Our Wednesday News Analysis | Opinion | Who Cares if Palestinians Are Dead or Alive?

Mourners react to the death of a 17-year-old Palestinian killed near Nablus, earlier this year.Credit: JAAFAR ASHTIYEH - AFP

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-04-02/ty-article/.premium/who-cares-if-palestinians-are-dead-or-alive/00000187-3e8b-db91-adcf-3f9f00200000

By Gideon Levy
Published April 2, 2023

“Let Israel remember its loyal and brave sons and daughters,” goes the prayer that will be said. Only ours, exclusively, above and superior to any other nation’s sons.

They are Palestinians, so what importance is there to whether they are alive or dead? Who was killed and who wounded? After all, they are all terrorists,
and that is their and their families’ fate."

A family is informed that their son has fallen in battle. Another family, from the same community, is informed that their son has been wounded and captured, and is now lying in the enemy’s hospital beyond the border. For over a month, this family has tried to visit their son, while the other family grieves over the death of its loved one, whose place of burial is unknown. Ultimately, the anticipated permit arrives and the mother travels to visit her wounded son. As soon as she enters his hospital room, her world collapses: The young man in the bed is not her son. He is the son of her neighbors who was believed to have died. The 40 days of ritual mourning have elapsed in any case.

This is what happened in recent weeks at Aqabat Jabr refugee camp, located on the outskirts of Jericho. Tayer Aweidat was declared dead; Alaa Aweidat was said to have been wounded. When the mother, Nawal, came to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital to visit her son, after a month of trying to obtain a permit, she was astonished to find a wounded man who was not her son. Since then, she and her family have been beside themselves. They want to know only one thing: What happened to their son?

The state actually replied: “The relevant person is apparently no longer alive and his body is being kept at the National Center of Forensic Medicine. … That ends our involvement,” wrote attorney Matanya Rosin, a deputy in the State Prosecutor’s Office, High Court of Justice department. The attorney was resolute: The son is “apparently” dead and that was “the end of our involvement.” That’s enough information for you subhumans, continue living with your doubts and don’t dare bother us again. The attorney also informed the family, with the humanity that so characterizes our enlightened country, that the family can go to the forensic institute to identify what is supposedly the body of their son...

Read more: Opinion | Who Cares if Palestinians Are Dead or Alive?

THE PITFALLS OF REDEFINING THE PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE

Young Palestinians play football next to Israel’s separation barrier, Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem, Mar. 8, 2023. (AP Photo)

Source: Arab News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2280686?utm_content=buffer01e33&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

By RAMZY BAROUD
Published April 3, 2023

"Can those who do not respect the rights of their own people
be trusted to champion the rights of others?"

When I excitedly shared the news on social media last week that the Indonesian island of Bali had refused to host the Israeli team as part of the Under-20 World Cup football tournament, which was scheduled to be held in cities around the country from May 20 to June 11 (although Indonesia has now been stripped of the hosting rights by FIFA), some readers were unimpressed.

Though any news related to Palestine and Israel often generates two sharply different kinds of response, the latest act of Indonesian solidarity with the Palestinian people failed to impress even some pro-Palestine activists in the West. Their rationale had nothing to do with Palestine or Israel, but the Indonesian government’s own human rights record.

This supposed dichotomy is as omnipresent as it is problematic. Some of the most genuine acts of solidarity with the Palestinians — or other oppressed nations in the Global South — tend to take place in other southern nations. But since they are frequently accused of having poor human rights records by Western governments and West-based rights groups, these gestures of solidarity are often accused of lacking substance...

Read more: The pitfalls of redefining the Palestinian struggle

ISRAEL’S RIGHTWING GOVERNMENT REPRESENTS THE JUDAIZATION OF ZIONISM

YITZCHAK GOLDKNOPF, LEADER OF UNITED TORAH JUDAISM WITH ITAMAR BEN-GVIR AND OTHER MKS. (PHOTO: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH 90)

Source: Mondoweiss
https://mondoweiss.net/2023/03/israels-rightwing-government-represents-the-judaization-of-zionism/

By HAIM BRESHEETH-ŽABNER
Published March 31, 2023

Early Zionism sought to reform the "Ghetto Jew" into the secular Zionist militant. But now the new Israeli government not only wants to push society to the right, but to dismantle its secularism as well.

"The statistics are clear:
Israel is safely on its way to becoming a Jewish version of the Islamic Republic.

While historical Zionism was a mainly secular movement, this changed a while ago through the social engineering of a new Jewish Identity, much like the Zionism of the Yeshuv sought to remake the “Ghetto Jew” into a secular Zionist pioneer."

For three long months, thousands of Israelis have been going out at least twice a week to demonstrate against their new and extreme government. The sights on our screens are unprecedented — huge gatherings in the main cities, main roads blocked, the official premier residence under siege, thousands blocking the road to the airport every time Netanyahu is on his way to another capital, and every Thursday is now a National Disruption Day with most major systems either grinding to a halt or barely functioning.

To make it even more difficult for Netanyahu and his unruly fascists on the Zionist right, some European countries, and even the US, have become more vocal about their disaffection. Is this Israel’s version of the color revolutions?

It is clear that most Israelis are against the so-called Judicial Reform, which the demonstrators call the judicial coup. Even some Likud voters — not the most well-behaved crowd at the best of times — have been deeply shaken by the ferocity of the changes. As long as the changes were mainly concerning the occupied territory and the more than six and a half million Palestinians living in historic Palestine, most Israelis would have backed their government as they have done so often before; but this government is clearly different — in its intentions, actions, tone, and especially its openness about its objectives. And for the first time, it is also focused on dramatically changing the life of Israeli Jews, not just of its Palestinian subjects living under a militarized apartheid regime...

Read more: Israel’s rightwing government represents the Judaization of Zionism