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Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

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    Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution' (OP)


    Salaam

    With Trump in power, Netanyahu has a free hand.


    Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'


    Land grab law 'allows theft, stalls peace process'

    Law that retroactively legalises settler homes on private Palestinian land widely condemned as legitimising theft.


    Israel's land grab law that retroactively legalises thousands of settlement homes in the occupied West Bank legitimises theft, violates international law and ends the prospect of a two-state solution, according to politicians, legal experts and human rights groups.

    The so-called "Regulation Bill" instantly drew wide condemnation as it was voted in by members of the Knesset late on Monday with a 60 to 52 majority.

    The law applies to about 4,000 settlement homes in the West Bank for which settlers could prove ignorance that they had built on privately owned Palestinian land and had received encouragement from the Israeli state to do so.

    Three Israeli NGOs - Peace Now, Yesh Din and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel - and numerous Palestinians said they intend to petition the Supreme Court to cancel the law.

    UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Tuesday in a statement: "This bill is in contravention of international law and will have far reaching legal consequences for Israel."

    The EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said in a statement that the bloc "condemns" the law and urges against its implementation "to avoid measures that further raise tensions and endanger the prospects for a peaceful solution to the conflict".

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the law was an aggression against the Palestinian people.

    "That bill is contrary to international law," Abbas said following a meeting with French President Francois Hollande in Paris. "This is an aggression against our people that we will be opposing in international organisations.

    "What we want is peace ... but what Israel does is to work toward one state based on apartheid."

    Hollande called on Israel to go back on the law, saying it would "pave the way for an annexation, de-facto, of the occupied territories, which would be contrary to the two-state solution".

    Hours before Abbas' meeting with Hollande, Saeb Erekat, secretary general of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, told the Associated Press news agency that the law puts "the last nail in the coffin of the two-state solution".

    Calling the move "theft", Erekat said the ruling showed "the Israeli government trying to legalise looting Palestinian land".

    The Arab League also accused Israel of "stealing the land" from Palestinians.

    "The law in question is only a cover for stealing the land and appropriating the property of Palestinians," said the head of the Cairo-based organisation, Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

    Palestinian owners will be compensated financially or with other land, but cannot negotiate their terms.

    The law is a continuation of "Israeli policies aimed at eliminating any possibility of a two-state solution and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state", Aboul Gheit said.

    Jordan, one of the few Arab states to have diplomatic ties with Israel, also denounced what it called "a provocative law likely to kill any hope of a two-state solution".

    According to the UN envoy for the Middle East peace process, Nickolay Mladenov, the law crosses a "very thick red line" towards annexation of the occupied West Bank, and sets a "very dangerous precedent".

    Speaking to the AFP news agency, he said: "This is the first time the Israeli Knesset legislates in the occupied Palestinian lands and particularly on property issues."

    He also raised the possibility the law could open Israel up to potential prosecution at the International Criminal Court, a threat Israel's own top government lawyer, attorney general Avichai Mandelblit, has also warned of.

    Mladenov called for strong international condemnation of the legislation but declined to criticise the US after President Donald Trump's administration refused to comment on it.

    Trump is more sympathetic to Israel's settlement policies than previous US presidents; the Israeli government has approved plans to build thousands of new homes on occupied territory since the far-right leader settled into the White House.

    "I think that is a very preliminary statement," Mladenov said. "Obviously they do need to consult, this is a new administration that has just come into office and they should be given the time and the space to find their policies."

    White House spokesman Sean Spicer said the US was likely to discuss the law with Netanyahu when the Israeli prime minister visits on February 15, but did not comment further in a press briefing on Tuesday.

    David Harris, head of AJC, the global Jewish advocacy organisation, said that "Israel's High Court can and should reverse this misguided legislation" ahead of Netanyahu's meeting with Trump in February.

    That was also the message from Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who said last week: "The chance that it will be struck down by the Supreme Court is 100 percent."

    'Against all international laws'

    International law considers all settlements to be illegal, but Israel distinguishes between those it sanctions and those it does not, dubbed outposts.

    A Palestinian Cabinet minister also called on the international community for support.

    "Nobody can legalise the theft of the Palestinian lands. Building settlements is a crime, building settlements is against all international laws," said Palestinian Tourism and Antiquities Minister Rula Maayaa. "I think it is time now for the international community to act concretely to stop the Israelis from these crimes."

    Nabil Abu Rdeneh, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, called the law "unacceptable" and urged the international community to act immediately.

    "This is an escalation that would only lead to more instability and chaos," Rdeneh said.

    Palestinians want the occupied West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip - territories Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war - for their future state.

    The international community views settlements as illegal and an obstacle to reaching peace.

    Shortly before leaving office, US President Barack Obama allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution declaring settlements illegal.

    Tobias Ellwood, Britain's Middle East minister, also condemned the land grab bill, saying it "is of great concern that the bill paves the way for significant growth in settlements deep in the West Bank".

    Yuval Shany, an international law professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the law violates basic rights, interferes with property rights and is discriminatory because it regulates only the transfer of land from Palestinians to Jews.

    http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/02/israel-land-grab-law-ends-hope-state-solution-170207143602924.html
    | Likes Scimitar, 'abd al-hakeem liked this post

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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Another update, the smear campaign against Corbyn continues.















    To be fair Corbyn has been known to hang around unsavory types



    Last edited by سيف الله; 08-15-2018 at 07:52 PM.
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Another update, looks like Corbyns capitulating under all the pressure.

    It’s kind of like what you see with Jeremy Corbyn. I mean, both the Tories and the Labour Party — the Labour Parliamentarians, the Blair guys, the media, like The Guardian— they’re all trying to destroy him. These latest attacks on him for anti-Semitism are just insane, but they’ll do anything to try to destroy his chances because he’s trying to create a political party in which people actually participate; not just the rich and powerful guys who tell you what to do, and that’s intolerable. So, I think maybe it’s going to be a real fight.

    https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/taking...-in-elections/





















    Last edited by سيف الله; 08-18-2018 at 12:20 AM.
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    More twisted humour from the Zios.

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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Another update

    Israel is building another 1,000 homes on Palestinian land. Where's the outrage?

    Never in the field of human rights has so much been owed by so many to so few


    In the week that Uri Avnery, the scourge of colonialism, died in Tel Aviv, the Israeli government announced a further enlargement of its massive colonial project in the occupied West Bank. Plans were now advanced, it said on Wednesday, for a further 1,000 “homes” in Jewish “settlements” – still the word we must use for such acts of land theft – and final approval had been given for another 382. Today, 600,000 Jewish Israelis live in about 140 colonies constructed on land belonging to another people, the Palestinians, either in the West Bank or east Jerusalem.

    There is a state of normalcy about all this, the world’s last colonial conflict; a weariness with the figures, a lacklustre response to the huge construction enterprise on Palestinian territory. Charting the spread of red roofs across the hilltops of the West Bank, the swimming pools and the lawns and smart roadways, the supermarkets and orchards – all encircled by acres of barbed wire and now also by the grotesque Wall – has become not so much a “story” for us reporters covering the Middle East, but a tired routine, a tally, a scorecard of land theft, a tale to be updated with each new “settlement” announcement and subsequent protest from Palestinians whose land is taken from them, and from the woeful and corrupt Palestinian Authority. The same is true of the small Israeli activist and leftist groups – B’Tselem, for example and Avnery’s own Gush Shalom – who have bravely fought on, when even Israel stopped listening, to tell the truth of this unique form of aggression.

    Never in the field of human rights has so much been owed by so many, to so few. The number of Jewish colonists living on Palestinian land – illegally under international law – rose from 80,000 at the time of the Oslo agreement in 1993, to 150,000 within seven years. Every one of those 70,000 new Jewish colonists was making a forbidden “unilateral step” – to use the Oslo prose for continued land seizures – when he or she crossed the threshold of their new home, but it mattered not.

    Article 49 of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s 1949 Geneva Conventions is quite specific: “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The UN security council and general assembly, the ICRC and the International Court of Justice agreed Article 49 applied to Israeli-occupied territories. This too, mattered not.

    Enlarging the colonies in the West Bank was sometimes publicly stated to be not just a return to the Biblical land of Israel but a punishment for Palestinians. The Israeli government specifically stated in 2012 that an announcement of 3,000 new “settler” homes in the West Bank was a response to the UN decision to grant Palestine non member observer status. This week Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s defence minister – whose language has embarrassed his own right wing colleagues – said he would build 400 Jewish housing units as a response to the murder of an Israeli civilian by a Palestinian in the Adam colony.

    No one disputes the violence of Palestinian groups – nor that the monstrous wall which encompasses even more Palestinian land has prevented suicide bombers from entering what we call “Israel proper” – the West Bank presumably being “Israel improper”. Indeed the wall and the colonies have become a concomitant part of the occupation. Cambridge scholar Yonatan Mendel has given us an explanation of the phenomenon which is breathtaking in its simplicity and honesty: “A single settlement only marked the beginning of a ‘securing’ project: it was not enough in itself. Logic required that more settlements be built around it. Then, in order to secure the newly established blocks of settlements, a secure network of roads was needed to run between them. But in order to secure the roads, more settlements needed to be constructed along them. Which is not to forget the wall that is needed to secure Israelis from the Palestinians, as well as securing the army patrols that secure the fences around the settlements, which secure the roads that altogether, in a bizarre way, secure Israeli citizens living in Haifa, Tel Aviv and Beer Sheba.”

    This evolving masterplan, Mendel wrote, which “ends with layer upon layer of security to secure security, ignores the crucial fact that the settlers and settlements were the central cause of security threats, and a major incitement to Palestinians. In other words, the security imperative is one of the greatest threats to Israel’s security.”

    If this almost burlesque analysis prevents journalism from its primary task of explaining the facts in a comprehensible way – since the official Israeli and American version of the colonisation is so different from the reality – the response of the US government to the illegal act of dispossession has only added to our unwillingness to confront the truth.

    Take then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright’s pusillanimous remarks during a Middle East tour in 1997. She urged Israel to “refrain from unilateral acts”, including “what Palestinians perceive as the provocative expansion of settlements, land confiscation, home demolitions and confiscation of IDs”. Colonies, property theft – confiscation – and the taking of identity papers, in the Albright lexicon, had become merely “what Palestinians perceive as provocative”. Did she not see these internationally illegal and morally disgraceful deeds as cruel and wicked, let alone provocative? How could she, when Ariel Sharon himself would describe “settlers” in 2001 as “a quality component of Israeli society”?

    And thus we were confronted by the special language of colonisation: “facts on the ground”, a phrase coined by the Israelis, “new realities on the ground”, said George W Bush in his infamous 2004 letter to Sharon, “settlements”, “neighbourhoods”, “suburbs”, ”population centres” – all in a West Bank no longer to be referred to as the “occupied territories” according to a prohibition by former US secretary of state Colin Powell, but rather: “disputed territories”. And if Israelis were not present in “occupied” territories – only in “disputed” territories – surely the Geneva Conventions did not apply. And so it went on.

    In these disputed territories, of course, there were “terrorist attacks” when Palestinians assaulted Israelis – but “deadly clashes” when Israelis shot Palestinians. The wall was not a wall but a “barrier” or ”fence”, or ”security barrier” or a “security fence” or ”separation barrier”. A halt to colonisation would become a “freeze”, a “moratorium”, or – my personal favourite – a “time out”.

    So why, the innocent reader or viewer might ask of us – we who reported this nonsensical stuff – did Arabs use violence against an innocent “settlement” on land which was “disputed” and marked off by a fence, something normally used to mark the boundary between gardens and fields? Surely, all this – neighbourhoods, fences, disputes – could be solved over a cup of tea or by resorting to lawyers? We had desemanticised this terrible conflict. Even Barack Obama, in his panegyric in Cairo nine years ago, spoke of the “displacement” and “dislocation” of Palestinians, rather than their dispossession and exile; as if they awoke one morning, checked the weather and decided to visit the beach in Gaza or enjoy a weekend in Lebanon, but then couldn’t get home again.

    The statistics – dull, boring and indeed familiar – are available to all who wish to know. And the figure today is 600,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem – and in the West Bank, of course, another 1,000 families on their way – all participating in what Avnery believed was a suicidal project which will create an apartheid Israeli state, because if a minority of Jews is to rule over a disenfranchised majority of Arabs – currently upwards of 2.75 million people – that will be the result.

    Back to Avnery, I suppose.

    Six years ago he told me things looked “pretty discouraging”. More so in the week of his death, I fear. He raged against Netanyahu, Trump, the president’s adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner and Lieberman. He didn’t support the boycott campaign, by the way, but said in 2012: “I do believe there will be a break and a complete change along the way, something like the fall of the Berlin Wall, which no-one expected the day before.” And he used to love repeating Donald Rumsfeld’s most infamous expression: “Stuff happens!”

    Right now, I’m not sure I agree.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/israel-settlement-expansion-1000-new-homes-palestinian-land-robert-fisk-wheres-the-outrage-a8504471.html
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    We are not meant to know about this.



    The attacks on Corbyn continue.





    However Jerusalem Post makes counter claim he didnt take part in the 'march'

    Walker also pointed out that Sacks had promoted a visit by World Mizrahi to Israel in May 2017, which included participation in the Jerusalem Day March of Flags. The march, starting at the Old City’s Damascus Gate and wending through the Muslim Quarter, has been strongly criticized for marchers’ inflammatory chants against Arabs and provocative behavior to the Arab residents of the Old City.

    Sacks did not, however, take part in the march, but Walker nevertheless falsely accused him of having done so.




    Oopsie slip of the tongue dearest Rabbi.



    Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s antisemitism accusations against Corbyn are offensive and unfounded

    I was disappointed that Jonathan Sacks, whom I have always considered to be a man of sound reason, has lent his voice to a campaign that to the neutral observer can only be seen as a weakly argued case to sustain the worst government of my long life by traducing an already weak opposition. This is at a time when the country needs a strong political process.

    I was becoming politically aware at about the time that the horrors of the holocaust were becoming known. Like many, I hoped that the revulsion we felt would forever draw a line under the discrimination against Jews that the teachings of the derivative religions had mainly caused.

    However, the rest of society will not long tolerate any group’s demands that discrimination must always be in its favour. At this time there is much anger in our country, which inevitably seeks a target. It is surprising that the same people who are leading, or riding, on the current campaign also refer to a rise in anti-Jewish sentiment, but do not relate cause and effect. I fear that their short term gain is possibly resulting in a return to the bad old ways.

    I use the proper term “anti-Jewish”, because it unreasonable to call someone who thinks the Palestinians have had a raw deal an antisemite. Arabs are Semites too.

    Ian Dillamore
    Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham


    Well done Sasha Simic for having the courage to defend Jeremy Corbyn against the manufactured and tirelessly nasty campaign being orchestrated against him. You are brave.

    This is now a rampaging witch hunt and all rationality has gone out the window. This is well demonstrated by the ex-chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks now smearing Corbyn with an accusation that he is as bad as Enoch Powell. This is frankly off the radar in terms of being grossly insulting and wildly unfair.

    The sector accusing Corbyn of everything short of being the actual devil incarnate seem to have no innate sense of restraint, and no respect whatsoever for the feelings of their target, despite being ready themselves to be offended, scandalised, outraged and so on, on a permanent basis.


    Penny Little
    Oxfordshire


    Jonathan Sacks was disingenuous in calling Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite who courts terrorists, haters and racists. The former chief rabbi has resolutely and unerringly defended Israel’s stance as a lightning rod of tolerance, justice and equality amid the darkness of terror, delegitimisation and defamation.

    Sacks might reread the story of Rachel Currie, the American activist who was crushed under the blades of the bulldozer while she was protecting Palestinian homes from being demolished, or ruminate over the ceaseless proliferation of illegal Jewish settlements, cultural appropriation and land expropriation, and the Judaisation of Jerusalem, economic siege and ethnic and religious persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories. Sacks should sow the seeds of peace, not those of schism and communal discord and hatred.


    Dr Munjed Farid al Qutob
    London NW2


    https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/jonathan-sacks-rabbi-jeremy-corbyn-antisemitism-enoch-powell-a8513101.html
    Last edited by سيف الله; 08-30-2018 at 09:46 AM.
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Another update

    Parts of Censored Al Jazeera Documentary on D.C. Israel Lobby Leaked

    "Astroturfing"
    - the deceptive practice of presenting an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the guise of unsolicited comments from members of the public.


    As Britain is coming to terms with the depth and the vile tactics employed by Zionist political organisations, Haaretz reports today on the Israeli Lobby's activity that is set to obliterate what is left of American values and political culture. Watch this now,

    Leaked clips from film, pulled by Al Jazeera in bid to appease American Jewish community, shows 'astroturfing' by college students involved with right-wing think tank, claims to reveal top U.S. donor of BDS blacklist.

    Haaretz reports: Video excerpts and new details from the censored Al Jazeera documentary about the Israeli lobby in the United States have been leaked to select media outlets in recent days.



    New details about the contents of the censored documentary appeared this week in the French monthly newspaper Le Monde Diplomatique, and video excerpts from it were published by Max Blumenthal and on the website Electronic Intifada.

    Two sources from pro-Israeli organizations who were contacted at the time by Al Jazeera's undercover reporter confirmed to Haaretz on Thursday that the new video excerpts were indeed filmed by the reporter, who has gone underground since early 2017.

    The reporter managed to become an intern at The Israel Project, a pro-Israeli organization in Washington, as Haaretz first reported last year.

    In one of the leaked excerpts from the film, he is seen speaking to one his bosses at The Israel Project, who tells him that Adam Milstein, an Israeli-American millionaire who supports a number of pro-Israeli groups in America, has been funding the secretive organization Canary Mission, which targets activists against Israel and the occupation on American campuses.



    Milstein denied this week, following the publication of this excerpt from the film, that he has been funding Canary Mission, which has been criticized by other pro-Israeli organizations for its aggressive tactics.

    Another excerpt shows how a "pro-Israeli" demonstration of American college students is put together, even though some of the demonstrators are in fact not interested at all in the subject.

    The Al Jazeera reporter joined a group of students who received a fellowship from the right-wing Hoover Institution, and they are seen telling him that their presence in a small pro-Israeli demonstration has been declared mandatory by their supervisors.

    "This is actually the first foot-soldier activity that we've been forced to do," one of the students says. Another describes it as "a chance to shout at Arabs" who will protest against Israel at the same location.

    The students also describe their presence at the demonstration as "astroturfing" - a political term that describes inauthentic political activism, which pretends to be grass-roots based activism. "It's when you set up fake protests," one student says. The same students are later seen holding "pro-Israel" signs at the demonstration.

    Since June 2017, Qatar has been placed under a partial blockade by two of its neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As a result of that blockade, Qatar has intensified its lobbying efforts in the United States, in hopes of convincing the Trump administration to support it in the spat with the Saudis and the UAE. A major pillar of that lobbying effort has been an attempt by Qatar to win over the support of major Jewish American organizations, especially those considered right-wing and supportive of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

    Qatar has invested millions of dollars in courting those Jewish organizations. That has included first-class flights and luxurious visits to Doha that were offered to influential figures in the American Jewish community; six-figure donations to right-wing Jewish organizations; generous honorariums paid to certain individuals who spoke favorably of Qatar after visiting the country, such as Mike Huckabee, a former Republican politician and the father of President Trump's press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders; and other expenses.


    http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/2018...l-lobby-leaked

    Blurb

    The first leaked excerpt of Al Jazeera's censored film on the Israel Lobby in the U.S. claims to identify the funder behind the Canary Mission, an anonymous website devoted to smearing and silencing vocal supporters of Palestinian rights. We play a clip from the film and speak to Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada, which exclusively revealed it

    Last edited by سيف الله; 09-01-2018 at 09:10 AM.
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Jewish establishment victory, Labour adopts IHRA antisemitism definition in full











    Bogus anti-Semitism smears unmask UK democracy as little more than a fraud

    "Anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools," said August Bebel. And fake anti-Semitism is as dangerous as the boy crying wolf argues George Galloway.

    Anti-Semitism is real and present, in Britain and in the world, even where there are no Jews. I well remember during the revolutionary swirl in Bucharest in January 1990, which I witnessed, hearing men fulminating against the post-coup leadership of Ion Iliescu and Petre Roman as "Jews" and the whole "communist" leadership being a "nest of Jews." For them "Jews" and "communists" was a synonym and Jews were everywhere even though they were in fact almost nowhere to be found. Most Romanian Jews had been slaughtered in the Holocaust and the rest had long since gone to Israel.

    In my book 'Downfall: the Ceausescus and the Romanian Revolution' there is a chapter entitled 'The Romanian Jews' in which I describe my long discussion with Romania's Chief Rabbi Dr Moses Rosen as the three stars twinkled in the sky over Poiana Brasov marking the end of the Sabbath. "Anti-Semitism without Jews," was how he described the situation in his country.

    Mind you the Rabbi had long been a man of ring-craft, having to deal with the suddenly dead dictator Ceausescu and accusations that he had collaborated with him. He had, in fact, because the Romanian potentate had been an early example of an anti-Semite who loved Israel. Rabbi Rosen saw it as his prime responsibility to facilitate the exodus of the surviving Romanian Jews to Israel. Nowadays these are common around the world, all the way from Steve Bannon to the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban or the far-right in Britain which once made Jews their whipping boy and now cavort on all-expenses paid trips atop Israeli tanks.

    From anti-Semitism without Jews to anti-Semitic Israelophilia is just one of the unexpected journeys of the last 30 years.

    There is anti-Semitism in Britain and there always has been. But the kind of brutal pogroms of Jews which were a regular feature of European life and death have not happened in Britain since the York and London massacres almost a thousand years ago. Grim repression and vile prejudice carried on for centuries after that but in modern times there has been nothing like what happened in modern Europe. In European countries - West and East - sections of the population fell upon the their own Jewish countrymen even before the Nazis and their trains arrived to take them to the death camps.

    From Ukraine to the Netherlands, Jew-hating locals committed murder against the Jews and many more collaborated with the Occupation forces to entrain their fellow citizens to the gas-chambers. But not in Britain.

    For a time, Britain stood alone against the beast of fascism and it was our finest hour. Whilst Britain did not fight WWII to liberate Jews, liberate what was left of them, we did, along with the Red Army advancing from the east - an army of a state which bore the overwhelming brunt of fascist depredation.

    Whilst groupuscules of the British far-right kept the flame of anti-Semitism alight - together with their "Empire-Loyalist" friends in the Conservatives - the vast majority of British people, and especially those on the left, saw clearly where racism can end up - in Auschwitz and Treblinka - determined to fight it as one of the first banners in their ranks.

    The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whom I have known for 40 years, remains an icon of that tradition as were his parents before him. His own mother fought at Cable St in London's East End against Britain's fascists in 1936 - defending the huge Jewish community then there under the slogan 'They Shall Not Pass'.

    Yet, if you google the words "anti-Semitism" today the first name which will pop-up is not the name of the architects and mass-murderers of Hitler's "Final Solution" but the name of Jeremy Corbyn.

    That is the stupendously stupid achievement of the leaders of the Israeli lobby in Britain - and Tel Aviv - today. Because Corbyn would not turn his face away from the suffering of the Palestinian people, would not eschew condemnation of the brutal Netanyahu regime, he is now - hourly - denounced as an anti-Semite, a Jew-hater, a Nazi.

    Some say the Israeli lobby is the architect of this Salem-style witch-hunt but I disagree. It would be easier if it were true. In my view the true architects are Britain's - and the US - ruling elites. Having tried to smear Corbyn as a Russian agent, a KGB operative, a Czech spy, an IRA man they have fastened on the only smear which appeared to have traction - anti-Semitism. They have weaponized the suffering and the murders of millions of Jews in the Holocaust in their coup against Corbyn.

    It's not a coup against Labour - the kind of Labour Party we had in the past was easily accommodated by the ruling class. It's not even a coup against Corbyn's frankly social-democratic economic program, less radical even than Harold Wilson's Program For Britain back in 1974.

    This is a very British coup against Corbyn's imagined foreign policy. A British government which might put a spoke in NATO's wheel. A British government which could no longer be dragooned into the anti-Russia front. A British government which would end the grisly but profitable arms trade with the despots of Arabia. A British government fighting for justice for the Palestinians, standing with Mexico, Venezuela, South Africa…

    This coup unmasks British democracy as little more than a fraud, lipstick upon a pig. The militarised mendacity of the entire mass media - led by the state broadcaster the BBC - the use of deep-state subversion methods against Corbyn has led many in Britain to fear even for the personal safety of the Labour leader. I used to read about things like this in my callow youth. I knew them to be true, in theory. But not in practice, not in Britain. It has taken this very British coup to change my mind.

    https://www.rt.com/op-ed/437593-anti-semitism-israel-uk-corbyn/#WeStandWithCorbyn
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  16. #472
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Another update, WEll it is their money, but there's more to this than meets the eye.

    UNRWA and Trump's attempt to erase the Palestinian people

    By cutting the funding to the UNRWA, Trump wants to eliminate the Palestinians' demand for the right to return.


    President Donald Trump appears to enjoy experimenting on human beings.

    First came the separation of young children from their parents. In May 2018, Trump ordered the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to send all adults caught crossing the border to federal jail to await trial, while transferring their children to either foster care or detention centres. Most of these children have been kept in what are essentially cages, and some have even been given psychotropic drugs without parental consent.

    The assumption is that pain, agony and suffering alter human behaviour, and that traumatising a large group of children and their parents serve to deter other people, even those fleeing life-threatening conflict zones, from trying to enter the US. The moral perspective is that the end justifies the means, even if the means include cruel and inhuman policies.

    Now comes Trump's latest experiment, this time with education, medical care, and famine. Adopting warped rhetoric, this experiment is presented as part of a groundbreaking Israeli-Palestinian peace plan.

    The idea is to cut all funding to the United Nations Relief Works and Agency (UNRWA), which, for the past 70 years, has been providing lifesaving assistance to more than five million Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan.

    UNRWA's spokesperson, Chris Gunness, spelled out the repercussions of such actions: "Let there be no mistake," he said, "this decision is likely to have a devastating impact on the lives of 526,000 children who receive a daily education from UNRWA; 3.5 million sick people who come to our clinics for medical care; 1.7 million food insecure people who receive assistance from us, and tens of thousands of vulnerable women, children and disabled refugees who come to us."

    Indeed, if the funding gap is not covered by other countries, Trump's decision will have a devastating impact on the lives of millions of Palestinians.

    This experiment seems to have two distinct - if related - goals.

    First, Trump apparently wants to see if a policy of destruction and anti-humanitarian intervention can be used as a peacemaking device in this protracted conflict.

    This is an inversion of parts of the Oslo paradigm, where the European Union and other international players decided to spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year on Palestinian state-building projects. Even though Oslo's goal may never have been the creation of an independent Palestinian state, Palestinian life was still considered to have some value.

    As it turns out, the idea informing the 1993 peace accords was to transfer control of a number of institutions and policies - such as education, healthcare, and food security - to the Palestinians in order to free Israel from the responsibility of managing the daily lives of the population it had colonised. And, while Israel abdicated responsibility for the Palestinian people, it continued to retain its hold over most of their land.

    Trump's current idea, by contrast, is to simply force a "peace process" by destroying all of the institutions that modern states use to manage their population while bringing the inhabitants to the brink of social death.

    Therefore, it is no coincidence that at exactly the same moment that Trump is cutting all funding from UNRWA, he has also decided to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority. The strategy is straightforward: the Palestinians must first be reduced to what Italian political theorist Georgio Agamben has called bare life in order to force them to accept the "great deal" that President Trump intends to offer them.

    The experiment's second goal is to erase Palestinian refugeehood.

    It is important to remember that UNRWA was set up to assist the 700,000 Palestinian refugees after the creation of Israel in 1948. Whether these Palestinians fled or were forcibly expelled from their towns and villages may be a point of contention, but there is no argument that, after the war had subsided, Israel refused to allow the Palestinians to return to their homes, thus violating article 11 of United Nations Resolution 194. This is how Israel created the refugee problem.

    Today, the descendants of these refugees number over five million people and it was always assumed that their status would be resolved through the creation of a Palestinian state. Since it is extremely unlikely that a viable Palestinian state is a component of Trump's "peace deal", the strategy now endeavours to erase the vast majority of Palestinian refugees from the historical and contemporary record.

    Parroting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's accusation of "fictitious" Palestinian refugees who threaten the state of Israel by perpetuating the right of return, Trump is currently claiming that only the people born and who had actually lived in Mandatory Palestine before the 1948 war - people who are now more than 70-years old - can be considered refugees. Their descendants cannot.

    The logic here, too, is clear. If the funding to the agency that feeds millions of refugees is stopped, then they will no longer be considered refugees, thus paving the way for a deal on Israel's terms. Stopping US funding, in other words, merely attempts to reinforce the deranged post-truth reality that has become Trump's trademark: in this case, that refugees are not refugees.

    While, the notion that property rights can be abrogated after one generation would seem anathema in Trump's business world, actually, viciously attacking the downtrodden fits perfectly with his modus operandi. His world view is perhaps best expressed in a recent tweet posted by his ally Netanyahu:

    "The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end, peace is made with the strong."

    From Cambodia to China and all the way to Europe, the 20th century saw its share of experiments on humans, all of which had horrific consequences. Tragically, Trump is no student of history. He is trying hard to present his introduction of new experiments as the pursuit of a peace deal, but as Gideon Levy recently wrote in Ha'aretz, it is actually a declaration of war against the Palestinian people.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/unrwa-trump-attempt-erase-palestinian-people-180903135218614.html
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  17. #473
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Junon, you're missing one thing. While Labour did adopt the annex with examples to the IHRA definition, it did so by adding its own caveat that it does not infringe on freedom of speech on Israel or on advocacy on behalf of the rights of the Palestinians.

    I would have preferred if they had trashed the whole IHRA text and denounced it as imprecise to the point of being useless for anything but making spurious accusations of antisemitism. Still, it's not so bad. These extra caveats should greatly mitigate the ability to use the IHRA text for that. Furthermore, if the Corbyn-haters still protest (which they quite predictably already are doing), it will make it harder for them to credibly deny that their purpose is anything but to shut down the debate on Israel.

    Furthermore, making such an apparent concession that in fact concedes little of substance, they're making it harder for the haters to use the matter as a pretext for outrage. All this happens in a wider context where Momentum has gradually seized control of the party, and having gotten the long knives out and started deselecting Blairite MPs who won't get onboard with the party programme. The Blairites are getting desperate, they've thrown everything and the kitchen sink at him and failed to bring him down. All that's left for them is to do a last-ditch attempt through coordinated mass resignation in protest, there's been murmurs of that some time now. Adopting a caveated IHRA makes the Corbynite faction look conciliatory and any Blairites who go through with the mass resignation to look silly.
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  18. #474
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Maybe, a lot of Blairite Mps are under pressure.



    Mind you Chukas opinion is as reliable as the Scottish weather.





    Response to Chuka.





    With the definition passed, it makes it increasingly difficult to have straight forward debates on the issue, criticising Israel will be like walking over a minefield.



    - - - Updated - - -

    More importantly

    Last edited by سيف الله; 09-12-2018 at 06:29 PM.
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  20. #475
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Another update

    Bulldozing Palestinian homes: The global firms aiding Israeli demolitions

    Multinational construction companies sell vehicles to the Israeli authorities for demolitions that activists condemn


    Human rights groups have condemned international construction firms for their role in the destruction of Palestinian villages including Khan al-Ahmar, which is set to be razed in the coming days.

    Photographs, video and social media posts show vehicles and equipment that have been sold to the Israeli army by Caterpillar, JCB and LiuGong being used in the demolition of Palestinian homes. All three companies have declined or failed to respond to MEE's requests for comment.

    In early September, the Israeli High Court of Justice rejected several last-ditch petitions filed by Khan al-Ahmar's residents and said that authorities could raze the homes from 12 September onwards.

    Amnesty International described the High Court's decision as sanctioning a "war crime" while UK-based NGO War on Want condemned the companies, which it says profit from sales of the equipment to the Israeli government.

    War on Want's Senior Campaigns Officer, Ryvka Barnard added that video and images incriminated Caterpillar, JCB, and Liugong for their role in Palestinian house demolitions.

    "We've seen photographic and video evidence of equipment from JCB and Liugong, for example, being used by the Israeli army and waiting to go into places like Khan al-Ahmar," Barnard told MEE.

    Activists have been exposing the complicity of companies like JCB and Caterpillar for many years, but the companies tend to respond in the typical manner of saying the human rights violations sadden them, but that they have no power over their equipment is used."

    Khan al-Ahmar is located between the Israeli settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim in the occupied West Bank, and has been a home for Bedouin since the 1950s. It has been at risk of demolition since 2010 after Israeli authorities accused the estimated 200 residents of illegal construction.

    Residents have rejected a government offer to rehouse them to West Jahalin, near the Palestinian community of Abu Dis, saying that the new site is adjacent to a landfill. Rights advocates say that a forcible transfer of the residents would violate the international laws that apply to occupied territories.

    Caterpillar (CAT)

    The US-based heavy equipment company has long been the target of boycott campaigns for its sale of bulldozers to the Israeli army.

    In July, villagers who spotted the CAT-branded heavy drilling equipment outside Khan al-Ahmar feared that it would lead to the construction of a new road for the nearby Israeli settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim.

    CAT bulldozers have been used previously by the Israeli army to demolish homes across the occupied Palestinian territories, including the D9 bulldozer, which killed American activist Rachel Corrie in 2003.

    The Corries sued the company over their daughter's death, but a US federal district judge dismissed the case in November 2005.

    In 2012, CAT was removed from the index of "socially responsible" companies put together by American investment support firm MSCI Inc; it cited concerns about CAT bulldozers being used by Israel in controversial operations.

    CAT said that it "does not equip tractors with armour or sell directly to the Israeli military but through the US government. And it cannot monitor the use of every piece of its equipment around the world".

    The company did not respond to calls for comment when asked by MEE about the presence of its equipment in Khan al-Ahmar.

    JCB


    The British-based company is famed for its yellow bulldozers. Israel has used its equipment in occupied East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Jordan Valley and across the West Bank.

    Pictures taken earlier in July showed JCB drilling equipment outside Khan al-Ahmar.

    In the past, its vehicles have been used by the Israeli government to build illegal Israeli settlements and by the army to destroy Palestinian homes, mosques and agricultural areas.

    In 2012 JCB's equipment was used to demolish homes in Silwan, a Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem. It dominates the Israeli market with a 65 percent market share of all excavators and a 90 percent market share of commonly used loading vehicles.

    The company only started to produce specially built military-grade construction vehicles in 1984: through offshoot JCB Defence Products it has supplied 3,500 vehicles to the military forces of 57 countries.

    JCB declined to comment after requests from Middle East Eye.

    LiuGong


    Chinese company LiuGong, a new player in the Israeli market, was founded in 1958 and is headquartered in Liuzhou.

    Like JCB and CAT, the company supplies bulldozers and other types of heavy construction equipment. Operating out of the Jebel Ali Free Zone in Dubai, it opened its Middle East office in 2011.

    Footage showed LiuGong bulldozers being used to dismantle Bedouin homes in early July, while other Palestinian activists sat on top of the diggers in a bid to stop them destroying Khan al-Ahmar.

    The use of LiuGong bulldozers by the Israeli army represents the growing Chinese presence in the country and across the Middle East, as European and American based construction companies face growing pressure to stop trading with Israel.

    LiuGong did not respond to requests for comments at the time of writing.

    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-bulldozers-palestinian-village-demolish-khan-al-ahmar-jcb-caterpillar-cat-liugong-1208431690
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  21. #476
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Another update

    Trump administration announces closure of Washington PLO office

    Palestinians decry US administration's decision as 'a declaration of war' on efforts to bring peace.


    The United States announced the closure of the Palestinian mission in Washington, DC, in what Palestinian leaders described as "a declaration of war" on peace efforts by the administration of President Donald Trump.

    In a statement on Monday, the US State Department said the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) office "has not taken steps to advance the start of direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel".

    "We have permitted the PLO office to conduct operations that support the objective of achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between Israelis and the Palestinians since the expiration of a previous waiver in November 2017," the statement said.

    It added the PLO leadership "has condemned a US peace plan they have not yet seen and refused to engage with the US government with respect to peace efforts and otherwise".

    In response, the Palestinian Authority (PA) said the move would allow Israel to continue "their policies against the Palestinian people and land".

    "It is a declaration of war on efforts to bring peace to our country and the region," PA spokesman Yousef al-Mahmoud was quoted as saying by Wafa news agency.

    PLO Secretary-General Saeb Erekat said in a statement the decision was "yet another affirmation of the Trump administration's policy to collectively punish the Palestinian people, including by cutting financial support for humanitarian services including health and education".

    Targeting the ICC

    Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton, threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday with sanctions if it carries out investigations into the US and Israel.

    "The United States will always stand with our friend and ally, Israel," Bolton said in a speech to the Federalist Society, a conservative group, in Washington, DC.

    "The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel."

    Bolton said the US will target the ICC it it formally proceeds with opening an investigation into alleged war crimes committed by US service members and intelligence professionals during the war in Afghanistan.

    Deteriorating ties

    The action against the PLO, which serves as the main entity representing the Palestinian people, is the latest in a series of measures by the Trump administration against the Palestinian leadership.

    Over the past year, Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, has repeatedly questioned Mahmoud Abbas' commitment to peace and the US president's so-called "deal of the century".

    The Palestinian leadership, which sees East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state, has suspended contacts with the US, after Washington recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel late last year.

    The Palestinians insist the status of the city is an issue to be negotiated between them and the Israelis.

    Officials in the Gaza Strip, which has been administered by Hamas since 2007, have also previously blasted the US for its support to Israel, saying Washington has long lost its regional credibility.

    The US gives Israel annual military aid of $3.1bn. Next year, that figure will increase to $3.8bn under a 10-year deal agreed by Barack Obama shortly before he stepped down as president.

    While the details of Trump's so-called "deal of the century" have not officially been released, leaks have suggested that the Palestinians would initially control the Gaza Strip and less than half of the occupied West Bank, while a Palestinian capital would be created from villages surrounding Jerusalem.

    The Israelis would retain security control over the Jordan valley and have total control over Palestinian travel between the West Bank and Gaza, while a corridor will be created between Palestinian territory and Jerusalem's holy sites.

    It appears meanwhile that Palestinians would have to surrender the principle of the right of return of Palestinian refugees expelled during the creation of Israel, while the future of illegal Israeli settlements and the final border between Palestine and Israel would be decided at a later date.

    'Siding with the bully'

    According to Diana Buttu, a Palestinian lawyer and analyst who served as a legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team from 2000 to 2005, Monday's decision is part of a list of requests the Israeli government made to the Trump administration last year.

    "The US was handed a wishlist by Israel, and that wishlist has everythig the Netanyahu government wants the Trump government to do," Buttu told Al Jazeera.

    "Slowly, piece by piece, the Trump administration is checking off everything that is on this list."

    "First we saw the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in May," Buttu said.

    "Then we saw the limiting of the number of refugees and stop funding for UNRWA last week, and lastly there not allowing the Palestinians to have official representation in the US, which is what happened now."

    According to Buttu, the US is rewarding Israel for "bad and illegal behaviour", while at the same time punishing Palestinians living under occupation.

    "The US is saying they are always going to side with the bully while punishing those that demand to live under freedom."

    According to Buttu, Monday's decision will not affect the already failed peace process.

    "The fact that we're still talking about a peace process is laughable," she told Al Jazeera.

    "All they are doing is keep talking about this "deal of the century", but they haven't presented anything yet and I think it is just an attempt to bring Palestinians to their knees," Buttu added.

    "But that is not going to happen, because the Palestinian people have been through the Nakba and more, and if the US thinks these decisions will bring them to their knees they're wrong."

    Cut in funding

    Monday's announcement comes just weeks after the US said it would cut more than $200m in economic aid for the Palestinians.

    The US had planned to give the Palestinians $251m for good governance, healthcare, education and funding for civil society in the current 2018 budget year that ends on September 30.

    On Sunday, Haaretz reported that the US has also decided to cut more than $20m in foreign aid meant to support hospitals in East Jerusalem.

    According to Haaretz, the hospitals treat Palestinian patients who require cancer and eye treatments.

    The decision to cut funding comes amid a severe humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, where more than 160 Palestinians protesting for their right to return to the areas from which they were forcibly expelled from in 1948 have been killed by Israeli gunfire since March 30 during weeks-long demonstrations near the fence with Israel.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/09/trump-administration-close-plo-office-washington-dc-180910064915646.html

    http://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje...nishingMap.mp4
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  22. #477
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Those Blairite MPs who are protesting over attempts to deselect them and demanding Corbyn protect them, after three years of having tried to bring about his downfall. I seriously can't believe the irony is lost on them. I suspect it's just a last-ditch effort to bring down Corbyn, hoping that he'll say or do something stupid in response that they can use to bring him down.
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  23. #478
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    More comment on the Corbyn affair.

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  24. #479
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Another update

    IHRC petitions Charity Commission about “vindictive campaign” to silence its director

    The Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC) has lodged a complaint with the Charity Commission about what it calls “the continued harassment of one of its directors” in “a vindictive campaign to silence anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist voices.”

    The complaint comes after the pro-Israel Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) launched a judicial review of a decision last month by the Crown Prosecution Service to throw out an attempted private prosecution against Nazim Ali on the grounds that chants he made during last June’s Al-Quds demonstration in London caused alarm or distress to Zionists taking part in a counter demonstration.

    The IHRC said it had hoped that would be the end of the matter but “the CAA seems intent on pursuing a case that clearly has no merit in law.”

    Mr Ali, an Islamic Human Rights Commission speaker, made several anti-Israel and anti-Zionist comments during the march but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) found that he had no case to answer.

    Zionists took particular offence when Ali said: “Some of the biggest corporations who are supporting the Conservative Party are Zionists. They are responsible for the murder in Grenfell. The Zionist supporters of the Tory Party.”

    In the letter to the Charity Commission, the IHRC calls on the regulator to investigate whether the CAA is in breach of charity law by using charitable funds to relentlessly pursue “false, vindictive and patently flawed cases.”

    It is certainly “not in the interest of the public for charitable funds to be used to pursue personal vendettas against political opponents,” says the letter.

    “The Commission should decide whether it is appropriate for CAA to keep their status as a charitable organisation whilst squandering their funds to silence and attack people who exercise their freedom of expression.”

    The Campaign Against Antisemitism was formed in August 2014 during a major Israeli offensive against Gaza.

    It says it works closely with police forces around the country, the Crown Prosecution Service, regulatory bodies and the government to ensure that antisemitism is detected, investigated and punished with the full force of the law.

    Last week it issued court proceedings against the national prosecuting agency after the CPS derailed CAA’s own private prosecution of Nazim Ali.

    CAA has alleged that Ali made anti-Semitic statements during the pro-Palestinian rally, including a suggestion that “Zionists” were in part responsible for the Grenfell Tower tragedy.

    However, CAA said it was now challenging that CPS decision “on the basis that it was irrational and unreasonable.”

    “This is a case that the CPS should have prosecuted itself,” said CAA chair Gideon Falter. “Our emphatic legal advice is that their decision to prevent us from doing so was irrational. We hope to succeed and resume the prosecution.”

    In response to the CAA’s decision to pursue a judicial review, a CPS spokesman said: “We will be opposing the application.”

    He added: “The CPS stopped the case after a senior prosecutor carefully reviewed all the available evidence and considered legal representations from the CAA and the suspect.

    “After applying the relevant law we concluded there was no realistic prospect of conviction and therefore the evidential test for prosecution set out in the Code for Crown Prosecutors was not met.”

    https://5pillarsuk.com/2018/09/12/ihrc-petitions-charity-commission-about-vindictive-campaign-to-silence-its-director/
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    سيف الله's Avatar Full Member
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    Re: Israel land grab law 'ends hope of two-state solution'

    Salaam

    Can anybody else confirm this?

    Saudi Arabia bars Palestinians in Jordan from Umrah and Hajj

    Umrah and Hajj tour agents say Riyadh has stopped issuing visas to Palestinians who hold temporary Jordanian passports.



    Saudi Arabia bans 300,000 Palestinians from Makkah

    Saudi Arabia issued new directives banning up to 300,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon from performing pilgrimage, Alarab.qa reported yesterday.

    Reporting the Palestinian Institution for Human Rights (Shahed), the Qatari news website said that Saudi Arabia stopped issuing visas for Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who do not hold a Palestinian Authority (PA) passport.

    Shahed reported travel agents were informed by the Saudi embassy in Lebanon not to accept applications from Palestinians who do not have PA passports.

    The rights group said it was worried about the “sudden” Saudi decision, calling on Kingdom to identify its reasons which have “dangerous consequences” on the Palestinian refugees and their future.

    According to Alarab.qa, Shahed could not reach officials at the Saudi embassy in Lebanon to get information about the issue, but said the PA embassy in Beirut did not receive official directions in this regard.

    Shahed said the move adds further burdens on Palestinian refugees as it restricts their freedom of movement and limits their chance of obtaining jobs in the Kingdom, in addition to preventing them from performing the Hajj.

    It is worth mentioning that thousands of Palestinians, who hold Jordanian passports, were banned from applying for Hajj visas this year.

    Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have been prevented from performing Umrah since the Egyptian military coup in 2013 saw the Rafah crossing on an almost permanent basis.

    https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180919-saudi-arabia-bans-300000-palestinians-from-makkah/

    This is related, only opened last month.

    Blurb

    The Palestinian president has visited a new departure hall for Hajj pilgrims. The site has been opened in the West Bank city of Jericho.

    The Palestinian president arrives in Jericho. He's come to see a newly-inaugurated departure hall for Hajj and Umrah pilgrims. The site aims to make it easier for thousands of people to travel from the West Bank through Jordan to Mecca for the annual pilgrimage. "We are very pleased to offer all the facilities for the rest of the pilgrims to Mecca to travel comfortably and do the rites of pilgrimage and come back satisfied," says Mahmoud Abbas. Pilgrim City, as the departure hall is known, has overnighting facilities and will make customs controls easier.

    Israel is in charge of all crossings from the West Bank into Jordan. The hall is located just outside the West Bank city of Jericho. Palestinian media said some 1,800 pilgrims departed Monday for Amman, Jordan and will then continue to Mecca. The facilities were built by the Palestinian Authority and have so far cost around 1.2 million US dollars.


    Last edited by سيف الله; 09-20-2018 at 11:11 PM.
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