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  • Jonathan Cook: Israel is in a death spiral – who will it take down with it?

    Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want to widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences.

    ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook in Middle East Eye

    There should be nothing surprising about the revelation that troops at Sde Teiman, a detention camp set up by Israel in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel, are routinely using rape as a weapon of torture against Palestinian inmates.

    Last month, nine soldiers from a prison unit, Force 100, were arrested for gang-raping a Palestinian inmate with a sharp object. He had to be hospitalised with his injuries.

    At least 53 prisoners are known to have died in Israeli detention, presumed in most cases to be either through torture or following the denial of access to medical care. No investigations have been carried out by Israel and no arrests have been made.

    Why should it be of any surprise that Israel’s self-proclaimed “most moral army in the world” uses torture and rape against Palestinians? It would be truly surprising if this was not happening.

    After all, this is the same military that for 10 months has used starvation as a weapon of war against the 2.3 million people of Gaza, half of them children.

    It is the same military that since October has laid waste to all of Gaza’s hospitals, as well as destroying almost all of its schools and 70 percent of its homes. It is the same military that is known to have killed over that period at least 40,000 Palestinians, with a further 21,000 children missing.

    It is the same military currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court in the world.

    No red lines
    If there are no red lines for Israel when it comes to brutalising Palestinian civilians trapped inside Gaza, why would there be any red lines for those kidnapped off its streets and dragged into its dungeons?

    I documented some of the horrors unfolding in Sde Teiman in these pages back in May.

    Months ago, the Israeli media began publishing testimonies from whistleblowing guards and doctors detailing the depraved conditions there.

    The International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to the detention camp, leaving it entirely unmonitored.

    The United Nations published a report on July 31 into the conditions in which some 9400 captive Palestinians have been held since last October. Most have been cut off from the outside world, and the reason for their seizure and imprisonment was never provided.

    The report concludes that “appalling acts” of torture and abuse are taking place at all of Israel’s detention centres, including sexual violence, waterboarding and attacks with dogs.

    The authors note “forced nudity of both men and women; beatings while naked, including on the genitals; electrocution of the genitals and anus; being forced to undergo repeated humiliating strip searches; widespread sexual slurs and threats of rape; and the inappropriate touching of women by both male and female soldiers”.

    There are, according to the investigation, “consistent reports” of Israeli security forces “inserting objects into detainees’ anuses”.

    Children sexually abused
    Last month, Save the Children found that many hundreds of Palestinian children had been imprisoned in Israel, where they faced starvation and sexual abuse.

    And this week B’Tselem, Israel’s main human rights group monitoring the occupation, produced a report — titled “Welcome to Hell” — which included the testimonies of dozens of Palestinians who had emerged from what it called “inhuman conditions”. Most had never been charged with an offence.

    It concluded that the abuses at Sde Teiman were “just the tip of the iceberg”. All of Israel’s detention centres formed “a network of torture camps for Palestinians” in which “every inmate is intentionally condemned to severe, relentless pain and suffering”. It added that this was “an organised, declared policy of the Israeli prison authorities”.

    Tal Steiner, head of the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, which has long campaigned against the systematic torture of Palestinian detainees, wrote last week that Sde Teiman “was a place where the most horrible torture we had ever seen was occurring”.

    In short, it has been an open secret in Israel that torture and sexual assault are routine at Sde Teiman.

    The abuse is so horrifying that last month Israel’s High Court ordered officials to explain why they were operating outside Israel’s own laws governing the internment of “unlawful combatants”.

    The surprise is not that sexual violence is being inflicted on Palestinian captives. It is that Israel’s top brass ever imagined the arrest of Israeli soldiers for raping a Palestinian would pass muster with the public.

    Toxic can of worms
    Instead, by making the arrests, the army opened a toxic can of worms.

    The arrests provoked a massive backlash from soldiers, politicians, Israeli media, and large sections of the Israeli public.

    Rioters, led by members of the Israeli Parliament, broke into Sde Teiman. An even larger group, including members of Force 100, tried to invade a military base, Beit Lid, where the soldiers were being held in an attempt to free them.

    The police, under the control of Itamar Ben Gvir, a settler leader with openly fascist leanings, delayed arriving to break up the protests. Ben Gvir has called for Palestinian prisoners to be summarily executed — or killed with “a shot to the head” — to save on the costs of holding them.

    No one was arrested over what amounted to a mutiny as well as a major breach of security.

    Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister, helped whip up popular indignation, denouncing the arrests and describing the Force 100 soldiers as “heroic warriors”.

    Other prominent cabinet ministers echoed him.

    Three soldiers freed
    Already, three of the soldiers have been freed, and more will likely follow.

    The consensus in Israel is that any abuse, including rape, is permitted against the thousands of Palestinians who have been seized by Israel in recent months — including women, children and many hundreds of medical personnel.

    That consensus is the same one that thinks it fine to bomb Palestinian women and children in Gaza, destroy their homes and starve them.

    Such depraved attitudes are not new. They draw on ideological convictions and legal precedents that developed through decades of Israel’s illegal occupation. Israeli society has completely normalised the idea that Palestinians are less than human and that any and every abuse of them is allowed.

    Hamas’s attack on October 7 simply brought the long-standing moral corruption at the core of Israeli society more obviously out into the open.

    In 2016, for example, the Israeli military appointed Colonel Eyal Karim as its chief rabbi, even after he had declared Palestinians to be “animals” and had approved the rape of Palestinian women in the interest of boosting soldiers’ morale.

    Religious extremists, let us note, increasingly predominate among combat troops.

    Compensation suit dismissed
    In 2015, Israel’s Supreme Court dismissed a compensation suit from a Lebanese prisoner that his lawyers submitted after he was released in a prisoner swap. Mustafa Dirani had been raped with a baton 15 years earlier in a secret jail known as Facility 1391.

    Despite Dirani’s claim being supported by a medical assessment from the time made by an Israeli military doctor, the court ruled that anyone engaged in an armed conflict with Israel could not make a claim against the Israeli state.

    Meanwhile, human and legal rights groups have regularly reported cases of Israeli soldiers and police raping and sexually assaulting Palestinians, including children.

    A clear message was sent to Israeli soldiers over many decades that, just as the genocidal murder of Palestinians is considered warranted and “lawful”, the torture and rape of Palestinians held in captivity is considered warranted and “lawful” too.

    Understandably, there was indignation that the long-established “rules” — that any and every atrocity is permitted — appeared suddenly and arbitrarily to have been changed.

    The biggest question is this: why did the Israeli military’s top legal adviser approve opening an investigation into the Force 100 soldiers — and why now?

    The answer is obvious. Israel’s commanders are in panic after a spate of setbacks in the international legal arena.

    ‘Plausible’ Gaza genocide
    The ICJ, sometimes referred to as the World Court, has put Israel on trial for committing what it considers a “plausible” genocide in Gaza.

    Separately, it concluded last month that Israel’s 57-year occupation is illegal and a form of aggression against the Palestinian people. Gaza never stopped being under occupation, the judges ruled, despite claims from its apologists, including Western governments, to the contrary.

    Significantly, that means Palestinians have a legal right to resist their occupation. Or, to put it another way, they have an immutable right to self-defence against their Israeli occupiers, while Israel has no such right against the Palestinians it illegally occupies.

    Israel is not in “armed conflict” with the Palestinian people. It is brutally occupying and oppressing them.

    Israel must immediately end the occupation to regain such a right of self-defence — something it demonstrably has no intention to do.

    Meanwhile, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICJ’s sister court, is actively seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, for war crimes.

    The various cases reinforce each other. The World Court’s decisions are making it ever harder for the ICC to drag its feet in issuing and expanding the circle of arrest warrants.

    Countervailing pressures
    Both courts are now under enormous, countervailing pressures.

    On the one side, massive external pressure is being exerted on the ICJ and ICC from states such as the US, Britain and Germany that are prepared to see the genocide in Gaza continue.

    And on the other, the judges themselves are fully aware of what is at stake if they fail to act.

    The longer they delay, the more they discredit international law and their own role as arbiters of that law. That will give even more leeway for other states to claim that inaction by the courts has set a precedent for their own right to commit war crimes.

    International law, the entire rationale for the ICJ and ICC’s existence, stands on a precipice. Israel’s genocide threatens to bring it all crashing down.

    Israel’s top brass stand in the middle of that fight.

    They are confident that Washington will block at the UN Security Council any effort to enforce the ICJ rulings against them — either a future one on genocide in Gaza or the existing one on their illegal occupation.

    No US veto at ICC
    But arrest warrants from the ICC are a different matter. Washington has no such veto. All states signed up to the ICC’s Rome Statute – that is, most of the West, minus the US — will be obligated to arrest Israeli officials who step on their soil and to hand them over to The Hague.

    Israel and the US had been hoping to use technicalities to delay the issuing of the arrest warrants for as long as possible. Most significantly, they recruited the UK, which has signed the Rome Statute, to do their dirty work.

    It looked like the new UK government under Keir Starmer would continue where its predecessor left off by tying up the court in lengthy and obscure legal debates about the continuing applicability of the long-dead, 30-year-old Oslo Accords.

    A former human rights lawyer, Starmer has repeatedly backed Israel’s “plausible” genocide, even arguing that the starvation of Gaza’s population, including its children, could be justified as “self-defence” — an idea entirely alien to international law, which treats it as collective punishment and a war crime.

    But now with a secure parliamentary majority, even Starmer appears to be baulking at being seen as helping Netanyahu personally avoid arrest for war crimes.

    The UK government announced late last month that it would drop Britain’s legal objections at the ICC.

    That has suddenly left both Netanyahu and the Israeli military command starkly exposed — which is the reason they felt compelled to approve the arrest of the Force 100 soldiers.

    Top prass pretexts
    Under a rule known as “complementarity”, Israeli officials might be able to avoid war crimes trials at The Hague if they can demonstrate that Israel is able and willing to prosecute war crimes itself. That would avert the need for the ICC to step in and fulfil its mandate.

    The Israeli top brass hoped they could feed a few lowly soldiers to the Israeli courts and drag out the trials for years. In the meantime, Washington would have the pretext it needed to bully the ICC into dropping the case for arrests on the grounds that Israel was already doing the job of prosecuting war crimes.

    The patent problem with this strategy is that the ICC isn’t primarily interested in a few grunts being prosecuted in Israel as war criminals, even assuming the trials ever take place.

    At issue is the military strategy that has allowed Israel to bomb Gaza into the Stone Age. At issue is a political culture that has made starving 2.3 million people seem normal.

    At issue is a religious and nationalistic fervour long cultivated in the army that now encourages soldiers to execute Palestinian children by shooting them in the head and chest, as a US doctor who volunteered in Gaza has testified.

    At issue is a military hierarchy that turns a blind eye to soldiers raping and sexually abusing Palestinian captives, including children.

    The buck stops not with a handful of soldiers in Force 100. It stops with the Israeli government and military leaders. They are at the top of a command chain that has authorised war crimes in Gaza for the past 10 months – and before that, for decades across the occupied territories.

    What is at stake
    This is why observers have totally underestimated what is at stake with the rulings of the ICC and ICJ.

    These judgments against Israel are forcing out into the light of day for proper scrutiny a state of affairs that has been quietly accepted by the West for decades. Should Israel have the right to operate as an apartheid regime that systematically engages in ethnic cleansing and the murder of Palestinians?

    A direct answer is needed from each Western capital. There is nowhere left to hide. Western states are being presented with a stark choice: either openly back Israeli apartheid and genocide, or for the first time withdraw support.

    The Israeli far-right, which now dominates both politically and in the army’s combat ranks, cares about none of this. It is immune to pressure. It is willing to go it alone.

    As the Israeli media has been warning for some time, sections of the army are effectively now turning into militias that follow their own rules.

    Israel’s military commanders, on the other hand, are starting to understand the trap they have set for themselves. They have long cultivated fascistic zealotry among ground troops needed to dehumanise and better oppress Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. But the war crimes proudly being live-streamed by their units now leave them exposed to the legal consequences.

    Israel’s international isolation means a place one day for them in the dock at The Hague.

    Israeli society’s demons exposed
    The ICC and ICJ rulings are not just bringing Israeli society’s demons out into the open, or those of a complicit Western political and media class.

    The international legal order is gradually cornering Israel’s war machine, forcing it to turn in on itself. The interests of the Israeli military command are now fundamentally opposed to those of the rank and file and the political leadership.

    The result, as military expert Yagil Levy has long warned, will be an increasing breakdown of discipline, as the attempts to arrest Force 100 soldiers demonstrated all too clearly.

    The Israeli military juggernaut cannot be easily or quickly turned around.

    The military command is reported to be furiously trying to push Netanyahu into agreeing on a hostage deal to bring about a ceasefire — not because it cares about the welfare of Palestinian civilians, or the hostages, but because the longer this “plausible” genocide continues, the bigger chance the generals will end up at The Hague.

    Israel’s zealots are ignoring the pleas of the top brass. They want not only to continue the drive to eliminate the Palestinian people but to widen the circle of war, whatever the consequences.

    That included the reckless, incendiary move last month to assassinate Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran — a provocation with one aim only: to undermine the moderates in Hamas and Tehran.

    If, as seems certain, Israel’s commanders are unwilling or incapable of reining in these excesses, then the World Court will find it impossible to ignore the charge of genocide against Israel and the ICC will be compelled to issue arrest warrants against more of the military leadership.

    A logic has been created in which evil feeds on evil in a death spiral. The question is how much more carnage and misery can Israel spread on the way down.

    Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. Republished from the author’s blog with permission.


    This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Bloody Eschatology: Israel and the next Big War

    The push towards an all-out war in the Middle East is moving out of its sleepwalking phase to that of conscious eschatological reckoning.  A blood filled, fiery Armageddon will reveal the forces of virtue, linking the evangelicals of the United States with the right-wing Jewish nationalists in Israel.  That appalling prospect is certainly not one to discount: the messianic are always a frightful bunch, thinking history and selectively pruned religions texts to be on their side.

    Each week now comes with some measure of sabotage, mutilation and disruption to prospects of peace.  In his July 24 address to the US Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlined his crude Manichean vision in routine barking fashion.  In doing so, his intention, as Noa Landau pithily put it, was not to end the war in Gaza so much as prolong it.

    For Netanyahu, the strained chords of civilisational rhetoric are never far away.  He would like other powers to muck in, battling the fiends he calls an “axis of terror”.  Impediments to the Jewish state’s war efforts had to be rejected.  To impose them would see other countries of similar kidney shackled.  “If Israel’s hands are tied, America is next.  I’ll tell you what else is next: the ability of all democracies to fight terrorism will be imperilled.”

    Room was reserved to attack the International Criminal Court, whose chief prosecutor has sought warrants of arrest against himself and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, and the presidents of notable US universities.  As for protesting students, they had chosen to “stand with evil.  They stand with Hamas.  They stand with rapists and murderers.”  With daring outrage, he blotted out any notion that Palestinian civilians were being butchered, despite a death toll in the densely populated strip hovering near 40,000.  Indeed, civilian deaths had been “practically none,” with Israel scrupulous in “getting civilians out of harm’s way, something people said we could never do”.

    With this blood crusted Weltanschauung, acts of destabilising mayhem are automatic.  Showing an utter contempt for Israeli hostages, let alone any humanity for the Palestinians they regard with expansive condescension, the Netanyahu government thought it wise to carry out two assassinations: that of Hamas’ political chief and chief negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, and Hezbollah’s top military chief Fuad Shukr, both killed within twenty-four hours in Beirut and Tehran respectively.

    The response to the assassinations in Israel was one of relish – at least for those of the Itamar Ben-Gvir school of thought.  As David Issacharoff, writing in Haaretz, described it, “Israel has become a Matryoshka doll of pyromaniacs.”  From his skewed vantage point as National Security Minister, assassinations are staple food for the state.  The killing of Hezbollah’s second in command, ostensibly for his alleged role in an attack on a Druze village in the Golan Heights, drew the gleeful response that “Every god has his day”.

    Despite certain Israeli media reports claiming an order from Netanyahu that ministers were to stay silent over Haniyeh’s killing, the enthusiasts were voluble in rapture.  Heritage Minister Amichay Eliyahu, also of Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, expressed his glee on social media, claiming that “this is the right way to clean the world of this filth.”  There were to be “No more imaginary ‘peace’/surrender agreements, no more mercy for these sons of death.”

    Other cabinet ministers also joined the gloating chorus.  “Careful What You Wish For,” wrote Minister for the Diaspora Amichai Chikli over a video of Haniyeh in a conference hall while people chanted “Death to Israel.”  Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi resorted to biblical verse: “So may all your enemies perish, O Lord.”

    Despite no official confirmation of Israel’s role in the killing of the senior Hamas official, the Government Press Office posted, if only briefly, an image of Haniyeh which left no room for nuance: “Eliminated: Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas highest-ranking leader, was killed in a precise strike in Tehran, Iran.”

    The richly violent musings of Ben-Gvir and his circle of sanctified terror have even proven indigestible for some members of the war cabinet.  Defence Minister Gallant, not immune from the urge to dehumanise the residents of Gaza, accused his national security counterpart of being a “pyromaniac”.  On the X platform, he declared his opposition against “any negotiations to bring him into the war cabinet – it would allow him to implement his plans.”  The same Gallant, however, was also in celebratory mood about the assassinations.

    Even outside the war cabinet, the views of Ben-Gvir, not to mention his overall influence, travel with toxic rapture.  In the background, incandescently inspiring, is Rabbi Dov Lior, a figure of glowing nationalist fury. It was he who incited members of the Jewish Underground to conduct various terrorist attacks in the 1980s against Palestinians.  (The same group also unsuccessfully plotted to blow up the Dome on the Rock.)

    This, as former UK diplomat Alastair Crooke observes, is the State of Judea doing battle against the State of Israel.  He quotes Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon, former Chief of Staff of the IDF, who sees such bloody eschatology as resting on a fundamental concept: “Jewish supremacy” or “Mein Kampf in reverse”.  For Rabbi Lior, the next big war cannot come soon enough, one, he anticipates, that is bound to feature Gog and Magog.

    The post Bloody Eschatology: Israel and the next Big War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Tlaib Lambasts Blinken for Saying the US Respects the Geneva Conventions

    Rep. Rashida Tlaib had harsh words for Secretary of State Antony Blinken as he attempted to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions while enabling what many experts consider to be Israel’s genocide in Gaza. “The United States reaffirms our steadfast commitment to respecting international humanitarian law and mitigating suffering in armed conflict…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Fears Grow of Wider Regional War in the Absence of Ceasefire in Gaza

    Iran has rejected a call by France, Germany and the United Kingdom demanding it refrain from any retaliatory attacks over the assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31. Tensions also remain high on Israel’s northern border as Lebanon-based Hezbollah vows to respond to the Israeli assassination of its senior military commander Fuad Shukr. On Friday…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Right-wing Israel lobby group goes after Clive Lewis – but ends up making his point for him

    A right-wing pro-Israel lobby group is going after a left-leaning Labour Party MP. Specifically, Labour Against Antisemitism (LAAS) has called for Norwich South MP Clive Lewis’s expulsion from the party. Unsurprisingly, the group has lodged a complaint to the party against Lewis for alleged antisemitism.

    Of course, we’ve been here before – as it wouldn’t be the first time LAAS smeared the Labour left with baseless allegations of antisemitism.

    Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is of course the most prominent casualty of this long-standing stitch up. Now, LAAS has turned its sights on Lewis for speaking out against Israel.

    Clive Lewis: dehumanisation of Palestinians linked to UK far-right pogroms

    Specifically, Clive Lewis made the connection between the West’s dehumanisation and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, and the far-right Islamophobic pogroms in the UK.

    Of course, Lewis was right to drive this home. The UK’s Islamophobia cannot be extricated from this – because racism doesn’t manifest in a vacuum. It’s perfectly evident to anyone remotely paying attention that after ten months of corporate media and political establishment genocide apologism, white supremacy and Zionism runs through the very core of the UK right.

    Plus, as the Canary’s Steve Topple previously wrote:

    Allowing Black and brown people to be demonised over here helps with the West’s global agenda of making them subhuman. How else do you think Israel could get away with killing 40,000 Palestinians without the UN sending in peacekeepers or the US invading?

    Ergo, it’s easy to imagine even on a surface level how devaluing Palestinian lives – largely Muslim – would lead to the same thing here. In fact, it has been plain to see. In February, Middle East Monitor (MEM) reported that Islamophobic attacks had risen by 235% since 7 October. Some on X poignantly summed this up:

    The fact actually is that it’s worse than Lewis’s relatively mild post actually suggested:

    Tommy Robinson’s Zionist connections

    And this only really scratches the surface. Key race riot inciter Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – Tommy Robinson – has multifarious links to the Zionist movement. Lowkey has detailed these:


    For one, he was co-founder of the English Defence League (EDL) with Israeli intelligence employee Paul Ray:

    And there were more relationships:

    Naturally, his ties don’t end there. As the Times of Israel reported, Philadelphia-based think tank Middle East Forum has been bankrolling Robinson:

    Daniel Pipes, MEF’s president, confirmed to The Times of Israel that his group has spent roughly $60,000 on three demonstrations defending Robinson’s legal trial.

    Pipes said that he first met Robinson in December 2017 and was “impressed” by him. He described Robinson as part of a group of people who are “trying to sustain their civilization, trying to keep Europe Europe, trying to keep the West the West. Overall, I think that their effort is sound and needed.”

    In fact, it noted that multiple right-wing pro-Israel organisations have been sponsoring Robinson.

    So, right-wingers can hardly argue there’s no connection between the recent race riot attacks against Muslim, Black, brown, and migrant communities in the UK, and Israel’s ongoing war crimes and genocide. Or so you would think.

    Right-wing lobby group cry antisemitism

    Enter, LAAS, who not only denied this tie altogether, but held it up as an example of antisemitism.

    Director of the right-wing pro-Israel group Alex Hearn told Sky News that:

    It is very concerning that people across the political spectrum, from “anti-racists” to the far right, have fantasised that ‘Zionists’ and Israel are to blame for unrest across Britain,” he said.

    A recent report by the Community Security Trust showed antisemitism in the last six months has gone up 105%, and that the pretext for these 1,978 incidents are often Palestine. This includes synagogues targeted 76 times and 121 assaults.

    For a Labour MP to blame a conflict thousands of miles away for the recent racism in far-right riots in Britain is highly irresponsible.

    When attacks against British Jews exploded following the Hamas 7 October massacre, no such link was made by Mr Lewis.

    However, as SKWAWKBOX underscored:

    The Community Security Trust (CST) is a UK charity deeply committed to promoting Israel and combating the pro-Palestinian ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ (BDS) campaign against goods and services from illegally-occupied Palestinian territory. It has equated opposition to Israel’s genocide with antisemitism, naming anti-genocide campaigners as the main source of antisemitic incidents.

    Notably, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) unpacked the CST’s claims of a “huge rise” in antisemitism since Israel began its abhorrent genocide. Unsurprisingly, CST had conflated antisemitism with anti-Zionism.

    This has been glaringly obvious as the Western corporate media and right-wing politicians have branded pro-Palestine protest demonstrations as antisemitic on multiple occasions.

    It was almost as if LAAS had an agenda. Of course, as some on X pointed out, this is precisely the case:

    One poster noted that the right-wing genocide-apologist organisation had stark double-standards:

    In other words, the UK mulling an arms embargo to stop Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians: connected to UK antisemitism. Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza: unconnected with the recent assaults on UK Muslims. Got it.

    Politicians must speak out

    CAGE International wondered why other politicians in parliament hadn’t yet had the courage to say it:

    Right on cue, socialist and committed anti-racist John McDonnell backed Clive Lewis’s statement:

    Other politicians like deputy Green Party leader Zack Polanski, and Jewish Labour Party councillor Martin Abrams voiced their support:

    Another Jewish Labour member standing for the party’s National Executive Committee pointed out the attacks showed more about the embedded Islamophobia of Zionists than anything antisemitic:

    In reality, it was actually the right-wing lobby group perpetuating antisemitism:

    LAAS racism

    One person pointed out that LAAS’s racism was hardly anything new:

    Therefore going after a sitting Black MP is entirely on brand as well, as climate and social justice campaigner Asad Rehman noted:

    Thankfully, for once, the Labour Party doesn’t seem to be pandering to Zionists. Astonishingly out of character, we know. According to Independent, the party isn’t planning disciplinary action against Lewis over his post.

    Though, lets not get too far ahead of ourselves. Starmer quickly threw Lewis under the bus regardless. According to the outlet:

    The prime minister quickly distanced himself from the remarks, with his spokesperson on Monday saying Sir Keir would “completely disagree” with the suggestion that events in Gaza are to blame for the unrest in Britain, which saw mosques attacked and more than 900 people arrested.

    She added that he would “never seek to conflate those two issues

    At the end of the day, LAAS didn’t expose a left-wing Labour politician as antisemitic. It was quite the opposite in fact. Its petty, motivated complaint only bared the right-wing’s deeply entrenched Islamophobia as part and parcel of its pro-Israel and colonial racism en masse. In other words, it proved that Lewis’s point was correct all along. And that until Palestine is free, this Islamophobic violence in the UK will not end.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Hannah Sharland

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • International Court of Justice Finds That BDS Is Not Just Legal, But Obligated

    Israel and its lobby have, for years now, been engaged in a frenzy of activity to further insulate Israel from accountability by using their influence in the West to effectively outlaw organized opposition to Israel. Foremost among these efforts has been the Israeli campaign to penalize calls to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its gross violations of human rights. As a result…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Far-right Israeli extremist Ben Gvir once AGAIN violates Al-Aqsa

    Israel’s far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir led hundreds of Israelis into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Occupied East Jerusalem on Tuesday 13 August and performed Talmudic rituals marking a Jewish holiday.

    Ben Gvir: Israel’s very own far-right thug – well, one of them…

    Ben Gvir, who has often defied the Israeli government’s longstanding ban on Jewish prayer at the mosque compound, vowed to “defeat Hamas” in Gaza in a video he filmed during his visit:

    On Tuesday morning, Ben Gvir and some 2,250 other far-right Israelis walked through the compound in groups, singing Jewish hymns, under the protection of Israeli police, an official from the Waqf, the Jordanian body that is custodian of the site, told AFP:

    Minister Ben Gvir, instead of maintaining the status quo at the mosque is supervising the Judaisation operation and trying to change the situation inside Al-Aqsa Mosque.

    Israeli police also “imposed restrictions” on Muslim worshippers trying to enter the mosque, he said. Reports on social media showed multiple Israeli extremists at the site:

    Jordan’s foreign ministry condemned the “storming” of the mosque, calling it a “flagrant violation of international law”.

    The continual violations of the historical and legal status quo in Jerusalem and its sanctities require a clear and firm international position that condemns these violations.

    Images posted on social media networks showed Ben Gvir inside the compound while several Israelis lay on the ground performing Talmudic rituals:

    Al-Aqsa violated again

    Ben Gvir released a video statement on social media platform X, which he filmed inside the compound himself, renewing his opposition to any truce in the war in Gaza:

    “We must win this war. We must win and not go to the talks in Doha or Cairo,” he said, referring to the US-backed negotiations for a truce and hostage release deal for Gaza to resume on Thursday:

    We can defeat Hamas… we must bring them down to their knees.

    The office of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Ben Gvir’s visit “deviated from the status quo”:

    Israel’s policy on the Temple Mount has not changed; this is how it has been and this is how it will be.

    Tuesday’s entry into the Al-Aqsa compound comes on the Jewish mourning day of Tisha Be’Av that commemorates the destruction of the ancient temple.

    Last month too, Ben Gvir, who is known for violent incitement, said he had prayed inside the Al-Aqsa mosque compound, defying the longstanding rules that permit Jewish visits but forbid prayer.

    Feature image via X – screengrab

    Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • UK hate riots inspired by Israel lobby’s favorite hooligan


    This content originally appeared on The Grayzone and was authored by The Grayzone.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Israel’s Morning Prayer Massacre Is Part of an Escalation of Attacks on Schools

    Over the past six weeks, as Israel has put nearly the entirety of Gaza under forced evacuation orders, Israeli forces have also been escalating its attacks on schools in the region, bombing a school every other day on average in this period of time. Last week, the UN raised alarm about Israels’ school attacks, finding that Israel had attacked at least 17 schools over the previous month.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • CAIR: Blinken Must Resign “in Disgrace” After Ending Probe Into Israeli Unit

    The U.S.’s largest Muslim civil rights organization has called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “resign his office in disgrace” after reports emerged that he has canned his investigation into an Israeli military battalion that the State Department had concluded committed human rights violations in the occupied West Bank. In a fiery statement on Friday, the Council on American-Islamic…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • State and Local Efforts to Divest From Israel Are Gaining Steam

    The United States has historically provided hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel. The flow of taxpayer funds to Israel’s military has only increased since Israeli forces launched an attack on Gaza in October 2023, in which as many as 186,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to an estimate published in The Lancet in July 2024. Beyond the federal dollars funding the…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel has bombed at least 18 schools in five weeks

    In little over a month, Israel has bombed at least 18 schools in Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinian people.

    On 5 August, in strikes on two United Nations-run schools – the Hassan Salama and al-Nasr in Gaza City – 80% of the victims were children. This is a feature of Israel’s assault, where Israel has killed 16,456 children so far.

    A particularly deadly strike on al-Tabin school in Gaza City on 10 August killed over 100 people. According to Palestinian civil defence, every body found was torn apart.

    On social media, people analysed the carnage brought upon civilians, compared to Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on 31 July.

    Palestine’s education ministry reported that, as of 6 August, Israel had killed around 10,043 Palestinian students since 7 October. It said Israel killed a further 504 teachers and administrators.

    On 3 August, Israel bombed the university of applied sciences in Gaza City, reportedly entirely obliterating campus buildings. It has destroyed or damaged all 12 universities in Gaza.

    Israel: committing “scholasticide”

    25 UN human rights experts expressed grave concern back in April:

    With more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide’

    The experts also pointed to the damaging or destruction of libraries, heritage sites, and the Central Archives of Gaza. They said:

    The foundations of Palestinian society are being reduced to rubble, and their history is being erased

    Despite Israel’s occupation, UN-run schools for Palestinian refugees have helped deliver one of the highest literacy rates in the world for Palestine.

    The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor said in January that Israel “has targeted academic, scientific, and intellectual figures in the Strip in deliberate and specific air raids on their homes without prior notice”.

    In October, teenager Shaimaa Saydam was among those Israeli forces killed in strikes. She was the highest performing Palestinian high school student of 2023.

    Responding to the attacks on schools, Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories, said:

    Israel is genociding the Palestinians one neighborhood at a time, one hospital at a time, one school at a time, one refugee camp at a time, one ‘safe zone’ at a time, with US and European weapons.

    Featured image via ABC News – YouTube

    By James Wright

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Israel Is Torturing Palestinian Prisoners to Death — With US Complicity

    On June 26, 2023, President Joe Biden declared: “Torture is prohibited everywhere and at all times. It is illegal, immoral, and a stain on our collective conscience.” Yet since last October, Israel, emboldened by Biden’s “ironclad support,” has tortured to death at least 60 Palestinians, according to a new report by Israel-based human rights group B’Tselem. The report comes barely 10 days…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Only Paralympian From Gaza Lost 15 Relatives in Israeli Assault

    Fadi Deeb represents Palestine as a shot putter in the 2024 Paralympics and is the only member of Palestine’s Olympic delegation from Gaza. He describes being shot by an Israeli sniper in 2001, which caused his disability; losing many family members in the current Israeli assault on Gaza; and why he feels a great responsibility in representing Palestinians on the world stage. “I want to raise my…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • March on DNC organizers are fighting Chicago for the right to protest

    Next week, from Aug. 19-22, the much anticipated Democratic National Convention will kick off in Chicago, and protestors from Chicago and around the country are preparing to descend on the DNC in full force. For organizers and the over 200 organizations that comprise the Coalition to March on the DNC, Palestine is at the top of the agenda—and the city of Chicago seems determined to keep protesters from making their dissent known to the nation and the world. For months, march organizers have been locked in a legal battle with the city over protest permits and approved march routes, but Hatem Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC and national chair of the US Palestinian Community Network, says the protests are happening one way or another. What is the current plan for the DNC protests? What should protestors, DNC-goers, and Chicago residents expect during the week of the DNC? The Real News speaks with Abudayyeh to get an insider perspective and the latest updates on the coalition’s plans to march on the DNC.

    Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
    Post-Production: Alina Nehlich

    Transcript

    The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Welcome everyone to The Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News.

    Mel Buer:

    And I’m Mel Buer, staff reporter.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    It’s so great to have you all with us. Before we get rolling today, I want to remind y’all that The Real News is an independent viewer and listener-supported grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads and we never put our reporting behind paywalls. Our team is fiercely dedicated to lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle across the US and around the world. But we cannot continue to do this work without your support. And we need you to become a supporter of The Real News now. Just head over to therealnews.com/donate and donate today. It really makes a difference.

    Mel Buer:

    We’re recording this episode on Saturday, August 10th. We are now officially less than three months away from the general election and we are just over a week away from the start of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which is set to take place in Chicago. The Real News is going to be on the ground reporting from the grassroots, showing you the side of the DNC corporate media won’t. One of the many critical stories we’ll be covering are the organized protest demonstrations that will be taking place in Chicago while the DNC is taking place at the United Center. On Monday, August 19th, I’ll be reporting from what is expected to be the largest protest of the week organized by the Coalition to March on the DNC.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    As the March on the DNC website states, “The March on the DNC Coalition fights for the rights and liberation of oppressed people and against the exploitation of workers. Beginning on August 19th 2024, we will march on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to bring the people’s agenda to within sight and sound of the Democratic Party leadership. Genocide Joe Biden has stepped down from running for president as the Democratic Party nominee. His decision doesn’t change the policies of Democratic Party leadership, specifically their support of the genocide in Palestine. So our movement must continue to apply pressure. On August 19th, we will March on the DNC for Gaza regardless of who gets nominated for the presidency.”

    Mel Buer:

    Over the last eight months or so, groups like the Coalition to March on the DNC have been fighting the city over permits for their marches. Ultimately ending up in federal court to settle the permitting issue. Multiple groups have sued the city on First Amendment grounds, saying that the city’s denial of march permits is unconstitutional.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    With us today is Hatem Abudayyeh, National Chair of the United States Palestinian Community Network and a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC. We’re going to discuss with Hatem these upcoming marches on the DNC, the latest updates on the permitting situation and what listeners, protest attendees and Chicago residents can expect from the week of the DNC. Hatem, thank you so much for coming on the show in the midst of your crazy schedule right now. We really appreciate it.

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    Yeah. I’m really honored to be here as well. And I want to promote your work to the masses too and I hope people can continue to donate and support the great stuff that you do as well.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Thank you so much, man. That means the world to us. It really does. And yeah, our listeners are eager to know about what they can expect. Many of them are going to be attending. If not, they’re going to be watching closely. And so just to jump right into the conversation, I’d like to take a moment to check in and get the latest update on the permitting battle that you and your fellow march organizers have been embroiled in for months. So I guess the big question is have the permits been granted? Like we mentioned in the intro, this has been a protracted battle over the permits that has been largely focused on the march route. The Coalition has proposed a route that would take marchers within sight and sound of the DNC while the city has been trying to relegate the marches to a shorter route, farther away, out of sight and sound from the United Center. So what’s the latest on the marching permits and the march route?

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    So the first thing I’ll say is that organizing works and folks from the movement, progressive social justice activists in this country, for decades and decades have proven that. We have already won a part of this battle. They did, as you mentioned, try to bury us four miles away from the United Center when we first submitted our applications. Of course, we rejected that immediately, described how ridiculous it was that they thought that we would accept something like that. And they knew they were going to lose that on First Amendment and constitutional grounds. So finally, after many months after this lawsuit, they rejected a fourth permit application of one of the lead organizations of the Coalition. But this time when they offered an alternative, they did put us within sight and sound. Now, the challenge that we’re dealing with right now is really a common sense political challenge even for the city.

    When we say it’s in the best interest of the city as well as the protesters that we need to extend the march, it’s based on decades and decades of experience. Understand that my organization, the United States Palestinian Community Network, the National Alliance against Racism and Political Repression, Students for a Democratic Society, anti-War Committees across the Midwest, Students for Justice in Palestine, Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine, all of these organizations, and now there are over 200 who have joined the Coalition. We have decades of experience organizing these things. We’ve been the lead organizers for RNC and DNC protests since 2008 and we were the lead organizers in the 2012 NATO protests in Chicago. So we’re professionals at this sort of thing. Even if you’re not a professional, it only takes a little bit of common sense to recognize that for tens of thousands of people that we expect to have there on Monday, August 19th, you’re not going to be able to put them on a route that’s only a mile long.

    Because what will happen is people from the front of the march are going to get back to Union Park, before thousands have even left Union Park. So even though we are within sight and sound, we’re still not upholding the First Amendment and constitutional rights of everybody because the folks in the back are not going to get within sight and sound. The folks in the back are not going to be able to express their messages, which are first and foremost, end USAID to Israel, stop the genocide, free Palestine and stand with Palestine. That is the center of these protests. But it wasn’t always the center of these protests. The other thing to recognize is that USPCN joined this Coalition in April of 2023. The day after they announced that it was going to be in Chicago, we helped form the Coalition to March on the DNC. Because we’re not a one-issue organization and we’re not a one-issue community. Palestinians and Arabs here who have been fighting for decades for Palestinian self-determination and liberation care about all the other issues that the Coalition to March on the DNC cares-

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    Care about all the other issues that the coalition of March on at the NC cares about as well, immigrant rights, police accountability, stopping police crimes, black liberation, women’s rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights. All of these issues are also at the forefront. But when October came around, we recognized that this was a US supported genocide. We saw that thousands and thousands were being killed in these massacres and that the US not only was not saying anything about it, they were openly supporting it unequivocally, diplomatically, politically, militarily, financially. We knew. We knew immediately, and everybody in the coalition knew immediately that we were going to have to center Palestine for the DNC. And ever since we have, and all of the 200 organizations that have signed on to this thing have had to say that they accept that we’re centering Palestine here. And that’s why it’s incredible that it’s this big. It’s incredible that it’s this broad. But nobody who has been watching the United States and the rest of the world in the last 10 months should be surprised that Palestinians have such incredibly broad support within the movement.

    Mel Buer:

    So they’ve still rejected your permits. Are these hearings still happening in federal court? Have you received a ruling from the judge? Because last I checked, you had had a hearing on the fifth about the permitting situation and about the route.

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    Yeah, we expected a ruling on that day or within a couple days of that, but the judge has still not ruled. We have a status hearing coming up on the 13th, which is Tuesday at 2:30 Chicago time, and I can’t imagine that she’s not going to rule on that day.

    Now, again, they’ve met the legal burden after real strong political and legal pressure. These city attorneys are the same city attorneys who advised Rahm Emanuel mayor one percent to not show the video and disclose the video of the killing of Laquan McDonald in Chicago a few years back, if you remember that case. They are the ones who recommended that he not release that tape. They said, “You will lose the election if you release this tape.” And the tape did not get released before the election. That’s the kind of city attorneys that we’re dealing with here.

    They have not been negotiating in good faith with us. They have blindsided us a number of times after making agreements and promises to us. And so, we’re not surprised that that’s happening from that entity. But we also live in a different Chicago now. In fact, I’ve said this to some people kind of laughingly, which I wish it was Rahm Emanuel that was the mayor, because in a battle against a Zionist pig like him, I know that we knock people over the head. But today’s administration in Chicago is a friendly one. It has friends of ours in it. It has people from the movement in it. It has organizers in it. The mayor himself is a former organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union. And so we are negotiating with the city, but at the same time, we’re dealing with this reactionary backwards elements within the city attorney’s office, what they call corporation council in Chicago. And they’ve blindsided us, like I said, a number of times.

    What we’re dealing with now is that they have not budged on the issue of the route. The other thing that they’ve done is they’ve made an argument that we needed to turn onto side streets. Again, same thing. You turn onto side streets, you cause a big logjam with these thousands and tens of thousands of people. A logjam potentially for folks like you all and others who are experienced with these kinds of things is going to have people actually stopped for minutes at a time, 10, 15, 20 minutes. And you know what happens inevitably in that situation. Somebody sees that there’s an open street, they want to try to run to it or walk to it or get some space. And we’ve asked the cops directly, what is going to happen when we’re walking down this thoroughfare, Washington Boulevard, and you force us to turn to make two sharp turns onto narrower streets and folks see that the bigger street that we were just on is open and they want to walk to it. Will they be subject to arrest? We asked repeatedly and finally they answered and they said, yes, they’d be subject to arrest.

    So we’re saying, why do you want that? We don’t want that. The city doesn’t want that. So just give us the longer route. Give us the wider streets. And they have not budged. They continue to claim that we don’t know where the Secret Service is putting their fencing, but at what point are we going to know that and at what point are you going to disclose that information so it’s on the public record so that you can make an argument and the world can hear why it is that you’re restricting our rights.

    Mel Buer:

    Seems to me that the city is deliberately creating a dangerous situation for 20 plus thousand people when you’re on side streets with front yards. First off, it’s a nuisance for the people who live there. You’re not trying to create a nuisance for these folks in these neighborhoods. You don’t want people walking over people’s lawns and potentially creating dangerous conditions if someone has a medical emergency in their house or something like that. But yeah, these smaller streets are, if you’re going to be filling it up with 20,000 plus people, the potential for dangerous situations to come from panics in the crowd or any of that nature should be something that is paid attention to. You would think that the city would be wanting to avoid situations like that.

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    Yeah, that’s what we’re saying. Ball’s in their court at this point. And Mel, it actually sounds like you might’ve listened to our Instagram video that we made at the last court hearing because we said just that. This is a community that is mostly Black, it’s the west side of Chicago, the historic west side of Chicago, folks who are already going to be burdened so unimaginably by the DNC already. There’s going to be checkpoints. People are going to have to be searched when they’re trying to leave their homes, trying to get back to their homes after work. There’s going to be street closures everywhere. And now they’re saying let’s also allow tens of thousands of people to march on lawns and step on flower beds and that sort of thing. We don’t want to burden that community.

    In fact, we have a number of Black-led organizations, including the main Black-led organization, in our coalition, the National Alliance against Racism and Political Repression, together with the Alliance USPCN and many others have been fliering and door knocking in those communities. And people have been great. They’ve been so gracious in accepting us and recognizing how important this DNC is. This relationship between Black communities and Palestinian communities in Chicago especially, but across the country as well, is a very, very important and special relationship. Like Black-Palestinian Solidarity has the people in power up in arms.

    When the movement for Black Lives put out a policy position paper a few years back, the Zionists lost their shit, essentially, and they attacked the movement for Black Lives, ADL, and JUF, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish United Fund and Jewish Federations all across the country came out and just attacked the Black community and the movement for Black Lives for their support of Palestine for calling Israel an apartheid state.

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    …Palestine for calling Israel an apartheid state and calling for the end of occupation and colonization. So that’s who we’re dealing with in terms of the support for Israel in this country among the Zionist organizations. But of course, it’s not just Zionist organizations, it’s the top leadership in Congress and of course the Biden and Harris administration as well. So this thing is going to be huge. It’s going to be historic. It’s going to be the largest mobilization for Palestinian rights in the history of Chicago. And it is going up against the strongest, most powerful empire in the history of the world. We recognize who’s in power. We recognize who the enemy is. People are asking, why are you protesting against the Democrats? Well, if the Republicans were in party and the Republicans had the President, then the event of the season would’ve been the RNC.

    It turns out that the folks who are most responsible, who are most complicit for the genocide, for the killing of 40,000 people, for the killing of 100 people at another school that was bombed just yesterday by the Israelis, 70,000 people in Khan Yunis in Gaza have been pushed out of their homes again just yesterday. And the responsibility is on genocide Joe and killer Kamala, so that’s why it doesn’t matter that there’s been a change to the top of the ticket. It doesn’t matter to our coalition. It doesn’t matter to the organizations that are joining and have joined the coalition and that are going to be mobilizing. In fact, Netanyahu was here two weeks ago. He met with Biden directly. He met with Harris directly, and then a day later he bombed Beirut and a day after that he violated the territorial integrity of the sovereign state of Iran and killed a Palestinian leader there. The US itself went and bombed I Iraq and they’re all threatening Yemen as well.

    That means Netanyahu got the green light directly from Biden and Harris. He must have. The timing of it means that he met with Biden one day, he bombed Beirut the next, he got the permission. And so Netanyahu for months has wanted to expand this into a regional war and we as an anti-war movement in this country, not just Palestine support and Palestine solidarity, but we need to make sure that we stop an expanded war on Lebanon or on Yemen or on Iran. And that’s incumbent upon us and the listeners of this show and the social justice and anti-war movement in this country as well.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Moving to kind of pick up on that and sort of bring it back down to the street level here because I know we got to let you go here in a couple of minutes. I wanted to just bring us back to week of the DNC itself and what folks listening to this can and should expect. Now, of course, as we said at the top, we’re recording this on Saturday, August 10th. We have on Tuesday another critical hearing. Things may change by the time you guys hear this. But Hatem, I wanted to ask just based on everything that we currently know on the existing plans and on where you see this battle going, what should protest attendees and Chicago residents expect on the week of the DNC? How can folks who are planning to be in Chicago get involved and what should they expect on the days of the marches themselves?

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    Yeah, so folks who are coming from outside of Chicago and can stay the entire week, should stay the entire week because the largest of the protests on the first day is going to be Monday the 19th at 12 noon. We’re going to be at Union Park. You should probably get there early because like I said, there’ll be tens of thousands of people in that beautiful historic park. It’s historic because if you remember in 2006 when the Immigrant Rights Movement rose up against the racist Census Burnett Bill, that’s where the first protest in the Immigrant Rights Movement first happened. That’s where 500,000 people gathered to protest against those racist policies. And then later that year, 750,000 were in Chicago and a million were in Los Angeles. And it was incredible, we took back May Day for the Immigrant Rights and the Workers’ Rights Movement in that year.

    And so I remember those so vividly, and I remember that park so vividly and that’s where we’re going to be. It’s a few blocks away from the United Center where the convention is happening. Like I said, we’re starting at noon but folks should get there early. We got a really, really powerful program. Jamila Woods is joining us, the wonderful singer-songwriter from Chicago who’s like nationally and internationally renowned now. She’s going to be there singing and protesting with us. And we got a great schedule of speakers as well that we’re going to make public in a couple of days. And then we’re going to march. The other thing I’ll say Mel and Maximilian, is that from day one we said, permit or not, we’re going to be marching. We expect that we will have a permit. We expect that we’re going to win this fight of ours.

    But people need to be there because the whole world is watching, and it’s very, very important for us to stop the genocide to be able to protest that week. On Thursday we’re book-ending. First day and the last day on Thursday, the Coalition of March on the DNC will organize at 5:00 PM at Union Park as well, kind of a closing protest. On Wednesday evening at 4:00 PM, the local Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine of which USPCN is also a leader, will be leading a protest on Wednesday. So there’s a lot of activities going on, a lot of protests going on, and a lot of opportunities for folks to join in. If you can only come for the first day, and we know that working people can’t take four days off to protest necessarily, if you can only come for the first day and you’re coming from across the Midwest or from the West coast and the East Coast and the South, and we know folks are coming from there as well, make sure you come on Monday at noon.

    And if you could stay for Wednesday at 4:00, stay for Thursday at 5:00, join us the whole week and continue to put out the call that says, free Palestine. Stand with Palestine, end USA to Israel and stop the genocide.

    Mel Buer:

    A bit of a follow-up question, what about the folks who can’t make it to Chicago for the DNC? What is your message to people out there about how they can get involved, why they should, what they can do from their home or from a distance to support the coalition and to support these marches while the DNC is happening?

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    I think what we need to continue to do, one of the things that has been really incredible about this movement as well is the escalation. I remember vividly a week or so into the genocide in October, USPCN, I believe was the first organization and working with the Chicago Alliance Against Racism and political Repression to shut down a congressperson’s office, Jan Schakowsky in Chicago. We had seven people arrested on that day. The next week we shut down Sean Casten’s office. He represents a huge number of Palestinians in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. We then shut down the street in front of Schakowsky’s House, the street in front of Casten’s House. We shut down Lake Shore Drive in front of Dick Durbin’s house, and Dick Durbin is the second most seen-

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    McDermott is the second most senior Democratic senator in the country, represents a huge Arab Palestinian population, pays lip service to how much he cares about us and our rights, and never, ever has stepped up truly and strongly in support of Palestine and in condemnation of Israel. So I think people in other places should pay really close attention to the Coalition to March on the DNC’s social media. There’s a lot of information there, a beautiful toolkit that folks can use with flyers and action alerts and social media storms and all of that sort of thing. How to contact your congresspeople, how to contact the White House and continue to work together with us in making these demands.

    But find out who the people in power are, and even if they’re Democrats, and even if they got a little bit of better policies domestically than the Republicans do, which we also recognize and understand, but hold them to account, escalate, go to their offices, do these advanced actions. I think right now, when we see these massacres continue to happen day after day, when we’re up to 40,000 killed, 90,000 injured, 2 million displaced, we do need to escalate.

    I know that a lot of your listeners are also organizers and social justice activists, and they know what it means to escalate. Power concedes nothing without a demand, and we have to escalate because the people in power continue to support Israel unequivocally. It’s unacceptable. It’s unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to hear Kamala Harris say we need humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. To be honest with you, absolutely we knew that we need that. The US is responsible for those people being killed and displaced, so the US is responsible for providing aid.

    But the people of Gaza are a very, very proud people. For decades they’ve lived under siege, for almost 80 years they’ve lived under occupation and colonization. They’re not begging for your rice. They don’t want you to drop bombs one day and then try to drop bags of rice the next day. That’s not what we’re asking for. I don’t care about Kamala. Harris saying that maybe she’s a little bit more empathetic to the Palestinian cause than Biden might’ve been. That means nothing to us. What she needs to do is to stop the genocide. What they need to do is utilize the power of the United States in this situation because we know the relationship between the United States and Israel. The US is the imperialist power that supports Israel unequivocally because Israel secures the US interests in the Middle East and in the Arab world. That’s the relationship.

    Biden said it himself. If Israel was not there, we would’ve had to manufacture an Israel. And because Israel is a white settler, colonialist, manufactured state that the United States needs to continue to support to secure its interests. So we have the power. This country, this government has the power to stop it. And if they don’t stop it, that means they support it. That’s exactly what our position is. And that means that Biden supports it, that means that Kamala Harris supports it, that means that Antony Blinken supports it and Durbin and Jeffries and Schumer and Pelosi and all of them.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    So that once again is Hatem Abudayyeh, National Chair of the United States Palestinian Community Network and a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC. Hatem, thank you so much again for coming on The Real News Network and giving us this critical update on the Coalition to March on the DNC. Mel and I are greatly looking forward to being there on the ground, covering this for The Real News Network. And we look forward to seeing you and everyone there in person in just over a week.

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    Sounds great. Thank you both, Mel and Maximilian, and the Chicagoans and the Coalition are good hosts too. So hit us up as soon as you get here and looking forward to meeting you in person.

    Mel Buer:

    It’s going to be great. Thanks so much for coming on.

    Hatem Abudayyeh:

    Of course.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Hell yeah. And to all of you listening right now, we are going to be on the ground, Mel and I, with our team covering the events of the DNC, covering the protests happening around the DNC, talking to working people in Chicago, Palestinian Americans, immigrant communities and regular folks about what they are feeling and thinking about the state of the country right now, the state of the Democratic Party and what they feel we need to do to move forward as a country, as a class. So stay tuned to The Real News Network, subscribe to our YouTube and podcast channels because we got a lot of great work coming for y’all on the week of the DNC and beyond.

    For The Real News Network, this is Maximilian Alvarez.

    Mel Buer:

    And I’m Mel Buer.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Once again, please head over to therealnews.com/support so we can keep bringing you more important coverage and conversations just like this. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.

  • Israel Used US-Supplied Bomb in Massacre of 93 Palestinians at Prayer in School

    Israeli forces used at least one U.S.-provided bomb in its massacre in a school-turned-shelter that killed nearly 100 Palestinians as they were conducting morning prayers on Saturday, a report finds. CNN reports that Israel used a GBU-39 small diameter bomb in the strike, citing an analysis by former U.S. army explosive ordnance disposal technician Trevor Ball who was shown footage of…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • More than a Killing of Hamas Political Leader Ismail Haniyeh

    69% of Israelis support assassinations even if cease-fire in Gaza delayed: Poll, Anadolu Agency

    In post-World War II, except for assassins from Israel, have military and intelligence agencies assassinated political leaders of another nation? Have any of these assassinations occurred in a nation that is not the native nation of the assassinated? Two come to mind.

    On March 1, 2020, the Trump government assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad, and, on November 28, 1971, four Black September gunmen killed Wasfi Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, in the lobby of the Sheraton Cairo Hotel in Egypt? U.S. special forces dispatched Osama bin-Laden in Pakistan, but bin-Laden was not a leader of a country. Established nations have a silent agreement of not assassinating another nation’s leaders and consider it an ugly behavior.

    There have been assassinations during military coups, in which the United States participated in the takeovers, several attempts to kill Fidel Castro by U.S. agencies, assassinations of dissidents on foreign soil by Russian, Turkish, and Iranian intelligence, and unproven charges of American complicity in assassinations of foreign leaders. Israel’s widespread physical and character assassinations of foreign leaders and civilians are unique; the numbers are staggering, and the world’s inattention to the numbers is chilling.

    Foreign civilians murdered by Israel in foreign nations

    Israel’s murders of innocents, who are doing daily tasks to earn bread and assist their countries, are mafia style “hits,” criminal activities to protect criminal activities. They are performed as routine matters, with no regard to the lives of others, as if those who are not Israelis are insignificant human beings.

    September 11, 1962, Heinz Krug, a West German rocket scientist working for Egypt’s missile program, was abducted and his body never found. From Operation Damocles:

    The Mossad set up a sting involving a former SS officer and war hero named Otto Skorzeny who Krug was led to believe would help keep him and the other scientists safe. Instead, Skorzeny killed Krug and a team of Israeli agents poured acid on his body and buried his remains in the forest outside Munich. The leader of the Mossad team was Yitzhak Shamir, the head of the special operations unit and later prime minister.

    In November, 1962, two parcel bombs arrived at the office of the missile project’s director, Wolfgang Pilz, maiming his secretary and killing five Egyptian workers.

    In February 1963, another scientist, Hans Kleinwachter, escaped an ambush in Switzerland. That April, two Mossad agents in Basel threatened to kill the project manager Paul Goerke and his daughter. A pistol was fired at a West German professor who was researching electronics for Egypt in the town of Lörrach.

    Note the use of a famous Nazi, Otto Skorzeny, in one of the escapades.

    June 13, 1980, Yehia El-Mashad, Egyptian nuclear scientist was murdered in his room at the Méridien Hotel in Paris.

    September 1981, José Alberto Albano do Amarante, a Brazilian Air Force lieutenant colonel, was  assassinated by the Israeli intelligence service to prevent Brazil from becoming a nuclear nation.

    July 14, 1989,  Said S. Bedair, Egyptian scientist in microwave engineering and a colonel in the Egyptian army fell to his death from the balcony of his brother’s apartment in Alexandria, Egypt. His veins were found cut and a gas leak was detected in the apartment. Egyptians claim that the Mossad assassinated him in a way that appeared a suicide.

    March 20, 1990,  Gerald Bull, Canadian engineer and designer of the Project Babylon “supergun” for Saddam Hussein’s government, was shot at the door to his apartment in Brussels, Belgium. Attributed to Mossad by several sources.

    Murdered Iranian Scientists and family members

    Mossad has been accused of assassinating Masoud Alimohammadi, Ardeshir Hosseinpour, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad, and Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan; scientists involved in the Iranian nuclear and missile programs. In some of the attacks other innocent civilians were killed. Israel is also suspected of being behind the attempted assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi. Meir Dagan, who served as Director of Mossad from 2002 until 2009, while not taking credit for the assassinations, praised them in an interview with a journalist, saying “the removal of important brains” from the Iranian nuclear project had achieved so-called “white defections”, frightening other Iranian nuclear scientists into requesting that they be transferred to civilian projects.

    November 12, 2011,  General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, the main architect of the Iranian missile system and the founder of Iran’s deterrent power ballistic missile, was assassinated in Tehran.

    April 21, 2018, Fadi Mohammad al-Batsh, a Palestinian engineer, was shot dead by two men on a motorcycle in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

    August 5, 2018, Aziz Asbar, Syrian scientist responsible for long-range rockets and chemical weapons programs, was killed by a car bomb in Masyaf, Syria.

    November 27, 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, senior official in the nuclear program of Iran, was killed by a remotely operated gun in a truck smuggled into Iran.

    March 19, 2023,  Ali Ramzi Al-Aswad, Palestinian Islamic Jihad engineer, was killed in the Damascus outskirts. Islamic Jihad accused Israel of the murder.

    Killing innocent civilians because they perform activities that assist Israel’s adversaries is not confined to weapons manufacture. Anyone in Gaza who helps Gazans to survive the Israeli onslaught is also in the crosshairs.

    Data from the U.N.’s Crisis Coordination Centre In Gaza, released by Dropsite News, shows that, by the end of June, 2024 , Israel’s assault on Gaza killed 195 United Nations staff members and at least 172 dependents of the staff.

    The killing of seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen alarmed the world. It was not an “isolated mistake.” NBC News reports,

    But while the Israel Defense Forces investigation suggests this was an isolated “grave mistake,” the mounting toll faced by aid agencies throughout the war points instead to what they say are systemic failings in the IDF’s approach to protecting humanitarian workers in the Gaza Strip. According to the United Nations, a total of 224 humanitarian aid workers have been killed since the start of the war.

    Murder of Palestinian and Hezbollah leaders

    Israel seems to delight in killing leaders and family members of those opposing Israel, while knowing the deceased leader will be replaced by another leader. Violating the sovereignty of other nations by blooding their soils does not bother the Israelis. They always excuse the killings by claiming the leader had given orders for a violent action against Israelis, without noting that the violent action succeeded several Israeli violent actions against the Palestinians and Israel could terminate the extrajudicial killings by granting the Palestinians their deserved freedom. The Israelis are special people; they are allowed to murder whomever, wherever, and whenever.

    April 16, 1988, Abu Jihad, second-in-command to Yassir Arafat, was shot dead in front of his family by Israeli commandos in Tunis.

    February 16, 1992, Abbas al-Musawi , Secretary-General of Hezbollah, was killed by Israeli Apache helicopters that fired missiles at the 3 vehicle motorcade of al-Musawi in southern Lebanon, killing him, his wife, his five-year-old son, and four others.

    March 22, 2004,  Ahmed Yassin, the frail and nearly blind paraplegic co-founder of Hamas, two bodyguards, and seven bystanders were killed by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache-fired Hellfire missiles. Seventeen bystanders were wounded.

    April 17, 2004, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, successor to Ahmed Yassin. was killed by helicopter-fired missiles, along with his son and bodyguard. Several bystanders were injured.

    July 31, 2024, Ismail Haniyeh, political leader of Hamas, was killed by a bomb in Tehran. Eighty innocent members of Haniyeh’s close and extended family had already been systematically killed by Israel.

    Haniyeh’s murder reminded me of the failed attempt to kill Khaled Mashaal, Hamas’ previous political leader. I met Khaled Mashaal in Damascus, Syria, where he went after his recovery. My notes on that meeting.

    Not kosher was a clandestine trip to meet a “minor” Hamas official, who turned out to be Khalid Meshaal, official political leader of Hamas, exiled in Damascus. The world became more aware of Meshaal when Israel’s Mossad tried to assassinate him in Amman. Jordan’s King Abdullah forced Israel to immediately supply an antidote to the poison given to Meshaal by threatening to publicly hang the Mossad agents who tried to kill the Hamas leader.

    Meshaal does not fill the western media description of a wild eyed fanatic. On the contrary, he is a friendly, deliberate, and well-spoken person who makes sense to the many who subscribe to similar positions. He said that Israel does not want peace and both negotiating parties aren’t strong enough to market their results to their peoples. Meshaal doesn’t delineate Hamas’ positions, but defers to a Palestinian position that accepts 1967 borders and an Arab position that has accepted the two-state solution. Since 2002, Bush has repeatedly spoken of support for a two-state solution, but where is it? The Hamas leader expects the region to be more explosive. Nevertheless, if the PA feels the Palestinian rights have been fulfilled, Hamas will welcome that. He has proposed a Hudna (truce), and if Israel responds positively, Hamas will not be an obstacle to peace. If the Right of Return is the only remaining problem, Hamas will compromise, and accept the will of the people. He claims Hamas does not encourage militancy, does not desire a theocratic state, is a national liberation movement, and will let the Palestinian people decide its own government.

    The February 1986 assassination of Sven Olof Palme, Prime Minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986, has never been solved. Swedish prosecutor Krister Petersson claimed “there was ‘reasonable evidence’ that the assailant was Stig Engstrom, a graphic designer at an insurance company, who killed himself in 2000, at the age of 66, and could not rule out the possibility that Mr. Engstrom had acted as part of a larger conspiracy.” Olof Palme, who had credibility and many admirers, was a severe critic of Israel, at a time when no Western leader voiced arguments against Israel. Could Mossad have been involved in his killing?

    Systematic Murder of Journalists

    Journalists are well identified and, in battles that have no battleground and are person to person, there is little possibility of a journalist becoming a casualty unless deliberately targeted. The only reason to deliberately target a journalist is to prevent the presentation of the truth.

    As of August 6, 2024, the Committee to protect Journalists (CPJ) “preliminary investigations showed at least 113 journalists and media workers were among the more than 40,000 killed since the war began, making it the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.” A previous report, in May 2024, “found that Israeli soldiers had killed at least 20 journalists in the last 22 years and none had ever been charged or held accountable.”

    The most well-known murder of a journalist was the May 11, 2022 deliberate targeting of Shireen Abu Akleh, “a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.” The Biden administration insisted “on ‘full and transparent accounting’ of death of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.” Despite not receiving any accounting, Biden has done nothing to punish Israel.

    Write “bad” stories about the Mafia and the Mafia retaliates, and apparently without concern ─ proof that Mafia Israel controls the American government.

    Revenge attacks on Adversaries

    Anyone who harmed an Israeli can expect to be hunted down and receive retribution. Hundreds of Palestinians and Lebanese Hezbollah have been found guilty without trial, and they and innocent others of mistaken identity have been blasted from the Earth. Three things wrong with the bold strikes.

    (1)    They do not prevent the deaths of Israel’s citizens and soldiers; they only retaliate for the deaths. Why were the Israelis killed; their murders revenged the killings and extreme harm done to individual Palestinians and the Palestinian community.

    (2)    Since day one of the Zionist invasion, the Israel population has been guilty of theft of Palestinian lands, wanton killings of Palestinians, destruction of their communities, oppression, ethnic cleansing, and interferences in their daily life. The Palestinians have a valid reason for their attacks. No Israeli is innocent. Israel’s retaliations are not revenge; they are a way of telling the Palestinians, “If you counter our thefts and oppression of your community we will strike you harder.

    (3)    Hamas and Hezbollah have warned Israel to halt all attacks on the Palestinian community. Israel ignores the threats and willingly provokes Hamas and Hezbollah into counterattacks.

    Character Assassinations

    No officials in the world’s governments speak in the vicious and demeaning manner of other officials as do Israeli officials; dehumanizing Palestinians and defaming antagonists.

    Every decision by United Nations (UN) agencies and Human Rights organizations that contradicts Israel’s polices is met with derision by Israeli officials. As an example, when the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly called for an immediate humanitarian truce between Israel and Hamas, Israel’s UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan said the UN no longer held “even one ounce of legitimacy or relevance.”

    Speaking at a conference in Israel, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “Nobody will let us cause two million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral, until our hostages are returned.”

    Israel’s former justice minister, Ayelet Shaked, posted on Facebook:

    Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

    Stereotypes and prejudice in conflict: Representations of Arabs in Israeli Jewish society, Bar-Tal, D., & Teichman, Y. (2005), Cambridge University Press, P.359 reports that “10% of the drawings in a sample of children asked to sketch a typical Arab depicted them as animals. Extensive evidence that Israeli children, when asked about Arabs, spoke of them in terms of pigs and other animals (as well as “barbarians,” “Nazis,” and murderers).”

    A worldwide contingent of Israel supporters defame Israel’s critics with false charges of anti-Semitism and media attacks that ruin reputations, cause employment difficulties, and isolate individuals.

    The Canary Mission, documents people and groups that it falsely accuses of promoting hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses. This bigoted organization also posts its Jewish Friends of Anti-Semites
    ADL, an organization concerned with false stereotypes, publishes its Top Ten Anti-Israel Groups in America.
    AMCHA, joins the forces of Israel supporters that make a mockery of the word anti-Semite, with its list of more than 200 anti-Israel Middle East Studies professors, many of whom are Jews.

    Israel is a Criminal Enterprise

    Middle East commentators ponder the reasons for Israel’s policy of targeted assassinations. Do they halt aggressive activities that counter Israel? Are they meant to intimidate people so they become fearful of engaging in actions that upset Israel or led to the belief that death is an act of mercy? Do they serve “as a mechanism to galvanize its own society rather than genuinely altering the political or military stance of its adversaries,” mentioned by Abdaljawad Omar in an article, “The real reason Israel is assassinating Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, and why it won’t stop the resistance?” It’s all part of a pattern, the pattern of a criminal enterprise and not the pattern of an established nation.

    Nations are formed from a community of people who share a common land, language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and history for centuries. If it were otherwise, why has Israel’s thrust been to give its Jews the scaffolding of a new nation by giving them a common language, culture, descent, and history, which reject how they previously lived? No established state has governments, leaders, and people who express themselves in the despicable manner and commit extrajudicial crimes in the violent manner as does Israel. The gathering of violent people, their engagement in continuous battle to gain territory and resources, and strong arm those who interfere with their thievery and dictatorial control are the efforts of a criminal enterprise.

    Misinterpretation of the governing nature and violent behavior of Israel has led to a faulty approach to resolving the Middle East crisis. There are no two-state, no one-state, no confederation, and no federal solutions to the crisis. There is only a “no state,” a criminal enterprise that pleads for an international police force to defeat the criminals and prevent additional murderous catastrophes.

    This is not a sarcastic and fanciful gaze at world politics. Engage Israelis in negotiations and find you are negotiating how much you are willing to be robbed. Those who honestly sought and still seek a reasonable compromise and solution of the crisis by negotiations have not factored into their arguments the true nature of the Zionist criminal mission and its criminal constituents;  a criminality that is international, extending to money laundering, ecstasy trade, prostitution, arms trade, and harboring criminals, including sex criminals fleeing the law. Israel does what it wants, when it wants, and where it wants, not functioning as a normal state but as a criminal enterprise.

    All of Israel’s worldwide supporters are criminals by association. The rewards of these aiders and abettors are neither beneficial nor tangible; they are willing to receive nothing, while knowing they share in the horrors done to others, earn contempt from the world community, and, hopefully, will, one day, receive eventual justice of years in prisons.

    The post More than a Killing of Hamas Political Leader Ismail Haniyeh first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • State repression writ large as Palestine Action actionists continue to be held

    Cops continue to hold six Palestine Action activists under counter-terrorism laws after they entered Elbit System’s Bristol factory – a company complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The group, other organisations, and its supporters have hit back – with protests happening outside two police stations. The Canary’s view? We’re witnessing the state setting a precedent against direct actionists.

    Palestine Action: more action against Elbit

    As the Canary previously reported, Palestine Action activists targeted Elbit’s Bristol site on Tuesday 6 August. They used a repurposed prison van to smash the gates at the site. When inside, they destroyed equipment and machinery that Israel would have used to kill Palestinian people with.

    As of Monday 12 August, Israel had killed at least 39,897 people in Gaza, including over 15,000 children. The toll includes 107 deaths in the previous 48 hours. Israel has also wounded around 92,152 people since 7 October.

    However, also on 12 August, cops had detained six Palestine Action activists for several days under counter-terrorism laws – completely disproportionate when contrasted with Israel’s war crimes and attempted genocide in Gaza.

    ‘We refuse to be intimidated’

    Palestine Action said in a statement:

    Actionists are being detained under the Terrorism Act, allowing the police to hold them for up to 7 days, with possible extension to 14 days, without charge. This comes after six were arrested on Tuesday 6th August for entering Elbit Systems’ Filton, Bristol site, to prevent its manufacture of weapons for genocide.

    The Filton premises are the brand new £35m R&D hub of Israel’s biggest weapons firm. Its June 2023 opening was attended by the UK-Israeli Ambassador Hotevely, and Elbit’s CEO Bezhalel Machlis – who has frequently boasted of the company’s central role in Israel’s military, during the ongoing Gaza genocide.

    Direct action against Elbit aims to disrupt this: targeting the source of colonial violence and genocide against the Palestinian people, undermining Elbit’s profiteering from Israel’s daily massacres.

    As well as detaining them under unprecedented powers, police have launched a smear campaign against the detained actionists, alleging violence against police and security guards. The activists are unable to respond to these claims, and unable to describe for public record the force used against them by police and private security. Palestine Action contends that these statements are designed to prejudice opinion and legal proceedings against activists, and to lay the groundwork for the police’s unjust use of authoritarian powers.

    Now, more than ever, Palestine Action and the #Filton6 need the support of the public, to push back against these authoritarian attempts to protect Israel’s weapons industry. Show the British state and Israeli arms companies that we refuse to be intimidated into allowing a genocide to happen.

    Other organisations have hit back at the cops and the government for allowing their actions.

    ‘Release them immediately’

    CAGE International said:

    These courageous actionists were acting to prevent the further arming of a regime currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, the highest judicial authority in the world. Their actions were rooted in a commitment to save innocent lives by disrupting the supply chain of weapons used to perpetuate ongoing genocidal violence.

    In a disturbing display of state repression, the actionists have been held since Tuesday 6 August, under the Terrorism Act 2000 on a seven-day warrant without charge. They are currently detained at Hammersmith and Newbury police stations. This abuse of counter-terrorism legislation is clearly designed to intimidate and silence those who dare to challenge the complicity of states and corporations in war crimes and human rights abuses. Direct action has proven so effective in challenging state-sanctioned atrocities that authorities are resorting to intimidation tactics and harsh legal measures to silence and undermine those who dare to take a stand.

    CAGE International calls for the immediate release of these actionists.

    The actions of these six individuals should be recognised for what they are: a principled and necessary intervention to halt the killing of innocent civilians.

    Hammersmith comes out

    Indeed – many people do recognised them as such. On Sunday 11 August people protested outside Hammersmith and Newbury police stations. Canary writer Samantha Asumadu was at Hammersmith. A significant number of people turned out:

    Cops were protecting the police station:

    Asumadu said:

    “I could hear it before I saw it. Shouts, chants and noise. I hurriedly lit my cigarette and walked toward the music. I got out my mask too; something I haven’t warn since the year after lockdown ended.

    “I doubt it would do any of the people there any good to hide our faces by now.

    “We would have been mapped and tagged years ago if we’d attended a protest – certainly since 2019 when the Public Order Act started making its way through parliament. But probably even before then if we had attended any anti-war, pro-justice protest. And I have attended many since the million-strong one in 2006 at what turned out to be the start of the second invasion of Iraq. 

    “On the mic/blow horn as I twisted and turned into the crowd, sliding sideways in order to get a view, was someone I recognised but wasn’t sure who it was. She gave me a wry smile and carried on speaking through the blow horn. She had half cut dreads that she’d tied up on the top of her head. Kafiri slung round her neck, she urged us to join in with her chant “no justice”.

    Righteous indignation

    Asumadu continued:

    “She soon introduced someone called MC Righteous. I’d heard his name plenty of times back in the early 2010s when people like Lowkey and Akala had made their names. MC Righteous had never hit the big time, but as far as I know he hasn’t also been boycotted or targeted by the state such as Lowkey has, or denounced by historians like Akala has. So maybe there’s  something in being NOT too famous.

    “He got the crowd hyped, even the older types hanging back a bit, and the small woman a in hijab who had brought her chair with her, determined to support the Filton 6 even from the back, even sitting down. “Bun the occupation”. Damn right. 

    “MC Righteous handed the mic to a woman who introduced herself as the mother of the youngest Palestine Actioner, at 20 years old, who had been unceremoniously locked up, supposedly on ‘terrorism’ charges. She said:

    I have never heard of Elbit Systems before my daughter got involved and now I know so much more, I support her actions 100%. But she has an illness, they are not giving her proper medication.

    “As she spoke I began to feel movement at the edges of the crowd of around 150 people.

    The cops shut it down

    Asumadu noted:

    “When I had entered their space I had noticed the numerous police who stood across the road, down the road, and on the road. They hadn’t been too close, but now I felt them over. I happened to be filming when they made their move:

    “What looked like them trying to encircle us, I slipped through with a second to spare and brushed past a policeman which allowed me to make my escape.

    “I crossed to the other side if the road, dodging traffic, and heading towards a sea of blue:

    “I took the above video from across the road, listened for a bit, then decided to walk to a pub not far away in Kensington Olympia. I was disconcerted to see the number of police vans they’d brought and parked on the other side of the road:

    “I took one last look back at the grandmothers, men, women, teenagers, students who had come out to make some noise for the Filton 6 and I felt blessed.

    Standing strong against repression

    As Asumadu summed up:

    “I remembered two years ago the last time I went to A Palestine Action. I was the only journalist there. Whilst only this year I got round to writing about it I had forgotten the photos and video I had taken so did another thread on X:

    “Because one thing I know is Palestine Action are not new to this, they’re true to this. Leaving the pub a couple of hours later having posting some of the photos on Instagram and X/Twitter I went back the way I had come.

    “Expecting to hear them again before I saw them. They had gone. So had all the police vans, and the police. I traced back the exact steps I had taken earlier in reverse but this time I noticed what was to the left of me . Directly opposite the Hammersmith police station is Hammersmith library. Enlightenment, and knowledge standing strong across from repression and hopelessness”.

    Palestine Action: don’t believe the cops

    People also went to Newbury:

    On 12 August, people also went back there:

    Meanwhile, Netpol said:

    Police appear to want to claim Palestine Action is some kind of ‘urban guerilla group’ because it engages in direct action against property. To make this stick, it now needs to portray it as ‘violent’. Anyone who knows the people involved in it recognises this as a fabrication.

    It has been frustrating that some media coverage has failed to challenge claims about alleged injuries to officers during a recent protest. The police have a long track record of lying about protests – look back to the claims made about Kingsnorth in 2008

    Everyone should exercise the greatest level of scepticism about any claims made by Avon and Somerset Police, who invented ‘broken bones’ during the Kill the Bill protests in 2021.

    It is obvious what cops are doing.

    The state is setting a precedent

    For four years, authorities have been unable to stop Palestine Action with standard legislation. Now, under exceptionally dubious justification, they are using terrorism laws to try and convict them. Authorities are also sending out a message to other groups like Just Stop Oil that their direct action will not be tolerated, either. Moreover, the state is once again protecting corporate capital – in this case, Elbit, to which Palestine Action has caused serious disruption and damage.

    However, cops holding Palestine Action activists under counter-terrorism laws also sends a clear signal to the public. In the same few days that far-right racist agitator Tommy Robinson was also detained under counter-terror laws, the state is saying that anyone who does not follow the Western liberal playbook will be face the consequences – regardless of whether they’re on the left or right.

    The fact that many of the far-right ‘thugs’ during the recent race riots got more lenient sentences than the Just Stop Oil ‘Whole Truth Five’ speaks volumes about how the state views the far right compared to what it would label the ‘far left’. Regardless of that, though, and the response to the race riots by the criminal justice system should also ring alarms bells for the rest of us.

    However, the biggest warning comes from cops treatment of Palestine Action. A precedent is being set – and it is not a good one.

    Featured image and additional images and video via Samantha Asumadu 

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Ireland calls out Israel’s deal with the EU after school massacree

    On 10 August, an Israeli airstrike hit a Palestinian school housing displaced families. Reportedly, Israel killed nearly 100 people in the strike. Following this, Irish taoiseach Simon Harris has called for an urgent review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

    Death toll

    Harris released a statement which begins:

    This weekend has brought the grisly milestone of 40,000 deaths in Gaza a step closer.

    A report released by the Lancet in July 2024 estimated that the number of deaths is actually far higher than this. The report stated:

    By June 19, 2024, 37 396 people had been killed in the Gaza Strip since the attack by Hamas and the Israeli invasion in October, 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Ministry’s figures have been contested by the Israeli authorities, although they have been accepted as accurate by Israeli intelligence services, the UN, and WHO. These data are supported by independent analyses, comparing changes in the number of deaths of UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff with those reported by the Ministry, which found claims of data fabrication implausible.

    Collecting data is becoming increasingly difficult for the Gaza Health Ministry due to the destruction of much of the infrastructure. The Ministry has had to augment its usual reporting, based on people dying in its hospitals or brought in dead, with information from reliable media sources and first responders. This change has inevitably degraded the detailed data recorded previously. Consequently, the Gaza Health Ministry now reports separately the number of unidentified bodies among the total death toll. As of May 10, 2024, 30% of the 35 091 deaths were unidentified.

    Its estimate was as follows (emphasis added):

    In recent conflicts, such indirect deaths range from three to 15 times the number of direct deaths. Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37 396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186 000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza. Using the 2022 Gaza Strip population estimate of 2 375 259, this would translate to 7·9% of the total population in the Gaza Strip.

    “Gut-wrenching”

    Harris’s statement continued:

    There is growing evidence of a prolonged humanitarian catastrophe, and I am particularly disturbed by the confirmation this weekend by the United Nations that the number of aid deliveries reaching Gaza has halved, from a daily average of 169 trucks in April to fewer than 80 trucks a day in June and July.

    The Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs also says that only 24 of 67 planned aid missions to northern Gaza this month have been facilitated by Israel.

    The United Nations has also assessed that more than 80 percent of the Gaza Strip has been placed under evacuation orders since October of last year.

    When people are told to leave, they have nowhere to go, so they often go to schools.

    490 of Gaza’s schools have been bombed or damaged since the start of the war, and this weekend’s images from inside al-Taba’een school are gut-wrenching. Ireland condemns outright such awful and wholesale loss of civilian life.

    A ceasefire remains urgently needed, and all sides must immediately work in good faith to bring one about.

    We have all been horrified by the many undoubted war crimes that have been committed in Gaza. There can be no impunity. Those responsible must be held to account.

    The ICJ orders

    Harris’s statement ends:

    All the legally binding orders of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] must also be implemented in full.

    Too many innocent lives have been lost in 10 months.

    The world is standing at the precipice of a horrific moment, and yet all levers to bring an end to the violence are not being used.

    I again call for an urgent review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement. The Agreement contains human rights clauses, and I do not believe it is conscionable for the EU to continue to render them redundant.

    Ireland calls for an immediate ceasefire, the unconditional release of Israeli hostages, and for aid trucks to flow unimpeded.

    In May 2024, the ICJ published the following conclusions with “measures to be adopted” by Israel:

    50. The Court considers that, in conformity with its obligations under the Genocide Convention, Israel must immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.
    51. The Court recalls that, in its Order of 26 January 2024, it ordered Israel, inter alia, to “take effective measures to prevent the destruction and ensure the preservation of evidence related to allegations of acts within the scope of Article II and Article III of [the Genocide Convention]” (see paragraph 5 above). In the present circumstances, the Court is also of the view that, in order to preserve evidence related to allegations of acts falling within the scope of Article II and Article III of the Genocide Convention, Israel must take effective measures to ensure the unimpeded access to the Gaza Strip of any commission of inquiry, fact-finding mission or other investigative body mandated by competent organs of the United Nations to investigate allegations of genocide

    The ICJ also drew attention to the orders it made for Israel to cease hostilities on 26 January and 28 March, which it noted are “applicable throughout the Gaza strip”.

    Proceedings at the ICJ against Israel were initiated by South Africa, which alleges:

    the commission of the following acts with genocidal intent: killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. According to South Africa, genocidal intent is evident from the way in which Israel’s military attack is being conducted, from the clear pattern of conduct of Israel in Gaza and from the statements made by Israeli officials in relation to the military operation in the Gaza Strip. The Applicant also contends that “[t]he intentional failure of the Government of Israel to condemn, prevent and punish such genocidal incitement constitutes in itself a grave violation of the Genocide Convention”.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By John Shafthauer

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran

    They say Iran “masterminded” a Canadian student encampment and is “destabilizing” West Asia. But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.

    Recently, various commentators, politicians and Zionist groups promoted a deranged report Iran “masterminded” the student divestment encampment at McGill. Seeking to frame student opposition to their university’s complicity with Israel’s holocaust as Iranian interference, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, Canada Proud, MP Kevin Vuong, senator Leo Housakos, conservative candidate Neil Oberman, influencer Yasmine Mohammed, journalist Sam Cooper, Hampstead mayor Jeremy Levi and others shared an Iran International report headlined “Iran masterminded anti-Israel protest in Canadian university”. Drawing from an analysis by an unnamed official at US cyber company XPOZ, the article claims large numbers of social media posts about the McGill encampment were in Farsi and may have come from Iranian government aligned accounts. A National Post article “Disinformation experts warn Iran, Russia and others encouraging anti-Israel protests in Canada” used the same data though it was slightly more circumspect in concluding Iran “masterminded” the encampment. It was shared by Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

    As someone who went to the encampment regularly and has followed activism at McGill for a quarter century it’s hard to not laugh at the absurdity. In the lead up to the encampment several students went on a two-month hunger strike to pressure the university to divest and there were a number of large anti-genocide protests on campus during the last academic year. For a decade there have been referendums on Palestine and in November 78.7% of undergraduates called on the administration to sever ties with “any corporations, institutions or individuals complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.” It was the largest referendum turnout in the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) history.

    The broader context in which the encampment grew out of also demonstrates the silliness of the ‘blame Iran’ claim. The students who set up the McGill encampment were quite obviously mimicking the tactics of their US counterparts. And the tactic had little to do with social media. I doubt the reliability of the data quoted by Iran International and the National Post but even if lots of Farsi language Iranian government bots promoted the encampment what impact did this have on a physical occupation of a campus in Montreal?

    At a higher level of ‘blame Iran’ idiocy, foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly is claiming Iran is “destabilizing” the region. A statement she released on Sunday regarding rising tensions in the region concluded, “I reiterated our call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, for the immediate release of all hostages, and demand that Iran and its proxies refrain from destabilizing actions in the region.” On July 26 Canada, Australia and New Zealand released a joint statement with a similar formulation. It noted, “We condemn Iran’s attack against Israel of April 13-14, call on Iran to refrain from further destabilizing actions in the Middle East, and demand that Iran and its affiliated groups, including Hizballah, cease their attacks.”

    Canadian officials never refer to Israel as “destabilizing” the region even though that country has killed hundreds of thousands in Gaza and stolen ever more Palestinian land in the West Bank all the while repeatedly attacking Lebanon and Syria and assassinating the Palestinians’ main ceasefire negotiator in Iran.

    As part of its blame Iran nonsense, Ottawa has ignored Israel’s recent assassination of the Hamas leader in Tehran and top Hezbolah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. But they will no doubt denounce Iran or Hezbollah when they respond.

    Four months ago, Ottawa remained silent when Israel damaged Canada’s embassy in Damascus while murdering eight Iranian officials at the country’s diplomatic compound. Then the Canadian government condemned Iran when it responded to Israel’s flagrant war crime.

    As part of this blame Iran mantra Ottawa recently joined the US in designating the 100,000-member Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organization. Listing the IRGC bolsters Israeli violence in the region.

    Canada continues to strengthen Israel as it commits horrific crime after horrific crime across the region. As death from illness and malnutrition grows due to 10 months of IOF barbarism in Gaza, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said it may be “justified and moral” to starve 2 million Palestinians but the world won’t let Israel do it. At the same time, Knesset members are openly debating the legitimacy of raping the 10,000 Palestinian hostages Israel holds in what a recent B’tselem report refers to as “torture camps”.

    But instead of focusing on Israel’s crimes we’re told to look away. At first, we were told Israel’s genocide was all Hamas’ fault. Now it’s Iran that is to blame.

    Israel and its supporters are like 4-year-olds caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It’s always someone else’s fault. Except this is not about a stolen sweet. This is about the world watching a genocide in real time and doing nothing about it.

    The post Look away from Israel’s crimes, they say, blame Iran first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • States Across the South Are Introducing Laws Punishing Pro-Palestinian Speech

    In the months since October 7, students, organizers, and community members have decried the ongoing genocide in Gaza and called for a free Palestine. There has also been a corresponding increase in Islamophobia and brutal suppression of Palestinian organizing, including intimidation, police brutality, and violence waged against college students who protested Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel Kills 100 in Gaza School Hours After Biden Approves $3.5B in Military Aid

    Just hours after the Biden administration Friday announced approval of $3.5 billion in military funds for Israel and shipments for new weaponry, an Israeli bombing of a school-turned-shelter in Gaza has killed 100 people or more, including scores of civilian men, women, and children in what was described as a “bloody massacre” that struck during morning prayers, leaving body parts scattered “in…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Israel’s Genocidal Violence Must Be Stopped — Before It’s Too Late

    Following World War II, Albert Camus posed a “formidable gamble” to those who had survived a tragedy of immense proportions. “We’re in history up to our necks,” he observed, yet we must wager that “words are more powerful than munitions.” “Leave or die” are the horrid words threatening largely unprotected Palestinian civilians in Gaza as dismayed populations around the world demand moral…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Landmark Lawsuit Takes Canary Mission to Court for Doxxing Palestine Advocates

    It seems like Canary Mission, the shadowy pro-Israel doxxing operation that has targeted pro-Palestinian voices for nearly a decade, will finally have its day in court. Last month, the Chicago chapter of the Council On American Islamic Relations (CAIR Chicago) filed a landmark federal lawsuit against the blacklisting website — it is the first time Canary Mission has been sued.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Harris Adviser Says She Opposes Israel Arms Embargo as She Shuts Down Protesters

    As activists are turning up the heat on the Kamala Harris campaign to come out strongly against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, a top Harris adviser said on Thursday that the vice president doesn’t support the idea of an arms embargo on Israel — one of the most crucial and consequential demands of pro-Palestine advocates calling for an end to Israel’s slaughter. Harris’s national security adviser…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Journalist Faces Hate Crime Charge for Allegedly Filming Gaza Protest Action

    Press freedom groups are raising alarm after New York police arrested and charged videographer Samuel Seligson for allegedly filming pro-Palestinian activists hurling red paint at the homes of top officials of the Brooklyn Museum, part of a campaign by activists demanding the institution divest from Israel. Seligson faces eight counts of criminal mischief with a hate crime enhancement…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Activists press Kamala Harris for arms embargo on Israel


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • “Uncommitted” Co-Chair Layla Elabed on Meeting Kamala Harris, Pressing VP for Arms Embargo on Israel


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Families Flee Khan Yunis as Israel Hammers Gaza With US-Supplied Bombs

    A wave of fresh bombings and military ground operations by Israel were underway in the city of Khan Younis on Friday as images of Palestinian families once again forced to flee plastered global news sites and world leaders, including the United States, refused to intervene to stop the relentless assault being inflicted on the people of Gaza. Al-Jazeera reports the southern city — which its…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ‘Israel has violated the [Olympic] Charter’: Jibril Rajoub calls for IOC action against Israel

    For as long as it has existed, the Olympics has shrouded itself in the language of international fraternity and peace. Yet more than 10 months into Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has yet to take action against the pariah state’s participation in the Paris games. Edge of Sports host Dave Zirin speaks with Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee, for an exclusive interview. Rajoub describes the hardships and obstacles Palestine’s athletes have overcome from the “fascist, racist occupation” to attend the Paris Olympics, and calls out the silence from the IOC regarding Israel’s genocide.

    Studio Production: Jules Boykoff
    Post-Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley

    Transcript

    Dave Zirin:

    Hey, this is Dave Zirin from Edge of Sports TV, only on the Real News Network. I’m speaking with Jibril Rajoub, who, among many titles, is also the head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee. We’re coming to you from Olympic Paris. Mr. Rajoub, thank you for joining us.

    Jibril Rajoub:

    Appreciate your kindness. Hopefully that, through this platform, I can convey the message of my people to the French people, which is a message of hope, peace, love, and determination to enjoy our fundamental rights. Right of self-determination, to live in peace, security, in our sovereign, independent, Palestinian state.

    Dave Zirin:

    What has the challenge been for you to bring an Olympic team to Paris, given the context of everything that’s been happening since October?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    I have the worst challenge, which is exclusive for the Palestinians. A fascist and racist occupation trying to liquidate, to destroy my Palestinian people through official terror, aggressions. Trying to negate us. But the other face of the picture is our commitment, our ambitions, and even our commitment to expose our justice cause through the ethics and the values of sport. Sport is a strategic choice. Athletes, to expose our justice cause, [are] the most effective tool, and this is… I think the Israelis don’t like and don’t want [this], because they want to present us totally in a different shape and character.

    But I am insisting, and I am working in spite [of the] closure, killing, suffocation, ethnic cleansing in Gaza, destroying all the facilities of sport—and even some of them are used as concentration camps in the West Bank. We had to suspend all official sport activities, because of the Israeli crazy and stupid and fascist choices on the ground. But in spite of that, you see that we came with eight athletes trying to convey a message to the international community: It’s the time to end the suffering of the Palestinian people.

    Dave Zirin:

    What makes sports so effective in conveying your message and your cause?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    I think sport today is a global language. Sport is a humanitarian, peaceful means. [And] therefore, I myself—I suffer. And I don’t want to see anyone suffer. I have spent 17 years in Israeli jails, which was worse than the Bastille. But in spite of that, I don’t want to cause suffering to anyone, no matter who is he and where is he coming from. I do believe that using sport, using athletes as an asset in our resistance and in our struggle, it’s very effective. And even here in France, the way that we were received, and all over the world, is encouraging me and motivating me to continue this path. A peaceful, a non-violent tool—sport, athletes, football, and so on.

    Dave Zirin:

    That goes to my next question. How has the Palestinian delegation, the Palestinian athletes, how have you been welcomed, treated, received here in Paris?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    Very friendly. With roses, smiling. Wherever we go, the French people, the normal people, are welcoming us in a friendly, smiling, lovely way. Even the president of France received me well and encouraged me to continue. And also, he’s trying to send a message of hope to our people. And I think he can. He can [play] a great role in the current situation, to send a message of hope to the Palestinians. Frustration, losing hope, will lead to bad consequences. We expect France—French people, French parliament, government, and the president—in the current situation, to play [a] crucial [role]… It’s important not to let the Palestinians [lose] hope. It’s the time. Believe me, it’s the time. Otherwise, pushing us to the vicious cycle of bloodshed and killing, they are playing on the hands of this fascist, crazy, stupid Bibi and his racist government. Bibi is the same model of hopeless. Bibi and his government is a real threat for regional stability and global peace. They’re expansionists, they’re fascists. The way that they are behaving, the way that they are talking about the Palestinians, as if we are not existing.

    They cannot deny that more than seven… about seven million Palestinians live in historic Palestine. Could they ignore? Could they continue on this apartheid?

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow.

    Jibril Rajoub:

    The ball is in the court of the international community, the free peoples, France. The French Revolution two centuries ago inspired the whole world. 13th of July, 1789 inspired the whole world. It’s the time. It’s the time for the disciples of that revolution to come up and say, “Enough is enough.”

    Dave Zirin:

    As you well know, there is the Olympic Charter. There is also something called the Olympic Truce. Israel has violated the Charter and the Truce flagrantly.

    Jibril Rajoub:

    Israel is insisting to violate all the principles, all the truces, all the charters, and continue their crazy and fascist doctrine to dictate facts by killing, by destroying, by occupying, by suffocating the Palestinians. The Israelis have no right because of the Holocaust, which we denounce, which we are against. We did not do that. Someone else! Why should we be a scapegoat? Why should we pay the price? Do the grandsons of the victims of the Holocaust have the right to do the same against the Palestinian people? The killing of tens of thousands in Gaza. The destruction of the whole infrastructure. What does this mean? For what? Do they have the right? [What is their] justification? Because of the Holocaust? We are not responsible and we should not. And this inferiority complex for the Europeans should be removed. And even for the Jews themselves, they have to understand that this crazy and stupid and rightist, fascist government is a real threat for their own existence.

    Dave Zirin:

    So why, given that they have violated the Olympic Charter, that they have violated the Olympic Truce—why is Israel allowed to still compete at the Olympics?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    The athlete who raised the flag, a judo champion, he himself signed a missile, sending it to the kids of Gaza, ‘From me to you.’ Does he have the right to attend? The president of the Olympic Committee of Israel visited, encouraged. And even some players and athletes were part of the Israeli occupying forces killing [inaudible]. Having official sport activities in the Occupied Territories—East Jerusalem, West Bank—is a clear cut violation of the Olympic Charter and [inaudible] statutes.

    The ball is in the court of Europe, who are responsible for the Holocaust. And it’s the time for them to raise [inaudible]. It was not a great honor for France and for the IOC to have the Israelis. It’s not a political issue for me. It’s a moral issue. It’s a legal issue. It’s a sport issue. It’s ethical issue. But this is the Holocaust inferiority complexity in Europe, which is leading, which is motivating.

    Dave Zirin:

    What does the International Olympic Committee not understand?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    Brother, I am not the expert person. I did my best, and I will continue on two directions. From one side, I will keep developing sport, encouraging the youth in Palestine to follow the ethics and the values of a sport as an effective platform to expose the suffering of our people. And, at the same time, to keep on working on all fronts in order to have Israel sanctioned, being punished by IOC and FIFA. Believe me, when I go to the history of South Africa, 60 years, 80 years, last century, it was kindergarten [compared to] what the Israelis are doing against the Palestinians.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. I also really wanted to ask you about the Algerian judoka who did not compete against… I know that’s Algeria, not Palestine. But should athletes not even compete against Israeli athletes here? What counsel would you give athletes, especially athletes who are appalled by what’s happening?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    Once again, I think the Israelis did lose their right to attend and to compete. And I don’t think that anyone who, for sport reasons, cannot play should be sanctioned. I would like to address an Israeli athlete with the ethics of the game. Could he tolerate competing against a Nazi athlete? Believe me, this is the same. This is the same. Don’t ask the victim. Ask the criminal.

    Dave Zirin:

    Our show is, of course, in the United States. Our article that we publish will be in the United States. What message do you have for the people of the United States, and the politicians of the United States who are arming Israel?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    They are arming, they are supporting, they are defending, and they are protecting, I think, for their own ethics and values, right of self-determination, human rights principles, and even for their own national security interests in the Middle East and all over the world. I call for them to raise a red card to Israel. The Israelis have the right to live in peace and security, but within their internationally recognized borders. The establishment of a Palestinian sovereign state next to the state of Israel. The emergence of such a state will contribute to regional stability, global peace. And the Israelis, I am sure, then have the right and will enjoy security and stability. The Israelis cannot continue their expansionist and their fascist policies on the ground and at the same time think that they can enjoy security and being integrated in the Middle East. No security, no integration without the emergence of an independent sovereign state.

    Dave Zirin:

    You’ve been so generous with your time, but one more question. What do sports mean?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    For me?

    Dave Zirin:

    No, no, no. To the people of Gaza. And how has this war taken that away from them?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    Please, please, please, please. All sports facilities in Gaza, 100 persons, destroyed—athletes, employees, staff of a sport, killed. Hundreds still missing. I don’t know whether they are under rubble or in Israeli jails. And also hundreds have been injured. Sport is no more existing in Gaza. What is existing is our determination, our commitment, our principles. In the West Bank, because of the Israeli suffocation policy, we have to suspend all leagues and sport activities. The movement with those settlers, fascist settlers, the disciples of Baruch Goldstein who are behaving like the bully of neighborhoods against the Palestinians. We cannot move. We cannot do anything. And also sport is no more working in the West Bank. It’s the time. It’s the time now.

    Dave Zirin:

    Wow. And I must ask you one last question. Does it feel sometimes like your head is just going to explode when you have all of this Olympic pageantry and joy while people in Gaza suffer so much?

    Jibril Rajoub:

    Not easy. Not easy. But frustration, giving up, surrendering is not part of my Palestinian national doctrine. My commitment to my people, [our] national aspirations—it’s a genetic issue. Giving up? White flag? Never, never. And I will keep leading the youth, the athletes, the fans in the right direction to achieve our people’s national aspirations and our people’s legitimate right, fundamental right, to live in their own independent Palestinian sovereign state, according to the UN resolutions and legitimacy. Okay, brother.

    Dave Zirin:

    Jibril Rajoub, thank you so much for joining us on Edge of Sports.

    Jibril Rajoub:

    All the best. Thanks to Catherine.

    Dave Zirin:

    We’ll be back after this.

    Maximillian Alvarez:

    Thank you so much for watching the Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories, and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work, so please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.

    This post was originally published on The Real News Network.