“Dear Mr. President,” the family’s letter, sent to Biden on Friday morning, began, “We, the family of Shireen Abu Akleh, write to express our grief, outrage and sense of betrayal concerning your administration’s abject response to the extrajudicial killing of our sister and aunt by Israeli forces on May 11, 2022, while on assignment in the occupied Palestinian city of Jenin in the West Bank.”

The letter, which was provided to The Intercept by the family, reminded the American president that Abu Akleh was not just “a prominent, beloved Palestinian journalist” and “a role model and a mentor” to women in her community. “She was also a United States citizen.”

The family, including Abu Akleh’s brother Anton and his children, demanded that Biden make time during his visit to the Middle East next week to meet with them, “and hear directly from us about our concerns and demands for justice.”

The U.S. “has been skulking toward the erasure of any wrongdoing by Israeli forces.”

They also described their anger and disappointment at a lack of support from the Biden administration, and suggested that instead of using its leverage over Israel to demand a credible investigation of the fatal shot that witnesses said was fired from an Israeli military convoy, “the United States has been skulking toward the erasure of any wrongdoing by Israeli forces.”

“In the days and weeks since an Israeli soldier killed Shireen, not only have we not been adequately consulted, informed, and supported by U.S. government officials, but your administration’s actions exhibit an apparent intent to undermine our efforts toward justice and accountability for Shireen’s death,” the renowned Al Jazeera correspondent’s relatives wrote.

The family provided links to a half-dozen painstaking examinations of the video and audio evidence of the killing — conducted by the Washington Post, CNN, The Associated Press, the New York Times, Bellingcat, and the United Nations Human Rights Office — which all concluded that the fatal shot had likely been fired from the Israeli Defense Forces, or IDF, raiding party.

“All available evidence suggests that Shireen, a U.S. citizen, was the subject of an extrajudicial killing,” the Abu Akleh family told Biden, “yet your administration has thoroughly failed to meet the bare minimum expectation held by a grieving family — to ensure a prompt, thorough, credible, impartial, independent, effective and transparent investigation that leads to true justice and accountability for Shireen’s killing.”

The family urged Biden to direct the Department of Justice to use the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Bureau and the FBI to investigate the killing of Abu Akleh.

The letter was sent days after the State Department released an oddly vague statement, on the Fourth of July holiday, reporting that “an extremely detailed forensic analysis” of the bullet that killed the journalist, carried out in Israel by unnamed “independent, third-party examiners,” overseen by the regional U.S. security coordinator, Lt. Gen. Michael Fenzel, was unable to determine if the shot had been fired from an Israeli rifle.

According to the State Department, the American general’s review of other information gathered by Israeli and Palestinian officials led him to the conclusion “that gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh.” Fenzel, however, “found no reason to believe that this was intentional but rather the result of tragic circumstances,” the statement added.

As the Abu Aklehs noted in their letter to Biden, the U.S. has offered no explanation of how the American general determined that no Israeli soldier intended to fire at the journalist, who was wearing a blue vest marked “PRESS,” but the statement seemed to exactly echo a claim the Israeli military has made repeatedly. “The IDF investigation conclusively determined that no IDF soldier deliberately fired at Ms. Abu Akleh,” Israel’s military said in a statement released the same day.

The U.S. has offered no explanation of how the American general determined that no Israeli soldier intended to fire at the journalist.

The journalist’s family also pointed out that just one day after State Department spokesperson Ned Price “announced that Shireen’s killing was likely unintentional,” he admitted, during questioning by reporters, that the U.S. security coordinator’s review of the evidence was “not a law enforcement investigation” and his conclusion about intent was simply “a judgment.”

“Nonetheless,” the family wrote to Biden, “your administration deemed it necessary to include and perpetuate the baseless and damaging conclusion that the killing was not intentional, seemingly choosing political expedience over actual accountability for a foreign government’s killing of a U.S. citizen.”

The Abu Aklehs went on to demand that the State Department retract the July 4 press statement and turn over to them any forensic report prepared by the ballistic experts, and reveal their identities. Price, the State Department spokesperson, told reporters that the forensic experts were not Americans but came from one of the seven other NATO countries that help train Palestinian Authority security forces.

While Price declined to say what country the experts came from, Israel’s military insisted in its own statement that “Israeli experts examined the bullet” in the presence of representatives of the U.S. security coordinator. The Israelis added that their ballistic examination was looking for evidence that the bullet had been fired from a specific weapon which was examined in the lab. That statement appears to indicate that Israel has identified the soldier from the Duvdevan commando unit who fired in Abu Akleh’s direction from the convoy during the raid.

The family also reminded Biden that 57 members of Congress and 24 senators had signed letters asking for the U.S. to be directly involved in investigating the killing of Abu Akleh, given that Palestinians and Israelis do not trust each other to conduct a credible and independent investigation.

“We reaffirm these demands on behalf of our beloved Shireen as your administration’s actions to date have not only fallen woefully short of ‘full accountability’ but they amount to express acceptance for Shireen’s killing,” the family wrote. “Your administration’s actions can only be seen as an attempt to erase the extrajudicial killing of Shireen and further entrench the systemic impunity enjoyed by Israeli forces and officials for unlawfully killing Palestinians.”

The post In Letter to Biden, Shireen Abu Akleh’s Family Demands a Meeting and an End to Israeli Impunity appeared first on The Intercept.

At least 74 Palestinians were detained by Monday afternoon, in the first hours of what Israel’s police force is calling “Operation Law and Order.” Palestinian rights groups called the planned arrest of up to 500 protesters — on charges ranging from attacks on the police to vandalism to online incitement — a blatant crackdown on dissent, timed to coincide with the dimming of the global spotlight on the conflict.

A mass campaign of arrests is happening in 48/ Israel. Israeli occupation forces are arresting Palestinian citizens involved in the uprising. #palestinerises pic.twitter.com/lwt2nntWwJ

— Dr. Yara Hawari ?. ???? ????? (@yarahawari) May 23, 2021

“Israeli forces and police are going on a mass arresting rampage in Lydd, and other Palestinian cities in an attempt to ‘even the score’ with Palestinians that spoke up against their ethnic cleansing,” the Palestinian writer Mariam Barghouti observed on Twitter, as video of two men being detained and blindfolded in the city Israelis call Lod circulated online. “This is what we warned about. Israel will target us all when you stop looking.”

“The world tends to look away as soon as Israeli lives are no longer threatened by rockets but it is stuff like this, that Israel does to Palestinians every day, that guarantees future rounds,” the writer and political analyst Yousef Munayyer commented on the same images.

Thread 1/2: The Occupation forces are carrying a violent mass arrests campaign, against Jerusalemites and Palestinians living in the lands occupied in 1948. Since this morning at least 15 Jerusalemites were arrested. pic.twitter.com/eKE1Jn7g9H

— Grassroots Al-Quds (@grassroots_quds) May 24, 2021

“Don’t look away from the purge,” Jalal Abukhater, a Jerusalem-based Palestinian writer and civil servant, urged his international Twitter followers early Monday morning. “Don’t look away from the terror Israeli forces are planning to put in hundreds of Palestinian homes over next 48 hrs.”

“The massive arrest campaign announced by Israeli police last night is a militarized war against Palestinian citizens of Israel,” Hassan Jabareen, the general director of Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in a statement. “This is a war against Palestinian demonstrators, political activists, and minors, employing massive Israeli police forces to raid the homes of Palestinian citizens.”

Another brief video clip that sowed outrage showed a young Palestinian boy being arrested in the Beit Hanina neighborhood of East Jerusalem.

Israeli police arrest a 10 year old Palestinian boy in Jerualem and his sister is crying pleading for his release. pic.twitter.com/5Fk6NcFLMq

— Salem Barahmeh (@Barahmeh) May 24, 2021

A researcher for the rights group Defense for Children International-Palestine reported that the boy, who is 11, was arrested because Israeli settlers accused him of throwing stones. He was later released.

Palestinian citizens of Israel had started their protests before the fighting in Gaza, in solidarity with Palestinian families threatened with eviction from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, in occupied East Jerusalem, to make way for Israeli settlers. Israeli police used force and mass arrests to try to stifle those protests, detaining more than 1,500 people this month, and Palestinians also faced violence from Jewish supremacist mobs, including racist soccer hooligans and far-right settlers.

“Reminding us that [Palestinians] inside Israel are also fighting a military system bent on oppressing them, Israel has launched a mass arrest campaign to pick up those who took to the street the past 2 weeks,” Tareq Baconi, an analyst at the International Crisis Group commented. There were, he added, “no similar arrests for Jewish mobs – their violence was state sanctioned.”

Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, told The New York Times that about 70 percent of those arrested this month were Palestinian citizens of Israel, but a Palestinian lawmaker in the Israeli Knesset, Aida Touma-Sliman, estimated that the true share was closer to 90 percent.

As of last week, according to Nimer Sultany, the editor-in-chief of The Palestine Yearbook of International Law, 85 percent of those arrested were Palestinian, and many of the rest were left-wing Israeli Jews protesting alongside them. The first 116 indictments were all against Palestinians.

Israel arrested 1000 protesters – citizens

850 Palestinians (20% minors)
150 are mostly left wing Jews

116 indictments:
100% Palestinians; 0 Jews.
@arab48website https://t.co/2NA03sDako

— Nimer Sultany (@NimerSultany) May 17, 2021

Three Jewish extremists who took part in a brutal mob attack on a Palestinian man in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bat Yam this month were charged on Monday with attempted murder and aggravated assault, Haaretz reported. As the newspaper also reported in its main, Hebrew-language edition, more than 20 attackers were seen on video beating the victim, but only four have been arrested so far, and just three charged.

Later in the day, a 17-year-old Palestinian accused of injuring an Israeli soldier and a civilian with a knife was shot and killed by a border police officer in Jerusalem. Pointing to video of the incident released by the police, and additional footage recorded by a witness, Defense for Children International-Palestine called the incident an apparent extrajudicial killing, since Israeli forces apparently fired at least three shots after the suspected attacker, Zuhdi Muhannad Zuhdi al-Tawil, “was incapacitated and on the ground.”

The wave of arrests of Palestinian citizens of Israel has been accompanied by evidence of casual brutality and racism from Israeli police officers. In one incident, captured on a surveillance camera in Umm el-Fahm — a majority Palestinian town in northern Israel where protesters marched last week — a food delivery driver who stepped aside as Israeli police officers were leading an arrested man away was first shoved off the sidewalk by one officer and then hurled to the ground by another.

1/3 ???? ?????:???? ????? ????, ??? ??? ???? ????? ??? ???? ?? ????? ????? ??????, ????? ?? ????? ????? ????? ??? 7 ????,????? ???? ????? ?? ?????? ??????? ?? ??? ???? ????? ???? ??? ?????,?????? ?????? ??????? ???? ???? ????? ????? ????? ?? ??? ????? ??? ?????.@Haaretz #????21 pic.twitter.com/QxmUzm4WT2

— Yanal Jabarin | ???? ?????? (@JbareenYanal) May 24, 2021

Yanal Jbareen, a Palestinian citizen of Israel who reports for Haaretz 21, the Israeli newspaper’s journalistic incubator, posted the video on Twitter along with an interview of the driver, summarized in Hebrew. According to Jbareen, the driver said that while he was lying on the ground, one of the officers told him that he should be more respectful of the police in future, worshipping them instead of god.

The post Israeli Police Round Up Palestinian Protesters Out of Global Spotlight appeared first on The Intercept.

The rockets fired from Gaza, seven of which reportedly reached the outskirts of Jerusalem but caused no serious casualties, came hours after Israeli police had entered the Aqsa mosque compound on Monday morning, firing stun grenades and rubber bullets at Palestinian protesters defending the site with rocks and fireworks.

At one point during the daylong battle inside the compound, a large tree caught fire near the mosque, with conflicting reports as to which side was to blame.

One of the beautiful cypress trees outside al-Aqsa mosque caught fire. Police say it's from from fireworks https://t.co/VzWHmkIc5w

— Yair Wallach (@YairWallach) May 10, 2021

https://twitter.com/ORHamilton/status/1391835281930735631

No damage was caused to the mosque, but before the fire was extinguished, Israeli television broadcast what Daniel Seidemann, the director of Terrestrial Jerusalem, called the “apocalyptic” image of “flames rising high above” the compound known as Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary, to Muslims and the Temple Mount to Jews.

The conservative Jerusalem Post journalist Lahav Harkov shared an image of the broadcast on Twitter.

One reporter from KAN says the fire is from a tree hit by a stun grenade, but that it’s not confirmed. Another reporter pointed out that Palestinians have been throwing explosives, firecrackers. Either way the fire is already out.

— Lahav Harkov (@LahavHarkov) May 10, 2021

Akiva Weisz, a reporter for Israel’s public broadcaster, Kan, posted video on Twitter of the flames burning near the mosque as a group of Israeli flag-waving, far-right religious extremists celebrated Jerusalem Day, an annual commemoration of Israel seizing full control of the city in 1967.

?? ??? ???? pic.twitter.com/PR069O7UzF

— ????? ????? Akiva Weisz (@AkivaWeisz) May 10, 2021

Palestinian Italian journalist Rula Jebreal shared another, closer angle on the scene from Israeli TV, which showed some of the religious Zionists on the plaza recording the fire on their phones.

A large fire in al-Aqsa’s courtyard as settlers celebrate.
Every year, Jewish extremists rip thru Jerusalem to terrorize Palestinians. Since Ramadan started, this racist hate parade intensified: fanatics inciting violence/chanting: “Death to Palestinians.”pic.twitter.com/y28jJfniOT

— Rula Jebreal (@rulajebreal) May 10, 2021

Another video clip of ultranationalist Israelis in ecstatic celebration in front of the Western Wall, as flames near the Aqsa mosque leapt into the night sky above, unsettled and appalled many Palestinian and Jewish critics of the 54-year-old Israeli occupation of the city.

Ayman Odeh, the leader of the Joint List of predominantly Arab parties in Israel’s parliament, called the images he posted on Twitter, of the party atmosphere on the plaza below the fire, shocking.

????? pic.twitter.com/7JM5ADoPJf

— ????? ???? ???? ???? Ayman Odeh (@AyOdeh) May 10, 2021

Odeh, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and an uncompromising critic of Israel’s attempt to make its occupation of East Jerusalem permanent, tweeted his one-word comment in Hebrew, but the frightening image of the region teetering on the edge of the abyss seemed to need no translation, as religious extremists — many of whom would like nothing better than to see the mosque destroyed — continued their celebration, at least untroubled by the flames.

Nathan Thrall, a Jerusalem-based expert on the conflict and the author of “The Only Language They Understand,” noted that the celebration of conquest was also taking place on a plaza that was constructed by demolishing a Palestinian neighborhood.

Days after conquering the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, Israel razed one of its Palestinian neighborhoods and transformed it into the Western Wall plaza. On Jerusalem Day in 2021, Israelis celebrated in that occupied plaza as a fire blazed in the al-Aqsa mosque compound above. https://t.co/DXKgyKaHcc

— Nathan Thrall (@NathanThrall) May 10, 2021

The video shared by the Palestinian legislator reached millions of viewers on Twitter, in part because of a claim he did not make, that it showed the Israeli extremists celebrating what Turkey’s state-owned channel TRT World called “a blaze at Al Aqsa Mosque.”

The viral spread of the video, and false rumors that the mosque was on fire, prompted journalists to clarify that the fire had not spread from the tree, while defenders of Israel tried to contain the damage to the country’s image by insisting that Palestinians were to blame for starting it and noting, correctly, that the nationalistic celebrations on the plaza below were already well underway before it began.

Jewish celebrating Jerusalem day by western wall, while you can see Palestinians and Arabs shooting fireworks on the Temple Mount causing a fire near El Aqsa. After this people now saying Israelis are celebrating burning the of al aqsa. Pure blood label.https://t.co/fPEYV9A447

— Jonathan Elkhoury- ??????? ?????? (@Jonathan_Elk) May 10, 2021

Israeli nationalists and reporters shared a distant video clip of the confusing battle between the protesters and the police around the mosque, which they presented as proof that the fire had been started by Palestinians. Judah Ari Gross, a military correspondent for the Times of Israel, suggested on Twitter that fireworks that started the blaze were fired toward the plaza “where thousands of Jews were gathered for Jerusalem Day celebrations.”

Correction: Additional footage of the incident appears to show that the fireworks were fired from the Temple Mount toward the Western Wall below (where thousands of Jews were gathered for Jerusalem Day celebrations).

The trees were just in the way. pic.twitter.com/NOw9Y1sdda

— Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) May 10, 2021

While the video evidence is far from clear, it seems possible that Palestinian protesters did accidentally start the fire. But this focus on who started the fire, and whether the Israeli extremists were celebrating the blaze, is a distraction from what is most disturbing about the video shared by Odeh.

That’s because, as several Israeli journalists, as well as activists and scholars who speak Hebrew, pointed out, what was most horrifying about the scene was the song the ultranationalists were singing along to as a fire raged in front of them near Islam’s third holiest site.

It was, as Yair Wallach, a senior lecturer in Israeli Studies at SOAS University of London, explained, a 1990s Hassidic rock tune associated with the far-right Jewish supremacist movement of Rabbi Meir Kahane.

I am sharing this, reluctantly, to point to the song they're singing. It's a Kahanist revenge song, words from the biblical story of Samson:
"O God, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes"
(Yimach Shemam, may their name be effaced, the youths chant) https://t.co/OZCYNpdjUF

— Yair Wallach (@YairWallach) May 10, 2021

Kahane was the virulently anti-Arab founder of the Jewish Defense League, whose extremist Kach party was designated a terrorist organization and banned in 1994 after one of its members, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Muslims praying at the Tomb of the Patriarchs shrine in the West Bank city of Hebron.

Before he was assassinated in 1990, Kahane served in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, where he introduced legislation to strip non-Jews of citizenship and called for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the occupied territories.

In March, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the former head of Kahane’s youth movement and the current head of the far-right Jewish Power party, was elected to the Knesset. Ben-Gvir, who has called for the destruction of Al Aqsa Mosque, made a provocative visit on Monday to the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, to advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, and then went to the Temple Mount, Haaretz reported.

Activists from the Kahanist youth organization Lehava, which is dedicated to preventing romantic relationships between Jews and Arabs, were in the city to take part in the annual Jerusalem Day flag march, in which religious Zionists usually parade through Palestinian neighborhoods in the Old City.

Video from a friend on the ground in the Jerusalem: right-wing Israeli settlers flying the Kahanist Lehava flag at the "March of Flags" pic.twitter.com/RR8BHi14Xk

— Joshua Leifer (@joshualeifer) May 10, 2021

That parade was halted on Monday, but the activists were at the heart of the musical celebration on the plaza as the fire burned above them.

“Hard to capture how deeply horrifying this video is,” Simone Zimmerman, the U.S. director of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, wrote on Twitter of the clip Odeh shared. “Thousands of Israeli Jews singing about revenge, chanting ‘Yimach shemam (may their names be erased),’ dancing as a fire burns on the Temple Mount. This is genocidal animus towards Palestinians — emboldened and unfiltered.”

“The song is not only genocidal, it’s also suicidal — from the story of Samson, who kills himself while getting revenge on the Philistines,” she added.

“These teens are student of pre-military yeshivas (the flag being waved is for the Tzvia Yeshiva in Dimona),” Elizabeth Tsurkov, a research fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking, pointing out some of the young Israelis gleefully singing about taking revenge on the biblical enemies of the Jews. “Imagine what these boys will do once they are given guns and authority over millions of Palestinians, while they enjoy near-total impunity.”

“As a Jew, it hurts me to see this disgusting show of hatred at the holiest site for the Jews, the Western Wall,” she continued. “Young boys celebrating as east Jerusalem burns. Zionism is infecting Jewish identity in Israel with ethno-nationalism, militarism and glorification of violence.”

While several Jewish observers who understand the meaning of the song the young extremists were singing echoed Tsurkov’s comments, Yair Wallach pointed out earlier in the day that the Palestinian struggle to keep Israel from asserting control over their access to the Aqsa mosque compound is not entirely, or exclusively, about religion.

“The thing about al-Aqsa/Temple Mount is that it’s the most important place in Palestine/Israel, and its in Palestinian hands,” Wallach wrote in an incisive Twitter thread. “Israeli police can storm it, take the keys, lock the doors, beat up or shoot people. All this doesn’t change the fact that it’s in Palestinian hands.”

“Palestinian effective sovereignty in al-Aqsa is not due to diplomatic negotiations, or international law, or armed struggle (although all these played a role in defending it). It’s about moral authority. Israeli policies in the last decade threaten the status quo by effectively allowing ritual Jewish visits to the site (although nominally banned). But Israel has not dared to take over the site, and it remains in Palestinian hands, at least for now,” he continued.

“So lots of people will emphasise the religious dimension, which is clearly there and is important, but it’s not just about that. It’s also about basic freedom,” Wallach observed. “And this effective and symbolic sovereignty, despite its clear limitations, is deeper than the limited self-rule of Ramallah or Gaza and ultimately provides a far greater challenge to Israel.”

The post This Is Not Fine: Why Video of an Ultranationalist Frenzy in Jerusalem Is So Unsettling appeared first on The Intercept.

“I support military assistance to Israel,” said Warren’s planned remarks, referring to the aid as “the elephant in the room.” 

“But if we’re serious about arresting settlement expansion and helping move the parties toward a two-state solution, then it would be irresponsible not to consider all of the tools we have at our disposal,” her speech went on. “One of those is restricting military aid from being used in the occupied territories. By continuing to provide military aid without restriction, we provide no incentive for Israel to adjust course.”

Warren’s position is consistent with the more progressive stance on Israel policy the senator has taken in recent years. Before the 2020 election cycle, Warren had come under fire for her vote on U.S. aid to Israel during the 2014 Gaza war. At the time, she defended the vote, saying, “America has a very special relationship with Israel.” 

But Warren went out of her way during her presidential campaign to position herself among the new class of Democrats not afraid to question that special relationship. In October 2019, she said “everything is on the table” should Israel move away from a two-state solution, and in May 2020, she signed a letter with 18 Senate Democrats opposing Israel’s unilateral annexation of territories in the West Bank. On the campaign trail, the senator said she would push Israel to end its ongoing occupation of Palestine and denounced the country’s decision to bar Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich, and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., from entering the West Bank and East Jerusalem. 

Those decisions came with a price. After Warren told activists from the Jewish anti-occupation group IfNotNow that she would push Israel to end the occupation, Republicans blasted her as anti-Israel, and some even labeled her an anti-Semite. Criticisms flowed from within her own party as well. Democratic Majority for Israel, a centrist Democratic PAC working to elect pro-Israel candidates, sent a memo warning other Democratic presidential candidates about IfNotNow, advising them to stick to a script saying they supported a two-state solution.

“Warren’s support of the common-sense idea that US military funding to the Israeli government should never go toward the occupation is a huge sign of the growing support among Democratic voters to take on the foreign policy hawks who no longer have complete control over the debate,” said Morriah Kaplan, spokesperson for IfNotNow.

Mark Mellman, a longtime strategist for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, launched Democratic Majority for Israel with several other Democratic strategists in 2019, aiming to curb the growing willingness among the party’s left wing to criticize the U.S. relationship with Israel and human rights abuses in the occupied territories. DMFI was the first Democratic group to run ads — with help from AIPAC — attacking Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., by name in either of his presidential campaigns. Most recently, DMFI came under criticism after a 2018 social media post surfaced from a board member who wrote, “Gaza is full of monsters. Time to burn the whole place.”

After news that Warren’s presidential campaign had hired an IfNotNow co-founder, Mellman made a personal call to her campaign manager. He wanted to make sure the staffer wasn’t working on Israel policy or Jewish outreach; Warren’s campaign assured him the staffer was not.

During the J Street speech, Warren also reiterated support for a two-state solution, condemned the continued expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and called on Israel to help Palestinians access Covid-19 vaccines. She called on the Biden administration to restore access to the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem to Palestinians, to reopen the Palestine Liberation Organization delegation office in Washington, D.C., and to take steps to end the ongoing blockade and ensuing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

The post Elizabeth Warren Suggests U.S. Explore Conditional Aid to Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

Israel’s military typically arrests and prosecutes 500 to 700 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 each year, subjecting them to coercive interrogation, physical violence, and trials in military courts that lack basic guarantees of due process.

'You threw a stone.' Video shows armed Israeli soldiers forcibly seizing 9-year-old Palestinian boy in his school https://t.co/kMeYmEmHm9 pic.twitter.com/SWy5y5Vlsz

— CNN (@CNN) April 1, 2019

McCollum’s bill, HR 2407, would amend the Foreign Assistance Act to prohibit funding for the military detention of children in any country, including Israel. The proposed law would also provide $19 million a year to American, Israeli, and Palestinian nongovernmental organizations to monitor the treatment of children detained by Israel’s army and offer physical and psychological treatment.

“Israel’s system of military juvenile detention is state-sponsored child abuse designed to intimidate and terrorize Palestinian children and their families,” McCollum said in a statement on Wednesday. “It must be condemned, but it is equally outrageous that U.S. tax dollars in the form of military aid to Israel are permitted to sustain what is clearly a gross human rights violation against children.”

In dry legislative language, the factual findings section of the bill paints a devastating picture of injustice sponsored by American taxpayers:

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, there are two separate legal systems, with Israeli military law imposed on Palestinians and Israeli civilian law applied to Israeli settlers. Approximately 2,900,000 Palestinians live in the West Bank, of which around 45 percent are children under the age of 18, who have lived their entire lives under Israeli military occupation.

Since 2000, more than 10,000 Palestinian children have been subject to the Israeli military court system. Israeli security forces detain children under the age of 12 for interrogation for extended periods of time even though prosecution of children under 12 is prohibited by Israeli military law.

The bill notes that Human Rights Watch reported in 2018 that Israel’s security forces detained Palestinian children “often using unnecessary force, questioned them without a family member present, and made them sign confessions in Hebrew, which most did not understand.” Such detentions, the same group discovered in 2015, “included the use of chokeholds, beatings, and coercive interrogation on children between the ages of 11 and 15 years.”

“Obaida,” a video report by Matthew Cassel for Defense for Children International Palestine, explores a 15-year-old Palestinian boy’s experience of Israeli military detention. Three days after the film was posted on YouTube last week, the boy was arrested again.

McCollum’s bill also cites a 2018 report from B’Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, which described the bleak reality in detail. “Every year, hundreds of Palestinian minors undergo the same scenario,” B’Tselem reported. “Israeli security forces pick them up on the street or at home in the middle of the night, then handcuff and blindfold them and transport them to interrogation, often subjecting them to violence en route. Exhausted and scared – some having spent a long time in transit, some having been roused from sleep, some having had nothing to eat or drink for hours – the minors are then interrogated. They are completely alone in there, cut off from the world, without any adult they know and trust by their side, and without having been given a chance to consult with a lawyer before the interrogation. The interrogation itself often involves threats, yelling, verbal abuse and sometimes physical violence. Its sole purpose is to get the minors to confess or provide information about others.”

As the text of McCollum’s bill explains, these abuses are well-known to the United States government. The findings section of the bill notes that the State Department’s 2013 human rights report pointed to evidence “that Israeli security services continued to abuse, and in some cases torture minors, frequently arrested on suspicion of stone-throwing, in order to coerce confessions. The torture tactics used included threats, intimidation, long-term handcuffing, beatings, and solitary confinement.”

Researchers working for another NGO, Defense for Children International Palestine, collected affidavits from 739 Palestinian children who were detained in the West Bank between 2013 and 2018. DCIP found that 73 percent of the children had endured physical violence, 86 percent were blindfolded, 96 percent were interrogated without having a parent or family member present, 20 percent were subjected to stress positions by interrogators, and 49 percent were detained from their homes in the middle of the night. More than 120 of the children had been held in isolation for interrogation purposes for an average of 13 days before any charges were filed.

This is heart-wrenching. 15 year old Mohammad Tamimi – brother of Ahed Tamimi – was arrested by the IDF during a night raid at their home.

15 year old kid. He joins hundreds of other Palestinian children sitting in Israeli prisons. https://t.co/5FzlfJcECq

— Sana Saeed (@SanaSaeed) April 8, 2019

“As Israel’s military occupation becomes more entrenched with no end in sight and the human impact of occupation is more and more visible, lawmakers are increasingly willing to challenge U.S. policy toward Israel,” Brad Parker, a senior adviser for policy and advocacy at DCIP, told The Intercept. “By prohibiting U.S. financial support of abuses against Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system, this bill aligns U.S. policy toward Israel with existing U.S. law and international law, sending a clear message to Israeli authorities that the systemic impunity enjoyed for so long concerning widespread ill-treatment of Palestinian child detainees must end.”

In 2017, McCollum, with 30 Democratic co-sponsors from what was then the House minority, introduced similar legislation to prohibit “U.S. assistance to Israel from being used to support the military detention, interrogation, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children.”

WATCH: @BettyMcCollum04 urges colleagues to co-sponsor H.R. 4391, a bill that would prohibit U.S. taxpayer funds from supporting grave human rights violations against Palestinian children in the Israeli military detention system. #nowaytotreatachild pic.twitter.com/8nodpMmOba

— #nowaytotreatachild (@nwttac) July 25, 2018

With Democrats now in the majority, her revised bill was referred to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Tuesday.

“Peace can only be achieved by respecting human rights, especially the rights of children,” McCollum said on Wednesday. “Congress must not turn a blind eye to the unjust and ongoing mistreatment of Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation.”

Update: Thursday, May 2, 7:34 a.m.

McCollum’s bill was welcomed by Human Rights Watch, as well as Palestinian-Americans and American Jews who oppose Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, which denies basic civil rights to nearly 3 million people living under Israeli military rule.

"Every year, Israeli forces physically abuse scores scores of Palestinians in custody with impunity.. it's not just a few bad apples, its a rotten tree." @hrw on US Congressional bill to prohibit funding grave violations of children's rights. Our take https://t.co/voLr72Wbz7 pic.twitter.com/SWbrm4dyny

— Omar Shakir (@OmarSShakir) May 1, 2019

“Progressive values demand freedom, justice, and equality for all people and across all issues, and we commend Rep. McCollum for putting hers into practice,” Yousef Munayyer, director of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, said in a statement. “For too long, Congress has given Israel a blank check even as it has entrenched its brutal military occupation and escalated human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. H.R. 2407 is an important step toward demanding accountability and sending a stern message that the American people do not want their tax dollars being used to deprive Palestinian children of their rights and childhoods.”

“Palestinian children – like all children – should be protected and treasured,” Rabbi Alissa Wise, deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace said. “It is unconscionable that U.S. military aid to Israel is enabling the Israeli military’s systematic abuse of Palestinian children; beatings, solitary confinement, and arbitrary detention are no way to treat a child. By prohibiting U.S. aid from funding these human rights violations, Rep. McCollum’s legislation recognizes that change will only happen when Congress demands real accountability.”

The post New House Bill Would Bar Israel From Using U.S. Military Aid to Detain Palestinian Children appeared first on The Intercept.

The predictable results of those meetings are now clear and well-documented. Ever since, Facebook has been on a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined by Israeli officials. Indeed, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders:

Shortly after news broke earlier this month of the agreement between the Israeli government and Facebook, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.

She’s right. The submission to Israeli dictates is hard to overstate: As the New York Times put it in December of last year, “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”

What makes this censorship particularly consequential is that “96 percent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.” That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians.

In the weeks following those Facebook-Israel meetings, reported The Independent, “the activist collective Palestinian Information Center reported that at least 10 of their administrators’ accounts for their Arabic and English Facebook pages — followed by more than 2 million people — have been suspended, seven of them permanently, which they say is a result of new measures put in place in the wake of Facebook’s meeting with Israel.” Last March, Facebook briefly shut down the Facebook page of the political party, Fatah, followed by millions, “because of an old photo posted of former leader Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.”

A 2016 report from the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms detailed how extensive the Facebook censorship was:

Pages and personal accounts that were filtered and blocked: Palestinian Dialogue Network (PALDF.net) Gaza now, Jerusalem News Network, Shihab agency, Radio Bethlehem 2000, Orient Radio Network, page Mesh Heck, Ramallah news, journalist Huzaifa Jamous from Abu Dis, activist Qassam Bedier, activist Mohammed Ghannam, journalist Kamel Jbeil, administrative accounts for Al Quds Page, administrative accounts Shihab agency, activist Abdel-Qader al-Titi, youth activist Hussein Shajaeih, Ramah Mubarak (account is activated), Ahmed Abdel Aal (account is activated), Mohammad Za’anin (still deleted), Amer Abu Arafa (still deleted), Abdulrahman al-Kahlout (still deleted).

Needless to say, Israelis have virtually free rein to post whatever they want about Palestinians. Calls by Israelis for the killing of Palestinians are commonplace on Facebook, and largely remain undisturbed.

As Al Jazeera reported last year, “Inflammatory speech posted in the Hebrew language … has attracted much less attention from the Israeli authorities and Facebook.” One study found that “122,000 users directly called for violence with words like ‘murder,’ ‘kill,’ or ‘burn.’ Arabs were the No. 1 recipients of hateful comments.” Yet there appears to be little effort by Facebook to censor any of that.

Though some of the most inflammatory and explicit calls for murder are sometimes removed, Facebook continues to allow the most extremist calls for incitement against Palestinians to flourish. Indeed, Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has often used social media to post what is clearly incitement to violence against Palestinians generally. In contrast to Facebook’s active suppression against Palestinians, the very idea that Facebook would ever use its censorship power against Netanyahu or other prominent Israelis calling for violence and inciting attacks is unthinkable. Indeed, as Al Jazeera concisely put it, “Facebook hasn’t met Palestinian leaders to discuss their concern.”

Facebook now seems to be explicitly admitting that it also intends to follow the censorship orders of the U.S. government. Earlier this week, the company deleted the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Ramzan Kadyrov, the repressive, brutal, and authoritarian leader of the Chechen Republic, who had a combined 4 million followers on those accounts. To put it mildly, Kadyrov — who is given free rein to rule the province in exchange for ultimate loyalty to Moscow — is the opposite of a sympathetic figure: He has been credibly accused of a wide range of horrific human rights violations, from the imprisonment and torture of LGBTs to the kidnapping and killing of dissidents.

But none of that dilutes how disturbing and dangerous Facebook’s rationale for its deletion of his accounts is. A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times that the company deleted these accounts not because Kadyrov is a mass murderer and tyrant, but that “Mr. Kadyrov’s accounts were deactivated because he had just been added to a United States sanctions list and that the company was legally obligated to act.”

As the Times notes, this rationale appears dubious or at least inconsistently applied: Others who are on the same sanctions list, such as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, remain active on both Facebook and Instagram. But just consider the incredibly menacing implications of Facebook’s claims.

What this means is obvious: that the U.S. government — meaning, at the moment, the Trump administration — has the unilateral and unchecked power to force the removal of anyone it wants from Facebook and Instagram by simply including them on a sanctions list. Does anyone think this is a good outcome? Does anyone trust the Trump administration — or any other government — to compel social media platforms to delete and block anyone it wants to be silenced? As the ACLU’s Jennifer Granick told the Times:

It’s not a law that appears to be written or designed to deal with the special situations where it’s lawful or appropriate to repress speech. … This sanctions law is being used to suppress speech with little consideration of the free expression values and the special risks of blocking speech, as opposed to blocking commerce or funds as the sanctions was designed to do. That’s really problematic.

Does Facebook’s policy of blocking people from its platform who are sanctioned apply to all governments? Obviously not. It goes without saying that if, say, Iran decided to impose sanctions on Chuck Schumer for his support of Trump’s policy of recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, Facebook would never delete the accounts of the Democratic Party Senate minority leader — just as Facebook would never delete the accounts of Israeli officials who incite violence against Palestinians or who are sanctioned by Palestinian officials. Just last month, Russia announced retaliatory sanctions against various Canadian officials and executives, but needless to say, Facebook took no action to censor them or block their accounts.

Similarly, would Facebook ever dare censor American politicians or journalists who use social media to call for violence against America’s enemies? To ask the question is to answer it.

As is always true of censorship, there is one, and only one, principle driving all of this: power. Facebook will submit to and obey the censorship demands of governments and officials who actually wield power over it, while ignoring those who do not. That’s why declared enemies of the U.S. and Israeli governments are vulnerable to censorship measures by Facebook, whereas U.S and Israeli officials (and their most tyrannical and repressive allies) are not:

All of this illustrates that the same severe dangers from state censorship are raised at least as much by the pleas for Silicon Valley giants to more actively censor “bad speech.” Calls for state censorship may often be well-intentioned — a desire to protect marginalized groups from damaging “hate speech” — yet, predictably, they are far more often used against marginalized groups: to censor them rather than protect them. One need merely look at how hate speech laws are used in Europe, or on U.S. college campuses, to see that the censorship victims are often critics of European wars, or activists against Israeli occupation, or advocates for minority rights.

One can create a fantasy world in one’s head, if one wishes, in which Silicon Valley executives use their power to protect marginalized peoples around the world by censoring those who wish to harm them. But in the real world, that is nothing but a sad pipe dream. Just as governments will, these companies will use their censorship power to serve, not to undermine, the world’s most powerful factions.

Just as one might cheer the censorship of someone one dislikes without contemplating the long-term consequences of the principle being validated, one can cheer the disappearance from Facebook and Instagram of a Chechen monster. But Facebook is explicitly telling you that the reason for its actions is that it was obeying the decrees of the U.S. government about who must be shunned.

It’s hard to believe that anyone’s ideal view of the internet entails vesting power in the U.S. government, the Israeli government, and other world powers to decide who may be heard on it and who must be suppressed. But increasingly, in the name of pleading with internet companies to protect us, that’s exactly what is happening.

The post Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments appeared first on The Intercept.

But now, a group of 43 senators — 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats — wants to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country’s decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.

The proposed measure, called the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S. 720), was introduced by Cardin on March 23. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports that the bill “was drafted with the assistance of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.” Indeed, AIPAC, in its 2017 lobbying agenda, identified passage of this bill as one of its top lobbying priorities for the year:

The bill’s co-sponsors include the senior Democrat in Washington, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, his New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand, and several of the Senate’s more liberal members, such as Ron Wyden of Oregon, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, and Maria Cantwell of Washington. Illustrating the bipartisanship that AIPAC typically summons, it also includes several of the most right-wing senators such as Ted Cruz of Texas, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, and Marco Rubio of Florida.

[Update – July 20, 2017: Glen Caplin, senior advisor to Gillibrand, sends along the following statement: “We have a different read of the specific bill language, however, due to the ACLU’s concerns, the Senator has extended an invitation to them to meet with her and discuss their concerns.”]

A similar measure was introduced in the House on the same date by two Republicans and one Democrat. It has already amassed 234 co-sponsors: 63 Democrats and 174 Republicans. As in the Senate, AIPAC has assembled an impressive ideological diversity among supporters, predictably including many of the most right-wing House members — Jason Chaffetz, Liz Cheney, Peter King — along with the second-ranking Democrat in the House, Steny Hoyer.

Among the co-sponsors of the bill are several of the politicians who have become political celebrities by positioning themselves as media leaders of the anti-Trump #Resistance, including three California House members who have become heroes to Democrats and staples of the cable news circuit: Ted Lieu, Adam Schiff, and Eric Swalwell. These politicians, who have built a wide public following by posturing as opponents of authoritarianism, are sponsoring one of the most oppressive and authoritarian bills that has pended before Congress in quite some time.

Last night, the ACLU posted a letter it sent to all members of the Senate urging them to oppose this bill. Warning that “proponents of the bill are seeking additional co-sponsors,” the civil liberties group explained that “it would punish individuals for no reason other than their political beliefs.” The letter detailed what makes this bill so particularly threatening to basic civic freedoms:

It is no small thing for the ACLU to insert itself into this controversy. One of the most traumatic events in the organization’s history was when it lost large numbers of donors and supporters in the late 1970s after it defended the free speech rights of neo-Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois, a town with a large community of Holocaust survivors.

Even the bravest of organizations often steadfastly avoid any controversies relating to Israel. Yet here, while appropriately pointing out that the ACLU “takes no position for or against the effort to boycott Israel or any foreign country,” the group categorically denounces this AIPAC-sponsored proposal for what it is: a bill that “seeks only to punish the exercise of constitutional rights.”

The ACLU has similarly opposed bipartisan efforts at the state level to punish businesses that participate in the boycott, pointing out that “boycotts to achieve political goals are a form of expression that the Supreme Court has ruled are protected by the First Amendment’s protections of freedom of speech, assembly, and petition,” and that such bills “place unconstitutional conditions on the exercise of constitutional rights.” The bill now co-sponsored in Congress by more than half of the House and close to half of the Senate is far more extreme than those.

Thus far, not a single member of Congress has joined the ACLU in denouncing this bill. The Intercept this morning sent inquiries to numerous non-committed members of the Senate and House who have yet to speak on this bill. We also sent inquiries to several co-sponsors of the bill — such as Rep. Lieu — who have positioned themselves as civil liberties champions and opponents of authoritarianism, asking:

Congressman Lieu: Last night, the ACLU vehemently denounced a bill that you are co-sponsoring — to criminalize support for a boycott of Israel — as a grave attack on free speech. Do you have any comment on the ACLU’s denunciation? You’ve been an outspoken champion for civil liberties; how can you reconcile that record with an effort to make it a felony for Americans to engage in activism that protests a foreign government’s actions? We’re writing about this today; any statement would be appreciated.

This morning, Lieu responded: “Thank you for sharing the letter. The bill has been around since March and this is the first time I have seen this issue raised. We will look into it.” (The Intercept will post any response from Rep. Lieu, or any late responses from others, as soon as they are received.)

Sen. Cantwell told The Intercept she is “a strong supporter of free speech rights” and will be reviewing the bill for First Amendment concerns in light of the ACLU statement.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, when asked by The Intercept about the ACLU’s warning that the bill he is co-sponsoring criminalizes free speech, affirmed his support for the bill by responding: “I continue to support a strong U.S./Israel relationship.”

Meanwhile, some co-sponsors seemed not to have any idea what they co-sponsored — almost as though they reflexively sign whatever comes from AIPAC without having any idea what’s in it. Democratic Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, for instance, seemed genuinely bewildered when told of the ACLU’s letter, saying, “What’s the Act? You’ll have to get back to me on that.”

A similar exchange took place with another co-sponsor, one of AIPAC’s most reliable allies, Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who said: “I’d want to read it. … I’d really have to look at it.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., a co-sponsor, said she hadn’t seen the ACLU letter but would give it a look. “I certainly will take their position into consideration, just like I take everybody’s position into consideration,” she said.

Gillibrand, the only senator in the 2020 presidential mix to co-sponsor the bill, told The Intercept she would have a statement to provide, which we’ll add as soon as it’s provided.

Perhaps most stunning is our interview with the primary sponsor of the bill, Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin, who seemed to have no idea what was in his bill, particularly insisting that it contains no criminal penalties.

But as the ACLU put it, “Violations would be subject to a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.”

That’s because, as Josh Ruebner expertly detailed when the bill was first unveiled, “the bill seeks to amend two laws — the Export Administration Act of 1979 and the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945,” and “the potential penalties for violating this bill are steep: a minimum $250,000 civil penalty and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years imprisonment, as stipulated in the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.”

Indeed, to see how serious the penalties are, and how clear it is that those penalties are imposed by this bill, one can just compare the bill’s text in Section 8(a), which provides that violators will be “fined in accordance with Section 206 of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1705),” to the penalty provisions of that law, which state:

That the bill refers to the fine, but not the prison sentence, is not enough to prevent a judge from applying the statute’s prison term, because the bill brings the statute into play, said Faiz Shakir, the ACLU’s political director, who authored the letter to the Senate. “The referral to the statute keeps criminal penalties in play, regardless of what their preference for punishment might be,” said Shakir.

The bill also extends the current prohibition on participating in boycotts sponsored by foreign governments to cover boycotts from international organizations such as the U.N. and the European Union. It also explicitly extends the boycott ban from Israel generally to any parts of Israel, including the settlements. For that reason, Ruebner explains, the bill — by design — would outlaw “campaigns by the Palestine solidarity movement to pressure corporations to cut ties to Israel or even with Israeli settlements.”

This pernicious bill highlights many vital yet typically ignored dynamics in Washington. First, journalists love to lament the lack of bipartisanship in Washington, yet the very mention of the word “Israel” causes most members of both parties to quickly snap into line in a show of unanimity that would make the regime of North Korea blush with envy. Even when virtually the entire world condemns Israeli aggression, or declares settlements illegal, the U.S. Congress — across party and ideological lines — finds virtually complete harmony in uniting against the world consensus and in defense of the Israeli government.

Third, AIPAC continues to be one of the most powerful, and pernicious, lobbying forces in the country. In what conceivable sense is it of benefit to Americans to turn them into felons for the crime of engaging in political activism in protest of a foreign nation’s government? And this is hardly the first time they have attempted to do this through their most devoted congressional loyalists; Cardin, for instance, had previously succeeded in inserting into trade bills provisions that would disfavor anyone who supports a boycott of Israel.

Finally, it is hard to put into words the irony of watching many of the most celebrated and beloved congressional leaders of the anti-authoritarian Resistance — Gillibrand, Schiff, Swalwell, and Lieu — sponsor one of the most oppressive and authoritarian bills to appear in Congress in many years. How can one credibly inveigh against “authoritarianism” while sponsoring a bill that dictates to American citizens what political views they are and are not allowed to espouse under threat of criminal prosecution? Whatever labels one might want to apply to the sponsors of this bill, “anti-authoritarianism” should not be among them.

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Top photo: Demonstrators protest outside Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office in New York City on June 9, 2016.

The post U.S. Lawmakers Seek to Criminally Outlaw Support for Boycott Campaign Against Israel appeared first on The Intercept.