Tag: Sheldon Adelson

“. . . Sorrow crawled naked in my city . . .” (Fadwa Tuqan)

Harold KnightLeave a comment

❶ Trump informs Palestinian president his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴀ) Senior White House official said that Donald Trump to declare recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Wednesday
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴃ) In a phone call by US President Donald Trump, President Abbas rejects intentions‎ to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
. . . . . ❶ ― (ᴄ) Abbas urges UN to stop Trump from recognizing Jerusalem as Israeli capital
❷ Why Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴀ) Trump is proving that the Israeli right was right all along
. . . . . ❷ ― (ᴃ) Why is Trump moving on Jerusalem now?
❸ POETRY by Fadwa Tuqan
` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` `
❶ TRUMP  INFORMS  PALESTINIAN  PRESIDENT  HIS  DECISION  TO  MOVE  THE  US  EMBASSY  TO  JERUSALEM
Palestine News Network – PNN
Dec. 6, 2017 ― US President Donald Trump inform Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas his decision to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv  to Jerusalem.
___Palestinian Presidential spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said that President Abbas was informed by Trump in phone call that us will move US embassy to Jerusalem.     MORE . . .
.  .  .  .  .  ❶  ―  (ᴀ)  SENIOR  WHITE  HOUSE  OFFICIAL  SAID  THAT  DONALD  TRUMP  TO  DECLARE  RECOGNITION  OF  JERUSALEM  AS  ISRAEL’S  CAPITAL  ON  WEDNESDAY   
Palestine News Network – PNN  
Dec. 6, 2017 ― A senior White House official said that the U.S. President Donald Trump will declare his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Wednesday. While Trump intends to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, he will sign a waiver delaying the move by six months, according to American law.
___He explained that Trump’s announcement is a mere acknowledgment of the fact that all Israeli government institutions are already based in Jerusalem, stressing that issues of borders and sovereignty will be determined through negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, ” an acknowledgement of reality seems like an important change.”     MORE . . .
.  .  .  .  .  ❶  ―  (ᴃ)  IN  A  PHONE  CALL  BY  US  PRESIDENT  DONALD  TRUMP,  PRESIDENT  ABBAS  REJECTS  INTENTIONS‎  TO  MOVE  THE  US  EMBASSY  FROM  TEL  AVIV  TO  JERUSALEM 
Palestine News and Information Agency – WAFA 
Dec. 5, 2017 (WAFA) – President Mahmoud Abbas relayed to the US President Donald Trump in a phone call that he received from the US president at 3:30 p.m. occupied Jerusalem time against the grave consequences of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem or making any announcement that alters the long held US policy regarding Jerusalem.
___ President Abbas reiterated that such a move will have detrimental consequences on the peace process and the prospects for the internationally endorsed two-state solution.
___Furthermore, President Abbas warned of the grave consequences on the stability and security of the region and the world at large.    MORE . . .   ..
.  .  .  .  .  ❶  ―  (ᴄ)  ABBAS  URGES  UN  TO  STOP  TRUMP  FROM  RECOGNIZING  JERUSALEM  AS  ISRAELI  CAPITAL 
Ma’an News Agency   
Dec. 6, 2017 ― Hours before US President Donald Trump is expected to announce his decision to move the American embassy in Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognized the Israeli-occupied city as the official capital of Israel, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas, in a last-ditch-effort, is reportedly pleading to the United Nations (UN) to stop the move.
___Official Palestinian Authority (PA)-owned Wafa news agency reported that Abbas sent an urgent letter to the Secretary-General of the UN demanding the intervention of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to stop Trump for making the declaration.
___In his letter, Abbas said that “this would end the peace process,” which Trump and his administration have attempted to revive in the first year of his presidency, with reports in recent weeks suggesting that the “ultimate peace plan” would be announced soon.
___After days of speculation over whether the US would be moving its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Trump called Abbas on Tuesday and confirmed his intentions to move the embassy.     MORE . . .   ..
❷ WHY  JERUSALEM  IS  NOT  THE  CAPITAL  OF  ISRAEL   
Al Jazeera English      
by Zena Tahhan & Farah Najjar
Dec. 6, 2017 ―US President Donald Trump is expected to call Jerusalem the capital of Israel on Wednesday and begin the process moving his country’s embassy to the city, according to senior US officials.
___The move has sparked global condemnation from world leaders who urged Trump to reconsider the decision.
___Israel occupied East Jerusalem at the end of the 1967 War with Syria, Egypt and Jordan; the western half of the holy city had been captured in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
___Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem effectively put the entire city under de-facto Israeli control. Israeli jurisdiction and ownership of Jerusalem, however, is not recognised by the international community, including the United States.
___The status of Jerusalem remains one of the main sticking points in efforts to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.     MORE . . .
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴀ)  TRUMP  IS  PROVING  THAT  THE  ISRAELI  RIGHT  WAS  RIGHT  ALL  ALONG 
+972 Magazine
Noam Sheizaf
Dec. 6, 2017 By recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital the U.S. president is boosting the settlers’ argument that in the long run, ‘facts on the ground’ are more important than diplomacy, and that Israel will eventually win legitimacy for its actions — even unilateral annexation.
___Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan is said to have hesitated before ordering the IDF to conquer the Temple Mount and Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967. “What do I need this Vatican for,” he said at one meeting. But even the secular Dayan was swept by the wave of religious euphoria that took Israel after the war. A few weeks later, the government decided to annex the eastern part of the city, along with a sizable territory around it, including over 20 Palestinian towns and villages that had never been part of the city. The size of the annexed land was 10 times bigger than what the Jordanians defined as East Jerusalem during the 19 years they ruled over it.
____ No country has recognized Israel’s unilateral annexation of the territory (and people) of Jerusalem; and since the Oslo process in the 1990s, it was commonly understood that the fate of the city would be decided in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. To complicate things further, Israel didn’t grant East Jerusalemites citizenship; it has kept them as “permanent residents” – a legal status usually meant for immigrants, which deprives them of many rights (most notably, the purchase of state land and the participation in the general elections), and which can be revoked at any moment by the Interior Ministry.  MORE . . .
.  .  .  .  .  ❷  ―  (ᴃ)  WHY  IS  TRUMP  MOVING  ON  JERUSALEM  NOW?
The Middle East Monitor – MEMO  
Ben White
Dec. 6, 2017 ― In comparison to the focus on opposition to the move and its possible ramifications, relatively little has been said about why Donald Trump’s administration has decided to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and signal its intent to relocate the US embassy from Tel Aviv.
___For example, one widely-shared piece of analysis does not really answer the question in its title, namely, “Why is Trump undoing decades of US policy on Jerusalem?”
___I believe there are three main reasons, none of which are mutually exclusive.
___First, US domestic politics. Today’s announcement plays well with Trump’s base amongst right-wing Christian evangelicals, as well as with the likes of influential individuals like Sheldon Adelson.
[. . . .] Second, Benjamin Netanyahu, along with other senior Israeli officials, might well have done a good job in persuading the Trump administration to make such a move.
[. . . .] Third – and this is perhaps where many commentators are missing a trick – the Trump administration might well envisage, and justify, the Jerusalem shift in the context of its much-heralded efforts at securing the “deal of the century”.     MORE . . .

“MY  SAD  CITY,”  BY  FADWA  TUQAN
(The day of Zionist Occupation, June 27, 1967)
The day we saw death and betrayal,
The tide ebbed.
The windows of the sky closed,
And the city held its breath.
The day the waves were vanquished, the day
The ugliness of the abyss revealed its true face,
Hope turned to ashes,
And gagging on disaster,
My sad city choked.

Gone were the children and the songs,
There was no shadow, no echo.
Sorrow crawled naked in my city,
With bloodied footsteps,
Silence reigned in the city,
Silence like crouching mountains,
Mysterious like the night, tragic silence,
Burdened,
Weighed down with death and defeat.
Alas! My sad and silent city.
Can it be true that in the season of harvest,
Grain and fruit have turned to ashes?
Alas! That this should be the fruit of all the journeying!
―Translated by A.M. Elmesseri

From BEFORE  THERE  IS  NOWHERE  TO  STAND: PALESTINE ISRAEL POETS RESPOND TO THE STRUGGLE. Ed. By Joan Dobbie and Grace Beeler. Sandpoint ID: Lost Horse Press, 2012. Available from B&N.
Obituary for Fadwa Tuqan, 2003.

“. . . And the remains of a forgotten village and a cross. . .” (Sami Al-Jundi)

Harold KnightLeave a comment
The Golan Heights as seen from Tel Dan -- the site of the temple for the Northern Kingdom (Israel) after the split from the Southern Kingdom (Judah).
The Golan Heights as seen from Tel Dan — the site of the temple for the Northern Kingdom (Israel) after the split from the Southern Kingdom (Judah). (Photo: Harold Knight, 2008)

❶ From THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA
CLAIMING TO PRESERVE JERUSALEM, ISRAELI ARCHAEOLOGISTS WRECK PALESTINIAN HERITAGE
Charlotte Silver
June 4, 2015
In an administrative building buried deep in the spaciously built suburbs of West Jerusalem, the latest phase of a long-standing struggle over a corner of land in the heart of the city concluded last week.
____Israel’s National Planning Committee has overseen an appeal by several bodies who oppose the further expansion of the powerful settler group Elad’s control over archaeological sites in Silwan, a congested Palestinian neighborhood located just meters away from al-Aqsa Mosque and the walls of the Old City in occupied East Jerusalem. With the blessing of the authorities, Elad plans to build a giant new visitors center on top of an excavation site.
____Elad (a Hebrew acronym for “To the City of David”) is a private organization that has become the de facto administrator of some of the most controversial archaeological sites in Jerusalem. Elad was founded in 1986 with the explicit goal of removing Palestinians from East Jerusalem and settling Jews in their place. . . .
____Last fall, under cover of night and flanked by police officers and private security guards, Elad moved dozens of Israeli settlers into 25 apartments in Silwan. The apartments were sold to a company registered abroad, but thought to be a disguised Elad, for between $1 million and $2 million.
(More. . .)

❷ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAELI MINISTER CALLS ON WORLD TO RECOGNISE GOLAN ANNEXATION
June 8, 2015
JERUSALEM (AFP) — A far-right Israeli minister on Sunday called for the international community to endorse his country’s 1981 annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, where he called for increased Jewish settlement.
____”I call on the international community… to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan,” Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home party, said in a speech at a time of increasing world pressure on Israel over the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
____Bennett sees the sparsely-populated Golan as a very different case from the Palestinian territories and a vital buffer between Israel and the turmoil raging a few hundred meters (yards away) where the Syrian government has lost control of the border region to rebels.
____”I understand that there is a disagreement on Judaea and Samaria, what the world calls the West Bank. I understand that on this we shall agree to disagree,” he said.
____”But the Golan, to ban agricultural exports from the Golan? Where is the logic, where is your morality.”
(More. . .)

❸ From MA’AN NEWS AGENCY
ISRAEL SAYS CHINA DEMANDS NO WORKERS IN SETTLEMENTS
June 8, 2015
JERUSALEM (AFP) — China has told Israel it will not allow migrant builders to work on settlements in the occupied West Bank, a senior Israeli government official said on Monday.
____Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged during his reelection campaign to step up settlement construction, and cabinet ministers in his new government have called for more building in the occupied territories, which is seen as an obstacle to peace with the Palestinians.
____And Israel is hoping to bring in thousands of foreign workers to accelerate the pace of the construction across the country and in the West Bank, media reported.
____”We are negotiating with China for an agreement on the arrival of thousands of additional workers,” the official told AFP, requesting anonymity.
____”For the moment, the talks are stumbling over several problems, including the employment of these immigrants in settlements in Judea and Samaria,” he said in reference to the occupied West Bank.
(More. . .)

Chinese construction workers building the Carmel Tunnel in Haifa, Israel, December 2007. (Photo by Doron Golan)
Chinese construction workers building the Carmel Tunnel in Haifa, Israel, December 2007. (Photo by Doron Golan)

❹ From MONDOWEISS
NETANYAHU UNDER SIEGE, IN ‘THE MOST EMBATTLED DEMOCRACY ON EARTH’
Philip Weiss
June 7, 2015
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has made two statements that demonstrate that a siege mentality has enveloped him due to the progress of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign (BDS).
____First, he issued a statement to the Sheldon Adelson “summit” in Las Vegas aimed at countering BDS to thank those gathered for allowing “young Jews to stand tall” for Israel, “the most embattled democracy on earth that seeks a genuine peace while fending off the forces of barbaric terrorism.” . . . .
____Then Netanyahu made a statement at the start of his Cabinet meeting this morning that seemed even more dire. Notice the Prime Minister’s grave gaunt demeanor in the video below as he begins by speaking of Hamas rockets and says the international community will not keep Israel from using “our full strength to uphold our right to defend ourselves.” Another attack on Gaza?
____He stated, “The spreading hypocrisy in the world will not tie our hands.”
____Then he says he is organizing an “offensive” effort against the BDS movement, which aims to delegitimize the Jewish state, not only in the settlements.
(More. . .)

❺ From PALESTINE NEWS & INFORMATION AGENCY – WAFA
TOP CZECH DIPLOMAT WARNS ISRAEL OF INEVITABLE INTERNATIONAL ISOLATION
K.F/M.H
RAMALLAH, June 8, 2015– A top Czech diplomat warned Israel of the inevitable international isolation as a result of its unrelenting racist policies and practices against Palestinians and the two-state solution.
____Czech Minister of Foreign Affairs Lubomir Zaoralek was reported in Israeli and Czech media outlets as warning that if Israel continues to obstruct the two-state solution, it will suffer from international isolation and be accused racism, an accusation the Czech would not be able to deny.
____Zaoralek was reported in the Israeli news website Walla! as stating that Czech has been working to prevent any political move against Israel, however it has become increasingly difficult to do so under the current Israeli coalition government, which opposes the two-state solution.
____The Czech warned that the alternative to the two-state solution would be apartheid.
____“We want to avoid initiatives against Israel, but it gets more difficult with the current government and with the opposition against a two-state solution,’ the minister was reported as saying.
(More. . .)

“TAKE ME TO AL-QASTAL,” BY SAMI AL-JUNDI

There, in the cradle of yearning
Where the birds circle in cheerless skies
in the pine forests,
There rest the souls of the ancients
Did you ask the Swallow, my friend,
About Al-Qastal?

From a hill looking over Deir Yassin
Where love was first born
Thousands of years ago
Before the birth of Christ
Before the budding of jasmine
By the cradle of the goldfinch
Be sure to ask about Al-Qastal.

A deep valley
A mystifying magic and a nectar of secrets
A flock of pigeons and a nightingale
And the remains of a forgotten village and a cross
Ruins of a Babylonian minaret
There, where the moon is near
And our first concern is
Love and Al-Qastal.

Take me to Al-Qastal
Take me to the beautiful grave
Take me to my last home
And load me up with the tragedies of the Arabs
And all the fragrance of the ancestors
My home is the prettiest
My grave is the largest
My path is to Al-Qastal.
—Translated by Amal Eqeiq

About Sami Al-Jundi, author of The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian’s Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker.
About Al-Qastal
From BEFORE THERE IS NOWHERE TO STAND: PALESTINE ISREL POETS RESPOND TO THE STRUGGLE. Ed. Joan Dobbie and Grace Beeler. Sandpoint ID: Lost Horse Press, 2012. Available from Amazon.

Pro-Israel philanthropist Adam Milstein (far right) with Sheldon and Miriam Adelson and Milstein’s wife, Gila. (Photo: Facebook/Adam Milstein)
Pro-Israel philanthropist Adam Milstein (far right) with Sheldon and Miriam Adelson and Milstein’s wife, Gila at anti-BDS summit in Las Vegas. (Photo: Facebook/Adam Milstein)

“. . . a boy sets out to inherit the ocean . . .” (Bei Dao)

Harold KnightLeave a comment

(A blog linking to information about PALESTINE not available in mainstream media.
“Online Resources” above lists helpful sites. Works by Palestinian poets close all posts.)

haaretz.

NETANYAHU’S REAL VICTIM? THE AMERICAN JEWISH ESTABLISHMENT
A new, GOP-centered Jewish alliance powered by Sheldon Adelson is gradually taking its place.
By Peter Beinart,  February 11, 2015

Who are Benjamin Netanyahu’s American victims? Not Barack Obama. Despite Bibi’s best efforts, he’s still in office, and

Casino Billionaire, Patron-at-large
Casino Billionaire, Patron-at-large

retains the affections of most American Jews. Not the left-wing activists who oppose a Jewish state within any borders: Bibi’s settlement mania has been a bonanza for them. “We’ve got to give credit to. . .
. . . Bibi’s longtime patron, Sheldon Adelson. If the old American Jewish establishment tries to combine support for Israeli policy with domestic tolerance, the new American Jewish establishment is nakedly Islamophobic. Adelson, for instance, is on record as saying that “the Muslims…want to kill all Jews.” The ZOA sponsors talks by anti-Muslim bigot Pamela Geller.
(Full article)

fmepTHE UNITED STATES AND ISRAEL AT A CROSSROADS – Report/Resource
February 19, 2015
Today, the U.S-Israel bilateral relationship stands at a crossroads.
Increasingly the national interests of the two countries – and in particular its current leaders — are diverging. While the latest crisis is focused on the nuclear talks with Iran, on no issue does this divide have greater long-term implications for U.S. interests in the region than the creation of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and security. For the United States, this is an imperative; for the current Israeli government it is not.
(Full story)

new yorkerLetter from Jerusalem
“THE ONE-STATE REALITY.” ISRAEL’S CONSERVATIVE PRESIDENT SPEAKS UP FOR CIVILITY, AND PAYS A PRICE
By David Remnick, November 17, 2014
Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin, the new President of Israel, is ardently opposed to the establishment of a Palestinian state. He is instead a proponent of Greater Israel, one Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. He professes to be mystified that anyone should object to the continued construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank: “It can’t be ‘occupied territory’ if the land is your own.”
. . . since Rivlin was elected President, in June, he has become Israel’s most unlikely moralist. Rivlin. . . has emerged as the most prominent critic of racist rhetoric, jingoism, fundamentalism, and sectarian violence, the highest-ranking advocate among Jewish Israelis for the civil rights of the Palestinians both in Israel and in the occupied territories. Last month, he told an academic conference in Jerusalem, “It is time to honestly admit that Israel is sick, and it is our duty to treat this illness.” (Full story)

eiISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER ON FACEBOOK: PALESTINIAN PRISONERS SHOULD BE EXECUTED
Patrick Strickland, Thursday 02/19/2015
Israel’s hardline right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman plans to introduce a bill into the country’s parliament, the Knesset, which would implement the death penalty for Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli lockup. (Full story)

PALESTINIANS FIGHT BACK AGAINST ISRAEL’S LAWLESSNESS.wrmeaorgbannerlogo7
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (2015).
By Rachelle Marshall
For nearly 70 years, Palestinians under Israeli occupation have endured expulsion from their homes, theft of their land, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, humiliation and devastating bombing attacks with remarkable forbearance. Since taking office in 2005 Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has tested that forbearance to the limit. But as recent events suggest, their patience may be exhausted.

With an Israeli government openly opposed to an independent Palestinian state, the massacre of 2,200 Gazans in Operation Protective Edge, the burning to death by Israelis of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khdeir, and thousands more Jewish settlers scheduled to move into Arab East Jerusalem, angry Palestinians took action using the only means they had—stone throwing and knife attacks. Netanyahu’s response was a pledge to “use an iron fist” against the mostly teenage protesters.

Between July and early November, 800 young Palestinians were arrested, scores of them under 18. Police didn’t hesitate to shoot children. Among the victims were Fatima Panjabi, 11, and her 4-year-old cousin Ahmad. Another child, Saleh Mahmoud, 11, was blinded in one eye when he was shot in the face. Bahaa Mousa Bader, 13, Orwah Abdel Hammad, 14, and 15-year-old Mohamed Sinokrot were killed by police bullets. The slain children were among the 53 Palestinians. . .
(Full story)

monitorCOULD OFFICIAL’S DEATH MEAN THE END OF PALESTINIAN SECURITY TIES WITH ISRAEL?
By Christa Case Bryant, December 10, 2014
Jerusalem — “If anyone asks about the Palestinian Gandhi, he is dead.”
That’s how one Palestinian on Twitter summed up the events of Wednesday, in which Ziad Abu

Ziad Abu Ein, the late Palestinian Ghandi
Ziad Abu Ein, the late Palestinian Ghandi

Ein, a senior Palestinian Authority (PA) official and a fiery leader of protests against Israeli settlement activity, died shortly after a clash with Israeli soldiers at a West Bank demonstration. (Full story)

“RAMALLAH,” by Bei Dao, 1949

in Ramallah
the ancients play chess in the starry sky
the endgame flickers
a bird locked in a clock
jumps out to tell the time

in Ramallah
the sun climbs over the wall like an old man
and goes through the market
throwing mirror light on
a rusted copper plate”=

in Ramallah
gods drink water from earthen jars
a bow asks a string for directions
a boy sets out to inherit the ocean
from the edge of the sky

in Ramallah
seeds sown along the high noon
death blossoms outside my window
resisting, the tree takes on a hurricane’s
violent original shape

On August 2, 1949, Zhao Zhenkai was born in Beijing. His pseudonym Bei Dao literally means “North Island,” and was suggested by a friend as a reference to the poet’s provenance from Northern China as well as his typical solitude. . . At the request of Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, he traveled to Palestine as part of a delegation for the International Parliament of Writers.