Posted by Uri Avnery

Jerusalem: the unholy city

Star of David against background of fireIn its long and chequered history, Jerusalem has been occupied by dozens of conquerors. Babylonians and Persians, Greeks and Romans, Mamluks and Turks, Britons and Jordanians – to mention just a few.

The latest occupier is Israel, which conquered and annexed Jerusalem in 1967. (I could have written “East Jerusalem” – but all of historical Jerusalem is in today’s East Jerusalem. All the other parts were built in the last 200 years by Zionist settlers, or are surrounding Arab villages which were arbitrarily joined to the huge area that is now called Jerusalem after its occupation.)

[Last] week, Jerusalem was in flames – again. Two youngsters from Jabel Mukaber, one of the Arab villages annexed to Jerusalem, entered a synagogue in the west of the city during morning prayers and killed four devout Jews, before themselves being killed by police. Continue reading →

Gaza: The war for nothing

Get Out - ad for anti Gaza war demo in Tel AvivAfter 50 days, the war is over. Hallelujah.

On the Israeli side: 71 dead, among them 66 soldiers, 1 child.

On the Palestinian side: 2,143 dead, 577 of them children, 263 women, 102 elderly. 11,230 injured. 10,800 buildings destroyed. 8,000 partially destroyed. About 40,000 damaged homes. Among the damaged buildings: 277 schools, 10 hospitals, 70 mosques, 2 churches. Also, 12 West Bank demonstrators, mostly children, who were shot.

So what was it all about?

The honest answer is: About nothing.

Neither side wanted it. Neither side started it. It just so happened. Continue reading →

Gaza seen through Israeli eyes: two different wars on different planets

Get Out - ad for anti Gaza war demo in Tel AvivThere was this village in England which took great pride in its archery. In every yard there stood a large target board showing the skills of its owner. On one of these boards every single arrow had hit a bull’s eye.

A curious visitor asked the owner: how is this possible? The reply: “Simple. First I shoot the arrows, and then I draw the circles around them.”

In this war, our government does the same. We achieve all our goals – but our goals change all the time. In the end, our victory will be complete.

When the war started, we just wanted to “destroy the terror infrastructure“. Then, when the rockets reached practically all of Israel (without causing much damage, largely owing to the miraculous anti-missile defense), the war aim was to destroy the rockets. When the army crossed the border into Gaza for this purpose, a huge network of tunnels was discovered. They became the main war aim. The tunnels must be destroyed. Continue reading →

Now Israel annexes all the Jews of the world

Can a law be both ridiculous and dangerous?

It certainly can. Witness the ongoing initiative of the Israeli government to enact a law that would define the State of Israel as “The Nation-State of the Jewish People”.

Ridiculous 1 – because what and who is the “Jewish people”? The Jews of the world are a mixed lot. Their only official definition in Israel is religious. In Israel, you are a Jew if your mother was a Jewess. This is a purely religious definition. Continue reading →

Palestine and the Egyptian revolution, as seen from the Israeli bunker

We are in the middle of a geological event. An earthquake of epoch-making dimensions is changing the landscape of the Middle East. Mountains turn into valleys, islands emerge from the sea, volcanoes cover the land with lava. People are afraid of change. When it happens, they tend to deny, ignore, pretend that nothing really important is happening. Israelis are no exception. What is happening now in Egypt will change Israeli lives. Continue reading →