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| | | New French website to be launched for Palestine Chronicle. Your help can make this a reality. | Dear Readers, We are certain that you have been able to see the value of your money at work. In the last three weeks alone we managed to acquire two new editors, and our content, both in terms of quantity and quality has already experienced significant improvement. And we certainly don't intend to stop. Indeed, the Chronicle is in the process of launching a French website which, for us, is as significant as the launch of our English edition over 15 years ago. However, in order for us to continue to progress, to reach new audiences and to offer the truth on Palestine, we need your help. We have raised over 6,000 dollars from the total amount we are requested. In order for our work to continue over the next six months, we need a minimum of $12,000. We urge you to make your contribution today to allow us to conclude our fundraiser and put our entire focus back into our work. Thank you for your help and solidarity. The Team at the Palestine Chronicle To make a contribution using your paypal account or credit card, please click Or kindly send your contribution to: PO Box 196
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| FEATURED | Religious Zealots Ready for Takeover of Israeli Army An Israeli settler puts an Israeli flag on the roof of a Palestinian house in a building in the center of the Palestinian city Hebron. (Photo: Via MEMO) By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth In a surprise move, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week forced out his long-serving defence minister, Moshe Yaalon. As he stepped down, Yaalon warned: "Extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel." He was referring partly to his expected successor: Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, whose trademark outbursts have included demands to bomb Egypt and behead disloyal Palestinian citizens. But Yaalon was also condemning extremism closer to home, in Netanyahu's Likud party. Yaalon is to take a break from politics. With fitting irony, his slot is to be filled on Likud's backbenches by Yehuda Glick, a settler whose struggle to destroy Jerusalem's al-Aqsa mosque and replace it with a Jewish temple has the potential to set the Middle East on fire. Israeli commentators pointed out that, with Lieberman's inclusion, the government will be the most extreme in Israel's history - again. French prime minister Manuel Valls, who began a visit to the region on Saturday, is likely to face an impregnable wall of government hostility as he tries to drum up interest in a French peace plan. Less noticed has been the gradual and parallel takeover of Israel's security institutions by those espousing the ideology of the settlers - known in Israel as the national-religious camp. None of this is accidental. For two decades the settlers have been targeting Israel's key institutions. Under Netanyahu's seven-year watch as prime minister, the process has accelerated. Naftali Bennett, leader of the settler party Jewish Home and education minister, recently boasted that the national-religious camp, though only a tenth of the population, held "leadership positions in all realms in Israel". One such success for Bennett is Roni Alsheikh who was appointed police chief late last year. He was a long-time resident of Kiryat Arba, one of the most violent settlements in the occupied territories. The force's most recent campaign, "Believing in the police", is designed to recruit more religious hardliners. Behind the programme are settler-politicians who have called Palestinians "sub-human" and expressed sympathy for those who burnt to death a Palestinian family, including a baby, last summer. The other security agencies are being transformed too. Religious nationalists now hold many of the top posts in the Shin Bet intelligence service and the Mossad, Israel's spy agency. In the army too, the settlers are today heavily over-represented in the officers corps and combat units. For more than a decade their rabbis have dominated the army's education corps, invoking God's will on the battlefield. But, despite these rising tidewaters, Israel's traditional secular elite - mostly of European extraction - have desperately clung on to the top rungs of the army command. Netanyahu bitterly resents their continuing control. They stood in his way at two momentous occasions, as he tried to overturn the Oslo accords in the late 1990s and to bomb Iran five years ago. In a bid to curb their influence, Netanyahu tried to promote the religious Yair Naveh as military chief last year, but was blocked by the top brass. Lieberman's arrival as defence minister, however, may mark a turning point. In some ways, less is at stake than Yaalon's hyperbolic warning suggests. For decades the secular generals have been in charge of an occupation that has crushed the rights of Palestinians and caged them into ever-smaller holding pens. These generals have been just as cruel as the religious officers replacing them. Nonetheless, the reverberations of this quiet revolution should not be ignored. The old elites have lived off the fat of the land in the kibbutz, Israel's spacious farming communities built on the ruins of hundreds of Palestinian villages ethnically cleansed in 1948. After the 1967 war, the kibbutz-generals happily exported the same model of industrial-scale theft of Palestinian land to the occupied territories. But their security obsessions were ultimately rooted in Israel, where they fear having to account for the crimes of 1948 from which they profited. Their abiding nightmare is a right of return to Israel of the lands' original owners - Palestinian refugees today numbering in the millions. The religious camp's priorities are different. The lands they defend most passionately are not in Israel but in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. That is where many live and where the holy places that sanctify their territorial greed are located. The spread of this zealotry into the army has deeply discomfited its more liberal elements. In recent years, small numbers of whistleblowers have emerged, from military intelligence unit 8200 through to a group called Breaking the Silence. The recent video of an execution of a badly wounded Palestinian by army medic Elor Azaria - and the outpouring of public support in Israel for him - has only intensified these tensions. This month the army's deputy head, Yair Golan, compared Israel to Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Lieberman, meanwhile, is Azaria's most vocal supporter. The goal of the religious nationalists is undisguised: to remove the last restraints on the occupation, and build a glorious, divinely ordained Greater Israel over an obliterated Palestinian society. That means no hope of a peaceful resolution of Israel's conflict with the Palestinians - unless it is preceded by a tumultuous civil war between Israel's secular and its religious Jews. - Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit his website: www.jonathan-cook.net. (A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi) |
| SELECTED |  Rami Hamdallah, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday rebuffed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's latest call for direct talks, opting instead to join a French-led multilateral peace initiative. According to an AFP report, Hamdallah said, "Netanyahu is trying to buy time... but this time he will not escape the international community." Hamdallah made [...]  Palestinian bodies of those killed by Israeli forces will not be returned, announced Gilad Erdan, Israeli Minister of Public Security. Luba al-Samri, an Israeli police spokeswoman reported on Tuesday that Erdan watched footage of the funeral of Alaa Abu Jamal in occupied East Jerusalem, which caused his "anger, disapproval and condemnation." Abu Jamal, 22, was [...]  By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth In a surprise move, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week forced out his long-serving defence minister, Moshe Yaalon. As he stepped down, Yaalon warned: "Extremist and dangerous elements have taken over Israel." He was referring partly to his expected successor: Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu party, [...]  Breaking the Silence is an Israeli organization that publishes anonymous testimony from soldiers regarding the use of excessive force against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The organization appeared in court on Sunday to counter the state of Israel's demand by its prosecutor that the group reveal its sources. Breaking the [...]  Mohammed Al-Qeeq, the 33-year-old Palestinian journalist who waged a 94-day hunger strike while in Israeli custody was finally released last week. His message to his fellow prisoners is: stand up to Israel's unjust detention policies. In an interview with Anadolu Agency he referred to his imprisonment as, "a bitter experience, but it taught me to [...]  Two Palestinian children were detained for six and a half hours for allegedly throwing stones at settlers in the village of al-Tur in occupied East Jerusalem, Muhammad Samih Ulayan, 10, and Mustafa Abu al-Hawa, 12, were arrested by Israeli forces while walking in al-Tur, before being transported to a nearby illegal Israeli settlement, then to [...]  Yousef M. Aljamal - Gaza There is no privacy in refugee camps. The Gaza Strip is home to eight refugee camps, which host hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 from their towns and villages following the creation of Israel. Jabalia refugee camp is home for nearly 90,000 Palestinians who live in [...] The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its weekly report that the Israeli army wounded at least 78 Palestinians, including 32 children, in clashes during 10-16 May. In a fire which broke out next to Beit 'Awa village in Hebron resulted in the damage of around 250 dunams of land [...]  By Ahmad Ghazal - Gaza Due to the current situation in the Gaza Strip, and with the numerous difficulties Gazans face, they try hard to escape from their reality by entertaining themselves, for example, by playing and watching football. During the 10-year siege imposed on Gaza since 2007 and the three offensives launched within six [...]  By Palestine Chronicle Staff Following Israel's offensive on Gaza in 2008-9, Refaat Alareer, a lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza started requesting that his students write short stories as a means of releasing their anger and frustration. During the offensive, he would tell his children stories that his grandmother told him while growing up. [...]  Mohammed Al-Qeeq, a Palestinian activist and journalist, has been released from prison by Israel. After a 94-day hunger strike in protest against his treatment by Israeli authorities, a deal was reached in February securing his release. Al-Qeeq, 33 worked as a news reporter for the Saudi-owned TV network, Al Majd. He was held in Israeli [...]  Israel is stepping up its efforts to seize control of Palestinian heritage sites and antiquities in the occupied territories. This is in direct violation of international law, Palestinian and Israeli archaeologists warned this week. The experts echoed criticisms levelled against Israel in a recent resolution passed by UNESCO, that accused Israel of interfering with major [...]  For women with breast cancer in Gaza, Israel and Egypt's isolation of the area affects nearly every stage of their diagnosis and treatment. Doctors in clinics and hospitals told surgeon Philippa Whitford, that vital medicines, including chemotherapy drugs, were extremely difficult to gain access to. Several patients reported having had their chemotherapy course interrupted when [...]  By Jeremy Salt Is Israel beyond redemption? Should we conclude, after seven decades of worsening behavior, that while there's life there's hope - life for the Zionists and Israel, of course, and, in fact, no hope for Palestine and the Palestinians, at least as far as the state of Israel is concerned. The binary divide [...]  By Yousef M. Aljamal - Gaza Tens of thousands of Palestinian students in Gaza are studying for their final exams at school, yet the limited amount of electricity in Gaza makes it difficult for them to adapt. Electricity outages, sometimes for more than 12 hours per day, leave these students with no other option except [...]  The second International Palestinian Conference for Media and Communications begins today in Istanbul, Turkey. The two-day event, is hosted by the Palestine Media Forum in partnership with Middle East Monitor (MEMO), and aims to discuss the most successful methods through which a fair representation of the Palestinian cause can be gathered. World-renowned media professionals including writers, heads of newspapers, radio and television journalists, artists [...]  By Ramzy Baroud On May 15th of every year, over the past 68 years, Palestinians have commemorated their collective exile from Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine to make room for a 'Jewish homeland' came at a price of unrelenting violence and perpetual suffering. Palestinians refer to that enduring experience as 'Nakba', or 'Catastrophe'. However, [...]  Israeli forces on Monday night returned the bodies of a Palestinian woman and a teenage boy from occupied East Jerusalem to their families for burial, after withholding the bodies for months. Israeli forces deployed heavily in the Um Tuba neighborhood of East Jerusalem before intelligence officers handed over the body of 51-year-old Fadwa Abu Teir [...]  For the past five decades, Palestinian intellectual, Abu Sitta was on a mission to rebuild the map of historic Palestine in an immense body of indisputable evidence and facts In his memoir, Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir, published last month, Abu Sitta chronicles the dispossession of the Palestinian homeland, by British and Jewish terrorists. From [...]  A $24 million Museum will open its doors Wednesday in Birzeit in the occupied West Bank, as a space to celebrate and redefine Palestinian art, history and culture. President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and other dignitaries are expected to attend the opening ceremony, but a spokeswoman acknowledged on Sunday that "there will not [...]  By Palestine Chronicle Staff Human Rights Watch has called on the Jordanian government to lift the restrictions imposed based on issuing "non-objection papers" to Palestinians from Gaza who travel through the country. Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of HRW sent a letter to the Jordanian Prime Minister, which read: "Since August, residents of Gaza have [...]
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| LATEST | Israeli Organisation Exposes Indiscriminate Warfare During Gaza War May 23 2016 / 8:19 pm Soldiers tell Breaking the Silence how they fired randomly at Palestinian homes. (Photo: Safa.ps, Flicker) Breaking the Silence is an Israeli organization that publishes anonymous testimony from soldiers regarding the use of excessive force against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The organization appeared in court on Sunday to counter the state of Israel's demand by its prosecutor that the group reveal its sources. Breaking the Silence comprises of current and former soldiers who released an enlightening report last year on the 2014 Gaza war that included anonymous testimony suggesting that indiscriminate artillery fire contributed to large-scale destruction and a high number of civilian casualties in the area. The organisation which is funded by foreign donors has been branded as traitors by many Israeli leaders. Michael Sfard, a lawyer representing Breaking the Silence, told the judge on Sunday that the group would be destroyed if it broke promises and exposed soldiers who provided testimony, arguing that these testimonials work in the interests of the public by exposing ordinary Israelis to the actions of their forces in the field. Israel's state attorney is seeking a court order to force the group to reveal names of soldiers whose testimonies appear in the Gaza report. The hearing on whether to compel the group to reveal its sources will continue in July. The Breaking the Silence website contains dozens of videotaped interviews with soldiers remaining anonymous, in which, for example a young tank gunner describes how his commander told them to fire at random buildings during the Gaza war. While Israeli officials denied that such acts were committed, Breaking the Silence activists say that all of their reports are reviewed by the military censor before release. (WASHINGTON POST, PC) |
| NEWS ROUNDUP | Rami Hamdallah, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority on Tuesday rebuffed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's latest call for direct talks, opting instead to join a French-led multilateral peace initiative. According to an AFP report, Hamdallah said, "Netanyahu is trying to buy time... but this time he will not escape the international community." Hamdallah made [...]  The 16th Doha Forum organized by Qatar's foreign ministry, was attended by heads of state from South Africa, Afghanistan, Yemen, Mauritius, and Niger, as well as Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General. The foreign minister of Qatar, SheikhMohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani , stressed the need to support human rights and increase security for the people [...] Palestinian bodies of those killed by Israeli forces will not be returned, announced Gilad Erdan, Israeli Minister of Public Security. Luba al-Samri, an Israeli police spokeswoman reported on Tuesday that Erdan watched footage of the funeral of Alaa Abu Jamal in occupied East Jerusalem, which caused his "anger, disapproval and condemnation." Abu Jamal, 22, was [...] Breaking the Silence is an Israeli organization that publishes anonymous testimony from soldiers regarding the use of excessive force against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The organization appeared in court on Sunday to counter the state of Israel's demand by its prosecutor that the group reveal its sources. Breaking the [...] Mohammed Al-Qeeq, the 33-year-old Palestinian journalist who waged a 94-day hunger strike while in Israeli custody was finally released last week. His message to his fellow prisoners is: stand up to Israel's unjust detention policies. In an interview with Anadolu Agency he referred to his imprisonment as, "a bitter experience, but it taught me to [...] Two Palestinian children were detained for six and a half hours for allegedly throwing stones at settlers in the village of al-Tur in occupied East Jerusalem, Muhammad Samih Ulayan, 10, and Mustafa Abu al-Hawa, 12, were arrested by Israeli forces while walking in al-Tur, before being transported to a nearby illegal Israeli settlement, then to [...] The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its weekly report that the Israeli army wounded at least 78 Palestinians, including 32 children, in clashes during 10-16 May. In a fire which broke out next to Beit 'Awa village in Hebron resulted in the damage of around 250 dunams of land [...]  Cement has been allowed into the Gaza Strip following a two-month ban imposed on the area, according to the Palestinian Authority's department of civil affairs. The department's media director, Muhammad al-Maqadma, said in a press statement that the minister of civil affairs, Hussein al-Sheikh, had worked on returning the entry of cement after a two-month [...] Mohammed Al-Qeeq, a Palestinian activist and journalist, has been released from prison by Israel. After a 94-day hunger strike in protest against his treatment by Israeli authorities, a deal was reached in February securing his release. Al-Qeeq, 33 worked as a news reporter for the Saudi-owned TV network, Al Majd. He was held in Israeli [...] Israel is stepping up its efforts to seize control of Palestinian heritage sites and antiquities in the occupied territories. This is in direct violation of international law, Palestinian and Israeli archaeologists warned this week. The experts echoed criticisms levelled against Israel in a recent resolution passed by UNESCO, that accused Israel of interfering with major [...] For women with breast cancer in Gaza, Israel and Egypt's isolation of the area affects nearly every stage of their diagnosis and treatment. Doctors in clinics and hospitals told surgeon Philippa Whitford, that vital medicines, including chemotherapy drugs, were extremely difficult to gain access to. Several patients reported having had their chemotherapy course interrupted when [...]  Lawmakers in Ontario vote this week to blacklist supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Tim Hudak, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, introduced the so-called Standing Up Against Anti-Semitism in Ontario Act on Tuesday. Hudak claimed that the goal of BDS is "to sponsor the de-legitimization of the state of [...]  Marwan Barghouti, an imprisoned Palestinian Fatah leader, has been nominated by the Belgian parliament for the Nobel Peace prize for 2016. Palestinian rights groups and various parliamentarians have been engaged in a campaign for Barghouti to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, referring to the imprisoned parliament member as the "Palestinian Mandela" and a [...]  The Palestinian Foreign Ministry condemned the decree recently issued by a number of Jewish rabbis, which allows the killing of Palestinians by opening fire on them without investigation or trial, claiming that such executions "stop the wave of Arab terrorism in the Holy Land [Israel]." In a press release; made available to Anadolu agency, the Foreign Ministry [...] By Yousef M. Aljamal - Gaza Tens of thousands of Palestinian students in Gaza are studying for their final exams at school, yet the limited amount of electricity in Gaza makes it difficult for them to adapt. Electricity outages, sometimes for more than 12 hours per day, leave these students with no other option except [...] The second International Palestinian Conference for Media and Communications begins today in Istanbul, Turkey. The two-day event, is hosted by the Palestine Media Forum in partnership with Middle East Monitor (MEMO), and aims to discuss the most successful methods through which a fair representation of the Palestinian cause can be gathered. World-renowned media professionals including writers, heads of newspapers, radio and television journalists, artists [...]  The Jewish extremist, Meir Ettinger (23), arrested for the arson attack that killed three members of the Dawabsha family in the occupied West Bank last summer, is to be released from Israeli custody. Two Israeli suspects were accused of murder of the arson attack which occurred in January when the home of the Dawabsha family [...] Israeli forces on Monday night returned the bodies of a Palestinian woman and a teenage boy from occupied East Jerusalem to their families for burial, after withholding the bodies for months. Israeli forces deployed heavily in the Um Tuba neighborhood of East Jerusalem before intelligence officers handed over the body of 51-year-old Fadwa Abu Teir [...] |
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The Palestine Chronicle is an independent online newspaper that provides daily news, commentary, features, book reviews, photos, art, etc, on a variety of subjects. However, it's largely focused on Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East region. The Palestine Chronicle is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. To contact the editor, submit an article or any other material, please write to: editor@palestinechronicle.com. For other inquiries write to: info@palestinechronicle.com. |
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