Settler violence against Palestinians is rarely prosecuted by Israel.
The Palestine Chronicle
(January 7, 2023) — Jewish settlers on Saturday chopped down dozens of olive trees belonging to Palestinian residents near the village of Amateen to the east of Qalqiliya, the official news agency WAFA reported.
Local sources told WAFA that a number of settlers from the illegal settlement of Havat Gilad cut down around 40 olive trees in a land located to the south of the aforementioned village.
The land belongs to two Palestinian residents.
Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is routine in the West Bank and is rarely prosecuted by Israeli authorities.
Dismantling Israel’s Settler Colonialism
(November 17, 2022) — In this episode of “Palestine In Perspective”, host and Toronto-based writer for The Palestine Chronicle, Paul Salvatori, talks with Francesca Albanese — current United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.
Albanese shares the findings of and challenges in producing her most recent report, in the capacity of the key UN role. Building off the findings of her predecessors she, in addition to viewing Israel as an apartheid state, stresses how — central to understanding its criminal subjugation of the Palestinian people — Israel is deeply invested in a settler-colonial project that involves the large-scale destruction of Palestinian life.
As in her report, Albanese here reminds listeners that countries internationally have a legal obligation to both help end and hold Israel accountable for this, rather than — as has been the case for decades — allow it to enjoy impunity.
Salvatori and Albanese also discuss the sensitive but important topic of the right of resistance and the extent to which Palestinians, enduring brutal Israeli occupation, are entitled to exercise it — in accordance with international law.
Unlike much mainstream discussion, this further illuminates how there is no “war” happening in Palestine but, through dehumanizing and violent means, an ongoing attempt by Israel to ethnically cleanse the nation.
Listeners are here invited to think about and find ways of challenging the war myth, often perpetuated by corporate news media, while — in solidarity with Palestine — mobilizing others to fight against Israel’s protracted campaign to eliminate Palestine altogether.
Israel: Thousands Protest
New Netanyahu Government
(January 7, 2023) — Thousands of Israelis protested on Saturday against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government, regarded as the most right-wing in Israeli history.
Protesters brandished signs with slogans including “Democracy in danger” and “Together against fascism and apartheid” in the coastal city of Tel Aviv.
Some waved Israeli and rainbow flags while others held a large banner reading “crime minister” – a slogan widely used by Israelis during regular demonstrations against Netanyahu in past years.
Following his 1 November election win, Netanyahu took office late last month at the head of a coalition with extreme-right and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties, some of whose officials now head key ministries.
It includes a politician who late last year admitted tax evasion and a clutch of far-right personalities, including one who once kept a portrait in his home of a man who massacred scores of Palestinian worshippers.
Netanyahu, 73, who himself is fighting corruption charges in court, had already served as premier longer than anyone in Israeli history, leading the country from 1996-1999 and 2009-2021.
“My grandparents came to Israel to build here something amazing… We don’t want to feel that our democracy is disappearing, that the Supreme Court will be destroyed,” said a lawyer among the protesters who gave his name only as Assaf.
“Extremists are starting to deploy their forces and it’s not the majority,” said protester Omer, a worker in Tel Aviv’s tech sector.
The new government has announced intentions to pursue a policy of settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank and carry out social reforms that have worried members and supporters of the LGBTQ+ community.
Israel’s new justice minister this week announced a reform programme including a “derogation clause” allowing parliament to override decisions of the Supreme Court.
Opposition leader Yair Lapid denounced the reforms, saying on Twitter that it “endangers the entire legal system of the State of Israel”.
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