Category: Israel Crimes
Instagram’s parent company — refuses to provide evidence refuting widespread reports that it’s censoring Gaza-related content on its platforms. This week on Deconstructed, technology reporter Sam Biddle joins Ryan Grim to discuss his recent reporting on the efforts of Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to press Meta for specifics.
Grim and Biddle dig into debates blaming the horrifying images coming out of Gaza for turning young people against the war. “When people see images of horrific bloodshed,” Biddle says, “when they see bodies blown apart by bombs, that’s upsetting to most people. There doesn’t have to be any ideology attached.” They also dive into how pressures to sanitize Israel’s war is being used to ban TikTok, and how X, formerly known as Twitter, is profiting off of government surveillance.
Source: Deconstructed: How the Gaza War Is Reshaping Social Media
Ultimately if there is any hope for a just resolution to this conflict, two questions will need to be addressed by the the political establishment in the United States: Can Israel’s allies continue denying basic human rights to Palestinians — rights that should be inherent to all human beings? And should Israel remain above international law and the laws of nations that underpin a rules-based order?
Source: Not a Single Palestinian Is Free
US claims that this week’s cease-fire resolution is “nonbinding” are highly doubtful, say many international law experts. Worse, they may be part of a broader US effort to delegitimize the UN.
But the US said the Israeli statement was “inaccurate in almost every respect and it is unfair to the hostages and their families” because Hamas’s response had been “prepared before the UN Security Council vote”.
Relatives of an Israeli held captive in Gaza were reportedly among those arrested by police at a protest in Tel Aviv, after the latest talks on a truce and the release of hostages broke down.
There have been almost daily demonstrations by the hostages’ families, but their anguish has been heightened by the news that Israeli officials have been recalled from the talks in Doha mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US.
Source: Israeli hostages’ relatives arrested at protest as Gaza talks break down
US arms transfers are conditioned by federal law, as the Congressional Research office explains, which: “prohibits security assistance to ‘any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.’” (Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended in 1976 with Section 502B(a)(2) (22 U.S.C. 2304(a)(2)). The Biden administration’s arms transfers to Israel are therefore blatantly illegal.
Source: State Department finding Israel not in Violation of Int’l Law Contradicted by Resigning Official
The chief architect behind the TikTok bill is Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher, whose biggest donor is AIPAC
In December 2023, MintPress investigated The 10/7 Project, a new Zionist lobby entity founded by AIPAC, ADL, AJC, JFNA, and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. The outfit was initially intended to be a very public affair, promoting human interest stories and atrocity propaganda generated by Operation Al-Aqsa Flood in the media while elevating its eponymous date to 9/11 levels in the American public mind.
The 10/7 Project has, to say the least, failed in this mission not least because citizen activists and journalists have challenged Israeli propaganda and exposed the realities of the Gaza genocide, with such devastating effect, on platforms such as TikTok. As such, it is only to be expected that the same lobbying organizations behind this effort have redoubled their quest for narrative control. If the information war cannot be won fairly, the only option is to nobble all opposition via straight-up censorship.
Source: Israel’s Shadow Over Free Speech: The Truth Behind the TikTok Ban Bill – ScheerPost
Board of directors
Unmentioned by the Times is that Giora Eiland, a retired Israeli major general, serves on the board of directors of Corsight.
When Eiland joined the board in January 2021, Igal Raichelgauz, chairman and founder of the Cortica Group, stated, “We are excited to add Giora to the company board, we believe that due to his extensive experience in the national security field, Corsight will continue growing into new markets and territories and lead the face recognition market in Israel and in the world.” Corsight is a subsidiary of Cortica, a firm focused on artificial intelligence.
Eiland is a proponent of the ethnic cleansing of the occupied territory of Gaza.
He wrote for the Israeli publication Ynet on 12 October that “One option is a massive and complex ground operation, with no regard to duration and cost, while the second option is to create conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable.”
In fact, Israel has done both.
Source: Firm helping Israel spy on Gaza includes genocide advocate | The Electronic Intifada
Despite a U.N.-backed report sounding the alarm on imminent famine in northern Gaza, Israeli authorities announced Sunday they will no longer approve the passage of any UNRWA food convoys into northern Gaza. “Our ability to adequately continue saving lives is really being obstructed,” says UNRWA spokesperson Tamara Alrifai. “What’s going to happen to UNRWA if we can no longer truly operate?” The decision came as President Biden signed a $1.2 trillion appropriations bill that strips funding to UNRWA for the next year. The U.S. first suspended aid to UNRWA in late January, when the Israeli government claimed 12 of the agency’s 30,000 employees were involved in Hamas’s attacks on October 7. The unsubstantiated allegation prompted top donors to cut funding to UNRWA, though many of them have resumed funding as the agency welcomes new donor countries and an unprecedented number of civil society donations. Seeing the U.S., the agency’s largest donor, “withhold funding … is a huge blow to us,” says Alrifai. “Stripping UNRWA of funding not only shrinks its ability to respond to the looming famine in Gaza, but also puts at risk the schools, the access of kids to proper education, the vaccines, the mother and child care — everything across the region.”
https://democracynow.cachefly.net/democracynow/360/dn2024-0328.mp4?start=2891.0
Some schools are acting on the misbegotten notion that Palestinian freedom is a threat to Jewish safety.
Source: Pro-Israel Advocates Weaponize “Safety” on College Campuses
In some ways, Israel ‘stands alone’, but only because its behavior is rejected by most countries and peoples around the world. However, it is hardly alone when its war crimes are being executed with western support and arms.
For the Israeli genocide in Gaza to end, those who continue to sustain the ongoing bloodbath must also be held accountable.
Source: Complicit in Genocide: Where Israel Gets Its Weapons From – CounterPunch.org
As the UN Security Council finally overcomes the US’ calculated protection of Israel’s aggression in order to pass a ceasefire resolution in Gaza; the failure of the UN, the US and western media to give us the full and true story of the Palestinian tragedy has become clear. We cannot rely on compromised bodies such as the International Criminal Court and the media to hold those responsible to account. We need a People’s Tribunal that is capable of investigating possible war crimes and genocide in Gaza.
Source: We need a People’s Tribunal on Palestine and Gaza – Pearls and Irritations
The U.S. experience in the Middle East is a classic study of political and military miscalculation leading to strategic failure. President Joe Biden’s political support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is being sorely tested, and his military support for Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), which is making the United States complicit in Israel’s genocidal campaign, is the latest and worst example of U.S. miscalculation. Overall, the exercise of U.S. military power in the Middle East, designed to gain strategic advantage, has backfired. It has led to disarray in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, and has opened diplomatic opportunities for Russia and China.
Source: The United States and the Middle East: the Politics of Miscalculation – CounterPunch.org
Israel: Above the law?
A look into how and why international laws and principles are being applied and ignored in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
The events of October 7 sent shockwaves across the world and brought to the forefront once again a conflict that has been ongoing for 75 years. The Israeli government’s response to Hamas’s attack was prompt – it embarked on a war of magnitude in Gaza, claiming it needed to take out Hamas and rescue the captives. At first, the consensus of Western powers seemed solid: Israel has the right to fight back against Hamas. But more than five months later, Israel’s military was facing criticism worldwide, including allegations that it is committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and even genocide.
This film will explore whether Israel is breaking international law and, if so, why are Western powers, in particular the United States, silent.
Source: Israel: Above the law? | Israel War on Gaza | Al Jazeera
It is not surprising that Palestinians are treated as contemptuously as they are when they are clearly not defined as ‘God’s People’.
The disregard for indigenous peoples by colonial powers was equally contemptuous, the rapacity for land unbridled greed, lands stolen, people killed and missionaries followed close behind to wipe out indigenous cultures replacing it with adoration for Jesus. The laws did not apply to the conquered, only to ‘God’s People’.
Source: Does God condone genocide? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
“‘Security Council resolutions are binding,’ Lin Jian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Tuesday.”
Beijing is correct on the law, and the Biden administration is being disingenuous. If President Biden did not want a ceasefire resolution to pass, he should have vetoed it. By abstaining and letting the world community vote on the matter, Biden has elicited a binding decision, and his officials should stop dancing around it.
The law here is clear.
The UN Security Council has finally passed a ceasefire resolution for Gaza, from which the US abstained, so it was passed by the other 14 members. Although UNSC resolutions are binding, and countries like Iraq and Iran have been severely punished for disobeying them, the US is running interference for the Netanyahu government by insisting that the resolution is “non-binding.”
Some Israeli leaders see an ugly third way out of this conundrum – reducing the number of Palestinians. By starving Palestinians in Gaza and destroying much of the housing and infrastructure, Netanyahu seems to want to render Gaza unlivable. That would be consistent with the calls of his rightwing ministers for mass deportation from Gaza – an effort to wipe 2.2 million Palestinians from the demographic balance sheet.
Certainly Netanyahu does not want to make the demographics worse by offering any sustenance to Palestinian refugees who might want to return – even to Palestine. Destroying Unrwa is part of that awful plan. No funder should join it.
U.N. member states must “use their influence” to push Israel to halt its bombardment of Gaza and blocking of humanitarian aid, said the group’s secretary general.
Source: ‘Crucial’ UN Report on Gaza Genocide Must Spur Global Action, Says Amnesty
After five months of military operations, Israel has destroyed Gaza. By analysing the patterns of violence and Israel’s policies in its onslaught on Gaza, this report concludes that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating Israel’s commission of genocide is met. More broadly, they also indicate that Israel’s actions have been driven by a genocidal logic integral to its settler-colonial project in Palestine, signalling a tragedy foretold.
How many more Palestinian civilians will Israel murder before such “support for Israel” begins to waver?
Now, Israel is accelerating land theft in the occupied West Bank, conducting assassinations of resistance fighters and killing children across the territory, despite repeated warnings that continued Israeli aggression would bring about an eruption.
Israeli soldiers killed more than 420 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since 7 October, and at least nine were killed by settlers, the UN monitoring group OCHA has reported.
Of those killed, 113 were children.
Israeli forces and settlers have injured nearly 5,000 Palestinians in the West Bank since 7 October, more than 700 of them children.
Source: Israel accelerates land theft in the West Bank | The Electronic Intifada
Members of an emergency medical team that has treated patients at a hospital in southern Gaza in recent weeks said Monday that the horrors they’ve witnessed there are “unimaginable,” from worsening malnutrition to deadly infections stemming from lack of healthcare equipment.
Source: ‘Beyond Comprehension’: Medical Team Reports Starvation, Infections at Gaza Hospital
Source: 
AIPAC and Christian Evangelists will use even more Money Power
Also on Monday, Palestine defenders rallied in Washington, D.C. to protest a visit to the State Department by Gallant and to demand an end to U.S. aid and weapons to Israel. Another high-level Israeli delegation’s visit to Washington was canceled Monday after the U.S. abstained from a U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
Source: US Accepts ‘Outrageous’ Israeli Assurances on Legal Use of Weapons in Gaza
A recent open letter from Hollywood creatives, condemning Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar acceptance speech, only reinforces the ongoing dehumanisation of lives in Israel and Palestine, Lyn Bender writes.
Source: Critics of Glazer’s Oscars speech prove the relevance of ‘The Zone of Interest’
PEN America may continue to exist, indeed its obsequiousness to governmental and corporate power will probably assure its funding, but it is a hollow brand used to justify the crimes and lies of the U.S. government and Israel.
Source: Chris Hedges: PEN America Self-Destructs – ScheerPost
Pleas for a common humanity include urgent, practical objectives:
- Join 139 countries in implementing the decision of the Labor Party general conference to recognise the State of Palestine.
- Implementation of the rulings of the ICJ
- Demands for a permanent ceasefire and an end to the siege of Gaza.
- Insist on return of all hostages
- Consider expulsion of Israeli Ambassador to Australia, recall of Australia’s Ambassador to Israel
- Ending any Australian military support for Israel
- Developing plans for peace with justice in which Palestinians from all walks take a lead.
- Consider proposals for an international peace conference to address Palestinians’ rights to self-determination and refugees’ rights of return.
- Support for a UN led emergency humanitarian program to address the immediate medical, food and housing needs of Gazans
Source: Moral cowardice hinders pleas for a Common Humanity in Gaza – Pearls and Irritations
The AJDS calls for the Australian Government to ban the importation of Israeli goods and services from the Occupied Territories and to cancel the contract for the purchase of $900million of Elbit systems for Hanwha Defence Australia because of the close connection between Elbit’s products and the war in Gaza and other action in the Occupied Territories. These actions would send a clear message to the Israeli government while not threatening its security.
Australia Shamed by Military Aid to Israel
Israel’s attacks on Palestinians aren’t only carried out through guns and bombs. They also come through its vice grip on agriculture, including its system of “water apartheid.” We spoke to a Palestinian farmer and union leader about his labor under occupation.
There’s a word for seeing — and saying — that Israel is engaged in large-scale crimes against humanity. And that word isn’t “antisemitism.” It’s realism.
Journalist Jeremy Loffredo goes inside the grassroots Israeli campaign to block desperately needed aid to the besieged Gaza Strip and elicits the shockingly candid views of the Jewish Israeli nationalists manning the barricades.
Gaza now resembles Berlin at the end of WW2. A bombed out ruin, littered with the decomposing bodies of innocent civilians, entombed in the rubble of their homes. The way is now cleared for Israel to take possession of all of Gaza. To forever banish the Palestinians from their traditional homeland. And the world watches on with little more than dispassionate interest. For Israel, founded by victims of the holocaust, how the worm has turned.
Source: Gaza is the holocaust reborn – Pearls and Irritations
I helped with airlifts in Afghanistan, aid to the Ukrainian front, and building roads in Rwanda. None of it prepared me for the challenges of Gaza.
Source: Gaza Humanitarian Worker: Biden Is on Board for Ethnic Cleansing
Focus Group Testing Strategies & Tactics to demonise Hamas
Luntz’s Gaza war presentation puts his poll-tested tactics back in the Israel lobby’s hands, urging pro-Israel public figures to stay on the attack with incendiary language and shocking allegations against their enemies.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has visited the Gaza border with Egypt, where he called the blocking of aid for the Gaza Strip a “moral outrage.”
The UN would continue to work with Egypt to “streamline” the flow of aid into Gaza, he told reporters in front of the gate of the Rafah crossing, an entry point for aid.
Source: ‘A moral outrage’: UN chief vents at Gaza border in ceasefire plea
I voted NO on the appropriations bill that the Senate passed last night. While hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children face starvation in Gaza, this bill actually prohibits funding to UNWRA, the key United Nations aid agency delivering life-saving humanitarian support. This will only intensify the already horrific situation in Gaza. This bill also provides another $3.3 billion in U.S. military aid for Netanyahu’s right-wing government to continue this barbaric war. The Netanyahu government should not receive another penny from U.S. taxpayers.
Source: Sanders: ‘The Netanyahu Gov’t Should Not Receive Another Penny from US’
The truth of it has since been demonstrated a hundred times over. Israel has proven a failed experiment, incapable of conducting itself as a legitimate nation-state.
But whose mistake is Israel? It was the West, Britain in the lead, that created Israel by caving to the Zionists at the expense of indigenous Palestinians. This is the reality of power that should weigh most heavily on our shoulders. Israel ‘R’ us.
Britain’s abandonment of the 1920 Mandate brings us to one of the deeper characteristics of our time, our postwar edifice. This is the ever more complete disregard of those in power for the principles, standards and broadly accepted ethics that give form and coherence to a stable civilisation and keep its public space clean and well lit.
Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has declared 800 hectares (1,977 acres) in the occupied West Bank as state land, in a move that will facilitate the use of the ground for settlement building.
Israel has now killed more than 32.000 Palestinians, including about 9.000 women and 13.000 children, in addition to more than 10.000 who remain missing, buried under the rubble of bombarded homes and buildings, and injured more than 74.188, mostly children, since October 7, 2023. Among the slain Palestinians are 4.257 schoolchildren, 227 educators, and 112 journalists.
ِAl-Jazeera reported that the Israeli army also killed 685 medical workers, and injured 902, in addition to damaging 99 medical facilities, including 30 hospitals.
The army also destroyed 76 ambulances; only 9 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are still open, although partially functioning, bombed, and lacking essential supplies.
More than %90 of the Gaza Strip population is now displaced, facing famine, diseases, deadly shortages of humanitarian supplies, and lacking access to clean water.
The Israeli army also bombed 154 UNRWA facilities, and destroyed 65.000 residential units, in addition to damaging more than 290.00.
Israel also destroyed 281 governmental schools and 65 UNRWA-run schools and damaged or destroyed %90 of governmental schools, educational facilities, and their various departments.
Source: Day 168: “Israel Kills Dozens In Gaza, Continues Shifa Hospital Invasion” | – IMEMC News
“The Israel lobby has sought to consolidate October 7th as something that towers even above Pearl Harbor, January 6th and 9/11 as a date that represents a new holocaust …They’ve done that in order to decontextualize the event and erase all the history that preceded it, which helps us understand why it took place,” Blumenthal tells Scheer.
Scheer and Blumenthal also detail how, through censorship, false reporting and other aspects of the information war, the stories of Palestinians continue to get lost and misrepresented, especially with the strength of Israeli propaganda.
“Zionism as applied in Palestine will always lead towards genocide. That’s the ultimate goal. They have to finish 1948. There’s no way to do it without genocide,” Blumenthal said.
Joe Biden has announced sanctions on Israeli settlers in Palestinian territory. But the sanctions themselves are toothless — a way to signal displeasure with the Israeli government without actually doing anything to change the situation.
Source: Biden’s Sanctions on Israeli Settlers Are Just for Show
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