{"id":10823,"date":"2009-09-17T08:14:12","date_gmt":"2009-09-17T13:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=10823"},"modified":"2009-09-17T08:14:12","modified_gmt":"2009-09-17T13:14:12","slug":"jonathan-cook-how-us-tax-breaks-fund-israeli-settlers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=10823","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Cook: How US tax breaks fund Israeli settlers"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth<\/p>\n

17 September 2009<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Mishmeret<\/a>

Mishmeret Yesha, which stands for 'Guardians of the Jews of Judea, Samaria and Gaza', trains armed response teams in settlements to fight off Palestinian invaders, plants vines and olive trees around the West Bank to claim it for Jews and keep it away from Palestinians, and pushes the creation of jobs and development for Jews. It rejects working with or acknowledging any legitimacy to Palestinians. Members the group train in a school in Yitzhar. Photo: Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times<\/p><\/div>Israeli peace activists are planning to ratchet up their campaign against groups in the United States that raise money for settlers by highlighting how tax exemptions are helping to fund the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank.<\/p>\n

Gush Shalom, a small peace group that advocates Israel\u2019s withdrawal from the occupied territories, is preparing to send details to the US tax authorities questioning the charitable status of several organizations.<\/p>\n

Adam Keller, a spokesman, said these operations\u2019 tax-exempt status meant that \u201csettlement expansion is effectively being subsidized out of the pockets of the US taxpayer and government\u201d.<\/p>\n

The campaign is designed to increase pressure on Barack Obama, the US president, to demand action from Israel on his repeated calls \u2013 so far largely ignored \u2013 to end settlement building. Last week, Israel announced plans to build 455 new homes in West Bank settlements and 500 apartments in East Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

Mr Obama is expected to unveil a Middle East peace plan this month.<\/p>\n

[Read the report<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jonathan Cook in Nazareth 17 September 2009 Israeli peace activists are planning to ratchet up their campaign against groups in the United States that raise money for settlers by highlighting how tax exemptions are helping to fund the expansion … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-2Oz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10823"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10829,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10823\/revisions\/10829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}