West Bank annexation is happening in plain sight
JVL Introduction
We posted another Ha’aretz piece about the Israel’s annexation plan and the “legal” processes it is putting into place. However, Israel sees no need to wait for the legislation to work its way through. Annexation is already well underway. As this article says: “The fact that these bills have not yet been approved by the Knesset has not prevented the coalition from pouring millions of shekels into the settlements in various ways. Such steps are no longer done in secret, but proudly and openly – for example, when Smotrich and Orit Strock recently participated in a ceremony creating a tea of rangers to serve the South Hebron Hill farm outposts.”
This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Tue 22 Apr 2025. Read the original here.
Don't Look Away: Israel's Annexation of the West Bank Is Already Here
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Everywhere we look we see two things: Israel violating every human rights and humanitarian law ever passed and the apparent powerlessness of those tasked with ensuring that human rights and humanitarian law are implemented. The UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice — all condemning the gross violations and the genocide, with no apparent power to stop even one death from happening. Cowering in fear of being accused of antisemitism? It beggars belief. The whole UN system, built because of what led to World War II, is at risk of falling apart unless it acts to stop Israel, which is a fascist state, not a Jewish one. And to stop all the violence being perpetrated, against Ukraine, in Sudan, by Modi, and everywhere where war and violence and destruction have replaced peace, the rule of law and justice. Words of condemnation alone are not enough. We need an international movement for peace with justice and the rule of international law. We need to reject our own countries’ leaders if they are supporting genocide, and that includes here in the UK, I’m sorry to say.
The beginning of a “Haaretz” article by Dani Dayan: –
“This year’s Holocaust Remembrance Day marks 80 years since the end of World War II and the defeat of the Third Reich. It was cause for jubilation across the globe, but not for the Jewish people [for whom it was too late]”.
I read this and howled inside, thinking of the ongoing holocaust against the Palestinians, many of whom will be starving to death right now. Both holocausts could have been stopped with many fewer deaths if the political elites in Europe and America had cared enough to act.
Parliamentarians knew enough by 1937-9 of what was going on inside Nazi Germany against the Jewish population to justify opening our borders to desperate refugees and organising state-run and funded schemes for their reception. Instead, faith groups, charities and kin were left to do what they could – which wasn’t much.
And now it’s 2025, there’s even more evidence of genocide, and our government still refuses to act.