The Israel Defense Forces on Friday yet again shelled tents of displaced Palestinians near the city of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, killing at least 25 and wounding another 50, local health and emergency officials said. “According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for Civil Defense first responders in Rafah, witnesses told rescue workers about the shelling at two locations in a coastal area that has…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Hundreds of Youth Demand supporters blocked Oxford Circus, London to demand a two-way arms embargo on Israel and for the incoming UK government to halt all new oil and gas licences granted since 2021.
At around 12pm on Saturday 22 June, a large group of Youth Demand supporters gathered at Victoria Embankment Gardens. The group heard speeches and held a people’s assembly – a deliberative discussion about the crisis and what to do about it:
Victoria Embankment Gardens now! pic.twitter.com/MFF5dyh4tg
— Youth Demand (@youth_demand) June 22, 2024
The group then dispersed, with groups marching through central London before reconvening at Oxford Circus, at around 2:50pm:
BREAKING: Youth Demand Block Oxford Circus
We will not blindly support a broken political system that turns a blind eye to genocide. Voting, letter writing, and signing petitions is no longer enough–we must escalate
Join us at https://t.co/rqU3Oswm2K pic.twitter.com/JW3MvfZWxm
— Youth Demand (@youth_demand) June 22, 2024
Of course, Youth Demand did previously warn it would be disrupting London each Saturday. As the Canary previously reported, the group gave the UK government one week from 23 May to stop all arms licences to Israel. Spain, Canada, Belgium, Italy, and the Netherlands have all paused arms licenses or shipments to Israel over fears that they may be used in violation of international humanitarian law.
That deadline passed – and now Youth Demand are acting, starting at Oxford Circus.
One of those taking action at Oxford Circus was Poppy Jabelman, 23, a human geography student from Exeter who said:
We’re demanding a two way arms embargo with Israel, as it’s appalling that the UK is still providing the bombs being dropped on starving people forced into refugee camps in Palestine. Each of the over 37,000 people brutally murdered had dreams, families and futures.”
Meanwhile Keir Starmer still refuses to call it what it is: genocide. Labour are set to win the general election with an unprecedented landslide, but this is no cause for celebration whilst they are complicit in the murder of children. The Youth Demand better! If you’ve similarly lost faith in our broken political system, and are outraged by the crimes against humanity we’re witnessing, head to youthdemand.org to sign up for action.
Another of those taking action at Oxford Circus was Violet Powell, 23, a student from Leeds who said:
Our country is complicit in genocide. Both major parties refuse to acknowledge the horrors they’re enabling or to call for an arms embargo on Israel. What good is voting when the outcome is the same? For a future to be liveable, and to not have regrets, I must take action now. I couldn’t live with myself otherwise. Join us for a week of action in Central London from the 13th-20th July.
The group said in a statement:
Young people will not accept a political system bought by weapons manufacturers, oil oligarchs and media barons. We deserve better. Young people all over the country are coming together to resist. Youth Demand will be taking action in Central London from the 13th-20th July.
Join us at https://youthdemand.org.
Featured image and additional images via Youth Demand
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is unhappy. Not so much with the Palestinians, whom he sees as terroristic, dispensable and a threat to Israeli security. Not with the Persians, who, he swears, will never acquire a nuclear weapon capacity on his watch. His recent lack of happiness has been directed against the fatty hand that feeds him and his country’s war making capabilities.
On June 18, the Israeli PM released a video decrying Washington’s recent conduct towards his government in terms of military aid. It was “inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel.” Having claimed such an idea to be inconceivable, Netanyahu proceeded to conceive. He stated that US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken had “assured” him “that the administration is working day and night to remove these bottlenecks. I certainly hope that’s the case. It should be the case.”
The release coincided with efforts made by President Joe Biden’s envoy, Amos Hochstein, to cool matters concerning Israel-Hezbollah hostilities, a matter that threatens to move beyond daily border skirmishes. It was also a pointed reference to the halt in a single shipment of 2000 pound (900kg) bombs to Israel regarding concerns about massive civilian casualties over any planned IDF assault on Rafah.
The White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was uncharacteristically unadorned in frankness. “We genuinely do not know what he is talking about.” Discussions between US and Israeli officials were continuing. “There are no other pauses – none.” It fell to the White House National Security Communications advisor, John Kirby, to field more substantive questions on the matter.
On June 20, Kirby admitted to being perplexed and disappointed at Netanyahu’s remarks, “especially given that no other country is doing more to help Israel defend itself against the threat by Hamas”. As he was at pains to point out, the US military industrial complex had enthusiastically furnished “material assistance to Israel” despite the pause on the provision of 2,000-pound bombs. The notion “that we had somehow stopped helping Israel with their self-defense needs is absolutely not accurate”. Netanyahu, in other words, was quibbling about the means of inflicting death, a matter of form over substance.
Blinken confirmed as much, stating that the administration was “continuing to review one shipment that President Biden has talked about with regard to 2000-pound bombs because of our concerns about their use in densely populated areas like Rafah.” All other matters were “moving as it normally would move.”
These remarks are unequivocally true. Annual military assistance to Israel from US coffers totals $3.8 billion. In April, President Joe Biden approved the provision of $17 billion in additional assistance to Israel amidst the continued pummelling of Gaza and the starvation of its thinning population. The Biden administration has also badgered Democratic lawmakers to give their blessing to the sale of 50 F-15 fighters to Israel in a contract amounting to $18 billion. But this, according to accounts from Israel’s Channel 12 and the German paper Bild, has been less than satisfactory for Israel’s blood lusting prime minister.
The disgruntled video precipitated much agitation among officials in the Biden administration. In an Axios report, three, inevitably anonymised, offer their views. One found it “hard to fathom” how the video “helps with deterrence. There is nothing like telling Hezbollah that the US is withholding weapons from Israel, which is false, to make them feel emboldened.”
The interviewed officials all admitted to Netanyahu’s inscrutability. A half-plausible line was ventured: running up points on the domestic front ahead of a visit to Washington from Israel’s defence minister, Yoav Gallant. Not that the strategy was working for opposition leader, Yair Lapid, who found Netanyahu’s effort damaging in its reverberating potential. From Moscow to Tokyo, “everyone is reaching the same conclusion: Israel is no longer the closest ally of the US. This is the damage Netanyahu is causing us.”
Kirby’s remarks deserve scrutiny on another level. For one, they suggest a rationale that would have done much in flattening Israeli egos. “The president put fighter aircrafts up in the air in the middle of April to help shoot down several hundred drones and missiles, including ballistic missiles that were fired from Iran proper at Israel.”
Here arises an important omission: the intervention by the US was part of a coordinated, choreographed plan enabling Iran to show force in response to the April 1 Israeli strike on its ambassadorial compound in Damascus while minimising the prospect of casualties. Accordingly, Tehran and Washington found themselves in an odd, unacknowledged embrace that had one unintended consequence: revealing Israeli vulnerability. No longer could Israel be seen to be self-sufficiently impregnable, its defences firmly holding against all adversaries. In a perverse twist on that dilemma, a strong ally providing support is bound to be resented. Nothing supplied will ever be, or can be, enough.
The post Quibbling About Killing: Netanyahu’s Spat with Washington first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The party responsible for a war crime—or any act of mass violence—is important information and something that should be named at the forefront of any news documenting said war crime or act of mass violence. This much seems obvious, but the “War in Gaza” has created a particularly grimy editorial genre of Natural Disaster-izing mass death. Specific episodes of mass killing, disease, and displacement at the hands of Israel as it carries out siege, occupation, and bombing are all too often covered like one would a deadly volcano or earthquake: The party responsible is not a specific government or military but a mysterious, agency-free “war,” “disaster,” or “humanitarian crisis.”
Israel’s responsibility is often mentioned or alluded to––typically in scare quotes––in the text further down the page, but it is not centered or made obvious, thus meaningfully reducing any political urgency around their guilt.
The most egregious practitioner of this grim editorial genre is the New York Times, which has obscured who is killing tens of thousands in Gazans with new lows of confusion and hand-wringing. Here are just a handful of headlines published over the past eight months which one could read, and re-read a dozen times, and still not be sure who is killing whom:
Reading these headlines, it’s impossible to know who is responsible for these human tragedies.
Take one May 6 report in the New York Times detailing how Israel’s assault has completely destroyed the education system of Gaza. “With Schools in Ruins, Education in Gaza Will Be Hobbled for Years,” read the headline. The subheadline continued, “Most of Gaza’s schools, including all of its universities, have severe damage that makes them unusable, which could harm an entire generation, the United Nations and others say.”
Not until paragraph seven does the New York Times mention who actually destroyed the schools and, even then, it’s framed as an accusation by UN officials and Palestinians. Repeatedly, both in framing and text, the cause of the annihilation of Gaza’s education system is presented as a vague, agency-free, symmetrical “war.” As if there are two equally powerful armies facing off in some type of a Napoleonic battle with unfortunate civilians on both sides caught in the middle, rather than a virtually one-way bombing, siege, and occupation of the most powerful military in the Middle East against a people with no modern defense systems.
One nonsensical New York Times social media post from Feb. 22 reads like a parody:
Deadly strikes in Rafah, in southern Gaza, flattened the Al-Farouk mosque, seen here, on Thursday, residents and the Palestinian Authority’s news agency said. Only Israel, which declined to comment on the attacks, carries out airstrikes in Gaza.
So why not just say it was Israel? Clearly it was. It’s the obvious implication of this language, which is at war with itself. But, alas, the New York Times can’t spell out the obvious, lest they offend the crybully pro-Israel media watchers and their right-wing “liberal media”-complaining confederates.
During just one 24-hour period in June, the New York Times ran three responsibility-absolving headlines and subheadlines that capture the agency-removing ethos of the paper:
“War” has “killed” Palestinians. “Dire Conditions in Gaza” created “a multitude of amputee” Palestinians. Gaza is the world’s deadliest place for aid workers because of some abstract “devastation.” Who is causing all this suffering? Reading the headlines and subheadlines, one would have no idea. Contrast this with how the Times covers Russian war crimes. Here, agency is clear upfront, as are the deadly consequences of the guilty party’s actions.
It is possible that the New York Times has a policy similar to that of CNN, which does not ascribe responsibility to the IDF until after Israeli officials formally confirm it. We know that CNN’s policy exists thanks to reporting from the Intercept in early January. An anonymous CNN staff member told the Intercept’s Daniel Boguslaw, “Israeli bombings in Gaza will be reported as ‘blasts’ attributed to nobody, until the Israeli military weighs in to either accept or deny responsibility. Quotes and information provided by Israeli army and government officials tend to be approved quickly, while those from Palestinians tend to be heavily scrutinized and slowly processed.”
Who did what to what? Impossible to tell from reading the headlines. In all these reports, much further into the article, Israel’s potential culpability is mentioned buried in the text
That CNN Natural Disaster-izes Gaza is thus evident in their headlines, which routinely obscure Israel’s role in the carnage being reported on. Here are a handful of the worst examples from the past few months:
Who did what to what? Impossible to tell from reading the headlines. In all these reports, much further into the article, Israel’s potential culpability is mentioned buried in the text, but typically attributed to “Hamas-run” ministries or “Gaza officials,” reducing the horrific sights to a he-said-she-said situation, despite Israel being the only party remotely capable of carrying out the attacks in question. An otherwise useful, detailed analysis of how Israel systematically destroyed the healthcare system in Gaza is framed by CNN as “How Gaza’s hospitals became battlegrounds.”
This isn’t “hospitals” “becoming battlegrounds”—this is Israel attacking hospitals.
Battlegrounds? Were there battles in these hospitals? No, there weren’t. For the most part, the IDF shelled them, bombed them, cleared them out to make life unsustainable, pursuant to their Oct.r 13 evacuation order of Northern Gaza. Occasionally, Palestinian fighters would attack IDF convoys as they approached hospitals, but at no point was there anything like a “battle” inside any hospital. Nor did CNN’s report show anything like this. It showed Israel attacking hospitals to clear them out, then they’d move on. This isn’t “hospitals” “becoming battlegrounds”—this is Israel attacking hospitals.
Again, contrast this Fog of War, who’s-to-say-who-did-what framing with how CNN covered Russian attacks on hospitals in a straightforward way. “Deadly Russian strikes obliterate Dnipro medical facility in central Ukraine,” read one headline from May 2023. “Anatomy of the Mariupol hospital attack,” read one March 22 headline. “Medical facilities and workers have been repeatedly hit by Russian forces since their invasion of Ukraine, despite this being against the rules of war.” the subhead stated. “Russian missile strike on Zaporizhzhia maternity hospital kills newborn baby,” a November 2022 CNN headline reads.
When it comes to Ukraine, responsibility is clear, the nature of the crime apparent and the moral implications are obvious. With Israel’s repeated war crimes against Gaza, agency is removed and the human suffering is framed like the result of a mudslide or earthquake.
Another recent example: Last week the Associated Press did a deep dive investigation into entire Palestinian families being wiped out by Israel, and even then framed the culprit not as a military, a government, or even a leader of Israel, but as a nebulous “war.” “The war in Gaza,” the headline read, “has wiped out entire Palestinian families. AP documents 60 who lost dozens or more.”
A different AP report from Wednesday read, “the war has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies to Palestinians who are facing widespread hunger.”
But “war” didn’t wipe out entire Palestinian families, nor did “war” cut off food and medicine to Palestinians in Gaza—Israel did. And we know this because, as several genocide scholars and the International Court of Justice clearly documented, Israeli officials kicked off their revenge campaign on Oct. 7 with explicitly genocidal intent. While the AP has been better at framing stories of mass death with a responsible party than the New York Times and CNN, they too often fall into the agency-removal trap.
Polls show over half of Americans frequently don’t read past the headline, so how our news is framed for the passing media consumer is of tremendous importance
Another reason for the widespread Natural Disaster-izing of Gaza is that pro-Israel pressure groups are constantly working the refs, whining to editors, reporters, and media owners that the media is being too hard on Israel. This crybully campaign escalated to great effect after the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital bombing on Oct. 17 where, allegedly, a single Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket killed over 200 people (despite approximately 1,800 Hamas/PIJ rockets landing in Israel and killing only 15 people in the first three months of war, but this is a different article). After this incident, headline writers became uniquely allergic to assigning Israel blame for anything, lest they be subject to the faked outrage of those seeking to make the Times and CNN look like Hamas mouthpieces.
Obviously, there is more to news reporting than headlines, subheadlines, and framing. But polls show over half of Americans frequently don’t read past the headline, so how our news is framed for the passing media consumer is of tremendous importance, politically. This is why pro-Israel media bullies put so many resources into attacking outlets that center Israel’s responsibility for the daily atrocity they are reporting on. They know it matters. And it matters that a deliberate, well-documented strategy of mass killing, displacement, and very likely genocide by a specific party that has repeatedly express genocidal intent, is obscured and removed from the reporting. And, instead, the suffering that appears on people’s TV screens and social media timelines is given the “Oh, Dearism” treatment, something with no author, no cause. Because, after all, if it’s not the US and its allies doing the killing, what can be done about it other than generally feeling bad and moving on?
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
The U.S. military may be permanently dismantling its pier in Gaza soon, The New York Times reports, after the pier has delivered little but a series of embarrassing failures and an amount of aid so paltry that it has done essentially nothing to address the spread of famine across the region. According to a Times report this week, military officials are telling aid groups that they may have to stop…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A group of nearly 70 Democrats is calling on the Biden administration to move to accept Palestinians fleeing Israel’s genocide in Gaza as refugees if they have family living in the U.S., an action praised by advocates who say that it is a small but crucial step toward saving Palestinian lives. In a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The corporate media has dodged reporting on a bombshell revelation about Israel from Jeremy Corbyn.
In an interview with Declassified co-founder Matt Kennard, former Labour leader Corbyn revealed that potential UK prime ministers are expected to unconditionally support Israeli military action.
Corbyn said:
During one extremely hostile meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee they confronted me and said will you give a blanket undertaking that you, as party leader and potentially prime minister, will automatically support any military action Israel undertakes?
And I said no, I will give no such undertaking… because the issue of Palestine has to be resolved and Palestinian people do not deserve to live under occupation, and the siege of Gaza has created such incredible stress.
Jeremy Corbyn says during a meeting with the Parliamentary Labour Party Committee he was confronted and asked to give assurances that as Labour leader – and potentially prime minister – he would automatically support any military action Israel undertakes
pic.twitter.com/RIN13HkHpF
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) June 20, 2024
Current Israeli military action amounts to a ‘plausible’ genocide, according to the International Court of Justice. Since 7 October, Israel has killed 37,980 Palestinian people including over 15,000 children.
Corbyn’s revelation suggests Keir Starmer, should he become prime minister, would be even less likely to take steps to end the genocide. Starmer’s Labour has already refused to ban arms sales to Israel or advocate sanctions on the state.
The Labour leader has also repeatedly sidestepped the question of whether he would enforce International Criminal Court arrest warrants against Israeli leaders.
In the interview, Kennard asked Corbyn whether he was “surprised” that Starmer said Israel has the right to withdraw water and electricity from Gaza. Corbyn said:
I was totally shocked by that reply. It’s absolutely clear in every aspect of law, never mind morality, that you don’t bomb schools, you don’t destroy water supplies, you don’t cut off electricity. And he said that’s legitimate self defence. It’s not. It’s a war crime.
But he also said he wasn’t surprised at Labour’s general support for Israel. He said that’s because the “pressure” from the Israeli government on Labour is “huge”. He continued:
Many countries do a great deal of lobbying… Israel has been an ever present lobby for Israel’s military needs as they put them. And attempts always to justify Israel’s continued occupation of Gaza and the West Bank
Corbyn also pointed out the lack of power of the Palestinian Authority in the Israeli occupied West Bank. He said he asked the founder of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, what he’d do if he became president of the Authority:
He said ‘well I wouldn’t be able to do anything – I don’t control the borders, I don’t control security, I don’t have an army, I only have money that comes in by the largesse of Israel. I’m not sure I’d have any authority to do anything. We are not an independent functioning state, we are a place under occupation’.
The former Labour leader later summed it up when he said “there’s a very colonial mentality that still pervades parliament”.
After Starmer purged him, Corbyn is running as an independent in Islington North. It’s imperative we return him as an MP.
Watch the full interview:
Featured image via A/POLITICAL – YouTube
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Night Won’t End, a new documentary from Al Jazeera English, takes an in-depth look at attacks on civilians by the Israeli military in Gaza and the United States’ role in the war. The film follows three Palestinian families as they recount the horrific experiences they have endured under relentless Israeli assault, including the family of 6-year-old Hind Rajab, the young Palestinian girl who…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Candidate in the general election Jon Ashworth has joined the prestigious ranks of being a member of the occasional Canary series “Labour politicians running from the public” – this time, exposing himself as the party’s answer to Alan Partridge.
On a serious note, though, and the former shadow cabinet stooge was seemingly intimidated by some Muslim uncles – as they asked just why he abstained in parliament on the vote for a ceasefire in Gaza.
As the Canary’s James Wright previously wrote, Labour candidates do not like being asked about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. For example, a voter asked the candidate for Bethnal Green and Stepney, Rushanara Ali, if he could ask her a question. But like shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves did earlier this year when asked questions on Palestine, Ali promptly ran away.
Then there’s shadow secretary for culture, media and sport Thangam Debbonaire, candidate for Bristol Central. Earlier in June, Owen Jones tried to asked her whether she supports an arms embargo on Israel amid its genocide against Palestinian people in Gaza. But she ran off too.
In February, Labour’s Rochdale candidate Azhar Ali marked another instance of Labour people trying to run the country without answering questions. Ali sped away in his car when reporters from 5 Pillars asked him “is Labour a party of genocide?”
Now, Ashworth has also joined these ranks
Community activist Majid Freeman and some locals bumped into Jon Ashworth and his Labour Party stooges on the campaign trail in Leicester South. As Freeman noted:
Elderly Muslim uncles who previously supported Jon came out to ask why he abstained from the Palestine ceasefire vote so he resorted to playing victim by saying we were bullying & intimidating him.
Yes indeed. Apparently, members of the public asking questions is “bullying”:
Bumped into Labour MP @JonAshworth who was canvassing in Leicester. Elderly Muslim uncles who prev supported Jon came out to ask why he abstained from the
ceasefire vote so he resorted to playing victim by saying we were bullying & intimidating him. We have every right to Q you pic.twitter.com/5q5UDCgTXN
— Majid Freeman (@Majstar7) June 21, 2024
Ashworth was filming on his mobile – although it is not clear for what purpose. However, what was clear is there was just a smidgen of… something distinctly racist… as Ashworth said:
If you want THESE people [emphasis as per Ashworth’s tone] to win this election… the bullies and the loudmouths… you’ve got to come out and vote against this.
Against what, Ashworth? People asking you questions over Gaza, Palestine, and genocidal Israel?
Clearly, the Labour candidate IS intimidated by the public asking him questions he doesn’t want to answer – as towards the end of Freeman’s video Ashworth does some weird, Partridge-style yoga shit – seemingly in an effort to look calm and in control. Watch from 1:40:
Bumped into Labour MP @JonAshworth who was canvassing in Leicester. Elderly Muslim uncles who prev supported Jon came out to ask why he abstained from the
— Majid Freeman (@Majstar7) June 21, 2024
It all feels very… well… this:
This:
This:
And this, Jon Ashworth:
Consider yourself in the Canary Hall of Fame.
There is of course a broader point to be made, here.
Jon Ashworth and other Labour candidates’ reactions over the serious question of Israel, Gaza, and their position reeks of an extreme arrogance – but also complete lack of accountability to the public. More and more, we’re seeing the Labour Party present itself as somehow unanswerable to the public – many of whom have genuine concerns over its stance on Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and its wider apartheid across the Occupied Territories.
Hiding behind accusations of bullying and intimidation betrays Labour candidates true motivations: that they will happily wring their hands over Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of people if it means a whiff of power for them. However, when questioned on it, their own consciences cannot lie. Therefore, they gaslight the public by claiming they’re the ones being threatened.
This is sick in the extreme, and shows the moral void that exists in the Labour Party now.
Politicians like Ashworth awkwardly being caught on camera is funny – but the underlying issue is deadly serious.
Featured image via X – screengrab
By Steve Topple
This post was originally published on Canary.
ANALYSIS: By Ian Parmeter, Australian National University
Among the many sayings attributed to Winston Churchill is, “Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
This sentiment seems appropriate as Israel potentially appears ready to embark on a war against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz said this week a decision on an all-out war against Hezbollah was “coming soon” and that senior commanders of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had signed off on a plan for the operation.
This threat comes despite the fact Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza is far from over. Israel has still not achieved the two primary objectives Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put forth at the start of the conflict:
Why Hezbollah is attacking Israel now
Israel has cogent reasons for wanting to eliminate the threat from Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been launching Iranian-supplied missiles, rockets and drones across the border into northern Israel since the Gaza war began on October 8.
Its stated purpose is to support Hamas by distracting the IDF from its Gaza operation.
Hezbollah’s attacks have been relatively circumscribed – confined so far to northern Israel. But they have led to the displacement of some 60,000 residents from the border area. These people are understandably fed up and demanding Netanyahu’s government takes action to force Hezbollah to withdraw from the border.
This anger has been augmented this week by Hezbollah publicising video footage of military and civilian sites in the northern Israeli city of Haifa, which had been taken by a low-flying surveillance drone.
The Israeli army said plans for an offensive in Lebanon were “approved and validated” amid escalating cross-border clashes with Hezbollah and a relative lull in Gaza fighting https://t.co/H0nq61Gbay pic.twitter.com/qzzFq3nDt5
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) June 18, 2024
The implication: Hezbollah was scoping the region for new targets. Haifa, a city of nearly 300,000, has not yet been subject to Hezbollah attacks.
The most far-right members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, have openly called for Israel to invade southern Lebanon. Even without this pressure, Netanyahu has ample reason to want to neutralise the Hezbollah threat because residents of northern Israel are strong supporters of his Likud party.
US and Iranian interests in a broader conflict
The United States is obviously concerned about the risk Israel will open a second front in its conflicts. As such, President Joe Biden has sent an envoy, Amos Hochstein, to Israel and Lebanon to try to reduce tensions on both sides.
In Lebanon, he cannot publicly deal directly with the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, because the group is on the US list of global terrorist organisations. Instead, he met the long-serving speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berri, who as a fellow Shia is able to talk with Nasrallah.
But Hezbollah answers to Iran — its main backer in the region. And it’s doubtful if any Lebanese leader can persuade it to desist from action approved by Iran.
Iran’s interests in the potential for an Israel-Hezbollah war at this time are mixed. It would obviously be glad to see Israel under military pressure on two fronts. But Iranian leaders see Hezbollah as insurance against an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities.
Hezbollah has an estimated 150,000 missiles and rockets, including some that could reach deep into Israel. So far, Iran seems to want Hezbollah to hold back from a major escalation with Israel, which could deplete most of that arsenal.
That said, although Israel’s Iron Dome defensive shield has been remarkably successful in neutralising the rocket threat from Gaza, it might not be as effective against a large-scale barrage of more sophisticated missiles.
Israel needed help from the US, Britain, France and Jordan in countering a direct attack from Iran in April that involved some 150 missiles and 170 drones.
Israel and Hezbollah conflict: escalating cross-border tensions. Video: ABC News
Lessons from previous Israeli interventions in Lebanon
The other factor – especially for wiser heads mindful of history – is the country’s previous interventions in Lebanon have been far from cost-free.
Israel’s problems with Lebanon started when the late King Hussein of Jordan forced the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), then led by Yasser Arafat, to relocate to Lebanon in 1970. He did that because the PLO had been using Jordan as a base for operations against Israel after the 1967 war, provoking Israeli retaliation.
From the early 1970s, the PLO formed a state within a state in Lebanon. It largely acted independently from the perennially weak Lebanese government, which was divided on sectarian grounds, and in 1975, collapsed into a prolonged civil war.
The PLO used southern Lebanon to launch attacks against Israel, leading Israel to launch a limited invasion of its northern neighbour in 1978, driving Palestinian militia groups north of the Litani River.
That invasion was only partially successful. Militants soon moved back towards the border and renewed their attacks on northern Israel. In 1982, then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin decided to remove the PLO entirely from Lebanon, launching a major invasion of Lebanon all the way to Beirut. This eventually forced the PLO leadership and the bulk of its fighters to relocate to Tunisia.
Gaza Genocide: 17th June: In depth report on escalation of cross border conflict: Hezbollah v Israel: Dissolving of genocidal war cabinet by Netenyahu to select others: visit by U.S. Hochstein today & far right fascists Gver/Smotrich jostling for war cabinet positions pic.twitter.com/g5J44afWeB
— JANET Gibson (@JANETGi59151282) June 17, 2024
Despite this success, the two Israeli invasions had the unintended consequence of radicalising the until-then quiescent Shia population of southern Lebanon.
That enabled Iran, in its early post-revolutionary phase under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to work with Shia clerics in Lebanon to establish Hezbollah (Party of God in Arabic), which became a greater threat to Israel than the PLO had ever been.
Bolstered by Iranian support, Hezbollah has become stronger over the years, becoming a force in Lebanese politics and regularly firing missiles into Israel.
In 2006, Hezbollah was able to block an IDF advance into southern Lebanon aimed at rescuing two Israeli soldiers Hezbollah had captured. The outcome was essentially a draw, and the two soldiers remained in captivity until their bodies were exchanged for Lebanese prisoners in 2008.
Many Arab observers at the time judged that by surviving an asymmetrical conflict, Hezbollah had emerged with a political and military victory.
For a while during and after that conflict, Nasrallah was one of the most popular regional leaders, despite the fact he was loathed by rulers of conservative Sunni Arab states such as Saudi Arabia.
Will history repeat itself?
This is the background to discussions in Israel about launching a war against Hezbollah. And it demonstrates how the quote from Churchill is relevant.
Most military experts would caution against choosing to fight a war on two fronts. Former US President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003 when the war in Afghanistan had not concluded. The outcome was hugely costly for the US military and disastrous for both countries.
The 19th century American writer Mark Twain is reported to have said that history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Will Israel’s leaders listen to the echoes of the past?
Dr Ian Parmeter, research scholar, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Dozens of UN experts are warning weapons makers, governments and investors that they are risking being complicit in “serious violations” of international human rights laws, potentially including genocide, by providing weapons to Israel as it wages genocide in Gaza. The group of 30 human rights experts, including multiple special rapporteurs to the UN, called out arms manufacturers like U.S.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israel’s genocide in Gaza is a genocide of children. Prior to last October, nearly half the population of Gaza were children. The official death toll, now regarded by many to be a severe undercount, accounts for more than 15,000 children killed by Israeli forces in the past eight months. For the majority of children who have survived, life will never be the same. Displacement, martyrdom of family members, and the exigencies of daily survival have placed a tremendous burden on these children’s shoulders. The Real News reports from Gaza.
Videographer: Ruwaida Amer
Producer: Belal Awad, Leo Erhardt
Video Editor: Leo Erhardt
Narrator:
Gaza has become a graveyard for thousands of children. It’s a living hell for everyone else.” These words stated by UNICEF spokesperson James Elder on October 31st, 2023.
Since then around 15,000 children have lost their lives, more than the number of children killed in conflicts in the entire world in the past 4 years put together. Now, mass starvation is set to replace bombs as the deadliest threat to Gaza’s children.
For those who have survived, it’s hard to imagine how they will remain children.
Kid:
They killed my mum and dad in front of me. My only friend who used to play with me died.
Narrator:
In the makeshift refugee camps in the South of Gaza, 10 year old Shams evacuated her home under shelling and is now living in a tent with her family.
Shams:
We kids are not living in safety, we could die and also, haven’t lived a nice life. When I walk down the street they bomb and I get scared.
The bathroom is far, so if I need to go I wake mum or dad to take me because the sounds of planes and drones are really loud, and there’s the sound of bombing from afar.
Narrator:
Shams’ dad Hossemmedin has had to watch his children go from worrying about school to worrying about drones.
HOSSEMMEDIN:
I evacuated with my children we left beneath air-strikes and destruction. We left and the situation was very very very dangerous. Honestly, I risked it because of my children, I wanted to protect my children.
I live in a residential tower, and the Israelis contacted us and said we need to evacuate. They didn’t even give us a chance for us to leave in peace.
On the contrary, we evacuated under destruction and bombs, and the dead and martyred were scattered on the street. I was holding my kids and hugging them and protecting them so they couldn’t see these scenes. Because they were scenes that as much as I say are beyond description.
SHAMS:
There’s no safety, when we’re walking it’s normal for them to bomb at any moment, and I get scared.
Narrator:
Shams isn’t only scared for her own safety, but the safety of her parents too.
SHAMS:
Because the Israelis are like this, they bomb in any place, to them it’s normal, and mom and dad sometimes they go out and I get scared for them. When they bomb somewhere, I get scared.
Narrator:
And becoming an orphan with no surviving parents is not an abstract fear – but a commonplace reality in Gaza today, that realistically could happen to any child.
Kid:
What is your name?
Mohammad.
Mohammad, tell us, how has Ramadan been so far?
Ramadan has been. Ramadan has not been good to me. Because I’m alone. With no mother or father.
Why, where are your parents?
Martyred.
When?
On October 29.
How were they martyred?
My father sent me to get some Maggi from the store and they (Israel) bombed the whole neighborhood. The neighborhood was unrecognizable. So I went to the Indonesian hospital and found my parents in shrouds.
HOSSEMMEDIN:
The war stole everything from the children. Everything related to childhood. Everything related to humanity. I mean, children, what do they want? A child is innocent. What does a child want?
She’s always asking me about Leo. Leo is her cat. She says I miss him, I wanna go and see him. I miss my grandad, I miss playing with my friends. I miss school, studying and the teachers.
SHAMS:
The war took from me my friends. I used to play with them.
[Where are they?]
In Rafah
[They died?]
No. But I miss them so much.
Narrator:
Gaza’s children have been forced to grow up fast… videos show children talking, moving and expressing themselves in adult ways, on themes that not even grown adults should ever have to face.
Woman:
How do you see the war?
GIRL:
It’s Ugly. From the start of the war, I became ugly too. I was beautiful, my face was bigger. I was beautiful. But we became ugly because of the corpses.
ANAS:
They have humiliated us with the aid parachutes that they dropped into the Sea! We live in Tel Al Zaatar, they threw the aid into the sea so we came here like dogs! I came to get food for my younger siblings who are screaminging with hunger. I swear I didn’t get anything. I swear to God I didn’t get anything.
HOSSEMMEDIN:
Behavior has had to change. It’s out of their hands. And out of our hands. They were removed from their environment and forced into a new one. So in the end they have to adjust to this new place they were forced into – in tents and so on – so in the end the behavior changed, their mannerisms changed.
REEM:
Their mentality changed, their talking changed. A lot of things have changed. They are not like they used to be. They used to be normal , but with the fear they changed a lot.
Narrator:
Reem is another parent who, alongside millions of others, was forced to flee her home with her family and now lives in a tent in Rafah. Her son is 14 year old Abdallah.
ABDALLAH:
We’re scared, we’re scared to walk on the streets because there isn’t anywhere safe, in any place in the whole of the Gaza strip, there isn’t safety.
The bombing was really strong, they were bombing belts of fire on people and they were running, and dead people scattered on the ground, the situation was really hard.
When we hear the sound of bombs, we start shaking, our hearts stop. That’s it, we’re scared.
[What did the war take from you?]
What did it take from me?
My childhood. They stole my childhood from me. My life was lost. No learning, no studies, nothing: no opportunity.
I fear for my mum and dad in the war. Because suddenly missiles could fall and they’ll be killed. My aunt, my cousins, neighbors, the neighbors’ children, relatives, friends… so many…
[What happened to them?]
They were killed.
Narrator:
Despite it all, kids will be kids, and moments of joy, laughter and along with it hope, remain.
ABDALLAH:
In the morning we wake up, we wash our faces, brush our teeth… We get up and get food from the store, and come back.
Laughs
[Background: No Aboud, don’t laugh.]
ABDALLAH:
It ‘s her!
REEM:
No, he doesn’t brush his teeth!
ABDALLAH:
Laughs
REEM:
He makes me laugh! Stop making me laugh, enough. Stop it! [What are your dreams?]
ABDALLAH:
That suddenly the war ends. They have a ceasefire. Go to Gaza. That’s all I want. I don’t want anything else.
SHAMS:
God willing we will live in peace and God will protect us all. Allah grant patience to those whose families were killed or martyred and take revenge on the Israelis.
SHAMS: sings:
We return, oh love,
We return,
Oh you, the flower of the poor, We return, oh love,
To love’s abode,
filled with the fire of love,
We return…
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has invoked World War II to rally support for his colonial expansion and genocide in Palestine.
Netanyahu said:
During World War II, Churchill told the United States ‘give us the tools, we’ll do the job’. And I say ‘give us the tools and we’ll finish the job a lot faster’
In the address, he claimed that Joe Biden’s administration is “withholding” weapons from Israel. But the US is Israel’s largest arms supplier and plans to send an additional $1bn weapons package to the state.
George Bush also invoked World War II to drum up support for his colonial war against Iraq. Quoting Canadian WWII prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, he said in 2004:
We cannot defend our country and save our homes and families by waiting for the enemy to attack us… We must also go out and meet the enemy before he reaches our shores.
Bush and Tony Blair’s aggressive attack on Iraq was illegal, according to the UN, and based on the infamous ‘dodgy dossier’. The invasion was widely condemned as a way to to extract oil from the country. BP has now pumped £15.4bn worth of oil from Iraq since 2011.
Israel’s assault on Gaza is also a colonial endeavour. Amid Israel’s genocide against Palestinian people in Gaza, Israel has licensed gas drilling in Palestinian territory. Israel’s occupation of Palestine, meanwhile, has blocked Palestinian people from accessing oil and gas reserves worth billions.
While the climate crisis means we should leave such reserves in the ground, Israel is clearly motivated to exploit the oil and gas.
Biden is a complete supporter of Israel’s onslaught against Gaza. As well as supplying weapons, Biden has removed US funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA).
Biden also was a supporter for the invasion of Iraq. The now-US president rejected resolutions that would have required UN oversight for greenlighting the invasion. He also voted to launch the attack.
Israel’s offensive against Gaza is yet another colonial war. And again, politicians are invoking WWII to rally support for – not against – fascist expansionism and genocide. You can’t make this stuff up.
Featured image via Netanyahu – X
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israeli forces have demonstrated a pattern of systematically targeting densely populated civilian areas across hundreds of attacks in Gaza that likely violate international wartime laws, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found in a report released Wednesday. “Monitoring by OHCHR strongly indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically failed to comply with…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Israeli forces have demonstrated a pattern of systematically targeting densely populated civilian areas across hundreds of attacks in Gaza that likely violate international wartime laws, the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) found in a report released Wednesday. “Monitoring by OHCHR strongly indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically failed to comply with…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In his very last article, ‘We are Spartacus’, published just a month before his death in December, John Pilger included a quote that exactly captured the truth of our time:
‘“This is a sharp time, now, a precise time …” wrote Arthur Miller in The Crucible, “We live no longer in the dusky afternoon when evil mixed itself with good and befuddled the world.”’
No-one saw more clearly than Pilger that the West’s use of ultra-violence to impose its brutal, zero-sum version of ‘international order’ is now completely out in the open. Even the blurred obfuscations of the state-corporate media lens are no longer able to hide the reality of who ‘we’ are.
Consider US Senator Lindsey Graham last month. With tens of thousands of civilians dead in Gaza, Graham dug down to some dark place and said on NBC:
‘Can I say this? Why is it OK for America to drop two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end their existential threat war? Why was it OK for us to do that? I thought it was OK.’
Graham was mistaken; it wasn’t ‘OK’ at all. But anyway, his point:
‘So, Israel, do whatever you have to do to survive as a Jewish state. Whatever you have to do.’ (Original emphasis)
The implication was clear. Past and future massacres of civilians – notably of women and children – were declared, not just ‘OK’, but unavoidable:
‘I think it’s impossible to mitigate civilian deaths in Gaza as long as Hamas uses their own population as human shields. I’ve never seen in the history of warfare such blatant efforts by an enemy – Hamas – to put civilians at risk.’
Graham concluded:
‘The last thing you want to do is reward this behavior.’
Israel reining in its US-supplied firepower to kill fewer civilians would be a ‘reward’ for bad behaviour.
Perhaps you remember Western politicians expressing such unapologetic savagery in the face of genocidal killing. We do not.
And Graham is not alone. Also in May, US Congressman Brian Mast called on Israel to devastate Rafah, where 600,000 children were then sheltering from Israeli bombs:
‘I think Israel should go in there and kick the shit out of them, just absolutely destroy them, their infrastructure, level anything that they touch.’
Three weeks later, on 27 May, media reported that at least eight Israeli missiles had slammed into Rafah’s camp of plastic tents. Refugees, mostly women and children, were burned alive. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting described the carnage many of us saw for ourselves on social media:
‘A boy cries in horror and fear as he watches his father’s tent burn with him inside. A man holds up the body of his charred, now-headless baby, wandering around, not knowing what to do or where to go. An injured, starving child convulses in pain as a medic struggles to find a vein for an IV in her emaciated arm.’
Worse was to come on 8 June when Israeli forces launched a raid to rescue four hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza. At least 274 Palestinians were killed with 698 wounded. The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell described the assault as a ‘massacre’, while the UN’s aid chief Martin Griffiths spoke of ‘shredded bodies on the ground’. Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, posted on X:
‘The #Nuseirat massacre will go down in history as one of the most appalling examples of disdain for Palestinian life in one of the most well-documented and boasted about genocides in history.’
The BBC headline reporting this massacre read merely:
‘Four hostages rescued in Gaza as hospitals say scores killed in Israeli strikes’
It was not at all surprising that the BBC mentioned the four hostages rescued ahead of the ‘scores’ – in fact, nearly 300 – Palestinians killed. News of the 274 Palestinian victims quickly dropped down the news page. Former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook commented:
‘BBC News’ main report on Saturday night breathlessly focused on the celebrations of the families of the freed captives, treating the massacre of Palestinians as an afterthought.’
Compare the BBC’s headline with one supplied by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights:
‘UN experts condemn outrageous disregard for Palestinian civilians during Israel’s military operation in Nuseirat’
Conditioned as we are by the ‘mainstream’ habit of normalising the unthinkable, we might not find the BBC headline all that biased – they just reported the facts. But just imagine if the identities of the civilians killed and the hostages rescued were reversed. While the deaths of 274 Israelis would have been a seismic event for the BBC for days and weeks, the liberation of four Palestinian hostages would hardly have been mentioned and certainly not celebrated. Journalists would have dreaded giving the impression that the release of four Palestinian hostages in any way justified the killing of so many Israelis. This New York Times headline would be unthinkable:
‘Hostages Reunited with Family After Israel Military Operation
‘Scores of Palestinians were killed, hospital officials said, as Israel carried out an intense military campaign to free four hostages’
Likewise, this Washington Post headline:
‘Four Israeli hostages rescued alive; at least
‘210 people killed in Gaza, officials say’
Is it not clear how the value of one group of human beings is relentlessly raised above the other? The Washington Post even commented:
‘For Israel, a rare day of joy amid bloodshed as 4 hostages rescued alive.’
If the identities were reversed, the idea that a day on which 274 Israelis had been killed might be declared ‘a rare day of joy’ would be deemed unthinkable, obscene.
Despite the many hundreds of dead and wounded civilians, and so many massacres of civilians over so many months, headlines in The Sunday Times described the massacre as a ‘daring raid’, a ‘surgical strike’ that resulted in ‘celebrations’.
Although the Nuseirat massacre clearly trashed President Biden’s supposed ‘red lines’, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan also described the attack as a ‘daring operation’. The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called it an ‘important sign of hope’. With hundreds of ‘shredded bodies on the ground’, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his ‘huge relief’.
How Many Gazans ‘Support Their Murdering, Raping Masters’?
For seven months, all political writers using social media have been relentlessly assailed by footage of tiny Palestinian children (often orphans) burned, bleeding, crushed, shaking in pain and terror, bits of broken skull protruding from their heads. We know we are living ‘in a sharp time’ when the Telegraph’s Associate Editor Camilla Tominey can respond to all of this on 18 May with a piece titled:
‘Admitting Gazan refugees would be proof that Britain has a death wish
‘We have no idea how many Palestinians support their murdering, raping masters’
Tominey wrote with utmost brutality:
‘We took in Ukrainians in part because we have a security agreement with Ukraine and can be fairly certain that none of those fleeing the Russian invasion are terrorists.
‘Sadly the same cannot be said for occupants of a country run by Hamas. Regardless of their medical – or other – qualifications, we have no idea how many Gazans support their murdering, raping masters, or how many have been further radicalised by war.
‘It would surely be better if these Labour MPs focused on our own problems, without burdening Britain yet further with someone else’s.’
Britain should not assume the ‘burden’ of helping injured babies and tiny, traumatised infants, when we have no way of knowing how many might ‘support their murdering, raping masters’.
Regarding rape, The Times discussed (7 June) a United Nations report submitted earlier this year by Pramilla Patten, the UN secretary-general’s special representative on sexual violence during and since the Hamas attacks of 7 October:
‘Patten made it clear there was sufficient evidence of acts of sexual violence to merit full and proper investigation and expressed her shock at the brutality of the violence. The report also confirmed Israeli authorities were unable to provide much of the evidence that political leaders had insisted existed. In all the Hamas video footage Patten’s team had watched and all the photographs they had seen, there were no depictions of rape. We hired a leading Israeli dark-web researcher to look for evidence of those images, including footage deleted from public sources. None could be found.
‘The report would prove confusing to the Israeli political establishment. On the one hand, it gives substantial and substantiated credence to the sexual assault claims; on the other it does not show them to be systematic and specifically says Israel has been unable to produce evidence it has claimed to possess of Hamas’s written orders to rape. Patten also asked that Israel investigate “credible allegations” of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian women and girls gathered by the UN’s legal mandate mission in the Palestinian territories.’
The Times also cited Orit Sulitzeanu, the executive director of Israel’s Association of Rape Crisis Centres:
‘The first letter that I received from the government of Israel talked about hundreds or thousands of cases of brutal sexual violence perpetrated against men, women and children. I have not found anything like that.’
Tominey smeared the entire Palestinian population with this comment:
‘It is also worth noting that a Palestinian student has already had her visa revoked after saying she was “full of joy” after the October 7 attacks. Dana Abuqamar, 19, a law student at the University of Manchester, said that she was “proud that Palestinian resistance has come to this point” after the atrocities. It would be naive to believe that the average Palestinian wishing to come to the UK thinks much differently.’
Tominey linked to an earlier Telegraph article by Isabel Oakeshott from October 2023, which sympathised with the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza, but added:
‘To usher in an additional cohort of traumatised people, many, if not most, of whom will not share our values; will not speak our language; and will not find it easy to build new lives here, would be insane. With the right support, most would probably integrate – but we must face up to the uncomfortable truth that a very small number will not wish us well, and may repay our generosity by fomenting division and hatred in our communities – or worse.’
Oakeshott offered the warning of protesters who ‘appear convinced that the plight of the people of Gaza is the fault of the Israelis, as opposed to the cruel Iranian-sponsored militia that controls the territory’. This, she said, ‘has grave implications for community cohesion. How much more dangerous will this already febrile situation become, if we naively import thousands more people brutalised by war and confused about who is to blame for their plight?’
Oakeshott’s brutal sign-off: ‘the UK does not have a duty to take a single one of those escaping the fall-out’. (Our emphasis)
Media brutality feeds party political brutality, which feeds further media brutality… and down we go. Peter Oborne, former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, commented recently:
‘One of the historical roles of the Conservative Party has been to act as a prophylactic against fascist and far-right forces which, history shows us, have always lurked not far under the surface in British society.
‘It is no longer playing that role. The Conservative Party is falling into the hands of the far right before our eyes.’
In his conclusion to a separate piece, Oborne posts an ominous warning on the emerging political culture of this ‘sharp time’:
The post “This Is A Sharp Time”: Israel’s “Day Of Joy” first appeared on Dissident Voice.‘For the first time in my life it is possible to look forward and envisage a sequence of events that might turn Britain fascist.’ (‘Peter Oborne’s Diary – The Dark Shadow of Fascism,’ Byline Times, July 2024)
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
On 17 June 2024, after serving student protesters with an Interim Possession Order (IPO) during the festival of Eid al-Adha, LSE evicted students and staff from the Bloom Building.
The following day, the LSE administration unilaterally broke off negotiations with student protesters concerning their demands, reneging on previous public commitments in which they had promised six weeks of negotiation between students and administrators, regardless of the status of the encampment:
The behaviour of LSE administration since the beginning of the Bloom Building occupation on 14 May demonstrates a pattern of bad faith and refusal to engage with students’ demands, particularly for divestment from crimes against the Palestinian people and disaffiliation from institutions complicit in violations of international law.
Students and staff have refused to accept business as usual in an institution materially complicit in genocide. Yet instead of faithfully engaging with this position, LSE administrators have attempted to end the student occupation through an escalation of measures that leveraged their extensive resources.
The school has made history here, as the first of the UK universities to evict a pro-Palestine student encampment.
This stain on their reputation draws into question claims of academic excellence and diverse critical thought. Crucial to the continued prestige of the institution is the consideration that this young generation is paying attention to the news and paying attention to systems of power, therefore will be deterred from attending a university in which their right to free speech is repressed.
Opposition from the school came in various forms:
Firstly, through spurious claims of a commitment to fire safety and student wellbeing (belied by their refusal to allow the Fire Brigades Union into the building).
Secondly, through legal means which both threatened to criminalise students and infringed upon their human rights to freedom of association and assembly.
Finally, through a refusal to engage seriously with safety concerns, culminating in outright violence as security shoved and pushed windows onto students’ hands in the course of decampment.
After this repeated pattern of bad faith tactics, the LSE administration then had the audacity to renege on promises they made to the student community regarding the continuity of negotiations regardless of the status of the occupation.
The actions of LSE administrators mark a serious breach of trust between the leadership of the institution and the rest of the school community, as well as a profound disregard for the democratic mandate behind the movement for divestment – as per a Student Union referendum, a record-breaking 89% of students voted in support of divestment:
LSE’s decision to evict student protesters following a County Court ruling in favour of their application for an IPO also marks a dangerous precedent in which administrators have chosen to prioritise proprietary rights over the human rights to freedom of expression and assembly, as outlined in Articles 10 and 11 of the Human Rights Act of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
The court ruling means that it is a criminal offence if members of the encampment return to the Bloom Building as protesters in the next 12 months. However, given that the court order applies to ‘persons unknown,’ even students and staff who were not part of the encampment – and indeed future students joining LSE in the new academic year – are at risk of being prosecuted for exercising their rights to expression and assembly.
Such a precedent undermines the entire LSE community’s right to protest, and will also have a chilling effect on the exercise of free speech in the university, belying LSE’s core values as an institution committed to dialogue and the exchange of ideas.
The LSE administration’s failure to uphold its duty of care is shaped by a pattern of institutional Islamophobia, exemplified by the fact that LSE administrators chose to evict students and staff during Eid al-Adha, one of the holiest festivals of the Muslim calendar, while knowing that a significant contingent of student occupiers are Muslim:
Throughout the occupation, LSE administration refused to acknowledge students’ repeated requests to take health and safety and surveillance concerns seriously. Specifically, the administration ignored our emails regarding the discrimination faced by Muslim students for 14 days and only responded after we repeatedly demanded a response.
Reported incidents included security staff forcing Muslim women entering the encampment to unveil, interrupting Muslims in prayer, and in one case a male member of security barged into the women’s restroom in the early morning and harassed an unveiled Muslim woman camping in the building.
The response of security on 17 June, guided by administrators’ mandates and the encouragement of senior security staff, is a continuation of the universities’ failure to uphold their duty of care to students and staff. This is especially concerning within the context of an established pattern of inaction on alleged sexual assault from those in positions of power at the LSE:
Ultimately, LSE’s actions demonstrate a callous refusal to engage with students’ ethical concerns regarding £89m the school has invested in crimes against the Palestinian people, fossil fuels, arms, and financing for these egregious activities, as per the student and staff-authored report Assets in Apartheid.
These actions also belong in a continuum of violence that finds its most extreme expression in the genocidal brutality exercised by the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people – a genocide that includes the forced displacement of Palestinians from their homes, the repressive curtailment of rights to protest and assembly, and the attempts destroy of all forms of Palestinian life.
Featured image and additional images via LSE Liberated Zone
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
Israel’s repeated use of heavy bombs in the densely-populated Gaza Strip indicates repeated violations of the laws of war, the UN said. They highlighted six attacks that killed at least 218 people.
The United Nations rights office, known by the acronym OHCHR, carried out investigations into deaths in October 2023 that they claim were emblematic of a concerning pattern. Some of the attacks involved suspected use of up to 2000-pound bombs on residential buildings, a school, refugee camps, and a market.
The requirement to select means and methods of warfare that avoid or at the very least minimise to every extent civilian harm appears to have been consistently violated in Israel’s bombing campaign.
The report concludes that the series of Israeli strikes, exemplified by the six attacks carried out between 9 October and 2 December, suggested that Israel’s military had:
repeatedly violated fundamental principles of the laws of war.
Among the attacks listed in Wednesday’s report were the strikes on Ash Shujaiyeh neighbourhood, in Gaza City on 2 December last year.
It caused destruction across an approximate diagonal span of 130 metres, destroying 15 buildings and damaging at least 14 others, it said.
The extent of the damage and the craters visible and seen on satellite imagery indicated that around nine 2,000-pound GBU-31 bombs were used. The UN said it had received information that at least 60 people were killed.
GBU-31s, along with 1,000-pound GBU-32s and 250-pound GBU-39s “are mostly used to penetrate through several floors of concrete and can completely collapse tall structures,” UN rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence told reporters.
Laurence continued:
Given how densely populated the areas targeted were, the use of an explosive weapon with such wide area effects is highly likely to amount to our prohibited indiscriminate attack.
The report found that an Israeli attack on Jabalya refugee camp on 31 October 2023:
completely flattened an area of at least 2,500 square metres, destroying 10 structures. It [the strike] impacted across an approximate diagonal span of 75 metres, causing damage to at least 10 more buildings. OHCHR verified 56 people killed, including 12 women and 23 children, with information of an additional 43 fatalities.
They also discuss “a massive explosion” in Al Burejj camp on 2 November 2023. Here, the report explains that:
The IDF has not mentioned Al Bureij Camp specifically before or after the incident.
These attacks have been chosen, it would appear, as emblematic of Israel’s mode of operations in bombing Gaza. That the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) do not explain these attacks is a choice. The report concludes that:
Monitoring by OHCHR strongly indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically failed to comply with the following fundamental principles of international humanitarian law in its conduct of hostilities in Gaza since 7 October: the principle of distinction, the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks, the principle of proportionality and the principle of precautions in attack.
Ajith Sunghay, head of OHCHR’s office in the Palestinian territories, said that the report focused heavily on Israeli actions, since the weapons used by Israel’s military were far more destructive.
The missiles fired by Hamas, while “absolutely unacceptable”, he said, “have not caused significant killing during the war” by comparison.
The report highlighted that unlawful targeting was not only a violation of the laws of war. When committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population, in line with an official state or organisational policy, it “may also implicate crimes against humanity.”
The report authors write:
Israel must conduct prompt, independent, impartial, thorough, effective and transparent investigations into these alleged violations of IHL and international human rights law (IHRL) and bring those reasonably suspected of criminal responsibility to account through trials that comply with international standards.
Yeah, don’t hold your breath.
This report shows the deep-rooted bias against Israel that has existed in OHCHR for decades.
Yes, it’s definitely the case that the OHCHR are biased against Israel. Not the fact that even the spineless and ineffective UN have managed to work out that since October 7 2023 Hamas have killed a handful of people, versus Israel having murdered thousands. Perhaps Israel can dry its tears with all the cash and weapons from their fellow war criminal friends in the US and the UK.
If we want to stretch our intellectual and moral limits slightly beyond the irreproachable UN we may perhaps consider that Palestine is a nation under siege, whose people have been hunted, tortured, detained, and murdered for 75 years. That would cast rather a different light on things, and Israel can’t have that now, can it?
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
The unique post-World War II economic and military power of the United States prevented military and foreign policy errors from becoming overpowering disasters. Military adventures in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq upended America’s political system and wounded its psyche. Other than the 2001 attacks on American soil, physical destruction was foreign, appearing as images on television screens. Oil price rises, inflation, increasing debt to finance military costs, and social upheavals temporarily perturbed the US socioeconomic system. A powerful America overcame the impediments and continually extended its power until the Asian Tigers, a rejuvenated China, and progressive Latin leaders appeared on the global stage. America’s hegemony declined and the decline became confirmed by the Russian/Ukraine conflagration, Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and a subsequent attack on protesting students at the UCLA campus. No nation with unique power and in control of that power would have permitted these horrific happenings.
The US is sliding into a mediocre existence. Heard that before? Hear it again. Four words describe those who have brought the United States to a sorrowful state ─ treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitor ─ harsh words that will be met with smiles, sneers, and derisions. They are correct words and backed by a long list of treacherous, treasonous, tyrannical, and traitorous actors in the American public. The description of the “tyranny in America” is not a repetitious overkill; it is a necessary refrain that punctuates the alarm ─ America is led by pseudo patriots who have betrayed its ideals and Americans must regain its inspiring freedom, liberty-loving, and peaceful aspirations.
Domestic treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors
Running for president of the USA are two traitors ─ Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
Donald Trump is accused of provoking and aiding the Jan 6, 2021 attack on the US capitol and pursuing an insurrection against the US government. Treason.
Donald Trump is accused of keeping US government top secrets in his home in locations where they could be revealed to others. He is guilty of violating US espionage laws. Treason.
Donald Trump solicits Evangelical vote and financial assistance by supporting Israel, a foreign nation, in its genocide of the Palestinian people. Treachery.
Joe Biden said, “Because even where we have some differences, my commitment to Israel, as you know, is ironclad. I think without Israel, there’s not a Jew in the world who’s secure. I think Israel is essential.” Besides the nonsensical statement that condemns Biden for not knowing that Israel is the only country in the world where Jews have continually suffered from fatal attacks, claim insecurity that seeks security, and exhibit excessive prejudice toward one another — Ashkenazi against Mizrahi, both against Yemeni and Falasha, and secular against ultra-orthodox — Biden admits he has failed to protect the most well-off Americans ─ Jewish citizens (from what??). Treachery.
By having said, “My commitment to Israel, as you know, is ironclad,” Joe Biden betrayed US interests, which should have a flexible foreign policy. He has allied the US people with genocide. Traitor.
Hunter Biden had financial dealings with adversaries of the US government. Joe Biden should have known his son’s arrangements and prevented accusations of influence peddling. Joe Biden is guilty of violating his oath of office. Treachery.
Biden, similar to Trump, brought classified documents to his home and left them scattered in places open to revelation. Despite the Justice Department not pressing charges, Biden is guilty of violating US espionage laws. Treason.
The US Justice Department (DOJ) indicted several Russians and Chinese who infiltrated America, gathered information, and lobbied for a foreign nation. The US Justice Department has not indicted one of tens of thousands of Israelis (could be one of hundreds of thousands), who have performed similar duties for Israel. Lobbying is only a small part of the damage to Americans done by these miscreant infiltrators, sent by Israel to foreign shores to do their mischief. From the almost one million Israelis living in the United States, hundreds of thousands may have become citizens, voted, and changed a highly contested election. In a coming election in Westchester, New York, Westchester Unites urged Jewish voters in the district (not non-Jewish voters??) to request ballots so they could vote before the June 25 Democratic primary battle between New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who criticizes Israel, and challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, an avid supporter of apartheid Israel’s genocide. Campaign organizers say they will spend up to $1 million to boost voter turnout.
I’m not privy to the manipulations of the American public performed by the mass of Israeli infiltrators. One example is the declarations by Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue. His contrived Amplify Israel Initiative “aims to breathe new life into the principles we’ve been committed to for decades, with an array of programs aimed at bolstering support for Israel and aligning Zionism with liberal ideology.” In clearer words, “influence every man, woman, and child that nationalist, militarist, oppressive, and apartheid Israel is a benevolent country.”
Who is Rabbi Hirsch? Ammiel Hirsch went to high school in Israel, served as a tank commander in the IDF, and was formerly the director of the Association of Reform Zionists of America, the Israeli arm of the North American Reform movement. In a response to a letter, in which 93 rabbinical and cantorial students harshly criticized Israeli actions in the hostilities between Israel and Hamas, Rabbi Hirsch wrote:
For the record, the Reform movement is a Zionist movement. Every single branch of our movement — the synagogue arm (Union for Reform Judaism), the rabbinic union (Central Conference of American Rabbis), and our seminary (HUC-JIR) — every organization separately, and all together, are Zionist and committed ideologically and theologically to Israel.
Why did Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, after receiving training in Israel, come to the United States to guide the Reform movement, which, in previous decades, had been against Zionism, and define it in Israel’s image? By not investigating the actions of multitudes of Israelis residing, the US Justice Department betrays the US people.
In an espionage scandal involving Lawrence Franklin, a former United States Department of Defense employee, who passed classified documents to AIPAC officials, which disclosed secret United States policy towards Iran, Franklin pleaded guilty and, in January 2006, was sentenced to nearly 13 years of prison. He served ten months of house arrest. The DOJ dropped espionage charges against the AIPAC officials — Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Reason (which was treason) — the Department claimed court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information (which can apply to almost every trial for treason). Despite the previous espionage charges and knowledge that un-American AIPAC is a lobby for apartheid Israel, the DOJ has not indicted AIPAC for being an unregistered lobby and has permitted its cadre of Israel firsters to wander the halls of Congress and shake palms with dollar bills. Traitors.
US representatives know that AIPAC lobbies for an apartheid Israel that is committing genocide and drags US citizens into accusations of aiding the genocide. Politicians accept contributions from individuals allied with AIPAC and vote in accordance with AIPAC’s preferences. The power of the contributions and fear that disregarding AIPAC poses a danger to remaining in office was highlighted in 1984. For voting to permit Boeing to sell AWACS aircraft to Saudi Arabia and for suggesting there were Palestinians and they had “rights,” AIPAC marked as undesirable the popular Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, Charles Percy, who had always favored Israel. Paul Simon wrote in his autobiography that Bob Asher, an AIPAC board member, called him to run for Senator from Illinois. Simon unseated the admired and respected Charles Percy who was only 98% pure in his support for Israel. Treachery.
The US government and local governments favor laws, such as the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which can suppress free speech and free actions that contend Israel’s genocidal policies, and H.R. 3016, Anti-Boycott Act, which “bars U.S. citizens from participating in boycotts of U.S. allies if those boycotts are promoted or imposed by foreign countries.” Federal and local governments tyrannize the US people. Tyranny.
The Los Angeles (LA) Police Department stood by for hours before halting attacks on peaceful UCLA students and then arrested dozens of student protesters and not any of the vigilantes who represented a foreign power and attacked the students. The LA Police Department supported a group representing a foreign government and failed to protect American citizens. Treason.
The House of Representatives has had numerous one-sided hearings on campus anti-Semitism that feature callous remarks against Jews from relatively few of the protestors. In none of the hearings has a Committee invited the student protestors to testify; maybe, because they might say, “These students do not represent the protestors. They are angry and frustrated individuals who see Israel identify itself as a Jewish state and note that a great number of American Jews approve of Israel and its genocide of the Palestinian people. They realistically equate Jews with the genocide.” The truth of these hearings is they are more concerned with fictional Jewish feelings than factual Palestinian lives. Let’s face it, these hearings are organized by Israel’s advocates who seek to prevent the US public from gaining awareness of the genocide and shift the protest arguments to a spurious charge of anti-Semitism in America. Elected officials adhere to a foreign nation’s request to stifle American citizens from exercising their right to protest and move dialogue from the horrific victimization of Gazans to an artificially created Jewish victimhood. College presidents committed a huge error by not responding to the committees’ fabricated charges of campus anti-Semitism with a simple statement, “There is no campus anti-Semitism and you are attempting to divert the impact of these demonstrations that criticize Israel policies into a false charge that indirectly enhances Israel’s image.” By representing a foreign power and censoring American students from their right to protest, these elected officials are guilty. Treason.
Foreign policies exhibit the same treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors.
North Vietnam
President Lyndon Johnson’s reciting a dubious attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on the USS Maddox in international waters cajoled Americans into accepting an increased US military involvement in the Vietnamese civil war. Global strategists also mentioned the Domino Theory, where if one country falls to communism, then adjacent nations also become communist. A non-functioning Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty (SEATO) tied these fabrications into a call for action. Result was 58,148 uniformed Americans killed, 200,000 wounded, and 75,000 severely wounded. Ho Chi Minh’s followers won the war and none of the neighboring SEATO nations became communist. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the leading prophet of the Domino Theory, confessed, “I think we were wrong. I do not believe that Vietnam was that important to the communists. I don’t believe that its loss would have led – it didn’t lead – to Communist control of Asia.” Treachery.
Six-day war
During the 1967 war between Israel and its neighbors, Israeli torpedo boats and airplanes attacked the intelligence ship USS Liberty in international waters, killed 34, and wounded 171 American service personnel. President Johnson refused to respond to this assault, an insult to all Americans. Treason.
Yom Kippur war
In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, President Nixon’s administration supplied arms to Israel and reversed the course of the war. Arab nations responded with an oil embargo that caused huge inflation in the United States, punished the American consumer, and harmed the American economy. Treachery.
Afghanistan-1980s
President Ronald Reagan’s CIA covertly assisted Pakistan intelligence in providing financial and military assistance to Osama bin Laden during the Soviet incursion into Afghanistan. In effect, the US played an essential role in creating the al-Qaeda network. Treason.
International Terrorism and 911
After Ronald Reagan helped create and popularize Osama bin Laden, later presidents did not heed Osama bin Laden’s warnings. The arch-terrorist clarified his position in the infamous Osama bin Laden’s “Letter to the American people,” which has been conveniently sidetracked to ensure Americans do not get infected with terrorism germs. It should be titled, “How the United States made me a terrorist.” It is difficult to agree with bin Laden but his statements are not easily contended.
You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern.
Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want.
You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.
William J. Clinton was president during the period that Bin Laden raged his fury at the United States. If Bill Clinton had considered some of bin Laden’s grievances his considerations might have prevented the later 9/11 attack on American soil. Treason.
George W. Bush and American security officials permitted 19 co-conspirators to enter the country and take preparatory flying lessons in full view of authorities. His DOJ did not pursue information that connected the Saudi royal family with the bombers. Treason.
Afghanistan-2001
Without exhausting all means to have Osama bin Laden extradited from Afghanistan and knowing that the Taliban was not directly involved in the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in a military adventure that had no defined purpose and accomplished nothing. In a war that lasted 20 years, the United States had 2,459 military deaths and 20,769 American service members wounded in action. Twenty years of a useless war that only brought the Taliban back to power. Treachery.
Iraq
George W. Bush’s uncalled-for war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom) is the best example of sacrificing U.S. lives to advance Israel’s interests. The cited reason ─ destroying Hussein’s weapons of destruction ─ whose evidence of developments the U.S. based on spurious intelligence and was a farce that no sensible person could believe. This “made for consumption” and fabricated story detracted from the real reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq — to prevent Iraq from becoming the central power in the Middle East and able to threaten Israel. Neocons succeeded in pressuring President George W. Bush to sacrifice American lives and, by military action, remove Saddam Hussein from power. Discarding the nonsensical assertion that Saddam Hussein, who had no nuclear material, no technology to develop a nuclear weapon, and no ICBMs to deliver a bomb, threatened the United States, and needed to be immediately stopped from turning bubble gum into a mighty weapon solicits a more acceptable reason for the U.S. attack on Iraq. The U.S. Department of Defense casualty website has the US military suffering 4,418 deaths and 31,994 wounded in action during the Iraq War. No coincidence that Iraq was a long-time adversary of Israel and it was in Israel’s interests to have Iraq become militarily impotent. Treason.
Libya
NATO declared it intervened in the 2011 Libyan Civil War “to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack.” President Barack Obama remarked, “Gaddafi declared that he would show ‘no mercy’ to his own people. He compared them to rats, and threatened to go door to door to inflict punishment.”
Reuters report demonstrated significant differences between Gaddafi’s remarks and President Obama’s rendition: Gaddafi Tells Rebel City, Benghazi, ‘We Will Show No Mercy,’ March 17, 2011.
Muammar Gaddafi told Libyan rebels on Thursday his armed forces were coming to their capital Benghazi tonight and would not show any mercy to fighters who resisted them. In a radio address, he told Benghazi residents that soldiers would search every house in the city and people who had no arms had no reason to fear. He also told his troops not to pursue any rebels who drop their guns and flee when government forces reach the city.
Logic tells us that few Benghazi residents could even have guns to hide, and Gadhafi’s forces were too limited to carry out any large-scale purge.
The U.S. vacillated, and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, convinced President Obama to join NATO in removing Gaddafi. NATO eliminated Gaddafi, Islamic extremists gained partial power, discarded armaments were shipped to al-Qaeda “look-alikes” throughout North Africa and soon the Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) coalition, Boko Haram, and Islamic State in West Africa (ISWA) were creating havoc throughout North Africa. The US gained nothing in removing Gaddafi and created more Islamic extremist organizations with which to contend. Treachery.
UN Vetoes
As of December 18, 2023, the U.S. vetoed resolutions critical of Israel 45 times. Each time, the Secretary of State offered the excuse that the resolution would not advance the cause of peace, and each time vetoing the resolution did not advance the cause for peace. Why do Americans give deference to Israelis when Israel insults American leaders, uses Americans to die in wars that advance Israel’s interests, causes havoc that brings injury to U.S. relations with other nations, and sucks money ($3.1 billion annually) from U.S. taxpayers to support its apartheid and oppressive policies?
Some mentioned reasons, which have changed during the decades, are:
Pundits confuse support for Israel with support for this Israel. The United States, for military and geopolitical reasons, can support Israel, as it does Columbia, but there is no reason to support and assist this Israel in the destruction of the Palestinians. The Washington establishment and foreign policymakers have incorrectly calculated the tradeoffs between supporting this Israel in its denial of Palestinian rights and in satisfying the Palestinian cause.
Just for money and votes, U.S. politicians sell out their commitment to the American people, follow the dictates of a foreign nation, and make Americans party to the destruction of innocent people. TREASON!!
Conclusion
Americans have, at times echoed grievances against their government’s policies and demonstrated their despair, well, some Americans, a small minority of the US population. The rest of the population has been naïve, complacent, and manipulated. Due to America’s intrinsic wealth — natural resources, abundant farmland, temperate climate, rivers, valleys, streams, hard-working population, ocean barriers to foreign incursions — the treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors temporarily slowed but did not stop the roaring engine. The roaring engine is beginning to sputter.
America’s posture as the leading defender of democracy and human rights is hypocritical; its economic system is challenged; its united states are disunited; its pluralistic political system is an epic fantasy; its legislative bodies are divided; and its courts are agenda-seeking rather than law-abiding. Democracy recedes and polarization of citizens widens. Americans are increasingly divided in their aspirations and express increasing fears of one another. An almost self-sufficient economic system proceeds with debt financing imports, trade imbalances, and growth, an unruly situation that can continue until debt hits a financial wall and repaying the debt becomes intolerable.
Hopefully, more Americans will take cognizance of the failed leadership, meet the challenges they pose, gather the resources, form the organizations, shout much louder, push much stronger, and succeed in disposing of the treachery, treason, tyranny, and traitors that have made the Statue of Liberty weep.
The words of Patrick Henry, “These are the times that try people’s souls,” are heard again in the cities and villages of a disunited United States of America.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The United Nations’ top human rights official said Tuesday that the situation in the West Bank was “dramatically deteriorating” and that Israeli security forces and settlers had killed 528 Palestinians in the occupied territory since October, “in many cases raising serious concerns of unlawful killings.” Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, made the remarks to the U.N.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
How to cut ties with genocide.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Palestine Action has caused £1m of damage to an Elbit-owned factory that supplies weapons parts to Israel. Of course, the militarists would call it criminal damage. However, activists would call the operation a success – as it means none of the kit made at the site can be used by Israel to kill Palestinians in Gaza and the Occupied Territories.
Palestine Action’s ‘decommissioning’ of Elbit Systems’ electro-optics weapons sights factory in Kent has left the ‘Instro Precision’ site immobilised, unable to produce weapons parts for export to Israel.
After tens of activists stormed the premises – bypassing security guards and cutting through three layers of wire fence – seven activists made it inside the factory itself, laying waste to the weapons of war being produced inside:
BREAKING: Actionists cut through 3 security fences to get inside Elbit's 'highly secure' compound and break into Kent's Israeli weapons factory.
Once inside, they begun dismantling machinery, technology and parts used to arm the Gaza genocide. pic.twitter.com/5yyQXJYbiA
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) June 17, 2024
During their 36 hour detention, before their release under strict bail conditions, police interrogators put it to the seven arrested that over £1m of damage was caused in their few hours inside the factory.
“Good”, said Palestine Action in a statement:
Fewer sniper sights manufactured at Instro Precision means fewer guns for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Cops then released the seven, pending further investigation:
All seven actionists released after 36 hours in police cells for breaking into Kent’s Israeli weapons factory and allegedly causing over £1million worth of damage! pic.twitter.com/ziKOcWcul4
— Palestine Action (@Pal_action) June 18, 2024
Destroying cables on the outside of the factory, and wrecking machinery, computer technology, and parts being produced for Instro’s product line, the action sought to – and has successfully – put the site out of action.
In a five year period, Instro Precision was granted over 50 weapons export licenses for sale of arms for military end-use in Israel, mostly of the ‘ML5’ category – weapons sight and target acquisition products. Many of these are the weapons sights ‘likely to be used in ground operations in Gaza’ by Israeli ground troops.
In 2019, an Elbit press release stated that thousands of XACT th64 and XACT th65 weapons sights had been delivered to the Israeli military, for use by “marksmen of both Infantry and Special Operation Forces”.
Besides products for snipers and infantry, Instro also manufactures sights and components for vehicular mounting, including the SpectroXR system fitted to Israel’s ‘Skylark’ drones. Instro products the ‘COAPS’ (Commander Open Architecture Panoramic Sight), which has been integrated with Main Battle Tanks and Armoured Fighting Vehicles with “hunter-killer capabilities”, in use by the Israeli military.
Featured image via Palestine Action
By The Canary
This post was originally published on Canary.
On 17 June 2024, Maria Elena Vignoli, Senior Counsel, International Justice Program of HRW, reported on several statements by States to rejects recent intimidation efforts.
Ninety-three member countries of the International Criminal Court (ICC) have declared their “unwavering support” for the court in the face of recent threats. The June 14 statement by an unprecedented number of ICC members across the globe follows a slew of threats, particularly after ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants against two senior Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with three Hamas leaders.
The joint statement reconfirmed ICC members’ support for the court “as an independent and impartial judicial institution” and their committment to defending the ICC, its officials, and those cooperating with it from any political interference and pressure. It follows similar expressions of support by the Presidency of the ICC Assembly of States Parties, several ICC member countries—including UN Security Council members—the high representative of the European Union, UN special procedures, and nongovernmental organizations.
In April, amid speculation ICC warrants for crimes committed in Gaza were imminent, 12 US senators threatened to sanction Khan should he pursue cases against top Israeli officials. Netanyahu also called on governments to prevent the court from issuing warrants. Khan’s office denounced the threats, noting that the ICC can also prosecute individuals for obstructing justice. [see also earlier: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/02/19/large-group-of-ngos-call-on-biden-administration-to-repeal-icc-sanctions/]
On June 4, after the warrant applications were announced, the US House of Representatives passed a bill aimed at imposing sanctions against the ICC, its officials, and those supporting investigations at the court involving US citizens or allies. The bill is now under consideration in the US Senate. The proposed law is reminiscent of the sanctions imposed by President Donald Trump on the previous ICC prosecutor to intimidate the court from pursuing cases against US and Israeli personnel for crimes committed in Afghanistan and Palestine. President Joe Biden revoked those sanctions in 2021 and has so far opposed the current bill.
The ICC is also in Russia’s crosshairs. In 2023, Russian authorities issued arrest warrants against Khan and six ICC judges after the ICC issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin and another Russian official for war crimes committed in Ukraine. Russian lawmakers also enacted a law criminalizing cooperation with the ICC.
In both the Palestine and Ukraine investigations, ICC officials are simply doing their job. The joint statement sends a strong message that ICC members have the court’s back and will not bow to efforts to undermine its independence.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/06/17/international-criminal-court-members-speak-out
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
As the U.S. was supposedly hard at work negotiating a Gaza ceasefire deal last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly assured Benjamin Netanyahu that the U.S. was working “day and night” to remove restrictions on weapons shipments to Israel, the Israeli prime minister said in a statement Tuesday — despite the Biden administration denying that it is withholding weapons at all.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On social media, people are correcting corporate media headlines that obscure Israel’s war crimes. MintPress News writer Alan MacLeod pointed out the BBC astonishing framing in March of Israelis trying to colonise Gaza:
Imagine a foreign country bombed your town and a bunch of people turned up and stole your house. Then imagine the BBC ran with this headline describing it like this.
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) June 16, 2024
Apparently, settlers are merely ‘setting their sights’ on Gaza’s beachfront. It sounds like they are merely eyeing up a nice holiday destination. In fact, the article opens with the sentiment “who wouldn’t want a house on the beach?”
The piece looks at Daniella Weiss who leads a colonial organisation called Nachala. Weiss said there are 500 Israeli families already ready to settle in Gaza. She continued:
I have friends in Tel Aviv, so they say, ‘Don’t forget to keep for me a plot near the coast in Gaza,’ because it’s a beautiful, beautiful coast, beautiful golden sand
Gaza and the West Bank are the remaining territories of the Palestinian people. That’s after Zionists colonised 78% of Palestine in 1948 through mass displacement and murder. This creation of Israel is known as the ‘Nakba’ or ‘catastrophe’, for Palestinian people.
Fast forward to the Israel of today and Israel’s agriculture and rural development minister Avi Dichter explicity referred to the ongoing military onslaught on Gaza as “Nakba 2023”.
And Israel’s national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for “encouraging the migration of the residents of Gaza”.
Then there’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who himself stated that Israel is “working on” the “migration” of people in Gaza.
Also a secret Israeli Intelligence Ministry document shows a plan to expel Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt.
Yet in the BBC piece the author charitably states that colonising Gaza is categorically “not government policy”.
In its ongoing genocidal assault on the Palestinian enclave, Israel has killed 37,920 Palestinian people including over 15,000 children. Israel has displaced nearly two million Gazan residents – more than the 800,000 Palestinians Zionists displaced in 1948.
Erika Guevara Rosas, senior director for research, advocacy, policy and campaigns at Amnesty International, said:
Generations of Palestinians across the occupied territories are deeply scarred by the trauma of being uprooted and dispossessed multiple times and with no prospect of return to their homes.
It is utterly harrowing to see the chilling scenes of 1948 Nakba… repeat themselves as droves of Palestinians in Gaza are forced to flee their homes on foot in search of safety over and over, and Israeli army and state backed settlers expel Palestinians in the West Bank from their homes
Despite what the settlers say, God is not a real estate agent. We must oppose this genocidal colonisation.
Featured image via DW News – YouTube
By James Wright
This post was originally published on Canary.
The Biden administration is in “non-compliance” with a U.S. law regarding foreign military assistance in allowing Israeli forces to dodge scrutiny over their brutality against Palestinians and otherwise, according to a new, scathing analysis by a former top State Department official. A report written for Just Security by Charles Blaha, who retired from his position as the director of the State…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
As more members of the military and State Department resign over U.S. funding of the genocide in Gaza, a new campaign was launched this week to allow military personnel to directly contact their congressional representatives.
Initiated by active-duty military members, veterans and G.I. rights groups, “Appeal for Redress v2,” is modeled after the 2006 Appeal for Redress conducted during the highly unpopular occupation of Iraq, to allow G.I.s to tell their representatives they are opposed to U.S. policy.
Active duty service members are opposing U.S. funding of Israel’s genocide not only because it is immoral, but also because U.S. government employees violate several federal statutes every time weapons are shipped to Israel, as cited in this letter from Veterans For Peace to the U.S. State Department.
James M. Branum, an attorney with the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, said, “Too often lawmakers make war policies without hearing from the people who have to implement them. This is what makes the Appeal for Redress v2 so important.”
Senior Airman Juan Bettancourt, on active duty while seeking conscientious objector separation, said, “My proudest act of service has been championing Appeal for Redress v2, a campaign to empower fellow service members to securely voice their moral outrage about our government’s complicity in Israeli war crimes and genocidal onslaught in Gaza. Although our rights are limited by our oath, Appeal for Redress v2 allows service members to carve out a modicum of agency and dispel any apprehensions that may impede us from denouncing this unspeakable carnage. Our voice is a powerful instrument, and it is our responsibility to humanity and the principles we hold dear to speak up against these heinous acts and make it known to our elected officials that we will not stand by silently while genocide unfolds. We refuse to be complicit. These are my views, not those of the Department of Defense.”
Army Sergeant Johnson said, “Throughout my Army career it has been reiterated to me time and time again to live and uphold Army values. I have been taught that honor and integrity are pivotal to being a soldier. It hurts me to my core that the same country that instilled these values in me would proudly support a genocide. It is our duty as service members to uphold Geneva conventions and international law. That is why I am pleading for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for humanitarian aid to be distributed throughout the entire Gaza Strip. To Ignore these crimes against humanity would be to turn my back on all the values I’ve cultivated as a soldier. It is against my personal beliefs as a man and my obligation as an active duty soldier to be complicit in this genocide. Fellow service members, please join me in calling for an immediate ceasefire and for Israel and the US to adhere to international law. These are my views, not those of the Department of Defense.”
Senior Airman Larry Hebert, also seeking conscientious objector status, said, “It is imperative that we uphold our personal and professional values and beliefs. There is no greater crime against humanity than genocide. No person, country, or institution should be supported unconditionally. This Appeal is within our rights as service members and we have a duty to exercise this right when our leaders commit violations of international and humanitarian law. You need to genuinely consider your actions now and reflect on how you’re contributing to the genocide. Are you helping or hurting the situation? There is no neutrality. By staying neutral, you hurt the oppressed. These are my views, not those of the Dept. of Defense.”
Bill Galvin, Counseling Coordinator at the Center on Conscience & War, said, “We’ve had an increase in calls from military personnel asking about getting discharged as conscientious objectors. Almost all of them cite the carnage in Gaza as something that their conscience would not allow them to ignore. Some have expressed feeling complicit in the violence.”
Kathleen Gilberd, executive director of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, said, “Many service members have serious objections to the U.S. support for Israel’s carnage in Gaza. Though their rights are somewhat limited, military personnel can still speak out about their beliefs and protest the travesty of this war. The Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild stands in support of these military dissenters and resisters.”
Shiloh Emelein, USMC veteran and Operations Director of About Face: Veterans Against the War, said, “We know many young people join the military out of necessity to get their needs met. But they are not obligated to contribute to genocide and unjust, unlawful wars that go against their conscience. You do have rights, you do have options to object, and there’s a large community of post-9/11 veterans ready to welcome you.”
To increase the awareness of this campaign among members of the military, civilian supporters are encouraged to share it on social media and to ask peace and justice organizations to share it with their membership.
The active-duty members listed in this release are available for comment by calling Bill Galvin, Center on Conscience and War, at 202-446-1461.
The post Active Duty, Veterans, G.I. Rights Group Launch Campaign for Military Personnel first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The moral burden lies with us all to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. And let’s not forget the other ‘silent’ conflicts and famines that are mounting across the world, which also demands a massive international response in the face of political apathy and indifference.
— Share The World’s Resources (STWR)
Since Israel’s military response in Gaza to the 7 October attack by Hamas, hundreds of civil society organisations have supported the call for a ceasefire. Global humanitarian and human rights groups also demand that all UN member states immediately halt arms transfers to Israel and Palestinian armed groups in order to avert further humanitarian catastrophe and loss of life.
While sharing the outrage and condemnation for the horrific attacks by Hamas, it is important to acknowledge its causes in decades of state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians by Israel. Rights groups have long documented the shameful hallmarks of colonialism and apartheid in Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories. Gaza has endured unimaginable suffering as a result of the illegal blockades imposed since the 1990s, a form of collective punishment that has turned Gaza into an ‘open-air prison’. But over the past eight months, Israel has gravely violated international law with its unprecedented military assaults on the besieged territory, killing upwards of 35,000 people including over 15,000 children.
Strong evidence suggests that the Israeli government’s actions violate the Genocide Convention, meaning it has inflicted conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians. Up to 70 percent of homes in Gaza have been destroyed, and an entire civilian infrastructure decimated including hospitals, schools, universities, cultural sites and UN facilities.
The latest actions in Rafah—closing a critical border crossing and forcibly displacing an estimated 800,000 people with nowhere else to go—clearly flout a provisional ruling of the World Court, which ordered Israel to take ‘all measures within its power’ to prevent acts of genocide. Rather than upholding the order by immediately providing basic services and humanitarian assistance to Gazans, Israel is deliberately using hunger as a weapon of war and committing further grievous war crimes. Half of the population of Gaza are already facing catastrophic levels of hunger, with famine imminent in the north.
Complicity with genocide
What the Israel-Gaza war has painfully revealed is the complicity of North American and many European countries with Israel’s genocidal crimes. The major Western powers present themselves as the defenders of human rights and morality, yet give unwavering support to Israel as it defies international law with impunity. These governments have repeatedly vetoed or abstained from resolutions at the UN Security Council calling for a humanitarian ceasefire. They have thwarted diplomatic efforts to bring Israel’s offensive to an end. They have opposed South Africa’s genocide case at the World Court. They have shamelessly cut life-saving aid to the United Nations relief agency for Palestinians. And they continue to supply Israel with taxpayer-funded weapons transfers—particularly the United States that has worked with Congress to secure billions of dollars of additional military assistance.
The hypocrisy and duplicity of Western countries has been exposed like never before. The most powerful Western states treat the Palestinians as if they are not worthy of the universal human rights endorsed by the United Nations more than 70 years ago. Their support for genocide shames us all and risks fuelling an endless cycle of violence and hatred that may eventually endanger the whole of humanity.
In the absence of political leadership, the moral burden lies with ordinary citizens to speak out, march and express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It is up to us to take a stand and protest against a genocidal war and its systemic support from callous politicians and the mainstream media. Peaceful student protesters are showing us the way with Gaza solidarity encampments and hunger strikes, despite violent police crackdowns and their false portrayal in the media as being antisemitic. Their brave actions have already helped force the U.S. administration to take pause and tentatively oppose a major ground invasion in Rafah. Now it falls to the rest of us to enforce international law through citizen action, to support human rights for all and end this immoral and illegal war.
A wider crime against humanity
The Israel-Gaza war may be the gravest moral crisis of our time, the most visible genocide in history. But we mustn’t forget the other conflicts around the world that our governments are neglecting, in which millions of people also face violence and mass displacement. In Sudan, civil war risks triggering a severe famine, with half the population already requiring humanitarian assistance and protection. Human Rights Watch report that widespread war crimes and a genocide is likely to have been committed in the region, although it is seldom mentioned in the Western media.
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, endemic violence has left nearly 7 million people internally displaced, and the country is suffering the world’s biggest child hunger crisis. In Yemen, more than half the population is dependent on food aid after years of war has destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure. Last year, Somalia was brought to the brink of famine as a result of unrelenting drought and flare-ups of conflict. Hunger is also skyrocketing in multiple other countries, including Burundi, Djibouti, Gambia, Haiti, Lebanon, Liberia, Senegal and Malawi.
Life-threatening levels of food insecurity affect a staggering 281 million people according to the latest global assessment, with those worst affected living in South Sudan, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Mali. Many of these hunger crises don’t make the news headlines. The majority are in conflict-affected areas that—similar to Gaza—leave vast numbers of people without shelter, medicine, food or clean water. At a time when humanitarian needs are soaring, all these crises are tragically underfunded. The humanitarian system is enduring the worst funding gap it has ever faced, described by UN officials as an obscene competition of suffering to receive emergency aid.
While speaking up for the neglected citizens of Palestine, we also need to hold our governments accountable for these wider crimes against humanity. The major Western powers must act to end the 16-year siege of Gaza, provide unlimited humanitarian support to the region and immediately broker a ceasefire. And they must act to mitigate the ‘silent’ conflicts and famines that are mounting across the world, which also demands a massive international response in the face of political apathy and indifference. So let’s extend the spirit of the Gaza protests into a global movement for abolishing the injustice of hunger, and call upon all governments to adequately fund our most basic human rights instead of fuelling more devastating wars.
The post In Solidarity with Gaza and the World’s Forgotten Millions first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Gulshan Khan, photojournalist in Johannesburg, reports: “What we are seeing in Palestine today is a hundred thousand times worse than what we experienced in South Africa.”
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“Israel, the establishment of Israel is based on the erasure of historical Palestine, on the depopulation of Palestinian towns and villages, and the imposing of a new geography in a new urban system, a new transport system, a new meaning, a new set of names, new maps on top of that area. And that is a huge construction project.”
“When you grow up in Israel, the entire education system is priming you to become part of a national project of erasure and dispossession. There are things that you simply are not told, and you understand that state ideology requires a certain narrative and requires certain epistemic erasure, meaning the erasure of history, erasure of people, erasure of the truth that you actually see in front of your eyes.”
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Imagine a woman knocking on your door in Bath, England, saying that your house is her house because the Romans occupied England in the 5th century, so anyone of Roman descent can make a historic claim to their land. Zionist Israeli Jews have made the same claims on the land in Palestine.
Facebook . com: (video) 1 min, 21 sec–June 12, 2024
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Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Land of Israel
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Narrow AI (Artificial Intelligence) is what we have now. AGI is when AI attains the ability to learn, understand, and perform. Technocrats believe this will be the achievement of Singularity–what they are ultimately trying to achieve.
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The post Genocide in Gaza, AGI, Age of Hebrew Bible first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
We speak with Israeli American Jewish scholar Raz Segal about the University of Minnesota’s move to rescind a job offer over his comments early in the war on Gaza, when he characterized the Israeli assault as a “textbook case of genocide.” Segal was set to lead the university’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, but after two board members quit in opposition to Segal’s selection and a…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
