Israel and West Bank Settlements

[cradleandshoot]

UN war crimes expert claims Israeli settlements amount to a war crime.

Using the words UN and expert in the same sentence is an oxymoron.

[dislaxxic]

The ADL Goes Full Bully

The organization’s new campaign against anti-Zionist and Palestine-solidarity groups is a clear sign that it lacks the credibility to lead on civil rights issues.

The ADL and the larger Israel-advocacy apparatus may score temporary victories in this fight. But in the long run, they will not win. Despite pouring substantial resources into pushing back against BDS and Palestine-solidarity campaigns—resources that far exceed anything their opponents have ever been able to muster—the movement for Palestinian freedom, for equality for all people living in Israel-Palestine, is only growing, becoming more mainstream. Indeed, for a rising generation of young people, support for Palestinian freedom is becoming a new baseline principle, no different from commitments to racial and gender equality. This generation also rejects the tired, zero-sum line of argument advanced by the ADL: that support for Palestinian liberation and opposition to anti-Semitism are incompatible.

..

[jhu72]

Fascism everywhere you look.

[Brooklyn]

Israel assassinates Palestinian reporters:



https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-61448311

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/pol ... -al-khalil



Then they attack the funerals of these victims. This after engaging in a smear campaign in which they say these women "attacked" them.

[Brooklyn]

Israeli terrorism in Iran continues unabated:


https://www.google.com/search?q=israel+ ... e&ie=UTF-8


There have now been five separate explosions in Iran tonight.

The IR ministry of Defense claims the explosion at a ammunition’s factory in Isfahan was the result of drones


https://apnews.com/2ea4c51f7be1e377b95d1fccc1c963ad

Iran says drone attack targets defense facility in Isfahan


Bomb-carrying drones targeted an Iranian defense factory in the central city of Isfahan overnight, authorities said early Sunday, causing some damage at the plant amid heightened regional and international tensions engulfing the Islamic Republic.

The Iranian Defense Ministry offered no information on who it suspected carried out the attack, which came as a refinery fire separately broke out in the country’s northwest and a 5.9-magnitude earthquake struck nearby, killing two people.

However, Tehran has been targeted in suspected Israeli drone strikes amid a shadow war with its Mideast rival as its nuclear deal with world powers collapsed. Meanwhile, tensions also remain high with neighboring Azerbaijan after a gunman attacked that country’s embassy in Tehran, killing its security chief and wounding two others.

Details on the Isfahan attack, which happened around 11:30 p.m. Saturday, remained scarce. A Defense Ministry statement described three drones being launched at the facility, with two of them successfully shot down. A third apparently made it through to strike the building, causing “minor damage” to its roof and wounding no one, the ministry said.

IRAN
Paris rallies demand release of Europeans imprisoned in Iran
US charges 3 in plot to kill Iranian-American author in NYC
Fatal shooting at Azerbaijan Embassy in Iran raises tensions
Correction: France-Iran story
Iranian state television’s English-language arm, Press TV, aired mobile phone video apparently showing the moment that drone struck along the busy Imam Khomeini Expressway that heads northwest out of Isfahan, one of several ways for drivers to go to the holy city of Qom and Tehran, Iran’s capital. A small crowd stood gathered, drawn by anti-aircraft fire, watching as an explosion and sparks struck a dark building.

“Oh my God! That was a drone, wasn’t it?” the man filming shouts. “Yeah, it was a drone.”

Those there fled after the strike.

That footage of the strike, as well as footage of the aftermath analyzed by The Associated Press, corresponded to a site on Minoo Street in northwestern Isfahan that’s near a shopping center that includes a carpet and an electronics store.

Iranian defense and nuclear sites increasingly find themselves surrounded by commercial properties and residential neighborhoods as the country’s cities sprawl ever outward. Some locations as well remain incredibly opaque about what they produce, with only a sign bearing a Defense Ministry or paramilitary Revolutionary Guard logo.

The Defense Ministry only called the site a “workshop,” without elaborating on what it made. Isfahan, some 350 kilometers (215 miles) south of Tehran, is home to both a large air base built for its fleet of American-made F-14 fighter jets and its Nuclear Fuel Research and Production Center.

Separately, Iran’s state TV said a fire broke out at an oil refinery in an industrial zone near the northwestern city of Tabriz. It said the cause was not yet known, as it showed footage of firefighters trying to extinguish the blaze.

State TV also said the magnitude-5.9 earthquake killed two people and injured some 580 more in rural areas in West Azerbaijan province, damaging buildings in many villages.

Iran and Israel have long been engaged in a shadow war that has included covert attacks on Iranian military and nuclear facilities.

Last year, Iran said an engineer was killed and another employee was wounded in an unexplained incident at the Parchin military and weapons development base east of the capital, Tehran. The ministry called it an accident, without providing further details.

Parchin is home to a military base where the International Atomic Energy Agency has said it suspected Iran conducted tests of explosive triggers that could be used in nuclear weapons.

In April 2021, Iran blamed Israel for an attack on its underground Natanz nuclear facility that damaged its centrifuges.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but Israeli media widely reported that the country had orchestrated a devastating cyberattack that caused a blackout at the nuclear facility. Israeli officials rarely acknowledge operations carried out by the country’s secret military units or its Mossad intelligence agency.

In 2020, Iran blamed Israel for a sophisticated attack that killed its top nuclear scientist.

Iran has always insisted its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. U.S. intelligence agencies, Western nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency have said Iran ran an organized nuclear weapons program until 2003.

The United Nations’ top nuclear official, Rafael Mariano Grossi, recently warned that Iran has enough highly enriched uranium to build “several” nuclear weapons if it chooses.

Efforts to revive a 2015 agreement with world powers that placed limits on Iran’s nuclear activities ground to a halt last year. Both the U.S. and Israel have vowed to prevent Iran from ever acquiring nuclear weapons, and neither has ruled out military action.



So many people in this world condemn Russia for its militarism in Ukraine but look the other way as Israel terrorizes Iran. If you're going to condemn one, then condemn the other.

[Brooklyn]

Netanyahu makes fascist threats against Iran because of its cooperation with the IAEA:


Netanyahu has threatened military actions against Tehran ~ https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu ... -outlawed/


While the hysterical news media in the USA and UK continue to pretend Iran is threatening war, it is clearly Israel that is jeopardizing world peace. For example the British Independent spews this garbage in which is alleges that Iran is planning on some war against the British: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/ir ... 5b68&ei=26

Yeah like Iran is going to launch military vessels, march its troops, and send airplanes all the way from the Middle East all the way to England. Hard to believe that anyone can be stupid enough to believe this mierda.

[Kismet]

Things in Israel right now look scary as hell. National strike has shut down Ben Gurion airport and after Benny fired the Defense minister both reservist and active duty military vow to resist and/or quit.
Can onl hope the Iranians don't decide to take advantage of the chaos and try something nefarious (like they are doing attacking US base in Northern Syria.)

[Seacoaster(1)]

Things in Israel right now look scary as hell. National strike has shut down Ben Gurion airport and after Benny fired the Defense minister both reservist and active duty military vow to resist and/or quit.
Can onl hope the Iranians don't decide to take advantage of the chaos and try something nefarious (like they are doing attacking US base in Northern Syria.)

Yes, remarkable. Hubris.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/things-fall-apart-2/

"The Israeli right is gripped in a deep malaise.

It has its argument about the over-powerful High Court. It believes that argument. It’s been making it for decades. Now, suddenly at the helm of a wholly rightist coalition that no centrist or leftist faction can fell, it believed it had a moment of opportunity.

The government was sworn in at the end of December. By January 4, the great judicial reform was announced by Justice Minister Yariv Levin. The opposition, everyone understood, would rail and rage; old elites watching their displacement would not go quietly into the night. But in the end, the frustration of three decades of judicial overreach, now hardened into a grim determination, would see the coalition through.

That was the plan. Then everything started to go wrong.

It wasn’t the usual things. Former justices did indeed rage on cue. Law scholars signed petitions. But the right-wing coalition was ready with answers. The Israeli court had swollen far beyond anything comparable in the West. On dry but fundamental questions — the power of the court in vetting appointments to itself, the expansion of standing (who can appeal) and justiciability (what issues the court can take up), and on and on — the Israeli court was not, as the right has it, “a judicial dictatorship,” but it was an outlier in the democratic world.

It was wholly reasonable and legitimate to seek to rein it in, and indeed it was once a serious contention of scholars on left and right alike.

For two long months, the right misunderstood the events. The strategy was simple: Pull the Band-Aid off fast, without blinking or wavering. The main problem, Levin and his partner in the reform MK Simcha Rothman believed, would be Benjamin Netanyahu, who has always favored quiet over meaningful, controversial action.

So the decision was made: No debate, engagement or negotiation until the very end of the legislative process would create as few opportunities as possible for a right-wing collapse. Justice Minister Levin refused to give interviews. Calls went out for the opposition to negotiate — but negotiate over what? Levin refused to slow the legislation. The original proposal was extreme even according to its own authors (speaking off-record, of course).

To the half of the country that hadn’t voted for the coalition, the extreme version was the goal, not a tactic on the way to a more moderate version. One doesn’t negotiate the dismantling of democracy on the breakneck schedule of the dismantlers.

In mid-February, one senior figure closely involved in the reform told this writer, “It’s not yet time to compromise.” The early protests, the calls even from supporters of judicial reform to moderate, to explain, to seriously address the growing sense in the streets that this was a full-blown assault on democracy — were rebuffed by right-wing political strategists.

The old elites, they explained, were angry that their cheese was moving.

’I don’t want to defend you’

By the time the political right had grasped the scale of its mistake, it was too late.

It happened at different points for different people, escalating over the past month and reaching a noticeable climax last week, when even impassioned supporters of judicial reform — of this judicial reform — started to rail against the government.

“A self-immolation like this on the right hasn’t been seen around these parts for a long time,” the right-wing columnist Sara Haetzni-Cohen, head of the activist group My Israel, wrote over the weekend.

Calling the reform “one of the most important and significant legal and policy initiatives the right has brought to the table in many years,” she then turned ferociously on the government she’d loyally supported.

“It turns out that the right-wing coalition we elected and for which we prayed doesn’t understand the greatness of the hour,” she charged. “Almost every day we awaken to another idiotic bill or embarrassing public statement produced by this coalition. The list of narrow and self-interested bills, whose purpose is to preserve power or serve narrow interests, grows ever longer. The gifts law [allowing unchecked gifts to public servants], the French law [immunizing the prime minister from prosecution], the law against recordings [prohibiting journalists from publicizing recordings of politicians without consent], the Deri law [to allow convicted politicians to serve as ministers], the Police Investigations Department law [weakening oversight of police in cases of police violence], the law to seize control of the Central Elections Committee, the Western Wall law [that stipulates prison time for women dressed immodestly at the holy site], the hametz law [allowing hospitals to bar food that isn’t kosher for Passover], and more.”

It was a long column, a litany of accusations. “There are laws that are populist to the point of dangerous, like the ‘immunity for IDF soldiers’ bill, which actually could deliver our best sons and daughters to The Hague. It all looks like it’s being done flippantly, with arrogance and hubris, driven by whims and the desire for momentary media headlines. MKs who we elected to bring change and a new message have brought us mainly embarrassment.”

The bottom line: “I’m embarrassed, because for all that I believe in this reform, in this correction, in the power that must return to our representatives — there’s a limit to how much I can explain their idiotic and irresponsible behavior in the Knesset. And you know something, dear coalition? I’m sick of it. I don’t want to defend you when you embarrass me, don’t want to support the irresponsible initiatives you permit yourself to propose, without understanding that every little movement on your part creates waves of protest and disgust on the outside.”

It was a sentiment that seemed to suddenly overtake the right. Some spoke of a “competition of folly” among lawmakers.

Some even noticed that it may not be enough to criticize merely the look of the thing. Of the 141 bills advanced by the coalition (at last count), there were those that would allow police searches of private homes without warrants, appoint 12 additional MKs to the coalition beyond the 120 elected lawmakers to allow the coalition to ignore the parliamentary opposition altogether, and give the ruling party control over the Central Elections Committee.

And all of that is distinct from the actual judicial shakeup, whose most radical and problematic version was still on the Knesset docket until just the past two weeks, and was barely modified even after that.

For a coalition that insisted to anyone who would listen that its reform was about advancing democracy, it seemed to go out of its way to convince any but its most loyal supporters otherwise.

Dr. Bibi and Mr. Netanyahu

No one really knows what’s in Benjamin Netanyahu’s heart. He has a long, illustrious record of serious and successful policymaking and a long paper trail of broadly liberal views and commitments.

But he’s also insisted for three long months that he’s “got both hands on the wheel” of this government, that he’s responsible for it and fully in control of the situation, that he owns everything that’s taking place.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during a discussion and a vote in the Knesset, Jerusalem, on March 22, 2023. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
He’s also the main force behind some of the most troubling bills, such as the “gifts law” advancing at breakneck speed through the Knesset Economy Committee this week that would allow almost unchecked and literally anonymous gift-giving to public servants and politicians. The bill is unquestionably a personal one; it would let Netanyahu, already a wealthy man, keep $270,000 given to him by a late cousin. That it is advancing faster than almost any other item on the coalition’s agenda, faster in fact than much of the judicial reform, signals a new kind of Netanyahu.

The Netanyahu, in fact, that many saw in Sunday’s sudden firing of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and who systematically gutted Likud’s internal democracy and institutions and now brooks no disagreement in the party ranks.

If Netanyahu is indeed in control, it’s becoming increasingly difficult — and not just for the opposition — to find the old, liberal Netanyahu buried under all the mess.

The right turns

It’s curiously difficult to determine precisely how many Israelis actually support judicial reform. Polls put levels of support at anywhere from 17% — a weekend survey that asked about the specific reform now being pushed by the government — to 90%, a figure drawn from internal polling on the right that seems to have played a part in the government’s strategy planning and presentation of the reform back in January.

The way you ask the question seems to produce radically different answers. And the answers themselves are a moving target, as the idea of remaking the judiciary has left the realm of substantive debate and become a touchstone of political identity.

With those caveats, it’s still possible to hazard a basic outline of Israeli public opinion: A significant majority appears to support some kind of judicial reform, and a significant majority opposes the specific reform being pushed by the government.

In a weekend poll by the Globes business journal, for example, just 17% said they supported the reform as-is, while 25% said they supported “some of its elements,” and 43% opposed the reform entirely.

It’s clear, too, that the opposition is far more afraid and mobilized. Asked if they’d personally attended a protest, an astonishing 19% of respondents said yes — one in five Israelis. Just 2% of Israelis said they’d attended every protest. Most of the protesters (15% of all respondents) attended between one and four times. That is, protests that regularly draw 200,000 people represent at least five times as many protesters in the broader population.

Firing Gallant

It was in this heady moment, with an increasingly bitter right-wing activist base that believes that the government, not the opposition, created this moment, and facing a growing protest movement already actively joined by one-fifth of the population, that Netanyahu fired his defense minister on Sunday over his call to pause the reform.

It was the catalyst that revealed just how much larger the protest movement could grow.

Hebrew-language Twitter began to fill up with a new voice: right-wingers, Likud voters, even reform supporters, suddenly grown weary of the government and looking to take a stand.


Anti-government protesters opposed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial overhaul plan set up bonfires and block a highway in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday, March 27, 2023, after the premier fired Defense Minister Yoav Gallant who had called on Netanyahu to freeze the push, citing deep divisions in the country and turmoil in the military. (AP/Oren Ziv)
And it hit the political echelons almost immediately.

“We’ve paid a heavy price,” Likud’s Miki Zohar lamented, for “failing to explain” the reform. Wary of facing Gallant’s fate, Zohar didn’t call for a freeze, but called to support Netanyahu if he should do so.

The view that the government, not Netanyahu’s “left” or “anarchists,” was responsible for the disaster was suddenly obvious to all.

“We must admit honestly — we’ve gone astray!” said Likud’s Amihai Chikli, the minister for Diaspora affairs. “Our mistake isn’t over the burning need for the reform — it’s more necessary now than ever before — but in its implementation.”

Likud’s Economy Minister Nir Barkat sounded a similar sentiment. “I will support the prime minister in a decision to stop and reconsider. The reform is important and we will do it — but not at the cost of civil war.”

Some of the most supportive right-wing journalists reached the same conclusion.

Squandered

Where does the right go from here?

It declared a dramatic change to Israel’s constitutional order as one declares a war. It advanced in a blitzkrieg through a deeply divided country, while signaling at full volume that it intends to do away with basic liberal protections. It started with a radical version of its own reform which some its own advocates now claim was a mere tactic, but which in practice would have gutted the Supreme Court and dismantled most of the political system’s checks and balances.

It didn’t debate, didn’t listen, didn’t try to convince until very late in the game, until it had grown frightened of the blowback. Until it was too late.

And it did all that in a country where polls show broad support for some version of judicial reform.

Never in the history of the country has so much political capital and hard-won electoral success been so swiftly and comprehensively squandered. Every minute that has passed since January 4 has been a neck-and-neck race between the Levin-Rothman-Netanyahu legislative stampede and the right’s hemorrhaging of its political capital.

Everything is still in the air. No one quite knows where the pieces are going to land. But no matter who wins that race, the damage wrought by the past three months of folly and hubris will not be quickly mended."

[jhu72]

Gee, wonder who's bright idea it was to destroy the court system? Sounds like something a criminal POS in fear of being found guilty would do.

[Brooklyn]

Israel -- the anti Christian state:


As attacks on Christians become more frequent, a crisis looms for Israel


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/as ... dfdf&ei=58


“If you are a Christian in the Middle East, there’s only one place where you are safe,” asserted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking to Christian Zionists in Rio de Janeiro in December 2018. “There’s only one place where the Christian community is growing, thriving, prospering. That’s in the State of Israel.”

Netanyahu’s claim is a central element of the image Israeli officials put forward about the country when speaking to Western audiences.

Ahead of Christmas last year, Israel’s official Twitter account posted a video of the Foreign Ministry’s Digital Diplomacy chief David Saranga on a “magical Christmas stroll” through Jerusalem’s Old City.

The picture of safe coexistence painted by Israeli officials is starkly at odds with the experiences Jerusalem’s Christian leaders themselves describe. While they readily acknowledge that there is no organized or governmental effort against them, Christian clergy in the Old City tell of a deteriorating atmosphere of harassment, apathy from authorities, and a growing fear that incidents of spitting and vandalism could turn into something far darker.

And with Netanyahu already under scrutiny from Western allies over policies toward the Palestinians and attempts at sweeping judicial reform, deteriorating safety for Christians — or at least Church leaders disseminating that narrative — could become another serious diplomatic problem for Israel’s embattled government.

March of the schoolchildren
On Friday, hundreds of Catholic schoolchildren in Jerusalem embarked on their traditional march along the Via Dolorosa as they do every year during the 40 days of Lent.


This time was different, however.

The students set off from the Church of the Flagellation, the second station of the cross, all clad in identical red scarves that bore the image of a broken statue of Jesus, the Scourged Savior effigy vandalized by an American Jewish tourist in the church in February.

The march, joined by the two senior Catholic figures in the Holy Land — Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa and Custodian of the Holy Land Francesco Patton — was not limited to a protest against that one incident.

“We are horrified and hurt in the wake of the many incidents of violence and hatred that have taken place recently against the Catholic community in Israel,” said Patton, also known as the Custos.


He cited seven incidents that have taken place in recent weeks, saying pointedly that “it is no coincidence that these serious incidents are taking place specifically now.”

“We expect and demand from the Israeli government and law enforcement to act with determination to stamp these serious phenomena.”

While there have long been periodic incidents of vandalism and harassment against Christian clergy in Jerusalem’s Old City, there has been a noticeable rise in attacks in recent weeks.

In November, two soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces’ Givati Brigade were detained on suspicion of spitting at the Armenian archbishop and other pilgrims during a procession in the Old City.

In early January, two Jewish teens were arrested for damaging graves at the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion.


The next week, the Maronite community center in the northern city of Ma’alot-Tarshiha was vandalized by unknown assailants over the Christmas holiday.

Jerusalem’s Armenian community buildings were also targeted by vandals, with multiple discriminatory phrases graffitied on the exterior of structures in the Armenian Quarter. According to the Armenian Patriarchate, “revenge,” “death to Christians,” “death to Arabs and gentiles” and “death to Armenians” were all graffitied in the quarter.

The attacks kept coming. On a Thursday night in late January, a gang of religious Jewish teens threw chairs at an Armenian restaurant inside the city’s New Gate. The vandalism at the Church of the Flagellation occurred the very next week.


And last week, a resident of southern Israel was arrested after attacking priests with an iron bar at the Tomb of the Virgin Mary in Gethsemane.

“Terrorist attacks, by radical Israeli groups, targeting churches, cemeteries, and Christian properties… have become almost a daily occurrence that evidently increases in intensity during Christian holidays,” said the Greek Orthodox Church.

And not all incidents even make the news. Father Matthew, secretary to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilus III, told The Times of Israel that last Tuesday, a handicapped priest making his way slowly out of the Greek Orthodox monastery was spat on by two religious Jewish youths. When another priest confronted the assailants, they pulled up their shirts to show canisters of pepper spray.

According to Father Matthew, the police detained, then released, the attackers.

Jerusalem Police told The Times of Israel it was not familiar with the incident, and asked for additional details.


Church officials are critical of the overall police response.

“The police try to paint each attack as something isolated, and try to paint the attackers as mentally unstable,” said Amir Dan, spokesman for the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. “In doing so, the police remove themselves from all responsibility.”

Indeed, after the Church of the Flagellation attack, police said they were checking whether the suspect had mental health issues. Police told The Times of Israel that the attacker at Mary’s Tomb — a Christian Moldovan-Israeli — was committed to a mental hospital temporarily.

A US tourist, left, is led away by police on suspicion that he vandalized a statue in the Church of the Flagellation in the Old City of Jerusalem, February 2, 2023. (Israel Police)
A US tourist, left, is led away by police on suspicion that he vandalized a statue in the Church of the Flagellation in the Old City of Jerusalem, February 2, 2023. (Israel Police)
© Provided by The Times of Israel
The Franciscans in the Old City are so worried that they have been locking the doors to their San Salvatore compound in the Old City at night ever since the desecration of the Jesus statue. They have never taken such a measure in the past, said Father Alberto Pari, secretary of the Custody.

“I think all the Christians, they are more aware that someone can enter and do something,” said Pari.

The police try to paint each attack as something isolated, and try to paint the attackers as mentally unstable.

Multiple officials repeated the charge that the rise in attacks is connected to the current ruling coalition, which includes far-right figures like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.


“Because of the government situation, some extremists, they feel like they have a protector,” said Pari. “Nobody will stop them if they do something that maybe they were thinking to do also before. But then there was more control from the police or they were not supported by some political leaders.”

Dan concurred with Pari’s assessment: “Unfortunately after this government was elected, there are those who feel they can do whatever they want. That they can lift up their fists and nothing will happen to them.”

Concerned ministries
The Israeli bodies in touch with Israel’s churches all condemn the attacks and insist they are aware of the problem.





more ....



Your tax dollars are used to finance Israel's Zionist government. The same one equated with fascism by Einstein over 70 years ago:


https://www.globalresearch.ca/albert-ei ... df=5438170



It is time to end this support, to get our money back, and to insure justice for all people in that country.

[jhu72]

Israel -- the anti Christian state:


As attacks on Christians become more frequent, a crisis looms for Israel


https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/as ... dfdf&ei=58


“If you are a Christian in the Middle East, there’s only one place where you are safe,” asserted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking to Christian Zionists in Rio de Janeiro in December 2018. “There’s only one place where the Christian community is growing, thriving, prospering. That’s in the State of Israel.”

Netanyahu’s claim is a central element of the image Israeli officials put forward about the country when speaking to Western audiences.

Ahead of Christmas last year, Israel’s official Twitter account posted a video of the Foreign Ministry’s Digital Diplomacy chief David Saranga on a “magical Christmas stroll” through Jerusalem’s Old City.

The picture of safe coexistence painted by Israeli officials is starkly at odds with the experiences Jerusalem’s Christian leaders themselves describe. While they readily acknowledge that there is no organized or governmental effort against them, Christian clergy in the Old City tell of a deteriorating atmosphere of harassment, apathy from authorities, and a growing fear that incidents of spitting and vandalism could turn into something far darker.

And with Netanyahu already under scrutiny from Western allies over policies toward the Palestinians and attempts at sweeping judicial reform, deteriorating safety for Christians — or at least Church leaders disseminating that narrative — could become another serious diplomatic problem for Israel’s embattled government.

March of the schoolchildren
On Friday, hundreds of Catholic schoolchildren in Jerusalem embarked on their traditional march along the Via Dolorosa as they do every year during the 40 days of Lent.


This time was different, however.

The students set off from the Church of the Flagellation, the second station of the cross, all clad in identical red scarves that bore the image of a broken statue of Jesus, the Scourged Savior effigy vandalized by an American Jewish tourist in the church in February.

The march, joined by the two senior Catholic figures in the Holy Land — Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa and Custodian of the Holy Land Francesco Patton — was not limited to a protest against that one incident.

“We are horrified and hurt in the wake of the many incidents of violence and hatred that have taken place recently against the Catholic community in Israel,” said Patton, also known as the Custos.


He cited seven incidents that have taken place in recent weeks, saying pointedly that “it is no coincidence that these serious incidents are taking place specifically now.”

“We expect and demand from the Israeli government and law enforcement to act with determination to stamp these serious phenomena.”

While there have long been periodic incidents of vandalism and harassment against Christian clergy in Jerusalem’s Old City, there has been a noticeable rise in attacks in recent weeks.

In November, two soldiers from the Israel Defense Forces’ Givati Brigade were detained on suspicion of spitting at the Armenian archbishop and other pilgrims during a procession in the Old City.

In early January, two Jewish teens were arrested for damaging graves at the Protestant cemetery on Mount Zion.


The next week, the Maronite community center in the northern city of Ma’alot-Tarshiha was vandalized by unknown assailants over the Christmas holiday.

Jerusalem’s Armenian community buildings were also targeted by vandals, with multiple discriminatory phrases graffitied on the exterior of structures in the Armenian Quarter. According to the Armenian Patriarchate, “revenge,” “death to Christians,” “death to Arabs and gentiles” and “death to Armenians” were all graffitied in the quarter.

The attacks kept coming. On a Thursday night in late January, a gang of religious Jewish teens threw chairs at an Armenian restaurant inside the city’s New Gate. The vandalism at the Church of the Flagellation occurred the very next week.


And last week, a resident of southern Israel was arrested after attacking priests with an iron bar at the Tomb of the Virgin Mary in Gethsemane.

“Terrorist attacks, by radical Israeli groups, targeting churches, cemeteries, and Christian properties… have become almost a daily occurrence that evidently increases in intensity during Christian holidays,” said the Greek Orthodox Church.

And not all incidents even make the news. Father Matthew, secretary to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch Theophilus III, told The Times of Israel that last Tuesday, a handicapped priest making his way slowly out of the Greek Orthodox monastery was spat on by two religious Jewish youths. When another priest confronted the assailants, they pulled up their shirts to show canisters of pepper spray.

According to Father Matthew, the police detained, then released, the attackers.

Jerusalem Police told The Times of Israel it was not familiar with the incident, and asked for additional details.


Church officials are critical of the overall police response.

“The police try to paint each attack as something isolated, and try to paint the attackers as mentally unstable,” said Amir Dan, spokesman for the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. “In doing so, the police remove themselves from all responsibility.”

Indeed, after the Church of the Flagellation attack, police said they were checking whether the suspect had mental health issues. Police told The Times of Israel that the attacker at Mary’s Tomb — a Christian Moldovan-Israeli — was committed to a mental hospital temporarily.

A US tourist, left, is led away by police on suspicion that he vandalized a statue in the Church of the Flagellation in the Old City of Jerusalem, February 2, 2023. (Israel Police)
A US tourist, left, is led away by police on suspicion that he vandalized a statue in the Church of the Flagellation in the Old City of Jerusalem, February 2, 2023. (Israel Police)
© Provided by The Times of Israel
The Franciscans in the Old City are so worried that they have been locking the doors to their San Salvatore compound in the Old City at night ever since the desecration of the Jesus statue. They have never taken such a measure in the past, said Father Alberto Pari, secretary of the Custody.

“I think all the Christians, they are more aware that someone can enter and do something,” said Pari.

The police try to paint each attack as something isolated, and try to paint the attackers as mentally unstable.

Multiple officials repeated the charge that the rise in attacks is connected to the current ruling coalition, which includes far-right figures like National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.


“Because of the government situation, some extremists, they feel like they have a protector,” said Pari. “Nobody will stop them if they do something that maybe they were thinking to do also before. But then there was more control from the police or they were not supported by some political leaders.”

Dan concurred with Pari’s assessment: “Unfortunately after this government was elected, there are those who feel they can do whatever they want. That they can lift up their fists and nothing will happen to them.”

Concerned ministries
The Israeli bodies in touch with Israel’s churches all condemn the attacks and insist they are aware of the problem.





more ....



Your tax dollars are used to finance Israel's Zionist government. The same one equated with fascism by Einstein over 70 years ago:


https://www.globalresearch.ca/albert-ei ... df=5438170



It is time to end this support, to get our money back, and to insure justice for all people in that country.

... ask me if I am surprised by the turn this government has taken? Actually not really a turn, just saying the previous quite part out loud now. I do however have a great deal of confidence in the Jewish people themselves.

[jhu72]

Staying home and reading the Torah is now equated with serving in the Israeli military. Jewish holy rollers are going to find their equation is a fallacy not an equation. US needs to stop supporting Israeli fascists. Fork em.

[PizzaSnake]

Israel is NOT an ally of the US. Period. It is, and has been, a dependent state. The reasons for supporting this dependency have varied over the years.

In the rapidly shifting world we live in, it is time to re-examine this “relationship.”

[OCanada]

A few things to kerp in mind.

If you do not know the Nation State Law in Israel you should find out more about it. Passed in 2018 i am pretty sure

Bengie in 2019 said “ Israel is NOT the state of all of its citizens”

Israel has never wanted a two state solution regardless of public statements. It has become an apartheid state.

The latest effort to change the judiciary is intended to weaken checks on Bengie. The existing system was not much different than other states.

Israel does not have a Constitution

[MDlaxfan76]

And now we have POS Greg Gutfeld smirkily weighing in on the Holocaust, "utility"...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/media/wh ... index.html

Frankly, this is why Israel exists, what has provided a moral justification for its existence and support...but the current government appears to be abandoning any semblance of moral high ground for raw power..."utility"...

Yes, we could see this coming, but it appears that unless there's a major course correction forced by its citizenry, American support for Israel is going to shrink to just the right wing nut jobs.

[jhu72]

And now we have POS Greg Gutfeld smirkily weighing in on the Holocaust, "utility"...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/media/wh ... index.html

Frankly, this is why Israel exists, what has provided a moral justification for its existence and support...but the current government appears to be abandoning any semblance of moral high ground for raw power..."utility"...

Yes, we could see this coming, but it appears that unless there's a major course correction forced by its citizenry, American support for Israel is going to shrink to just the right wing nut jobs.

,,, the only reason America's right wing nut jobs support Israel is they think it feeds into their end times wet dream.

[jhu72]

A few things to kerp in mind.

If you do not know the Nation State Law in Israel you should find out more about it. Passed in 2018 i am pretty sure

Bengie in 2019 said “ Israel is NOT the state of all of its citizens”

Israel has never wanted a two state solution regardless of public statements. It has become an apartheid state.

The latest effort to change the judiciary is intended to weaken checks on Bengie. The existing system was not much different than other states.

Israel does not have a Constitution

... understood

[OCanada]

Israel has lost significant support in its US diaspora. Traditionally votes plus money have provided a cushion but the cushion seems to be shrinking. Israel can ill adford to lose its US financial base. Its tech work with right wing governments eg. Hungary etc is generating another base of support

[old salt]

And now we have POS Greg Gutfeld smirkily weighing in on the Holocaust, "utility"...
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/media/wh ... aust/index

Typical Biden WH over-reaction for effect. Just as they are doing with the FL education guidelines.
No honest effort to examine what's being said & place it in context.
That's why honest debate or discussion is no longer possible.
That was hardly an endorsement of the Holocaust, & acknowledging that some freed slaves emerged with marketable skills is hardly an endorsement for slavery. No honest, fair minded person would make that interpretation then exploit it for divisive effect.

[jhu72]

... not fair minded like you.