Inside Israel's Surveillance Machine

Israeli Surveillance of the Palestinians

EU Needs to Acknowledge the Reality of Israeli Apartheid

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Did You Know That Israel Has Been Banning Palestinians From Organizing any Protests for 50 years? 50 Years of Israeli Occupation: Four Outrageous Facts about Military Order 101

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Threat of Israeli settler violence casts dark shadow over 2019

Following a year of escalating attacks by settlers against Palestinians, Israel's security agency is warning of a continued upward trend

CJ Werleman

Sunday 27 January 2019 10:55 UTC

On the night of 12 October 2018, Aisha al-Rabi, a Palestinian in her 40s, was riding in her family’s car, seated next to her husband and with her two daughters asleep in the back. 

These would be the final minutes of her life. The mother-of-seven was killed moments later, after being struck in the head by a stone thrown by a group of teenage Jewish settlers on a road near the settlement of Rehelim in the occupied West Bank.

Rabi’s brutal murder was just one of 482 attacks carried out by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank during 2018, a threefold increase over the previous year.

Even more worrying, Israel’s security agency, Shin Bet, forecasts a continued upward surge in settler violence against Palestinians this year, warning that extremist Jewish groups are “committed” to terrorising Palestinians in the occupied territory. 

Clear and sinister motive

It’s hard to imagine how 2018 could have been any worse for the more than six million Palestinians who live in Israel and the occupied territories. Not only did the US sanctify an Israeli war crime in relocating its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, but it also cut funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, jeopardising the lives of hundreds of thousands Palestinian refugees who depend on the agency for their daily survival. 

Also last year, Israeli snipers assassinated around 200 peaceful Palestinian protesters in Gaza, including women, children, medics and journalists, all killed since the Great March of Return began on 30 March.

These attacks are occurring and increasing for one very simple reason: The perpetrators are neither deterred, arrested nor punished

Added to this misery is the fact that illegal Jewish settlers are now seemingly hell-bent on going after the more than two million Palestinians who legally occupy the West Bank.

While only a small number of the 482 settler attacks in 2018 were fatal, the objective of this violence has a clear and sinister motive: to terrorise the indigenous population into fleeing their homes for refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and elsewhere.

Acts of settler violence have included physical assaults and the vandalism and destruction of Palestinian-owned farmland, homes and vehicles. In addition, “price tag” attacks have been designed to “exact a price” from local Palestinians for residing on the land that Israeli settlers deem desirable for themselves.

Apartheid system of governance

Palestinian residents in the village of Yasuf described to Middle East Eye how they awoke to find their car tyres slashed, and their homes and local mosque covered in racist graffiti, including: “Death to Arabs”, “Price tag” and “Revenge”.

These attacks are occurring and increasing for one very simple reason: The perpetrators are neither deterred, arrested nor punished. In the occupied West Bank, there is one set of laws and rules for Palestinians, and another for Israeli settlers. This is the hallmark of an apartheid system of governance: two laws for one land. 

Israeli settlers are pictured in the settlement of Sa Nur in the occupied West Bank on 24 July (AFP)

In fact, the entire Israeli judicial system is based on racism and prejudice against non-Jewish people, so much so that it refuses to recognise the rights of Palestinians who live lawfully on their land, while at the same time granting extraordinary legal rights to Jewish settlers who live in settlements that defy international law.

It’s also easy to argue that in the Trump era, which has effectively given Israel a green light to do whatever it pleases against Palestinians - no matter how repressive, illegal or immoral - there is a climate of impunity for settlers in the West Bank. This is illustrated by the fact that the Israeli government issued its highest number of new settlement construction tenders in more than a decade during the past year.

‘Green light’ for settlements

When I spoke with former Palestinian health minister Basem Naim, he identified four factors behind the surge in settler violence, including the Israeli government’s tacit support of right-wing extremism; the refusal of the Israeli judicial system to hold violent settlers accountable; the US government’s “green light” for building more settlements; and the “collaboration” of Palestinian Authority security forces with Israel.

Omar Baddar, a Palestinian American and deputy director of the Arab American Institute, told me: “Donald Trump’s administration is the most viciously anti-Palestinian administration in the history of the US.

"[As a result], Israeli settlers have picked up on the climate created by their own extremist government and the unconditional backing of the Trump administration, which in turn emboldens them to carry out further aggression against the Palestinians, knowing accountability is a very distant prospect.”

With these political winds favouring Israel’s settler movement - one that’s enthusiastically led by the Netanyahu government and underwritten by the Trump administration - 2019 promises to be every bit as violent towards Palestinians living under the boot of an ever-expanding settler population, one that’s becoming increasingly emboldened and radicalised.

Boycott Israel? No US State Jobs Or Aid For You

Once again, a perfect example of absolute arrogance and entitlement. This mentality comes right from the Jewish Talmud. (Be sure to scroll down and go through all the articles here.) See here for more about the connections between Homeland Security and Zionism. This is so important to point out because what you see in the video below is 'PROOF' of the connections between Zionism and Homeland Security. This is another part of what Homeland Security does, they are involved in "protecting the Homeland." One wonders what "Homeland" they are actually involved in protecting. To learn more about the state of Israel, see here and here.

Jailed For Calling the Palestinian Authority Rotten

The following article is a good example of how the people that are supposed to be "helping and protecting" us are completely corrupt and cannot be trusted. This goes for Canada and the United States too.  As this peace activist said... "We are all Palestinians."  

As I have shown time and time again on this blog, you better watch what you say.... they may be watching you too!

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Kifah Quzmar was at a café in downtown Ramallah when a few men followed him to the toilet. After grabbing him, they dragged him out to a car with a yellow Israeli license plate.

The men, it soon transpired, were undercover police working for the Palestinian Authority. They apprehended Quzmar at the West Bank café on 11 May because of comments he had made on Facebook.

Following the arrest of his friend Seif al-Idrissi by PA forces in April, Kifah wrote on the social media website: “Do you know why the mukhabarat [PA intelligence service] is a rotten agency? Because the entire PA is rotten.”

According to his brother, Anan, this is not the first time that Kifah had been arrested because of something he wrote on Facebook. “They interrogated him a couple of years ago for a joke mocking the PA which he wrote during a snowstorm,” Anan said.

Kifah was released on bail one week after his arrest this month. His lawyer, Anas al-Barghouti, said Kifah could face charges of insulting the PA. No charges have yet been issued.

Kifah is a business student at Birzeit University in the occupied West Bank. He is also a member of the Democratic Progressive Student Pole, the largest left-wing organization in the university.

Moral bankruptcy

Palestinian scholar Abdel Sattar Qassem argued that such arrests expose the moral bankruptcy and illegitimacy of the PA and its leadership.

Qassem, a political science professor at An-Najah University in the West Bank city of Nablus, has himself been recently arrested for speaking out against the PA.

“Political arrests have been a PA policy since its establishment and they witness increases whenever the PA sees itself under threat,” Qassem told The Electronic Intifada. “They target leftists and Islamists and anyone who is critical of the PA and its security coordination with the Israeli occupation.”

Qassem said that political persecutions and arrests by the PA are designed to serve two intertwined interests.

“They seek to protect the Israeli occupation and prevent any potential uprising against it and they also endeavor to cement the status quo and maintain the privileges that the PA has by preventing any potential uprising against it,” he said.

Many of those regularly arrested by the PA are known for activism against the Israeli occupation, according to Qassem. Arresting them, he argued, sends a message to the PA’s backers in Arab and Western governments that the PA will not allow another intifada.

When an uprising against the occupation began in October last, Mahmoud Abbas, the PA’s leader, said that he wished to avoid an “escalation” with Israel. He has previously described the PA’s cooperation with the Israeli military and intelligence as “sacred.”

Most Palestinians remain reluctant to speak about the issue of political arrests by the PA.

While Kifah Quzmar’s family and friends were prepared to talk about his case, circulating the Facebook post that led to his arrest, other former detainees at PA prisons have avoided publicity for fear of retribution.

Reliable data about the number of people arrested on political grounds by the PA are very hard to find.

“The PA always denies that it holds political prisoners, regularly framing those arrests as either criminal or security,” Anas al-Barghouti, Kifah’s lawyer who also works for the Palestinian prisoner support group Addameer, said.

“We always struggle to compile names and approximate numbers of political detainees because the PA always tries to keep those facts censored,” Muhannad al-Azzeh, an Addameer spokesperson, told The Electronic intifada. “But from the information that we have managed to compile, there has been a noticeable increase in [detention] over the last few months.”

“Arrest season”

The increase can be linked to the beginning of student union election campaigns in universities.

Students affiliated to the Islamic Bloc have been the main targets; they have been pursued by both Israeli and PA forces. Leftist students — particularly those competing with Fatah, the dominant party in the PA — have also been targeted, albeit to a lesser degree.

Many Palestinian student activists describe the months preceding university elections as “arrest season.”

Arrests of students by the PA, either from their homes or university dorms, hit their peak in March just a month before the elections in most West Bank universities.

A number of female students, especially those affiliated to the Islamic Bloc, have been arrested.

Alaa Manasra, a postgraduate student at Hebron University, was arrested on her way to class on 7 March this year. She was released after seven hours of interrogation that focused on her activism.

Another female student at Hebron University, who spoke on condition of anonymity, believes that there is direct cooperation between the PA and Israel in targeting students.

“The PA basically does Israel’s dirty work, breaking into our homes, confiscating our laptops and trying to stifle any form of activism inside universities to guarantee that the Fatah-affiliated student groups win the elections,” the student said.

The student believes that the arrest campaign has been more aggressive this year in response to the unexpected wins by the Islamic Bloc at Birzeit University, a traditional stronghold of Fatah’s youth wing.

Treated as enemy

Palestinian concerns that the PA is directly coordinating its activities with Israel were reinforced by the arrest of three youths who were allegedly planning an attack on Israeli military targets.

Bassel al-Araj, Haytham Siyaj and Muhammad Harb were arrested by the PA in April.

Anas al-Barghouti, lawyer for the three men, said that the PA tries to spin such arrests in a positive manner. “They claim that the arrests were to ‘protect’ those youths, which is quite ironic,” he said.

It is also quite common for Palestinians to be imprisoned by Israel shortly after being released by the PA.

A recent case in point is that of Khalil Canaan, who was arrested by Israeli forces from his home in Aida refugee camp beside the West Bank city of Bethlehem about a week ago. He had only been released from PA detention two days earlier.

Palestinians often say that being arrested by the PA is worse than being arrested by Israel.

“It hurts to be arrested and persecuted by your own people, by those who claim to represent the Palestinian cause,” Qassem said, referring to his personal experience of repeated spells in PA jails. “Criticism of the PA is labeled as treason and they treat you as an enemy for opposing Abbas.”

Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails receive considerable support, regardless of their political affiliation. Meanwhile, Palestinians jailed by the PA receive little solidarity, said Qassem, despite the terrible conditions they face.

“Abbas has repeatedly stated that he’d do anything to prevent the eruption of a third intifada,” Qassem said. “The ongoing repression and arrests demonstrate his commitment to protect Israel and his own status.”

Budour Youssef Hassan is a Palestinian writer and law graduate based in occupied Jerusalem. Blog:budourhassan.wordpress.com. Twitter: @Budour48