Lee Heidhues 10.22.2023

Trying to stay current with the violent events in Palestine/Israel is difficult for the diligent consumer of news.

Here in America the perspective is that of the government in Washington, elected officials and the mainstream media.

The only way to get a different perspective is to tune in to Aljazeera, based in Qatar. This network definitely looks at the world from Palestinian perspective. It is also true that Al Jazeera, a well funded network, has thorough coverage with correspondents and commentators throughout the region. Including inside Israel.

Embedded within the following article is a documentary: Israel-Gaza. The Fog of War

Excerpted from Aljazeera and Times of Israel 10.22.2023

The Times of Israel liveblogged events as they unfolded through Sunday, the 13th day of Operation Protective Edge. The IDF announced Sunday evening that 13 Golani Brigade soldiers died overnight in fighting in Gaza, raising the Israeli army death toll to 18. The soldiers were killed in heavy combat in the Hamas stronghold of Shejaiya, which also left 60 Palestinians dead, Gaza Health Ministry officials said. Israel said the neighborhood is a Hamas stronghold, and that the army had warned residents to evacuate it. At day’s end, PM Netanyahu vowed that Hamas would be neutralized, and US Secretary said he was heading to Cairo in a ceasefire bid. (Monday’s liveblog is here.) You can also follow @TOIAlerts on Twitter — we’re live-tweeting all the updates there as well.

The Israeli military has said one of its soldiers was killed by an anti-tank missile reportedly shot by the Palestinian armed group Hamas during a raid into the Gaza Strip by the Israeli Army.

Three other soldiers were injured in the raid on Sunday, said the statement that came as the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, announced on its Telegram account that it had pushed Israeli forces back into Israel.

One Israeli soldier was killed, while “one was moderately injured, and two were lightly injured as a result of an anti-tank missile”, the Israeli military said.

The military said the purpose of the raid was to locate Hamas captives in Gaza’s Khan Younis area and to “thwart terrorist infrastructure”

Israeli forces have been conducting raids across the border that they say are meant to clear the area and gather intelligence about captives being held by Hamas.

According to Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum, reporting from Khan Younis in Gaza, the raids are forcing Hamas to prepare for a long-speculated ground invasion by Israel.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/22/israeli-soldier-killed-during-ground-raid-in-gaza-israels-army-says

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-israel-hunts-for-terror-tunnels-after-soldiers-killed-abbas-to-meet-hamas-chief-for-ceasefire-talks/

Top photo: Israeli military casualties of its war against The Palestinian people in Gaza.

Lee Heidhues 10.21.2023

What is this all about?

A young Jewish leader in Detroit stabbed to death in front of her home.

Is it something insidious? A vicious act of antisemitism?

An all too familiar random crime in America?

The reality needs to be known.

Excerpted from Detroit Free Press 10.21.2023

A politically connected Detroit synagogue president was found stabbed to death Saturday morning outside her home in the city’s Lafayette Park neighborhood, east of downtown.

Police have not yet identified a motive, they said. They were called to a woman found lying on the ground unresponsive at about 6:30 a.m. and pronounced her dead at the scene, they said.

Samantha Woll, 40, led the Isaac Agree Downtown Detroit Synagogue and previously worked for U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Holly, and on the reelection campaign of Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat.

Police said in an afternoon statement that they were investigating after finding a body stabbed multiple times in the 1300 block of Joliet Place. A trail of blood led to the victim’s home, where police said they believe the crime occurred.

Detroit Police Chief James White asked for patience in a statement released Saturday evening and said an update on the investigation would come Sunday. “Over the course of the last several hours, the DPD has mobilized many of its resources and has been leveraging every law enforcement and community resource it has to help further the investigation. Understandably, this crime leaves many unanswered questions.”

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2023/10/21/samantha-woll-dead-isaac-agree-downtown-detroit-synagogue-president/71271616007/

Top photo: Detroit police at the death scene of Samantha Woll – 10.21.2023

Lee Heidhues 10.19.2023

The German authorities are understandably sensitive regarding any protest which targets the behavior of the State of Israel.

Israel’s brutal military campaign against Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip.

Retribution for the barbaric October 7 Hamas attack inside Israel killing over 1000 citizens of the Jewish state.

Where this cycle of violence is headed is impossible to predict.

The only sure thing is that there will be more death and destruction.

The motives of protesters in Berlin and in cities world wide cannot be simply categorized.

There is support for the Palestinian people. Sadly there are also currents of antisemitism directed towards Jewish people and the State of Israel.

The authorities in Berlin are not making such fine distinctions. Given the history of Nazi Germany the police are quashing any protest which could be interpreted as antisemitic.

That is the official government policy.

Deutsche Welle 10.19.2023

At least 174 people were arrested and 65 police officers were injured at unauthorized pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Berlin on Wednesday night, according to a police spokesperson.

Berlin police chief Barbara Slowik told regional broadcaster RBB that the situation in Neukölln was “tense.”

Authorities had banned such protests, which have been called in response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the militant group which killed around 1,400 Israelis in a terrorist attack two weeks ago.

Clashes broke out in the district of Neukölln between police and protesters who did not comply with orders to disperse.

Some attendees used pyrotechnics, set fire to barricades and pelted police with stones and bottles, law enforcement said.

According to police, several vehicles and a tree also caught fire during the incidnet. 

Police used water cannons, including to put out fires. The fire brigade also said it responded to several small fires.

The incident comes after after two Molotov cocktails were thrown at a Jewish community center in Berlin in the early hours of Wednesday morning. 

Separately on Wednesday night, another gathering against violence in the Middle East was held outside the Foreign Office in Berlin. While 50 attendees had been registered, several hundred people showed up and the organizer subsequently called off the protest. 

Pro-Palestinian protests were also held in other German cities influding Frankfurt, where police used water cannons, and in Nuremberg.

Police broke up another pro-Palestinian protest in Berlin last weekend.

https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-174-arrested-at-unauthorized-pro-palestinian-events/a-67145837

Top photo: Jewish citizens, destroyed during the Nazi Germany holocaust, push back against growing anti-semitic behavior in Berlin.

Lee Heidhues 10.18.2023

Hamas and Israel are two scorpions in a bottle with the citizens of The Gaza Strip fatally trapped by these venomous combatants.

It’s reassuring to know that The People in America coast to coast are taking to the streets in support of the Palestinian people.

The action moved to Washington DC while President Biden was in Israel making nice with Bibi Netanyahu. America’s political ruling class has stood by Israel for historical and geopolitical reasons. The ruling class must be shown there are limits in standing up for Israel.

The Israeli government has decided there are no innocent bystanders.

There must be limits to the American support for the draconian Israeli military crackdown against the people of The Gaza Strip. The Israeli brutal reaction to the murderous assault by Hamas on Israel two weeks ago. Which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Palestinian men, women and children by the American funded Israeli military.

Excerpted from The New York Times 10.18.2023

Hundreds of demonstrators descended on a congressional building in Washington on Wednesday afternoon to demand a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war, resulting in an estimated 300 arrests and restricting access to Capitol Hill.

The rally was organized by two Jewish anti-Zionist groups, Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, and about 400 of their members assembled inside the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building, led by about 25 rabbis reading testimonials from Palestinians in Gaza and reciting prayers. Outside, hundreds more chanted, “Cease-fire now” and sang in Hebrew and English.

Demonstrations are not permitted in congressional buildings. About 300 protesters were arrested, organizers estimated, though the Capitol Police would not comment on the number beyond saying on the social media platform X that three were charged with assault on a police officer. Protesters were restrained with zip ties and led into police vans.

Linda Holtzman, a rabbi from Philadelphia, said she was protesting because of her faith, values and Jewish history, a theme other attendees echoed. Rabbi Holtzman, who said she was concerned about violence intensifying against civilians in Gaza, said that her grandmother survived the Holocaust and that she was taught to fight for all human life.

“Where there is no justice, I have to be a voice for justice,” she said.

Lee Heidhues 10.16.2023

Brooke Jenkins is the political creature who rode into office after engaging in blatant Red Baiting to drive her predecessor Chesa Boudin from office in a 2022 Recall election laden with heavy undertones of antisemitism.

The San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has once again proved herself to be an embarrassment to San Francisco with her strident attacks on thousands of citizens advocating for the Palestinian people.

The DA’s social media posts were so over the top and incendiary that she was forced to delete them following a firestorm of criticism.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 10.16.2023

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins has deleted a tweet in which she characterized a rally in support of Palestinians as a “pro-Hamas” event.

In a joint statement distributed on Monday morning, several organizations condemned San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins Jenkins’ post and analogized it to anti-Muslim rhetoric believed to have motivated the deadly stabbing of a 6 year-old Muslim boy in Illinois.

Wassim Hage, outreach coordinator for the Arab Resource and Organizing Center in San Francisco, accused Jenkins of intentional misrepresentation by conflating peaceful protesters with antisemitism and with a militant organization that the U.S. has on its terrorist watch list. The statement co-authored by the Arab Resource and Organizing Center noted, also, that Jenkins had cited no evidence tying the rally to the “Death to Israel” graffiti.

“The characterization is deliberately and recklessly incorrect,” Hage said, referring to the district attorney’s posts. He and others demanded accountability in the form of a public censure, a retraction, and possibly a probe by Breed’s office and the Board of Supervisors. 

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/brooke-jenkins-hamas-tweet-deleted-18428837.php

Lee Heidhues 10.15.2023

The international sports world is not immune to the carnage in the Middle East started by Hamas terrorists and the ferocious reprisal response by the Israeli government of Bibi Netanyahu.

Where this confrontation is headed nobody knows.

When the sports world stands up and takes notice the story has reached deep into the world’s consciousness.

Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 10.15.2023

There’s a situation out there where thousands of innocent people are being murdered.”

Bayern Munich defender Noussair Mazraoui reportedly shared a video on Instagram in which he wished “victory” to the Palestinians in the conflict with Israel. 

In his post, the Moroccan national player shared a short clip featuring the image of a waving Palestinian flag accompanied by a prayer-like voiceover saying: “God help our persecuted brothers in Palestine, so that they attain victory. May God have mercy on the dead, may God heal their wounded.”

Mazraoui shared the post with the word Ameen (Amen) and a praying hands emoji. His club Bayern Munich has yet to comment.

Mazraoui is currently on the road with the Moroccan national team, which played Ivory Coast on Saturday and faces Liberia on Tuesday. Another Instagram post shared by Mazraoui features stories from four Moroccan teammates — the Bayern defenseman himself, plus Hakim Ziyech (Galatasaray Istanbul), Zakaria Aboukhlal (FC Toulouse), and 2019/2020 SC Paderborn midfielder Abdelhamid Sabiri (currently, Saudi Pro club Al-Fayha FC).

The accompanying text read: “Moroccan NT [national team] players Aboukhlal, Ziyech, Mazraoui & Sabiri have all posted stories in support of Palestine but you can only see the stories if you go to their profile, they’re trying to silence us, it’s literally us against the world!” All four shared the post on their own Instagram pages.

However, the 25-year-old later sent an additional post clarifying his previous messages, saying: “First of all I would like to say it’s really disappointing that I have to explain what I stand for.

https://www.dw.com/en/bayern-munich-defender-posts-pro-palestinian-video/a-67104478

Top photo:

Lee Heidhues 10.14.2023

This is intellectual terrorism.

Why are the Germans censoring a Palestinian award winning author? Her writing is far removed from the terror inflicted by Hamas and the resultant catastrophe Israel is inflicting on the men, women and children of Gaza?

The wanton terror Hamas inflicted on Israel, murdering over 1000 of its citizens, is now being repaid in a horrific manner by the Jewish State.

The Frankfurt Book Fair is engaging in a form of intellectual terrorism.

The unintended consequence of this intellectual terrorism will be that the work of Adania Shibli will be more widely read.

It is ironic that Ms. Shibli’s work is being censored “due to the war in Israel.” One of the first things the Nazis did after coming to power in 1933 was to engage in book burnings of work that did not comport with their warped philosophy.

Excerpted from The New York Times 10.13.2023

An award ceremony that was set to honor a novel by a Palestinian author at the Frankfurt Book Fair next week was canceled on Friday “due to the war in Israel,” according to Litprom, the German literary association that organizes the prize.

The novel, by Adania Shibli, is titled “Minor Detail” in English and tells the true story of the 1949 rape and murder of a Palestinian Bedouin girl by Israeli soldiers, according to its German publisher, Berenberg Verlag.

The controversy in Germany surrounding the novel began this summer when Ulrich Noller, a journalist on the Litprom jury, resigned over the decision to give the literature prize to Ms. Shibli’s novel. A literary critic with Die Tageszeitung, a left-leaning German newspaper, reignited the debate this week, accusing the book of portraying “the State of Israel as a murder machine,” though other German critics have praised the novel.

A German-language version translated from the original Arabic was published in 2022, and a previous English translation was nominated for a National Book Award in 2020 and the International Booker Prize in 2021.

The ceremony was intended to celebrate the novel for winning the 2023 LiBeraturpreis, a German literature prize awarded annually to an author from Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Arab world and presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the global publishing industry’s largest gatherings.

Lee Heidhues 10.10.2023

All the carnage in Palestine/Israel has me thinking of a vivid memory going back decades.

Throughout the early part of my over two years traveling and working abroad, I was sending almost daily postcards and letters to the Love of my Life. Liz.

After a year without the presence of Liz, she came to Europe on a separate agenda. Eventually we hooked up in Germany and have been together ever since.

In 1970 my traveling companion at the time and I spent over three months in Israel. Much of our time together was spent in the Old City of Jerusalem drinking tea and hanging out with the locals.

For several weeks we earned money smashing rocks at an archeological dig next to the Wailing Wall. It was only years later that I learned the site came about because, after the Six Day War in 1967, the occupying Israelis evicted the Palestinian residents and bulldozed their housing.

My traveling companion and I traveled all over the country. At one point going down to southern Israel and the port City of Eilat. On the way we stayed with an expat American from Baltimore who ran a roadside stand just off the highway where people could stop for snacks.

I could walk across the road and step into Jordan.

One night an Israeli military patrol stopped for a beverage. We were all sitting around talking when suddenly an Israeli soldier stuck his Uzi in my stomach, poked my belly a couple of times and laughed, “IF YOU WERE AN ARAB I’D SHOOT YOU.”

I was so taken aback I didn’t know how to respond. I think I laughed nervously.

For sure I never forgot the incident and as the Israeli military rains down its revenge against the Hamas terrorists who murdered nearly a thousand Israelis this event comes to mind.

A year later Liz and I were in Rotterdam, Holland attending a Pink Floyd concert. The memory of the Uzi poking into my stomach was fading but never to be forgotten.

The postcards were purchased during my travels in Israel in 1970.

Top postcard -“Zahal” Israeli parachutists on Parade

Lee Heidhues 10.9.2023

An international incident for the beleaguered Mayor London Breed and the San Francisco Police Department.

An incident which Mayor Breed cannot easily talk away. It’s an international incident and the Chinese government is not happy.

Killing an intruder who crashed his car into the Chinese consulate just blocks from City Hall.

Negotiations are taking place for a possible visit by China’s President Xi Jinping to November’s APEC summit in San Francisco, with the White House confirming that a meeting with President Joe Biden is a possibility.

Just one month before the Asia Pacific Economic Conference is scheduled to kickoff in San Francisco when tens of thousands of people are expected to attend. 21 nations will be represented and leaders of those countries will be participating.

Excerpted from The Daily Mail UK and The San Francisco Standard 10.9.2023

‘Where’s the CCP?’: Driver is shot dead after plowing car into the Chinese consulate in San Francisco and then demanding to know where to find the Communist Party

• Police shoot attacker at the scene after he drives into the diplomatic building  
• Shocking video shows staff and visitors fleeing the room in terror as the driver emerges from his car 

Staff and visitors fled in terror from the Chinese consulate in San Francisco after a suspected armed attacker crashed into its lobby and was shot dead by police.

Diplomatic bosses at the consulate reacted with fury to the attack. 

The incident prompted strong protests from the Chinese government, which said the “extremely bad” incursion had seriously damaged the building and endangered workers.

“The mission severely condemns this violent attack and reserves the right to pursue responsibilities related to the incident,” the consulate said in a statement. “Our mission has made solemn representations to the United States, demanding that the truth be quickly ascertained and dealt with seriously in accordance with the law.”

San Francisco police said they were working with the U.S. State Department to investigate. Police did not release the identity of the driver or discuss what might have motivated his actions.

The driver said ‘where’s the CCP’ (Chinese Communist Party) as he emerged bleeding from the blue Honda sedan and was grabbed by guards just after 3pm Pacific time. 

He was shot when police arrived moments later and was declared dead after being taken to hospital.

‘This is an open and active investigation and the San Francisco Police Department is working and coordinating with investigators from the US State Department.

The consulate is a frequent target of protests from human rights activists and supporters of the Falun Gong movement.

Police and emergency vehicles swarmed the area around Laguna Street and Geary Boulevard. The fire department initially said the man had been taken to a hospital with serious injuries, but San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Kathryn Winters said around 6:30 p.m. that he had died.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12612621/One-person-shot-suspect-crashes-Chinese-consulate-San-Francisco-sparking-major-emergency-response.html

Lee Heidhues 10.8.2023

I keep asking myself how the Middle East has turned into such a cauldron of death and destruction.

Granted there has been religious and political strife in the Middle East; specifically Palestine nee Israel, since the times of Jesus.

It’s fair to say that the situation really deteriorated beginning on November 2, 1917 when the British government issued the Balfour Declaration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government in 1917 during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, then an Ottoman region with a small minority Jewish population. The declaration was contained in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The text of the declaration was published in the press on 9 November 1917.

The State of Israel was created May 14, 1948. As they say the rest is history.

Displacement of the Palestinian population and creation of the hegemonic State of Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_Declaration_of_Independence

The Israeli Declaration of Independence, formally the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel^[2] (Hebrew: הכרזה על הקמת מדינת ישראל), was proclaimed on 14 May 1948 (5 Iyar 5708) by David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization,^[a][3] Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and soon to be firstPrime Minister of Israel.^[4] It declared the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel, which would come into effect on termination of the British Mandate at midnight that day.^[5][1] The event is celebrated annually in Israel as Independence Day, a national holiday on 5 Iyar of every year according to the Hebrew calendar.

The current inferno in Palestine nee Israel is the latest manifestation of the Balfour Declaration.