radiofree.asia

Category: Genocide

  • Something’s Coming, We Don’t Know What It Is But It Is Going To Be Bad

    With a click, with a shock
    Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch
    Something’s coming, don’t know when but it’s soon . . .

    — “Something’s Coming,” West Side Story, lyrics by S. Sondheim, music by L. Bernstein.

    Shock should not be the word, but when World War III breaks fully loose many who are now sleeping will be shocked.  The war has already started, but its full fury and devastation are just around the corner.  When it does, Tony’s singular fate in West Side Story will be the fate of untold millions.

    It is a Greek tragedy brought on by the terrible hubris of the United States, its NATO accomplices, and the genocidal state of Israel and the Zionist terrorists who run it.

    Tony felt a miracle was due, but it didn’t come true for him except to briefly love Maria and then get killed as result of a false report, and only a miracle will now save the world from the cataclysm that is on the way, whether it is initiated by intent, a false report, an accident, or the game of nuclear chicken played once too often.

    Let us hope but not be naïve.  The signs all point in one direction.  The gun on the wall in the first act of this tragic play is primed to go off in the final one.  Every effort to avoid this terrible fate by seeking peace and not war has been rejected by the U.S. and its equally insane allies.  Every so-called red line laid down by Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinians, and their allies has been violated with impunity and blatant arrogance.  But impunity has its limits and the dark Furies of vengeance will have their day.

    “It is the dead, not the living,” said Antigone, “who make the longest demands.”  Their ghostly voices cry out to be avenged.

    I wish I were not compelled by conscience to write this, but it seems clearly evident to me that we stand on the edge of an abyss.  The fate of the world rests in the hands of leaders who are clearly psychotic and who harbor death wishes.  It’s not terribly complex.  Netanyahu and Biden are two of them.  Yes, like other mass killers, I think they love their children and give their dog biscuits to eat.  But yes, they also are so corrupted in their souls that they relish war and the sense of false power and prestige it brings them.  They gladly kill other people’s children.  They can defend themselves many times over, offer all kinds of excuses, but the facts speak otherwise.  This is hard for regular people to accept.

    The great American writer who lived in exile in France for so many years and who was born 100 years ago this month, James Baldwin, wrote an essay – “The Creative Process” – in which he addressed the issue of how becoming a normal member of society dulls one to the shadow side of personal and social truths.  He wrote:

    And, in the same way that to become a social human being one modifies and suppresses and, ultimately, without great courage, lies to oneself about all one’s interior, uncharted chaos, so have we, as a nation, modified or suppressed and lied about all the darker forces in our history.

    And lie and suppress we still do today.

    Imagine, if you will, that Mexico has invaded Texas with the full support of the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian governments.  Their weapons are supplied by these countries and their drone and missile attacks on the U.S. are coordinated by Russian technology.  The Seven Mile Bridge in Florida has been attacked.  The U.S. Mexican border is dotted with Russian troops on bases with nuclear missiles aimed at U.S. cities.

    It’s not hard to do.  That is a small analogy to what the U.S./NATO is doing to Russia.

    Do you think the United States would not respond with great force?

    Do you think it would not feel threatened with nuclear annihilation?

    How do you think it would respond?

    The U.S/NATO war against Russia via Ukraine is accelerating by the day.  The current Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk region has upped the ante dramatically.  After denying it knew in advance of this Ukrainian invasion of Russia, the demented U.S. President Joseph Biden said the other day when asked about the fighting in Kursk, “I’ve spoken with my staff on a regular basis probably every four or five hours for the last six or eight days. And it’s — it’s creating a real dilemma for Putin.  And we’ve been in direct contact — constant contact with — with the Ukrainians.”  Do you think Kamala Harris was kept in the dark?

    Now how do you think the Russians are going to respond?  How many red lines will they allow the U.S. to cross without massive retaliation?  And what kind of retaliation?

    Switch then to the Middle East where the Iranians and their allies are preparing to retaliate to Israel’s attacks on their soil. No one knows when but it seems soon.  Something is coming and it won’t be pretty.  Will it then ignite a massive war in the region with the U.S. and Israel pitted against the region?  Will nuclear weapons be used?  Will the wars in Ukraine/Russia and the Middle East join into what will be called WW III?

    While the U.S. continues to massively arm Israel, Russian is arming its ally Iran and likely training them in the use of those weapons as the U.S. is doing in Ukraine. The stage is set.  We enter the final act.

    Natanyahu wants and needs war to survive.  So he thinks.  Psychotic killers always do.

    The signs all point in one direction.  No one should be shocked if the worst comes to pass.

    “Phone’ll jingle, door’ll knock, open the latch.”

    If you have time.

    The post Something’s Coming, We Don’t Know What It Is But It Is Going To Be Bad first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Death Count in Gaza Surpasses 40,000 — With True Death Toll Likely Higher

    The official death toll from Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has surpassed 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry — but with thousands missing under the rubble or dead from disease or starvation, the true death toll is likely far higher. According to the health ministry, as of Thursday, officials had counted 40,005 killed and 92,401 wounded by Israel. This includes at least…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Has Killed 2,100 Babies Under 2 Years Old in Gaza, Rights Group Says

    Israeli forces have killed thousands of newborns and babies in Gaza in the last 10 months of its genocide, a rights group reports after Israel killed a pair of twin newborns who were just 4 days old on Tuesday. According to Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, Israel has killed 2,100 Palestinian babies under the age of two since October, out of a total of 17,000 children killed.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Poll: Harris Would Gain Support in Key States If She Backed Israel Arms Embargo

    Democrats could drive support in key swing states this fall if Vice President Kamala Harris calls for an end to weapons transfers to Israel amid its genocide in Gaza, new polling finds even as the Biden administration doubles down on its military support of Israel. The latest Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project/YouGov poll released Wednesday finds that large…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Palestinian Reverend Calls on US Faith Leaders to Oppose Israel’s Genocide

    Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to the official death toll, though the true casualty figure is likely far higher with thousands of the dead unaccounted for. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have raided towns and villages across the occupied West Bank, and settlers under military protection have repeatedly stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in recent days.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Palestinian Reverend Munther Isaac to U.S. Faith Leaders: If You Are Silent, You Approve of Genocide


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Palestinian Reverend Munther Isaac to Faith Leaders in U.S.: If You Are Silent, You Approve of Genocide

    Revisaac

    Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, according to the official death toll, though the true casualty figure is likely far higher with thousands of the dead unaccounted for. Meanwhile, Israeli forces have raided towns and villages across the occupied West Bank, and settlers under military protection have repeatedly stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in recent days. This all comes as the State Department on Tuesday announced the approval of $20 billion in new arms sales to Israel, including scores of fighter jets. We speak with the Reverend Munther Isaac, pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, who joins us in our New York studio for an in-depth conversation. He is in the United States on a speaking tour to encourage faith leaders to oppose U.S. support for Israel’s onslaught. “We’re still calling for a ceasefire, and it feels like we’re still calling for the world to humanize the people of Gaza, to humanize Palestinians,” says Isaac. “If you’re silent, knowing how your money is being spent, that means you approve.”


    This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • On the Call Not to Protest in Chicago

    Vice President Kamala Harris in August 2021. (White House /Erin Scott)

    Two college professors who studied and lived in the 1960s recently published an  opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times urging dissidents not to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The first paragraph is a stark example of uber-liberals suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome:

    A collection of fringe radical groups are calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August at the Democratic National Convention — a ‘March on the DNC’ for Palestine. We study political movements, and we’ve participated in more than a few ourselves. We share the concerns of many Americans about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the need for an immediate cease-fire and the release of hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. But we’re not going to heed the call to protest in Chicago. We hope others will stay away as well.

    Cheri Honkala, an advocate for decades for the poor and homeless in the streets of Philadelphia, plans to lead the Poor People’s Army in a march to the steps of the United Center on the convention’s opening day. If she is “radical fringe,” then so am I.

    The tireless and fearless founder of Philadelphia’s Kensington Welfare Rights Union in 1991, Honkala is now the Poor People’s Army’s national spokesperson and national coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign.

    She has been arrested over 200 times, but says that her worst was at the July Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee where she tried to serve an arrest warrant on Trump and the Republican Party for crimes against humanity.

    Police cuffed her, then drove her alone in a van to a closed prison where 200 military police officers sat at tables, ready to be of service to convention security on demand. They locked her in a room with glass walls for hours, then drove her to an empty warehouse district where they let her out at night in a thunder and lightning storm, with no wallet and no phone.

    She is now preparing to confront the Democrats. Chicago was compelled to grant the Poor People’s Army a permit to march to the steps of the convention at Chicago’s United Center after failing to respond to her appeal of a permit denial. Authorities are now attempting to reroute the march, but the Poor People’s Army does not plan to back down.

    The protests will address domestic crises as well as the genocide against Palestinians. Honkala talks about the reality of the streets, telling Black Agenda Report that:

    More Americans have died because of the opiate crisis than died in the Vietnam War. Millions of dollars have come into Philadelphia, supposedly to help with recovery programs and housing and services here, but it never makes it to the people.

    However, these learned professors of the 1960s writing in the LA Times assert that those preparing to protest must support the Democratic Party and its candidates because Donald Trump is a new Hitler who will end democracy. They say this is not the time for protest.

    Malcom X Comes to Mind

    But who determines when to be patient and ask for incremental change, and when to demand radical change?  At this point even national health care, closing Guantanamo, or increasing the national minimum wage to minimum subsistence, would be radical change. Malcom X comes to mind: “That’s not a chip on my shoulder. That’s your foot on my neck.” Sometimes, incrementalism doesn’t work.

    Though the professors express “concern” about the genocide in Gaza, their piece speaks only of the Israeli hostages, not of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, many of them children, held without charges, sexually assaulted, and tortured. A Knesset member recently said that rape of Palestinian prisoners is legitimate.

    October 7 happened in part because of all the Palestinians in prison with no charges or hope of a trial. The only ceasefire after October 7 brought Palestinian prisoners home at a 3:1 ratio to Israeli hostages but the ratio of remaining Palestinian prisoners to Israeli hostages is still far higher. Prisoner release will be part of any negotiation and must be one of the demands of the Palestinian solidarity movement.

    Palestinian Youth Accord for Prisoners rally in Gaza support of Palestinian administrative detainees on a mass hunger strike, May 12, 2014. (Joe Catron, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)

    The professors say they support a two-state solution, but that dream is long dead; members of the U.N. Security Council and the General Assembly have repeated it like a mantra for decades as Israel colonized more land in the West Bank and rained bombs on Gaza. President Joe Biden and the U.S. State Department continue to invoke it but say that it can only be created by negotiation between Israelis and Palestinians, which is to say not at all.

    October 7 happened because 75 years of negotiations failed. The recent Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh dimmed hopes of a negotiated settlement any time soon.

    These men of the ’60s claim that “the convention protests of 1960 and 1964 followed a sophisticated and pragmatic strategy of working within and without the party apparatus.” But why would anyone trust their “within and without” strategy after the Democratic Party elite stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020 and kept Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from running as a Democrat this year?

    The long cover-up of Biden’s decline and his unceremonious replacement with Kamala Harris, a lock-em-up candidate who has never won a single delegate, reeks of Deep State. Many are asking, “Who is in charge, given the president’s obviously impaired faculties?”

    While praise is showered on Biden’s alleged prowess in negotiating the recent historic and complicated international prisoner exchange, his incompetence was evident in the disastrous June 27 debate.  He confuses Haifa with Rafah, and Mexico with Egypt. There is no way he negotiated the prisoner exchange.

    According to the LA Times editorialists, Chicago in 1960 and 1964 had good protesters who “worked within the party apparatus.”  The 1968 protesters, they say, were bad and “set back the cause.”  

    The DNC protests are allegedly why Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon, who continued the Vietnam War longer — they hypothesize — than Humphrey would have.  Of course, the anti-war candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, had probably just been assassinated by the Deep State, after winning the California primary, all but assuring his nomination. But rather than protest, we should have quietly urged an anti-war platform?

    Humphrey promised to stop bombing North Vietnam and seek a ceasefire after the convention and before the election, because it was clear that the anti-war movement couldn’t be ignored. Would he have made those promises without the protests in Chicago? Would he have kept them if elected?  There is no way to know for sure.

    As one who was on the streets protesting the Vietnam War, I knew that it was imperative to let the Vietnamese know we were in solidarity with them, and the Palestinians deserve no less. We must express our outrage at both parties for their support of the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

    Demonstration outside the The Watergate Hotel in Washington, where Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu was staying, July 22. (Diane Krauthamer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

    “The key organizers,” the professors write:

    the ones who will determine the message this protest conveys by its slogans and actions, are members of the ultra-leftist Party for Socialism and Liberation, and its front organization, the ANSWER coalition. This is the same group behind the demonstration that burned an American flag and defaced monuments in a ‘day of rage’ as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress last week.

    If burning an American flag, a form of protest protected by the Supreme Court, and defacing monuments as acts of rage against war criminal Netanyahu make protestors “ultra-leftist,” then sign me up.

    Rather than using labels like “ultra-leftist”, why not challenge what this group actually says, specifically and factually? The global stakes are quite high, so clarification and accuracy are essential.  The Poor People’s Army and Code Pink are also among the organizers. The protests are organized by a coalition of groups determined to challenge the Democrats in the streets over their position on Palestine. Let’s not bring back Red baiting.

    According to the professors, “…the primary goal has to be to defeat Donald Trump, and to help Democratic candidates win in the House and Senate.”

    They don’t want to lose voters “to a perception that Democrats are the party of chaos…” But it is past time to expose the chaos to the light of day. We would be immoral to stand passively by as the U.S. funds genocide in Palestine and plays a game of nuclear chicken with Russia in Ukraine.

    Rather than conceding all political space to the Democratic Party’s coronation of Kamala Harris, we must expose how fundamentally undemocratic it is. They stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders twice, kept RFK Jr out of this year’s Democratic primary, then shoehorned Kamala Harris into place with the barest semblance of Democratic process; a bunch of no-name delegates quickly met and agreed to throw their support to her.

    According to renowned journalist Seymour Hersch, Barack Obama threatened Biden with the 25th Amendment if he didn’t step down. It’s all about backroom deals and Deep State manipulations, while the rest of us wonder who’s really in charge. Yet the professors scoff at the notion that the Democratic Party is “a tool of billionaires and corporations.”  It’s not?

    Ajamu Baraka recently wrote:

    The fact that select oligarchs, in this case, the cabal that actually runs the Democrat Party, can remove a presidential nominee and expeditiously anoint Kamala Harris as his replacement cannot be characterized as anything else but a coup…The oppressed must have a clear and sober understanding of the class and power dynamics in the Democrat Party but also in the broader society. The gangster move by the oligarchs who control the Democrats stripped away any pretense that any real structures of democracy exist in that party.

    People who went to Chicago in 1968 to protest the Vietnam War at the DNC were courageous and righteous. People planning to go to Chicago’s DNC this year to protest Democratic Party complicity in the ongoing Gaza genocide are also courageous and righteous.  Crash the party is a slogan of the Chicago chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America.  Sign me up.  We need to get that foot off our necks.

    • First published in Consortium News

    The post On the Call Not to Protest in Chicago first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Jonathan Cook: Israel is in a death spiral – who will it take down with it?

    Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want to widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences.

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye

    There should be nothing surprising about the revelation that troops at Sde Teiman, a detention camp set up by Israel in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, are routinely using rape as a weapon of torture against Palestinian inmates.

    Last month, nine soldiers from a prison unit, Force 100, were arrested for gang-raping a Palestinian inmate with a sharp object. He had to be hospitalised with his injuries.

    At least 53 prisoners are known to have died in Israeli detention, presumed in most cases to be either through torture or following the denial of access to medical care. No investigations have been carried out by Israel and no arrests have been made.

    Why should it be of any surprise that Israel’s self-proclaimed “most moral army in the world” uses torture and rape against Palestinians? It would be truly surprising if this was not happening.

    After all, this is the same military that for 10 months has used starvation as a weapon of war against the 2.3 million people of Gaza, half of them children.

    It is the same military that since October has laid waste to all of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as destroying almost all of its schools and 70 percent of its homes. It is the same military that is known to have killed over that period at least 40,000 Palestinians, with a further 21,000 children missing.

    It is the same military currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in the world.

    No red lines
    If there are no red lines for Israel when it comes to brutalising Palestinian civilians trapped inside Gaza, why would there be any red lines for those kidnapped off its streets and dragged into its dungeons?

    I documented some of the horrors unfolding in Sde Teiman in these pages back in May.

    Months ago, the Israeli media began publishing testimonies from whistleblowing guards and doctors detailing the depraved conditions there.

    The International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to the detention camp, leaving it entirely unmonitored.

    The United Nations published a report on July 31 into the conditions in which some 9400 captive Palestinians have been held since last October. Most have been cut off from the outside world, and the reason for their seizure and imprisonment was never provided.

    The report concludes that “appalling acts” of torture and abuse are taking place at all of Israel’s detention centres, including sexual violence, waterboarding and attacks with dogs.

    The authors note “forced nudity of both men and women; beatings while naked, including on the genitals; electrocution of the genitals and anus; being forced to undergo repeated humiliating strip searches; widespread sexual slurs and threats of rape; and the inappropriate touching of women by both male and female soldiers”.

    There are, according to the investigation, “consistent reports” of Israeli security forces “inserting objects into detainees’ anuses”.

    Children sexually abused
    Last month, Save the Children found that many hundreds of Palestinian children had been imprisoned in Israel, where they faced starvation and sexual abuse.

    And this week B’Tselem, Israel’s main human rights group monitoring the occupation, produced a report — titled “Welcome to Hell” — which included the testimonies of dozens of Palestinians who had emerged from what it called “inhuman conditions”. Most had never been charged with an offence.

    It concluded that the abuses at Sde Teiman were “just the tip of the iceberg”. All of Israel’s detention centres formed “a network of torture camps for Palestinians” in which “every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering”. It added that this was “an organised, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.

    Tal Steiner, head of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which has long campaigned against the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees, wrote last week that Sde Teiman “was a place where the most horrible torture we had ever seen was occurring”.

    In short, it has been an open secret in Israel that torture and sexual assault are routine at Sde Teiman.

    The abuse is so horrifying that last month Israel’s High Court ordered officials to explain why they were operating outside Israel’s own laws governing the internment of “unlawful combatants”.

    The surprise is not that sexual violence is being inflicted on Palestinian captives. It is that Israel’s top brass ever imagined the arrest of Israeli soldiers for raping a Palestinian would pass muster with the public.

    Toxic can of worms
    Instead, by making the arrests, the army opened a toxic can of worms.

    The arrests provoked a massive backlash from soldiers, politicians, Israeli media, and large sections of the Israeli public.

    Rioters, led by members of the Israeli Parliament, broke into Sde Teiman. An even larger group, including members of Force 100, tried to invade a military base, Beit Lid, where the soldiers were being held in an attempt to free them.

    The police, under the control of Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler leader with openly fascist leanings, delayed arriving to break up the protests. Ben Gvir has called for Palestinian prisoners to be summarily executed — or killed with “a shot to the head” — to save on the costs of holding them.

    No one was arrested over what amounted to a mutiny as well as a major breach of security.

    Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, helped whip up popular indignation, denouncing the arrests and describing the Force 100 soldiers as “heroic warriors”.

    Other prominent cabinet ministers echoed him.

    Three soldiers freed
    Already, three of the soldiers have been freed, and more will likely follow.

    The consensus in Israel is that any abuse, including rape, is permitted against the thousands of Palestinians who have been seized by Israel in recent months — including women, children and many hundreds of medical personnel.

    That consensus is the same one that thinks it fine to bomb Palestinian women and children in Gaza, destroy their homes and starve them.

    Such depraved attitudes are not new. They draw on ideological convictions and legal precedents that developed through decades of Israel’s illegal occupation. Israeli society has completely normalised the idea that Palestinians are less than human and that any and every abuse of them is allowed.

    Hamas’s attack on October 7 simply brought the long-standing moral corruption at the core of Israeli society more obviously out into the open.

    In 2016, for example, the Israeli military appointed Colonel Eyal Karim as its chief rabbi, even after he had declared Palestinians to be “animals” and had approved the rape of Palestinian women in the interest of boosting soldiers’ morale.

    Religious extremists, let us note, increasingly predominate among combat troops.

    Compensation suit dismissed
    In 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed a compensation suit from a Lebanese prisoner that his lawyers submitted after he was released in a prisoner swap. Mustafa Dirani had been raped with a baton 15 years earlier in a secret jail known as Facility 1391.

    Despite Dirani’s claim being supported by a medical assessment from the time made by an Israeli military doctor, the court ruled that anyone engaged in an armed conflict with Israel could not make a claim against the Israeli state.

    Meanwhile, human and legal rights groups have regularly reported cases of Israeli soldiers and police raping and sexually assaulting Palestinians, including children.

    A clear message was sent to Israeli soldiers over many decades that, just as the genocidal murder of Palestinians is considered warranted and “lawful”, the torture and rape of Palestinians held in captivity is considered warranted and “lawful” too.

    Understandably, there was indignation that the long-established “rules” — that any and every atrocity is permitted — appeared suddenly and arbitrarily to have been changed.

    The biggest question is this: why did the Israeli military’s top legal adviser approve opening an investigation into the Force 100 soldiers — and why now?

    The answer is obvious. Israel’s commanders are in panic after a spate of setbacks in the international legal arena.

    ‘Plausible’ Gaza genocide
    The ICJ, sometimes referred to as the World Court, has put Israel on trial for committing what it considers a “plausible” genocide in Gaza.

    Separately, it concluded last month that Israel’s 57-year occupation is illegal and a form of aggression against the Palestinian people. Gaza never stopped being under occupation, the judges ruled, despite claims from its apologists, including Western governments, to the contrary.

    Significantly, that means Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation. Or, to put it another way, they have an immutable right to self-defence against their Israeli occupiers, while Israel has no such right against the Palestinians it illegally occupies.

    Israel is not in “armed conflict” with the Palestinian people. It is brutally occupying and oppressing them.

    Israel must immediately end the occupation to regain such a right of self-defence — something it demonstrably has no intention to do.

    Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICJ’s sister court, is actively seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes.

    The various cases reinforce each other. The World Court’s decisions are making it ever harder for the ICC to drag its feet in issuing and expanding the circle of arrest warrants.

    Countervailing pressures
    Both courts are now under enormous, countervailing pressures.

    On the one side, massive external pressure is being exerted on the ICJ and ICC from states such as the US, Britain and Germany that are prepared to see the genocide in Gaza continue.

    And on the other, the judges themselves are fully aware of what is at stake if they fail to act.

    The longer they delay, the more they discredit international law and their own role as arbiters of that law. That will give even more leeway for other states to claim that inaction by the courts has set a precedent for their own right to commit war crimes.

    International law, the entire rationale for the ICJ and ICC’s existence, stands on a precipice. Israel’s genocide threatens to bring it all crashing down.

    Israel’s top brass stand in the middle of that fight.

    They are confident that Washington will block at the UN Security Council any effort to enforce the ICJ rulings against them — either a future one on genocide in Gaza or the existing one on their illegal occupation.

    No US veto at ICC
    But arrest warrants from the ICC are a different matter. Washington has no such veto. All states signed up to the ICC’s Rome Statute – that is, most of the West, minus the US — will be obligated to arrest Israeli officials who step on their soil and to hand them over to The Hague.

    Israel and the US had been hoping to use technicalities to delay the issuing of the arrest warrants for as long as possible. Most significantly, they recruited the UK, which has signed the Rome Statute, to do their dirty work.

    It looked like the new UK government under Keir Starmer would continue where its predecessor left off by tying up the court in lengthy and obscure legal debates about the continuing applicability of the long-dead, 30-year-old Oslo Accords.

    A former human rights lawyer, Starmer has repeatedly backed Israel’s “plausible” genocide, even arguing that the starvation of Gaza’s population, including its children, could be justified as “self-defence” — an idea entirely alien to international law, which treats it as collective punishment and a war crime.

    But now with a secure parliamentary majority, even Starmer appears to be baulking at being seen as helping Netanyahu personally avoid arrest for war crimes.

    The UK government announced late last month that it would drop Britain’s legal objections at the ICC.

    That has suddenly left both Netanyahu and the Israeli military command starkly exposed — which is the reason they felt compelled to approve the arrest of the Force 100 soldiers.

    Top prass pretexts
    Under a rule known as “complementarity”, Israeli officials might be able to avoid war crimes trials at The Hague if they can demonstrate that Israel is able and willing to prosecute war crimes itself. That would avert the need for the ICC to step in and fulfil its mandate.

    The Israeli top brass hoped they could feed a few lowly soldiers to the Israeli courts and drag out the trials for years. In the meantime, Washington would have the pretext it needed to bully the ICC into dropping the case for arrests on the grounds that Israel was already doing the job of prosecuting war crimes.

    The patent problem with this strategy is that the ICC isn’t primarily interested in a few grunts being prosecuted in Israel as war criminals, even assuming the trials ever take place.

    At issue is the military strategy that has allowed Israel to bomb Gaza into the Stone Age. At issue is a political culture that has made starving 2.3 million people seem normal.

    At issue is a religious and nationalistic fervour long cultivated in the army that now encourages soldiers to execute Palestinian children by shooting them in the head and chest, as a US doctor who volunteered in Gaza has testified.

    At issue is a military hierarchy that turns a blind eye to soldiers raping and sexually abusing Palestinian captives, including children.

    The buck stops not with a handful of soldiers in Force 100. It stops with the Israeli government and military leaders. They are at the top of a command chain that has authorised war crimes in Gaza for the past 10 months – and before that, for decades across the occupied territories.

    What is at stake
    This is why observers have totally underestimated what is at stake with the rulings of the ICC and ICJ.

    These judgments against Israel are forcing out into the light of day for proper scrutiny a state of affairs that has been quietly accepted by the West for decades. Should Israel have the right to operate as an apartheid regime that systematically engages in ethnic cleansing and the murder of Palestinians?

    A direct answer is needed from each Western capital. There is nowhere left to hide. Western states are being presented with a stark choice: either openly back Israeli apartheid and genocide, or for the first time withdraw support.

    The Israeli far-right, which now dominates both politically and in the army’s combat ranks, cares about none of this. It is immune to pressure. It is willing to go it alone.

    As the Israeli media has been warning for some time, sections of the army are effectively now turning into militias that follow their own rules.

    Israel’s military commanders, on the other hand, are starting to understand the trap they have set for themselves. They have long cultivated fascistic zealotry among ground troops needed to dehumanise and better oppress Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But the war crimes proudly being live-streamed by their units now leave them exposed to the legal consequences.

    Israel’s international isolation means a place one day for them in the dock at The Hague.

    Israeli society’s demons exposed
    The ICC and ICJ rulings are not just bringing Israeli society’s demons out into the open, or those of a complicit Western political and media class.

    The international legal order is gradually cornering Israel’s war machine, forcing it to turn in on itself. The interests of the Israeli military command are now fundamentally opposed to those of the rank and file and the political leadership.

    The result, as military expert Yagil Levy has long warned, will be an increasing breakdown of discipline, as the attempts to arrest Force 100 soldiers demonstrated all too clearly.

    The Israeli military juggernaut cannot be easily or quickly turned around.

    The military command is reported to be furiously trying to push Netanyahu into agreeing on a hostage deal to bring about a ceasefire — not because it cares about the welfare of Palestinian civilians, or the hostages, but because the longer this “plausible” genocide continues, the bigger chance the generals will end up at The Hague.

    Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want not only to continue the drive to eliminate the Palestinian people but to widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences.

    That included the reckless, incendiary move last month to assassinate Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran — a provocation with one aim only: to undermine the moderates in Hamas and Tehran.

    If, as seems certain, Israel’s commanders are unwilling or incapable of reining in these excesses, then the World Court will find it impossible to ignore the charge of genocide against Israel and the ICC will be compelled to issue arrest warrants against more of the military leadership.

    A logic has been created in which evil feeds on evil in a death spiral. The question is how much more carnage and misery can Israel spread on the way down.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Bloody Eschatology: Israel and the next Big War

    The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning.  A blood filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel.  That appalling prospect is certainly not one to discount: the messianic are always a frightful bunch, thinking history and selectively pruned religions texts to be on their side.

    Each week now comes with some measure of sabotage, mutilation and disruption to prospects of peace.  In his July 24 address to the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined his crude Manichean vision in routine barking fashion.  In doing so, his intention, as Noa Landau pithily put it, was not to end the war in Gaza so much as prolong it.

    For Netanyahu, the strained chords of civilisational rhetoric are never far away.  He would like other powers to muck in, battling the fiends he calls an “axis of terror”.  Impediments to the Jewish state’s war efforts had to be rejected.  To impose them would see other countries of similar kidney shackled.  “If Israel’s hands are tied, America is next.  I’ll tell you what else is next: the ability of all democracies to fight terrorism will be imperilled.”

    Room was reserved to attack the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor has sought warrants of arrest against himself and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and the presidents of notable US universities.  As for protesting students, they had chosen to “stand with evil.  They stand with Hamas.  They stand with rapists and murderers.”  With daring outrage, he blotted out any notion that Palestinian civilians were being butchered, despite a death toll in the densely populated strip hovering near 40,000.  Indeed, civilian deaths had been “practically none,” with Israel scrupulous in “getting civilians out of harm’s way, something people said we could never do”.

    With this blood crusted Weltanschauung, acts of destabilising mayhem are automatic.  Showing an utter contempt for Israeli hostages, let alone any humanity for the Palestinians they regard with expansive condescension, the Netanyahu government thought it wise to carry out two assassinations: that of Hamas’ political chief and chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, and Hezbollah’s top military chief Fuad Shukr, both killed within twenty-four hours in Beirut and Tehran respectively.

    The response to the assassinations in Israel was one of relish – at least for those of the Itamar Ben-Gvir school of thought.  As David Issacharoff, writing in Haaretz, described it, “Israel has become a Matryoshka doll of pyromaniacs.”  From his skewed vantage point as National Security Minister, assassinations are staple food for the state.  The killing of Hezbollah’s second in command, ostensibly for his alleged role in an attack on a Druze village in the Golan Heights, drew the gleeful response that “Every god has his day”.

    Despite certain Israeli media reports claiming an order from Netanyahu that ministers were to stay silent over Haniyeh’s killing, the enthusiasts were voluble in rapture.  Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, also of Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, expressed his glee on social media, claiming that “this is the right way to clean the world of this filth.”  There were to be “No more imaginary ‘peace’/surrender agreements, no more mercy for these sons of death.”

    Other cabinet ministers also joined the gloating chorus.  “Careful What You Wish For,” wrote Minister for the Diaspora Amichai Chikli over a video of Haniyeh in a conference hall while people chanted “Death to Israel.”  Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi resorted to biblical verse: “So may all your enemies perish, O Lord.”

    Despite no official confirmation of Israel’s role in the killing of the senior Hamas official, the Government Press Office posted, if only briefly, an image of Haniyeh which left no room for nuance: “Eliminated: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas highest-ranking leader, was killed in a precise strike in Tehran, Iran.”

    The richly violent musings of Ben-Gvir and his circle of sanctified terror have even proven indigestible for some members of the war cabinet.  Defence Minister Gallant, not immune from the urge to dehumanise the residents of Gaza, accused his national security counterpart of being a “pyromaniac”.  On the X platform, he declared his opposition against “any negotiations to bring him into the war cabinet – it would allow him to implement his plans.”  The same Gallant, however, was also in celebratory mood about the assassinations.

    Even outside the war cabinet, the views of Ben-Gvir, not to mention his overall influence, travel with toxic rapture.  In the background, incandescently inspiring, is Rabbi Dov Lior, a figure of glowing nationalist fury. It was he who incited members of the Jewish Underground to conduct various terrorist attacks in the 1980s against Palestinians.  (The same group also unsuccessfully plotted to blow up the Dome on the Rock.)

    This, as former UK diplomat Alastair Crooke observes, is the State of Judea doing battle against the State of Israel.  He quotes Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who sees such bloody eschatology as resting on a fundamental concept: “Jewish supremacy” or “Mein Kampf in reverse”.  For Rabbi Lior, the next big war cannot come soon enough, one, he anticipates, that is bound to feature Gog and Magog.

    The post Bloody Eschatology: Israel and the next Big War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israel’s Morning Prayer Massacre Is Part of an Escalation of Attacks on Schools

    Over the past six weeks, as Israel has put nearly the entirety of Gaza under forced evacuation orders, Israeli forces have also been escalating its attacks on schools in the region, bombing a school every other day on average in this period of time. Last week, the UN raised alarm about Israels’ school attacks, finding that Israel had attacked at least 17 schools over the previous month.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • State and Local Efforts to Divest From Israel Are Gaining Steam

    The United States has historically provided hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel. The flow of taxpayer funds to Israel’s military has only increased since Israeli forces launched an attack on Gaza in October 2023, in which as many as 186,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to an estimate published in The Lancet in July 2024. Beyond the federal dollars funding the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Only Paralympian From Gaza Lost 15 Relatives in Israeli Assault

    Fadi Deeb represents Palestine as a shot putter in the 2024 Paralympics and is the only member of Palestine’s Olympic delegation from Gaza. He describes being shot by an Israeli sniper in 2001, which caused his disability; losing many family members in the current Israeli assault on Gaza; and why he feels a great responsibility in representing Palestinians on the world stage. “I want to raise my…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran

    They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.

    Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “Iran masterminded anti-Israel protest in Canadian university”. Drawing from an analysis by an unnamed official at US cyber company XPOZ, the article claims large numbers of social media posts about the McGill encampment were in Farsi and may have come from Iranian government aligned accounts. A National Post article “Disinformation experts warn Iran, Russia and others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada” used the same data though it was slightly more circumspect in concluding Iran “masterminded” the encampment. It was shared by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

    As someone who went to the encampment regularly and has followed activism at McGill for a quarter century it’s hard to not laugh at the absurdity. In the lead up to the encampment several students went on a two-month hunger strike to pressure the university to divest and there were a number of large anti-genocide protests on campus during the last academic year. For a decade there have been referendums on Palestine and in November 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” It was the largest referendum turnout in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history.

    The broader context in which the encampment grew out of also demonstrates the silliness of the ‘blame Iran’ claim. The students who set up the McGill encampment were quite obviously mimicking the tactics of their US counterparts. And the tactic had little to do with social media. I doubt the reliability of the data quoted by Iran International and the National Post but even if lots of Farsi language Iranian government bots promoted the encampment what impact did this have on a physical occupation of a campus in Montreal?

    At a higher level of ‘blame Iran’ idiocy, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly is claiming Iran is “destabilizing” the region. A statement she released on Sunday regarding rising tensions in the region concluded, “I reiterated our call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the immediate release of all hostages, and demand that Iran and its proxies refrain from destabilizing actions in the region.” On July 26 Canada, Australia and New Zealand released a joint statement with a similar formulation. It noted, “We condemn Iran’s attack against Israel of April 13-14, call on Iran to refrain from further destabilizing actions in the Middle East, and demand that Iran and its affiliated groups, including Hizballah, cease their attacks.”

    Canadian officials never refer to Israel as “destabilizing” the region even though that country has killed hundreds of thousands in Gaza and stolen ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank all the while repeatedly attacking Lebanon and Syria and assassinating the Palestinians’ main ceasefire negotiator in Iran.

    As part of its blame Iran nonsense, Ottawa has ignored Israel’s recent assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran and top Hezbolah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. But they will no doubt denounce Iran or Hezbollah when they respond.

    Four months ago, Ottawa remained silent when Israel damaged Canada’s embassy in Damascus while murdering eight Iranian officials at the country’s diplomatic compound. Then the Canadian government condemned Iran when it responded to Israel’s flagrant war crime.

    As part of this blame Iran mantra Ottawa recently joined the US in designating the 100,000-member Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. Listing the IRGC bolsters Israeli violence in the region.

    Canada continues to strengthen Israel as it commits horrific crime after horrific crime across the region. As death from illness and malnutrition grows due to 10 months of IOF barbarism in Gaza, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said it may be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million Palestinians but the world won’t let Israel do it. At the same time, Knesset members are openly debating the legitimacy of raping the 10,000 Palestinian hostages Israel holds in what a recent B’tselem report refers to as “torture camps”.

    But instead of focusing on Israel’s crimes we’re told to look away. At first, we were told Israel’s genocide was all Hamas’ fault. Now it’s Iran that is to blame.

    Israel and its supporters are like 4-year-olds caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s always someone else’s fault. Except this is not about a stolen sweet. This is about the world watching a genocide in real time and doing nothing about it.

    The post Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • From Aaron Bushnell to “I’m Speaking” in Five Months

    I can’t really find the words to express how depressing it is to watch the life get sucked out of the anti-genocide movement in the United States because one of the candidates running for president this year happens to come from the administration that’s been overseeing said genocide.

    Kamala Harris shouted down protesters against the US-backed incineration of Gaza during a campaign rally on Wednesday, responding to their chants of “we won’t vote for genocide” by telling them they’re helping Trump win.

    The Hill reports:

    Demonstrators in the crowd at Harris’s Detroit rally repeatedly shouted out as the vice president spoke to an airplane hangar packed with supporters, “Kamala, Kamala you can’t Hide, we won’t vote for genocide.” The crowd booed and drowned out the protesters with chants of “Kamala.”

    “I’m here because we believe in democracy. Everyone’s voice matters, but I am speaking now. I am speaking now,” Harris said to applause.

    As protesters continued to interrupt, Harris delivered a more blunt warning.

    “You know what, if you want Donald Trump to win then say that. Otherwise I’m speaking,” she said.

    The crowd thunderously applauded the comments from Harris. Social media is full of Democrats sharing the footage of the interaction and fawning over what a commanding girlboss she is.

    Like I said. Depressing.

    https://x.com/JulianaStratton/status/1821343725638836267

    Shortly after Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed Harris, I noted that we were “already seeing some strong ‘shut up shut up SHUT UP about Gaza’ energy from Kamala supporters toward those to their left,” and since that time this phenomenon has been growing steadily worse. Now we’ve got this freakish dynamic where criticizing an administration that is guilty of the crime of genocide will get people telling you “Hey, nobody’s perfect!” like it’s some petty little quibble.

    And I can’t help watching all this and wondering what Aaron Bushnell would think. On February 25 Bushnell self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington while screaming “Free Palestine” to draw attention to the horrors his country was helping to inflict upon the people of Gaza, and now the cause he gave his life for in the most agonizing way possible is being intentionally subverted by people who claim to care about justice and human rights. What would this look like to him?

    If, before igniting the accelerant, Bushnell had been granted a vision of Harris silencing anti-genocide protesters to the applause of her followers months in the future, would he still have gone through with it? Or would he have cast his lighter aside and collapsed in a fit of despair while Gaza burns, like the rest of us are doing right now?

    https://x.com/caitoz/status/1821506809389265210

    Five months. In a bit over five months we went from seeing an active-duty airman light himself on fire to turn America’s eyes toward Gaza, followed by a highly energized student protest movement against their country’s facilitation of genocidal war crimes, to seeing those student protests crushed with the approval of the current president, and then his would-be successor telling anti-genocide protesters to shut the fuck up and fall in line so that Democrats can win.

    Every time a light gets sparked in the darkness, the empire scrambles to snuff it out. Which wouldn’t be so depressing if not for all the brainwashed masses falling all over themselves to help them do it.

    Ah well. The fight goes on. Even if these pricks are going to set the whole world on fire, we can still at least try to make it difficult for them.

    The post From Aaron Bushnell to “I’m Speaking” in Five Months first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • We Must Oppose Israel’s Dangerous Gamble Before It’s Too Late


    Following World War II, Albert Camus posed a “formidable gamble” to those who had survived a tragedy of immense proportions. “We’re in history up to our necks,” he observed, yet we must wager that “words are more powerful than munitions.”

    “Leave or die” are the horrid words threatening largely unprotected Palestinian civilians in Gaza as dismayed populations around the world demand moral decency, or at least some indication of sanity, from their non-responsive governments.

    The stakes couldn’t be higher. For decades, Israel has flouted international norms by refusing to acknowledge its nuclear weapons arsenal. Nor has it signed relevant treaties governing the biological weapons it possesses. For years, Israel has flagrantly violated the Geneva Conventions and basic principles of customary international law through its forcible acquisition of territories in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and through its transfer of Israeli settlers into the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

    Now, Israel’s genocidal attacks against Palestinians living in Gaza have cost the lives of at least 39,677 people. Tens of thousands more are believed to be buried beneath the rubble, with at least 90,000 wounded and the overwhelming majority of its displaced 1.9 million population facing starvation.

    Israel’s failure to comply with international treaties and humanitarian law signal an acute need for other countries to organize weapons embargoes, cease trade deals, and provide support for civilian peacekeepers to bring about a permanent ceasefire.

    Instead of unwavering adherence to international law, the United States continues to arm and protect Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestinians, which now includes using starvation as a weapon of war.

    We must try to absorb what it means to live as a refugee in an open-air concentration camp—already one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, even before 70 percent of its housing was destroyed. More than 341 mosques and three churches have been destroyed. 2,000-pound bombs have been dropped on tents in places deemed safe areas.

    Innocent civilians are being killed by snipers. Thirty-one out of thirty-six hospitals have been damaged or destroyed. Escape routes are cut off. Persistent restrictions on the flow of humanitarian aid into and around Gaza are driving a desperate shortage of food, fuel, and medicine. As access to humanitarian relief is deliberately choked off, children are being collectively punished while Israeli leaders denounce them as animals. The world watches in horror as surgeons are forced to amputate the limbs of wounded children with no available anesthetics.

    A new polio epidemic emerges while Israel vaccinates its soldiers but leaves the Palestinian civilian population vulnerable. Newly released prisoners have said they were subjected to torture, including being waterboarded and raped.

    Rather than bring suspects before international courts, Israel has resorted to assassinations of the very negotiators with which it purports to be seeking peace, and in a manner clearly intended to expand the conflict into a global war involving multiple nuclear-armed nations.

    In its July 19, 2024, authoritative Advisory Opinion on Israel’s Settlement Policy and Practices, the World Court clearly declared the Israeli settlement project in the Occupied Territories to be illegal. The Court outlined the obligation of all parties to the Geneva Convention and the Genocide Convention to discontinue any economic or trade dealings with Israel which might help perpetuate Israel’s occupation and unlawful presence in the territory. Countries that signed or ratified these agreements are obligated to immediately stop arms exports to Israel and to use political, military, and economic influence to stop Israel’s flagrant, escalating violations of international humanitarian law.

    The World Court has provided strong, clear words denouncing Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. As during the Vietnam War, ordinary citizens can no longer abide with the lawless barbarism of continuing assaults against Palestinians.

    “Rolling the bones” is a slang expression for gambling. With a regional war perhaps now unavoidable in the Middle East, the genocidal derangement of the United States and Europe over Israel’s actions may well lead to a nuclear war that ends the human species. Failing to use our words at this most crucial juncture for humanity would be, as Camus said, a formidable gamble indeed.

    This article first appeared in The Progressive.

    The post We Must Oppose Israel’s Dangerous Gamble Before It’s Too Late first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Nothing’s changed since 1948 except now Israel’s excuses don’t work

    The headline above, about yet another Israeli operation to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians in the tiny, besieged and utterly destroyed enclave of Gaza, was published in yesterday’s Middle East Eye.

    When I began studying Israeli history more than a quarter of a century ago, people claiming to be experts proffered plenty of excuses to explain why Israelis should not be held responsible for the 1948 ethnic cleansing of some 750,000 Palestinians from their homes – what Palestinians call their Nakba, or Catastrophe.

    1. I was told most Israelis were not involved and knew nothing of the war crimes carried out against the Palestinians during Israel’s establishment.

    2. I was told that those Israelis who did take part in war crimes, like Operation Broom to expel Palestinians from their homeland, did so only because they were traumatised by their experiences in Europe. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, these Israelis assumed that, were the Jewish people to survive, they had no alternative but to drive out the Palestinians en masse.

    3. From others, I was told that no ethnic cleansing had taken place. The Palestinians had simply fled at the first sign of conflict because they had no real historical attachment to the land.

    4. Or I was told that the Palestinians’ displacement was an unfortunate consequence of a violent war in which Israeli leaders had the best interests of Palestinians at heart. The Palestinians hadn’t left because of Israeli violence but because they has been ordered to do so by Arab leaders in the region. In fact, the story went, Israel had pleaded with many of the 750,000 refugees to come home afterwards, but those same Arab leaders stubbornly blocked their return.

    Every one of these claims was nonsense, directly contradicted by all the documentary evidence.

    That should be even clearer today, as Israel continues the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Palestinian people more than 75 years on.

    1. Every Israeli knows exactly what is going on in Gaza – after all, their children-soldiers keep posting videos online showing the latest crimes they have committed, from blowing up mosques and hospitals to shooting randomly into homes. Polls show all but a small minority of Israelis approve of the savagery that has killed many tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children. A third of them think Israel needs to go further in its barbarity.

    Today, Israeli TV shows host debates about how much pain soldiers should be allowed to inflict by raping their Palestinian captives. Don’t believe me? Watch this from Israel’s Channel 12:

    2. If the existential fears of Israelis and Jews still require the murder, rape and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians three-quarters of a century on from the Holocaust, then we need to treat that trauma as the problem – and refuse to indulge it any longer.

    3. The people of Gaza are fleeing their homes – or at least the small number who still have homes not bombed to ruins – not because they lack an attachment to Palestine. They are fleeing from one part of the cage Israel has created for them to another part of it for one reason alone: because all of them – men, women and children – are terrified of being slaughtered by an Israeli military, at best, indifferent to their suffering and their fate.

    4. No serious case can be made today that Israel is carrying out any of its crimes in Gaza – from bombing civilians to starving them – with regret, or that its leaders seek the best for the Palestinian population. Israel is on trial for genocide at the world’s highest court precisely because the judges there suspect it has the very worst intentions possible towards the Palestinian people.

    We have been lied to for decades about the creation of Israel. It was always a settler colonial project. And like other settler colonial projects – from the US and Australia to South Africa and Algeria – it always viewed the native people as inferior, as non-human, as animals, and was bent on their elimination.

    What is so obviously true today was true then too, at Israel’s birth. Israel was born in sin, and it continues to live in sin.

    We in the West abetted its crimes in 1948, and we’re still abetting them today. Nothing has changed, except the excuses no longer work.

    The post Nothing’s changed since 1948 except now Israel’s excuses don’t work first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Finding the Moral Courage to Recognize a Genocide

    Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

    Silence in the face of a polio epidemic

    Last week, Gaza’s Ministry of Health announced the detection of poliovirus in sewage water samples, placing residents at significant risk of contracting this highly infectious virus. Despite a 99% decline in global polio cases since 1988 due to extensive vaccination campaigns, the eradication of polio is now under threat. The ongoing conflict in Gaza, characterized by Israeli military actions that have damaged or destroyed water infrastructure, has exacerbated conditions conducive to the spread of diseases. Limited access to clean drinking water, poor hygiene, overcrowding, and disruptions to childhood immunizations, including boosters, all contribute to this public health crisis.

    In response to this alarming development, U.S. medical professional organizations have remained conspicuously silent. On November 3, the American Public Health Association (APHA) issued a statement recognizing Israel’s right to self-defense but failed to address the 16-year blockade of Gaza and its devastating humanitarian impact. The APHA referred to the situation as a “growing humanitarian crisis arising from limited access to basic human necessities” without mentioning the ongoing bombing campaign targeting civilians in Gaza. Less than two weeks later, the same organization issued a one-sentence call for an immediate ceasefire in the “Hamas-Israel war.”

    On November 11, the American Medical Association’s (AMA) House of Delegates declined to consider a resolution co-sponsored by the Minority Affairs Section supporting a ceasefire in Israel and Palestine. Former AMA president, Andrew Gurman, MD, stated, “This resolution deals with a geopolitical issue, which is in no way the purview of this house,” emphasizing that their role is to address issues facing doctors and patients in the U.S. This stance contrasts sharply with the AMA’s previous condemnation of attacks on healthcare workers and facilities in Ukraine, where it called for an “immediate ceasefire and an end to all attacks on health care workers and facilities.”

    Why are medical professional organizations staying silent?

    As reported in MedPage, nine months into the genocide, the AMA passed a resolution calling for peace in Israel and Palestine but still refrained from demanding a ceasefire. In April, the World Medical Association (WMA), alarmed by the escalating healthcare and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, including starvation and lack of medical care, unanimously passed a resolution calling for a “bilateral, negotiated, and sustainable ceasefire,” with support from the Israeli Medical Society.

    A compelling article published by Mondoweiss, an online journal providing analysis on Palestine, Israel, and the U.S., questioned the silence of U.S. public health institutions amidst a genocide financially and ideologically supported by their own government. The author suggested several reasons: a failure to recognize the root causes of health disparities driven by colonialism, imperialism, and racial capitalism; a history of harm inflicted by U.S. medical institutions on marginalized communities; and the substantial investments of U.S. universities in the weapons industry.

    I propose an additional explanation. For too long, U.S. physicians have been blind to the paradox within our training and healthcare system. As Eric Reinhart argues in a JAMA Commentary published last year, medical education has been political, but in a manner that is “overwhelmingly conservative, profoundly uncritical, and reflexively protective of an ethically bankrupt field that has spent a century building up a capitalist healthcare industry.” This has led doctors and medical students to accept and uphold a for-profit, market-driven healthcare system that often disregards how politics shapes our profession.

    Medical professionals must speak out

    Given this context, it is perhaps unsurprising that many health professionals lack the moral courage to acknowledge a genocide. However, we must demand more from our professional associations. They should call for an immediate ceasefire, safe and unrestricted humanitarian access to Gaza, the evacuation of urgent medical cases including children with family members, the protection of civilian infrastructure, and an end to the transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel. These actions are essential to uphold our ethical obligations and avoid complicity in what UN experts describe as potential serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian laws.

    The medical community must rise to the occasion, recognizing and addressing the genocide in Gaza, which today includes a potential polio epidemic, with the urgency and moral clarity it demands. We cannot afford to remain silent in the face of such profound suffering and injustice.

    The post Finding the Moral Courage to Recognize a Genocide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.


    This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ana Malinow.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In Roll Call Vote, Uncommitted Delegates Choose Palestinian Victims Over Harris

    Dozens of uncommitted delegates selected to represent voters from their home states at the Democratic National Committee Convention met earlier this week, refusing to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and instead casting protest votes to signal their discontent with the White House’s continued material support for Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians living in Gaza. In a post shared by…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • In Roll Call Vote, Uncommitted Delegates Choose Palestinian Victims Over Harris

    Dozens of uncommitted delegates selected to represent voters from their home states at the Democratic National Committee Convention met earlier this week, refusing to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris and instead casting protest votes to signal their discontent with the White House’s continued material support for Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians living in Gaza. In a post shared by…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Decades of US Arms Deals With Israel Paved the Way to Genocide in Gaza

    On June 8, Israel rescued four hostages held by Hamas at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. Yet the operation left a trail of destruction, killing at least 274 Palestinians and injuring 698, according to local authorities. Corpses lined the pavement because the morgues were full, while film footage captured civilians rushing children caked with blood through hospital corridors.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Only a Failing US Empire Would Be So Blind as to Cheer Netanyahu and his Genocide

    There is only one country in the world right now, in the midst of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is guaranteed dozens of standing ovations from the vast majority of its elected representatives.

    That country is not Israel, where he has been a hugely divisive figure for many years. It is the United States.

    On Wednesday, Netanyahu was back-slapped, glad-handed, whooped and cheered as he slowly made his way – hailed at every step as a conquering hero – to the podium of the US Congress.

    This was the same Netanyahu who has overseen during the past 10 months the slaughter– so far – of some 40,000 Palestinians, around half of them women and children. More than 21,000 other children are reported missing, most of them likely dead under rubble.

    It was the same Netanyahu who levelled a strip of territory – originally home to 2.3 million Palestinians – that is expected to take 80 years to rebuild, at a cost of at least $50bn.

    It was the same Netanyahu who has destroyed every hospital and university in Gaza, and bombed almost all of its schools that were serving as shelters for families made homeless by other Israeli bombs.

    It was the same Netanyahu whose arrest is being sought by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, accused of using starvation as a weapon of war by imposing an aid blockade that has engineered a famine across Gaza.

    It was the same Netanyahu whose government was found last week by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to have been intensifying Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinian people in an act of long-term aggression.

    It was the same Netanyahu whose government is standing trial for committing what the ICJ, the world’s highest judicial body, has termed a “plausible genocide”.

    And yet, there was just one visible protester in the congressional chamber. Rashida Tlaib, the only US legislator of Palestinian heritage, sat silently grasping a small black sign. On one side it said: “War criminal”. On the other: “Guilty of genocide”.

    One person among hundreds mutely trying to point out that the emperor was naked.

    Cocooned from horror

    Indeed, the optics were stark.

    This looked less like a visit by a foreign leader than a decorated elder general being welcomed back to the Senate in ancient Rome, or a grey-haired British viceroy from India embraced in the motherland’s parliament, after brutally subduing the “barbarians” on the fringes of empire.

    This was a scene familiar from history books: of imperial brutality and colonial savagery, recast by the seat of the imperium as valour, honour, civilisation. And it looked every bit as absurd, and abhorrent, as it does when we look back on what happened 200 or 2,000 years ago.

    It was a reminder that, despite our self-serving claims of progress and humanitarianism, our world is not very different from the way it has been for thousands of years.

    It was a reminder that power elites like to celebrate the demonstration of their power, cocooned both from the horrors faced by those crushed by their might, and from the clamour of protest of those horrified by the infliction of so much suffering.

    It was a reminder that this is not a “war” between Israel and Hamas – let alone, as Netanyahu would have us believe, a battle for civilisation between the Judeo-Christian world and the Islamic world.

    This is a US imperial war – part of its military campaign for “global, full-spectrum dominance” – carried out by Washington’s most favoured client state.

    The genocide is fully a US genocide, armed by Washington, paid for by Washington, given diplomatic cover by Washington, and – as the scenes in Congress underlined – cheered on by Washington.

    Or as Netanyahu stated in a moment of unintentional candour to Congress: “Our enemies are your enemy, our fight is your fight, and our victory will be your victory.”

    Israel is Washington’s largest military outpost in the oil-rich Middle East. The Israeli army is the Pentagon’s main battalion in that strategically important region. And Netanyahu is the outpost’s commander in chief.

    What is vital to Washington elites is that the outpost is supported at all costs; that it doesn’t fall to the “barbarians”.

    Outpouring of lies

    There was another small moment of inadvertent truth amid Netanyahu’s outpouring of lies. The Israeli prime minister stated that what was happening in Gaza was “a clash between barbarism and civilisation”. He was not wrong.

    On the one side, there is the barbarism of the current joint Israeli-US genocide against the people of Gaza, a dramatic escalation of the 17-year Israeli siege of the enclave that preceded it, and the decades of belligerent rule under an Israeli system of apartheid before that.

    And on the other side, there are the embattled few desperately trying to safeguard the West’s professed values of “civilisation”, of international humanitarian law, of the protection of the weak and vulnerable, of the rights of children.

    The US Congress decisively showed where it stood: with barbarism.

    Netanyahu has become the most feted foreign leader in US history, invited to speak to Congress four times, surpassing even Britain’s wartime leader, Winston Churchill.

    He is fully Washington’s creature. His savagery, his monstrousness is entirely made in America. As he implored his US handlers: “Give us the tools faster and we’ll finish the job faster.”

    Finish the job of genocide.

    Performative dissent

    Some Democrats preferred to stay away, including party power broker Nancy Pelosi. Instead, she met families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza – not, of course, Palestinian families whose loved ones in Gaza had been slaughtered by Israel.

    Vice President Kamala Harris explained her own absence as a scheduling conflict. She met the Israeli prime minister, as did President Joe Biden, on Thursday.

    Afterwards, she claimed to have pressed Netanyahu on the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza, but stressed too that Israel “had a right to defend itself” – a right that Israel specifically does not have, as the ICJ pointed out last week, because Israel is the one permanently violating the rights of the Palestinians through its prolonged occupation, apartheid rule and ethnic cleansing.

    But the dissent of Pelosi – and of Harris, if that is what it was – was purely performative. True, they have no personal love for Netanyahu, who has so closely allied himself and his government with the US Republican right and former president Donald Trump.

    But Netanyahu simply serves as an alibi. Both Pelosi and Harris are stalwart supporters of Israel – a state that, according to the ICJ’s judgment last week, decades ago instituted apartheid rule in the Palestinian territories, using an illegal occupation as cover to ethnically cleanse the population there.

    Their political agenda is not about ending the annihilation of the people of Gaza. It is acting as a safety valve for popular dissatisfaction among traditional Democratic voters shocked by the scenes from Gaza.

    It is to deceive them into imagining that behind closed doors, there is some sort of policy fight over Israel’s handling of the Palestinian issue. That voting Democrat will one day – one very distant day – lead to an undefined “peace”, a fabled “two-state solution” where Palestinian children won’t keep dying in the interests of preserving the security of Israel’s illegal settler-militias.

    US policy towards Israel has not changed in any meaningful sense for decades, whether the president has been red or blue, whether Trump has been in the White House or Barack Obama.

    And if Harris becomes president – admittedly, a big if – US arms and money will continue flowing to Israel, while Israel will get to decide if US aid to Gaza is ever allowed in.

    Why? Because Israel is the lynchpin in a US imperial project for global full-spectrum dominance. Because for Washington to change course on Israel, it would also have to do other unthinkable things.

    It would have to begin dismantling its 800 military bases around the planet, just as Israel was told by the ICJ last week to dismantle its many dozens of illegal settlements on Palestinian territory.

    The US would need to agree a shared global security architecture with China and Russia, rather than seek to bully and batter these great powers into submission with bloody proxy wars, such as the one in Ukraine.

    The coming fall

    Pelosi, remember, smeared students on US campuses protesting Israel’s plausible genocide in Gaza as being linked to Russia. She urged the FBI to investigate them for pressuring the Biden administration to support a ceasefire.

    Netanyahu, in his address to Congress, similarly demonised the demonstrators – in his case, by accusing them of being “useful idiots” of Israel’s main foe, Iran.

    Neither can afford to recognise that millions of ordinary people across the US think it is wrong to bomb and starve children – and to use a war with an unachievable aim as the cover story.

    Hamas cannot be “eliminated” through Israel’s current bout of horrifying violence for a very obvious reason: The group is a product, a symptom, of earlier bouts of horrifying Israeli violence.

    As even western counter-terrorism experts have had to concede, Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza are strengthening Hamas, not weakening it. Young men and boys who lose their family to Israeli bombs are Hamas’s most fervent new recruits.

    That’s why Netanyahu insisted Israel’s military offensive – the genocide – in Gaza could not end soon. He demanded weapons and money to keep his soldiers in the enclave indefinitely, in an operation he termed as “demilitarisation and deradicalisation”.

    Decoded, that means a continuing horror show for the Palestinians there, as they are forced to continue living and dying with an Israeli aid blockade, starvation, bombs and unmarked “kill zones”.

    It means, too, an indefinite risk of Israel’s war on Gaza spilling over into a regional war, and potentially a global one, as tripwires towards escalation continue to grow in number.

    The US Congress, however, is too blinded by championing its small fortressed state in the Middle East to think about such complexities. Its members roared “USA!” to their satrap from Israel, just as Roman senators once roared “Glory!” to generals whose victories they assumed would continue forever.

    The rulers of the Roman empire no more saw the coming fall than their modern counterparts in Washington can. But every empire falls. And its collapse becomes inevitable once its rulers lose all sense of how absurd and abhorrent they have become.

    • First published in Middle East Eye

    The post Only a Failing US Empire Would Be So Blind as to Cheer Netanyahu and his Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

  • Political Pretence: The Democrats and the Palestinians

    The fact that the Democrats currently occupy the White House has done little to ruffle the equation of blood and gore in the Middle East, notably regarding the fate of the Palestinians.  The ongoing Israeli campaign of stunning ruthlessness against the Gaza unfortunates is certainly a worry for some Democratic strategists, if only because certain voters are finally expressing an opinion on the subject.  Israel, right or wrong, is no longer an entirely plausible proposition.

    In swing states such as Michigan, the cranky and disgruntled on the issue, certain given the potential role of Arab American voters, is not negligible.  In May, a published Arab American Institute (AAI) poll revealed that support for President Joe Biden among Arab Americans had collapsed to a mere 20%.  This was telling, given that Biden had won 60% of the same voting bloc in 2020.

    The potential consequence of that shift has not gone unnoticed among pro-Israeli voices keen to arrest any potential tide.  On the electoral battleground, Representative Jamaal Bowman can count himself as one of the first Democratic figures to lose a primary for his stance against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  (It should be said that his stance on Israel has not always been a consistent one.)  Bowman had previously defeated the hawkish Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th congressional district in the Bronx and southern Westchester County, the latter known for his cosy relationship, not only with Israel but with weapons manufacturers.

    Last month, it was Bowman’s turn to taste defeat, a fate more or less assured by the muscular support offered by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to his centrist opponent George Latimer, which came to a stunning US$14 million.  The scandalously hefty spending in that primary made it the most expensive in the history of the House of Representatives.

    At the highest levels, the scene is set for the pudding of mawkish insincerity.  The presumptive Democratic nominee for the White House is certainly offering this in spades.  Kamala Harris’s comments on the slaughter in Gaza and Israel’s overall policy towards Palestinians suggest political moulding and shifting, a ploy intended to stave off electoral threat.  Votes are at hand, and Israel’s tenacious brutality is not going down well in certain parts of the constituency.  But the usual acknowedgments and doffing the cap to supporting Israel always follow.

    The Vice President persists in reasserting her “unwavering commitment” to Israel’s sacrosanct right to defend itself.  This is then coupled with the concern – as she expressed to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu – of “the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians”.  (Harris-speak suggests that innocent civilians will always die in the cause.)

    Cheap, calculated language follows.  “The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety – sometimes displaced for a 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.”

    Eman Abdelhadi of the University of Chicago finds such sentiments from Harris parch dry, arguing that a lack of “an actual commitment to stop killing the children of Gaza” invalidates any claims to empathy.  “To be empathetic to someone that you’re shooting in the head is not exactly laudable.  We don’t need empathy from these people.  We need to stop providing the weapons and the money that is actively killing the people that they’re supposedly empathising with.”

    Within the Democrats, there is some movement of disgruntlement, though this is the sort that rarely rises above the gravitas of paper ceremony and gesture.  Thomas Kennedy, a figure who co-founded the Miami-Dade Democratic Progressive Caucus in early 2017, wrote for The Intercept earlier this year explaining why he had left the Democratic campaign in disgust. “I am submitting my resignation in large part because of the Biden administration’s inexcusable support of Israeli war crimes and the mass killing of Palestinians in Gaza”.  He also adds another reason: “the DNC’s role in protecting President Joe Biden from a democratic process that could check that complicity.”

    A survey available from the Brookings Institution suggests that electoral tremors among Democratic voters regarding support for Israel’s ongoing campaign will be manageable.  Bowman’s remarks that Israel is responsible for genocide tend to figure among a mere 7% of Democratic candidates.  From the survey work done by the thinktank, 18% of the candidates took what was described as “a more moderate position, saying that the US should make support for Israel conditional and call for a ceasefire.”

    The survey continues to note “a divide in the Democratic party, but the anti-Israel candidates compose only 2% of the primary winners.  Outside the most extreme position, the party is split fairly evenly, with most candidates displaying sympathy for Israel, but hesitancy to voice full-throated unconditional support.”

    In this show of performative grief for the plight of Palestinians, the Democrats can feign concern while still continuing the military and political support Israel has become so accustomed to.  The result is one of theatre that does little to alter the catastrophe taking place in Gaza, leaving the political furniture virtually untouched.

    The post Political Pretence: The Democrats and the Palestinians first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Top Israeli Official: “Morally Justified” to Starve 2 Million to Death in Gaza

    A top Israeli official suggested on Monday that he believes it is “morally justified” for Israel to wipe out Gaza’s population through famine and starvation, in chilling statements that pro-Palestine advocates say openly indicate genocidal intent. Speaking at a conference hosted by the far right Israel Hayom newspaper, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich complained about having to allow…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Trauma of Palestinians Who Fled Gaza for Egypt Is Compounded by Legal Woes

    Sometimes Afnan al-Hashim finds herself feeling envious of her 36-year-old sister Fida, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in February, along with her husband and four small children — one of whom was just six months old. Israel had carpet-bombed the densely packed Jabalia refugee camp in the north of Gaza City, which has now been left in ruins from Israel’s unprecedented nine-month long…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • There Are Over 100,000 Cases of Hepatitis B in Gaza, Report Says

    As humanitarian groups warn that multiple epidemics are likely ongoing in Gaza, one report has revealed that there has been a major uptick of cases of viral hepatitis B, which infects the liver, as sanitary conditions continue to deteriorate and Israel’s genocide rages on. Haaretz reports that over 100,000 cases of viral hepatitis B have been recorded in Gaza…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Open Letter to Israel: I Want My Country Back

    To: The State of Israel, AIPAC and the International Zionist Movement

    I write as an American citizen. You have stolen my country, and I want it back.

    I did not ask for my country to be complicit in the ongoing genocide and attempted eradication of the people of Gaza and Palestine. I do not want to be complicit in the genocide of anyone. I do not want this crime to stain the name of the United States of America whenever it is spoken for the next century and for all eternity, and to bring shame upon me and my descendants, and to all others who hold American citizenship.

    The American people are as yet only partially aware of this crime. This is because you have been very successful in exerting a powerful influence on the media, the government, and other pillars of American society. I’m not saying you have done anything illegal. You may have, but you clearly prefer to use legal means as much as possible. And it is possible. US law allows anyone with the necessary means to own media, and – within very broad limits – to control who gets elected to government office and who gets appointed to other public offices.

    For better or worse, this is the American way, and it can be made better or worse than it is. But you have abused and corrupted it. You have strangled the political process so that any candidate who criticizes Israel and opposes aid to Israel cannot be elected, because you control the funding as well as the funders in a system which depends entirely on private campaign funds, and where corporations and other wealthy associations are permitted to participate.

    You have also strangled academic freedom to debate or protest Israel on American campuses through control of funding, resulting in harassment and removal of faculty and punishment of students. You have hijacked American film, news organizations, and other media so that only the information and views that you permit are widely available to the public.

    You use such influence to pass laws at all levels, requiring allegiance to Israel in order to obtain licenses and permits. You apply censorship to social media to prevent free expression of views, information and opinion that might reflect negatively on Israel. You mobilize posting of libel and slander against persons and businesses that criticize Israel and defend Palestinians and their allies.

    Your job, and that of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy, and the global network of sayanim (collaborators) is to assure, by these and any other available means, that Israel dominates all narratives, all public policy and decision making, and that all actions in both the public and private sphere are to the benefit of Israel. You have been enormously successful in capturing almost unlimited military and financial support from the US government, in controlling U.S. government policy, and in shaping American minds to accept and support a massive civilian genocide, including starvation and infection of hundreds of thousands and ultimately probably millions of innocent people.

    How can this happen? The American people have spoken and protested in many ways and in large numbers, and polls show that, in spite of your manipulations of US society, a majority of Americans do not support continued aid to Israel, and want an immediate ceasefire. Members of Congress have been deluged with letters, phone calls and email messages.

    But part of the system of controlling our government includes your parallel organization of shadow “advisors” or “minders” whose job it is to remain in the face of our elected and appointed officials, and to “recommend” what to say and how to vote, and to provide draft legislation and public announcements that the official can introduce and promote on behalf of Israel. Otherwise, you will threaten to find someone to replace her/him in the next election cycle.

    I feel helpless appealing to my members of Congress for anything that you oppose, no matter how many of my fellow citizens might join me. But I now realize that my members of Congress feel the same way. They really don’t have a choice any more than I do. In effect, therefore, they are mere avatars for you and your allies. You are our government.

    What can I do about this? I’m not sure, but a start might be to require AIPAC and other actors on behalf of Israel to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, like all other representatives of foreign governments. Israel is a foreign government, isn’t it? As I recall, that was last tried by Sen. J. William Fulbright’s committee in 1963, but when Lyndon B. Johnson came to the presidency by assassination that year, the option faded. But, of course, it’s never too late.

    Second, we can overturn Citizens United, by whatever legal means necessary, if possible. Even better, we can prohibit or severely curtail private financing of elections, overturning Citizens United in the process, but going beyond, to eliminate some of the most obvious sources of public corruption. We can also legislate greater protection for free speech and the press, punish use of private donations to deny free speech and other civil rights, and enact similar measures.

    The problem with all such remedies, of course, is how to get them passed by institutions that are already under your corrupt control. I’m not sure I have an answer for that, but someone else might. Because even genocide will not save Israel, which is not defeating – and cannot defeat – Hamas. Perhaps Hamas and its allies will liberate both Palestine and the United States.

    The post Open Letter to Israel: I Want My Country Back first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Olympic Genocide Games


    This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Gaza Has 14 Times More Debris Than Total Created in All Conflicts Since 2008

    Israel’s relentless bombing campaign in Gaza has, over the course of 300 days, created a staggering amount of debris — not only burying Palestinians alive and destroying life-supporting infrastructure, but also putting Palestinians at risk to a number of pollutants that could cause diseases like cancer long after the genocide has ended. According to an assessment of satellite imagery by UN…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Has Damaged or Destroyed 85 Percent of Schools in Gaza

    In just the last 10 months of its genocide, Israel has damaged or destroyed nearly 9 out of 10 schools in Gaza, the UN has reported. According to assessments by the UN-backed Global Education Cluster, almost 85 percent of school buildings in Gaza have been directly hit or damaged, as the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) highlighted on Friday.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.