vjp-global

9-20-2016 Israeli forces detain 41 Palestinians, injure 2 in massive raids across occupied territory – Ma'an News Agency http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=773223   [According to The Palestinian Prisoner's Society (PPS), t here were detentions in East Jerusalem, the Jerusalem district, the Hebron district, the Ramallah district, the Bethlehem district; the Jenin district.] According to Addameer, 7,000 Palestinians were held in Israeli prisons as of August. The group estimates that 40 percent of Palestinian men have been detained by Israel at some point in their lives.   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://972mag.com/how-israel-is-turning-one-arab-party-into-a-security-threat/122047/ Balad isn't the first political party in Israel to be suspected of violating campaign finance laws. But it is the first one to have its members arrested in overnight, commando-style raids… Orly Noy argues, "Israel simply does not have the tools to deal with a non-violent national-civil struggle by Israel's Palestinian citizens. Therefore it prefers to mark them as struggles that threaten state security and escalate them. When the state deems nonviolent actions, such as the Gaza flotillas or the BDS movement, as terrorism that subvert the state's existence, it moves them from the civil sphere into one in where it writes all the rules: the security sphere. Defining Balad as a security threat exempts Israel from the need to deal with the party's legitimate national and civil demands. In this way, Sunday's arrests achieved their goals, even if they are only m

..http://www.jta.org/2016/09/20/default/arab-lawmaker-aymen-odeh-wants-to-save-the-israeli-left-but-not-join-it Andrew Tobin interviews Joint List leader MK Aymen Odeh. "Our situation is very complex. It's not only equality that we seek. I want the end of the occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the State of Israel. I want equality for the Arab citizens of Israel. I want social justice for all people. I want full equality between men and women and sexual orientations. I want to protect the environment. I am a citizen, but I'm also a Palestinian, and first and foremost I'm a human being. In the government, and in the right wing in general, they don't recognize me as either..."

http://www.timesofisrael.com/trump-win-could-lead-obama-to-back-2-state-move-at-un-ex-diplomat-predicts/ Outgoing president would want to create standards his successor cannot undo, Dennis Ross says at Palo Alto confab on future of Zionism sponsored by The Times of Israel . Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME membe

http://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-blames-palestinian-attacks-on-despair-but-hamas-credits-resistance/ Amid renewed wave of stabbings and car-rammings, PA president says 'martyrs and youths' behind assaults 'have lost hope.' But Hamas spokesperson Usamah Hamdan [said]: Our young people carry knives of their own accord because they belong to a people of resistance, which is not vanquished by the assault of the occupier or security coordination with it…" Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/why-israels-actions-can-be-called-genocide Israel lobby groups [including JStreet] recently reacted with outrage against the Movement for Black Lives policy platform which refers to US complicity in Israel's "genocide" and "apartheid" against the Palestinian people…Despite the outrage of many pro-Israel groups, there is a long history of human rights scholarship and legal analysis that supports the assertion Israel is committing genocide, according to a statement from the Center for Constitutional Rights .   "Genocide can be applied to the destruction of a people or a national group as a viable group, and that can be both with their being driven from a land… or just the destruction of their national identity," Katherine Franke , board chair at CCR, told The Electronic Intifada.   Palestinians have claimed "that what the state of Israel has done is try

http://972mag.com/yes-israel-does-differentiate-between-jewish-and-palestinian-terror/121919/ When Palestinians demand their attackers receive the same punishments as those who target Jews, the pretense of equal treatment before the law slips away. Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://fmep.org/blog/2016/09/5-takeaways-us-israel-mou/?link_id=1&can_id=c813d5f9ebeb2229b0fcd2c4eb02aabb&source=email-what-were-reading-five-takeaways-from-the-us-israel-mou&email_referrer=what-were-reading-five-takeaways-from-the-us-israel-mou&email_subject=what-were-reading-five-takeaways-from-the-us-israel-mou   Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got less than he hoped… The new MOU ends US support for Israel's defense industry… President Obama significantly reduced Congress' role in the aid process… President Obama drew an explicit connection between US military aid to Israel and the Palestinian issue… President Obama put into action a vision of supporting Israel's security while opposing its policies…   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://jstreet.org/connecting-dots-area-c-briefing-mk-michal-rozin/   MK Rozin discussed how extreme policy proposals and financial support coming from far-right organizations work together to destroy not just Palestinian homes and villages, but the prospects for a two-state solution.   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://www.jta.org/2016/09/14/news-opinion/politics/obamas-38b-aid-package-to-israel-comes-with-caveats-its-generous-but-on-his-terms?utm_source=Newsletter+subscribers&utm_campaign=116ff0d944-Daily_Briefing_9_15_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2dce5bc6f8-116ff0d944-25383237 President Barack Obama's near parting gift to Israel, a guarantee of $38 billion in defense assistance over a decade, distills into a single document what he's been saying throughout eight fraught years: I have your back, but on my terms.   The agreement signed Wednesday in the State Department's Treaty Room here increases assistance for Israel over the prior Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2007 under the George W. Bush administration and guaranteeing Israel $31 billion over 10 years.   But it also substantially shrinks the role Congress plays in a critical forum shaping U.S.-Israel relations, defense assistance, and in so doing diminishes the influence of the mainstream p

http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=773147 Israeli forces Thursday evicted a Palestinian family from their home in the neighborhood of Saadiya in the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem in order to make room for Jewish-only housing managed by right-wing settler group Ateret Cohanim…Ateret Cohanim, along with other pro-settler organizations, commonly uses Israel's 1970 Legal and Administrative Matters law to evict Palestinians from their homes. According to the law, Jewish Israelis are allowed to claim ownership of property if they can prove it was under Jewish ownership before 1948. However, the law only applies to Jewish Israelis, and not to Palestinians who were dispossessed of their lands and properties prior to and after the establishment of Israel in 1948, despite their right being upheld by UN General Assembly Resolution 194…   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://www.alternet.org/g4s-withdraws-operations-palestine-it-moves-north-dakotas-indian-country   …The resistance campaign attracted support from the Palestine solidarity organization Samidoun: Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. The group released a statement on August 30 to express its "strongest support for the Sioux nation and Native resistance," writing: "Settler colonialism and its theft of native land for the purpose of exploitation and the construction of colonial and imperialist power is a threat to indigenous peoples around the world and indeed, the future of the world itself."……G4S has faced widespread allegations of human rights abuses far beyond Palestine—from South Africa to the United Kingdom ... Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/us-condemns-netanyahus-charge-that-palestinians-want-to-ethnically-cleanse-jews-from-west-bank/2016/09/10/73722b45-3d19-42a9-b6aa-4f5283f0f02c_story.html   U.S. officials condemned a provocative video posted Friday by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that accused the Palestinians of wanting to commit "ethnic cleansing" by ridding the West Bank of Jews...   Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://www.timesofisrael.com/j-street-calls-for-tax-review-for-us-pro-settlement-organizations/   Group says NGOs 'channeled millions' to support settlers, despite long-standing bipartisan American policy of condemning settlements…David Ignatius of the Washington Post reported in 2009 that a search of IRS records showed "28 US charitable groups that made a total of $33.4 million in tax-exempt contributions to settlements and related organizations between 2004 and 2007." Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/09/11/how-israel-stole-the-bomb/ When Israel launched a covert scheme to steal material and secrets to build a nuclear bomb, U.S. officials looked the other way and obstructed investigations, as described in a book reviewed by James DiEugenio  [Roger Mattson's Stealing the Atom Bomb: How Denial and Deception Armed Israel ]. Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://972mag.com/special/aslyum-seekers-2/ There are tens of thousands of African asylum seekers in Israel, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan. Israel cannot deport nationals from those countries, but is pursuing a string of measures to stop new arrivals and encourage those already here to leave. +972 tracks the developments and challenges faced by a status-less community under increasing pressure.    Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1317   The economy of the Occupied Palestinian Territory could easily produce twice the gross domestic product (GDP) it generates now, while unemployment and poverty could recede significantly, according to this year's report on UN Conference on Trade And Development.. Surveying a number of studies, the report reveals the channels through which occupation deprives the Palestinian people of their human right to development and hollows out the Palestinian economy.    Chief among these are the confiscation of Palestinian land, water and other natural resources; loss of policy space; restrictions on the movement of people and goods; destruction of assets and the productive base; expansion of Israeli settlements; fragmentation of domestic markets; separation from international markets and forced dependence on the Israeli economy… Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member

http://972mag.com/who-are-the-isis-supporters-in-israels-prisons/121722/ The 46 ISIS-associated prisoners represent only 0.3 percent of the prison population and just one-tenth of one percent of all prisoners. Some went off to fight in Syria, while others expressed support for the group on social media… Out of over 17,000 people being held in Israeli prisons at the end of June, 37 percent of those prisoners, 6,369 people, are classified as "security prisoners," and the rest as criminal prisoners. The "security" classification has no basis in the Israeli criminal code; it is an arbitrary classification used by the IPS to separate people convicted of political or ideological and purely criminal offenses. Almost all "security prisoners" are Palestinian... Posted by Judith Ferster, AIME member