Israel’s long-standing assault on Palestine’s education sector is so severe that it has earned a label: scholasticide. In Gaza, the devastation has been catastrophic: Israel destroyed 80 percent of schools in the Strip and bombed all 12 universities. Among the victims killed are approximately 130 professors, academics, scientists and university presidents (along with members of their families)…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Peter Ford served in the UK Foreign Ministry for many years including being UK Ambassador to Bahrein (1999-2003) and then Syria (2003-2006). Following that, he was representative to the Arab world for the Commissioner General of United Nations Relief and Works Agency. He was interviewed by Rick Stering on Jan 6, 2025.
Rick Sterling: Why do you think the Syrian military and government collapsed so rapidly?
Peter Ford: Everybody was surprised but with hindsight, we shouldn’t have been. Over more than a decade, the Syrian army had been hollowed out by the extremely dire economic situation in Syria, mainly caused by western sanctions. Syria only had a few hours of electricity a day, no money to buy weapons and no ability to use the international banking system to buy anything whatsoever. It’s no surprise that the Army was run down. With hindsight, you might say the surprise is that the Syrian government and Army were successful in driving back the Islamists. The Syrian Army forced them into the redoubt of Idlib four or five years ago.But after that point, the Syrian army deteriorated, became less battle ready on the technical level and also morale.
Syrian soldiers are mainly conscripts and they suffer as much as any ordinary Syrian from the really dreadful economic situation in Syria. I hesitate to admit it, but the Western sanctions were extremely effectively in doing what they were designed to do: to bring the Syrian economy down to its knees. So we have to say, and I say this with deep regret, the sanctions worked. The sanctions did exactly what they were designed to do to make the Syrian people suffer, and thereby to bring about discontent with what they call the regime.
Ordinary Syrians didn’t understand the complexities of geopolitics, and they blamed the Syrian government for everything: not having electricity, not having food, not having gas, oil, high inflation. Everything that came from being cut off from the world economy and not having supporters with bottomless pockets.
Syria was being attacked and occupied by major military powers (Turkey, USA, Israel). Plus thousands of foreign jihadis. The Syrian army was so demoralized that they really were a paper tiger by the end of the day.
RS: Do you think the UK and the US were involved in training the jihadis prior to the December attack on Aleppo?
PF: Absolutely. The Israelis also. The leader of Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), Ahmed Hussein al Sharaa (formerly known as Mohammad abu Jolani) almost certainly has British advisors in the background. In fact, I detected the hand of such advisors in some of the statements made in impeccable English. The statements had Americanized spelling, so the CIA are in there too. Jolani is a puppet, a marionette saying what they want him to say.
RS: What’s is the current situation, a month after the collapse?
PF: There are skirmishes here and there, but broadly, the Islamists and foreign fighters are ruling the roost. There are pockets of resistance in Latakia where the Alawite are literally fighting for their lives. Much of the fighting is about the attempts by HTF, the present rulers to confiscate weapons. The Alawites are resisting and there are pockets of resistance in the South where there are local Druze militias.
HTS is spread thinly on the ground. They are facing problems in asserting themselves. Although they had a walkover against the Syrian army, they never actually had to do much fighting. I would guess they only have about 30,000 fighting men and spread across Syria, that is not a lot. There’s an important pocket of resistance in the Northeast where the Kurds are. The Kurdish American allies are resisting. The so-called Syrian National Army, which is a front for the Turkish army, may go into a fully fledged war against the Kurdish forces. But that’s going to depend partly on what happens after the inauguration of the new US president, how Trump deals with the situation.
RS: What are you hearing from people in Syria?
It is not a pretty story. HTS and their allies have been parading showing their dominance, flying ISIS and Al-Qaeda flags. They have been bullying, intimidating, confiscating and looting. Surrendering Christian as well as Alawite soldiers have been given summary justice, roadside executions being the norm. Christians in their towns and villages are just trying to hunker down and pray. Literally. I’m sorry to say the senior Christian clerics, with one or two noble exceptions, have opted for appeasement and effectively betrayed their communities. The senior leadership at the Orthodox Church, in particular Greek Catholic church, have had themselves photographed with dignitaries of the jihadi regime.
They are turning the other cheek. It’s quite a contrast with the Alawite. But they have no choice. You may remember that the slogan of the jihadi armies during the conflict was, “Christians to Beirut, Alawite to the grave.” HTS is going through the motions of having meetings with clerics and making soothing noises. All the while their henchmen are driving around in trucks flying ISIS flags. What I’m hearing is very depressing.
The regime is leaving the Alawites totally abandoned. You barely read a word in the west in media about the plight of the Alawite and not much more about the Christians.
RS: Western media have demonized Bashar al Assad and even Asma Assad. What was your impression of Bashar and Asma when you met them? What do you think of accusations they accumulated billions of dollars?
PF: The accusations are completely spurious. I know some members of the Assad family, some of them have lived for many years in Britain. They lived in very modest personal circumstances. If Assad had been a billionaire, like they’re saying, some of that would’ve trickled down. I can guarantee you that has not been the case. These accusations also go against the impressions that I picked up when I was seeing the Assads when I was an ambassador there. They appreciated the good things of life the same as everybody else, but they didn’t come across as the Marcos type. Nothing at all like that. It is all lies, made up to serve the deeper agenda.
The media kicking of Bashar and Asma is really distasteful. It’s pointless.He’s disappointed his few remaining followers, although it was unrealistic, I believe, for them to expect more. But the fact is that he ran when others were not able to run, and many of those have been killed, or they’re hiding or they’ve escaped to Lebanon in some cases where they’re also hiding. He did get out with his skin, but to beat up on him as the media are doing is really distasteful and pointless. It is akin to this new genre of political pornography, Assad porn, the torture stories, the hyped up narrative about prison and graves being opened up. Actually, by the way, most of those graves are war dead. They were not people who’d been tortured to death as the media pretends. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the conflict over more than a decade, and many of them were buried in unmarked graves. But the western media are reveling in this new genre of Assad porn.
This is all being whipped up to make Western audiences more accepting of the way the West is getting into bed with Al-Qaeda. The more they demonize Assad and harp on the misdeeds of the Assad regime, and the more likely we are to swallow and be distracted away from the hideous atrocities being carried out right now.
Western leaders are kissing the feet of a guy who’s still a wanted terrorist and who has been a founder member of ISIS for God’s sake, as well as a founder member of Al-Qaeda in Syria. It is morally distasteful and shaming.
Joulani needs the west desperately now. Otherwise, he will face the same fate as Bashar Asad. If the economy continues on its trajectory of the years, then Joulani will be dead meat in fairly short order. He has to deliver massive rapid economic improvement to survive as leader. And this is what it’s all about. His strategy, obviously, is to milk his status as a puppet of the West in order to secure not just reconstruction aid, but that’s for the long term, but more immediately sanctions relief, the electricity flowing again, the oil.
Let”s not forget that the oil and gas of Syria is still effectively in the hands of the United States, which through its Kurdish puppets, controls a segment of the economy, which used to be worth, I think, 20% of serious GDP and provide essential oil for fuel, cooking, everything. He’s got to get his hands on that and get sanctions lifted. That’s what so much of it is about. But he has one major problem: Israel. Israel’s not buying it. Israel is the exception. All the western front is tumbling over itself to go and kiss the feet of the sultan of Damascus. But the Israelis are sucking their teeth, saying they don’t trust the guy.
Israel is destroying the remnants of the Syrian army and its infrastructure. Meanwhile they grab more Syrian land. They want to keep Syria on its knees indefinitely by insisting that Western sanctions not be lifted. I sense there’s a battle royal going on in Washington between what we might call the deep state, which would favor lifting sanctions and the Israel lobby, which is resisting that for selfish Israeli reasons. Given that the Israeli lobby wins these tussles nine times out of 10 , the outlook may not be that great for the Jolani regime.
RS: What are your hopes and fears for Syria? What’s the nightmare scenario and what’s the best possible?
PF: I’m very pessimistic. It is very hard to see a silver lining in what has happened. Syria has been taken off the table as a Middle East player. The old Syria has died effectively. Syria was the last man standing among the Arab countries that supported the Palestinians. There was no other. There were militias like Hezbollah plus Yemen but there were no states other than Syria. Syria is now gone, and the jihadis are saying, telling the world they don’t care. By the way, this is an example of how the Israelis will not take yes for an answer. The jihadis keep telling the world, “We love Israel. We don’t care about the Palestinians. Please accept us. We love you.” And the Israelis won’t take yes for an answer.
The best hope for the Syrian people is that they may get some respite. It is possible to imagine a scenario where the Syrian people are able to recover, at least economically a scenario under which sanctions are lifted, under which Syria, the central government recovers control of its oil and grain, where fighting has stopped, where it doesn’t have to pay anything to keep up an army because it’s not trying.They might be able to put everything into reconstruction.
So it is possible to imagine a scenario where Syria loses its soul, but gains more hours of electricity. That is possibly the most likely scenario. But there are major obstacles as we discussed, Israel standing in the way of sanctions, lifting pockets of resistance in discipline among the jihadi ranks, Turkey rampaging against the Kurds and ISIS which is still not a completely spent force. So the outlook is obviously cloudy. We should take stock in a month’s time when we see the early days of the new regime in Washington on which so much will depend.
RS: In Trump’s first term he tried to remove all US troops from east Syria but his efforts were ignored. Perhaps that could have made a big difference?
PF: Yes, it could have been a total game changer. If Syria had access to its oil, it wouldn’t have had the fuel problem, the electricity problem. It could have changed the history of the region.
Now, the US is increasing the number of soldiers and bases in Syria. And they recently assassinated a ISIS leader which might have played a role in sparking the recent terrorist attack in the US. All of this makes it much harder now for Trump to withdraw US forces because it will seen as a retreat, a reward for ISIS.
I argued for years that the sanctions were manifestly not working. But in the end they did. It’s like a bridge. It gets undermined and then suddenly it breaks. There was no single cause. It was just the culmination and things reached a tipping point.
The post How the West Destroyed Syria first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Rick Sterling.
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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! As we continue our discussion of President Jimmy Carter’s legacy, we look at his policies in the Middle East and North Africa, in particular, Israel and Palestine.
On Thursday during the state funeral in Washington, President Carter’s former adviser Stuart Eizenstat praised Carter’s work on facilitating the Camp David Peace Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978.
STUART EIZENSTAT: Jimmy Carter’s most lasting achievement, and the one I think he was most proud of, was to bring the first peace to the Middle East through the greatest act of personal diplomacy in American history, the Camp David Accords.
For 13 days and nights, he negotiated with Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, personally drafting more than 20 peace proposals and shuttling them between the Israeli and Egyptian delegations.
And he saved the agreement at the 11th hour — and it was the 11th hour — by appealing to Begin’s love of his grandchildren.
For the past 45 years, the Egypt-Israel peace treaty has never been violated and laid the foundation for the Abraham Accords.
AMY GOODMAN: The Abraham Accords are the bilateral normalisation agreements between Israel and, as well, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel and Bahrain, signed in 2020.
In 2006, years after he left office, Jimmy Carter wrote a book called Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which he compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to South Africa’s former racist regime.
It was striking for a former US president to use the words “Palestine,” let alone “apartheid,” in referring to the Occupied Territories. I went down to The Carter Center to speak with President Jimmy Carter about the controversy around his book and what he wanted the world to understand.
JIMMY CARTER: The word “apartheid” is exactly accurate. You know, this is an area that’s occupied by two powers. They are now completely separated.
The Palestinians can’t even ride on the same roads that the Israelis have created or built in Palestinian territory.
The Israelis never see a Palestinian, except the Israeli soldiers. The Palestinians never see an Israeli, except at a distance, except the Israeli soldiers.
So, within Palestinian territory, they are absolutely and totally separated, much worse than they were in South Africa, by the way. And the other thing is, the other definition of “apartheid” is, one side dominates the other.
And the Israelis completely dominate the life of the Palestinian people.
AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t Americans know what you have seen?
JIMMY CARTER: Americans don’t want to know and many Israelis don’t want to know what is going on inside Palestine.
It’s a terrible human rights persecution that far transcends what any outsider would imagine. And there are powerful political forces in America that prevent any objective analysis of the problem in the Holy Land.
I think it’s accurate to say that not a single member of Congress with whom I’m familiar would possibly speak out and call for Israel to withdraw to their legal boundaries, or to publicise the plight of the Palestinians or even to call publicly and repeatedly for good-faith peace talks.
There hasn’t been a day of peace talks now in more than seven years. So this is a taboo subject. And I would say that if any member of Congress did speak out as I’ve just described, they would probably not be back in the Congress the next term.
AMY GOODMAN: President Jimmy Carter. To see that whole interview we did at The Carter Center, you can go to democracynow.org.
For more on his legacy in the Middle East during his presidency and beyond, we’re joined in London by historian Seth Anziska, professor of Jewish-Muslim relations at University College London, author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo.
What should we understand about the legacy of President Carter, Professor Anziska?
Late former US President Jimmy Carter’s opposition to Israeli apartheid. Video: Democracy Now!
SETH ANZISKA: Well, thank you, Amy.
I think, primarily, the biggest lesson is that when he came into office, he was the first US president to talk about the idea of a Palestinian homeland, alongside his commitment to Israeli security. And that was an enormous change from what had come before and what’s come since.
And I think that the way we understand Carter’s legacy should very much be oriented around the very deep commitment he had to justice and a resolution of the Palestinian question, alongside his commitment to Israel, which derived very much from his Southern Baptist faith.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about the whole trajectory. Talk about the Camp David Accords, for which he was hailed throughout the various funeral services this week and has been hailed in many places around the world.
SETH ANZISKA: Well, I think one of the biggest misunderstandings about the legacy of Camp David is that this is not at all what Carter had intended or had hoped for when he came into office. He actually had a much more comprehensive vision of peace in the Middle East, that included a resolution of the Palestinian component, but also peace with Syria, with Jordan.
And he came up with some of these ideas, developed them with Cyrus Vance, the secretary of state, and Zbigniew Brzeziński, his national security adviser. And in developing those ideas, which came out in 1977 in a very closely held memo that was not widely shared inside the administration, he actually talked about return of refugees, he talked about the status of Jerusalem, and he desired very much to think about the different components of the regional settlement as part of an overall vision.
This was in contrast to Henry Kissinger’s attitude of piecemeal diplomacy that had preceded him in the aftermath of the 1973 war. So we can understand Carter in this way very much as a departure and somebody who understood the value and the necessity of contending with these much broader regional dynamics.
Now, the reasons why this ended up with a far more limited, but very significant, bilateral peace treaty between Egypt and Israel had a lot to do both with the election of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977, as well as the position of Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat and also the role of the Palestinians and the PLO.
But what people don’t quite recall or understand is that Camp David and the agreement towards the peace treaty was in many ways a compromise or, in Brzeziński’s view, was a real departure from what had been the intention.
And that gap between what people had hoped for within the administration and what ended up emerging in 1979 with the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty also was tethered very much to the perpetuation of Palestinian statelessness. So, if we want to understand why and how Palestinians have been deprived of sovereignty or remain stateless to this day, we have to go back to think about the impact of Camp David itself.
AMY GOODMAN: Interesting that Sadat would be assassinated years later in Egypt when Carter was on the plane with Nixon and Ford. That’s when they say that cemented his relationship with Ford, while they hardly talked to Nixon at all.
But if you could also comment on President Carter and post-President Carter? I mean, the fact that he wrote this book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, using the word “Palestine,” using the word “apartheid,” to refer to the Occupied Territories — I remember chasing him down the hall at the Democratic convention when he was supposed to speak. This was the Obama Democratic convention. And it ended up he didn’t speak. And I chased him and Rosalynn, because . . .
SETH ANZISKA: Remember that in 1977, there was a very famous speech that he gave in Clinton, Massachusetts, talking about a Palestinian homeland. And that raised huge hackles, both in the American Jewish community among American Jewish leaders who were very uncomfortable and were already distrustful of a Southern Democrat and his views on Israel, but also Cold War conservatives, who were quite hawkish and felt that he was far too close to engaging with the Soviet Union.
And so, both of those constituencies were very, very opposed to his attitude and his approach on the Palestinian issue. And I think we can see echoes of that in how he then was treated after his presidency, when much of his activism and much of his engagement on the question of Palestine, to my view, derived from a sense of frustration and regret about what he was not able to achieve in the Camp David Accords.
And his commitment stemmed from the same values that he had been shaped by early on, a sense of viewing the Palestinian issue through the same lens as civil rights, in the same lens as what he experienced in the South, which is often, what his biographers have explained, where his views and approach towards the Palestinians came from, but also a particularly close relationship to biblical views around Israel and Zionism, that he was very much committed to Israeli security as a result.
And that was never something that he let go of, even if you look closely at his work in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Some of his views on Israel are actually quite closely aligned with positions that many in the Jewish community would feel comfortable with.
The fact that people criticised and attacked him for that, I think, speaks to the taboo of talking about what’s happening or what has happened, in the context of Israel and Palestine, in the same kind of language as disenfranchisement around race in apartheid South Africa.
And, of course, as Carter said in the interview you just ran that you had done with him when the book came out, the situation is far worse in actuality with what is happening vis-à-vis Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
AMY GOODMAN: Seth Anziska, I want to thank you so much for being with us, professor of Jewish-Muslim relations at University College London, author of Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, speaking to us from London.
This transcript article was originally published by Democracy Now! and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence.
This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.
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UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said, “The protection of hospitals during warfare is paramount and must be respected by all sides, at all times.” International law enshrines medical facilities as sanctuaries for those in direst need but as Dr. Rupa Marya tells host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Israel’s attacks on hospitals amidst the ongoing genocide represent a catastrophic violation of this principle.
A professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, Marya now faces suspension for speaking out against Israel’s blatant violations of international law.
The post The Chris Hedges Report: The Zionists Kill Doctors in Gaza appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Biden’s time in office is coming to an end, but not before a parting gift for Israel.
The State Department recently announced that it would notify Congress about another massive arms deal, this one worth $8 billion. It includes medium-range air-to-air missiles, Hellfire missiles, 500-pound bombs, and more.
The announcement comes amid a deluge of dire news out of Gaza. Flood. Famine. Extreme cold. Israel killed more than 234 Palestinians during the first 4 days of 2025. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International recently published reports saying Israel is committing genocide.
The post Blinken’s Disturbing Exit Interview appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Sanaa, Yemen – Israel, the US, and Britain on Friday carried out their first coordinated attack on Houthi targets in Yemen, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation reported.
Houthi-affiliated Al-Masirah TV also reported that a series of airstrikes targeted the vicinity of the Al-Sabeen Square in the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
The attack coincided with a rally in support of Palestine amid Israel’s 16-month-old continuing genocidal war on Gaza.
Additionally, the Houthis reported six airstrikes on the port city of Al-Hudaydah in western Yemen.
Al-Masirah later reported: “An American-British assault targeted the Harf Sufyan district in the governorate of Amran with 12 airstrikes.”
The post Israel, US, UK Launch First Joint Attack On Houthi Targets appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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A group of UN human rights experts is urging the U.S. Senate to block a bill that seeks to punish the International Criminal Court (ICC) and people affiliated with it after the body issued arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, condemning the bill as “dangerous” and against international law. “It is shocking to see a country that considers itself a champion of the rule of law trying to stymie…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The death toll of Israel’s genocide in Gaza is likely far higher than reported by health officials, by a margin of tens of thousands of deaths, researchers from a top research university have found in a new study published online on Thursday. In the first eight months of Israel’s slaughter, the official toll underreported deaths by 41 percent, the group of London School of Hygiene &
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli officials have obstructed a UN investigation into alleged sexual crimes committed by Hamas fighters during the 7 October 2023 Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, fearing this would open the door to a probe into the rampant allegations of sexual violence against Palestinians inside Israeli torture camps.
According to a report by Israeli daily Haaretz, Tel Aviv rejected a request from Pramila Patten, the UN special representative of the secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, to investigate the allegations against Hamas after she established that a necessary condition would be access to Israeli detention centers to probe claims against Israeli soldiers.
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Doctors Against Genocide (DAG) has called for the US to halt aid to Israel after their colleagues were detained last month by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.
DAG, a global coalition of health care workers, mobilized more than 50 medical professionals on Capitol Hill to advocate for the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, who was detained by Israeli forces along with others during a Dec. 27 raid on the health facility.
The delegation visited members of the House of Representatives and Senate on Wednesday to advocate for urgent congressional action on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
The post Healthcare Workers Tell Congress To Halt Military Aid To Israel appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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For the past three months, Israeli forces have blocked or allowed the interruption of every aid mission attempted by the UN into north Gaza, as officials warn that famine may be ongoing in the region and Palestinians languish without water and other basic needs. The UN reported Wednesday that it attempted to reach northern Gaza 165 times between October 6 and December 31. Of those missions…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The House has overwhelmingly voted to pass a bill to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its issuing of arrest warrants for Israeli leaders for their alleged crimes against humanity in Gaza, as the death toll from Israel’s genocide tops 46,000 people, with many more deaths likely going uncounted. The Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act passed 243 to 140…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Hospitals across the Gaza Strip are at imminent risk of shutdown or have already been forced to reduce operations as they run out of fuel due to Israel’s near-total blockade of fuel across the strip, officials and human rights groups have warned. Gaza health officials warned this week that all of the remaining hospitals in the besieged enclave no longer have any fuel reserves to operate…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Founded in 1884, the American Historical Association (AHA) represents professional academics and historians that advance the study of history in the United States. With well over 10,000 members, it serves as one of the world’s most influential and robust associations for historians. The AHA contributes to an evolving and progressing body of scholarship, and inspires a civic-minded and public…
A new year has begun, yet Israel’s atrocities in Palestine persist. In Gaza, the situation is more dire than ever. Health workers are stretched to breaking point, particularly in northern Gaza, where not a single hospital remains functional. Their resilience in the face of unimaginable suffering is nothing short of heroic, but they cannot do it alone.
On Monday 7 January, health workers and supporters gathered outside parliament to demand urgent action. Jeremy Corbyn addressed the crowd calling for IDF troops to withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank, as well as from southern Lebanon and Syria; and for the British government to stop supplying arms to Israel.
On Saturday 18 January, we will unite and once again call for an end to the genocide, despite attempts by the police to curb our right to protest. Join us in Central London for the next National Demonstration for Palestine, just days before the inauguration of Donald Trump in the US.
Date: Saturday 18 January
Time: Assemble 12pm (midday)
Location: BBC, Portland Place, W1A
If you haven’t yet, please email your MP using a letter written by health workers who have been on the ground in Gaza. Their first-hand accounts highlight the devastating impact of the ongoing violence and call for immediate action. It takes just two minutes – click here to take action.
Yesterday, the Met Police stated its intention to prevent the protest from going ahead, reneging on the previous agreement with the organisers made months ago. The coalition leading the marches put out this statement to confirm that we will march in solidarity with the Palestinian people, as planned.
Coaches from towns and cities across the country are being organised for the Palestine march. Please help make this march as large as possible by sharing it on social media and encouraging friends, colleagues and neighbours to join too.
We must show the people of Palestine that they are not alone and together, make 2025 a year of justice for Palestine. As Jeremy Corbyn reminded us on Monday, “we will stand forever with the people of Palestine until they have justice, peace and freedom”.
Featured image supplied
By The Canary
On 8 January 2025, independent MP Jeremy Corbyn pushed Keir Starmer’s government for transparency on the role that a strategically important RAF base is playing in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The previous day, Corbyn described in his letter that foreign office parliamentary under-secretary Hamish Falconer had responded to a question of his “during an Urgent Question on Northern Gaza”. And the former Labour Party leader said Falconer had “failed to answer or acknowledge my question on the use of the British air base in Cyprus, RAF Akrotiri”. He insisted that:
My constituents deserve to know the full scale of this government’s complicity and participation in genocide.
With this in mind, Corbyn asked for clarification on three important follow-up questions:
3. Is RAF Akrotiri being used as a route for weapons to go to Israel to be deployed in Gaza?
4. How many US Air Force flights have flown from RAF Akrotiri to Israel since 7 October 2023?
5. Has your government sought legal advice over the continued use of RAF Akrotiri to support Israeli military operations?
And he warned the government to be careful with its actions for legal reasons:
Your government will be aware that the ICC has issued arrest warrants to Israeli officials. The government should also be aware that if it knowingly sends weapons to a government whose leader is wanted for war crimes, then it is not immune to the long arm of international law.
He was referring to the International Criminal Court (ICC) finally issuing arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel‘s former defence minister Yoav Gallant back in November 2024.
Both the current Labour government and the previous Conservative government have used RAF Akrotiri (the unique colonial relic on occupied Cypriot land which is part of the “largest Royal Air Force base outside the United Kingdom”) to lend a helping hand to Israeli war criminals.
So far, RAF Akrotiri has supported covert US flights to occupied Palestine, sent dozens of British warplanes to both Israel and Lebanon, and facilitated British spy flights and the passing of intelligence from officers on the ground to Israel. And as Declassified co-founder Matt Kennard has insisted, these are the actions of “a country which is participating” in Israel’s genocide – “a direct participant”.
Corbyn’s original question, that Falconer failed to answer properly, was:
Will Britain continue supplying weapons, including parts for jet planes, and allowing the use of RAF Akrotiri as a route for weapons to go to Israel to be used to destroy life in Gaza?
And that’s a question that everyone in the country should be asking their MPs regularly and repeatedly until British participation in the genocide ends.
I have written to the Foreign Office asking them to tell the truth about RAF Akrotiri and arms exports to Israel.
We deserve to know the full scale of our government’s complicity and participation in genocide. pic.twitter.com/KEBZzJP8CJ
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) January 8, 2025
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
Joe Biden’s parting gift of $8 billion in weapons sales to the apartheid state of Israel acknowledges the gruesome reality of the genocide in Gaza. This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. This is a permanent, endless war designed not to destroy Hamas, or free Israeli hostages, but to eradicate, once and for all, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. It is the final push to create a Greater Israel, which will include not only Gaza and the West Bank, but chunks of Lebanon and Syria. It is the culmination of the Zionist dream. And it will be paid for with rivers of blood — Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian.
The post Genocide: The New Normal appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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As President Biden greenlights another $8 billion in weapons to Israel in his last days in office and Secretary Blinken gives a parting New York Times interview in which he denies that a genocide is taking place in Gaza, many pro-Palestine activists are anxiously counting down the days until “Genocide Joe” and his crew exit the White House. But what will activists have to contend with under the Trump presidency?
Donald Trump proved his pro-Israel agenda in his first term by moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, supporting West Bank settlements, recognizing the Golan Heights as part of Israel, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and enacting the Abraham Accords to normalize relations between Israel and Arab states, while disregarding the plight of Palestinians.
The post From Genocide Joe To Trump’s Israel First: What’s Next For Palestine? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
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Health workers worldwide are demanding the release of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, who was abducted by Israeli armed forces during the recent siege on northern Gaza’s health centers. Doctors, nurses, physiotherapists, and health activists organized rallies in Canada, Europe, and the United States around January 6, calling for an immediate ceasefire and the protection of Palestinian health workers’ fundamental rights.
In Brussels, a rally was organized by Health Workers for Palestine, Viva Salud, and United for Palestine (Unis pour la Palestine, UPP) near the European Parliament.
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Ireland has submitted a declaration to join South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) accusing Israel of genocide.
“Ireland, invoking Article 63 of the Statute of the Court, filed in the Registry of the Court a declaration of intervention in the case concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip,” or South Africa versus Israel, the ICJ said in a statement on 7 January.
Under Article 63, any state party to a convention that is under judicial consideration has the right to intervene, making the ICJ’s interpretation of that convention binding on them as well.
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There was absolutely nothing stopping them. But not one single member of Western mainstream media ever visited a bomb site in Lebanon to verify whether Israeli claims it was a Hezbollah base or missile site were true because they knew the answer is negative, as I found across dozens of bomb sites, and that is not the narrative they are paid to promote.
But when a narrative they are paid to promote came to the fore, they flocked to Damascus – driving right past the bombed civilian homes, ambulance centres and schools of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley to get there – to promote Syria’s new Israel-, U.S.A- and Turkey-sponsored “democratic” government of entirely “reformed” HTS (Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) Wahhabists.
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The mother of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, has reportedly died of a heart attack as Israel has refused to provide updates on the condition of the doctor as they hold him hostage in Israel’s most notorious torture camp for Palestinian detainees. Her death was reported by Palestinian media outlets and MedGlobal, for which Abu Safiya is a lead physician.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel has started 2025 by killing dozens of children in Gaza in strikes and raids across the besieged enclave, the UN has reported, after having already broken numerous records for violence against children in its genocide of Palestinians in the past 15 months. In the first seven days of the new year, Israeli forces killed at least 74 children in Gaza, according to UNICEF. They are among at…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Today (Wednesday 8 January) the Palestine Coalition have been informed by the Met Police that they intend to go back on a previous agreement and impose conditions to prevent us marching from BBC HQ at Portland Place on Saturday 18 January.
We have already announced our intention to assemble outside the BBC to protest against the pro-Israel bias of its coverage – something recently highlighted in a detailed report by journalist Owen Jones to which the Corporation has so far not responded. We utterly condemn this attempt to use repressive powers to prevent our planned protest at the BBC.
The route for the march was confirmed with the police nearly two months ago and, as agreed with them, was publicly announced on 30 November. This route, beginning at the BBC, has only been used twice in the last 15 months of demonstrations and not since February 2024. With just over a week to go, the Metropolitan Police has now reneged on our agreement and stated its intention to prevent our protest from going ahead as planned.
The BBC is a major institution – it is a publicly-funded state broadcaster and is rightly accountable to the public. It is unacceptable for the police to misuse public order powers to shield the BBC from democratic scrutiny.
The excuse offered by the police is that our march could cause disruption to a nearby synagogue. It follows representations from pro-Israel groups and activists who have been publicly calling for action to be taken to curtail our right to protest against Israel’s ongoing genocide. This includes the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis who has openly celebrated the horrific and criminal actions of the Israeli military in Gaza, describing them as the “most outstanding possible thing that a decent responsible country can do”.
In fact, the closest synagogue to the BBC is not even on the route of the march. Moreover, as the Met Police have acknowledged, there has not been a single incident of any threat to a synagogue attached to any of the marches. Any suggestion that our marches are somehow hostile to Jewish people ignores the fact that every march has been joined by thousands of Jewish people – many in an organised Jewish bloc – and addressed by Jewish speakers on the demonstration platforms. Representatives of the Jewish bloc have written to the police seeking a meeting to express their concerns that the police are choosing to listen solely to pro-Israel Jewish voices, but they have not had any response.
We firmly reject any attempt to suppress our right to campaign for an end to Israel’s genocidal violence and decades long violations of the rights of the Palestinian people. In the past few weeks, Israel has intensified its indiscriminate attacks including against hospitals and civilians sheltering in so-called ‘humanitarian safe zones.’ It is this and the ongoing complicity of the British government in these crimes that continues to bring people onto the streets in huge numbers. Our marches represent a diverse cross section of the public including the Palestinian community, many of whom are relatives of those killed by Israel.
We remain in dialogue with the Metropolitan Police but call on them to immediately abandon their intention to prevent our protest at the BBC. We call on all those who are rightly outraged by Israel’s ongoing genocide and those who uphold the democratic right to protest to join us when we march in London on Saturday 18 January.
The National March for Palestine coalition is:
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Raffi Berg, the online editor for BBC News coverage on the Middle East, has been at the centre of a massive controversy in recent weeks. But a new petition from former Channel 4 editor Tamara Abood insists that “Raffi is the tip of the iceberg”. And she calls for the sacking of people even higher up than Berg over the BBC‘s shameful (and longstanding) pro-Israel bias, specifically during the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Public attention focused in on Berg after journalist Owen Jones published an investigation in December about pro-Israel bias at the BBC.
Having interviewed journalists and other staff at the public service broadcaster, Jones revealed that “senior figures” had been skewing coverage to be more favourable to Israel while dismissing regular objections from employees who demanded the corporation uphold its supposed commitment to providing fair and impartial reporting. And in particular, Jones highlighted the malign role that Berg played. According to one former BBC journalist:
This guy’s entire job is to water down everything that’s too critical of Israel.
Others said he “micromanages” coverage, with one insisting that he “has the power to reframe every story”.
Even worse are his connections to the CIA, Mossad, and war criminal Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As Jewish Voice for Peace explains:
Zionism is a form of Jewish nationalism, and is the primary ideology that drove the establishment of Israel.
It adds that:
While it had many strains historically, the Zionism that took hold and stands today is a settler-colonial movement, establishing an apartheid state where Jews have more rights than others.
The pro-Israel (or Zionist) lobby in Britain has a massive influence. In the last parliament, it donated money to a quarter of British MPs, and reportedly had significant sway in the government. Half of the initial cabinet of the current Labour government, meanwhile, had received such funds.
Abood argues that the same is true in the British media sector. As she said in the petition text:
I have first hand experience of the extraordinary and malign influence that Zionist lobby groups exert over programme makers and broadcasters.
I have spent the last 15 months watching in disgust as mainstream broadcasters in the UK have framed what is happening in Gaza through the lens of Israeli propagandists.
But Berg is just a part of this, she stressed:
Raffi is the tip of the iceberg. Scratch the surface of the BBC and you will find it packed to the rafters with Zionists who will quash ideas for programmes that are critical of Israel and who will frame the reporting on Gaza to centre Israeli interests.
Abood also insisted:
It is my belief as a former lawyer and tv producer that, in time, our mainstream media will be judged to have been complicit in a genocide by providing cover for Israel’s crimes. In fact, as I write, lawyers who specialise in international law and human rights have many of these so-called “journalists” in their sights.
And she argued that:
BBC license payers are being deliberately mislead about the nature and extent of Israel’s depravity in Gaza. The BBC is breaching its own requirements, and that of Ofcom, for due impartiality. As a license payer, you should be able to trust the BBC as a credible news source. The BBC is no longer credible. It has shown itself to be an outpost of the Israeli Ministry of Misinformation.
Overall, her comments were damning. She said “the BBC subverts the truth in order to influence the public’s response in favour of Israel”, and that there has been “a deliberate strategy of lies and omissions by broadcasters like the BBC“.
Rather than focusing on Raffi Berg, though, she looks to BBC News CEO Deborah Turness. As she emphasised:
Your license fee pays her £400K + salary.
Deborah Turness must go
For her, licence-fee payers deserve so much better. And we completely agree. That’s why we should all support the petition and demand change.
Featured image via screengrab
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
Many people around the world will rightly remember the Biden-Harris administration – notably Anthony Blinken – as one of the most despicable US regimes in living memory.
In particular, it has shamelessly backed Israel’s genocide in Gaza, while sending billions of dollars’ worth of arms to the apartheid colonial power. It has also gaslit people witnessing the livestreamed atrocities by refusing to accept the determination from numerous genocide experts that Israel has been carrying out a genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip since October 2023.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken has been a particularly ghoulish gaslighter during the Gaza genocide, consistently denying reality with a compassionless stare as he seeks to justify Israel’s war crimes. And now, Blinken has finally recognised genocide, but not in Gaza.
So he is able to do so. He just chooses not to do so in the case of Israel. He makes a clear division between victims he considers to be worthy or unworthy of his support.
Blinken has previously spoken about genocides against Rwandans, Yezidis, Rohingya, Bosnians, Roma and Sinti, and Uyghurs. Now, he has called out the genocidal atrocities in the ongoing civil war in Sudan.
As author Assal Rad rightly responded to Blinken’s latest comment:
You destroyed international law and lied repeatedly in service of Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. By politicizing the determination of genocide you’ve undermined the foundation for accountability.
History will only remember you for the genocide you aided at every turn.
In 2019, women and trade unions led mass protests in Sudan that pushed war criminal dictator Omar al-Bashir to step down after decades in charge.
But unfortunately, hope didn’t last long. Because military factions descended into a battle for power, with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) receiving Egyptian backing and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) getting assistance from the United Arab Emirates (UAE). (Note here that the regimes in both Egypt and the UAE are US allies.)
Since the current SAF-RSF conflict started in 2023, estimates suggest that between 20,000 and 150,000 people have died either as a direct or indirect result of hostilities. While there have been atrocities on both sides, the RSF seems to be largely responsible for the worst (like in El Geneina).
Blinken rightly condemned the war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in Sudan in a 7 January statement, announcing related sanctions.
However, as Rad pointed out, this is unfortunately meaningless.
By consistently protecting wanted war criminals in Israel, Blinken and the Biden-Harris administration as a whole have shown that their supposed commitment to ensuring international accountability is just lip service.
They have eroded international law like never before. And it is ordinary people suffering atrocities around the world who will lose out as a result.
Featured image via the Canary
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Health Ministry in Gaza warned on 7 January that the medical sector in the strip is facing a disaster due to crippling shortages of essential supplies and humanitarian aid.
The ministry released a statement warning “of a real disaster that is sweeping hospitals, oxygen stations, medicine refrigerators, and nurseries in all health facilities remaining in operation in the Gaza Strip.”
“There is no fuel stock in hospitals due to the policy of dripping in fuel that the occupation has been following in bringing in since the beginning of the war on Gaza.
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It is not uncommon for police to drive around with their lights flashing in Black and working-class neighborhoods in Atlanta. This is a tactic used to intimidate and make their presence known; for residents of these neighborhoods, it can feel like psychological warfare. US law enforcement learned this strategy from Israeli forces.
Thousands of law enforcement officials have traveled to Israel to learn new repression strategies and surveillance techniques from the Israel National Police, Israel Defense Forces, and the Shin Bet, who inflict violence, crowd control, and surveillance onto Palestinians. Anti-imperialist advocates say the tactics being taught to US law enforcement were battle-tested on Palestinians and spread to the US to target Black and Brown communities through a training relationship that grants Israeli forces more power and profit, causing further harm to Palestinians.
These programs are facilitated by the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program—the latter of which was started in 1996. US leaders sought Israel’s guidance to curb terrorism, and a ‘deadly exchange’ of worst practices between US and Israeli forces was born. Federal, state, county, and municipal law enforcement executives including local police departments, the FBI, and ICE have traveled to Israel, while thousands of officials have attended conferences with Israeli experts in the US. An inaugural “US-Israel Security Conference” by JINSA occurred last month, where a former Israel Defense Forces commander was included as a guest speaker.
“Certain police practices and policies that all happen time and time again, when you look back and try to pull back on the thread to see where they got this from, it always comes back to somebody went to Israel.”
Steven Hardge, an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace.
“Within these programs, worst practices are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing practices that already exist in both countries,” said Rania Salem, an organizer with the US Palestinian Community Network. “US forces take whatever is working in Israel and they bring it here and inflict it on Black and Brown people.”
Police departments in New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Atlanta, among others, have close ties with Israeli forces. Salem said that the increasing militarization of US police in recent decades is due in large part to the “funding and support of Israel’s brutal military occupation.” She said that in return for these trainings the state of Israel gets in good standing with the US for future support, and its forces learn new tactics in return—Salem said that Israel learned stop-and-frisk and racist traffic stop techniques from US law enforcement.
There is strong opposition. Palestinian solidarity, racial justice, and local organizations are calling for an end to this deadly exchange, saying that it perpetuates settler colonialism and violence against marginalized communities, and harms both people in the US and in Palestine. They say that investments should be made into the community, not policing.
“It essentially brings together all these violent systems that oppress our people here in the United States and oppress Palestinians and Palestine together,” Salem said. “Our communities need to come together to organize against these police exchange programs.”
After George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in 2020, advocates said that the knee-to-neck choke-hold used was “used and perfected to torture Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces through 72 years of ethnic cleansing and dispossession.” Members of the Minneapolis Police Department have been trained by Israeli officials.
Following that, when thousands of protestors took to the streets in the Black Lives Matter uprisings, police used racial profiling, tear gas, and other repressive crowd control techniques to quell the protestors. Salem said many of those practices were exported from the violence of Israeli forces.
“When police started using different kinds of weaponry against protesters, Palestinians were already very, very familiar with that kind of confrontation,” Salem said.
Between 2002 to 2009, the Los Angeles Police Department’s chief and deputy chief traveled to Israel for training multiple times. The deputy chief traveled as part of JINSA’s first cohort in their first law enforcement exchange program. During these trips, Israeli companies introduced the LAPD officials to facial recognition and drone technology manufactured in Israel. The police department also developed a “broken windows” approach, which “grows from the idea that constant policing of low-level disorder—through the targeting of Black and brown communities with constant police surveillance, harassment—will somehow deter serious criminal activity.”
After nearly 10 years of training with Israeli forces, the New York Police Department was exposed to have run a “demographics unit” that spied on Muslims and “treated basic acts of daily living as potential crimes,” which are techniques used by Israeli forces on Palestinians. In return, they adopted NYPD’s data collection method.
“Certain police practices and policies that all happen time and time again, when you look back and try to pull back on the thread to see where they got this from, it always comes back to somebody went to Israel,” said Steven Hardge, an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace.
Officials in Atlanta, Georgia, are pioneers in the police exchange program as well. The Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program, housed at the University of Georgia, has been sending people to Israel every year for over 31 years. Hardge said that the trips are funded by private entities, Department of Justice grants, and taxpayer dollars.
Hardge also said that the GILEE program also trains with Israeli forces through annual conferences in Atlanta and hosts law enforcement from around the country at these events. The training, he said, includes workshops and seminars.
Musa Springer, also an organizer with Black Alliance for Peace, said that at least 43,000 people have participated in GILEE workshops, conferences, and events. They said it creates danger for Atlantans, as demonstrated in the police killings of Anthony Hill and several Black people in Atlanta.
“There is a sort of level of racial profiling that is sewn into the tactics and then those racial profiling, which also takes place here in the US, among us, becomes even stronger and more reinforced in the style of policing,” Springer said. “What we see is that Black residents, as well as activists and organizers who are mobilizing, are increasingly treated as terrorists.”
Out of Atlanta’s collaboration with Israeli forces comes their “Cop City” police training facility, which is based off Israel’s “Little Gaza,” a replica of the Gaza strip. At these facilities, police can battle test repressive techniques and surveillance. Hardge said that the Cop City and Little Gaza are meant “to give the occupying forces a realistic training ground in which they can actually implement their counterinsurgency tactics on the occupied population.”
“Anybody who goes there will be participating in the skills development of counterinsurgency, of how to better practice kettling, how to better practice shutting down or brutalizing peaceful protests,” Hardge said.
In addition to repressive tactics, advocates say that US and Israeli forces both make use of surveillance techniques and technology that is Israel-based, like Cellebrite, and predictive policing software, like the software provided by Palantir.
Lou Blumberg, co-founder of Eye on Surveillance and a representative of the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in New Orleans, said that, in 2014, the New Orleans Police Department took a trip to Tel Aviv which was funded by a government grant, the Jewish Federation, and other private entities. The goal was to learn about Cellebrite, a ‘universal forensics extraction device’ from an Israel-based technology company, in order to bring the surveillance back to the US. Cellebrite’s technology was tested on Palestinians before its usage became widespread.
“Because Israel is occupying the Palestinian people, it creates what author Antony Lowenstein calls the ‘Palestine Laboratory’ for Israel to experiment and then get all this data about these surveillance tools, and then be able to sell that … ‘Look how well these tools are working to criminalize these people, don’t you want that for your country?’” Blumberg said.
An organizer with New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Ports, an organization dedicated to ending all ties between New Orleans institutions and businesses and Israel, who wished to remain anonymous, said that a lot of the cameras the city of New Orleans has put up in the streets for surveillance use Israeli technology. She said that law enforcement can often use Briefcam, an Israeli video surveillance technology, now owned by the parent company Canon.
Hundreds of people in the US have been arrested due to facial recognition technology, some of them falsely identified. People of color, particularly Black people, are more likely to be misidentified by facial recognition technology.
The organizer said that Israeli technology companies are “taking this technology and exporting it for governments like the US government to perpetuate this form of apartheid that marginalized communities have been living under” and Israel “uses the same tactics abroad and over here in order to further their hegemony and their occupation of the people.”
“Cellebrite is used today to violate people’s right to due process, or these AI facial recognition technologies are used to attack and jail people, mostly disproportionately people of marginalized communities,” the organizer told TRNN. “These have been tried and tested methods in Palestine for the past decades, and Israel does it to expand its territory, to further occupy and oppress people to further the apartheid system that they are under.”
In addition to supplying local law enforcement with surveillance, the organizer said that Israeli companies sell Cellebrite “universal forensics extraction” hacking software and training to ICE, which gives them access to personal data. ICE officials have gone on multiple trips to Israel to swap “best practices” at checkpoints, prisons, settlements, and the airports in Israel.
The US Department of Homeland Security has also been contracting with Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems for technology that surveils the US-Mexico border in southern Arizona since 2014. The contract was extended by DHS in 2017 to further militarize the border using this technology.
Edith Romero, an organizer with Eye on Surveillance, said she sees parallels in the rhetoric Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli forces use for Palestinians and the language used in the US to talk about immigrants. In the past, President-elect Donald Trump and Netanyahu have praised each other’s border policies.
“They’re using this to target immigrant communities and to arrest, to detain and to separate families, and sometimes deportations,” Romero said.
Activists are fighting for liberation in the US and Palestine. Some are already seeing victories. In 2020, Eye on Surveillance successfully advocated for a ban on facial recognition surveillance—provided in large part by Israeli companies—in New Orleans. While parts of the ban were reversed in 2022, the organization continues to hold monthly meetings to push back against surveillance and policing.
Additionally, they are looking to end economic ties between Israel and the city permanently and calling for the money to be redirected into the community. Renard Bridgewater, co-founder of Eye on Surveillance, said that “so many things could be funded with the money that is going towards Israel and their continued onslaught and overall abuse and slaughter of Palestinian people.”
Bridgewater said that rather than funding law enforcement trips to Israel, cities should be supporting their residents by providing equitable living wages, education, affordable housing, and resources to solve food insecurity. Eye on Surveillance is also part of the Break the Bonds Campaign in Louisiana, which aims to encourage state officials to divest from Israel. The state has over $40 million in bonds which the organization said “bolsters and supports Israel’s economy.”
Bridgewater said that people can fight against the police training exchanges and Israeli technology being used in the US by organizing. Eye on Surveillance, Black Alliance for Peace, and the US Palestinian Community Network are some of many organizations raising awareness about the issue.
“I think that small movements or small ripples certainly create larger movements and things of that nature,” Bridgewater said. “I think that any time you have the opportunity to be able to build with folks, no matter if it’s two or three, that can eventually lead to two or 3,000 but it has to start somewhere, and it can’t necessarily always be these very grandiose and large, expansive ideas.”
“It’s important to get together and organize, because as soon as we realize that our enemies are the same, the easier it is to realize who our allies are,” said the organizer with NOSHIP. “Once we organize and put these two and two together, then we know who put our effort against.”
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
The Israeli military has admitted that its soldiers hid in an ambulance in order to infiltrate and raid a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank — a move one UN expert has described as a “flagrant violation” of international humanitarian law. Last month, armed Israeli soldiers drove into the Balata refugee camp in Nablus in an ambulance. Soldiers stormed the camp, killing two Palestinians…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has pledged that he will do everything in his power to block an $8 billion sale of weapons to Israel announced by the Biden administration last week, as Israeli forces are entering the 16th month of their genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. On Friday, the Biden administration notified Congress of the weapons package, which reportedly contains thousands…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.