It’s been almost two months since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop killing Gazans and destroying their means of subsistence. So let’s look back and ask (1) how Israel has responded to its “orders,” and (2) how hard the Biden administration has pushed Israel to abide by those orders. Spoiler alert: the short answers are (1) not well and (2) not very.
Source: Armed by Washington, Israel Trashes the Genocide Convention – CounterPunch.org
The international human rights architecture is creaking under the weight of the hypocrisy of countries who profess support for a rules-based order yet continue to provide weapons to Israel that kill more innocent Palestinians. Above all, this is a war on human rights.
Source: There is no moral argument that justifies the sale of weapons to Israel | Mary Lawlor | The Guardian
Palestinian human rights lawyer Diana Buttu on Israel’s ongoing nakba and the fight for freedom from Gaza to the West Bank.
Source: Intercepted: “We Have to Start Thinking in Terms of Decolonization”
The Nakba that Palestinians with Israeli citizenship are facing may not be as violent and brutal as the one their brothers and sisters in Gaza and the West Bank are enduring. But its consequences and ultimate goal are the same: the complete elimination of Palestinian presence in historical Palestine.
Source: Palestinians in Israel also face a Nakba | Israel War on Gaza | Al Jazeera
It is remarked often enough, including in this space, that Israel’s savagery in its determination to exterminate the Palestinians of Gaza — and we had better brace for what is next on the West Bank of the Jordan — marks a turn for all of humanity.
In its descent into depravity the Zionist state drags the West altogether down with it.
It’s been almost two months since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop killing Gazans and destroying their means of subsistence. But Israel continues to flout the order with impunity — aided and abetted by the Biden administration.
This doesn’t typically happen as a result of any grand monolithic conspiracy; it’s mostly just the natural consequence of having all the major news platforms controlled by wealthy and powerful people who each have a vested interest in manufacturing consent for the status quo upon which their wealth and power are premised.
The oligarchs control the media, and they hire the executives who run the media, and the executives hire the editors who write the headlines and guide the reporters to report a certain way, and this gives rise to a system where everyone working for the outlet conducts themselves in a way that just so happens to suit the powerful people on top.
Then before you know it you’ve got editors at The New York Times — a paper that’s been published by the same family for over a century — packaging a story about starvation caused by an Israeli siege to look like it’s a story about an innocent crop failure.
Odds are nobody told them to do that; they just learned over the years that that’s how you rise to the top in an outlet like The New York Times.
Prominent right-wing media figures have spent months deploying antisemitic tropes and accusations to disparage liberal and anti-Zionist Jews who have questioned or opposed Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
Zionists the “revisionist muscle-minded Jews” have always fomented chaos, division and threat while waiting for a distracted world. Until the formation of Israel in 1948 they were terrorists. They guerillas conducting a war against both Britain and indigenous Palestinians. They knew the British Empire was decolonising and that the Palestinians would resist their invasion. But India, China and Korea were a bigger distraction. 1967 saw America busy with Vietnam so using their own “Bethlehem Directive” as an excuse they yelled “invasion” and attacked Egypt, Syria and Jordan conducting the 6-day war netting and illegally occupying and settling even more land.
Today it’s Ukraine and Russia that have enabled another perfect storm and an effort to complete more of what was always their intended plan Eretz Israel= The Greater Israel and Final Nakba. All they needed was 7/10 which Israeli intel knew was coming and did nothing about.
The collective despondency derives from various factors, including the lingering trauma of October 7, the soldiers who continue to be killed in Gaza, the hundreds of thousands of Israelis evacuated from the southern and northern regions, the precarious economic situation, and the hostages still held in captivity.
However, it also reflects a deep understanding among significant portions of the Jewish public of several things: that the war in Gaza is not going anywhere; that the total defeat of Hamas is not a realistic goal; that the belief that military force will release the hostages is hollow; and that mass population transfer of Palestinians is not possible, both because Palestinians will refuse to leave and because no one wants to take them in.
Source: The Israeli public is dispirited. So why is the right euphoric?
The International Court of Justice’s ruling to prevent genocide in Gaza has triggered cutoffs and legal challenges to military cooperation with Israel. Despite its many problems, international lawmaking is hurting Israel’s ability to wage brutal war.
the ICJ ruling has had notable real-world ripple effects on global military support for Israel’s war. This is true even if it still falls far short of what we would ideally expect to see in a world where international law truly reigned supreme.
Source: International Legal Rulings Are Helping Block Arms to Israel
Undaunted, Netanyahu mocks international criticism for his actions. “Reports this week that Israel plans to build a further 3,476 settler homes in Maale Adumin, Efrat, and Kedar fly in the face of international law,” said in a statement Volker Türk, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights responding to the Israeli government latest settlement expansion plans.
Türk also said that Israel is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention by “effectively transferring civilian population of Israel to the occupied territory while displacing the Palestinian population from their land. Such transfers amount to a war crime that may engage the individual responsibility of those involved.”
Source: Netanyahu’s Law of Unintended Consequences – CounterPunch.org
There is nothing in recent memory that matches the scale of the atrocities being inflicted on the civilians of Gaza, who appear to be being punished for their very existence. Every report and image coming out of this tiny but densely populated piece of land brings despair, horror and incredulity, with the question “How can this be happening?” being uppermost.
His statement was not made lightly:
Source: Israel: a nation killing and starving children – Pearls and Irritations
U.S. officials say an Israeli military operation in Rafah would likely lead to a significant shift in U.S. policy — including an end to the defense of Israel at the United Nations and restrictions on the use of U.S. weapons by Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza.
Ever since it withdrew its settlements in 2005, Israel has periodically attacked Gaza. This shelling of locations throughout the narrow strip of land gave rise to the Israeli expression “mowing the lawn.” In other words, Israel was bombing Gaza regularly to “maintain order.”
Piers allow things to come in. They allow things to go out. And Israel, which has no intention of halting its murderous siege of Gaza, including its policy of enforced starvation, appears to have found a solution to its problem of where to expel the 2.3 million Palestinians.
Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of former president and presumptive 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump, said in a recent interview that if he were in charge of Israeli policy, he would push Gaza civilians into Egypt or Israel’s Negev desert—a proposal that critics denounced as ethnic cleansing.
Source: Trump Son-in-Law Jared Kushner Calls for Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza to ‘Finish the Job’
The U.S. and more than a dozen other nations suspended funding for UNRWA in the wake of the Israeli allegations. In what UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini later called an act of “reverse due process,” the agency terminated nine employees in response to Israel’s claims, despite admitting to having no evidence to support their firing.
Source: US State Department Claims It Hasn’t Seen Reports of Israel Torturing UNRWA Staff
Instead of dealing with the clear warnings he was given, the Israeli prime minister focused on crushing democracy, establishing his status as the supreme ruler and transferring resources to the ultra-Orthodox and the settlements
Source: Sen Van Hollen Says Netanyahu Spreading ‘Flat Out Lies’ About UNRWA
Source: Here’s What Pramila Patten’s UN Report on Oct. 7 Sexual Violence Actually Said – ScheerPost
Palestine In Israeli School Books
Max Blumenthal discussed the crisis within the Democratic Party as the party grassroots revolts against President Joe Biden’s vehement support for Israel’s rampage in the besieged Gaza Strip, where at least 30,000 have been killed to date – mostly women and children.
Blumenthal points the finger at the Democratic Party establishment for crushing any and all iterations of antiwar politics, and illustrates how its most prominent figures have been bought off by the Israel lobby.
‘The Genocide Democrats’ — Max Blumenthal Speaks at Woman’s National Democratic Club – ScheerPost
In the past 24 hours of the Israeli attack on the civilian population of the Gaza Strip, Israeli occupation forces committed 13 massacres against families in the Gaza Strip, resulting in at least 149 Palestinians killed and 300 wounded, according to medical sources.
Meanwhile, ambulance and rescue teams have been unable to reach hundreds of wounded and killed, with dead bodies still trapped under the rubble or scattered on roads as Israeli occupation forces continue to obstruct the arrival of medical teams.
Source: Updated: Day 161 of Israeli Attack on Gaza: 149 Killed | – IMEMC News
It’s not just the defense industry — plenty of US-based corporations do business with Israel and are complicit in its violation of Palestinian human rights in Gaza and beyond. Here are some of the worst offenders.
Source: The Obscene US Profiteering From Israeli War and Occupation
AIPAC attendees applauded his pursuit of genocide in Gaza, where tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, neighborhoods wiped out, and the Israeli military has overseen starvation policies now taking the lives of Palestinian children.
Source: AIPAC applauds Netanyahu genocide | The Electronic Intifada
The start of Operation of Al-Aqsa Flood on Oct. 7 was accompanied by a deluge of Israeli propaganda. Claims of beheaded babies, infants found in ovens, mass rape, and other heinous atrocities allegedly committed by Hamas circulated far and wide, promoted by a range of interlocutors that included journalists, celebrities, legacy media, and even President Biden himself. Months later, the most outrageous of these claims of Hamas atrocities have been debunked, but the damage has already been done. Ali Abuminah joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the Israeli propaganda campaign providing cover for the genocide in Gaza, and the complicity of corporate media in these crimes.
Chris Hedges: Oct. 7 and Israel’s propaganda war w/Ali Abunimah – ScheerPost
Acclaimed journalist Mehdi Hasan joins us to discuss U.S. media coverage of the Israeli war on Gaza and how the war is a genocide being abetted by the United States. Hasan says U.S. media is overwhelmingly pro-Israel and fails to convey the truth to audiences. “Palestinian voices not being on American television or in American print is one of the biggest problems when it comes to our coverage of this conflict,” he says. Hasan has just launched a new media company, Zeteo, which he started after the end of his weekly news program on MSNBC and Peacock earlier this year. Hasan’s interviews routinely led to viral segments, including his tough questioning of Israeli government spokesperson Mark Regev, but the cable network announced it was canceling his show in November. The move drew considerable outrage, with critics slamming MSNBC for effectively silencing one of the most prominent Muslim voices in U.S. media. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to threaten a ground invasion of Rafah in southern Gaza, which human rights groups warn would be a massacre. President Biden has said such an escalation is a “red line” for him, but Netanyahu has vowed to push ahead anyway. “Where is the outcry here in the West?” asks Hasan of reports of Israeli war crimes, including the killing of over 100 journalists in the past five months in Gaza and the blockade of aid from the region. “It’s a stain on [Biden’s] record, on America’s conscience.”
Israeli militias expelled between 60,000 and 70,000 inhabitants of the two towns and refugees from nearby villages under direct orders from Yitzhak Rabin – who was at the time director of operations for Operation Dani – with David Ben-Gurion’s agreement. Those who sought shelter in the Lydda mosque were massacred. Between 80 and 176 people inside Dahmash Mosque were massacred with machine guns, grenades and rockets. Twenty-five were killed elsewhere.
The rest were expelled at gunpoint by Rabin in what became known as the “death march” to Ramallah. Old men, women and children fell by the wayside, dying of exhaustion, dehydration and disease.
Money and women’s jewelry were looted at leisure by Israeli soldiers. Some were killed if they resisted. There was so much looting that 1,800 trucks were said to have been loaded with stolen property.
Source: The Nakba: Five Palestinian towns massacred 75 years ago | Israel War on Gaza News | Al Jazeera
Israel has further isolated Gaza by deliberately targeting and destroying communications infrastructure. The resulting communications blackouts have thrust Gaza further into the dark, making it increasingly difficult for Palestinians to share evidence of Israeli war crimes with the outside world. As a result, efforts to push back against Israeli disinformation are severely hindered and Israeli propaganda can run amok.
At the time of writing, Israeli forces have killed over 30,000 Palestinians across Gaza and the West Bank since October 2023. They have targeted hospitals, schools, and civilians fleeing their homes. Israel’s assault is marked not only by the historic scale of violence being inflicted upon Palestinians, but by the unprecedented flood of disinformation being deployed to justify it.
World attention has understandably focused on the horrific violence Israel is inflicting upon the people of Gaza. But the brutal apartheid system in the West Bank has also been intensifying, along with the lethal violence used to enforce it.
Source: Israel’s Rule Over the West Bank Is an Apartheid Regime
Clearly, there is growing evidence that the supposed anti-Israel bias of the UN is a myth concocted to benefit Israel. Evidently, if there’s any bias at the world’s preeminent international institution, it is against the Palestinians rather than the other way round.
On 7 October, the Israeli army implemented its controversial Hannibal directive, which amounts to an order to assassinate Israeli captives to avoid having to barter for their lives by freeing Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
At Kibbutz Be’eri, another Israeli colonial settlement near the Gaza boundary fence, the Israeli army attacked a home containing 14 civilian captives and several dozen Hamas fighters.
All but one of the Qassam fighters and all but two of the captives were killed in the intense crossfire. At least three of the civilians, including 12-year-old Liel Hatsroni, were incinerated by Israeli tank shells fired at the house.
As The Electronic Intifada previously reported, Barak Hiram, the Israeli general who gave the order to fire at the house, told a fabricated story in an attempt to cover up this incident, when Channel 12’s Ilana Dayan interviewed him in October.
The families of the Israeli civilians killed by Israeli army fire at Kibbutz Be’eri have demanded that the military immediately investigate the incident and the decision to use overwhelming firepower at the cost of the lives of their loved ones.
Israeli military sources have revealed that on 7 October attack helicopters, along with armed drones, swarmed the skies above southern Israel and around Gaza.
Israeli news outlet Ynet reported in November how “28 fighter helicopters shot over the course of the day all of the ammunition in their bellies, in renewed runs to rearm.”
Ynet mentions in particular Lieutenant Colonel A., the commander of Squadron 190, who around mid-morning of 7 October “instructed the other fighters in the air to shoot at everything they see in the area of the fence.”
Source: Released captive tells how Israeli fire killed kibbutz resident | The Electronic Intifada
“Five months of violence, displacement, starvation, and disease on top of nearly 17 years of a blockade have caused relentless mental harm to children in Gaza,” said Save the Children.
Source: Israeli Genocide Causing ‘Complete Psychological Destruction’ of Gaza Children
For five months now, our screens have been bombarded by images depicting Israel’s air and ground assault on Gaza. This extraordinary footage, this apocalyptic scene, shows just how widespread that destruction has been. Israel is still denying foreign journalists independent access to Gaza. We’re in Israel, about a kilometre from the border, reports the ABC’s John Lyons.
Descartes “I think therefore I am” However Zionists police your thinking. If they think you’re a terrorist or antisemite you are and any criticism proves you are. The Bethlehem Doctrine allows them to kill on presumption. However not so anybody else. If an action or “doing is being” then I’m free to think you’re a turd “Free” is the operative word and criticise surely? Aren’t the 10 commandments about “doing” isn’t International law about “doing”? Israelis see fit to break all the rules. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is a template for honesty. Yet Israel’s Rabbis call for mothers of unborn babies to be killed because of what they might grow to think. Sounds to me like the voice of the guilty or a Fascist rather than the wise
Slow, terrifying months into Israel’s genocidal attacks on Palestine and every day the moral weakness of our political and cultural systems is discovered.
Source: Silence over Israeli genocide provokes social media backlash
Thursday that around 60,000 pregnant women in Gaza are suffering from dehydration, malnutrition, and lack of adequate medical care. Malnourished pregnant mothers can’t feed their fetuses; Gaza’s youngest starvation fatality was reportedly just 1 day old.
Source: ‘Complete Madness’: Israel Blocks Food Aid as More Gaza Children Starve to Death
The Gaza war, however, is confronting the world with an unprecedented challenge, specifically to governments’ relationship with international law and their obligations to international institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), and others.
And this at a time of war, mass dislodgement and impending famine, and when the allegations – still unsubstantiated – were directed at roughly 0.1 per cent of the UN agency’s estimated 13,000 Gaza staff members.
I thought about this abject failure of the international community and the failure of so many Jewish people to condemn an Israeli government so utterly hijacked by right-wing extremists, messianic radicals, hooligan settlers and a morally bankrupt prime minister.
The Israeli government had for months been preventing sufficient aid from entering Gaza, and Palestinians were now eating grass and drinking putrid water. Hundreds were being forced to share one latrine. Children were beginning to die of famine, and even aid workers were starving to death. Virtually every hospital had been damaged or destroyed. Doctors, nurses, artists, students, teachers, journalists, entire families and children, thousands upon thousands of children, all dead.
“I have never in my many, many years as an aid worker seen a place that has been so bombarded for such a long time, with such a trapped population, without any escape,” said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council.
Source: Israel war: IDF’s killing of innocent Palestinians has given me no choice but to speak out
While US President Joe Biden has recently announced a plan to airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza, David Harden, a former director of the US Agency for International Development has criticized this plan as “ineffective” in practice, and a symbol of the Biden administration attempting to “paper over a massive failure.”
As over 100 Palestinians are killed by Israeli forces while gathering for food aid in Gaza City, we speak to Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, who in November became the second of only five U.S. senators to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. In January, he traveled to the Rafah border crossing in Egypt to witness the system of humanitarian aid deliveries, which he described on the Senate floor as a “complicated, bizarre inspection process.” Merkley is now calling for the U.S. to bypass Israel in order to directly send aid to Gaza. Because of the United States’ relationship to Israel — “more closely tied than any situation in the world” — Merkley says, “It’s the United States that has leverage to address this situation, and the world expects us to take the lead.”
The very denial by Israel saying it wasn’t us to each and every incident in this war is a denial that there even is a war going on. Israel’s whole propaganda campaign has been to treat every event as a single issue and decontextualize the very reason there is a war in the first place. They don’t want the History of Israel and its existence at the cost of Palestinians brought into relief.
It’s a criminal offense for teachers in Israel to stray off the official line at any level in an Israeli’s education. This event will be sold as “Hamas and the UNRWA did this we only shot in the air to disperse the trucks and they prevented COGAT from doing the generous job they have always done”
Continuing the relentless assault on civilians in Gaza, Israeli troops killed more than 100 starving Palestinians waiting for flour from aid trucks yesterday. Emboldened by US complicity, Israel persists in acting with impunity in Gaza.
Source: Israel’s Flour Massacre in Gaza Is a Horrific War Crime
One wonders if this war will continue in time for Israel to ceasefire at Trump’s request?
The only good thing about what’s happening in Gaza is that it’s waking westerners up to the fact that everything they’ve been told about their society, their media and their world is a lie. Cracks are appearing in the illusion, and those of us who care about truth, peace and justice need to help draw attention to them. From there, real change becomes a genuine possibility.
Source: Caitlin Johnstone: How the Imperial Media Report on an Israeli Massacre
Israel will ceasefire on Trump’s request leaving Biden naked and gone
Creating conditions that threaten the survival of all or part of a given population is part of the very definition of genocide under international law. To feed children, treat the wounded, and save innocent lives — and avoid being complicit in genocide — the U.S. must restore UNRWA’s funding and use its leverage to compel an immediate cease-fire in the conflict.
It is tough to measure the effect of BDS on company ledgers or Israel’s economy: the movement is largely decentralised, with activities happening locally and nationally run by different groups and individuals.
But companies are cutting ties with Israel – most recently the German sportswear brand Puma, a BDS target since 2018, which announced in December that it would not renew its contract with the Israel Football Association (IFA).
Source: Britain Wants to Ban Boycotts of Israel. Does That Mean They’re Working? – ScheerPost
“The heinous crimes carried out by Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups since October 7 are the abhorrent legacy of decadeslong impunity for unlawful attacks by all parties and Israel’s crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution against Palestinians,” the group said. “The international community’s long-standing unwillingness to act to hold perpetrators to account has fueled grave abuses.”
Source: ‘Enough Is Enough’: Former Top Sanders Aide Urges Israel Arms Embargo
My life in northern Gaza since October 7 has been one unending nightmare. Fear, anxiety, hunger, thirst, and cold have become my daily companions. I am unable to comprehend the gravity of our situation, nor come to terms with the losses. Our lives here cannot be understood or explained in any rational way.
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