Deported from Palestine: Why Israel fears journalists

Journalist Eoin Wilson reflects on Israel’s policy of deporting foreign witnesses to the Israeli occupation.

“Israel’s policy of deporting foreign witnesses to the occupation goes hand in hand with policies of settlement expansion, land confiscation and repression against Palestinian civil society.” [Courtesy Eoin Wilson/Al Jazeera]

Last September, the United Nations Human Rights Council called for international action to curb what it described as “an Israeli campaign to evict international workers”.

As Israel tightens its grip on Palestinians and their international supporters, a growing number of activists, researchers and journalists have been denied access by the Israeli authorities.

Among them is Eoin Wilson, an Irish-Scottish freelance journalist specialising in social movements and international solidarity activism. Earlier this month, he was refused entry and banned for 10 years. Here, he reflects on his ordeal at the hands of Israeli interrogators.

Racial profiling and the targeting and deportation, by Israel, of Muslim and Arab travellers is well-documented [Courtesy of Eoin Wilson/Al Jazeera]

We queue, Palestinians and tourists alike, to pass through the metal detectors ahead. Alongside Hebrew and English welcome signs, the Arabic greeting “Ahlan wa Sahlan”, roughly translated as “you have come to your people and your land”, appears cruelly ironic.

Our experience was disempowering and frustrating, but I was not denied entry to my own land by an occupying power. Such pain is intensely real for millions of Palestinians, who are refused the right of return or imprisoned by Israel’s systems of control and collective punishment.

It is early November 2016, and we are at the Allenby crossing, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. This crossing, also known as the King Hussein Bridge, is the only crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, and is controlled entirely by Israel. Palestinian baggage handlers pass by in orange high-vis vests. Like Palestinians who work on the construction of settlements and the Wall, they seem like prisoners employed by the prison.

Beyond the first security measures is the main terminal, much like an aircraft hanger. Large air-conditioning pipes run along the ceiling pumping out cold air, in a constant buzz which occasionally rises to a high-pitched screech.

We plan to spend time in a Palestinian refugee camp, and we are nervous. I have spent time in Palestine before, and written articles about the occupation. We obviously cannot say this to the Israeli officials, so it is a fine balancing act between not saying too much, and not saying too little.

At one end of the building is a line of passport control booths. We see a greying passport officer with glasses, laughing with a tourist. We pick him, hoping he is in a good mood.

He begins his questioning about the reasons for our visit; we answer “tourism”, careful to avoid any mention of Palestine, Palestinians or the occupation. Instead, we list tourist and historical sites.

He asks my partner, who is Latina, the names of her parents, perhaps looking for an Arab or Muslim family connection. Racial profiling and the targeting and deportation, by Israel, of Muslim and Arab travellers is well-documented . He finds no Arab or Muslim connection and gives her a three-month tourist visa.

“After several more hours of waiting, we are finally handed a letter confirming our denial of entry, and told that we are banned for 10 years.”[Courtesy of Eoin Wilson/Al Jazeera]

His semi-friendly demeanour quickly changes when he realises I spent an extended period in the West Bank several years ago. He takes our passports and tells us to wait. We sit beneath large prints of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, visual assertions of Israel’s claim to Jerusalem as its capital, despite being one of the most iconic symbols of Palestinian identity.

Our first interrogation is by the Interior Ministry. We are separated and I am taken to a small, grim room. An official asks about our reasons for visiting, our finances and our plans. Using aggressive interrogation techniques to try to rattle me, the official shouts and repeats the same questions, with dramatic pauses and purposeful scribbling.

“What do you want to do in Israel? There’s nothing to do in Israel”, she barks. She is not a good advertisement for tourism, but that is not her job. Her job is to separate the religious pilgrims and bars-and-beaches-tourists, from those who want to spend time with Palestinians and witness the occupation.

After a long wait, it is the army’s turn. This is a bad sign. We are separated again, and I am interrogated by a male sergeant, and my partner by a female soldier. The sergeant asks me very specific questions.

“Do you know any Palestinians?” “Have you ever been a member of an ‘anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian’ group?” “What did you study at university?” “Have you been to Gaza or Iraq?”

I answer carefully, trying to answer truthfully without “incriminating” myself. The soldier asks to see my Whatsapp contacts. I had taken precautions to remove anything related to Palestine from my phone and laptop, and to disable my social media accounts, so I decide to cooperate. He types “972” into my phone, the dialling code for Israel and Palestine, looking for any numbers of Palestinians.

Your smartphone can be your biggest enemy in the wrong hands, and your social media and internet presence, alongside information on phones and laptops, can betray you.

The soldiers leave, and we compare notes. Besides our plans, my partner’s questioning focused more on our relationship, and whether or not it was genuine.

Without being told what will happen next, we again wait, this time for over an hour. A Palestinian woman is led crying from a curtained search room by a customs agent, while young Israeli employees stand around, playing on phones and flirting and laughing with each other, seemingly desensitised to the systematic humiliation and dehumanisation of the Palestinians around them.

I try to sleep, but when I open my eyes there are two plain-clothed agents standing in front of me. I am now the only suspect.

I follow them past the passport desks, in the direction of the exit. Beyond those doors, Palestine and “freedom”. Instead, we enter a series of narrow corridors, and I am taken to a small room and told to sit down, facing the female agent. Her male colleague hovers in the doorway, silent.

On the walls are some faded “Visit Israel”-type posters. My interrogator is sitting behind two computer screens, with a poorly-printed, pixelated Israel flag on the wall behind her. Though they do not say, I assume they are Shin Bet. She tells me “you shouldn’t lie to us any more. We are different from the others. The consequences of lying will be serious”.

It is cold, and I pull my hood up and cross my legs, trying to keep warm, but also to show quiet defiance. I think how warm it is outside and how much I want to walk in Palestine’s afternoon sunshine. She starts the interrogation. She knows when I disabled my social media accounts and asks questions about private content which should be inaccessible. She shows me a computer screen with articles for the Electronic Intifada, with “Eoin Wilson” in the bylines.

I say that it is a funny coincidence. She tells me that there was only one person with that name in the West Bank when these articles were written. Another coincidence, I say.

She asks about a Palestinian friend who is now in an Israeli prison, held under Administrative Detention, which sees hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by military courts for indefinitely renewable six-month sentences, without being allowed to see the evidence against them. I deny knowing him.

She mentions my support of Celtic Football Club in Scotland. I say nothing and the interrogation continues. I later ask why she is interested in which football team I support, and she mentions seeing Celtic clothing in my luggage. Our possessions have been searched without our knowledge or consent.

“Are you a fan of Scottish football?” I ask her. She mumbles something about European football. Perhaps she supports Hapoel Be’er Sheva.

It was against this Israeli club that a group of Celtic fans, the Green Brigade , carried out a display of solidarity with Palestine, waving dozens of Palestinian flags and drawing the wrath of UEFA, who fined Celtic. In response, Celtic fans have “matched the fine for Palestine”, by raising over £175,000 ($217,253), which will be divided between Medical Aid for Palestine and the Lajee centre in Aida refugee camp.

Though brief, her mention of Celtic shows an awareness among the Israeli establishment that actions in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) can take many forms, and Celtic supporters’ solidarity has made an impact in this corner of occupied-Palestine.

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Faljazeera%2Fvideos%2Fvb.7382473689%2F10153414383188690%2F&width=700&show_text=false&height=343&appId

This interrogation has continued for over an hour, but she insists that if I cooperate there is still a chance of being given a visa. “But I have to be honest”, she says, “the chances are less than 50/50”. I know the chances are zero. Any hope of a visa has evaporated in this claustrophobic room.

We both know this is now just an intelligence gathering exercise, and I tell her we are finished. I have walked the fine line of cooperation, and now it is time to stop and accept defeat.

Forefront in my mind is the danger of somehow putting Palestinians in danger, and despite the technical precautions I have taken, I know that intrusive intelligence-gathering is common practice.


INTERACTIVE: Building the occupation


After several more hours of waiting, we are finally handed a letter confirming our denial of entry, and told that we are banned for 10 years. Among the reasons cited for my denial were “public order considerations”. When independent journalism is considered a threat to a society’s “public order”, profound questions must be asked about the values and principles of that society.

Our experience was disempowering and frustrating, but I was not denied entry to my own land by an occupying power. Such pain is intensely real for millions of Palestinians, who are refused the right of return or imprisoned by Israel’s systems of control and collective punishment.

Ours is not an isolated case, and Israel’s policy of deporting foreign witnesses to the occupation goes hand in hand with policies of settlement expansion, land confiscation, killings, mass imprisonment without trial, repression of Palestinian civil society, home demolitions, and a myriad of other methods of settler-colonialism.

But while these crimes continue, there will always be witnesses. This is what Israel fears.

Eoin Wilson is an Irish-Scottish freelance journalist specialising in social movements and international solidarity activism. He is currently based in Jordan.

Follow Eoin Wilson on Twitter: @eoin_wilson

Source: Al Jazeera


Fidel Castro Hailed as True Friend of Palestine

  • Fidel Castro with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1974.

    Fidel Castro with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1974. | Photo: AFP

Published 27 November 2016
Palestinian flags were flown at half-mast in honor of the Cuban revolutionary leader Sunday.

Across the Palestinian resistance spectrum, the late Cuban leader and revolutionary Fidel Castro left a mark on the development of the struggle against decades of Israeli colonialism and occupation and so several Palestinian groups took the time to express their gratitude for Cuban solidarity throughout the years.

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The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist Palestinian group, was among the first organizations to issue a statement mourning the death of Fidel and highlighting his constant support of “the oppressed peoples of the world in their confrontation with imperialism, Zionism, racism and capitalism.”

Under the leadership of Fidel, “Cuba stood with the Palestinian people and their liberation movement in all facets of international struggle, building a revolutionary alliance for collective movement against imperialism, colonialism and its particular manifestation in Palestine, Zionism,” the statement posted on the PFLP website Saturday said.

“Zionism has been a key weapon of racist oppression, a fact recognized by Fidel Castro and the Cuban people and state.”

The other socialist Palestinian group, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, expressed its own sadness at the death of the Cuban revolutionary.

“The departure of the comrade, the leader, the friend, the great revolutionary, the patriot, and the nationalist Fidel Castro is a great loss for all revolutionaries and nationalist forces around the world,” the group’s Secretary General Nayif Hawatmeh said according to the Palestinian news agency Ma’an.

Diplomatic ties between Cuba and Palestine began in the same year that Fidel became prime minister in 1959 following the Cuban Revolution when Raul Castro and Che Guevara visited the Gaza Strip.

Fidel invited late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to Cuba eight times, where the Cuban leader “always welcomed (Arafat) like he was a head of state,” Palestinian officials told Al-Jazeera.

Fidel broke diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973 and has repeatedly called Zionism a form of fascism and racial discrimination. In 2014 he said that Israel was committing a “Palestinian Holocaust” in his reaction to the brutal Israeli 50-day war on occupied Gaza that year.

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In a letter to Cuban President Raul Castro Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hailed Fidel as a man who spent “his life sternly defending his country’s and people’s causes in addition to just and righteous causes around the world.”

Abbas ordered Palestinian flags to be set at half-staff Sunday, according to Wafa, the Palestinian state news agency.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which Fidel was the first to recognize and grant full diplomatic status to in 1964 after it was founded, issued a statement highlighting his unwavering support for Palestine.

Also, an unnamed leader in the Palestinian resistance group Hamas told the Jerusalem Post that Fidel was “a brother in the resistance and stood in the face of colonialists, similar to Nelson Mandela.”

——————————————————————————————————–

Israel Cracks Down on Palestinians for Facebook Posts

  • “Persecuting journalists and activists for their views and material shared on social media platforms has been rampant in Palestine,” the report read. 

    “Persecuting journalists and activists for their views and material shared on social media platforms has been rampant in Palestine,” the report read.  | Photo: Twitter / @palinfoen

Published 25 October 2016
A Palestinian NGO says the social media site is flagging and reporting Palestinians’ Facebook posts.

Meetings between Facebook and Israeli government officials have led to a number of closed Palestinian accounts and a spike in arrests of dissident Facebook users, according to a new report from a Palestinian freedom of speech organization.

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According to Thursday’s report by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms, or MADA, increasing numbers of Palestinian journalists, activists and citizens have been arrested and interrogated in recent months following posts deemed objectionable by Israeli security officials.

“Persecuting journalists and activists for their views and material shared on social media platforms has been rampant in Palestine,” said the report.

From 2014 until 2016, MADA said that they had found 70 violations against Palestinian journalists, and even more against Palestinian activists and citizens.

“Most of the Israeli violations against media freedoms, which outnumbered the Palestinian ones were considered as the gravest and most serious physical abuses,” said the report.

Israeli authorities have been increasingly concerned with social media posts which could incite violence. Israeli Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked and Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Internal Security Minister, met with officials from Facebook over their government’s plan to criminalize “offensive content” posted on social media.

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The report said that as a result of an agreement between the government and the social media giant, posts deemed too “extremist” or critical of Israeli occupation were removed, with at least 20 users banned.

Many have noted that not all banned posts are related to Israeli occupation, nor have they all incited extremist violence.

The MADA said that Israel’s censorship is a serious violation of freedom of expression and warned against other states taking up a similar “Israeli model.”

The group said that “Israeli occupation authorities are using all possible means to silence Palestinians, and deprive them of enjoying their right to freedom of expression and opinion.”

———————————————————————————————————

Just who are The Hasbara and Sayanim?

LEVITE PRIEST GETS HIS GOY PRESENT

Let me just take a moment to define two important terms I use here a lot, so the newly awakened will understand what kind of creeps we’re dealing with in our lands.

“Hasbara,” or “HasbaRATS” as I like to call them, are Jews who insidiously work to screw up White people in the head, usually for Israel’s “survival,” but you could easily make a strong case for all the other PC “diversity” and “multicultural” crap they inflict on us, too. Some belong to organized Internet groups who actually call themselves “Hasbara” even today; these are traitorous Zionists working to keep the mass population of Israel’s Numero Uno MacDaddy — the USA — under their thrall.

“I’hasbir” is an ancient Hebrew word meaning “to explain.” Most often used as a term for secret spies and agents sent into walled cities belonging to other people in the Levant — the major crossroads area between continents now called Israel (the “Promised Land of milk and honey” BS). Once the tricky-dick Hebrew cutthroats gained access, other rats were let in through any hidden entrances — thanks to a paid-off traitor, or stupid idiot who had no idea of what was now in store for his people.

Hmmm, parallels with the way these so-called Jews operate today are mind-boggling.

Once inside, the Hebrew soldier thugs brutally attacked the sleeping and wine-besotted inhabitants, hacking everyone in sight with stone sharpened bronze-age swords — men, women and children — along with slaves and domesticated animals, simply because they all didn’t worship the same God as the Jews did. They cared nothing about “converting” them since they only wanted the land and property — just like what the modern day Israelis are doing to the Palestinians right the flock now.

This is where all the “slew” and “slaying” stuff in the Bible comes from (the five books of Exodus through Deuteronomy written some 200-300 years after the supposed hero business of “Moses” and “Joshua”). According to them, it was all on God’s orders, including the total genocide of the sandnigger Midianite tribe who helped Moses survive in the desert after his expulsion from Egypt (Charlton Heston’s wife, played by ’50s hottie Yvonne De Carlo, in the movie “The Ten Commandments”).

Thanks to Jew BS written about in the Old Testament, today’s rat-faced Khazar legions from southern Russia have inherited a long tradition of stabbing people in the back who once helped them. The rats don’t give a rat’s ass.

Hell, it kills me to this day (I even remember asking the priest about it way back in catechism classes as a precocious young INCOG), that no one in Christian churches ever seemed to ask out loud: “Hey everybody, just WTF are we celebrating these murderous desert thugs who slaughtered sandniggers all over the place?”

Oh, before I forget, as God’s “sacred” representatives on Earth, the Levite priestly class made the tribe’s soldiers turn over the largest share of the gold booty and the most bootylicious virgin babes of any sacked city — for later use back in the tents as slave trollops — if you get my drift. Some things never change.

One thing to bear in mind, is all of this “hasbara” tough guy image BS, bandied about by those that today call themselves “Jews,” is little more than a fervently insane belief structure passed down the generations by Eastern European and southern Russian rabbis — nutcase Khazars who have long fancied themselves the physical descendents of ancient Israelites and God’s “Chosen.” Total BS.

Today, Jewry has tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of these rats across the globe organized on the Internet to confuse the Goyim by flooding chat rooms, blog sites, comments and online polls — writing and acting as if they were just another Goy schmuck. They even have special Israel-supplied software called “Megaphone” to send out alerts to each other. Some of these groups are actually paid by the Israeli government and certainly other, more shadowy, Jew Zionist operations.

Matter of fact, individual Jews don’t have to belong to any organized group at all. Often, they simply work freelance for sheer Jew giggles alone (one is probably eyeballing my site right now). He or she well understands that if enough of us Goyim “get it,” the Jew’s comfy parasite party in America just might come to a screeching halt.

You could even reasonably make the case that all Jews working in the media, left or right, are really nothing but Jewish HasbaRATS in a big, BIG way. They get paid huge sums of Federal Reserve shekels writing Zionist propaganda, or even lefty, PC ideology in the continual, never-ending Jewish racial and moral destruction of the West. This is where you get the liberal BS you see in the media, along with the invasion of Third Worlders and muzzies into White lands that so well pisses you off.

“The US shouldn’t give high clearances to Jews, because when asked to help, we’re willing to do anything for the love of our country, Israel.”

— US Navy intelligence analyst and convicted spy for Israel, Jonathan Pollard, during his interrogations. Please note this Jew was born and raised in America, yet the material he handed over to Israel literally put all of us Americans in serious nuclear riskafter Israel traded it to the Soviets (commie Jews are rife everywhere). Because of the Jew-controlled mass media in the US, few even know of this rat and what he did.

DOCTOR NO

Now Sayanim Jews are a little different. “Sayanim” is simply the plural of “SAYAN.” It means “volunteers.” These are Diaspora Jews living in our countries who have been quietly asked by Israeli MOSSAD controllers called “KATSAS” to help out the Mother country in a small way usually, but sometimes very big. 9/11 anyone?

BTW: The Jews got the Wikipedia page on this deleted. One of the MOSSAD Jews exposing all this, Victor Ostrovsky, is still there — for now.

And it doesn’t have to be a dangerous, active role at all. Let’s say for example, a rich Jew fat cat has a lot of real estate holdings in the Dallas, Texas area. The MOSSAD Katsas will ask him if he can be “on-call” to provide a furnished “safe house,” just in case a MOSSAD operative needs to shack up in his particular area of the city, or simply as base camp for an ongoing MOSSAD operation (details are never told to said real estate Jew for US legality loopholes, so they can say “they had no idea”).

Also, Israel has a special intelligence division dedicated to stealing secret industrial and high tech information from other countries — including the USA. Once called “LAKHAM” (they probably have another name for it by now); stolen info gets turned over to Israeli companies to enrich the Jewish state. Technology companies based over there have plenty of stock owned by Israeli state intel ops, so all the big and little Jews get to “wet their beaks” with profits.

You only hear about when China or Russia does it to us. Jews in America steal proprietary information all the time for Israel — should the American company find out, they get nowhere in legal proceedings. When it comes to Israel, it’s all been a rigged game.

Of course, so-called “American” Jews recruited by Israeli MOSSAD for Sayanim duties are told to keep the request quiet for the sake of Jewry in general. Better not let the Goyim get too wise! Should the Jew express qualms at being a traitor, or risk being found out by over-zealous Goyim authorities, they are simply told “hey, it’s all cool, just don’t say anything to the Goy about us asking you, bro.” Chances are, most Jews say “yes” right off the bat since they are honored to secretly help the Zionist cause.

The rats probably soon tell their wives or lovers so they can have some great “secret agent” sex that night. And indeed, this has came out before in break-ups and divorces — you just never hear JACK because the media and the FBI knows well to tread carefully down that path — or risk getting fired from the big bosses.

Just think about what backstabbers these Jews truly are!

Folks: What we got is an immoral, bastard race of Ancient Religious Reenactors who, because of 1300 years of self-delusion (beginning around 740AD), think of themselves as oh-so-great and blessed by God. Believe me, these kinds of subversive rats have ZERO problem stabbing America in the back for the sake of the Jewish or Israeli cause. Or just for buckage, often enough.

The bona fide creeps even have a special term of endearment for their style of outrageous racial arrogance. It’s called “CHUTZPAH” and they love it in each other.

— Phillip Marlowe

TEN EXPLOSIVE US GOVERNMENT SECRETS ABOUT ISRAEL.

Encyclopedia of Jewish & Israeli Spying

FEITH STAR OF SATAN

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