David Muial, an Israeli who took part in the bloody lynching of Eritrean refugee Habtom Zarhum in October 2015, got a sentence of community service this week for “abusing the helpless”, even as Ahed Tamimi, the 17-year-old Palestinian who slapped an Israeli soldier, got 8 months in prison.
Israeli justice is defined by two events on Monday: the military parole board further reduced Elor Azarya’s prison sentence for killing an incapacitated Palestininian suspect, and a military appeals court rejected Ahed Tamimi’s appeal for an open trial on charges of slapping an Israeli soldier occupying her home.
The Israeli Knesset ethics committee has suspended Member of Knesset Haneen Zoabi for a week for having used the word ‘murder’ to describe actions of Israeli soldiers against Palestinians. She says that she cannot comfort an “insulated” Israeli society by allowing it to regard its oppressive actions as “just.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s AIPAC speech was about ‘the good, the bad and the beautiful’. All about equality and justice – but not for Palestinians.
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo opines that those who seek to ban circumcision are basically anti-Semites and possibly ‘well-meaning’ but naive Jews. “The attempt to outlaw this rite may not just make Jewish life impossible, but would probably end all Jewish existence. In fact, it is a call to end the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.”
A new organization called The One State Foundation is working to broaden debate over equitable outcomes in Israel/Palestine and build support for a one state solution. Hamada Jaber, co-founder and board member says, “We should stop wasting our time and the time of future generations and immediately start investing all our efforts in the only solution; the one state solution.”
In a sign of how unsettled Israeli society is by the Tamimi family’s nonviolent resistance in occupied Nabi Saleh, Major General Yoav Mordechai claims that Mohammed Tamimi, 15, was not shot in the head by Israelis in December, a lie of stunning audacity.
In a wild speech in Munich, Netanyahu warned of a global Holocaust if Iran gets nuclear weapons. And he said that Iran was similar to the Nazis, in its supposed desire to annihilate 6 million Jews in Israel. Netanyahu is seeking any distraction he can get from the corruption investigation that is closing in on him, Jonathan Ofir writes.
Following on the heels of the Israeli police recommendation to indict Benjamin Netanyahu on corruption charges a new book on David Ben-Gurion shares new discoveries on the first Israeli prime minister’s marital unfaithfulness. Jonathan Ofir says that regardless of the personal failings of Israel’s leaders, the state building project they are carrying out has always been corrupt to the core: “The deceit that Zionism applies in order to cover up for its colonialist designs to erase Palestine is a constant factor, and the goal is always corrupt.”
The military judge closed the doors on 17-year-old Ahed Tamimi’s initial trial hearing for slapping a soldier in occupied Nabi Saleh December 19. He said he was acting in the best interest of a juvenile defendant. But it is in Ahed Tamimi and all Palestinians’ interest for the trial to be open so that the occupation can be revealed to the world.