Author: Joshua Tartakovsky

Recent Palestinian attacks against Israel suggest a new uprising (intifada) of the loners is on the making to which Israel may have no sufficient response.

The stabbing of several Israeli youth near the Alon Shvut colony in the Occupied West Bank by a Palestinian man, the stabbing of an Israeli soldier on November 10 in Tel Aviv, and the running over of several Israeli citizens in Occupied East Jerusalem that resulted in the death of an infant last week, all indicate that a new intifada or uprising is well underway.

Yet while similar intifadas were marked by popular uprisings throughout the West Bank that disrupted the Israeli status-quo and sense of normalcy, as was the case in the Al Aqsa Intifada of 2000, or in the first intifada of 1987, popular protests that took place in recent days in the West Bank and inside Israel (particularly in the Galilee, where a Palestinian youth was shot several days ago, and in East Jerusalem) have been contained to a significant degree by Israel forces who are well accustomed to popular protests and who fired tear gas canisters on the demonstrators.

Continue reading “The Intifada of the Loners: Israel Finds Itself in a Bind As the Occupation Continues”

The shooting of a prominent Jewish activist who frequented the sacred Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharifon a nearly daily basis by a Palestinian gunmen on October 29, 2014, is another cornerstone signaling a deteriorating state of affairs. Young Israeli Jewish nationalists declared that they would attempt to visit the Temple Mount tomorrow morning in response. This latest incident comes after another attack in which a Palestinian driver ran over an Israeli baby and a woman, while several days earlier an Israeli settler ran over a Palestinian girl in the Occupied West Bank.

Jerusalem is holy to the three monotheistic religions and contains residents of all three faiths. Ever since 1967, when Israel occupied East Jerusalem, it did not grant Arab residents of the city the same rights given to Jewish residents. Non-Jewish residents in the East are given residency permits but usually not full citizenship. They are often barred from expanding their homes as their families grow in number while they suffer from neglect by the municipal services in an attempt to "Judaize" the city.

The city’s poster site, the Temple Mount where the magnificent Al Aqsa Mosque is located, is occupied by Israeli soldiers who guard the entrances and exits and frequently raid the area once clashes break out. Israel limits access to the holy site to Palestinians below the age of 45, thereby restricting Palestinian Muslims’ freedom of religion. For many Palestinian Muslims, it is not easy to accept that that this holy site is under a foreign occupation. As Israel expands its building of Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem it appears that a future Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as Jerusalem remains as elusive and ungraspable as a religious vision.

For Jews who are residents of Jerusalem a different situation emerges. While Israeli settlers are encouraged to settle Arab East Jerusalem, Israeli Jews are not allowed to pray in the Temple Mount due to Israel’s fear of instigating a religious war. While most religious Jews believe that entering the area is forbidden until the coming of the Messiah, a small yet adamant minority continues to visit the area in an attempt to reclaim it. In the eyes of Palestinian Muslims, this is as an attempt to forcibly grab a religious site with the goal of eventually destroying the Al Aqsa Mosque and rebuilding the Jewish temple in its stead. From the perspective of nationalist religious Jews, however, the Israeli government is not allowing them to practice their religion in a Jewish holy site while they may be blind to the fact that the presence of Israeli soldiers in the area is seen as a foreign occupation by Muslim worshippers. The situation is further compounded by the fact that Israel often prevents Palestinian Christians from visiting the Holy Sepulcher during Easter, reserving the area for international tourists.

Jerusalem is a holy city to the three monotheistic faiths and has rarely been a peaceful city. Yet the ongoing Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the lack of a conclusive Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement and Israel’s discriminatory policies in the holy city, only ensure that the crisis will deepen and deteriorate. As a first step towards resolving the current predicament, the rights of all citizens living in the city must be respected and granted unconditionally and the military occupation must come to an end. Otherwise, the holy city may witness yet another round of bloodshed and misery.

Joshua Tartakovsky is an Israeli-American independent journalist and a graduate of Brown University and LSE.

The military operations undertaken by the Ukrainian and Israeli governments in East Ukraine and Gaza, although frequently being represented as "anti-terror operations", in fact involve the mass killing of civilians on the ground, with US support, under the pretext of the state defending itself. As wars are being waged in both countries, the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries are heavily bombarding civilians as Human Rights Watch has confirmed. The civilian toll in Ukraine has been at least 1,129 so far and 1,650 people were killed in Gaza. The UN condemned the massive shelling of schools and seniors’ homes by the Ukrainian military as it condemned the bombing of a UN school by Israel, saying these violated international law. The similarities between the two conflicts and the ideology that produced them may be worth pointing out, as has been done before in different ways by a critic of these policies and also by the ambassador of Ukraine to Israel, though perhaps not by the way the latter had in mind.

The slaughter of civilians, be they ethnic Russian or Palestinian, cannot be divorced from the fact that both the Ukrainian and the Israeli Governments have no intention of granting autonomous rights to these respective populations under their control and may ultimately even see their lives as disposable. The unelected Ukrainian Government did not accept the referendum held in the Donbass in which over 90% of residents voted for self-rule, while in Israel, Netanyahu recently said that he would never support a sovereign Palestinian state. Indeed, both the Ukrainian and Israeli government share highly racist views of these targeted populations.

Continue reading “Israel and Ukraine: Ridding the Nation of the ‘Undesirables’”

This originally appeared on Truth-Out.

The current Israeli onslaught on Gaza which so far resulted in 120 dead and counting, as Israel is attempting to a final blow to Hamas after many failed attempts, appears to have been planned in advance, regardless of developments on the ground. Following the abduction of three Israeli youth and their subsequent murder several weeks ago, Israel laid the blame on Hamas although the latter denied responsibility and said it wants calm with Israel. It then went on to conduct a major crackdown on the movement in the West Bank and arrested over 500 people. Israel is now launching a massive aerial bombing campaign on Gaza, claiming its goal is to eradicate Hamas. Hamas was a convenient target for the Israeli government that has been fretting over the fact that it joined a unity government with the PLO, which received international recognition. By framing Hamas as the culprit initially, Israel probably sought to disrupt the government and chose an escalation at a time when it was faced by increased international criticism as peace talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas collapsed.

In a way, the current Israeli onslaught on Gaza is not much different than the earlier aerial bombing campaigns that took place in 2009 and in 2012. Then, as now, the Israeli government claimed it was doing so to protect its civilians from rocket fire while failing to acknowledge the fact that the illegal blockade of Gaza, in which 1.8 million people are confined to a tiny strip and in which anyone who approaches a buffer zone next to the border is automatically shot, will mean that Palestinian will attempt to practice resistance with by available means. While Israel systematically attempts to gain international solidarity by asking the world what would they do if they were attacked by rockets, it does not ask the question of what would one do if confined to a blockaded area from which there is no escape and without a functioning alarm system. (Similarly, while Egypt has also closed its border with Gaza, Israel remains the occupying power in strip due to siege it imposes. It was also Israel, and not Egypt, that occupied the area in 1967). Then, as now, Israel claimed it was not targeting civilians intentionally although it was doing just that. Then, as now, the international community turned a blind eye to what a former Israeli pilot described as war-crimes, until the number of the dead became ‘unbearably’ high beyond what the international community can accept. Then, as now, Israel continuously violated the ceasefire it had with Hamas and at the same time ignored its own violations. Then, as now, Israel refused to negotiate directly with Hamas, although a rabbi of a West Bank settlement who has done so managed to achieve an agreeable cease-fire.

What is different, however, this time, is that even some in the US mainstream media that traditionally tends to unquestionably adopt Israel’s narrative, began to depict life in Gaza. The Washington Post, for example, posted a video of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip from the ground level, a perspective not often seen on the American press and issued a list of children killed. What is also different, this time, is that Israeli politicians have openly declared the entire Palestinian people to be the enemy, and radical right wing Israelis have staged demonstrations calling for "death to the Arabs". Indeed, the brutal burning to death of a Palestinian child, carried out by Israeli radicals, has indicated the degree to which the anti-Arab incitement has been that severe that the Israeli government may be losing control of the situation. Additionally, this time, unlike in earlier events, Hamas leader Khaled Masha’al issued a statement directly to Israelis arguing they should blame Netanyahu for their current predicament. This time too, unlike in previous attempts, an Israeli ground invasion in Gaza, and even a recapturing of the entire strip, is a realistic possibility. While it is hard to say whether Israel has escalated the situation because of its desire to get rid of Hamas or due to its interest in gas reserves found near the Gaza coast, Israeli citizens, who are rightfully fearful due to the constant rocket attacks, are for the most part still united behind the Israeli government’s "Protective Edge" operation, just as they support "Pillar of Cloud" and "Cast Lead" although none of the previous operations has provided them with security or a lasting peace. To what degree the international community will continue to support Israel’s actions in Gaza remains to be seen.

Joshua Tartakovsky is an Israeli-American independent journalist and a graduate of Brown University and LSE.