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  • The 1948 Recognition of Israel: Impact, Legacy, and Relevance

    Note: Update of my previous article from March 2008.

    Except for a brief interlude during the Eisenhower administration, United States’ support for Israel, in its genocide of the Palestinian people, has been an ongoing process since the Truman administration recognized the state. Contemporary events prompt a review of the post-World War II history that resulted in the formation of a nation that had no visible name until David Ben Gurion proclaimed, on May 14, 1948, the state as Israel.

    Books, articles, documents, memoirs and letters from past generations detail how a small group of insiders prevailed over recommendations from an experienced and famous U.S. State Department of “wise men.” It is the story of the Zionist mission. It is the story of apartheid Israel.

    The impact, legacy and relevance of the 1946-1948 events to today’s occurrences have not been sufficiently explored. Under the surface are the hidden messages and obscure drives that shaped the past and extended into the future. A more complete analysis of the legacy from Truman’s rapid recognition of the state of Israel explains the past and clarifies the present.

    In the initiation of a trend, supporters of those who derailed State Department Near East policy were able to integrate themselves into Middle East policy and subsequently shape global policies. Turmoil from initial events provoked a continuous turmoil in the Middle East. Almost all administrations framed Middle East polices to favor the Zionist cause.

    The Truman State Department consisted of leading luminaries of U.S. State Department history. George C. Marshall, United States military chief of staff during World War II, first military leader to become Secretary of State and later a Nobel Prize recipient, had Loy Henderson, Robert A. Lovett, Dean Rusk, Warren Austin and other known figures in his department. Many of them were not entirely supportive of the UN partition plan; their State Department followed Truman’s directives until sensing the partition plan would be counterproductive and cause more violence than it intended to resolve. The record indicates the State Department attempted to modify Truman’s policy that favored partition. They sought a temporary UN  trusteeship.

    President Truman postured himself as motivated by a conviction — the displaced Jews who had survived the World War II Holocaust needed and deserved an immediate home. The U.S. president vacillated in his arguments and contradicted himself in statements. He railed vehemently against the steady stream of advocates for a Jewish state and retained several presidential advisors who pursed one purpose; promoting a new Jewish state. A suspicion remains that his humanitarian motives had a political content; the Democratic Party craved the financial and voting support of Zionist organizations and their allies.

    Clark Clifford, Truman’s chief consul and ardent promoter for a Jewish state, quickly became one of the president’s closest assistants. He was not Truman’s principal assistant, a post held by John Roy Steelman, and behaved as if he were titular chief of staff by acting unilaterally and somewhat dubious in actions that proved decisive. The evidence points to Clifford favoring election expediencies in developing policies that led to the creation of the state of Israel.

    The story begins at the closing shots of World War II and with the refugees in displaced persons camps.

    The plight of the displaced persons could not be easily resolved. The United States was involved in returning millions of its armed forces to their homes, in the repatriation of captured enemy soldiers, and in preventing mass starvation in Europe. A possibility of a post-war depression and mass unemployment guided America’s political thinkers. In addition, the U.S. immigration laws did not permit the immediate admittance of the displaced persons, nor could it show favoritism. Unable to find a legal mechanism that would  bring them to America, Truman petitioned Great Britain to allow them to immigrate to Palestine. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee cited the 1939 White Paper, which specified a definite number of applicants, as a limiting factor. He also suspected new immigrants would burden Britain’s over-stressed mandate and add troubles to the existing emergency.

    Truman could not prevail over Attlee. What to do? After presentations by an Anglo-American inquiry commission and a joint cabinet committee (Morrison-Grady) failed to achieve welcoming peace proposals, a tired and irked British government requested the UN General Assembly to consider the Palestine problem. On May 15, 1947, the UN created the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP). The committee outlined a partition plan with the city of Jerusalem under a UN trusteeship. Truman instructed the State Department to support the partition plan. UN Ambassador Warren Austin and the state department’s Near East Division, led by Loy Henderson, doubted that partition could resolve the situation.

    During the months of UNSCOP’s efforts, Truman complained of pressure by pro-Zionist groups. In Volume II of his Memoirs, p.158, the former president relates:

    The facts were that not only were there pressure movements around the United Nations unlike anything that had been there before but that the White house too, was subjected to a constant barrage. I do not think I ever had as much pressure and propaganda aimed at the White House as I had in this instance. The persistence of a few of the extreme Zionist leaders — actuated by political motives and engaging in political threats — disturbed and annoyed. Some were even suggesting that we pressure sovereign nations into favorable votes in the General Assembly.

    This harsh rhetoric was mild compared to other Truman’s statements concerning the Zionists and its American leaders, especially Cleveland’s Rabbi Silver. In a memorandum to advisor David K. Niles, the president wrote, “We could have settled this whole Palestine thing if U.S. politics had been kept out of it. Terror and Silver are the contributing cause of some, if not all of our troubles.”

    On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly approved the UNSCOP Partition plan. Approval only meant agreement in principle. No effective means for transferring the principle into an operational result had been determined. The lack of enforcement provoked more conflict in Palestine. Each side strived to gain territory and advantage. The uncontrolled mayhem steered the U.S. State Department to adopt the concept of a temporary trusteeship for the area. Believing it had President Truman’s approval, the State Department instructed the U.S. delegation to the United States to petition for a special session of the General Assembly and reconsider the Palestinian issue. In his presentation, UN Ambassador Warren Austin proposed the establishment of a temporary trusteeship for Palestine.

    Truman denied giving a green light for the presentation and wrote in his diary, which has been quoted in “The Private Papers of Harry S. Truman, P.127. “This morning I find that the State dept. has reversed my Palestine policy. The first I knew about it is what I see in the papers. Isn’t that hell!” His infuriation arose from embarrassment of having assured Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, whom he highly regarded, that the U.S. would not depart from the Partition Plan and would not entertain a temporary trusteeship. George McKee Elsey, in his memoir, An Unplanned Life, p.161, supplied evidence of Truman’s awareness and permission for the speech. White House staff member Elsey writes:

    In fact, as I quickly learned in delving into the record and querying White House and State Staff, Truman had personally read and approved some days earlier the Austin speech, which outlined a plan for U.N. trusteeship of Palestine when the British Mandate ended in May in lieu of partitioning the area into separate Jewish and Arab territories.

    The May 15 date for the British exit neared, and the Zionists prepared to declare their state and present their credentials for recognition. Contradictions in U.S. Near East policy led to policies that became completely confusing.

    In a speech to the UN General Assembly, March 25, 1948, President Truman clarified his nation’s temporary endorsement of a UN Trusteeship for Palestine that did not prejudice partition. The pleased State Department instructed Ambassador Austin to proceed with deliberations of the Trusteeship proposal. As if not cognizant of the UN trusteeship discussion, Truman prepared to recognize the soon to be formed state. On May 12, two days before an expected announcement by the Jewish Agency in Palestine, an angered George C. Marshall and his assistant Robert Lovett confronted Truman and demanded reasons for the haste in wanting to grant recognition. The president selected his counsel Clark Clifford, who was not involved in foreign policy, to clarify the reasons for the intended recognition.

    Clifford’s principal reasons for instant recognition: The UN Security Council could not obtain a truce in hostilities; partition would happen in fact; the U.S. would eventually have to recognize a new state, and it was preferable to get the jump on the Soviet Union.

    Clifford’s arguments are easily rebutted. (1) More significant than whether or not the Security Council could obtain a truce was that the UN council was engaged in discussions hoping to achieve a truce. Recognition would close the discussions and prevent the truce. (2) If the Trusteeship was approved and implemented, an entity unilaterally invoking a partition scheme would violate the UN dictates. (3) Clifford’s simple explanation that the U.S. must recognize the new state quickly because the U.S. must recognize the new state was a statement and not a clarification. (4) As for the Soviet Union, Clifford echoed the alarm of Phillip C. Jessup, a member of the U.S. delegation to the UN, who, according to Robert J. Donovan in his book Conflict and Crisis, The Presidency of Harry S. Truman, p.380, cabled UN affairs officer Dean Rusk that the Soviet Union wanted recognition to use Article 51 of the UN charter to protect the new state and thus gain a foothold in the Middle East. This view is specious — Article 51 pertains to defense of member states and the new nation did not become a UN member until one year later. Besides, wasn’t it advantageous for the U.S. to have the Soviet Union recognize the new state before it did? The State Department could then claim it had no choice and would lose less favor with the Arab states.

    Marshall questioned why a domestic affairs advisor was determining foreign policy. Truman replied that he had invited Clifford to make a presentation. Obviously, Truman did not want history to record his words and asked his campaign manager to speak for him. Sensing that politics and the forthcoming presidential election had become overriding factors in a significant foreign policy decision, the dedicated George C. Marshall uttered one of the most insulting words ever directed by a cabinet official to a president, “If you follow Clifford’s advice, and if I were to vote in the next election, I would vote against you.” Clark Clifford’s Memoir, Council to the President, P.13, mentions that the Secretary also insisted that these personal remarks be included in the official state department record of the meeting. Whew! (Vice President Harris take note.)

    Fearing that the transfer of advice on Near East affairs from the state and defense departments to inexperienced advisors and non-professional lobbyists would continue, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Lovett determined to change Truman’s intentions. For some unknown reason, rather than calling the president directly, he channeled his inquiries through Counselor Clark Clifford. The president’s counselor didn’t speak to the president about Lovett’s urgencies, but assumed a new role ─ he spoke for the president. In response to Lovett’s request to ask Truman to delay recognition, Clifford confesses in his memoir, P.22,

    Saying (to Lovett) I would check with the President, I waited about three minutes and called Lovett back to say that delay was out of the question. It was about 5:40 and the State Department has run out of time and ideas.

    Within a few minutes, one of the most bizarre sequence of events that had ever occurred in U.S. diplomacy unfolded.

    Clifford states he called Dean Rusk and asked the UN affairs officer to inform Warren Austin, chief of the U.S. delegation to the UN, that the president intended to recognize the new Near East state within fifteen minutes. His called bypassed protocol; usually the assistant secretary of state should be informed and that person has the obligation to inform other staff members of decisions. Clifford quotes a surprised Rusk as retaliating with the remark, “This cuts directly across what our delegation had been trying to accomplish in the General Assembly, and we have a large majority for it.” Rusk supposedly called Warren Austin who went home without bothering to inform the U.S. delegation of the news.

    Truman’s rapid signing (within 11 minutes) of the document that gave de facto recognition to the ‘new state of Israel’ angered members at a United Nations meeting on the Trusteeship. After learning the new state would be called Israel, the words ‘Jewish state’ were crossed out and the words ‘state of Israel’ were inserted.

    May 14 was an enviable day for the new state of Israel, but an unpleasant day for the 160 year old American republic. The diplomatic solution to the Near East crisis had been settled, but the conflict has not been resolved.

    What does history show?

    History supports the conviction that the Partition Plan would not resolve the hostilities. The State Department concern for rapidly recognizing a new state, without knowledge of its constitution or composition, was diplomatically correct and prescient. The quick recognition of a state for the Jewish population prevented the UN from finishing a discussion of providing mechanisms to prevent more bloodshed and providing proper protection for the state’s large Palestinian population. George Marshall’s State Department acted honestly, with knowledge, and with the conviction it served the interests of the United States

    President Harry S. Truman correctly perceived the tenacity of the Zionists. He erred in his judgment that the Partition Plan would resolve the conflict. The unusual rapid response for recognition of the new state, without awareness of its composition, signified a pardon of the excesses committed by Irgun and Haganah against civilian populations and certified the exclusion of any Palestinian voice in the new government. Truman never asked what would happen to the 400,000 Palestinians who had no representation in the new state. Evidently, he didn’t consider that the placing of 100,000 displaced Jews into Palestine would also mean the placing of weapons in the hands of many of these persons and, together with instant recognition, would reinforce the eventual displacement of 900,000 Palestinians. The European DP camps were temporary shelter for those who would undoubtedly find permanent homes and citizenship; the UNWRA refugee camps became permanent homes for several million Palestinian displaced persons who languish with stateless identification.

    The post-election provided Truman with an opportunity to show he was not captive to the Zionist enterprise. What did he do? He only half-heartedly pressured Israel in 1949 to resettle displaced Palestinians. This token maneuver is verified by Joshua Landis. In a paper published in The Palestinian Refugees: Old Problems – New Solutions, University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, OK, 2001, p. 77-87, Landis writes,

    McGee threatened the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. that if Israel did not accept 200,000 refugees, the US would withhold $49 million worth of Export-Import Bank loans to Israel. The Israeli Ambassador was unimpressed with McGhee’s threat and responded that McGhee “wouldn’t get by with this move.” The Israeli Ambassador boasted that “he would stop it.”

    True to his word, the Ambassador was able to nip McGhee’s threat in the bud. That same afternoon, the White house phoned McGhee to say that the President would have nothing to do with withholding loans to Israel. Never again would a State Department official under President Truman attempt to intimidate Israel on the issue of refugees.

    Landis claims the U.S. President tried to resolve the Palestinian DP problem by offering the Syrian government $400,000,000 dollars in exchange for settling up to 500,000 Palestinians in the fertile plains between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. A president of a nation was willing to burden his own nation in order to relieve Israel of its obligation to the Palestinian refugees. In retrospect, he behaved circumspect and his compassion for victims depended on their value to the Democratic Party.

    A humanitarian light brightened the parade of lobbyists for partition and this light managed to convince many of the validity of their cause. Later U.S. government Middle East policies repeated the intense lobbying that guided Truman’s 1948 decisions and subdued the power and recommendations of government agencies.

    The darkened perspective, due to Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians, has not deterred the forces who continue to obtain a U.S. foreign policy that favors their direction. The memory of Truman’s electoral victory, which defied all predictions, continues to make prospective candidates for national office sense that winning elections depends upon support from those who also support Israel.

    The legacy of the 1946-1948 events is well described. Control of discussions pushed a previous U.S. administration to provide a legal frame for creation of the state of Israel. Control of discussions continued and impelled contemporary administrations to provide the support for that frame. Without U.S. support, Israel’s authentic moral, political, economic and military character would have been exposed and its structure weakened. The Israeli state might have collapsed.

    The genocide started in 1947, from an improbable ‘there’ and has continued until the impossible ‘here.’ By supporting Israel, the democratic and freedom loving United States has made the improbable a sickening and frightful reality.

    The post The 1948 Recognition of Israel: Impact, Legacy, and Relevance first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • “We can’t arrest our way to liberation”

    This story was originally published by In These Times on Sep. 25, 2024. It is shared here with permission.

    In a lot of ways, an attack on Nabala Cafe always felt inevitable — and we didn’t even have a Palestinian flag hanging in the window when we first opened in July.

    So many sellers of Palestinian flags also sell Israeli flags, so it didn’t feel right to give them money. But a community member donated a flag after our first week and we hung it up proudly in our front window — as visible as possible.

    “A community member donated a flag after our first week and we hung it up proudly in our front window—as visible as possible.”

    I named the shop Nabala Cafe as a tribute to my ancestral home in Palestine, Bayt Nabala, a village that was destroyed during the Nakba in 1948. Three thousand villagers (called ​“Nabalis”) mostly fled east towards Ramallah. As Israel occupied more and more Palestinian land over time, Nabalis continued to be displaced. Some stayed in Palestine or across the eastern border in Jordan, but we’ve all been forced to find homes in different parts of the world.

    Chicago is home to the largest population of Palestinians in the United States, and we have a strong community of hundreds of Nabalis living in the area. The concept of Nabala Cafe started here, building on the deep community roots of Nabalis that have remained strong over decades, all centering our home of Bayt Nabala.

    Nabala Cafe offers a selection of free books to community members, and those who come to the cafe frequently grab a book off the shelves and spend time reading there. Photo by Steel Brooks

    For years I felt dejected and disconnected from the world, spending my time and energy in corporate sales. Each day I was pushing consumer data to companies who would leverage it for financial gain while irreparably damaging the communities and environments they exploited. During that time, the most rewarding aspects of my life were a long way from the office. They were in Uptown where I’d spend much of my free time connecting with community members and providing food, water and resources to unhoused neighbors.

    But this was never enough. There was always more to do in the community — more time needed to build relationships, more space needed to share skills and develop a well-rounded community, and more energy needed to develop sustainable mutual aid networks and broader social movements.

    “During that time, the most rewarding aspects of my life were a long way from the office. They were in Uptown where I’d spend much of my free time connecting with community members and providing food, water and resources to unhoused neighbors.”

    But instead I was spending most of my time and energy downtown, empowering the consumerism of the Loop and all of the global corporate entities with deep ties to Chicago’s business sector.

    Nabala Cafe was a way to address this problem — shifting my time and energy to my community, with hopes of adding support, capacity, nourishment and care. With some encouragement from loved ones, I started the project in earnest in 2022. About two years later I was finally putting up our decorations honoring Palestine and opening the doors to the public.

    Palestinians and Palestinian businesses have been frequent targets since the genocide in Gaza began. When we opened, we thought that it would only be a matter of time before someone attacked us. And on a recent evening, someone smashed the window where we displayed our flag.

    After a window was smashed at Nabala Cafe, a board was put up to cover the open space. Community members came together to paint a mural on the board, so even after the window was fixed, Nabala Cafe owner Eyad Zeid decided to keep the board facing inward as a reminder of the community support the cafe received after the attack. Photo by Steel Brooks

    At least two other nearby businesses, the bookstore Women & Children First and the clothing store Naaz Studios, were also attacked in recent months in similar ways. And as we know all too well, attacks on businesses that support Palestinian liberation are just a small slice of the overall violence we have seen over the past year.

    There have been evictions handed out to residents displaying Palestinian flags on their apartments and employments terminated for the simple act of wearing a keffiyeh. Three college students who were speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs were shot in Vermont. A woman attempted to drown a 3-year-old Palestinian girl in Texas. And right here in the Chicago area, 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume was violently murdered in October 2023.

    “Nabala Cafe was a way to address this problem—shifting my time and energy to my community, with hopes of adding support, capacity, nourishment and care.”

    It’s not just the murderers and vandals attacking Palestinians. It’s the police too. So many cops have ties to white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and so many police departments have had training exchange programs with the Israeli Occupation Forces — the same forces who have likely murdered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in the last year alone.

    It’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is calling and trying to intimidate Palestinian activists like In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi. The same FBI and federal authorities who have taken Palestinians away from their families with horrifying regularity since September 11, 2001.

    So for those of us who have been attacked in these various ways, questions we hold are: What can justice look like when anti-Palestinian racism is so deeply embedded and so violent? How are we supposed to respond? How can we focus on continuing to build community and relationships and not resign ourselves to searching for solutions from those who are explicitly oppressing, surveilling and attacking us?

    After our window was broken, many people suggested involving police — but for what exactly? Consider the hypocrisy of collaborating with law enforcement that enacts such violence of its own. And even if the person who smashed our window was arrested and jailed, and even if the U.S. carceral system was somehow — in some alternate universe — a truly rehabilitative force, there are still too many people empowered by genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians and deeply indoctrinated by Zionist propaganda. 

    But there is one thing I know for certain: We can’t arrest our way to liberation and we can’t jail our way to community.

    “But there is one thing I know for certain: We can’t arrest our way to liberation and we can’t jail our way to community.”

    Instead of turning to police, we turned to what Nabala Cafe is all about: community. As soon as word got out about the attack, our community came through to support us. We raised more than 10 times the money we needed to replace the broken window in less than 24 hours. Our business flourished in a way that we could not have ever imagined, and people got to work immediately beautifying our space, including painting a mural on our boarded-up window and covering the sidewalk with chalk artwork.

    Our community was there with love and care when we needed it. But I also know we’re lucky and benefit from Palestine currently being the center of so many discussions. One thing I couldn’t help thinking about during all of this is what I would have done if our community hadn’t shown up, or if I was somewhere else and didn’t have the support we have here. That is the reality for so many others. 

    The Palestinian flag at Nabala Cafe still hangs proudly in the window. Photo by Steel Brooks

    The stress and fear that I felt the moment I found out about the broken window was paralyzing. The only thing I could think to do was let people know what happened and call the insurance company. I didn’t even think to sweep up the glass until a friend came by with a broom. And I didn’t even consider that we’d need to board up the window until another friend reached out and offered to do it.

    So many businesses and individuals who experience a violating attack like this are not met with even a fraction of the support that we received. Often, they are completely alone.

    How can we fault these folks for mobilizing police and the carceral system when they have no one else to turn to? Even if they would prefer a different course of action, their fears and stresses are valid, the violence is real and present and, for businesses similar to ours, the threat to so many people’s livelihoods is palpable and frightening.

    It’s our duty to show up for our communities in every way possible, because when we do not show up, that void is taken by police. I hope that one of the lessons we can take away from the attack on Nabala Cafe is that we need to make a collective effort to serve and support one another, so that relying on police for anything is a non-starter. We’re better off without them.

    And police seem to always make that calculation for us. When I arrived at the cafe to deal with the broken window, it was about 7 a.m., more than seven hours after the window was broken. Police were on the scene overnight, and their biggest accomplishment was using police tape to hang a black garbage bag over the wide open window. 

    Nabala Cafe features artwork by Palestinian artists and about Palestine which can be purchased by those at the cafe. For owner Eyad Zeid, the artwork is part of an effort to spread the beauty of Palestinian culture throughout the neighborhood. Photo by Steel Brooks

    When I called them to file a report in the morning (unfortunately required for insurance claims), they absurdly asked me what happened. I had just arrived, how would I have known? Then, when I asked them what happened, and what had occurred while they were there overnight, they said they didn’t know and that they didn’t document anything because ​“there was no victim present.” They didn’t say anything about considering it a targeted attack and just handed me a piece of paper reading ​“criminal damage to property” and that included a report number. That was that and I haven’t heard from them since.

    Good riddance. The police do not care. But our communities do, and we need to get better at showing that care to one another in our day-to-day lives.

    “Good riddance. The police do not care. But our communities do, and we need to get better at showing that care to one another in our day-to-day lives.”

    It’s of course challenging because so many of us are putting our time and energy into making a living that also unfortunately benefits the ruling class; we have limited free time, so showing up for community becomes that much more difficult.

    But the fundamental question is how we can continue to use our collective power to build community strength — and we do have some key examples to draw from.

    One surrounds a Palestinian woman who faces eviction in Logan Square for hanging a Palestinian flag outside her apartment, and who has courageously left it hanging through a time-consuming legal battle. An incredible community formed around her — a true multiracial and religiously diverse community (including both Palestinians and Jews) — who protested, created artwork, and planned many different events in support of her and in service of free expression. It’s been nearly a year and this community is stronger than ever.

    Nabala Cafe owner Eyad Zeid prepares Karak Chai. Many associate Karak Chai with community, comfort and supporting loved ones. Photo by Steel Brooks

    Another surrounds the firing of a woman who was wearing a keffiyeh at her job at an Apple store in Lincoln Park. The way the staff at the store advocated and fought for her was so inspirational, and months later so many of these folks are embedded in more supportive and impactful community spaces.

    These are small, but courageous acts. But that’s what we need right now, and that’s how we can protect each other, keep each other safe, and build community together.

    And our actions don’t even need to be courageous to have an impact. It can be as simple as striking up conversations with neighbors and community members we’ve never met, or those that we continue to be in relationship and friendship with. Ultimately we need to consistently show up for one another on a massive scale, but there’s no telling what small acts can bring.

    I’m incredibly grateful for our community, and more proud of Nabala Cafe than ever. I’m more optimistic than ever that it can be a space of connection and bonding, of love and nourishment.

    Because we can’t arrest our way to liberation, we can only get there by building together.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Report from Beirut: Israel Is “Targeting Everyone” in Bombing Campaign, Killing 700+ in Just Days


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israeli Bombs Displace 140,000 Children as Lebanon Braces for Possible Invasion

    An estimated 140,000 children have been displaced just this week by Israeli bombings in Lebanon, attacks that have killed close to 700 people and pushed the region to the precipice of a full-scale war. Save the Children, a leading humanitarian group, said Thursday that the 140,000 kids forced from their homes over the past four days bring Lebanon’s total number of displaced children to at…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Report from Beirut: Israel Is “Targeting Everyone” in Bombing Campaign, Killing 700+ in Just Days

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    We get an update from Lebanon, where the death toll from Israeli airstrikes has risen to over 700 since Monday, following a series of explosions involving pagers and walkie-talkies in Beirut and southern Lebanon last week. The Israeli military reiterated its troops were preparing for a ground invasion of Lebanon if tensions continue to escalate. Multiple Israeli tanks and armored vehicles have appeared across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. As the Biden administration claims it’s working toward a ceasefire in Lebanon, Israel is set to receive a new military aid package from the United States totaling some $8.7 billion. “People are really scared,” says Mona Fawaz, professor of urban planning at the American University of Beirut. “Israel does these so-called targeted assassinations, which, sadly, much of the Western press has been celebrating, and they talk about Israelis’ ingenuity. In fact, it’s targeting everyone.” Fawaz discusses the context for Lebanon’s crisis, organizing to shelter and survive the bombing, and the Israeli messaging about evacuation orders and Hezbollah.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • 103 Democrats Demand Homicide Probe Into Israel’s Killing of Aysenur Eygi

    A group of over 100 Democrats in Congress is urging the Biden administration to open an independent investigation into Israel’s killing of American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi in the occupied West Bank earlier this month. In a letter sent this week, the lawmakers ask for the White House, State Department and Justice Department to probe whether Eygi’s killing could be classified as a homicide.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Sends 88 Unidentifiable Bodies of Palestinians to Gaza in a Container

    On Wednesday, Israeli forces sent a shipping container to Gaza that contained bodies of 88 Palestinians that were decomposed to the point that they were unidentifiable, sparking horror over Israel’s treatment of Palestinians even after death. Israel delivered the Palestinians’ bodies in a large yellow container loaded on a truck, with no identification or information about how…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sanders Files to Force First-Ever Vote in Congress on Blocking Weapons to Israel

    Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and two other senators have introduced resolutions that will force the Senate to undertake the first-ever vote in Congress on blocking weapons to Israel. On Wednesday, Sanders introduced six resolutions blocking six sales of different weapons contained within the $20 billion weapons deal announced by the Biden administration in August. The sales include many of…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • As International Community Continues to Enable Israel, People Must Heed BDS Call

    Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon and preparing for a possible ground invasion of the country, with the Netanyahu government rejecting a proposed 21-day ceasefire put forward by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. About 500,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, and the Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel’s Enforced Disappearance of Palestinian Women from Gaza

    Our latest visual captures the horrific testimonies of Palestinian women from Gaza who were arbitrarily detained and held incommunicado by Israel for more than 50 days, according to interviews by Amnesty International and the UN. Held hostage under the “Detention of Unlawful Combatants law,” which grants the Israeli military sweeping powers to detain anyone from Gaza without evidence, Palestinians detained from Gaza are being subjected to torture and inhumane treatment, denied access to lawyers, while their location is kept secret from their families.








    The post Israel’s Enforced Disappearance of Palestinian Women from Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • OUTRAGE as Israel’s genocidal ambassador to the UK spotted at Labour conference

    If the new Labour government signalled one thing indisputably at its party conference this year, is that it’s an unrepentant apologist for genocidal war criminals. This was particularly apparent at a Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) official fringe event. There, cabinet members – half themselves funded by the pro-Israel lobby group – welcomed Israel’s hard right genocide-mongering ambassador with open arms. Obviously, this was in sharp contrast to its violent repressive reception towards activists protesting for Palestine at conference.

    Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely’s disgusting genocidal rap-sheet has been hard to miss. But it didn’t stop Labour’s top-dogs hobnobbing will Hotovely anyway.

    LFI at Labour conference hosting genocide-mongers

    It’s now nearly a year into Israel’s indiscriminate genocide in Gaza where it has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, and displaced 90% of the population. Meanwhile, the violent settler colonial state has turned its sights on Lebanon in another slew of likely war crime massacres. There, it has launched a brutal bombing campaign – killing hundreds and already displacing over 90,000 people.

    As all this continues, the Labour Party conference hosted Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely. It was at a fringe event hosted by LFI.

    As the Canary previously highlighted, conference also welcomed former IDF general and opposition leader Yair Golan. Golan has a torrid history in the oppressive occupation of Palestinians in the West Bank. And less than a week ago, Golan was calling for Israel to invade and occupy Lebanon. Declassified journalist John McEvoy also pointed out this is guy who has effectively called for the collective punishment of the Palestinian people:

    Naturally, he met with Starmer and foreign secretary David Lammy. This was to discuss removal of the UK’s few arms embargoes on Israel.

    But, if Golan’s conference cameo was a sign of the utterly depraved moral vacuity of Starmer’s Labour government, Hotovely’s warm welcome only added fuel to the fire.

    Cabinet cosying up to Israel’s genocidal ambassador to the UK

    This is because the far right ambassador has also been vocally, unashamedly genocidal – and on numerous occasions at that.

    Just since Israel began its siege on the strip, she has voiced murderous ethnic cleansing intent to the UK corporate press:

    However, she has been at this long before 7 October:

    Moreover, in 2017 Hotovely went on a rancid rant in the Knesset. She called Palestinians “thieves of history” in a tirade effectively claiming that Palestinians don’t exist.

    After Israel appointed her its ambassador to the UK in 2020, she then went on another bigoted diatribe. This time it was a full on Nakba denial crusade:

    Unsurprisingly, her Zionist ethnostate-fueled racism hasn’t stopped there either:

    With friends like these, Palestine protesters are the enemy

    Naturally, none of this has stopped key government cabinet members from cosying up to Golan or Hotovely:

    But then, Starmer’s apartheid and genocide apologists have form on this. In 2021, pro-Palestine activists demonstrated against London School of Economics for hosting Hotovely in a debate. As Labour leader, Starmer lambasted the protests:

    Fast-forward to his Labour government and it’s more of the same shameless apologism for Israel. When a pro-Palestine activist challenged chancellor Rachel Reeves on the government’s arms to Israel, she essentially said that the party has no patience for protest. Still, there was ample time for the LFI vice-chair to snap a piccie with the genocide ambassador:

    With friends like these genocidal war criminals:

    Call for the complete murderous annihilation of Gaza and Palestine and Labour will roll out the red carpet. Demand the government stop sending arms to the genocidal maniacs mercilessly murdering Palestinians? A jumped up Labour councillor (yes, you read that right) will get you in a chokehold and drag you from the conference hall. And all with the support of a vitriol-frenzied crowd.

    By contrast, the crowd at LFI’s event:

    Of course, it’s all for the so-called two-state solution the Israeli ambassador – among many other officials in Israel – has outright said they don’t want anyway:

    If there were any lingering doubts that the new Labour government would be anything other than genocide-abetting war criminals themselves, this should finally put that to rest.

    Featured image via screengrab

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • U.S. Gov’t Agencies Found Israel Was Blocking Gaza Aid. Blinken Ignored Them to Keep Weapons Flowing


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon”: Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • My Palestinian Chicago Cafe Was Attacked. I Turned to the Community, Not Cops.

    In a lot of ways, an attack on Nabala Cafe always felt inevitable — and we didn’t even have a Palestinian flag hanging in the window when we first opened in July. So many sellers of Palestinian flags also sell Israeli flags, so it didn’t feel right to give them money. But a community member donated a flag after our first week and we hung it up proudly in our front window — as visible as…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • U.S. Gov’t Agencies Found Israel Was Blocking Gaza Aid. Blinken Ignored Them to Keep Weapons Flowing

    Seg3 blinken

    We speak with Brett Murphy, the ProPublica reporter behind a blockbuster exposé that revealed the Biden administration ignored warnings from its own experts about Israel blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza in order to keep supplying the country with weapons. USAID, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the State Department’s refugees bureau both concluded earlier this year that Israeli authorities routinely impeded delivery of food and medicine into the devastated Palestinian territory, where hunger, disease and displacement have wreaked havoc on the civilian population. Although U.S. law requires the government to stop arms shipments to countries that prevent the delivery of U.S.-backed aid, Secretary of State Antony Blinken ignored the findings and told Congress Israel was not restricting humanitarian assistance — helping to keep weapons flowing to the Israeli military to continue its assault on Gaza.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon”: Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace

    Seg2 lara lebanon bombing

    Israel is continuing its bombardment of Lebanon and preparing for a possible ground invasion of the country, with the Netanyahu government rejecting a proposed 21-day ceasefire put forward by the United States, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. About 500,000 people in Lebanon have been displaced, and the Health Ministry reports at least 72 people were killed and nearly 400 wounded in Israeli attacks on Wednesday, bringing the death toll to over 620 in recent days. “There is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now,” says Beirut-based journalist Lara Bitar, who details how Israel has repeatedly attacked and invaded Lebanese territory going back decades. “The source of this pain can be pinpointed to the presence of the Israeli settler state in our region that continues to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Lebanon and across most of the world.”


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Tlaib Slams Biden for Deploying Troops to Middle East as Israel Bombs Lebanon

    Progressive lawmakers and advocacy groups are sharply criticizing the Biden administration for its decision this week to deploy additional troops to the Middle East as Israel is carrying out a major escalation of its attacks on Lebanon. Outspoken advocates for Palestinian rights, including Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Cori Bush (D-Missouri), have said that bolstering the U.S.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Has Displaced Over 90,000 People in Lebanon in Just 3 Days, UN Reports

    Israel has forcibly displaced nearly 100,000 people in Lebanon over the course of just a few days, the UN has reported as Israeli forces appear to be gearing up for a ground invasion of Lebanon. Just since Monday, at least 90,530 people in Lebanon have been forced to flee their homes, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported Wednesday.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘Arrest Netanyahu’: NYC activists call mass march during Netanyahu’s UN address 

    Nearly a year into Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, US support for the pariah state has not ceased. Now, as Israel drastically escalates indiscriminate bombing and massacres in neighboring Lebanon, the US is preparing to receive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York City, where he will address the United Nations on September 26. The Shut It Down for Palestine coalition has called for a mass march at 3:00 PM on that day, beginning at Bryant Park in Manhattan and then heading to the UN. Layan Fuleihan, Education Director at The People’s Forum, returns to The Real News to discuss Netanyahu’s visit, how the movement for Palestine will rise to confront him, and why solidarity with Palestine remains the most pressing political question of our time.

    Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
    Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

    Transcript

    Ju-Hyun Park:  Welcome to The Real News podcast. This is Ju-Hyun Park, engagement editor at The Real News.

    Today we’re discussing Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United Nations in New York on Thursday, Sept. 26, and how the people of the city are preparing to confront him.

    Before we begin, we’d like to extend our gratitude on behalf of The Real News team to you, our listeners and supporters. We are proud to be a nonprofit newsroom that tells the stories corporate media won’t. And as part of that commitment, we don’t take ad money or corporate donations, period. We depend on listeners like you to make our work possible. So please consider becoming a sustainer of The Real News today at therealnews.com/donate.

    Internationally wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu is on his way to the United Nations General Assembly, where, on Thursday, Sept. 26, he’ll deliver a speech to the very institution whose highest court has put out a warrant for his arrest. Organizers with the Shut It Down for Palestine coalition are calling for a major protest to oppose Netanyahu’s presence and, once again, call for his arrest.

    Returning to The Real News today is Layan Fuleihan, director of education at The People’s Forum, one of the key convening organizations in the coalition organizing against Netanyahu’s visit. 

    Layan, welcome back to The Real News.

    Layan Fuleihan:  Thanks so much for having me on.

    Ju-Hyun Park:  Layan, let’s start from the jump with what people really need to know. When and where is the protest, what are you calling for, and why is it so important that people show up?

    Layan Fuleihan:  Well, the protest will gather at Bryant Park on Thursday, Sept. 26 at 3:00 PM in the afternoon, and we will rally and then march towards the United Nations. Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to speak that afternoon at some point between 3:00 and can go all the way up until 9:00 PM.

    And so we are going to be ready to have a very strong presence whenever that time may be, and to send a very strong signal to not just Netanyahu, but also to the entire world that the people of New York, the people of the United States are very aware that Benjamin Netanyahu is a wanted war criminal and has no business addressing the international community in the halls of the United Nations.

    Ju-Hyun Park:  Layan, we’re nearly a year into this genocide, and we are now seeing a growing number of estimates, including from The Lancet medical journal, that are beginning to place the death toll in Gaza at estimates in the hundreds of thousands. We are also seeing a major escalation along the northern front with Lebanon. There have been daily Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon going back for months. Just this week where what is now being called the Tuesday and Wednesday massacres when Israeli forces hacked and detonated pagers being carried across the country of Lebanon, killing dozens of people, injuring thousands of others.

    Some people may be wondering, by this point, if the things we do from within the US are truly having an impact. What’s it going to take for the movement in solidarity with Palestine to achieve its political objectives?

    Layan Fuleihan:  Thanks for that. I think the number one thing that we need to be doing as organizers, as the movement, the people that make up the movement for Palestine in the United States, is to continue growing the movement. And that means a lot of different things.

    One, it means showing people the fact that growing the movement and the movement itself is actually important. It can feel strange because people came out on the streets almost now a year ago saying, no genocide on Palestine. We want to end the genocide on Palestine, and spoke directly to the United States government, of which we are constituents, to say, please stop everything that you are doing to make possible this genocide.

    As the months went on, many people grew conscious of the fact that the United States is actually the perpetrator of genocide. The way the relationship between Israel and the United States is shaped and is formed means that Israel cannot do any of the things that it is doing without the support, whether it is public open support or not, of the United States.

    And we saw multiple moments in which the US’s role was actually exposed in more direct ways, whether it was actual US military personnel on the ground in Gaza helping the Israeli occupation forces carry out massacres, or whether it was US intelligence agencies providing more information for the Israeli occupation than the Israeli intelligence services themselves.

    So the question of complicity has moved now to be transformed into a greater understanding that it’s not about complicity at this point. The United States is responsible for the genocide.

    That said, it isn’t the movement in the United States that is fighting on the front lines in Gaza. It is the Palestinian resistance, the Palestinian people who are the ones fighting directly against the military machine of imperialism. And we’ve seen that the United States is completely unwilling to listen to the demands of its own constituents, of its own population, and to shape its foreign policy along the lines of the demands of its population.

    And so what we’ve watched over the past year is that the battle has been played out and has prolonged primarily because the Palestinian people have not yet been defeated. There have been huge massacres. The pain of the losses and the immensity of the losses is impossible to describe at all in words.

    And the everyday torture that the Palestinian people are going through in Gaza is just impossible for anyone to really understand. What we’re witnessing is so inhumane and so brutal that it is just beyond human comprehension.

    That said, the Palestinian liberation struggle has not been defeated. And we can see the results of that. I think what you mentioned about Lebanon is extremely important, and I want to say a few words on this because what we’ve now seen is that Netanyahu and his administration, frustrated by the fact that they can’t win in Gaza, have now moved to open a new front of the war.

    They’ve been threatening this for the past year, but with the massacres that they committed and the terrorist attacks that they committed yesterday and their declarations of war with that act and with their actions today as well claiming that they’re going to triple their bombardments of Lebanon every day, that now Lebanon is the focus of the war.

    They’ve added a new objective to the war, which is returning the Israelis back to the north, which they had been evacuated from to avoid casualties from the conflict across the border.

    So we’ve seen now that Netanyahu has no qualms about expanding the war of extermination to Lebanon because he’s unable to reach a conclusion that works for him in Gaza.

    Now, I’m giving all this context because it’s important for us to understand the shape of the genocide and the war of extermination that the United States is carrying out alongside its Israeli partner. And we have to understand also that our role is extremely important. The United States cannot publicly say right now that they’re willing to go ahead and open another front of the war of extermination with Lebanon.

    If you listen to what the White House is saying, they’re saying diplomacy, de-escalation, et cetera. They’ve been saying now for months, and they’ve been trying to trick the population into thinking that they are engineering a ceasefire when, in fact, we know that they are providing cover for Netanyahu to create obstacles to the negotiation process.

    Again, we’re not believing the words of the White House, but this is a sign that the public opinion is acting as some form of restraint, that the White House is anxious to fully associate itself with its own actions in the region right now.

    And we need to keep building that restraint, keep building that pressure. And most importantly, the most important thing that we can do is, through the movement, change public consciousness in the United States.

    Public opinion is one thing. Public opinion right now is not on the side of the White House and on Israel. The majority of people in the United States would like to see an end to this terrible chapter of human history.

    Consciousness is another thing, and consciousness is that realization of the fact that it’s the US system itself, the US capitalist and imperialist system itself that has created the conditions for this genocide to occur. And it is only by changing that system that we are going to be able to end not just this chapter of the genocide, but the entire occupation of Palestine and all other US imperialist wars across the world, one. And two, that we’re going to be able to have a system in which the demands of the population itself has an impact on the decisions that the government makes in regards to both foreign and domestic policy.

    So I was a bit long-winded there, but I think it’s a complex issue, and one of the main roles that we have in the movement here is to bring this kind of analysis and this kind of understanding to people who have been in the streets now for almost a year, who have changed their entire way of living.

    Many people used to do things on the weekends, like other things, like go see people and have brunch. I don’t know what people did. Now you go to protests. You go to meetings. You go to actions. You go to teach-ins. A large section of the population, their whole daily life has been transformed. They have changed their routines. They have reorganized themselves to become not only people who participate in the movement, but who organize it.

    And it’s important that all of us actually develop the skills and the capacity to understand the shape of this genocidal war as it continues, because the number one thing we need to do is not let down with the movement. We need to keep it growing. If war breaks out in Lebanon, direct war, a larger scale war with Lebanon, if it breaks out in the region, if it breaks out in other places, this new shift in consciousness that we’ve created, we need to build off of it.

    We don’t want to have to rebuild it again. So we are really committed to continuing to mobilize, continuing to organize and to not allow the White House and the propaganda arm, the mainstream media, to distract people from our task.

    Ju-Hyun Park:  It certainly says a lot that we are now a year into this process and we have seen an incredible amount of changes, I think, among many, many different sectors of the population. As you’re saying, people are becoming not only agitated to take action on one or two occasions, but really to engage in a deep and committed process as part of a larger movement in which we have all found different ways to play roles.

    I think something that has emerged from this process as well is how obvious it has become just how little regard US leaders hold for the opinion of the public.

    For instance, we now know that more than 60% of Americans support ending US aid to Israel, yet neither presidential candidate or major party has expressed any interest in doing this. In fact, they are sticking to their guns, quite literally, even more firmly than ever before. Kamala Harris and the Democrats have proven especially impervious to demands made on their party to end its support of genocide.

    What would you say to those who think Palestine needs to go on the back burner in the lead up to this election, given that there are many people who have had the shift in consciousness, and yet at the same time there are also many who have not really participated, yet continue to see this as an issue that is perhaps distant from them or secondary to things that they might consider to be more important concerns like the outcome of the presidential election?

    Layan Fuleihan:  Well, I can understand where that thinking comes from, unfortunately, knowing the way in which people have been shaped in this political system that we live in here. But I completely reject that formulation that Palestine has to go on the back burner, that we have to measure out, find the lesser of two evils for this round of the presidential elections in order to survive another day so we can keep mobilizing and keep protesting. I think that that is completely misleading people and doesn’t give people an honest assessment of what is really laid out in front of us.

    What we really have laid out in front of us is what you just described. We have two ruling class parties who are united on the issue of imperialism. They may do it with different words, they may do it in different ways. One party may favor some forms of soft power, the other may favor other ways of doing it. At the end of the day, it’s the same objectives: full US global domination, US hegemony across the world.

    And the result of that is what we’re seeing before our eyes, this livestreamed genocide that we’ve been witnessing for the past year. To say that there are other issues now that we should turn to and that Palestine is less important is operating under the idea that we have no options in front of us, that we have no political power, and that we have to take the best that we can get, and the best that we can get is to scramble for a slightly nicer version of the same ruling class that we have been seeing in these election rounds every four years.

    I reject that idea because I believe that we do have political power. History has shown us that we have political power. The world today shows us that we have political power. Does it mean that that comes through elections? Not necessarily.

    But I think it’s not insignificant that, this year, third party candidates are getting much more support and traction than ever before. People are rejecting the two-party ruling class system of the elections that we’ve been living through for decades. And not just that, people are rejecting the idea that the elections sets the agenda for what’s important and what’s not.

    How can we tell people that a genocide right now is not important? We also don’t tell people that police brutality, that immigration, that the extreme economic crisis that people are going through, that healthcare are not important. All of these things are important, but they’re all also very connected. The same system that produced the genocide is the same system that is producing these crises in the domestic arena.

    So I think it’s misleading to tell people, let’s put Palestine on the back burner so that we can figure out these other issues, when, in fact, it’s the same root cause that’s created all of the problems, including the genocide in Palestine.

    And the number one thing that we can do is help organize so that people can feel that our political power doesn’t rely on the electoral process. That, in fact, our political power comes from organizing. It comes from organizing and building consciousness to understand that we are the majority in this country. We are the working class. The people who do work every day, day in, day out, who are out in the streets right now are the ones who are making this country possible. And we also can build a different system if we organize ourselves to do it.

    Is it going to happen in this electoral edition? Probably not. But I’m confident that whoever is elected will face the same political power that we’ve been building over the past year and every single time there is an uprising and a mass movement over the past years. So we just have to be ready to confront any challenges that a new administration brings us, but clear and confident that we’re not going to have salvation in a more nicer packaged version of one or the other.

    Ju-Hyun Park:  Thanks for giving some direction around that discussion in terms of seeing organizing as the real base that our power comes from.

    Speaking of organizing, and given the fact that you and I are both New Yorkers, this protest is happening in New York where the UN headquarters is located, I want to bring in some of the issues swirling around the NYPD this week.

    For listeners who may be unaware, first of all, the Adams administration, multiple members of the top brass of the NYPD, including the former police commissioner, are currently under FBI investigation for a number of different crimes and alleged violations.

    In addition to that, there was a really horrific NYPD… You can’t really call it anything other than a mass shooting that occurred earlier on the week of Sept. 16 in which NYPD officers at the Sutter Avenue L stop opened fire after someone was suspected of jumping the turnstile. In other words, not paying their fare and just attempting to get onto the train.

    Now, I will note that the fare for the MTA, that’s the New York subway, is $2.90. So over $2.90, you had multiple officers firing their weapons in a crowded subway station, ultimately wounding four people, including 49-year-old Gregory Del Pesh, a Black man who is now in critical condition after being struck in the brain by a bullet from the NYPD.

    I’m wondering if you can connect the issue of police violence and the presence of police as a kind of occupation in communities across the country, particularly in communities of color, to the question of Palestine and the movement in solidarity with Palestine?

    Layan Fuleihan:  Well, I think that’s exactly right. I think that the similarity doesn’t just come from the similar actions of US police brutality and Israeli occupation forces. It comes from the fact that they are both institutions that come from a system that has the same interests. The Israeli occupation would not exist without US imperialism right now. It didn’t exist without European colonialism, and this is where it comes from.

    The Israeli occupation forces come out of the militias that were formed in order to massacre and ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their land. US police forces, their history also comes from this kind of terrorist militia type violence. It comes from groups of people assigned the task of finding and imprisoning and returning enslaved workers who had found a way to escape and return them back to the slaveholders.

    So this is the shared history of the US police and Israeli occupation forces is that they come out of this genocidal, settler colonial violence. And we don’t have to draw direct comparisons that can be a little bit clunky and that can flatten the details, because obviously it’s not the same thing at all. Right now what we’re seeing in Palestine is an all out mass bombing, genocidal war.

    That’s not what we’re seeing in the United States, but we are seeing the police and we have been seeing the police used as a way to completely repress, and not only repress, but to see, in particular, poor and communities of color as completely worthless. I mean, $2.90 is nothing for a human life. It’s completely outrageous, but it’s also not out of character for the way the police acts. The killings that the police have carried out across this country for decades, this is part of the character of the police of the United States.

    And I think that the clarity that people have developed over the past year in understanding the way the United States has no care for human life, not here, not in Palestine, not in Lebanon, not in Iraq, not anywhere in the world, not in the DRC, not in Sudan, the list goes on. It doesn’t matter where people are, they do not care for human life.

    And people can understand very clearly that it’s not now a question of making people see that they should care about human life, it’s the system itself that is producing this kind of violence, and we need to overthrow it. We need to change it.

    I think that the clarity that people have gathered from their experience over the past year is going to help people address things like police violence and police brutality also with more clarity.

    There’s a great chant that has been heard many times, that we’ve heard together in the protests we’ve been to together, “Gaza will free us all.” And I think it’s a very symbolic message for the moment right now. Because in order to help Gaza, we need to also organize against the system here. And that system is the one killing Black and Brown and poor people across the country for no reason, just for being poor, just for existing, and just for being a threat.

    We are a threat organized. We are a threat to the ruling class system that would like to exploit us for as much profit as they possibly can. In fact, even kill us to make sure they get that $2.90, and are not getting as much profit as they possibly can from every part of lived experience.

    Ju-Hyun Park:  Yeah, thank you so much for that wonderful answer. And I would also just throw in very briefly, the NYPD is one of many police departments across the country that received direct training from the armed forces of Israel. And so we can see that there’s a sick cycle at play where the US pumps billions of dollars into propping up Israel as a state that colonizes Palestine, that rehearses and experiments really horrific methods of repression against the Palestinian people, refines them, and then exports them back to United States, where it is police officers that walk our streets that have learned these methods and are then ready to use them against the population here. So we really do see a shared struggle like in a real unity in that oppression that we all need to be combating together.

    Now, I do want to wrap this conversation up. And taking us back to the question of Netanyahu coming here to New York, I’m wondering if you can talk to listeners about how to keep up with information about this march specifically coming up on Thursday, but also if you can tell us how to plug into the movement after Thursday, Sept. 26.

    Layan Fuleihan:  Sure. First, you can go to shutitdown4palestine.org. That’s four, the number, so shutitdown4palestine.org, where you can get the updated information about the march. You can get posters. You can get templates, graphics to download and share and put up around your neighborhood. And that’s one way to get all the news.

    You can, of course, follow social media. You can follow our social media here at The People’s Forum. That’s People’s Forum NYC. You can follow the Palestinian Youth Movement.

    We also have many organizations in the Shut It Down for Palestine Coalition here in New York, all of whom are great sources for the information about the protest, but also across the entire country. So unfortunately, New York has the burden of Netanyahu’s visit, but of course, we’ll take that burden with a lot of duty, revolutionary duty, and we will meet the task.

    But the rest of the country also is carrying out many different actions, protests, mobilizations, and we’re getting ready for a national day of action on Oct. 5 to mark one year of the genocide and one year of resistance. There will be mobilizations and actions across the country, and it’s also paired with a fundraiser to support the needs in Gaza right now on the ground, a national fundraiser.

    So you can get all that information also on the Shut It Down for Palestine website, where you can see actions registered across the country, you can register your own and you can meet people.

    And the last thing that I’ll say is that every Monday at The People’s Forum, we have an open meeting for organizing actions for the Shut It Down for Palestine movement. So you can come every Monday at 6:30 PM. You can meet other organizers, you can meet other organizations, and you can meet other people, make new friends, new comrades at these meetings where you can get involved in any kind of action, large or small, and find collectivity in organizing them together.

    Ju-Hyun Park:  Thank you so much. To reiterate, the march against Netanyahu will be taking place at 3:00 PM, Bryant Park on Thursday, Sept. 26 in New York City. There are also volunteer meetings every Monday at The People’s Forum in the evening. And of course, there will be nationwide actions occurring probably in your city as well on or around Oct. 5. You can go to shutitdownforpalestine.org for more information on that.

    You’ve been listening to The Real News podcast. This is Ju-Hyun Park speaking with Layan Fuleihan of The People’s Forum. Before we go, we’d like to thank all you listeners once again and take a moment to recognize The Real News studio team: David Hebden, Cameron Grenadino, Kayla Rivara, and Alina Nehlich, who make all our work possible. Stay tuned for further updates on Palestine and everywhere else that working people are on the front lines of struggle to fight for a better world. This has been The Real News. We’ll catch you next time.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Advocates Demand Blinken Resign After Report Reveals “Egregiously Illegal” Acts

    Calls have grown for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to resign or be impeached, after a bombshell report revealed that he lied to Congress about internal Biden administration recommendations that the U.S. suspend weapons shipments to Israel over myriad human rights violations — a move that one advocacy group said is “egregiously illegal.” Muslim and Arab rights groups and commentators said…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel is NOT targetting Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is targeting civilians in typical settler-colonial style.

    The United Nations said on Wednesday that just over 90,000 people had been displaced in Lebanon this week. Israel is continuing to pound what it says are Hezbollah targets. Plainly, however, Israel is once again attacking civilians indiscriminately and with impunity.

    The UN’s International Organization for Migration has recorded “90,530 newly displaced persons.” A statement from the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs added that among the displaced people”

    many of the more than 111,000 people displaced since October… are likely to have been secondarily displaced.

    Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said Tuesday that the number of displaced in Lebanon was:

    now probably… approaching half a million.

    Lebanon: at “grave risk”

    Israeli raids on Lebanon on Monday killed at least 558 people. That marks the deadliest day of violence since Lebanon’s 1975-90 civil war. Human Rights Watch (HRW) have warned that Israeli strikes on Lebanon were putting civillians:

    at grave risk of harm.

    HRW also urged an international investigation into hostilities in the country and in northern Israel. A statement from the group read:

    Human Rights Watch has called on Israel’s key allies to suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel, given the real risk that they will be used to commit grave abuses.

    Lamia Fakih, HRW’s Middle East and North Africa director said that United Nations:

    member states should take urgent action to establish an independent inquiry into violations during the current hostilities. It is paramount for Israel and Hezbollah to comply with the laws of war to minimise civilian harm.

    Fakih continued that:

    The presence of a Hezbollah commander, rocket launcher, or other military facility in a populated area does not justify attacking the area without regard to the civilian population.

    Israel raining terror down

    However, that’s exactly what Israel are doing to Lebanon. And, as Professor Asad Abukhalil explained:

    Israel’s current insistence that it’s targeting Hamas and Hezbollah is a well-worn settler colonial tactic that presumes killing and disabling civilians and forcing mass displacement is an acceptable price to pay for the possibility of perhaps destabilising Hamas and Hezbollah.

    One lawyer took issue with the characterisation of Lebanese people as “evacuating”:

    Just as Palestinians have been expelled into so-called humanitarian zones (which Israel then bombs anyway), Lebanese people are now being expelled from their homes by Israel.

    Just as social media feeds have been full of people torn about by bombs in Palestine, Israel is now doing the same in Lebanon:

    And yet, despite wave after wave of Israeli attacks in both Palestine and Lebanon, nobody in the international community is doing anything:

    Which is it?

    Electronic Intifada director Ali Abunimah asked the question that should already be haunting American politicians:

    As Abunimah says, which is it? Is America the centre of democracy and freedom, a world leader in diplomacy and geopolitics, the most powerful nation in the world? Or is it helpless, its hands tied by a situation so complex they can do nothing but watch? For a nation so trigger happy with its own Black citizens, so eager to bomb Middle East countries to democracy, to so generously share its freedom through torturing and detaining people in the Global South, it’s difficult to stomach.

    Powerless to help you, but not powerless to kill you.

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Chanukah 2023

    Boeing Headquarters, Chicago
    December 14, 2023

    On the last night night of Chanukah, you stand on a bridge, alongside twelve others, blocking traffic.  You hold a black rectangular posterboard with the letter “I” lit up in small holiday lights bright against the dark matting.  You are letter seven in the phrase CEASEFIRE NOW! “F” stands to your left, “R” to your right. You check in with each other, smiling. Each one of you, each letter, is a necessary part of the entire demand.

    On the sidewalk, a rally with speeches, singing and chanting continues, a determined, spirited din to accompany your blockade. Through the crowd, you see the face of your rabbi holding a mic, but it’s hard to distinguish his words.

    A row of police officers stands in front of you, and another row behind them, and a third behind the second, their faces impervious. They are young. Many of them are not white. They are too far away for you to read the last names on their badges, but you imagine they contain all the identities of contemporary working-class Chicago, all the ethnicities from which CPD now amply recruits.

    You note their guns, their batons, their body armor, their pepper spray. You are not inexperienced with police and are fairly certain that at this moment, the situation is under control. There will be no tasering, pepper spraying or shooting. Still, with the cops, there are no guarantees– those words spoken at your training last week come back to you -and you could imagine the situation unraveling and getting rough, but you don’t. You feel calm, strong, completely certain, no second thoughts or doubts.  Your parents, of blessed memory, taught you how to face the police.

    You are about to be arrested.

    Standing on this bridge and blockading traffic had taken more maneuvering than you expected.  The group had to line up in reverse order on the bridge’s pedestrian walkway without attracting police attention. Keeping police focused on the rally in front of Boeing headquarters would give you the space needed to figure out how to spell backwards, get in formation, cross the bridge on the green light and stop. You spread out and took position, resting the four-foot letters on the asphalt in front of you, your message shining: CEASEFIRE NOW! You stopped traffic in a matter of seconds. Now drivers wanting to head east onto the Washington bridge are stuck and their horns, blaring from behind the police line, make it clear that you’ve made a lot of people angry.

    You wear many layers. Underneath, a long-sleeved t-shirt and a fleece. On top, a parka and insulated vest. Wool socks, zippered boots, no strings-you’ve prepared for what you will be allowed to keep in your cell, which will be cold. Woolen hat, gloves, and of course, an N95 mask. You won’t be able to put it on later, so you’re wearing it in advance. Your ID is in the zippered vest pocket. You’ve made sure to get to a bathroom before the rally, since no one knows how long it will take for the police to clear everyone from the bridge. You wonder if the much younger people blockading the street with you have had the same concern. Probably not.

    Your underlayer, the lightweight cotton t-shirt, nestles against your skin. You bought it at the Yiddish Book Center last spring, after a week-long language class there. It is black, and has der aleph-beis, the alphabet, printed in white letters across the back.  No one can see your shirt, but you know it is there and you feel the language of your ancestors sprawled across your ribcage. Yiddish is buried deep inside you, protecting you. Khof curls like a reverse C, a strong spine protecting the top and bottom as they open to the left, like two outstretched arms in a battering wind. The sound of khof, its friction against the back palette, is easy for you to pronounce. You’ve heard it since you were a child, words like Khanike and kholem and Khelm, the town in Ashkenazi Jewish lore known for its harmless, charming simpletons.  Snuggling your back, mid-alphabet, khof lies somewhere near the bottom of your lungs and when you breathe, it comes to life, a seed germinating and sprouting inside you, rising from the black Galician soil where your grandmother raised her gardens.

    But now is not the time to dwell in your past. Not the time to lament how this language was passed on to you only as a relic, not something alive and breathing, even though your grandmothers were born into it, lived and loved and birthed their own children in it.

    You are here to protest what is happening right now. Today, the civilian death toll from the Israeli bombing of Gaza stands at 18,000. Among the dead, there are at least 8,000 children. You are standing on this bridge to disrupt, to say there can be no business as usual, that your tax dollars will not pay for meting out slaughter. You are blocking this bridge to call out the death company whose headquarters you stand in front of, the company that supplies the fighter jets and the bombs delivering this assault. On this last night of Chanukah you are saying not in our name, the slogan written in stark white letters across the black t-shirts worn by many in the crowd of protestors. By now, two months into public, continuous protest around the country, these t-shirts have become a familiar outfit.

    Squad cars arrive, blue lights flashing, followed by paddy wagons.  The lieutenant in charge is angry and frustrated by your surprise move which changed the scene from a rally easily monitored by officers on bicycles into one that would require much more.  He warns you that your action is illegal, and you are subject to arrest.  As if you didn’t know. As if this were not intentional.

    The arrests happen quickly. The lieutenant approaches you one at a time, starting with C, unraveling the demand for ceasefire from its beginning.  He gets close in your faces and repeats what he has already said -your action is illegal. He asks if you will agree to leave and walk off the bridge on your own, then asks if you understand that you are about to be arrested for disorderly conduct and obstruction.  R, to your left, seems subdued, maybe nervous. He is young, likely has a job to get to tomorrow or an interview for something next week, something consequential.  Most of your group is young. They are all putting themselves at risk. But no one breaks rank.

    No, I am not walking off this bridge. Yes, I understand I am going to be arrested and charged.

    You watch as the police detain C,E,A,S,E and F. The same procedure for all –several officers tie their hands behind their backs, capture their wrists in zipties. Each one is led from the bridge past the crowd towards the paddy wagons.  The crowd cheers and sings and sends love.

    It’s a parade of sorts and you wonder why the police have chosen to march people on this side of the bridge right past the rally, when they could have walked all of you on the other side where you would be far less visible to your admiring comrades. It is dramatic and theatrical.

    As your turn approaches, you remember your daughter’s advice, from her own arrest last month in New York. “Have them tie you up in front. It’s your legal right if you ask. It will be easier on your shoulders, Mom.”.

    Lately, your shoulders have been bothering you. You’ve been aware of your rotator cuffs in a way you weren’t before. When the lieutenant approaches you, you have already seen and heard six people arrested and you are ready. After he asks you if you will leave on your own, warns you of your imminent arrest and tells you the charges, you hold your wrists in front of you and make your request. To your surprise, though he is snarly and clearly tired of all of you, he agrees.

    And off you go, zip-tied in front, masked, bundled in layers, past the cheering crowd.  A friend and her daughter stand on the sidelines, taking pictures and a video you will watch later, over and over again, seeing yourself taken to a paddy wagon by the Chicago police.

    If your parents were still alive, they’d be in the crowd giving you the thumbs up.  If they could have heard another friend shout “Free Palestine,” as you were marched by, they would have agreed.

    Eventually, there are seven of you in the paddy wagon.  You’ve been sorted by perceived gender, or perhaps by what’s on your IDs. You’re careful about what you discuss.  Nothing about your action. There is only one other woman in your age range, and so when the conversation turns to music, you are pretty much lost.

    You sit in the wagon for a long time before it bounces off towards wherever you are heading.  There don’t seem to be any shock absorbers in the wagon, and no seat belts. You all agree that you are heading east over the same bridge you’ve been blocking, though of course you can’t see outside. Chicagoans internalize a sense of the grid. Zip-tied and jostled, you sit in two rows, lined up against either side. After a short ride, the wagon comes to an abrupt halt. You wait, perhaps fifteen long minutes, or more, no idea where you are. “They are probably getting dinner,” your companion to the right says.  She has an extensive arrest record and says it wouldn’t be the first time the cops stop for pizza while the protestors in the wagon wait.

    This remark leads to an exchange about previous arrest experiences, even though music is a safer topic. Surveillance. When one of your wagon mates asks you if you’ve been arrested before, you say no, only tear-gassed, but you note that you’ve been protesting your entire life, even while still in utero, at least according to family lore. Whatever was being protested in 1958 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin before your birth month of October, well, you were there along with your mom. There was plenty to protest. The sixties were in their prequel and your parents were certainly not too happy about the fifties either.

    “And how does it feel now to be arrested?” she asks.

    “Overdue,” you say.

    This will become your go-to phrase when people ask you about the arrest.  You are not inclined to say that it is the least you can do, that it is nothing compared to the death and destruction raining down upon the people of Gaza, because it sounds trite, but, given your long protest history, it really is how you feel. The least you could do. And certainly overdue.

    In the collective holding cell at the precinct jail, you share stories. You bond. Seven women in a cell for an undetermined period, of course it happens. Demographically, there are obvious ways to distinguish the group.

    Two of you are in your sixties. The rest, much younger.

    One of you is Christian, a minister. The rest, Jewish.

    Three of you are well versed in the Frankfurt School. The rest, not so much but they do get the basic concepts. Everybody in this cell has at least an undergrad degree.

    Four of you work at non-profits. Two are professors (or retired, you, specifically.). And then there’s the one minister.

    Six of you have tattoos.  Only one does not. You. So you feel inadequate and explain that for five years, you and your daughter have been trying to decide on a mother-daughter tattoo.  You both can be indecisive, debating people and so it hasn’t happened yet, because you haven’t agreed on a design yet, but you will. Maybe a monarch on you, a milkweed pod on her. Or loons and canoes. She has some nostalgia for the Midwest, despite her decision to trot off to New York.

    And then, on this night of a Chanukah protest and arrest, the next division raises one of your important foundational stories. Of the six Jewish women, five have had a painful, conflictive break with Zionist ideology and the communities and families in which they were raised.  Only one has been raised as an anti-Zionist.  Only one has never supported Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish ethnostate at the expense of Palestinian freedom and self-determination.  Only one has been raised as an American Jewish minority within a minority.  You.

    “You are lucky,” someone tells you.  The others agree.

    You think about this before responding.

    On the one hand, you admire people who break with the ideas they have been raised in, if those ideas are unjust. You admire people who can make a break with received wisdom. There is liberation in that act. Rejecting at least some part of one’s parents’ thinking is usually necessary.  Each generation should be an improvement upon the preceding one, you often say to your kids, when they let you know that their ideas about something are different -i.e., more advanced-than yours.

    At many moments in your life, certain aspects of your parents’ Old Left beliefs have been a constraint.  Perhaps shackle. But you have always agreed with their most basic premises, certainly those about justice and equality and the evils of capitalism. And you have always admired their consistent walking the walk, the life of protest and boycotts and political actions, your upbringing among Black and brown people in hyper segregated Milwaukee, their clear, lived intention to provide you with something other than whiteness.  But it was not an easy way to grow up.

    And especially on the topic of Israel, the basic tenet in which they raised you–no, there should not be a Jewish ethnostate-one you have never broken with, has made it hard for you to find community with other American Jewish people, including your extended families.

    “Yes, lucky,” you agree.  There is nuance in everything, but not always.

    You’ve just heard the heartache of someone who told her rabbi that he had taught her a pack of lies.  They avoid each other.  Another whose parents have told her that they are deeply ashamed of her. And another, whose parents haven’t spoken to her in years, speaks with resignation about their rupture.

    The stories are painful.

    At some point, you leave the topic of Zionism and return to tatoos. Show and tell begins. But it is winter in Chicago and are dressed warmly, to have stood on a bridge in the cold, so you are all wearing long sleeves and warm leggings and sweatpants.  Someone rolls up the left sleeve of her shirt.  But how to show the upper arm?  Some minor undressing occurs. Another rolls up the leg of her sweatpants to show off the art on the back of her calf.  But how to show the thigh?  Pull them down!  Finally, a cellmate rolls up her shirt to show you a tattoo that extends from her neck along her spine, almost to her butt, a gorgeous breathtaking tattoo that elicits oohs and aahs from the entire group. Along with the tattoo we see her belly and bra, her ribs and backbone.  This escalation of the undressing is enough for the officers watching you from outside the thick glass windows of the collective cell.  Enough story-telling, enough female bonding, enough revealing of the artwork on covered limbs and backs. More than enough.  The show is over.  One by one they call you out, dissemble the collective. They “process” you, take your fingerprints, your mug shot, take you to another are of the jail where there are individual cells, each one of you on her own. You spend the rest of your time, another seven hours, in a cold cell with bright lights, a camera, a hard bench, an open toilet and sink combination with a trickle of water to wash hands and take a drink, left alone to ponder.  You sit in solitary, counting the cinder blocks of your cell, with lots of time to go over the shared stories, the laughter, the tears, the determination.

    At 3:30 a.m. you are released. The jail support team is waiting for you outside the precinct door to offer hugs, smiles, sufganyot, the jelly-donuts you eat at Chanukah, and a ride home. They’ve been waiting outside half the night.  Now the other half is yours.

    You wonder, where did this story begin? Where will it take me? How do I tell it?

    The post Chanukah 2023 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Israeli Airstrikes in Lebanon Kill at Least 569, Displace Tens of Thousands

    The Israeli military is reportedly preparing to invade Lebanon while continuing to launch extensive airstrikes across the country, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the death toll has reached at least 569 people, with more than 1,800 wounded. Israeli strikes have killed United Nations employees, medical workers, at least one journalist and 50 children over the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • U.S. Officials Concluded Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza. Blinken Rejected Them


    This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by ProPublica.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Ian Austin suddenly being a director of the Jewish Chronicle is the least of its problems

    The Canary reported recently on the scandal involving the Jewish Chronicle (JC), which involved the publishing of fake stories. It had published articles from a pro-Israel journalist for months which, according to some “senior Israeli analysts”, may have been “part of an influence campaign” from Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

    What needs to be highlighted much more in the wake of this scandal, however, is the JC’s long track record of dubious ethical behaviour, and its lasting links to high-profile propagandists on the right.

    In particular, we should demand answers from its co-director Ian Austin, who sits in the House of Lords thanks to the Tories and taxpayers’ money; a fact neatly spotted by Red Collective:

    The JC has long flown under anonymous ownership. But what we do know is that ‘Tory agent’ Robbie Gibb, who holds important positions at the BBC, “was the only director of the company that owns it until last month”.

    We’ve long known about the BBC’s links to the Conservative Party, but in the wake of the JC scandal, numerous groups have called into question Gibb’s fitness to continue having any role in influencing editorial positions at the public broadcaster – especially regarding the Israeli state’s genocide in Gaza.

    After Gibb resigned in August, Ian Austin became a director, along with venture capitalist Jonathan Kandel. So they took over the role just before the scandal broke. And while Gibb has seemingly slipped away quietly, Austin also appears to have kept his new role on the down-low.

    On X, for example, we failed to find any mention from him about becoming a director of the JC. Gibb, meanwhile, “remains the sole director of the JC Media and Culture Preservation Initiative… which shares a correspondence address with the Jewish Chronicle”.

    The Jewish Chronicle and an anti-progressive smear campaign

    In early 2020, the Jewish Chronicle (JC) was failing. It had been a key part of vicious media efforts to keep former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn out of power. But having succeeded in aiding the anti-Corbyn campaign, it announced it was having to close down.

    A rescue squad of thoroughly unsavoury hacks then swooped in, though. The group included: John Ware, the man responsible for the highly controversial 2019 Panorama hit-job against Corbyn and his party; former BBC editor and Tory adviser Robbie Gibb; former Labour warhawk John Woodcock; and Israeli-state apologist Jonathan Sacerdoti, who was once a spokesperson for the highly controversial Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) and bragged in 2018 about “weaponising” antisemitism to get rid of Corbyn.

    As Jonathan Cook highlighted at Middle East Eye, the JC had a “deeply problematic track record” long before the current scandal, with many “scandalous breaches of both the law and media ethics” over recent years.

    As he explained, even “the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), the feeble “regulator” created and financed by the billionaire-owned corporate media, has repeatedly found the paper guilty of breaching its code of practice”. He added:

    According to the research of journalist and academic Brian Cathcart, in the five years to 2023, the paper broke the code an astonishing 41 times. The Chronicle has also lost, or been forced to settle, at least four libel cases. Writing about these failings, Cathcart called the large number of violations “off the scale” for a small weekly publication.

    And he continued by stressing that:

    Notably, many of the JC’s press-code violations and libel settlements related to its false allegations against either Palestinian solidarity organisations or members of the Labour left. The Chronicle served as the chief attack dog on Corbyn and his allies, stoking fears among prominent sections of the Jewish community. It began that campaign early on, when Corbyn first emerged as a candidate for the leadership.

    Corporate media outlets then amplified this coverage. And the JC knew what it was doing. As the former chair Alan Jacobs said in 2020, funders could “be proud that their combined generosity allowed the JC to survive long enough to help to see off Jeremy Corbyn and friends”.

    Never forget the anti-left media crusade. And never stop resisting it.

    Cook insisted that, under Corbyn’s leadership of Labour, the Jewish Chronicle (JC):

    led the pressure on British institutions, including the Labour Party, to adopt a new definition of antisemitism that conflated criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. Israel was the original driving force behind this new definition.

    And he concluded:

    it was precisely the relentless bullying and silencing of voices critical of Israel through the Corbyn years that helped pave the way for Israel’s current slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children.

    The pro-Israel right’s vile and cynical weaponisation of antisemitism allegations to attack left-wing allies of the Palestinian people was a key moment not only in Britain’s history, but for the world. Because if outlets like the Jewish Chronicle could divisively and falsely claim that Jeremy Corbyn – a longstanding anti-racist campaigner and peace–prize winner – was somehow an “existential threat” to Jewish people in Britain, and get away with it, what couldn’t the propaganda machine achieve?

    Corbyn represented a danger to the status quo domestically and internationally, because he wasn’t afraid to criticise the crimes of Israeli colonialism or stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people.

    He marked a clear ethical break from the Labour Party’s corporate warmongering and corrupt foreign policy in previous years. It was easy to unite all the forces for evil in the world against him. And that’s what happened.

    We must never forget the anti-left media crusade that helped to pave the way for the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Because it didn’t stop after neutralising Corbyn. The propaganda war continues today.

    And we can only build a better, more compassionate world, if we unite and mobilise to counter that propaganda – not least from the Jewish Chronicle.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • U.S. Officials Concluded Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza. Blinken Rejected Them


    This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by ProPublica.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • UN’s Guterres slams impunity over the ‘nonstop nightmare’ caused by Israel in Gaza

    The UN General Assembly is meeting for the first time since the state of Israel began its genocidal assault on occupied Gaza. And secretary general Antonio Guterres has heavily criticised the “get-out-of-jail-free card” mentality of numerous countries today. This seemed to be a clear reference to the US and its allies failing to hold Israel to account for its war crimes in Gaza.

    Guterres lamented that ongoing impunity risked pushing the world towards a global conflict.

    Israel’s genocide in Gaza, without a doubt, has brought into question the UN’s credibility as a worthwhile institution, as a small handful of nations have been able to ignore the will of the overwhelming majority of members.

    Israel’s continuing impunity is ‘edging us towards the unimaginable’

    Addressing Israel’s Gaza genocide in particular, Guterres insisted:

    Nothing can justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. The speed and scale of the killing and destruction in Gaza are unlike anything I have seen in my years as secretary general.

    He also warned that:

    Gaza is a nonstop nightmare that threatens to take the entire region with it

    And he stressed that:

    the level of impunity in the world is politically indefensible and morally intolerable. Today, a growing number of governments and others feel entitled to get-out-of-jail-free cards. They can trample international law, they can violate the United Nations charter, they can turn a blind eye to international human rights conventions or the decisions of international courts…

    They can thumb their nose at international humanitarian law, they can invade another country, lay waste to all societies or utterly disregard the welfare of their own people and nothing will happen.

    Many speakers from different countries mentioned the genocide in Gaza and urged action against Israel. But the secretary general’s comments above were a clear nod in Israel’s direction, specifically considering that the US and its lobby group of loyal nations have consistently blocked UN efforts to hold the Middle Eastern colonial power to account.

    UN chief: ‘we are heading towards the unimaginable’

    Finally, Guterres seemed to suggest that the lack of respect for international law is pushing the world closer and closer to a global conflict, saying:

    We are edging towards the unimaginable. A powder keg which risks engulfing the world.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Ed Sykes

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Birmingham University rips up Palestine flags, destroys camp, during freshers week

    Fresher’s Week at the University of Birmingham has seen confrontations between pro-Palestine students and the university security and bailiffs.

    University of Birmingham: anti-Palestine?

    While the encampment at the university was brought to an end back in July, the struggle for justice in Palestine continues and the student-staff coalition of the encampment, which calls itself BhamLiberatedZone, has been active this week.

    On Monday 23 September, the students, who all wish to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, say they put about 15 tents up on campus for a fresher’s meet and greet, and had planned to leave by 5pm.

    “We wanted to have a physical presence and meet some new students, talk about the uni’s complicity in genocide, and the companies they invest in – stuff like that” says one of the students.

    But university security arrived less than 10 minutes after they set up.

    “Security brutalised us. They pushed and pulled us. A few of us ended up with cuts and bruises. Some people got really scared and ran away. We were told repeatedly by security that we have crossed red lines and we will be expelled if they find out who we are, but we always cover our hair and faces” says the student.

    Another student said “The sight of campus security ripping up Palestine flags and pulling tents away from their own students in public view was truly horrifying to witness. We were terrified of what they might do to us, but our righteous anger was greater than any fear they could instill. This harassment of students peacefully protesting against a genocide will forever be a shame on the University of Birmingham”.

    Yesterday, these students planned a picnic with music, food, and talks about Palestine, and put up five tents. This time, they lasted several hours before bailiffs warned them if they did not leave within 20 minutes they would be forced to go.

    “Everyone stayed in the tents, and the bailiffs eventually forced us off the grass, although they were less violent than the security on Monday. Security told us that, because we were resisting the bailiffs, they’d called the police”.

    Not backing down

    BhamLiberatedZone, which is planning more activities for the rest of this week, is calling for the university to urgently meet with them, to discuss their key demands- which include being transparent about its investments, and fully divesting from all companies complicit in occupation, apartheid and genocide of the Palestinians.

    “Our hopes are to force the university to the negotiations table once again. They did this last year, but once we were evicted they stopped talking to us. This needs to change”.

    Featured image and additional images/video via BhamLiberatedZone

    By Charlie Jaay

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Will The Deadly Israel Attacks Turn Into A New Lebanon War?


    This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israel Kills 2 UN Workers in Lebanon Bombing Campaign

    Israel killed two workers for the UN Refugee Agency, the agency has said, in bombardments across Lebanon on Monday that resulted in the deadliest single day of attacks in the country in decades. The UN Human High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office announced that workers Dina Darwiche and Ali Basma, who worked in UN offices in eastern and southern Lebanon, respectively, were killed.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.