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Why Palestinians Protest their Eviction by Israel: The untold story of Sheikh Jarrah

There are two separate Sheikh Jarrah stories. One is read about and watched on the news, the other receives little media coverage or due analysis.

The obvious story is that of the nightly raids and violence meted out by Israeli police and Jewish extremists against Palestinians in the devastated East Jerusalem neighbourhood. For weeks, thousands of Jewish extremists have targeted Palestinian communities in Jerusalem’s Old City. Their objective is the removal of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood. They are not acting alone. Their riots and rampages are directed by a well-coordinated leadership composed of Zionist and Jewish extremist groups, such as the Otzma Yehudit party and the Lehava Movement. Their unfounded claims, violent actions and abhorrent chant “Death to the Arabs” are validated by Israeli politicians, including Knesset member Itamar Ben-Gvir and the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Arieh King.

Here is a little taste of the political discourse of Ben-Gvir and King, who were caught on video shouting at and insulting a wounded Palestinian protester. The video starts with MK Ben-Gvir yelling disparagingly at a Palestinian who was apparently wounded by Israeli police, yet returned to protest against the evictions planned for Sheikh Jarrah.

Ben-Gvir is heard shouting, “Abu Hummus, how is your ass?”

“The bullet is still there, that’s why he is limping,” responds Deputy Mayor King, who continues: “Did they take the bullet out of your ass? Did they take it out already? It is a pity it did not go in here.” He points to his head.

Delighted with what they perceive to be a whimsical commentary on the wounding of the Palestinian, the politicians’ entourage of Jewish extremists laugh.

While “Abu Hummus”, wounded yet still protesting, is a testament to the tenacity of the Palestinian people, King, Ben-Gvir, the settlers and the police are a representation of the united Israeli front aimed at ethnically cleansing Palestinians and imposing a Jewish majority in Jerusalem.

Another important factor in the ongoing Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign in the occupied city is Israel’s court system, which has provided a veneer of legality for the targeting of Palestinian inhabitants of Jerusalem.

The legal basis of the Jewish settlers’ constant attempts to steal more Palestinian properties can be traced back to a specific 1970 law, known as the Legal and Administrative Matters Law, which allowed Jews to sue Palestinians for properties they claim to have owned prior to the establishment of Israel on the ruins of historic Palestine in 1948. While Palestinians are excluded from making similar claims about the properties from which they have been driven since 1948 — this is what apartheid looks like – Israeli courts have generously handed Palestinian homes, land and other assets to Jewish claimants. In turn, these homes, as in the case of Sheikh Jarrah and other Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, are often sold to Jewish settler organisations to build yet more colonies on occupied Palestinian land.

In February, the Israeli Supreme Court awarded Jewish settlers the right to have Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Following a Palestinian and international backlash, it offered Palestinians a “compromise”, whereby the families relinquish ownership rights to their homes and agree to continue to live there as tenants, paying rents to the same illegal Jewish settlers who have stolen their homes in the first place, but who are now armed with a court judgement.

However, the “logic” through which Jews claim Palestinian properties as their own should not be associated with a few extremist organisations. After all, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 was not the work of a few extreme Zionists. Similarly, the illegal occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 and the massive settlement enterprise that followed was not the brainchild of a few extremist individuals. Colonialism in Israel was, and remains, a state-run project, which ultimately aims to achieve the same objective as that being carried out in Sheikh Jarrah: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and Palestinians to ensure a Jewish demographic majority.

This is the untold story of Sheikh Jarrah, one that cannot be expressed by a few sound bites on the news or in social media posts. However, this most relevant of narratives is largely hidden. It is easier to blame a few Jewish extremists than to hold the entire Israeli government and establishment accountable. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is constantly manipulating the subject of demographics to advance the interests of his Jewish constituency. He is not only a strong believer in an exclusive Jewish state, but also fully aware of the political influence of Jewish settlers. For example, shortly before the 23 March General Election, Netanyahu gave the green light for the construction of 540 illegal settlement units in the so-called Har-Homa E Area — Mount Abu Ghneim — in the occupied West Bank, in the hope of acquiring as many settler votes as possible.

Hence, while the Sheikh Jarrah story is garnering some attention even in mainstream US media, there is a near-complete absence of any depth and context to the coverage, including the fact that Sheikh Jarrah is not the exception but the norm. Sadly, as Palestinians and their supporters try to circumvent widespread media censorship by reaching out directly to civil societies across the world using social media platforms, they are often censored there, as well.

One of the videos initially censored by Instagram, for example, is that of Muna Al-Kurd, a Palestinian woman who had her home in Sheikh Jarrah stolen by a Jewish settler by the name of Yakub.

“Yakub, you know this is not your house,” Muna says outside her home, addressing the settler.

“Yes, but if I go, you don’t go back. So what’s the problem? Why are you yelling at me? I didn’t do this. I didn’t do this. It’s easy to yell at me, but I didn’t do this,” he replies.

“You are stealing my house.”

“And if I don’t steal it, someone else is going to steal it.”

“No. No one is allowed to steal it,” insists Muna.

That, in a nutshell, is the untold story of Sheikh Jarrah and of Jerusalem; in fact, of Palestine. Muna is Palestine, and Yakub is Israel. If Muna is ever going to get justice, she must be allowed to reclaim her stolen home, and Yakub must be held accountable for his crime.

The above perspective is from Informed Comment.

BREAKING: Rep. Liz Cheney, until now the third highest ranking Republican in the House, has been removed from her position as Republican Conference Chair.

— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) May 12, 2021

Sen. Bernie Sanders blasts defense contractors over soaring costs, vows tougher oversight

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a former Democratic presidential candidate, says he will use his powerful new position atop the Senate Budget Committee to exercise tougher oversight over America’s vast national security establishment, including the private-sector organizations that profit from taxpayer-funded defense contracts.

In an exclusive interview with The Washington Post ahead of a Wednesday budget hearing, Sanders criticized the Pentagon for failing to keep track of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds. Citing former president Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warnings about the military industrial complex, he excoriated defense agencies and weapons manufacturers over hundreds of billions of dollars in cost overruns on programs, including the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. And he said large defense conglomerates, as taxpayer-funded entities, should face the same standard of accountability and transparency as their government counterparts.

“We have a very powerful military industrial complex, and I don’t think they get the scrutiny that they deserve, and I think it’s appropriate to start there,” Sanders said.

He added that the chief executives of the major defense contractors earn close to 100 times more than the secretary of defense “despite the fact that in the case of Lockheed Martin and others, the lion’s share of their revenue comes from the federal government.”

“In many ways something like Lockheed Martin really is a federal agency,” he said.

In letters signed jointly with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and obtained by The Post, Sanders’s office asked executives from the top three defense contractors ― Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon Technologies ― to attend a Wednesday budget hearing focused on waste, fraud and abuse in the defense sector. All three companies declined to make their executives available. They also declined to comment for this article.

Of their decision not to attend the hearing, Sanders said: “They are not often asked hard questions, and they would choose not to be transparent, not to have to face the senators who want to ask them hard questions.” He later said he thought defense contractors should be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests from journalists and members of the public, something that was proposed in 2019 by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Industry representatives and conservative national security experts told The Post it is entirely appropriate for Sanders to exercise oversight over defense spending. However, they argued that the Democratic Party on the whole does not support the deep spending cuts Sanders has pushed for in the past.

The first budget proposal to emerge from the Biden White House kept defense spending essentially flat while increasing funds for education and health care. Biden has also proposed a massive infrastructure revitalization plan and wants to fund it with increased corporate taxes.

Tim McClees, vice president of legislative affairs at the Aerospace Industry Association, argued that both parties are in agreement over the need for a well-funded military that can counter new threats to U.S. national security. Over the past five years the Pentagon made new investments to outpace a fast-modernizing Chinese military, and to outstrip Russian hypersonic missile development.

“New missions for our troops, new threats to our security, and new challenges to the DIB [defense-industrial base] and our shared supply chain are real and persistent,” McClees said in a statement. “Congress plays a vital role in working with DoD and industry to understand these threats and in ensuring the warfighter can continue to defend our country. It’s encouraging to see ongoing bipartisan support for strong, sustained, and stable defense spending.”

Throughout the past year, taxpayer-funded military business has provided a sort of financial oasis for leading aerospace manufacturers.

As of last year, about three-quarters of Lockheed’s revenue came from U.S. taxpayers, either through contracts it holds directly with the U.S. government or through subcontracting arrangements with other contractors, according to the company’s 2020 annual report. The rest comes primarily from weapons deals with foreign governments, a tightly-regulated line of business that has soared in recent years as more foreign militaries purchased F-35 fighter jets.

Although the F-35 has been criticized in recent months by powerful congressional Democrats ― House Armed Services Committee chair Adam B. Smith (D-Calif.) called it a “rathole” ― the program’s manufacturing base supports more than 250,000 jobs across 45 states, giving it a deep well of parochial support throughout the House and Senate. Sanders’s home state of Vermont, for example, is home to four F-35 supplier locations which directly or indirectly support roughly 1,660 jobs, according to estimates published by Lockheed Martin.

The recent economic crisis has done little to dampen Lockheed’s fortunes. The company saw soaring profits and revenue last year even as coronavirus-inflicted closures decimated other industries. Last year it posted record sales of $64.5 billion, representing a 9 percent increase over 2019.

Boeing and Raytheon face a very different financial reality. Both companies have substantial footholds in the commercial aerospace market, which is still recovering from a coronavirus-inflicted slowdown in air travel. For them, defense contracts are a buffer against steep job losses in their commercial divisions.

‘Our industry knows Joe Biden really well’: Defense contractors unconcerned as Biden clinches victory

But Sanders has pointed to the soaring salaries of chief executives at leading defense firms, and posited that defense spending levels far surpass what the United States needs to defend itself. The U.S. defense budget is larger than that of the next 12 nations combined, he argued.

“I helped lead the effort recently to cut military spending, and I think we can do that and retain by far the strongest military in the world,” Sanders said. “But the Pentagon cannot be given a license to waste many, many billions of dollars … they need to be run in a cost-effective way, in a transparent way, and I sense that is certainly not the case right now.”

After troops leave Afghanistan, U.S. will face challenges maintaining counterterrorism capability

Citing data compiled by the Government Accountability Office, Sanders and Grassley said the Pentagon has over $1.8 trillion worth of weapons systems under development, and claimed that roughly $628 billion of that is the result of cost growth above original estimates. They said the delivery of initial capabilities for major weapons systems is, on average, two years behind schedule, also citing the GAO data.

“I want to see a much, much tougher approach to cost overruns,” Sanders said.

Depending on how he wields his position as chair of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders’s broadsides against the defense establishment could add a new wrinkle to the congressional calculus on defense spending. Budgets are typically negotiated primarily between the White House and congressional leaders. But Sanders’s position gives him a powerful megaphone he could use to rally support for spending cuts.

In a recent interview, he bemoaned the lack of serious debate in Congress on the subject of defense budgets.

“If you check the record over the last couple of years, very rarely is there a debate over the size of the [defense] budget,” Sanders said. “At a time of enormous social need in America, when so many people are uninsured or underinsured, where we have over a half a million people who are homeless, where we have young people leaving school deeply in debt, I think we have to prioritize our spending.”

Roger Zakheim, Washington director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, said the 10 percent spending cut Sanders has proposed in the past would have a debilitating effect on America’s global standing. He said Sanders’s past proposals would reduce the U.S. military to “a regional force at best,” citing research his organization conducted in partnership with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

“The economic prosperity and the peace that we have enjoyed for decades now has come from the U.S. military being a guarantor for international commerce, trade and peace,” Zakheim said. “When we looked at what a 10 percent cut would do, it’s just pretty amazing how quickly that requires the Pentagon to constrain the size, reach and modernization of the military.”

Aside from closer attention to cost overruns, Sanders also said he would press the Defense Department on its failure to track its own funding. The Pentagon completed its first full audit in 2018. It failed the audit, with only a handful of agencies receiving a passing grade. Indeed, a primary finding of the audit was that the department lacks a comprehensive accounting system that can monitor government funds or keep track of the defense assets that are under private ownership.

#Republicans in the #Texas House passed a bill Tuesday that effectively bans public school teachers from talking about racism, white supremacy or current news events. https://t.co/O2tDaIB4cn

— The N9ne's ⚖️🗽 9️⃣🌍🇺🇸💰 (@TheWholeN9nes) May 12, 2021

Biden says he will try to forge a consensus on a compromise over his infrastructure bill during meeting with Republican and Democratic leadership. pic.twitter.com/EL8HPA49V5

— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) May 12, 2021

Futile.

Judge who struck down eviction moratorium lives in nearly $3 million, 6-bedroom home https://t.co/JuJKy0SnD7 by @matthewccook5

— The Intercept (@theintercept) May 12, 2021

The Intercept is referring to the judge striking down the CDC policy.

Pres. Biden will meet today with the top 4 congressional leaders including Mitch McConnell. McConnell has not only said he’s 100 percent committed to stopping Biden’s agenda; he has said that not a single Senate R will support increasing taxes on the rich.https://t.co/qlTO7NRAHO

— Faiz (@fshakir) May 12, 2021