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Category: Genocide

  • “Divest from Genocide”: 1,000+ Protest Brooklyn Museum for Israel Ties; NYPD Throws Punches, Arrests 34

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    At least a thousand pro-Palestinian protesters took over the Brooklyn Museum in New York on Friday, with a small group occupying the lobby while others unfurled banners on the facade of the building reading “Free Palestine: Divest from Genocide.” Police arrested at least 34 people, including Within Our Lifetime founder Nerdeen Kiswani, whose hijab was ripped off as officers tackled and arrested her. Democracy Now! was on the scene and spoke with protesters, who said that almost eight months into Israel’s brutal assault on the Gaza Strip, prominent institutions in the U.S. have an obligation to disclose their ties to the occupation and divest. “We are making it clear that we will continue to occupy institutions just like this one and call out individuals like the board of the Brooklyn Museum to make clear that their money and our money is being used for this genocide,” said Abdullah Akl, a member of Within Our Lifetime, a Palestinian-led community organization.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Paying the Toll

    A 5/31/2024 article in CounterPunch returns to the question of the death toll of the genocide in Gaza, and the gross undercount of deaths by almost every agency imaginable, even the ones in Gaza itself. I suggest further elaboration.

    200,000 was the number dead that Ralph Nader estimated at the beginning of March. It has to be double that now. How many thousands of pregnant women and their fetuses and newborn have died? How many diabetics or others needing medication or special diets or treatment? But even those without special conditions are dying because they can’t give up food and water.

    We have reached the stage where the number of starving or dehydrated persons is so high that they have no defense against common diseases or mild injuries. Why are they not reported? Because there is no one to record them, of course. The hospitals and clinics are largely a memory. Potable water is a luxury. I’m banned from X and FB, but I imagine you’ve seen the living and dying skeletons that I predicted months ago. I see them mainly on Telegram. The international agencies report that nearly all the population is food insecure, and a majority are malnourished. It’s a matter of time.

    Israel would like to move faster. I’m not sure why they don’t. Perhaps they’re afraid that world reaction will graduate to more forceful measures, but I see no indication that this is the case. With the exception of Yemen and some non-state actors, no one seems willing to resort to physical force. Members of the US Congress and figures in the Biden administration have even encouraged Israel to “finish the job”. Certainly, they have no moral qualms.

    Are they worried that they will run out of Jews? Part of the purpose of killing off the Palestinians was to assure that Jews will be significantly more numerous in “greater Israel” (AKA Palestine). That clearly is not working. It is far more likely that more Jews have fled Israel than Palestinians have been reduced by genocide. In fact, even the effective Jewish inhabited area has been reduced in both the north and the south.

    Worse still, Israel grossly underestimated the capability of the Palestinian resistance and its partners, and overestimated its own. Hamas and its allies clearly understood and planned for Israel’s reaction, while Israel had little appreciation for their adversary. So much for the strategy of disproportionate force. Israel is unaccustomed to taking so many casualties, which are in any case unknown. No one believes the official count and resorting to foreign mercenaries.

    Israel is also dissolving from within. Who’s buying Israeli anymore, except the dwindling community of true believers? What economy is left consists largely of shoveling American money into Israeli furnaces. Meanwhile, Israelis are fighting among themselves for desperate solutions to their intractable problems. The powerful international network of faithful sayanim will remain in place (who likes to give up power?) and will continue to manage the controls. But other Jews will object to being associated with such persons, weakening the support for, and the effectiveness of, the Zionist dreamightmare.

    Israel is clearly losing, but the rate of its demise will depend on factors that are difficult to predict, and even harder to control. Nevertheless, if Israel survives this miscalculation in the short term, it will only do so as a smaller, more fanatical remnant of its former self.

    The post Paying the Toll first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Far Right Israeli Minister Threatens to Attack West Bank Like Gaza Strip

    Israel’s forces have killed at least 36,224 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in less than eight months, and far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Thursday threatened to similarly attack the illegally occupied West Bank. Smotrich, leader of the Religious Zionism party, shared on social media a video he recorded in Bat Hefer, following similar posts a day earlier. The Times of Israel…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • When Nicaragua Took Germany to Court, Media Put Nicaragua in the Dock

    When Nicaragua accused Germany of aiding and abetting Israel’s genocide in Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) last month, readers of corporate media might have seriously wondered whether Nicaragua’s case had any legitimacy.

    The case targeted Germany as the second biggest supplier of arms to Israel, because the US, Israel’s biggest supplier, does not accept the court’s jurisdiction on this issue. The object (as Nicaragua’s lawyer explained) was to create a precedent with wider application – that countries must take responsibility for the consequences of their arms sales to avoid them being used in breach of international law.

    Many in corporate media took a more jaundiced view. The Financial Times led by telling readers, “The authoritarian government of Nicaragua accused Germany of ‘facilitating genocide’ in Gaza at the opening of a politically charged case.” The second paragraph in a New York Times article cited “experts” who saw it “as a cynical move by a totalitarian government to bolster its profile and distract attention from its own worsening record of repression.” The Guardian qualified its comment piece by remarking that “Nicaragua is hardly a poster child when it comes to respect for human rights.”

    Double standards are evident here. If the US government were to do what it has failed to do so far, and condemn Israel’s genocidal violence, Western corporate media would not remind readers of US crimes against humanity, such as the Abu Ghraib tortures, extraordinary renditions or the hundreds imprisoned without trial at Guantánamo. It’s hard to imagine Washington would be accused of “hypocrisy” (Guardian) for calling out Israel’s crimes. Any condemnation of Israel by the US or one of its Western allies would be taken at face value—in clear contrast to the media’s treatment of such action by an official enemy country like Nicaragua.

    Of establishment media, Spain’s El Pais was perhaps the most vitriolic in its portrayal of Nicaragua. Its piece on the court case was headlined “The Worst Version of Nicaragua Against the Best Version of Germany.” “The third international court case on the Gaza war pits a regime accused of crimes against humanity against a strong and legitimate democracy,” the piece explained. “It may be a noble cause, but its champion couldn’t be worse.”

    The paper commented rather oddly that Germany was “at its finest” arguing the case, and that its “defense against Nicaragua’s charges is solid and its legitimacy as a democratic state is unassailable”—a comment presumably intended to contrast its legitimacy with “the Nicaraguan dictatorship.”

    In addition to its article cited above, the New York Times had a report more focused on the case itself. However, it was CNN and Al Jazeera that stood out as covering the case on its own merits rather than being distracted by animosity toward Nicaragua.

    The negative presentation in much of the media was repeated when, later in April, they headlined that Nicaragua’s request had been “rejected” by the ICJ, with the New York Times again remembering to insert a derogatory comment about Nicaragua’s action being “hypocritical.” These followup reports largely overlooked the impact the case had on Germany’s ability to further arm Israel during its continued assault on Gaza.

    Nicaraguan ‘Nazis’

    Corporate media had been gifted their criticisms of Nicaragua by a report published at the end of February by the UN Human Rights Council. A “group of human rights experts on Nicaragua” (the “GHREN”) had produced its second report on the country. Its first, last year, had accused Nicaragua’s government of crimes against humanity, leading to this eyebrow-raising New York Times headline: “Nicaragua’s ‘Nazis’: Stunned Investigators Cite Hitler’s Germany.”

    The GHREN’s leader, German lawyer Jan-Michael Simon, had indeed likened the current Sandinista government to the Nazis. Times reporter Frances Robles quoted Simon:

    “The weaponizing of the justice system against political opponents in the way that is done in Nicaragua is exactly what the Nazi regime did,” Jan-Michael Simon, who led the team of U.N.-appointed criminal justice experts, said in an interview.

    “People massively stripped of their nationality and being expelled out of the country: This is exactly what the Nazis did too,” he added.

    It’s quite an accusation, given that the Nazis established over 44,000 incarceration camps of various types and killed some 17 million people. Robles gave few numbers regarding the crimes Nicaragua is accused of, but did mention 40 extrajudicial killings in 2018 attributed to state and allied actors and noted that the Ortega government had in 2023 “stripped the citizenship from 300 Nicaraguans who a judge called ‘traitors to the homeland.’”

    Robles also quoted Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a member of the Nicaraguan oligarchic family who are among the Sandinista government’s fiercest opponents; Chamorro claimed there was evidence of “more than 350 people who were assassinated.” Even if true, this would seem to be a serious stretch from “exactly what the Nazis did.”

    Like most Western reporters, Robles—who also wrote the recent ICJ piece for the Times—gave no attention to the criticisms of the GHREN’s work by human rights specialists who argued that the GHREN did not examine all the evidence made available to it and interviewed only opposition sources. For example, former UN independent expert Alfred de Zayas castigated its first report in his book The Human Rights Industry, calling it a “political pamphlet” intended to destabilize Nicaragua’s government.

    Even if one takes the GHREN account at face value, the Gaza genocide is at least 100 times worse in terms of numbers of fatalities, quite apart from other horrendous elements, such as deliberate starvation, indiscriminate bombing, destruction of hospitals and much more. It’s unclear why the accusations against Nicaragua should delegitimize the case against Germany.

    Hague history

    Many media reports did mention Nicaragua’s long history of support for Palestine—which undermines the accusation of cynicism underlying the case—but few noted the Latin American country’s history of success at the Hague. As Carlos Argüello, the Nicaraguan ambassador to the Netherlands who took the lead at the ICJ, pointed out, Nicaragua has more experience at the Hague than most countries, including Germany. This began with its pioneer case against the US in 1984, when it won compensation of £17 billion (that was never paid) for the damage done to Nicaragua by the US-funded Contra war and the mining of its ports.

    One notable exception to that historical erasure came from Robles at the Times, who did refer to the 1984 case. But the point was clearly not to remind readers of US crimes or to demonstrate that Nicaragua is an actor to be taken seriously in the realm of international law. The two academics she quoted both served to portray the current case as merely “cynical.”

    The first, Mateo Jarquín, Robles quoted as saying that the Sandinista government has “a long track record…of using global bodies like the ICJ to carve out space for itself internationally—to build legitimacy and resist diplomatic isolation.” Robles didn’t disclose Jarquín’s second surname, Chamorro. Like her source in the earlier article, he is a member of the family that includes several government opponents.

    Robles also quoted Manuel Orozco, a former Nicaraguan working at the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, whose major funders include the US Agency for International Development and the International Republican Institute, notorious for their role in promoting regime change, including in Nicaragua. Orozco told Robles that “Nicaragua lacks the moral and political authority to speak or advocate for human rights, much less on matters of genocide.”

    “Effectively siding with Germany”

    On April 30, the ICJ declined to grant Nicaragua its requested provisional measures against Germany, including requiring the cessation of arms deliveries to Israel. Headlining this outcome, the Associated Press said the court was “effectively siding with Germany.” The outlet did, however, continue by explaining that the court had “declined to throw out the case altogether, as Germany had requested” and will hear arguments from both sides, with a resolution not likely to come for years.

    That was better than NPR’s report, which only mentioned that the court was proceeding with the case in its final paragraph.

    But German lawyer and professor Stefan Talmon clarified that the court’s ruling “severely limits Germany’s ability to transfer arms to Israel.”

    “The court’s order was widely interpreted as a victory for Germany,” Talmon commented. “A closer examination of the order, however, points to the opposite.” He concluded that although the ICJ did not generally ban the provision of arms to Israel, it did impose significant restrictions on it by emphasizing Germany’s obligation to “avoid the risk that such arms might be used to violate the [Genocide and Geneva] Conventions.”

    And Talmon pointed out that the court appeared to make its decision that an order to halt war weapons shipments was unnecessary based on Germany’s claim that it had already stopped doing so.

    “By expressly emphasizing that, ‘at present’, circumstances did not require the indication of provisional measures, the Court made it clear that it could indicate such measures in the future,” Talmon wrote.

    Establishment media, seemingly distracted by the “hypocrisy” of Nicaragua challenging a country whose “legitimacy as a democratic state is unassailable,” mostly failed to notice that its legal efforts were therefore at least partially successful: It forced Germany to back down from its unstinting support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and alerted German politicians to the fact that they are at risk of being held accountable under international law if they transfer any further war weapons.

    • First published in FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)

    The post When Nicaragua Took Germany to Court, Media Put Nicaragua in the Dock first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • White House Denial of Genocide Buried Under Mountain of Evidence to the Contrary

    As Amal Nassar lay in pain on a bed at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in northern Gaza, the echoes of explosions and artillery fire could be heard all around her. It was mid-January and she had made her way to the embattled hospital to give birth to a baby girl she would name Mira. While Amal should have been celebrating her infant’s delivery, instead she was engulfed in fear…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Dropped US-Made Boeing Bombs in Rafah Tent Camp Massacre

    Israel used U.S.-made bombs in its attack on a camp of displaced Palestinians outside Rafah that killed dozens on Sunday night, according to analyses from both The New York Times and CNN. Humanitarian groups had condemned the Israeli strike, which killed at least 45, mostly women and children, and injured more than 240. The attack left medical personnel dealing with charred corpses and missing…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The ICC Takes on Israel and the US Congressional Mafia

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant at a press conference in Tel Aviv on October 28, 2023. POOL / VIA REUTER

    Senator Lindsay Graham was bursting with contempt for the International Criminal Court (ICC) when he grilled Secretary of State Blinken at a May 21 Congressional hearing. Wagging his finger, he warned that, if the ICC gets away with issuing arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “we are next.”

    The audience at the hearing, stacked with CODEPINK pro-Palestine supporters, burst out in applause at the notion of the US being hauled before the world’s highest court. “You can clap all you want,” an angry Graham retorted, “but they tried to come after our soldiers in Afghanistan.” Graham was thankful that in the Afghan case “reason prevailed” when the case was dropped, adding that the US must level sanctions against the ICC “not only to protect our friends in Israel but to protect ourselves.”

    Graham was referring to the 2019 efforts of former ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to hold both the Taliban and the US accountable for war crimes in Afghanistan. When Graham said that “reason prevailed,” he really meant that US thuggery prevailed because the Trump administration brazenly imposed sanctions against ICC officials, denying them visas to the US and freezing their assets in US banks. President Biden lifted the sanctions but did so with the tacit understanding that the court would not resume the probe of US crimes in Afghanistan. The message from both Democratic and Republican presidents was clear: Do not dare hold the US to the same standards you use for others.

    The International Criminal Court was founded in 1998 as the result of a lifetime’s work by an American (and Jewish) international lawyer, Benjamin Ferencz, rooted in his experience as an investigator and chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg tribunals after the Second World War. Ben passed away in 2023 at the age of 103, but the universal jurisdiction that the court is exercising in this case is the fruition of his life’s work to hold war criminals accountable under international law, no matter what country they are from or who their victims are.

    Enter Israel. The ICC has been building a case against Israel for nearly a decade. A recent blockbuster investigation by the Guardian and two Israeli-based news outlets revealed a shocking almost decade-long secret campaign against the court by Israeli intelligence agencies, who surveilled, hacked, pressured, smeared and threatened ICC officials in an effort to derail the court’s inquiries.

    Despite the pressure, on May 20, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan made his request for Israeli and Hamas arrest warrants. Among the charges against the Israeli officials are extermination, using starvation as a method of warfare, willfully causing great suffering, and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.

    Prosecutor Karim Khan’s request has now gone to a panel of three judges who will determine in the coming weeks whether the request is granted. But pro-Israel forces in the US are trying their best to throw sand in the wheels of justice with threats of new sanctions.

    One ultimatum already came from Senator Tom Cotton and 11 other Republican senators in a toxic April 24 letter. “Target Israel and we will target you,” the senators signaled to the ICC. “If you move forward with the measures indicated in the report, we will move to end all American support for the ICC, sanction your employees and associates, and bar you and your families from the United States.” The letter concluded with a hair-raising: “You have been warned.”

    The Biden administration has responded to the ICC by flip flopping like a fish on dry land. On May 20, the White House put out a statement calling the ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders “outrageous”, adding “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.  We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.” Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called the request “shameful.” At a hearing on May 22, he told Senator Graham that he welcomed working with him on efforts to sanction the ICC.

    But on May 28, National Security Council Communications Advisor John Kirby said at a White House press briefing, “We don’t believe that sanctions against the ICC is the right approach here.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who spoke after Kirby, reiterated that message. She said that legislation against the ICC “is not something the administration is going to support” and that “sanctions on the ICC are not an effective or appropriate tool to address U.S. concerns.”

    This new position from the White House will make it easier for more Democrats to say no to the bills that will be introduced as soon as Congress returns from recess on June 3. Already, dueling statements are coming out from Congressional members. While Senate Majority Leader Schumer called the ICC appeal “reprehensible” and Democrat Joe Manchin joined with Republicans to call for visa bans for ICC officials and sanctions on the international body, Senator Bernie Sanders defended the court, saying, “The ICC is doing its job. It’s doing what it is supposed to do. We cannot only apply international law when it is convenient.”

    On the House side, progressives voiced support for the ICC.  Rep. Cori Bush said, “Seeking arrest warrants for human rights abuses is an important step towards accountability. It’s shameful for U.S. officials to threaten the ICC while continuing to send weapons that enable war crimes.” Rep. Mark Pocan gave a gutsy response, saying, “If Netanyahu comes to address Congress, I would be more than glad to show the ICC the way to the House floor to issue that warrant.”

    While most Republicans and pro-Israel hawks in the Democratic Party will likely join hands to hammer the international court, President Biden may ultimately feel pressured to adopt the position best articulated by Senator Van Hollen. “It is fine to express opposition to a possible judicial action, but it is absolutely wrong to interfere in a judicial matter by threatening judicial officers, their family members and their employees with retribution. This thuggery is something befitting the mafia, not U.S. senators.” It is also not befitting the White House, especially one that has been such a willing partner to Israel’s war crimes.

    The post The ICC Takes on Israel and the US Congressional Mafia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Palestine solidarity group condemns ‘colonial violence’ in Rafah, Kanaky

    Asia Pacific Report

    A New Zealand solidarity group for Palestine with a focus on settler colonialism has condemned the latest atrocities by the Israeli military in its attack on Rafah — in defiance of the International Court of Justice order last Friday to halt the assault — and also French brutality in Kanaky New Caledonia.

    In its statement, Justice for Palestine (J4Pal) said that Monday had been “a day of unconscionable and unforgivable violence” against the people of Rafah.

    As global condemnation over the attack on displaced Palestinians in a tent camp and the UN Security Council convened an emergency meeting on the ground invasion, a new atrocity was reported yesterday.

    Israeli forces shelled a tent camp in a designated “safe zone” west of Rafah and killed at least 21 people, including 13 women and girls, in the latest mass killing of Palestinian civilians.

    “Gaza deserves better. Kanaky deserves better. Aotearoa deserves better. All our babies deserve better,” said the group.

    “It is not our role to articulate what indigenous Kanak people are fighting for. Kanak people are the experts in their own lives and struggle, and they must be listened to on their own terms at this critical moment,” the statement said.

    “Our work for Palestinian rights is, however, part of a larger struggle against settler-colonialism. It is our duty, honour and joy to make connections in this common struggle.

    ‘Dangerous ideologies’
    “These connections begin right here in Aotearoa, where Māori never ceded sovereignty. As New Zealand’s current government, France and Israel all demonstrate, the dangerous ideologies of colonialism are not yet the footnotes in history we strive to make them.

    “We recognise common injustices:

    • The failure of media to place the current uprising in the context of 150 years of history of French violence in Kanak,
    • The characterisation of Kanak activists as ‘terrorists’ all while a militarised foreign force represses them on their own land,
    • The deliberate transfer of a settler population to disenfranchise indigenous people and their control over their own territory,
    • A refusal to engage with the righteous aspirations of the Kanak people, and
    •The lack of support from Western governments around these aspirations.”

    Justice for Palestine said in its statement that it was its sincere belief that a world without colonialism was not only necessary, it was near.

    “With thanks to the steadfastness of not only Kanak, Māori and Palestinian people, and indigenous people everywhere.

    “The struggle of the Kanak people is an inspiration and reminder that while we may face the brute power of empire, we are many, and we are not going anywhere.”

    Justice for Palestine is a human rights organisation working in Aotearoa to promote justice, peace and freedom for the Palestinian people.

    It added: “Now is the hour for Te Tiriti justice, and liberation for both the Kanak and Palestinian people.”


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Rafah Invasion Was Once Biden’s “Red Line” — But Israel Continues to Cross It

    Two days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to halt its military offensive on Rafah, dozens of displaced Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes. On Sunday night, the Israeli military bombed civilians whom it had previously ordered to move to the designated “safe zone” of Tal Al-Sultan in the northwestern part of Rafah. Israel has bombed Rafah dozens of times…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Without Enforcement Mechanism, ICJ’s Ruling to End Rafah Assault Will Be Ignored

    Two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to immediately stop its assault on Rafah, Israeli warplanes began to drop bombs on refugee tent camps in what had previously been declared a “safe zone.” At least 45 people, including children and infants, were killed in the bombing. We discuss the ruling and the massacre in Rafah with Ahmed Abofoul, a legal researcher and advocacy…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ocasio-Cortez and Jayapal Urge Biden to Suspend Israel Aid After Rafah Bombing

    Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is among those calling for President Joe Biden to immediately suspend all U.S. military aid to Israel as she called Sunday night’s bombing of a “tent zone of innocents” in Rafah “an indefensible atrocity.” In a statement posted to X on Monday, the New York Democrat said the bombing by the Israel Defense Forces — which killed an estimated 45 people and wounded…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Trail of Campus Repression of Palestine Solidarity Leads Back to DC

    The academic year that just ended left America’s college campuses in quite a state: with snipers on the rooftops and checkpoints at the gates; quads overrun by riot squads, state troopers, and federal agents; and even the scent of gunpowder in the air. In short, in the spring semester of 2024, many of our campuses came to resemble armed camps. What’s more, alongside such brute displays of force…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Much of the World Awakens to a Decades Long Genocide

    Several times over the past two decades, I have written about the malevolence of Israel (and by that I mean Zionist Israel, which is predominantly Jewish, although there are likeliest quislings among the Palestinian ranks, e.g., Mahmoud Abbas). Israel is part of Historical Palestine. However, the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine wrested a chunk of Historical Palestine away from Palestinians.

    Since its inception, Israel, the self-declared Jewish State, has been staunchly backed by the US with the tacit support of other western nations. Israel, indeed, has a powerful lobby.

    Israel has managed to chip away at the original 1947 UN partition plan map, that set borders for Jews and Arabs in Historical Palestine, until Palestinians were left with a fractional land base. Yet, when many so-called pundits speak of a two-state solution, they invariably speak of the 1967 borders and not the 1947 borders. Meanwhile, Israel, which acknowledges no borders for itself, has become ensconced in Syria’s Golan Heights, Lebanon’s Shebaa farms, and chunks of the West Bank.

    Many Palestinians have been forced to live their entire lives outside their homeland. Ilan Pappe wrote a book called The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine which relates the plight of 800,000 Palestinians pushed outside Historical Palestine.  In my review of Pappe’s book in 2007, I credited him with putting words to the Zionist crimes against Palestinians, but I (and my colleague Gary Zatzman) took issue with Pappe’s reluctance to call the “Israel-Palestine conflict” (Pappe’s wording) genocide.

    I concluded,

    Why is it an “Israel-Palestine conflict”? It implies an equivalency between the two sides. There is no equivalency. It is a Zionist genocide perpetrated against Palestinians, abetted by much of the bystanding world. This is what it has always been and continues to be.

    Finally, in 2009, Pappe demurred and called ethnic cleansing a “genocide in slow motion.”

    Israeli academics had already argued that ethnic cleansing is genocide, although they eluded mention of the Nakba.

    Following 7 October, Israel amped up its destruction of hospitals, schools, mosques, homes, etc; committed several massacres and war crimes; to which Israeli officials uttered openly racist epithets dehumanizing Palestinians which is just more of the same from Israeli officials, as racism and apartheid are Israeli policy. (See “Israeli Zionist Racism Unmasked”  and the series: “Defining Israeli Zionist Racism” Parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 12.).

    Now, with the amping up of the destruction, massacres, and openly racist epithets by Israeli officials against Palestinians and Palestinian society, much of the fence-sitting world has recognized what this has always been: a genocide perpetrated by Israeli Jews (with polls indicating support by a majority of Israeli Jews, a stable sentiment over the years). Nonetheless, many western governments continue to provide cover for Israeli war crimes; for instance, sending in the gendarmes to crack down on the free speech rights of morally centered students opposed to the genocide against Palestinians. Or, in the US case, sending arms to Israel.

    It took South Africa to have the fortitude to haul Israel before the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

    And it seems the ICJ directives for Israel to halt further aggressions against Palestinians gave the International Criminal Court (ICC) the gumption to issue warrants for the arrest of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yoav Gallant. For good measure, three Palestinians — Yahya Sinwar (Hamas leader), Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri (commander-in-chief of the military wing of Hamas), and Ismail Haniyeh — were also indicted, for alleged involvement in the October 7 attacks, even though  Palestinians have the inalienable right to resist occupation and oppression.

    They say justice delayed is justice denied; only time will tell if the international legal deliberations to protect Palestinians from Israeli war crimes will be successful.

    The post Much of the World Awakens to a Decades Long Genocide first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “Nowhere Is Safe”: Israel Bombs Tent Camp in Rafah, Killing 45 Palestinians

    International rights groups and leaders who for months have demanded a cease-fire in Gaza expressed renewed horror as images emerged from Israel’s Sunday bombing of a tent camp that had been set up by forcibly displaced Palestinians in Rafah, with women and children making up the majority of the 45 people who were reportedly killed in the attack. Emergency workers told NBC News that the death toll…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Could These Arrest Warrants Signal the Beginning of the End for the “Axis of Evil”?

    UK foreign secretery Lord David Cameron has told peers: “I don’t believe for one moment that seeking these warrants is going to help get the hostages out, it’s not going to help get aid in and it’s not going to help deliver a sustainable ceasefire. To draw moral equivalence between the Hamas leadership and the democratically-elected leader of Israel I think is just plain wrong.”

    He misses the point as usual. The warrants have nothing to do with that. They are about bringing those wanted for the most grievous war crimes to justice.

    Prime minister Rishi Sunak then said that the move was “deeply unhelpful”, adding: “There is no moral equivalence between a democratic state exercising its lawful right to self defence and the terrorist group Hamas.”

    Even Biden was singing off the same hymn-sheet saying there is “no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas” and that what’s happening in Gaza is not genocide…. a hymn of praise for Israel almost.

    Of course there is no moral equivalence. As the world has witnessed, Israel’s crimes are a thousand times greater than Hamas’s and are allowed to continue without let-up, courtesy of the US and UK who dutifully carry on supplying the ordnance and weaponry. It still hasn’t penetrated enough Washington and Whitehall skulls that it is the Palestinian resistance who are exercising their lawful right to self-defence – using “armed struggle” if necessary – against Israel’s illegal military occupation, brutal 17-year blockade and decades-long murderous oppression (UN Resolutions 37/43 and 3246).

    Furthermore Hamas are just as legitimate as any Israeli administration having been democratically elected under the scrutiny of international observers, a result immediately rejected at the time by the UK, Israel and the US because it didn’t happen to suit their evil purpose in the Middle East.

    And why are Hamas proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK? Only because a group of Israel’s pimps and stooges among Westminster’s political elite say so. It would be interesting to take a vote on what the people who put them there actually think, now they know the horrendous situation in Gaza and the West Bank and the long history leading up to it. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to proscribe Likud, Netyanyahu’s terrorist party?

    Cameron also claims it’s a mistake to draw moral equivalence because Palestine is not regarded as a state. Again, he isn’t paying attention. 146 of the 193 UN member states recognise Palestine, including Ireland, Norway and Spain who announced recognition just a few days ago. 11 of these are EU states, so what is Cameron drivelling about?

    Fortunately, a cross-party group of 105 MPs and Lords has called on the UK Government “to do all it can to support the International Criminal Court” after Prime Minister Sunak’s remark that its decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders was “deeply unhelpful”. In a letter addressed to Foreign Secretary Cameron they say “there is mounting evidence that Israel has committed clear and obvious violations of international law in Gaza and we strongly believe that those responsible must be held to account”. They call on the Government “to take a clear stance against any attempts to intimidate an independent and impartial international court…. The Court, its Prosecutor, and all its staff must be free to pursue justice without fear or favour”.

    One of the organisers, MP Richard Burgon, said: “At every stage, our Government has failed to fulfil its moral duty to do everything it can to help save lives and prevent suffering in Gaza. It must not fail again. It must back the ICC in ensuring that there is no impunity for war crimes and it must stand up to those seeking to impede justice.”

    Almost straightaway Sunak, in a surprise move, called a general election for 4 July. This means that MPs immediately cease being MPs but ministers continue in office until a new government is formed. For the next 6 weeks, then, Sunak’s crew continue to rule without being accountable to the House of Commons and could do a lot of damage. So this is a doubly dangerous time for our nation.

    Meanwhile Cameron and his ignorant friends seem to think the Gaza war only started as recently as October 7. He plays up the release of 134 Israeli hostages when, on October 6 Israel was holding 5,200 Palestinians captive, including at least 170 children, and since then has abducted some 7,350 more. Why do we never hear from Cameron about the Palestinian hostages/prisoners?

    And how many Palestinians had Israel killed before October 7? Answer: 10,651 slaughtered by Israel in the 23 years up to Oct 7, including 2,270 children and 656 women (Israel’s B’Tselem figures). That’s 460 a year. In that period Israel was exterminating Palestinians at the rate of 8:1 and children at the rate of 16:1.

    Israel’s friends in the West like to think of Netanyahu as the leader of a Western style democracy that shares our values. Actually he’s the head of a nasty little ethnocracy with vicious apartheid policies and a 76-year record of terrorism, pursuing an extended military campaign aimed at occupying and annexing another people’s lands and resources, and showing no respect whatsoever for British values or international norms of behaviour.

    So, putting aside for a moment our dislike of Hamas’s methods, shouldn’t we be asking our politicians to explain why exactly Hamas must be eliminated and the Palestinians’ homeland pulverised in the process, seeing as it is they who are under illegally military occupation and they who have the ultimate right of self-defence?

    It’s easy to see where Cameron is coming from. After 3 months of genocide in Gaza, he denied Israel had broken international law. He also said it was “nonsense” to suggest that Israel intended to commit genocide. Asked if he thought Israel had a case to answer at the ICJ, he said: “No, I absolutely don’t. I think the South African action is wrong, I think it is unhelpful, I think it shouldn’t be happening…. I take the view that Israel is acting in self-defence after the appalling attack on October 7. But even if you take a different view to my view, to look at Israel, a democracy, a country with the rule of law, a country with armed forces that are committed to obeying the rule of law, to say that that country, that leadership, that armed forces, that they have intent to commit genocide, I think that is nonsense, I think that is wrong.”

    So says this self-declared zionist and key stooge for Israel, one of many at Westminster who are desperate to maintain the shady US/UK-Israel alliance. Do Sunak, Cameron & co really want victory for the genocidists? It seems they do. Because they’ve pledged their undying adoration and support for that rotten apartheid regime and now the world has seen it for what it really is and their position is turning sour.

    On the face of it the Hamas trio — Haniyeh, Sinwar and Dief — with competent legal representation seem likely to survive the legal process. And although many are questioning why arrest warrants are being considered for them at the same time as the mega-maniac Netanyahu there is reason to hope that, if they do come to trial, a lot of bad stuff about Israel, the US and the UK will come out. The world will then be much wiser and the ‘axis of evil’ behind it all will collapse under the weight of its own lunacy.

    The UK general election will likely rid us of Sunak, Cameron and the rest of the Tory nitwits. But sitting in the waiting room is Labour’s Keir Starmer, another Israel stooge. Yes, the zionists have all angles covered.

    The post Could These Arrest Warrants Signal the Beginning of the End for the “Axis of Evil”? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • GOP Antisemitism Hearing Is “Offensive and Dangerous,” Jewish Organizers Say

    As U.S. House Republicans held yet another hearing about antisemitism and higher education on Thursday, Jewish students and advocacy groups aimed to set the record straight on the threats they face and the largely peaceful protests against genocide. “This hearing has nothing to do with keeping Jewish students on campus safe, and is solely designed as part of a broader campaign to silence anti-war…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Irish Lawmaker: Recognizing Palestine as a State Is Essential Step Toward Peace

    Three European nations have announced plans to recognize the State of Palestine, joining 143 other countries around the world in formal recognition. Leaders in Ireland, Norway and Spain cited a desire to support a political solution to the ongoing conflict in Gaza as the driving force behind the announcements, while Israel responded by recalling its ambassadors from all three countries.

    Source

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  • Israel to Punish West Bank After 3 More Countries Recognize Palestinian State

    Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich cannot directly punish Spain, Ireland and Norway for recognizing a Palestinian state, so the extremist leader is punishing Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank instead. The Biden administration on Wednesday criticized Smotrich’s call to expand illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and withhold critical tax revenues that support basic…

    Source

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  • A Misplaced Purity: Democracies and Crimes Against International Law

    The application for arrest warrants by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Karim A.A. Khan in the Israel-Hamas War gives us a chance to revisit a recurring theme in the commission of crimes in international humanitarian law.  Certain states, so this logic goes, either commit no crimes, or, if they do, have good reasons for doing so, be they self-defence against a monstrous enemy, or as part of a broader civilisational mission.

    In this context, the application for warrants regarding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, merits particular interest.  Those regarding the Hamas trio of its leader Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, the commander-in-chief of Al-Qassam Brigades, and the organisation’s political bureau head Ismail Haniyeh, would have left most Western governments untroubled.

    From Khan’s perspective, the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant will focus on policies of starvation, the intentional causing of “great suffering, or serious injury to body or health”, including cruel treatment, wilful killing or murder, intentional attacks on the Palestinian population, including extermination, persecution and other inhumane acts falling within the Rome Statute “as crimes against humanity”.

    The ICC prosecutor’s assessment follows the now increasingly common claim that Israel’s military effort, prosecuted in the cause of self-defence in the aftermath of the October 7 attacks by Hamas, is not what it claims to be.  Far from being paragons of proportionate warfare and humanitarian grace in war, Israel’s army and security forces are part of a program that has seen needless killing and suffering.  The crimes against humanity alleged “were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to State policy.”

    The reaction from the Israeli side was always expected.  Netanyahu accused the prosecutor of “creating a false symmetry between the democratically elected leaders of Israel and the terrorist chieftains”.  He rejected “with disgust the comparison of the prosecutor in The Hague between democratic Israel and the mass murderers of Hamas”.

    Israeli President Isaac Herzog also found “any attempt to draw parallels between these atrocious terrorists and a democratically elected government of Israel – working to fulfil its duty to defend and protect its citizens in adherence to the principles of international law […] outrageous and cannot be accepted by anyone.”

    Israel’s staunchest ally, sponsor and likewise self-declared democracy (it is, in fact, a republic created by those suspicious of that system of government), was also there to hold the fort against such legal efforts.  US President Joe Biden’s statement on the matter was short and brusque: “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous.  And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”

    The democracy-as-purity theme, one used as a seeming exculpation of all conduct in war, surfaced in the May 21 exchange between Senator James Risch, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  Was the secretary, inquired Risch, amenable to supporting legislation to combat the ICC “sticking its nose in the business of countries that have an independent, legitimate, democratic judicial system”?  (No consideration was given to the sustained efforts by the Netanyahu government to erode judicial independence in passing legislation to curb the discretion of courts to strike down government decisions.)

    The response from Blinken was agreeable to such an aim.  There was “no question we have to look at the appropriate steps to take to deal with, again, what is a profoundly wrong-headed decision.”  As things stand, a bill is already warming the lawmaking benches with a clear target.  Sponsored by Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, the Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act would obligate the President to block the entry of ICC officials to the US, revoke any current US visas such officials hold, and prohibit any property transactions taking place in the US.  To avoid such measures, the court must cease all cases against “protected persons of the United States and its allies”.

    The Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer similarly saw the prosecutor’s efforts as a pairing of incongruous parties. “The fact however that the leader of the terrorist organisation Hamas whose declared goal is the extinction of the State of Israel is being mentioned at the same time as the democratically elected representatives of that very State is non-comprehensible.”

    From the outset, such statements do two things.  The first is to conjure up a false distinction – that of equivalence – something absent in the prosecutor’s application.  The acts alleged are relevant to each specified party and are specific to them.  The second is a corollary: that democracies do not break international law and certainly not when it comes to war crimes and crimes against humanity, most notably when committed against a certain type of foe.  The more savage the enemy, the greater the latitude in excusing vengeful violence.  That remains, essentially, the cornerstone of Israel’s defence argument at the International Court of Justice.

    Such arguments echo an old trope.  The two administrations of George W. Bush spilled much ink in justifying the torture, enforced disappearance and renditions of terror suspects to third countries during its declared Global War on Terror.  Lawyers in both the White House and Justice Department gave their professional blessing, adopting an expansive definition of executive power in defiance of international laws and protections.  Such sacred documents as the Geneva Conventions could be defied when facing Islamist terrorism.

    Lurking beneath such justifications is the snobbery of exceptionalism, the conceit of power.  Civilised liberal democracies, when battling the forces of a named barbarism, are to be treated as special cases in the world of international humanitarian law.  The ICC prosecutor begs to differ.

    The post A Misplaced Purity: Democracies and Crimes Against International Law first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • WA Students Say Gaza Encampment Has Been Most Valuable Part of Their Education

    Police have forcibly dismantled Gaza solidarity encampments at universities across the U.S., including those in Columbia University, UC Berkeley and University of Michigan, yet the encampment at Western Washington University (WWU) in Bellingham, Washington, is still going strong. Students constructed the encampment on May 14 after hearing university administrators’ disappointing response to a list…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ongoing Colonization

    On May 15, we will commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba amid another catastrophe. Since 1948, Palestinians have suffered a profound and enduring trauma, as families were forcibly uprooted from their ancestral lands by Zionist militias, villages were destroyed, and communities were torn apart to create the settler colonial state of Israel. The Nakba represents not only a historical event but an ongoing reality, as it laid the foundation for the continued colonization and occupation of Palestinian land and violent dispossession of the Palestinian people. This series captures how the genocide and mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza is an extension of the 1948 Nakba.

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  • The Rages of Equivalence: The ICC Prosecutor, Israel and Hamas

    The legal world was abuzz.  The diplomatic channels of various countries raged and fizzed.  It had been rumoured that Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his cabinet colleagues, had been bracing themselves for a stinging intervention from the International Criminal Court, a body they give no credence or respect to.

    Then came the words from the Prosecutor of the ICC, Karim A.A. Khan on May 20, announcing that arrest warrants were being sought in the context of the Israel-Hamas War, benignly described as the “Situation in Palestine”, under the Rome Statute.  “On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my Office, I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for […] war crimes and crimes against humanity on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023”.

    Hamas figures responsible for the attacks of October 7 against Israel also feature.  They include the essential triumvirate: Hamas chief, Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Al-Masri, the commander-in-chief of Al-Qassam Brigades, and Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas Political Bureau.  All “bear responsibility for […] war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of Israel and the State of Palestine (on the Gaza Strip) from at least 7 October 2023”.

    On Israel’s part, Khan’s office points the accusing finger at such alleged war crimes as starvation, the wilful causing of “great suffering, or serious injury to body or health”, including cruel treatment, wilful killing or murder, the intentional direction of attacks against a civilian population, extermination, persecution and other inhumane acts falling within the Rome Statute “as crimes against humanity”.

    The ICC prosecutor’s assessment follows the now increasingly common claim that Israel’s military effort, prosecuted in the cause of self-defence, is not what it claims to be.  Far from being paragons of proportionate warfare and humanitarian grace in war, Israel’s army and security forces are part of a program that has seen needless killing and suffering.  The crimes against humanity alleged “were committed as part of a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population pursuant to State policy.”

    Khan acknowledges Israel’s innate right and marrow to self-defence.  He does not consider it estranged from the objects of international humanitarian law.  To divorce them would merely enliven barbarism.  The means Israel chose to achieve its military aims in Gaza, “namely, intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious body or health of the civilian population – are criminal.”

    On the part of Hamas, the prosecutor cites extermination, murder, the taking of hostages, the use of rape and sexual violence, the resort to torture, cruel treatment and “[o]utrages upon personal dignity” as crimes worthy of investigation.  Khan finds that the accused individuals “planned and instigated the commission of crimes” on October 7 and had “through their own actions, including visits to hostages shortly after their kidnapping, acknowledged their responsibility for their crimes.”

    When law intrudes into the violence of war and conflict, the participants and instigators are rarely satisfied.  The matter becomes even more testy when international tribunals feature.  Concerns about power, bias, and an inappropriate coupling (or decoupling) of potential culprits abound.

    No doubt anticipating the fulminating response, Khan convened a panel of experts in international law to advise him whether his applications for arrest warrants met the threshold requirements of Article 58 of the Rome Statute.  It would be hard to dismiss the weighty credentials of a group made up of such figures as Lord Justice Fulford, Judge Theodor Meron and Baroness Helena Kennedy.

    None of this mattered in the catatonic rage arising from pairing the warring parties in the same effort.  The response reads like a decrypting key to hate and exceptionalism.  All wage war justly; all wage war righteously.  According to Netanyahu, Israel had suffered a “hit job”, with Khan “creating a false symmetry between the democratically elected leaders of Israel and the terrorist chieftains”.  The subtext is clear: democracies, at least those declaring themselves as such, are beyond reproach when fighting designated savages.

    On the side of the Middle East’s only nuclear power (officially undeclared) came the erroneous argument that lumping Hamas officials with Israeli cabinet members was tantamount to equivalence.  “The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous,” declared US President Joe Biden.  “And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence – none – between Israel and Hamas.”  Ditto the Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer, who thought the pairing “non-comprehensible”.

    The prosecutor implied no such thing, focusing on the profile of each of the individuals.  The allegations regarding Netanyahu and Gallant, for instance, keenly focus on starvation as a means of waging war, including broader applications of collective punishment against Gaza’s civilian population.  For the leaders of Hamas, the interest is on allegations of murder, sexual violence, extermination, torture, hostage taking and incidents of captivity.

    The trope of faultless democracy at war against terrorism is a common one.  The George W. Bush administration made incessant use of it in justifying illegal renditions and torture during the scandalously named Global War on Terror.  Memoranda from the White House and the US Justice Department gave nodding approval to such measures, arguing that “illegal combatants” deserved no human rights protections, notably under the Geneva Conventions.

    Unfortunately, many a just cause sprouts from crime, and the protagonists can always claim to be on the right side of history when the world takes notice of a plight.  Only at the conclusion of the peace accords can stock be taken, the egregiousness of it all accounted for.  Along the way, the law looks increasingly shabby, suffering in sulky silence.  These applications for arrest warrants are merely a modest measure to, pardon the pun, arrest that tendency.  It is now up to the pre-trial chamber of the ICC to take the next step.

    The post The Rages of Equivalence: The ICC Prosecutor, Israel and Hamas first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • Israel Displaced Nearly 1 Million Palestinians in Past 2 Weeks, UN Report Shows

    A United Nations (UN) report issued on Monday describes how more than 900,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been displaced in just the past two weeks alone, a disturbing trend that is a direct consequence of Israel’s continuing genocidal attacks and actions in the region. The report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) showcases how 100,000 residents have been forced…

    Source

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  • First Jewish Biden Appointee to Publicly Resign Is “So Angry at the President”

    We speak with Lily Greenberg Call, the first known Jewish appointee to resign from the Biden administration over the war in Gaza. Greenberg Call was a special assistant to the chief of staff at the Interior Department after being named to the post by President Joe Biden in early 2023, but she quit on May 15 in a four-page letter that slammed Biden’s “disastrous, continued support for Israel’s…

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  • Biden Criticizes ICC Warrant Request Against Israel Despite Evidence of Genocide

    During a speech in the White House Rose Garden on Monday, President Joe Biden denied that the attacks by Israel on Gaza and the witholding of critical humanitarian aid to the victims of those attacks, which have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians since October, amounted to genocide. Biden was giving the speech to mark the start of Jewish Heritage Month, though it seemed his…

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  • Indeed, there is no comparison: Israel’s crimes are far worse than Hamas’

    There is one thing we should all be able to agree with Benjamin Netanyahu on: Any comparison between Israel’s war crimes and those of Hamas is, as the Israeli prime minister put it, “absurd and false” and a “distortion of reality”.Here’s why:

    * Israeli war crimes have been ongoing for more than seven decades, long predating Hamas’ creation.

    * Israel has kept the Palestinians of Gaza caged into a concentration camp for the past 17 years, denying them connection to the outside world and the essentials of life. Hamas managed to besiege a small part of Israel for one day, on October 7.

    * For every Israeli killed by Hamas on October 7, Israel has slaughtered at least 35 times that number of Palestinians. Similar kill-ratios grossly skewed in Israel’s favour have been true for decades.

    * Israel has killed more than 15,000 Palestinian children since October – and many tens of thousands more Palestinian children are missing under rubble, maimed or orphaned. By early April, Israel had killed a further 114 children in the West Bank and injured 725 more. Hamas killed a total of 33 Israeli children on October 7.

    * Israel has laid waste to Gaza’s entire health sector. It has bombed its hospitals, and killed, beaten and kidnapped many hundreds of medical personnel. Hamas has not attacked one Israeli hospital.

    * Israel has killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza and more than 250 aid workers. It has also kidnapped a further 40 journalists. Most are presumed to have been taken to a secret detention facility where torture is rife. Hamas is reported to have killed one Israeli journalist on October 7, and no known aid workers.

    * Israel is actively starving Gaza’s population by denying it food, water and aid. That is a power – a genocidal one – Hamas could only ever dream of.

    * Israel has been forcibly removing Palestinians from their lands for more than 76 years to build illegal Jewish settlements in their place. Hamas has not been able to ethnically cleanse a single Israeli, nor build a single Palestinian settlement on Israeli land.

    * Some 750,000 Palestinians are reported to have been taken hostage and jailed by Israel since 1967 – an unwelcome rite of passage for Palestinian men and boys and one in which torture is routine and military trials ensure a near-100% conviction rate. Until October 7, Hamas had only ever managed to take hostage a handful of the Israeli soldiers whose job is to oppress Palestinians.

    * And, while Hamas is designated a terrorist organisation by western states, those same western states laud Israel, fund and arm it, and provide it with diplomatic cover, even as the World Court rules that a plausible case has been made it is committing a genocide in Gaza.

    Yes, Netanyahu is right. There is no comparison at all.

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  • Inside one Israeli death and torture camp

    Palestinians participate in a sit-in protest at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, on 5 May. They denounced the assassination of Dr. Adnan Al-Barash in an Israeli prison.  (Ali Hamad APA images)

    Torture, amputations and the fetid smell of untreated wounds hang heavy in the air at the Sde Teiman facility.

    An army base situated between Beersheba and Gaza in the southern Negev region, it was turned into a detention center for Palestinians, including abductees from Gaza, before they are transferred to other prisons.

    Three Israelis who worked at the facility, and possibly participated in abuses against Palestinians, gave testimonies and pictures to CNN of what they witnessed.

    The whistleblowers painted a grim picture of what amounts to a torture camp, where Palestinians are held without charge, interrogated and filtered through to detention centers or sent back to Gaza.

    The facility is segregated into two areas: one designated for the detention of 70 Palestinians from Gaza, where they are subjected to severe physical restraint, CNN reported.

    The other section serves as a so-called field hospital, where injured detainees are immobilized and strapped to their beds, forced to defecate in their diapers and fed through straws.

    At least three army bases have been transformed into detention facilities since Israel’s genocide in Gaza began on 7 October, at least so far as the Israeli military has admitted to: Sde Teiman in Israel, and the Anatot and Ofer military bases in the occupied West Bank.

    The number of Palestinians detained at those facilities is unknown.

    During its ground invasion, the Israeli army converted schools within the Gaza Strip into military bases and detention centers, according to the group Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.

    One notable example is the Salah al-Din preparatory school in Gaza City. That school was transformed by Israeli occupation forces into a detention and interrogation center for hundreds of Palestinians in February.

    Recent legal amendments have paved the way for such facilities, notably the “unlawful combatant law,” which expands Israeli authorities’ powers to detain Palestinians without charge, trial, seeing a judge or legal oversight for up to 75 days after arrest.

    Detainees may also be deprived of legal counsel for up to six months.

    “Unlawful combatants” have previously included individuals such as an elderly Palestinian woman with Alzheimer’s.

    Formerly detained Palestinians at Sde Teiman have also described the harrowing conditions inflicted by Israeli authorities.

    Pictures leaked to CNN depict rows of prisoners handcuffed, blindfolded and held behind a fence under floodlights.

    “The prisoners are subjected to collective beatings and abuse by soldiers, using profanities that prisoners are unable to repeat,” prisoners rights group Addameer reported.

    “They are also forced to kneel on gravel or asphalt, spending their days with their hands bound and blindfolded, unable to speak to each other.”

    Addameer said Israeli interrogators torture detainees and subject them to “dignity-stripping treatment,” including stress positions for hours as well as sleep deprivation.

    UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestine refugees, has collected information from hundreds of Palestinians who were detained since the beginning of Israel’s ground operation in late October last year, The New York Times reported.

    Israeli authorities subjected Palestinians – “men and women, children, older persons, persons with disabilities,” according to UNRWA – to ill-treatment throughout their detention, including sexual abuse and threats of sexual violence.

    “Paradise for interns”

    Abducted Palestinians in the prison camp are subjected to routine amputations due to severe cuff injuries, an Israeli field doctor who had worked at the camp revealed to the newspaper Haaretz last month.

    Whistleblowers provided CNN with descriptions of the field hospital at the camp, and the broadcaster created a 3D video model illustrating these accounts. The illustration depicted detainees lying horizontally, nearly naked, wearing diapers, with their hands and feet tied down to beds.

    The video depicted a tent with up to 20 detainees.

    One of the whistleblowers, who worked as a medic at the detention center’s so-called field hospital, described it as a playground for unqualified medical personnel. He even admitted to lacking the appropriate training for the treatment he was asked to administer.

    “It is a paradise for interns because it’s like you do whatever you want,” he said.

    “I was asked to learn how to do things on the patients, performing minor medical procedures that are totally outside my expertise,” he added.

    “Just being there felt like being complicit in abuse.”

    The same whistleblower said he witnessed an amputation performed due to injuries sustained by handcuffing.

    Israeli authorities ensured that the identities of unqualified personnel were shielded from any potential future investigations by abstaining from signing any medical documents. This confirmation aligns with a report published earlier this year by Israeli rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.

    Dr. Mohammed al-Ran, a Palestinian with Bosnian citizenship who headed the surgical unit at the Indonesian hospital in northern Gaza, described to CNN what he witnessed while he was held at the Sde Teiman prison camp.

    After Israeli forces seized him in December at the al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City, al-Ran was stripped, blindfolded, handcuffed, and crowded into the back of a truck with other Palestinian detainees, many of whom were also barely clothed, before being transported to the facility.

    During his 44-day detention in the facility, the doctor spent most of his time serving as an intermediary between the prisoners and the guards.

    It was during this period, when he was no longer blindfolded, that he witnessed the worst of the atrocities.

    “Part of my torture was being able to see how people were being tortured,” he told CNN.

    “At first you couldn’t see. You couldn’t see the torture, the vengeance, the oppression,” he added.

    “When they removed my blindfold, I could see the extent of the humiliation and abasement … I could see the extent to which they saw us not as human beings but as animals.”

    Worse than death

    “Addameer asserts that there is a reasonable basis to claim that the occupying forces are committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against prisoners from the Gaza Strip,” the prisoners group said.

    This encompasses complicity by the government, judges, prison authorities, police and the military, thereby undermining the credibility of any self-examinations, when and if they occur.

    In March, a revealing exposé by Haaretz disclosed that at least 27 Palestinians have died while in Israeli custody since 7 October. Only six have been identified, according to Addameer.

    However, this figure could potentially be higher, given disturbing reports of Palestinians dying in detention.

    For instance, news only broke weeks after Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, the 50-year-old head of orthopedics at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, was killed in Ofer Prison in the West Bank on 19 April, according to the Palestinian Authority.

    Many Palestinians in Gaza remain missing, whether being trapped beneath the rubble of buildings targeted by Israeli shelling in Gaza, or laid to rest without identification – whether through Palestinian efforts to honor the dead or within mass graves created by Israeli soldiers during ground invasions.

    Some Palestinians may view those facilities as their last chance to locate their missing family members.

    However, a former detainee asserts this is a fate worse than death.

    As Dr. Mohammed al-Ran was being released, a fellow prisoner implored him to locate his family in Gaza and deliver them a message.

    “He asked me to tell them that it is better for them to be martyrs,” al-Ran recounted to CNN.

    “It is better for them to die than to be captured and held here.”

    • First published in The Electronic Intifada

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  • ICC Prosecutor Formally Applies for Arrest Warrants for Israeli, Hamas Leaders

    The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Monday announced he has “formally applied” for arrest warrants for the top political and military leaders of Hamas as well as the Israeli government on “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” charges related to the October 7 attack by Palestinian militants and the brutal assault on the people of Gaza that Israel unleashed in response.

    Source

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  • Western Governments’ Submission: From Assisting Israel to Obeying Israel

    Israel’s ongoing destruction of the Palestinian community distressed much of the world but hope and optimism that the destruction had a limit, the oppression would exhaust itself, and the destruction would not reach beyond its present borders contained the anxieties. An overly aggressive and duplicitous response to the October 7 attack changed attitudes from that of tolerating oppression to confronting an apparent genocide. The realignment of international coalitions shifted into high gear with the Russia-China bloc recognizing that Israel is a racist, militarist, supremacist, and supra-nationalist entity, a country without borders that solicits assistance from a well-organized network of cadres who control media sources and manipulate governments. Its constant aggression has no end and is leading to additional conflicts in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iran, and, maybe Iraq. Russia and China, who tried to maintain good relations with Israel, cannot tolerate the genocide. Aggression against their partners will be aggression against them. External appearance of cordial relations with Israel masks their animosity toward the Zionist regime.

    Alignment with Israel in its oppression of the Palestinians has reduced US credibility as a nation that respects justice and defends freedom. Supporters of the Israel foreign nation attacked peacefully protesting American students and police stood aside and permitted the aggression to occur. This happened on the University of California, Los Angeles campus when an unruly group attacked students and their encampment. LA security officers stood by for hours before halting the attackers and then arrested dozens of student protesters and not any of those who attacked the students. The 1930 Nazis and their stormtroopers have been resurrected. US “democracy” follows Israel “democracy.”

    In an interview, Georgia Senator Lindsey Graham says, “Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state.” indicating Israel could nuke Gaza. Why is a Georgia Senator intensely involved with Israel and willing to recommend the genocide of Palestinian people?

    The deliberate killing of the convoy of World Central Kitchen Workers on Gaza soil, one of hundreds of massacres committed by the Israeli military in Gaza and the West Bank, gets a rebuke and then fades from the public mind.

    The October 7, 2023 attack on Israeli soil, used as an excuse to demolish all of Gaza and its people, is mentioned daily in the press and is not allowed to fade from the public mind.

    Protests on U.S. campuses against a horrific genocide by Israel, which calls itself a Jewish state, are nullified by insinuating the protests are anti-Semitic ─ Jewish students claim that nobody likes them anymore. This claim moves the US Congress to hold hearings on “campus anti-Semitism” and deem Jewish feelings more serious than the destruction of the Gazan community.

    Who are these 21st century stormtroopers and how did they obtain the power to act freely? Who influences nations, governments, and citizens to ignore Israel’s racism, militarism, supremacism, and supra-nationalism and permits Israel to commit genocide. The who, how, and what to do to counter the submission of Western nations to Israel’s dominance has been the leading question for those who strive to obtain peace and justice in the Middle East.

    Reaction to the genocide concentrates on what is done to the Palestinians and what can be done for the two communities to live together. A strategy of what should be done to prevent the destruction of the Palestinians has been overlooked. Failures to challenge the deception and prevent the consequences have been the greatest failures of the supporters of Palestinian rights. Failure to challenge the traitorous actions of American legislators, who sacrifice American lives and American interests for the advancement of apartheid Israel, is the greatest failure of the American people. Israel lives by organizing the failures of others.

    Start with defining the elements used to gain Western submission to Israel’s dictates. Planned infiltration by Zionist supporters in the US and European institutions — media, government, entertainment, financial, and educational — and Israeli immigration to Western nations, where the immigrants spy, propagandize, and become voting citizens that decide elections have enabled a distorted presentation of the Middle East crisis and deceptively allied populations with Israel.

    The Unholy Trinity

    In the United States, an unholy trinity guides US policy to favor Israel, searches out its antagonists, and charges “anti-Semitism” in every truth concerning apartheid Israel.

    • American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) funnels campaign contributions to politicos who take the Faustian pledge and are willing to sell their souls to protect Israel.
    • Committee for (In)Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA)  promotes inaccurate and unbalanced coverage of Israel and the Middle East. Staffers directly contact reporters, editors, producers, and publishers, giving them distorted and inaccurate coverage, and offering errors to refute factual information.
    • Anti-defamation League (ADL) is the first line of defense for Israel’s oppression. The ADL turns truthful condemnation of Israel into charges of anti-Semitism, provides exaggerated statistics by 100 fold to make it appear that US Jews are victims of a massive conspiracy, and identifies anti-Zionists as anti-Semites.

    Special relationship

    Commentators go to great lengths to explain the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States, treating it as a unique affair, in which both benefit. This slogan is a hoax, which originated during World War II as a description of the relationship between embattled Great Britain and a still neutral United States. Somehow and somewhere, a clever someone adapted the World War II slogan, applied it to Israel, and managed to insert it in the everyday lexicon of several nations. Some examples:

    “The Netherlands maintains excellent relations with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and a constructive partnership through our development cooperation programme, while the special relationship with Israel allows for political openings.”

    “The minister met with Israeli Minister of Military Affairs Moshe Ya’alon in Berlin on Thursday. Ya’alon is on a two-day visit to Germany. ‘This is the first foreign guest I have the pleasure of welcoming here in my function as defense minister. It shows the special relationship between Germany and Israel,’ the German defense minister stated.”

    “Some members of the EU were against the deepening of relations with Israel without the progress in the Peace Process. The Czech plan did not materialize, yet, the ‘special relationship’ between the Czech Republic and the Jewish state remains strong.”

    Placing the words “special relationship” in government conversations, speeches, reports, articles, and documents so they become part of the everyday vocabulary of Europeans is a significant thrust of Israel’s public relations effort. The words seem harmless but they have a psychological impact. Parental relationship with children is special; parents warn and forgive children for their misdeeds, after all, they are special, which describes Western nation relations with Israel. Constant warnings to Israel for its oppressive actions followed by tacit forgiveness allow Israel to continue its despotic behavior.

    Infiltration

    During the last decade, more than one million Israelis left their nation. Some are fleeing a Zionist cause that has betrayed them. Others migrate and continue their allegiance to Israel. Why did they migrate? These immigrants are a cadre of weaponless soldiers, who behave benignly but are propagandists who labor to align foreign institutions in accord with Israel’s interests.

    I have witnessed immigrants inviting fellow workers to their homes and convincing them why they should support Israel. I knew of them going to synagogues and urging the Rabbis to place the Israeli flag next to the American flag. Previously refused, having the two flags together is now routine

    In public schools, efforts are made to gain support for Israel by emphasizing the World War II Holocaust (nothing on the Nakba). I have seen the Diary of Anne Frank placed on empty desks. Librarians gather students in the library to choose general biographies to read. Seven out of ten are biographies of personalities from the World War II Holocaust. One librarian showed her ignorance of the topic by referring to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg as a Nazi officer who helped the Jews. The World War II Holocaust has a vital place in history but treating it as a purposeful commodity demeans the lost lives.

    U.S. citizens and Israeli “immigrants” act as research centers for Israel, accumulating social, political, and economic statistics on American industrial and commercial life and sending the data to Israel ─ unregistered foreign agents whose activities are illegal.

    Students and visiting professors from Israel arrive with more objectives than learning. I have seen them at university conferences encountering Palestinian expressions of grievances with statements such as, “The West Bank roads that Israel is building are meant to serve Palestinians one day,” and then congregate after the meeting to discuss what they can do to counter the remarks made at the meeting. A visiting professor to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, to whom school authorities refused use of his grant to teach Holocaust studies, sued the university for anti-Semitism and won his case. St. Cloud now has a Jewish Studies and Resources Center but no courses, only a document center.

    Georgetown has a Center for Jewish Civilization (what is Jewish civilization?). Some typical courses have no relation to a “Jewish Civilization.”

    JCIV-1031-01 German Catholics in Hitler’s Army Fall 2023 – This course will examine the role of Catholics in the Wehrmacht, including its crimes against Jews and other civilians.

    JCIV-291-01 Combating Terrorist Financing Spring 2023 – Spring 2023 – This course explores how terrorists and terrorist organizations are funded and resourced, how they move and access money, and how governments and other international actors seek to combat the financing of transnational threats.

    The Center for Jewish Civilization has periodic meetings, open to the public whose topics have nothing to do with any Jewish civilization and have much to do with Israel. Some examples:

    April 20, 2023: “2023 Andrew H. Siegal Lecture by Professor Ed Husain – Berlin, Baghdad, and the Beltway: Democracy, Dictatorship, and the Dilemmas.”

    November 3, 2022: Saints and Soldiers: Internet-Age Terrorism, From Syria to the Capitol Siege.”

    Many talks are on the World War II Holocaust and anti-Semitism. No talks on Maimonides and other Jewish philosophers. No talks on past Jewish life in Spain, Tunisia, Iraq, and Europe.

    Think Tanks

    Political, “think tank,” peace, and cultural organizations in Washington, D.C. are unusually populated with Israelis and Israel supporters. Most prominent are Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), and American Enterprise Institute (AEI), all pushing the Israel line. One route that I have noticed for becoming a ”think tank expert” is obtaining credentials from an Israeli institute, being awarded a grant to visit the United States by a sketchy organization, and eventually receiving an invitation (by a friend) to lecture at a university and becoming recognized as an expert on the Middle East. This leads to a recommendation for a fellowship at a Middle East “think tank,” more recognition, and soon we have an artificially prepared “Middle East expert” who ingratiates with peace groups and tries to steer everyone, including those at the institutions and universities, to lessen aggressive attitudes toward Israel. Nothing too extreme, only a neutralization of activity.

    Agents

    During 2010, the FBI uncovered 10 unregistered Russian agents living in the U.S. as ordinary citizens, engaged in harmless activities, such as meeting people in high places to influence their attitudes and reporting American views on foreign and domestic affairs to Moscow. Multiply the number of discovered Russian agents by tens of thousands and you will have the number of Israeli expatriates in the U.S., many of whom take the opportunity to do the same for Israel, become U.S. citizens, and vote for Israel-friendly candidates.

    It all seems harmless and operates smoothly. However, considering the number of Israelis who have migrated to the U.S. and other Western nations in the last decades the amount can form a massive propaganda organization that steers westerners to favor Israel. Previous estimates by the Israeli government ministries and the Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council, which represents Israelis across the United States and promotes their interests, had between 500,000 and 800,000 Israelis living in the U.S., about 150,000 living in the New York area, 120,000 in Los Angeles, and 80,000 in Miami.

    What are the more important voting areas in the United States? New York, California, and Florida are significant. Enough dual citizens and American-Israelis can shape the ballot in those regions and may have done that in the disputed 2000 presidential election. If Al Gore had won the 2000 presidential election, would the US have attacked Iraq?

    This immigration needs intensive investigation and a full report. Americans deserve protection from foreign influence. Anyone representing the interests of a foreign nation should be registered as a foreign agent. Those placing the interests of a foreign nation before their own nation’s interests should be exposed.

    Global Influencers

    Extend the most deceptive propaganda mechanism in history from AIPAC, ADL, and CAMERA in the United States to the international scene.

    A report titled: The Israel Lobby and the European Union, researched and written by Public Interest Investigations and Spinwatch, and published by EuroPal Forum, “seeks to explore a number of Israel lobby groups in the European Union, the power they wield, and the dubious sources that fund them, while also uncovering the secretive transatlantic networks behind them. Perhaps the timeliest chapters in this report are the ones that deal with the issue of criminalizing resistance and silencing dissent.” A few examples will be mentioned.

    In France, Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF) gathers an assortment of groups dedicated to Israel. An example of their thrust and how they operate.

    French Jewish group CRIF fined for defaming pro-Palestinian charity, April 8, 2014.

    (JTA) – France’s largest Jewish organization defamed a pro-Palestinian charity by accusing it of financing Hamas, a French court ruled. The ruling against the CRIF umbrella group handed down by the Nancy Court of Cassation last month was first reported Sunday by the news site al-kanz.org. CRIF staff were ordered to pay the equivalent of $4,140 to the Committee for Charity and Support for the Palestinians, or CBSP – a group that CRIF researcher Marc Knobel in 2010 wrote “collects funds for Hamas.”

    Former Spanish Prime Minister José  Maria Aznar (why him?) leads The Friends of Israel Initiative (FII), which defines its thrust as “countering the growing efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel and its right to live in peace within safe and defensible borders.” A July 2014 working paper, “Understanding the Issue of Israeli Settlements and Borders,” claims that

    …settlements have become an exaggerated issue in the diplomatic discourse over Israel. Settlement activity, like the construction of homes and schools, does not constitute a violation of Israel’s signed agreements with the Palestinians. The assertion that settlement activity is a violation of international law is not universally accepted, though it is frequently stated in UN debates and in the declarations of the European Union.

    A July 2017 event featured this statement:

    As goes Israel – so goes the United States of America and so goes Western civilization. And so many of our adversaries and enemies know that. That’s what we’re facing all across the Middle East and, truthfully, all across the world.

    The United Kingdom has almost as many pro-Israel organizations as Israelis. Some of these are:

    Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), a parliamentary group affiliated with the Labor Party, promotes support for a strong bilateral relationship between Britain and Israel.

    We run and promote campaigns to help create a lasting peace in the Middle East with Israel safe, secure and recognised within its borders; living alongside a democratic, independent Palestinian state.

    Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is a parliamentary group affiliated with the Conservative Party and dedicated to strengthening business, cultural, and political ties between the United Kingdom and Israel. CFI has given £377,994 to the Conservative Party since 2004, mostly in the form of fully-funded trips to Israel for MPs, according to the Electoral Commission website. Directors of CFI have also given money directly to the Tory party.

    Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) seeks to present Israel’s case to journalists.

    Our Strategic Assessments provide expert analysis of the ever changing challenges to Israeli security. From sub-state actors and foreign states to domestic concerns, the strategic threats to Israel and the Middle East are explored in depth.

    Russia, yes Russia, has formation of a new lobby.

    Jerusalem Post, Pro-Israel caucus forming in Russian parliament, By GIL HOFFMAN, 05/25/2013

    A select group of Russian parliament members will soon be urging their colleagues to say “da” to Israel after a delegation of Israelis took steps to initiate the formation of a pro-Israel caucus in the Duma in meetings last week in Moscow.

    Conclusion

    Digest all of this. Why is there a plethora of foreign groups aiding one small country that has a strong military and is prosperous? Do equivalent assemblies of forces that promote a specific nation exist in the world? The questions answer themselves; these groups do not elevate a weak and destitute land; they shield an apartheid land from being exposed as a militarist and oppressive nation that is committing genocide.

    Devising strategies for countering the pro-Israel groups, who proudly announce their agendas, is priority number one for those who realize the perilous situations of the Palestinians and their principal allies. Although pushed for many years in other articles, no strategy has been offered. Without an effective strategy, Western governments continue their “special relationship” with Israel, Israel continues its oppressive relationship with the Palestinians, and the Palestinians are doomed. Why will anything change?

    Time to not concentrate entirely on how many Palestinians were killed today and concentrate more on how many Palestinians can be saved tomorrow. Let’s learn of strategies to change the direction of the Middle East crisis. I’ll make my contribution in a subsequent article.

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  • Ongoing Destruction

    On May 15, we will commemorate the 76th anniversary of the Nakba amid another catastrophe. Since 1948, Palestinians have suffered a profound and enduring trauma, as families were forcibly uprooted from their ancestral lands by Zionist militias, villages were destroyed, and communities were torn apart to create the settler colonial state of Israel. The Nakba represents not only a historical event but an ongoing reality, as it laid the foundation for the continued colonization and occupation of Palestinian land and violent dispossession of the Palestinian people. This series captures how the genocide and mass displacement of Palestinians in Gaza is an extension of the 1948 Nakba.

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    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.