[Settler] banks fear new international sanctions over financing settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, particularly measures planned by Britain, […] Haaretz reported Wednesday, Anadolu reports.

The newspaper said the Association of Banks in [occupied Palestine] had prepared an assessment warning that anticipated British sanctions could affect [settlers’] financial institutions.

The measures could target entities involved in settlement construction or financing, extending beyond those implicated in violence by […] occupiers, according to the report.

Banks are declining to clarify whether they will provide guarantees to contractors seeking to participate in government tenders for the E1 settlement project between Jerusalem and the Maale Adumim settlement.

Located east of Jerusalem, the project aims to connect Maale Adumim to the city through the confiscation of Palestinian land, separating occupied East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank.

On Sept. 8, 12 countries, including Britain, France, Spain and Canada, announced plans to prohibit trade with […] settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Britain also announced plans to expand its sanctions framework to cover individuals and entities involved in settlement construction or financing.

According to Haaretz, the British measures require legislation that could take six to nine months to pass.

Representatives of the banking association have met with officials from [the occupation’s] Foreign Ministry, central bank and Strategic Affairs Ministry to discuss concerns over the potential consequences.

The association’s assessment warned that sanctions, if approved, could affect financial institutions linked to settlement expansion. International financial institutions could also tighten scrutiny of related transactions before the legislation takes effect.

The Bank […] expressed concern over the threat of sanctions, saying in a statement that the range of scenarios and implications is broad.

Banks have yet to clarify their position on financing or providing guarantees to construction companies participating in the E1 tenders.

“We have to be patient for another month and hope this issue calms down. Things may look different a week after the elections,” Haaretz quoted a banking source as saying, referring to [a] parliamentary vote scheduled for Oct. 27.

On Sept. 27, […] Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara postponed the deadline for submitting bids for the E1 construction tender by one month, leaving the remaining procedures until after the Knesset elections.

[The] authorities had planned to put 2,167 settlement housing units out to tender on Oct. 25, in addition to 1,234 units included in a separate tender in August, bringing the total to 3,401.

About 750,000 […] occupiers live in 194 settlements and 400 settlement outposts across the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, according to official Palestinian figures.

The UN has repeatedly affirmed that […] settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are illegal under international law, warning that they undermine prospects for a two-state solution.

I was dreading writing this since I did not want to risk starting any drama, but I don’t know what else to do anymore after seeing the moderating staff reject my report.

It’s truly undeniable that these last three years have been stressful for all of us — most of all Palestinians — so some cynicism is to be expected. That being said, tolerating anti-Jewish sentiment like this does not help any of us either. All that it really does is play into the Herzlians’ hands, capitulating to their alarmism, and makes our spaces less welcoming to Jewish critics of Zionism. I know that we’re all tired of Herzlians constantly abusing accusations of antisemitism, but going so far as to tolerate that phenomenon only gives them exactly what they want to see.

And for the record, yes, I do think that bashing Germans or Italians or the Japanese per se during World War II would have been wrong, because it misidentifies ethnicity as the real problem and needlessly erases the Germans, Italians, and Japanese folk who opposed the Axis. It would have been easier to understand coming from the people whom the Axis oppressed, but even so I would have gently discouraged that kind of thinking. I refuse to play ethnic supremacists’ games by indulging in a little ethnocentrism myself.

I am not going to ragequit Lemmygrad.ml again, but I have to be honest and admit that tolerance for toxicity like this only makes me less interested in using this forum and convinces me that I was correct to limit my usage anyway. That isn’t meant to be a threat; if you truly see nothing wrong with speech like this then I guess that there’s really not much that I can do to stop you. But however you feel about that, I’ll do what feels natural to me and be around less and less.

We’ve written before about Daphy Michel, a person ICE dumped on a freezing 20℉ degree sidewalk who, tragically, did not survive this maltreatment. We reported on this in part because the Allegheny county medical examiner’s office ruled her death a homicide. That is, ICE is directly responsible for Michel’s death.

Now, her surviving family is teeing up to sue ICE and related governmental agencies in an attempt to have a court truly hold them responsible for this homicide. As important as Michel’s case is, we hope [that] everyone remembers [that] this was not an isolated incident. It is part of a pattern of systemic abuse and neglect by DHS/ICE that has led to the deaths of dozens of vulnerable people. Perhaps Michel’s family can get a court to shine a light on these hidden abuses, too.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

Jose Trinidad Rojas Pilego, a witness to the fatal ICE shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Arajuo during a traffic stop in Houston, TX, was ordered released from ICE custody this week after a judge ruled his due process rights were being violated. The same judge blocked Rojas Pilego’s deportation in July.

The testimony of Rojas Pilego as well as the other passenger in his car directly contradicts the U.S. gov’t’s narrative of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s murder. Rojas Pliego described the government’s account as “a lie.”

Similar to Salgado Araujo, Rojas Pilego entered the U.S. decades ago and is attempting to gain legal status. If ICE agents want to detain him again, they must give noticef first and hold a pre-detention hearing.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

The current federal régime has officially ended Temporary Protected Status for Haitians, marking the latest attack on a group of people the state has persecuted in various ways for over 200 years. The ending of TPS comes in spite of the fact that Haiti is currently listed by the U.S. State Department as a “Do Not Travel” country due to extreme violence and instability—the reason TPS was extended to Haitians in the first place.

At the ICE offices in Blue Ash, Ohio, immigrants and neighbors showed up in solidarity as Haitians were called in on a Sunday morning to update their status, the first step in deportation proceedings. One attendee, Bethany Rogers, said she “came to bear witness to a great wrong.”

Viles Dorsainvil, executive director of the Springfield Haitian Support Center, said: “The American people have to know that if we are here, it is because the foreign policies of those big countries have failed our country and make it a hell for us not to be able to live in there. If you put my house on fire, you would have expected that I would come to your yard. That’s the reality.”

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)

The U.S. government has made no protest against the latest […] terrorist war crimes against Lebanon, after a day when Israeli bombs and rockets killed 500 Lebanese people. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris continue to arm and support Israel. Donald Trump cheers on Benyamin Netanyahu. The Pentagon has sent more troops to the region.

Then, according to reports repeated in U.S. media, the Israelis used 80 of the U.S.-supplied 2,000-pound bombs, “bunker busters,” to kill Hezbollah Secretary- General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Sept. 28. Both Biden and Harris called this war crime a “measure of justice.” That means U.S. imperialism supplied the weapons and gave the murder political support — even as the U.S. officials claimed to be urging de-escalation and negotiation.

Even before Israel’s new round of mass terrorism, there had been no indication during the entire period after October 7, 2023, that the U.S. government would withhold its support from Israel. Despite Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian population of Gaza — a genocide observed by billions of people worldwide — Washington supported the Zionist state.

During that entire period of the slaughter in Gaza, the U.S. government has continued to fund weapons to keep the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) fully supplied. U.S. diplomats have given Israel full protection in the United Nations. The people of most of the world have observed the U.S. government’s complicity in genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass murders of civilians, including tens of thousands of children.

This situation is no surprise. Except for the aftermath of the 1956 British/French/Israeli seizure of the Suez Canal and the Sinai Peninsula, the U.S. has supported Israel in every war crisis situation during the 76 years of Israel’s existence with arms, intelligence and diplomacy.

It is hard to imagine a situation in which the U.S., the Pentagon, the CIA and the U.S. State Department would withdraw support from Israel. This is especially true if there were any possibility that the Israelis might be defeated, because such a defeat would encourage the liberation struggle in the region and threaten key interests of U.S. imperialism.

Elements in the U.S. military or civilian leadership may oppose involving the U.S. military in an Israeli initiative, because a wider war in West Asia would weaken U.S. intervention elsewhere. They might argue that NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine with Russia is more important or that China presents the biggest danger to U.S. world hegemony.

But there are certainly elements in the U.S. state apparatus or in the government (for example, the Congress members who gave standing ovations to Netanyahu) who agitate for a war against the Axis of Resistance and especially against Iran. These elements even urge the Israeli offensive as a way of convincing those forces Washington considers its “enemies” that no crime is too great for Israel or the U.S. to commit. Israeli aggression then becomes part of the U.S. offensive against Russia and China.

All of Washington’s strategists consider Hezbollah, the Syrian government in Damascus, the Ansarullah forces in Yemen, the guerrillas in Iraq, the Islamic Republic of Iran — called the Axis of Resistance — enemies of [neo]imperialist interests.

Try to find a single good post here.