1. Green Light for Ethnic Cleansing in South Hebron Hills
2. SA/DD – Same Apartheid/Different Day
3. Settlement Developments – West Bank (general)
4. Targeting Settlers
5. Legalizing Violence Outposts
6. Bonus Reads

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1. Bills, Resolutions, Letters
2. Hearings
3. On the Record

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“Israel‘s Supreme Court has rejected a petition against the eviction of more than 1,000 Palestinian inhabitants of a rural part of the occupied West Bank, in an area Israel has designated a zone for military exercises. After two decades of inconclusive legal manoeuvring, the Supreme Court issued its ruling late on Wednesday, paving the way for the demolition of eight small villages in Masafer Yatta, a rocky, arid area near Hebron.” See here for more on Masafer Yatta and Firing Zone 918, including FMEP interviews with activists and experts.

“The occupation court just decided: My community will be destroyed. I live in Massafer Yatta, Palestine. An unjust 23 year long trial ended today with a verdict of mass eviction. The army can now place us on trucks, 2,400 people, and expel us from our ancient villages, one by one.”

“When I was just 1.5 old in 1999, the Israeli army destroyed my village and threw us homeless along with +100s of Palestinians from 12 villages in Masafer Yatta, we returned to our homes, last night, 22 years after, the court ruled Our villages to the army. If the eviction take place today, 1000s of us living here will be homeless again, the Israeli court even say that our [Villages] and children’s schools must be shooting play ground for the [Israeli] army, 10000s of animals would die from Hunger, we wouldn’t have our fields to graze. We are calling on everyone to stand with us, to stop this eviction. Would you help save lives? Of Thousands of children and animals? We need your help at the most. Ask your government to oppose the eviction that Israel is committing against us. Join the struggle – #SaveMasaferYatta  https://savemasaferyatta.com/en/”

“In the historiographical debate about whether Israel is in its essence and character a colonial-settler entity, the justices have expressed a firm stance: Most certainly, it is. Because the essence of settler colonialism is the taking over of land by an immigrant population while expelling its indigenous (in the most extreme case by committing genocide), denying their linkage to the land and totally excluding them from the new political order that the immigrants have created. In this order, in which the indigenous population has no say or any rights, it’s natural for the new rulers to decide that a particular piece of land is needed for its army. Or maybe more settlers. Or maybe both. Masafer Yatta’s transformation into Firing Zone 918 is but another tier in a process that has been going on between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean for more than a century, and serves as an illustration of the continuity of Israeli policy.”

“Yesterday, on the eve of Memorial Day and almost secretly, the Israeli Supreme Court published its ruling regarding the legality of the eviction orders of thousands of Palestinians living in the south Hebron Hills in an area declared as a firing zone (No. 918)…The ruling rejected the claim that the prohibition of forcible transfer set forth in international law is customary and binding. Judge Mintz ruled that this was a treaty norm, that is, one that expresses agreements between states but is not enforceable in a domestic court. Beyond the fact that this is a cruel decision that could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe, this rationale denying that the prohibition on forced transfer is customary law is nothing less than an embarrassing legal error…The prohibition on forced transfer is perhaps one of the oldest in the prohibitions of modern war laws…The world we live in is a world where slavery is forbidden, the murder of civilians is forbidden and deportation is forbidden. It seems to me that this is an intuitive moral principle.”

“The justices have thus proved once again that the occupied cannot expect justice from the occupier’s court. The decision, weaving baseless legal interpretation with decontextualized facts, makes it clear that there is no crime which the high court justices will not find a way to legitimize. Employing sugarcoated language, hypocrisy, and lies, the justices once again fulfilled their role in Israel’s regime of Jewish supremacy and paved the way for the crime of forcible transfer to be committed, while reversing reality: the ruling cast Palestinian victims as the “unlawful” offenders, while portraying the apartheid regime as the victim. The international community must prevent Israel from forcibly transferring the Masafer Yatta communities and make sure, should this crime be committed, that those responsible for it – including government ministers, the military top echelons, and the supreme court justices – will be held accountable.” See also this B’Tselem video, “Firing Zone 918 – An Exercise in War Crimes”

“Nabil Abu Rudeineh, the spokesperson for President Mahmoud Abbas, warned today of the Supreme Israeli Court’s decision okaying the demolition of more than 12 Palestinian villages in Masafer Yatta and the ensuing displacement of more than 4,000 Palestinian citizens, saying these evictions amount to ethnic cleansing.” Also from WAFA this week, see Israeli settlers place mobile home in Masafer Yatta, a prelude to taking over land and Palestinian shepherd assaulted, wounded by settlers south of Hebron (in the Masafer Yatta village of Umm el Kheir).

“Israeli Channel 12 news confirms their reporter fabricated accusation against @972mag reporter @basel_adra in prime time news. The anchor admitted it was false reporting. Basel is one of the leading reporters covering Israeli expulsion efforts in MasaferYatta #SaveMasaferYatta” [Video in link]. See also this analysis from Breaking the Silence’s Ori Givati, “So what did we have? A blood libel against a Palestinian activist & harsh accusations against left-wing orgs based on total lie, published in main edition of News12, & a weak/embarrassing “clarification” that doesn’t take responsibility or clarify that the event never happened.”

“The horrifying killing spree could have strategic repercussions. Events of this kind have in the past marked watershed moments resulting in deep policy shifts…the attack came just days after Gaza-based Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, in a particularly graphic April 30 address, exhorted Palestinians to defend Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque against what he described as Jewish desecration. “Whoever has a gun should prepare it, and whoever does not have a gun should prepare his cleaver, axe or knife,” he urged his listeners.”

“According to data issued quarterly by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), as of 31 March 2022, there were 4,241 Palestinians (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza) held as “security prisoners” in detention facilities including 134 children (12-17 years). In the case of children there was an 8% increase in the number compared with the previous month and an annual decrease of 13% compared with 2021. Two children were held in administrative detention. According to the IPS, 67% of child detainees were transferred to prisons inside Israel in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.”

“Israel is holding about 600 Palestinian detainees without charge or trial, the highest number since 2016, an Israeli rights group said. HaMoked, an Israeli rights group that regularly gathers figures from prison authorities, said on Monday that as of May there were 604 detainees held in administrative detention. Nearly all are Palestinians, as administrative detention is very rarely used against Jews. So-called administrative detainees are arrested on “secret evidence”, unaware of the accusations against them, and are not allowed to defend themselves in court. They are usually held for renewable six-month periods that often lead to years in detention.”

“Two prominent Palestinian rights activists were prevented from travelling by Israel last week while en route to attend the World Social Forum in Mexico, provoking an outcry from campaigners…Francis and Aboudi are the directors of Palestinian prisoners’ rights group Addameer and the Bisan Center for Research and Development, respectively. These two groups are among six Palestinian civil society organisations that Israel declared “terrorist organisations” last year. According to Francis, the travel bans imposed on her and Aboudi are no coincidence, and are part of a broader Israeli effort to continue to repress Palestinian civil society organisations and the people who work in the sector.” For more, see FMEP’s Resource page, “On Israel’s Declaration of Palestinian Human Rights Groups as “Terrorist Organizations”

“Previously unpublished data from the Civil Administration — the arm of the Israeli military that governs the occupied territories — which was collated by the NGO Kerem Navot, suggests that confiscations of Palestinian agricultural and construction equipment (including tractors, cranes, construction materials, and water cisterns) have leapt nearly threefold over the past seven years. Confiscations of similar equipment from Israeli settlers in the West Bank, meanwhile, dropped by 42 percent over the same period…Data obtained by Kerem Navot further shows that, between 2014 and 2020, the Civil Administration raised more than NIS 8 million [$2.4 million] from release fees for the seized equipment, and profited some NIS 2.5 million [$750,000] from selling equipment that owners were unable or unwilling to reclaim. In other words, the Civil Administration raked in over NIS 10 million from the confiscation of agricultural and construction equipment over that period…[Kerem Navot’s Dror] Etkes continues: “The data shows the enormous gaps in enforcement against Israelis and against Palestinians with regards to construction in Area C,” referring to the 60 percent of the occupied West Bank which is under full Israeli civil and military control, and where firing zones also lie. “This is stuff anyone working on the ground sees every day — in the huge spike in demolition of Palestinian construction, and the jump in the number of illegal [Israeli settlement] outposts in recent years.”

“Israel is set to advance plans for nearly 4,000 housing units in Israeli settlements in the West Bank next week, despite firm American opposition to settlement construction…The expected approvals will come just over a month before a planned visit to Israel by US President Joe Biden…Settler leaders appeared unappeased by the plans, calling the pending approvals too modest in scope and charging that the tranche had shrunk by some 2,000 units planned for outside the major settlement blocs.”

“Critics say the planned projects will turn what is left of the open, rolling landscape around the Old City into a kind of Disneyland and mar the iconic skyline. Opponents also see the plans as part of a grander political strategy to erase the line between East and West Jerusalem and strengthen Israel’s claim to sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. They say the intent is to emphasize the Jewish history and culture of areas loaded with religious and political sensitivities, and play down their Muslim, Christian or Palestinian character. The involvement of a private Jewish settler organization has only fueled those concerns.”

“Amid the rise in usage of facial recognition technologies and the acceleration of its development during the pandemic, journalistic investigations are uncovering more and more ways that these Israeli cyber companies are violating privacy and human rights around the world, as well as here in Israel-Palestine. The Israeli surveillance industry is unsupervised and is expanding at what seems like an unstoppable pace. Perhaps Israeli citizens are already being identified by the police on their way to demonstrations and political gatherings — and we know that this is already the case in Gaza and the West Bank. Soon, this identification will also be taking place via drones flying above us in demonstrations, and body cameras worn by police officers. This is not just an invasion of privacy, it is a real threat to our most basic rights.” See also “Spanish Prime Minister, Defense Minister Hacked Using Israel’s Pegasus Spyware in 2021, Officials Say” (Haaretz) 

“The fact that the Ukrainians now being welcomed are refugees only heightens the hypocrisy — and pain — for families like mine. My spouse’s parents fled their Mediterranean coastal village in what is now Israel as refugees in 1948, and he and his mother have the right, under international law, to return there…The Israeli authorities say they will not allow Ukrainian refugees who do not have Jewish ancestry to remain in Israel permanently — they expect them to return home once it is safe to do so. With this approach, Israel’s political leaders seem to expect that whoever controls Ukraine when the dust settles will respect the international human rights that they themselves have flouted for years: the right of refugees to return to the country or territory they fled, irrespective of who controls it and of the demographic balance that they might seek to maintain.” See also “Israeli Lawyer Takes Senior Role at Human Rights Watch” (Haaretz)

“Nearly six years after Israel accused Mohammed el-Halabi of diverting tens of millions of dollars from an international charity to Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers, he has yet to be convicted in an Israeli court and is still being held in detention. World Vision — a major Christian charity that operates around the world — as well as independent auditors and the Australian government have found no evidence of any wrongdoing. El-Halabi’s lawyer says he has rejected multiple plea bargains that would have allowed him to walk free years ago. Closing arguments ended in September. The prosecution has requested another hearing Monday to extend his detention.”

“In this 22-minute video, Palestinian human rights experts break down what Apartheid means, and how it applies to Israel’s control over Palestinians, while ordinary Palestinian citizens of Israel, residents of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and refugees in the diaspora take us inside their homes and towns, and tell us what it’s like being a Palestinian living under Israeli rule.”

“From September to December 2021, as the US policy fellow for Al-Shabaka, a Palestinian think tank, I engaged in a series of conversations with Palestinians – young and old, urban and rural, from unemployed to retired – within the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel, and the Palestinian diaspora about how to rethink aid and development in Palestine. Unsurprisingly, many of the people I spoke with were critical of how aid functions in the region. That’s despite the fact that all said they had seen clear advances in health, education, and even economic development, all due to international aid. There was a clear appreciation of the most tangible benefits of aid, like scholarships or other opportunities for young people, and they tended to recognise that Palestinian dependence on aid was likely to continue, at least for now (at least 80 percent of Palestinians in Gaza need aid to get by). But they felt that aid groups and donors have actually limited Palestinian development by failing to challenge damaging Israeli policies, like the strict limits on what can be brought into Gaza; or the expanding settlements, and the land and resources appropriated to support them, in the West Bank. This has resulted in a situation that has deteriorated over time, impeding the work of humanitarians and reproducing the conditions that make aid necessary in the first place.”

“ICYMI, May 1, 2022 is the date the ADL officially declared war on critics of Israel/Zionism..“We will use our analytic capabilities to expose their ideas and ideology.” [hasbara/organized defamation]. “We will use our litigation skills to hold them accountable for their harm.” [SLAPP suits, litigation to erode 1st Amdt]…“We will use our advocacy muscles to push policymakers to take action.” [action to erode 1st Amdt. also, but don’t dare mention the word “lobby” or you will be accused of using an antisemitic trope]. “And we will use our communications know-how to share these stories with the world.” [more hasbara/organized defamation]. The evolution of the ADL into a combination of Canary Mission and a pro-Greater Israel lawfare attack organization is now complete.” *Note that the quotes cite the ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. See also the full text of “Remarks by Jonathan Greenblatt to the ADL Virtual National Leadership Summit,” May 1, 2022. 

“Greenblatt’s announcement marks much less a break with the ADL’s modus operandi than an open admission of what its leaders used to deny. For the ADL, as its critics have long insisted, is first and foremost an Israel-advocacy organization. Its priority is to defend Israel—which maintains indefinite military rule over millions in the West Bank and a siege on Gaza—from any consequences for its actions…The ADL is, in rhetoric and in practice, an anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian outfit. That is true now; it was true in the past. Greenblatt, who made his name hawking bottled water under a guise of social entrepreneurship before a stint in the Obama administration, gave the organization a face-lift when he assumed the title of CEO in 2015. But in the years since, perceptible changes have remained largely in the realm of the cosmetic. The ADL’s Trump-era rebrand to emphasize fighting “extremism” and “hate” was a skillful PR gambit; its defense of a brutal, deadly occupation in Israel-Palestine continued apace…Still, there is a grotesque irony in Greenblatt’s smearing of Palestine-solidarity and Jewish anti-Zionist activists as being “in the same category” as the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville or shot up the Tree of Life synagogue. It was not Palestine-solidarity activists who found common cause with the white-nationalist- and neo-Nazi-adjacent Trumpian right but Greenblatt himself.”

“Greenblatt’s main argument isn’t just that anti-Zionists are antisemites. It’s that, as antisemites, anti-Zionists are the functional equivalent of white nationalists. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), he argues, are “the photo inverse of the Extreme Right that ADL long has tracked.” What’s so odd about this is that SJP, JVP, and CAIR all support legal equality irrespective of race, religion, or ethnicity, both in Israel-Palestine and the United States. That’s the opposite of white nationalists, who believe the US is a white Christian nation in which everyone else should be subordinate…The point is that if you’re creating an ideological spectrum that runs from legal equality to legal supremacy, progressive anti-Zionists are on one end and white nationalists are on the other. What lies in between them is the ADL, which supports equality under the law in the United States but calls that same principle antisemitic in Israel-Palestine. If you want to understand why Greenblatt’s argument is so muddled, that’s the reason. He needs to argue that his own position—legal equality in the US, legal supremacy in Israel-Palestine—is coherent. And to do that he needs to argue that people who believe consistently in legal equality and people who believe consistently in legal supremacy are one and the same.”

“Controversy erupted this week over a young Palestinian activist’s invitation to speak at Georgetown Law School. In advance of the event, the Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, accused 23-year-old Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd of being antisemitic — an allegation that was echoed by conservative media outlets. Though the event on Tuesday went ahead as planned, Georgetown has come under pressure in the media, as well as from some students and faculty, to condemn El-Kurd and disavow the event. The war of words began a few days before the Georgetown event, when Jonathan Greenblatt, the liberal head of the ADL, shared a dossier accusing El-Kurd of antisemitism based on a selection of his tweets and past writing. …“There are elaborate and ever-shifting speech codes that are constantly retrofitted to try and equate any form of Palestinian criticism of Zionism with antisemitism,” Munayyer said. “Those of us who operate in the American debate around this issue are forced to be very aware of the many ways that one’s legitimate criticism of Zionism can be misconstrued in bad faith as antisemitic speech.””

See also “Georgetown University Law Center Alumni Letter in Support of Mohammed El-Kurd” which includes this quote from Mohammed El-Kurd: “It is baffling to me that a community devoted to the study of law would see no problem in falsely quoting me, without examining the original quote and its context, or disclosing the fact that it is from a poem in a poetry book filled with metaphors. In this instance, I was not even aware this metaphor could be interpreted as a trope. The assumption that I would even believe such a nonsensical and unscientific thing is beyond offensive to me and rooted in anti-Palestinian racism. What could have been a learning opportunity was instead turned into a bad-faith attack of defamation to discredit my advocacy.”

“Since the launch of the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and the collapse of the Oslo Peace Process in the early aughts, the college campus has been a locus of American political conflict over Israel/Palestine. As student Palestine solidarity activists have attempted to introduce BDS resolutions across the country, Israel advocacy organizations have responded by building a vast organizing infrastructure to intervene in student debates about Israel, painting campuses as threatening and hostile places for Jewish students and pushing for greater restrictions on pro-Palestine student speech. In only the latest example, members of the NYU law school’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter—half of them Jewish—are facing media defamation for a statement the group sent to the law school listserv. How does it transform campus activism and the experience of individual students when outside organizations and media commentators get involved? Is it misleading to frame these conflicts as simply a fight between two opposing camps? What do you do when your mom forwards you Bari Weiss’s substack? Jewish Currents Editor-in-Chief Arielle Angel, Assistant Editor Mari Cohen, and Contributing Editor Joshua Leifer discuss these questions and the recent NYU events with Dylan Saba, Jewish Currents fellow and Palestine Legal staff attorney.” Also from Jewish Currents, see this discussion of approaches to understanding and applying definitions of antisemitism, “Deborah Lipstadt vs. “The Oldest Hatred”.” 

“When Deutsche Welle fired seven Arab journalists over accusations of antisemitism, many in Germany took its decision at face value. But a closer look shows DW’s investigation was riddled with political motives…Through a series of interviews and further investigation, +972 found that DW’s firings of the Arab journalists have not only raised allegations that the company violated German labor laws, but that DW’s external investigation into their cases was far from transparent or well-intentioned. In fact, the targeted journalists have expressed that the investigation appears to have been politically motivated and focused on scapegoating Arab and especially Palestinian journalists, leaving an environment of fear, distrust, and strict self-censorship when it comes to Israel-Palestine at an already mismanaged and scandal-ridden DW.”

“As the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski fought for justice in Israel-Palestine. All that changed once he got to Congress…Malinowski is not the member of Congress most hostile to Palestinian rights. He’s not even the congressional Democrat most hostile to Palestinian rights. But he is the member of Congress whose record on the issue most flagrantly contradicts his prior work and his overall commitment to human rights. Many Washington politicians know little about how US policies underwrite the daily degradation of Palestinian life. Malinowski is a different and even more dispiriting case: He does know. Yet to safeguard his political survival he supports those policies all the same. In recent years, journalists have suggested that the Democratic Party is undergoing a “tectonic” shift on Israel-Palestine. Tom Malinowski shows just how much the old rules still apply.”

“The Jewish Democratic Council of American said it is “proud to endorse” Haley Stevens over Andy Levin…”

“Democratic incumbent Rep. Shontel Brown will run for re-election in November to keep her seat as Ohio’s 11th Congressional District representative after defeating her opponent, former State Sen. Nina Turner, in a rematch of a special election last year that attracted significant involvement from pro-Israel organizations.”

“The country’s most influential pro-Israel group has dramatically escalated its direct involvement in elections, reshaping Democratic primaries with its endorsements, campaign contributions and lavish super PAC. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) founded a super PAC, United Democracy Project, that has already spent nearly $3.5 million to influence just five congressional primaries, according to a HuffPost analysis of federal election disclosures. The size of the spending is a source of anger and anxiety for more left-leaning groups…James Zogby, a pro-Palestinian activist and president of the Arab American Institute, said the new burst of spending confirmed the oft-denied influence of pro-Israel money in U.S. politics.”

“An interview with sociologist Matt Boxer on what we can and can’t learn from new statistics from the ADL and AJC.”

“In her new edited volume, Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition, Al-Shabaka policy analyst and Associate Professor of Political Economy at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Leila Farsakh, brings together a diverse group of intellectuals to critically engage with the meaning of Palestinian statehood. By going beyond partition, which fundamentally underpins the two-state solution, Farsakh and the contributing authors show that the components of Palestinian statehood, including citizenship, sovereignty, and nationhood, must be articulated within the context of decolonization.”

“On May 3, 2022, hundreds of people attended the 17th annual Israeli-Palestinian Memorial Day Ceremony. The event — which is billed as an “opportunity for Israelis and Palestinians to both grieve together and stand strong in demanding an end to the cycle of violence” — took place in a secret location in Tel Aviv due to security concerns, and was broadcasted online with over 200,000 tuning in from around the world. The keynote speech of the night was delivered by left-wing Israeli activist and author Yuli Novak, the former executive director of Breaking the Silence. It was translated by Libby Lenkinski and is reprinted below in full.”

“Gaza’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities announced the discovery of an ancient statue dating back to the Canaanite era on April 26. A farmer had found the statue in the Sheikh Hamouda area of Khan Yunis in the southern enclave. Jamal Abu Rida, director of antiquities at the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities in the Gaza Strip, told Al-Monitor that the 22-centimeter (nine-inch) limestone statue is of a head wearing a crown of snakes. Abu Rida said, “The statue dates back 4,500 years and belongs to the Canaanite goddess Anat, who is the goddess of love, beauty and war, according to Canaanite mythology. The statue is currently exhibited in the Pasha Palace Museum in Gaza.””

“Eleven Days in May is a documentary about the children who were killed in Gaza during Israel’s 11-day bombardment last May. At least 60 of the almost 200 Palestinian victims were children, but the exact figure is impossible to verify. The film opens with BBC News footage of the airstrikes – the type viewers are familiar with, “but then tend to forget about,” says Winterbottom – before running through the conflict chronologically, telling the viewer about the children who died each day, via interviews with 28 families.”

“The fact that bulldozers have cropped up in both India and Israel as a chilling symbol of state repression is no coincidence. On the contrary, the nature of the repression itself is common to both cases: In both India and Israel, the far-right regimes that govern the two countries share a common vision of a ethnic-majoritarian apartheid state, and are willing to go to extreme lengths to realize that vision. As they both seek not only to make that nightmare real but to do so while still maintaining some semblance of legitimacy in the eyes of the international community, it is not surprising that they have found natural allies in each other. The affinity between India and Israel has deep roots. The most notorious example is, of course, the close security relationship between the two nations. India accounts for 46 percent of Israel’s total arms exports, making it the largest buyer of Israeli weapons, and the Modi government recently made headlines for purchasing Israeli spyware that it then used to illegally surveil and target journalists, human rights defenders, and opposition leaders…The affinity between India and Israel’s far-right regimes, however, goes far beyond surface-level issues like the arms trade or even the personal relationships between their leaders. In fact, it extends back to the very roots of the two regimes, and more importantly, to the ideologies that motivate them: Hindutva and Zionism.”