Category: Genocide

  • Israeli forces struck the crowded area of Gaza that they designated a “safe zone” for the second time in two days on Wednesday, striking a school that was specifically marked as a humanitarian safe area in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. The strike on the UN-run al-Jaouni school killed at least 18 people and injured at least 18 more, according to initial reports by Palestinian…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israeli forces have killed at least 19 Palestinians in an attack on a designated “humanitarian safe zone” in southern Gaza, leaving massive craters where dozens of tents sheltering Palestinian families once stood. Israel dropped at least four bombs on the al-Mawasi refugee camp early Tuesday morning, hitting at least 20 tents, according to Al Jazeera. The attack wounded many…

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  • This week marks 23 years since George W. Bush declared a U.S.-led “war on terror” and the people of Afghanistan and Iraq are still suffering its consequences. After the U.S. invaded Iraq, an estimated half a million Iraqis were killed and at least 9.2 million were displaced. From 2003-2011, more than 4.7 million Iraqis suffered from moderate to severe food insecurity. Over 243,000…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • We speak to acclaimed historian, activist and filmmaker Tariq Ali about Western governments’ support for Israel’s war on Gaza and popular protest in support of Palestine, which Ali calls the “biggest divide we’ve seen in politics almost since the Vietnam War.” He argues that this division is “challenging the very nature of democracy” and the international rule of law. Ali also shares his analysis…

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  • Israeli officials are lobbying U.S. lawmakers to pressure South Africa into dropping its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, according to a report published Monday. Axios said it obtained a classified Israeli Foreign Ministry cable sent Monday to the country’s embassy in Washington, D.C. and all its U.S. consulates threatening consequences if South Africa…

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  • Israel is using famine and starvation in Gaza as a “genocidal tactic” borne from decades of Israeli occupation, a top UN adviser is warning the UN General Assembly. In a 24-page report, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Michael Fakhri warns that Israel’s starvation campaign is creating conditions akin to, if not already amounting to, famine in the Gaza Strip. He details how Israel…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel has attacked 16 schools in Gaza in the past six weeks, killing hundreds of Palestinians, rights group Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reported this week — as hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza should have been starting a new school year. According to Euro-Med Monitor, Israel has killed 217 Palestinians across 16 schools now functioning as shelters in Gaza since the beginning of…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Five questions, and a sixth:

    1. At what point does it become irresponsible not to compare Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinian people with the genocide westerners know best: the Nazi Holocaust?

    2. At what point does shielding Israel from the revulsion its actions naturally inspire not turn into complicity?

    3. At what point should western publics be offered proper historical context to make sense of Israel’s genocide: one that lets them understand how the Zionist movement was ideologically shaped by its exposure to ugly, century-old European ethnic nationalisms that culminated in Nazism, and how the Zionists chose to mirror those supremacist ideologies rather than reject them?

    4. At what point are we allowed to say that Israel cannot continue to exist in its current form, as a racist, settler-colonial state masquerading as the “state of the Jews”, and that it must be remade, as apartheid South Africa once was?

    5. And at what point are we permitted to prize Palestinian life over the “sensitivities” of Zionist supremacists?

    6. Is the answer: Never?

    The post At what point are we permitted to…? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • When I was in middle school, at a majority-white public school in Montana, I was given an assignment to interview a grandparent about their childhood. The questions were designed to help us better understand what we did and did not have in common with each other. When I interviewed my maternal grandmother, I asked her whether there was ever a bully at her school. Her answer surprised me…

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  • “I see promise in the connections between the 2020 protests against anti-Blackness and the 2023-2024 protests against Palestinian genocide,” Palestinian American scholar Zahi Zalloua told me this summer. “I’m very invested in the reignited Black-Palestinian solidarity movement; it points to the vibrancy of an anti-racist, anti-colonial Left.” In the face of the terrifying devastation…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, including the Jenin refugee camp, early on Friday, after a 10-day military operation that resulted in the killing of dozens of Palestinians in Jenin and left significant destruction to the city and camp’s streets and infrastructure. The invasion on Jenin was part of ‘Operation Summer Camps’…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Guardian reported this week a source from within the Foreign Office confirming what anyone paying close attention already knew.

    By last February, according to the source, Britain’s then Foreign Secretary, David Cameron, had received official advice that Israel was using British arms components to commit war crimes in Gaza. Cameron sat on that information for many months, concealing it from the House of Commons and the British public, while Israel continued to butcher tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians.

    Several points need making about the information provided to the Guardian:

    1. The source says that the advice to Cameron on Israeli war crimes was “so obvious” it could not have been misunderstood by him or anyone else in the previous government. Given that the new Labour government has been similarly advised, forcing it to partially suspend arms sales, one conclusion only is possible: Cameron is complicit in Israel’s war crimes. The International Criminal Court must immediately investigate him. Its British chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, needs to issue an arrest warrant for Cameron as soon as possible. No ifs or buts.

    2. Now in government, Labour has a legal duty to make clear the timeline of the advice Cameron received – and who else received it – to help the ICC in its prosecution of the former Foreign Secretary and other British officials for complicity in Israel’s atrocities.

    3. The current furore being kicked up over Labour’s suspension of a tiny fraction of arm sales to Israel needs to be put firmly in context. David Lammy, Cameron’s successor, is keen to evade any risk of complicity charges himself. Leaders of the previous government are denouncing his decision on arms sales only because it exposes their own complicity in war crimes. Their outrage is desperate arse-covering – something the media ought to be highlighting but isn’t.

    4. Labour needs to explain why, according to the source, the advice it has published has apparently been watered down from the advice Cameron received. As a result, Lammy has suspended 30 of 350 arms contracts with Israel – or 8 per cent of the total. He has avoided suspending the British components most likely to be assisting Israel in its war crimes: those used in Israel’s F-35 jets, made in the US.

    Why? Because that would incur the full wrath of the Biden administration. He and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, dare not take on Washington.

    In other words, Lammy’s decision has not only exposed the complicity of Cameron and the previous Tory leadership in Israeli war crimes. It also exposes Lammy and Starmer’s complicity. Put bluntly, following this week’s announcement, they are now 8 per cent less complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity than Cameron and the Tories were.

    5. There has been lots of fake indignation from Israel and its lobbyists, especially in Britain’s Jewish community, about how offensive it is that the government should announce its suspension of a small fraction of arms sales to support Israel’s genocide in Gaza the day six Israeli hostages were buried.

    The chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, for example, is incensed that the UK is limiting its arming of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, saying it “beggars belief”. He is thereby calling for the UK to trash international law, and ignore its own officials’ advice that Israel risks using British weapons to commit war crimes. He is demanding that the UK facilitate genocide.

    The British Board of Deputies, which claims to represent British Jews, has retweeted Mirvis’ comment. The Board’s president has been all over the airwaves similarly decryingLammy’s decision.

    Israel would, of course, have always found some reason to be appalled at the timing. There is an obviously far more important consideration than the bogus “sensitivities” of Israel and genocide apologists like Rabbi Mirvis. Each day the UK government delays banning all arms to Israel – not just a small percentage – more Palestinians in Gaza die and the more Britain contributes to Israel’s crimes against humanity.

    But equally to the point: according to the rules Starmer imposed on the Labour party – that Britain’s Jewish leaders get to define what offends Jews and what amounts to antisemitism, especially on issues concerning Israel – the Labour government is now, judged by those standards, antisemitic. You can’t have one set of rules for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left, and another for Starmer and the Labour right.

    Or rather you can. That is precisely the game the entire British establishment has been playing for the past seven years. A game that has facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza even more than the sales of British weapons to Israel.

    6. Many have dismissed the significance of recent rulings against Israel from the International Court of Justice – that Israel is “plausibly” committing genocide in Gaza and that its decades of occupation are illegal and a form of apartheid – as well as moves from the International Criminal Court to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal.

    Here we see how mistaken that approach is. Those legal decisions have set the two wings of the British establishment – the Tories and the Starmerite Labour right – at loggerheads. Both are now desperate in their different ways to distance themselves from charges of complicity.

    The rulings have also opened up a potential rift with Washington. The State Department spokesman has been shown having to frantically justify why the US is not banning its own arms sales.

    Admittedly, these are only small fissures in the western system of oligarchy. But those fissures are weaknesses – weaknesses that those who care about human rights, care about international law, care about stopping a genocide, and care about saving their own humanity can exploit. We have few opportunities. We need to grasp every single one of them.

    The post Six takeaways from the UK’s decision on arms sales to Israel the media are hiding first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel is on track to wipe out nearly the entire population of Gaza if global powers don’t intervene to stop its genocide, a UN expert has warned, based on estimates of the true death toll in Gaza from the first 11 months of the slaughter. “Reading the health experts, I am starting to think with horror that if it’s not stopped, Israel’s assault could end up exterminating almost the entire…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The United Nations is warning the humanitarian situation in Gaza remains “beyond catastrophic” as more than 1 million Palestinians in Gaza did not receive any food rations in August amid Israel’s relentless assault. Israel’s 11-month campaign has killed more than 15,000 children and enabled the besieged territory’s first polio outbreak in a quarter-century. INARA founder Arwa Damon just got back…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.


  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) with US Vice President Kamala Harris IMAGE/Independent/MSN/Duck Duck Go

    A quote, wrongly attributed to Abraham Lincoln, reads:

    You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

    Well, that may be true but what is also true is that you can fool most of the people (followers of politicians, political parties, religions, celebrities, stars, social media influencers, businesspersons, and so on) most of the time because followers place blind trust in their heroes, heroines, religious leaders, influencers, etc.

    This was visible during the quadrennial spectacles called Republican National Convention (July 15 to July 18, 2024, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin) and Democratic National Convention (August 19 to August 22, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois).

    Of course, there is a difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party: the Republicans are overtly hostile and will screw you unashamedly in broad day light without any kind of lubrication or apology.

    The Democrats are, in that respect, a bit less rough. They’ll beg your pardon; would plead with you to understand the criticality of the situation; but will screw you, nonetheless — of course, in a dim light with a bit of lubricant.

    Both the conventions took place during the ongoing Israeli slaughter, displacements, starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza since October 12, 2023. Both parties have supported the Israeli carnage. There is a division in the Democratic Party about supporting Israel, but the strong voices are few and many a times become victims of the Israel Lobby. One of the powerful group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) has spent more than $100 million in the 2024 election campaign: $15 million was spent to defeat US House Representatives Jamal Bowman who was critical of Israeli genocide of Gazans and $9 million to oust Cori Bush, another critic of Israeli war.

    Danaka Katovich, National Co-Director CodePink, describes how a woman outside the convention center calling out the names of the children killed in Gaza was ignored and laughed at.

    “There was a young woman that sat outside the exit of the Democratic National Convention on its third night reading the names of the children Israel has killed in the last ten months. She did it for hours, until her speaker battery died. She did it alone, taking care to pronounce every child’s name correctly and to say their age at the time of their murder. Without her, many of the DNC guests wouldn’t necessarily be confronted with the carnage members of their party is carrying out.

    “Outside the gates of the DNC I saw a young woman making sure the children of Palestine weren’t just numbers, and I saw people laughing at her for doing so. They laughed loudly and mocked her voice. They mocked the names of the dead babies. They yelled at her to leave them alone. They left the coronation ceremony livid that they had to even hear about Gaza.”

    Things were not too different inside the convention center, either.

    The DNC allowed the parents of one of the hostages held by Hamas to speak and highlight their plight but no Palestinian was permitted to talk about the killing of over 41,000 [1] Palestinians (33% of them children and 18.4% women) and about ceasefire. Even a speech which included support for Kamala Harris was disallowed.

    The speakers who did talk about Gaza and Palestine knew very well that their speeches were not going to make any difference.

    AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez):

    “She [Vice President Kamala Harris] is working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing hostages home.”

    After five and a half years in the US Congress and as an active member of the Democratic Party, progressive AOC [2] knows damn well that no efforts on part of Kamala or Biden administration is needed to secure a ceasefire — the US just has to stop money and arms flow to Israel and that’s it.

    On August 21, AOC posted on X:

    “Just as we must honor the humanity of hostages, so too must we center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment. To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The @DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.

    Bernie Sanders:

    “We must end this horrific war in Gaza. Bring home the hostages and demand an immediate ceasefire.”

    Two progressive members devoted a total of 31 words to the more than 10 month old continuing tragedy without mentioning the over 41,000 Palestinians killed!

    Senator Raphael Warnock (Georgia) talked about children’s (including Gaza’s) safety.

    I need all of my neighbors’ children to be okay — poor inner-city children in Atlanta and poor children in Appalachia.” “I need the poor children of Israel and the poor children of Gaza, I need Israelis and Palestinians, I need those in the Congo, those in Haiti, those in Ukraine. I need American children on both sides of the tracks to be OK. Because we are all God’s children.”

    The speakers, including (Barack Obama), touched on various topics, but as Lorraine Ali in Los Angeles Times observed,

    “But little was said about Gaza or Israel, and the silence spoke volumes. Let’s talk about everything but that war.”

    When hawkish Harris opened her mouth she roared about defending the security of the most powerful and technologically advanced country, Israel, against the broken Palestinians.

    “With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done.

    “Let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organization Hamas caused on Oct. 7.

    “Including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival. At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again.

    “The scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war such that – Israel is secure – the hostages are released – the suffering in Gaza ends – and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity.”

    Hamas of the Israeli occupied Gaza is a “terrorist organization” but there is no mention of who caused the loss of “so many innocent lives” or who is making “desperate, hungry people” flee for “safety, over and over again.”
    No mention of Israel. This, from one who is the would-be next President of the US.

    She said she and Biden are “working around the clock.” The clock must be out of order. The war will only stop when the US decides to halt its support.

    Back in July, Netanyahu addressed the US Congress. Many Democrats abstained, Harris included. But then the very next day, she met Netanyahu in private. Her facial expressions didn’t show she was angry in any manner. Now look at Obama’s picture with Netanyahu where Obama’s displeasure is visible. Netanyahu was trying to undermine Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

    The statement by Harris after her meeting with Netanyahu was the same diplomatic bullshit. [3]

    The conventions are basically a feel good exercise to create excitement and hope among supporters and to denigrate and make fun of the opposition. The Democrats did exactly that; made fun of former president and the current Republican Party presidential candidate, Donald Trump and frightened, rightly so, their followers/die hard supporters with fascism replacing “democracy” if Trump gets reelected.

    The Democrats, however, didn’t remind their supporters that they (the Democrats), when in power, do act in a fascist manner overseas with their wars, sanctions, embargoes, blockades, seizing money and gold belonging to countries they don’t like.

    On domestic issues the Democrats and Republicans differ on certain issues but both support capitalism and get plenty of money from the corporations. The hands of both parties are drenched with blood of foreigners, including children and women. Even within the US, the Democrats are cruel with many segments of the society. Republicans are openly cruel.

    Notes

    [1] After every Israeli deadly crime, the usual statement, actually a warning, from its major supporter, the United States, is,

    “We are engaged in intense diplomacy pretty much around the clock, with a very simple message: All parties must refrain from escalation.”

    That is, Israel’s murderous act should remain unpunished or else we’ll jump in to defend Israel. The above warning was for Iran to refrain from any retaliation against Israel which had assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also ordered killing of Lebanese militia group Hezbollah’s commander Fuad Shukr.

    [2] The Democratic leadership was using one of their presidents’ tactic by inviting AOC to speak and thus mainstreaming her but also blunting her voice. President Lyndon B. Johnson (1908 – 1973) said the following about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

    “It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”

    [3] A couple of paragraphs from Harris’ statement;

    “I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians.  And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over 2 million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity.

    “What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating — the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time.  We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies.  We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering.  And I will not be silent.”

    Lip service completed, let the one-sided hostilities continue …

    The post DNC 2024 and Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Between October and May, Israeli forces worked to create a wide “buffer zone” along Gaza’s eastern border, where they damaged or destroyed nearly everything, ranging from schools to agricultural land — making an area of destruction encompassing 16 percent of Gaza’s land, a new report finds. According to an analysis by Amnesty International released Thursday, Israel has cleared a strip of land…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu killed a ceasefire deal in July that would have seen the release of three of the six captives whose bodies were recovered by the Israeli military last week, a new report reveals as experts and people familiar with the negotiations are saying Netanyahu has been purposely sabotaging ceasefire negotiations for months. According to Israeli paper Yedioth…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Lawmakers in Portland, Maine voted unanimously on Wednesday to divest public funds from “all entities complicit” in Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip, making the city the first on the U.S. East Coast to take such a step. Sponsored by the Maine Coalition for Palestine and the Maine chapter of Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP), the newly approved resolution contains a “divestment list” of more…

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  • President Joe Biden read the tea leaves, and, from the periphery of the political system, Vice President (VP) Kamala Harris abruptly emerged as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States of America. The American public knew that Kamala Harris was VP, was not sure of how to pronounce her first name, and was not familiar with her voyage to the top spot. By announcing  that the convention theme “’For the People, For Our Future,”’ will further introduce Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz to the nation and lay out their bold vision for America, including how they will fight for people, our freedoms, and our future,” the Democratic Party convention unraveled as a solution to the mystery of “who is presidential candidate Kamala Harris?”

    Grandnieces explained how to pronounce her first name and an assortment of previous well-respected Democrat luminaries detailed why they love and we should love candidate Harris. Finally, the real-life Kamala Harris took the stage, eloquently traced the course of her life and outlined her recommended policies, including the awaited “ticking bomb” that has divided the Democratic Party  ─ handling of the Middle East crisis. Did the real Kamala Harris stand up?

    To the eager Democrats, more from being influenced by the engineered media than what they saw, Kamala Harris was convincing, presenting herself as a patriotic and  dedicated American, fighting  for people’s rights, and demonstrating ability to handle the previously mentioned critical issue facing the Democratic Party ─ the Middle East crisis. Driven by the manipulated euphoria, the followers of the Democratic Party ruled that the real Kamala Harris stood up.

    A surface phenomena!

    Kamala Harris did not have to express herself with the narratives that she used. Her presentation reinforced the reasons that guide those who have been driven to the Trump candidacy — Democratic support for NATO  and foreign wars, liberal hypocrisy, promotion of the military-industrial complex, interference in other nations, and claiming  the moral high ground. Candidate Harris may have harmed her candidacy. Parse the words.

    Before a delegation, chanting Trump rhetoric of “USA, USA, USA,” VP Harris said, “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”

    U.S. foreign policy defends its global hegemony — economic, cultural, and militarist — against perceived opponents in China and Russia. Harris’ dialogue prompted many questions:

    Why does Israel deserve unique attention? How does Israel fit in with U.S. objectives and U.S. worldwide conflicts any more than Egypt?
    Why does a president seeker single out support for a nation, which, if it disappeared, would not change U.S. life, U.S. global strategy, or U.S. direction by one monkey tail?
    Why defend apartheid Israel in its theft of Palestinian lands, dehumanizing  the Palestinian people, and murdering their children?
    Where are the adversaries that Israel must defend itself against? Are they Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran, who have no offensive capabilities, and  — no air force, no tanks, no navies and no desire to be vanquished? [Iran has an aged and minor air force, but it has a navy and hypersonic missiles; some military analysts consider that Hezbollah defeated Israel — DV ed]

    By some weird (favored word these days) thinking, adopting Israel’s problems as America’s problems is an ordinary consideration. Israel’s adversaries are immediately America’s adversaries. Problems that the U.S. has with China and Russia receive no attention in Israel; hey, Russia and China are two of Israel’s favored partners.

    If Kamala Harris does not want “the people of Israel to again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival,” shouldn’t she warn Israel that it is preferable that a terrorist organization called Zionism does not inflict upon the people of Palestine the horrors it has caused them for 75 years, including unspeakable violence against the population and massacres of infants? Unlike Israel, which has killed many American civilians and service people (USS Liberty), Hamas has not done any damage to Americans and, from an American perspective, cannot be  designated a terrorist organization, no more that the U.S., who committed several atrocities in Vietnam and Iraq, can be labelled a terrorist organization.

    Reading a document scripted by AIPAC, became evident by the additional Harris comment, “At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”

    This is the usual and cunning  Zionist practice of presenting everything with the “good guy” and “bad guy” balanced approach. Keep up the hopes. Don’t be concerned that Israel is favored, there are also elements who realize that “what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating.” Note that Harris delineates Hamas committing devastation upon Israelis, but makes no mention of who caused the devastation in Gaza and uses “many innocent lives lost,” rather than “innocent people murdered.” Who promoted “desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again, and who induced “the scale of suffering that is heartbreaking.” The culprit Israel is never mentioned.

    For the umpteenth time, we hear, “With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock because now is the time to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done,” and “President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.” Mention of Palestinians’ “right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination” has been an annual ritual and Democrat’s doctrine for decades. The “time to get a hostage deal and cease-fire done” was nine months ago, before tens of thousands of Palestinians were slaughtered and almost all of them were several times displaced.

    The heir to Anthony Blinken, the most incapable Secretary of State in all U.S. history, will probably be saying the same in year 2030, except for replacing the words “Palestinian people,” with the words, “the  ten surviving Palestinians.”

    By some weird (favored word these days) thinking, the convention invited the parents of a Zionist American, who was captured by Hamas, to plead for his release. The parents stated he had migrated to Israel to be with his people. Let’s place this in perspective.

    This is a person who grew up in the United States, received his education and training in the United States, speaks English. and identifies with American culture.  He has no identification with Israelis, who speak Hebrew, eat different foods, and have a different history and culture. Does he share much with a Moroccan or Tunisian Jew? Are these his people? Isn’t he American?

    This person deserted the nation that nurtured him and, for no adequate reason, assisted a despotic nation in its genocide of the Palestinians. The Americans of Palestinian descent, murdered, harassed, and detained by Israel received no attention.

    VP Harris continued her pandering to the military-industrial complex with the brilliant remarks, “And know this: I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists,” followed with, “Trump, on the other hand, threatened to abandon NATO. He encouraged Putin to invade our allies, he said Russia could “do whatever the hell they want… as President, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies.”

    In the 2016 election, a major part of the American electorate rejected the conventional wisdoms of using NATO for offensive purposes, enhancing the military-industrial complex, and waging constant wars. In 2024, eight years later, the Dems still do not realize why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election.

    All that Kamala Harris said could have been iterated in a more politically preferred manner — stopping wars rather than helping others in wars, ending the Middle East strife rather than assisting in genocide, finding ways to gain Iran and DPRK friendships rather than threatening them, striving to reduce conflict rather than strengthening NATO.

    Moving voters away from the Democratic Party emerged from a hypocritical statement, “…to be clear, my entire career, I’ve only had one client: the people.” If so, why did Harris pander to one class, the middle class, by offering, “Well, instead of a Trump tax hike, we will pass a middle-class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million Americans.”

    Tax cuts are controversial and usually occur during times of recessions. Is Harris saying that the present tax rates, which are the lowest since World War II, are still not sufficiently low, and that the Biden administration ignored the middle class and will make amends? Is it wise to cut taxes and increase consumer demand during an inflationary period? This suggested tax cut is a disaster for the American economy. Not wanting to drift this article too far from its central issue, I’ll defer discussion of the proposed tax cut for another article.

    Number one issue

    There are a multitude of reasons that the U.S. participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people is the number one issue in the U.S. today and, unless that issue is justly satisfied, it does not matter who gets elected.  Supporting the genocide,

    • Turns the Declaration of Independence and Constitution into words on paper, which are used to benefit an elite and cajole the masses.
    • Reduces democracy, human rights, freedom, justice, and right to self-determination to farce.
    • Intensifies the divisions that have already polarized America.
    • Drives many Americans to despair, unable to comprehend how an obvious genocide by an obvious tyrant is supported and permitted. The American government and its mass of citizens exhibit insensitivity to the genocide, insensibility to the forces driving it, lack of concern for the Palestinian people, and have bewildered the knowing America.
    • Betrays American sacrifices in World War II, where the U.S. fought against a tyranny and now supports its almost identical lookalike.
    • Ratifies the use of those killed in Nazi labor camps to justify the mass killings of innocent Palestinians.
    • Increases resentment to Jews and reinforces charges that Jews manipulate power and control media and courts. I know people who now refuse to socialize with Jews unless they are assured these Jews are not pro-Israel.
    • Disturbs American youth who cannot understand how a legitimate and necessary protest against genocide becomes charged as an anti-Semitic diatribe and their pleas for human tights turns them into anti-Semites.

    Conclusion

    Political pundits predict Kamal Harris will lose the election if she shows a neutral attitude in the Middle East crisis and indicates a possibility of not favoring apartheid Israel. She might win the election if she allows Israel to exterminate the Palestinian people and cause massive upheavals that involve the American people, which could include future civil strife. Is this possible, a minor nation is able to give a major political Party in the world’s most powerful nation a sinister Faustian bargain that degrades the United States to a historical position below that of Attila the Hun? Can any American accept this bargain, especially when using American muscle to counter the genocide is a simple solution and the correct procedure? Are apartheid and genocide the norm and acceptable?

    Many of us have become ashamed of being Jews. Must we now become ashamed of being Americans?

    The post The Democratic Party Conventional Convention first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has doubled down on his insistence that the Israeli military permanently occupy Gaza’s border with Egypt, further obstructing ceasefire negotiations as protests for a hostage release deal erupt in Israel. On Monday, Netanyahu hosted a long press conference in which he pledged not to “surrender to pressure” that he strike a ceasefire deal.

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  • An independent United Nations expert warned Monday that “Israel’s genocidal violence risks leaking out of Gaza and into the occupied Palestinian territory as a whole” as Western governments, corporations, and other institutions keep up their support for the Israeli military, which stands accused of grave war crimes in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. Francesca Albanese, the U.N.

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  • Left movements are engaged in some of the hardest work there is — politically, emotionally and spiritually — because it involves changing peoples’ perceptions of the world, fighting against a status quo that is accepted as a given. That is true for abolitionists, for queer and trans people fighting for their rights, for the Land Back movement, and for all those fighting against capitalism.

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  • The Israeli military killed nearly a dozen people Sunday in its latest bombing of a school-turned-shelter in the Gaza Strip, an attack that came amid limited pauses aimed at allowing relief workers to vaccinate Palestinian children against reemergent polio. Israel’s strike on the Safad school in Gaza City killed at least 11 people, including a woman and a girl, a spokesperson for Gaza’s civil…

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  • As Israel tightens its siege, medical supplies in the Gaza Strip are running out, and doctors confront patients with unimaginable injuries. The orthopedist Hani Bseso operated on his niece Ahed’s leg, after a shell plowed through their home. Bleeding profusely, Ahed remained in an agonizing daze, as relatives carried her downstairs. Reaching a hospital was impossible. So Bseso amputated her…

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  • Despite much grandstanding in the Biden administration about halting specific arms shipments to Israel over feigned concerns about how they might be used (inflicting death is the expected form), US military supplies have been restored with barely a murmur.  In a report in Haaretz on August 29, a rush of weapons to Israel has been noticed since the end of July.

    August proved to be the second busiest month for US arms deliveries to Israel’s Nevatim Airbase since the October 2023 attacks by Hamas.  This has taken place alongside an increased concentration of US forces in the region since Israel’s assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh at the end of last month.  Two aircraft carriers, a guided missile submarine, and deployments of advanced F-22 stealth aircraft in Qatar, have featured in a show intended to deter Tehran from any retaliatory strikes.

    After examining open-source aviation data from the end of July, Haaretz concluded that the issue of delayed shipments of US weapons had “been solved.”  Dozens of flights by US military transport planes, along with civilian and military Israeli cargo planes, mostly from Qatar and the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, had been noted.  Demands by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his July 24 speech to Congress that US military aid be “dramatically” expedited to “end the war in Gaza and help prevent a broader war in the Middle East”, had been heeded.

    On August 26, Israel received its 500th aerial shipment of weapons and military supplies from the United States since the latest war’s commencement.  The 500 flights have also been supplemented by 107 sea shipments, altogether facilitating the transfer of 50,000 tons of military equipment in an initiative between the US military, Israel’s Defence Ministry’s Directorate of Production and Procurement and Mission to the United States, the IDF’s planning Directorate and the Israeli Air Force.

    During the same month, the Democratic National Convention, which saw no debate about the candidature of Kamala Harris as its choice for presidential candidate, had tepidly promised some agitation on continued arms to Israel.  Ahead of the event, the Uncommitted movement’s 30 delegates, picked by voters alarmed by US support for Israel’s war machine in Gaza, were hoping to convince the 4,000 pledged delegates Harris had captured to add an arms embargo to its campaign in order to induce a ceasefire.

    A petition by the group sought two outcomes: the adding of language to both the party and campaign platform “that unequivocally supports a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and a cessation of supplying weapons for Israel’s assault and occupation against Palestinians.”

    These wishes proved much too salty for the apparatchiks and party managers.  The Democratic Party’s 2024 national platform ironically enough begins with an effusive “land acknowledgment” to “the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations” but plays it safe regarding an ally very much the product of territorial seizure, violence and occupation.  Despite mutterings in the party room about a split between moderate and progressive members on Israel’s conduct of the war, the topic of a ceasefire never made it to the committee hearings when the document was drafted.

    In firmly insisting on continued US support for Israel in its war against Hamas, much is made in the platform about US efforts to forge a way that will see a release of the hostages, “a durable ceasefire”, the easing of “humanitarian suffering in Gaza” and the “possible normalization between Israel and key Arab states, together with meaningful progress and a political horizon for the Palestinian people.”  The language is instructive: the Palestinians are objects of pitiful charity, at the mercy of Israel, the US, and various Arab states.  Like toddlers, they are to be managed, steered, guided, their political choices forever mediated through the wishes of other powers.

    With Israel remaining Washington’s paramount ally in the Middle East, that process of steering and managing the unruly Palestinians has been, thus far, lethal.  During her first interview given after the convention (she has an aversion to them), Harris scotched any suggestions on going wobbly on Israel.  “I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defence and its ability to defend itself, and that’s not going to change,” she told CNN’s Dana Bush.  In what has become a standard refrain, Harris lamented that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” while acknowledging Israel’s right to self-defence.

    When asked whether she would alter President Biden’s policy on furnishing military assistance to Israel, “No” came the reply.  “We have to get a deal done. The war must end, and we must get a deal that is about getting the hostages out.  I’ve met with the families of the American hostages.  Let’s get the hostages out.  Let’s get the ceasefire done.”

    This middle-management lingo says much about Harris’s worldview; in wishing to “get the ceasefire done”, she is encouraging a range of factors that will make sure nothing of the sort will be achieved.  The Netanyahu formula has worked its usual black magic.  Hence, the lack of an arms embargo, and the continued, generous supply to the IDF from their largest military benefactor.

    The post A Return to Form: Expediting US Arms to Israel first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Israel’s ongoing military onslaught on the northern West Bank cities of Jenin, Tulkarem, and Tubas has now entered its third day. The Israeli army has made a point of describing it as the largest-scale invasion of the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, a message largely meant for its Israeli audience, and perhaps also meant to terrorize Palestinians as a form of psychological…

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  • This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

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  • Israel withdrew an evacuation order in Gaza for the first time this week — the day after the Biden administration sent Israeli officials a memo urging restraint on the sweeping evacuation orders that have displaced 90 percent of Gaza’s population so far. On Thursday, the Israeli military announced that, on August 29 and 30, Palestinians could return to certain parts of central Gaza that were…

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  • Vice President Kamala Harris has sparked fury after saying that she would not break from President Joe Biden’s policies toward Israel and its U.S.-sponsored genocide of Palestinians in Gaza if she were elected president this fall. In an interview with CNN on Thursday, Harris said she would not stop sending Israel weapons and that Israel “has a right to defend itself” — after it has killed…

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  • Israel’s Ministry of Defense acknowledged a landmark on August 26: The Israeli military had received its 500th airlift of supplies from the United States since the attack by Hamas and other Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023. According to the ministry, those flights and more than a hundred sea shipments have delivered over 50,000 tons of military equipment, including armored vehicles…

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