Israeli forces have demonstrated a pattern of systematically targeting densely populated civilian areas across hundreds of attacks in Gaza that likely violate international wartime laws, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found in a report released Wednesday. “Monitoring by OHCHR strongly indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically failed to comply with…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In his very last article, ‘We are Spartacus’, published just a month before his death in December, John Pilger included a quote that exactly captured the truth of our time:
‘“This is a sharp time, now, a precise time …” wrote Arthur Miller in The Crucible, “We live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world.”’
No-one saw more clearly than Pilger that the West’s use of ultra-violence to impose its brutal, zero-sum version of ‘international order’ is now completely out in the open. Even the blurred obfuscations of the state-corporate media lens are no longer able to hide the reality of who ‘we’ are.
Consider US Senator Lindsey Graham last month. With tens of thousands of civilians dead in Gaza, Graham dug down to some dark place and said on NBC:
‘Can I say this? Why is it OK for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it OK for us to do that? I thought it was OK.’
Graham was mistaken; it wasn’t ‘OK’ at all. But anyway, his point:
‘So, Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Whatever you have to do.’ (Original emphasis)
The implication was clear. Past and future massacres of civilians – notably of women and children – were declared, not just ‘OK’, but unavoidable:
‘I think it’s impossible to mitigate civilian deaths in Gaza as long as Hamas uses their own population as human shields. I’ve never seen in the history of warfare such blatant efforts by an enemy – Hamas – to put civilians at risk.’
Graham concluded:
‘The last thing you want to do is reward this behavior.’
Israel reining in its US-supplied firepower to kill fewer civilians would be a ‘reward’ for bad behaviour.
Perhaps you remember Western politicians expressing such unapologetic savagery in the face of genocidal killing. We do not.
And Graham is not alone. Also in May, US Congressman Brian Mast called on Israel to devastate Rafah, where 600,000 children were then sheltering from Israeli bombs:
‘I think Israel should go in there and kick the shit out of them, just absolutely destroy them, their infrastructure, level anything that they touch.’
Three weeks later, on 27 May, media reported that at least eight Israeli missiles had slammed into Rafah’s camp of plastic tents. Refugees, mostly women and children, were burned alive. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting described the carnage many of us saw for ourselves on social media:
‘A boy cries in horror and fear as he watches his father’s tent burn with him inside. A man holds up the body of his charred, now-headless baby, wandering around, not knowing what to do or where to go. An injured, starving child convulses in pain as a medic struggles to find a vein for an IV in her emaciated arm.’
Worse was to come on 8 June when Israeli forces launched a raid to rescue four hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. At least 274 Palestinians were killed with 698 wounded. The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell described the assault as a ‘massacre’, while the UN’s aid chief Martin Griffiths spoke of ‘shredded bodies on the ground’. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, posted on X:
‘The #Nuseirat massacre will go down in history as one of the most appalling examples of disdain for Palestinian life in one of the most well-documented and boasted about genocides in history.’
The BBC headline reporting this massacre read merely:
‘Four hostages rescued in Gaza as hospitals say scores killed in Israeli strikes’
It was not at all surprising that the BBC mentioned the four hostages rescued ahead of the ‘scores’ – in fact, nearly 300 – Palestinians killed. News of the 274 Palestinian victims quickly dropped down the news page. Former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook commented:
‘BBC News’ main report on Saturday night breathlessly focused on the celebrations of the families of the freed captives, treating the massacre of Palestinians as an afterthought.’
Compare the BBC’s headline with one supplied by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:
‘UN experts condemn outrageous disregard for Palestinian civilians during Israel’s military operation in Nuseirat’
Conditioned as we are by the ‘mainstream’ habit of normalising the unthinkable, we might not find the BBC headline all that biased – they just reported the facts. But just imagine if the identities of the civilians killed and the hostages rescued were reversed. While the deaths of 274 Israelis would have been a seismic event for the BBC for days and weeks, the liberation of four Palestinian hostages would hardly have been mentioned and certainly not celebrated. Journalists would have dreaded giving the impression that the release of four Palestinian hostages in any way justified the killing of so many Israelis. This New York Times headline would be unthinkable:
‘Hostages Reunited with Family After Israel Military Operation
‘Scores of Palestinians were killed, hospital officials said, as Israel carried out an intense military campaign to free four hostages’
Likewise, this Washington Post headline:
‘Four Israeli hostages rescued alive; at least
‘210 people killed in Gaza, officials say’
Is it not clear how the value of one group of human beings is relentlessly raised above the other? The Washington Post even commented:
‘For Israel, a rare day of joy amid bloodshed as 4 hostages rescued alive.’
If the identities were reversed, the idea that a day on which 274 Israelis had been killed might be declared ‘a rare day of joy’ would be deemed unthinkable, obscene.
Despite the many hundreds of dead and wounded civilians, and so many massacres of civilians over so many months, headlines in The Sunday Times described the massacre as a ‘daring raid’, a ‘surgical strike’ that resulted in ‘celebrations’.
Although the Nuseirat massacre clearly trashed President Biden’s supposed ‘red lines’, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan also described the attack as a ‘daring operation’. The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it an ‘important sign of hope’. With hundreds of ‘shredded bodies on the ground’, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his ‘huge relief’.
How Many Gazans ‘Support Their Murdering, Raping Masters’?
For seven months, all political writers using social media have been relentlessly assailed by footage of tiny Palestinian children (often orphans) burned, bleeding, crushed, shaking in pain and terror, bits of broken skull protruding from their heads. We know we are living ‘in a sharp time’ when the Telegraph’s Associate Editor Camilla Tominey can respond to all of this on 18 May with a piece titled:
‘Admitting Gazan refugees would be proof that Britain has a death wish
‘We have no idea how many Palestinians support their murdering, raping masters’
Tominey wrote with utmost brutality:
‘We took in Ukrainians in part because we have a security agreement with Ukraine and can be fairly certain that none of those fleeing the Russian invasion are terrorists.
‘Sadly the same cannot be said for occupants of a country run by Hamas. Regardless of their medical – or other – qualifications, we have no idea how many Gazans support their murdering, raping masters, or how many have been further radicalised by war.
‘It would surely be better if these Labour MPs focused on our own problems, without burdening Britain yet further with someone else’s.’
Britain should not assume the ‘burden’ of helping injured babies and tiny, traumatised infants, when we have no way of knowing how many might ‘support their murdering, raping masters’.
Regarding rape, The Times discussed (7 June) a United Nations report submitted earlier this year by Pramilla Patten, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence during and since the Hamas attacks of 7 October:
‘Patten made it clear there was sufficient evidence of acts of sexual violence to merit full and proper investigation and expressed her shock at the brutality of the violence. The report also confirmed Israeli authorities were unable to provide much of the evidence that political leaders had insisted existed. In all the Hamas video footage Patten’s team had watched and all the photographs they had seen, there were no depictions of rape. We hired a leading Israeli dark-web researcher to look for evidence of those images, including footage deleted from public sources. None could be found.
‘The report would prove confusing to the Israeli political establishment. On the one hand, it gives substantial and substantiated credence to the sexual assault claims; on the other it does not show them to be systematic and specifically says Israel has been unable to produce evidence it has claimed to possess of Hamas’s written orders to rape. Patten also asked that Israel investigate “credible allegations” of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls gathered by the UN’s legal mandate mission in the Palestinian territories.’
The Times also cited Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of Israel’s Association of Rape Crisis Centres:
‘The first letter that I received from the government of Israel talked about hundreds or thousands of cases of brutal sexual violence perpetrated against men, women and children. I have not found anything like that.’
Tominey smeared the entire Palestinian population with this comment:
‘It is also worth noting that a Palestinian student has already had her visa revoked after saying she was “full of joy” after the October 7 attacks. Dana Abuqamar, 19, a law student at the University of Manchester, said that she was “proud that Palestinian resistance has come to this point” after the atrocities. It would be naive to believe that the average Palestinian wishing to come to the UK thinks much differently.’
Tominey linked to an earlier Telegraph article by Isabel Oakeshott from October 2023, which sympathised with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, but added:
‘To usher in an additional cohort of traumatised people, many, if not most, of whom will not share our values; will not speak our language; and will not find it easy to build new lives here, would be insane. With the right support, most would probably integrate – but we must face up to the uncomfortable truth that a very small number will not wish us well, and may repay our generosity by fomenting division and hatred in our communities – or worse.’
Oakeshott offered the warning of protesters who ‘appear convinced that the plight of the people of Gaza is the fault of the Israelis, as opposed to the cruel Iranian-sponsored militia that controls the territory’. This, she said, ‘has grave implications for community cohesion. How much more dangerous will this already febrile situation become, if we naively import thousands more people brutalised by war and confused about who is to blame for their plight?’
Oakeshott’s brutal sign-off: ‘the UK does not have a duty to take a single one of those escaping the fall-out’. (Our emphasis)
Media brutality feeds party political brutality, which feeds further media brutality… and down we go. Peter Oborne, former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, commented recently:
‘One of the historical roles of the Conservative Party has been to act as a prophylactic against fascist and far-right forces which, history shows us, have always lurked not far under the surface in British society.
‘It is no longer playing that role. The Conservative Party is falling into the hands of the far right before our eyes.’
In his conclusion to a separate piece, Oborne posts an ominous warning on the emerging political culture of this ‘sharp time’:
The post “This Is A Sharp Time”: Israel’s “Day Of Joy” first appeared on Dissident Voice.‘For the first time in my life it is possible to look forward and envisage a sequence of events that might turn Britain fascist.’ (‘Peter Oborne’s Diary – The Dark Shadow of Fascism,’ Byline Times, July 2024)
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
On 17 June 2024, after serving student protesters with an Interim Possession Order (IPO) during the festival of Eid al-Adha, LSE evicted students and staff from the Bloom Building.
The following day, the LSE administration unilaterally broke off negotiations with student protesters concerning their demands, reneging on previous public commitments in which they had promised six weeks of negotiation between students and administrators, regardless of the status of the encampment:
The behaviour of LSE administration since the beginning of the Bloom Building occupation on 14 May demonstrates a pattern of bad faith and refusal to engage with students’ demands, particularly for divestment from crimes against the Palestinian people and disaffiliation from institutions complicit in violations of international law.
Students and staff have refused to accept business as usual in an institution materially complicit in genocide. Yet instead of faithfully engaging with this position, LSE administrators have attempted to end the student occupation through an escalation of measures that leveraged their extensive resources.
The school has made history here, as the first of the UK universities to evict a pro-Palestine student encampment.
This stain on their reputation draws into question claims of academic excellence and diverse critical thought. Crucial to the continued prestige of the institution is the consideration that this young generation is paying attention to the news and paying attention to systems of power, therefore will be deterred from attending a university in which their right to free speech is repressed.
Opposition from the school came in various forms:
Firstly, through spurious claims of a commitment to fire safety and student wellbeing (belied by their refusal to allow the Fire Brigades Union into the building).
Secondly, through legal means which both threatened to criminalise students and infringed upon their human rights to freedom of association and assembly.
Finally, through a refusal to engage seriously with safety concerns, culminating in outright violence as security shoved and pushed windows onto students’ hands in the course of decampment.
After this repeated pattern of bad faith tactics, the LSE administration then had the audacity to renege on promises they made to the student community regarding the continuity of negotiations regardless of the status of the occupation.
The actions of LSE administrators mark a serious breach of trust between the leadership of the institution and the rest of the school community, as well as a profound disregard for the democratic mandate behind the movement for divestment – as per a Student Union referendum, a record-breaking 89% of students voted in support of divestment:
LSE’s decision to evict student protesters following a County Court ruling in favour of their application for an IPO also marks a dangerous precedent in which administrators have chosen to prioritise proprietary rights over the human rights to freedom of expression and assembly, as outlined in Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The court ruling means that it is a criminal offence if members of the encampment return to the Bloom Building as protesters in the next 12 months. However, given that the court order applies to ‘persons unknown,’ even students and staff who were not part of the encampment – and indeed future students joining LSE in the new academic year – are at risk of being prosecuted for exercising their rights to expression and assembly.
Such a precedent undermines the entire LSE community’s right to protest, and will also have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech in the university, belying LSE’s core values as an institution committed to dialogue and the exchange of ideas.
The LSE administration’s failure to uphold its duty of care is shaped by a pattern of institutional Islamophobia, exemplified by the fact that LSE administrators chose to evict students and staff during Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest festivals of the Muslim calendar, while knowing that a significant contingent of student occupiers are Muslim:
Throughout the occupation, LSE administration refused to acknowledge students’ repeated requests to take health and safety and surveillance concerns seriously. Specifically, the administration ignored our emails regarding the discrimination faced by Muslim students for 14 days and only responded after we repeatedly demanded a response.
Reported incidents included security staff forcing Muslim women entering the encampment to unveil, interrupting Muslims in prayer, and in one case a male member of security barged into the women’s restroom in the early morning and harassed an unveiled Muslim woman camping in the building.
The response of security on 17 June, guided by administrators’ mandates and the encouragement of senior security staff, is a continuation of the universities’ failure to uphold their duty of care to students and staff. This is especially concerning within the context of an established pattern of inaction on alleged sexual assault from those in positions of power at the LSE:
Ultimately, LSE’s actions demonstrate a callous refusal to engage with students’ ethical concerns regarding £89m the school has invested in crimes against the Palestinian people, fossil fuels, arms, and financing for these egregious activities, as per the student and staff-authored report Assets in Apartheid.
These actions also belong in a continuum of violence that finds its most extreme expression in the genocidal brutality exercised by the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people – a genocide that includes the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes, the repressive curtailment of rights to protest and assembly, and the attempts destroy of all forms of Palestinian life.
Featured image and additional images via LSE Liberated Zone
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israel’s repeated use of heavy bombs in the densely-populated Gaza Strip indicates repeated violations of the laws of war, the UN said. They highlighted six attacks that killed at least 218 people.
The United Nations rights office, known by the acronym OHCHR, carried out investigations into deaths in October 2023 that they claim were emblematic of a concerning pattern. Some of the attacks involved suspected use of up to 2000-pound bombs on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps, and a market.
The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.
The report concludes that the series of Israeli strikes, exemplified by the six attacks carried out between 9 October and 2 December, suggested that Israel’s military had:
repeatedly violated fundamental principles of the laws of war.
Among the attacks listed in Wednesday’s report were the strikes on Ash Shujaiyeh neighbourhood, in Gaza City on 2 December last year.
It caused destruction across an approximate diagonal span of 130 metres, destroying 15 buildings and damaging at least 14 others, it said.
The extent of the damage and the craters visible and seen on satellite imagery indicated that around nine 2,000-pound GBU-31 bombs were used. The UN said it had received information that at least 60 people were killed.
GBU-31s, along with 1,000-pound GBU-32s and 250-pound GBU-39s “are mostly used to penetrate through several floors of concrete and can completely collapse tall structures,” UN rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters.
Laurence continued:
Given how densely populated the areas targeted were, the use of an explosive weapon with such wide area effects is highly likely to amount to our prohibited indiscriminate attack.
The report found that an Israeli attack on Jabalya refugee camp on 31 October 2023:
completely flattened an area of at least 2,500 square metres, destroying 10 structures. It [the strike] impacted across an approximate diagonal span of 75 metres, causing damage to at least 10 more buildings. OHCHR verified 56 people killed, including 12 women and 23 children, with information of an additional 43 fatalities.
They also discuss “a massive explosion” in Al Burejj camp on 2 November 2023. Here, the report explains that:
The IDF has not mentioned Al Bureij Camp specifically before or after the incident.
These attacks have been chosen, it would appear, as emblematic of Israel’s mode of operations in bombing Gaza. That the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) do not explain these attacks is a choice. The report concludes that:
Monitoring by OHCHR strongly indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically failed to comply with the following fundamental principles of international humanitarian law in its conduct of hostilities in Gaza since 7 October: the principle of distinction, the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks, the principle of proportionality and the principle of precautions in attack.
Ajith Sunghay, head of OHCHR’s office in the Palestinian territories, said that the report focused heavily on Israeli actions, since the weapons used by Israel’s military were far more destructive.
The missiles fired by Hamas, while “absolutely unacceptable”, he said, “have not caused significant killing during the war” by comparison.
The report highlighted that unlawful targeting was not only a violation of the laws of war. When committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, in line with an official state or organisational policy, it “may also implicate crimes against humanity.”
The report authors write:
Israel must conduct prompt, independent, impartial, thorough, effective and transparent investigations into these alleged violations of IHL and international human rights law (IHRL) and bring those reasonably suspected of criminal responsibility to account through trials that comply with international standards.
Yeah, don’t hold your breath.
This report shows the deep-rooted bias against Israel that has existed in OHCHR for decades.
Yes, it’s definitely the case that the OHCHR are biased against Israel. Not the fact that even the spineless and ineffective UN have managed to work out that since October 7 2023 Hamas have killed a handful of people, versus Israel having murdered thousands. Perhaps Israel can dry its tears with all the cash and weapons from their fellow war criminal friends in the US and the UK.
If we want to stretch our intellectual and moral limits slightly beyond the irreproachable UN we may perhaps consider that Palestine is a nation under siege, whose people have been hunted, tortured, detained, and murdered for 75 years. That would cast rather a different light on things, and Israel can’t have that now, can it?
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
The unique post-World War II economic and military power of the United States prevented military and foreign policy errors from becoming overpowering disasters. Military adventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq upended America’s political system and wounded its psyche. Other than the 2001 attacks on American soil, physical destruction was foreign, appearing as images on television screens. Oil price rises, inflation, increasing debt to finance military costs, and social upheavals temporarily perturbed the US socioeconomic system. A powerful America overcame the impediments and continually extended its power until the Asian Tigers, a rejuvenated China, and progressive Latin leaders appeared on the global stage. America’s hegemony declined and the decline became confirmed by the Russian/Ukraine conflagration, Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and a subsequent attack on protesting students at the UCLA campus. No nation with unique power and in control of that power would have permitted these horrific happenings.
The US is sliding into a mediocre existence. Heard that before? Hear it again. Four words describe those who have brought the United States to a sorrowful state ─ treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitor ─ harsh words that will be met with smiles, sneers, and derisions. They are correct words and backed by a long list of treacherous, treasonous, tyrannical, and traitorous actors in the American public. The description of the “tyranny in America” is not a repetitious overkill; it is a necessary refrain that punctuates the alarm ─ America is led by pseudo patriots who have betrayed its ideals and Americans must regain its inspiring freedom, liberty-loving, and peaceful aspirations.
Domestic treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors
Running for president of the USA are two traitors ─ Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Donald Trump is accused of provoking and aiding the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US capitol and pursuing an insurrection against the US government. Treason.
Donald Trump is accused of keeping US government top secrets in his home in locations where they could be revealed to others. He is guilty of violating US espionage laws. Treason.
Donald Trump solicits Evangelical vote and financial assistance by supporting Israel, a foreign nation, in its genocide of the Palestinian people. Treachery.
Joe Biden said, “Because even where we have some differences, my commitment to Israel, as you know, is ironclad. I think without Israel, there’s not a Jew in the world who’s secure. I think Israel is essential.” Besides the nonsensical statement that condemns Biden for not knowing that Israel is the only country in the world where Jews have continually suffered from fatal attacks, claim insecurity that seeks security, and exhibit excessive prejudice toward one another — Ashkenazi against Mizrahi, both against Yemeni and Falasha, and secular against ultra-orthodox — Biden admits he has failed to protect the most well-off Americans ─ Jewish citizens (from what??). Treachery.
By having said, “My commitment to Israel, as you know, is ironclad,” Joe Biden betrayed US interests, which should have a flexible foreign policy. He has allied the US people with genocide. Traitor.
Hunter Biden had financial dealings with adversaries of the US government. Joe Biden should have known his son’s arrangements and prevented accusations of influence peddling. Joe Biden is guilty of violating his oath of office. Treachery.
Biden, similar to Trump, brought classified documents to his home and left them scattered in places open to revelation. Despite the Justice Department not pressing charges, Biden is guilty of violating US espionage laws. Treason.
The US Justice Department (DOJ) indicted several Russians and Chinese who infiltrated America, gathered information, and lobbied for a foreign nation. The US Justice Department has not indicted one of tens of thousands of Israelis (could be one of hundreds of thousands), who have performed similar duties for Israel. Lobbying is only a small part of the damage to Americans done by these miscreant infiltrators, sent by Israel to foreign shores to do their mischief. From the almost one million Israelis living in the United States, hundreds of thousands may have become citizens, voted, and changed a highly contested election. In a coming election in Westchester, New York, Westchester Unites urged Jewish voters in the district (not non-Jewish voters??) to request ballots so they could vote before the June 25 Democratic primary battle between New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who criticizes Israel, and challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, an avid supporter of apartheid Israel’s genocide. Campaign organizers say they will spend up to $1 million to boost voter turnout.
I’m not privy to the manipulations of the American public performed by the mass of Israeli infiltrators. One example is the declarations by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. His contrived Amplify Israel Initiative “aims to breathe new life into the principles we’ve been committed to for decades, with an array of programs aimed at bolstering support for Israel and aligning Zionism with liberal ideology.” In clearer words, “influence every man, woman, and child that nationalist, militarist, oppressive, and apartheid Israel is a benevolent country.”
Who is Rabbi Hirsch? Ammiel Hirsch went to high school in Israel, served as a tank commander in the IDF, and was formerly the director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, the Israeli arm of the North American Reform movement. In a response to a letter, in which 93 rabbinical and cantorial students harshly criticized Israeli actions in the hostilities between Israel and Hamas, Rabbi Hirsch wrote:
For the record, the Reform movement is a Zionist movement. Every single branch of our movement — the synagogue arm (Union for Reform Judaism), the rabbinic union (Central Conference of American Rabbis), and our seminary (HUC-JIR) — every organization separately, and all together, are Zionist and committed ideologically and theologically to Israel.
Why did Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, after receiving training in Israel, come to the United States to guide the Reform movement, which, in previous decades, had been against Zionism, and define it in Israel’s image? By not investigating the actions of multitudes of Israelis residing, the US Justice Department betrays the US people.
In an espionage scandal involving Lawrence Franklin, a former United States Department of Defense employee, who passed classified documents to AIPAC officials, which disclosed secret United States policy towards Iran, Franklin pleaded guilty and, in January 2006, was sentenced to nearly 13 years of prison. He served ten months of house arrest. The DOJ dropped espionage charges against the AIPAC officials — Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Reason (which was treason) — the Department claimed court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information (which can apply to almost every trial for treason). Despite the previous espionage charges and knowledge that un-American AIPAC is a lobby for apartheid Israel, the DOJ has not indicted AIPAC for being an unregistered lobby and has permitted its cadre of Israel firsters to wander the halls of Congress and shake palms with dollar bills. Traitors.
US representatives know that AIPAC lobbies for an apartheid Israel that is committing genocide and drags US citizens into accusations of aiding the genocide. Politicians accept contributions from individuals allied with AIPAC and vote in accordance with AIPAC’s preferences. The power of the contributions and fear that disregarding AIPAC poses a danger to remaining in office was highlighted in 1984. For voting to permit Boeing to sell AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia and for suggesting there were Palestinians and they had “rights,” AIPAC marked as undesirable the popular Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Charles Percy, who had always favored Israel. Paul Simon wrote in his autobiography that Bob Asher, an AIPAC board member, called him to run for Senator from Illinois. Simon unseated the admired and respected Charles Percy who was only 98% pure in his support for Israel. Treachery.
The US government and local governments favor laws, such as the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which can suppress free speech and free actions that contend Israel’s genocidal policies, and H.R. 3016, Anti-Boycott Act, which “bars U.S. citizens from participating in boycotts of U.S. allies if those boycotts are promoted or imposed by foreign countries.” Federal and local governments tyrannize the US people. Tyranny.
The Los Angeles (LA) Police Department stood by for hours before halting attacks on peaceful UCLA students and then arrested dozens of student protesters and not any of the vigilantes who represented a foreign power and attacked the students. The LA Police Department supported a group representing a foreign government and failed to protect American citizens. Treason.
The House of Representatives has had numerous one-sided hearings on campus anti-Semitism that feature callous remarks against Jews from relatively few of the protestors. In none of the hearings has a Committee invited the student protestors to testify; maybe, because they might say, “These students do not represent the protestors. They are angry and frustrated individuals who see Israel identify itself as a Jewish state and note that a great number of American Jews approve of Israel and its genocide of the Palestinian people. They realistically equate Jews with the genocide.” The truth of these hearings is they are more concerned with fictional Jewish feelings than factual Palestinian lives. Let’s face it, these hearings are organized by Israel’s advocates who seek to prevent the US public from gaining awareness of the genocide and shift the protest arguments to a spurious charge of anti-Semitism in America. Elected officials adhere to a foreign nation’s request to stifle American citizens from exercising their right to protest and move dialogue from the horrific victimization of Gazans to an artificially created Jewish victimhood. College presidents committed a huge error by not responding to the committees’ fabricated charges of campus anti-Semitism with a simple statement, “There is no campus anti-Semitism and you are attempting to divert the impact of these demonstrations that criticize Israel policies into a false charge that indirectly enhances Israel’s image.” By representing a foreign power and censoring American students from their right to protest, these elected officials are guilty. Treason.
Foreign policies exhibit the same treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors.
North Vietnam
President Lyndon Johnson’s reciting a dubious attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on the USS Maddox in international waters cajoled Americans into accepting an increased US military involvement in the Vietnamese civil war. Global strategists also mentioned the Domino Theory, where if one country falls to communism, then adjacent nations also become communist. A non-functioning Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty (SEATO) tied these fabrications into a call for action. Result was 58,148 uniformed Americans killed, 200,000 wounded, and 75,000 severely wounded. Ho Chi Minh’s followers won the war and none of the neighboring SEATO nations became communist. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the leading prophet of the Domino Theory, confessed, “I think we were wrong. I do not believe that Vietnam was that important to the communists. I don’t believe that its loss would have led – it didn’t lead – to Communist control of Asia.” Treachery.
Six-day war
During the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbors, Israeli torpedo boats and airplanes attacked the intelligence ship USS Liberty in international waters, killed 34, and wounded 171 American service personnel. President Johnson refused to respond to this assault, an insult to all Americans. Treason.
Yom Kippur war
In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, President Nixon’s administration supplied arms to Israel and reversed the course of the war. Arab nations responded with an oil embargo that caused huge inflation in the United States, punished the American consumer, and harmed the American economy. Treachery.
Afghanistan-1980s
President Ronald Reagan’s CIA covertly assisted Pakistan intelligence in providing financial and military assistance to Osama bin Laden during the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan. In effect, the US played an essential role in creating the al-Qaeda network. Treason.
International Terrorism and 911
After Ronald Reagan helped create and popularize Osama bin Laden, later presidents did not heed Osama bin Laden’s warnings. The arch-terrorist clarified his position in the infamous Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to the American people,” which has been conveniently sidetracked to ensure Americans do not get infected with terrorism germs. It should be titled, “How the United States made me a terrorist.” It is difficult to agree with bin Laden but his statements are not easily contended.
You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern.
Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.
You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.
William J. Clinton was president during the period that Bin Laden raged his fury at the United States. If Bill Clinton had considered some of bin Laden’s grievances his considerations might have prevented the later 9/11 attack on American soil. Treason.
George W. Bush and American security officials permitted 19 co-conspirators to enter the country and take preparatory flying lessons in full view of authorities. His DOJ did not pursue information that connected the Saudi royal family with the bombers. Treason.
Afghanistan-2001
Without exhausting all means to have Osama bin Laden extradited from Afghanistan and knowing that the Taliban was not directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in a military adventure that had no defined purpose and accomplished nothing. In a war that lasted 20 years, the United States had 2,459 military deaths and 20,769 American service members wounded in action. Twenty years of a useless war that only brought the Taliban back to power. Treachery.
Iraq
George W. Bush’s uncalled-for war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) is the best example of sacrificing U.S. lives to advance Israel’s interests. The cited reason ─ destroying Hussein’s weapons of destruction ─ whose evidence of developments the U.S. based on spurious intelligence and was a farce that no sensible person could believe. This “made for consumption” and fabricated story detracted from the real reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq — to prevent Iraq from becoming the central power in the Middle East and able to threaten Israel. Neocons succeeded in pressuring President George W. Bush to sacrifice American lives and, by military action, remove Saddam Hussein from power. Discarding the nonsensical assertion that Saddam Hussein, who had no nuclear material, no technology to develop a nuclear weapon, and no ICBMs to deliver a bomb, threatened the United States, and needed to be immediately stopped from turning bubble gum into a mighty weapon solicits a more acceptable reason for the U.S. attack on Iraq. The U.S. Department of Defense casualty website has the US military suffering 4,418 deaths and 31,994 wounded in action during the Iraq War. No coincidence that Iraq was a long-time adversary of Israel and it was in Israel’s interests to have Iraq become militarily impotent. Treason.
Libya
NATO declared it intervened in the 2011 Libyan Civil War “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” President Barack Obama remarked, “Gaddafi declared that he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment.”
Reuters report demonstrated significant differences between Gaddafi’s remarks and President Obama’s rendition: Gaddafi Tells Rebel City, Benghazi, ‘We Will Show No Mercy,’ March 17, 2011.
Muammar Gaddafi told Libyan rebels on Thursday his armed forces were coming to their capital Benghazi tonight and would not show any mercy to fighters who resisted them. In a radio address, he told Benghazi residents that soldiers would search every house in the city and people who had no arms had no reason to fear. He also told his troops not to pursue any rebels who drop their guns and flee when government forces reach the city.
Logic tells us that few Benghazi residents could even have guns to hide, and Gadhafi’s forces were too limited to carry out any large-scale purge.
The U.S. vacillated, and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, convinced President Obama to join NATO in removing Gaddafi. NATO eliminated Gaddafi, Islamic extremists gained partial power, discarded armaments were shipped to al-Qaeda “look-alikes” throughout North Africa and soon the Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) coalition, Boko Haram, and Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) were creating havoc throughout North Africa. The US gained nothing in removing Gaddafi and created more Islamic extremist organizations with which to contend. Treachery.
UN Vetoes
As of December 18, 2023, the U.S. vetoed resolutions critical of Israel 45 times. Each time, the Secretary of State offered the excuse that the resolution would not advance the cause of peace, and each time vetoing the resolution did not advance the cause for peace. Why do Americans give deference to Israelis when Israel insults American leaders, uses Americans to die in wars that advance Israel’s interests, causes havoc that brings injury to U.S. relations with other nations, and sucks money ($3.1 billion annually) from U.S. taxpayers to support its apartheid and oppressive policies?
Some mentioned reasons, which have changed during the decades, are:
Pundits confuse support for Israel with support for this Israel. The United States, for military and geopolitical reasons, can support Israel, as it does Columbia, but there is no reason to support and assist this Israel in the destruction of the Palestinians. The Washington establishment and foreign policymakers have incorrectly calculated the tradeoffs between supporting this Israel in its denial of Palestinian rights and in satisfying the Palestinian cause.
Just for money and votes, U.S. politicians sell out their commitment to the American people, follow the dictates of a foreign nation, and make Americans party to the destruction of innocent people. TREASON!!
Conclusion
Americans have, at times echoed grievances against their government’s policies and demonstrated their despair, well, some Americans, a small minority of the US population. The rest of the population has been naïve, complacent, and manipulated. Due to America’s intrinsic wealth — natural resources, abundant farmland, temperate climate, rivers, valleys, streams, hard-working population, ocean barriers to foreign incursions — the treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors temporarily slowed but did not stop the roaring engine. The roaring engine is beginning to sputter.
America’s posture as the leading defender of democracy and human rights is hypocritical; its economic system is challenged; its united states are disunited; its pluralistic political system is an epic fantasy; its legislative bodies are divided; and its courts are agenda-seeking rather than law-abiding. Democracy recedes and polarization of citizens widens. Americans are increasingly divided in their aspirations and express increasing fears of one another. An almost self-sufficient economic system proceeds with debt financing imports, trade imbalances, and growth, an unruly situation that can continue until debt hits a financial wall and repaying the debt becomes intolerable.
Hopefully, more Americans will take cognizance of the failed leadership, meet the challenges they pose, gather the resources, form the organizations, shout much louder, push much stronger, and succeed in disposing of the treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors that have made the Statue of Liberty weep.
The words of Patrick Henry, “These are the times that try people’s souls,” are heard again in the cities and villages of a disunited United States of America.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The United Nations’ top human rights official said Tuesday that the situation in the West Bank was “dramatically deteriorating” and that Israeli security forces and settlers had killed 528 Palestinians in the occupied territory since October, “in many cases raising serious concerns of unlawful killings.” Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, made the remarks to the U.N.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
How to cut ties with genocide.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Palestine Action has caused £1m of damage to an Elbit-owned factory that supplies weapons parts to Israel. Of course, the militarists would call it criminal damage. However, activists would call the operation a success – as it means none of the kit made at the site can be used by Israel to kill Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Territories.
Palestine Action’s ‘decommissioning’ of Elbit Systems’ electro-optics weapons sights factory in Kent has left the ‘Instro Precision’ site immobilised, unable to produce weapons parts for export to Israel.
After tens of activists stormed the premises – bypassing security guards and cutting through three layers of wire fence – seven activists made it inside the factory itself, laying waste to the weapons of war being produced inside:
BREAKING: Actionists cut through 3 security fences to get inside Elbit's 'highly secure' compound and break into Kent's Israeli weapons factory.
Once inside, they begun dismantling machinery, technology and parts used to arm the Gaza genocide. pic.twitter.com/5yyQXJYbiA
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) June 17, 2024
During their 36 hour detention, before their release under strict bail conditions, police interrogators put it to the seven arrested that over £1m of damage was caused in their few hours inside the factory.
“Good”, said Palestine Action in a statement:
Fewer sniper sights manufactured at Instro Precision means fewer guns for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Cops then released the seven, pending further investigation:
All seven actionists released after 36 hours in police cells for breaking into Kent’s Israeli weapons factory and allegedly causing over £1million worth of damage! pic.twitter.com/ziKOcWcul4
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) June 18, 2024
Destroying cables on the outside of the factory, and wrecking machinery, computer technology, and parts being produced for Instro’s product line, the action sought to – and has successfully – put the site out of action.
In a five year period, Instro Precision was granted over 50 weapons export licenses for sale of arms for military end-use in Israel, mostly of the ‘ML5’ category – weapons sight and target acquisition products. Many of these are the weapons sights ‘likely to be used in ground operations in Gaza’ by Israeli ground troops.
In 2019, an Elbit press release stated that thousands of XACT th64 and XACT th65 weapons sights had been delivered to the Israeli military, for use by “marksmen of both Infantry and Special Operation Forces”.
Besides products for snipers and infantry, Instro also manufactures sights and components for vehicular mounting, including the SpectroXR system fitted to Israel’s ‘Skylark’ drones. Instro products the ‘COAPS’ (Commander Open Architecture Panoramic Sight), which has been integrated with Main Battle Tanks and Armoured Fighting Vehicles with “hunter-killer capabilities”, in use by the Israeli military.
Featured image via Palestine Action
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
On 17 June 2024, Maria Elena Vignoli, Senior Counsel, International Justice Program of HRW, reported on several statements by States to rejects recent intimidation efforts.
Ninety-three member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have declared their “unwavering support” for the court in the face of recent threats. The June 14 statement by an unprecedented number of ICC members across the globe follows a slew of threats, particularly after ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants against two senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with three Hamas leaders.
The joint statement reconfirmed ICC members’ support for the court “as an independent and impartial judicial institution” and their committment to defending the ICC, its officials, and those cooperating with it from any political interference and pressure. It follows similar expressions of support by the Presidency of the ICC Assembly of States Parties, several ICC member countries—including UN Security Council members—the high representative of the European Union, UN special procedures, and nongovernmental organizations.
In April, amid speculation ICC warrants for crimes committed in Gaza were imminent, 12 US senators threatened to sanction Khan should he pursue cases against top Israeli officials. Netanyahu also called on governments to prevent the court from issuing warrants. Khan’s office denounced the threats, noting that the ICC can also prosecute individuals for obstructing justice. [see also earlier: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/02/19/large-group-of-ngos-call-on-biden-administration-to-repeal-icc-sanctions/]
On June 4, after the warrant applications were announced, the US House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at imposing sanctions against the ICC, its officials, and those supporting investigations at the court involving US citizens or allies. The bill is now under consideration in the US Senate. The proposed law is reminiscent of the sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump on the previous ICC prosecutor to intimidate the court from pursuing cases against US and Israeli personnel for crimes committed in Afghanistan and Palestine. President Joe Biden revoked those sanctions in 2021 and has so far opposed the current bill.
The ICC is also in Russia’s crosshairs. In 2023, Russian authorities issued arrest warrants against Khan and six ICC judges after the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official for war crimes committed in Ukraine. Russian lawmakers also enacted a law criminalizing cooperation with the ICC.
In both the Palestine and Ukraine investigations, ICC officials are simply doing their job. The joint statement sends a strong message that ICC members have the court’s back and will not bow to efforts to undermine its independence.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/06/17/international-criminal-court-members-speak-out
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
As the U.S. was supposedly hard at work negotiating a Gaza ceasefire deal last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly assured Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. was working “day and night” to remove restrictions on weapons shipments to Israel, the Israeli prime minister said in a statement Tuesday — despite the Biden administration denying that it is withholding weapons at all.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On social media, people are correcting corporate media headlines that obscure Israel’s war crimes. MintPress News writer Alan MacLeod pointed out the BBC astonishing framing in March of Israelis trying to colonise Gaza:
Imagine a foreign country bombed your town and a bunch of people turned up and stole your house. Then imagine the BBC ran with this headline describing it like this.
pic.twitter.com/FayLWyfdv1
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) June 16, 2024
Apparently, settlers are merely ‘setting their sights’ on Gaza’s beachfront. It sounds like they are merely eyeing up a nice holiday destination. In fact, the article opens with the sentiment “who wouldn’t want a house on the beach?”
The piece looks at Daniella Weiss who leads a colonial organisation called Nachala. Weiss said there are 500 Israeli families already ready to settle in Gaza. She continued:
I have friends in Tel Aviv, so they say, ‘Don’t forget to keep for me a plot near the coast in Gaza,’ because it’s a beautiful, beautiful coast, beautiful golden sand
Gaza and the West Bank are the remaining territories of the Palestinian people. That’s after Zionists colonised 78% of Palestine in 1948 through mass displacement and murder. This creation of Israel is known as the ‘Nakba’ or ‘catastrophe’, for Palestinian people.
Fast forward to the Israel of today and Israel’s agriculture and rural development minister Avi Dichter explicity referred to the ongoing military onslaught on Gaza as “Nakba 2023”.
And Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for “encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza”.
Then there’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who himself stated that Israel is “working on” the “migration” of people in Gaza.
Also a secret Israeli Intelligence Ministry document shows a plan to expel Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt.
Yet in the BBC piece the author charitably states that colonising Gaza is categorically “not government policy”.
In its ongoing genocidal assault on the Palestinian enclave, Israel has killed 37,920 Palestinian people including over 15,000 children. Israel has displaced nearly two million Gazan residents – more than the 800,000 Palestinians Zionists displaced in 1948.
Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty International, said:
Generations of Palestinians across the occupied territories are deeply scarred by the trauma of being uprooted and dispossessed multiple times and with no prospect of return to their homes.
It is utterly harrowing to see the chilling scenes of 1948 Nakba… repeat themselves as droves of Palestinians in Gaza are forced to flee their homes on foot in search of safety over and over, and Israeli army and state backed settlers expel Palestinians in the West Bank from their homes
Despite what the settlers say, God is not a real estate agent. We must oppose this genocidal colonisation.
Featured image via DW News – YouTube
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Biden administration is in “non-compliance” with a U.S. law regarding foreign military assistance in allowing Israeli forces to dodge scrutiny over their brutality against Palestinians and otherwise, according to a new, scathing analysis by a former top State Department official. A report written for Just Security by Charles Blaha, who retired from his position as the director of the State…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As more members of the military and State Department resign over U.S. funding of the genocide in Gaza, a new campaign was launched this week to allow military personnel to directly contact their congressional representatives.
Initiated by active-duty military members, veterans and G.I. rights groups, “Appeal for Redress v2,” is modeled after the 2006 Appeal for Redress conducted during the highly unpopular occupation of Iraq, to allow G.I.s to tell their representatives they are opposed to U.S. policy.
Active duty service members are opposing U.S. funding of Israel’s genocide not only because it is immoral, but also because U.S. government employees violate several federal statutes every time weapons are shipped to Israel, as cited in this letter from Veterans For Peace to the U.S. State Department.
James M. Branum, an attorney with the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, said, “Too often lawmakers make war policies without hearing from the people who have to implement them. This is what makes the Appeal for Redress v2 so important.”
Senior Airman Juan Bettancourt, on active duty while seeking conscientious objector separation, said, “My proudest act of service has been championing Appeal for Redress v2, a campaign to empower fellow service members to securely voice their moral outrage about our government’s complicity in Israeli war crimes and genocidal onslaught in Gaza. Although our rights are limited by our oath, Appeal for Redress v2 allows service members to carve out a modicum of agency and dispel any apprehensions that may impede us from denouncing this unspeakable carnage. Our voice is a powerful instrument, and it is our responsibility to humanity and the principles we hold dear to speak up against these heinous acts and make it known to our elected officials that we will not stand by silently while genocide unfolds. We refuse to be complicit. These are my views, not those of the Department of Defense.”
Army Sergeant Johnson said, “Throughout my Army career it has been reiterated to me time and time again to live and uphold Army values. I have been taught that honor and integrity are pivotal to being a soldier. It hurts me to my core that the same country that instilled these values in me would proudly support a genocide. It is our duty as service members to uphold Geneva conventions and international law. That is why I am pleading for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for humanitarian aid to be distributed throughout the entire Gaza Strip. To Ignore these crimes against humanity would be to turn my back on all the values I’ve cultivated as a soldier. It is against my personal beliefs as a man and my obligation as an active duty soldier to be complicit in this genocide. Fellow service members, please join me in calling for an immediate ceasefire and for Israel and the US to adhere to international law. These are my views, not those of the Department of Defense.”
Senior Airman Larry Hebert, also seeking conscientious objector status, said, “It is imperative that we uphold our personal and professional values and beliefs. There is no greater crime against humanity than genocide. No person, country, or institution should be supported unconditionally. This Appeal is within our rights as service members and we have a duty to exercise this right when our leaders commit violations of international and humanitarian law. You need to genuinely consider your actions now and reflect on how you’re contributing to the genocide. Are you helping or hurting the situation? There is no neutrality. By staying neutral, you hurt the oppressed. These are my views, not those of the Dept. of Defense.”
Bill Galvin, Counseling Coordinator at the Center on Conscience & War, said, “We’ve had an increase in calls from military personnel asking about getting discharged as conscientious objectors. Almost all of them cite the carnage in Gaza as something that their conscience would not allow them to ignore. Some have expressed feeling complicit in the violence.”
Kathleen Gilberd, executive director of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, said, “Many service members have serious objections to the U.S. support for Israel’s carnage in Gaza. Though their rights are somewhat limited, military personnel can still speak out about their beliefs and protest the travesty of this war. The Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild stands in support of these military dissenters and resisters.”
Shiloh Emelein, USMC veteran and Operations Director of About Face: Veterans Against the War, said, “We know many young people join the military out of necessity to get their needs met. But they are not obligated to contribute to genocide and unjust, unlawful wars that go against their conscience. You do have rights, you do have options to object, and there’s a large community of post-9/11 veterans ready to welcome you.”
To increase the awareness of this campaign among members of the military, civilian supporters are encouraged to share it on social media and to ask peace and justice organizations to share it with their membership.
The active-duty members listed in this release are available for comment by calling Bill Galvin, Center on Conscience and War, at 202-446-1461.
The post Active Duty, Veterans, G.I. Rights Group Launch Campaign for Military Personnel first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The moral burden lies with us all to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. And let’s not forget the other ‘silent’ conflicts and famines that are mounting across the world, which also demands a massive international response in the face of political apathy and indifference.
— Share The World’s Resources (STWR)
Since Israel’s military response in Gaza to the 7 October attack by Hamas, hundreds of civil society organisations have supported the call for a ceasefire. Global humanitarian and human rights groups also demand that all UN member states immediately halt arms transfers to Israel and Palestinian armed groups in order to avert further humanitarian catastrophe and loss of life.
While sharing the outrage and condemnation for the horrific attacks by Hamas, it is important to acknowledge its causes in decades of state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians by Israel. Rights groups have long documented the shameful hallmarks of colonialism and apartheid in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Gaza has endured unimaginable suffering as a result of the illegal blockades imposed since the 1990s, a form of collective punishment that has turned Gaza into an ‘open-air prison’. But over the past eight months, Israel has gravely violated international law with its unprecedented military assaults on the besieged territory, killing upwards of 35,000 people including over 15,000 children.
Strong evidence suggests that the Israeli government’s actions violate the Genocide Convention, meaning it has inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians. Up to 70 percent of homes in Gaza have been destroyed, and an entire civilian infrastructure decimated including hospitals, schools, universities, cultural sites and UN facilities.
The latest actions in Rafah—closing a critical border crossing and forcibly displacing an estimated 800,000 people with nowhere else to go—clearly flout a provisional ruling of the World Court, which ordered Israel to take ‘all measures within its power’ to prevent acts of genocide. Rather than upholding the order by immediately providing basic services and humanitarian assistance to Gazans, Israel is deliberately using hunger as a weapon of war and committing further grievous war crimes. Half of the population of Gaza are already facing catastrophic levels of hunger, with famine imminent in the north.
Complicity with genocide
What the Israel-Gaza war has painfully revealed is the complicity of North American and many European countries with Israel’s genocidal crimes. The major Western powers present themselves as the defenders of human rights and morality, yet give unwavering support to Israel as it defies international law with impunity. These governments have repeatedly vetoed or abstained from resolutions at the UN Security Council calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. They have thwarted diplomatic efforts to bring Israel’s offensive to an end. They have opposed South Africa’s genocide case at the World Court. They have shamelessly cut life-saving aid to the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians. And they continue to supply Israel with taxpayer-funded weapons transfers—particularly the United States that has worked with Congress to secure billions of dollars of additional military assistance.
The hypocrisy and duplicity of Western countries has been exposed like never before. The most powerful Western states treat the Palestinians as if they are not worthy of the universal human rights endorsed by the United Nations more than 70 years ago. Their support for genocide shames us all and risks fuelling an endless cycle of violence and hatred that may eventually endanger the whole of humanity.
In the absence of political leadership, the moral burden lies with ordinary citizens to speak out, march and express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It is up to us to take a stand and protest against a genocidal war and its systemic support from callous politicians and the mainstream media. Peaceful student protesters are showing us the way with Gaza solidarity encampments and hunger strikes, despite violent police crackdowns and their false portrayal in the media as being antisemitic. Their brave actions have already helped force the U.S. administration to take pause and tentatively oppose a major ground invasion in Rafah. Now it falls to the rest of us to enforce international law through citizen action, to support human rights for all and end this immoral and illegal war.
A wider crime against humanity
The Israel-Gaza war may be the gravest moral crisis of our time, the most visible genocide in history. But we mustn’t forget the other conflicts around the world that our governments are neglecting, in which millions of people also face violence and mass displacement. In Sudan, civil war risks triggering a severe famine, with half the population already requiring humanitarian assistance and protection. Human Rights Watch report that widespread war crimes and a genocide is likely to have been committed in the region, although it is seldom mentioned in the Western media.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, endemic violence has left nearly 7 million people internally displaced, and the country is suffering the world’s biggest child hunger crisis. In Yemen, more than half the population is dependent on food aid after years of war has destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. Last year, Somalia was brought to the brink of famine as a result of unrelenting drought and flare-ups of conflict. Hunger is also skyrocketing in multiple other countries, including Burundi, Djibouti, Gambia, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia, Senegal and Malawi.
Life-threatening levels of food insecurity affect a staggering 281 million people according to the latest global assessment, with those worst affected living in South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Mali. Many of these hunger crises don’t make the news headlines. The majority are in conflict-affected areas that—similar to Gaza—leave vast numbers of people without shelter, medicine, food or clean water. At a time when humanitarian needs are soaring, all these crises are tragically underfunded. The humanitarian system is enduring the worst funding gap it has ever faced, described by UN officials as an obscene competition of suffering to receive emergency aid.
While speaking up for the neglected citizens of Palestine, we also need to hold our governments accountable for these wider crimes against humanity. The major Western powers must act to end the 16-year siege of Gaza, provide unlimited humanitarian support to the region and immediately broker a ceasefire. And they must act to mitigate the ‘silent’ conflicts and famines that are mounting across the world, which also demands a massive international response in the face of political apathy and indifference. So let’s extend the spirit of the Gaza protests into a global movement for abolishing the injustice of hunger, and call upon all governments to adequately fund our most basic human rights instead of fuelling more devastating wars.
The post In Solidarity with Gaza and the World’s Forgotten Millions first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Gulshan Khan, photojournalist in Johannesburg, reports: “What we are seeing in Palestine today is a hundred thousand times worse than what we experienced in South Africa.”
*****
“Israel, the establishment of Israel is based on the erasure of historical Palestine, on the depopulation of Palestinian towns and villages, and the imposing of a new geography in a new urban system, a new transport system, a new meaning, a new set of names, new maps on top of that area. And that is a huge construction project.”
“When you grow up in Israel, the entire education system is priming you to become part of a national project of erasure and dispossession. There are things that you simply are not told, and you understand that state ideology requires a certain narrative and requires certain epistemic erasure, meaning the erasure of history, erasure of people, erasure of the truth that you actually see in front of your eyes.”
*****
Imagine a woman knocking on your door in Bath, England, saying that your house is her house because the Romans occupied England in the 5th century, so anyone of Roman descent can make a historic claim to their land. Zionist Israeli Jews have made the same claims on the land in Palestine.
Facebook . com: (video) 1 min, 21 sec–June 12, 2024
*****
*****
Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
*****
Narrow AI (Artificial Intelligence) is what we have now. AGI is when AI attains the ability to learn, understand, and perform. Technocrats believe this will be the achievement of Singularity–what they are ultimately trying to achieve.
*****
The post Genocide in Gaza, AGI, Age of Hebrew Bible first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
We speak with Israeli American Jewish scholar Raz Segal about the University of Minnesota’s move to rescind a job offer over his comments early in the war on Gaza, when he characterized the Israeli assault as a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal was set to lead the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, but after two board members quit in opposition to Segal’s selection and a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The genocide in Gaza has captured the attention of the world, but nowhere in Palestine is safe from Israel’s onslaught. Israeli repression, land grabs, and deadly raids in the West Bank have increased dramatically since Oct. 7. Long subjected to a brutal apartheid system and routine attacks from settlers and the IDF, Palestinians in the West Bank now face a more aggravated Zionist threat than before, with “no light at the end of the tunnel.” Palestinian-American humanitarian Joyce Ajlouny, director of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), joins The Marc Steiner Show to discuss her recent trip to Ramallah, West Bank, her decades of on-the-ground humanitarian work in Palestine, and the services AFSC aid workers continue to bravely provide to hundreds of thousands of people under the worst of conditions.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s wonderful to have you all with us.
As some of you know, I’ve been deeply involved in working to end the Israeli occupation of West Bank and Gaza since 1968. Here at The Real News, I’ve been producing a series called Not in Our Name, with Jewish voices standing up to Israel, saying not in our name. But now this slaughter has taken hold.
What’s happening now is breaking my heart. It’s mind-numbing. On the day we taped this conversation, the war on Gaza is in its 244th day. No less than 36,654 Palestinians, 71% of them women, children, and infants, have been slaughtered. 83,309 people wounded, with more than 10,000 buried under the rubble of bombed homes. Almost all of 2.5 million Gazans have been displaced. Communities, hospitals destroyed, or wastelands.
My guest today is Joyce Ajlouny, who’s been leading the American Friends Service Committee since 2017. She’s a Palestinian American and a Quaker, who served as a country director for Palestine and Israel with Oxfam Great Britain, chaired the Association of International Development Agencies, and, for 13 years, was the director of the Ramallah Friends School in the West Bank, which is a K through 12 Quaker school.
Remember the three Palestinian college students who were shot in Vermont? They were graduates of that school.
Joyce, welcome. It’s good to have you with us.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Good to be here. Thanks for having me, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
I almost don’t know where to begin. I’ve been covering this so deeply, and you were there recently. I’ve read the things that you’ve written. To me, it’s almost impossible to put your hands around what is going on at the moment. I understand it from people who survived the camps and fought in the Warsaw ghetto against the Nazis, and I can’t believe that what’s being done in our name to Palestinian people at this moment.
You’ve been witnessing it. Tell us a bit about what you feel and what you’ve seen on the ground.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yeah, it’s true. Where do we begin, Marc? This is such a deeply concerning issue for us at the American Friends Service Committee, but also for me personally, where I have lived most of my life in Ramallah on the West Bank. I have dear friends in Gaza. Just to see that the world has allowed this level of destruction and killings to that level of a genocide, to me, is mind-boggling.
It’s hard to understand when we were relying on so many systems in the world, an order that will prevent, especially after so many genocides and the Holocaust, that we have systems in place to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening.
A lot of people ask me, how am I feeling? How am I doing? Myself and Palestinians all over the world, we’re stunned. We have no more words. We are speechless.
Just watching our feed only today, 68 innocent people were killed as they were sleeping and taking shelter in a school. Yesterday, 101. It’s just mind-boggling that this continues. To me, what really is most frustrating is the complicity of our government and for them not to do more.
Marc Steiner:
I know on March 7, you participated in a demonstration with AFSC and others where you blocked the route of Biden’s motorcade. You had some very strong things to say about what could and should be happening instead of what’s happening now from our government.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yes. Yes. I think it takes, we have to stretch ourselves to do courageous things, and civil disobedience is one of them. I was, yes, one of those who took part in that civil disobedience action, blocking the road at the time of the State of the Union Address.
It seems like I’ve been on the Hill many times, I’ve been to the State Department, I’ve been to the White House, speaking on behalf of AFSC, and to urge the government to call for a permanent ceasefire, and demand it now, to call for an end to fueling Israel with weapons, and to ensure that humanitarian access is granted unfettered to the Palestinian community in Gaza.
Unfortunately, eight months in, myself and the so many courageous people on the streets taking the lead of Palestinian Americans, Jewish Americans, people of all faiths, it’s going to deaf ears, and we are getting lip service in return.
We have seen some shifts, of course, and we think it’s due to the protest movement, but when someone, a staffer in a congressman’s office tells us that the phone calls that they receive calling for a ceasefire are 20 to one, yet that congressman is not doing anything to call for a ceasefire. It puts to questions, like, nothing is urging the government to take concrete steps to stop the onslaught.
I think it’s a phone call away. I think Biden can actually do it if he had the will and the intention to stop military aid and put pressure on the Israeli government to stop the onslaught.
Marc Steiner:
He doesn’t have to play the political game and condemn Israel. I think it would be nice, but he can bring parties together and create peace like Carter attempted to do at Camp David.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think he can, but I also, if and when that happens, it doesn’t seem like he’s moving in that direction, unfortunately.
Marc Steiner:
No.
Joyce Ajlouny:
I think that what I have not seen is a vision for a peace process that breaks away from the past 30 years of this Oslo paradigm that has failed miserably. Unfortunately, there has to be a reckoning with that, and say, okay, the role that the US has played for the past 30 years-plus, beyond the Biden administration, has not brought peace to Palestinians nor Israelis. It has not provided. It wasn’t even in the best interest of the United States.
Look at where we are today. In my visit to Palestine last month, people were questioning me about the role of the United States on our tax dollars and why they are not doing more. People are pointing the finger at the United States, saying they are complicit in what is happening in Gaza.
I hope that whatever happens that it doesn’t take us back to the status quo, and that the United States can be an honest broker, provide that impartiality as a mediator, reroute us in international law, in the moral authority for humanity, and equality, and all the good stuff, UN resolutions past and present, to reroute us there and to ensure that the Palestinians have the right to self-determination in whichever way. As long as those principles are upheld, and that Israel has its security as well.
There are things that can be done, but I think it takes a will. What I’m not seeing in this administration very clearly is a will.
Marc Steiner:
Talk a bit about what you saw when you went to Palestine last month.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Well, I went to see family and meet staff. AFSC has staff in Gaza. I’d like to talk a little bit about that, Marc, in a bit.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah, please, please.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yes, to visit family and friends. But let me start a little bit with, I did manage to meet our staff in Gaza Online. Obviously, my heart was with them. I wanted to go, people don’t realize how close… Gaza is 60 miles away or so from Ramah where I was. Yet we had no access, of course, to going.
We did meet them online in that special moment when they had internet access. That was good enough. They poured their heart out. I’m just in awe of them, because they are three staff. They work with many, many volunteers.
Marc Steiner:
Three?
Joyce Ajlouny:
Three, yeah, they’re three staff: Adham, and Firas, and Serena. But as I said, they work with other organizations, partner organizations. They have provided food, hygiene kits, they’ve done activities with children. They have served over half a million people since Oct. 7.
I am just in awe of how they do it, because they have lost their homes themselves. They have been displaced time and time again. It’s just every few weeks, they’re saying, we’re moving again, we’re moving again.
Last time they moved from Rafah, and now they are in tents. And yet they wake up in the morning, they tent for their families, making sure they have food and water if they can. Then they go off and do AFSC work and provide humanitarian aid as much as possible, as much as they can find.
We have been supporting them with that. We have an operation in Egypt. As you know, trucks of aid that we’ve purchased, just like all other international organizations, have been stuck at the border. Israel is not letting them in.
Our last truck that was coming in through Jordan was attacked by the settler motorcade. Luckily, the flour on the truck was intact and we were able to bring it in. We are, us old humanitarian organizations, are having a hard time getting our humanitarian aid in. Nonetheless, the work continues. We continue to support as much as we can on the ground. We know it’s a drop in the ocean.
But my stay was in Ramallah. I think one thing that has been absent in the media these days here in the United States is a focus on what’s going on the West Bank.
It was petrifying to be there. I couldn’t go on the road to go to a nearby village because my son who’s there and my mother who’s there were like, no, no, no, it’s not safe, because of the settler violence.
That has been, to me, a very stark difference from in the past, where we kind of knew what roads to avoid, et cetera, to stay safe. This time around, there was this aura of insecurity that was very stark. I think also settlers are raiding towns every day.
One family member had a young daughter, she’s 22 or 23, and they kidnapped her at night. The Israeli soldiers came in, kidnapped her at 3:00 in the morning and took her in.
What people don’t realize is that, since Oct. 7, Israel has detained more than 8,000 Palestinians. That, to me, is an astounding number. The only reason, in my opinion, that they’ve detained so many people is that they want to use them as bargaining chips. That’s what happened during the last exchange.
After that deal as just a temporary ceasefire deal, I believe Israel released some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, but the next day, they can go back and round them up again, or round up others. That is what’s happening on the West Bank. It’s very, very dire. People don’t feel safe. Israeli raids, settler raids are the name of the game.
Then there’s this sense of despair, Marc, was what I felt of people who wanted to do so much, yet they couldn’t. They wanted to reach out to their people in Gaza, to go there, help out with the humanitarian effort. And that sense of helplessness, feeling alone, that they couldn’t do much to help their own people.
At the same time, I saw a lot of creativity, and I keep talking, I like to talk about the silver lining sometimes. A radio station that was putting on some educational materials so young students in Gaza can tune in and learn a thing or two, or the local university there, Birzeit University, offering the students in Gaza classes online so they can finish their university degrees.
One architecture school, they sent images of how to build your own tent to their Gazan colleagues, et cetera. I think these are the sort of things that I like to talk about, because it talks about the resilience of the Palestinian community, and that’s what I saw there.
Marc Steiner:
That is really a critical point, I think, and for people to understand, is the resilience inside the Palestinian world, and how people are doing everything they can to survive and to help one another survive.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
It’s unfathomable. If I try to explain to people, to talk about what it’s like to not have your freedom, to not be able to go from village to village, to not see your parents, to be taken to jail for no reason, other than you’re Palestinian.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yeah. I think, Marc, I think people don’t understand that this is not an Oct. 7 start date for this occupation and this apartheid system. I’ve lived through it all my life as a child. Where do I begin to explain the ins and outs of what it means to be under the military control of a belligerent, settler-colonial system that wants to ethnically cleanse me from the land? I believe that that is what’s happening. It’s really about that. It’s a continuation of that.
So many of my family members left 10, 20 years ago from Ramallah. They’re living in the United States, and the reason they left is that Israel has made it unbearable for people to live there.
I think that that’s what people don’t realize is that the day in and out of our lives, the daily humiliation that I remember as a child, and as leading a school there, seeing how brutal the occupation is. And the trauma, the collective trauma that has caused for generations. That’s something people can’t really understand, that now we’re surrounded by walls, and total impunity of anyone who attacks a village.
There’s no accountability. Take it from even an American citizen, Shireen Abu Akleh, the journalist who was targeted and killed, there was no accountability. And times thousands and tens of thousands now in Gaza who are being targeted and killed, aid workers. I fear for our staff as aid workers.
There was so much attention given to the central food kitchen aid workers who were sadly and tragically targeted and killed, and rightly so, but no one’s talking about the tens of Palestinian aid workers that have been targeted and killed at the same time. There’s just the total impunity.
We as Palestinians, we continue to live in a world that we feel doesn’t regard us as of value or of equal human beings. That’s how we feel. At the same time, we do see how the people in the street in the United States and all over the world, people joining us in our struggle in solidarity that is so strong from the student encampments, to Jewish Voice for Peace, If Not Now, so many other groups that are walking the talk and are putting their bodies on the line for its cause.
To me, when I was in Ramallah, it was in the midst of those encampments and at the height of it. I can’t tell you, even our staff in Gaza mentioned them to me, and they said how much hope they give them. There’s something to be said about the difference that they have made, at least to lift up the spirits of those who are living under the gun. That’s important that they continue.
Marc Steiner:
I think that there’s so much I wanted to talk to you about, maybe we can do it over a different period of time. One of the things in all the years that you’ve been doing the work you do, and the years you ran that school, and I watched you on my friend Amy Goodman’s show reading those poems from the young people who were from your school that wrote these poems when they were in the sixth grade. I’m talking about the young people who were shot in Vermont.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
Well, two things. Let me just start with this: Where do you think this goes from here, and what do you think we have to do to get us there?
Joyce Ajlouny:
I think if there’s one thing that is positive, if I want to say that, because it’s hard to put anything positive in it —
Marc Steiner:
I understand. Yeah.
Joyce Ajlouny:
You understand, is that for once the Palestinian narrative and the Palestinian story is now out there, and our narrative about our dispossession in 1948 and our Nakba, our catastrophe, that narrative is out there. I know there are so many attempts to silence it, and that’s been the case for decades. Now, people are asking questions. They are wondering, who are those Palestinians, and why have they been dispossessed for years?
I think that we need to do some reckoning with that. People in this country need to do some reckoning around that, and around their role as the US government in supporting it. I think that we have seen the people are speaking. And I don’t have the latest polls, but even so many of the Democrats are saying, we are against what Israel is doing, and we are against supporting them. There are huge percentages.
This are the first time Israel’s being called out, and in such large numbers, because no one supports genocide. No one wants to put their name next to genocide. It’s going to come back and haunt us. I know that. I think what we need to do is to stay the course.
At AFSC, Marc, I’d like to just say a few things about what we are doing.
Marc Steiner:
Yeah, please do.
Joyce Ajlouny:
We’re doing work on the ground, as I said, the humanitarian work. I don’t know if you know that AFSC was called by the United Nations in 1948 after the Nakba to set up camps in the Gaza Strip. We were the first, I think, only organization there doing that. We were doing the bulk of the work. It was soon after we received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947. I think that’s why we were in the limelight a little bit. The UN asked us to go to Gaza, and we went, and we set up the camps.
Then after that, the UNRWA, the UN Agency, was created and took over. We remained there since. We’ve been in Gaza since 1948. On the ground here in the United States, we have been relentless about our advocacy for Palestinian rights.
For example, today, we have something we call the Apartheid Free Campaign. We are inviting faith communities and congregations and organizations to step away from supporting the apartheid system, and occupation, and settler colonialism. We’re asking them to take a pledge.
That’s been two years now in the making, this campaign, because what it does is also opens conversation. Okay, apartheid, why are you calling it apartheid? Let’s talk about it. Communities, and congregations, and faith communities are coming together to discuss and to see if they feel comfortable with the pledge. We are, in all, over 130 congregations that signed the pledge so far.
What also, the other thing that we do is that we have a weekly action hour for Ceasefire Now where people sign up. It’s every Friday at 12:00 PM Eastern, and where they can get updates from us straight from the ground in Gaza.
Also, they can take actions collectively together. They call elected officials, or they write to the editor, or they make calls to their elected officials. That’s something that we do every Friday. Thousands have registered for this with us. We’re very happy with that.
Another thing that I’m really, really proud of what we’re doing is that we have for years been working on economic justice issues we have developed. We do a lot of research on corporate complicity in oppressive systems, especially on apartheid. We produce a lot of research on these companies. We have an online screen called Investigate where folks can go in and plug in their investments and see if they are on the divestment lists or not.
We have been, sort of on the back end, supporting the BDS movement in doing so. As of late, because of the student encampments and their demand for divestment from their universities, I think we have stepped that up.
We also have a guide that guides students on how to negotiate and how to talk to their university investment committees. It’s a full-fledged guide with resources and how-to. It’s also on our website: afsc.org/divest. We have been on this for a long time, because as a Quaker organization, we believe in nonviolence as a tool for resisting injustice. We find that divestment is a very powerful tool. We’ve seen it at work ending the South African apartheid.
We are behind the scenes doing a lot of that work for the movement. That these are some of the things we are doing. We published a book called Light in Gaza that was published two years ago. It’s an anthology. We asked Gazan writers to write about their imaginations of Gaza without occupation. That’s why it’s called Light in Gaza. It’s beautiful.
One of the authors was Dr. Refaat Alareer, who, as you may know, was killed. He’s the one who wrote the poem “If I Must Die”. It’s a very popular poem.
Marc Steiner:
Yes, yes.
Joyce Ajlouny:
He’s one of the authors in that book. We have been for years trying to bring the voice of Gazans. We have a campaign called Gaza Unlocked, where the aim of that is to bring the voices of Gazans into the US mainstream. We have been supporting study towards the mastermind behind the Gaza march, The Great March of Return, if you remember that. It was every Friday on the border.
Marc Steiner:
I do.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yes. The mastermind is Ahmed Abu Artema, and we invited him to the United States three or four years ago. We did a tour for him around the country, talking to different media and organizations about his notion and his vision for nonviolent resistance.
That is what we do as a Quaker organization. We need to speak truth to power, but also promote the efforts towards justice that are nonviolent. That’s why we are very much in support of the divestment effort.
Marc Steiner:
Well, the work you’re doing is very critical.
One thing, we don’t have a lot of time, but just to… Where do you think, as an activist, as a leader of organization, as a onviolent activist, someone who’s been working at this their whole life, where do you see the role and power of nonviolence playing in this? How does that work when an Israeli army is decimating and slaughtering people all around you?
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yeah, it’s hard. I remember at the time with my students when I was leading the school, and they see their people getting killed, their own families, their homes demolished or imprisoned, and they’re angry. What do you do with this anger? What do you do with this anger? How do you channel it in ways that are nonviolent?
I can’t say that… What we have to do as leaders who believe in the power of nonviolent resistance is to put those options, make them available to them, and make compelling arguments for why, in the hope that that they will understand and follow through.
It’s difficult. Not everybody prescribes to that. Some people are too angry, especially during this time of the genocide in Gaza. I’ve had friends and people that I know that have always been proponents of nonviolent resistance, always supported it. Today, they’re questioning it. They’re like, we’re stuck. We’re stuck.
I do understand that, but I think as a Quaker organization, we need to really be pushing that as much as possible. I saw the beauty of the impact of nonviolent resistance during the first Intifada when I was living on the West Bank.
Marc Steiner:
That’s right, you lived through that. That’s right.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yes, I lived through that, and I saw how beautiful it was and how impactful it was, and it changed public opinion. The Oslo Peace Process started, I think, because of that.
I remember the civil disobedience we did, the community protection that we did. Israel closed all the schools. I was teaching at the Ramallah Friends School then, and they shut down all schools for months. We were teaching kids in our clandestine classrooms and planting community gardens. We had neighborhood watch, and had peaceful demonstrations. Of course, we were attacked, and boycotted Israeli goods. It was just really beautiful to see that power of it.
The Great March of Return is one that, unfortunately, that’s the thing: you do the nonviolent methods, but then you are faced in return by Israeli aggression. During The Great March of Return, I believe 100 and some, I can’t remember how many, I think 200, 214 Palestinians were killed by snipers, and 46 children during those nonviolent things.
One film that I urge your listeners to go and look for is the Five Broken Cameras. It’s an Academy Award-nominated film because it talks about one village in the West Bank and how they were on a path resisting the settlement expansion and building around their village. For seven years, they were documenting their movement, and it’s called Five Broken Cameras.
We have some amazing examples of resistance, but unfortunately, the response has been quite violent against them. I always know that that’s the only way. There should always be room for diplomacy, and for shared humanity, and moral courage to really rise above. That is, our leaders today are, especially in Israel, are not showing that. We need to keep at it. There’s no other way, really. There’s no other way.
That’s why working for a faith community like the American Friends Service Committee and AFSC grounds us in our values. I think we need to always refer to them as our foundation for our moral grounding and ethical frameworks of how we want to deal with conflict in the world, going back to messages of our compassion, and peace, and justice. We have to keep the course. It takes time. It’s not going to happen overnight.
Unfortunately, that’s how I feel that the situation in Palestine, and the occupation, and the apartheid, and the genocide is going to continue. I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, unfortunately. That’s why people need to be, continue the course of standing up and raising their voice as high as can be, so folks…
We’ve seen it historically from all sorts of civil rights movements, that that’s what it took, the people speaking up. The anti-war movement, that’s what it took, people speaking up, and standing up boldly, and courageously, and staying the course until freedom and justice is attained.
Marc Steiner:
Very well said and very true. That’s what it does take. It heartens me to see the growing number of Jewish Americans, the people I grew up with, standing up and saying, not in our name. We have to get more of us out there to do that.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yes. I can’t tell you enough what it does to our spirits. I have been working very closely with JVP and If Not Now, and it’s what’s giving us hope. All my Palestinian friends here and Palestinian Americans, all they want to talk about is how moved they are by the courage of young and old Jewish activists who are really standing up saying, not in our name.
That has been really fueling us to do more because we know we’re not alone. We have so many constituents, so many communities that are standing by us boldly, doing the hard work. That’s all been incredibly hopeful for us.
Marc Steiner:
I want to thank you for being with us today. I want to thank you for the work you do. As we leave each other today, when you were on Democracy Now! and you read those poems of the kids who were graduates of your school in Ramallah, who were also the kids who were shot and attacked in Vermont, and the poems they wrote when they were in the sixth grade, I should say, in 2015.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yes.
Marc Steiner:
I don’t know if you have them in front of you. I do.
Joyce Ajlouny:
I don’t.
Marc Steiner:
I do.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Okay, okay.
Marc Steiner:
I think it speaks to the power of young Palestinian children and Palestinians in general. I think it speaks to the incredible work that the Friends School does in Ramallah. People should know about this. I’ll be linking to all that when this goes online.
Joyce Ajlouny:
That’s great.
Marc Steiner:
I should release one of them. I don’t know whether it should be “Hope Dwells in my Heart”, or “My Ears Are Pounding”.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Yeah, because it’s been a while since I read them. It’s been months, so I can’t —
Marc Steiner:
Let me just read them, [inaudible 00:35:32].
Joyce Ajlouny:
Okay, sure.
Marc Steiner:
This is by Hisham Awartani.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Awartani, yeah.
Marc Steiner:
He was a graduate of the Friends School. He wrote this in the sixth grade. He was one of the kids who were young men who was shot in that attack in Vermont. He wrote, and remember folks, I said he wrote this in the sixth grade:
“Hope dwells in my heart. It shines like a light in darkness. Light cannot be smothered. It cannot be drowned out by tears, and the screams of the wounded. It only grows in strength. The light can outshine hate. This light can outshine injustice. It outshines segregation and apartheid.
“As a Greek legend, Pandora opened a box, and when she did, all the evil escaped. Luckily, Pandora closed the jar before hope could escape. As long as hope stayed in that jar, hope would never escape. I ask you one thing, learn from that story. Learn to never give up hope. Learn to never give power in the darkest times, and let the light shine.”
The other poem I’m going to leave you all with as well — And is by the same person who wrote the same poem — This is, I’ll read this to you, Tahseen wrote this, sixth grade:
“My ears are pounding. Children dying. Mothers crying. Authorities lying. My ears are pounding. My ears are pounding. Missiles destroying. Bombs exploding. Bullets killing. My ears are pounding. Press careless. Dreams traceless. Lands ownerless. My ears are pounding. Kids without mothers. Beds without covers. Palestine without others. My ears are pounding. My ears are pounding. There is one sound I heard. Not from a breeze or a bird. The sound of darkness. My ears are pounding. My ears are pounding. I’d rather be deaf.”
Joyce, thank you so much for the work you do.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Of course. Thank you, Marc, for having me. Enjoyed the conversation.
Marc Steiner:
I look forward to having many more and staying in touch. Joyce Ajlouny, who’s doing the work that needs to be done as head of the AFSC, fighting for human rights across the globe and in Palestine, Israel, thank you so much for being with us.
Joyce Ajlouny:
Thank you, Marc.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, thank you to Joyce Ajlouny for her work and for joining us today. We thank all of you for joining us today. We’ll link to the work of the American Friends Service Committee in Gaza and the West Bank on our site here at The Real News. We’ll keep you up to date on issues happening in Palestine and what the Friends are doing as you heard at the end of our conversation.
Thanks to Cameron Grandino for running and editing the show today, and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes, and everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible.
Please let me know what you thought about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com, and I’ll get right back to you.
Once again, thank you to Joyce Ajlouny for this enlightening conversation. For the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Liberal shill and Guardian columnist Marina Hyde has thrown her toys out the pram with the most privileged take imaginable. It was over book festival boycotts against climate-wrecking and genocidal investments.
Predictably, Hyde was incensed at the supposed “politicisation” of literary art and laid into the protesters fighting it. Or translation: she couldn’t give a toss about the Israel massacring people in Gaza, or people dying on the frontlines of the climate crisis. Because god forbid these get in the way of her little literary self-promoting event.
In a six-minute rant of epic cognitive dissonance proportions, Hyde showed all that’s wrong with the Western liberal media class.
On 17 June, Marina Hyde and Richard Osman’s media and TV podcast The Rest is Entertainment turned its attention to book festival boycotts.
Specifically, the pair opined on investment management company Baillie Gifford pulling out of or getting banned from major literary festivals. As the Canary has previously reported, this has largely occurred in response to protests against the company’s controversial investments.
In this particular instance, Hyde lambasted one specific group: Fossil Free Books. The group comprises literary workers who are calling for their industry to divest from fossil fuels and businesses propping up Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As its website explains:
Baillie Gifford currently has up to £5bn invested in the fossil fuel industry,[2] including the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC)[3] and Petrobras.[4]
CNOOC is a shareholder in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, which is already displacing people from their homes in Uganda and, if it goes ahead, will be the world’s largest heated crude oil pipeline.[5] Petrobras is one of the top ten companies for projected fossil fuel development and exploration this decade.[6] These investments are funding destruction and harm in very real terms.
We’ve just renewed our call for Baillie Gifford to divest from the fossil fuel industry and from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide. Read our updated open letter, signed by 800 members (and counting) of the literary community.
However, Hyde took umbrage with Fossil Free Books’ aims, arguing that the festivals shouldn’t be “politicised”.
The Canary won’t regale you with the nitty-gritty details of her soapbox tirade. The crucial point is, Hyde harped on about the wonderful philanphropic sponsorships of Baillie Gifford, and lambasted the boycotts. If you’re so inclined, you can watch her shit the bed here:
Fossil Free Book vs. Baillie Gifford. The boycotting of book festivals. pic.twitter.com/ygbgbE8I3e
— The Rest Is Entertainment (@restisents) June 17, 2024
Largely, it was a media masterclass in rank hypocrisy. Thankfully, the good people of X have graciously well and truly ratioed her for it.
Marina Hyde also branded the cultural boycotts a “contraction of the mind”. We hear you Marina, Fossil Free Books equipping themselves with the tools and information to fight the oppressors is evidently an exercise in shrinking the cerebrum.
A poster on X postulated that perhaps its those big Oxford bods that are festering in mindless mediocrity. What, like Hyde herself perhaps, who read English at Christchurch College?
Marina Hyde and Richard Osman (both Oxbridge cunts btw) are the perfect poster children for the mediocrity that defines British media and culture. https://t.co/GCCAKFbBBe
— Cathy Brennan (@TownTattle) June 17, 2024
Of course, her high-horse shit is also rich from someone preaching from the landed gentry with an enormous media platform:
classic centrist columnist. “I preach about how awful this world is, from my landed gentry and well paid life. but should anyone make a stand to change it, you’re ridiculous bed wetters.” without a terrible world that they can preach about, Hyde et al will have no ivory tower. https://t.co/CbUkz8olBx
— eyeswideshut (@eyeswideshut75) June 17, 2024
Lest we forget, Hyde – or Marina Elizabeth Catherine Dudley-Williams – is the literal daughter of a baronet:
Marina Hyde’s whole privilege existence is based upon a politics where the few matter more than the many. A Daughter of a baronet doesn’t get to cry “Art for art sake.”
— John Smith (son of Harry Leslie Smith) (@Harryslaststand) June 17, 2024
What’s more, she shamelessy peddled the position that “not all art is political”, so why punish the spineless book festivals taking blood money?
Except of course, Hyde quite literally makes a living out of just such snivelling liberal media takes herself:
Oh, bless the white privilege of imagining that not everything is politics. And the irony of Marina Hyde, who literally makes her living using an art form – writing – to be political, putting this forward is…quite something. https://t.co/xOl1x3O5Yo
— Irim Sarwar (@irimtated) June 17, 2024
And, for Hyde, it’s blatantly about high-tailing it on the profiteering gravy train more than anything else too:
Who thought someone could moan for 6 minutes about being accountable for the power structures they seek to profit from https://t.co/C1zDQUghTt
— Me (@Barnard17) June 18, 2024
Oh, bless the white privilege of imagining that not everything is politics. And the irony of Marina Hyde, who literally makes her living using an art form – writing – to be political, putting this forward is…quite something. https://t.co/xOl1x3O5Yo
— Irim Sarwar (@irimtated) June 17, 2024
Did we mention Hyde is a frequent-flier of the literary festival circuit? In May, she was a speaker at the Stratford Literary Festival. And you guessed it, Baillie Gifford is its sponsor. We’ll just leave that there…
Naturally, that might explain her doing mind-bending athletics to point the finger of blame at – *checks notes* – the protesters:
Who are “the wreckers” here?
Is it @fossilfreebooks workers who are using their right to free speech and calling for an end to deadly pollution?
Or is it the bosses of @BaillieGifford who have cut funding for festivals rather than cut funding for the wrecking of our future? https://t.co/l8clu4B5ly
— Ansell Eade (@AnsellEade) June 18, 2024
In short, between ditching the book festival scene and divesting from fossil fuels and genocide, Baillie Gifford chose the former. Because ultimately, capitalists will always sacrifice their environmental and social goals for profit. It’s literally their MO. Nothing political about that. But of course it’s the boycotters fault that book festivals are short on funding.
In other words, she has it quite backwards:
Nonsense. It is Baillie Gifford who seek to politicise art by making it compatible with the aims (and advertising) of an asset manager, and in turn their profit from Israeli apartheid. The call for divestment is the call to depoliticise art. You and Marina have it upside-down.
— Julian Sayarer (@JulianSayarer) June 17, 2024
In fact, as some on X highlighted, investment companies sponsoring cultural events is precisely this ‘politicisation’ she so despises:
In any event, why does Marina Hyde think investment bankers are funding arts festivals? Cos they just really love books? Corporate social responsibility programmes are just when companies are really nice? It’s thought-numbing reactionary dreck.
— C (@Obseyxx) June 17, 2024
According to Marina Hyde, what’s not to love about laundering the image of climate crisis and genocide-funding corporations?
Of course, that’s the rub. For the media establishment, it’s all about protecting the status quo:
It never fails to catch me off guard how, when self-confessed liberals are confronted with the need for actual radical action to create a fairer world, they are so quick to reel back in horror and support the status quo. https://t.co/82eRyCG2nG
— David Veevers (@DavidVeevers1) June 18, 2024
Who are “the wreckers” here?
Is it @fossilfreebooks workers who are using their right to free speech and calling for an end to deadly pollution?
Or is it the bosses of @BaillieGifford who have cut funding for festivals rather than cut funding for the wrecking of our future? https://t.co/l8clu4B5ly
— Ansell Eade (@AnsellEade) June 18, 2024
What Marina Hyde and Jonny Geller mean here by ‘a contraction of the human experience’ is really just the loss of insulation, among the middle classes, from the effects of politics. https://t.co/PzsPZtVufj
— Jon Stone (@shotscarecrow) June 17, 2024
Because boo-hoo, your middle class book soiree is cancelled. Meanwhile, Hyde couldn’t even masquerade as someone who cared about the climate crisis or Gaza:
I love how Gaza like climate change has become a derisive reference for western liberals when they want to rail against what they believe are the eccentric concerns that are destroying their way of life. https://t.co/tAERDzlcZ1
— Idrees Ahmad | idreesahmad.bsky.social (@im_PULSE) June 17, 2024
This is just genocide apologism. Very well dressed up, sure, but the point is clear: “Please let me get on with my life and stop asking me to discuss what is going on in Gaza”.
— No Context Zands (@RobZands) June 17, 2024
Nevermind that Israel has systematically destroyed Gaza’s cultural institutions and sites, including over 140 historic monuments. Or that the climate crisis is decimating the natural world.
It’s almost as if Marina Hyde isn’t actually interested in protecting art at all. Instead, reactionary punching down is the bread and butter of Western liberal chancers like Lady Dudley-Williams. Compare and contrast:
In 2019 Jeremy Corbyn wanted to protect EVERY public library for ALL UK children.
In 2024 Marina Hyde wants to protect £223bn Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship of Cheltenham Festival’s one-off Children’s outreach programme.
PICK YOUR FIGHTER NON-THINKING PEASANTS!!!! https://t.co/Jb2233Yyk6
— Love Ssega (@LoveSsega) June 17, 2024
Some on X exposed her as the hypocritical opportunist she really is. Notably, on the one hand Marina Hyde has spoken out against sports-washing for prolific human rights violator Saudi Arabia. Yet, when it comes to fossil fuels and Israeli genocide, art-washing is golden:
Given how damning @MarinaHyde has been about Saudi Arabian sportswashing, surely not hard to understand the problem with artswashing? https://t.co/MLsCe9FLFa
If the Saudi Public Investment Fund was sponsoring these festivals, there would be no debate about art being political! https://t.co/6IcTtd3ZWZ
— Huw Jordan (@huwjordan) June 17, 2024
Hyde brazenly flirts within the politically permissible – that is, the media has manufactured the conditions for her flaccid criticism of these boycotts. Largely, it has done this by dehumanising Palestinians and colonised Black and brown communities in the Global South. By contrast, as one astute X user suggested, she’d likely be champing at the bit to stick it to Russia:
I also seriously doubt that Hyde would take this attitude to demands relating to cultural events and the Ukraine-Russia war. Hard not to read this from Lady Dudley-Williams at fizzing anger at the impertinence of the grotty little shouty people.
— Asterios (@AsteriosTweets) June 17, 2024
Yet, if Hyde’s rattled – she’s right to be. Because, with drivel like this, it’s only a matter of time before readers tire of her liberal lickspittle. Ultimately, Hyde’s selective outrage is not surprising. She predicates her privilege on massaging the image of criminal capitalists tyrannising people and the planet for profit. What is surprising, is that anyone still listens to her shite.
If you weren’t already folks, now would be a good time to boycott the Guardian and its corporate capitalist-abetting band of two-faced stenographers.
Feature image via The Rest is Entertainment – X
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israeli forces killed at least 17 people early Tuesday in attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the site of a recent operation in which Israel’s military massacred more than 270 Palestinians to rescue four hostages. Reporting from central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said it has “been another bloody night” in the area, noting that Israeli forces attacked two homes in Nuseirat…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
We speak with Israeli American Jewish scholar Raz Segal about the University of Minnesota’s move to rescind a job offer over his comments early in the war on Gaza, when he characterized the Israeli assault as a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal was set to lead the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, but after two board members quit in opposition to Segal’s selection and a smear campaign led by the pro-Israel group Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), the school revoked the offer. Segal says he has been “targeted because of my identity as a Jew who refuses the narrowing down of Jewish identity to Zionism” and calls the JCRC-led opposition a “hateful campaign of lies and distortions” and “crude political intervention.” “This was a completely legitimate hiring process,” states Segal. He says rescission of his offer “spells the end of this idea of free inquiry, of academic freedom, of research and teaching — and all in the service, of course, of supporting an extremely violent state.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist
West Papuan pro-independence supporters are calling Indonesia’s condemnation of Israel hypocritical considering its occupation of Papua for 61 years.
The Indonesian government, through the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the President, has condemned the Israeli government’s handling of the conflict in Gaza.
In a statement, a United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) spokesperson said: “Indonesia’s stance on the international stage contrasts with its actions in Papua”.
“Indonesia mediates conflicts in several Asian countries but lacks a roadmap for resolving the conflict in Papua.”
The group is calling for the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to immediately form a fact-finding mission to investigate alleged human rights violations. They have also asked for a review of Indonesia’s UN membership.
In November last year, the Pacific Islands Forum appointed the Fiji and Papua New Guinea prime ministers as special envoys to Indonesia to “address the West Papua issue“.
The ULMWP are asking for Indonesia to let the two leaders visit Papua.
Hard to compare with Gaza
Human Rights Watch researcher in Indonesia Andreas Harsono said the situation in West Papua was hard to compare to Gaza.
“Palestine, Gaza and the West Bank, of course, is recognised by more than 130 countries, members of the United Nations. Meanwhile, West Papua is being discussed mostly among seven or maybe 10 other countries, so this is difficult to compare.”
He said Indonesia — the most populous Muslim majority country — had religion in common with Palestine.
But Harsono said West Papua did need more international attention and there was little understanding of the conflict inside Indonesia because of propaganda.
ULMWP executive secretary Markus Haluk reiterated calls for a UN fact-finding mission.
“We want the UN to send their fact-finding mission to West Papua to witness and to prove that there is a slow-motion genocide, ethnocide and ecocide happening in West Papua,” Haluk said, speaking to RNZ Pacific through a translator.
It is an ongoing plea for the United Nations to visit. In 2019, the Indonesian government agreed in principle to a visit by the Human Rights Commissioner but that promise has not been fulfilled.
Haluk said the “big brothers” in the region — referring to New Zealand and Australia — could bring up the UN fact-finding mission when the nation’s leaders meet with their Indonesian counterparts.
“There has been several visits by the leaders but it seems like the issue of West Papua is not as important as the other issues such as trade,” he said.
‘Refusing to take responsibility’
Former New Zealand Greens MP Catherine Delahunty said she felt frustrated that West Papua had not got the attention it should, especially considering it was in “our own backyard”.
Nearly all foreign media has been banned from entering West Papua.
“Anyone that criticises the regime has great difficulty getting into that country to report and local journalists are subjected to sustained threats and so we’re in a very unhealthy situation in terms of public understanding of just how drastic the situation is,” she said.
Delahunty said Indonesia had been intimidating smaller nations, while larger ones like New Zealand and Australia were “refusing to act”.
“They are refusing to take responsibility for their own part in allowing this to continue.”
She said New Zealand and Australia could create consequences for Indonesia if it continued to not allow the fact-finding mission, by doing things like stopping military exchanges.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said New Zealand “follows human rights developments closely, and takes all allegations of human rights violations seriously”.
“New Zealand continues to register concerns about the human rights situation in Papua via appropriate fora. New Zealand encourages Indonesia to promote and protect the rights of all its citizens, and to be transparent in policy relating to Papua.
“New Zealand recognises Indonesia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, including in Papua.”
In a statement to RNZ Pacific, the Indonesian Embassy in Wellington said the government of Indonesia was committed to accelerate the development of all provinces, “including our brothers and sisters in Papua”, to lead and enjoy a prosperous way of life.
“Papua is highly respected as an honourable region and will continue to be maintained as such,” it said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
You could almost sense the smacking of lips, accompanied by the rubbing of hands. The departure of Benny Gantz from the Israeli war cabinet, which had served as a checking forum against the conventional security cabinet, presented a perfect opportunity for those who felt his presence stifling. In these febrile times, Gantz, the leader of the opposition National Unity party, passes as a moderate centrist and had been one of its three voting members, alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
The resignation was prompted by Netanyahu’s tardy attitude towards formulating a plan to end the war in Gaza. Gantz had given him till June 8 to come up with something satisfactory, “a plan of action” that would include the normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia and the creation of “an international civilian governance mechanism in Gaza”. “Unfortunately,” stated Gantz, “Netanyahu is preventing us from achieving real victory. So we are leaving the unity government. With a heavy but full heart.”
According to Gantz, he joined the emergency coalition “because we knew it was a bad government. The people of Israel, the fighters, the commanders, the families of the murdered, the casualties and the hostages needed unity and support like they needed air to breathe.”
In his resignation letter, Gantz musters praise for his own role and that of his party. “After the October 7 disaster, we set up together the emergency government. Our joining was not under question at that difficult time… Our entrance contributed several achievements to the government… national unity and conveying a clear message to the international community as well as to our enemies.”
If the message had been one of a savage campaign littered with Palestinian corpses, the infliction of conditions of famine, the crushing of the Gaza strip, not to mention ignoring political realities, then it was certainly conveyed. If any moderate influence had been exerted on the part of Gantz and his colleagues, it was a statue yet to escape its marble confines. Much of what he has proposed are distinctions without much difference. He envisages the return of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, the destruction and substitution of the organisation in Gaza, the return of residents of the north displaced from their homes and fortifying the US-led effort against Iran.
Fellow National Unity minister Gadi Eisenkot, who also resigned, explained that the cabinet led by Netanyahu was prevented from “making key decisions, which were needed to realize the war’s goals and improve Israel’s strategic position.”
Israel watchers speculated on the significance of the move. The Gantz gambit could well stimulate an early conclusion to the conflict. On the other hand, his bluff could be called, enabling the hard right of the coalition to entrench themselves.
Shalom Lipner, non-resident senior fellow for Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, suggested that the resignation placed the PM “at the complete mercy of his right-wing and religious fellow travellers who – in the absence of Gantz’s fig leaf – will steer policy in a direction that is anathema to the Biden administration and puts Israel’s essential ties with the United States at risk.” A bitter Israel Harel, writing in Haaretz, wondered what improvements might be made by Gantz’s departure. Would it, for instance, encourage Netanyahu to behave more responsibly in the face of pressure from the likes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir? Or weaken Hezbollah’s will? Or “frighten Yahya Sinwar into giving up the life insurance the hostages are providing him?”
At first instance, Netanyahu urged Gantz to reconsider. “Israel is in an existential war on multiple fronts,” the Israeli PM wrote on X. “Benny, this is not the time to abandon the campaign – this is the time to join forces.”
On June 16, Netanyahu confirmed that the ship had sailed. The six-member war cabinet, described by opposition leader Yair Lapid as a “shameful arena for settling scores, fighting and discussions that lead nowhere”, had outlived its fractious usefulness. “The cabinet was in the coalition agreement with Gantz at his request,” the PM is said to have told the Security Cabinet. “As soon as Gantz left – there was no need for a cabinet anymore.” In its place, stated a spokesperson from the prime minister’s office, the security cabinet will simply meet with greater regularity, with Netanyahu holding ad hoc “security consultations” when needed.
Abolishing the war cabinet does serve one purpose. It prevents such nationalist demagogues as Ben-Gvir of Otzma Yehudit and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party from adding their troubling names to the outfit. Ben-Gvir had insisted on his addition, arguing that it was time to bring in ministers who “warned in real-time against the conception and viewpoint that everyone today accepts was wrong.” He also argued against the secrecy of the war as prosecuted.
Both men, who have urged on even greater slaughter in Gaza and the eviction of Palestinians living there, remain members of the broader security cabinet. And they have made no secret about their mixture of delight and loathing at Gantz’s departure. “There is no less stately act than resigning from a government in time of war,” Smotrich haughtily declared.
For the moment, the scene is set for a war to go even more badly than it already has. As Gaza starves and continues to be levelled, Israel’s politicians will be circling in anticipation of an election date. Netanyahu’s primary goal till then, as it has been for some years: survive.
The post Fractious Arenas: Netanyahu Dissolves the War Cabinet first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
U.S. Marines and IDF soldiers in joint maneuver Intrepid Maven, Feb. 28, 2023. Photo: US Marines
On June 13, Hamas responded to persistent needling by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the U.S. proposal for a pause in the Israeli massacre in Gaza. The group said it has “dealt positively… with the latest proposal and all proposals to reach a cease-fire agreement.” Hamas added, by contrast, that, “while Blinken continues to talk about ‘Israel’s approval of the latest proposal, we have not heard any Israeli official voicing approval.”
The full details of the U.S. proposal have yet to be made public, but the pause in Israeli attacks and release of hostages in the first phase would reportedly lead to further negotiations for a more lasting cease-fire and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in the second phase. But there is no guarantee that the second round of negotiations would succeed.
As former Israeli Labor Party prime minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio on June 3rd, “How do you think [Gaza military commander] Sinwar will react when he is told: but be quick, because we still have to kill you, after you return all the hostages?”
Meanwhile, as Hamas pointed out, Israel has not publicly accepted the terms of the latest U.S. cease-fire proposal, so it has only the word of U.S. officials that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has privately agreed to it. In public, Netanyahu still insists that he is committed to the complete destruction of Hamas and its governing authority in Gaza, and has actually stepped up Israel’s vicious attacks in central and southern Gaza.
The basic disagreement that President Joe Biden and Secretary Blinken’s smoke and mirrors cannot hide is that Hamas, like every Palestinian, wants a real end to the genocide, while the Israeli and U.S. governments do not.
Biden or Netanyahu could end the slaughter very quickly if they wanted to—Netanyahu by agreeing to a permanent cease-fire, or Biden by ending or suspending U.S. weapons deliveries to Israel. Israel could not carry out this war without U.S. military and diplomatic support. But Biden refuses to use his leverage, even though he has admitted in an interview that it was “reasonable” to conclude that Netanyahu is prolonging the war for his own political benefit.
The U.S. is still sending weapons to Israel to continue the massacre in violation of a cease-fire order by the International Court of Justice. Bipartisan U.S. leaders have invited Netanyahu to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress on July 24, even as the International Criminal Court reviews a request by its chief prosecutor for an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes, crimes against humanity and murder.
The United States seems determined to share Israel’s self-inflicted isolation from voices calling for peace from all over the world, including large majorities of countries in the UN General Assembly and Security Council.
But perhaps this is appropriate, as the United States bears a great deal of responsibility for that isolation. By its decades of unconditional support for Israel, and by using its UN Security Council veto dozens of times to shield Israel from international accountability, the United States has enabled successive Israeli governments to pursue flagrantly criminal policies and to thumb their noses at the growing outrage of people and countries across the world.
This pattern of U.S. support for Israel goes all the way back to its founding, when Zionist leaders in Palestine unleashed a well-planned operation to seize much more territory than the UN allocated to their new state in its partition plan, which the Palestinians and neighboring countries already firmly opposed.
The massacres, the bulldozed villages and the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 to a million people in the Nakba have been meticulously documented, despite an extraordinary propaganda campaign to persuade two generations of Israelis, Americans and Europeans that they never happened.
The U.S. was the first country to grant Israel de facto recognition on May 14, 1948, and played a leading role in the 1949 UN votes to recognize the new state of Israel within its illegally seized borders. President Eisenhower had the wisdom to oppose Britain, France and Israel in their war to capture the Suez Canal in 1956, but Israel’s seizure of the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 1967 persuaded U.S. leaders that it could be a valuable military ally in the Middle East.
Unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s illegal occupation and annexation of more and more territory over the past 57 years has corrupted Israeli politics and encouraged increasingly extreme and racist Israeli governments to keep expanding their genocidal territorial ambitions. Netanyahu’s Likud party and government now fully embrace their Greater Israel plan to annex all of occupied Palestine and parts of other countries, wherever and whenever new opportunities for expansion present themselves.
Israel’s de facto expansion has been facilitated by the United States’ monopoly over mediation between Israel and Palestine, which it has aggressively staked out and defended against the UN and other countries. The irreconcilable contradiction between the U.S.’s conflicting roles as Israel’s most powerful military ally and the principal mediator between Israel and Palestine is obvious to the whole world.
But as we see even in the midst of the genocide in Gaza, the rest of the world and the UN have failed to break this U.S. monopoly and establish legitimate, impartial mediation by the UN or neutral countries that respect the lives of Palestinians and their human and civil rights.
Qatar mediated a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in November 2023, but it has since been upstaged by U.S. moves to prolong the massacre through deceptive proposals, cynical posturing and Security Council vetoes. The U.S. consistently vetoes all but its own proposals on Israel and Palestine in the UN Security Council, even when its own proposals are deliberately meaningless, ineffective or counterproductive.
The UN General Assembly is united in support of Palestine, voting almost unanimously year after year to demand an end to the Israeli occupation. A hundred and forty-four countries have recognized Palestine as a country, and only the U.S. veto denies it full UN membership. The Israeli genocide in Gaza has even shamed the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) into suspending their ingrained pro-Western bias and pursuing cases against Israel.
One way that the nations of the world could come together to apply greater pressure on Israel to end its assault on Gaza would be a “Uniting for Peace” resolution in the UN General Assembly. This is a measure the General Assembly can take when the Security Council is prevented from acting to restore peace and security by the veto of a permanent member.
Israel has demonstrated that it is prepared to ignore cease-fire resolutions by the General Assembly and the Security Council, and an order by the ICJ, but a Uniting for Peace resolution could impose penalties on Israel for its actions, such as an arms embargo or an economic boycott. If the United States still insists on continuing its complicity in Israel’s international crimes, the General Assembly could take action against the U.S. too.
A General Assembly resolution would change the terms of the international debate and shift the focus back from Biden and Blinken’s diversionary tactics to the urgency of enforcing the lasting cease-fire that the whole world is calling for.
It is time for the United Nations and neutral countries to push Israel’s U.S. partner in genocide to the side, and for legitimate international authorities and mediators to take responsibility for enforcing international law, ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine and bringing peace to the Middle East.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Israel has detained at least 640 Palestinian children in the West Bank since October, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society (PPS) reported on Monday, as Israeli officials have escalated their violence and suppression of Palestinians in the West Bank during their genocide of Gaza. At least 240 of these children are still in Israeli detention, according to the group. Israeli officials are also…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli weapons exports hit a record high in 2023, the Israeli government reported on Monday, as Israeli forces carried out their ongoing genocide in Gaza and escalated their slaughter of Palestinians in the West Bank. According to the Israeli defense ministry, the country’s arms exports totalled $13.1 billion last year, an all-time high as Israel has doubled its arms exports in the last five…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel’s near-total blockade of humanitarian aid has pushed tens of thousands of children in Gaza to the point of requiring medical treatment for starvation and malnutrition, the UN reported on Saturday. According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), there are currently over 50,000 children in Gaza who need to be treated for acute malnutrition — or nearly a tenth of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Top Israeli officials on Sunday discussed plans to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank as an act of retaliation against countries that recently joined the majority of the international community in recognizing Palestinian statehood. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a statement Sunday announcing that government officials “discussed steps to…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
At yet another pro-Palestine demonstration, cops have been out enacting violence against peaceful protesters. This time, the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) force was the culprit.
As usual, the police appeared to be lying through their teeth to get out of it.
On Saturday, protesters in Manchester held a march in solidarity with Gaza, in central Manchester:
Now: Heavy rain in Manchester and 1000s out demanding freedom for Palestine & freedom for 5,000 Palestinians arrested in Gaza since October 07 who with 8000 arrested in the West Bank have suffered the most barbaric torture with over 60 tortured to death by their Israeli jailers.… pic.twitter.com/eYROs0UdWy
— MANPalestine Action (@ManPalestine) June 15, 2024
However, what started out as a peaceful demonstration, soon turned violent. Naturally, it was GMP that charged into the crowd and carried out the brutality, as protesters showed on X:
Police beat Manchester protesters for opposing the Gaza genocide and demanding the freedom of Palestinian political prisoners @_YFFP_ pic.twitter.com/DSasQQINng
— MANPalestine Action (@ManPalestine) June 15, 2024
Predictably, the GMP statement closed ranks in the usual way. Notably, the Manchester Evening News reported that four officers “suffered ‘non-serious’ injuries”. Perhaps a few officers strained a vein in their temples, because protesters highlighted that it was the actually the police that injured people on the demo.
In some staggering levels of spin, GMP said that:
Whilst public order policing is complex and challenging, we will not tolerate violence or threatening behaviour and will take action to protect ourselves and the public when necessary.
However, as one X poster pointed out, this is evidently simply the behaviour of a police force ‘protecting’ itself:
“What’s your badge number?”
“Fuck off, and move!” https://t.co/YW1Lv1Dz4e
— Muguruki
It almost sounds straight from the deluded Zionist apologist’s playbook of the same old sycophantic mantra about Israel’s “right to defend itself”.
People on X underscored that elderly people and children made up some of the peaceful demonstration. Of course, this didn’t stop the police from throwing some protesters to the floor and endangering them:
Why are protestors being beaten ? @gmpolice
Man with a stick and women being pushed and thrown to the floor. There are children present in the crowd.
These protests have been going on for 8 months and have been nothing but peaceful.
Serious questions need to be answered. https://t.co/47j2LtiBoW
— Siema Iqbal (@siemaiqbal) June 15, 2024
wasnt here yesterday but have been on majority of marches last 8 months and cannot believe this. these crowds are full of elderly people and children. seeing accounts of people having to pull toddlers out of the way of police. @AndyBurnhamGM answer for this. https://t.co/heuiCOIGS7
— jain edwards (@jain_edwards) June 16, 2024
Moreover, pro-Palestine campaigners have held eight months of non-violent protest in Manchester. By contrast, this wasn’t GMP’s first assault on their democratic rights to peaceful assembly:
CALL OUT: if you have any video of the police violence in Manchester yesterday, please send it to @GBCMANCHESTER at manchestergbc@riseup.net
This is the same GMP unit, led by the same inspector, that assaulted legal observers in February, see: https://t.co/TzmKLsW1tZ https://t.co/U7h4iXX5cU
— Netpol (@netpol) June 16, 2024
In particular, Netpol referred to GMP officers previously assaulting two legal observers with batons. As it reported at the time:
One of the legal observers held up his hands as the police became more violent and informed officers that he was not a participant in any of the protests, but fell to the ground after he was struck painfully in the back, he believes by a police baton. He then described how three officers stood over him with their batons drawn before he was picked up – and thrown violently back onto the floor. He has bruising to his legs. This excessive use of force was captured on video, which also verifies the legal observer’s description of events.
The other legal observer, who was behind the police line some distance from this incident, told us how she was confronted by an inspector with an extended baton. She said she was pushed backward and struck twice before two other officers, one an ‘evidence gatherer’ (normally responsible for filming protests), came aggressively towards her with their batons drawn. This too has been verified by video footage. As a result of the police violence, she has a suspected perforated ear drum and received bruises to her face.
Of course, it barely needs pointing out after months of oppressive policing of Palestine solidarity protests, but this is the cops operating exactly as intended. That is, as a violent tool of the oppressive state. Many on X were quick to state this:
The British state doing what it does – attacking ordinary citizens who dare challenge its imperialism as genocide. “The enemy is at home”… https://t.co/KqDSfUWgKR
— GM Stop the War Coalition (@GMSTWC) June 15, 2024
The capitalist state and its enforcers don’t protect the rights of the oppressed abroad or the working class here. They protect their own power and the system of oppression they benefit from. We need our own self defence orgs.
Kick out the war criminals! Take back the streets! https://t.co/GNRab4cCCs
— Alex (@andamarxist) June 16, 2024
And as astutely highlighted by others, there’s a long history of police forces violently repressing the working class. In fact, in the very spot the pro-Palestine protesters marched, a paramilitary force protecting the interests of the Tory elite, enacted just such violence against pro-democracy and anti-poverty protesters. Only, that was the Peterloo Massacre in 1819:
theres a kind of fatalistic irony for this to happen in st peters square where peterloo took place. https://t.co/heuiCOIGS7
— jain edwards (@jain_edwards) June 16, 2024
Independent socialist candidate standing for Cardiff West John Urquhart said the quiet part we’re all thinking out loud:
Abolish the fucking police. https://t.co/xR4RAgfYKM
— John Urquhart
#AintAsking 𓅿 (@TheDryhtscipe) June 15, 2024
It’s a reminder, if we still needed it, that the police exist to shield the interests of the state, and its capitalist elite. Since the political establishment is drenched in complicity of Israel’s genocide, it’s not surprising that its enforcers continue to turn on those showing solidarity with Palestine.
Feature image via Manchester Palestine Action – Twitter
This post was originally published on Canary.
Surprising revelation at a picnic. Talking with a person I met; rambling on about his interest in history, he suddenly exclaimed, “Look at what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians, and getting away with it for years.” At neighborhood social events I have attended, if anybody talked about foreign policy, it was usually about helping the suffering Israelis defend themselves from terror attacks; nobody contradicted the erroneous statements. Hearing an average Joe American speak honestly about the genocide indicated a shift in American thinking. The next day at a Bridge game (I’m a good bridge player), a political consultant who had worked with Al Gore’s campaign mentioned that Joe Biden could not win the election. I concurred and added that it was due to Biden assisting Israel in attacks against the Palestinians. No rebuttal to my remark from a group that is normally pro-Israel. Never seen that before.
Originally perceived as a tragic mistake that might prove costly to Gaza’s existence, Hamas’ attack revealed the calculated and brutal manner in which Israel uses injury to its citizens as an excuse to destroy Palestinian life in the occupied territories. Netanyahu’s genocidal response to Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack has shocked the world. This revelation signals a turning point in the battle to save the Palestinians from Israel’s destructive tactics; international forces are emerging from the shadows and are willing to engage Israel’s vociferous warriors
Israel’s propaganda machinery used its access to Western media and convinced the world its military is fighting an entrenched terrorist force that it must destroy before that force destroys Israel and world Jewry. Whoever thinks otherwise is an anti-Semite, so don’t bother thinking about it. Those wanting veracity and justice seek to provide the public with a valid perspective of the happenings in Gaza and enable an intelligent and rational solution to a situation that is causing death and destruction. The contradictions and obvious mendacities exhibited by Israel’s legions go unnoticed by conventional media and government officials. The public clamors for truths that converge to peace. Finally, paths for reaching the public are now available.
Start with Hamas
Hamas firmly established itself in 1987, with an association to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 38 years after a newly formed Israeli military seized territory awarded to the Palestinians in the Partition Plan 181, 37 years after Prime Minister David Ben Gurion approved the theft of lands from families that Hamas represents, and 36 years after the Israel government terrorized Palestinians to leave their ancestral homes. Israel’s military loaded Palestinians into trucks and transported them to Gaza with insufficient food, water, and shelter and ethnically cleansed the southwest zone of the British Mandate of Palestinians who just wanted to till their lands and showed no resistance to the Zionist intrusion. Hamas established itself long after the Zionists started the destruction of the Palestinians.
The nightmares for the residents from the ethnically cleansed Palestinian villages of Al-Majdahl, Beit Daras, Falujah, Isdud, Qastina, Hamameh, and other villages did not end with their arduous trips to Gaza; ethnic cleansing was an initial step before wholesale theft of property and valuables. Two hundred thousand Palestinians were pushed into Gaza to live in tents, sleep on bare ground, and exist from aid by Quaker organizations and wages from subservient labor. Internment in refugee camps, brutal occupation, military raids, destruction of facilities, destruction of crops and arable lands, prevention of fishing rights, denial of livelihood, and denial of access to the outside world continued to punish the Gazans without an end.
After the 1993-1995 Oslo accords, Israel constructed a 60-kilometer fence around the Gaza Strip and destroyed Gaza’s only airport. Removing illegal Israeli settlers from Gaza, who were mainly there to give Israel an excuse for its military presence, did not stop infiltration by Israeli forces into Gaza. Several wars caused thousands of Palestinian casualties and immense infrastructure destruction. The lives of the displaced Palestinians and their descendants evolved from being wards of the United Nations to virtual imprisonment in an overly crowded environment.
By responding to 38 decades of terrorism committed against the people they represent, Hamas cannot be considered a terrorist organization. They may have, on occasions, used terrorist methods, which is the primary method they have, but fighting a terrorist nation by existing means is resistance to terrorism and not terrorism. Israel is a democratic nation, whose population determines the nation’s leaders and activities; those citizens are involved in the terrorism and, by not changing their nation’s terrorist activities, they are open to aggressive actions toward them. The descendants of the European Jews, who forced the antecedents of the present-day Gazans out of the land they now occupy, should recognize their obligation to those who live only a few kilometers away and whose oppression they can observe; the Gazan s also observe and are taunted by the prosperity they see from those who reside in their stolen lands, chase through their cherished fields and deny them the right to a peaceful and decent existence.
Hamas has not harmed anyone outside of Israel and there is no reason for the United States and the European Union (EU) to label Hamas as a terrorist organization. Israel’s Mossad has murdered and injured scores of innocent people globally and is not labelled a terrorist organization. Don’t these anomalies need correction?
The October 7 attack was a coda to the counter terrorism that the militant Gaza organization has waged against Israel. It was unusually vicious and may have included atrocities that deserve condemnation. Not resolved is the identification of the culprits in the atrocities; were they operating in accord with Hamas orders or were they isolated individuals expressing rage and taking revenge for the atrocities committed upon their families? Because Israel insists the atrocities were a Hamas directive, the question will never be investigated or answered. If that is the case, then Hamas receives the benefit of doubt─ it would be insensible of Hamas to urge actions that drive world opinion from its support.
Israel’s worldwide propaganda machine (Hasbara) previously instructed Western media to precede Hamas with the word terrorist, as if the two words were one word. The Pavlovian response to the characterization assured that upon hearing the word Hamas the adjective terrorist flowed to the brain. The terrorism that Israel and its Mossad have inflicted upon the Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian, and Iranian people, as well as hundreds of innocents from several nations throughout the world, is never discussed.
If Hamas did not exist, Israel would find another organization to provoke, accuse of terrorism, and be pressed to liquidate in an uncontrollable war that the state of Israel claims was forced upon it.
The brutal war against the Palestinians
Israel’s excuses for waging war in Gaza fail from day one. If Israel wants to eliminate militant Hamas then it only needs to stop oppressing the Palestinians. No oppression, no provocations, and no Hamas reaction. In 2008, the Palestinian militant group floated an offer — if Israel withdrew from the lands it seized in the 1967 Mideast war and remained behind the green line, Hamas would agree to a 10-year truce. Israel did not accept the offer, showed it wanted it all Palestinian land, and then accused Hamas of terrorism for defending the Palestinians against Israel’s aggression.
Reinforcing the Israel border and containing Hamas behind the border is not difficult and would have resolved one issue. Negotiating release of the captives was only a matter of numbers in a quid pro quo deal that may have irritated Israel’s leaders but would have satisfied Israel’s anguished population. That leaves combatting the mortars and rockets that cause havoc to Israel. That problem could be resolved if the larger problem of oppression was resolved.
Exact statistics on Israeli casualties due to rockets fired from Gaza in the last 10 years, after barrages became heavy, are difficult to confirm. Research and estimation have about 25 Israelis killed from rocket fire, an average of 2.5/year. As of June 10, about 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the invasion and 50 hostages have died in captivity. Israel has traded an average of 2.5 deaths/year during the next 140 years for 350 immediate deaths to its citizens and total destruction of Gaza for assuring that there is no Hamas to launch rockets. Why does Israel prefer to have its military youth immediately killed and all hostages severely endangered when another plan is less deadly to the Israel population? Does that sound plausible? Netanyahu says the only way to save the hostages is by the invasion, which contradicts the assertion that ferocious Hamas will kill the hostages. Does that sound plausible?
Reasons for other Israeli military actions have been implausible.
Israel destroyed a World Central Kitchen (WCK) convoy and killed seven aid workers. The IDF’s investigation concluded “that the army unit involved had believed the vehicles they were tracking from the sky had been taken over by Hamas gunmen, and that they were not aware of the coordination procedures put in place between the military and World Central Kitchen for that evening. After the aid convoy reached its warehouse destination, a car carrying what the IDF said were gunmen headed north, while the WCK aid workers began driving south in vehicles marked with the charity’s logo.”
The entire evidence presented by the Israeli military for believing Hamas fighters drove the trucks was seeing a bag that the military mistook for a gun. Other than the bag, the Israel investigation admitted the military did not have confirmation of any gunmen in any of the cars. One way of confirming — have troops establish a blockade on the road and then broadcast for the car occupants to leave the cars. That would have peacefully resolved the issue. Why wasn’t that done?
Conclusion: The World Central Kitchen convoy was deliberately targeted by Israeli military to intimidate food aid suppliers and have Israel obtain more control of food deliveries.
Why hasn’t Israel occupied the institutions — schools, hospitals, community centers, mosques — to ensure Hamas militants would not be able to use them and innocent civilians could? Just pull up in armored vehicles to the institutions, broadcast for all occupants to temporarily leave, carefully enter and occupy the institutions. If there are Hamas militants, they will either flee into tunnels or be killed in the ensuing firefight. Preferable to know the institution constituency than kill innocent civilians because it is suspected that Hamas militants might reside on the premises.
Operating in an environment of violent hostility, the June 8 rescue of four hostages had a greater probability that more hostages and rescuers would be killed than survived. Only one military personnel was killed and “Gaza’s Ministry of Health said 210 people were killed and another 400 were injured in the assault and rescue operation.” This occurred at the same time the US had prepared a proposal that would bring release of all hostages.
Another exposure of the brutality of the Israel military. They could have waited for the outcome of the US proposal before engaging in a dangerous and bloody rescue operation. The 210 Palestinians killed and 400 wounded did not counter the Israelis; they were just arbitrarily killed. Compare that to what Hamas could have been doing and has not done. Hamas has not kept the hostages in the same areas as Hamas fighters, which would act as a deterrence for Israel to attack or subject the hostages to death.
The Turning Point
A turning point in the long straight road along which Israel has driven the Palestinians has been achieved. Where that road will lead is indeterminate and precarious — this road has Zionist land mines that disturb and block passage.
In the campus protests, those who favored the Palestinian cause and were against the genocide greatly outnumbered the pro-Israelis who favored the genocide. Yet, the smaller number of the genocidal were able to stifle the protests and have a congressional committee label them as anti-Semitic. As usual, in American democracy the mass of people do not determine policy; it is the well-heeled and well-connected who determine the country’s direction.
Israel, which is committing genocide, calls itself a Jewish nation and a majority of worldwide Jewry supports Israel. This means worldwide Jewry supports the genocide. Those against the genocide are against those who support the genocide and, by default, are against Zionist Jews. Being against Zionist Jews automatically labels one as anti-Semitic. We have anti-genocide is anti-Semitic and pro-genocide is a good thing, contradictions that make a sham of the U.S. government who close their eyes to this circus trick that only the Zionists can perform.
The turning point is a difficult road, along which everyone must shout louder, act more forcibly, attract more audience, and beat the drum of insensitivity until an American President steps out of the White House, crosses Pennsylvania Avenue, and warmly embraces those who demonstrate for Palestinian freedom. Am I too naive?
The post A Turning Point in the Oppression of the Palestinians first appeared on Dissident Voice.Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning—
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
