A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
(Full Story)
Search This Blog
Back to 500BC.
==========================
Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Thursday, January 31, 2019
Amnesty accuses online travel sites of profiting from Israel's occupation
Amnesty
International says websites like Booking.com and Expedia fail to tell
tourists the West Bank and East Jerusalem are occupied
Tourists
participate in a two-hour anti-terror course at the Caliber 3 shooting
range, near the Israeli settlement of Efrat in the occupied West Bank,
on 18 July 2017 (AFP)
Wednesday 30 January 2019
An Israeli official has accused Amnesty International of anti-Semitism
after the rights group released a detailed report accusing online
tourism companies of profiting from listings in illegal Israeli
settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Gilad Erdan, Israel's minister of public security and strategic affairs, tweeted that
Amnesty "has become a leader in the anti-Semitic BDS campaign",
referring to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement for
Palestinian rights.
Erdan said the group's report is "an outrageous attempt to distort facts, deny Jewish heritage and delegitimise Israel".
The minister also asked his staff to examine the possibility of
preventing Amnesty International staff from entering Israel and
expelling those already there.
Many tourists we met during our study did not know that this is occupied territoires- Laith Abu Zayed, Amnesty campaigner
Earlier on Wednesday, Amnesty International called on Airbnb,
Booking.com, Expedia and TripAdvisor to remove home- and hotel-rental
listings in Israeli settlements and stop profiting from "war crimes" by
offering services there.
"In doing business with settlements, all four companies are contributing
to, and profiting from, the maintenance, development and expansion of
illegal settlements, which amount to war crimes under international
criminal law," the group said in its Destination: Occupation report.
'Misleading information'
The report studies several tourism listings, including in the West Bank
towns of Hebron, Khirbet Susiya, Khan Al-Ahmar, Qaryut and Jalud, as
well in as the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan.
About three million Palestinians currently live in the West Bank and
East Jerusalem, while around 600,000 Israeli settlers - including
200,000 in East Jerusalem alone - live in the same area in settlements
that are against international law.
Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the
1967 war. It later unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in a move never
recognised by the International community.
Laith Abu Zayed, an Amnesty campaigner, told Middle East Eye that online
tourism websites help Israel make its settlements "look normal" - and
they do not make it clear that these areas are considered occupied under
International law.
"Many tourists we met during our study did not know that this is [the]
occupied territories. They thought it's part of Israel because websites
such as Expedia and Airbnb list these places as part of Israel and this
is a piece of misleading information," Abu Zayed said.
READ MORE ►
Following a years-long campaign by Palestinian rights groups, Airbnb, a
privately owned US-based company founded in 2008, announced in November
that it would remove approximately 200 home-rental listings in Israeli
settlements in the occupied West Bank.
While the move was welcomed by Palestinians and their supporters, it was
immediately denounced by defenders of Israel, including members of the
Israeli government. On Wednesday, Erdan said that Airbnb's decision was
an act of surrender to the BDS movement, which "now comes with a
price".
However, Amnesty's report found that Airbnb's commitment did not extend
to 100 listings in settlements in East Jerusalem, "even though this too
is occupied territory".
It also said that as of January, Airbnb had not yet implemented its
decision and was still listing properties in the occupied Palestinian
territories.
Listings near villages slated for demolition
Abu Zayed said that of about four million tourists that travelled to
Israel last year, 45 percent of them visited the West Bank and East
Jerusalem.
“It is a big percentage and it contributed to profiting [off] the
occupation - the hotels and restaurants - and at the same time ignoring
Palestinians," Abu Zayed said.
"Take the Shiloh tourist site, for example. Last
week a Palestinian was shot and killed by an Israeli settler in the
area, which is surrounded by settlements listed by online companies. Tourists will never hear about that."
The shooter in that attack was from the Adei Ad settlement outpost, a
short distance from the Shiloh tourist site and the settlement of the
same name, in the north of the West Bank.
In its report, Amnesty noted that Israel has constructed many of its
settlements close to archaeological sites as part of an attempt to
explicitly link the modern State of Israel to ancient Jewish history.
Shiloh is a regarded by Jews as a holy site - with artifacts discovered there allegedly datingback to ancient Judea - but Abu Zayed said that a mosque had also been there for hundreds of years.
"Israel downplays or ignores the significance of non-Jewish periods at archaeological and historic sites," the report said.