A claim has been repeatedly shared in social media posts that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a statement threatening Israel in support of Iran.
But the claim is false. Keyword searches found no official statements or credible reports that back the claim. Experts dismissed the claim, saying there is little to gain for Kim in making such a statement.
The claim was shared in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Aug. 3, 2024, by a user called “SprinterFamily” who has previously spread false information about North Korea.
The post cited Kim as saying: “We will always stand by Iran and will respond decisively to any threat to our ally. We warn the mercenary of global imperialism, namely Israel, not to make mistakes.”
A screenshot of the false X post.
The claim began to circulate amid growing fears of a regional war in the Middle East.
The nearly 10-month-old war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has led to regular low-level hostilities between Israel and Iran and Hezbollah, as well as other groups in the region that are aligned with Tehran.
But after the killing of the top leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah in July, Iran and Hezbollah pledged to retaliate, with media reports saying they may attack Israel.
North Korea has been a strategic partner of long standing for Iran, based on their subjection to extensive U.S. economic sanctions and other U.S. policies designed to counter the threats they pose to key U.S. partners.
There have been media reports that North Korean-made weapons have been supplied to Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas through Iran.
Some believe North Korea is indirectly involved in the conflicts in the Middle East, although it has never officially acknowledged or commented on any military support.
But the claim about the North Korean leader’s threat against Israel is false.
A review of North Korea’s state-run media outlets, which often carry statements from Kim, found no such statement or report.
‘Little to gain for Kim’
Harry Kazianis, senior director at the Center for the National Interest think tank, believes that if the statement was not recorded by North Korea’s official news agency, it should be assumed that the claim is false.
Kazianis said North Korea had “other ways” to cause trouble for Israel, including sales of missile technology to Iran that could be used against Israel, citing U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies.
Makino Yoshihiro, a visiting professor at Hiroshima University and diplomatic correspondent for Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun, said there would be little to gain for Kim in making such a statement.
“Iran is currently trying not to overly provoke the United States, and North Korea’s involvement would create confusion,” said Yoshihiro.
Bruce Bennett, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation, believes the claim about Kim’s statement on Israel may have originated from China or Russia, citing Russia’s attempts to build an anti-Western coalition.
“Given that there was an attack in Iran that killed a major Hamas leader, and Kim Jong Un did nothing, it suggests that if he was really threatening to confront Israel, something would have already happened,” Bennett said, adding that Kim’s threats are primarily for propaganda purposes and are unlikely to be carried out in practice.
Translated by Dukin Han. Edited by Taejun Kang.
Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Dukin Han for RFA Korean.
Israeli forces raided and shuttered the West Bank bureau of news organization Al Jazeera, accusing the newsroom of “supporting terrorism” in an order that compelled the office to close for 45 days. The raid of Al Jazeera was captured on video by the camera people of the Qatar-funded broadcaster. In the clip, bureau chief Walid al-Omari reads the order aloud and questions soldiers.
As Israel followed up its remote bombings of communications devices in Lebanon with airstrikes on Beirut, the United Nations Security Council held an emergency session Friday during which officials urgently called for an immediate cease-fire and warned that the Middle East is on “the brink of catastrophe.” “We risk seeing a conflagration that could dwarf even the devastation and suffering…
A United Nations committee on Thursday called out Israel for “serious violations” of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in the occupied Palestinian territories, particularly with its nearly yearlong assault on the Gaza Strip. “The outrageous death of children is almost historically unique. This is an extremely dark place in history,” said Bragi Guðbrandsson, vice chair of the U.N.
The UN general assembly has overwhelmingly voted for Israel to end its occupation of Palestine within a year. The resolution backs July’s order from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for Israel to withdraw from Palestine.
124 states voted in favour, including France and Spain, while 14 voted against including the US and Israel. The UK, Canada, Germany, Italy and Australia were among the 43 countries that abstained.
Israel occupation: “violation of international law”
The Israeli settlements, and their associated regime, including the transfer by Israel of settlers to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as well as Israel’s maintenance of their presence, the confiscation or requisitioning of land, the exploitation of natural resources, the extension of Israeli law to occupied territory, the forced displacement of the Palestinian population, and violence by settlers and occupying forces against Palestinians, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law
The UN motion also supports the ICJ’s finding that Israel is operating an apartheid regime through its discriminatory policies in occupied Palestine:
Israel’s legislation and measures impose and serve to maintain a near-complete separation in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, between the settler and Palestinian communities and constitute a breach of article 3 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which refers to two particularly severe forms of racial discrimination and stipulates that “States Parties particularly condemn racial segregation and apartheid and undertake to prevent, prohibit and eradicate all practices of this nature in territories under their jurisdiction”
The general assembly motion follows others like the 2016 security council resolution that stated:
the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace
As a member of the security council with veto power, the UK under the Conservatives voted in favour of the 2016 motion. Now the UK under Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has abstained on the general assembly resolution. Given the Tories are considered even more pro-Israel, this is telling.
The UK’s explanation for abstaining says the resolution doesn’t provide “sufficient clarity to effectively advance our shared aim of a peace premised on a negotiated two-state solution”. But through abstaining the UK is effectively supporting Israel’s ongoing further colonial expansion into Palestine.
The resolution calls on states to sanction any products coming from Israelis in occupied Palestine, not to legally recognise in the future a Greater Israel and to avoid legitimising its exploitation of Palestinian natural resources through trade.
There are over 700,000 illegal Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian territory of the West Bank. The motion calls not only for Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, but to pay reparations to Palestinians.
Right after we broadcast, Israel carried out “targeted strikes” in Beirut as it appears to be preparing for a ground invasion of southern Lebanon as an expansion of its war on Gaza. Following deadly Israeli attacks that blew up walkie-talkies and pagers across Lebanon this week, killing at least 37 people and wounding around 3,000, Israeli officials have pledged to ramp up their campaign…
Israel has pounded Lebanon with bombs, just days after targeting communications devices in a series of deadly explosions. 37 people have been killed, and thousands more wounded. Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, called the attacks a “massacre” and a possible “act of war.”
Nasrallah said Israel would face “just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not”. As he delivered his address, Israeli fighter jets roared over Beirut, their sonic booms shaking buildings and sending residents scrambling for cover.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israel struck the south at least 52 times. It was one of the heaviest Israeli bombardments of south Lebanon since the border exchanges erupted last October.
Hezbollah meanwhile said it launched at least 17 attacks on military sites in northern Israel.
Professor Jason Hickel used a BBC graphic to show the scale of Israeli attacks on Lebanon:
People need to see this. Israel has perpetrated over 80% of the cross-border attacks with Lebanon during the past year. Hezbollah has shown remarkable restraint. pic.twitter.com/iu9JB0oaYr
Lebanese foreign minister Abdallah Bou Habib said the “blatant assault on Lebanon’s sovereignty and security” was a dangerous development that could “signal a wider war”.
Speaking ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on the attacks, he said Lebanon had filed a complaint against “Israel’s cyber-terrorist aggression that amounts to a war crime”.
Israel’s terrorist device blasts
The device blasts and Thursday’s barrage of air strikes came after Israel announced it was shifting its war objectives to its northern border with Lebanon where it has been trading fire with Hezbollah.
For nearly a year, Israel’s firepower has been focused on Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza, but its troops have also been engaged in near-daily exchanges with Hezbollah fighters. Hezbollah maintains that its fight is in support of Hamas, and Nasrallah vowed the attacks on Israel will continue as long as the war in Gaza lasts.
The preliminary findings of a Lebanese investigation found the pagers had been booby-trapped, a security official said. Once pagers were detonated, the resulting blasts caused chaos and bloody destruction at a number of sites.
The country’s mission to the United Nations concurred, saying in a letter that the probe showed “the targeted devices were professionally booby-trapped… before arriving in Lebanon, and were detonated by sending emails to the devices”.
A source close to Hezbollah, asking not to be identified, said the pagers were recently imported and appeared to have been “sabotaged at source”.
A key horrifying element of the attacks is their indiscriminate nature.
Jessica Peake, an international law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, toldThe Intercept:
I think detonating pagers in people’s pockets without any knowledge of where those are, in that moment, is a pretty evident indiscriminate attack.
I think this seems to be quite blatant, both violations of both proportionality and indiscriminate attacks.
Of course, the implication here is that the apparently sabotaged devices are used by doctors, restaurant staff, and more – civilians, in other words. After the initial wave of attacks via paging devices, walkie talkie devices were also detonated.
Living in terror in Lebanon
For people in Lebanon, many are living in terror unsure which everyday devices may explode next.
Lina Ismail spoke to Agence France-Presse (AFP) by phone from the eastern city of Baalbek and said:
What happened in the last two days is so frightening. It’s terrifying.
I took away my daughter’s power bank and we even sleep with our mobile phones in a separate room.
Horrifyingly, mainstream media in the West has followed a familiar playbook: absolve Israel above all:
These headlines are ridiculous. Pagers and walkie-talkies are not attacking Lebanon, Israel is pic.twitter.com/MQxpQm5Yig
Once again, the Israeli perspective appears to be that they are targeting Hezbollah for supporting Hamas – did they get Hezbollah? Children with eyes blown out of their heads, has that stopped Hezbollah?
Fatima Abdullah is laid to rest in Lebanon.
Abdullah was killed in the Israeli intelligence pager attack yesterday.
Disgustingly, the technological skill required to sabotage and detonate devices has been celebrated by some on social media:
Had the terrorist attack witnessed in Lebanon in the past 48hrs occurred in Europe, western media would be following victims, telling the story of a boy who lost an eye, a girl who lost her life… but these are only brown people, so they celebrate Israel's ingenuity. Repulsive.
Brown, Arab, and Muslim lives are more disposable than white lives. This white supremacist logic is precisely what allows people to consider the technological implications over and above the chaos and terror Israel has spread in Lebanon.
Disposability
The fact that 9 year old Fatima’s funeral was disrupted with yet another wave of blasts should turn anyone’s stomach:
Fatima was killed in the pager attack. She was 9 years old. Then during her funeral, Israel set off another explosion killing mourners. Textbook terrorism. https://t.co/gsFMxQ4d85
Meanwhile, Western media can’t even bring itself to state clearly who is carrying out these attacks. These pagers and walkie talkies did not spontaneously detonate on their own, killing and wounding many.
Israel is responsible, and the media’s detachment of accountability is cruel and commonplace.
The killing of these people in Lebanon is the very definition of spreading terror. Some were shopping, some were in their homes, some with children. Israel’s impunity clearly knows no bounds.
Content warning – this article contains embedded video clips that depict graphic settler colonial violence
Footage of an Israel raid in the occupied West Bank showed a soldier pushing an apparently dead Palestinian man off a rooftop.
AFPTV footage of the operation in the town of Qabatiyah, near Jenin, on Thursday showed an Israeli soldier using his foot to roll the body towards the edge of the roof and then pushing him over, while at least two other soldiers looked on. The Cradle shared the shocking footage:
In the first video, an invading Israeli soldier executes a young Palestinian at point-blank range on the roof of the house he was besieged in. In the second, soldiers throw his body off the roof in Qabatiya, south of Jenin, occupied West Bank. pic.twitter.com/qdtgzubWmu
Qabatiyah is located in the northern West Bank, where the military has been carrying out large-scale raids since late August that the Palestinian health ministry says have left dozens dead.
Barbaric behaviour from Israel
Former Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth stated the obvious – there is no military need for Israel to throw someone off a roof:
Under international humanitarian law, soldiers are supposed to ensure the bodies of enemy combatants are treated decently. Yet Israeli soldiers threw the bodies of three Palestinian men from a roof “There is no military need to do this.” https://t.co/b1HJ0PZdyC
The Chief of Communications at Euro-Med Monitor, Muhammed Shehada, pointed out that the accusations Israelis make of Palestinians are often confessions of their own crimes:
"But… but Hamas threw people off rooftops" has been one of Israel's main talking points to justify slaughtering Gazans for decades.
Here, the IDF, in broad daylight, throwing a Palestinian off a rooftop after they shot him today.
‘Gazans will throw you off the roof’. Every single accusation – a confession. They will never stop telling on themselves, cursed people. Longing for the day Israel experiences everthing it has done to Palestine. https://t.co/dDohjoRjcg
This horrifying video of Israeli soldiers throwing Palestinians off of a rooftop in Qabatiya, south of Jenin, should be breaking news. But it won’t due to anti-Palestinian media bias. https://t.co/BjAAAmY2oT
Al Jazeerareported that the Israeli soldiers had thrown three men off a building after having shot them. The men’s bodies were then removed with a military bulldozer.
Secretary general of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, told Al Jazeera that the footage showed:
absolutely savage and inhuman behaviour.
Barghouti showed that he was not sure if the men kicked off the rooftop “were still alive or not.”
Journalist Laila Warah, currently in Ramallah, said:
The footage we’ve seen is horrific and it’s making the rounds here in Palestine. But ultimately, Palestinians are not surprised. Israel has a track record of disrespecting the bodies of the Palestinians they kill.
Even in death, Palestinians are brutalised and subjected to disrespectful and demeaning treatment from Israelis. Undoubtedly, if an Israeli person being kicked off a rooftop, mainstream media would be spilling forth with emotional reporting decrying the inhumanity and savage behaviour. As it is, Israelis continue to brutalise Palestinians and much of the world barely spares them a glance.
‘Some of the most serious crimes under international law’
ICJP has written to the Attorney General – the overseer of the charity sector in the UK – asking him to investigate JNF UK, and consider revoking its charitable status.
The letter states that “JNF UK’s activities implicate some of the most serious crimes under international law” and accuses it of:
funding the Israeli military, supporting Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), and partnering with Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael Jewish National Fund (JNF) in Israel – an organisation which has been involved in the ongoing displacement of Palestinians and property theft in the oPt, as well as destruction of the natural environment.
Mira Naseer, Legal Officer at ICJP, told the Canary:
There has been a long campaign (by Stop the JNF) and complaint files to both the Charity Commission, here in the UK, and the fundraising regulator, which clearly show JNF UK’s fundraising practices are deceptive, and that its charitable purpose don’t align with the public interest.
In light of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, I think it is particularly horrific that it’s still fundraising and operating as a charity in the UK. From publicly available information, it’s very clear that this so called charity should be under government scrutiny and yet, time and time again we have seen regulators and officials just dismiss the facts presented to them.
Activism against JNF Canada pays off
Last month, after more than a decade of grassroots activism the Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) revoked the charity status of JNF Canada, after finding it had violated tax laws by raising money for a foreign army- the Israeli Defence Force, and this has given renewed hope to activists, that the same can happen to JNF UK.
Mick Napier, a founder member of the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which helped launch the Stop the JNF campaign more than a decade ago, told the Canary:
It’s a great breakthrough, and quite remarkable, because the Canadian government is one of the most pro-Israel governments on the planet. Our efforts against JNF UK, in England and Wales with the Charity Commission, and in Scotland, with the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) have, so far, been uniformly bleak, despite all sorts of efforts.
Beginnings of a racist and colonialist organisation
Established in 1901 by the World Zionist Organisation, the purpose of the JNF is, and always has been, to acquire land to establish and develop ‘a Jewish state for the benefit of Jewish people’ from anywhere in the world, by the colonisation of Palestinian land and the expulsion of Palestinians.
A 1940 diary extract from Joseph Weitz, director of the JNF’s Lands Department and, in 1948, leader of the ‘transfer committee’, confirms the JNF’s objective of ethnic cleansing and settler colonialism. He wrote:
There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [Bedouin] tribe. And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution.
Initially, the JNF raised funds in the Jewish diaspora, and bought only small areas of land, but this changed during the creation of Israel in 1948, when it played an essential role in the dispossession of Palestinians, and seized vast amounts of land.
Zionist militias violently expelled around 750,000 Palestinians from their homes, and destroyed hundreds of towns and villages, while Israel’s Absentee Property Law – which is still in use today – ensured the state gained ownership of any land from which Palestinians had fled.
The JNF is now the largest single land owner in Israel, controlling large areas belonging to millions of Palestinians, but barring them from leasing, building on, managing or working their own land.
JNF UK enjoys tax exemption and gift aid, but helps fund Israel’s crimes
The organisation is active in more than 55 countries and has fundraising branches and offices around the world, including Scotland and England. These branches operate behind a corporate veil so generally deny they are part of the same organisation, although acting as fundraiser and publicist for their parent organisation (the JNF) in Israel.
Almost all are registered for charitable or tax-exempt status, even though the JNF is complicit in ethnic cleansing, occupation, and apartheid. Donations to JNF UK are also eligible for Gift Aid, so our government tops up donations by adding its own 25% contribution.
JNF UK claims that ‘every penny raised by JNF UK is sent to a project in Israel’.
‘British Park’ is one such project, the JNF UK’s branch financed and developed in the 1950s, and continues to develop today. This 10,000 acre recreation area and forest was created over the remains of seven Palestinian villages, the largest of which was Ajjur, home to a population of more than 3700 until a series of military attacks, in 1948, led to the violent expulsion of its residents.
‘Memorials’ show people and organisations in the UK who have financed the land-grab:
Palestinian refugee Kholoud Al-Ajarma is an anthropologist and film maker. She was born and brought up in Aida refugee camp, Bethlehem, after her family was driven out of Ajjur in 1948. Their lands now lie under ‘British Park’.
She told the Canary:
Ajjur was attacked by Zionist militias. They occupied the mosque, the highest building in the village, and started shooting randomly. The men stayed to try and fight, and the women and children left in a hurry, taking only essentials. They thought they would return, but it didn’t end up like this. When money ran out, my family heard there was somewhere to live in tents, and ended up in Aida. They still live there.
Tree planting used to hide war crimes
According to the Palestine Land Society, the refugee camps of the West Bank and Jordan alone hold around 170,000 Palestinians whose lands were seized to create British Park:
British Park is just one of many developed on stolen Palestinian land to hide war crimes carried out by the JNF – the destruction of homes, schools, religious and cultural institutions, and archaeological sites, and the often violent dispossession of Palestinians from their land:
JNF has planted more than 240 million trees, mainly the Australian Eucalyptus – which is fast growing but highly dependent on water – and the Aleppo Pine – renamed by Zionists as the ‘Jerusalem Pine’. This native species, which uses a lot of water and is very prone to disease and forest fires, naturally occupies sparse hilltop ecosystems and was not suited to the forestry projects of the JNF. Forest fires are now a common sight in Israel as a result of their planting.
These forests serve several purposes.
They make Palestine look more like the Northern and Eastern European landscape, where the early settlers primarily came from. When planted over the ruins of destroyed villages, which more than two-thirds of JNF forests are on, they also hide evidence of ethnic cleansing, stop Palestinian refugees from ever being able to return to their villages, and also help erase Palestinian history.
After 1948, the JNF repackaged itself as an environmental organisation and is now registered as an environmental NGO with the United Nations. Eurig Scandrett was part of the Friends of the Earth International Delegation to Palestine in 2012, and co-author of its report Environmental Nakba. He says nothing is further from the truth:
The JNF is not an environmental organisation, but a racist one, trying to cover its crimes through greenwash. In all its guises – as an adjunct of the state of Israel or as a charity in Britain – its purpose remains the same: an instrument of ethnic cleansing. It is an utter disgrace that its offices in England and Scotland have charitable status and are subsidised by UK taxpayers.
Its projects of displacement and forestation continue today, particularly in the Naqab (Negev), where the JNF UK is currently focused.
A major JNF ‘development’ is underway to transform the Naqab into ‘the national engine of growth’ and a military and high-tech hub by 2040.
This plan requires the forced displacement of Bedouins to make way for exclusively Jewish settlements, complete with parks and forests, for the one million Jewish people who will be settled into the area.
As Israeli citizens who are non-Jewish, most Bedouins have their basic rights violated on a regular basis and many live in villages unrecognised by the state. There are many ongoing land ownership disputes and long-standing attempts by Israel to displace the Naqab’s Bedouin, but many refuse to leave as they see their land as an integral part of their identity and heritage.
In 2022, widespread peaceful protest by Bedouin communities against JNF tree planting projects resulted in police repression and brutality.
JNF UK complicit in erasure of Bedouin villages, culture, and heritage
While JNF boasts of ‘making the desert bloom’, the Bedouin see this as an attempt to erase their villages and make the surrounding land inaccessible to former inhabitants – a means of asserting state control and forcibly displacing them from their ancestral lands – as much of JNF’s afforestation here occurs on land still legally disputed, such as in the ‘unrecognized’ village of Al-Araqib, which has been demolished over 220 times since 2010 to make way for a JNF forest.
In the Negev, we have encountered the JNF, during the demolitions in Al-Araqib, where on one occasion, a JNF tractor even participated in the destruction. Although the organisation presents its afforestation efforts – which it was quick to carry out around the village – as combating desertification, they are more about controlling land. These forests take over areas that could be used for grazing, and restrict the development of Bedouin’s towns and villages. They don’t hide the preference for displacing communities to plant forests or establish Jewish-only settlements. This is unjustifiable racism.
Aziz, a Bedouin from Al-Araqib village, says:
A lot of damage has been done to us. The JNF is an organization that has destroyed the seasonal crops in our village. It has erased the borders between the plots of land. It has wiped out the seasonal vegetation that grows in the area. It is erasing our history. The JNF is a dispossessing organization.
Residents of Umm al-Hiran have been told their village will be demolished in two months, to make way for a Jewish settlement called Dror but, as yet, they have not been provided with a clear relocation plan, so many still remain on their land.
Umm al-Hiran resident Rahad Abu Alkeyan told the Canary:
KKL (JNF) is building the infrastructure for the new settlement ‘Dror’ which pushes us from our home and will lead to the destruction of our homes and our dispossession to the city of Hora. Solutions must be found, and there must be dialogue with the residents. Destroying the villages is not the solution – only full and equal citizenship is the answer.
These demolitions are a violation of International law, and UN experts have stressed that the Bedouin must be allowed to stay on their land.
JNF is also called into question about the environmental effects of its afforestation of the Naqab.
Plants, animals, and birds, many of which are specifically adapted to this environment, are now seeing their habitat destroyed by encroaching trees. There is also the added problem of irrigation of the region, which involves the diversion of water from the Jordan River, using the National Water Carrier.
Scandrett said:
They have been extracting water for decades and, as a result, the River Jordan’s flow is about 4% of what it was during British mandate times. The primary impact of this National Water Carrier, has been massive devastation to the River Jordan. The water is now almost gone.
JNF branches around the world ‘vulnerable like never before, to organised campaigning’
The JNF uses environmentalism as a cover for ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and occupation, and there should be no place for an organisation such as this in our society.
By giving its fundraising branches, such as JNF UK, charitable status, and refusing to revoke this – when there is clear evidence of wrongdoing – our government and other governments around the world make us complicit in what the JNF does.
In addition to pressurising our regulatory organisations-which are government agents, campaigners say we need to continue raising awareness of the role the JNF plays in ethic cleansing and environmental destruction.
Stop the JNF campaign, is gathering pace around the world, and has already had considerable success in Napier’s native Scotland, where JNF stopped its on the ground fundraising more than a decade ago.
Napier concluded:
In Scotland, they used to do big glitzy fundraising affairs, with some Hollywood A listers, at golf clubs and at the Hilton, but that’s all stopped, since 2014, because we always gave them a hard time and held a protest. Given the International Court of Justice’s ruling on the plausibility of Israeli genocide, its fundraising arms around the world are vulnerable like never before, to organised campaigning. Help us spread awareness of the JNF’s history and ongoing involvement in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Support us at www.stopthejnf.org
Featured image and additional images via Kholoud Al-Ajarma
The U.S. presidential election is just 45 days away, and for antiwar voters, the policy differences between the two leading candidates are vanishingly thin. As the Biden-Harris administration continues to supply billions of dollars in military aid to Israel, the Uncommitted National Movement, which for months has attempted to steer the Democratic Party toward a more critical stance on Israel, has announced it is not endorsing Kamala Harris. Neither does the organization recommend casting a third-party vote, citing the risk of splitting the two-party vote and ushering in a second term for Donald Trump. “We were not met in good faith with our policy demands,” says the Uncommitted National Movement’s co-founder Lexis Zeidan about its attempts to parley with the Harris campaign. Zeidan says the organization will continue to pressure Democrats from within and outside of the party. “What we’re asking is not outrageous.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
The coverage of Israeli soldiers pushing three Palestinians off a roof in the West Bank town of Qabatiya – it’s unclear whether the men are dead or near-dead – is being barely reported by the western media, even though it was videoed from two different angles and a reporter from the main US news agency Associated Press witnessed it.
The Israeli soldiers killed, mutilated and humiliated the bodies of three Palestinians in Qabatia ( Jenin area) today and threw their bodies from a high building to the ground in a savage and inhuman manner. pic.twitter.com/0umG45ZhPH
— Mustafa Barghouti @Mustafa_Barghouti (@MustafaBarghou1) September 19, 2024
AP reported on this incident some nine hours ago. Its news feed is accessed by all western establishment media, so they all know.
Yet again, the media has chosen to ignore Israeli war crimes, even when there is definitive proof that they occurred. (Or perhaps more accurately: even more so when there is definitive proof they occurred.)
Remember, that same media never fails to highlight – or simply make up – any crime Palestinians are accused of, such as those non-existent “beheaded babies”.
AP itself treats this latest atrocity in the West Bank as no big deal. It reports simply that it may be part of a “pattern of excessive force” by Israeli soldiers towards Palestinians.
That comment, without quote marks and ascribed to a human rights group, is almost certainly AP’s preferred characterisation of the group’s reference to a pattern not of “excessive force” but of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
AP makes sure to give Israel’s pretext for why it is committing war crimes: “Israel says the raids are necessary to stamp out militancy.”
But it forgets yet again to mention why that “militancy” exists: because Israel has been violently enforcing an illegal military occupation of the Palestinian territories for many decades, in which it – once again illegally – has drafted in an army of settler militias to drive out the native Palestinian population.
AP also forgets to mention that, under international law, the Palestinians have every right to resist Israel’s occupying soldiers, including “militantly”.
Western governments might characterise Palestinians shooting at Israeli soldiers as “terrorism”, but that’s not how it is seen in the international law codes that western states drafted decades ago and that they claim to uphold.
It’s also worth noting that the local Palestinian reporter who witnessed this crime had his report rewritten by “Julia Frankel, an Associated Press reporter in Jerusalem”.
As is true with many other western outlets, AP copy is editorially overseen from Jerusalem, where its office is staffed mostly with Israeli Jews.
Western news outlets doubtless privately rationalise this to themselves as a wise precaution, making sure copy is “sensitive” to Israel’s perspective and less likely to incur the wrath of the Israeli government and Israel lobby.
Which is precisely the problem. The bias in western reporting is baked in. It is designed not to upset Israel – in the midst of a “plausible genocide”, according to the World Court – which means it’s entirely skewed and completely untrustworthy.
It makes our media utterly complicit in Israel’s war crimes, including when Israeli soldiers throw Palestinians off a roof.
UPDATE:
Very belatedly, the BBC has reported this on one of its news channels. Note, it adds an entirely unnecessary disclaimer that the footage hasn’t been “independently verified” – whatever that means. There are now at least three separate videos, all taken from different angles, showing the same war crime. Even the Israeli military has confirmed the incident happened.
The BBC also assumes the three Palestinians are dead. There is absolutely no reason to make that assumption: it violates the most basic rules of reporting.
And the anchor, clearly nervous about how she should refer to the men being pushed off a roof, ends by observing that the footage is “another example of the tensions and the many fronts on which we see Israel fighting”. No, it’s another example of Israeli soldiers committing war crimes, and the media trying to deflect attention from that fact.
The BBC runs a report on Israeli soldiers pushing Palestinian bodies off the roof of a building & the presenter then remarks that the footage is an example of the many fronts Israel is fighting on
The Palestine solidarity movement will converge on Liverpool for the Labour Party conference to demand the government take action on Israel’s genocide. Meanwhile, inside the conference it’s emerged that Labour Party officials have banned the use of the words “genocide” and “apartheid” in publicity materials – in relation to Israel’s genocide and apartheid.
The 19th national march for Palestine since October 2023 will take place on Saturday 21 September and is the first to be held outside London. Tens of thousands of demonstrators will march through Liverpool to the perimeter of the Labour Party conference to demand the UK government take meaningful action to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza and in support of Palestinian rights.
The march leaves St George’s Plateau, Lime St Station, Liverpool at 12pm. There will be a rally at Pier Head from 2pm. Full details are here.
Labour protest
In the first national March for Palestine outside of London, Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and its coalition partners have brought the movement for freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians to the Labour Party conference.
On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to affirm the historic ruling by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July and trigger the legal obligation of all states to end complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid regime, including through an arms embargo.
Shamefully, the UK abstained in the vote, following a pattern of complicity with Israel’s violations of international law.
Despite the continuation of what the ICJ accepted to be a plausible case of genocide in Gaza, and the application made by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for arrest warrants for Israeli leaders, the UK government has continued to speak of Israel as a key ally.
Earlier this month the Foreign Secretary David Lammy accepted that there is a clear risk that UK arms exports might be used to commit serious violations of international law – but his response – to suspend 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel – has been condemned as inadequate and ineffective by campaigners. In particular, he excluded indirect exports of components to Israel for the F-35 combat aircraft, known to have been used to massacre civilians in Gaza.
Banned from saying ‘genocide’
Whilst the national March for Palestine will be outside conference, PSC will continue its work inside the conference with two important fringe meetings on Monday 23 September.
At 1pm “Labour, Palestine, and Islamophobia” will be a discussion on the alienation of Muslim and other minority communities from Labour due to its position on Gaza and what the party must do to recover lost support and confront the threat of the far right.
At 6pm a panel on “Justice for Palestine: confronting genocide and ending apartheid” will urge the government to do more to end Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and unlawful occupation.
PSC was not allowed to use the words “genocide” or “apartheid” in their description of their fringe meeting in the official conference guide, which instead lists the fringe meeting simply as ‘Justice for Palestine’.
This is yet another example of the Labour leadership refusing to address the realities affirmed by numerous human rights monitoring bodies, and this year by the ICJ, that Israel is practising the crime of apartheid. It also ignores the evidence accepted as plausible by the ICJ that Israel is now committing the crime of genocide.
PSC has also been supported by constituency Labour parties and trade unions in attempting to secure a motion for debate on Palestine at the conference. Motions on Palestine – calling for international law to be upheld and a complete stop to arms exports to Israel – are on the conference agenda, but it has not yet been decided whether they will be debated.
It is feared that factions linked to the party leadership will seek to push the motions off the agenda to avoid embarrassment to the government, and avoid any discussions that are critical of Israel’s actions or call for its government to be held to account.
Israel IS committing genocide – yet Labour won’t let you say it
Ben Jamal, PSC Director, said:
Israel is committing a genocide, after decades of illegal military occupation of Palestinian land and decades of practicing the crime of apartheid on all Palestinians. The vast majority of the world’s governments believe it is time Israel was held to account and sanctioned for repeatedly and flagrantly violating international law. The narrow band of governments that stand in the way of upholding international law shamefully includes our own.
The Labour government knows that Israel is committing crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. But instead of honouring its obligations under international law, it is still seeking to shield Israel from accountability. It is shocking and unacceptable that this government would remain actively complicit with a state that commits genocide and practices apartheid, but that is the case. That is why we bring our movement for Palestinian freedom, justice and equality to the Labour party conference.
The wider labour movement, as demonstrated by the motion passed unanimously by the TUC at its recent congress, is calling for action to hold Israel to account including a full arms embargo. Opinion polls show that these demands are supported by members in the Labour party and by the wider public. This is a moral test for Keir Starmer and the Labour leadership. They need to stand up for the implementation of international law and be bold in confronting those who undermine it, no matter who they are.
With each ludicrously diabolical move, Israel’s security and military services are proving that they will broaden the conflict ignited when Hamas breached the country’s vaunted security defences on October 7. Notions such as ceasefire and peace are terms of nonsense and babble before the next grand push towards apocalyptic recognition.
The pager killings in Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 17 that left almost 3000 people injured and 12 dead were just another facet of this move. On September 18, a number of walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah were also detonated, killing 14. (The combined death toll continues to rise.)
In keeping with the small script that always accompanies such operations, the coordinated measure to detonate thousands of deadly pagers had Mossad’s fingerprints over it, though never officially accepted as such. It featured the use of the Apollo AR924 pager, adopted by Hezbollah as a substitute for smartphone technology long compromised by Israeli surveillance.
The group had ordered 5,000 beepers made by the Taiwanese Gold Apollo manufacturer in the early spring, most likely via BAC Consulting, a Hungarian-based company licensed to use the trademark. According to a Reuters report, citing a “senior Lebanese source”, these had been modified “at the production level.” Mossad had “injected a board inside the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with a device or scanner.”
The manner of its execution stirred sighs of admiration. Here was Israel’s intelligence apparatus, caught napping on October 7, reputationally restored. French defence expert Pierre Servent suggested that, “The series of operations conducted over the last few months marks their big comeback, with a desire for deterrence and a message: ‘we messed up but are not dead.’” A salivating Mike Dimino, former CIA analyst and plying his trade at Defense Priorities, a US-based think tank, admired the operation as one of “classic sabotage” that would have taken “months if not years” to put into play and proved to be “[i]ntelligence work at its finest.”
While admired by the security types as bloody, bold machismo, this venture remains politically stunted. However stunning a statement of power, it only promises temporary paralysis. It’s true that Hezbollah is in disarray regarding its communications, the extent of the compromise, and pondering the nightmarish logistics of it all. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has every reason to feel rattled. But the pretext for an escalation, the temptation to reassert virility and strength, has been set, thereby creating the broader justification for a move into Lebanon.
The broader war, the death, and the calamity, beckons, and an excited DiMino proposes that, “If you were planning a ground incursion into Lebanon to push Hezbollah N[orth] of the Litani, this is exactly the sort of chaos you’d sow in advance.” An unnamed former Israeli official, speaking to Axios, confirmed that the modified pagers had been originally intended as a swift, opening attack “in an all-out war to try to cripple Hezbollah.” Their use on September 17 was only prompted by Israeli concerns that their operation might have been compromised.
Nasrallah, in his September 19 speech, complemented the dark mood. “Israel’s foolish Northern Command leader talks about a security zone inside Lebanese territory – we are waiting for you to enter Lebanese territory.” He also promised that the only way 120,000 Israelis evacuated from the North could return safely “is to stop the aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”
Every resort to force, every attempt to avoid the diplomatic table, is another deadly deviation, distraction and denial. It is also an admission that Israel remains incapable of reaching an accord with the Palestinians and those who either defend or exploit their dispossession and grief.
On a granular level, the wide flung nature of the operation, while audacious in its execution, also suggests an absence of focus. The target range, in this case, was violently expansive: not merely leaders but low-level operatives and those in proximity to them. The result was to be expected: death, including two children, and broadly inflicted mutilations. In humanitarian terms, it was disastrous, demonstrating, yet again, the callousness that such a conflict entails. Bystanders at marketplaces were maimed. Doctors and other medical workers were injured. Lebanon’s hospital system was overwhelmed.
Human Rights Watch notes that international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-traps precisely because such devices could place civilians in harm’s way. “The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known,” opined Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at HRW, “would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction.”
Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, to which both Lebanon and Israel are parties, offers the following definition of a booby-trap: “any device or material which is designed, constructed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act.”
Quibbling over matters of international humanitarian law is never far away. Over the dead and injured in rarified air, disputatious legal eagles often appear. While the use of such devices “in the form of harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material” is prohibited by Article 7(2) of Amended Protocol II, the legal pedants will ask what constitutes specific design and construction. Ditto such issues as proportionality and legitimate targeting.
Jessica Peake of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, is mercifully free of quibbles in offering her assessment: “detonating pagers in people’s pockets without any knowledge of where those are, in that moment, is a pretty evident indiscriminate attack” and also a violation of the rule of proportionality.
The calculus of such killings and targeting enriches rather than drains the pool of blood and massacre. Its logic is not one of cessation but replication. No longer can Israel’s military prowess alone be seen as a reassurance against any retaliation and whatever form it takes. October 7 continues to cast its dispelling shadow. Deterrence through sheer technological power, far from being asserted, has been further weakened.
With each ludicrously diabolical move, Israel’s security and military services are proving that they will broaden the conflict ignited when Hamas breached the country’s vaunted security defences on October 7. Notions such as ceasefire and peace are terms of nonsense and babble before the next grand push towards apocalyptic recognition.
The pager killings in Lebanon and parts of Syria on September 17 that left almost 3000 people injured and 12 dead were just another facet of this move. On September 18, a number of walkie-talkies used by members of Hezbollah were also detonated, killing 14. (The combined death toll continues to rise.)
In keeping with the small script that always accompanies such operations, the coordinated measure to detonate thousands of deadly pagers had Mossad’s fingerprints over it, though never officially accepted as such. It featured the use of the Apollo AR924 pager, adopted by Hezbollah as a substitute for smartphone technology long compromised by Israeli surveillance.
The group had ordered 5,000 beepers made by the Taiwanese Gold Apollo manufacturer in the early spring, most likely via BAC Consulting, a Hungarian-based company licensed to use the trademark. According to a Reuters report, citing a “senior Lebanese source”, these had been modified “at the production level.” Mossad had “injected a board inside the device that has explosive material that receives a code. It’s very hard to detect it through any means. Even with a device or scanner.”
The manner of its execution stirred sighs of admiration. Here was Israel’s intelligence apparatus, caught napping on October 7, reputationally restored. French defence expert Pierre Servent suggested that, “The series of operations conducted over the last few months marks their big comeback, with a desire for deterrence and a message: ‘we messed up but are not dead.’” A salivating Mike Dimino, former CIA analyst and plying his trade at Defense Priorities, a US-based think tank, admired the operation as one of “classic sabotage” that would have taken “months if not years” to put into play and proved to be “[i]ntelligence work at its finest.”
While admired by the security types as bloody, bold machismo, this venture remains politically stunted. However stunning a statement of power, it only promises temporary paralysis. It’s true that Hezbollah is in disarray regarding its communications, the extent of the compromise, and pondering the nightmarish logistics of it all. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has every reason to feel rattled. But the pretext for an escalation, the temptation to reassert virility and strength, has been set, thereby creating the broader justification for a move into Lebanon.
The broader war, the death, and the calamity, beckons, and an excited DiMino proposes that, “If you were planning a ground incursion into Lebanon to push Hezbollah N[orth] of the Litani, this is exactly the sort of chaos you’d sow in advance.” An unnamed former Israeli official, speaking to Axios, confirmed that the modified pagers had been originally intended as a swift, opening attack “in an all-out war to try to cripple Hezbollah.” Their use on September 17 was only prompted by Israeli concerns that their operation might have been compromised.
Nasrallah, in his September 19 speech, complemented the dark mood. “Israel’s foolish Northern Command leader talks about a security zone inside Lebanese territory – we are waiting for you to enter Lebanese territory.” He also promised that the only way 120,000 Israelis evacuated from the North could return safely “is to stop the aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.”
Every resort to force, every attempt to avoid the diplomatic table, is another deadly deviation, distraction and denial. It is also an admission that Israel remains incapable of reaching an accord with the Palestinians and those who either defend or exploit their dispossession and grief.
On a granular level, the wide flung nature of the operation, while audacious in its execution, also suggests an absence of focus. The target range, in this case, was violently expansive: not merely leaders but low-level operatives and those in proximity to them. The result was to be expected: death, including two children, and broadly inflicted mutilations. In humanitarian terms, it was disastrous, demonstrating, yet again, the callousness that such a conflict entails. Bystanders at marketplaces were maimed. Doctors and other medical workers were injured. Lebanon’s hospital system was overwhelmed.
Human Rights Watch notes that international humanitarian law prohibits the use of booby-traps precisely because such devices could place civilians in harm’s way. “The use of an explosive device whose exact location could not be reliably known,” opined Lama Fakih, Middle East and North Africa Director at HRW, “would be unlawfully indiscriminate, using a means of attack that could not be directed at a specific military target and as a result would strike military targets and civilians without distinction.”
Amended Protocol II of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, to which both Lebanon and Israel are parties, offers the following definition of a booby-trap: “any device or material which is designed, constructed or adapted to kill or injure, and which functions unexpectedly when a person disturbs or approaches an apparently harmless object or performs an apparently safe act.”
Quibbling over matters of international humanitarian law is never far away. Over the dead and injured in rarified air, disputatious legal eagles often appear. While the use of such devices “in the form of harmless portable objects which are specifically designed and constructed to contain explosive material” is prohibited by Article 7(2) of Amended Protocol II, the legal pedants will ask what constitutes specific design and construction. Ditto such issues as proportionality and legitimate targeting.
Jessica Peake of the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, is mercifully free of quibbles in offering her assessment: “detonating pagers in people’s pockets without any knowledge of where those are, in that moment, is a pretty evident indiscriminate attack” and also a violation of the rule of proportionality.
The calculus of such killings and targeting enriches rather than drains the pool of blood and massacre. Its logic is not one of cessation but replication. No longer can Israel’s military prowess alone be seen as a reassurance against any retaliation and whatever form it takes. October 7 continues to cast its dispelling shadow. Deterrence through sheer technological power, far from being asserted, has been further weakened.
The death toll from Israel’s device explosions in Lebanon is continuing to rise as Israel has intensified its bombings in southern Lebanon and Hezbollah’s leader has said the attacks are a “declaration of war” by Israel. On Thursday, the Lebanese Health Ministry reported that the death toll from the pager and walkie talkie explosions in the previous two days is at 37, while over 3,000…
The Uncommitted Movement announced on Thursday that it is declining to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris after the Democratic Party has repeatedly refused to address the pro-Palestine caucus’s concerns over the party’s role in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In a statement, the group said that the Harris campaign has made it “impossible” for them to endorse the vice president. Most recently…
The House passed a bill on Wednesday to label products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank as originating from “Israel,” essentially recognizing Israel’s annexation and ethnic cleansing of the region in what opponents of the bill say is a “hateful” attempt to erase the very existence of Palestinians in Palestine. The bill would make permanent an extremist Donald Trump…
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Sept 18, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
A trio of human rights groups on Wednesday announced a new interactive initiative exposing what the coalition is calling a “Genocide Gentry” of weapons company executives and board members and “54 museums, cultural organizations, universities, and colleges that currently host these individuals on their boards or in other prominent roles.”
The coalition—which consists of the Adalah Justice Project, LittleSis, and Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)—published a map and database detailing the “educational and cultural ties to board members of six defense corporations” amid Israel’s ongoing annihilation of Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
Genocide gentry: members of the ruling class who hold prestigious positions at cultural & educational institutions despite their connections to warfare.
“Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza and nearly 200 cultural heritage sites since October 2023, using bombs and weapons manufactured by the companies included in the Genocide Gentry research,” the coalition said. “As of April, these attacks have killed more than 5,479 students and 261 teachers and destroyed or critically damaged nearly 90% of all school buildings in Gaza.”
“Universities across the country including the likes of Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and New York University have remained largely silent on Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza,” the groups added. “Behind closed doors, these same universities are hosting executives and board members of the companies manufacturing the weapons used in these attacks as board members, trustees, and fellows.”
Members of the Genocide Gentry include:
Jeh Johnson, Lockheed Martin board of directors: Johnson is currently a Columbia University trustee, and sits on the board of directors at MetLife and U.S. Steel. Columbia University notably shut down student protests demanding divestment from weapons companies like Lockheed Martin.
Brian C. Rogers, RTX board of directors: Rogers is currently a trustee of the Harvard Management Company, tasked with managing the $50 billion endowment. Notably Harvard administrators have cracked down on students demanding divestment from weapons companies like RTX, formerly Raytheon.
Catherine B. Reynolds, General Dynamics board of directors: Reynolds is a trustee of the Kennedy Center and sponsors a fellowship at New York University, which has also cracked down on anti-genocide protests and recently enacted a policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
“Students on university campuses across the country have not only been demanding divestment, but transparency,” said Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project. “Transparency about their institutions’ investments, partnerships, donors, and decision-makers, and their connections to individuals and companies directly enabling and profiting off war and genocide.”
“This research helps provide some of this transparency by illuminating just how embedded the interests of the weapons industry are within our institutions, so we can begin chipping away at the power and influence that they wield,” she added.
ACRE campaign director Ramah Kudaimi noted that “as part of its genocide since October 2023, Israel has targeted universities and cultural centers across Gaza, destroying campuses, museums, libraries, and more.”
“That this is all backed by the United States means U.S. educational and cultural institutions have a responsibility to consider what their role is in helping end these war crimes, and that starts with reconsidering their connections with the weapons companies profiting from the destruction,” Kudaimi said.
Munira Lokhandwala, director of the Tech and Training program at LittleSis, said: “This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions. Through this research, we show how the defense industry shapes and influences our civic and cultural institutions, and as a result, their silence around war and genocide.”
“We must ask our institutions: What role are you playing in whitewashing war and destruction by inviting those who profit from manufacturing weapons onto your boards and into your galas?” she added.
On August 29, 12-16 police officers, some of them from the UK’s counter-terrorism unit, arrested Palestine activist and journalist Sarah Wilkinson, 61, under the Terrorism Act 2000, for content she had posted online. The bail conditions, which included not being allowed to use any electronic devices or any form of public transportation, were dropped a week later. She has also returned to…
Relating how ISM activist Rachel Corrie’s death at the hands of an Israeli bulldozer still hasn’t been subject to a thorough, credible, and transparent investigation, Rachel’s parents Cindy and Craig Corrie summed it up best: “Israel does not do investigations; they do cover-ups“.
Without regard to these serious liabilities, the US State Department continues to allow Israel to manage the investigation, promising other action “if those results aren’t satisfactory.”
In the two days since the State Department’s criticisms of Israel’s investigation, there has been no change in the status quo and the US continues to send weapons to Israel to be used in Gaza and in the West Bank against Palestinians.
It is crucial to understand Ayşenur Eygi’s murder in the context of Israel’s oppressive colonial regime.
By counting on the Israeli military to continue an investigation that they cannot be trusted to carry out impartially and truthfully, the US remains complicit in Israel’s ongoing crimes against humanity.
We get an update from Beirut, after at least 20 people were killed and 450 others wounded in Lebanon on Wednesday when walkie-talkie radios across the country exploded without warning, the second day of an apparent Israeli operation targeting Hezbollah members by booby-trapping handheld communication devices. A day earlier, at least 12 people were killed and thousands more left with gruesome injuries when pagers began exploding across the country. Lebanon has banned pagers and walkie-talkies on all flights, while Lebanese citizens say they now live in fear that everyday household electronics could suddenly explode. Among those killed in the attacks are children, medics and other civilians. “This has been widely reported in the Western press as a sophisticated campaign that targeted alleged Hezbollah operatives, but the reality is that, for the most part, these explosions were occuring in civilian areas,” says journalist Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of the Beirut-based independent media organization The Public Source. Bitar warns that Israel’s “terrorist attacks” could be a prelude to a larger assault. “The Israeli government has already taken a decision to escalate, to wage full-scale war on all of Lebanon.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
Nearly a year into the world’s first live-streamed genocide – which began in Gaza, and is rapidly expanding into the occupied West Bank – the establishment western media still avoid using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s rampage of destruction.
The worse the genocide gets, the longer Israel’s starvation-blockade of the enclave continues, the harder it gets to obscure the horrors – the less coverage Gaza receives.
The worst offender has been the BBC, given that it is Britain’s only publicly funded broadcaster. Ultimately, it is supposed to be accountable to the British public, who are required by law to pay its licence fee.
This is why it has been beyond ludicrous to witness the billionaire-owned media froth at the mouth in recent days about “BBC bias” – not against Palestinians, but against Israel. Yes, you heard that right.
We are talking about the same “anti-Israel” BBC that just ran yet another headline – this time after an Israeli sniper shot an American citizen in the head – that managed somehow, once again, to fail to mention who killed her. Any casual reader risked inferring from the headline “American activist shot dead in occupied West Bank” that the culprit was a Palestinian gunman.
After all, Palestinians, not Israel, are represented by Hamas, a group “designated as a terrorist organisation” by the British government, as the BBC helpfully keeps reminding us.
And it is the supposedly “anti-Israel” BBC that last week sought to stymie efforts by 15 aid agencies known as the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) to run a major fundraiser through the nation’s broadcasters.
No one is under any illusions about why the BBC is so unwilling to get involved. The DEC has chosen Gaza as the beneficiary of its latest aid drive.
The committee faced the very same problem with the BBC back in 2009, when the corporation refused to take part in a Gaza fundraiser on the extraordinary pretext that doing so would compromise its rules on “impartiality”.
Presumably, in the BBC’s eyes, saving the lives of Palestinian children reveals a prejudice that saving Ukrainian children’s lives does not.
In its 2009 attack, Israel killed “only” 1,300 or so Palestinians in Gaza, not the many tens of thousands – or possibly hundreds of thousands, no one truly knows – it has this time around.
Famously, the late, independent-minded Labour politician Tony Benn broke ranks and defied the BBC’s DEC ban by reading out details of how to donate money live on air, over the protests of the show’s presenter. As he pointed out then, and it is even truer today: “People will die because of the BBC’s decision.”
According to sources within both the committee and the BBC, the corporation’s executives are terrified – as they were previously – of the “backlash” from Israel and its powerful lobbyists in the UK if it promotes the Gaza appeal.
A spokesperson for the BBC told Middle East Eye that the fundraiser did not meet all the established criteria for a national appeal, despite the DEC’s expert opinion that it does, but noted the possibility of broadcasting an appeal was “under review”.
Pulling punches
The reason Israel is able to carry out a genocide, and western leaders are able to actively support it, is precisely because the establishment media constantly pulls its punches – very much in Israel’s favour.
Readers and viewers are given no sense that Israel is carrying out systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, let alone a genocide.
Journalists prefer to frame events as a “humanitarian crisis” because this strips away Israel’s responsibility for creating the crisis. It looks at the effects, the suffering, rather than the cause: Israel.
Worse, these same journalists constantly throw sand in our eyes with nonsensical counter-claims to suggest that Israel is actually the victim, not the perpetrator.
Take, for example, the new “study” into supposed BBC anti-Israel bias, led by a British lawyer based in Israel. A faux-horrified Daily Mail warned over the weekend that the “BBC is FOURTEEN times more likely to accuse Israel of genocide than Hamas … amid growing calls for inquiry”.
But read the text, and what’s truly stunning is that over the selected four-month period, the BBC associated Israel with the term “genocide” only 283 times – in its massive output across many television and radio channels, its website, podcasts and various social media platforms, which serve myriad populations at home and abroad.
What the Mail and other right-wing attack-dog media don’t mention is the fact that none of those references would have been the BBC’s own editorialising. Even Palestinian guests who try to use the word on its shows are quickly shut down.
Many of the references would have been BBC News reporting on a case filed by South Africa at the International Court of Justice, which is investigating Israel for what the world’s top court termed in January to be a “plausible” risk of genocide in Gaza.
Regrettably for the BBC, it has been impossible to report that story without mentioning the word “genocide”, because it lies at the heart of the legal case.
What should, in fact, astound us far more is that an active genocide, in which the West is fully complicit, was mentioned by the BBC’s globe-spanning media empire a total of only 283 times in the four months following 7 October.
Campaign of intimidation
The World Court’s preliminary ruling on Israel’s genocide is vital context that should be front and centre of every media story on Gaza. Instead, it is usually unmentioned, or hidden at the end of reports, where few will read about it.
The BBC infamously gave barely any coverage to the genocide case presented in January to the World Court by South Africa, which the panel of judges found to be “plausible”. On the other hand, it broadcast the entirety of Israel’s defence to the same court.
Now, after this latest campaign of intimidation by the billionaire-owned media, the BBC will likely be even less willing to mention the genocide – which is precisely the aim.
What should have stunned the Mail and the rest of the establishment media far more is that the BBC broadcast 19 references to a Hamas “genocide” in the same four-month period.
The idea that Hamas is capable of a “genocide” against Israel, or Jews, is as divorced from reality as the fiction that it “beheaded babies” on 7 October or the claims, still lacking any evidence, that it committed “mass rape” on that day.
Hamas, an armed group numbering thousand of fighters, currently pinned down in Gaza by one of the strongest armies in the world, is quite incapable of committing a “genocide” of Israelis.
This is, of course, why the World Court is not investigating Hamas for genocide, and why only Israel’s most fanatic apologists, including the western media, run with fake news either that Hamas is committing a genocide, or that it is conceivable it may try to do so.
No one really takes seriously claims of a Hamas genocide. The tell was the world’s stunned reaction when the group managed to escape from the concentration camp that is Gaza for a single day on 7 October and wreak so much death and havoc.
The idea that Hamas could do anything worse than that – or even repeat the attack – is simply delusional. The best Hamas can do is wage a guerrilla war of attrition against the Israeli military from its underground tunnels, which is precisely what it is doing.
Here’s another statistic worth highlighting from the recent “study”: in the same four-month period, the BBC used the term “crimes against humanity” 22 times to describe the atrocities committed by Hamas on one day last October, compared with only 15 times to describe Israel’s even worse atrocities committed continuouslyover the past year.
Allowable thought
The ultimate effect of the latest media furore is to increase pressure on the BBC to make even larger concessions to the self-serving, right-wing political agenda of the billionaire-owned media and the corporate interests of the war machine it represents.
The state broadcaster’s job is to set limits on allowable thought for the British public – not on the right, where that role falls to papers such as the Mail and the Telegraph, but on the other side of the political spectrum, on what is misleadingly referred to as “the left”.
The BBC’s task is to define what is acceptable speech and action – meaning acceptable to the British establishment – by those seeking to challenge its domestic and foreign policy.
Twice in living memory, progressive left-wing opposition leaders have emerged: Michael Foot in the early 1980s, and Jeremy Corbyn in the late 2010s. On both occasions, the media have united as one to vilify them.
That should surprise no one. Making the BBC a whipping boy – denouncing it as “left-wing” – is a form of permanent gaslighting designed both to make Britain’s extreme right-wing media seem centrist, and to normalise the drive to push the BBC ever further rightwards.
Over decades, the billionaire-owned media have crafted in the public’s mind the idea that the BBC defines the extreme end of supposedly “left-wing” thought. The more the corporation can be pushed to the right, the more the left faces an unwelcome choice: either follow the BBC rightwards, or become universally reviled as the loony left, the woke left, the Trot left, the militant left.
Bolstering this self-fulfilling argument, any protests by BBC staff can be deduced by the journalist-servants of Rupert Murdoch and other press tycoons as further proof of the corporation’s left-wing or Marxist bias.
The media system is rigged, and the BBC is the perfect vehicle for keeping it this way.
Pressing the button
What the BBC and the rest of the mainstream media are downplaying are not just the facts of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, but also the obvious genocidal intent of Israeli leaders, the country’s wider society, and its apologists in the UK and elsewhere.
It should not be up for debate that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, when everyone from its prime minister down has told us that this is very much their intent.
The examples of such genocidal statements by Israeli leaders filled pages of South Africa’s case to the World Court.
Just one example: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the Palestinians as “Amalek” – a reference to a biblical story well known to every Israeli schoolchild, in which the Israelites are ordered by God to wipe an entire people, including their children and livestock, off the face of the earth.
Anyone engaged on social media will have faced a battery of similarly genocidal statements from mostly anonymous supporters of Israel.
Those genocide cheerleaders recently gained a face – two, in fact. Video clips of two Israelis, podcasting in English under the name “Two Nice Jewish Boys”, have gone viral, showing the pair calling for the extermination of every last Palestinian man, woman and child.
One of the podcasters said that “zero people in Israel” care whether a polio outbreak caused by Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s water, sewage and heath facilities ends up killing babies, noting that Israel’s agreement to a vaccination campaign is driven purely by public relations needs.
In another clip, the podcasters agree that Palestinian hostages in Israeli prisons deserve to be “executed by shoving too large of an object up their butts”.
They also make clear that they would not hesitate to press a genocide button to wipe out the Palestinian people: “If you gave me a button to just erase Gaza – every single living being in Gaza would no longer be living tomorrow – I would press it in a second … And I think most Israelis would. They wouldn’t talk about it like I am, they wouldn’t say ‘I pressed it’, but they would press it.”
Relentless depravity
It is easy to get alarmed over such inhuman comments, but the furore generated by this pair is likely to deflect from a more important point: that they are utterly representative of where Israeli society is right now. They are not on some depraved fringe. They are not outliers. They are firmly in the mainstream.
The evidence is not just in the fact that Israel’s citizen army is systematically beating and sodomising Palestinian prisoners, sniping Palestinian children in Gaza with shots to the head, cheering the detonation of universities and mosques, desecrating Palestinian bodies, and enforcing a starvation-blockade on Gaza.
It is in the welcoming of all this relentless depravity by wider Israeli society.
After a video emerged of a group of soldiers sodomising a Palestinian prisoner at Israel’s Sde Teiman torture camp, Israelis rallied to their side. The extent of the prisoner’s internal injuries required him to be hospitalised.
In the aftermath, Israeli pundits – educated “liberals” – sat in TV studios discussing whether soldiers should be allowed to make their own decisions about whether to rape Palestinians in detention, or whether such abuses should be organised by the state as part of an official torture programme.
?SHOCKING?
Israel is quite possibly the only nation in the world where it is permissable and commonplace to go on TV and openly declare that the RAPING of prisoners should be a LEGITIMATE and OFFICIAL POLICY of the state and must be widely implemented. pic.twitter.com/1PyRXk8fxU
One of the soldiers accused in the gang rape case chose to cast off his anonymity after being championed by journalists who interviewed him. He’s now treated as a minor celebrity on Israeli TV shows.
Polls show that the vast majority of Jewish Israelis either approve of the razing of Gaza, or want even more of it. Some 70 percent want to ban from social media platforms any expressions of sympathy for civilians in Gaza.
None of this is really new. It all just got a lot more ostentatious after Hamas’s attack on 7 October.
After all, some of the most shocking violence that day occurred when Hamas fighters stumbled onto a dance festival close to Gaza.
The brutal imprisonment of 2.3 million Palestinians, and the 17-year blockade denying them the essentials of life and any meaningful freedoms, had become so normal to Israelis that hip, freedom-loving Israeli youngsters could happily hold a rave so close to that mass of human suffering.
Or as one of the Two Nice Jewish Boys observed of his feelings about life in Israel: “It’s nice to know that you’re dancing in a concert while hundreds of thousands of Gazans are homeless, sitting in a tent.” His partner interrupted: “Makes it even better … People enjoy knowing they [Palestinians in Gaza] are suffering.”
‘Heroic soldiers’
This monstrous indifference to, or even pleasure in, the torture of others isn’t restricted to Israelis. There’s a whole army of prominent supporters of Israel in the West who confidently act as apologists for Israel’s genocidal actions.
What unites them all is the Jewish supremacist ideology of Zionism.
In Britain, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has not spoken out against the mass slaughter of Palestinian children in Gaza, nor has he kept quiet about it. Instead, he has given Israel’s war crimes his blessing.
Back in mid-January, as South Africa began making public its case against Israel for genocide that the World Court found “plausible”, Mirvis spoke at a public meeting, where he referred to Israel’s operations in Gaza as “the most outstanding possible thing”.
"We can be proud of the state of Israel, what it represents .. what Israel is doing is the most outstanding thing a decent responsible country can do for its citizens”
British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis praises Israeli forces at a recent talk at Cranbrook United Synagogue… pic.twitter.com/QjSEs76dLf
He described the troops clearly documented committing war crimes as “our heroic soldiers” – inexplicably conflating the actions of a foreign, Israeli army with the British army.
Even if we imagine he was truly ignorant of the war crimes in Gaza eight months ago, there can be no excuses now.
Yet, last week, Mirvis spoke out again, this time to berate the British government for imposing a very partial limit on arms sales to Israel after it received legal advice that such weapons were likely being used by Israel to commit war crimes.
In other words, Mirvis openly called for his own government to ignore international law and arm a state committing war crimes, according to UK government lawyers, and a “plausible genocide”, according to the World Court.
There are apologists like Mirvis in influential posts across the West.
Appearing on TV late last month, his counterpart in France, Haim Korsia, urged Israel to “finish the job” in Gaza, and backed Netanyahu, who the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor is pursuing for war crimes.
Korsia refused to condemn Israel’s killing of at least 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza, arguingthat those deaths were “not of the same order” as the 1,150 deaths of Israelis on 7 October.
He clearly meant Palestinian lives were not as important as Israeli lives.
Inner fascist
Nearly 30 years ago, Israeli sociologist Dan Rabinowitz published a book, Overlooking Nazareth, that argued Israel was a far more profoundly racist society than was widely understood.
His work has taken on a new relevance – and not just for Israelis – since 7 October.
Back in the 1990s, as now, outsiders assumed that Israel was divided between the religious and secular, the traditional and modern; between vulgar recent immigrants and more enlightened “veterans”.
Israelis often see their society split geographically too: between peripheral communities where popular racism flourishes, and a metropolitan centre around Tel Aviv where a sensitive, cultured liberalism predominates.
Rabinowitz tore this thesis to shreds. He took as his case study the small Jewish city of Nazareth Illit in northern Israel, renowned for its extreme right-wing politics, including support for the fascist movement of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Rabinowitz ascribed the city’s politics chiefly to the fact that it had been built by the state on top of Nazareth, the largest community of Palestinians in Israel, specifically to contain, control and oppress its historic neighbour.
His argument was that the Jews of Nazareth Illit were not more racist than the Jews of Tel Aviv. They were simply far more exposed to an “Arab” presence. In fact, given the fact that few Jews chose to live there, they were heavily outnumbered by their “Arab” neighbours. The state had placed them in a direct, confrontational competition with Nazareth for land and resources.
The Jews of Tel Aviv, by contrast, almost never came across an “Arab” unless it was in a servant’s role: as a waiter or a worker on a building site.
The difference, noted Rabinowitz, was that the Jews of Nazareth Illit were confronted with their own racism on a daily basis. They had rationalised and become easy with it. Jews in Tel Aviv, meanwhile, could pretend they were open-minded because their bigotry was never meaningfully tested.
Well, 7 October changed all that. The “liberals” of Tel Aviv were suddenly confronted by an unwelcome, avenging Palestinian presence inside their state. The “Arab” was no longer the oppressed, tame, servile one they were used to.
Unexpectedly, the Jews of Tel Aviv felt a space they believed to be theirs exclusively being invaded, just as the Jews of Nazareth Illit had felt for decades. And they responded in exactly the same way. They rationalised their inner fascist. Overnight, they became comfortable with genocide.
The genocide party
That sense of invasion extends beyond Israel, of course.
On 7 October, Hamas’s surprise assault wasn’t just an attack on Israel. The breakout by a small group of armed fighters from one of the largest and most heavily fortified prisons ever built was also a shocking assault on western elites’ complacency – their belief that the world order they had built by force to enrich themselves was permanent and inviolable.
7 October severely shook their confidence that the non-western world could be contained forever; that it must continue to do the West’s bidding, and that it would remain enslaved indefinitely.
Just as it has with Israelis, the Hamas attack quickly exposed the little fascist within the West’s political, media and religious elite, who had spent a lifetime pretending to be the guardians of a western civilising mission – one that was enlightened, humanitarian and liberal.
The act worked, because the world was ordered in such a way that they could easily pretend to themselves and others that they stood against the barbarism of the Other.
The West’s colonialism was largely out of sight, devolved to globe-spanning, exploitative, environmentally destructive western corporations and a network of some 800 US overseas military bases, which were there to kick ass if this new arms-length economic imperialism encountered difficulties.
Whether intentionally or not, Hamas tore off the mask of that deception on 7 October. The pretence of an ideological rift between western leaders on the right and a supposed “left” evaporated overnight. They all belonged to the same war party; they all became devotees of the genocide party.
All have clamoured for Israel’s supposed “right to defend itself” – in truth, its right to continue decades of oppression of the Palestinian people – by imposing a blockade on food, water and power to Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
All actively approve arming Israel’s slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinians. All have done nothing to impose a ceasefire apart from paying lip service to the notion.
All seem readier to tear up international law and its supporting institutions than to enforce it against Israel. All denounce as antisemitism the mass protests against genocide, rather than denouncing the genocide itself.
7 October was a defining moment. It exposed a monstrous barbarity with which it is hard to come to terms. And we won’t, until we face a difficult truth: that the source of such depravity is far closer to home than we ever imagined.
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