Bezalel Smotrich Archives - Page 5 of 6

Borrell Calls For Possible EU Sanctions Against Israeli Ministers

CrossFireArabia
August 29, 2024

The EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said, Thursday, he asked the bloc members if they want to impose sanctions on some Israeli ministers for “hate messages” against Palestinians in ciolation of international law.

At the start of a European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, Borrell told reporters that he has begun asking EU member states “if they consider [it] appropriate to include in our list of sanctions some Israeli ministers [who] have been engaged in unacceptable hate messages against Palestinians and proposing things that clearly go against international law”.

Borrell did not name any of the Israeli ministers to whom he was referring or specify which messages he had in mind according to the Quds News Network.

The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell calls on the bloc’s 27-member states to impose sanctions on a number of Israeli ministers for their "hate" speeches against Palestinians, while calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza amid reports of… pic.twitter.com/SWDANCg5vV
— The New Region (@thenewregion) August 29, 2024

In recent weeks, he has publicly criticized National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich for statements he has described as “sinister” and “an incitement to war crimes” as they have publicly called for Israel to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and push more Palestinians out of Gaza.

Belgium’s Deputy Prime Minister Petra De Sutter said she will offer full support for the imposition of sanctions on Ben-Gvir and Smotrich during the meeting.

“Genocidal policies and statements should not go unpunished,” she said in a post on X.

Ireland, one of the EU’s most pro-Palestinian members said, Thursday, it backed Borrell’s suggestion.

“We will be supporting Josep Borrell’s recommendation for sanctions in respect of settler organizations in the West Bank who are facilitating [the] expansion of settlements and also to Israeli ministers,” Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin told reporters as he arrived at the Brussels meeting.

Smotrich has previously caused outrage, including from the EU, for saying that “it might be justified and moral” to starve the two million Palestinians in Gaza as well as for calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from the coastal enclave.

Ben-Gvir has also drawn anger for advocating the resettlement of Palestinians outside Gaza and for saying his right to move around the occupied West Bank outweighed those of the Palestinians living there. The extremist minister also called for an increase in the military pressure and starving people as the only way to release Israeli prisoners.

Following Borrell’s remarks, Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz, said his government is “now working with our friends in Europe to prevent the adoption of resolutions against Israel” at the meeting of EU’s top diplomats.

“The message we are conveying is clear: In a reality where Israel is faced with the threats of Iran and its proxy terrorist organizations – the free world must stand by Israel, and not act against it,” he wrote on X.

Analyses

Palestinians: Down But By No Means Beaten!

CrossFireArabia
August 29, 2024

Palestinian analysts confirm the military operation launched by the Israeli occupation on the camps in the northern occupied West Bank – “Summer Camps” – aim to eradicate the resistance through excess force and the destruction of their popular base and is considered more dangerous than the “Defensive Shield” operation it carried out in the occupied West Bank in 2002.

Palestinian political analyst Ismat Mansour stressed the most dangerous thing about the last Israeli military operation emanates from what Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said about evacuating the residents of the camps to humanitarian places to carry out cleansing operations,” a sentence also made by the army spokesman when the operation was launched.

Israeli bulldozers destroying the streets of Jenin

Jenin is in the West Bank. Hamas are not in the West Bank

It’s just never been ‘defence’
It’s always been oppression
It’s always been genocide

It’s a land grab

In front of the whole world.pic.twitter.com/q6TT5Lrk3V
— Howard Beckett (@BeckettUnite) August 28, 2024

“The goal of these military operations are clear, and represented in destroying the Palestinian infrastructure and turning the camps into uninhabitable places with creeping and gradual ethnic cleansing,” Mansour told Quds Press.

Mansour attributed these plans to the declared programs of the Israeli occupation government and “its structure, ideology, and agenda – highlighted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to resolve the conflict,” in reference to the aim to annex the West Bank to the occupation state.

Therefore Mansour called for “the necessity of working to find a unified collective plan that mobilizes all [Palestinian] energies to confront this criminal mentality.”

Expert Azzam Abu Al-Adas considers the current Israeli military operation in the West Bank is far “more dangerous than that of the Operation Defensive Shield carried by the Jewish army in 2002.”

He pointed out “when Operation Defensive Shield was executed, the Palestinian factions were present in the West Bank and existed in terms of infrastructure, finance, and military, and had the ability to rebuild their forces and compensate for losses. Now, the factions have been dismantled financially, militarily, and socially.”

“Operation Defensive Shield was carried out at a time when the number of settlers in the West Bank was barely 70,000, and now it is 800,000, which means that eliminating the resistance will increase the encroachment of the army and settlers,” according to his thinking.

Abu Shujaa the Tulkarem Brigade commander ascends as a Martyr to meet his God today after a cowardly israeli attack on Nour Shams Camp in the West Bank.

He talks about his Martyrdom in this interview and his words are profound:

"But this doesn't matter whether they assassinate… pic.twitter.com/kiPLnNvxNp
— Suppressed News. (@SuppressedNws) August 29, 2024

Abu Al-Adas pointed out head of the Israeli government of occupation Benjamin Netanyahu, “is in dire need of a victory, and since he failed to achieve it in Gaza, he will claim this such an image in the West Bank raise his popularity, especially among the settlers and will increase his chances in the upcoming elections, which he intends to run for.”

“In 2002, the occupation was still living under the shock of the then prime minister Ariel Sharon who entered Al-Aqsa Mosque in 2000, and Al-Aqsa Mosque was out of the game, but now if Israel succeeds in eliminating the resistance act it means the building of the synagogue which Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir talked about and displacing the people of Jerusalem” becomes more real.

The occupation forces began a large-scale military operation targeting resistance fighters in Jenin, Tulkarm and Tubas in the northern West Bank at dawn Wednesday, where large Israeli forces invaded all areas, cities and camps in the northern West Bank from several axes, calling it operation “Summer Camps”.

The Israeli media reported the military operation is the largest since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, and carried out with the Israeli warplanes, army, Israeli Internal Security Service (Shabak) and other undercover forces with the use of helicopters and fighter jets extensively.

Israel is preparing a genocide for the west bank.

Those that said advocated pacifism over resistance , this is where it leads. We resist to exist. pic.twitter.com/dYzYdSjOPz
— Syrian Girl (@Partisangirl) August 28, 2024

Operation Defensive Shield was a military operation carried out by Israel to occupy and attack areas of the Palestinian Authority, after the Palestinian soldier Abdul Basit Odeh carried out the Park Hotel operation, which is considered one of the largest suicide operations in the history of the Palestinian resistance.

For Israel the main goal of the operation was to eliminate the second Palestinian Intifada which began in 2000 after Sharon, as prime minister, stormed the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

“Operation Defensive Shield” was launched on 29 March, 2002 and ended on 10 May.

News

Netanyahu is Leading Israel Into The Abyss – Ehud Olmert

CrossFireArabia
August 24, 2024

Ehud Olmert, former Israeli Prime Minister confirmed that Benjamin Netanyahu does not want to recover the Israeli prisoners in the Gaza Strip, and that the ceasefire negotiations may collapse. He warned the current Israeli prime minister is leading Israel to the abyss and a comprehensive war in the Middle East.

In a recent Haaretz article Olmert added, the continuation of the war in the Gaza Strip and its expansion in the north with Hezbollah will increase the chances of a comprehensive regional war with other parties like the Yemeni armed forces, and other groups supported by Iran in Syria and Iraq joining in.

According to Israeli ex-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, "The Ben Gvirs and the Smotrichs" are "yearning" for an Iranian response, as massive as possible, that will lead to a regional war they could use for ethnic cleansing, to "force out all the Palestinians from the territories" pic.twitter.com/q2zyjmQuqK
— B.M. (@ireallyhateyou) August 8, 2024

He said such a scenario would pose a real threat to Israel, and a step that will lead to the deaths of many soldiers and settlers. He noted this will cause serious damage to the physical infrastructure inside Israel and to a real deterioration in its international standing.

He pointed out Netanyahu must choose between abandoning his declared goal of “absolute victory” and continuing the war and expanding it into a comprehensive confrontation on multiple fronts without a reasonable timetable to end it. He added that Israel is approaching a comprehensive war in great strides, and this is what Netanyahu, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich want.

Olmert called on Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant, Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, and Mossad chief David Barnea to jointly announce their resignations, as soon as Netanyahu thwarts negotiations to reach a ceasefire agreement in Gaza in the coming days.

"THEY ARE KILLERS, MURDERERS, TERRORISTS"

Ex- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says about Netanyahu and his Government:

"They are killers, they are murderers, they are terrorists." pic.twitter.com/3c7M9EFBg3
— Palestine and MENA Info Center (@PALMENA_IC) December 24, 2023

In a related context, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said in its editorial that the prisoners that are being held in Gaza, now in their 11-month of captivity have “begun to slowly rot in Hamas tunnels, and have become secondary figures for Netanyahu.”

The newspaper pointed out that Netanyahu sometimes says that he is ready to negotiate, and other times he lengthens the Israeli delegation’s rope, and announces that he will be flexible, but suddenly he adds new conditions, revealing that he says in closed political salons that there is no ceasefire deal, and in the meantime more prisoners are dying according to the Quds News Network.

Analyses

Arab States Need to Sever Ties With Israel – Barghouti

CrossFireArabia
August 14, 2024

Secretary-general of the Palestinian Nåtional Initiative Dr. Mustafa Barghouti called on Arab governments that have relations with Israel to sever their ties with the occupation and withdraw their ambassadors. He described the storming of Al-Aqsa Mosque by Israeli settlers as a very dangerous development.

The Islamic Endowments Dept in occupied Jerusalem said, Tuesday, more than 2,958 settlers and extremists stormed the blessed mosque since Tuesday morning, including two ministers and a member of the Knesset.

Endowments sources confirmed Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Talking to Al Jazeera’s “Gaza What’s Next” program Barghouti said that the Israeli occupation aims to impose temporal and spatial division in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, so that it becomes a place for Jewish prayer as well, as it did before in the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, taking advantage of the state of war in Gaza and the brutality practiced by its army against the Palestinians in the occupied holy city.

He added the Israeli occupation aims to create a new reality whose content is the Judaization of Al-Aqsa Mosque. He pointed out the temporal and spatial division Ben Gvir is trying to impose on the ground was rejected by the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Camp David talks and led to their collapse.

Barghouti wondered about the role of countries and governments that have relations with the Israeli occupation in confronting what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist government members are doing, most notably Ben Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

He said if Arab governments want to impose real pressure on the occupation, they are required to cancel all normalization agreements with Tel Aviv and impose a comprehensive boycott on Israel, and expel their ambassadors and withdraw Arab ambassadors from Israel.

He pointed out this is the simplest of things because the Palestinians are not demanding the Arabs send armies to fight Israel. The Arab peoples are also required to take action and pressure their governments.

Barghouti believes deterring Netanyahu and his government requires immediate action from Arab and Islamic countries alike.

Unified Palestinian leadership

On the Palestinian level, what is required – according to Barghouti – is the formation of a unified leadership in a joint national struggle program and the immediate implementation of what was agreed upon in the Beijing meeting, including the formation of a national consensus government and creation of a unified leadership framework.

Barghouti argues there is an Israeli conspiracy not only to Judaize Al-Aqsa Mosque, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but also to achieve absolute Israeli hegemony militarily, politically and economically over the Arab world.

For his part, former US State Department official William Lawrence agrees with the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Initiative that the Arab countries that have established relations with Israel are required to withdraw their ambassadors from Israel, noting the idea of normalizing relations with it was a bad one.

Lawrence admitted – in his interview with the program “Gaza… What’s Next?” – that the United States is making statements but is not taking any actual measures to deter Israel.

Barghouti and the former American official agreed that Netanyahu wants to undermine negotiations with the Palestinian resistance and because he does not want to reach an agreement to stop the war on Gaza, he finds excuses every time.

It is noteworthy that the “New York Times” newspaper quoted Israeli documents as saying that Netanyahu secretly added new conditions to Israel’s demands in the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza and the prisoner exchange deal according to Jo24.

Analyses

Smotrich: Last Fallen Angel of Death, Starvation!

Saleem Ayoub Quna
August 11, 2024

By Saleem Ayoub Quna

“Pogrom” is a Russian word which means an organized act of cruel behavior or killing done to a large group of people based on their race and religion.

The word caught the attention of Europeans in the third quarter of the 19th century after many Jewish communities in towns and cities across the south-eastern parts of the Russian Empire, mainly Poland, Ukraine and Odessa, were attacked and harassed by the larger community, followers of the Russian Orthodox Church. They saw members of the smaller Jewish communities exploiting and blackmailing them, for financial and commercial gain.

The wave of pogroms spread to other countries in Europe in similar fashion and continued for three years in the early 1880s. These events paved the way for some Jewish activists like the Hungarian-born, Theodor Herzl, a writer, journalist and lawyer, to start a political movement to defend the Jews against such attacks. Herzl later became the founder of Zionism.

Another most important reason for the repeated pogroms was the assassination of Russia’s Tsar Alexander II at the hands of a Jew. The Tsar was blamed for encouraging his people to attack members of the Jewish community.

It's horrifying but not surprising to hear Smotrich say it's 'justified and moral' to starve 2 million Palestinians in Gaza to death. This vile rhetoric is just the tip of the iceberg. Smotrich is a minister in a government that Western leaders claim shares their values. pic.twitter.com/6QKCmfStcd
— Jehad Abusalim جهاد أبو سليم (@JehadAbusalim) August 5, 2024

In addition to killing, setting on fire, and vandalizing Jewish properties in the above-mentioned cities and towns, tactics of starvation and deprivation were systematically employed to further harass and punish the Jews.

Later in the early and mid-1940s and under the watch of Adolf Hitler, the founder of Nazis, European Jews especially in Germany were brutally persecuted in a process that led to what the Jews call the “ Holocaust”; this became a decisive turning point in Jewish-European relations.

Enter Smotrich

Today, almost 140 years after the pogroms, and 80 years after the Holocaust, a descendant from the Ukraine, the land of the pogroms and holocaust atrocities, the name of Bezalel Smotrich emerges from the smoke of guns over the strip of Gaza, to openly call for the expulsion of all Palestinians from their ancestral home land that today forcefully became Israel.

It also happens that he is also the actual Finance Minister in Netanyahu’s extreme-right government, and head of the National Religious Party.

Although he was born, according to international law, in an illegal settlement on the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, his last name should be a reminder of his ancestors’ village (Smotrych) west of Ukraine today!

If the expulsion of all Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank who refuse to recognize his “greater Israel”, according to this man doesn’t work, Israel must resort to every possible tactic to drive them out of their homes.

These tactics must include but not limited to exterminating as many Palestinians as possible in Gaza and/or starving them to death, and that will be just fine for him and even moral as he recently made clear.

It is ironic that the an offspring of survivors of the pogroms and Holocaust, gives himself the right and liberty to borrow the same ugly tactics applied against his own ancestors, to be practiced against those who had nothing to do with European pogroms and Holocaust atrocities! Such a bizarre and mind-boggling analogy makes one wonder what kind of character we are dealing with here?

This man, I strongly believe, has more than one little problem! He has a short and selective memory; has an overdose of instinct hatred against those who oppose him; and an extreme sense of superiority versus any different ethnic or religious group.

Finally one simple advice for, hopefully, the last fallen angel of death and starvation: Ask your Sephardim compatriots who lived and thrived in many Arab countries, like Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria before the establishment of your “little Israel” in 1948, if any heard about or experienced any kind of pogrom behaviors at the hands of their Muslim and Christian compatriots, who lived in peace and harmony for more than two and half millennia long before your ancestors survived the atrocities of European pogroms and Holocaust and decided to take refuge in this part of the world?

UN Human Rights Chief @volker_turk is shocked & appalled by words of Israeli Minister Smotrich for whom letting 2 million Palestinians in #Gaza starve to death could be “justified & moral” in order to free hostages.

We condemn these words in the strongest terms. pic.twitter.com/463jqstHct
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) August 9, 2024

This opinion was especially written for Crossfire Arabia by Saleem Ayoub Quna who is a Jordanian author writing on local, regional and international affairs and has two books published. He has a BA in English Literature from Jordan University, a diploma from Paris and an MA from Johns Hopkins University in Washington. He also has working knowledge of French and German.

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Borrell Calls For Possible EU Sanctions Against Israeli Ministers

Palestinians: Down But By No Means Beaten!

Netanyahu is Leading Israel Into The Abyss – Ehud Olmert

Arab States Need to Sever Ties With Israel – Barghouti

Smotrich: Last Fallen Angel of Death, Starvation!

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