Paul Weller has announced that there will be a Gig for Gaza next month in London. Fellow artists performing will include Lowkey, Primal Scream, Paloma Faith, Kneecap, and Liam Bailey. Tickets are not out until 15 November.
There will be music, guest speakers, and short films at the event to raise funds for people in occupied Gaza. The money from Gig for Gaza will go to Medical Aid for Palestinians and Gaza Forever.
Just Announced: More Artists for Gig for Gaza
Weâre thrilled to announce that @Palomafaith has joined the lineup with rapper @Lowkey0nline hosting the evening. Alongside incredible performances, the night will also feature guest speakers and short films at @O2AcademyBrix
âThis is an opportunity to enjoy a night of powerful music, and make a tangible difference in the lives of people facing unimaginable hardshipâ organisers of Gig for Gaza said. âEvery ticket and donation countsâ.
As NME reported, Gig for Gaza artwork was “designed by Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack â who have consistently used their platform to demand an immediate end to the brutal occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people”.
Gig for Gaza
Gig for Gaza comes at a time when many governments have effectively either turned their backs on the Palestinian people, or refused to recognise Israel’s multiple breaches of International Humanitarian Law (IHL).
Since 7 October 2023, Israeli occupation forces have killed at least 43,712 people, including 16,765 children in Gaza. And a study from July 2024 in medical journal The Lancet found that, if we include indirect deaths, âit is not implausible to estimate that up to 186â000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gazaâ.
Israel has also systematically targeted Gazaâs educational institutions (and people belonging to them) during the ongoing genocide. The brutal assault has destroyed or damaged over 80% of schools, in what experts call âeducideâ or âscholasticideâ.
So, the Gig for Gaza is a timely event not least in terms of fundraising – but also to raise awareness of Israel’s ongoing genocide.
Tickets for the Gig for Gaza go on sale tomorrow, 15 November, at 10am.
Two Palestine Action activists, imprisoned for taking action to disrupt the operations of Thales in Govan, Glasgow, have been refused their appeal for immediate release from HMP Barlinnie. In a 5th November appeal hearing at Edinburgh’s High Court of Justiciary, two judges reduced their 12 months sentences to 10 months.
Palestine Action Thales 5: no light at the end of the tunnel
Stuart Bretherton and Calum Lacy have been imprisoned since 20 August 2024 on a 12-month sentence for ‘breach of the peace’, for actions at Thales’ Govan factory in June 2022. They were imprisoned alongside three others, collectively the ‘Thales 5′, who each face sentences between 12 and 14 months.
The action at Thales sought to disrupt the French arms giant’s operations, targeting the factory due to Thales’ considerable links with Israel’s largest arms firm, Elbit Systems, along with its direct supplies to the Israeli military during an ongoing genocide in Gaza:
Their imprisonment, superseding Scottish Sentencing Council guidelines against custodial sentences for those under 25 years of age, was issued by sheriff John McCormick to “deter” further actions by others against weapons companies in Scotland.
Both the original Sheriff and the Judges overseeing the appeal ignored the social work reports, which did not recommend jail as appropriate sentencing in this case.
Commenting on the imprisonment of the Thales 5, Green MSP Maggie Chapman has stated that “although draconian anti-protest laws have recently been implemented by Westminster, with some appalling effects, these are not applicable to Scotland, so it has been a severe shock to see the sentences passed upon these young activists”:
Not only are these disproportionate to the nonviolent nature of the actions, and inconsistent with the evidence provided by social work reports in the case, they also contradict the intent of the Scottish Sentencing Councilâs guidelines on appropriate sanctions to be imposed upon young people.
Political prisoners
Annie Lane, partner of Stuart Bretherton, stated:
I deeply respect all five of them for the action they took and all Palestine action prisoners and activists in the UK who are refusing to be complicit whilst we witness a genocide in real time on our screens. These activists really are the best of us.
Stuart and I are expecting and having to go through pregnancy without him has been really difficult. But I think of the all those pregnant or with children living in Palestine under Israeli apartheid and I know what I am experiencing will never be as painful as what they are going through.
The Thales 5 political prisoners can be supported via a CrowdFunder set up by their family and friends. You can donate to that here.
Letters of support from members of the public are welcome. You can get details on how to write to them here.
The Thales 5 are joined by eleven others in Britain and, as of today, four in the United States, all imprisoned for taking direct action in the face of Western complicity in Israel’s genocide, occupation, and apartheid in Palestine.
In Britain, evidence obtained through disclosures suggest that Israel and Elbit Systems have exerted diplomatic and political pressure upon the British government, seeking greater repression of Palestine Action activists and intervention in their court cases.
Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action
There are a number of factors that clearly explain his silence.
Starmer has used the word genocide elsewhere…
There have long been debates over where to use the word genocide. But in the past, Starmer:
Voted in 2016 “to refer genocide of Yazidis & Christians by Daesh to UN and ICC to start process to bring perpetrators to justice”. Daesh (Isis/Isil) killed over 5,000 people in its mass slaughter of Yazidis.
Wrote in 2021 about China’s treatment of its Uyghur community (for which there are no apparent reports of murder, except the roughly 200 deaths during the July 2009 riots). He said he’d be working “to ensure Britain never turns a blind eye to genocide”. Also in 2021, he insisted on sending a message to the Conservatives that “genocide can never be met with indifference, impunity or inaction”.
Marked the 2022 “anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica”, saying “we remember the 8,000 Muslim men and boys who lost their lives”. He marked the 2023 anniversary too. And in 2020, he called it an “inhuman genocide”.
Foreign secretary David Lammy had a similar record of speaking about genocide in thepast. He even insisted correctly that “genocide does not start with genocide” but “with the denial of rights, attacks on truth, the rule of law and democracy”. But like Starmer, Lammy has now become very shy about the word. Like his boss, he has also insisted on avoiding the word genocide, and on minimising Israel’s crimes.
Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin proposed condemning the crime of genocide in 1944. And 80 years later, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has asserted that:
One might even say that Lemkin’s definition fits the situation in Palestine for the past 76 years.
Reading Raphael Lemkin's original 1944 definition of genocide with Gaza in mind is a very illuminating excercise: pic.twitter.com/OKB05DQB4V
So why was Starmer happy to use the word genocide previously, but not in 2024? What changed?
…so why not about Gaza?
It can’t be about the numbers. Because Israeli occupation forces have already killed “at least 43,712 people, including 16,765 children” in Gaza. And a study from July in medical journal The Lancetfound that, if we include indirect deaths, “it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186â000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza”.
If it’s not about the number of murders, then what else could it be? Could it possibly be because, as Declassified has reported, Starmer’s “top team has accepted hundreds of thousands of pounds from pro-Israel funders”?
Or might Starmer be scared of losing power if he grows a backbone? Because he happily jumped on the bandwagon to cynically weaponise antisemitism allegations against his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, who took a firm stand against Israeli crimes in occupied Palestine. And despite kneeling before the altar of the pro-Israel lobby, Starmer still faces pressure to back Israel’s genocide even more passionately.
Perhaps the biggest reason to avoid using the word genocide, however, is that doing so would draw attention to Britain’s failure to fulfil its legal obligations to prevent such atrocities.
Admitting genocide is happening would highlight Britain’s violation of its obligations
Political leaders themselves will avoid talking about genocide, to protect themselves not only from demands to stop it, but also from scrutiny of their complicity â Israel has been helped by RAF surveillance, British-made weapons and parts for its bombers, and diplomatic support, all of which the Starmer Government has continued.
Indeed, British governments under Starmer and Sunak have participated in Israel’s genocide via RAF flights over Gaza, and US flights from the UK’s base on Cyprus. As UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has stressed in the Tribune:
the UK is violating its obligations under international law not to aid and assist a state which is committing international wrongdoings.
Albanese has reported on Israelâs âsettler colonial genocideâ in Gaza herself. And she explained Britain’s obligation to prevent that in more detail, saying in a video interview that:
In order not to violate the Genocide Convention, which contains an obligation to prevent genocide, member states need to comply with the obligation not to support a state that might be committing genocide⌠Member states have been put on notice that there is this risk, as of the 26th of January this year… Even if genocide had not been committed yet, because there is a risk, there is an obligation to prevent.
You'd think Keir Starmer would know this, being a human rights lawyer and all.
(@FranceskAlbs's comments were made in relation to the Foreign Secretary refusing to accept what is happening is genocide, just as Starmer did today) pic.twitter.com/zMCujcCH1h
The International Commission of Jurists has backed this idea up.
So not only is Starmer a spineless tool of the pro-genocide lobby. He’s also violating his responsibilities by continuing to support Israel’s crimes. And that’s why he’s trying to convince us that the atrocities we’re all witnessing in real time are not genocide.
Human Rights Watch says it has evidence that suggests âthe war crime of forcible transferâ of civilians
Israel is using evacuation orders to pursue the âdeliberate and massive forced displacementâ of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, according to a report by Human Rights Watch, which says the policy amounts to crimes against humanity.
The US-based group added it had collected evidence that suggested âthe war crime of forcible transfer [of the civilian population]â, describing it as âa grave breach of the Geneva conventions and a crime under the Rome statute of the international criminal courtâ.
One of the clearest signs of Israel’s genocidal intent in Gaza has been its unrelenting, targeted attacks on children and families. Israel has slaughtered more than 11,000 Palestinian children over the past year, and there are also over 17,000 children who have lost their parents and caretakers. These orphans have been largely embraced by their communities, but must still find a way to survive the war without their closest loved ones. The Real News reports from Khan Younis, speaking to Alma, age 12, and Mahmoud, age 13, who have both survived Israeli massacres that killed the majority of their relatives.
Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt Videographer: Ruwaida Amer, Mahmoud Al Mashharawi Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Transcript
NARRATOR: For those children who escape death, surviving has its own challenges. According to UNICEF, At least 17,000 children were estimated to be unaccompanied or separated from their parents in the Gaza Strip in February 2024, four months into the war. Today, that number is likely significantly higher.Â
ALMA MOHAMED GHANEM JAROUR: Come and sit. Look how nice the camp looks. Thereâs the first medical point, and there is the second. Thereâs the administration point.
NARRATOR:Â Alma Jarour was the sole survivor of an Israeli air strike that flattened the entire building where she was taking refuge, killing a reported 140 people in total, and almost every single member of her extended family.Â
She is only one of the orphans staying at the âDar Al Barakaâ orphanage, a single tent in a sea of refugee tents, designated exclusively for orphans West of the city of Khan Yunis.
ALMA: Where do you like to go?
GIRL 1: I like the amusement park!
ALMA: And you, Samaa?
GIRL 2: I like to go to restaurants!
ALMA: âAnd I like to go to the sea!
ALMA: The place I used to love to go to the most before the war was the sea. When the war began, the Yarmuk mosque was targeted and it was next to our house. I felt strangled, my chest was constricted. I was so scared, I would hide in my mumâs arms. We would sleep in my mum and dadâs arms. We would not move from our places. We were in my uncleâs building. The entire building was bombed. It was full of children and women only.
INTERVIEWER: Where were you?
ALMA: I was with them! I was not expecting that. I got out from under the rubble and thought my family had also gotten out. I didnât expect that. I got out, and then strangers took me to their home. I ran away and went back to the building. The people took me away a second time but I went back to the building again. I got the biggest shock, I found all the people from the building in pieces. In pieces. I donât know what to tell you.Â
I came out from the rubble, out of 140 people. I mean, there were 140 people in the building. Weâre innocent children, weâre not involved in anything. Weâre children.
INTERVIEWER: All your family died?
ALMA: Yes, all of them. What can we say?
NARRATOR: Sami Jihad Haddad is Almaâs auntâs husband, and one of her only surviving relatives.
SAMI JIHAD HADDAD: The house was hit, and the only survivor was Alma. She came out of the rubble after three hours. No one else survived with her, they all died. No one remained for Alma except her aunt, because her aunt was displaced to Al Wasta.
God sent the war and wiped out their entire line. He wiped the near and the far. From the grandfather to the grandson: theyâre all gone. This girl survived. No uncle, no father, no grandfatherâall of them: may god have mercy on their souls. In the center of this building. They stayed under the rubble for four months, until the neighbors and loved ones pulled them out when the area was cleared after the bombings.
ALMA: I was in the building on the same day, at the time of that same air strike. On that same day I went to the south. What did I find? I found tanks and weaponsâŚ
INTERVIEWER: Who did you go with?
ALMA: With my motherâs relatives, but they are not my relatives. We found the Israelis, and tanks and weapons. I mean, we found a sniper who was shooting at us, and tanks were pointing at us! I mean, an unbearable scene.
We found blood. I found blood. But my aunt, she found a corpse. Thrown in the street. I saw a lot of blood. I was walking in the street and I saw a lot of blood. The Israelis were moving in the area, they were in front of us, they were in front of us, it was normal. They had a store of weapons there. They raided a house and took it over and made it their place. They went in and took out a lot of weapons. I mean, these were unbearable scenes at this time. The whole way I was screaming, screaming, screaming. I was screaming for four, five days, I didnât speak to anyone. I didnât want to eat.
NARRATOR: Like Alma, 12-year-old Mahmoud has also been recently orphaned.
MAHMOUD TAYSIR ABU SHAHMEH: We were sleeping at 3 o’clock at night. We heard a strike and I ran out of the house outside. I was injured from the strike, and thatâs it. After I was in the hospital for 14 [days], then we went to sheikh Nasser, then we left to Mashrouâ, then to Rafah. Then after Rafah we came here, to Khan Yunis.
INTERVIEWER: How did your parents die?
MAHMOUD: The house was struck, and we lost my mum, my sister, my brother, his wife, his son, my aunt. Then they struck my house at a different time, and we lost my dad, my uncle, my other uncle, my other uncle, my little cousin, my other cousin, my aunt, her son, and my dadâs wife.
INTERVIEWER: And you were left alone?
MAHMOUD: Yeah, I’m left alone, I have three married sisters, theyâre all with their husbands.
NARRATOR: Daoud Abu Shahmeh is Mahmoudâs uncle and one of his only surviving relatives. He tells us about Mahdmoudâs anxiety attacks and dark memories that mostly surface at night.
DAOUD ABU SHAHMEH: His mental state is difficult; honestly, itâs bad. What do you expect? A child loses his mother, his father? The air strikes. Every minute, something bombed. Whatâs his mental state? Itâs destroyed! Iâm telling you, not the mental state of children, us adults, our mental state is destroyed.
We try to ease his pain. Heâs not a baby, heâs 12 years old and heâs aware that his parents have died and gone to heaven. Sometimes he dreams at night and shouts out, âMummy! Daddy! Where are you?â
Everything I can do for him, I do it. He asks and I tell him, may Allah have mercy on your mum. May Allah have mercy on your dad. They were good people. They live in Heaven, God Willing. And may God allow us to join them. Because I swear this is no life. I swear itâs no life. Weâre not living. Weâre martyrs-in-waiting. Everyone is waiting for their day.
NARRATOR: But during the daylight hours, both Mahmoud and Alma show remarkable resilience.
MAHMOUD: We play football in the evening with the boys here outside. We play for an hour and then we come and sit here.
DAOUD ABU SHAHMEH: I sit with him and we play together. We play football. We throw the ball to each other. I tell them stories about ghouls, old fairy tales. We laugh together. When they get tired, we all go to sleep together.
ALMA: I have coloring pencils and we play together and have fun. Instead of remembering. When Iâm alone I start to remember what happened and remember how life before used to be so nice.
I dream that I will go to my grandmother. My grandmother in Germany, my dadâs mother. I want to go to her a lot. I miss her. I want to embrace her and she wants to embrace me.
INTERVIEWER: What do you miss about your mum and dad?
ALMA: Their embrace, honestly. I used to love being in their embrace. I feel their embrace was warm. In winter the best thing is to go and cuddle your mum and dad. Those were sweet days.
When this war is over, I will have nothing left. My childhood home is gone. The house we lived the best days of our lives in, is gone. Nothing is left for me when this war is over. Thatâs all.
On Wednesday 13 November, supporters of Youth Demand disrupted traffic in Manchester, demanding a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the UK government to halt all fossil fuel licences granted since 2021.
Youth Demand day three: Manchester
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters blocked Fairfield Street in Manchester, preventing cars from passing while holding banners that read: âNEVER AGAIN IS NOWâ and âYOUTH DEMAND AN END TO GENOCIDEâ, along with Palestine flags:
Shelby Murphy from Manchester took action. She said:
We are witnessing a Genocide in real time. There should be no business as usual. Disruptive action reminds people of that.
Then, at 12pm the group went on to block Sackville Street, lighting green and red coloured flares while traffic was at a standstill:
They then went ahead to block Oxford Road:
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
Every day that Governments like ours fail to act, Israel escalates the genocide theyâre committing . They are attempting to close down UNRWA aid operations, not just in Gaza but the West Bank too â top officials are warning this will be devastating. This is murder.
As the Canary has been documenting, the group first took action on Remembrance Day, Monday 11 November. Members laid a Palestinian flag-coloured wreath at the Cenotaph, while also blocking roads and disrupting traffic elsewhere in London and in Manchester.
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters silently blocked the road outside of the Houses of Parliament during the Armistice Day remembrance service. The group could be seen holding signs which read âNever Again for Anyoneâ and âOver 186,000 Deadâ.
At around 12:10pm the group also occupied the road on Cannon Street until around 12:25pm. The group then moved on and at around 1:10pm they disrupted the road at Moorgate, on the London Wall Road until around 1:30pm.
Also at around 9am, supporters swarmed the streets at two locations in Manchester.
Then, on Tuesday 12 November the group did similar in Leeds – blocking multiple roads and being threatened with arrest.
Youth Demand said that âYoung people will not accept our politicians supporting the murder of innocent people. This week, young people are taking action in cities all around the country”
At Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), independent MP Ayoub Khan of the Independent Alliance of MPs, took Labour Party PM Keir Starmer to task over what the International Court of Justice called a ‘plausible genocide’ of Palestinian people:
‘The Genocide Convention makes it explicitly clear that genocide is not about numbers it’s about intent’
Indep MP Ayoub Khan asks what the PM’s definition of genocide is
Article two of the United Nations Genocide Convention makes it explicitly clear that genocide is not about numbers, it’s about intent. And the intent of the Israeli government and the IDF has been explicitly clear in words and in actions over the past 400 days, more than 45,000 innocent men, women and children killed.
On the 28 October the foreign secretary denied that a genocide was even taking place and suggested that the Israeli army had not yet killed enough Palestinians to constitute a genocide. And… at PMQs, the prime minister stated that he had never referred to the atrocities happening in Gaza as a genocide.
Will the prime minister share his definition of genocide with this House? And will he state what further action he is prepared to take to save lives of desperate and starving men, women and children…?
In response at PMQs, Starmer didn’t share what contrary definition of genocide he has, nor what he would do to help Palestinians:
It would be wise to start a question like that with reference to what happened in October of last year. I’m well aware of the definition of genocide and that’s why I’ve never referred to it as genocide.
But article two of the UN genocide convention states:
In the present Convention, genocide means… acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
Palestinians are a national, ethnical, racial and largely religious group and Israel is killing them en masse. In fact, Joyce Msuya, acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, has said that “the entire population of north Gaza is at risk of dying”.
Israelis themselves have highlighted public comments from Israeli authority figures that suggest that Israel’s onslaught on Gaza goes beyond warfare.
In a letter to the Israeli attorney general from December 2023, a group of former senior members of Israelâs diplomatic corps, academics, journalists, former members of Knesset, and social activists say Israelâs judiciary is ignoring âextensive and blatant incitement to genocide, expulsion, and ethnic cleansing in Gaza by public figuresâ. They write âthe explicit calls to commit atrocious crimes, as stated, against millions of civilians have turned into a legitimate and regular part of Israeli discourseâ.
The letter references such incitement, including one from Israeli MP Yitzhak Kroizer. He said âthe Gaza Strip should be flattened, and for all of them there is but one sentence, and that is deathâ.
It is also Islamophobia awareness month. And I reaffirm our commitment to standing against discrimination and racism in all its forms
Yet standing against Islamophobia and racism in “all its forms” clearly doesn’t apply to the Palestinians in Gaza. In his answer to Khan, Starmer suggested the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, which killed around 1,200 Israelis (some of whom Israeli forces themselves killed) justifies Israel killing around 45,000 Palestinians, of which 70% were women and children (according to the UN). That’s not a diplomatic, nor statesman-like approach.
a total arms embargo, an end to the illegal occupation and settlement policy, and the immediate and unconditional recognition of the state of Palestine
Not many people today know about the radical history of the Jewish Labor Bund, the Jewish socialist party founded within the Russian Empire in 1897âbut they should. Understanding the Bund is essential for understanding the long and critically relevant tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism. âFrom the Bund’s very earliest days,â artist and author Molly Crabapple says, members âsaw that if there was an attempt to create a Jewish ethno-state in Palestine, it would mean a state of eternal war with both the neighboring countries [and] the Palestinians⌠inside that country.â
In this episode of The Marc Steiner Show, Marc speaks with Crabapple about what the history of the Bund can teach us today in the midst of Israelâs genocidal war on Palestine, and about how anti-Zionist Jews, including Crabapple herself, continue to fight for a socialist alternative to Zionism.
Studio Production: David Hebden Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
What you just heard is Di Shvue, the anthem of the Jewish Labor Bund. It’s appropriate for our guest. This is Marc Steiner. Welcome to the Marc Steiner show here at The Real News, and I’m about to talk to Molly Crabapple. She joins us once again. Artist, activist, writer, co-author of Brothers of the Gun, which is an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, which was a New York Times notable book and listed for 2018 National Book Award, and her memoir, Drawing Blood, which received global praise and attention. Her animated films have been nominated for three Emmys and won an Edward R. Murrow Award, Disappearing Rooms. Crapapple’s reportage has been published in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, vanity Fair, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and right here on The Real News.
So Molly, welcome. Good to have you back with us.
Molly Crabapple:
Thank you so much for having me, Marc. And thank you so much for starting with Di Shvue, the Bund’s anthem.
Marc Steiner:
Tell me, before we get into what’s happened to you recently, getting arrested and what you were protesting, let’s talk a bit about the Bund. I really want to understand how you get into them, and for our listeners, let’s stop here. For our listeners right now, let’s talk about what is the Jewish Bund and then how did Molly jump into it?
Molly Crabapple:
What was the Jewish Bund? The Jewish Bund was a Jewish socialist, secular, and defiantly anti-Zionist revolutionary party that started in 1897 in the Tzarist Empire and became one of the most popular Jewish movements in Poland and the former Pale of Settlement until it was destroyed by the Holocaust and then by Stalin. And the Bund was a movement that was based on this idea that they called hereness, doykayt in Yiddish, that said that Jews had the right to live in the countries where they were born, where their fathers and mothers were born in the Eastern Europe that had rejected and brutalized them, but was still their home. It was a philosophy that said, “Here where we live now is our country. We don’t have to go to the there of Palestine and colonize it in order to have lives of freedom and of safety. We can do it here and we fight for it here.”
Marc Steiner:
That whole argument, that discussion has been lost since the founding of Israel, and especially during these wars with, A, the passions about Zionism even if you’re not a Zionist, and B, because Jews always feel preyed upon and the other. But the struggle inside that world, inside the Jewish world, over Zionism and things like the Bund have been around for the last 150 years.
Molly Crabapple:
As soon as Zionism, political Zionism was created, there was anti-Zionism.
Marc Steiner:
Exactly. So talk a bit about what you think the Bund’s legacy is now for us, because you’re working on that at this moment. There’s a book coming out, so talk a bit about what their relevancy is for what we’re facing now and what they say to us in this age.
Molly Crabapple:
Sure. So I spent the last five years working on a book about the Jewish Labor Bund. It’s called Here Where We Live is Our Country, and I think it’s the first full history of the group that’s written for a popular audience. It’s not an academic book. It’s a book that is written in a way that’s as exciting and vivid and funny, where characters talk. That’s something that you could give to a 25-year-old and say, “This is your history.”
Now, why did I choose to write a book about the Bund and why does it say something that’s so relevant and so vital for us now? To me, what their legacy is, it’s threefold. The first is that they were humane democratic socialists. They were people whose philosophy was in line with the DSA here. They were people who did not go over to Stalinism, but who nonetheless were a party that fought with their fists and in electoral politics and in the streets for the rights of workers. So that’s the first thing. They were socialists in the best way.
They were also people who said that the answer for Jews was not to go and colonize and ethnically cleanse another country in order to make a sort of ersatz homeland, but instead that Jews had the right to live where they were and that this was something worth fighting for, that your home now where you were, was worth defending and could be defended in solidarity with other people. Bernard Goldstein, who was a fighter for the Bund who ran their militia, he compared their philosophy in interwar Poland to that of Black people in America. And Bernard said that from knowledge he spent the last years of his life in the Bronx.
The third reason that I have been obsessed with them is that they were so, so prescient about what Zionism would become. From the Bund’s very earliest days, they saw that if there was an attempt to create a Jewish ethnostate in Palestine, it would mean a state of eternal war with both the neighboring countries, but also with the Palestinians that were inside that country, and that it would mean also an eternal state of war with the Jews that were taken into this project to get rid of their previous cultures, whether it was the Arabic culture of a Jew from Baghdad or the Yiddish culture of a Jew from Vilnius to create them as these new Israelis. And they saw that eventually this violence that Israel would need to inflict from its very first moments would turn inward and create a state that was based on racism and religious fundamentalism. They literally have letters and articles where they’re writing this in the 1920s and the 1930s.
Marc Steiner:
And here we find ourselves in this moment. This is probably, I think in my lifetime, one of the most dangerous moments we face, not just in Israel, in this country, across the globe, for the rise of neo-fascism. And Israel is at the heart of that. It’s painful and difficult to fathom that Jews could end up running a neo-fascist state. There have always been fascists among the Jews as well as communists and liberals and everybody else, but the idea that a neo-fascist state has taken hold, and that we are, the larger we, are pressing on other people at this moment and also could cause that we bring the Masada to ourselves again. That’s where I think we find ourselves.
Molly Crabapple:
We find ourselves where a self-declared Jewish state with a big old Star of David on the flag is doing a genocide in Gaza and is involved in an evil, unspeakable invasion of Lebanon, and that’s creating hell every day on the West Bank for Palestinians. That’s where we find ourselves. It’s one of the most shameful and heartbreaking moments that I can think of. On one hand, I’ve always rejected this idea that because a people has been oppressed, that it makes them good people. I don’t actually think oppression, let alone going through a genocide like Jews did, makes anyone better.
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Molly Crabapple:
In fact, I think it makes you worse. I think that in fact, the role that the Holocaust has played in cultural and ethical life has in some ways blinded people to the fact that suffering makes no one into saints. I often think about the people of the Soviet Union who had 20 million people were murdered, 20 million who had their cities destroyed, who suffered ungodly amounts under the Nazis, and who pretty soon afterwards killed millions of people in Afghanistan and Chechnya, and no one would look and say, “How could the people of the Soviet Union after suffering so much inflict suffering on others?”
Marc Steiner:
Right. Right.
Molly Crabapple:
It wouldn’t even cross people’s mind. But I think because the Holocaust is this event that’s almost put apart from history, this basic truth about humans has been forgotten, that enduring a genocide just means that you’re a people that endured a genocide. It does not mean that you are destined by history never to inflict one on others.
Marc Steiner:
Exactly. To me, it’s the contradiction that exists when you look at the fact that in the sixties, 70% of all the white freedom fighters were Jews. At the same time, I had cousins who I loved dearly I would sit with, but they were slumlords, and they owned corner stores that ripped off the people in poor neighborhoods where they lived and worked. And the contradictions just abound. And that’s just human existence, I think. I think in the Jewish world, we could use some kind of internal discussion about who we are and let’s deal with reality.
Molly Crabapple:
Exactly, that we have the same flaws and contradictions and idiocies and heroisms as any other group.
Marc Steiner:
Let’s talk a bit about your recent arrest.
Molly Crabapple:
My recent arrest.
Marc Steiner:
With Nan Goldin and others at Wall Street.
Molly Crabapple:
Yes. So I was arrested trying to block the stock market from opening with… How many people were we? I think several hundred people organized by Jewish Voices for Peace, which is, speaking of things that give me hope in our people, I love JVP. What a profoundly ethical and brave and amazing group. We were trying to blockade the stock market to protest the full-throated material support that American corporations were giving to the genocide and Gaza, to protest the bombs and bullets that companies like Lockheed Martin, for instance, are sending to tear apart Gazan children. That’s why we were there. And there was a small, pathetic little band of Zionist counter-protesters that threw eggs at us, tried to yell at the meathead cops to be allowed in to scream in our faces, but in general, we were all arrested. And I was very proud to do that. And I think that, honestly, it feels like the least I could do.
Marc Steiner:
And that’s been happening across the country too and across the globe. And I think it’s really important that, as you were describing, that Jews come out as activists saying, “Not in our name. This is not going to happen. We don’t stand with this.”
Molly Crabapple:
Oh my God, it’s the most important thing in the world. You have this state that claims us, it claims that it’s acting on behalf of Jews. It perverts our history. It blasphemes our symbols by carving them into the literal earth of Gaza and into Palestinian faces, and it says, “This is Jews. This is Jews doing it. We are Jews and we are inflicting this horror.” And every bit, every particle of my being is like, “Fuck you. No. How dare you?” And for me, I think it is so essential that Jewish people are screaming with their full chests that, “No, this genocidal Israeli state does not represent us. It has no right to excuse its atrocities with our history, with our identity, with our religion, with our pain. It has no right at all, and no, not in our name.”
Marc Steiner:
So you’re a woman who’s been an artist and a writer and an activist, and you have taken yourself into war zones.
Molly Crabapple:
I have, yeah.
Marc Steiner:
To Ukraine and other places.
Molly Crabapple:
Yeah. I was in Ukraine in 2022. Yes. Oh, man, you’re making me do math. Yeah, 2022.
Marc Steiner:
It all melds, I know, I understand.
Molly Crabapple:
Yeah, I know.
Marc Steiner:
And your writing out of that was very powerful and very painful. That war is going on and has not ended. And it’s also where that borderline between Ukraine and Poland is where my family came from originally. And so we got a lot of back and forth about that. But I’m curious, looking at what’s happening in Ukraine and looking at what’s now happening in Palestine-Israel, where do you think after all this work you’ve done, the kind of visionary kind of thinking you’ve been involved in, where do you think this is taking us? None of us are prescient, but your analysis about where this is taking us and how this happened to us.
Molly Crabapple:
In terms of particularly the war against the people of Gaza, it’s part of this cheapening of human life. It is part of this, how do I put this? Willingness by governments around the world to countenance people literally being thrown into a meat grinder and mass murdered. This is the worst, what’s happening in Gaza is the worst thing that I have ever witnessed, even though I obviously was not reporting from Gaza, just communicating with my friends inside, but it’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying that there aren’t worst things going on. It’s not like a hierarchy of suffering, but it’s certainly the worst thing that I’ve ever been aware of in the sense of people who are literally trapped and totally cut off who are being bombed and murdered from the sky, from the ground, from the sea, and who are basically without defense.
To me, that element of people being without defense and also totally cut off and unable to escape is what makes this so, it makes it different than Ukraine. Despite the horrific and obscene atrocities that Russia has visited on Ukraine, at least Ukrainians have an open border to Poland, and at least they are being armed by America. They have some ability to defend themselves, inadequate though it is. It’s also what makes it different from Syria, because in Syria, people could still, they could flee to Turkey or to Lebanon, and also they were getting arms, inadequate and often used in bad ways, but still they weren’t defenseless like people are in Gaza. I just think that this phenomenon where we are all watching literal babies having their limbs blown off, and girls with half their skull sheared off on our smartphones every day, while those in power continue to arm and fund it, is something that is like a wound in all of our moral fabric.
Marc Steiner:
I was thinking about the work you’re doing now in the Bund and JVP now. There’s an arc here to me, a historical political arc, but I’ve never seen before the numbers. Since the Bund was very powerful in Poland and Russia, but looking now at JVP and the anti-war groups, the anti-Zionist and non-Zionist groups of young Jews especially, the movements have similarities. And the power, though, this time seems to be not winding down, and it seems it’s going to have an effect on this country, maybe Israel-Palestine, including inside the Jewish community, and you are in the middle of it.
Molly Crabapple:
Yeah. Every day, I am in awe of these Jewish kids in JVP, if not now, in just countless, countless groups, some of which aren’t specifically Jewish. A lot of the people who organized the Columbia encampment were Jewish kids. I am in awe of their courage, of their willingness to face a lot of rejection, often from their families, to get arrested, to affect their job prospects, to risk their university educations because of just their profound moral need to protest this genocide. And it is something that’s growing, right?
I think that a lot of older people, like people of my mother’s generation, who are American Jews, they had this very delusional view of Israel that was not actually based on even having visited Israel. Or even there were people who didn’t know Hebrew who couldn’t name an Israeli political party, but they had seen the movie Exodus, and they maybe once had visited a kibbutz when they were young for three weeks or so. And they had this very strong emotional attachment, and this emotional attachment utterly blinded them to the horrific crimes that Israel, since its foundation, was inflicting on Palestinian people. I think that the difference with younger Jews is they don’t have that, right? They’re not people who remember a Israel that claimed to be socialist, right?
Marc Steiner:
Right.
Molly Crabapple:
They’re people who probably weren’t, they probably never in their lives saw an Israel that wasn’t being governed by Netanyahu. I mean, Netanyahu has basically been in power on and off since he incited Rabin’s murder, I think.
Marc Steiner:
Exactly, yes. When I look at that, we all have our journeys. In ’67, I tried to join the Israeli Army to fight because of the war.
Molly Crabapple:
You did?
Marc Steiner:
Yes.
Molly Crabapple:
Zion rejected you, man. [inaudible 00:18:36] Jesus.
Marc Steiner:
That was in the midst of being an anti-Vietnam war activist and organizer in the underground media as well.
Molly Crabapple:
So why? Why did you-
Marc Steiner:
Because it was that war that changed a lot of us. It was that war, meeting left-wing Israelis, meeting Palestinians, that changed everything, that went from being a member of Hashomer Hatzair to saying, “No, this is wrong. This is not us. We can’t do this.” That’s where the switch came.
Molly Crabapple:
Right. Right.
Marc Steiner:
I’m glad the war was over in seven days. I didn’t join the IDF. But I think that there was a profound switch then, and it’s happening now. When I think about your work on the Bund, and people really need to know this, I can’t wait for it to come out so we really can dive into it deeply together to understand what that history means for us now, and that war in ’67, and where we find ourselves today with this war in Gaza, where we are slaughtering tens of thousands of Palestinians, to destroying the entire strip of Gaza. One of my closest friends is Palestinian Ali Zageb, his nephews, two of them were shot and killed by settlers outside of Ramallah.
Molly Crabapple:
[inaudible 00:19:58].
Marc Steiner:
In this madness now.
Molly Crabapple:
Yes, yes.
Marc Steiner:
And I’m in touch with a guy I’m going to get on the air with again, Mohammed Rah, who is in Gaza trying to take care of his people. People don’t fathom how horrendous this war is for the people in Gaza, what it’s doing to them.
Molly Crabapple:
Every single bit of life is being destroyed. Every university, every library, every hospital, every restaurant, everything that people built against such odds, right? Because these people were building these things under blockade, under extreme limits on construction materials, under poverty. They’re building them while being bombed every two years. People in Gaza still built so much beauty in spite of everything. And all of that has been systematically block-by-block destroyed and turned into blood-soaked dust by this genocidal invasion.
I also, I reported from Gaza in 2015, and I had this amazing translator I work with, Mohammed Rajab, and right now he’s a driver for UNICEF, and he is living in a tent with four little boys and his wife and his elderly parents. His father-in-law died because Israel sadistically keeps medicine out of the Gaza Strip. And so he died in pain because of this sadistic Israeli blockade that they’ve done at the same time as they’re doing this genocidal invasion. And I just think about that.
One moment you have a home, you have things that you’ve built, you have beauty that you’ve made, you have a family, and then the next moment you’re living in a fucking tent surrounded by just the absolute destruction of everything you’ve ever known. And right now at this moment, where Israel is essentially liquidating Northern Gaza, where they’re rounding up men and forcing them to strip and writing numbers on their foreheads and taking them to God knows what torture camp, my heart wants to leap out of my chest from rage at this.
Marc Steiner:
Yes, I understand completely. Before we’ll let you go, I want to go back to this arc and also where you think this takes us now. I mean, the Bund that you wrote about was a very powerful movement, a non-Zionist Jewish movement.
Molly Crabapple:
Anti-Zionist Jewish movement.
Marc Steiner:
Anti-Zionist, excuse me, crystal clear, anti is the right word, not non, anti-Zionist.
Molly Crabapple:
They literally had mass meetings where the banner was “Liquidate Zionism,” and they passed resolutions that, this is in Warsaw in the twenties. They passed resolutions that were like, “It is the duty of every worker to struggle with all his might against Zionism and national chauvinism.”
Marc Steiner:
So do you think there is actually a hope that we can build a really strong, not Bund, because that’s another century, but a movement that really takes hold inside the Jewish world that speaks to the rest world saying no, and we can actually do something to stop this, that we have a voice, and it’s not just up to the folks that have all the money in all the kind of major Jewish organizations?
Molly Crabapple:
I absolutely think that a movement is being built and not just in America. There’s networks of Jews in Europe that are standing against this, in Argentina, in Australia. In places around the world that have Jewish communities, Jews are absolutely rejecting this. And they’re organizing both just as people in general political things like how I’m in the Democratic socialists, but also they’re organizing as Jews. And I think it’s something that is scaring the shit out of the people that are the donors to these major Jewish orgs.
There was an interesting article. Who wrote it? It was basically labor reporting about how Jewish organizations around the country, from Jewish day schools to synagogues to just like lefty Jewish cultural groups, have been purging anti-Zionist employees, especially young people, who are people who don’t necessarily have a big platform and a lot of means to fight back. They’ve been firing people over being in a keffiyeh in a Facebook photo or liking an Instagram post. And I think the reason that there’s this huge, huge institutional backlash against young anti-Zionist Jews is because these donors are scared shitless because they know that they’re losing an entire generation.
Marc Steiner:
Exactly. I agree. As we close out today, I want to come back to that day where you all went to Wall Street, you and Nan Goldin and the others, and the effect that had, and those demonstrations are not stopping.
Molly Crabapple:
Absolutely not, no. JVP has been doing these demonstrations that involve civil disobedience and mass arrests. They have a long history of doing that. But specifically, they’ve been doing that since very, very soon after the genocide began in Gaza. They took over Grand Central Station, hundreds of people were arrested. I was also part of a demonstration where we took over the Statue of Liberty. Over and over and over again, whether in the Capitol or at sites in New York, they have been doing these mass demonstrations, where hundreds of people are getting arrested in order to show that they utterly reject this war. Obviously, I don’t think that we alone can stop the bombs. We’re a very small group, despite how big our mouths are. I mean, Jews in general. But I think that the moral power of Jews utterly rejecting this genocide and utterly rejecting this apartheid being carried out in our name is crucial. And I think it’s terrifying to the Zionist establishment. And it’s not going away. It’s only growing.
Marc Steiner:
Molly Crabapple, first of all, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you’re an extremely busy human being. I appreciate your work, your creativity, your strength to stand up to all this that’s happening and what you paint, draw, and write. And I look forward to talking when the Bund comes out, your book on the Bund. And thank you so much for everything and taking time out of your valuable work to join us today.
Molly Crabapple:
Thank you so much. My pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Marc Steiner:
I want to thank Molly Crabapple once again for joining us and bringing her creative genius to bear on so many issues we’re confronting, especially Israel-Palestine. We’ll link to all of her written and artistic work. It’s well worth the exploration. And thanks to David Hebden for running the program today, audio editor Alina Nehlich for all of her magic in audio producing, Rosette Sewali for producing the Marc Steiner Show and the tireless Killer Ravala 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, thanks to Molly Crabapple for joining us today. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
Donald Trump is picking a number of pro-Israel voices to join his incoming cabinet. His selections, some of which have officially been made and others which have only been reported from inside sources, solidify the fact that his administration will embrace a hawkish foreign policy in the Middle East, and advance attacks against organizations aiming to help Palestinians.
After 25 years, football legend Gary Lineker has stepped down from Match of the Day. And as he does so, let’s recap why he can do so with his head held high – especially because of his opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Gary Lineker: taking a stand
In 2023, the BBC asked Gary Lineker to apologise for criticising the Conservative government’s asylum policy language as akin to that of 1930s Germany. After his principled refusal to do so, fellow presenters joined his walkout. The BBC later reinstated him.
Lineker’s employers at the BBC have consistently shown pro-Israel bias during the apartheid state’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. But the presenter has refused to back down to threats and pressure to support Israel’s war crimes. Instead, he has insisted on standing up for human rights.
When it became clear that Israel was enacting collective punishment yet again on the civilian population of the occupied Gaza Strip after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023, Lineker stood up for protesters who were facing vile smears from the government:
Marching and calling for a ceasefire and peace so that more innocent children donât get killed is not really the definition of a hate march. https://t.co/qLyIqZKhwt
How could it be controversial to want peace? I just donât understand it. You donât need to be Islamophobic to condemn Hamas, or antisemitic to condemn Israel.
And when responding to some Jewish friends who asked him to show support for Israel online, he said “What?! Look, absolutely no. And nor should you.”
Despite leaving Match of the Day, Lineker will continue in other roles at the BBC. But thanks to his wealth and successful Goalhanger Podcasts company, he can afford to spend less time at the toxic national broadcaster.
Gaza genocide is “the worst thing I’ve seen in my lifetime”
In May 2024, Gary Lineker spoke to journalist Mehdi Hasan about the Gaza genocide. He called it “the worst thing I’ve seen in my lifetime”. And he added:
I’m not Israeli. I’m not Palestinian. So I see it, I think, purely from the outside… from neutral perspective.
However, he said:
the minute you… raise your voice against what they’re now doing there…you get accused of being a supporter of Hamas… There’s a lot heavy lobbying on people to be quiet. So I understand why most people refrain. But I’m getting on a bit now… I’m fairly secure. And I can’t be silent about what’s happening there… It’s just… so utterly awful.
He also insisted:
It’s not antisemitic to say that what Israel is doing is wrong… I just can’t see how everybody doesn’t see it that way now… Whatever started it, we all know that… the history of this area of the world goes way before October the 7th, but it’s truly dreadful what’s happening. And I cry on a regular basis when I see certain images on social media.
More recently, he retweeted a UNICEF spokesperson calling Gaza “hell on Earth”:
This is what life is like for a million terrified children in Gaza as they are bombed, sniped, massacred & starved by IOF colonial terrorists backed & armed by US, UK & Germany & whitewashed by Western media.
Lineker is certainly not perfect, of course. His company, for example, employswar criminalAlastair Campbell. And when Lineker faced threats over sharing a tweet about boycotting Israel, he backtracked.
However, it’s shockingly rare today to find such high-profile celebrities willing to openly oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza. So on the occasion of Gary Lineker stepping back from Match of the Day, we’d like to thank him for taking a stand.
Israeli media outlet Ynet just tried to propagandise the recent brawls involving Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans in Amsterdam. But it failed miserably.
Maccabi Tel Aviv coverage in Ynet: ‘utterly surreal’
The title of the article was âThis is what a pogrom looks like, this is the new antisemitism”. But as Owen Jones pointed out on X, the connection between the headline and the opening section was “utterly surreal”. Why? Because despite trying to convince readers that the response to Maccabi Tel Aviv provocations in the city was somehow an ‘antisemitic pogrom’, the first paragraph reads:
This is what an Israeli woman who arrived in Amsterdam two days before the soccer match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Ajax clubs wrote about the atmosphere in the city: “There were huge gatherings and shouts of ‘Death to Arabs’ in Amsterdam’s main squares, alongside violence against people holding Palestinian flags.â
This woman then added that:
Leaving the game, 10 Maccabi Tel Aviv fans were roaming the train looking for a Palestinian to ‘beat up’ (their words).
And while these comments undermined the Ynet article’s ridiculous headline, they seemed to capture the situation well. Because there are countless reports of Maccabi Tel Aviv fans’ provocations in the city. And hooligans appeared to attack Arabs or pro-Palestinians in particular:
A taxi driver in Amsterdam was filming Maccabi supporters tearing down a Palestinian flag when his car was attacked and hooligans tried to drag him out of it. His lawyer is now documenting other cases of violence racism committed by Maccabi fans.@stepvaessen reporting. pic.twitter.com/wFj81rdSPS
Arab taxi drivers apparently bore the brunt of the hooligans’ hostility. But the corporate media, in its efforts to push the propaganda of the genocidal Israeli apartheid state, has paid little attention to their side of the story. Independent journalists have spoken to numerous drivers, though, many of whom fear media smears against them if they appear on camera. One said:
These [Maccabi Tel Aviv] supporters, they [media and political elites] make them out to be like a peaceful Boy Scout association, but that is the framing of the media which is not correct at all.
So here it is…
The full story of the taxi-drivers in #Amsterdam with English subtitles.
The Western corporate media ignored (or at best underplayed) the many provocations leading up to the local resistance to Maccabi  Tel Aviv hooligans. It minimised their anti-Arab racism, failed to highlight their âculture of genocideâ and the deplorable genocidal nature of their chants. And there was no emphasis on FIFA and UEFA consistently ignoring requests to follow through on their own regulations by banning Israeli teams like Maccabi Tel Aviv (in line with their banning of, for example, Russian teams).
Even the Ynet article itself shared the Amsterdam police chief’s admission that “the Israelis started the riots”. And it consistently clarified with its language that the violence had little to do with locals attacking Jewish people for being Jewish but with “Israelis” and “Maccabi Tel Aviv fans”.
Former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy has spoken very clearly about the events in Amsterdam. He is fully aware of the dangers of antisemitism, but stressed that:
What happened in Amsterdam is something entirely different
He called Western propaganda over Amsterdam “intentional misdirection” and “a form of Holocaust trivialisation”, insisting:
European leaders, deeply complicity in this plausible genocide in Gaza, may be telling their publics âitâs normal to welcome Israel and its football teamsâ. But masses of people in Europe do not want racist thugs, chanting racist slogans embracing that genocide, to threaten and march through their towns and cities. They should not and will not accept this. There is no normal sport under genocide and apartheid.
"There is no normal sport under genocide and apartheid."
Political analyst Daniel Levy emphasises that the clashes with Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Amsterdam are about the normalisation and encouragement of Israelâs war on Gaza, not anti-Semitism. pic.twitter.com/lzmcjsLDnW
Levy is right. It’s not at all normal to allow genocide apologists to roam the streets aggressively provoking people. And that’s why we should all push FIFA and other organisations to suspend Israeli teams until, at the very least, the genocide in Gaza ends.
Rehovot-based Forsea Foods has recorded the highest level of cell density in the cultivated meat and seafood industry, helping it achieve costs lower than conventional eel meat.
As it prepares to launch cultivated unagi in Japan in 2026, Forsea Foods has achieved a critical breakthrough in its production process.
The Israeli company’s technology has reached a cell density of over 300 million cells per ml with minimal and precise use of cultured media, which make up the bulk of the costs of cultivated meat. This, the firm says, will allow it to further reduce costs of its planet-friendly version of freshwater eel meat.
Cell density can greatly affect the viability of cells, and how they proliferate and differentiate. Cultivated meat involves growing cells at high densities, which can often dictate when companies harvest the cells after cultivation. For some, developing technologies to produce these proteins at high densities in smaller spaces is key to their market path.
For the majority of startups, cell densities range between 100,000 to 500,000 cells per ml, but larger producers aim for much higher densities, according to alternative protein think tank the Good Food Institute (GFI). Forsea Foods says its breakthrough means it now has the highest cell density in the industry.
How Forsea Foods created cultivated eel meat
Courtesy: Forsea Foods
Forsea Foods is tackling a $4.3B luxury market for eel meat, which commands wholesale prices between $40 and $60 per kg in Japan, the consumer of over 70% of all eel caught globally. The fact that freshwater eel is a critically endangered species that’s hard to breed in captivity makes it a delicacy in the country.
Poaching, illegal trading, breeding troubles and pollution have decimated supplies of the fish, with consumption declining by 63% between 2000 and 2021 in Japan. Overfishing, meanwhile, doesn’t just disrupt eel populations, but also the marine and freshwater ecosystems they inhabit.
The three-year-old startup first showcased its cultivated eel at Saido, a vegan restaurant in Tokyo. The product is grown via Forsea Foods’s proprietary organoid technology, which involves creating the ideal environment for cells to assemble into 3D microtissue structures comprising fat, muscle and connective tissues.
These mimic organ functions and structures, and spontaneously differentiate into edible cells, replacing the natural growth process of tissues in a living animal. The process also bypasses the scaffolding stage (where cells are grown on 3D scaffolds to create structured proteins) and significantly lowers reliance on growth factors, helping it produce cultivated meat in a cost-effective manner.
âThe breakthrough to this level of cell density highlights the strength of our organoid technology,â said Forsea Foods co-founder and CTO Moria Shimoni. âItâs a validation of our approach to high-efficiency cultivation of seafood to meet both economic and sustainability goals at scale.”
Roee Nir, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, added: “This is a major milestone for Forsea and validates our vision of making sustainable, high-quality seafood affordable and widely accessible. It also sets a powerful precedent for scaling other cultured seafood products and establishing sustainable alternative supply chains for ecologically sensitive species.”
Preparing for launch in attractive Japanese market
Courtesy: Anatoly Michaello
While cultivated seafood is years away from price parity with conventional eel, the high cell density positions Forsea Foods at the forefront of efforts to lower the production costs of these novel proteins. âForseaâs organoid technology requires less capital expenditure than other technologies,â explained Nir.
âAchieving this level of cell density with minimal resources will translate to substantial reductions in the unit of economics and will bring cultured seafood production to a cost that is actually below the traditional market price,” he added.
It has completed a proof-of-concept for its continuous harvesting process, and is now aiming to take production to the next phase of commercial scale-up. The company, which is working on six different cell lines, has raised $5.2M in seed financing so far, and intends to launch a Series A funding round soon, which will fund the construction of a commercial pilot plant.
Forsea Foods held a tasting event in Tel Aviv-based restaurant A in June, which convened investors, journalists, food manufacturers, opinion leaders, as well as government representatives. It is now preparing to file regulatory dossiers in Japan, targeting a commercial launch for 2026.
Japan is becoming an increasingly hot destination for alternative protein companies, and has a population where over two in five are willing to try these cultivated meat and seafood products, especially if they’re priced the same or cheaper.
âOfficials are making steady progress in developing a novel food regulatory framework. Unlike countries that conduct individual consultations, Japanese officials primarily communicate with industry associations that speak on behalf of alternative protein companies, which fosters better market readiness for the sector as a whole,â Kimiko Hong-Mitsui, interim director of GFI Japan told Green Queen last month.
“Our recent industry survey shows that cultivated meat production is definitely not a one-size-fits-all approach,â Elliot Swartz, principal cultivated meat scientist at the think tank, remarked on Forsea Foods’s development. âIt’s encouraging to see positive data from companies showing how different methods can address challenges in cost and scale.â
As the deadline set by the Biden administration last month for Israel to step up aid deliveries to Gaza passed on Tuesday, human rights groups demanded that the U.S. stick to its commitment to holding the Israeli government accountable for what one advocate called “a campaign of ethnic cleansing.” But the White House’s refusal over the last 13 months to follow U.S.
A recent BDS victory over corporate giant Carrefour has shown yet again how powerful the actions of ordinary people can be in opposing Israel’s genocide and apartheid.
BDS Carrefour victory
French supermarket chain Carrefour is one of the biggest earners in the world. And the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement calls it a “genocide enabler” due to its partnership with an Israeli company profiting from the many crimes of the Israeli state.
On 5 November, the BDS movement announced that campaigners in Jordan had forced Carrefour out of the country:
After a large scale & creative boycott campaign that contributed to huge financial losses & reputational damage, Majid Al Futtaim Group, the partner of @Carrefour in most of the Arab region, announced the complete termination of its commercial dealings with Carrefour in Jordan. pic.twitter.com/sVt6eAbIWe
It explained that the “large scale and creative boycott campaign” had helped to generate “huge financial losses and reputational damage”.
This came on top of a previous victory, when a popular brand of coffee in the country closed 13 branches in the supermarket giant’s stores.
The holder of the previous Carrefour franchise in Jordan, however, also operates in a number of other Arab countries, including Lebanon. So the struggle against Carrefour in the region is only just beginning.
Tip of the iceberg
The BDS Carrefour victory comes after Pret a Manger pulled out of an expansion in Israel earlier in the year. As the Canary previously reported, in 2022 UK coffee chain Pret a Manger signed a franchise agreement with Israeli conglomerate Fox Group and restaurant operator Yarzin Sella to open 40 stores in Israel over the next decade.
However, after sustained pressure from the likes of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, it was reported that Pret has gone back on this agreement, worth millions of pounds, and will not open Pret stores in Israel. The company told the Canary it was nothing to do with BDS. Make what you will of that.
In short, despite political efforts around that world seeking to repress the BDS movement, many campaigners are keeping up the good work. And they’re getting results.
On Tuesday 12 November, supporters of Youth Demand disrupted traffic in Leeds – demanding a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the UK government to halt all new fossil fuel licences granted since 2021.
Youth Demand ‘swarm’ in Leeds
At around 11:35am, supporters of Youth Demand took action blocking traffic at Parkinson Steps in Leeds until around midday:
They could be seen holding Palestinian flags and signs saying âpolitics is fuckedâ:
At around 12:40pm the group re-convened at the Headrow Brigate intersection and disrupted traffic until around 12:50pm:
Todayâs actions are the second day in a week-long run of actions in cities all over the country.
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
Israel has openly admitted to ethnically cleansing Gaza- one of the gravest war crimes under international law. The UN has highlighted that nearly 70% of those who have been killed in Gaza over a 6 month period were women and children.
Meanwhile, the western media continues to manipulate reality, claiming that the Israeli thugs terrorising the streets of Amsterdam in recent days are in fact the âvictimsâ of violence. All while the UK continues to sell weapons to Israel, despite our Prime Minister being a former âhuman rightsâ lawyer, clearly aware that Israel is committing war crimes. We need an arms embargo now.
Yes, politics is fucked
Youth Demand’s swarm came after the group also took action on Remembrance Day, Monday 11 November. Members laid a Palestinian flag-coloured wreath at the Cenotaph, while also blocking roads and disrupting traffic elsewhere in London and in Manchester.
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters silently blocked the road outside of the Houses of Parliament during the Armistice Day remembrance service. The group could be seen holding signs which read âNever Again for Anyoneâ and âOver 186,000 Deadâ.
At around 12:10pm the group also occupied the road on Cannon Street until around 12:25pm. The group then moved on and at around 1:10pm they disrupted the road at Moorgate, on the London Wall Road until around 1:30pm.
Also at around 9am, supporters swarmed the streets at two locations in Manchester.
These type of action will be continuing for the rest of the week, the group said – although it has not disclosed in what locations.
One of those who took action on 12 November is Joe Clark, who said:
Iâm taking action today because the UK does not value Palestinian life. How can you pay respects to the fallen who died resisting genocide, whilst simultaneously sending weapons to commit a genocide in Gaza?
We wonât stop until our government is no longer complicit in this tragic hypocrisy.
Youth Demand said that âYoung people will not accept our politicians supporting the murder of innocent people. This week, young people are taking action in cities all around the country. Sign up for the national week of action starting today at https://youthdemand.orgâ.
Featured image and additional images via Youth Demand
Francesca Albanese has been the UN’s ‘special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967′ since 2022. At the end of October, she released her latest report on Israel’s “settler colonial genocide” in Gaza. And in a recent interview, she concisely summed up why Western countries fear calling out Israel’sapartheid system.
Francesca Albanese: apartheid is a crime
Interviewer Samira Mohyeddin asked Albanese why Western governments avoid using the term ‘apartheid’ when talking about Israel, despite the fact that human rights organisations, UN experts, and the International Court of Justice have clearly outlined Israel’s apartheid crimes. Albanese replied:
Because apartheid is a crime. And recognising it as a crime carries responsibilities – responsibilities to stop it, not to engage with it, to take actions including justice.
My sit down with the indefatigably exacting and erudite @FranceskAlbs.
What an honour it was to speak with her. She is holding a mirror to the world right now & many donât like the reflection; including the Canadian government.
Albanese recently mentioned apartheid when condemning the UK arrest of 79-year-old Jewish-Israeli professor Haim Bresheeth, who has consistently spoken out against Israelâs crimes. She insisted:
Persecution of individuals & organisations opposing Apartheid constitutes an act of Apartheid (Apartheid Convention, art. II(F)). Are we allowing Apartheid to spread beyond borders? Ending Apartheid is a fundamental state obligation & a moral imperative upon all of us.
Colonial Erasure – ‘taking the land without the people’
Earlier in the interview with Mohyeddin, Albanese explained that, since her first report on Gaza in March:
The genocide has intensified. And in Gaza, I’ve analysed patterns, massacres, attacks on civilians that have become more and more obvious. As the resistance in Gaza gets decimated, you could see that there are only civilians between the Israeli army and the Israeli army’s objective, which is to take the land without the people.
This is why I call it Colonial Erasure. And this is not something that started recently.
This is something that has been building up, building up. But then, as of October 8th, it escalated into an unprecedented and determined destruction of the Palestinian people, which started in Gaza but it’s metastisizing to the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory.
Because of her firm condemnation of Israeli crimes in occupied Palestine, Albanese has long been the target of a vile smear campaign. Dozens of Jewish organisations haverejected attempts to smear her as antisemitic.
Albanese is currently speaking at public events in the UK.
On Tuesday 12 November, the direct action network Palestine Action redoubled its efforts to shut down Elbit Systems, Israelâs largest weapons company. Members of the group have been blockading the entrances of two Elbit sites in Bristol.
Palestine Action: two Elbit sites in Bristol shut down
The activists used lock on devices inside vans to block the gates at both sites, preventing any from entering and damaging Elbit’s ability to develop death-dealing weapons. Locking on is now an offence under the Tory-introduced draconian Public Order Act.
One of the sites, the facility at Filton, Bristol, is the most recent of Elbit facilities in England, the brand new ÂŁ35m R&D hub of Israelâs biggest weapons firm. So, Palestine Action shut it down:
Its June 2023 opening was attended by the UK-Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotevely, and Elbitâs CEO Bezhalel Machlis â who has frequently boasted of the companyâs central role in Israelâs military during the ongoing Gaza genocide.
According to Israeli media, Elbit provides up to 80% of the Israeli militaryâs land based military equipment and 85% of its military drones. It supplies vast numbers of munitions and missiles â including the âIron Stingâ recently developed and deployed for the first time in the 2023-2024 genocide in Gaza, along with wide categories of surveillance technologies, targeting systems, and innumerate other armaments.
“Direct action against Elbit aims to disrupt this: targeting the source of colonial violence and genocide against the Palestinian people, undermining Elbitâs profiteering from Israelâs daily massacres.” said a Palestine Action spokesperson.
At Filton, it was quite a view from on top of the van:
From inside a van and atop a tripod, actionists block the only entrance into the research & manufacturing hub of Israel's largest arms firm, Elbit Systems.
At the same time, others are obstructing Elbit's British HQ.
Meanwhile, the other site Palestine Action blockaded was Elbit’s headquarters at Aztec West 600:
This HQ is used by used by Elbit to oversee their logistical, financial, and operational affairs throughout the country, making it a key hub for Israelâs arms trade in Britain. This is the latest in a series of actions undertaken at the site since the start of Palestine Action’s campaign:
Disrupting colonial violence
A Palestine Action spokesperson said:
Sustained direct action against Elbit disrupts the colonial violence and genocide against the Palestinian people. When our government fails to abide by their legal and moral responsibility to prevent genocide, it is the responsibility of ordinary people to take direct action to do so. We will continue to take direct action until Elbit is out of Britain.
Featured image and additional images via Neil Terry and Palestine Action
President-elect Trump has named New York GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik as his choice for ambassador to the United Nations. The nomination is one of the first major appointments Trump has made since winning the election last week. Stefanik has been a staunch Trump loyalist going back to his first term in office, and she has been one of the most vocal supporters of the war in Gaza over the last year.
We speak with Dutch Palestinian analyst Mouin Rabbani about the latest developments in the Middle East as Israel continues its deadly assaults on Gaza and Lebanon. Qatar recently announced it will no longer act as mediator for ceasefire talks, saying the two sides were not serious about reaching a deal to stop the fighting. “This entire process from the outset has been a complete charade…
Direct action campaign group Youth Demand has marked Remembrance Day, Monday 11 November, by reminding us that currently Israel is slaughtering countless people in Gaza and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They did it at the Cenotaph and around England.
Youth Demand Remembrance Day action
Supporters of Youth Demand laid a wreath at the cenotaph, whilst other groups have been swarming in British cities to call for an end to genocide. Youth Demand are campaigning for a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.
At around 2:30 supporters of Youth Demand laid a wreath at the Cenotaph to, the group said, “commemorate those who fell in battle resisting genocide”, and to call on the government to respect the sacrifice of those who died by ending the support for the ongoing mass murder of Palestinians:
They could be seen holding a banner which read âLammy Stop Arming Genocide’:
Youth Demand supporters have also been disrupting the traffic in British cities today, in order to call for an immediate arms embargo.
At 11am, a group of Youth Demand supporters silently blocked the road outside of the Houses of Parliament during the Armistice Day remembrance service. The group could be seen holding signs which read âNever Again for Anyoneâ and âOver 186,000 Deadâ:
At around 12:10pm the group also occupied the road on Cannon Street until around 12:25pm. The group then moved on and at around 1:10pm they disrupted the road at Moorgate, on the London Wall Road until around 1:30pm.
Also at around 9am this morning, supporters of Youth Demand swarmed the streets at two locations in Manchester:
Police issued warnings under Section 50 of the Police Reform Act 2002 and took details of all participants, warning the supporters would be arrested if they attempted to enter the road again:
The government ‘disgraces veterans’ memory’
A Youth Demand spokesperson said:
On this day we remember those who gave their lives fighting a genocide. Yet the government disgraces their memory by continuing to sell UK made weapons to a state guilty of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The world said ‘never again’ would we allow such atrocities to happen, and yet it is happening again right now to the people of Gaza, whilst the Western political establishment and media continue to misdirect the public about what is transpiring. Regardless of our differences we must come together to demand our political leaders take the basic steps to protect the lives of innocent people, or we will have truly lost our humanity.
One of those taking action today is Lia-Anjali Lazarus, 20, a languages and politics student from London, who said:
Never again means never again for anyone. Our government honoring those who fell resisting genocide, whilst also selling arms to a state committing genocide is beyond hypocritical. I feel obliged to take action as it is clear our government will not cut arms ties with Israel without pressure and demand from the general public.
We are seeing the mass slaughter of Palestinian people and we are seeing killer floods in Spain. These crises are a direct result of our leaders prioritising profit over human lives, be it by selling weapons or continuing to drill for oil and gas. We demand it stops now.
A genocide is happening right now
Also taking action in Manchester today is Jazz Dean, a care worker from Manchester, who said:
We don’t want to be disrupting people’s day, but when there is a genocide happening and innocent civilians are losing their lives day after day we cannot stand by. Direct action works, this is why we’re doing it. Our government is complicit in genocide. They continue to buy and sell weapons with Israel. We know what those weapons are used for and that is why we must act.
Youth Demand said that “Young people will not accept our politicians supporting the murder of innocent people. This week, young people are taking action in cities all around the country. Sign up for the national week of action starting today at https://youthdemand.org”.
Featured image and additional images via Youth Demand
Student protesters showed solidarity with Palestine on Saturday 9 November by occupying the engineering building at the University of Leicester. Below you can see some of the images and videos from the occupation, which students passed to the Canary. We understand that the occupation ended when security officers threatened protesters with arrest:
You can see more from the occupation on the Palestine Society’s Instagram page:
The following are the University of Leicester students’ demands. They said in a letter:
As students we call on you as our University and our Studentsâ Union to make these changes. We also demand as our Studentsâ Union that you help us to pressure the University into acting on these demands as well as show public support for them.
We also demand that all students protesting the ongoing genocide and your complicity will receive no punishment for their peaceful actions.
Section 1: Public Statement
1a) The University of Leicester updates its statement making it clear that the state of Israel must be condemned for the mass killing of civilian Palestinians. Failing this the University should at least alter the statement to list the numbers of casualties and in particular child casualties on both sides.
1b) The University of Leicester and the UoL studentsâ union make a public apology acknowledging that the way they handled Russiaâs invasion of Ukraine vs how they have handled the genocide of the Palestinian people; was unequal in support and gave the impression to students that they believe that white peopleâs lives matter more than the lives of Arabs. We understand that this sentiment has already been expressed behind closed doors however we are requesting a public apology.
1c) The University publicly recognises that all of the 12 higher education facilities in Gaza have been systematically and intentionally destroyed or damaged, in what has been dubbed ‘scholasticide’ [1]. 95 academic staff have been killed, 88,000 students have been deprived of education and 555 were not granted international scholarships. [2]
1d) The University updates its public statement to include information on the provisional ICJ ruling on genocide noting that all states party to the genocide convention, including the UK, have a duty to implement the orders of the ICJ and prevent genocide.
1e) Upon the University failing to act on our requests, the Students’ Union put out their own statement that actually reflects the views of students in accordance with what is outlined above.
1f) The University writes a letter to all Leicester MPâs and the government, including the prime minister and the foreign secretary, calling for an immediate ceasefire, to stop the arms sale to Israel that makes this country complicit in genocide, and the immediate allowance of necessary aid into Gaza.
Section 2: Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
2a) The University continues to take BDS into account when looking into future investment options.
2b) The University does not allow companies and brands to advertise themselves on campus that are actively aiding or profiting from the ongoing genocide and apartheid of Palestinians. In particular but not limited to companies that are producing weaponry being used to kill Palestinians e.g. BAE systems, MBDA, Leonardo to name just some.
2c) Where possible the University removes all brands from campus that are publicly or financially supporting the genocide and apartheid of Palestinians by the state of Israel in particular but not limited to: HP, CocaCola and all of its subsidiaries (SmartWater etc), Pepsi, Starbucks.
We thank the University for beginning this process with CocaCola and for considering the removal of Starbucks, and HP. However, we still call on you to completely remove these companies, including in vending machines, upon the renewal of their respective leases.
2d) The University publicly promises to not work with any Israeli universities in the near future that are active and willing participants in the ongoing genocide[3]
2e) The University uses its claimed influence on Barclays as a large financial institution, to pressure them to divest from arms companies that have regularly been proven to be manufacturing weapons used to commit war crimes, in particular Elbit Systems. If and when Barclays denies this request, the University publicly promises to students, and begins the process of changing banks to a more ethical option, for example Nationwide.
2f) The University puts pressure on space park Leicester and does anything in its power to cut ties with brands that produce arms that are being used to genocide the Palestinians e.g. Rolls Royce, Airbus and others.
It must take action
Section 3: Malcolm Shaw
3a) The University publicly acknowledges and reprimands Emeritus professor Malcolm Shaw as being in breach of the Universityâs dignity and respect policy for Islamophobia. Failing this, the University publicly acknowledges that its dignity and respect policy is entirely performative and in reality they do not care if staff members are in breach of it. [4]
3b) The University and the UoL Studentsâ Union publicly acknowledges that Malcolm Shaw’s views do not reflect the views of students or other staff.
Section 4: Supporting Palestine and Education
4a) The University of Leicester explores collaborative projects with Palestine educational institutions including scholarships, academic fellowships and twinning arrangements with Universities in the occupied territories.
4b) The University encourages staff and students to educate themselves on both the history and current state of the relationship between Israel and Palestine and the UKâs influence in this.
4c) The University requires departments to include optional or compulsory ethics modules to teach students about how the companies that they choose to work for as a graduate impact the world around them. This is already employed in many universities in the UK and is especially important but not limited to those subjects that lead into arms manufacturing e.g. Physics and Engineering.
The Canary will have more updates on the students’ situation at the University of Leicester as it develops.
In the Orwellian Western order we’re currently living through, genociders are the victims and people who resist are the terrorists. But after MaccabiTel Avivhooligans came face to face with karma in Amsterdam, the gaslighting and hypocrisy of Western elites went into overdrive. Corporate media routinely manufactures consent for fascism on the down-low, but you could clearly see the cogs in propaganda machine at work over the weekend.
One speaker spoke out against the people “who attacked our city, who attacked our people, who chanted ‘death to Arabs’ in our city”, insisting “we do not tolerate this”.
"How can this be intimidating for Jewish people if Jewish people participate in this demonstration?"
Protesters in Amsterdam have gathered to rally against Israel's genocide in Gaza, despite a demonstration ban put in place after Israeli football fans triggered violence⌠pic.twitter.com/1IFtE2c7Z1
Today, despite a ban on protests this week, Palestine solidarity groups gathered in Amsterdam, rallying for Palestine, Lebanon, and against the framing of the November 7th events as "antisemitic."
Very unsafe situation in shopping street Nieuwendijk. Police beating a woman. Another woman running away falls on her head. Bleeding. A nurse offers help. Not allowed. She gets help now. Two people arrested in front of McDonalds.
Maccabi Tel Aviv: listen to the locals in Amsterdam
Local anti-Zionist Jewish collective Erev Rav was one group that had worried about their safety during Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans’ stay in Amsterdam. The group has previously condemned attempts to use the Holocaust to normalise genocide against Palestinians. Erev Rav’s Yuval Gal, who is originally from Tel Aviv, said the police shouldâve known exactly who Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans were. He added that:
The football was a side thing for them. But many of them came to… make a pro-Israel or pro-genocide demonstration in Amsterdam for 3 or 4 days.
His comments came in an excellent report from independent news outlet Left Laser, among many other comments from local people who felt under attack from the Maccabi TA hooligans:
Erasmus University Rotterdam researcher and journalist Mariya Nadeem Khan, meanwhile, lamented the West’s manufacturing of a story that was far from reality:
scariest part about the mass psychosis that the west has managed to manufacture in less than two days is trying to convince people that the âviolenceâ was antisemitic in a city with a sizeable Jewish population that has stood beside its massive pro-Palestine movement (for years)
And here’s what the Western media chose not to prioritise…
As the Western media and political elites were manufacturing outrage over brawls in Amsterdam that led to no deaths or serious injuries, a UN report came out. The UN Human Rights Office confirmed that, up until September 2024, 44% of the people Israel had killed in Gaza were children. In fact, as Truthoutreported:
The three age categories most represented were children aged between 5 and 9 years old; children between 10 and 14; and babies and toddlers aged 0 to 4.
The slaughter of thousands of children was not the main story at the weekend, though. Nor was the murder of 15 children in northern Gaza on Sunday alone. Nor was the anti-Palestinian pogrom in the occupied West Bank the previous week, where armed Israeli settlers torched people’s vehicles, homes, and olive trees older than the state of Israel. It was some Israeli hooligans facing resistance to their hateful romp through Amsterdam who received the limelight and sympathy.
Another story the media was deprioritising was the call from over 500 “scholars and practitioners of international law, international relations, conflict studies, politics and genocide studies” for the UN to unseat Israel from its general assembly as it did with apartheid South Africa in the 1970s. They actually believe the case for suspension is stronger for Israel, considering its longstanding resistance to international accountability.
And as has become a regular occurrence, Israeli newspaper Haaretz has shown more professional integrity than Western corporate media. Because on Sunday, it accused Benjamin Netanyahu and his occupation forces of âconducting an ethnic cleansing operationâ in the north of Gaza. The devastation there was akin to that of a ânatural disasterâ, but was a âpremeditated act of human destructionâ.
As author Assal Rad insisted, these stories and others would not receive the outrage from Western elites that Maccabi Tel Aviv’s comeuppance in Amsterdam did:
Israel killed dozens of people in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria. This is just today.
Bombing three nations in one day, killing women and children, will get less coverage and none of the outrage Amsterdam did. This dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims is not normal. Their lives matter. pic.twitter.com/MMePTUJDQn
Remembrance must mean stopping fascism forever, or it means nothing
The Western corporate media ignored (or at best underplayed) the many provocationsleading up to the local resistance to Maccabi Tel Aviv hooligans. It minimised their anti-Arab racism, failed to highlight their “culture of genocide” and the deplorablegenocidal nature of their chants. And there was no emphasis on FIFA and UEFA consistently ignoring requests to follow through on their own regulations by banning Israeli teams like Maccabi Tel Aviv (in line with their banning of Russian teams).
The far-right governing coalition in the Netherlands, meanwhile, played along with the ‘poor little Israeli hooligan’ narrative because it fit nicely into their pro-genocide and anti-immigrant agenda.
In Britain, 11 November marks Remembrance Day. And the only type of remembrance that has any value is one that pushes us to act. Not just to wear a poppy, but to work for a world of peace. To highlight the horrific pointlessness of war – the wanton death and destruction that’s a stain on humanity. To oppose the hateful ideologies that drive us into conflict.
Political and media elites in the West are marching our countries into a fascist order that glorifies genocide and represses its opponents. If we truly mourn the losses of the past (and present), we must act to stop them from plaguing our future too.
Campaign group Fossil Free London staged a protest outside BPâs headquarters on the first day of the COP29 in Azerbaijan. It was over not only BP and the host nation’s reliance on fossil fuels, but both of their propping up of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
COP29 protests already begin
Protestors held a banner reading, âBP, stop fuelling genocide and climate breakdownâ:
They demanded BP stop their oil and gas extraction, âhijackingâ the Conference of the Parties (COP) process, and âprofiteering from genocideâ:
The COP29 began in Baku, Azerbaijan today, with world leaders gathering to attempt to reach agreements to reduce global carbon emissions.
Azerbaijan: not exactly the best host
Azerbaijan is heavily dependent on its fossil fuel income, which makes up 90% of export revenues and 60% of state revenues. State-owned SOCAR and BP have a close, long-term corporate relationship, recently agreeing to expand their oil and gas partnership exploring new fields to drill.
Israel also receives around 30% of its oil from Azerbaijan, via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. Majority owned by BP, with the second largest shareholder is SOCAR – the Azerbaijani national oil company – this oil has gone on to fuel Israeli military operations in Palestine and Lebanon and its genocide in Gaza.
Following ICJâs ruling on Israel, human rights experts have warned that countries and corporations supplying oil to Israeli armed forces may be complicit in war crimes and genocide.Â
The demonstration is responding to an international campaign coordinated by Energy Embargo for Palestine, Filistin İçin 1000 Genç, and the Palestinian-led Global Energy Embargo for Palestine.
COP29 intersects with so much more
It also comes as part of a series of actions on the intersections of COP29, the climate crisis and Palestine in London, culminating in the March for Global Climate Justice on Saturday 16 November.
Joanna Warrington, a campaigner with Fossil Free London, said:
Itâs the very same fossil fuel giants that profit from the suffering of billions as our climate tips closer to collapse, which are fuelling and enabling Israelâs horrific colonial genocide. This is all playing out right in front of our world leaders, who sit clapping in the audience instead of standing up to protect human rights and life.
Climate crisis and genocide are being made and supported here in London. Our global political processes are being polluted by corporations like BP that continue to tear up our society so that the resultant blood flow can carry massive profits to them.
Featured image and additional images via Fossil Free London
Sheffield-based border abolition project Give Over has put together an abolitionist journalism toolkit for editors and journalists reporting on immigration. Crucially, it challenges Western legacy media outletsâ institutionally racist and colonial approach to journalism.
It provides a one-stop-shop style guide for approaching immigration reporting in a way thatâs actively anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist. In following Give Overâs guide, journalists can contribute to dismantling the violent systems of oppression dehumanising and denigrating Black, Brown, and other racially minoritised communities.
In other words, it’s a vital new style guide that all newsrooms committed to this should take up.
Abolitionist journalism: a vital new toolkit
Give Over has published a vital report to hold an abolitionist lens over what it means to be a journalist in today’s grossly unjust, unequal world.
In October, the project published its work under the title:
JOURNALIST AS SUBJECT: Using an abolitionist lens to report on borders
It challenges the inherent assumption in traditional Western corporate media that journalists must always be neutral, unbiased, and objective. Moreover, it moves beyond a model of media that venerates reporters removed from the injustices theyâre reporting on.
Instead, its report calls for a solidarity reporting approach, grounded in lived experience and active participatory citizenship. It explains that its toolkit is:
an exploration of the type of journalism that is possible when the journalist is considered as a subject; a live, heart-beating, trembling part of life as much as anybody else. To pretend otherwise is to close oneâs journalism off from the history of critical approaches to anti-racism, colonialism, and abolition that define the Western project.
Writer and researcher on Islamophobia and former Canary journalist and editor Dr Maryam Jameela (she/he) lead the project and authored the report. Together with four other members of the Give Over team, she has worked for three years to examine racist reporting on immigration.
In that time, Give Over has hosted a series of community events, including workshops, panel discussions, art curation and exhibitions. These formed a key part of producing its vital new journalism toolkit. The Canary previously reported on one of these. This was its âConditional Western Solidarity and Palestinian Journalismâ panel in March 2024. You can read more about it, and watch the full event here.
Lived experience and community voices
In fact, the report itself made a point of emphasising the crucial role these events played in building the toolkit. It underscored that:
Whilst it may seem unorthodox for a project about journalism to host discussion spaces for local community members this has been a core part of Give Over. Our work in commissioning guest authors, in compiling this report as a guide for journalists and editors would not have been possible without a sustained interest and passion for the communities we belong to. Journalists are as active members of society as anybody else. To pretend otherwise is to reduce journalists to stenographers of history and, frankly, such a thing is wildly unnecessary.
In other words, journalistsâ own lived experience, and role in communities should not be relegated by traditional conventions of journalism committed to centring whiteness.
And this is a big part of what the toolkit calls on newsrooms to encourage and embed in their reporting too. It proposes that media outlets could also host workshops that bring together diverse groups to tackle envisioning solutions for the future.
A toolkit to take traditional media to task
Significantly, the report acts as a style guide for reporters. These guidelines aim to challenge the racist status quo the Western media routinely perpetuates on refugees and migration.
It advocates that to work towards border abolition, journalists should consider the following as key tenets of a more ethical media landscape. The report divides these into multiple categories for ease of use.
Firstly, it puts across key language and terminology considerations, which include:
Using humanising language that respects migrantsâ dignity and rights. By the same reasoning, this also means avoiding dehumanising language.
Writing in active voice. Journalists should do so to âclearly identify the systems and policies responsible for border violenceâ.
Make sure to acknowledge the diverse and complex identities of migrants with inclusive narratives that avoid homogenisation and oversimplification.
Next, it implores journalists to embed the following when thinking of the story focus and framing:
Centre lived experiences – whether the journalist’s own or the communitiesâ theyâre reporting on.
Interrogate Western narratives that relegate refugees worth to their utility, and make solidarity conditional.
Reframe the narrative from reactive to proactive storytelling.
Abolitionist journalism: a style guide for a just and equitable future
Besides these, the abolitionist journalism toolkit challenges journalists to think critically on where and who itâs sourcing its stories from. Alongside this, it emphasises the importance of ensuring appropriate contributor attribution. With all that in mind, it says that journalists should:
Elevate marginalised voices of people the border regime is impacting, and âparticularly those from the global majority.â
Make sure to fact-check with care by consulting trusted sources and experts.
Acknowledge all contributors collaborating, and credit appropriately.
The style guide also brings up key visual and multimedia considerations that put dignity and rights at the heart of journalism, including:
Using respectful imagery that ârespect the dignity and agency of those depictedâ and avoid reductive stereotypes.
Captioning and context for images.
Wherever possible, use creative approaches that involves commissioning artwork to help contest âtraditional visual narratives of migrationâ.
Give Overâs abolitionist journalism framework also centres on journalists contributing to the work imagining more just and equitable futures too. It means recognising that future migration and border scenarios are interconnected with other global crises, such as the climate crisis for instance.
Whatâs more, in envisioning future narratives, journalists should ensure these are inclusive. This means giving over space to historically marginalised communities and:
ensuring that their lived experiences shape the story of what is possible.
The toolkit offers other vital guidance for journalists around crafting intersectional, multi-layered, and nuanced narratives and scenarios.
Gaza: a case and point of media complicity
Of course, Give Over constructed its toolkit in the midst of Israelâs unending brutal genocide in Gaza. It therefore couldnât facilitate journalists engaging in meaningful introspection without drawing attention to how Western mediaâs purposeful failure to do the above is perpetuating this abhorrent violence towards Palestinians.
Specifically, Western media reporting on this is exemplar of the way in which this journalistic approach denigrates the freedoms, journalism, and lived realities of Black, Brown, and other racially minoritised people.
That is, Western corporate media has failed to call out Israel as it intentionally, unconscionably, murders Palestinian journalists. It has shown that its ideals of journalistic freedom doesnât apply equally, or in fact, at all to Palestinian reporters. In short, Western media solidarity with Palestine is conditional.
Unsurprisingly then, Western media reporting on Gaza has flouted every rule in the Give Over handbook.
For instance, passive voice persistently rears its head. Who did the killing? As Give Over points out, news outlets have repeatedly omitted Israel from the headlines. Meanwhile, Western media whiteness is on full display in its rank double standards. Russia for instance, regularly features as the perpetrator in attacks on Ukraine in sharp contrast.
It also regularly uses language to dehumanise Palestinians. In one example, it shows a Guardian news piece that calls young Israeli hostages âchildrenâ. In the same sentence, it describes young Palestinian hostages as:
people aged 18 and younger
Instead of amplifying Palestinian voices, news outlets also regularly act as propagandist mouthpieces for Israeli officials. Or in other words, the very people perpetrating the genocide.
A lens to challenge Western media white supremacy
When Give Over speaks of abolition, this isnât solely the physical borders in and of themselves. In reality, structures of white supremacy, institutional racism, and colonialism maintain borders in many aspects of society. In other words, itâs concerned with the violent impulses and practices of the state. For instance, examples of this it identifies would be detention and deportation, disappearing people to maintain borders, overseas wars, and militarisation.
Moreover, the report draws on the idea of borders involving the state manufacturing consent for the borderisation of societal spaces. It unpacks how the state expropriates everyday people in professional public service roles as willing, complicit agents of this. Of course, this invariably applies to journalists too.
Now, Give Overâs unflinching project is calling on reporters to take up its tools of anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist liberation in their own work. It subverts the legacy media notions of impartiality and objectivity. Instead, it offers up a journalism lens that serves racially minoritised and other marginalised communities. Specifically, those that these tired traditional media notions have consistently sidelined.
And crucially, itâs a powerful, poignant reminder to reporters that journalism should always challenge the oppressors, while centring and amplifying the voices that it has traditionally marginalised. Because ultimately, what is journalism for, if not precisely that?
Every journalist that cares about building a better world should read it, and put its principles at the heart of all they do.
Sheffield-based border abolition project Give Over has put together an abolitionist journalism toolkit for editors and journalists reporting on immigration. Crucially, it challenges Western legacy media outletsâ institutionally racist and colonial approach to journalism.
It provides a one-stop-shop style guide for approaching immigration reporting in a way thatâs actively anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist. In following Give Overâs guide, journalists can contribute to dismantling the violent systems of oppression dehumanising and denigrating Black, Brown, and other racially minoritised communities.
In other words, it’s a vital new style guide that all newsrooms committed to this should take up.
Abolitionist journalism: a vital new toolkit
Give Over has published a vital report to hold an abolitionist lens over what it means to be a journalist in today’s grossly unjust, unequal world.
In October, the project published its work under the title:
JOURNALIST AS SUBJECT: Using an abolitionist lens to report on borders
It challenges the inherent assumption in traditional Western corporate media that journalists must always be neutral, unbiased, and objective. Moreover, it moves beyond a model of media that venerates reporters removed from the injustices theyâre reporting on.
Instead, its report calls for a solidarity reporting approach, grounded in lived experience and active participatory citizenship. It explains that its toolkit is:
an exploration of the type of journalism that is possible when the journalist is considered as a subject; a live, heart-beating, trembling part of life as much as anybody else. To pretend otherwise is to close oneâs journalism off from the history of critical approaches to anti-racism, colonialism, and abolition that define the Western project.
Writer and researcher on Islamophobia and former Canary journalist and editor Dr Maryam Jameela (she/he) lead the project and authored the report. Together with four other members of the Give Over team, she has worked for three years to examine racist reporting on immigration.
In that time, Give Over has hosted a series of community events, including workshops, panel discussions, art curation and exhibitions. These formed a key part of producing its vital new journalism toolkit. The Canary previously reported on one of these. This was its âConditional Western Solidarity and Palestinian Journalismâ panel in March 2024. You can read more about it, and watch the full event here.
Lived experience and community voices
In fact, the report itself made a point of emphasising the crucial role these events played in building the toolkit. It underscored that:
Whilst it may seem unorthodox for a project about journalism to host discussion spaces for local community members this has been a core part of Give Over. Our work in commissioning guest authors, in compiling this report as a guide for journalists and editors would not have been possible without a sustained interest and passion for the communities we belong to. Journalists are as active members of society as anybody else. To pretend otherwise is to reduce journalists to stenographers of history and, frankly, such a thing is wildly unnecessary.
In other words, journalistsâ own lived experience, and role in communities should not be relegated by traditional conventions of journalism committed to centring whiteness.
And this is a big part of what the toolkit calls on newsrooms to encourage and embed in their reporting too. It proposes that media outlets could also host workshops that bring together diverse groups to tackle envisioning solutions for the future.
A toolkit to take traditional media to task
Significantly, the report acts as a style guide for reporters. These guidelines aim to challenge the racist status quo the Western media routinely perpetuates on refugees and migration.
It advocates that to work towards border abolition, journalists should consider the following as key tenets of a more ethical media landscape. The report divides these into multiple categories for ease of use.
Firstly, it puts across key language and terminology considerations, which include:
Using humanising language that respects migrantsâ dignity and rights. By the same reasoning, this also means avoiding dehumanising language.
Writing in active voice. Journalists should do so to âclearly identify the systems and policies responsible for border violenceâ.
Make sure to acknowledge the diverse and complex identities of migrants with inclusive narratives that avoid homogenisation and oversimplification.
Next, it implores journalists to embed the following when thinking of the story focus and framing:
Centre lived experiences – whether the journalist’s own or the communitiesâ theyâre reporting on.
Interrogate Western narratives that relegate refugees worth to their utility, and make solidarity conditional.
Reframe the narrative from reactive to proactive storytelling.
Abolitionist journalism: a style guide for a just and equitable future
Besides these, the abolitionist journalism toolkit challenges journalists to think critically on where and who itâs sourcing its stories from. Alongside this, it emphasises the importance of ensuring appropriate contributor attribution. With all that in mind, it says that journalists should:
Elevate marginalised voices of people the border regime is impacting, and âparticularly those from the global majority.â
Make sure to fact-check with care by consulting trusted sources and experts.
Acknowledge all contributors collaborating, and credit appropriately.
The style guide also brings up key visual and multimedia considerations that put dignity and rights at the heart of journalism, including:
Using respectful imagery that ârespect the dignity and agency of those depictedâ and avoid reductive stereotypes.
Captioning and context for images.
Wherever possible, use creative approaches that involves commissioning artwork to help contest âtraditional visual narratives of migrationâ.
Give Overâs abolitionist journalism framework also centres on journalists contributing to the work imagining more just and equitable futures too. It means recognising that future migration and border scenarios are interconnected with other global crises, such as the climate crisis for instance.
Whatâs more, in envisioning future narratives, journalists should ensure these are inclusive. This means giving over space to historically marginalised communities and:
ensuring that their lived experiences shape the story of what is possible.
The toolkit offers other vital guidance for journalists around crafting intersectional, multi-layered, and nuanced narratives and scenarios.
Gaza: a case and point of media complicity
Of course, Give Over constructed its toolkit in the midst of Israelâs unending brutal genocide in Gaza. It therefore couldnât facilitate journalists engaging in meaningful introspection without drawing attention to how Western mediaâs purposeful failure to do the above is perpetuating this abhorrent violence towards Palestinians.
Specifically, Western media reporting on this is exemplar of the way in which this journalistic approach denigrates the freedoms, journalism, and lived realities of Black, Brown, and other racially minoritised people.
That is, Western corporate media has failed to call out Israel as it intentionally, unconscionably, murders Palestinian journalists. It has shown that its ideals of journalistic freedom doesnât apply equally, or in fact, at all to Palestinian reporters. In short, Western media solidarity with Palestine is conditional.
Unsurprisingly then, Western media reporting on Gaza has flouted every rule in the Give Over handbook.
For instance, passive voice persistently rears its head. Who did the killing? As Give Over points out, news outlets have repeatedly omitted Israel from the headlines. Meanwhile, Western media whiteness is on full display in its rank double standards. Russia for instance, regularly features as the perpetrator in attacks on Ukraine in sharp contrast.
It also regularly uses language to dehumanise Palestinians. In one example, it shows a Guardian news piece that calls young Israeli hostages âchildrenâ. In the same sentence, it describes young Palestinian hostages as:
people aged 18 and younger
Instead of amplifying Palestinian voices, news outlets also regularly act as propagandist mouthpieces for Israeli officials. Or in other words, the very people perpetrating the genocide.
A lens to challenge Western media white supremacy
When Give Over speaks of abolition, this isnât solely the physical borders in and of themselves. In reality, structures of white supremacy, institutional racism, and colonialism maintain borders in many aspects of society. In other words, itâs concerned with the violent impulses and practices of the state. For instance, examples of this it identifies would be detention and deportation, disappearing people to maintain borders, overseas wars, and militarisation.
Moreover, the report draws on the idea of borders involving the state manufacturing consent for the borderisation of societal spaces. It unpacks how the state expropriates everyday people in professional public service roles as willing, complicit agents of this. Of course, this invariably applies to journalists too.
Now, Give Overâs unflinching project is calling on reporters to take up its tools of anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist liberation in their own work. It subverts the legacy media notions of impartiality and objectivity. Instead, it offers up a journalism lens that serves racially minoritised and other marginalised communities. Specifically, those that these tired traditional media notions have consistently sidelined.
And crucially, itâs a powerful, poignant reminder to reporters that journalism should always challenge the oppressors, while centring and amplifying the voices that it has traditionally marginalised. Because ultimately, what is journalism for, if not precisely that?
Every journalist that cares about building a better world should read it, and put its principles at the heart of all they do.
My Palestinian American family is in great pain. Every member of my Arab American community lost a relative or a friend during the past 13 months. We are torn to pieces and outraged by the U.S. support for Israel’s war on Gaza and the ravages wrought in southern Lebanon. Having lost several family members and friends — among them artists, teachers and academics I’ve known and writers with whom I’…
Allianz not only provide Employerâs Liability Insurance to Elbit Systems, but also have substantial investments in the firm.
It has previously been described as Elbitâs âprinciple institutional shareholderâ, at-one-point owning over 2% of the company. The finance company continues to hold thousands of shares in Elbit Systems Ltd, while its subsidiary âAllianz Insurance Products Trustâ provides insurance services for Elbit Systems UK, including employment insurance.
Western capital has continued to profit from the mass murder of Palestinians. Allianzâ profit books, its returns on its investments, have been bolstered by the hundreds of military technologies which Elbit provides in service of genocide.
Elbit provides over 85% of Israelâs drones, including the quadcopters used to assassinate countless Palestinian men, women, and children, and has publicly advertised its weaponry as being âbattle-testedâ on Palestinians. Its business operations are central to Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, and its technologies uphold the brutal occupation regime.
Palestine Action: the actions will continue
Palestine Action has tried writing to Allianz, to ask that they end their relationship with Elbit, which is a direct contradiction of their human rights policy, which supposedly commits the company to “supporting and respecting the protection of international human rights” and “ensuring that Allianz is not complicit in human rights abuses”.
The letter stated:
We ask that you do not renew your insurance of Elbit Systems UK, and do not insure the company, or any of its subsidiaries in the future. We also request that you completely divest from Elbit Systems Ltd. If you can confirm that you will cease all dealings with Elbit Systems, we will happily end our campaign against you.
However, Palestine Action has not received a reply.
Elbitâs Employersâ Liability Insurance policy with Allianz was due for renewal on 7 November 2024 – the day of Palestine Action’s action. The group hopes that Allianz will take the visit to their Belfast office as a timely reminder that links to Elbit are bad for business, and that they might want to look at the rising cost of their own insurance premiums.
A spokesperson for Palestine Action said:
As long as companies aid and abet the Genocide in Gaza, through links to Elbit Systems, there will be no let-up in our actions upon them.
Featured image and additional images via Palestine Action
Sky News has been caught in a storm over it’s deleting and then re-editing of a report on the Maccabi Tel Aviv fan’s rioting in Amsterdam. However, the original filmmaker who captured some of the footage it used has now come forward – and claims that it, and other media outlets, misrepresented it to shore up the narrative that the attacks were antisemitic.
Maccabi Tel Aviv/Sky News
On 8 November, media outlets and politicians decried “antisemitic attacks” on Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans, with some referring to the incident as a “pogrom”, and others comparing it to the events of pre-war Nazi Germany. These same outlets and politicians received criticism for leaving out significant context on what happened in the run up to the later violence – but at the time, this didn’t include Sky News:
Maccabi Tel Aviv fans: – chanted "kill the arabs" – chanted "there are no schools in Gaza, because all the children are dead" – ripped down Palestinian flags – disrupted the minute silence for the Valencia flood victims – with fireworks
While there is evidence of violence being directed towards the Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, the narrative that this was a Nazi-style pogrom just doesn’t hold up, as we reported ourselves. Another outlet which game some semblance of balance was Sky News, but the initial report they produced was later deleted:
1/ This is nuts. After mysteriously deleting a package covering the Amsterdam protests, Sky News have put up a new version. The new version completely changes the thrust to emphasise that the violence was antisemitic. See the opening screenshot change below https://t.co/BAOj2nLQo0pic.twitter.com/uto2Y7Driy
3/ They have also inserted into the video, right after the opening footage of Dutch Prime Minister condemning antisemitsm. This was not in the original video. pic.twitter.com/H57zN9NSXw
5/ As if it couldn't get any worse – the original report ends with the reporter saying that while politicians had called it a pogrom, "their statements failed to mention the assaults by Israeli hooligans against Dutch citizens" . This bit was DELETED. I've included it below pic.twitter.com/2VFTDzGqCJ
So marginalized were stories attempting to explain violence from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans that one Amsterdam resident took to social media to call out the media bias. She described hiding in fear as Israeli supporters attacked her home for displaying a Palestinian flag, stating in Dutch, âI hardly see anything in the media about my experience â that letting loose agitated football hooligans with war traumas, from a country that commits genocide and engages in extreme dehumanization, in the city *regardless of whether there are counter-protests* is not a good idea.â
Sky News’s reason for re-editing the video to remove the above context? Apparently it didn’t meet their “standards for balance and impartiality”:
Editorâs Note: This is a re-edit of a previous video which didnât meet Sky Newsâ standards for balance and impartiality.
Jones captured both videos for those who want to see:
Another thing I noticed is that in the new edited video – the narrative changed from describing @iAnnetnl 's video (I think) as 'Maccabi hooligans' chasing people down a steeet, to 'a group of hooded men can be seen chasing'. Wow. https://t.co/JADMlWcZxo
Novara Media’s Rivkah Brown, meanwhile, highlighted that Sky News editor Sandy Rashty has been retweeting messages which align with the ‘Nazi pogrom’ version of reality:
Annet noticed that many outlets were ignoring and even reversing the context she gave them, with a picture of a “Maccabi mob” chasing pedestrians presented as antisemitic violence:
Legitimate question:
What I explained to several media channels is that the Maccabi supporters deliberately started the riot in front of central station returning from the game. They came from two directions. Lit heavily fireworks at Damrak and gathered in front of the hotel.⌠https://t.co/nZckzq3Q1R
Annet has been contacting outlets, questioning the use of her footage, and demanding retractions and apologies. She’s already had some success:
This morning, I received an apology from journalist Christian Feld (@ChrFeld) of @ARD_BaB
Tagesschau is the first news outlet to apologize for using my footage of the Maccabi supporters attacking Amsterdam citizens in a framed anti-semitism context and has removed my footage⌠pic.twitter.com/S9zSlvYRI6
The West is responsible for funding and tolerating Israel’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. As such, it suits the establishment to present a narrative that all Jewish people support Israel and that any attack against Israel or its people is an attack on Jewish people everywhere.
Western media’s handling of this latest story is a textbook example of how they will ignore, edit, and delete context that doesn’t support their preferred narrative. What’s not so textbook is we now get to see these edits being made in front of our very eyes – like those of Sky News.
Qatarâs Foreign Ministry has rejected media reports that it has pulled out of mediation efforts between Israel and Hamas but added that it has âstalledâ its efforts until all parties show âwillingness and seriousnessâ to end the war.
News of the suspension comes as Gaza marks 400 days of war with more than 43,000 Palestinians being killed, 102,000 wounded and 10,000 missing.
The death toll includes at least 17,385 children, including 825 children below the age of one, and nearly 12,000 women.
In a statement on X, the ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari said Qatar had informed the relevant mediation parties 10 days ago of its intentions.
Al-Ansari also said that reports regarding the Hamas political office in Doha were inaccurate, âstating that the main goal of the of the office in Qatar is to be a channel of communication between the concerned partiesâ.
â Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Qatar (@MofaQatar_EN) November 9, 2024
Qatarâs Foreign Ministry spokesperson also said that the country would not accept that its role as a mediator be used to âblackmail itâ.
âQatar will not accept that mediation be a reason for blackmailing it, as we have witnessed manipulation since the collapse of the first pause and the women and children exchange deal, especially in retreating from obligations agreed upon through mediation, and exploiting the continuation of negotiations to justify the continuation of the war to serve narrow political purposes,â he said in the statement posted on X.
Criticism aimed at Israel
Commentators on Al Jazeera pointed to the criticism being primarily aimed at Israel and the US.
Senior political analyst Marwan Bishara said Qatar had been spearheading the attempt at reaching a ceasefire “for so long now”.
“Clearly, there have been attempts by a number of parties, notably the Israelis, to undermine the process or abuse the process of diplomacy in order to continue the war.”
400 days of genocide in Gaza . . . reportage by Al Jazeera, banned in Israel. Image: AJ screenshot APR
Earlier, Cindy McCain, executive director of the UNâs World Food Programme (WFP), said immediate steps must be taken to prevent an âall-out catastropheâ in northern Gaza where Israeli forces have maintained a monthlong siege on as many as 95,000 civilian residents amid its brutal military offensive in the area.
‘Unacceptable’ famine crisis
âThe unacceptable is confirmed: Famine is likely happening in north Gaza,â McCain wrote on social media.
Steps must be taken immediately, McCain said, to allow the âsafe, rapid [and] unimpeded flow of humanitarian [and] commercial suppliesâ to reach the besieged population in the north of the war-torn territory.
A “Teachers for free Palestine” placard at Saturday’s solidarity rally for Palestine in Auckland. Image: David Robie/APR
World Health Organisation Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has added his voice to rising concerns, saying on social media it was: âDeeply alarming.â
A group of global food security experts has reported that famine is likely âimminent within the northern Gaza Stripâ.
Meanwhile, more than 50 countries have signed a letter urging the UN Security Council and General Assembly to take immediate steps to halt arms sales to Israel.
The letter accuses the Israeli government of not doing enough to protect the lives of civilians during its assault on Gaza, reports Al Jazeera.
A protester with the Turkish flag at Saturday’s Palestine and Lebanon solidarity rally in Auckland as demonstrations continued around the world. Image: APR
Sky 501 
OneWord187 
(@iAnnetnl) 
Today, despite a ban on protests this week, Palestine solidarity groups gathered in Amsterdam, rallying for Palestine, Lebanon, and against the framing of the November 7th events as "antisemitic."
