Forum Topics

Jeremy Bowen talks to a squatter/settler

"Bowen: Israeli settlers intensify campaign to drive out West Bank Palestinians"BBC 10/8/25."The conflict between Arabs and Jews for control of the land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea started well over a century ago when Zionists from Europe began to buy land to set up communities in Palestine.It has been shaped by significant turning points.The latest has come from the deadly 7 October 2023 attacks by Hamas and Israel's devastating response.The consequences of the last 22 months of war, and however more months are left before a ceasefire, threaten to spread across years and generations, just like the Middle East war in 1967, when Israel captured Gaza from Egypt and East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan.The scale of destruction and killing in the Gaza war obscures what is happening in the West Bank, which smoulders with tension and violence.Since October 2023, Israel's pressure on West Bank Palestinians has increased sharply, justified as legitimate security measures.Evidence based on statements by ministers, influential local leaders like Simcha and accounts by witnesses on the ground reveal that the pressure is part of a wider agenda, to accelerate the spread of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and to extinguish any lingering hopes of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.Palestinians and human rights groups also accuse the Israeli security forces of failing in their legal duty as occupiers to protect Palestinians as well as their own citizens - not just turning a blind eye to settler attacks, but even joining in.Violence by ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers in the West Bank has risen sharply since 7 October 2023.Ocha, the UN's humanitarian office, estimates an average of four settler attacks every day.The International Court of Justice has issued an advisory opinion that the entire occupation of Palestinian territory captured in 1967 is illegal.Israel's rejects the ICJ's view and claims that the Geneva Conventions forbidding settlement in occupied territories do not apply - a view disputed by many of its own allies as well as international lawyers.In the shade of the fig tree, Simcha denied all suggestions he had attacked Palestinians, as he celebrated the fact that most of the Arab farmers who used to graze their animals on the hills he has SEIZED and tend their olives in the valleys had gone.He looks back to the Hamas October attacks, and Israel's response ever since, as a turning point."I think that a lot has changed, that the enemy in our land lost hope. He's beginning to understand that he's on his way out; that's what has changed in the last year or year and a half."Today you can walk around here in the land in the desert, and nobody will jump on you and try to kill you. There are still attempts to oppose our presence here in this land, but the enemy is starting to understand this slowly. They have no future here."The reality has changed. I ask you and the people of the world, why are you so interested in those Palestinians so much? Why do you care about them? It's just another small nation."The Palestinians don't interest me. I care about my people."Simcha says the Palestinians who left villages and farms near the hilltops he has claimed simply realised that God intended the land for Jews, not for them.""At a ceremony in one of them ("outposts") in the south Hebron Hills in April this year, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whose powers over the running of the occupation also make him something like the governor of the West Bank, donated 19 all-terrain vehicles to the settlers. He praised them for "grabbing massive territories".A sharp-eyed reporter at the Times of Israel pointed out that one of the settlers at the ceremony, Yinon Levi, had been filmed harassing Palestinians from an all-terrain vehicle. Levi is sanctioned by the UK and the European Union for using violence to drive Palestinians off their land, though President Trump lifted similar sanctions imposed by Joe Biden.Levi is radical settler royalty, married to the daughter of Noam Federman - a notorious extremist. Federman is a former leader of the Kach party, which is designated as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the US, the European Union and others.On 28 July this year, Yinon Levi fired a bullet that killed Odeh Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist and journalist, during a disturbance in the West Bank village of Umm al-Khair. Levi pleaded self-defence and was released after three days of house arrest.When we went to Umm al-Khair, Hathaleen's dried blood was still at the place where he was killed.His brother, Khalil, told me the dead man was holding his five-year-old son, Watan, and filming the violent scenes on his phone when he was killed."https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj4wwxz12jkoThis project has been going on for over a hundred years. It is getting ever closer to fulfilment.

David Ainsworth ● 1d20 Comments ● 39m

Yvette Cooper cannot tell you why - just trust her

"The home secretary, Yvette Cooper, told the BBC that Palestine Action “is not a non-violent organisation” and claimed that court restrictions meant people “don’t know the full nature of this organisation”.But Huda Ammori, co-founder of Palestine Action, said: “Yvette Cooper and No 10’s claim that Palestine Action is a violent organisation is false and defamatory and even disproven by the government’s own intelligence assessment of Palestine Action’s activities …“It was revealed in court during my ongoing legal challenge to the ban that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre’s (JTAC’S) assessment acknowledges that ‘Palestine Action does not advocate for violence against persons’ and that the ‘majority’ of its activities ‘would not be classified as terrorism’.[Huda Ammori]:- “Spraying red paint on war planes is not terrorism. Disrupting Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, by trespassing on their sites in Britain is not terrorism. It is the Israeli Defense Forces and all those who arm and enable their war crimes who are the terrorists.”JTAC, a government body based within MI5, produced a secret report on 7 March which was disclosed in the high court.While recommending banning Palestine Action, JTAC said the group “primarily uses direct action tactics”, which typically resulted in minor damage to property. “Common tactics include graffiti, petty vandalism, occupation and lock-ons,” it added.Defend Our Juries, which has organised multiple demonstrations, including Saturday’s, in support of Palestine Action, also highlighted Whitehall officials’ description – again in documents revealed in court – of a ban as “relatively novel” as “there was no known precedent of an organisation being proscribed on the basis that it was concerned in terrorism mainly due to its use or threat of action involving serious damage to property”.A Defend Our Juries spokesperson said: “It is despicable that under political pressure, Yvette Cooper is now actively misleading the British public about the nature of Palestine Action, knowing that if people come to their defence to counter her disinformation, she can have them jailed for 14 years [because they could be deemed to supporting a proscribed group].”https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/11/palestine-action-huda-ammori-ministers-claims

David Ainsworth ● 3h3 Comments ● 1h

Why is it only Israel that daily makes the news re 'genocide'?

Jews and many living in or are associated with Israel are the race that suffered the greatest genocide in modern times.For those that might have forgotten, some 6,000,000 were murdered on an industrial scale in Nazi Germany in WWII.This naturally has made them at least wary of how they are considered and treated in the West and the Middle East.Palestinians in their conflict with Israel are not experiencing such a fate.It is claimed that Israel has killed 52,000 Palestinians in Gaza.These are figures put out by the 'Gazan Health Ministry' (unelected).This is known to be run by Hamas  which itself murdered and sexually assaulted numerous women, children and the elderly in October 2023 and still hold many hostages as well as the corpses of those it murdered.It does not distinguish between civilian deaths and those of its fighting forces that imbed themselves amongst the general Populus.And of course Hamas is attempting to enact its Charter Declaration which calls for the annihilation of the state of Israel and its Jewish citizens.But we should not forget there have been and still are many conflicts raging around the world that have resulted in many deaths and claims of genocide.They received and get little attention by the anti-Israel bien pensants and fellow travellers.All the focus is on Israel.For example note the deaths resulting from the following -2023 Masalit, West Darfur Sudan - 15,000 deaths2020 Tigray Ethiopia 162,000 deaths2016 Rohingya, Myanmar - 9,000 deaths2016 China - Uyghur birth rate drops 24% because of genocidal persecution2014 Ukraine - 12,000 deaths by Russians2014 Iraq Turkman 3,500 deaths (by ISIS)2014 Iraq/Syria (Yazidis) - 2,100 deaths (by ISIS)2003 Darfur, Sudan - 98,000 deaths2002 North Kivu, DR Congo - 60,000 deaths1996 Kivu, Zaire - 200,000 deaths (Hutus)1994 Rwanda - 491,000 deaths (Tutsis)1992 Bosnia - 31,000 deaths (by Serbs)All inter-tribal as is the conflict initiated by Hamas against Israel.Cut Israel some slack.

John Hawkes ● 79d44 Comments ● 1d

Yet More Hypocrisy From A Labour Minister

Labour homelessness minister resigns after being called for 'extreme hypocrisy' after she 'threw out FOUR tenants then raised rent on her London home by £700 Labour's Homelessness Minister was forced to quit tonight after an embarrassing eviction row.Rushanara Ali was accused of 'staggering hypocrisy' amid claims she ejected tenants from one of her homes, before putting it back on the market for an extra £700 a month rent.Rushanara Ali was accused of 'staggering hypocrisy' amid claims she ejected tenants from one of her homes, before putting it back on the market for an extra £700 a month rent.Following mounting calls to resign, she announced she would stand down from the government to avoid becoming 'a distraction'.In a letter to the Prime Minister, there was no apology with Ms Ali insisting that she had followed 'all relevant legal requirements' and said she 'took my responsibilities and duties seriously'.Her resignation came after it emerged that she had hiked rent on a property she owns by hundreds of pounds just weeks after the previous tenants' contract ended.Ms Ali, 50, has repeatedly cast herself as a voice for hard-up tenants, and spoke out against private renters 'being exploited and discriminated against'. ****And she championed the Renters' Rights Bill, currently going through Parliament, which will ban landlords who evict tenants from re-listing a property for a higher rent until at least six months after the occupants have left. Her actions would have been illegal under this law.!!!!Staggering hypocrisy!!🤬https://mol.im/a/14980971

Sue Hammond ● 4d14 Comments ● 2d