Yossi Schwartz, ISL-the RCIT section in Israel/Occupied Palestine, 20.10.2021
Zionist settlers protected by the army attack Palestinian villages and residents harvesting their olive trees on a daily basis. The attacks include beatings of farmers and the destruction of trees, in order to prevent the olive harvest. According to the Zionist law (inherited from the Ottoman law) if Palestinians are unable to work in their fields the land become a state land that can be allocated to the settlers. At the same time for the second day the Zionist armed forces violently have raided Damascus Gate and surrounding streets in occupied East Jerusalem during a Palestinian national holiday for the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. At least 49 Palestinians were injured and 22 were arrested according to Aljazeera’s report based on local media.
Widely circulated videos have showed Zionist armed hooligans in uniform violently arresting and assaulting young male and female – beating with batons, chasing after children, firing tear gas and sound bombs at families. They also attacked medical staff and arrested journalists.
This brutality is a response to the hundreds of defying youths, who protest over the desecration of graves in a historic Muslim cemetery near the Old City, parts of which are being built over to make a national park. The Zionist Jerusalem Municipality began the excavations in the cemetery on October 10.
“Damascus Gate near the Old City of Jerusalem is a place where young Palestinians like to gather in the evening and socialize with their friends but, for the last few months, Israeli police and special forces have been violently forcing them to disperse to make way for Israeli settlers entering the Old City,” Jawad Siam of the Wadi Helweh Centre in occupied East Jerusalem, which monitors violence against Palestinians, told Al Jazeera.” [1]
“Siam also said that a number of Palestinians had also been arrested, assaulted and banned from the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City for shouting “Allahu Akbar” as Israeli settlers entered and began praying on the grounds of Islam’s third-holiest site. The settlers’ move violated a “status quo agreement” between the Israeli occupation and the Jordanian Waqf authority that administers the mosque compound“. [2]
Bar Lev the Labor Zionist minister of police (Public Security) shamelessly lied when he stated that the “police ‘scrupulously maintain’ regulations at flashpoint holy site, under which Jews are banned from worshiping“.
Even the right-wing Times of Israel made it clear that Bar Lev lies: “Over the past few months, Israeli and international media have repeatedly shown police seemingly easing the restrictions on Jewish prayer, in an apparent shift from the status quo. Jewish visitors have been filmed apparently being allowed to worship freely, while officers looked on. In mid-July, Prime Minister Naphtali Bennett published a statement appearing to affirm the right of Jews to “freedom of worship” at the holy site. The premier’s office later walked back the remarks, but not before they had elicited a minor firestorm of condemnations by Arab and Muslim leaders”. [3]
At the same time the Zionists’ cabinet approved a proposal on Sunday granting police with even more broad powers – allowing them to freely search homes without a court warrant – “if they think they can find a suspect or evidence related to a serious crime”, according to Israeli media.
The bill, proposed by Minister Gideon Saar, comes after a government decision last month to deploy the internal Israeli intelligence service, known as Shabak or Shin Bet, in Palestinian towns and villages as part of its “national fight against crime”.
Hassan Jabareen, founder and director of Adalah, the main Palestinian legal defense of the 1948 Palestinians, said “the bill will give police the pretext to search any Palestinian home.”
“In practice, they will be able to go into the majority of Arab homes, because in every [Arab] neighborhood and town, there are shootings and killings,” Hassan told Al Jazeera. “It’s enough for them to be suspicious to do so.” [4]
The leadership of the Joint List that includes the Stalinist front Hadash is on the record calling for more police protection rather than organize self-defense of the Palestinian themselves. Now their members can see the fruits of this call.
This is the real face of the new government led by the right-wing Prime Minister Bennett the new darling of Biden the President of US imperialism, Johnson the village idiot of British imperialism, and former Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The youth come to Damascus Gate not only to socialize, but as defiance against the Israeli occupation and its discriminatory laws and racist practices in favor of Jewish settlers and the extreme right members of the Knesset like Ben Gevir Baruch Marzel and Bezalel Smotrich who are followers of the extreme nationalist and racist Meir Kahane who was executed by an Egyptian born patriot El Sayyid Nosair on 5 November 1990 at the New York Marriott East Side, a hotel in Manhattan, New York City.
“They (The Palestinian youth) are taking non-violent and civil disobedience action, showing not only the Israelis but other Palestinians how to pursue freedom while fighting the occupation. They are aware of the ongoing Judaisation of East Jerusalem at the expense of the Palestinian population. Siam explained Palestinians are resisting in different capacities: Some documented the confrontations; some took part in protests; while others threw stones at Israeli soldiers.
We didn’t wait for Europe or the Americans to tell us what to do or dictate to us how we should behave as we are tired of biased behavior and treatment in favor of Israel.” [5]
Down with the Zionist Apartheid State from the River to the Sea!
For a new Popular Uprising of the Palestinians!
For Palestine Red and Free from the River to the Sea!
Endnotes:
[1]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/19/israeli-forces-violent-raids-in-east-jerusalem-continue
[2] Ibid
[3]https://www.timesofisrael.com/after-reports-on-jewish-prayer-minister-insists-temple-mt-status-quo-in-place/
[4] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/19/crime
[5]https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/10/19/israeli-forces-violent-raids-in-east-jerusalem-continue