“Cool” Tel Aviv proudly boasts of citizens’ role in brutal Israeli occupation army
3 oktober 2015 Electronic Intifada
The city of Tel Aviv has become one of the main “products” Israel tries to sell internationally to soften its image as an apartheid state that brutally occupies millions of Palestinians.
Tel Aviv is marketed as a cool destination of culture, care-free fun and gay life, especially to counter the growing internationalboycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign.
But at home the Tel Aviv municipality is proud to trumpet the city’s contributions to the very same occupation and war crimes that its friendly image is used to obscure in international Brand Israel propaganda.
One ad sponsored by the municipality currently appears on bus shelters and boasts that the “IDF enlistment rate from Tel Aviv city schools is 91% for girls and 92% for boys.” The online version of the ad also brags that Tel Aviv is the city with the largest number of career officers in the Israeli army.
The photo at top was shot by an activist on Ibn-Gvirol street, between the City Hall and the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Sumail, which is now subsumed by Tel Aviv.
In effect, the poster expresses pride in the high participation of city youths in the brigades that blockade and shell Gaza, occupy the West Bank, hold upambulancesand pregnant women atcheckpoints, stand guard as bulldozersdestroy homesand confiscate land, and carry out night raids pulling Palestinian children from their beds, or just shooting them with impunity.
It can also be read as a dig at Jerusalem, which has a much higher religious population, and likely a lower enlistment rate.
The poster is part of a campaign called “Did you know?” that highlights different aspects of the city. Another ad boasts, “In Tel-Aviv-Jaffa there are approximately 50 dog parks, used by more than 20,000 dogs.”
There is, however, no poster saying that Sudanese refugees or native Palestinians are welcome in Tel Aviv. That’s just not part of the image the city is trying to project.
Thousands demonstrate in Tel Aviv: ‘No security without a solution’ 24 oktober 2015
Thousands of Israelis demonstrate in central Tel Aviv against the government’s unwillingness to reach an agreement with the Palestinians.
Photos by Yotam Ronen, Oren Ziv / Activestills.org
MKs from the left-wing Meretz party protest against the Netanyahu governments policies, Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, October 24, 2015. (photo: Yotam Ronen)
Thousands of Israelis participated in a protest march in central Tel Aviv Saturday night against the Netanyahu government’s policies in the West Bank and the continuing violence.
The demonstrators, many of them from Peace Now — which organized the event — and the left-wing Meretz party, along with several members from the Arab-Jewish Hadash party and Da’am Workers Party, marched from Habima Square to the IDF headquarters on Kaplan Street, waving Israeli flags and holding signs that read “Intifada government, go home” and “There is no security without a solution.”
Among the speakers was Peace Now head Yariv Oppenheimer, who accused the government of “taking an entire country hostage in an unnecessary religious war, and we are all paying the price. You have turned the state into a violent, racist, and hopeless place. We have come here to call for an end to the hatred and the incitement, for a struggle against racism, and to demand a political solution — two states for two people.”
The mayor of the Bedouin city Rahat, Talal Al-Qarinawi, also spoke, saying that although he has a state, he does “not have a prime minister.”
“I do not believe in this prime minister,” he continued, “anyone who incites against Palestinians is an idiot. An idiot who does not understand history. A year ago the police killed two of our young men, innocent men. Did anyone among us incite and call for revenge?”
Zehava Galon, who heads the left-wing Meretz party, also spoke during the protest, telling the crowd that the only thing that has changed since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin is that “now you are the main inciter and you are the prime minister.”
Galon also mentioned the attack on Rabbi Arik Asherman of the human rights group Rabbis for Human Rights by a masked settler, during the olive harvest in a Palestinian village in the West Bank. “This attack is a result of incitement by right-wing ministers and members of Knesset, who are asking the public to carry weapons and “shoot a bullet in the head” of anyone who looks like a terrorist, while also inciting against the Left,” Galon said.
“This kind of messaging creates a bloody reality that is turning the territories into the Wild West. The settlers do as they please, and there is no one to stop them. This incident joins a number of hate crimes against Arabs, the lynch against an innocent Eritrean man who lay bleeding on the floor, in cases of “mistaken identity.”
972mag.com/thousands-demonstrate-in-Tel-Aviv-no-security-without-a-solution/113185/
Shoot First Don’t ask Questions Later
Een jonge vrouw werd 12 oktober 2015 bijna gelyncht in Tel Aviv, omdat ze ruzie kreeg met een taxichauffeur. Indien een omstander uit Zuid-Amerika niet adequaat ingegrepen had, was ze nu dood, beschuldigd van ‘stabbing’ en was het huis van haar familie in Haifa vernietigd.
Ook jongeren uit Jaffa worden ‘s nachts door de politie thuis gearresteerd
“Zaher [lawyer of Adalah] remarks that the manner in which Israeli police and courts have handled protesters points to a fundamental difference in the way the state treats and views its Palestinian citizens versus its Jewish ones. Ultimately, she says, Israeli authorities treat their own Palestinian citizens similarly to Palestinians in the occupied territories: “It doesn’t matter where you are—if you’re Palestinian you’re an enemy and you’re a threat and you’re treated as a Palestinian.”
The Israeli legal system, Zaher continues, “is based on a perspective of a Palestinian…as an alien. When they are viewed as an enemy and this is anchored in the law then you have the legitimization to do anything.”
Jongeren uit Jaffa: It ‘s enough that people yell: “terrorist, terrorist”
Van 2 tot 8 september 2015 zijn politici van Amsterdam en Den Haag hartelijk onthaald in Tel Aviv . Hieronder berichten over deze bezoeken aan Tel Aviv (en Ramallah)
- ‘Ingebroken op Van der Laan’s e-mailaccount’ Frank van der Linde in One World.nl 12 september 2015
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Mensenrechten wijken voor zaken doen met Tel Aviv Frank van der Linde op Joop.nl 10 september 2015
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Burgemeester van der Laan krijgt spoedcursus bezet Palestina Het Parool 9 september 2015
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Frank van der Linde is in Tel Aviv. Wij publiceren hier de videoreportages die hij ons toestuurt 2 tot 8 september 2015