Tensions continue to rise over Israel’s announcement of a new settlement expansion in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, with Palestinian negotiators condemning the move and US officials declining to issue any joint statements with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israeli government confirmed the construction again today, the latest in a series of settlement moves announced just ahead of Netanyahu meetings with Obama Administration officials. Even members of Netanyahu’s ruling coalition are questioning the wisdom of the latest move, so soon after a very public falling out over a similar announcemcent during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel.
Though the size of the latest expansion was miniscule, a mere 20 apartments compared to the 1,600 announced during Biden’s visit, the timing and the controversial nature of the settlement seemed designed to spark a reaction.
Readers may remember the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for an incident in August in which Israeli police evicted 50 Palestinians from a pair of family compounds they had legally purchased in 1958, before the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. The Israeli courts rejected the families’ claims to the land, setting the homes aside for a settlement on the grounds that Jewish families had purchased the territory at some point during the Ottoman Empire. The 20 settlements in question will be built at the old Shepherd Hotel in the neighborhood as part of a plan which will eventually create a much larger settlement in the neighborhood.
The White House has so far insisted only that it is seeking “clarification” of the move from Israel, but Prime Minister Netanyahu is said to have canceled a number of planned interviews with American media outlets and is prepared to leave Washington in the morning.
The Israeli Government is at war with the American people. It wants to use our country for its wars, as a proxy power, and it wants to engander the Jewish people of Israel for idiotic right wing nationalism that may lead to a one apartheid state instead of peace for two peoples.
Basil you are right — its not our people in the US or Israel, but the disguised Global EMPIRE that has us both by the throat.
The American-style Imperialist Political Action Committee (AIPAC) no more speaks for the vast majority of average 'democracy-thinking', peace-loving, and anti-war Israeli and American Jews, than the Chamber of Commerce/EMPIRE speaks for the vast majority of 'democracy-thinking', average working-class, anti-Empire, anti-corporatist/fascist, and honest small-business progressive Americans!
Both these very similar, stealthy, propagandist, and 'Predator Drone'-style organizations working for the exact same Global corporate/financial/militarist EMPIRE — that infects both 'our' countries like a cancer hiding behind the facade of its MULTI-Party modern 'Vichy' sham of faux democratic governments — represent only death-spiraling "Empire-thinking" and continue to launch 'Hell-Fire Missiles' of lies and deceit against their own citizens.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
The only reason Bibi was here, was to give Obama his marching orders for an attack against Iran and get his butt kissed some more. He really seems to enjoy that.
What's gonna happen when the 350 million non-Jewish Americans finally figure out how the support of the US Jewish community enabled Israeli subversion of the US?" And the millions of evangelical Christians who now so fervently support Israel, what of them? Can anyone doubt that these folks, waiting for the destruction of Israel to signal the coming of "the rapture", will turn on a dime into a full-throated lynch mob, with unbridled enthusiasm to do their part against the unregenerate devil-spawn Jews? In all the world only Americans, the American Jewish community right along with the rest, remain hoodwinked by the Israel myth. When the myth finally evaporates, world Jewry will once again be subject to a reaction, with the American Jewish community at the head of the line. The Zionist phenomenon has set in motion the next holocaust with a modern example of the pattern of behavior behind five thousand years of so-called "persecution".
The white house is looking for "clarification" that israel is again snubbing its nose at international law.
Yeah, the Obama administration is really laying down the law with the Israelis. No joint statements! I'm sure Netanyahu is quaking in his loafers.
The billions in aid will continue to flow. The unconditional support at the U.N. remains. The aggressive wars against its enemies go on endlessly. Investigations of Israeli espionage are quashed. The boot-licking speeches by American politicians at AIPAC conferences have become a rite of passage. Use American-made F16s and helicopter gunships against Palestinian civilians? Hey, we'll avert our eyes.
But build 20 apartments in Jerusalem? No joint statements for at least a week! Yep, Obama is drawing a line in the sand. Hope and change, folks. How's it working out for ya?