A major new report by Human Rights Watch says for the first time that Israel is committing crimes of apartheid and persecution in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The international human rights group says Israeli authorities dispossessed, confined and forcibly separated Palestinians. “For years, prominent voices have warned that apartheid lurked just around the corner. But it’s very clear that that threshold has been crossed,” says Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s time for the international community to recognize the reality on the ground for what it is — apartheid and persecution — and take the steps necessary to end a situation of this gravity.”

Read more:

https://www.democracynow.org/2021/4/30/hrw_israel_palestine_apartheid_persecution

Israel's Justice Ministry has postponed a key hearing on possible evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Scores of people were injured in overnight clashes.

The Israeli Justice Ministry said on Sunday that it was postponing the hearing in a legal case that could see several Palestinian families evicted from their homes.

The announcement comes after several days of clashes in Jerusalem. Scores of Palestinians and several Israeli security forces were injured overnight in violence sparked by a dispute over a land ownership case dating back to before the foundation of the state of Israel.

"In all the circumstances and in light of the attorney general's request, the regular hearing for tomorrow, May 10, 2021, is canceled," the ministry said in a statement. A new hearing will be arranged within 30 days.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted on Sunday evening that two rockets had been fired from Gaza into Israel. One was reportedly intercepted by the Iron Dome Aerial Defense System and no casualties were reported.

Hamas, the ruling Islamist group in Gaza, had threatened attacks against Israel if the case against the Palestinian families went ahead. 

Read more:

https://www.dw.com/en/jerusalem-israel-delays-palestinian-eviction-hearing-after-clashes/a-57473188

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When Arthur Balfour, then Britain’s foreign secretary, promised 104 years ago to help establish a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, his words changed the world. The Guardian of 1917 supported, celebrated and could even be said to have helped facilitate the Balfour declaration. Scott [The Guardian's editor] was a supporter of Zionism and this blinded him to Palestinian rights. In 1917 he wrote a leader on the day the Balfour declaration was announced, in which he dismissed any other claim to the Holy Land, saying: “The existing Arab population of Palestine is small and at a low stage of civilisation.” Whatever else can be said, Israel today is not the country the Guardian foresaw or would have wanted.

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https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/may/07/guardian-200-what-we-got-wrong-the-guardians-worst-errors-of-judgment-over-200-years

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According to regional media, at least 130 rockets have been fired from Gaza on Tuesday evening, targeting Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities. Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, launched “hundreds” of rockets, the Gaza-based Shehab news agency reported.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/523516-israel-building-hit-gaza-rockets/

Time for the Israelis and the Palestinians to show some restraint AND STOP fighting. First the Israelis HAVE TO STOP STEALING lands that have been those of Palestinians for generations. Once Israel stops thieving, peace can happen with a bit more possibilites — especially as the Iranians and the Saudis are starting to talk to each other... 

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WHEN ISRAELI TROOPS stormed the Aqsa mosque compound last week during Ramadan prayers, much of the world vicariously experienced the raid as it took place. Raw video footage of soldiers storming through screaming crowds — with stun grenades exploding as congregants ran for safety — was transmitted globally at the speed of information.

The provocative attack on a site considered holy to billions of people triggered an almost immediate reaction, not just among international media and online, but at the diplomatic level as well. Within a day of the incident, U.S. lawmakers, European states, and even Arab governments that have good relations with Israel were publicly condemning the assault and demanding de-escalation. These actors were themselves reacting to the pressure coming, or expected, from their own populations, much of whom had livestreamed the events or seen clips of the social media videos.

Rather than reading relatively controlled textual accounts in the morning paper the next day, ordinary people the world over witnessed the violent scenes blow-by-blow. Images distributed on social media of several attempts by Israel to evict Palestinians from their homes in the historic Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem had kicked off the tensions earlier in the week. On Monday,  videos of Israeli throngs at holy sites cheering the chaos while singing far-right anthems flew around the internet. Now, footage of violence in mixed Arab-Jewish cities across Israel is spreading, along with the aftermaths of Israeli air strikes in Gaza. The emotional impact of literally viewing these scenes as they happen cannot be underestimated.

“Due to technology, ordinary Palestinians now have the ability to broadcast their stories without the filter of a media that is highly biased against them,” said Yousef Munayyer, nonresident senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, a nonpartisan research institute. “We are seeing this on many different platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, where Palestinians of the younger generation are sharing their voices and experiences with as many people as possible.”

The internet has so deeply enveloped all aspects of our culture that it’s hard to recall that we are still in the early phases of a digital revolution. Estimates hold that by mid-decade, around 75 percent of people on Earth will have a smartphone. Being able to capture high-resolution videos and instantaneously send them out to the world is placing a level of broadcasting power once monopolized by outlets like CNN in the pockets of almost everyone.

The political impact of this change has already helped reshape politics across the world and has become a critical variable during armed conflicts. The pure strength of weaponry was for so long alone as the prime determinant in conflicts, but now extraordinarily powerful states also have to worry about teenagers with 200-gram microcomputers — as Israel is seeing today.

“I think we have been seeing the importance of this for a number of years now,” said Munayyer. “The state of Israel, and states in general, now have a much harder time using traditional tools to control the narrative of events.”

A SAD REFLECTION of the sheer length of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that it has continued over several information revolutions. When early waves of Jewish settlers began arriving in Mandatory Palestine in the late 19th century, people were still understanding the world through print media and telegrams, later giving way to newsreels. That frame of reference has since transformed several times over. Throughout the 20th century, as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians escalated, scenes of shootings, bombings, and forced displacement were transmitted to the world first by newspapers, then radio stations, network television channels, and now, in perhaps the biggest revolution yet, instantaneously by participants themselves through unedited cellphone video.

In the Mideast conflict, Israel’s decadeslong occupation has been punctuated by two mass Palestinian uprisings, known as intifadas. The current tensions — over Sheikh Jarrah and Al Aqsa Mosque — are raising the specter of a third in which, for Palestinians, the implications of the new information environment cannot be overstated. The next major phase of the conflict may take place in the streets of Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip, but the narrative war between Israelis, Palestinians, and their respective global diasporas will be fought just as much in cyberspace.

For the Israelis, this narrative war is hugely important, not least because of the role of the U.S., its most important political and military supporter. The U.S., through military aid, pays for about a fifth of the Israeli defense budget and acts as a bulwark against international action, in the United Nations and other fora, aimed at Israel.

During the first and second intifadas, the Israel-Palestine conflict was depicted to a global audience largely from an Israeli perspective. Should a third uprising break out, raw footage like that broadcast during the raids on Al Aqsa Mosque are likely to trigger immediate reactions from the global public that are favorable to the Palestinians, as well as from American lawmakers who have grown bolder in their condemnation of Israeli actions.

The Mideast conflict had lately subsided as an international issue, but the wave of Israeli actions captured on social media stoked outrage and pushed it back into the headlines. “Many people had been thinking recently that the Israel-Palestine issue was falling off the agenda,” Munayyer said, “but now we are seeing the scale of mobilization throughout the land and globally.”

Read more:

https://theintercept.com/2021/05/12/israel-palestine-jerusalem-social-media/

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The Israeli military warned the owners of the building in advance about the strike, allowing the journalists working inside to evacuate, AP and Al Jazeera reporters including those who had worked in the building confirmed on Twitter.

Read more/see video:

https://www.rt.com/news/523915-israeli-airstrike-gaza-ap-al-jazeera/

 https://www.rt.com/news/523932-associated-press-al-jazeera-condemn/

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