US orders Air India to pay $1.4 million for delay in providing refunds for cancelled flights

The Tata group-owned airline has paid $121.5 million (Rs 985.5 crore) as refunds for flight cancellation, mostly during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Scroll Staff

Nov 15, 2022 · An Air India aircraft prepares to land at the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai. | Indranil Mukherjee/ AFP

The United States government on Monday ordered Air India to pay $1.4 million (Rs 11.36 crore) as penalty for extreme delays in providing refunds to passengers due to the cancellation or change in flights, mostly during the pandemic.

Air India is one of the six airlines fined by the United States Department of Transportation for failing to provide timely refunds to passengers after flights were cancelled or significantly changed. The Tata group-owned airline has paid $121.5 million (Rs 985.57 crore) as refunds for flight cancellation.

Besides Air India, the other airlines that were asked to pay penalties for delay in refunds include Frontier, TAP Portugal, Aero Mexico, EI AI, and Avianca.

The six airlines have paid $600 million (Rs 4,872 crore) in total as refunds, the Department of Transportation announced. The department has also assessed more than $7.25 million (Rs 58.8 crore) in civil penalties against the six airlines for extreme delays in providing refunds.

“With today’s fines, the Department’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection has assessed $8.1 million (Rs 65.7 crore) in civil penalties in 2022, the largest amount ever issued in a single year by that office,” said the Department of Transportation.

“When a flight gets canceled, passengers seeking refunds should be paid back promptly,” said US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. “Whenever that doesn’t happen, we will act to hold airlines accountable on behalf of American travelers and get passengers their money back. A flight cancellation is frustrating enough, and you shouldn’t also have to haggle or wait months to get your refund.”

Under the United States’ law, airlines and ticket agents have a legal obligation to refund consumers if the airline cancels or significantly changes a flight to, from and within the United States, and the passenger does not wish to accept the alternative offered.

Air India took more than 100 days to process more than half of the 1,900 refund complaints filed with the Department of Transportation for flights that the carrier cancelled or significantly changed, reported PTI.

U.S. Says Six Airlines Issue $622 Million In Refunds

By David Shepardson
11/14/22 

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg joins a rally to support Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto ahead of the midterm elections in Henderson, Nevada, U.S. November 7, 2022.

The U.S. Transportation Department said Monday that six airlines were slapped with $7.25 million in penalties and agreed to issue $622 million in passenger refunds as the agency vows to aggressively enforce consumer protections.

The actions helped ensure the carriers paid required refunds "to hundreds of thousands of passengers who had their flights canceled or significantly changed," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters. "It shouldn't take enforcement action from (USDOT) to get airlines to pay the funds that they're required to pay."

Many of the refunds involved flights delayed or canceled during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many travelers waited months or even years for refunds.

Buttigieg said under the settlements ultra-low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines was required to pay $222 million in refunds and will pay a $2.2 million penalty, while Tata Group-owned Air India will pay $121.5 million in required refunds and a $1.4 million fine.

Frontier said it issued $92 million in refunds and redeemed credits and vouchers to customers who voluntarily canceled non-refundable tickets during COVID and were not entitled to refunds. It said the refunds "demonstrate Frontier's commitment to treating our customers with fairness and flexibility."

State-owned TAP Portugal will issue $126.5 million in required refunds and pay a $1.1 million penalty, and Colombia's Avianca will pay $76.8 million in required refunds and pay a $750,000 penalty.

El Al Israel Airlines will issue $61.9 million in required refunds and pay a $900,000 penalty, and Mexico's Aeromexico will pay $13.6 million in required refunds and a $900,000 fine.

El Al told USDOT it had no policy of denying refunds and "prioritized refunds for U.S. passengers," but said it had been unable to meet the department's timeframe because of the pressure the "COVID-19 public health emergency had on its personnel and its finances."

Avianca told USDOT it had no policy to deny refunds but "had to process approximately seven-years' worth of refund requests in one year with reduced staffing."

Aeromexico in 2020 and 2021 determined that refunds would be processed 12 months after receipt, USDOT said, resulting in thousands of U.S. passengers not getting timely refunds. Aeromexico told USDOT "as it faced the possibility that it would need to cease operations, it made the difficult decision to limit how passengers holding nonrefundable tickets could recover the value of those tickets."

USDOT said Air India did not provide timely refunds. The airline said it received a "flood of refund requests from March 2020 through September 2021 because of its "liberal refund-on-demand policy."

TAP said it had faced "an avalanche of refund requests and its call center was quickly overwhelmed."

USDOT said it is investigating other carriers.

USDOT credited airlines with some payments for nonrefundable tickets against the penalties: Frontier got a $1.2 million credit, TAP Portugal $550,000, El Al $450,000 and Avianca $375,000.

British newspaper reporting falls dramatically short on Palestine

Greg Shupak 

The Electronic Intifada 

7 July 2022

Reporting Palestine-Israel in British Newspapers: An Analysis of British Newspapers by Nadia Sirhan, Palgrave Macmillan (2021)

‘Conflict,’ Nadia Sirhan says in Reporting Palestine-Israel in British Newspapers, is the word most commonly used to describe Palestine-Israel but it should only be used that way if it appears between inverted commas.

The term, she points out, wrongly suggests a power symmetry between the parties, obscuring the realities of apartheid, colonialism and occupation.

“A new lexicon is needed,” she contends, “one that subverts the pervasive propaganda and blatant bias” that consistently favor the nuclear-armed ethnocracy that has dispossessed – and is dispossessing – Palestine’s Indigenous people.

Sirhan has a poetic flare making her work more readable than that of many scholars. She writes, for instance: “The Nakba continues apace. So much has happened since – 1967, the Intifadas, an unrelenting illegal military occupation, an illegal blockade, land theft, human rights abuses, etcetera, etcetera, in an interminable list – innumerable lives lost or destroyed, being lost and being destroyed. Present continuous.”

Yet such literary flourishes do not interfere with her book’s rigor.

Reporting Palestine-Israel in British Newspapers looks at how language is used in media coverage of Palestine and the ways linguistic choices can shape public opinion. Sirhan, a translator with a PhD in Arabic linguistics from SOAS, University of London, dissects word choices and sentence structure while also looking at such issues as Israel’s foundational myths, censorship, agenda setting and sourcing.

Sirhan analyzes approximately 400 articles from five British newspapers: The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and The Times.

She focuses on how these outlets have covered five recent events: Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s assault on Gaza in 2008-09; the kidnapping and killing in 2014 of three teenage Israeli settlers (Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach); an arson attack in 2015 that killed a Palestinian toddler and his parents (the Dawabsha family) while severely burning a young child; the killing in 2017 of an Israeli police officer and two Israeli security guards (Solomon Gavriyah, Youssef Ottman, and Or Arish, respectively) in the illegal Har Adar settlement; and the killing, also in 2017, of unarmed Palestinian paraplegic Ibrahim Abu Thurayya.

Sirhan says the newspapers she looked at consistently provide their audiences with pro-Israel coverage. Sirhan’s third chapter, which looks at language use in the coverage, is especially compelling. She finds that, when Palestinians kill Israelis, the five newspapers use the active voice, but that they use the passive voice to describe Israel killing Palestinians.

Such formulations highlight Palestinian responsibility for violence and conceal Israel’s because passive voice occludes a sentence’s subject whereas active voice is clear about who did what.

Elsewhere in the book, Sirhan notes that just a few of the articles on Operation Cast Lead mention that Israel is an occupier and that many of the pieces “seemed to falsely imply” that, because Israel removed its settlers from Gaza, the Strip is no longer occupied.

The blockade and siege of Gaza are “largely absent” from the articles on Cast Lead.
The apparatus of state

According to Sirhan, fewer than half of the articles about the four other stories describe the West Bank as occupied and many of those that do only refer to it that way once.

In Sirhan’s dataset, moreover, Israeli settlements are seldom described as illegal and international law is rarely mentioned at all. Such sleights-of-hand obscure the extent to which Israel is an outlaw state and undermine the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle.

These distortions have systemic explanations. Sirhan points out that because Israel has a state and Palestinians don’t, Israel can and does use this apparatus to try to manage perceptions of its policies.

It imposed a media blackout during Operation Cast Lead, for example, and – when it isn’t repressing or murdering Palestinian journalists – it obstructs their work by failing to grant them press accreditation, a tactic that Sirhan says has also been applied to non-Palestinian journalists accurately reporting on Israeli crimes.

Sirhan also writes that western journalists report from the Israeli side of the Green Line, or from Israeli-annexed Jerusalem, far more often than from the West Bank or Gaza. News outlets cite Israeli authorities as sources more frequently than they do Palestinians.

Moreover, Sirhan points to research showing that 54 percent of foreign journalists in Israel were fluent in Hebrew while 6 percent were fluent in Arabic. All such factors help make western journalists more likely to see matters from the Israeli point of view than from the Palestinian.

Sirhan suggests a variety of ways to improve the British media’s dismal record on Palestine. News agencies should base a team in the West Bank and should hire more Palestinian journalists who live in Palestine. Lobbies, she contends, should be more carefully regulated and their influence curtailed to rein in their ability to pressure journalists or try to discredit them.

Sirhan convincingly argues that the two-state solution is deceased though it’s unclear how this view squares with her assertion that “Israel must withdraw to the pre-1967 borders,” which seems to imply an Israeli and a Palestinian state. Her book closes by considering possible paths toward a future of peace and liberation in Palestine. She calls for organized mass protests and civil disobedience internationally to demand that governments stop arming Israel, cease buying Israeli weapons, and push for Israel to be prosecuted for its crimes against the Palestinians.

In addition, she advocates for full support of a global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

Such developments, in Sirhan’s estimation, will force Israel to abide by international law, end its criminal occupation, lift the siege of Gaza, and – citing France’s removal of one million of its citizens from Algeria – dismantle its post-1967 settlements. In a context like that, Sirhan thinks it might be possible for Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or be compensated if they decline to do so.

Reporting Palestine-Israel in British Newspapers is useful for academics, students and activists, and will be of interest to general readers who are curious about how media manipulation functions or who care about justice in Palestine and beyond.

Greg Shupak writes fiction and political analysis and teaches Media Studies and English at the University of Guelph-Humber. He is the author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media.

Gaza’s cesspools


Yasmin Abusayma 

The Electronic Intifada 

4 November 2022

Around 120,000 cubic meters of untreated wastewater flow into the Mediterranean daily from Gaza, yet new wastewater treatment plants are reducing pollution. Mohammed AsadAPA images

“We haven’t felt at ease in two years,” Hana Abu Dhaher, 23, said. “We no longer enjoy meals or family gatherings.”

Life hasn’t been the same for the Abu Dhaher family since April 2021, when a new wastewater treatment plant opened about 100 meters from their family home, located east of central Gaza’s al-Bureij camp.

“Our neighborhood is infested with flies and mosquitoes,” Abu Dhaher, an accountant, said. “Furthermore, the foul odor does not leave the house.”

The al-Bureij wastewater treatment plant was built to treat all of central Gaza’s wastewater – a significant task, given Gaza’s sewage crisis. Currently, the plant absorbs around 60,000 cubic meters of sewage water daily, according to engineer Zuhdi al-Ghariz, the project director of the Ministry of Local Government.

As one of the world’s most densely populated areas, the Gaza Strip and its population of 2.1 million are in dire need of more sewage treatment facilities like al-Bureij.

Currently, around 120,000 cubic meters of untreated wastewater from Gaza go into the Mediterranean every day. Though, with new treatment plants, this amount appears to be on the decline.

The existing sewage networks service only 60 percent of homes in the Gaza Strip, and the remaining 40 percent depend on septic tanks that often leak and seep into the aquifer.

Yet, over the past several years, as more facilities are built to address Gaza’s wastewater crisis, the residents in their vicinity are enduring a different kind of nightmare.
Residents protest al-Bureij

While project director al-Ghariz acknowledged that al-Bureij residents might be bothered by the plant’s smell – which he says is caused by the accumulation of untreated wastewater – he said that the plant’s construction was “supervised by international consultants who designed the stations according to international specifications.”

Specifically, Germany, which invested $100 million in the plant’s construction.

The plant “handles the problem of sewage that was spilling into the sea by natural flow, ruining soil and groundwater wells,” he said, noting that in coming years the plant will treat 90,000-120,000 cubic meters daily.

Hashem Taha, the al-Bureij treatment plant operations officer, also did not deny the existence of problems for residents.

“We saw an increase in insects and terrible odors,” he said, “therefore the municipality of al-Bureij was provided with diesel and materials needed to kill mosquitoes and clear weeds that created a fertile environment for their development.”

He said that the smell problem has mostly been resolved, and that it is only particularly bad for an hour or two during the day, when the station processes the wastewater.

Yet Zahia Abu Dhaher, the mother of Hana, said the smell is persistent.

“The smell is harmful, especially for us, the elderly who suffer from shortness of breath,” she said.

Furthermore, the mosquitoes are so bad that her sons and daughters have developed rashes as a result of the nonstop bites and must visit the doctor on a regular basis for treatment.

This past August, the Abu Dhaher family along with other residents of al-Bureij protested outside the gates of the plant, demanding an improvement in conditions, but to no avail.

Zahia Abu Dhaher said that Israel’s May 2021 attack on Gaza only worsened the situation.

The station was operated remotely and faced numerous power cuts, which intensified the smell as a result of the accumulation of solid waste.

During that attack, Israel further destroyed or damaged 23,070 meters of sewage lines and 2,850 meters of rainwater drain pipes, according to the Gaza municipality.

Nihad al-Khatib, the official in charge of operating sewage plants at Gaza’s Coastal Municipalities Water Utility, said the impact of the Israeli blockade on Gaza’s sewage crisis cannot be overstated.

“The development of many plants has been postponed because the occupation has not allowed the entry of equipment needed to operate and complete them,” he said. “Some projects have been suspended for more than a year and a half.”

As Israel destroys Gaza’s infrastructure, prevents the entry of equipment needed to maintain facilities and imposes restrictions on the construction of new infrastructure, the efficient treatment of sewage becomes a near impossibility.

Flooded with sewage in Beach camp

Mousa al-Sisi, 76, dreads wintertime in Beach refugee camp.

In 2019, a sewage pipe opposite his house exploded and leaked into his family’s home. He had to build a wall of sandbags outside to stop the flow and re-route it toward the sea.

For this reason, many Palestinians in Gaza see sewage pipes and drains as bombs just waiting to explode every winter.

“The [sewage] problem has been present for years,” al-Sisi said, “but it has gotten much worse in the last two years due to the camp’s inadequate infrastructure.”

Infrastructure is shoddy throughout the camps in the Gaza Strip, and it causes daily problems that range from a nuisance to catastrophic.

“When my grandchildren go to school,” al-Sisi said, “they jump from stone to stone amid the foul smells.”

Each winter carries the threat of temporary displacement, property damage and health issues due to flooding and burst sewage and drainage pipes.

The Gaza municipality has discussed a development project in coordination with UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, to help address the sewage crisis in Beach camp.

Despite such projects, sewage problems persist. For instance, in the Jabaliya camp, the Abu Rashid pond is a constant nuisance to those who live nearby.

Originally a natural spot where rainwater collected, in 1975 the nine-meter-deep pond became a depository for sewage.

Even with the numerous development projects in this area, the pond still emits a powerful stench and attracts rodents and insects, especially in summer.

Abdel Rahman al-Ajrami, 35, is unemployed and lives near Abu Rashid pond.

“We really do not need the problems caused by the pond,” he said. “We live in a state of anxiety with the first drop of rain in winter, as the water level rises and sometimes gets into our homes.”

Hamdi Mutair, the former director of Jabaliya municipality’s water and sanitation department, said there are efforts in place to maintain the pond, such as pumping in water and spraying pesticides.

Yet constant interruptions of electricity and the fuel crisis have instead made the pond a cesspool.

Yasmin Abusayma is a freelance writer and translator from Gaza, Palestine.

The burden Western liberals impose only on Palestinians


Joseph Massad 

The Electronic Intifada 

9 November 2022

Billionaires Sheldon Adelson (left) and Haim Saban (right), pictured in 2014, are among the wealthy pro-Zionist Jews who have financed Israeli colonization. Their role is comparable to the European Christian businesses and states that funded colonization in Algeria, South Africa, Kenya, New Zealand or even Israel. Shahar AzranPolaris/Newscom

Since the beginning of Zionist Jewish colonization of their country in the 1880s, Palestinians have faced demands that they carry a double burden: to fight off the Jewish racist colonists while having to defend their colonizers against anti-Jewish European Christian racism.

No other colonized people has been forced to carry such a double burden. Not even the Indigenous African peoples of Liberia were asked to defend their own Black American racist colonizers who despised them against European and US anti-Black racism that targeted the Black colonists.

Neither were Black South Africans ever asked to defend their Afrikaner oppressors against the British who oppressed the Afrikaners, even placing them in concentration camps.

And no one ever demanded that Indigenous people defend their white colonizers against the religious persecution they suffered in Europe which they claim impelled them to colonize North America.

When these various colonized peoples attacked the oppressiveness of their colonizers and their supremacist and exploitative crimes, no one seemed concerned that such criticisms would be used by the former oppressors of the colonists against them, or that the colonized had no right to condemn their oppressors.

By contrast, the general demand put to the Palestinians by many European Christians and Jews and by the colonizing European Jews is that Palestinians should have ceded their homeland voluntarily to European Jews and expressed sympathy with the European Jewish plight against European anti-Semitism.

Short of that, European Christians and European colonizing Jews would insist that the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle against Jewish colonization is “anti-Semitic,” meaning that the Palestinians do not oppose the principle of the colonization of their homeland, but rather that they only oppose the right of Jews, but not other peoples, to colonize it.

Were Christians, Muslims or Hindus to colonize Palestine, the Palestinians, according to this logic, would have ceded their homeland willingly, but they refuse to do so in the case of Jews simply because they are anti-Semites.

Conditional sympathy

In the last 50 years, western Christian and Jewish liberals who sympathize with Palestinians as victims of Israeli oppression, but not as anti-colonial resistors, insist that all Palestinian criticism of Israel must be carefully calibrated lest it be perceived by Europeans as anti-Semitism.

However, during the same period, the Israelis and their Western supporters have waged a major campaign arguing that all criticism of Zionism and Israel is “anti-Semitic,” a campaign that culminated in the recent adoption by European countries and the US of the anti-Semitism definition concocted by the European-based International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

These accusations have centered on several suspect arguments that many Western supporters of the Palestinians-as-victims-but-not-as-resistors want to bar the Palestinians from making.

The Zionists and Western liberals argue that if Palestinians attack Jews’ right to colonize their lands, it would be anti-Semitic because in denying European Jews the right to be colonists the Palestinians would be denying their alleged “right” to self-determination. Or worse, that Palestinians would be denying the racist connection that Protestant Europeans conjured since the 16th century, namely that European Jews are fantastically somehow the descendants of Palestine’s ancient Hebrews, (something European Jewish lore also sometimes claimed) and not later European converts to Judaism!

By this logic, the Zionists argue that the Palestinians are in fact the colonists of Palestine, while the European Jewish colonists were the real natives of Palestine who were repatriating to the homeland of their alleged ancient ancestors.

In the early 19th century, many European philhellenists considered themselves the descendants of the ancient Greeks and saw the indigenous Greeks as “Christianized Slavs” who migrated south to ancient Greece and that they were more akin to the Turks.

But as no settler-colonial project was ultimately conceived for Greece, the matter was dropped in favor of Greek “independence” from the Ottomans and Greece’s appropriation as part of Europe rather than the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Zionists have never been original thinkers, as most of their arguments are derived from other European colonists. It was the French and later the Italians who argued that their colonization of North Africa was nothing short of the return to the ancient land of the Roman Empire and that the Indigenous Arabs were the actual colonists!

Indeed, Western racist luminaries like Albert Camus insisted that the Algerian Arabs were foreign colonists while claiming that “the French of Algeria are also natives, in the strong sense of the word.”

European anti-Semitism projected onto Palestinians

Should Palestinians then concede the Zionist fabrication that European Jews are the Indigenous people in Palestine and that they are the actual colonists, lest they be accused of anti-Semitism?

When Palestinians claim that the Western and US media have always been pro-Israel and racist against the Palestinians, their Western supporters worry that this would be perceived as anti-Semitic, because European and US anti-Semites traditionally accuse European Jews of controlling the Western media.

However, the Palestinian claim is no different from the Algerian claim that the Western media always supported French colonialism in Algeria, or the Native American claim that the Western media supports the rights of the white colonists in the United States.

That Western media, which is the media of colonizers and colonists, supports colonialism attests to a structural bias, sometimes even a conspiratorial bias, against the Indigenous peoples.

This does not mean that Jews control the Western media as the anti-Semites claim. It means that European colonists, Christians and Jews, and pro-colonists do.

Should Palestinians then not attack the endemic pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias of the Western media lest they be “mistaken” for anti-Semites by liberals?

Palestinians have also traditionally identified the huge financial and political power that the Zionist movement mobilized since the 1880s to fulfil its plan for the colonization of Palestine, beginning with the Rothschilds who financed the earliest European Jewish colonies in Palestine.

Again, when Palestinians speak of wealthy European or American Jews, businesspeople and bankers, who support Zionism and Israel, conceive of plans to expel the Palestinians and promise to finance their expulsion – as the wealthy American Jewish Zionist Edward A. Norman proposed in 1934 – or to steal their lands, Western Christian and Jewish liberals flinch that these arguments smack of the Christian European anti-Semitic canard that all Jews are rich and run the entire financial system of the West.

But the fact that rich pro-Zionist Jews support Israel and finance the colonists is no different from the investment of European Christian businesses and states in financing the colonization of Algeria, South Africa, Kenya, New Zealand or even Israel.

Exposing wealthy European and US Jews who finance Zionism is on account of their formidable colonial role and influence in destroying Palestinian society and oppressing Palestinians.

It does not imply, as the anti-Semites would have us believe, that all Jews are bankers who run the lives of European Christians, or that all Jews are rich, which they are not – even if and when, by most accounts, a majority of European and US Jews have supported and continue to support Jewish colonization in Palestine since World War II, just as a majority of French and British Christians supported colonization in Africa.

Should Palestinians then remain silent on the influence of those Zionist European and US Jews who contribute to their oppression lest they be mistaken for anti-Semites?

Colonial encounter

Not being European, Palestinians have encountered Jews since the 1880s mainly as armed colonists, intent on stealing their lands and expelling them from their country.

While it is true that some Palestinian political leaders sought to use European anti-Semitic rhetoric against their European Jewish colonizers to defend against Zionist colonization, the majority of Palestinian leaders have often done the exact opposite and conceded several Zionist colonial and racist claims as the writer and intellectual Yusuf al-Khalidi did over a century ago, Yasser Arafat did in 2002 and Mahmoud Abbas continues to do today.

Al-Khalidi, who lived in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century, protested the choice of Palestine as the location of a future state for European Jews on account of it being the home of the native Palestinian Arabs.

He responded to the assertions of Theodor Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, to whom he sent a letter in 1899, as follows: “By what right then do the Jews claim it for themselves?”

Strangely, buying into Zionist racialist and anti-Semitic claims that European Jews were direct biological descendants of the ancient Hebrews, al-Khalidi, most likely on account of the European colonial education he had acquired, affirmed that “Zionism, theoretically, is a completely natural and just idea as a solution to the Jewish question,” and indeed, “who can challenge the rights of the Jews in Palestine? Good Lord, historically it is really your country.”

However, in the interest of peace, al-Khalidi proposed that the Zionist movement look for other “uninhabited countries where millions of poor Jews who may perhaps become happy and find a secure life there as a people.”

“That would perhaps be the best, the most rational solution to the Jewish question,” he argued. “But in the name of God, let Palestine be left in peace.”

Many Palestinians after al-Khalidi continue to fall for these bogus Zionist arguments.

The rewards of anti-Palestinian racism

The irony lies in the fact that the Western liberal critics of the Palestinians and those who support Palestinians-as-victims seldom take the Zionists and pro-Zionists to task for their interminable racist outbursts against the Palestinians and other Arabs, and their use of traditional European and white American anti-Arab racism that led to the murder of millions of Arabs from Algeria to Libya by the Europeans during the anti-colonial struggles, and Iraq by the Americans since 1991.

American Jewish journalist Jeffrey Goldberg revels, for instance, in his published work in having been a colonist in Israel and in joining the Israeli army and serving in its ranks as a prison guard of Palestinians jailed for opposing Jewish colonization (he was also a cheerleader of the US invasion of Iraq).

Yet Goldberg is celebrated, respected and given editorial jobs in the most prestigious liberal US magazines, along with journalism awards, despite his deplorable views of the Palestinians and Iraqis, not to mention his direct role in acts of persecution as a prison guard.

In contrast, if a Palestinian journalist is discovered to have expressed abhorrent views in support of European anti-Semitism in her immature and ill-informed youth, not in published work, but on Facebook, views she flagrantly mistook as part of legitimate expression of rage against her oppressors, she is fired from her job even by a pro-Palestinian media outlet.

Moreover, a journalistic award is rescinded to the satisfaction of Western liberals, even when her youthful infraction was not repeated during her journalistic career.

Meanwhile, the former Israeli prison guard continues his anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian journalistic rhetoric and his ongoing attacks on those Palestinians who defend their people against colonialism as anti-Semites.

Another prominent American Jewish journalist, Ben Shapiro, has called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians and endorsed the killing of Palestinian and Afghan civilians.

Shapiro once declared that “Israelis like to build” while “Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.”

Yet these and other racist comments did not stop The New York Times from celebrating Shapiro as “provocative gladiator” and “prizefighter,” while at the same time noting that he has been a target of anti-Semitism.

Of course, white American and European Christian journalists such as The New York Times’ John F. Burns, who support and report glowingly on US invasions abroad, have always been and continue to be celebrated.

Jewish journalists are punished too

However, Jewish journalists who criticize Israel are dismissed from liberal Western media outlets as happened to Emily Wilder, who was let go by the Associated Press in 2021, and more recently Katie Halper who was fired by The Hill.

In the case of Wilder, her “activism in college was the real issue” that led to her firing, according to media reports.

Compare her case with the mainstream Western media’s celebration of the Israeli prison guard’s account of his encounter with Palestinians in Israel’s dungeons as grounds for his promotion, not ostracism or dismissal!

What European and American liberals want is that Palestinians remain silent on the international mechanisms that support and defend the Jewish settler-colony, that Palestinians solely oppose the oppression to which they are subjected by their Jewish colonists, but not the Jewish colonists’ right to colonize them; that Palestinians must defend their Jewish colonists against European anti-Semites; and that Palestinians stand in solidarity with the colonists-as-victims while the Palestinians are quashed under the colonists’ military boots.

Meanwhile, almost no amount of active collaboration with the Israelis in their oppression of the Palestinians, let alone regular Israeli and pro-Israeli expression of anti-Palestinian racism, even merits censure when espoused by Israelis or their Western fans.

When a majority of the Palestinian political and intellectual class heed calls by Western liberals to defend Jews against anti-Semitism, as the Palestine Liberation Organization had done in honoring the Jewish victims of the Holocaust since the 1970s, neither Israel nor its supporters are satisfied.

Their objective is not to teach Palestinians about the history of European Jews as victims of oppression, but rather to teach them why European Jews as oppressors had and have every right to colonize them and take their country away from them.

Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University in New York. His most recent book is Islam in Liberalism (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

Oslo is long dead. Time to revive the PLO


Kareem Youssef and Mishlin Mekleh

The Electronic Intifada 

10 November 2022

Demonstrations against the Palestinian Authority over the death in PA custody of Nizar Banat in 2021 STRAPA images

The Oslo accords were signed 29 years ago, on 13 September 1993. The Palestinian Authority, its main manifestation, has attempted and failed for nearly three decades to contain the Palestinian people’s resistance and struggle for national liberation.

Palestine’s enemy today is not only Israel and its US backers, but also those who are rewarded for complying with Oslo: the Palestinian Authority, those who take money from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the diplomatic and lobby missions – like the Muslim Leadership Initiative – that reflect Zionist aspirations.

From the Jordanian monarchy and US-funded Egyptian leadership to the treachery of Gulf countries and big Arab capitalists, normalization in a post-Oslo world is a concept and practice rejected by Palestinian fighters, organizers and activists in the homeland and diaspora.

These different forces normalize the existence of Israel and the “two-state” concession plan as envisioned by Oslo. Those who cling to the futile “two-state solution,” and believe a Zionist, settler-colonial entity can reform and thus become some kind of “normal” partner of Palestinians and Arabs, must be isolated and defeated. These normalizers help silence, arrest, assassinate and surveil members of the Palestine liberation movement and our allies, per the Oslo security protocol drawn up by Zionists and the US.

The betrayal by Yasser Arafat and those around him at Oslo – keeping negotiators in Madrid in the dark over the secret talks – manifested into a public “peace” initiative that abandoned the Palestinian people after the sacrifices and steadfastness in Lebanon in the 1970s and early ‘80s, and the first intifada of the late 1980s and early 1990s. But the fight for liberation, from the river to the sea, continues despite the Oslo-born PA.

The constants

Palestinians and Arabs have the right to resist military occupation and settler-colonialism, including by armed resistance. The Palestine liberation struggle is committed to the thawabet (“constants”), which truly unifies the movement and are today maintained by the coordinated resistance in Palestine and support from the entirety of the diaspora. These thawabet are:

1) Self-determination and independence for the Palestinian people from the river to the sea, with Jerusalem as our indivisible capital;

2) The non-negotiable Right of Return (including restitution and reparations) for all Palestinian refugees and their descendants to the homes and lands they were exiled from since the beginning of Zionist colonization, in 1947-1948, and again in 1967;

3) The right of resistance in all its forms to end the colonization and occupation of all Palestinian and Arab lands.

Palestinian martyrs, prisoners and refugees bear the brunt of sell-out Oslo policies, which laid the groundwork for the especially shameless “security coordination” between Israel and the PA. This coordination targets our own people, including Bassel al-Araj, who openly decried the PA’s treachery and was assassinated by the Israelis in 2017.

PA thugs did the deed themselves when Nizar Banat, a prominent and popular leader who amplified anti-corruption and anti-normalization demands, was killed last year.

Hundreds of Palestinians in the homeland rallied for justice for Banat and were met with batons and other violence by the PA police and “security forces.” The US Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) is currently one of a number of US-based organizations that are in the leadership of an international campaign to ensure accountability for Nizar’s murder.

When Al Jazeera journalist and US citizen Shireen Abu Akleh was murdered by the Israelis in Jenin in May of this year, all of the contradictions of Oslo came to the fore once again.
Security collusion

Except under exceptional circumstances, the agreement bans Israel from entering “Area A,” (which constitutes approximately 18 percent of the land of the West Bank) and is ostensibly under full civilian and security control of the PA). But Israel ignores this and attacks Palestinians whenever and wherever it wants.

Israel has brazenly ignored its responsibilities within the agreement for decades, but the PA continues to function as if Oslo is binding. The PA did not and could not protect Abu Akleh. And the fight for justice and accountability in the international arena and in the US Congress is being fought mostly by her family and advocates.

The PA’s security apparatus, in collusion with Israel and the US, also targets student organizers. Students in Hebron, Birzeit, Nablus and other places have been abducted and imprisoned by PA police, and it is clearly Oslo and security coordination that is the source of the repression.

The PA sometimes even delivers Palestinian revolutionaries to Israel, as we have seen over many years in, among many examples, from the prominent case of Ahmad Saadat, to, just recently in September, when two Palestinians – one of whom is high on Israel’s “wanted list” – were arrested by the PA in Nablus. Palestinians there responded to this arrest by confronting the PA police, which shot and killed a protester.

The security coordination between Israel and the PA feeds into Israel’s colonial political prisoner system, where any Palestinian can be jailed without charge and tried before a military court, a tool used regularly to target influential organizers, create fear and trauma, and fracture the grassroots resistance movement.

A number of institutions in the US have initiated and supported campaigns to advocate for the release of abducted political prisoners like Khalida Jarrar, Khitam Saafin, Ata Khattab, and Ubai Aboudi, and children like Ahmad Manasra, while also championing hunger strikers like Khalil Awawdeh and Hisham Abu Hawash.

Some of these prisoners are leaders of grassroots institutions – such as the six recently designated as “terrorist organizations” by Israel – that organize to create a reality independent of Zionism and corrupt PA influence.

Oslo also created conditions for economic partnerships between Israel and the PA. These settler-colonial investments favor a class of Palestinians that operates to control and exploit the working class masses. Oslo left the PA almost entirely financially reliant on international donors and Israeli tax collections, and thus vulnerable to donor sentiment and Israel’s good graces. Not surprisingly, this has caused anything from food insecurity and monopolizing capital to exposing Palestinian villages like Birzeit to toxic waste and hazardous working conditions.

Rejecting the PA

PA agents for Oslo have been active in the US for years, but many organizations have rejected PA attempts to engage them in dialogue.

Last year, USPCN publicly called out a coalition effort that was ostensibly formed to unite Palestinians in the US, but ultimately exposed as a front for the PA. Also last year, a PA initiative to revive the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) was rejected by Palestinian students in the US, who exposed it as an attempt to detract from their already-successful organizing outside of the PA’s influence. (For the sake of clarity, there is a GUPS at San Francisco State University that has been active for decades, and has absolutely no connection to the PA.)

In addition, institutions across the diaspora stood firmly alongside forces inside Palestine that rejected the most recent Palestine National Council meeting in April. This was not out of a lack of support for the PNC, but because Palestinians in the US were clearly handpicked by the PA to attend and help elect a new Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee that is, unfortunately, no longer representative – as it was in its heyday – of all Palestinians in the homeland and diaspora.

To reject Oslo is to reject normalization, all two-state solutions, and US and other imperialist funding. And despite living here as immigrants, refugees and citizens, Palestinians and Arabs in the US are still part and parcel of the Arab world and the indivisible nation of Palestine. In the US, our communities recognize that the tactic of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) is also a rejection of normalization, and an effective tool to place economic pressure on Israel.

One of the major lessons of Oslo is that Palestinians are not in any kind of state-building stage, as the PA has tried to argue for decades. We are still in the national liberation stage of our movement, and accordingly, we must unite across political lines, ideological persuasions and social sectors to defeat the colonizers. Palestinian political unity around the thawabet (constants) and unity within the resistance itself are prime examples of what our people want and the trajectory of the liberation movement.

Today’s PLO is used duplicitously to consolidate power in the hands of the PA, which is still led by a stream within Fatah. This does not mean that the PLO should be abandoned or liquidated. On the contrary. To uphold the thawabet, the PLO must be rebuilt and reformed to again become the sole legitimate representative of all Palestinian social sectors, political forces, resistance organizations and geographical regions across Palestine and further afield, including those that were not part of the original body. The PLO must again lead our unified national liberation movement.

The vast majority of Palestinians worldwide are anti-Oslo, anti-normalization, anti-PA and pro-resistance. When it was clear that the deal was a “peace for capital” arrangement and not a path to liberation, Oslo was ultimately rejected by the Palestinian people. It could never, and will never, silence our unbreakable will on the road to liberation.

Kareem Youssef is a long-time organizer with USPCN’s Southern California chapter and a PhD student in Materials Science at UCLA.

Mishlin Mekleh is an organizer with USPCN’s Southern California chapter and serves the greater Arab community of the Southland with mental health support and healing.

Ben & Jerry’s repudiates Israeli ice cream sold under its name

Ali Abunimah

Activism and BDS Beat 

16 November 2022

Vermont-based Ben & Jerry’s says that ice cream marketed with its name and insignia in Israel and the occupied West Bank has nothing to do with it. Debbie HillUPI

Ben & Jerry’s has repudiated the ice cream sold under its name in Israel and the occupied West Bank by an Israeli company.

The sale of the frozen treats in Israeli settlements built on Palestinian land in violation of international law is at the heart of a legal dispute between Ben & Jerry’s and its owner Unilever.

“Without the consent of Ben & Jerry’s Independent Board, Unilever has sold trademark rights to the Hebrew and Arabic language versions of the Ben & Jerry’s name to Blue & White Ice Cream Ltd,” Ben & Jerry’s independent board said Tuesday.

“Any products sold by Blue & White Ice Cream Ltd. are uniquely its own and should not be confused with products produced and distributed by Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc,” the board added, noting that the Vermont-based company “has no ownership of, affiliation with, or economic interest in Blue & White Ice Cream Ltd.”

Ben & Jerry’s reiterated that “the sale of products bearing any Ben & Jerry’s insignia in the occupied Palestinian territory is against our values. Such sales are inconsistent with international law, fundamental human rights and Ben & Jerry’s social mission.”

Blue & White Ice Cream Ltd is a company owned by Avi Zinger, the former Israeli licensee to which Unilever purports to have transferred Ben & Jerry’s trademarks and intellectual property in Israel.

Lawsuit advancing

Ben & Jerry’s announcement on Tuesday comes as the legal dispute between the Vermont-based ice cream maker and its parent company over the matter appears to be heating up.

In July 2021, Ben & Jerry’s decided that it would end a longstanding licensing agreement that allowed its products to be manufactured and sold in Israel and the occupied West Bank, following years of campaigns by Palestinian rights activists.

A year later, however, Unilever announced that it had sold the Ben & Jerry’s brand and trademark in Israel to the Israeli licensee.

Under this deal, the ice cream would continue to be marketed throughout Israel and the occupied West Bank using the Ben & Jerry’s logo in Hebrew and Arabic.

Unilever admitted that it made the move under threats and pressure from Israel and its lobby.

But Ben & Jerry’s disputed Unilever’s right to make the deal.

In July it sued Unilever in federal court in New York, claiming that the transfer of the ownership of its trademarks and intellectual property to the Israeli company violated the acquisition agreement that Ben & Jerry’s signed when Unilever bought it in 2000.

Under the agreement, Ben & Jerry’s retained an independent board “empowered to protect and defend Ben & Jerry’s brand equity and integrity.”

The board says it was never consulted by Unilever over the sale of its rights to the Israeli company and that the action undermines Ben & Jerry’s renowned advocacy on progressive social issues, a core feature of its brand.

Over the summer, efforts to settle the dispute through mediation failed, reportedly because Ben & Jerry’s did “not want to ‘cave’ on its social mission and stance on Palestinian human rights.”

Security threats

At the end of September, Ben & Jerry’s filed an amended complaint with additional allegations against Unilever.

These include misconduct by Unilever against the board, such as refusing to pay directors their compensation.

This was “particularly egregious given the security threats that board members have faced, leaving individual Board members to pay for their own security measures – including relocation –while not being compensated,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit does not specify the nature of the security threats, but it is alarming that threats board members faced after taking a stance in support of Palestinian rights were so severe that they were effectively forced to go into hiding.

Another key claim is that Unilever secretly transferred Ben & Jerry’s trademarks to a Unilever-owned entity without informing or consulting the independent board just months after the 2000 merger, flagrantly violating the acquisition agreement.

Ben & Jerry’s says in the amended complaint that this secret transfer only came to light in court papers filed by Unilever this summer in response to the lawsuit.

Ben & Jerry’s alleges that the surreptitious transfer was an “attempted end-run around Ben & Jerry’s rights and protections.”

Ben & Jerry’s felt the pressure

The amended lawsuit also reveals how effective public and activist pressure was in getting Ben & Jerry’s to address its complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.

It notes that the company “had begun receiving complaints regarding the human rights implications of selling its products in the West Bank” as early as 2013. In response, the board formed a special committee and sent multiple fact-finding missions to the region.

One such delegation in 2019, including Ben & Jerry’s CEO Matthew McCarthy, other top executives and board chair Anuradha Mittal, met “members of the Israeli government, human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch, former Israeli soldiers, local farmers, Palestinian representatives and UN agencies,” according to the complaint.

In the meantime, “pressure continued to grow,” with McCarthy and the company receiving “hundreds of emails” expressing “concerns regarding the human rights implications of Ben & Jerry’s continued sales in the West Bank.”

But the lawsuit alleges that McCarthy – who was appointed by Unilever as Ben & Jerry’s CEO – “failed to inform the board about the number of emails.”

There was also huge pushback on social media. The complaint cites, for example, how in June 2020, “Ben & Jerry’s experienced a 204 percent increase in mentions relating to its business in the West Bank and Palestinian rights.”

As McCarthy and Unilever dragged their feet over these calls for action, Ben & Jerry’s managers and board members expressed concern that the issue could no longer be brushed aside.

“We will need to focus on this issue … before this turns into a huge campaign against us,” board chair Mittal wrote to CEO McCarthy and parent company Unilever in June 2020.

The same month Mittal wrote to them again emphasizing that “the slow pace” on the question of trading in Israeli settlements is “becoming a threat to the business, social mission and brand integrity” of Ben & Jerry’s.

One Ben & Jerry’s employee wrote, “I don’t think I can overstate just how much of a danger this is to our activism in Europe.”

That was only the tip of the iceberg. A group of 28 Ben & Jerry’s managers wrote to McCarthy expressing their frustration: “We believe that our activities in Israel contravene our social mission and values and seriously impede our activism work.”

The managers noted that they were already seeing a “backlash” that was “affecting both the credibility of what we can do and the ability to work with progressive partners on campaigns and projects.”

At one point, the ice cream maker’s global social mission officer stressed, “I believe this is getting quite urgent.”

But according to Ben & Jerry’s lawsuit, Unilever and McCarthy didn’t see it that way and continued to procrastinate. So the board took action itself, culminating in the July 2021 decision to end the licensing agreement with the Israeli company.

Ben & Jerry’s notes that its decision to end sales in Israel was supported by its founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, and that even Unilever issued a statement confirming that it had “always recognized the right of the brand and its independent board to take decisions about its social missions.”

But a year later, under pro-Israel pressure, Unilever reversed course. Its purported sale of the Ben & Jerry’s brand in Israel to the Israeli licensee was hailed by Israel and its lobby as a blow to the Palestinian campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

It was, however, a hollow victory.

Far from making the issue melt away, Unilever’s actions have ensured that the unethical profiteering of multinational businesses from Israel’s system of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid will remain front and center as the lawsuit grinds on.

Ben & Jerry’s is asking the court to stop Unilever from doing anything further to facilitate ice cream sales using its trademarks and intellectual property in Israel, to return ownership of all its trademarks to Ben & Jerry’s and to pay damages and legal costs.

Israel kills nine Palestinians so far in November


Tamara Nassar 

Rights and Accountability 

15 November 2022

Palestinians mourn Musab Muhammad Mahmoud Zabin Nafal, who was shot and killed by Israeli forces. Ahmad ArouriAPA images

The first week of November saw nine Palestinians killed by Israeli occupation forces.

This has been the deadliest year in the West Bank on a monthly average since the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs began systematically tracking fatalities in 2005.

Last month, for instance, the Israeli military killed on average one Palestinian every day. As Palestinians in the West Bank continue their resistance against Israel’s occupation, this average shows no sign of letting up.

On 14 November, the Israeli army killed a 15-year-old Palestinian girl in the town of Beitunia near Ramallah.

She was identified as Fulla al-Masalmeh from a town in the southern West Bank.

The Israeli army said a vehicle approached them during a military incursion into Beitunia and refused to stop when ordered. They opened fire on the vehicle, killing al-Masalmeh.

On 9 November, a 29-year-old man was shot and killed by Israeli forces in Jenin.

The Palestinian health ministry confirmed his identity as Raafat Ali Abdullah Ayyaseh. He was from the village of Sanur near Jenin.

Initially, Israeli soldiers detained Ayyaseh and then turned him over to the Red Crescent, which transferred him to hospital in critical condition where he was declared dead, Red Crescent ambulance service head Mahmoud Saadi told the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Israeli occupation forces also killed a child overnight on 9 November during an incursion into the city of Nablus.

The Israeli army was escorting a group of right-wing Israeli lawmakers attending an event at Joseph’s Tomb, an archeological site located in the city, which is considered sacred by Muslims, Christians and Jews.

The settler visit went ahead even though senior Israeli army officials had reportedly objected. A division commander approved it in the end.

Youths, including Muhammad Hamdallah Hashash, 15, started confronting settlers and Israeli forces.

They placed a homemade explosive object, according to a field investigation conducted by Defense for Children International-Palestine.

Mahdi approached the object when it fell out of place, and Israeli forces shot him in the leg 400 meters away.

Even after Mahdi fell, Israeli forces continued to shoot at him and the explosive object, causing the bomb to go off and kill him.

Residents of the area are regularly harassed and provoked by incursions into the site by Israeli settlers under heavy military guard.
Teen killed near Ramallah

On 5 November, Israeli occupation forces killed a teen with seven bullets at an intersection near the town of Sinjil near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Musab Muhammad Mahmoud Zabin Nafal was 18. His body was handed over to Palestinian ambulance medics, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which conducts field investigations.

During the same incident, Israeli forces also wounded his cousin, Nishan Dumar Zabin Nafal, 18.

The Israeli army accused the teens of throwing stones and damaging vehicles.

There were no Palestinian eyewitnesses to the incident, but PCHR concluded that “the fact that Israeli occupation forces handed the corpse of the Palestinian teenager to ambulance attendants constitutes a new crime of extrajudicial execution and assassination.”

Israeli troops routinely use live fire against Palestinians they accuse of throwing stones or Molotov cocktails, even if there are no injuries to Israeli soldiers or civilians.

It is legal under international humanitarian law for an occupied people to resist a military occupation.

Meanwhile, on 3 November, members of the Yamam unit of Israel’s Border Police used a civilian minibus with a Palestinian license plate to sneak into the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

They barricaded a butchery where people were readying to celebrate the upcoming wedding of Farouq Jamil Hasan Salameh, a commander of Islamic Jihad’s military wing.

Salameh was fatally injured by gunshots to the chest, abdomen and head when a Yamam member opened fire on people inside the butchery. Others were wounded, and five were arrested.

The Israeli army later cordoned off Salameh’s house in the Jenin refugee camp while Palestinians threw stones at the invaders.
Israel kills child

Israeli forces also shot and killed a 14-year-old boy near the entrance to the camp.

Muhammad Samer Muhammad Khalouf had arrived at the entrance of the camp where others were confronting the Israeli army.

He “allegedly fired a homemade gun at Israeli military vehicles,” according to DCIP, which conducted a field investigation.

Troops opened fire on Muhammad from 100 meters away, hitting him in the chest.

On the same day, a man was killed by Israeli police after allegedly stabbing and moderately injuring an Israeli police officer in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The Palestinian health ministry identified the man as Amer Husam Bader, 20.

Birzeit University, where Bader was a civil engineering student, mourned him “with great pride.”

Two other Israeli policemen were wounded by their colleagues who were shooting at Bader.

The day before, on 2 November, a man accused of ramming a car into and attacking an Israeli soldier with an axe was shot and killed by Israeli occupation forces.

Footage reported to be of the incident shows a white minibus ramming into a person near a small structure and hitting a pole.

Afterwards, the truck driver emerges from the vehicle and appears to attack the soldier with an object. Apparently shot, the driver then falls to the ground.

The soldier was transferred to hospital with serious injuries, the army said.
Shooting protestors

The Israeli military said it wished to avoid publication of documentation from the scene of the attack, which took place at a checkpoint at the entrance of Beit Ur near Ramallah. But some media circulated footage purportedly showing the attack.

The man accused of carrying out the operation was identified as Habbas Abdelhafith Yousef Rayyan, 54, by the Palestinian health ministry. He was from the village of Beit Duqqu northwest of Jerusalem.

His son, Qusai Rayyan, had been in Israeli prison when the incident took place. Israel detained him in September and he was released days after his father’s killing.

The day after killing Habbas Rayyan, the Israeli military raided his home and shot rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters at protestors who had gathered nearby, PCHR reported.



Palestinians threw stones in protest, and the Israeli military responded with live fire and more rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas, killing 42-year-old Daoud Mahmoud Khalil Rayyan with a bullet to the chest.

Mustafa Mirar, a resident living nearby, tried to help Daoud Rayyan by pulling him into his yard and calling emergency services. Medical personnel arrived immediately, but the Israeli military denied them entry, PCHR said.

Despite Rayyan’s critical condition, the Israeli army didn’t allow medical crews to take him to hospital until a half hour later.

Despite the Israeli army’s claims that Palestinians threw Molotov cocktails when Rayyan was shot, Mirar and other eyewitnesses told PCHR’s fieldworkers that no Molotov cocktails were seen with protesters or Daoud Rayyan, “who did not pose any danger to the Israeli soldiers that directly targeted him in his chest,” PCHR said.

Elsewhere, an Israeli settler succumbed to wounds sustained when he was reportedly stabbed by a Palestinian on 25 October near the al-Funduq village in the northeastern West Bank.Tamara Nassar's blog

KURDISTAN

85 years ago, the execution of Seyit Riza

The 15 November marks the 85th anniversary of the execution of Seyit Riza by the Turkish state.

ANF
NEWS DESK
Wednesday, 16 Nov 2022, 08:22

15 November marked the 85th anniversary of the execution of Seyt Riza. Commemorations have taken place in Dersim and many other cities.

Seyit Riza (1863 – 1937) was an Alevi, Zaza-Kurdish political leader from the Dersim region of North Kurdistan (today part of the Turkish state). He is known and remembered in the Kurdish Liberation Movement as the chieftain of the Dersim Rebellion, a military uprising that happened during the years 1937 and 1938 to protest the oppression of the Kurdish people by the Turkish state. This revolt was the 27th Kurdish uprising since the creation of the Turkish State in 1923 and the last of the 20th century until the appearance of the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan) and the start of its armed struggle in 1984.

The Dersim revolt took place in the continuity of the multiple Kurdish uprisings that followed the process of the Turkish nation-state formation after the fall of the Ottoman empire. All those uprisings were caused because of the Turkification of the country by its first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. Indeed, from his accession to power in 1923 until his death in 1928, the latter pursued a repressive policy of homogenization of the country by imposing the Turkish ethnic identity in every aspect of social life: from the language that people speak in the streets to the language to be taught at schools, from the education to the industrial life, from the trade to the cadres of state officials, from the civil law to the settlement of citizens to particular regions (let’s note that this policy did not change at all and continue to live in today’s Erdogan’s policy…). Many minorities protested against it, but their revolts have all been drowned in blood.

Nevertheless, until 1936, the mountainous region of Dersim, known for its rebellious character (11 revolts had happened in the previous 40 years), had been little affected by the Turkish state’s assimilation campaigns. The Kurdish and Zaza tribes living there were rejecting the Turkish authorities and also were refusing to pay any taxes. Their interference was such that Ataturk considered Dersim to be the country’s most important domestic problem.

To put an end to the Dersim’s resistance, Ataturk appointed General Abdullah Alpdoğan responsible for the region by giving him the authority to exile people if anyone would refuse assimilation. To make this possible, several military observation posts were then built around Dersim and more and more Turkish soldiers were brought to the region. It is said that planes flew over Dersim every day.

As the tension between the Turkish soldiers and the population was getting higher and higher, Seyit Reza decided to send one of his own sons to negotiate with General Alpdoğan in order to avoid a war and to protect the population and its rights. But the latter killed the emissary. In response to the death of his son, Seyit Reza decided to call the Dersim clan leaders and, in early 1937, they joined forces to counter the Turkish attack. The first action was the attack on a police convoy.

The Turkish army, under Ataturk’s direct order, tried to break the rebels by strength and sent more than 25,000 soldiers supported by plane bombardments. But the fighters of Seyit Riza resisted fiercely and refused to surrender. They fought so hard that the Turkish army had to trick them in order to end the resistance.

In the fall of 1937, General Alpdoğan invited Seyit Riza to discuss a peace agreement. When Seyit Riza went there, he was made prisoner together with his 16-year-old son and 8 of his men. Such a treacherous action was so inconceivable in the rules of honor and tradition of the time that it is said that Seyit Riza only spit the following words:

“Government without honor and deceitful!”

After eight days, they were all hanged. Before his hanging, Seyit Riza last words were:

“I am now 75 years old. I will fall Sehid and join the Sehids of Kurdistan. Dersim lost, but the Kurds and Kurdistan will win. The Kurdish youths will take revenge on me. Thus shall cruel men die, so shall vile and deceitful men die.”

After his death, the resistance continued for another year. But the atrocity of the repression that came down on Dersim, where men, women and children were massacred by Turkish soldiers, put an end to the rebel troops. According to official reports, more than 10,000 civilians were massacred and more than 11,000 were taken into exile, depopulating the province. Many rebels who surrendered were executed and women and children were burned alive. A total of 40,000 Kurds were killed.

* Text compiled by The Internationalist Commune

TURKIYE'S REICHSTAG FIRE

KCK: Istanbul attack shows that AKP-MHP are pursuing new malicious plans

“Our movement has nothing to do with this attack. The attempt to blame our movement shows that the AKP-MHP are pursuing new malicious plans. We call on everyone to be sensitive, careful, vigilant and make all necessary efforts to understand the truth.”

ANF

BEHDINAN
Tuesday, 15 Nov 2022, 12:04

The Co-Presidency of the KCK (Kurdistan Communities Union) Executive Council released a statement about Sunday’s deadly bomb attack that killed 6 people and injured 81 others in Taksim, Istanbul.

While Turkish officials were quick to blame the Kurdish freedom movement for the deadly attack, claiming that the attacker had come from northern Syria, the Headquarters Command of the People’s Defense Center (HSM), the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), denied involvement in the incident, making it clear that they were against attacks directed at civilians.

The General Commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Mazlum Abdi said, “Our forces have nothing to do with the Istanbul attack and deny the allegations that blame our forces.”

The People’s Defense Units (YPG) also refuted the Turkish state’s allegations, saying, ““We strongly reject these groundless allegations. We have no connection to the terrorist Ehlam El-Beşîr who carried out the attack. The whole world knows that the principle of our forces is based on the protection of human rights and counter-terrorism. We condemn any form of attack directed at civilians. Our forces struggle within the context of democracy, human and women’s rights, and the fight against terror and dictatorship.”

The statement released by the KCK Executive Council Co-Presidency on Tuesday includes the following:

“On November 13, 2022, many people were killed and injured in an explosion on Istiklal Street in Istanbul. We are deeply saddened by the loss of life and injuries as a result of this attack. As the Kurdish Freedom Movement and on behalf of our people, we would like to express that we share their sorrow and express our condolences. We extend our condolences to the people of Turkey and the families of those who lost their lives and wish a speedy recovery to those who were injured. We strongly condemn this attack, which was clearly organized under a dark guise and targeted the democratic future of the peoples of Turkey. Although the HPG Central Command [Hêzen Parastina Gel – People´s Defense Forces] announced that they have no relation with this attack and that it is out of the question for them to carry out attacks targeting civilians, the fascist AKP-MHP state and its supporters are persistently trying to blame this attack on our movement. We would therefore like to state once again that the Kurdish Freedom Movement has nothing to do with this attack. The fascist AKP-MHP state insistently wants to blame this attack on our movement in order to hide the truth and to create the necessary conditions for them to carry out their malicious plans. We therefore call on everyone, especially the democratic public and media, to make all efforts necessary to expose this attack. The statements and slanders of the fascist AKP-MHP state accusing our movement do absolutely not reflect the truth. To the contrary, they only serve to conceal the truth of the incident. Even based on a preliminary evaluation, it is not difficult to understand that this constitutes a plot by the AKP-MHP. That is why we strongly urge Turkey’s intellectuals, democrats, democratic press and political forces that seek the democratization of Turkey, to disregard the statements of the fascist AKP-MHP state aimed at concealing the truth and to make efforts to reveal the truth of this incident.

The fascist AKP-MHP alliance pursues a policy that is based on enmity towards the Kurdish people. It has vowed to realize Kurdish genocide and to destroy the Kurdish Freedom Movement, which struggles for the freedom of the oppressed, exploited and denied people of Kurdistan. The fascist AKP-MHP alliance spends all of Turkey’s wealth and all the values of society on the annihilation of the Kurds. No means have been left unused, all kinds of inhumane methods have been applied and massacres and occupations have been carried out. The AKP-MHP alliance, which knows no bounds in enmity towards the Kurds, has resorted to the most despicable and inhumane weapons of mass destruction when it could not achieve its goals despite having used all kinds of dirty and ugly war methods. The AKP-MHP has not only wasted the values of the people for the anti-Kurdish war, but has also committed crimes against humanity by using chemical weapons and has thus put the whole society of Turkey under suspicion. However, despite all inhumane practices, including the use of chemical weapons, the fascist AKP-MHP alliance has not been able to achieve its malicious goals. On the contrary, due to the revelation of the use of chemical weapons, its true face has been revealed even more. This has caused it to experience serious problems and has made its plans fail. No matter what methods the fascist AKP-MHP alliance resorts to, it cannot succeed against the resistance of the guerrilla and the struggle of the peoples, women and democratic forces, especially the Kurdish people. Today, everybody knows that the AKP-MHP alliance aims to eliminate democracy by destroying the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the Kurds and to establish a religious, nationalist, authoritarian and fascist order in Turkey. However, as a result of the resistance and struggle, the AKP-MHP has realized that they cannot not realize this goal. They now know that they have lost the support of society and that they will lose their power in the case of elections. The AKP-MHP alliance has not only failed to realize its fascist and genocidal plans, but has been exposed, blocked and ended up in a helpless situation due to its crimes against humanity.

It is obvious that the AKP-MHP alliance plans to resort to new and malicious methods in order to change this situation and to get out of its crisis. The attack in Istanbul constitutes the first step of this plan. Once again, we would like to stress that this is a new and malicious plan. We call on everyone to be vigilant in this regard and to make efforts to reveal the truth by not relying on the statements made by the AKP-MHP state. With this attack, the AKP-MHP alliance aims to create an environment that resembles the situation after the massacre on October 10, 2015 [in front of Ankara's main train station]. It is important for everybody to realize that this is a malicious and despicable plan targeting the future of Turkey and the efforts of the Kurdish and Turkish peoples to live together. Everyone in favor of democracy and coexistence must take the right and necessary attitude and thus defeat this malicious plan, just as the previous plans of the fascist AKP-MHP alliance have been defeated.

The fascist AKP-MHP state’s attempt to blame this attack on our movement and to claim that it was carried out from Rojava constitutes a highly deliberate manipulation. Everyone knows that one of the most important parts of the fascist AKP-MHP alliance’s Kurdish genocide is the occupation of Rojava. It is very obvious that the AKP-MHP aims to create the necessary environment for an invasion by targeting Rojava with this plot. The timing of this attack is also very telling. It was carried out at a time when it has been revealed that the AKP-MHP uses chemical weapons and burns soldiers’ bodies, when Turkish society is struggling with serious economic problems, when the war against the Kurds and the religious, gangster, mafia-oriented order are being questioned and demands for democracy are being voiced more and more loudly, and when the AKP-MHP is losing the support of society. It is clear that this is a diversion of the political agenda and that it aims to initiate malicious developments again. Whenever malicious developments are wanted, massacres are organized and Kurds are blamed. The latest attack in Istanbul also has such a purpose. Everybody must therefore be sensitive and vigilant. This is a deliberate effort to portray the perpetrator of the attack as being from Rojava or Syria. By doing so, they want to create a certain environment. Regardless of who carried out the attack, Kurdish or not, this attack and the individuals mentioned have nothing to do with our movement or the Rojava revolutionary forces. The Rojava forces have already declared that they have nothing to do with this attack. Everyone should be aware of this fact and should not become a tool for the AKP-MHP’s plan that involves malicious ambitions. Our movement can never be linked to attacks targeting civilians. We would never plan and carry out such attacks. We are a movement that resists the genocidal attacks of the fascist AKP-MHP alliance, seeks a democratic solution to the Kurdish question and struggles for the democratization of Turkey. Everyone in Turkey knows this. It is very clear that any attitude that is not based on such an approach will support the AKP-MHP alliance and serve their malicious plans.

The fascist AKP-MHP alliance has reached a stage of collapse as a result of the resistance and struggle of the Kurds, the peoples, women and all democratic forces. It now has difficulties carrying out its genocidal fascist plans and surviving. The use of chemical weapons has also been exposed, which has caused even more difficulties for the AKP-MHP. Turkey’s future, well-being and democratization depend on the destruction of this fascist alliance that aims to darken the future by organizing malicious plans and that commit crimes against humanity. Due to this malicious plan, it is now necessary for everyone to see the reality of the AKP-MHP alliance and its horrible and malicious goals even better and to fight against it. The AKP-MHP alliance even burns soldiers’ corpses in order to hide what they are doing and to prevent anyone from knowing what is going on. This is the reality of the AKP-MHP. Everyone who claims not to be fascist, to care about Turkey, to not be an enemy of the Kurds, to be human, in short, to not be an AKP-MHP member, needs to acknowledge this reality, make an effort to make this reality known to the public and stand against the AKP-MHP’s plan to make the facts invisible by silencing the press with the help of the disinformation law. Being human, democratic, steadfast and moral requires this.

We would like to once again condemn this attack, which has deeply saddened our people and the people of Turkey. We share the sorrow for the loss of lives and the injured. As the Kurdish Freedom Movement, we reiterate our promise to our people and the peoples of Turkey to realize the goal of democracy and freedom, and once again promise to continue the struggle for this. We state clearly once again that our movement has nothing to do with this attack. The attempt to blame this attack on our movement shows that the AKP-MHP are pursuing new malicious plans. Therefore, we call on everyone to be sensitive, careful, vigilant and make all necessary efforts to understand the truth.

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