Wednesday Edition - Opinion | If the PA Is Responsible for Palestinian Violence, Who 'Ratifies' Jewish Terrorism?

Source: Haaretz
https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-if-the-pa-is-responsible-for-palestinian-violence-who-ratifies-jewish-terrorism-1.10737999

By Zvi Bar'el
Published April 12, 2022

The High Court of Justice produced a dramatic legal innovation this week when it ruled that Jewish victims of terror can sue for compensation from the Palestine Authority. The justification for that is based on the responsibility of the PA – which “ratifies” those acts of terror by paying compensation to the families of Palestinian prisoners and of the assailants who were killed.

In this ruling there was a difference of opinion between Justices Yitzhak Amit and David Mintz on the one hand, and Justice Ofer Grosskopf on the other. The first two assumed that it is widely accepted and self-evident that the very payment of compensation to the families of the prisoners is a type of “ratification” of their activity, which proves that the PA is a partner to an extent that gives it responsibility. Grosskopf, on the other hand, thought that describing the PA as a “ratifying” body requires an examination of whether there is a “significant and close” link in real time between the PA and the terror attacks and their perpetrators.

Presumably this ruling was not meant only to help the families of Jewish victims to receive compensation, but also to deter the PA and pressure it to stop paying compensation – a kind of development of the law that allows Israel to deduct from the tax money transferred to the PA the sums it pays to the prisoners’ families.

But the High Court decision is not choosy. If the PA is responsible, because it “ratifies” the attacks, then the Israeli government bears similar responsibility for any damage caused by the settlers, whether by uprooting a tree and torching a car, or by wounding and killing Palestinians. The criterion determined by the High Court, to the effect that the compensation paid by the PA to the families of the assailants is considered complicity in the act, is also valid when it comes to Israel...

Read more: Opinion | If the PA Is Responsible for Palestinian Violence, Who 'Ratifies' Jewish Terrorism?

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Palestine’s Widening Geography of Resistance: Why Israel Cannot Defeat the Palestinians

Source: Ramzy Baroud, Politics for the People
http://www.ramzybaroud.net/palestines-widening-geography-of-resistance-why-israel-cannot-defeat-the-palestinians/

By Ramzy Baroud
Published April 13, 2022

There is a reason why Israel is insistent on linking the series of attacks carried out by Palestinians recently to a specific location, namely the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank. By doing so, the embattled Naftali Bennett’s government can simply order another deadly military operation in Jenin to reassure its citizens that the situation is under control.

Indeed, on April 9, the Israeli army has stormed the Jenin refugee camp, killing a Palestinian and wounding ten others. However, Israel’s problem is much bigger than Jenin.

If we examine the events starting with the March 22 stabbing attack in the southern city of Beersheba (Bir Al Saba’) – which resulted in the death of four – and ending with the killing of three Israelis in Tel Aviv – including two army officers – we will reach an obvious conclusion: these attacks must have been, to some extent, coordinated.

Spontaneous Palestinian retaliation to the violence of the Israeli occupation rarely follows this pattern in terms of timing or style. All the attacks, with the exception of Beersheba, were carried out using firearms. The shooters, as indicated by the amateur videos of some of the events and statements by Israeli eyewitnesses, were well-trained and were acting with great composure.

An example was the March 27 Hadera event, carried out by two cousins, Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariah, from the Arab town of Umm al-Fahm, inside Israel. Israeli media reported of the unmistakable skills of the attackers, armed with weapons that, according to the Israeli news agency, Tazpit Press Service, cost more than $30,000.

Read more: Palestine’s Widening Geography of Resistance: Why Israel Cannot Defeat the Palestinians

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Beware of the resurgent Russophobia

Source: Al Jazeera
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/4/1/beware-of-the-resurgent-russophobia

By Hamid Dabashi
Published April 1, 2022

So what if Putin likes Dostoyevsky?

“Vladimir Putin adores Fyodor Dostoevsky,” I recently read in an article. “A close reading of the legendary author’s texts reveals the feeling might have been mutual.”

Before long I also read that in Italy a university had cancelled a literature course on Dostoyevsky over the Ukraine crisis. If the world were left at the mercy of such acts of juvenile lunacy, we will sooner lose the moral parameters of our earthly existence than we do the environmental conditions of human survival. What has Dostoyevsky to do with Putin? We might as well ban Faulkner because we oppose the Ku Klux Klan – or stop reading Emile Zola because we do not like Marine Le Pen. What sheer sophomoric puerility is this?

People around the world aghast at the barbarity of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine (as they were with Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq) must be very careful not to fall into this trap. “A plague on both your houses,” we should instead say both to Putin and his nemesis as we reach for our copies of the masterpieces of Russian literature to reread in protest, beginning of course with Dostoyevsky.

I was walking through that neighbourhood like a pilgrim retracing every inch of it graced by the memories of a lasting monument to a man’s literary genius, a novelist whom Nietzsche had praised as “the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn”, the towering moral figure on whom Freud wrote his iconic essay, “Dostoyevsky and Parricide”...

Read more: Beware of the resurgent Russophobia