USA & Israel vs Palestina: Accomplices in Ethnic Cleansing

Another Palestinian human being was murdered by the IDF, Israeli occupation army, on May 11^th 2022 in the Palestinian city of Jenin. This time the victim of the occupation and apartheid was a famous Palestinian, Shireen Abu Akleh, a face, personality and presence, that had told the Palestinian story and daily struggle with bravery and integrity on TV screens for over 25 years. It was a face and voice I have watched and listened to through her reports for Al Jazeera, a media organisation that has been targeted a number of times by Israel previously. I was shocked and upset and raging with the rest of those affected, over what had been inflicted upon yet another Palestinian, with overwhelming brutality, for daring just to exist and speak.

As soon as the Israeli state apparatus started to speak about the event, everyone sensible was able to conclude there were lies being told. The fellow Palestinian journalists with Shireen, who are corroborating eyewitnesses, one of whom was also shot, Producer Ali Al-Samoudi, clearly explained what had happened to them. They had been targeted by clearly visible Israeli soldiers, who identified themselves, to which the Palestinian journalists identified themselves back, and the Israeli soldiers continued to shoot at them anyway, shot Shireen in the head and then at anyone who came to her aide. There is tragic and upsetting video footage of this from just after Shireen is shot dead. Shatha Hanaysha is the fellow Palestinian journalist pinned down by the gunfire in the video, as her friend, mentor and colleague lay maimed next to her. B’Tselem, and Bellingcat, have already concluded in the preliminary that Palestinian gunfire directed against the Israeli security forces raid in Jenin, as initially claimed by the Israeli government as the cause of Shireen’s death, did not have line of sight on Shireen and her team and was very unlikely to have been the cause of her death.

Was she targeted because she was a journalist?

Without doubt.

Dozens of Palestinian journalists have been killed by Israeli security forces since 2000 and dozens of foreign correspondents have been harassed and harmed. It is Israel's policy.

Was Shireen targeted because she was a Palestinian? 

Always.

Thousands of Palestinians, children, women, men, the elderly and infirm have been killed and murdered by Israeli security forces in the same time period.

It. Is. The. Policy. Of. An. Apartheid. State.

The Israeli occupation army that was raiding Jenin in the West Bank of Palestine was illegitimately and unlawfully upholding the occupation and apartheid of Palestinian land and lives. Policies and actions that have again and again and again and again, for decades, been agreed by the vast majority of world governments, Human Rights organisations, international law experts and the majority of the opinion of citizens of the world to be wrong, immoral and breaking international law.

The enablers of the Israeli occupation & apartheid & eethnic cleansing in the ‘west’, mostly the USA and the UK, were quick to condemn the attack on Shireen, her team and the free press, but there is nothing tangible behind these words.

There will be no real consequences.

As Russia is sanctioned to the hilt for their illegal invasion of Ukraine, including targeting standard Russians through these sanctions,

Israel’s supporters cannot even bring themselves to support or accept the legitimacy of the Palestinian-led call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).

Instead claiming it is antisemitic in its aims in simply calling for the holding to account the state and private apparatus in Israel which is linked to the grinding decades long occupation and apartheid of the Palestinian people and their land.

I lit a candle to commemorate Shireen Abu Akleh’s name and memory. This candle must continue to burn in all of our minds, in our voices and through our actions as the global citizenry in supporting the Palestinian moral and lawful right to peace and justice.

Free, Free Palestine! 

End Israel's impunity!

USA and Israel, stop the ethnic cleansing!

BDS MOVEMENT - Statement:

On 11 May 2022, apartheid Israeli forces killed the beloved and highly respected Palestinian journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, in the occupied Palestinian city of Jenin. She was wearing a press flak jacket and helmet. #JusticeForShireen demands ending complicity in maintaining Israel’s apartheid regime and holding those responsible for her murder accountable.

This murder is part of a consistent pattern of Israeli violent attacks against journalists revealing to the world the brutalities of its 74-year-old regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid. 

Urge the ICC to investigate Shireen’s murder and hold those responsible accountable
   

It is also an attempt to instill a deep sense of fear and insecurity among all Palestinians struggling for freedom, justice and equality. Yet Shireen’s courage was reflected in the inspiring courage and commitment of the tens of thousands of Palestinians participating in her long funeral procession across the occupied Palestinian territory, especially in Jerusalem, where many Palestinian flags were waved in defiance of apartheid Israel’s violent attempt to prevent them.

Forensic evidence and investigations of the murder by Al-Haq and B’Tselem have all forced apartheid Israel, known for its compulsive lies in attempting to whitewash the murder of its Palestinian victims, to finally admit that the fatal shot that extinguished Shireen’s precious life was indeed fired by one of its snipers. This amounts to willful killing, a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICC must fully investigate this murder and hold those who perpetrated the crime, those who issued the orders, and the entire political leadership of apartheid Israel accountable.

Though Israel killed Shireen Abu Akleh, her blood is also on the hands of the enablers, funders and defenders of apartheid, primarily the US, EU, UK, Canada and Australia. We call for public BDS pressure to end the West’s colonial hypocrisy and shameless complicity in Israeli crimes and ongoing Nakba against Indigenous Palestinians.

It’s high time for the UN to investigate Israeli apartheid and to impose proportional, legal and targeted sanctions to dismantle it, as was done against apartheid South Africa. 

Many journalist syndicates have condemned the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh, including the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and PEN International. Yet mainstream media coverage remains as biased to the colonizers and dehumanizing to the colonized as ever.

In response to Israel’s attempts to silence Palestinian voices like Shireen’s, urge local/national journalist syndicates and federations to take concrete action, including:

• Ending ties with complicit Israeli institutions.
• Pledging to refuse junkets to Israel funded by the Israeli government, complicit Israeli institutions and Israel lobby groups.
• Supporting journalists who refuse to cover assignments in Israel on ethical grounds.
• Supporting the IFJ case before the ICC on Israel’s systematic targeting of Palestinian journalists.
• Pledging to respect the ethical and professional journalistic guidelines developed by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate and the Palestinian BDS National Committee. 
• Pledging to center Palestinian voices and eyewitnesses instead of centering Israeli government spokespersons.

Urge media studies and journalism faculties and departments to:

• Respect the Palestinian BDS call by ending ties with complicit Israeli institutions.
• Refuse to host official representatives of complicit Israeli institutions.

Palestinians do not need charity. We need meaningful solidarity, and we demand accountability.

Meanwhile, Palestinians are justifiably worried that the mandate granted to the United Nations Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, might be coming to an end. UNRWA’s mission, which has been in effect since 1949, has done more than provide urgent aid and support to millions of refugees. It was also a political platform that protected and preserved the rights of several generations of Palestinians.

Though UNRWA was not established as a political or legal platform per se, the context of its mandate was largely political, since Palestinians became refugees as a result of military and political events – the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people by Israel and the latter’s refusal to respect the Right of Return for Palestinians as enshrined in UN resolution 194 (III) of December 11, 1948.

“UNRWA has a humanitarian and development mandate to provide assistance and protection to Palestine refugees pending a just and lasting solution to their plight,” the UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of December 8, 1949 read. Alas, neither a ‘lasting solution’ to the plight of the refugees, nor even a political horizon has been achieved. Instead of using this realization as a way to revisit the international community’s failure to bring justice to Palestine and to hold Israel and its US benefactors accountable, it is UNRWA and, by extension, the refugees that are being punished.

In a stern warning on April 24, the head of the political committee at the Palestinian National Council (PNC), Saleh Nasser said that UNRWA’s mandate might be coming to an end. Nasser referenced a recent statement by the UN body’s Commissioner-General, Philippe Lazzarini, about the future of the organization.

Lazzarini’s statement, published a day earlier, left room for some interpretation, though it was clear that something fundamental regarding the status, mandate and work of UNRWA is about to change. “We can admit that the current situation is untenable and will inevitably result in the erosion of the quality of the UNRWA services or, worse, to their interruption,” Lazzarini said.

Commenting on the statement, Nasser said that this “is a prelude to donors stopping their funding for UNRWA.”

The subject of UNRWA’s future is now a priority within the Palestinian, but also Arab political discourse. Any attempts at canceling or redefining UNRWA’s mission will pose a serious, if not an unprecedented challenge for Palestinians. UNRWA provides educational, health and other support for 5.6 million Palestinians in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. At an annual budget of $1.6 billion, this support, and the massive network that has been created by the organization, cannot be easily replaced.

Equally important is the political nature of the organization. The very existence of UNRWA means that there is a political issue that must be addressed regarding the plight and future of Palestinian refugees. In fact, it is not the mere lack of enthusiasm to finance the organization that has caused the current crisis. It is something bigger, and far more sinister.

In June 2018, Jared Kushner, son-in-law and advisor to former US President Donald Trump, visited Amman, Jordan, where he, according to the US Foreign Policy magazine, tried to persuade Jordan’s King Abdullah to remove the refugee status from 2 million Palestinians currently living in the country.

This and other attempts have failed. In September 2018, Washington, under the Trump administration, decided to cease its financial support of UNRWA. As the organization’s main funder, the American decision was devastating, because about 30 percent of UNRWA’s money comes from the US alone. Yet, UNRWA hobbled along by increasing its reliance on the private sector and individual donations.

Though the Palestinian leadership celebrated the Biden Administration’s decision to resume UNRWA’s funding on April 7, 2021, a little caveat in Washington’s move was largely kept secret. Washington only agreed to fund UNRWA after the latter agreed to sign a two-year plan, known as Framework for Cooperation. In essence, the plan effectively turned UNRWA into a platform for Israel and American policies in Palestine, whereby the UN body consented to US – thus Israeli – demands to ensure that no aid would reach any Palestinian refugee who has received military training “as a member of the so-called Palestinian Liberation Army”, other organizations or “has engaged in any act of terrorism”. Moreover, the Framework expects UNRWA to monitor “Palestinian curriculum content”.

By entering into an agrement with the US Department of State, “UNRWA has effectively transformed itself from a humanitarian agency that provides assistance and relief to Palestinian refugees, to a security agency furthering the security and political agenda of the US, and ultimately Israel,” BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights noted.

Palestinian protests, however, did not change the new reality, which effectively altered the entire mandate granted to UNRWA by the international community nearly 73 years ago. Worse, European countries followed suit when, last September, the European parliament advanced an amendment that would condition EU support of UNRWA on the editing and rewriting of Palestinian school text books that, supposedly, ‘incite violence’ against Israel.

Instead of focusing solely on shutting down UNRWA immediately, the US, Israel and their supporters are working to change the nature of the organization’s mission and to entirely rewrite its original mandate. The agency that was established to protect the rights of the refugees, is now expected to protect Israeli, American and western interests in Palestine.

Though UNRWA was never an ideal organization, it has indeed succeeded in helping millions of Palestinians throughout the years, while preserving the political nature of their plight.

Though the Palestinian Authority, various poltical factions, Arab governments and others have protested the Israeli-American designs against UNRWA, such protestations are unlikely to make much difference, considering that UNRWA itself is surrendering to outside pressures. While Palestinians, Arabs and their allies must continue to fight for UNRWA’s original mission, they must urgently develop alternative plans and platforms that would shield Palestinian refugees and their Right of Return from becoming marginal and, eventually, forgotten.

If Palestinian refugees are removed from the list of political priorities concerning the future of a just peace in Palestine, neither justice nor peace can possibly be attained.