Several days ago, Lefty Coaster posted this diary on Daily Kos, which deserves sharing as it substantiates that, in spite of the Road Map, Annapolis, and the Bush Peace Initiative, Israel continues right on confiscating Palestinian lands, killing along the way as needed, in short, its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
But what is most significant about this diary is that it was based on a report from NPR or National Public Radio, a favorite news source for many educated people. Breakthroughs in the censorship of news from the Israel-Palestinian front like this one suggests that at least some news sources will no longer stand by and watch human rights crimes take place and say nothing about them. A few nights earlier, NBC Nightly News featured a video showing an Israeli soldier shooting a blindfolded, handcuffed Palestinian in the foot.
These breakthroughs indicate progress in countering the censorship/propaganda that pervades the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the American news media. Perhaps still others will follow.
Lefty Coaster’s diary was entitled: NPR: Israel blows up East Jerusalem apartment building in violent act of ethnic cleansing. (See the original for links to information sources.)
Thu Jul 31, 2008
A very disturbing report by NPR revealed a side of Israel Americans are rarely allowed to see by our MSM. A side of Israel that uses Jerusalem’s racist municipal bureaucracy to put pressure on the Arab residents of occupied East Jerusalem to leave the city by squeezing the housing supply available to Arabs.
Dispute Over East Jerusalem Imperils Peace Talks
Israeli officials say they destroyed the home because of a zoning violation. They call it a legal demolition of an illegally expanded building. The owner, Majid Abu Eesha, sees it as an attempt to expel Arabs from the east side of the city that Israel captured in the 1967 war.
“This is a message to all East Jerusalemites,” Eesha says. “They don’t want any Arabs here. They want a pure Zionist Jerusalem.”
The perception that the demolition of houses amounts to a Zionist land grab is widespread among Arab East Jerusalemites. Palestinians complain bitterly that Israel unfairly denies them building permits while encouraging Jews to build here.
Since the 1967 when East Jerusalem was first occupied, Israeli authorities have allowed almost no new construction by the Arab residents of the city.
Arab neighborhoods have become more and more overcrowded as the population of East Jerusalem has grown since 1967. Since no building permits were available to Arabs, illegal construction has become the norm. Israeli Authorities often levy exorbitant fines on the occupants of some buildings without permits, others they demolish without any warning leaving the occupants homeless, with all the contents of their homes destroyed during the demolition.
In Israel it is essentially the homes of Palestinian citizens of Israel (Israeli Arabs) which are targeted for demolition. The phenomenon is linked to the state’s policy of large-scale confiscation of land, restrictive planning regulations and discriminatory policies in the allocation of state land which makes it difficult or impossible for Israeli Arabs to obtain building permits.
Unlicensed houses: In the Arab sector in Israel demolition of houses for lack of building permits is a recurrent phenomenon, whereas house demolition in the Jewish sector is virtually unheard of. In the Occupied Territories it is also invariably Palestinian homes which are destroyed, while illegal Jewish settlements continue to be expanded.
Amnesty International
Meanwhile Israeli “settlers” in outposts the Israeli government regards as illegal are allowed to remain in their homes unmolested.
Does this sound like the kind of government the U.S. should give its unconditional support to? A government that announced this week that that there would be no peace agreement the U.S. is seeking because the Palestinian Authority wouldn’t go along with Israel’s land grab in East Jerusalem.
Kudos to NPR.
ADDENDUM: I said Israel kills Palestinians who get in the way of its colonialism of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Since the Annapolis Conference ended eight months ago, over 520 Palestinians have been killed including over 70 children. Israel continues killing Palestinians, as it has in the past, while America stands by saying nothing, and right wing sympathizers cheer them on.
UPDATE: This piece by Lawrence of Cyberia adds to the propaganda mess that the continuation of the IP conflict is dependent upon. The repeated notion that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic must be balanced by the reality of right wing Zionist rhetoric, like this.
Good News And Bad News
The Good News
Since I last wrote on the subject, I haven’t noticed any ads at all on Haaretz.com for Samson Blinded, the looney-Zionist (as opposed to Right Zionist or liberal Zionist) Web site that portrays Palestinians as cockroaches and encourages their removal from all of Greater Israel, and that had been advertising there on a regular basis for at least the last nine months.
Haaretz.com promotes website advocating genocide and terrorism
Report, The Electronic Intifada, 2 June 2008
Haaretz.com, the website of the Israeli newspaper often cited as an example of Israel’s liberal, critical media carries paid advertisements from a website openly advocating the total destruction of the Palestinian people, the murder of large numbers of Muslim civilians, the assassination of the family members of Arab rulers, and the use of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons against dozens of countries.
The website, Samson Blinded, claims that Google banned its advertisements from its ad words program. If that is true, it would be consistent with Google’s policy that prohibits advertising promoting violence or advocating against any group based on race, ethnic or national origin or religion. Yet the Samson Blinded advertisements appear prominently on the main page and article pages of Haaretz’s website.
Perhaps it’s my strongly-worded complaint to Ha’aretz.com that did it: the one I sent on the last occasion I saw the ad in question, when it was published on the same page as a story decrying Hamas’ inciting against Israelis, of all places. Though as Ha’aretz didn’t actually get round to sending me as much as an acknowledgement, I’m guessing not.
Anyway, for now the ads seem to be gone.
The Bad News
I was slumming it at Ynet yesterday, reading the charming story of Israeli settlers being a light to the nations by tying a Palestinian youth to an ATV and dragging him him through his father’s olive grove, and when I scrolled down to the bottom of the story I noticed who was advertising there (see graphic below).
AD in Ynet.Com
Oh well, it’s Ynet. It’s not like Ynet has that good of a reputation to lose anyway.
Thanks, Lawrence of Cyberia.
