Palestinian militants on Saturday morning launched an “unprecedented” infultration attack on Israel, the biggest in years, sending fighters over the border from Gaza, firing thousands of rockets and killing dozens of Israelis. In response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered a call-up of reservists and said “we are at war.”
Tag: israel
Prominent Settler Activist Says Spitting on Christians ‘Ancient Jewish Custom’
Israeli settler Elisha Yered, who is suspected of involvement in the killing of Palestinian teen Qosai Mi’tan, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday that spitting at Christians is “an ancient Jewish custom.”
The comment comes amid several incidents of Jews spitting on or near Christian worshippers in Jerusalem’s Old City , which were filmed on Sunday and Monday. This gives more evidence to the fact that these attacks have become widespread.
Tens of thousands of Jews joined in events and prayers for the Sukkot holiday in recent days, during which many of the spitting incidents were recorded. Most of the individuals filmed in the act were Jewish youths who spat on church buildings or at Christian worshipers they encountered.
Yered’s post says that “It’s a good time to mention that spitting near priests or churches is an ancient Jewish custom, and there’s even a special blessing in Jewish law that should be recited when you see a church,” which praises God for turning a blind eye to transgressors
ROGER WATERS ANSWERS THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST ANTISEMITISM
Earlier this month the Campaign Against Antisemitism contacted me about a film they have made. They gave me seven days to respond to multiple questions about matters dating back to 2002 and 2010. Initially I took the view that their attacks on my character did not deserve a response. However, now that the attacks are in circulation, I want to put my response on record.
All my life I have used the platform my career has given me to support causes I believe in. I passionately believe in Universal Human Rights. I have always worked to make the world a better, more just and more equitable place for all my brothers and sisters, all over the world, irrespective of their ethnicity, religion or nationality, from indigenous peoples threatened by the US oil industry to Iranian women protesting for their rights.
That is why I am active in the non-violent protest movement against the Israeli government’s illegal occupation of Palestine and its egregious treatment of Palestinians.
Those who wish to conflate that position with antisemitism do a great disservice to us all.
People need to know about the CAA, the organisation that made this film. Following complaints to the Charity Commission the CAA is facing scrutiny. Its core purpose is waging partisan political campaigns against critics of the state of Israel. So I knew their questions were not asked in good faith.
Truth is, I’m frequently mouthy and prone to irreverence, I can’t recall what I said 13 or more years ago. I’ve worked closely for many years with many Jewish people, musicians and others. If I have upset the two individuals who appear in the film I’m sorry for that. But I can say with certainty that I am not, and have never been, an antisemite – as anyone who really knows me will testify. I know the Jewish people to be a diverse, interesting, and complicated bunch, just like the rest of humanity. Many are allies in the fight for equality and justice, in Israel, Palestine and around the world.
Mysterious 3,800-Year-Old Canaanite Arch and Stairway Unearthed in Israel
Archaeologists have made a stunning—yet thoroughly puzzling—discovery in northern Israel: a 3,800-year-old Canaanite arch and stairway, perfectly preserved underground.
Researchers don’t know the purpose of the structure, which was unearthed at the Tel Shimron archaeological site. They also don’t understand why it was sealed off not long after its construction.
But its preservation is “breathtaking, especially since the building material is unfired (!) mud brick—a material that only rarely survives a long time,” says excavation co-director Mario A.S. Martin, an archaeologist at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, in an email to Live Science’s Sascha Pare.
Archaeologists haven’t historically paid much attention to Tel Shimron. Before the current dig began in 2017, the site had never been extensively excavated. Recently, the team stumbled upon a strange structure that appeared to be man-made.
“We kept digging down further, and it was preserved at a depth of one meter, then two meters, then three meters, then four meters,” excavation co-director Daniel Master, an archaeologist at Wheaton College, tells the Times of Israel’s Melanie Lidman. “This structure was totally intact, and suddenly we realized we were dealing with the foundation of a building or a superstructure that had been constructed at the top of the site.”
The team uncovered mud brick walls up to 13 feet (4 meters) thick, reports Ariel David of Haaretz. Strangely, no rooms were found within them. Instead, the inside was made up of a long corridor—which led to the mysterious arch. Beyond it, researchers found a staircase leading deeper underground.
Meta deletes Al Jazeera presenter’s profile after show criticising Israel
Al Jazeera Arabic presenter Tamer Almisshal has had his Facebook profile deleted by Meta 24 hours after the programme Tip of the Iceberg aired an investigation into Meta’s censorship of Palestinian content titled The Locked Space.
The programme’s investigation, which aired on Friday, included admissions by Eric Barbing, former head of Israel’s cybersecurity apparatus, about his organisation’s effort to track Palestinian content according to criteria that included “liking” a photo of a Palestinian killed by Israeli forces.
Then the agency would approach Facebook and argue that the content should be taken down.
According to Barbing, Facebook usually complies with the requests and Israel’s security apparatus follows up cases, including bringing court cases if need be.
The investigation followed up on Barbing’s admissions by interviewing a number of human and digital rights experts who agreed that there was a distinct imbalance in how Palestinian content is restricted.
The programme also interviewed Julie Owono, a member of Facebook’s oversight board, who admitted there is a discrepancy in how rules are interpreted and applied to Palestinian content and added that recommendations had been sent to Facebook to correct this.
Al Jazeera has asked Facebook about why Almisshal’s profile was shut down with no prior warning or explanation. It had not received a response by the time of publication.
Israel expanded an apartheid law last week. No one is talking about it.
There has been a lot of noise from the Israeli protests concerning the judicial overhaul. The recent central law that was passed last week reduced the supreme court’s ability to overturn government policy, the so-called “reasonableness law.” But another law also passed just a day later — an amendment to a core apartheid law known as the “Village Committees Law” of 2010, more officially named the Cooperative Societies Ordinance. It passed without opposition, and was hardly noticed.
Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, explained how “these committees, which to date exist in the Galilee and in the Naqab (Negev), have the power to approve or to deny applicants who wish to reside there, based on their perceived ‘social suitability’ to the ‘social and cultural fabric’ of a community. In practice, this power has led to the exclusion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from these communities, which are built on state-controlled land.”
The amendment that was passed (nr. 12) expands the existing law, which was limited to towns of up to 400 households, by introducing a new category called a “Continued Communal Town,” which allows towns with up to 700 households to have such admission committees. “Furthermore,” Adalah notes, “in five years, the Minister of Economy and Industry will be authorized to permit admissions committees in towns with more than 700. This provision, de facto, cancels the restriction on the number of households specified in the law.”
TEXAS STATE POLICE PURCHASED ISRAELI PHONE-TRACKING SOFTWARE FOR “BORDER EMERGENCY”
THE TEXAS DEPARTMENT of Public Safety purchased access to powerful software capable of locating and following people through their phones as part of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s “border security disaster” efforts, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept.
In 2021, Abbott proclaimed that the “surge of individuals unlawfully crossing the Texas-Mexico border posed an ongoing and imminent threat of disaster” to the state and its residents. Among other effects, the disaster declaration opened a spigot of government money to a variety of private firms ostensibly paid to help patrol and blockade the state’s border with Mexico.
One of the private companies that got in on the cash disbursements was Cobwebs Technologies, a little-known Israeli surveillance contractor. Cobwebs’s marquee product, the surveillance platform Tangles, offers its users a bounty of different tools for tracking people as they navigate both the internet and the real world, synthesizing social media posts, app activity, facial recognition, and phone tracking.
Placement of ancient hidden lamps, skulls in cave in Israel suggests Roman-era practice of necromancy
A pair of archaeologists, one with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the other from Bar-Ilan University, has found evidence of Roman-era necromancy practices in a cave in Israel. In their study, reported in the journal Harvard Theological Review, Eitan Klein and Boaz Zissu analyzed artifacts excavated from the Te’omim Cave over the past 14 years.
The Te’omim Cave has played a role in the history of what is now the Jerusalem hills region west of the famous city. During the Bar-Kokhba Revolt, for example, it served as a hideout for Jewish rebels. In this new effort, the researchers studied artifacts that multiple groups have removed from the cave since 2009 as part of a collaboration between several entities in Israel. Such artifacts have been dated to approximately 2,000 years ago, during the Roman era.
Researchers have found more than 120 oil lamps, various weapons, vessels, coins and even three human skulls. Many of the artifacts were found wedged into tight spaces. In this new effort, the researchers analyzed the artifacts and the places where they were found and hypothesize that at least some of them were used in attempts to speak with dead people, a practice called necromancy.
Necromancy is the practice of enchanted conjuring, involving attempts to communicate with the dead by calling forth their spirits or visualizations of them for the purpose of divination or revealing future events, or to discover secrets. It is also generally associated with black magic or witchcraft. Klein and Zissu suggest that the placement of many of the lamps, for example, is indicative of behavior associated with necromancy—mostly because of the presence of the skulls.
When Did Humans Start Settling Down?
Twelve thousand years ago, long before the beginning of recorded history, a group of perhaps 200 people lived in a small village by a stream flowing into the Sea of Galilee, in what today is northern Israel. The villagers hunted gazelle and hares, fished for carp, built stone houses, and buried their dead in a cemetery next to their homes. When I hiked to the site early one morning, it was easy to imagine them: A few figures setting off with nets to the lakeshore, others walking toward the hills with bows and arrows to look for game, and more down by the riverbank, spinning thread or crushing barley, shooing children out of the way—a community waking up together and getting to work, unaware of their position at the dawn of a new age.
I came to the village with Leore Grosman, an archaeologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We turned up a dirt track off the two-lane road that circles the Sea of Galilee. On the far shore, across five miles of placid water, lights in the city of Tiberias were blinking off. The sun wasn’t quite up, but the caffeine was kicking in. Grosman lit a cigarette and told me about herself in a gravelly voice. She started out studying math, then moved to Egyptology. She loved hieroglyphics. “But it’s a lot of sitting in libraries, and it’s a matter of personality,” she said. “I need to be outside.” She began digging here in 2010 with a feeling that the site, known as Nahal Ein Gev II, had something to say about a great change in the human story. She has returned each summer since.
Israel Killed Civilians, Targeted Hospitals in Jenin With US Weapons and Support
From July 3-4, Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) — using weapons funded by the United States — mounted the most violent military assault in the occupied West Bank in two decades.
In what Israel dubbed “Operation Home and Garden,” more than 1,000 ground troops invaded the Jenin refugee camp. Assisted by helicopter gunships and armed drones, the IOF killed 12 Palestinians — including six civilians (five of them children) — and wounded more than 120 others (including 14 children), according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. The IOF partially destroyed 109 houses, extensively damaged the infrastructure, leveled the streets and created a power outage. About 4,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their homes.
While the IOF has used armed drones against Gazans, they are now using them against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as well.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government, as usual, issued no criticism of the brutal IOF assault on Jenin. Instead, the White House declared that the United States “supports Israel’s security and right to defend its people against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups.”
Under international law, the occupying power (Israel) is not entitled to self-defense against the people it occupies (the Palestinians). A UN-appointed Commission of Inquiry determined last year that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory is illegal and called on the General Assembly to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice.
Hellbound and Down 
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