تركيزاً لا تُشوّش عليه الساحة الجنوبية، أي قطاع غزة، بل أيّ قسم من أقسام فلسطين التاريخية. على أن غزة تتّجه اليوم لتكون جزءاً لا يتجزّأ من الساحة الشمالية، بما ينفي عنها وصف الساحة المعزولة التي ينحصر تهديدها في نطاقها. وفي هذا الإطار، يُعدّ حديث مسؤول حركة «حماس» في القطاع، يحيى السنوار، عن التنسيق على أعلى المستويات مع «حزب الله» خلال المواجهة، كما الحديث الذي سبقه، وهو الأهمّ من ناحية إسرائيل، لأمين عام حزب الله، السيد حسن نصر الله، عن الجاهزية للتدخّل إن لزم الأمر لمساعدة الساحة الفلسطينية، مصدر قلق لتل أبيب ومُتّخذي القرارات فيها.
بناءً على ما تقدّم، ستكون إسرائيل، ومعها حليفها الأميركي، والجهات الإقليمية التي تدور في فلكهما، معنيِّين بتحقيق جملة أهداف، على رأسها ما يلي:
– إرجاع غزة إلى حدودها، ومنع ربط سلاحها وإرادة تفعيله بقضايا القدس والحرم القدسي، فضلاً عن أقسام فلسطين الأخرى. – منع الربط بين قواعد الاشتباك التي تحكم صراع غزة وإسرائيل، وبين أيّ ساحة أو جبهة في الشمال، بما يشمل ردع غزة عن التدخّل، أو الاستعداد للتدخّل، إلى جانب الساحة الشمالية، ربطاً بتموضع القطاع الذي بات إقليمياً، وأيضاً ردع الساحة الشمالية نفسها عن مساندة غزة، إن تطلّب الأمر ذلك.
– إعادة الاعتبار إلى معادلة الحصار مقابل الغذاء، كما كانت عليه الأمور قبل المواجهة، وإغراء القطاع بعطاءات مالية، سيجد العدو دائماً أطرافاً إقليميين يسارعون إلى تلبيتها، ومن جملة ذلك إعادة الإعمار.
– إعادة الاعتبار إلى السلطة الفلسطينية، وإن كانت إسرائيل نفسها، ومَن معها، تسبّبوا في إضعاف مكانتها ودورها لدى الجمهور الفلسطيني. وفي هذا الإطار، تأتي العطاءات المالية الممنوحة للسلطة، وإعادة فتح القنصلية الأميركية في القدس المحتلة كمُمثّلية أميركية لدى الجانب الفلسطيني، وكذلك المبادرات واللقاءات والاتصالات من جانب دول «الاعتدال العربي» بعد قطيعة مع رام الله، فيما لا يُستبعد إحياء شكل من أشكال التفاوض مع العدو، أملاً في إعادة السلطة إلى مكان متقدّم نوعاً ما على جدول اهتمام الفلسطينيين. لكن الواقع أن السلطة اليوم باتت تُعدّ لدى الفلسطينيين «شاهد ما شفش حاجة»، في مرحلة هي الأكثر حساسية وتأثيراً على فلسطين والقضية الفلسطينية والقدس، وهو ما يُصعّب مهمّة العدو.
تلك هي الأهداف الإسرائيلية في المرحلة التالية إذاً، لكن الفرق بين تشخيص المصالح التي يُفترض العمل عليها وبين النتائج التي يمكن تحقيقها بالفعل، فرق كبير، وهو ما قد ينطبق على حالة تل أبيب. مع ذلك، لن يدفع الفشل إسرائيل إلى الانكفاء والتسليم بالواقع الجديد، بل هي ستلجأ إلى خيارات أخرى وبديلة، وربّما أيضاً مع استعداد لتحمّل أثمانها إن ارتفعت نسبياً. على أن الإصرار الإسرائيلي، والدافعية المرتفعة لدى العدو، تقابلهما إرادة صلبة لدى الجانب الفلسطيني الغزّي أيضاً. فالمارد الذي خرج من القمقم لن يكون معنيّاً بالعودة إليه، كما تَصعُب على غيره، مهما بلغت مستويات دافعيّته، إعادته إليه. وللصراع، الذي ثبت أنه لا يخمد، جولات آتية.
The IRS states that terrorist activities are considered substantial means for disqualifying an organization’s tax-exempt status, yet money is still finding its way through a number of high-profile tax-exempt American charities to known terrorist groups inside Israel.
JERUSALEM — As Israel rained rockets down on Gaza in mid-May, inside 1948-occupied Palestine (Historic Palestine and modern-day Israel), another kind of Israeli terror emerged. Jewish supremacists stormed cities with high Palestinian populations chanting “Death to Arabs!,” attacking scores of Palestinians and vandalizing their properties.
The mob violence killed two Palestinian citizens of Israel, according to the Mossawa Center: the Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens of Israel. And despite calls for calm, the attacks are ongoing. On Thursday, a Jewish mob dragged a Bedouin driver out of his car and beat him with glass bottles in northern Historic Palestine. Earlier, footage posted on social media showed Arab gas station workers lying on the ground after being surrounded and beaten by a Jewish mob in the town of Binyamina:
הלינץ׳ בצומת בנימינה אתמול. לא ראיתי אותו בפיד שלי עדיין. האיש בחולצה האפורה והאיש בחולצה הלבנה מגוננים על עובר האורח החף מפשע מפני האנשים בחולצות השחורות. ניתן לראות אותו שקוע על הרצפה בסוף הסרטון pic.twitter.com/lxHUTB3ixj
— Naaman Stavy نعمان ستڤي (@NaamanStavy) May 13, 2021
הלינץ׳ בצומת בנימינה אתמול. לא ראיתי אותו בפיד שלי עדיין. האיש בחולצה האפורה והאיש בחולצה הלבנה מגוננים על עובר האורח החף מפשע מפני האנשים בחולצות השחורות. ניתן לראות אותו שקוע על הרצפה בסוף הסרטון pic.twitter.com/lxHUTB3ixj
— Naaman Stavy نعمان ستڤي (@NaamanStavy) May 13, 2021
The American Jewish community condemned the wave of anti-Palestinian violence, under the assumption these attacks stem from the fringes of Jewish society. In reality, however, these Jewish supremacists receive financial support from a network of charities in the United States.
Jewish extremists organizing online
As the Israeli government orchestrated a bombing campaign on Gaza, right-wing Israeli activists were coordinating their own war-like operations online.
According to HaBloc, an Israeli nonprofit organization monitoring anti-democratic activity, tens of new groups have been created in the last two weeks on WhatsApp and Telegram. The number of participants in each group ranged from the tens, hundreds, and even thousands. About 22,00 people in total were active in these groups.
HaBloc’s observation of these ultra-right-wing groups reveals how they used social media to organize attacks in advance offline. The groups exchanged information, sold weapons like knives, bats, and pepper spray, used inflammatory rhetoric such as calling for revenge against Palestinian citizens of Israel and documented themselves rioting in the streets.
“This is far more than what’s happening on a daily basis within the far right in Israel,” Ran Cohen, co-founder of HaBloc, said of the extremist activity.
News media reported that the main groups behind the recent rampage were Lehava, a Jewish supremacist organization opposing assimilation and coexistence, and La Familia, a far-right group supporting the Israeli Premier League football club Beitar Jerusalem.
The Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the public and legal advocacy arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, has been monitoring Lehava’s activity for more than a decade.
“Lehava is an organization that claims to work against assimilation, but basically wants to create a Jewish-only space in Jerusalem and in Israel in general,” Rabbi Noa Sattath, IRAC’s director, told MintPress News. “In this last wave of violence, they were certainly instigators in several of the cases.”
Lehava leader Ben-Zion Gopstein arrives in court after being charged with incitement and terrorism in 2014. Mahmoud Illean | AP
IRAC demanded Lehava be labeled a terrorist organization in a letter sent this week to Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz, Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, and Head of the Shabak (General Security Service) Nadav Argaman.
Researchers within HaBloc, cautioned, though, attaching the violence to specific organizations.
“The role of Lehava in what happened is not direct,” HaBloc said. “It’s not like there was a central command and they’re sending people into the streets. It was really something that sort of spread out in a more organic way.”
“But the infrastructure and the ideology of Lehava is present and it contributes to what happened in the past few weeks,” HaBloc added.
The American charities bankrolling Lehava
Ben-Zion Gopstein is the leader of Lehava (or “flame” in Hebrew) and founded the organization in 2005. He is a notorious right-wing activist and disciple of Rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-Israeli extremist who founded the Kach Party, a political movement espousing racist beliefs.
After a brief stint in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in the 1980s, the Kach Party was banned from Israeli politics and deemed a terrorist organization by both Israel and the U.S.
Four years after Kahane’s assassination in 1990, Baruch Goldstein, an ardent Kahane follower, opened fired at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron—killing 29 worshippers.
Lehava is considered the successor to Kach, and Kahane’s racist ideology, Kahanism, runs deep within Lehava circles.
In addition to following right-wing interactions online, HaBloc’s research has also found a complex web of nonprofits in Israel and the U.S. connected to Lehava.
Lehava is not a registered charity in Israel so it can’t accept donations. Instead, money is funneled to Lehava through the Israeli nonprofit, the Foundation for the Salvation of the People of Israel, or Hakeren Lehazalat Am Israel in Hebrew. Israeli fund, Chemla or “mercy” in Hebrew has also been linked to Lehava until about 2014, according to HaBloc.
The Foundation for the Salvation of the People of Israel did not respond to requests for comment via email. The email address may be Gopstein’s as “benzion” is part of it. When contacted at the telephone number associated with the organization’s GuideStar (a nonprofit database) profile, the person said this was not the foundation and hung up. Contact information for Chemla is not publically available.
Two tax-exempt charities in the U.S. fund Kahanist activity in Israel: Charity of Light and the American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi.
Charity of Light funnels money to Chasdei Meir (which translates roughly into “charity which shines” in Hebrew). Chasdei Meir was named after Kahane, according to the fund’s website. As evidenced on Charity of Light’s tax returns, Chasdei Meir is related to the Chemla Fund. Charity of Light donated $72,000 to Chasdei Meir/Chemla Fund in 2018, according to its most recent tax filing.
Armed members of Chasdei Meir are shown wearing jumpsuits emblazoned with portarts of Meir Kahane
“This is sort of the place for indoctrination of Kahanist ideology,” HaBloc said. “It’s where Benzi Gopstein studied and other prominent Kahanist figures.”
The charity gave $154,000 to Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi in 2018, according to the most recent tax report. The yeshiva is even classified as a terrorist organization by the United States. The yeshiva’s dean, Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer, is also part of Chasdei Meir. The yeshiva did not return a request for comment.
The nonprofits’ tax filings list Levi Chazan as the director of Charity of Light and American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi, and Steven Goldrich is listed as a director of Charity of Light and treasurer of American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi. Chazan was convicted in a 1984 bus shooting in the Occupied West Bank, which wounded seven Palestinians. Both did not respond to requests for comment.
HaBloc explained this entanglement of Israeli and American organizations is not directly supporting Lehava with monetary contributions, but rather aiding the network around it.
“The relationship between [Lehava] and groups that are funded with American money are two separate issues,” HaBloc’s Cohen said. “There are connections, of course, but we cannot say that these groups that were active in the last two weeks were funded with American dollars.”
Other financial players
The aforementioned charities are largely linked to Kahanism and Lehava, but other American foundations have also been tied to Israeli extremism.
The Traditional Fund gave $51,000 to American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon and $11,500 to American Friends of Chasdei Meir in 2018. The American Friends of Chasdei Meir is not listed in any available nonprofit database, however, Chasdei Meir’s website does name the American Friends of Chasdei Meir as its contact. The Traditional Fund did not respond to press inquiries.
According to T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, the Central Fund of Israel (CFI) funds Chemla and Yeshivat HaRa’ayon HaYehudi. The organization filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in 2018 to revoke CFI and the American Friends of Yeshivat HaRa’ayon’s charitable status on the grounds these groups are funding terrorism.
IRS charity law states that terrorist activities are considered substantial means for disqualifying an organization’s tax-exempt status. This is in accordance with engaging in illegal acts contrary to standard U.S. policy.
A litany of private foundations supports the CFI. Most notably, the foundations belonging to the late American billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Irving Moskowitz. The Moskowitz family foundations have contributed more than $8 million to CFI since 2018 and Adelson’s foundation gave $50,000 to CFI in 2018.
Jay Marcus of CFl said in a statement to MintPress News that, “The Central Fund of Israel absolutely rejects violence and does not support any organizations that promote violence. Furthermore, if an organization that we once supported ever started promoting violence, CFI would not support them in the future.”
Marcus claims that he hasn’t heard of Lehava, adding, “having had rockets indiscriminately showered down on my head, I would certainly disagree with your myth about which ‘groups start violence.’”
The Falic family, owners of the major retail chain Duty Free Americas, has supported The Fund for Saving the People of Israel in the past, providing a total of $60,000 to the association from 2007-2017. The money is wired through the Falic’s Israel-based foundation, the Segal Fund. The Falics could not be reached for comment.
Kahanism’s surge in Israel
Kahane’s Kach Party was banned from entering Israeli politics in 1988. But thanks to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Kahanists are now infiltrating the halls of the Knesset (Israeli parliament).
A Jewish settler wears a T-shirt with the image of Meir Kahane near the city of Ramallah. Bernat Armangue | AP
“Because the prime minister was in such a dire situation and was desperate for every vote, he gave [Otzma Yehudit] the legitimacy,” Rabbi Sattath said. “What we’re seeing here in Israel and around the world is that one of the symptoms of democracies in decline is when the extreme right takes over the center right. The fact that the prime minister and some of the right-wing parties gave the Jewish Power Party legitimacy has then increased their power. And that’s what enabled them to use these methods they’ve used for over a decade on a large scale in the last wave of violence.”
Upon reflecting back to Kahane’s short time in the Knesset, Rabbi Sattath said he faced opposition from every politician and was immediately ostracized.
“When he got into the Knesset, he got the bare minimum [of votes] to get one seat. But what happened in the eighties was he was boycotted by every other Knesset member. Nobody would sit in the plenum when he was speaking,” Rabbi Sattath said. “Everybody from the left and the right understood that these ideas were dangerous and extreme and had to be restrained.”
Today, the political climate in Israeli politics is different.
“What we’re seeing now is that the restraint is completely over,” Rabbi Sattath continued. “And we’re hoping that by shedding light on the past weeks’ violence, we can return to the understanding that there needs to be a red line, that these violent militias and racist, Jewish supremacists have to be stopped.”
“What they need to do is they need to occupy the bases of the Canadian Armed Forces! They need to occupy the military hardware factories! They need to occupy their courts and stopthe shipping of these weapons to apartheid Israel! Anything less than that will not actually cleanse them from the blood on their hands as Canadians!”
– Laith Marouf, from this week’s interview
LISTEN TO THE SHOW
As of 2:00 am on May 21 by the Israel-Palestine hour this morning, or 7:00pm EDT on Thursday, the two sides of the disputing rivals had ceased hostilities – at least for the time being.[1]
As of 2:00 am on May 21 by the Israel-Palestine hour this morning, or 7:00pm EDT on Thursday, the two sides of the disputing rivals had ceased hostilities – at least for the time being.[1]
By the standard account, the bitter eruption rose up on May 6 when Palestinians rose up in protest to a Supreme Court of Israel ruling on the matter of evicting six Palestinian families from their housing units in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. This was followed the next day by Israeli police storming the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam and firing stun grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas at the worshippers in attendance.
Then on May 10, Hamas, the militant force governing over Gaza, wanted Israeli security forces removed from Sheikh Jarrah and the Temple Mount complex, location of the holiest site in Judaism which also housed Al-Aqsa Mosque. When Israel refused they fired rockets on targets in Israel. What followed was a campaign of airstrikes by Israel.
The following clip recorded by Middle East Eye is just a sample of what the last two weeks were like:
“I don’t know what to do.”
A 10-year-old Palestinian girl breaks down while talking to MEE after Israeli air strikes destroyed her neighbour’s house, killing 8 children and 2 women#Gaza#Palestine#Israelpic.twitter.com/jnZx8wruaX
Regrettably, violence in the region tends to spring up from time to time. And absent being held to account for past crimes by the UN, Washington, or really anyone, Israel will most likely continue on setting up more shelters on occupied land, and besieging the beleaguered Gaza, and ignoring the human rights of their Palestinian neighbours frankly at levels well beyond the harsh treatment of Blacks in modern day America.
But something is a little different this time. Despite Israel’s ‘Iron Dome’ technology taking out as many as 90 percent of rockets, some projectiles, cruise missiles no less, are punching through and hitting Israel stronger than ever. The Palestinians in Israel are themselves taking action in the streets, in businesses, and synagogues. And even in the United States, while the President continues to disappoint with his tepid remarks about the right of Israel to defend itself, sharp and popular critics in Congress such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are speaking out loudly against continuing to arm Israel despite its ongoing abuses against Palestinians.
Do these and other unique scenarios marking this 11 day period of terror mean things will be different now or in the long term? This is the question running through this Global Research News Hour and its sixty minute broadcast.
On the show in our first half hour, Richard Falk, professor emeritus of law at Princeton university talks to listeners highlighting some of the less talked about elements of the past month, including how it was incited by right wing settlers and during the Islamic holy period known as Ramadan. He also discussed attacks on media and the prospects for victory for Palestinians in the long term.
Following that, we hear from Richard Silverstein, a progressive blogger focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict. He will dwell on the growth in Hamas’ arsenal, the growth of Palestinian solidarity in Israel, and the potential ability of the International Criminal Court to wound Israel’s prospects.
Finally, Palestine activist and commentator Laith Marouf joins us again to dwell on the motives of the new Palestinian resistance, the prospects for the conflict to intensify, and the goals of Canadians wishing to show their solidarity with the damaged but determined victims of 73 years of Israeli confrontation.
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years and holds the title of professor emeritus. In 2008 he was also appointed by the UN to serve a six-year term as the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. He contributes regularly to Global Research.
Richard Silverstein is a political writer and commentator. Since 2003 he has authored the progressive Jewish blog Tikun Olam, which focuses on exposing the excesses of the Israeli national security state. He contributes regularly to Middle East Eye, and has contributed in the past to Truthout, Alternet, Haaretz, Mint Press News, Jewish Forward, Los Angeles Times, Comment Is Free and Al Jazeera English.
Laith Marouf is a long time multimedia consultant and producer and currently serves as Senior Consultant at the Community Media Advocacy Centre (www.cmacentre.org) and the coordinator of ICTV, in Canada (www.tele1.ca). Laith derives much of his understanding of Middle Eastern Affairs from his ancestral background of being both of Palestinian and of Syrian extraction. He is currently based in Beirut.
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.
CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.
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