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settlements
Israeli Forces Reportedly Kill US Human Rights Activist With 'Deliberate Shot to the Head'
"A soldier fired directly at the protestors, hitting the American activist in the head from behind," said one eyewitness.
Sep 06, 2024
One journalist said that "devastating levels of impunity" were on display in the West Bank on Friday as Israeli forces reportedly shot a 26-year-old American human rights advocate, Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, in the head, killing her as she protested the expansion of illegal settlements.
AJ+, Al Jazeera's digitial platform, reported that according to eyewitness accounts, Eygi was killed by a "deliberate shot to the head."
Eygi, who had dual citizenship in the U.S. and Turkey, was taking part in a campaign to protect Palestinian farmers from violence by Israeli settlers, 700,000 of whom live in illegal settlements erected over the last five decades in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
Israel rejects the position of the United Nations' highest court that the settlements violate international law, and the U.S. has continued to be the largest funder of the Israeli military despite thousands of deadly attacks by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and settlers on Palestinians—and activists trying to protect them—in the West Bank.
The protest where Eygi was killed was in the town of Beita, near the settlement of Evyatar, which was authorized by Israel last year.
"Just as the prayers were finishing, the Israeli military started firing tear gas and stun grenades towards the protestors," Hisham Dweikat, a resident of Beita, toldCNN. "As people were running away, live fire was shot and a soldier fired directly at the protestors, hitting the American activist in the head from behind and falling to the ground."
Suhauna Hussain, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, said on X that Eygi lived in the Seattle area and had recently graduated from the University of Washington.
Israel has intensified attacks on the West Bank in recent months, despite the government's claim that it is targeting Hamas, which operates in Gaza, in the current conflict that began last October.
On Friday, Israeli forces withdrew from the city of Jenin and its refugee camp after a 10-day operation that killed at least 36 Palestinians, including children. The U.N. warned Israel was using "lethal war-like tactics" this week as the IDF destroyed civilian infrastructure and carried out drone strikes in Jenin.
U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the Biden administration was "aware of the tragic death of an American citizen" in the West Bank and that officials were "urgently gathering more information."
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American member of Congress, demanded that the State Department clarify how eyewitnesses and Palestinian media have characterized Eygi's death.
"How's they die, Matt?" said Tlaib. "Was it magic? Who or what killed Aysenur? Asking on behalf of Americans who want to know."
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Extremist Israeli Leaders Slammed for 'Reckless Pursuit' of New West Bank Colony
"My life's mission," said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, is "to fight the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state"—even as an overwhelming majority of the world's nations support independence for Palestine.
Aug 14, 2024
The Israeli government said Wednesday that it has completed plans for the first new apartheid settlement in the occupied West Bank since 2017, a move the country's far-right finance minister said was due in part to increasing international recognition of Palestinian statehood amid Israel's obliteration of Gaza and a recent World Court affirming the occupation's illegality.
The Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, also known as the Civil Administration, announced what's known as a "blue line"—which defines and delimits the boundaries of a new settlement—for Nahal Heletz, one of five Jewish-only colonies
proposed for construction or expansion on stolen Palestinian land. If built, the nearly 150-acre colony would connect the Gush Etzion settlement bloc with Jerusalem.
"The connection of Gush Etzion to Jerusalem by establishing a new settlement is a historic moment," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a settler, said Wednesday. "No anti-Israel and anti-Zionist decision will stop the continued development of the settlement enterprise."
"We will continue to fight the dangerous idea of a Palestinian state and establish facts on the ground," Smotrich continued, referring to the longtime Israeli practice of violating international law by colonizing and annexing Palestinian land to establish what one legal scholar described as "de facto possession with the aim of attaining de jure possession."
Smotrich added: "This is my life's mission and I will continue it as long as I can... Together we will continue to pursue Zionism. We will build, develop, fight, and win."
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an "occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." Since Israel conquered the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Syria's Golan Heights in 1967, Israeli settlement population has increased exponentially from around 1,500 colonists in 1970 to roughly 140,000 at the time of the Oslo Accords in 1993—under which Israel agreed to halt new settlement activity—to more than 500,000 today.
Settlers often destroy property and attack Palestinians, sometimes en masse in deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into leaving so their land can be stolen. As the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 500 Palestinians in the West Bank since October, including at least 143 children, according to the United Nations Children's Fund.
Last month, the International Court of Justice—where Israel is on trial for genocide over its conduct in the Gaza war—ruled that Israel's 57-year occupation is an illegal form of apartheid that must end "as rapidly as possible."
The Gaza war, in which Israeli forces have killed or wounded more than 143,000 Palestinians, forcibly displaced almost all of the territory's 2.3 million people, starved hundreds of thousands of people—some of them to death—and flattened much of the coastal enclave, has also pushed numerous nations to recognize Palestinian statehood. Around 150 countries now support Palestinian independence. In April, the United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution on Palestinian U.N. membership.
Smotrich applauded the resolution's defeat. The finance minister has come under fire recently for
defending Israeli soldiers accused of gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner at the notorious Sde Teiman torture prison—he called the suspects "heroic warriors"—and for asserting that it would be "justified and moral" for Israel to starve 2 million Palestinians to death.
The Israeli activist group Peace Now decried the recent decision by the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud) to establish a new Settlement Administration under Smotrich's authority.
"Netanyahu and Smotrich are relentlessly advancing de facto annexation," Peace Now said Wednesday. "This reckless pursuit will have dire consequences for everyone. The new settlement at Nahal Heletz will create an isolated enclave deep within Palestinian territory, inevitably escalating friction and security challenges."
"This administration is wholly dedicated to advancing the settlement enterprise while completely neglecting the needs of both Israelis and Palestinians," the group added. "This government must be held accountable and replaced—now."
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Investigation Exposes How Etsy Profits From Israeli Apartheid
"Etsy isn't simply turning a blind eye to stores listed on its site operating in illegal Israeli settlements—it is directly profiting from and even in certain cases, promoting them," said one campaigner.
Aug 07, 2024
Etsy, the popular U.S.-based e-commerce website, is profiting from goods made and sold in Israel's illegal settler colonies in the occupied West Bank, a report published Wednesday revealed.
"Under the radar, Etsy—the popular online platform for selling and buying artisanal and vintage items, with a mission to 'keep commerce human'—has been profiting from businesses with shops in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory (OPT)," states the briefing, which was published by the Institute for Journalism and Social Change (IJSC), Global Justice Now, and War on Want.
"It's time to bring an end to this shameless corporate profiteering."
"This briefing reveals, for the first time, how Etsy hosts numerous shops that explicitly name as their locations places that are considered illegal Israeli settlements by the [United Nations] and under international law—and as recently confirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in its ruling in July," the publication continues.
The ICJ's nonbinding advisory opinion affirmed that "the policies and practices of Israel in the OPT amount to apartheid."
Report author Claire Provost said that "Western complicity in Israeli war crimes is so pervasive that even Etsy, the popular platform for 'feel-good' shopping, is connected to businesses in the settlements."
"So far these ties have gone under the radar and unchallenged," added Provost, IJSC's co-founder and co-director. "That, at least, ends now."
Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden said that "Etsy isn't simply turning a blind eye to stores listed on its site operating in illegal Israeli settlements—it is directly profiting from and even in certain cases, promoting them."
"Doing so risks complicity in war crimes—and the reality is, they're not the only company profiting from the human misery inflicted on Palestinians day in, day out," he added. "It's time to bring an end to this shameless corporate profiteering."
Etsy charges listing and transaction fees. It also offers seller advertising for an additional fee. "Star sellers" are highlighted to prospective buyers. At least four star sellers—including one that had over 12,000 sales as of late July—specifically list illegal Israeli settlements as their locations.
The report identifies 14 Etsy stores located in the Ariel settlement, nine in Maale Adumim, and four in Tekoa.
"The full amount of money that has gone to businesses in the settlements, and Etsy in the process, is hard to estimate," the report acknowledges. Etsy "also hosts many more shops that only say they are based in 'Israel,' without specifying particular locations, making it hard or impossible for consumers to tell if they are also in such settlements."
"This trade has a significant Irish connection, too—which will alarm many in that country, where there are growing calls to cut ties with settlement businesses," the publication continues. "Etsy's contracts with these shops in settlements appear to be done through the company's Irish subsidiary, Etsy Ireland U.C., which is headquartered in Dublin."
Amid "Israeli efforts to expand their illegal settlements in the West Bank and increasing settler violence against Palestinians," some "consumers of conscience may have bought unknowingly from Etsy shops in these illegal settlements," the report adds. "Etsy may not have been questioned about these business links before."
"These problems, at least, can end now," the paper states. "We now know that Etsy is another company that is profiting from business relationships with the illegal settlements. By facilitating the sale of products from shops located in these settlements, Etsy could be connected to war crimes—and this could, in turn, be making users of the platform around the world, as well as Ireland (as the location of Etsy's subsidiary contracting with settlement shops), unknowingly involved too."
"These business relationships look like a serious problem for Etsy. But Etsy also has an opportunity to respond to these revelations, and concerns about them," the report argues. "It could act on its ability, as written into its policies, to cut its ties with shops in illegal settlements."
"It could also require that all shops disclose their location (city/town and not just country)," the authors added. "In doing
so, it could show real leadership to many already or potentially loyal users: people who want to make 'feel good,' conscious and more ethical purchases online."
In 2019, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that food products made in Israeli settlements must indicate that they originate from a settlement instead of being labeled "Product of Israel."
The following year in the United States, the administration of then-President Donald Trumpordered goods produced in much of the occupied West Bank to be labeled "Made in Israel."
The global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement has notched a string of successes in its campaign to educate and influence consumers to eschew Israeli settlement products.
Responding to a query from Provost, Etsy said that "we have shared this information internally with the appropriate teams for review."
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