Newsletter · March 2023

The Report: A word from Jeff; 3/20 webinar with critical analysis of Ken Burns' Holocaust film; S. Africa downgrades diplomacy with Apartheid Israel

THE REPORT

To Friends of ICAHD-USA

Amplifying a critical Israeli voice in the US, opposing US government support of Israeli apartheid, supporting the One Democratic State Campaign.

March 9, 2023

Your must-read for understanding Israel's "matrix of control," critical Palestine-Israel news, cutting edge analyses, opportunities for solidarity, and the work of ICAHD in the United States.

ICAHDUSA.org

hosted by LA Jews for Peace

Monday, March 20, 7:00pm PT, 10:00pm ET

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Chuck O’Connell and Dick Platkin turn a critical eye on Burns’ film and the choices the directors made in telling the story.

Chuck O’Connell lectured in Sociology for over 25 years at UCLA, UC Irvine, and Pierce College where he taught that understanding the modern American situation involved race, ethnicity, nationality, and war.

Dick Platkin is a retired city planner with over 30 years of experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. He writes the weekly "Planning Watch" column for the LA Progressive and CityWatchLA, and is a member of the ICAHD-USA board of directors.

Israeli Jews do not see this connection since the issue of occupation and Palestinian rights has long been reduced almost exclusively to issues of “security.” For them, the mass demonstrations have to do with “saving Israeli democracy,” as if a liberal, democratic Israel can be severed from the Israel that is imposing an apartheid regime over millions of Palestinians. And this the mopping up process, completing the settler project in the West Bank while domesticating the Palestinians, continues apace, without any resistance or meaningful opposition even by Israel’s “Leftist” parties like Labor or Meretz. And at the center of the mopping up is, as may be expected, house demolitions. Not that the campaign of ethnically cleansing Area C (62% of the West Bank under full Israeli control), expropriating Palestinian land and settling it with Jews has changed in any major way – since 1967 Israel has demolished some 60,000 Palestinian homes, farms, schools, mosques, community centers, businesses and infrastructure, and that merely goes on – but that campaign of rendering occupation a permanent fact of life has become part of official government policy and structure. Bezalel Smotrich, a violent settler who heads the Religious Zionism party, a key member of Netanyahu’s government coalition, has been given control over the Civil Administration, the military government of the West Bank, the very body that demolishes Palestinians homes in the West Bank, confiscates Palestinian land and approves settlement construction. Smotrich is not merely a right-wing politician, however. He founded Regavim, an Israeli organization dedicated to pushing the government to demolish “illegal” Palestinian homes – on both sides of the Green Line. If I am the head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Smotrich is the head of the Israeli Committee For House Demolitions. The qualitative change in the new government, then, is not in pursuing policies of ethnic cleansing per se – that has never changed – but in making such policies official and up-front, part of an openly declared aim of finally Judaizing the whole of historic Palestine. The imposition of an apartheid regime would seem intolerable for any other state. Israel, however, protected in the UN mainly (though not only) by the United States, fears no sanctions. Though mild criticism may arise from time to time, without the threat of sanctions Israel reads accurately that it has a green light from the international community to continue until completion of its settler enterprise. NEWS, OPINION & ANALYSIS

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UPCOMING WEBINAR

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF

KEN BURNS' HOLOCAUST FILM

ANALYSIS from JEFF HALPER

THE MOPPING UP CONTINUES March 6, 2023 Israel is embroiled today in two separate but interrelated struggles. The first is to snuff out the last vestiges of Palestinian resistance to Zionist colonialism that began its campaign of “Judaizing” Palestine 130 years ago and render the reality of a Greater Israel from the River to the Sea an irreversible political fact; the other to foreclose any internal resistance to Israel becoming an apartheid state by ensuring through “judicial reform” that right-wing nationalists retain permanent control of the government and dismantle any democratic structures or laws that threaten their colonial enterprise from within.

American Jews who bought ‘Jewish democracy’ label for apartheid need to wake up

There is not one American Jew who would want to live in an America in which sovereignty was limited to Christians . . . . So why are there still American Jews who think Palestinians should tolerate a Jewish and democratic state?

Israel to continue demolishing Palestinian homes during Ramadan

Ben Gvir insists police continue inflammatory practice in East Jerusalem despite warnings of security officials.

Face the facts: Israel relies on settler violence

Israeli settlers – colonizers would arguably be a more accurate word – are not an outlaw group in Israel. They are a strategic tool in the implementation of policies pursued by successive Israeli governments. … The objectives of those policies have been to steal land and to expel Palestinians.

In historic move, South Africa votes to downgrade diplomatic ties with ‘Apartheid Israel’

’As South Africans, we refuse to stand by while apartheid is being perpetrated again,’ said the National Freedom Party in a statement released following the landmark vote.” Thank you for your continuing support

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