Matthew Ferry's List: Israel-Palestine

• Amir Fuchs, a civil-liberties lawyer and a researcher at the Israel Democracy Institute, said that Israel has no explicit law ensuring free speech, but that its Supreme Court has aggressively protected it. Mr. Fuchs argues that the ban is unnecessary because incitement to violence is already a crime, and anyone who is called a Nazi can sue for defamation.
• The proposed law, Mr. Fuchs complained, “says that if some 15-year-old kid will tell his friend that their teacher is a Nazi, even if it’s a joke, technically it’s a criminal offense.”
• “Of course, I don’t support using these words, and also the symbols of the Nazis, and using the Holocaust to persuade and to try to use it in every conversation,” he said. “But you measure the freedom of speech in a democratic country in the freedom to say these disturbing and annoying things, not in what is nice and pleasant to hear.”

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• We need to flatten entire neighborhoods in Gaza. Flatten all of Gaza.  The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima – the Japanese weren’t surrendering  fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.
• There should be no electricity in  Gaza, no gasoline or moving vehicles, nothing. Then they’d really call  for a ceasefire.
  

• Included in the House’s Defense Appropriations Bill approved last week is $351 million for the Iron Dome anti-missile system, which is $175 million more than was requested in President Obama’s 2015 budget and $131 million more than funding in the 2014 fiscal year.

   

• who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.

  • Also have been reports of responding with sound bombs and rubber bullets. 
• As the funerals were underway, hundreds of extreme-right protesters gathered in Jerusalem demanding that the government avenge the deaths. Chanting “Death to Arabs,” they tried to attack Arab passers-by who had to be extricated by the police. More than 40 protesters were arrested.

• One crucial question is whether the United States will stop undermining the international consensus, which favors a two-state settlement along the internationally recognized border (the Green Line established in the 1949 ceasefire agreements), with guarantees for “the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries.” That was the wording of a resolution brought to the UN Security Council in January 1976 by Egypt, Syria and Jordan, supported by the Arab states—and vetoed by the United States.

   

• In contrast, US investment is flowing into Israel. When Warren Buffett bought an Israeli tool-making firm for $2 billion last year, he described Israel as the most promising country for investors outside the United States itself.
• But it is not South African–style apartheid. In the occupied territories, the situation is far worse than it was in South Africa, where the white nationalists needed the black population: it was the country’s workforce, and as grotesque as the bantustans were, the nationalist government devoted resources to sustaining and seeking international recognition for them. In sharp contrast, Israel wants to rid itself of the Palestinian burden.

• The road ahead leads not to South Africa, but rather to an increase in the proportion of Jews in the Greater Israel that is being constructed. This is the realistic alternative to a two-state settlement. There is no reason to expect Israel to accept a Palestinian population it does not want.

   

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• According to Article II of that convention, the term applies to acts "committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them."
• There, the term "racial discrimination" is defined as "any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life."
• It is not legally possible in Israel for a Jewish citizen to marry a non-Jewish citizen.

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• I've learned that – and this is just one example of many – a Palestinian child has tragically been killed every three days for the past 14 years. That bears repeating, since such deaths are rarely, if ever, given any attention in America: Palestinian parents have had to bury a child every three days for the past 14 years.

   

• Ben Gurion also oversaw the massive land theft, which transferred most of the land in Israel from its Palestinian owners to the Zionist state or its affiliated organizations, such as the Jewish National Fund. The usual ploy went like this: the army – over which Ben Gurion kept control, combining the office of Prime Minister and Defense Minister – would inform a Palestinian village it had to be evacuated for military reasons for a year, and after a year the land would be declared abandoned and confiscated.

• The Israeli army said it attacked more than 160 sites in Gaza early Wednesday, including 118 concealed rockets launching sites, six Hamas compounds — including naval police and national security compounds — 10 militant command centres, weapons storage facilities and 10 tunnels used for militant activity and to ferry supplies in from Egypt. The border between Gaza and Egypt has effectively been closed for months.

    

• A charity for disabled people and a mosque in which Israel claims weapons were concealed were reported to be among the latest targets struck as the Palestinians and their international supporters began drafting a UN resolution calling for “an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire”.

• Israel said preparations were under way for a possible ground attack, with tanks and artillery massed along the border and 33,000 reservists mobilised out of 40,000 approved by the cabinet.
  

• So far no one in Israel has been killed. Two have been seriously wounded, including a man at a petrol station hit by a rocket.
  
• In northern Israel at least one rocket fired from Lebanon struck an open area near the town of Metula, prompting troops to hit back with artillery fire, the army said.
  

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• Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said Israeli strikes raised the death toll there to 135, with more than 920 wounded. Among the dead was a nephew of Ismail Haniyeh, a top Hamas leader, who was killed in an airstrike near his home, Hamas officials said.

• The "Iron Dome," a US-funded, Israel-developed rocket defence system, has intercepted more than 130 incoming rockets, preventing any Israeli fatalities so far. A handful of Israelis have been wounded by rockets that slipped through.